"Just Desserts"
A Tomb Raider short story by Sarah Crisman (Scrisman@juno.com)
Like most hospitals at night, it was cold, dark, antiseptic. A pervading sense of
fear mingled with a modicum of hopelessness and a draught of tears overwhelmed all but
the most hardened and trained (or jaded) individuals who walked the halls. Illness was
nothing more than a business to most of the people employed by the hospital, and their
casual air about the whole thing did nothing to ease the fears of patients and visitors
alike.
Fortunately, at least for those who had come to see loved ones, visiting hours
were over, and all but those who were with dying family members had been quietly
ushered out the door hours ago. For the next few hours, they would have a rest, a
reprieve from the subconscious terrors of the medical facility.
The patients, on the other hand, were not so fortunate. A night in a hospital, even
when one has grown used to such things over the years, can cause even the most stone-
hearted to break down and weep. Yet even among the patients, there were some who
were more fortunate than others. Many were sedated into a mild slumber, and had tuned
out the world around them. Others were so tired from their long days that not even the
night terrors of the hospital could keep them from sleep. The least fortunate of all were
the ones who were new, and could not sleep for whatever reason, be it the patient in the
bed next to them who was making noise, or just the problems caused by sleeping in an
unfamiliar bed.
The lights in the fourth floor room had been dimmed in a manner suitable to the
lone occupant. With the breathing tubes stuck down his throat, he was in no position to
talk. Earlier in the day, the hospital staff had removed a bullet from his right shoulder,
set a broken leg and arm, wrapped his chest to help a few cracked ribs heal, put the breathing tubes in as a post-operative precaution due to throat trauma, and immobilized him further to prevent unauthorized movement on his part. The IV inserted in the back of his hand dripped steadily, barely perceptible in the silence that had descended over the hospital in the last few hours. The drug injections of before had started to wear off, and the night nurse had not returned to re-administer them.
He felt around on the bed next to him for the switch to call the orderly, picked it
up in his hand, then paused, taking pleasure in the fact that he was, for the first time in
many hours, starting to feel coherent again. Pain was certainly not foreign to him, and he
had borne much worse before. Compared to the other scrapes he had gotten himself into
over the years, this was nothing; a mere pinprick in the open-heart surgery of life. He set
the call button back down on the bed and closed his eyes. All in all, he was lucky to be alive.
A few minutes later, he felt the cool outside air starting to flow over him. As best
he could, he tried to smile. This was an unexpected luxury right now. For a brief
moment, he dreamed he was flying, soaring through the air on the night breeze,
unencumbered by the weight of the hospital bed, the casts, the breathing tubes, or the
needle jabbed into the upper veins of his hand. He was free again.
A twinge of...something...fluttered through his brain. His conscious mind was
trying to tell him something, trying to get him to remember...what? Why couldn't he
remember? It probably had something to do with the fall, he reasoned. After all, he had
hit his head somewhere on the way down...he was certain of that. He remembered the
doctors saying there was no concussion (a miracle, given the circumstances and
everything else that had gone wrong that day). So what would-
In an instant, it flashed into his head. When he was first wheeled into the room,
he had taken notice of the windows while the curtains had been pulled back: they did not
open. There was no handle, inside or out, that would permit them to twist or rise in any
way. So where was this wind coming from all of a sudden? In a panic, he opened his
eyes and turned his head as far to his right as he could, straining to see in the pale
illumination. Though he knew the window couldn't be open, the drapes blew in a gentle
zephyr. What had once seemed a welcome, refreshing breeze of cool air now caused his
spine to tingle, and gooseflesh to pop out all up and down his arms. Something was not
right...
Movement!
He turned even farther to the right, ignoring the pain from his shoulder, straining
to see what was moving in the room with him. He hadn't heard the door open...indeed, it
had been locked by the nurse as he left for the evening. Shadows played inside the room,
bouncing off walls where they had no business being cast in the first place. His first
impulse was to shout for help, but the breathing tubes prevented any sort of loud
vocalization.
Then it hit him: he must be asleep. It was all a dream, or the drugs, or both. After
all, a window that wasn't designed to be opened couldn't possibly be letting in the wind.
And he was four floors up. There wasn't anyone in this world who would be capable of
breaking into a fourth floor hospital room from the outside, nor anyone who would even
want to do so with the possible, utterly absurd exception of-
"Hullo, Pierre."
The shadows came into focus all at once to reveal brown hair, a feminine figure, a
holstered gun at her waist, and a pony tail swaying behind her back. She made no noise
as she walked slowly and deliberately across the tile floor, ghost-like in her movements.
She peered down at him, staring into him with those eyes he had met so many
times in the past. Boring into him with that gaze of hers. Staring right through him as
though he were a sheet of wispy, transparent cloth instead of a bed-ridden, defenseless
hospital patient.
'Lara Croft...'
The thought snapped his mind back to reality, and he groped for the buzzer to call
the nurse. As his hand went for it, however, he bumped it unintentionally, and felt it start
to slide off the bed. As quickly as he could, he slithered his hand after it, feeling it tug on
the sheet slightly where it had seemed to catch itself.
Lara observed him with detached interest, watched his fingers slowly groping
towards the button on the side of the bed, let him get within a hair's distance of it, then
tapped the edge of the bed with her boot. "Oops."
