I swore to myself that I wouldn't write Uncharted fanfiction when I started playing Drake's Fortune... and then I fell in love with the characters and story and wrote some Uncharted fanfiction anyway. There's really no excuse for this one, and I'm not the first to write something based on the multiplayer. This is loosely based on a good match I played once, is written just for fun, and turned out way longer than originally intended. Naughty Dog/SCEA own the characters and such, and this is Among Thieves competitive multiplayer, so don't go looking for anybody to vanish in a puff of smoke or spawn an RPG out of nowhere. ;)
The Sanctuary / Elimination / Standard
"There's five of them," Nathan said, peeking around the doorway at the dark shapes moving in the building across the courtyard. At his side, he was vaguely aware of Elena exchanging a quiet word with Tenzin in his native tongue. Snowfall lightly dusted the mountain air, soft white flakes floating through the open roof on a gentle breeze. It was quiet, almost peaceful.
Almost. He lined up one of the shapes in his sniper sight, leading him as he moved out of the far building and bolted for cover behind a low rock wall. He was just shy of the crumbling stone when Nathan muttered, "See ya, jackass," and squeezed the trigger.
But his rifle shot was accompanied by the distinct triple report of an FAL, and the man in the courtyard spun from the impact and died, his body slumping awkwardly over the broken wall. Nathan turned to frown at Tenzin, who offered an apologetic smile and a word he didn't understand as he slung the slim black rifle over one shoulder. Elena was politely trying to hide a smile of her own as she supplied the translation: "Four, he says," and Chloe barked a laugh. Jeff was grinning too, Jeff who was in a shirt and vest while everybody else stood shivering in thick winter coats, excepting their resident Tibetan. But Elena had mentioned once that he was from one of the Dakotas or some equally frozen place, so they forgave his insanity regarding clothing and cold weather.
Nathan rolled his eyes and loaded a fresh round into the chamber while he had the chance. "Alright, let's get this over with. Four of them and five of us means they have better odds of finding one of us than we do of them, so be careful and use your mic, it's there for a reason. Look out for each other and don't be reckless," he said, watching Elena on the last word.
"Yeah, yeah," she conceded in a tone that said she had heard this before, snapping back her pistol slide. It was the best answer he could have possibly gotten out of her.
"I need you on the other side of that yard, behind them. Take Chloe and Jeff and flank them, quickly, quietly," Nathan told her. "Me and the sharpshooter will hold our end 'til you get there, and cover you when we can." He nudged Tenzin and pointed up towards the tower loft above them. Understanding, the Tibetan tipped his hat at them and turned up the wooden staircase, FAL across his back.
"You two be careful," Chloe said as she followed Jeff down through a hole in the floor, out onto stone and snow. Nathan gave her a nod, but when Elena went to leave the same way he caught the strap of her shoulder holster. "Watch your back, I mean it," he reiterated. She met him with a quick, hard kiss and laughed, "You watch it for me, I'll be looking after those two."
"So, anyway…" urged Chloe into his headset, and Elena took her turn through the trapdoor and then they were gone.
When Nathan came up to the landing, so was Tenzin. "What the hell," he complained, peeking around the open doorway at the broken towers and jagged rock scratching at the sky. There was no movement, from friend or foe. Had he dropped down to the front of the building, out by the gate? He sighed a curse before electronic Tibetan rattled in one ear, followed by Elena's translation: "He's up above you, Nate."
Half of a ladder to the rooftop poked down above the landing, and at the very top was Tenzin, hunkered down behind a broken section of railing. The FAL bristled black above the splintered wood. "Oh." Nathan took a shoulder against the doorway. "You might've taught him a word or two of English, you know."
"And you might've picked up a few night classes at the community college before you came to Tibet," she threw back. When Jeff agreed, Nathan could hear his goofy grin.
"I was in a hurry," he said defensively. Through his sniper scope he checked for moving shapes or the flash of sun on arms and armor. Nothing.
"Shut up, all of you," Chloe spat.
Nathan shut up and slowly panned his scope across the courtyard. There were towers to either side of his own, one short and one tall; both vacant as far as he could see. So was the wallwalk between them that blocked his view of the opposite gate and tower poking up behind it. He envied Tenzin his high perch for the better vantage point, but he wasn't about to go and crowd up there with him.
His own view was so lacking that he darted onto the outer landing that overlooked the courtyard, ducking behind the low parapet that ran the width of the gate. Nathan aimed over his defensive barrier to quickly search the grounds and surrounding buildings, and found the view from out here somehow still wasn't worth a damn. All he saw were flurries of snow and cold walls of wood and rock. All he heard was whistling wind and the gentle tolling of the bells on the gate below him. Rising up out of the ground on his left was a stone well painted the same dull green as the gate and tower, a bottomless pit of darkness from this angle.
