Lara and her Teams arrive in Cairo and find out a lot of things, but at the End.... she starts to stare into the Ruby again

When the airplane landed in Cairo, the three got out and looked around. Lara had her guns in a backpack and wore large sunglasses. Bryce and Wilson stood behind her and waited for the car to slowly roll towards her. As her plane slowly rolled into the parking position, Lara stood on the airfield with her legs spread wide apart and a winning grin on her face. Here the hunt would begin and soon she knew what kind of box it was. When Lara entered the car, she sighed. The car was cooled down to 16 degrees while outside it was more than twice as hot. The drop-in temperature was quite intense and not only affected her. Sitting opposite her was one of her contacts who she had distributed all over the world. Achmed was one of her closer contacts. Since she was often in this part of the world, she needed an especially good contact here.

"LARA!" he called out in a good mood and hugged her.

"Achmed! How is your wife?"

" Very well, Lara. Everything is fine. But she is worried about you! Usually we have more time to prepare for one of your visits. This time it was not even a day? What's wrong?"

"There were unexpected changes in my travel plans Achmed. Could you still organize everything?" she asked and was fully aware that he had really had little time.

"But Lara! Of course, I organized everything," he laughed and pulled several tickets out of his jacket and held them out to her. Joyfully surprised, Lara accepted the three tickets and raised an eyebrow in amazement. "An uncle of my cousin has a brother whose neighbor has a good friend of the brother-in-law of the mother of the curator of the museum." He said and then raised his fingers. "Uncle, cousin, brother, neighbor, friend, brother-in-law, mother! Yup, that's right!"

Except for Wilson, they all laughed at the nature of Achmed. He drove with the three Englishmen to the hotel where Lara had her room. Wilson and Bryce also had rooms here but not on their floor. When Lara arrived in her room there were already 2 huge suitcases on the big bed.

"Are these my toys Achmed?" she asked and opened the suitcases. In them she found several weapons, ammunition and some modern equipment like small computers, GPS systems and of course climbing equipment. She searched everything and raised an eyebrow. "No explosives?" she asked astonished and Achmed raised his hands.

"Lara! This is a hotel, not a military base. You'll get the C4 when we leave town. For some reason the police have a problem with beautiful women walking around with explosives," he grinned, and Lara nodded.

"Excellent Achmed. What kind of vehicles do we have?"

"From here we go on with a Humvee. Have a friend who knows someone who has good contacts with the Americans. Is in perfect shape. I put a motorcycle on it, because I know what you like. More I could not prepare yet, because I did not get a route, but you know me.

"A huge family!" grinned Lara and hugged him long. "Thank you very much Achmed. Give my regards to your wife!"

When he was gone, she looked at Wilson and Bryce. "Okay guys. You know the drill. Bryce. I need all the data you have in my folder by tonight. Wilson. I'm going to need enough supplies and provisions, maybe on short notice."

Both nodded and Lara grabbed a very thin coat and put it on. This was just there to hide her otherwise rather revealing clothes. Here it didn't always turn out well to walk around like she usually did. She took a cab to the museum and showed the papers she had from Achmed at the counter. The woman looked at them briefly and then let them in.

Inside she could not deny herself the feeling of calm that she always felt when she was in a museum. Here she felt at home. Surrounded by the past. Probably she would not find anything here, but unfortunately, she had hardly any traces to follow. Only the symbols on the box were a clue.

"Lara Croft!" she suddenly heard her name and turned her head in the direction the call came from.

"Professor Conner’s?" she asked in amazement and delight when she saw one of her old lecturers. Gladly surprised, she walked up to him and hugged him. "What are you doing here?"

"Oh. I am here as an expert on some of the latest discoveries. Isn't that why you're here, too?"

"No. What discoveries?" she asked curiously.

"A stone tablet was found in one of the burial chambers in the Valley of the Kings, which tells of a sovereign unknown until then. I was called in to determine the authenticity of this tablet."

Both walked through the halls where the history of Egypt was exhibited, and he told her about the new find. Apparently, it had been found in a hidden chamber of one of the oldest pharaohs and when the two of them stood in front of the box in which this stone plate had been inlaid, Lara could not believe her eyes. This box and hers were almost identical. Only that this one was not made of gold, but of a kind of onyx. But apart from that the pictures on the box fitted pretty much exactly.

"Do you like Lara?" smiled the professor and she went around the box. But there was one fundamental difference. There was no gemstone placed here.

"Very interesting. Yes... really. Could you already identify the symbols?" asked Lara and the professor nodded. "A large part yes... but a few not yet. Could it be that you know more about the box than you want to admit?"

"What makes you think so?"

"Let's just say I know you well enough." He smiled, and she giggled.

"Weren't you going to show me the plaque?"

"As mysterious as ever... come..." For over an hour they talked about the stone tablet which gave Lara the one or other idea. Apparently the two boxes belonged together somehow, even if the box here was about 6 millennia younger than Lara's.

Unfortunately, the stone tablet itself did not help her in the least, but at least she had been able to find out the location of the find. The professor was really a nice guy, but just way too talkative. When she came back to the hotel, the sun slowly set. After a quick shower, she had felt strangely sweaty since the flight, she felt much better. When she got out of the shower naked she felt clean and fit for the first time. She rubbed the towel over her stunning body and went to the window. With the towel wrapped over her head, she stood naked on the glass, looking at the approaching sandstorm on the horizon. It was a huge wall of sand approaching at incredible speed. She heard the door open and Bryce came in. He saw that Lara was still naked and just shrugged his shoulders as he set up his laptop on the table.