Pierre watched in mute horror as the call device slipped from the side of the bed,
swung towards the floor, missed it by scant inches, tapped the wall several times, then
finally became motionless, hanging from its attachment in the ceiling.
"Awww..." Lara was all condescending sympathy. "Did you lose your little
toy?"
It was infuriating having her towering over him, and him not able to speak a
single word in his own defense. He couldn't even reach up and pull the tube out of his
throat because of the way his arms had been strapped to the mattress. Somewhere inside,
Pierre DuPont started to quiver with fear. But he would not show it...no, not even with
this woman, this girl standing over him. He wouldn't give her the satisfaction.
"Terribly sorry about the window," Lara continued. "I do hope the breeze doesn't
get to you. I thought the night air was simply too nice to be left outside."
Rage began to bubble up inside Pierre, and he gritted his teeth as best he could
against the ribbed plastic tubing.
"Tut tut," Lara said, looking him over. "Why, you are quite a mess. My sources
were correct after all. Now, let's see just what happened to you to put you into this
place..." Casually, she walked over to his chart and picked it up, wet her finger with her
tongue, then began flipping through the pages casually, nodding here and there as she
read. "Hmmm...bullet to the shoulder...looks like someone's aim wasn't totally off. Ah,
broken leg! Oh, and an arm to go with it. An excellent choice, by the way. Cracked
ribs...minor internal injuries, and a couple of torn ligaments." Still holding the chart, she
looked up at him. "All in all, I'd say a pretty nasty bit of work. But then again, it's
absolutely nothing compared to what I was going to give you if I had caught up with you
that day."
Pierre glared at her. What on Earth was she going on about?
Lara closed the folder then placed it gently back in the small plastic holding bin at
the foot of the bed. Turning her fingers towards her, she placed her palms on the foot of
the bed and leaned towards him. "Yes, comparatively speaking, you got off with little
more than a slap on the wrist. That's why I'm here tonight."
Pierre frowned. This didn't make any sense.
"Silly me! I'm certain you've forgotten by now, haven't you?"
Pierre cocked his head, puppy-like.
"Well, I haven't. You see, when you killed Michael, something inside of me just
sort of, well, snapped. Ah, I see the recognition dawning already. You should know that
I've spent a considerable amount of time and money tracking you down. I was lucky you
hurt yourself when you did, since I had gotten a tip that you were in China, and I was just
about to book a flight out there when I heard about this."
Pierre shook his head, trying to convey that he didn't understand what was going
on.
From her side holster, Lara withdrew a single gun, and turned it towards the light
to admire it. Pierre's eyebrows went up in surprise, for it wasn't what he had been
expecting her to carry.
"Recognize one of these, Pierre? Of course you do; you know all about guns. It's
a .38 calibre, a "snubbie" as they call them on the streets. They're terrible weapons,
really. Utterly useless at any sort of long range. You certainly wouldn't take one with
you on a hunting trip, as it's got very little stopping power. Only six shots, too, which is
worse than the standard ammo clip for a magnum or other high-powered handgun. Plus it
has to be manually reloaded with a bullet in each chamber. Not something you want to
have to deal with in a high-combat situation. So you're probably wondering why I've got
one with me tonight, hm?"
Pierre didn't say anything. He heard the different pitch in Lara's voice,
recognizing it as the tone of someone who had gone over the edge, or who was in serious
danger of doing so. This was very, very bad...
Lara held the gun up and gave the chamber a whirl, listening to the clicks as it
spun before finally stopping it by pulling back the trigger. "Tonight, Pierre, we're going
to play a little game. I'm sure you've heard of it before. It's called 'Russian Roulette'.
Very simple, uncomplicated type of game. All it takes is one gun, one bullet, and two
crazy people. And tonight, we're the loonies. The rules are fairly straightforward. We
take turns pointing the gun at our heads and pulling the trigger."
Lara put the barrel of the gun at her temple, hesitated a moment until she was
certain Pierre was looking at her, and pulled the trigger.
An audible 'click' echoed through the room.
Lara smiled, then turned the gun on Pierre, holding it a few scant centimeters
away from his forehead. "Under ordinary circumstances, you're considered lucky if
you're the one who's left alive. So tell me, Pierre...in the words of 'Dirty Harry,' do you
feel lucky?"
Pierre's eyes crossed themselves in an effort to watch her finger as it pulled on the
trigger a second time. He felt the sweat breaking out on his brow. This was it...Lara had
seriously gone stark raving mad...
Seconds later, Pierre heard the 'click', and felt himself start breathing again.
Lara lowered the pistol and stared at him again. "I'm sure you understand that
normally you'd be the one to pull the trigger, but given your current condition, I figured
I'd be a better woman for the job. Any objections?"
Pierre couldn't have said anything even if he could have spoken. Lara had him
absolutely paralyzed with fear. It coursed through his veins, soaked through his skin, and
melted into the sheets silently, then started the process all over again.
"Didn't think so. But you didn't seem to remember what I was talking about
before. Now that I have your attention, I'll try again."
Lara drew herself up to her full height and glared down at Pierre. "It was two
weeks ago. Michael and I were looking for the 'Figure of Dawn' in those caves when
you swooped in out of nowhere and stole it out of my hands."
A smile sprouted across Pierre's face as her words triggered the memory of the
day he had, once again, outsmarted Lara Croft. Finder's keeper's...
