by Dave Stern
The doctor’s eyes were wide with surprise. He had yet to react to the peril beneath them, had barely registered the fact that they were falling through the air.
Lara knew why—Reiss was a scientist, given to careful contemplation of events unfolding before him. Situations like this, however, didn’t lend themselves to contemplation. They required split-second reactions.
Lara was used to dealing in split seconds.
Even as she’d leapt for Reiss, she was gauging the distance to the pool, weighing a half-dozen possible courses of action. As they’d gone over the ledge, she’d registered their relative positions in the air and decided instantly on the best way to insure not only Reiss’s death, but her survival.
And that one, she acted on.
She pulled the doctor closer and flipped him over in midair, so that he was facing up toward her. Then she snapped her arms and her one good leg out, pushing off, putting distance between the two of them.
The shell-shocked expression on his face hadn’t changed at all. Reiss still looked like a deer, caught in the headlights. An apt comparison.
He was about to meet the same fate.
The gun smashed off the rim of the pool and skittered across the cavern floor.
Reiss plunged into the acid.
For a split second, Lara saw the expression on his face finally change, from shock to sheer agony as the black, bubbling liquid touched him.
She jumped down on him, landing feet first, simultaneously pushing him farther down into the acid and pushing herself back up into the air.
She flipped and rolled to the ground just outside the pool.
The soles of her boots were smoking where they’d touched acid.
“Fitter? Wiser?” Lara shook her head. “You weren’t either of those, doctor.”
A skeletal hand shot out of the pool, clawed for the rim…and failed.
The last of Dr. Jonathan Reiss dissolved before her eyes.
She turned and saw his gun lying in the dirt. Operating on instinct, Lara picked it up and tucked it into her waistband.
And here coming toward her, through the far end of the chamber, was Terry.
“Nice work there.” He smiled, nodding toward the pool.
“Thanks.” She hesitated. “And thank you for coming back, Terry.”
“You’re welcome—Lara.”
She smiled. “You know that’s the first time you’ve called me that. In a long time.”
“I know.” He set down his pack on the ground. “Here. Let’s take care of that wound.”
“I’m fine,” Lara said.
“Yeah. Just the same.” He eased her down to the ground and pulled some supplies out of his pack.
“Hillary? Bryce?” Lara asked as he tended to her wound.
“They’re fine. They’re up there—” he nodded toward the surface. “In a copter.”
Lara nodded, then frowned. “Wait a minute. Bryce is in a copter? He’s not flying it, is he?”
“He is. Not doing a half-bad job, either. Though I’m glad it’s not my copter.” Terry started to wrap the wound—looser than she would have liked.
“Here—let me.” Lara took the gauze from his hand and finished dressing the wound. Terry helped her to her feet when she was done.
“I’m not fooled, you know.”
“About what?”
“I know the only reason you helped was to prove I was wrong about you.”
Terry smiled back. “Come on. Let’s get out of here.”
He slung the pack over his shoulder and turned to go.
It was only then that Lara saw the other bag hanging from around his neck and the outline of what was contained within it.
Pandora.
The gauze in her fingers slipped through her hand.
“Terry.”
He turned to look at her.
“No. We can’t.”
He saw where she was looking and his eyes widened in surprise.
“You’re joking.”
She shook her head.
“We just leave it here? When it’s worth a fortune?”
“Millions of people could die.”
“You’re being melodramatic. No one will actually use it…”
“You’d take that chance?” She shook her head. “Terry—”
“WHAT?” He advanced on her, eyes blazing. “You want to tell me again about those millions who could die? It won’t happen. And I’m not going to leave this here on the chance it might. I served my country, then I served my time for going out on my own. I’ve helped keep this away from Reiss. I deserve my reward. I’m taking it.”
He turned to go.
Lara stepped in front of him.
“That’s the longest speech you ever made, Terry. Congratulations. Too bad it’s all just a load of self-serving bull.” She stared into his eyes. “What happened to you, Terry? What happened to the man I knew in Chasong?”
“I became wise in the ways of the world, that’s all.”
