Shadow of the Tomb Raider--Path of the Apocalypse

by S. D. Perry

He won’t die. I’m not going to play games if they’re in my way.

  Firearms had become a regular part of her training regime since Yamatai. She was good, her groupings consistent even on quick draws. These killers wouldn’t keep her from getting back to Jonah.

  A voice from the past whispered through her mind, tempering the burst of determination. You think you kill to survive, but you kill because it is in your nature. The Trinity agent, Auger Ramille, had said that to her. She’d thought about his statement often over the years, and had finally come to the uncomfortable conclusion that he might be right. His terminology was imprecise, though. She was only a pragmatist in a war against people with no empathy, who were playing with powers they couldn’t hope to control. Her nature was to fight them as hard as she could, using everything she had. She no longer clung to the childish belief in her innocence when it came to killing, but she didn’t enjoy it or seek it out; if Trinity would stop trying to murder everyone, she would gladly retire.

  She stopped outside the chamber with the crawlway up, the route she didn’t mean to take, her attention caught by a glimpse of colors in the low light of her beam. There were glyphs carved into the farthest wall of the small room, a series of numbers, representations of travel—directions, stars, lines of waves. Lara grabbed her camera, clicked off a fast series. Marin hadn’t told her this chamber was important, but it looked like a calendar—perhaps to calculate the Maya travelers’ journey, to estimate how long it would take them to get where they were going.

  Estimates aren’t facts.

  Yes, and Marin laid mines, he wasn’t an archaeologist.

  Perhaps the Maya had made the trip many times; she wished she had time to study her findings properly. She wondered if there were more chambers like this one, with information that Marin hadn’t deemed worthwhile.

  She stepped closer to the carvings, frowning. Like the glyphs in the upper chamber of the mural room, some of these had been changed. She could see where lines and dots had been added to some of the numbers. The changes looked newer, sharper than the others. Like, centuries newer.

  She touched one of the etched lines, remembering what Marin had said—that there was something not “right” about the Blue Labyrinth. Had someone come through and changed some of the writing? Why?

  Lara clipped the camera to her belt and moved back into the main passage. She’d go up at the well and take pictures of everything she saw from now on, assuming she could do so without getting herself shot.

  There was a shuffle of movement, somewhere close. Lara cocked her head, tapping out her light. There, again—a whisper like scattering rocks. It was coming from the calendar room behind her.

  Pebbles and dirt falling down from the top of that crawling passage.

  Someone was looking down. Looking for her.

  She turned on her LED again and hurried on, the tunnel walls closing around her in the meager blue glow.

  * * *

  Harper had his light back on in an instant when he heard the shots; three, four rounds from Ace’s Ruger, he thought, followed almost immediately by an echoing blast. Dirt sifted down and Harper hit the ground as a few hundred bats came rushing up from the labyrinth, pouring through the chamber over his head, flying back to the drop. He heard that ugly bird sound again, and distant echoes of rocks falling, and then it was over.

  He got to his feet, saw the rush of dancing dust pouring from the lower tunnel’s entrance, the motes white and falling in the light from his lamp. “Sound off. Ace, Sergei, copy?”

  Nothing. “Hux? Mitchell?”

  There was a blur of static, a short burst of sound. “—back now. Limit—return—”

  Hux. Harper took a breath, walking into the upper passage. There were some curves but it was a mostly straight shot across the top. “Repeat your status.”

  “…contained cave-in in the lower tunnel,” Hux said, his voice gaining clarity. “Mitchell heard one of them call in; she’s 99 percent that it was Sergei.”

  Harper came to a stop, waiting for the beep that signaled Hux was finished talking. He wanted a good signal, but wasn’t going to risk leaving his post unguarded. A sickly scattering of albino fungi grew from the line of crap along the floor. What a miserable place. “Nothing from Ace?”

  “Negative.”

  “Any sign of Croft?”

  “Not that I’ve seen, unless that trap was her,” Hux said. “Mitchell is ahead of me. She’s going to climb down, get eyes on what happened. If Croft is dead, we’ll confirm. I’m going to double-check some of the connecting points.”

