The Cradle of Life

For the first time in almost a month, Lara Croft was comfortable.

She was back home, in the study at Croft Manor, sprawled out in a red leather chair. On the table to her left was a mug of tea and a plate of scones—cinnamon walnut, fresh from the oven.
Plutarch's Lives
was open in her lap, there was a warm compress on her neck, and Coltrane playing gently in the background.

She did not intend on moving for several hours and only then to make her way into a hot bath. Then to bed. Up in the morning and repeat again till relaxed. A week or so should do it, she calculated—dispel the ghosts of Von Croy and Eckhardt from her mind, give the bruises she'd obtained in Prague and Paris time to heal.

When she heard the study door creak open, she frowned.

“No,” she said without looking up. “Resting. Incommunicado.”

She waited for the door to shut.

Instead, she heard the sound of a throat clearing. High-pitched, hesitant.

Bryce.

“Don't make me get out of this chair,” she said. She wet a finger, and turned a page.

“Er,” Bryce replied. “It's just…”

His voice trailed off. His footsteps edged closer. She looked up from the book.

Bryce was staring past her, at the scones.

“Oh my.” He sniffed the air. “Are those cinnamon?”

“Cinnamon walnut.”

He smiled, and actually licked his lips. “Really?”

She glared at him.

Bryce was her tech man—resident geek. Kept her equipment—weapons, communications systems, transport vehicles, etc.—in tip-top shape. She was glad to have him around…usually.

“One,” she said, holding out the plate.

He snatched the biggest and started cramming it into his mouth.

“Now off with you,” Lara said, putting down the scones. “I'm on downtime. Unavailable. System maintenance, to put in terms you'll find easily comprehensible.”

“Mmm,” Bryce said. “I understand.” He licked his fingers. “Delicious. Hillary never makes these for me.”

“It's because you're a pain in the arse.”

Bryce looked shocked.

“I mean that in the nicest way possible,” Lara said. “Now shoo—exit stage left. Close the door behind you.”

“I—”

“Go,” Lara repeated firmly. “Don't make me lay hands on you.”

She turned to the
Plutarch
again. She was skipping around in it—no reason for her to study up any further on Pericles or Alexander, she'd done those two to death, and she never bothered with the Romans because she'd long ago decided that they were soldiers and nothing more—as far as culture was concerned they'd simply followed in the footsteps of the Greeks and appropriated whatever they…

Her musings puttered to a halt.

Footsteps
, she thought. She hadn't heard Bryce's.

She looked up. He had, in fact, not moved at all.

He smiled. “Good stopping point?”

She sighed heavily and pinched the bridge of her nose.

“Bryce. Am I not making myself clear?”

“You're clear, you're clear,” he said quickly. “I just thought you'd want to see this.”

“This” was a sheet of paper, which he held up with both hands, turned toward her. A computer printout—a photograph.

“That looks like the ocean,” Lara said.

“It is,” Bryce agreed.

“Why would I be interested in the ocean?”

“You're not. What you might be interested in is this.” He pointed at the middle of the picture, though from where she sat Lara couldn't see at what.

“Come closer,” she said.

“It's a wooden something or other,” Bryce supplied. “An artifact, to put it in terms you'd find easily comprehensible. With a very interesting carving on the face of it—” He pointed again. “Here.”

Bryce was closer now—close enough that Lara could just barely make out the object he was talking about, floating in the middle of the sea. And on it, a geometric design of some sort—a representation of the sun, she realized. No, a star—an eight-pointed star, with—

Lara bolted upright. The
Plutarch
slid to the floor with a resounding thump.

An eight-pointed star.

“Let me see that,” she said, standing.

Bryce shrank backward, mistaking her interest for anger.

Lara crossed the remaining distance between them in two quick steps and snatched the photo from him.

It was, indeed, an eight-pointed star.

The emblem of Alexander the Great.

“Where?” she demanded, shifting her focus from the picture to Bryce.

“The Aegean, as I said. Thirty-six point seven-four degrees north by—”

She grabbed his arm. He winced.

“Show me,” she said and marched him out of the study, double-time.

 

Less than a minute later, they were standing in front of a huge flat-screen monitor. The screen displayed a landmass shaped like a backward C. There were two small islands in its empty center and another, slightly larger one to the northwest of it.

She recognized the area immediately.

“This is Santorini.” She pointed at the largest island, the backward C. “That's Thera.”

“Yes.” Bryce smiled. There was a walnut stuck in between his two front teeth. “Very impressive.”

Not really, Lara thought, but didn't bother to say it out loud because any archaeologist—and certainly any tomb raider—worth their salt would have recognized the island group just as quickly, Thera having been the site of a spectacular eruption almost four thousand years ago, an event that destroyed Minoan civilization and gave rise to the myth of Atlantis. And of course there was Akrotiri, a Minoan-era city on Thera itself, an excavation that had unearthed some of the most spectacular finds of the last twenty years. An excavation that her father had played a prominent role in, which had fixed the island—and its importance—permanently in her own mind.

“There was an eruption fifteen minutes ago,” Bryce was saying. “Fairly minor—three point eight on the Richter, but what it did—here, I'll show you.” He began feverishly typing on the keyboard.

Lara sat back again, letting Bryce do his thing, taking in the whole of the tech center—what he liked to call the mansion's “control room”—and shaking her head.

