16188/A Three Hour Savage Tour

A Three Hour Savage Tour
Date of Scene:	27 October 2023
Location:	SHIELD Outpost
Synopsis:	SHIELD conducts a survey on the inland sea in the center of the Savage Land. Lara looks good in a non-regulation wetsuit, Darcy plays Subnautica, and they discover ruins in the deep. But maybe... the deep has also discovered them!
Cast of Characters:	Darcy Lewis, Lara Croft

---

Darcy Lewis has posed:
Since the Brood incident, SHIELD has maintained an ongoing presence in the Savage Land monitoring the situation. While the so-called 'psychic disruption' of the Hive Mind supposedly destroyed most of the creatures, their full eradication has not been verified. Without confirmation, the entire region remains under observation and quarantine procedures. There is risk of both a latent viral reservoir in the local animal population, as well as disconnected 'mature' drones - their re-evolved intelligent form.

And that isn't SHIELD's only concern in the area.

The technology which enables the entire region to exist is still poorly understood, although what is known is that it is certainly of extraterrestrial origin, and very very old. While the hostile self-defense AI protocols have been successfully disabled, the legacy of these literal ancient aliens remains in the form of many ruins and hidden scientific complexes, each a treasure trove of strange knowledge... and dangerous power. Agent Romanova's account of her encounter with one of their 'Engineers' only further proves that these beings are more than a bit of strange history: some remain on Earth, and what they're up to is anyone's guess -- but it probably isn't good.

All that said, day-to-day operations in the region are not hardly so frightening. Brood sightings are rarer and rarer, and apart from ruins, none of the aliens have shown their faces. Absent such threats, the place is a scientific wonderland, with much to study and discover. Living dinosaurs, ancient ruins, strange technology, unique ecosystems, isolated human cultures: there's something for every specialty.

Lara Croft, presumably, enjoys all the 'tomb'-like stuff. Darcy studies alien doodadds. Today, both of them happen to be aboard a SHIELD research vessel, newly launched to begin surveying what the locals call the Gorahn Sea, an inland aquatic body on the western side of the central volcanic basin. An important central feature, it sees use by many of the local cultures and populations. No doubt, some are yet uncontacted by the outsiders, although they have been provided some descriptions by their allies like the Lemurians.

So, TLDR: We're on a boat (yeah)!

Lara Croft has posed:
The Savage Lands on the whole represented an archaeologist's dream discovery. Being that SHIELD was at the forefront of exploring the place, which meant Lara Croft was high on the list of those allowed within it was a key example of why she'd elected to take the job with SHIELD. It presented opportunities she might otherwise struggle to ever gain access to at all. She had been on a number of expeditions in to the jungle ruins of the Savage Lands thus far, having a wide variety of interactions with the local wildlife, some good and some otherwise... Lara hated even thinking of this place as a 'playground' that hits a lot of her inner child dreams, but it's also hard to deny that it is precisely that for the young explorer.

On the boat, here and now, Lara is seated out on the deck, her eyes down on a map of the region, with a journal open beside her that she is jotting notes down inside of, while her tablet computer plays a video from a fellow SHIELD colleague talking about his own explorations locally. Dressed in a navy blue SHIELD sleeveless tunic, tucked in to a pair of dark grey shorts, the British woman has her hair done up in a ponytail behind her head, and a pair of expensive sunglasses covering her eyes.

On the tablet, the man's voice speaks. "We have to tread carefully. These remote societies may be just as dangerous as the inhabitants of North Sentinel Island. If we simply show up on their shores, even bringing them food and water, it may very well end in tragedy, for them... or for us."

Lara taps her pen against the map on the small table in front of her, its edges curling up in the wind coming up off of the waters. She raises her shaded eyes up to look out toward the sea itself, marveling at its aquatic beauty in this strange secluded land.

Darcy Lewis has posed:
Darcy really isn't much of an intrepid explorer herself. But a boat... well, that's pretty easy. You sit, it does the moving. It's very convenient!