  “Yeah, fine. Do what it takes. If you see anyone, tell them to flush her this way if they can’t get a shot. And watch your six.”

  Not advice he normally felt compelled to give, but he had a sinking feeling that he might be down another crew member. He could easily see Ace forget about watching his feet if he’d been running down Croft. With Greaves crippled and Dixon taking that freak shot…

  All in two days. All because of Lara fucking Croft.

  “Copy,” Hux said, and the radio went silent.

  Harper fell back to his position, briefly considering whether to bring in the men from the airfield, set up a perimeter. It would only take a few minutes to walk back into range, relay instructions through Reddy. The trio would have to bring the pilot with them—Winters was a cut-and-run type if ever there was one—but Reddy could go over the maps, they could figure out where she might come out and stake the likeliest places.

  Not yet. She’s here, right in front of us, now. Hux was one of the best professional problem-solvers working for the cause—smart, manipulative, driven. Mitchell was perhaps even better, her ruthlessness impeccable. Ace and Sergei were both professionals; Ace could play it a little high and loose at times, but he got results. Sergei was probably the best shot with a nine-mil and had never panicked under fire, under any circumstances.

  It’s only just starting. No matter how good Croft was, he had faith that his people were better. He was better. He couldn’t discount her training or her demonic luck, but he also couldn’t deny the feeling he’d had since landing in Colombia, that this was a fateful day. Croft’s death wouldn’t make amends for the trouble she’d caused but it would be his own personal triumph, on behalf of all those who’d sworn the Oath.

  He settled back and cut his lamp. This time, the dark didn’t bother him so much.

  * * *

  When they heard the rumble, Reddy and Smith both edged toward the cenote.

  “Come in, Commander,” Reddy said into the radio. “Do you copy?” But there was no answer. A hundred bats poured up into the sky.

  “That was one of the traps, right?” Smith asked, and Reddy shook his head, staring down into the well as if he’d be able to see anything.

  Miguel only shifted in his uneasy sleep. Jonah used the distraction to work on his own zip-tie cuffs, the tactical kind favored by bounty hunters and riot cops. The plastic looped around each wrist, the ends cinched with a simple ratchet lock. Not a long-term hold for a big man such as himself. He knew that Reddy would be over to check before long, so he hurried, twisting his wrists, flexing. It was going to hurt, but he’d get out. He’d cut Miguel loose and fight if he could, run if he couldn’t. If they could get to the cover of the jungle, he’d find the banyan with the shotgun.

  If. He was going to have to wait for the right circumstances. He thought Harper and his team might be the people Lara had seen back in Mexico, going after Marin. She’d said they were trained, not grunts. Harper’s team all had the flat eyes of killers, their equipment was extra, and the way the commander had gone off on his psycho murder fantasy, Jonah thought this was some kind of personal thing for him.

  Doesn’t matter who they are. He hated that Harper and his psychos were down there looking for her, but he could only do what he could do. First thing was to make sure that Lara had a clear exit.

  Or die trying. He considered the thought, relaxing his arms while Reddy stared at him for a moment b
efore turning back to the cenote. It was what it was. Better than not trying.

  He tried not to overthink the underground explosion. Lara wouldn’t have triggered a trap accidentally, which meant either she’d done it on purpose, or one of Harper’s people had set it off.

  And maybe she was right under it when they did. Maybe they blew a hole that dropped her a thousand feet into the ground.

  He didn’t try to deny the fear, but also didn’t let it stop him from rotating his sore wrists, working the plastic. He’d shifted the pocketknife high up into his sock already, while Reddy stalked around, looking like he’d bit a lemon, and Smith kept jerking his Glock toward the jungle every time anything bigger than a beetle moved.

  “Think that was your girl?” Reddy asked abruptly, taking a step toward Jonah. “You think she maybe just got buried under a ton of rock? That’d be a goddamn shame.”

  “A goddamn shame,” Smith repeated, and laughed, a dumb guffaw. Reddy looked away, irritated.