The place was a disaster area—a mess of cable, and monitors, and spare parts scattered haphazardly around the room. He'd put the helicopter simulator back online, as well, if she wasn't mistaken—and given the size of the joystick controller off to the right, she didn't think she was—which she'd told him more than once was a disastrously bad idea. The notion of someone as easily distractable as Bryce flying a helicopter…

Not for the first time, Lara wondered if actually sectioning off part of Croft Manor for Bryce's use had been a good idea. Perhaps she should have done as Hillary suggested—build him a shed next to the trailer he insisted on living in, right next to the manor. But Bryce had been so persuasive about the benefits of having the house “wired,” she'd gone along with his desires.

Someone laid a hand on her shoulder. She turned and saw Hillary standing over her.

“This does not look like rest,” Hillary said.

She smiled and laid her hand over his. “Don't worry—Bryce is doing the work. I'm just observing.”

He frowned. Hillary was her man Friday—his family had served the Crofts for more than a generation. He'd lived in the manor longer than Lara had, knew things about it—about the Crofts, about Lara—that she'd long ago forgotten.

He also knew about Prague, and ever since Lara's return, had been watching over her like a mother hen.

“Where's your tea?” He frowned, and looked around the room. “I'll get you some more tea.”

“Not necessary,” she said. “I'm fine.”

“Won't be a minute,” Hillary said, heading off in the direction of the kitchen.

“Here we are,” Bryce announced. “This is fifteen minutes ago.”

Lara turned back to the monitor. It showed Thera as it looked from several hundred feet up, whitewashed stone buildings coating the hillside, the narrow cobblestoned streets, the churches, a tavern—

“Bryce,” Lara said, suddenly realizing something. “Where are these images coming from?”

“No need to worry.” He spoke without turning around to face her.

Lara frowned. “Tell me you're not tied in to Langley again.” She did not want to have to deal with the Americans again. The last time they had caught Bryce hijacking their signals, she'd had to fly to Washington and kiss ass for a week to prevent them from starting extradition proceedings.

If he was doing it again…

“No, no,” Bryce said quickly. “These are courtesy of a ZY-Three out of Jiquan command center. And it's all legit, believe me. Well, at least as legit as you can get doing this sort of thing.”

Lara frowned. “Out of where?”

“Jiquan Command Center. Gansu Province.”

Lara looked at the images again, and shook her head. “These are off a Chinese satellite?”

“Yes, that's right.”

“The Chinese don't have anything nearly this powerful.”

“Not officially.” He smiled again. “But I've made a friend, recently—on one of the AI forums the other night, and we got to chatting, and of course I asked him what he did, and it turns out he's one of the surveillance monitors for—”

“Enough,” Lara said, holding up a hand. “As long as it's not Langley, I can deal.”

“It's not Langley,” Bryce said. “Ah.” He pointed at the monitor. “Watch this.”

Whoever was controlling the satellite's focus—Bryce's friend, perhaps?—had found something of interest. The camera zoomed in closer on the town—Fira, or Oia, possibly even Merovigli, where she'd spent one idyllic summer as a teenager—and stopped.

They were looking at a wooden deck, perched precariously on a cliff overlooking the ocean. A large portion of the deck was covered by a white tent—no, not a tent, a thinner cloth, a canopy, almost transparent to the satellite. Beneath the canopy, Lara saw movement—people, dozens of them. On the portion of the deck not covered by the canopy, tables were set up, filled with people eating, drinking, in mostly formal wear…

Lara suddenly realized she was looking at a wedding.

The people moving underneath the canopy were dancing.

“Your friend,” Lara said, smiling, “is somewhat of a voyeur.”

“Well,” Bryce said. “Er.”

The camera moved away. Naturally—as high up as the satellite was, it couldn't focus on such a small area for long.

Except that a split second later, the satellite was focused on the wedding again. From farther off, and at a different angle this time—one that let it peer underneath the tent. Lara caught a glimpse of guests in formal dress, arms clasped around each other, making a circle—she marveled at the resolution the satellite was capable of—when suddenly the image on the monitor wavered.

The dancing stopped.

“That was shock number one,” Bryce announced. He pointed to another monitor just to the right of the one they were watching, which showed an X-Y graph. “Two point seven on the Richter.”

Guests milled about on the screen.

The image wavered again. This time, Lara saw objects on the monitor actually shake. For a second, she feared the entire deck might topple off the mountain and plunge into the sea.

“Shock number two,” Bryce announced. “Three point eight.”

The white canopy collapsed, covering dozens of people. The cloth rippled and surged. The bride sat down on the deck, and put her head in her hands.

The satellite moved off again. A second later, she was looking at the ocean. And as she watched, something popped to the surface and rested there, bobbing on the current.

The artifact Bryce had shown her, bearing the symbol of Alexander the Great. The eight-pointed star.

The earthquake had clearly disturbed something, but what…

“Can you go in closer on that?” she asked Bryce, pointing at the screen.

Bryce nodded. She watched the image grow larger, theories about what might have happened—what the earthquake might have disturbed—running through her mind. A shipwreck, perhaps—that seemed the most likely candidate, although—

“Terrible resolution at this size,” Bryce said. “Hold on a minute.”

He keyed in a few more commands. Lara watched as the image grew sharper and sharper, till Bryce leaned back with a satisfied smile.