"You fired at us as you were leaving," Lara continued, eyes closing to slits. "You
missed us both, because you've always been such a lousy shot, but you managed to hit
one of the roof supports, causing a rather significant cave in. I made it out. Michael
didn't."
Pierre tried to shrug, but the motion caused pain to explode from his shoulder, and
he halted midway through the motion.
Lara backed away from him, then walked to the side of the bed and sat down
beside him on the mattress. "Yes, you had forgotten all about that, hadn't you? But I
remember." Without warning, she poked his injured shoulder.
Pierre's scream of pain at Lara's touch was converted into an almost soundless
moan around the breather tube. He eyed her wildly now, trying to move and trap her in
some way to keep her from doing it again, but the restraints held him firmly.
"Do you have any idea what these last two weeks have been like for me?" she
demanded of him. "Have you even the slightest notion of what I've been going through?
Do you realize it's been the same thing for my entire life now?"
Pierre found himself shaking his head.
"Of course you don't." The words came as nothing but a whisper from her lips.
"How could someone like you know? How?"
He scowled at her, but found that it hurt to frown after he had waved his head
around so much at the orderly, and the scowl turned to a wince of pain in an instant.
Lara dragged a nearby chair over to the hospital bed and sat down next to her
prisoner. "Now, where were we? Oh, right. We were comparing notes about our lives.
I'll go first, if you don't mind. Not that you have any choice, of course, but it makes me
feel better to pretend like I'm actually presenting you with some option. Rather like
those South American dictators who claim to be elected democratically simply because
the population knows that anyone who votes against the current despot will be executed,
don't you think? Of course, everyone in these so-called 'civilised' nations looks the
other way. Right now, Pierre, I'm the dictator, you're voting, and everyone else is facing
the opposite direction. So...cast your ballot."
Slowly, infuriatingly, Pierre nodded his head. If he had any say about things,
there would be coup before the night was out. But he had to play his cards right, and that
included showing Lara what she wanted to see. Because to do otherwise might invite her
to actually use that gun again, and that wasn't good at all.
"Excellent." Lara crossed her legs, laid the hand with the gun in her lap, and
continued. "I've seen your background, of course. Mother left when you were quite
little, and daddy was a two-bit thug who let his son do whatever he pleased. You might
think this was terrible, but coming from my point of view, you had absolute and total
freedom from very early on."
She shifted her weight. "You wouldn't know what it's like, growing up in utter
and complete social isolation because you had a father who felt that children should be
seen and not heard. Getting etiquette and proper manners thrown at you twenty-four
hours a day, being told you liked it even when you wanted to snap back that you didn't,
thank you very much. Getting taken to places so stuffy that you could hardly breathe.
No, you had your freedom from day one."
Pierre glanced at her, not understanding anything. What does this have to do with
the matter at hand?
"Then, just when I needed them the most, they sent me off to a boarding school in
another country! Switzerland, of all places! A 'Finishing School,' they called it. Pretty
accurate name, if you think about it. They were meant to 'finish you off' if you hadn't
absolutely gotten all the rules down when you were living at home. Can you imagine me
at a finishing school?" She threw her head back and cackled.
"So, in a way, you could say it was a bit of a load lifted when the plane crashed
and Daddy finally disowned me. There wasn't any more of that upper-class life to live,
no more finishing school to attend, and I had my freedom. The only sad part was that
Daddy didn't want to talk to me anymore. Bad enough mother had to die, but then he
made it all the worse.
"I called him on the phone the other day, you know. Called him up and told him
Michael had been killed. I felt it only fair, seeing as how he had met Michael before, and
seemed to get along with him well enough, even though he was an American. Know
what he did? Said he was sorry for Michael, for staying with me like he had, and then he
got upset at me for getting him killed. As if I had any choice in the matter?
"I tried to explain to him, of course. Tried to tell him it was all your fault, that if
you hadn't decided to follow us in and run off with my treasure, that we wouldn't have
given chase, and you wouldn't have shot at us like that and caused the cave in. But he
wouldn't have it. He was convinced that, somehow, the responsibility was all on my
shoulders, even though Michael was an adult and followed by choice, not because I
pushed him around or bullied him.
"Maybe I should have you call Daddy on the phone and tell him it was your fault.
You're another male. Perhaps he'd listen to you. But I doubt it. When Daddy gets set in
his ways, it would take something more powerful than a locomotive to move him. And
right now, you're not even as strong as a small pushcart. So I'm afraid that makes us
both worthless in my father's eyes."
Lara stood up slowly, raised the gun, placed it under her chin, tilted her head
back, shut her eyes, and pulled the trigger.
Click.
"Looks like I'm still lucky so far, Pierre. What about you?"
Pierre shook visibly as Lara turned the pistol away from her throat and pointed it
at his head. He wanted to close his eyes like Lara had, but he couldn't tear his gaze away
from her finger...holding the trigger...starting to squeeze it...
Click.
Pierre let out the breath he had been holding and Lara laughed. "So, your luck
holds out a second time. Two more chambers though. So the question is, will '5' be my
lucky number...or yours?"
She watched Pierre shiver under the sheet as the gentle outside breeze rolled
through the window, danced through the air, and swirled around the room. It really was a
nice evening outside. It was a shame to be wasting it in here like this.
