A New Beginning

Lara had almost crossed the entire campus before she realized she could already call Zip to brief him on the way back to the hotel to save time later. She knew she was going to stay up longer than she really wanted to so every bit of finished work was a blessing.
The archaeologist took out the headset from her purse and called her assistant while waiting for the traffic lights to change so she could cross the street.

As he got his eyes back to the lady who just excited the university, he followed her to some traffic lights where they were forced to stop.
Staying a bit further away from her, he saw her adjusting an headset. John heard her distinctly talking, but through the various cars driving by and people mumbling, he barely could make out what she said. The lights turned green and she walked off again as Reese pursued still reminiscing about what the two professors talked about. The woman seemed to have gotten some clue about what was going on. And John was keen on finding out.

"Target is moving up."

"Thanks, Anders. Dismissed."

Isabela allowed herself another drink as she continued to check on upcoming emails that may include updates. She had gotten a biography on this Raleigh guy that Miss Croft had mentioned, also vague documents that affirmed the fact that his research had been burned down. The only true treasure so far, was that they had acquired a copy of the letter Miss Croft must have been reading. It was referring to an Orb he had found, with strange powers that seemed to emanate from it. Now he didn't mention anything supernatural, in fact ... the discouraging part was that he didn't say much at all, ending the letter saying he looked forward to meeting up with Edmund.

Isabela took a deep breath and leaned back in her chair, shot glass in hand as she watched the monitor.
Anders zapped in one last time, letting her know that some guy seemed to be following Miss Croft.

Isabela wrinkled her forehead but dismissed the matter as unimportant for right now.

"Yes, Zip. The Walter Raleigh," Lara clarified. She was surprised Zip had even heard his name before. "I'm confused myself. He was never supposed to be in Asia, let alone India. This is more than strange."

The archaeologist had noticed a seemingly sleazy homeless man following her for the past couple minutes, although she wasn't sure when he had started to. She figured he was going to attempt to rob her at some point. She chuckled at the thought.

"So what about the other two gentleman?" Zip asked.

"James Aldwych and some... Edmund, I believe. Check them out for me, will you?" Lara just crossed a fork in the road, headed to the tall building that was her hotel. If the guy pursueing her was going to attack her, he better hurried it up.

"Already did," her assistant replied.

"And?"

"Nothing. They practically didn't exist."

She almost stopped walking, surprised about what she just heard but then remembered that probably wasn't a smart thing to do in her current situation and kept moving instead.  "I have something to deal with, I'll call you back in a minute."

From the whole time he perused her, John didn't even pick up any word from what she was saying to the one she called to.
But he did notice the woman stopping in her tracks but quickly moving forward as her body language told him that she might have suspect that she's being followed.
He looked around, hopefully spotting the person who might have set off this sudden action of her, when all of a sudden he thought about his own attire. Seems Reese forgot how he looked and how obvious it must have been from the start. John shook his head by this terrible mistake and was thinking on how to solve this. The woman seemed to hang up on the person she was calling to and walked further.
Reese decided this would be a great time to get some more distance between them, and see where she resided.
However, when he looked around, she was vanished. Just like that when a second ago he had his eyes on her.
The amount of alcohol still in his system must've made him too sloppy this night.

"And they have never seen it again?"

"Nope, no trace of The Orb after Raleigh has vanished. He had it in his possession but as Miss Croft already pointed out, he was so shocked by what he had found, he burned everything down. That they even got their hands on some of the letters is extraordinary!"

"Hm," Isabela pondered, tapping a pen to her lips as she was thinking.

"There's no more hints in Mumbai?" she asked.

"Not yet. We've just sent some of our locals out to investigate. It's not even been two hours yet, give it some time, boss."

"But time's running out," she whispered and leaned back with a sigh.

Lara felt mildly uncomfortable with how close the homeless man had gotten and turned into a small alley next to her hotel. She sprinted through it and came out on the other side, safe from her stalker. She went back around the corner and into the hotel after checking if she had in fact lost him.

