The tale opens with Nathan "Nate" Drake and his mentor Victor "Sully" Sullivan walking into a London pub to meet Talbot, a man eager to buy Nate's ring. The deal sours when Nate and Sully accuse Talbot of paying in counterfeit notes, and a brawl erupts. Battling past Talbot's thugs into an alley, the pair are cornered and overpowered by his accomplice Charlie Cutter, then confronted by Talbot's employer, Katherine Marlowe, who snatches Drake's ring. Nate lunges after her, but Cutter guns both men down, seemingly killing them.
The story then leaps back twenty years, to a teenage Nathan Drake prowling a museum in Cartagena, Colombia, hunting for Sir Francis Drake's ring — only to be thrown out when guards take him for a thief. Fascinated by a stranger named Victor Sullivan, the young Nate trails Sully to a keymaker, picks his pocket, and slips back into the museum to steal the ring. Before he can escape he is caught by Marlowe, her henchmen, and Sully himself, who turns out to be working for her. Nate flees with the ring as Marlowe's agents give chase, but Sully has a change of heart, rescues the boy, and takes him under his wing as a mentor.