Among other things, one of the main purposes of the ship is to haul around the rather large (and heavy!) suite of onboard sensor equipment, from deep-range radar to map out the inland seafloor to metal detectors and radiation gauges. Some of these are no doubt intended to help with identifying the more 'exotic' artifacts, traces of alien or otherworldly technology. Others do much more basic things, like tracking fish populations! There's really a bit for everyone, the ship just gobbling up raw data for the various flavors of SHIELD nerds to pour through and analyze in greater detail.

And this equipment is what she's working with right now. Or, it's what she was working with, because she happens to emerge at that moment through the open hatch to the main bridge tower, walking out onto the deck. Although Darcy tends to bundle amd layer, the weather here is quite warm, so it's not an option. In fact, given that they're out here where logistics are tight and personnel storage limited, she's in mostly identical SHIELD-issue gear. They could be sisters! ... except very obviously not.

However, she is wearing a big old pair of sunglasses pushed up on her forehead, which she pulls down as she comes out onto the sunny deck.

"... good advice," she declares, announcing herself after eavesdropping the last part of the video. "You read the briefing earlier?" The daily data briefs come with all kinds of nuggets of information, although this one included some commentary through the Lemurians about other nearby groups. The Aerians, of course, they know pretty well by now. After their home was destroyed (by the Hulk!), a lot of them have migrated into Queen Leanne's territory, while the area around their former home remains one of the quarantine hot-spots. The Pterons share lake property as well, and are another familiar bunch - although oddly, they've grown quieter, rather than bolder, after Sauron 'escaped' after bringing them to help in the large battle. No one knows what they're up to!

Another one in the briefing are the Tubanti. These they've yet to make contact with. But they're considered, if anything, the dominant species in the region, given that they're largely aquatic, piscine humanoids. "Fish people, huh?"

Lara Croft has posed:
When Darcy arrives near to where Lara is seated, the English woman reaches out to gently tap the screen of her tablet to pause the video feed. She looks toward Darcy then, her own dark brown hair flowing with loose strands around her brow in the strong winds coming across the deck. "I find it all obsessively fascinating." Lara responds to the other woman dressed in the same attire.

With her hand reaching out toward a covered metal cup, Lara raises it up with both hands to her lips to take a sip of its contents. "Mmh, in fact the Tubanti are of interest to me most. Likely since they remain the most mysterious. In fact... recently Steve took me to meet a reclusive SHIELD associate named Abe Sapien-- I don't know if you have had the chance to ever meet him-- but it seemed like a 'primer' for what might be experienced should we meet any of the Tubanti."

With a brush of her left hand across her brow, pushing aside the tendrils of dark hair, Lara raises up to walk over toward the edge of the deck, her right hand still holding her shiny metal cup. After a few moments are spent observing the waters, Lara looks back toward Darcy with a warm smile upon her visage.

"How experienced are you at scuba?" She asks. "I've been told that the scanners are finding as many mysteries beneath the waters as we've found above them..."

Darcy Lewis has posed:
"I haven't, no. And. Mm. Maybe. There could be some distant connection, or it could just be some kind of convergent evolution. Or, well, just alien meddling. The description we got from the Lemurians..." Which is to say, of them being a fairly primitive and aggressive group, at least by comparison to the castle-dwelling Atlantean descendants. "...makes them sound a lot less, uh, well, polite." Darcy definitely looks less than thrilled by the topic. Weird locals aren't what she's here for!

"Uh, I've got basic certification, had to do it in training at some point." As in all things field work, Darcy is at about the bottom of the SHIELD requirements. Which doesn't mean she doesn't know what she's doing, SHIELD training is intense! But it is far, far from her specialty.

Speaking of those sensors and all the things beneath the water, Darcy's pocket beeps with a notification sound, and when she pulls out her phone to check, it causes her to glance back toward the central structure of the ship. "Looks like they got a ping of something down there." She does a couple tappa-tappas to pull up info. "Both some unusual formations on the seafloor, and metallic signatures."