Back on her room, she called Zip again, took off her coat and boots and threw her purse on the little glass desk after taking out Raleigh's letters and the other papers she had obtained from the historians back at the university. The archaeologist grabbed a folder containing some more documents and scanned copies of even more documents and walked up and down her suite, skimming through them.
She was waiting for Zip to answer her call, which was basically any second considering the guy hung out in front of his computer literally all day long.

"What happened?" was his first question upon accepting the incoming call.

"Some homeless man stalking me, had to get rid of him," Lara replied and flipped through another few pages.

"Are you okay?"

"Come on! Of course I am," she chuckled. "Now, let me in on the mystery of our missing gentlemen."

"Honestly, there's not much to let you in on," Zip responded, sounding the tiniest bit nervous. "I literally can't find a thing."

"Let me get this straight; an adventurer sets out to find this ancient piece of Atlantean technology. Sir Walter Raleigh gets ahold of the letters some way or another and proceeds to burn them down, including all of his research on the matter?"

"Dude sounds like a real spoilsport to me," Zip said. "So, what has your smart brain come up with?"

"I'm afraid your compliment is in vain, Zip. I can't seem to figure it out. Just what happened to those two chaps?" Lara had sat down on the edge of her bed and was reading through the letter again. And then again, and again.

She was smart, but not smart enough.
Reese stepped into the same hotel she went into a good ten minutes before. Looking around it surprisingly had the same rich feeling to it as the university did. Lucky for him, it seemed the hall was empty, considering the time he stepped in there. Almost midnight.
He looked behind the counter of where the people usually greet you and give you a key, but it looked that they were absent.
Weird to leave it unmanned like that. Seems he got lucky.

Ignoring the bell on the desk to call a worker, John grabbed one of the keys that hung on the board with a ticket on it that the owner was not in and went towards the elevator where some ordinary lift music played. Hopefully the person who holds this room will stay out for a bit longer. He looked on the key, which said "316" Looking at the small map in the elevator, the male saw this room was on the 7th floor. If only he knew which room the woman stayed in. It would make everything so much easier.
John arrived on the floor, and slowly walked through the hallway checking every door until he found the room he was looking for.
Before actually opening it he knocked, just to see if there was a response.
After no one opening the door and hearing no sounds coming from inside, Reese used the key and entered the hotel room and flicked on the lights.
"Well this looks comfy." he mumbled as he saw the luxurity of the room.

"What can be so horrible that you burn everything about it down and vanish? And why vanish ... if he did nothing wrong. Was he that scared of the Orb? It wasn't like it would track him down. Or .. could it?" Isabela let out a deep sigh and leaned back in her chair. Having observed Miss Croft in her room hasn't revealed any new information. In fact, she seemed as helpless as Isabela was herself. There was a chance she was just pretending not to know anything in case anyone was listening in - which was the case - but Isabela doubted it.
If she wanted this treasure and myth unraveled she needed to take a big leap.

"Anders?"

"Yes?"

"Get me Miss Croft's personal phone number. Now," she paused, getting up out of her chair, with drink in hand, heading to the bedroom.

"You have until tomorrow, along with everything else you can find about Raleigh and the Orb, anything really ... stay busy. Call me as soon as you got something."

She hung up after the "Got it," and decided to get some rest because she had the feeling there wouldn't be much once things got going.

"Roanoke Colony," Lara suddenly exclaimed, putting the letters out of her hand. She let herself fall on the bed she was sitting on and crossed her arms behind her head, staring at the ceiling. A disbelieving laugh escaped her lips.

"Excuse me?"

"Late 16th century, Walter Raleigh, sailors dissapearing without a trace? Doesn't that ring a bell?" She grabbed the letters on the bed next to her again and examined them for the hundredth time.