"Do you want to get dressed first or should I explain it to you?" he simply asked. It wasn't the first time he had seen her like that, after all. Even though she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, she was somehow not his type at all. He saw her more as the big sister he had never had. Lara just nodded and went into the bedroom. While Bryce set everything up, Lara quickly put on a bra and panties. She briefly considered whether she wanted to go out again today and slowly pulled black suspenders over her long legs. Sighing she stood in front of the mirror.

"What I would give if they would finally stop reducing me to my appearance." She said in a moment of uncertainty. It was rare for her to worry about it or even think about it. Only Wilson and Bryce were different. Neither of them would ever try to hit on her or anything like that and she was infinitely happy about that. She put on a silk robe and knotted it together. Even though Bryce did not respond sexually to her, there was no need to run around half naked in front of him. Her huge tits could hardly control the coat and so the coat tightened quite a bit and despite the belt you could clearly see her black bra. Her bulging breasts peeked far out of the coat when she came out. She had tied her wet hair into a long braid that fell over her shoulder. She looked at her desk on which Bryce had set up all kinds of equipment. Even the golden box was on the table... and the gemstone was right next to her.

With hasty steps she hurried to the table and looked at the box. It was still closed. A small part of Lara had hoped that Bryce had opened it by now.

"Did you find out anything?" she asked and stood next to him.

" A lot. For the first part. This gemstone is not part of the original box. It was placed much later."

Lara nodded slowly. It was not unusual to work on a piece of art over the centuries. But her instinct told her that this gemstone was not just an embellishment but had a special meaning. She stood next to Bryce and grabbed his cup of coffee. Ignoring his loud hey, she took a sip. "do you have any more?"

"Yes. The gem is... to say the least... odd. You see this, Lara? This is a surface scan. As you can see, the gemstone has a very flat surface."

"Okay?" said Lara with a tone that made it clear she didn't know what he meant.

"Lara. This is impossible. This gemstone must have been polished. There is no natural gemstone that has such a perfect shape. The only problem is that I did not find any traces of processing. This means that this gemstone cannot exist in this form.

"So, we have a riddle within a riddle?" Lara asked while sipping the coffee. "Next time without sugar please."

"I like MY coffee with sugar," muttered Bryce and then tapped an area of the monitor. "This should interest you. This is an analysis of the gold. I scraped some of it off and examined it. Because of the impurities in the gold, I can tell you exactly where it came from."

"Well, that's something."

"And there is something else, Lara. The gemstone has a radiation signature like I've never seen before."

"It's radioactive?"

"No. I triple-checked everything. It's low level radiation in the EM range. Nothing dangerous. I just have no idea where the radiation is coming from."

"Good." She said, putting the box on the table in front of her. "Where the hell did you come from?" But just as she was about to put it down, it slipped out of her hand and the box fell onto the table a little rough. Astonished, Lara watched as the gemstone came off the pedestal and fell to the floor in front of the box.

"Have you ever dropped it before?" Lara asked suspiciously and looked at the box more closely. It was astonishing that the gemstone had come off so easily. But when she looked at the pedestal, she saw a symbol that was hidden behind the gemstone. "Well, well, well," she said more to herself and knocked impatiently on the table and stretched out her hand. Without looking up, she reached into the void again and again until Bryce finally pressed a magnifying glass into her hand. "Where's Wilson?" she asked while looking more closely at the symbol with the magnifying glass.

"Still shopping. After that he wanted to organize the necessary travel documents. Achmed wanted to help him. He said it would take longer."

"I need pictures of this! The full program," she said, and Bryce looked at the clock and Lara nodded when she noticed. "Tomorrow is enough for me, too. We have a lot of work to do anyway before we can go on. But tomorrow morning you will be here at 8 o'clock."

"Shouldn't I take the box with me? Then I can pick it up tomorrow..."

"Sure. Then you also take care of the professional killers who might be after the box and will come after you heavily armed. That's sweet of you. After all, I killed some of them, so they'd be really pissed at me," she grinned, and he put the box on her bedside table.

"I'll pick it up here tomorrow morning!"

"good boy!"

When he had left the room, she looked at the cup of coffee that was empty and turned it over. "Heaven. The boy needs bigger cups!" A glance at the window showed her that the sandstorm had reached the city by now, but she was hardly affected from up here. However, it was impossible for her to see the city. Here and there a skyscraper rose out of the sandstorm but that was all. Above her, however, a beautiful starry sky could be seen. The full moon was high in the sky and seemed especially big and clear today. Lara smiled. The fact that the storm had swallowed the light of the city made it possible to see the stars so well.

She stretched and yawned. "Tomorrow will be a good day," she said as she was about to go to bed, she looked around the room once more. She had locked all the doors and laid out small traps all over the place to make sure that she would not be surprised. The room was too high for her to be shot from another house. She was in a good situation. She turned off the light and then went to her bed. But as she stood next to the bed, her eyes fell on the ruby lying on the floor next to the gold box. The moonlight made it sparkle beautifully. She admired again how beautiful it was and wondered who or what had created it. She took him by the hand and held him in front of the moon. The light of the moon was refracted so beautifully that she started to turn it back and forth so that her face was flooded with the bright colors.