Chapter 2
The name, spoken so softly, hit Alex Ryder with the force of a physical blow. Croft. The forbidden name. The name that haunted the edges of his family history, a name his grandfather had spat out with venom on his deathbed. He had spent years tracking it, following whispers and half-truths, convinced that finding its modern bearer would lead him to the Chronos Shard. He had imagined a ruthless, decadent aristocrat, a greedy patriarch hoarding the world's secrets. He had not imagined Anya Crofter, an archivist with dust on her sleeves and secrets in her eyes.
"An insurance policy," he repeated, the words tasting like ash. "You lie. My grandfather's journal is filled with their collaboration. Their shared discoveries." He pulled a small, leather-bound book from the inner pocket of his suit. The journal was worn, its pages stained and brittle. He flipped it open to a marked page, showing it to her. On it was a detailed sketch of the jade hummingbird, next to a passage written in a spidery, desperate hand. Lara believes the bird is a key to a place 'beyond the sun.' We are close. The Shard will be ours.
Anya glanced at the journal, her expression unreadable. "Close, yes," she agreed, her tone flat. "Close to the trap. Your grandfather was a brilliant cartographer, Mr. Ryder. But he was naive. He believed in shared glory. My great-grandfather, the original Croft, believed only in ownership. The journal doesn't show you what happened after that entry was written. It doesn't show the betrayal. It doesn't show my ancestor leaving your grandfather to take the fall when the local authorities, paid off by a rival expedition, arrived. He escaped with the Shard. Your grandfather escaped with nothing but a shattered reputation and a story no one would believe."
[ Location: British Museum ]
Anya stepped back from the velvet rope, her movements fluid and purposeful. She didn't look at Ryder, but at the security guard patrolling the far end of the hall, her mind clearly working through a series of calculations. "Your grandfather's journal is a map to the lies, not the truth," she continued, her voice low and urgent. "He was fed information, led to believe the Shard was a single object. The truth is far more complex. The Chronos Shard is not a device to be possessed, but a network of nodes, anchors in the timeline. And they are failing. That is the storm I spoke of. The one my family has been trying, and failing, to contain for a century."
Ryder stared at her, the journal trembling slightly in his hand. The pieces were shifting, rearranging themselves into a picture he didn't want to see. "Failing?" he asked, his own voice barely a whisper. "What do you mean, failing? What happens when they fail?"
Anya finally looked at him, her grey eyes filled with a deep, ancient weariness. "Then the past doesn't stay where it's supposed to," she said. "It leaks. Moments unravel. People who should be dead are alive again. Cities that should be lost are found. The world becomes a tapestry with its threads pulled loose. And in the chaos... a shadow rises. A shadow that was sealed away by the very act of breaking the Shard. A shadow that has been waiting for its chance."