"Wouldn't have if I didn't just look it up. Some English colony vanishing in 1587?" Zip replied, sounding somewhat baffled.

The adventurer chuckled and sat back up, wrapping her arms around her knees as she pulled them closer to her chest. "Yes. Some say it was some kind of black magic, a curse the natives put on the settlers to drive them out of their land."

"They only found some word carved into a tree on the island," Zip said.

"Croatoan," Lara interrupted. "Historians believe it was the name of the tribe that lived in that area. It is also the name of a nearby island where others think the settlers relocated. Hardly any real evidence though."

"There's something else bothering me."

"And what would that be?" The archaeologist has been reflecting about this case more than she had about anything in the past three years. It has been that long since she unconvered the plans of the Cabal syndicate and she was eager to get her hands on something exciting again, something big. She finally felt that certain joy emerging from deep within her again, that itching for adventure she had missed and forgotten about and had only briefly relived while making her way through the ancient catacombs beneath the Louvre or investigating the highly dangerous facility in Prague.
Back when Putai and all of her friends were brutally murdered she thought she would never be the same again. She was scarred, paranoid, afraid of what had happened and what was to become of her. Something inside of her broke and she didn't know how to fix it. When she held Werner's dead body in her bloody arms, she felt nothing but fear. Fear of what she had become, of why she wasn't feeling any grief or anger or anything. She was cold and scared and what little pleasure she got out of exploring some of the most magnificent tombs in all of Europe in the following days was concerning her for months.
But she was on the right track. She was Lara Croft after all and she couldn't let anything break her. She chose this life for herself and she knew damn well she was going to fight and keep going, no matter what happened to her and no matter how much loss she had to experience. So she kept going. The day she returned from Prague she ordered Winston to come back to Croft Manor, she hired Zip to be her full-time technical assistant, she had whatever damage she had done to the mansion in her outbursts of anger after returning from Egypt repaired and she got a lot better a lot sooner than she would have ever imagined. Lara knew she couldn't let herself go like that ever again and after not having any proper cases to work on for almost three years she knew this was going to be the one to get her back into the life she had lead successfully for so long.

"I think someone's wiretapping us. Something's wrong with the connection. Looks like some sort of micro-technology. Check your clothes, your bag."

Lara instantly got up from the bed and emptied her bag on it. She took a quick look at the things that fell out while frisking herself for any device that shouldn't be there and then she felt a tiny lump on the back of her top, right above her belt. She took it off and couldn't believe what her eyes were seeing.

"Bloody hell," she muttered. "You are right."

As soon as the room lit up, John didn't know what he saw. Like two or three laptops stood open with visuals of various streets close to the hotel.
Entering the room further he also noticed a audio tapping machine. Reese looked further around with an impressed frown on his face, but he had to check it out later, for now something else had a priority. Checking the suitcase next to the side of the bed, he found a neat looking suit. Checking if it was his size he chuckled and took it with him inside the bathroom. After a quick but satisfying shower, he began to open all the drawers and closets at the sink area. it was then, he noticed that there was a toilet bag on the sink where he found the razor blade he desperately needed along with some shaving cream. Finally he got rid of that filthy beard and immediate change was to be seen. Looking deeper into the bag, he also found a small blunt pair of scissors.
It didn't work as well as he hoped it would on cutting his hair back to his usual length, but it had to do. Taking quite a while he finally was finished and John looked back at the end result in the mirror. There he met the man again who he hadn't seen for a long time.
He ripped his eyes off the mirror again since there was no time for waxing sentimental.
Reese then got himself into the suit and walked back into the main room and started to check out every single detail of the gear that was seen.

