TOMB RAIDER: The Money Pit

Chapter 2: Rewritten History

CHAPTER 2: Rewritten History

Surrey, England

1

With the practiced ease of an astronaut twirling end over end in an airless, anti-gravity atmosphere, Lara double-back-flipped to land perfectly on the mat, the higher of the two parallel bars still quivering behind her as if missing her weight.

It had been three days since Lara returned home from France. During that time, she had worked hard to burn off the alcohol consumed over the two nights spent away. Not that the indulgences and the lack of exercise showed; it was just a state of mind for Lara. The sweat and the adrenaline were a way of forcing out of her system any feelings of serenity. Complacency was for those who knew and accepted their futures; Lara preferred not to know how the dice would roll. Ambiguity in life was, to Lara, sometimes as thrilling as uncertainty in adventure.

Lara sniggered at this thought. Her body could work physical wonders this early in the morning, but when she let her mind play, it sometimes went off on bizarre tangents.

She sprinted across the carpeted floor, dove, rolled, came up in a kneel, guns already plucked, aimed. She fired. Twin short arrows with suckers hit the target with a wet smack. Lara smiled. The human-shaped cardboard cut-out appeared to have protruding eyes, so finely placed were her shots.

Lara re-holstered the plastic guns.

She got to her feet, looking around the training room, wondering what apparatus to try next. She crossed to a cupboard in a corner, from which she removed a pair of flexible steel mittens dotted with spiked studs. Next to where they'd sat on the shelf, a pair of similarly designed boots.

Lara moved to the south wall, where there was a wooden climbing wall as wide as a bus is long and reaching from floor to ceiling, some twenty metres high.

Lara pulled the Velcro straps tight on both the gloves and the boots. She faced the wooden wall, staring up at it as if squaring up to a larger enemy. This wall was her enemy.

She stepped back, ran forward, jumped, tucking her head low, bringing her legs up. She performed a half somersault and hit the wooden wall with her back, not hard enough to hurt but hard enough for her heel studs to bite the wood deep so that she hung there, upside down, head a foot off the floor, pony-tail curled beneath her like a sleeping snake.

She sighed. This was strengthening her heart and her muscles, but was there truly a reward? No. She could climb down at any time and have a cup of tea, nice and safe. Cosy.

She bent at the waist, bringing her upper body up as high as she could until she was staring at her feet, bent double, and her abdominal muscles were screaming their agony, which only fuelled Lara's energies. She held the pose for as long as she could, almost half a minute. Just before muscle failure, she punched the wall at a point above her feet, driving the studs in.

She wriggled her feet until the boots came free from the wood. She let her legs slide away from her, left anti-clockwise, right clockwise. Twin arcs were scraped into the wood by the studs, coming together below her to create a complete circle. Now she hung by her hands, facing the wall.