by S. D. Perry
Lara walked to the center of the room, turning, the camera clicking and flashing, then hurried to the giant mural, crouching to take pictures of the hieroglyphics to either side. She recognized many of the words and signifiers—snake, heart, stars, river, mountain—but didn’t try to translate, all too aware of her extremely limited time. There was a lot, but it clearly referenced the same directions she’d found in Mexico. She didn’t see anything new.
There was a nylon rope ladder hanging from the ledge, anchored by bolts drilled into the stone. Lara gave it a pull and then quickly climbed up to the ledge, edging to the mural to get a clear image of the rest of the glyphs. The upper room’s writings didn’t look the same as the writings in the lower half, the carvings deeper… In fact, it looked like some of the original glyphs had been overwritten. She could see shallow marks where paint had been scraped away. Weird.
She had pictures of everything. Footsteps, soft but clear now, were coming from the lower tunnel. Lara snapped off her headlamp and started edging toward the upper chamber’s entrance. The dark was absolute, but a smudge of light appeared only seconds later from the tunnel below, quickly brightening.
Lara unsnapped her holster then nocked an arrow, sidling as quickly as she could—but the first man swung into the room before she made it to the opening. She couldn’t see him; only his light, and the sound of his stealthy steps gave him away. A beat later, someone else came in.
She was a meter from the exit but didn’t dare move. She lowered herself into a crouch. If she couldn’t see them, they shouldn’t be able to see her—but they would hear her, no question.
“Look at this shit,” one of them whispered. Light moved up over the mural, then flicked around the top of the room.
The man who answered him had a very slight accent. Russian. “Should I climb up?”
“Knock yourself out.” Definitely American. West Coast. “You can see, though, can’t you?”
“There’s only a few more chambers along this passage,” the Russian said. “You think Mitchell and Hux got her?”
“No shots.”
“There might not be if Mitchell finds her first,” the Russian said. “She got a new knife.”
“Bro, shut up. You hear that?”
A salamander screamed, faintly, from somewhere in the maze. The sound really was uncanny, a steady, rasping shriek. It must be at an incredible volume to reach so far. The tunnels echoed with it.
“Seriously,” the Russian said. He stepped into view, and Lara caught a glimpse of dark, hooded eyes beneath a furrowed brow before she tucked her head, flattening into the shadow of the ledge. His face had been smudged with black. He wore a tactical helmet with a lamp and a mic. “What is that?”
“Lara Croft, calling for me,” West Coast quipped. “She wants me, bro. She’s gonna swoon when she sees me coming.”
The Russian didn’t sound impressed. “Great. Easy shot for me, and then I’m going to get the fuck out of here.”
A torch’s light played over the upper chamber again. Lara tucked in tight, but the beam passed high.
“No way you get a shot before I do,” West Coast said. “Come on, let’s get this done.”
They left the chamber, their light fading away south.
Mitchell and Hux, the Russian and the Romeo… So at least four, and presumably more at the drop, or in one of the passages leading out. If they were working in pairs, she might be able to pull off her vague plan to dodge between the top corridors.
When she was sure the two men were well past, she climbed back down. She was behind them; she would use the lower tunnel back to one of the connectors. The last rooms were a klick north and up. There was an explosive trap at the final chamber, the puzzle room, but she remembered exactly where it was. Getting back to Jonah was her primary concern, and from that last area it was a straight run back to the cenote’s opening, one last mine to jump at the tunnel’s entrance and she could be out. If the path was blocked, there was a well she could use near the north end of the tunnel. It was a drop but she had rope; if she had to she could get into the maze and follow the arrows, approach from another angle.
Or you could just shoot your way out.
There was that, too. It was a terrible idea, risky—firing any caliber of gun underground with bare rocks as a backdrop was not a survival skill—and being willing to shoot wasn’t the same as having the opportunity. The killers could just turn off their lights and wait for her to walk by. They couldn’t actively hunt for her in the dark… but she couldn’t move, either, without some light.