  Jonah didn’t answer, filing the interaction. Reddy was an arrogant pig and hungry to fight. And Smith might be a trained killer, but he came off like a serious moron; Reddy’s lack of respect for him backed up the impression. They had guns, and therefore the upper hand, but not necessarily for very much longer. The team who’d gone in after Lara had been wearing Kevlar, but both guards had shed theirs in the sweaty heat, tossed them into one of the trucks soon after Harper left.

  Reddy tried to raise the commander again, and Smith slapped at his neck, cursing the mosquitoes for the tenth time, then swung his fancy handgun toward the hollow mechanical clatter of the unknown night caller.

  “The hell is that, anyway?” Smith said. “It’s fucking weird.”

  “Calm your shit,” Reddy snapped. “It’s a toucan.”

  “In the dark? Anyway, I thought toucans squawked,” Smith said.

  “Yeah, well, they also sound like that.”

  Jonah raised his eyebrows. You could learn from the most unlikely of sources.

  He kept his eyes open and used every second of the guards’ continued distraction to flex and rotate his wrists, turn and pull, patiently ignoring the growing pain.

  * * *

  Jennifer Mitchell found Sergei climbing up from a mural chamber that opened to the lower tunnel. She’d seen his light first and swept in fast, lowering the CZ 75 when she saw the young Russian on the rope ladder.

  “Sergei,” she said, and his head snapped around. He looked a little pale around the eyes. “Where’s Ace?”

  Sergei climbed the rest of the way up. “Dead and buried. Croft put an arrow through him. He fell on a D2 trap, blocked off the lower tunnel. She’s on the north side of it somewhere.”

  Sloppy, that they’d let her get away. Ace was no loss, she’d considered killing him herself every time he said titties, which was often. Was Croft looking for a way up, or down? If Mitchell were in her position, she might drop into the maze. More places to hide, to crouch in the blackness and wait for targets to walk by, announcing themselves with lights and noise.

  Who says she’s hiding? Croft had taken out Ace on top of a charge, not exactly a stealth maneuver. She might just march down the main corridor, .45 blazing.

  Mitchell considered it critically. The woman’s attachment to her friend would urge her to move quickly, but she wouldn’t be reckless. Croft was no amateur.

  She turned back north, visualizing the layout of the site as she started walking. If she could get ahead of Croft, she could be the one waiting in the dark. There were several passages connecting the tunnels. All she had to do was set up near the last one, whichever was closest to Harper.

  “Is Hux with you?” Sergei asked, hurrying to catch up to her. Mitchell didn’t answer. The evidence spoke for itself.

  “I should go down past the blockage, in case she’s using the lower tunnel to get back to the drop,” he said.

  “Do that, then,” Mitchell said, and kept walking. She hoped she would be the one to end Croft. No one else in the Dozen would fully appreciate the gravitas of striking down such a rare creature, a fit, highly competent, intelligent woman pursuing an agenda with the full force of her well-developed abilities. Mitchell had no idea why Croft had set herself up against Trinity, but the reason was incidental. Croft was a force to be reckoned with, and the Dozen, even Harper, underestimated her because they were stupid men. They talked about her incredible luck and scoffed about how she was no match for them, as if there was anything in Croft’s history that suggested she couldn’t or wouldn’t kill them. Their arrogance was typical, and utterly unfounded.

  “Is Hux talking to the commander?” Sergei asked. “Are you sweeping together up here?”

  He was seeking some kind of reassurance. Mitchell didn’t generally offer advice but she had nothing against Sergei. Good with a gun, didn’t panic, kept to himself.

  No mind for strategy, though. “It’s hide and seek now, and the drop point is home base,” she said. “Nothing’s off limits, but Croft isn’t going to do anything that costs too much time. Find a likely spot and go dark, wait for her to come to you. And do it fast, because she might be doing exactly the same thing while you’re looking for a place to set up.”

  Sergei nodded, his eyes appreciative, raising his chin at her. It was funny how people responded to the things she said when she wasn’t angling for a result. She liked having the power that respect afforded.

  One of the cave animals called from somewhere in the maze below, and was answered by two more.

  “What is that, anyway?” Sergei asked, nervous—eyes wide, voice high.

