5"Halt! Put your hands up, you're trespassing on private property." The officer shouts. There's a split second that Lara considers complying, thinks about going quietly and letting them sort the mess out. A single moment that she's already stepping forward to go- but then his hand falls to his side in a way that is all too familiar to Lara, and her conditioned response takes over. Her forward step turns into a pivot and she sprints down the west hall, aiming for the servants' entrance. Legs flying underneath her as she leaps over the fallen debris and broken furniture, breath heaving from a panic she's been fighting for so long, heart thumping in a far too fast to be healthy way. The siren starts as she hears the engine roar and tires spin in the yard as they chase after her, no doubt calling it in. Lara whips around the curve of the hallway, feet kicking off the wall as her overmomentum sends her crashing into the stone.
But she can't stop, can't let them win. They have Sam, and they're planning on doing god knows what to her. Lara is her only chance. She just hopes she can get there in time, that she won't find Sam used and broken in some cell. Lara crashes through the window and rolls in the grass, forgetting that the servants' entrance was long remodeled away, the Crofts being one of the first in the peerage to get rid of their servants. The officer being the wheel slams on the brakes and swerves to dodge the crazy woman who burst out of the building right in front of them. Lara still catches herself on the hood, shoes thankfully skidding with the car on the wet grass rather than pulling her under. As soon as she has her feet she's off again, rabbiting along the moor on paths that are untrimmed, but still familiar to her. The officers give chase, jumping from the car whose headlights pierce the night to follow.
They're tracking her in the woods, and Roth is dead and she's gotten him killed and it's all her fault- Lara trips on a fallen tree, too dark to see the trunk in her way and can't stop her roll down the hill. The officers are slower behind her, pausing to turn on their torches and light their path. They follow for as far as they can, but Lara is used to hiding her trail, and these are no trackers. They lose her path in the wood, and turn back.
"Lara, you need to get up."
"Lara, get your lazy bones up."
"Little Bird, you can't stay here."
Lara jumps awake in shock, crying out in pain as her arm sends out fiery tingles that something is wrong. She's tangled in a pile of branches and weeds, most broken from her sudden impact. But her arm hangs at a bad angle. Lara grits her teeth and tugs the limb close, screaming into her shirt as she belts it to her chest to try and keep it from moving too much. Ignoring the wet clothes or the blood staining her head she sets off, leaving the parachute behind. She doesn't recognize the land, but that is nothing new. This whole island is something foreign and wrong to her. Her head pounds and when she pulls her hand back it comes with an unhealthy red sticky coating. She must have crashed harder than she thought. Something feels off in the back of her mind, but Lara pushes it aside. She climbs out of the pile of broken branches and sets off east, toward the rising sun.
The helicopter pilot is circling around, following the directions the officers passed on when he sees movement out of the corner of his eye. Movement and something not forest colored. He pulls the stick back to hover and looks over- there she is. The mystery home invader who ran.
"Dispatch, be advised. I've found her. She's in the gully about 4 klicks from the highway, headed toward the dam." He radios.
"Understood. Standby." Dispatch replies, and he waits, "Pilot, you are cleared to return to base. Local units will take to from here."
"I read you. Headed home."
"Good job spotting her." Dispatch says, before letting the channel click off.
Lara hears the helicopter roars above her, which throws her addled mind another twist- the solaria didn't have helicopters. Nothing on the island flew, Himiko wouldn't let it. She thought it was blasphemy to be in the air, a defiance of her powers. But that doesn't change her direction, and Lara still follows her heading east. She grows worried as the trees start to thin being replaced by tall grasses. Without the solid trunks to protect her, Lara's heart starts beating faster.
"I see her!" someone shouts, and Lara panics, turning and running again. But this time there's light out and she's not in the same shape as before. The officers chasing her aren't hindered and there are more of them this time. She fights, smashing an elbow into the first one to get close to her, kicking another in the leg before breaking free again and running. But they swear and continue the chase, and other officers get close. One grabs her arm and she tries to fight but his grip is like a vise. She screams and kicks and whirls, but she can't break his grip.