"Anyway, Pierre, that's the story of my life: a father who was never there for me
when I was around, who closes himself off in his own little world of politicking and
finances to keep himself from thinking about the past, from thinking about mother and
builds walls so high that not even his only daughter can climb them. Maybe that's
why I do what I do."
She sat back down in the chair, re-crossed her legs, and balanced the gun on her
knees, barrel pointing at the bed. "Yes, I think that would be a good excuse, don't you? I
explore and do things for sport that most normal people wouldn't do for millions of
pounds. Or francs, if you prefer. What's your favorite currency, Pierre?"
DuPont shrugged, trying to indicate general helplessness, confusion, and the fact
that he'd never really thought about that before with the same simple motion.
"They're really all the same, you know. Dollars or Deutschmarks, Lira or Rubles,
Yen or Pesos. Did you know that my father could tell you the conversion rate for any
of them, back and forth, updated to the day? He really likes that sort of thing. It was
partly how he made his money before he got married to my mother, playing the world
market. Every day and evening, he reads the papers and memorizes the going rates to
keep himself all ship-shape and bristol fashion.
"But all of that means so little in the grand scheme of things. The fact that he
can't even see his own prison, can't see that he built it for himself is completely beside
the point right now. That's his problem to deal with, not mine. You, on the other hand,
are my problem."
She stuck an accusing finger at his nose. "You're not my only problem, of course,
but right now, you're the biggest. Don't get all smug and assume that you are the only
person I ever get mad at, because you aren't, and even if you were, I wouldn't give you
the sense of satisfaction by telling you. No, Pierre DuPont, there are others. Dozens of
others. Some of them might even make you look like a saint. And we all know there are
no saints in this game. There may not even be such a thing as right and wrong. Morality
and archaeology got divorced a long time ago. They found out they were bad
bedfellows."
Pierre wanted to argue that what they did wasn't technically archaeology, but was
forced to settle with frowning instead.
"But you know something, Pierre?"
He raised his eyebrows, as if to ask, "What?"
"That's the reason I do what I do," Lara stated, matter-of-factly. "The excitement
of doing something that I know is right, that's what keeps me in this game. The feeling
of satisfaction when I walk away from a successful mission knowing that no one else on
this Earth could have pulled it off. The knowledge that, when I'm doing a job, I'm right
and everyone else is wrong. It's powerfully seductive, isn't it?"
Without standing this time, Lara put the gun to her temple, shut her eyes...and
pulled the trigger.
Click.
Pierre began to squirm in the bed.
Lara opened her eyes and lowered the gun. "Looks like I'm the lucky one
tonight, Pierre. But I guess I should finish my train of thought, shouldn't I?"
She waited for an answer, but Pierre didn't move. She brought the gun up and
pointed it at him. "Shouldn't I?"
Swiftly, Pierre nodded as best he could.
Lara kept the gun pointing at him anyway. "I thought so." She leaned back in the
chair and paused to reflect on something.
"You know, I've been thinking about something else," she said. "I've killed
people in my lifetime. You have to in this line of work. Comes with the territory, after
all. Sometimes, I've used a gun. Other times, a knife. A few times, I even used my bare
hands. And, for some reason, the feeling is almost always...euphoric. Cathartic, if you
will. Because even though I know what I'm doing is right at the time, someone else out
there might think differently.
"And I suppose that is what this all boils down to, Pierre. When I fight you, when
I beat you at your own game, I know somewhere down deep in my heart that I'm doing
the right thing.
"There are times, Pierre, that I hate your kind. I hate your kind with such a
passion that it almost makes me cry. The fact that people like you are out there
absolutely pisses me off, pardon the slang. So when I can see your evil and expose it to
your own face, it makes me happy."
Pierre started to shake in the bed again. But Lara wasn't finished.
"When, after two weeks of searching, I finally have you pinned down, safely set
in my crosshairs, with no chance of you escaping, and I smell your fear, watch you
sweat...when it comes down to that final act of closing your eyes, once and for all..."
Though he tried to control himself, a single tear rolled from Pierre's left eye, and
the shaking continued.
Lara brought the gun down until it was pressed lightly against his forehead.
"When I know that you'll wake up someplace else, someplace that isn't of this world..."
Her finger touched the trigger gently, slid up and down it for a brief moment, then
started to tighten.
Pierre finally found the strength to shut his eyes as he saw her finger beginning to
pull the small lever. He felt his heart hammering his chest, certain it was audible all up
and down the hall. His breathing tripled in speed as he started to hyperventilate. Time
slowed to a crawl as panic flooded his brain, mixing with the adrenaline there, giving him
what felt like a few precious seconds to mentally say his good-byes, knowing that he'd be
dead before he heard the shot.
Click.
"...That's when I find out that my gun isn't loaded," Lara finished. She holstered
the pistol. "I guess I'm stuck with you another after all, Pierre DuPont." Without
another word, she turned her back on him and walked to the window and her escape.
Two hours later, the new orderly made his rounds of the halls and discovered
Pierre DuPont to be wide awake, suffering from what seemed like some form of mental
shock. The patient didn't even argue with him as he took out the syringe, squeezed it
until a few drops of liquid spurted out, then plunged it deep into his vein. "Sleep tight,
Mister DuPont," the nurse said as the drugs rapidly coursed their way through Pierre's
system and dropped him into an uneasy slumber. Somewhere inside, he was grateful for
the small reprieve. That was going to leave a scar...