Lara Croft has posed:
"I suppose it's a little insensitive of me to suggest that Abe might be similar to what we would find with the Tubanti." Lara says with a grim edge to her voice, as well as a smirk at herself. She partakes in another sip from whatever she has in her metal cup, before lowering it again to hold it in front of her waist. She nods her head gently to what Darcy says of her own scuba experience, before the phone is produced and the update is issued out.

The English explorer steps over to stand behind Darcy's left shoulder, tilting her head to peer over it toward the woman's held device. She can't see much from this angle, and out in the sunlight like they are, but when she hears the news she straightens her head, and glances toward the aft of the ship.

"Well then. We may have found our first target to explore." She says with a clear grin playing across her lips now as her eyes sweep back over toward Darcy again. "You're not going to spend the whole time on the boat, are you?" She asks, headed back toward her things a few steps away. "I'd be happy to help you get beyond the basics if you're up for it." She says in that calm and pleasing voice of hers.

One item is stuffed in to her travel bag followed by the next before she tugs the zipper closed. "We best go check with the others though, see if whatever they've found is worth our time or not. But I'm guessing if they're pinging your phone, then ... they're quite confident it is."

Darcy Lewis has posed:
"Yeah. Wouldn't get an alert unless it was outside a certain statistical threshold." Which is to say, well, mostly what Lara said. That if it wasn't big enough, substantial enough, whatever to be worth their time, it would just get logged with so much other data. As if to confirm this, another agent walks out, not down on the deck with them but onto the balcony of the bridge a deck above them. "Doctor Lewis? You're gonna want to see this!" Yeah...

---

It's maybe half an hour later. The SHIELD vessel has halted, and without major currents, bobs fairly reliably upon the water in the vague vicinity of whatever lies beneath. The group of them, Lara and Darcy and a few more techs, have moved to the back of the ship, which has one of those areas specifically for this, a kind of step-down platform that is closer to the water. It has, well, a lot more than that in fact, there are two crane arms above them, supporting a little miniature sub!

Darcy is in her wetsuit, although there's still some discussion over how to approach the whole thing. "It's pretty far down. Not too far for a dive, pressure wise, but it makes sense for you to use powered swim assists." They have those sitting ready, too. A pair of yellow... uh, they kind of look like miniature rocket-ships, except with propellers on the rear end and little handles to hold on to.

"What do you think, Agent Croft?" She's certainly the senior agent, when it comes to experience on this kind of work!

Lara Croft has posed:
Once things were better laid out as to what had been found, or what little they knew of it, Lara had gone to get suited up. A half an hour later and she's on the back aft deck of the ship, securing straps, and checking gauges on everyone's equipment. She helps with some of the straps, both on herself, and on the others set to either go on this team or another later.

She is standing on that back deck, her feet submerged in water up past her now bare ankles. Her wetsuit a long sleeved design, but bare across her legs. She has a black webbing belt around her waist with a number of items attached to it, from underwater camera, to lights, to other oddities she's brought along. Her eyes dart over to Darcy, then to the others before finally to the personal transport skiffs. "We should bring them along, most definitely. We can't be sure entirely of what to expect from the undercurrents of this sea. It's best to be prepared for anything though, and if needs be these can help us get back to the surface much more swiftly." She states, as she steps over to her own gear, hefting her tanks up to strap them on, before checking her regulator.

Her brown eyes dart back over to Darcy then. "Have you piloted a mini sub before?" She asks the astrophysicist.

One of the of the other SHIELD techs gives a grin to that question. "It's fun, like a video game."

This causes Lara to laugh lightly as she secures a strap across her covered stomach. "I imagine it is a little more detailed than that..." She says in a bit of dry sarcasm in return to the young man standing amidst their group.

Darcy Lewis has posed:
"I'm learning to fly our prototype spacecraft. How hard can this be?" Darcy wonders. She leaves a pause of a few seconds, maybe long enough that it actually gets awkward, and then grins, letting on that she's having some fun. "See that's a science joke because a subarmine is actually kind of the opposite of a spaceship. Built for megapressure instead of vaccuum. Completely different." Nerd.