He walked over to the laptops and examined the camera visuals again. The man then noticed it were angles towards sidewalks he and that woman walked past. Could it have a connection? Walking over to the audio tap, he saw various bars on the little screen showing there was sound on the other end it was tapping it from. Unmuting the device he heard a distinct male voice as if it was coming from a phone call or some sorts.
"I think someone's wiretapping us. Something's wrong with the connection. Looks like some sort of micro-technology. Check your clothes, your bag."
John looked up in shock. Seemed the little detective that used to stay here just got exposed. After a short silence he heard a familiar voice coming through.
"Bloody hell, You are right."
This gave him an uncomfortable feeling. It seemed they were indeed wiring the woman he followed to this place. What has she gotten herself into.
Muting the device again he sprung up and began to search through the room for anything that looked like a firearm.

Isabela hadn't even made it to her bed. As soon as she heard the words Roanoke colony and Croatoan she was back behind her computer, taking notes and sending off emails to several of her assistants to take the search even further.

She waited, her fingers hovering over the keyboard, listening intently to what is was that was bothering Miss Croft. Out of the corner of her eye, on one of the other monitors that displayed small windows for all the cameras installed around the place, she noticed Mister Newkirk walk into the hotel. She raised her eyebrows in surprise, then frowned. It wasn't entirely suspicious but almost too convenient that he was in the same hotel that Miss Croft was in.

"I think someone's wiretapping us."

Isabela started and spilled her drink. She cussed as the sticky rum made its way through her pants and was dripping onto the carpet.

"I have Miss Croft's number, I am sending it to you right now," Ander's voice chimed in at the same time as she heard Miss Croft confirm that her partner Zip had been right. So she had found the chip.
Isabela cussed and thanked Anders at the same time and also tried to wipe up some of the mess, her heart pounding in fear that Zip could trace it right back to her and that would mean game over.

She had no idea just yet that a third party was involved after all.

"Deactivated it just now."

"Me too." Lara threw the tiny microchip on the floor and stepped on it. She picked the remains up and flushed them down the toilet.

"You know, that wasn't actually necessary, considering I just said I deactivated it," Zip complained.

"You know I don't trust these things."

Lara went back into the bedroom and took a deep breath. Just when I had figured things out, she thought. She should have known better; there was always going to be trouble when you attended to those kind of matters.

"Newkirk," Zip interrupted her train of thought.

"Huh?"

"I traced the signal back to him. Camera footage shows he's actually on his way to your hotel right now."

Looking back at the feeds, John saw a familiar face walking up to the Hotel doors. It looked like one of the professors he saw earlier at the hotel. Funny how he walks right into the same hotel where the woman he talked to was staying, unless-...
In a rush, Reese walked over to the suitcase and checked the card where you usually put on your name should it get lost.
"Dr. Marcus Newkirk." he mumbled to himself reading it, remembering the professors calling out each others' name on which one was the one on the card.
"Well I'll be damned..." he continued. "So why is it you're spying on her."

John looked over at the desk again and seemed to have missed some documents lying under one of the laptops. Inside it were copies of various history documents. Reading through some of the pages, of which one was a copy of an old letter, he noticed it seemed to revolve around one name 'Raleigh.'
Not understanding one bit of it, he threw the map back on the desk without a care in the world. The professor was coming up and he had to get out of here. Once he reached the door, he heard someone from the other end touching the lock of the door.
"Yes, yes. They lost the key, luckily they had a spare one."
Not wasting any second, John raced over towards the clothing closet and hid himself in there as the professor slowly entered after saying his goodbyes on the phone he just hung up.

Isabela was bracing herself, biting down on her lower lips and her eyes squeezed shut she waited for that one little beep that would let her know Miss Croft had found the chip.

"Deactivated it just now."

"Huh?" Isabela mumbled quietly to herself. She opened her eyes and continued to hear Miss Croft and her assistant Zip.

She let out the air she had been holding and wiped some sweat off her forehead.

"Newkirk," Zip chimed and Isabela's eyes widened and she again shook her head, this time in disbelief. It was so obvious! How could he have made a mistake like that? But she found herself grinning right away; he always has been full of himself and thought himself above everyone else.