Lara pulled one of the tiny LEDs from her pack and clicked it on, a soft beam of blue light, barely enough for her to see her feet. It was enough. She left the mural chamber and headed north, walking quickly and lightly, bow and arrow in hand. If she could get through without alerting everyone to her whereabouts, so much the better.
She hurried past the access point between the maze and the lower of the top tunnels, feeling the distance between her and the soldiers grow, and was still cautiously optimistic when she remembered that Marin’s team had laid a charge about twenty meters past the spot where she’d climbed up—a pressure mine between two small chambers on the tunnel’s west side.
Lara raised the tiny beam, saw the rocky edge of the first chamber ahead of her. She hesitated, then tapped on her headlamp. It looked as though flagstones had been set into the tunnel floor in the stretch between the rooms, placed and then covered in dirt. If she hadn’t been looking, she might not have noticed. Marin’s notes had rated the mine as a D2, whatever that was, low level, enough to bring down the wall between the chambers and block the main passage.
The charge had to be right between the chambers, but she hadn’t expected to be traveling down here at all; she didn’t know which stone. She didn’t want to touch any of them. She could back up, run and jump the whole thing, but she would make noise landing.
The tunnel wall opposite the chamber entries was rough, had some good holds. Easy, only a few meters. She leaned over the first stones and stepped onto the wall, slipping her boot into a crevice, then pulled herself hand over hand, shifting herself across. There was some seepage in the wall here but it was recent, and she made sure of her holds. She was almost across when the rock beneath her right foot gave way, crumbling out of the packed mud. The small stones around it shifted, a larger rock above leaning forward.
Lara threw herself right, diving for the unbroken tunnel floor past the laid stones. She tried to tuck but the angle was wrong and she ended up flat on her back with a resounding thump, her axe and bow clattering against the rocks, the echoes spinning through the dark.
They’d be coming. She rolled onto her feet, spared a glance for the tunnel wall—only a handful of rocks had fallen, resting against the eastern wall in a dark clump— and snapped off her lights.
* * *
Sergei Andreov knew that Ace saw any fear as weakness, but that screaming. Sergei wasn’t afraid of the dark, or claustrophobic—he’d been excited to go on a hunt for the near-legendary Lara Croft, the woman who had killed so many soldiers of God—but he was not chill about howling cave monsters, even with the XD in hand, even with Ace making his dumb gross jokes. As soon as they heard those weird, echoing screams, Sergei had lost his taste for prolonging the chase. Another one shrieked now, closer.
“Ever heard of a drekavac?” he asked Ace.
“Sounds Russian.”
“Because I’m Russian, you dumb fuck. Drekavac means ‘the screamer.’ It’s a creature that haunts the darkest woods, preying on the lost.” He was about to add, My grandmother used to tell me stories about it, but remembered who he was talking to in the nick of time. He’d never live down a confession like that.
Ace grinned. “Aw, you scared, Serge? Want me to get you a blankie and a nightlight?”
“Oh, go fuck yourself,” Sergei said. He shouldn’t have said anything. The man was clearly still psyched to get some payback on Croft, who was absolutely deserving, but Serg
ei wasn’t feeling it. The sooner they capped this treacherous bitch and were on their way, the better.
They were nearing the end of the passage Harper had assigned them, and they’d found exactly nothing. There was no way to differentiate between old prints and new in the packed, rocky dirt, and all of the rooms and tunnels looked essentially the same, except for the size, and the unpleasant artwork—floods and knives and snakes and that bright blue color everywhere. That shade of blue didn’t belong down here in the dark. It was like seeing a butterfly at the bottom of a shit bucket.
They swept the last chamber, a low, dead room at the very end of the tunnel. There were empty ledges where presumably some fancy Maya crap had been displayed before Trinity came and took it.