He took a step forward and she blocked him again.
“You have authorization to kill me? Better do it then. Because if you think standing in front of me is enough…”
He moved then, too fast for her to do anything, and cracked her across the face.
Lara fell to the ground, stunned. She blinked away tears.
“You don’t have it in you to stop me, Croft. Because when it comes down to it, all your beliefs, all your ideals—they’re just words. They’re not real. I am. And you’ve loved me. I don’t care how strong you think you are. You’re not going to choose them over me.” He stared her in the eye. “Now move.”
She hesitated.
Terry was right about one thing. It was time for her to make a choice. Her beliefs, her ideals…or him.
“Fine,” he said, shrugging. “We can just stand here all day long and argue, and—”
But she wasn’t listening. Because at the same time Terry had shrugged, his arm had started to move toward the gun in his waistband.
Split-second reactions, Lara thought, and her fingers closed around the grip of Reiss’s gun.
Twenty-Three
Two thousand years, or twenty-five thousand—the force within the box knew no conception of time. It had no conception of space or distance, either.
One world was much the same as the next.
Life and death, shadow and light—all aspects of existence were contained within its being. It knew the essential, existential truths that lay at the heart of mankind’s eternal, never-ending quest for knowledge.
Lara sensed all those things, somehow, as she held the box in her hands, on the verge of placing it back in the black pool. For a minute, she was tempted.
The lid seemed to lift a little, beckoning her to gaze within.
Just a peek, she thought. Just a glimpse of the knowledge, the power that lay within.
But she knew how that story went.
She set the box down in the pool and stood.
All at once, a shaft of white light filled the room. Daybreak so soon?
“Lara!” That was Kosa’s voice coming from above.
She looked up toward the roof of the chamber and began to climb.
It wasn’t just Kosa. Standing outside the crater that surrounded the entrance to the chamber, waiting for her, was the entire tribe. They had made the light she saw—all of them carried flashlights, or lanterns, or lamps of some sort.
Kosa smiled and walked toward her. She smiled back, happy to see that he was all right, that neither his fight with Reiss or his encounter with the shadow guardians—
Sudden terror filled her heart and she spun around, looking to the forest.
“They’re gone. The shadow guardians,” Kosa said.
“So is Reiss,” Lara said.
The tribal leader stepped forward and spoke.
“The box is safe now, he says,” Kosa told her.
Lara nodded. “Will you tell him something for me?” She looked the leader in the eye. “T
ell him I understand now, what he was saying before.”
She looked back across the summit, at the primordial, windswept landscape, the towering cones of black rock, the pools of bubbling mud, and the entrance to Pandora’s chamber.
The mountain of God.
“Tell him he was right,” Lara said. “Some things aren’t meant to be found.”
The descent to the village was a long one.
The whole way down, Lara found herself thinking about Terry.
She thought of him lying on his back in the chamber below, staring up to the heavens with a stunned expression on his face. To the last, he hadn’t believed she would shoot him. And to be honest, up until that very instant that Terry had gone for his weapon, Lara hadn’t known herself what she would do.
She thought, too, about why he’d done what he had. Why the five million pounds MI6 had promised him wasn’t enough for him.
Why she hadn’t been enough for him—either back in Chasong, or in Pandora’s chamber.
Something had died inside him long ago, she decided. Maybe there was even a little part of him that had wanted to die, had wanted Lara to shoot. Maybe that was why he hadn’t killed her right off in the chamber, why he’d only slapped her, telegraphing his intentions so that she was ready the next time.
Maybe. Lara didn’t suppose she’d ever know for sure.
The sun was shining high in the sky now. Just ahead, she saw a clearing in the jungle. The village.
She heard Bryce and Hillary laughing in the distance. Well. At least somebody was having a good time.
Kosa came up alongside her.
“Sometimes it’s a lonely path.”
Lara nodded.
“But it is the right one.” He smiled and laid a hand on her shoulder. “You did well back there.”
His words—an exact echo of what Terry had told her, not once but twice over the last couple of days—stopped her right in her tracks.
