Lara had thought she was overwhelmed when the boat broke apart. But as scared as she was, she knew she would be okay; because Roth was there, holding out a hand to her. Roth had always protected her. He'd always looked after her, and made her feel better. She knew he would catch her.
And then she slipped through his grip and dropped into the ocean.
Lara was a strong swimmer. At least, she was in a warm swimming pool. She'd scuba dived in the Australian Barrier Reefs, she'd competed in freestyle events... But fully clothed, bleeding, vaguely concussed and with ice-cold seawater pouring into her lungs as she screamed... It was an entirely different experience; and Lara was certain she would drown before she could remember so much as a single swimming lesson.
The first thing they taught us in swim class was called the Deadman's Float. She thought distantly. I always thought that seemed a little ghoulish.
She remembered making it to shore, but she didn't remember swimming. She remembered lightning, but she didn't remember clouds. She remembered seeing the others, further up the beach, but she didn't remember seeing lifeboats...
And then she heard the sound of something swinging through the air behind her, and she remembered nothing at all.
She saw the dawn starting to break outside the obscene Butcher's Den she found herself in. A big meat locker, for human meat. The floor was thick with blood and discarded bones.
But what hit her first was the smell.
Lara had seen sacrificial chambers before. She had seen the ancient chambers where cannibalism was performed in centuries past. They had all been... Dry. Dusty. This place was still slick with fresh gore.
Lara had come from a wealthy family. And though she had religiously made an effort to support herself without her waiting trust funds, her family had been wealthy enough that she had been taught what to do in the event of being abducted. Her job was to stay calm, keep from antagonising her captors, and do what she could to make friends with them, until rescue could come.
Lara knew all these rules, and obeyed none of them. She wasn't being held to ransom; she was hanging upside down from a meat hook, surrounded by people who had already been skinned, swaying above what was left of yesterdays menu.
The only way to get free of the ceiling, was to get to the floor, and do it very suddenly. The floor was littered with deadfall sticks and jagged bones. She tried to miss them as she broke free and fell.
She failed.
She had screamed when she pulled the spike out of her side. She had screamed, and bawled, and whimpered and cried, and thrown up. She may even have passed out for a few minutes.
Once she found her way out of the meat locker, she had found the altar. A small candlelit structure... with a fresh body crucified across it.
It was Steph.
Lara was sick to her stomach. She'd never been close with Stephanie during the voyage, but to see anyone strung up like this...
It struck Lara suddenly that she and Steph were the only women in the chamber full of bodies.
So did they keep me alive because they wanted to keep the meat fresh? She thought. Or something much worse?
Once free of her ropes, Lara staggered her way through cave-ins, runaway mudslides, passages so narrow it crushed her ribcage...
Find Roth. Need Roth. Keep Moving. Need the others. Find the others. Find the Endurance Crew. Need the Endurance. Heh. The name of the ship was Endurance. Funny. No, nothing's funny. Need Endurance. Find Roth. Roth will help you!
She pushed through, swallowing dirt and mud and black, sticky blood from human and animals... Until the passage had caved in and dumped her in a rushing underground river. She had tried to swim up, catch a breath of air, but the underground passage had no air pockets, only solid stone.
Lara fought her panic. The underground river had doused her torch instantly. No light could hope to shine down here. She had no chance to swim, no direction to swim in. She was at the nonexistent mercy of the current, hoping that it was flowing out somewhere she could breathe...
As dizziness started to claim her from oxygen deprivation, she prayed the river would get where it was going, and get her there quickly.
She was spat out of a mountainside, but she wasn't even close to done yet; the current carrying her along a nearly straight drop. The ride back to the shoreline slammed her against every tangle of thorns, every jagged edge. She was a bloody pulp of barely moving flesh, until finally she saw daylight again.
With long sobbing breaths, Lara wrapped her arms around her middle, wretchedly waiting for the world to stop spinning.
Her senses lit up like someone was screaming a warning at her. In the far distance, she could hear them coming. Men, with their gun and their knives. They were laughing. They knew she had escaped, and they were laughing. They would kill her, and God knew what else, and it was a fun game for them to play.
Keep Moving. Keep Moving. Keep Moving. Keep Moving.
Sobbing, Lara fought her way upright and ran, trembling from the cold, trembling harder from the fear. Her fingers were broken, two of them sticking out at odd angles. She yelled as she tried to straighten them, whimpered as she tried to tear her shirt and bandage them and keep running, all at the same time. Blood was running down her legs from a thousand cuts.
Find Roth. Need Roth. Keep Moving. Need the others. Find the others. Roth will save you!
And then the thunder cracked the sky, and poured heavy driving rains down on her.
She had wondered why her screams hadn't drawn her captors attention back in the Butchers Den, and now she knew. They'd heard screaming before. Just as the hawks had heard from the rats and rabbits.
Prey often squealed.
Lara ran until she couldn't see their flashlights any more and shivered against the nearest rock wall, turning the frequency dial of her emergency beacon. "Hello? This is Lara Croft! Can anyone hear me?"
She was cold, wet, bleeding, and calling for help as loud as she could, even as she was being hunted.
She just needed to find Roth. He would know what to do. He would protect her.
She was Prey.
AN: First one down. This isn't going to be a novelization, only a series of drabbles. I don't know how many there will be. This story will cover the game, and Lara's transformation at various points. I might continue beyond the end of the game, I don't know yet. It depends on how things turn out.
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