For this prophecy. This opportunity. The commander hadn’t come out and said it directly, but everyone knew he thought Dominguez was the real deal. If Harper thought so, that was good enough for Sergei. For all of them. Trinity pushed the cause forward; Harper’s Dozen smoothed the pathway.
Ace was scowling, that they hadn’t come across the girl. “All right, let’s back it up. She could have heard us coming and ducked down somewhere.”
“Then we should hurry,” Sergei said. “If she’s heading back, we can catch up to her.”
Ace smirked. “Still worried about cave trolls?”
“Fuck you,” Sergei said. “Didn’t you hear them?”
“Nothing the SR9 can’t handle,” Ace said, patting his Ruger. “I understand you’re worried, with a pussy XD. How many does it hold? Eight?”
Sergei stifled a sigh. Eddie “Ace” Darnell was a solid player at work but he was competitive, deeply committed to his personal ideal of masculinity, which was almost comically toxic. Ace always had to dominate, to be the most willing to fuck or fight, to bench-press the most, to win the game. There were several men on the team like that, but Ace was Alpha. Sergei didn’t play like that; he had been with the Dozen for two years, working his way up because he didn’t panic and he didn’t question orders. Ace’s psychotic bravado was going to cost him one day.
“Whatever,” Sergei said. “Let’s—”
They heard a sound. A thud, and the clatter of some light metal or plastic. Close in, back the way they’d come.
Ace darted to the opening of the low room, leaning out into the tunnel, a tight grin on his face.
“We’ve got her. Take the west wall,” Ace whispered, and hurried out into the passage. Sergei followed, hanging back a step. Ace barely checked his corners, too eager. Reckless.
Not necessarily a bad thing. He didn’t want Ace to get shot or attacked—the Dozen were a team, even if they weren’t personally close—but it was a distinct possibility, and Sergei didn’t mind being second in range. If Ace went down, he would have time to react, and he was an expert fucking shot with his “pussy” XD. He didn’t need more rounds. If Croft went for Ace, Sergei would take her out before she could blink: a single, perfect shot. They could be back on the plane in an hour, flying away from this demon-infested hole.
He swept the rooms on the west wall, flashes of blue paint and ugly pictures, dirty rocks and crawling fungus and scuttling tiny bugs. They heard another distant call of the whatever-it-was—
Drekavac!
—and Sergei tensed further, hurrying through the passage behind Ace, waiting for his light to play across some white screaming face filled with teeth, lurking in the black. It was bullshit, he knew—his grandmother had been an illiterate from a tiny village in the middle of nowhere, and her stories about thin, long-clawed demons were nonsense—but somehow it was harder to be certain of that in the cold, smothering dark, with those awful cries echoing around.
They reached the first of the charges that had been placed along the tunnel—there was another, larger pressure mine much farther north—and they both dropped their beams down, looking for the trigger. The flat rock looked like the rest of them, but touched the wall exactly between the chambers and extended to nearly the middle of the tunnel. The charge beneath it was small, but in Sergei’s mind there was no such thing as a minor explosion underground.
As soon as their lights were pointed down, there was a soft noise in front of them. Sergei looked up as the sound registered in his ears, a whizzing, like—
Ace grabbed his throat with his left hand and started burbling blood. He staggered sideways, an arrow protruding from between his bloody fingers. A second arrow hit him in the shoulder. It would have hit Sergei had Ace not been in the way.
Ace clawed at the arrow in his throat, then brought up his Ruger and started firing vaguely north, the shots wild, ricocheting off the rocks, chips of limestone flying.
The charge!
Sergei just caught a glimpse of the woman’s face at the very limit of his light, her visage pale and grim, before she turned and ran, hurtling out of sight.
Sergei fell back double-time, turned to sprint as Ace staggered again over the stones, crumpling—
BOOM!
Sergei threw himself forward as the tunnel shook, dirt and rock crashing down behind him in a thunderous blast. Choking dust blew over him in a cold gust that smelled like mud and burning chemicals. As the ringing in his ears dimmed, he heard more of those horrible animal screams, echoing up from the labyrinth.