"I'm not dying! I refuse to let you sacrifice me! Himiko isn't a god, she's a monster!" Lara screams. One of the officer's tugs on her broken arm and she screams in pain, eyes watering up as agony floors her brain. There's a knife and they cut at her belt on her arm but she can't see that and in her panic she thrashes the wrong way and they cut her shoulder. Finally they manage to cuff her, Lara fighting and screaming and eyes wild with fear and Mathias walks out from behind a tree, staff raised with his evil smile.
"No one leaves."He says. Lara, overwhelmed and overloaded finally passes out.
The two officers that drew the unlucky position of having to cart her back to the station share looks, with Lara strapped in in the back.
"What the hell Dave. What is going on there?"
"Fuck, I don't know, Rog. She wasn't acting like anyone I've ever seen."
"Think she's, you know-" he twirls his finger in the air.
"Nah, she's got all the lights on upstairs. But it's something weird."
"Her screaming-it was like she thought we was someone else."
"If she isn't batty then she went through something insane. Sacrifice? Gods? Sounds culty to me."
"I just hope she can get help. She definitely needs it."
"I'd say. She was light as a feather. I could feel every rib as I carried her."
"Damn. Hopefully she's gotten far away from that cult, I hate to think of anything like that around here."
"Whole place has gone to hell since the Croft's left."
"Yeah, but what'd you expect? The head shoots hisself, leaving his kid daughter behind to find his body- whole thing is cursed."
"Anybody call in that she's bleeding?"
Rog turns to look and swears, "Dispatch be advised, suspect is leaking blood all over my backseat. Request a medic be on station to patch her up."
"Dispatch hears. One will be waiting."
Having heard the whole story on the radio, the first thing the medic does, after making sure it's safe, is sedate Lara. He's not about to fight a girl who nearly took out two officers with one arm tied behind on her back. Once she's out, he starts his diagnostic and starts patching her up.
Lara wakes up and the first thing she sees are the bars. Her eyes go wide and she doesn't notice the lack of sulfur, the fluorescent lights, no screaming- all she can see are the bars holding her in. Her, trapped in the caves, waiting for someone to come along and do whatever with her, powerless to escape, to fight, stuck impotent against them, and a failure.
SAM! Sam is dead, sacrificed or bleeding out or something terrible, and Roth and Reyes were counting on her, along with Jonah and Alex and she let them down. The solaria took all of her guns and her bow, took her ammo and arrows, took everything from her. Even her journal and Sam's camera. She hates to think what is going to be on the card now.
The on duty officer notices that Lara is awake and hyperventilating, and notifies the arresting officer.
The man walks down the row of cells, really on three of them, and sits outside of her.
"Ms. Doe, we have a few questions for you while we wait for the lab results to come back.." When Lara doesn't respond, doesn't even acknowledge his presence, he sighs.
"Ms. Doe, ignoring me won't help anything. Ms. Doe." When she still doesn't even twitch, he reaches over and waves a hand in front of her stare. "Huh, nothing." He glances at the on duty officer and they share a look.
"Ms. Doe, you were found at Croft manor where you fled the scene. We found you nearly 16 hours later near the highway, do you remember that?" he asks.
When she still doesn't respond he opens his notebook and checks his notes, "Let's see, officers reported that you shouted about the sun while they were arresting you? About scarifies and monsters? Ma'am, if you're on the run from a cult we can help."
When he still doesn't get even a twitch he looks back at the on duty officer. "Wish we knew who 'Sam' was."
"Sam's gone." The voice is cracked and shaky, a dry hoarse whisper, but she finally responds.
"He is? What happened?" The officer asks, cracking his notebook to a clean page.
"She left. After we had sorted everything she disappeared."
"Sorted what?" he asks.
Lara frowns, "No, she was taken. By Mathias- he lied to us, pretended to be like us and then he took her."
"Who is Mathias?"
"But I got her back, at the castle. We- we blew it up and got out. But then Whitman took her back, he gave her to them."
"Sir, the lab reports are in! Sir, you've got to read this!" Someone shouts.
"What happened next?" the officer prompts.
Lara face hardens, and her eyes grow darker, colder, "I killed them all."
"Sir, that's Lara Croft!" The tech says, bursting down the hall, paper fluttering in his hand. "That's our missing Lara Croft."