"But the good news is, I am qualified for it. Because I knew I was going on this mission and went ahead to train on the important gear. We also do a lot of drone and remote operation work at SWORD, and the principles there are very similar to the control scheme it uses. So I picked it up fast." While she might not be much of an athlete, she is scarily smart and can pick up that kind of stuff very quickly. "I don't have a lot of time in the water, but it should be fine."

"I'll gear up anyway. Since we're not going deep enough to need pressure, we'll run it equalized." Which is to say, that they'll flood the sub so that she can potentially leave and re-enter without needing to deal with the pressure. It means she'll be on external air just like Lara, but she'll have a cool little ship! Unless anything goes wrong.

Standing at the aft, she casts a last glance down at Lara as she finishes up with her gear, before finishing secures her own, pulling on the air supply and checking various gauges and straps. "Alright. Lower that bad boy!" The crane motors begin to turn, the cables unspool, and the sub lowers toward the water and then finally reaches the surface. They keep it on the crane as Darcy climbs aboard, double-checking her own SCUBA gear before shimmying into the open hatch.

They're ready to head howevermany meters under the sea!

Lara Croft has posed:
Darcy's explanation of her qualifications for the mini-sub summon a smile upon Lara's visage. At it all, she nods vaguely once or twice. "Well, I expect to see some serious manuevers down there." She fires back before starting to descend one of the submerged ladders in to the water. She pauses there to finish sorting out her gear, lowering her mask down in to the water to dip it beneath the surface where she washes it in to the sea, clearing it off and balancing the temperature a bit before she puts it on.

Moments later, and Lara is falling backward off of the ledge of the boat's aft deck, vanishing beneath the azure waters..

Just a handful of minutes later, under the shadow beneath the ship, Lara's shoulder lamp is activated. She adjusts her mask, which allows her to talk, and her voice comes across the net, the sound of bubbles filling the background of her transmission.

"Everyone check in. We're just above the target site, this should be an easy dive..."

Lara reaches the skiff, wrapping her hands around it as her flippers kick a few times behind her to line her up just right. Her comm clicks again.

"Beggining my descent."

The propellers of the skiff come online, and its twin headlights help illuminate the depths of the dark sea waters below, with Lara's long bare legs just gently drifting behind her as she enjoys the assisted ride...

"How is the sub, Agent Lewis?" Lara's filtered voice asks.

Darcy Lewis has posed:
"It really is like a videogame." Hopefully, that's reassuring? At least it seems to suggest that Darcy has things under control!

The sub descends slowly, almost entirely through its ballast controls in this stage, rather than any kind of propulsion. The setup they have also gives them a useful link to the ship - the sub has a tether (although it can detach from it), helping with communication, numerous lights, it's own set of sensors (albeit less impressive than the big boat), and so on. Extra air, too. It's like a little mini command base.

Also cute robot grabby arms!

They spend a while in descent, large schools of fish occasionally visible, or single larger ones, some of them clearly ancient, with much more bony exteriors. Fortunately, no Liopleurodon or Cryptoclidus to be seen, no giant Mosasaurs. Eventually, those various lights, both Lara's headlamps and the sub's, will start to illuminate something other than just empty water and its many inhabitants, however.

The area that they're enterting is itself something of an large underwater canyon, explaining the depth readings that they got from the initial radar. It a large one, much larger than the ship and stretching quite a ways in each direction, so navigation isn't any sort of difficulty either. But it does provide a somewhat sheltered environment tucked deeper into the seafloor. Inside, there are all kinds of rock formations and a diversity of life growing upon them. All of it is remarkably beautiful, but it isn't what they're looking for.

But soon, they'll see it. Beside the canyon wall on one side, at first easily mistakable for another formation, is a column that is... too round, to symetrical, to be wholly nattural. Only a bit of it is separate, with one side eventually swallowed up by the slope of the canyon wall. But it's there, something like a... tower?