“Are you all right?” he asked, frowning.
“Fine.” She managed a smile now. “And Kosa—thank you.”
“I did very little—but I do appreciate the sentiment.” All at once he burst into laughter and pointed straight ahead, toward the village.
“I see your friends have made themselves at home.”
Lara’s eyes widened in surprise.
“What on earth…”
Bryce and Hillary were seated in the middle of a large group of tribespeople—most of them women. Both men had abandoned their clothes for traditional tribal costume.
Lara and Kosa joined the group. Both men were so involved in what was being done to them—Bryce was having his hair braided and Hillary was having his face painted—that they didn’t even notice.
“That rather tickles,” Hillary said.
“Be thankful you don’t wear makeup everyday,” Lara said.
Hillary’s eyes opened and he shot to his feet.
“Are you all right? Where’s Reiss?”
“Pandora?” Bryce asked. “Sheridan?”
She avoided their eyes. “I’m fine. It’s over.”
“Lara?” Hillary frowned. “Are you sure?”
“Sure. Really. Even better now seeing the two of you. It’s…touching.”
“You know us,” Bryce said. “Always making friends, sharing a laugh—”
Kosa, who had been talking to one of the women in the group, leaned forward and interrupted.
“Getting married.”
Bryce’s jaw dropped.
“What?” Hillary said, the smile suddenly frozen on his face.
“This is a wedding ceremony. And these—” Kosa pointed toward the two largest women in the group, who smiled back at him “—are your brides.”
“Er.” Bryce stammered. “That was never explained to us.”
“No. Definitely not.” Hillary shook his head. “No proposals were exchanged.”
“That we know about,” Bryce said.
Hillary glared at him. “Definitely not.”
“Don’t worry,” Kosa said, winking at Lara. “I’ll explain this is a miscommunication.”
The tribal leader had joined them. Kosa and he began to talk.
Lara discreetly backed off. She’d spotted her Jeep at the edge of the village—Kosa must have had it brought up earlier.
He suddenly looked up and spoke in English to Bryce and Hillary.
“Run,” he said.
The two men turned and headed straight for Lara.
She fired up the Jeep. They clambered into the back—Kosa ran up alongside and jumped in the front.
“This’ll teach you to spend time with other women,” Lara said, eyeing Hillary and Bryce in the rearview mirror.
Both men smiled back.
Lara and her friends sped away then, across the African savannah, heading for home.
Acknowledgments
Special thanks to Margaret Clark, Scott Shannon, the Pocket Rocket, and all the other good folks at Pocket Books…
Thanks also to Paula Block at Paramount, Dean Georgaris, Larry Gordon, Lloyd Levin, Kirk M. Petruccelli, and the Fabulous Five high atop Mother Mary’s Hill.
Lara Croft (Angelina Jolie) is convinced that she knows the location of the tomb.
Bryce (Noah Taylor) and Hillary (Chris Barrie), with an assist from the Royal Navy, find Lara.
Terry Sheridan (Gerard Butler)—just released from an ultra-prison deep within the former Soviet Union—is singularly ungrateful.
Sheridan said he could take Lara to the Shay Ling—he just didn’t mention how.
Chen Lo only thinks he has gotten the best of Lara.
Lara and Sheridan are determined at all cost to stop the truck carrying the Orb.
If recapturing the Orb kills a few of the Petrakis’ killers, so be it.
Dr. Jonathan Reiss (Ciarán Hinds) watches with anticipation as his computers work to unlock the message of the Orb and the location of Pandora’s box.
While she may enjoy his “company,” Lara does not trust Sheridan.
The Orb reveals a map showing the location of the Cradle of Life and ultimately the box.
Kosa (Djimon Hounsou) and Lara secure help, hoping they can get to the box first.
When Lara sees no alternative, she agrees to lead Reiss to the Cradle of Life.
As an unseen force picks off Reiss’s men, Lara knows it is the Shadow Guardians.
Lara has only to reach out and Reiss will possess the horrific powers of Pandora’s box.