Fuck!
He scrambled south on his hands and knees, ignoring the scrapes, the trickle of pebbles that pattered down on his back like rain. That bitch had been waiting for them at the charges, waiting in the dark until they had to watch their step. Ace was dead and Sergei had missed his shot.
He turned around, saw a wall of rock and dirt blocking the passage, cutting him off from where the chambers had been. There was blood on some of the stones, but no sign of Ace.
He tapped his helmet’s mic while dirt was still rattling down the side of the new wall. The ceiling had grown a meter but had held. “Commander, do you copy? Come in, Commander? Hux? Mitchell?”
There was a crackle of static. He thought about calling out—Hux and Mitchell were somewhere above him, they might hear him, but then, so would Croft. He wouldn’t count on either of them to help him, anyway. Killing Croft was the priority, and their time wasn’t unlimited.
He had the maps. He could go back to the big room that opened into the upper tunnel, see if there was still a way through up top. Or he could drop down into the maze and…
No. No way. God knew what was down there.
You’ll complete this mission, and you’ll kill anything that tries to stop you. Commander Harper’s voice was louder than Sergei’s fear, calm and sane. The mission. It was a cave, not a fairy tale; he was armed and careful, better than Ace. Clearly, because Ace was dead… which meant there would be a reshuffling of the top players. If he could bring down Croft there’d be a bonus, but the real win would be moving up in Harper’s esteem. The commander’s very best had gone on to lead teams of their own.
Still. He decided he would go back through the top tunnel. Easier to drop back down to where he was supposed to be than to climb up, and there was no reason to think she’d gone down, so there was no reason to go deeper… where anything could be squatting in the dark, waiting…
“Fuck off,” Sergei whispered, and quickly started back south, refusing to think any more about his grandmother’s stories.
* * *
Lara ducked around a curve in the passage as West Coast started firing his semi, blood pumping from the side of his neck. She tapped her lamp and ran as soon as she was clear, praying that the whole system wasn’t about to collapse.
BOOM! The charge detonated. Lara threw herself onto her knees and covered her head, the blast rolling past and then echoing back at her from the caverns ahead, dust sifting down. She waited, listening to the tumble of rock behind her, the changing echoes.
When the tremors stopped, she stood up in a clatter of loose rocks and walked back a few steps, examining the cave-in. The passage was blocked by an untidy sprawl of dirt and shattered stone. There was a new hole in th
e floor next to the heaped, muddy rocks, opening over the top of the labyrinth. It would be a tight fit and she’d have to go in on her side, but it might be a useful route if she couldn’t find another way out.
She fixed its location in her mind, starting north again. For the moment, she thought she was okay. The Russian was behind the cave-in, and West Coast Romeo had been dead before he’d hit the floor, his jugular pierced.
Listen to you. That was a human being.
She shook her head. A disgusting human being who’d been coming to murder her. These weren’t average Trinity soldiers. They wore tactical gear and were carrying expensive hardware. The same people who’d been after Marin, perhaps. A hit squad. And there were at least two more in the tunnel overhead.
Hux. And Mitchell, who has a new knife.
Where were they now? She recalled from Marin’s map that there was a room about fifty meters ahead that opened into the upper tunnel, through a narrow climbing passage in the back, a crawl. She could get up there… but she’d be the proverbial fish in a barrel. If someone was waiting at the top, they could lean in and shoot her while she edged up.
The well, farther along. There was a sloping well ahead that cut through the top half of the dig, one of several. That was a trickier climb, but it let out near the final areas that Marin had marked, including the puzzle room. If she ran into anyone from Trinity along that route, she’d have more options.
You’re still planning to get your pictures. Jonah could be being tortured right now, your best friend in this world.
It’s on the way, and it’s fastest. If I don’t get what I came for, all of this is for nothing.
If Jonah dies—