Lara Croft has posed:
There comes a light, amused, laugh at Darcy's response from Lara as she has the lead on this descent. Ahead of the mini-sub, and a little below it, Lara's legs continue to gently wave, and glide along with the motion of her assisted powered skiff. "I'll admit, I'm quite glad we are not seeing any aquatic life that might consider itself to be... Well, It is probably best not to speak on it, and summon them." Lara idly comments before a few casual comments come from the mothership above.

Lara sends back a few communiques to their surface ship before focusing on what lies ahead. As she travels, she can be seen mounting a camera to one of the slots on the surface of her skiff, activating it and testing it out with the display on the dashboard of the transport.

"I can see the site up ahead." Comes her first calm expression of what she is initially seeing. Her ponytail flows like the whisps of a ghost behind her head, as she angles the skiff toward the canyon area. It doesn't take her long to get in close, allowing the cone of her lights to glide across the submerged structures, the scenery bathed in the white light of the high powered LED lumens.

"Beautiful." Lara says as she takes it all in, her covered eyes swapping from looking at the scenery herself, to viewing it from her dash camera.

It's only a few more meters before that structure becomes partially visible in the hazey depths.

"Something else." Lara comments, her mask releasing a column of bubbles that jet up from the side of her head. "It looks like a pyramid..? A tower..?" She seems unsure at this distance. "Are you seeing it, Darcy?" She then asks, her flippers kicking gently behind her as she slows the thrust on her skiff so as not to proceed at a reckless pace.

Darcy Lewis has posed:
"We've actually got special radar for that, and some drones on recon. The really big aquatic dinos and other aquatic animals," because really, tons of them aren't technically dinosaurs, "are pretty easy to spot and track. It's actually something they've been doing on some beaches for sharks now, for a while." So... not so fancy SHIELD tech, in this case. Or a fancy'd up version of something basic, anyway. "So hopeful, no unexpected hellos from anything big enough to swallow you hole." Reassuring!

That chatter is put aside for 'business' when Lara finally comes upon something recognizable as their target. The sub is following behind her, so it isn't too long before Darcy can see it too. Of course, the sub has extra gear to document their findings, and she starts taking video. Lara's on film!

"Readings indicate cylindrical, maybe about 3 meters diameter. We do have metallics, but they're faint. Can you maybe see if you can scrape the surface and see what we have? Could be a lot of buildup, and I want to get an idea what the actual surface looks like." Since Lara now has a task before her, Darcy's attention switches to some of her internal instrumentation. Tap tap, beep boop. Who knows what she's doing, but it's probably all very scientific.

"There are other structures further down the slope. You're right, that second one ahead, it might be a pyramid or a dome. This could all well be a submerged city."

Lara Croft has posed:
Lara's skiff came to a gentle halt, and the Agent manning it kicked with her flippers to go vertical behind it. She spends a moment just gently kicking her feet to stay in place, as she fiddles with something on the dash of her transport, then with something on her belt. She listens to Darcy from behind her in the mini-sub, while she looks past her vehicle toward the structures ahead. "Yeah, I'm going to go in for a closer look." She says, a glance given back over her right shoulder at Darcy inside her bubble cockpit. "Keep close as you can." She states, likely for a wide array of reasons.

Lara's hands begin to push across the surface of her skiff, as she moves around it. Her flippers begin to gracefully push her body forward, and soon she's pushing onward in toward the structure closest to her. Another column of bubbles swirl out from her mask, as she kicks her feet to bring her to a halt. She can be seen then brushing her bare hands over the surface of the structure, testing its tactile feel before she reaches for her belt. "Taking samples." Her voice says over the comm.

Darcy will see Lara then unfolding a silvery knife blade no larger than a few inches, and with it she begins to scrape at the side of the structure's surface. She bags whatever she finds, and has it slipped in to a pouch on the back of her right hip.