A Tomb Raider short story by Sarah Crisman (Scrisman@juno.com)
Like most hospitals at night, it was cold, dark, antiseptic. A pervading sense of
fear mingled with a modicum of hopelessness and a draught of tears overwhelmed all but
the most hardened and trained (or jaded) individuals who walked the halls. Illness was
nothing more than a business to most of the people employed by the hospital, and their
casual air about the whole thing did nothing to ease the fears of patients and visitors
alike.
Fortunately, at least for those who had come to see loved ones, visiting hours
were over, and all but those who were with dying family members had been quietly
ushered out the door hours ago. For the next few hours, they would have a rest, a
reprieve from the subconscious terrors of the medical facility.
The patients, on the other hand, were not so fortunate. A night in a hospital, even
when one has grown used to such things over the years, can cause even the most stone-
hearted to break down and weep. Yet even among the patients, there were some who
were more fortunate than others. Many were sedated into a mild slumber, and had tuned
out the world around them. Others were so tired from their long days that not even the
night terrors of the hospital could keep them from sleep. The least fortunate of all were
the ones who were new, and could not sleep for whatever reason, be it the patient in the
bed next to them who was making noise, or just the problems caused by sleeping in an
unfamiliar bed.
The lights in the fourth floor room had been dimmed in a manner suitable to the
lone occupant. With the breathing tubes stuck down his throat, he was in no position to
talk. Earlier in the day, the hospital staff had removed a bullet from his right shoulder,
set a broken leg and arm, wrapped his chest to help a few cracked ribs heal, put the breathing tubes in as a post-operative precaution due to throat trauma, and immobilized him further to prevent unauthorized movement on his part. The IV inserted in the back of his hand dripped steadily, barely perceptible in the silence that had descended over the hospital in the last few hours. The drug injections of before had started to wear off, and the night nurse had not returned to re-administer them.
He felt around on the bed next to him for the switch to call the orderly, picked it
up in his hand, then paused, taking pleasure in the fact that he was, for the first time in
many hours, starting to feel coherent again. Pain was certainly not foreign to him, and he
had borne much worse before. Compared to the other scrapes he had gotten himself into
over the years, this was nothing; a mere pinprick in the open-heart surgery of life. He set
the call button back down on the bed and closed his eyes. All in all, he was lucky to be alive.
A few minutes later, he felt the cool outside air starting to flow over him. As best
he could, he tried to smile. This was an unexpected luxury right now. For a brief
moment, he dreamed he was flying, soaring through the air on the night breeze,
unencumbered by the weight of the hospital bed, the casts, the breathing tubes, or the
needle jabbed into the upper veins of his hand. He was free again.
A twinge of...something...fluttered through his brain. His conscious mind was
trying to tell him something, trying to get him to remember...what? Why couldn't he
remember? It probably had something to do with the fall, he reasoned. After all, he had
hit his head somewhere on the way down...he was certain of that. He remembered the
doctors saying there was no concussion (a miracle, given the circumstances and
everything else that had gone wrong that day). So what would-
In an instant, it flashed into his head. When he was first wheeled into the room,
he had taken notice of the windows while the curtains had been pulled back: they did not
open. There was no handle, inside or out, that would permit them to twist or rise in any
way. So where was this wind coming from all of a sudden? In a panic, he opened his
eyes and turned his head as far to his right as he could, straining to see in the pale
illumination. Though he knew the window couldn't be open, the drapes blew in a gentle
zephyr. What had once seemed a welcome, refreshing breeze of cool air now caused his
spine to tingle, and gooseflesh to pop out all up and down his arms. Something was not
right...
Movement!
He turned even farther to the right, ignoring the pain from his shoulder, straining
to see what was moving in the room with him. He hadn't heard the door open...indeed, it
had been locked by the nurse as he left for the evening. Shadows played inside the room,
bouncing off walls where they had no business being cast in the first place. His first
impulse was to shout for help, but the breathing tubes prevented any sort of loud
vocalization.
Then it hit him: he must be asleep. It was all a dream, or the drugs, or both. After
all, a window that wasn't designed to be opened couldn't possibly be letting in the wind.
And he was four floors up. There wasn't anyone in this world who would be capable of
breaking into a fourth floor hospital room from the outside, nor anyone who would even
want to do so with the possible, utterly absurd exception of-
"Hullo, Pierre."
The shadows came into focus all at once to reveal brown hair, a feminine figure, a
holstered gun at her waist, and a pony tail swaying behind her back. She made no noise
as she walked slowly and deliberately across the tile floor, ghost-like in her movements.
She peered down at him, staring into him with those eyes he had met so many
times in the past. Boring into him with that gaze of hers. Staring right through him as
though he were a sheet of wispy, transparent cloth instead of a bed-ridden, defenseless
hospital patient.
'Lara Croft...'
The thought snapped his mind back to reality, and he groped for the buzzer to call
the nurse. As his hand went for it, however, he bumped it unintentionally, and felt it start
to slide off the bed. As quickly as he could, he slithered his hand after it, feeling it tug on
the sheet slightly where it had seemed to catch itself.
Lara observed him with detached interest, watched his fingers slowly groping
towards the button on the side of the bed, let him get within a hair's distance of it, then
tapped the edge of the bed with her boot. "Oops."