  Mitchell shrugged, adjusting her weapons as she walked. She had the extended mag for the CZ 75, sixteen rounds locked and loaded. She also had an assortment of knives: a Gerber Mark II, a double-edged dagger with serrations just past the ricasso and a custom grip, perfect for slashing and stabbing; a matte black karambit that she had practiced with extensively, the small, curved knife a precision killer, made for blood-letting swipes; and a brand-new Dark Ops Interceptor E&E, eight and a half inches of silver death with an extended handle for versatility, full tang, tanto tip, and a hook for gutting. A single smooth extension, a flick of the wrist, and all that amazing vibrancy and energy would flood out of Croft and puddle on the stone at her feet.

  “I think we should fall back to the drop,” Sergei said.

  That was the problem with interacting. People assumed things about you, like that you gave a shit what they thought.

  Mitchell didn’t answer and deliberately picked up her pace, considering the maps she’d studied on the flight in. There was a place where the top tunnels joined to the labyrinth less than a mile north, a well that Croft might choose—not the easiest spot, but not obvious, and certainly in the woman’s skill set. Hux would probably set up near there. He might get Croft, he was good—but Croft might actually be better. She lacked that fundamental arrogance, the belief that her talents alone entitled her to win. Mitchell decided to set up farther north. Let Hux take his shot; if he could beat Lara then the woman wasn’t a worthy opponent for Mitchell, anyway.

  She turned off her helmet’s lamp and pulled out a small flashlight, aiming the beam at her feet, excitement warm in her belly. Hux was the only possible snag. Sergei would hang back, too careful, and Harper would never get his shot because if Croft made it past Hux she was going to run across Mitchell first. Who would win? It was exciting to not be entirely certain of the outcome.

  She smiled to herself. Not entirely certain, but reasonably sure.

  * * *

  Lara moved quickly through the site’s lower main tunnel, pausing three times for pictures—glyphs on the wall, a depiction of the star path with a lot of numbers, a compass rose painted with the Maya directional colors and smooth, unfaded lines of blue cutting through the center… But the blue didn’t look right on the compass, the shade too light, and she wondered again if the site had been tampered with. If someone had changed things, they’d done it a long time ago. The color
was wrong but very old.

  She worked fast, nervous about the light, wishing the salamanders would be quiet. The explosion had riled them. She estimated that there wasn’t a large population, certainly less than a hundred, but they sounded like a hundred thousand. They kept shrieking, their cries echoing up from the lower tunnels, drowning out any footsteps she might hear, any rocks falling or whispering.

  At least Trinity won’t hear you, either. She started to time her movements for when the shrieks crested, hurrying when the cries were loudest.

  She reached the small tunnel she was watching for, a narrow crack that extended parallel to the lower main corridor and veered east and down. She sidled through quickly, keeping the bow ready, turning off her lamp when she reached the opening at the end of the crevice.

  She waited—no sound—then edged forward. No light, either. A salamander called up through the dark, close but meters below. She could hear that she’d reached the well from the way the sound echoed back at her.

  Lara turned on her larger torch, quickly scanning the chamber. The crack she’d slid through ended in a short, steep drop, to a ledge of rock that opened into darkness below. The maze.

  She looked up. Four meters to the platform above, and it angled out at the top. She could get up but she had to do it quietly, no hammering, and she’d be totally vulnerable on the last pitch—and visible from the two uppermost levels of the maze, the opening in the top corridor, and the crack where she was standing.

  And hanging from your fingertips over a, let’s see… about a dozen meters before it bottoms out in the labyrinth?

  When she looked down to estimate, she saw a salamander run across the floor of the lowest tunnel, a flicker of white. A second ran after it along one curved wall, silent, blind head cocked as it scurried out of sight.

  Yet another reason you’re going to do this fast.

  She tapped her headlamp back on, clipped the torch to her belt, slung her bow and climbed up and away from her position, angling toward the most promising path—a steep climb, but crosshatched by a number of narrow cracks that ran up the side of the well. The first part was rocky, not difficult. She made it to the cracks and wedged her toes and fingers deep, reaching high, pushing for holds that stretched her arms and legs to their limit. She was at the thick and curving base of the top tunnel only minutes after she started, warmed up for the last pitch.