"This has to be related to the Tubanti... We've had no indication that any other species have ever lived in structures like this." The explorer says as she uses her hands to push around the obstacles in her way, venturing around them, and over them, with her legs kicking and swaying to keep her going, and her shoulder lamp casting a beam of light out ahead of her, as more bubbles pour from the side of her mask.

She sees the other distant signs of submerged buildings, and it makes her quietly gasp over the comms. "It is remarkable..." She says in that very British way of dancing through the sylables of each word.

Darcy Lewis has posed:
"Or it could be Atlantean." That's a whole thing. The distant past of an ancient race, preserved in this weird place like a bubble out of time, now totally divergent with their modern descendants. If one even believes any of that stuff.

"Everything we've heard about the Tubanti calls them primitive, so the chance of them building something like this seems kind of slim, at least in their current incarnation. But it could very well be that they've moved in. We've seem a lot of that, throughout these various local groups. The Aerians were using energy weapons, living in spires built on an impossible tall mountain, but their society seems... I don't know, maybe in line with classical antiquity. The Lemurians brought their 'magic' cannons out to kill the megabrood. All these people seem to dwell in the left-overs of something older."

Inside the sub, she glances around, a gesture that reveals sub-conscious anxiety. "Supposedly they have a pretty large population, too, and yet we've barely seen them. So where are they all hiding?" IT is perhaps a somewhat ominous thought!

Lara conducts her very scientific knife work. She'll find many layers to work through: an outer crust of built-up sea life that proves surprisingly resilient, a compacted substrate of sand and silt beneath it, anchoring those creatures. And then finally, below that, she hits something hard. Maybe, with a bit of light from one of the lamps, she'll catch the a silvery metallic gleam beneath. It is not unlike some of the other hidden 'hi tech' structures they've found hidden beneath the ground.

"Maybe we should survey a bit more, get a count of the structures, see if any of them have anything that looks like a way inside?"

Lara Croft has posed:
"Perhaps it's a bit of both?" Lara counters with regard to the Atlantean suggestion. "I've wanted to get to see the Atlantean cities first hand, and yet been unable to garner that chance, but I have seen quite a lot of their style throughout what we've found here. Atlantean style seems... more elaborately artistic than what we're seeing here, so far at least."

Lara glances back over her shoulder toward where she'd done the scraping samples. "But that metal... that is more advanced than anything has any right being in a place this old. Mysteries, upon mysteries," Lara says with a light laugh. "This entire lost world is just as terrible at creating new questions as my father was."

Lara continues to move across a pillar covered in that same sand and silt, her left hand stroking across it causing some kick-up of dust in her wake. She pushes herself around a bend, and then glances back to Darcy's sub.

"Let the mothership know that we have more here to go over than we can do on this trip alone... We may need an entire second team out here..."

She kicks her legs again, her flippers once more waving to push her body forward through the dark azure depths. Internally, Lara considers the question of where the Tubanti are hiding, and after a silent few moments she speaks up again.

"What if the entirety of the Savage Lands is not just an experiment in life on the surface, but also life well beneath the ground too? Sub-terrainian cities that extend far below the surface, with more life and species' that we're even aware of? Suggesting that we haven't even scratched the proverbial surface..."

As more bubbles filter out of Lara's mask, and as she swims ahead toward another structure across a small aquaduct-like dip in the terrain, Lara can be heard laughing lightly. "I think I'm letting my imagination get the better of me.."

Darcy Lewis has posed:
Darcy taps another button, switches screens. She has a feed from a camera on Lara's facemask! So she can basically steal the woman's vision, give or take. "Yeah, good call on the architectural differences. I mean, it's hard to tell under all this silt and coral, but I think you're right that the level of ornamentation isn't there. Everything the Aerians and Lemurians have is really beautiful, it shows that heritage. This definitely seems more... utilitarian."

But this isn't the extent of Lara's good instincts. When she points out the scale of what is in front of them, it definitely snaps Darcy back from her awe a bit, and she again quickly changes equipment. "Right. Yeah. Checking in upstairs. I'll give them the coordinates and we'll probably have to plan out multiple surveys. This is more than we can tackle on our air, and it's a bad idea to redline it."

