Antarctica, RX
Tech Research
Output1
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Only minutes have passed since the hideous creature
that Dr. Willard had become gasped the last breath of its violently
short life cycle. The experiment had failed. The gleam of immortality
returned to the stars from which it came.
Lara looks on silently, oblivious to the press of the bitter
Antarctic wind. Suddenly a ragged figure emerges from the dark, gaping
hole of the meteor cavern. It is Willard, a human reborn, but in the
throes of death. A hand gestures wildly. A final guttural laugh
tears through the silence. The figure slumps forward and is
still.
With the snow already forming a ghastly shroud over the body,
Lara quickly tears an object form the dead man's grasp. A wallet, its
monogrammed "W" now standing sadly against Willard's last earthly
remains.
"Hmmm... what have we here?" Lara wondered, picking up a
monogrammed leather wallet. "No doubt made from the hide of some poor
endangered species," Lara thinks to herself. Without wasting time to
investigate the contents of wallet, she slips it into her backpack and
makes her way out of the meteor
cavern.
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The winter rains outside are pounding relentlessly against the
windows, and the fire in the fireplace is now just a smouldering pile
of cinders. The cold of the English winter is starting to penetrate
the stone walls of the old Surrey mansion.
Lara, still tired and aching from having just returned from her
visit to London, rolls over
and pulls up the fluffy silk covers up over her nose. Last night was
the first good night of sleep she's had since she set out to look for
the meteor artifacts.
Lara briefly considers just sleeping in today, but knows that she
wouldn't be able to stand being in bed that long. She finally lets
out a moan when the desire for a hot shower has finally overcome her
desire to stay under the covers.
She flips her legs off the side of her bed, and reaches over and
pulls her gown off of the bed post. She pulls the gown over her
over-sized T-shirt and shuffles into the bathroom. She turns on the
hot water in the shower, and returns to the bedroom to wait for the
hot water to make its way through the manor to her bathroom.
Lara idly wanders over to the couch by the windows. She picks up
her backpack off the couch and drops it to one side of the couch only
to find assorted items that were beneath the backpack. Lara had
dumped this stuff out of her backpack when she hurridly unpacked after
returning from Antarctica.
Lara sweeps all of it to one end of the couch as she places one
knee on the couch and sits down in a half lotus position. She stares
out at the rain, and as she turns her gaze on the items on the couch,
she notices something she had picked up in Antarctica.
Lara reaches down and picks up the small brown object. Holding
it up to look at it, she turns it over a few times. It's Willard's
wallet. "Huh," an amused Lara lets out. She had forgotten in her
tumultuous encounter with Willard, she picked up the wallet he
dropped.
Inside the wallet is the usual collection of tattered mementos, a
hodge-podge of foreign currency, consisting of a few English Pounds,
Dutch Gilders, and even Japanese Yen, a map of England, and what seems
like a photo of Willard's
Estate.
"Well, well," mused Lara, "It looks like I have a fan. He has a
was a newspaper clipping of
me3. I didn't know he was
so... attached." A yellow piece of paper catches her eye.
It's a telegram to Willard
from one of his henchmen4. "Fifth
Artifact found. Stop. Delivery confirmed to your Lock Ness
Estate. Stop." There's more in the message, but the rest is
unreadable except to mention that someone else knows about the Fifth
Artifact.
Lara is surprised by the contents of the telegram and exclaims to
no one in particular, "This cannot be!" Then a familiar expression
glides across Lara's face-an eyebrow raised by a wry and knowing
smile. Before her, a telegram urging an immediate return to take
possession of another artifact now secure beneath the Scottish mists
at Willard's Loch Ness estate.
"The adventure continues," says Lara, to no one in particular.
Willard's dark laughter is now ringing in her ears. "So there was a
fifth..." Lara's voice trails off. She snaps back to the here and
now and announces, "So it's off to Scotland for me. Where's that
helicopter of mine?"(follow
plot)
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