Pierre watched in mute horror as the call device slipped from the side of the bed,
swung towards the floor, missed it by scant inches, tapped the wall several times, then
finally became motionless, hanging from its attachment in the ceiling.
"Awww..." Lara was all condescending sympathy. "Did you lose your little
toy?"
It was infuriating having her towering over him, and him not able to speak a
single word in his own defense. He couldn't even reach up and pull the tube out of his
throat because of the way his arms had been strapped to the mattress. Somewhere inside,
Pierre DuPont started to quiver with fear. But he would not show it...no, not even with
this woman, this girl standing over him. He wouldn't give her the satisfaction.
"Terribly sorry about the window," Lara continued. "I do hope the breeze doesn't
get to you. I thought the night air was simply too nice to be left outside."
Rage began to bubble up inside Pierre, and he gritted his teeth as best he could
against the ribbed plastic tubing.
"Tut tut," Lara said, looking him over. "Why, you are quite a mess. My sources
were correct after all. Now, let's see just what happened to you to put you into this
place..." Casually, she walked over to his chart and picked it up, wet her finger with her
tongue, then began flipping through the pages casually, nodding here and there as she
read. "Hmmm...bullet to the shoulder...looks like someone's aim wasn't totally off. Ah,
broken leg! Oh, and an arm to go with it. An excellent choice, by the way. Cracked
ribs...minor internal injuries, and a couple of torn ligaments." Still holding the chart, she
looked up at him. "All in all, I'd say a pretty nasty bit of work. But then again, it's
absolutely nothing compared to what I was going to give you if I had caught up with you
that day."
Pierre glared at her. What on Earth was she going on about?
Lara closed the folder then placed it gently back in the small plastic holding bin at
the foot of the bed. Turning her fingers towards her, she placed her palms on the foot of
the bed and leaned towards him. "Yes, comparatively speaking, you got off with little
more than a slap on the wrist. That's why I'm here tonight."
Pierre frowned. This didn't make any sense.
"Silly me! I'm certain you've forgotten by now, haven't you?"
Pierre cocked his head, puppy-like.
"Well, I haven't. You see, when you killed Michael, something inside of me just
sort of, well, snapped. Ah, I see the recognition dawning already. You should know that
I've spent a considerable amount of time and money tracking you down. I was lucky you
hurt yourself when you did, since I had gotten a tip that you were in China, and I was just
about to book a flight out there when I heard about this."
Pierre shook his head, trying to convey that he didn't understand what was going
on.
From her side holster, Lara withdrew a single gun, and turned it towards the light
to admire it. Pierre's eyebrows went up in surprise, for it wasn't what he had been
expecting her to carry.
"Recognize one of these, Pierre? Of course you do; you know all about guns. It's
a .38 calibre, a "snubbie" as they call them on the streets. They're terrible weapons,
really. Utterly useless at any sort of long range. You certainly wouldn't take one with
you on a hunting trip, as it's got very little stopping power. Only six shots, too, which is
worse than the standard ammo clip for a magnum or other high-powered handgun. Plus it
has to be manually reloaded with a bullet in each chamber. Not something you want to
have to deal with in a high-combat situation. So you're probably wondering why I've got
one with me tonight, hm?"
Pierre didn't say anything. He heard the different pitch in Lara's voice,
recognizing it as the tone of someone who had gone over the edge, or who was in serious
danger of doing so. This was very, very bad...
Lara held the gun up and gave the chamber a whirl, listening to the clicks as it
spun before finally stopping it by pulling back the trigger. "Tonight, Pierre, we're going
to play a little game. I'm sure you've heard of it before. It's called 'Russian Roulette'.
Very simple, uncomplicated type of game. All it takes is one gun, one bullet, and two
crazy people. And tonight, we're the loonies. The rules are fairly straightforward. We
take turns pointing the gun at our heads and pulling the trigger."
Lara put the barrel of the gun at her temple, hesitated a moment until she was
certain Pierre was looking at her, and pulled the trigger.
An audible 'click' echoed through the room.
Lara smiled, then turned the gun on Pierre, holding it a few scant centimeters
away from his forehead. "Under ordinary circumstances, you're considered lucky if
you're the one who's left alive. So tell me, Pierre...in the words of 'Dirty Harry,' do you
feel lucky?"
Pierre's eyes crossed themselves in an effort to watch her finger as it pulled on the
trigger a second time. He felt the sweat breaking out on his brow. This was it...Lara had
seriously gone stark raving mad...
Seconds later, Pierre heard the 'click', and felt himself start breathing again.
Lara lowered the pistol and stared at him again. "I'm sure you understand that
normally you'd be the one to pull the trigger, but given your current condition, I figured
I'd be a better woman for the job. Any objections?"
Pierre couldn't have said anything even if he could have spoken. Lara had him
absolutely paralyzed with fear. It coursed through his veins, soaked through his skin, and
melted into the sheets silently, then started the process all over again.
"Didn't think so. But you didn't seem to remember what I was talking about
before. Now that I have your attention, I'll try again."
Lara drew herself up to her full height and glared down at Pierre. "It was two
weeks ago. Michael and I were looking for the 'Figure of Dawn' in those caves when
you swooped in out of nowhere and stole it out of my hands."
A smile sprouted across Pierre's face as her words triggered the memory of the
day he had, once again, outsmarted Lara Croft. Finder's keeper's...