Taking another sip of her rum Isabela leaned back, she tapped on her mic to Anders and let him know to erase every other camera and chip besides the one in Miss Croft's room and put all efforts onto that one to remain hidden. She herself killed all the links and open windows she has had and concentrated simply on listening in. She had her plan. She would call Miss Croft tomorrow and go from there. This was a mystery neither one of them had figured out yet and if Isabela played her cards right teaming up with Miss Croft would pay out to have been the right decision.

She looked down and remembered that she had spilled rum onto one of her thighs before, she sighed but figured she'd get changed and head to bed soon anyway.

Lara walked up to the big fancy glass facade of her suite overlooking the busy streets. She noticed she could even see one corner of the university from up there. No sign of Newkirk on the sidewalks however.

"He just entered the hotel," Zip weighed in again.

"This should be interesting."

The adventurer returned to the centre of her room and took a knife out of a small suitcase that she always brought with her on trips like these. She put her boots back on and strapped the blade into one of them. She could definitely not take any risks.

"Are you gonna go look for him?" Zip asked.

"I doubt I will have to."

The professor happily whistled as his undid his tie and threw it on the bed. John carefully looked through the opening of the closet trying to pinpoint his movements as Newkirk checked the audio logs he recorded and the footage.
"Hmm she's already in, great- should have more info within the hour." he mumbled to himself and continued to whistle a tune, not noticing the audio had actually stopped spiking. Next he threw off his jacket that also flew over to the bed. John made an uncomfortable face hoping he wouldn't undress himself and then trying to grab a new outfit out of the closet.
However, he heard the footsteps going over towards the bathroom. This didn't make Reese feel any more comfortable, since he practically left his mess in there. The second he thought about it, he heard the whistling stop and the voice of the man loud through the room.
"What the hell!?"
Knowing this was his only chance, John jumped of the closet and went for the door- however the professor was catching up fast and grabbed Reese by the arm who punched him back almost knocking him over. However, Newkirk just shook it off and went in a noobish fight position.
"What are you doing in my room, thief!?" he said angrily and he went for the man in the suit who just stepped aside and made the professor crash into the wall instead. Making an amused grin, John just looked over at the frustrating professor who tried to get up again.
"Well, as far as I know it's also my room." Reese said waving the key he stole around teasingly.
This was going to be more fun that he thought.

Isabela leaned back, crossing her arms in front of her chest and watched patiently for what was to come. Newkirk wouldn't be so dumb as to just enter her room, she thought. But then, over and over have people fascinated her with their amount of stupidity.

She checked the time, took a deep breath and granted herself one last shot.

"I'm getting something," Zip said after the moments of silence in which Lara was walking up and down her room, waiting for Newkirk to find her. She was sure he had figured out in which room she stayed in so it was only a matter of time until he showed up. "I think it's coming from one of the devices in his room."

"Guess I will be paying him a visit then," Lara chuckled and played with her knife.

"I updated the map on your PDA."

The adventurer pulled the device out of her purse and opened the interface. Zip had come up with a GPS-based mapping technology that he tailored to Lara's needs. He kept it simple and user-friendly so she could navigate the program as quickly and effeciently as possible. With a few swipes and taps she had a complete overview over all the floor plans of the hotel and neighboring areas.

"The noise is coming from downstairs," Zip analyzed. "Turn on your headset, I'll connect you through."

After putting in her earpiece she immediately heard two men chatter, interrupted by some infrequent bursts of noise, the connection wasn't very good. The more she heard she realized it sounded more like an argument.

As Lara was going through maps of the floors, trying to find where the GPS signal came from she heard a familiar voice shout. She was certain it had to be Newkirk's.

"It's on the seventh floor," Zip updated her.

"Are you sure?"

"Yea. Head down there, check the doors to right side of the elevator, I can't make out what room it is exactly."