There's a bit of communication, back and forth.

"Yep. They agree with your call. You can take a pass on that second structure, but then we'll head back up. No rush on any of this." Indeed, the dark, serene underwater world around them seems to reinforce those words. It has a great stillness to it, a sense of things suspended. However long this city has waited for them, it surely isn't going anywhere.

Where Lara goes, Darcy makes sure to pilot the sub to keep in close proximity. "I don't know. It's a plausible hypothesis. We know next to nothing about these Engineers, yet it stands to reason that if this place was an experiment they were running, it might apply to nearly every part of the environment."

Lara Croft has posed:
One thing about Lara in the flippers, versus Darcy in the submersible is that Lara has a lot more agility and dexterity of motion. She can dart around damn near as well as a dolphin like this. It leads to the archaeologist getting a little ahead of Darcy's vehicle, though she's not out of naked-eye visibility for very long, as Darcy is navigating with that sub quite expertly! All that online gaming is paying off!

"Well, if nothing else, we're at least getting a little more insight in to the full breadth of what we're up against when it comes to returning to the base with exciting updates." She can be heard over comms, following it with another bit of light laughter.

Darcy has that spy-eye vantage point of seeing through Lara's mask too, and it shows her pausing to brush her hand over the second structure, brushing away detritus from the sea, as she searches for markings of any kind.

"There has to be an entrance to one of these somewhere too..." She quietly says as her hand scrapes across the surface, before she uses it to push herself along again, moving on to the next part.

Her other hand is holding her own recording device, taking her own up-close angles on various elements that cause those curious parts of her mind to tingle with a desire to learn more.

"If I do find a doorway, are you willing to sit tight out here while I take a peak inside one of these?" She asks, knowing Darcy would obviously not be able to follow her, should Lara find a crevace to slip herself through, or some kind of entryway that would undoubtedly really get her sense of exploration tingling.

Darcy would be able to easily tell that the Briton is essentially a kid in a candy store down here in the depths of the Savage seas.

Darcy Lewis has posed:
While the surface of the dome itself seems unbroken, she eventually finds a portal on the surface of a long recangular section running out from it. It's not even one she needs pry open, but rather a dark hole yawning in the side of the thing. Can she go in, pleeeeease?

Well, it's pretty hard to say no to Lara!

"Alright. You have five minutes in there."

Five minutes, as it turns out, isn't enough to tell her much. Getting down into this 'connecting' piece, it's clearly a long corridoor. One way runs back toward the dome, but there's a door there, sci-fi like, but unpowered and thus unwilling to 'woosh' open for her. Down the other direction? The darkness continues for... well, farther than the five minutes gets her.

---

SEVEN minutes later, plus travel, after nagging Lara about going over, she's finally made it back. "Beginning ascent," Darcy tells the mothership, and then makes it so!

Their pace back to the surface is unhurried, which reinforces the sense in rationing extra time: going up too quickly is always dangerous, after all, to the human body if not to the equipment. Blub blub blub.

As they leave the dark canyon depths and approach the area of sunlit water above, the world seems to open back up again. They can see the hull of their ship from beneath, see once more the schools of colorfull fish that wheel and sworl to avoid the two outsiders in their world. Eventually, they reach the surface, and all is as they remember it, save perhaps the slight changes in lighting, marking the time they've spent below. It's obviously much easier for Lara to get back aboard. The sub, by comparison, is a whole procedure, sitting bobbing at the surface while they attach the crane to lift it back out.

But all gets done.

Later, they're on deck, masks off, gear unloaded, and wetsuits stylishly partly unzipped as they drip dry. Techs check the sub, science-folks come to take Lara's samples. The galley will be serving dinner soon. All in all, it's a good day's work.

---

Unbeknownst to the satisfied SHIELD officers, they are not alone. Even as the night grows dark and the water turns black, the same silhouette of the ship's hull is watched by a dozen sets of eyes, peering upward from the deep.