"You fired at us as you were leaving," Lara continued, eyes closing to slits. "You
missed us both, because you've always been such a lousy shot, but you managed to hit
one of the roof supports, causing a rather significant cave in. I made it out. Michael
didn't."
Pierre tried to shrug, but the motion caused pain to explode from his shoulder, and
he halted midway through the motion.
Lara backed away from him, then walked to the side of the bed and sat down
beside him on the mattress. "Yes, you had forgotten all about that, hadn't you? But I
remember." Without warning, she poked his injured shoulder.
Pierre's scream of pain at Lara's touch was converted into an almost soundless
moan around the breather tube. He eyed her wildly now, trying to move and trap her in
some way to keep her from doing it again, but the restraints held him firmly.
"Do you have any idea what these last two weeks have been like for me?" she
demanded of him. "Have you even the slightest notion of what I've been going through?
Do you realize it's been the same thing for my entire life now?"
Pierre found himself shaking his head.
"Of course you don't." The words came as nothing but a whisper from her lips.
"How could someone like you know? How?"
He scowled at her, but found that it hurt to frown after he had waved his head
around so much at the orderly, and the scowl turned to a wince of pain in an instant.
Lara dragged a nearby chair over to the hospital bed and sat down next to her
prisoner. "Now, where were we? Oh, right. We were comparing notes about our lives.
I'll go first, if you don't mind. Not that you have any choice, of course, but it makes me
feel better to pretend like I'm actually presenting you with some option. Rather like
those South American dictators who claim to be elected democratically simply because
the population knows that anyone who votes against the current despot will be executed,
don't you think? Of course, everyone in these so-called 'civilised' nations looks the
other way. Right now, Pierre, I'm the dictator, you're voting, and everyone else is facing
the opposite direction. So...cast your ballot."
Slowly, infuriatingly, Pierre nodded his head. If he had any say about things,
there would be coup before the night was out. But he had to play his cards right, and that
included showing Lara what she wanted to see. Because to do otherwise might invite her
to actually use that gun again, and that wasn't good at all.
"Excellent." Lara crossed her legs, laid the hand with the gun in her lap, and
continued. "I've seen your background, of course. Mother left when you were quite
little, and daddy was a two-bit thug who let his son do whatever he pleased. You might
think this was terrible, but coming from my point of view, you had absolute and total
freedom from very early on."
She shifted her weight. "You wouldn't know what it's like, growing up in utter
and complete social isolation because you had a father who felt that children should be
seen and not heard. Getting etiquette and proper manners thrown at you twenty-four
hours a day, being told you liked it even when you wanted to snap back that you didn't,
thank you very much. Getting taken to places so stuffy that you could hardly breathe.
No, you had your freedom from day one."
Pierre glanced at her, not understanding anything. What does this have to do with
the matter at hand?
"Then, just when I needed them the most, they sent me off to a boarding school in
another country! Switzerland, of all places! A 'Finishing School,' they called it. Pretty
accurate name, if you think about it. They were meant to 'finish you off' if you hadn't
absolutely gotten all the rules down when you were living at home. Can you imagine me
at a finishing school?" She threw her head back and cackled.
"So, in a way, you could say it was a bit of a load lifted when the plane crashed
and Daddy finally disowned me. There wasn't any more of that upper-class life to live,
no more finishing school to attend, and I had my freedom. The only sad part was that
Daddy didn't want to talk to me anymore. Bad enough mother had to die, but then he
made it all the worse.
"I called him on the phone the other day, you know. Called him up and told him
Michael had been killed. I felt it only fair, seeing as how he had met Michael before, and
seemed to get along with him well enough, even though he was an American. Know
what he did? Said he was sorry for Michael, for staying with me like he had, and then he
got upset at me for getting him killed. As if I had any choice in the matter?
"I tried to explain to him, of course. Tried to tell him it was all your fault, that if
you hadn't decided to follow us in and run off with my treasure, that we wouldn't have
given chase, and you wouldn't have shot at us like that and caused the cave in. But he
wouldn't have it. He was convinced that, somehow, the responsibility was all on my
shoulders, even though Michael was an adult and followed by choice, not because I
pushed him around or bullied him.
"Maybe I should have you call Daddy on the phone and tell him it was your fault.
You're another male. Perhaps he'd listen to you. But I doubt it. When Daddy gets set in
his ways, it would take something more powerful than a locomotive to move him. And
right now, you're not even as strong as a small pushcart. So I'm afraid that makes us
both worthless in my father's eyes."
Lara stood up slowly, raised the gun, placed it under her chin, tilted her head
back, shut her eyes, and pulled the trigger.
Click.
"Looks like I'm still lucky so far, Pierre. What about you?"
Pierre shook visibly as Lara turned the pistol away from her throat and pointed it
at his head. He wanted to close his eyes like Lara had, but he couldn't tear his gaze away
from her finger...holding the trigger...starting to squeeze it...
Click.
Pierre let out the breath he had been holding and Lara laughed. "So, your luck
holds out a second time. Two more chambers though. So the question is, will '5' be my
lucky number...or yours?"
She watched Pierre shiver under the sheet as the gentle outside breeze rolled
through the window, danced through the air, and swirled around the room. It really was a
nice evening outside. It was a shame to be wasting it in here like this.