The tomb raider grabbed her purse, put the PDA back into it and the rest of the headset on her head before she rushed out of the room and headed for the elevator on her level.

The professor rolled over the floor after another clumsy fall and John wondered how he got so good in tapping information and be so sneaky cause he definitely had no experience in hand to hand combat, at all.
"Need a hand?" John asked highly amused and held out his arm while the professor scoffed and just didn't let up. "Ok. That's it, you're hurting yourself more than me." the man in the suit finally said and pushed the professor in the bed, and quickly grabbed a tie wrap and fastened Newkirk's arm around a piece of the furniture who immediately protested. Reese grabbed a chair and sat next to him.
"So, who are you spying on?" He asked, while the other man was still trying to pull his arm loose from the bed. The man in the suit already knew, but it was time to get some clearer answers.
"Like I'm gonna tell someone who broke into my hotel room!" Newkirk aggressively said. "You even stole my clothes!"
John rolled his eyes and stood up and began to investigate the room even further.
"Hey! Those are personal belongings!" the professor yelled, but Reese just ignored it. Finally he found the thing he was looking for, strapped under the bed.
"Well look what we got here." and he pulled out the 9mm from the tape and Newkirk once again protested.
"Put that back!" he said in a stern tone, but John grinned instead, and checked the gun's ammo. It was full and the man in the suit knew that this interrogation was about to get even more fun.

Lara stepped out of the elevator the second the doors opened on the seventh floor of the hotel and made her way down the hallway. She had her PDA out again and checked where the signal was strongest as she made her way past the first few doors on the right side.

She stopped in front of room 315 when she heard a loud noise coming from behind one of the doors. It sounded like someone falling on the floor. Newkirk seemed to have been engaged in a fistfight from the sound of things.

The adventurer pressed her ear against the hotel room door.

"Next one," Zip said.

She took a step back. "You sure?"

"I'm sure."

When she walked over to the next room she realized Zip was right. She could clearly hear a man shout something and she was certain it had to be Marcus. She had no idea what was going on behind that door and who he was arguing with but she wasn't going to wait for it to escalate into something worse.

Lara turned the headset off, pulled out her knife and positioned herself right in front of the door. Then she picked up speed and slammed her left shoulder into it as hard as she could and proceeded to stumble into the room along with the door.

"You just simply have to tell me who and why you were spying on that poor woman." John began after a long interrogation that got him nowhere.
"You're never going to get any answers from me!" the professor yelled and the man in the suit just shook his head. Finally loosing his patience, the man readied the gun he found, and before he could even make a small threat of shooting in one of his limbs, the door swung open with a loud crash.
In an instant, John pointed the weapon towards a familiar face.
"You?" he asked confused, and in the door opening stood the woman he followed back towards the hotel.

Once Miss Croft was out the room Isabela had no more means of tracking her; and she didn't feel like setting anything up. She glanced at the time and decided to stick with her plan of calling Miss Croft tomorrow. As of right now, there was nothing she could do. And she figured she'd need the sleep anyway, for she had a feeling she would be a lot more involved once she got into contact with the notorious tomb raider.

"Me," Lara chuckled and immediately threw her combat knife at the stranger's gun. She scanned the situation and environment in a matter of split seconds and had noticed Newkirk was tied up on the bed.

She had no time to question what exactly was going on though the obvious thing to assume was that the man was a robber that held her acquaintance captive and stole his things. That would have explained why he had followed Lara so close to the hotel; he might have been on the lookout for rich guests.

The gun flew out of his hands as soon as the woman's knife touched his hands and he confusingly looked over to her, as if it was really necessary.
It was for certain that she didn't trust him at all, and he looked over towards the Professor who looked back at the duo in shock.
"This is the woman you spied on, isn't she?" John asked Newkirk while faintly pointing over towards her.
"I- I..." the professor began and then kept his mouth shut.
"He's very shy." he told her, while making a faint smile over towards the woman.