"Anyway, Pierre, that's the story of my life: a father who was never there for me
when I was around, who closes himself off in his own little world of politicking and
finances to keep himself from thinking about the past, from thinking about mother and
builds walls so high that not even his only daughter can climb them. Maybe that's
why I do what I do."
She sat back down in the chair, re-crossed her legs, and balanced the gun on her
knees, barrel pointing at the bed. "Yes, I think that would be a good excuse, don't you? I
explore and do things for sport that most normal people wouldn't do for millions of
pounds. Or francs, if you prefer. What's your favorite currency, Pierre?"
DuPont shrugged, trying to indicate general helplessness, confusion, and the fact
that he'd never really thought about that before with the same simple motion.
"They're really all the same, you know. Dollars or Deutschmarks, Lira or Rubles,
Yen or Pesos. Did you know that my father could tell you the conversion rate for any
of them, back and forth, updated to the day? He really likes that sort of thing. It was
partly how he made his money before he got married to my mother, playing the world
market. Every day and evening, he reads the papers and memorizes the going rates to
keep himself all ship-shape and bristol fashion.
"But all of that means so little in the grand scheme of things. The fact that he
can't even see his own prison, can't see that he built it for himself is completely beside
the point right now. That's his problem to deal with, not mine. You, on the other hand,
are my problem."
She stuck an accusing finger at his nose. "You're not my only problem, of course,
but right now, you're the biggest. Don't get all smug and assume that you are the only
person I ever get mad at, because you aren't, and even if you were, I wouldn't give you
the sense of satisfaction by telling you. No, Pierre DuPont, there are others. Dozens of
others. Some of them might even make you look like a saint. And we all know there are
no saints in this game. There may not even be such a thing as right and wrong. Morality
and archaeology got divorced a long time ago. They found out they were bad
bedfellows."
Pierre wanted to argue that what they did wasn't technically archaeology, but was
forced to settle with frowning instead.
"But you know something, Pierre?"
He raised his eyebrows, as if to ask, "What?"
"That's the reason I do what I do," Lara stated, matter-of-factly. "The excitement
of doing something that I know is right, that's what keeps me in this game. The feeling
of satisfaction when I walk away from a successful mission knowing that no one else on
this Earth could have pulled it off. The knowledge that, when I'm doing a job, I'm right
and everyone else is wrong. It's powerfully seductive, isn't it?"
Without standing this time, Lara put the gun to her temple, shut her eyes...and
pulled the trigger.
Click.
Pierre began to squirm in the bed.
Lara opened her eyes and lowered the gun. "Looks like I'm the lucky one
tonight, Pierre. But I guess I should finish my train of thought, shouldn't I?"
She waited for an answer, but Pierre didn't move. She brought the gun up and
pointed it at him. "Shouldn't I?"
Swiftly, Pierre nodded as best he could.
Lara kept the gun pointing at him anyway. "I thought so." She leaned back in the
chair and paused to reflect on something.
"You know, I've been thinking about something else," she said. "I've killed
people in my lifetime. You have to in this line of work. Comes with the territory, after
all. Sometimes, I've used a gun. Other times, a knife. A few times, I even used my bare
hands. And, for some reason, the feeling is almost always...euphoric. Cathartic, if you
will. Because even though I know what I'm doing is right at the time, someone else out
there might think differently.
"And I suppose that is what this all boils down to, Pierre. When I fight you, when
I beat you at your own game, I know somewhere down deep in my heart that I'm doing
the right thing.
"There are times, Pierre, that I hate your kind. I hate your kind with such a
passion that it almost makes me cry. The fact that people like you are out there
absolutely pisses me off, pardon the slang. So when I can see your evil and expose it to
your own face, it makes me happy."
Pierre started to shake in the bed again. But Lara wasn't finished.
"When, after two weeks of searching, I finally have you pinned down, safely set
in my crosshairs, with no chance of you escaping, and I smell your fear, watch you
sweat...when it comes down to that final act of closing your eyes, once and for all..."
Though he tried to control himself, a single tear rolled from Pierre's left eye, and
the shaking continued.
Lara brought the gun down until it was pressed lightly against his forehead.
"When I know that you'll wake up someplace else, someplace that isn't of this world..."
Her finger touched the trigger gently, slid up and down it for a brief moment, then
started to tighten.
Pierre finally found the strength to shut his eyes as he saw her finger beginning to
pull the small lever. He felt his heart hammering his chest, certain it was audible all up
and down the hall. His breathing tripled in speed as he started to hyperventilate. Time
slowed to a crawl as panic flooded his brain, mixing with the adrenaline there, giving him
what felt like a few precious seconds to mentally say his good-byes, knowing that he'd be
dead before he heard the shot.
Click.
"...That's when I find out that my gun isn't loaded," Lara finished. She holstered
the pistol. "I guess I'm stuck with you another after all, Pierre DuPont." Without
another word, she turned her back on him and walked to the window and her escape.
Two hours later, the new orderly made his rounds of the halls and discovered
Pierre DuPont to be wide awake, suffering from what seemed like some form of mental
shock. The patient didn't even argue with him as he took out the syringe, squeezed it
until a few drops of liquid spurted out, then plunged it deep into his vein. "Sleep tight,
Mister DuPont," the nurse said as the drugs rapidly coursed their way through Pierre's
system and dropped him into an uneasy slumber. Somewhere inside, he was grateful for
the small reprieve. That was going to leave a scar...