Nathan glanced back at the doorway. He didn't like being out here. Someone could be sneaking into their tower right now and he had left his back exposed by coming outside, and Tenzin was probably too invested in his scope to defend him. Maybe this wasn't such a good idea. Nathan rolled away from the parapet and leapt back inside the building, drawing his rifle up to check the stairs for invaders, though there were none. He circled down a few steps to check the ground floor for good measure. Nobody there either.
"I can't see a damn thing," he finally ventured, brushing snowmelt from his hair with a shiver. "You guys on the other side yet?"
"Underground," Jeff whispered back. "Wait, someone's coming."
Nathan searched through his sniper scope again, unsuccessfully. I should've gone with the girls and had Jeff wait here instead. He had no patience for this shit.
The tunnel was freezing cold, the ground slick and pooled with mist from the waterfall. There was some terrible beast cut into the shadowed rock above the pouring water, a snarling half eagle-half rat thing that was too ugly to look at for long, but it was the half man-half truck running down the tunnel in front of her that made her skin crawl.
It was Lazarevich's lieutenant in dark green fatigues, bearing an M4 in his big hairy hands. When he had dropped down into the cave and turned sideways into the long tunnel without even glancing once in their direction, Jeff had raised his AK to the bastard's back while Chloe palmed a grenade, but Elena spun between them and they had to stay their hands or kill her too.
She ignored their hissed curses as she tailed Draza, letting them fade into the hissing of the little waterfall behind her. There was no need to draw attention to themselves with a lot of gunfire if she had the opportunity to take him out silently. Reckless, they liked to call her, but the big blind son of a bitch was right there and it just wasn't in her to ignore such a sweet chance.
The end of the tunnel blazed bright with cold daylight, opening up to a cliff swirling with snow and a wall of water crashing down off a huge gray mountain. Draza went left to vanish behind the rock face and Elena hesitated, afraid he had seen her, sickeningly aware that she had trapped herself in the dim confines of the corridor. Briefly considering a grenade to the tunnel opening in case he was waiting around the corner, she decided to remain silent, approaching with her back to the wall and her pistol out. And her off hand hovering near the explosives on her belt. Just in case.
He wasn't waiting for her, but a sprinkle of falling pebbles made her look up to see him climbing onto the rock ledge over the tunnel in the shadow of a tower that looked taller than it probably was from down here. At her feet was a grenade launcher gleaming in the sun, but there was no time to pick it up or wonder why Draza had not. She leapt to catch the ledge just as he cleared it and flung a hand out, grabbing for his belt, an ankle, anything at all.
But he was just out of reach, and her fingers closed around empty air instead of snatching him down off the cliff like she had wanted, and she had to clench her teeth and pull herself up after him. He was running along the precipice towards the building they had just left, and the set of low stairs built into the cliff that Chloe had waved off in favor of the tunnel a few minutes ago.
Elena started after him, but he had a good lead on her and the chance to kill him quietly was gone; he was halfway to the steps already and she would never catch him at this rate. Casting a cautious glance behind her, she slid to a stop and brought up her Beretta in both hands.
Draza apparently heard the swish of boots on stone or had decided to go back for the grenade launcher, because he was suddenly rushing right at her. Shit, this is gonna hurt, she realized. I can take him down with me, at least.
She fired into his shoulder, but once was all she had time for as he charged through the muzzle flash to give her the back of his fist across her mouth. He hit her so hard she spun around and almost staggered right off the mountain, blinded by pain and the hot metallic taste of blood. Then he was behind her with his arms hooked under her chin, tightening around her throat. Her pistol clattered to the ground, cocked, unlocked, and completely useless.
Elena clawed at his fists and forearms, trying to twist out of the chokehold, angry that he didn't seem to notice her bullet in his arm. His heavy armor pressed painfully against her back as he squeezed her to his chest. Stupid, she told herself. What did you think was gonna happen?
"Go to sleep, little bitch," Draza growled hotly against her ear. He gave her a wet kiss on one cheek and yanked her backwards, dragging her down towards her death.
And the ground beside them exploded, a searing white shockwave that ripped the earth out from underfoot and stung her ears so badly that for one awful instant the world went silent, until sound returned as a terrible high wail screeching through her skull. A wave of fresh pain crashed over her and Elena felt strangely weightless, like she was flying.
No, falling! She flailed for solid ground, fingers scrabbling at stone and snow, and beneath her frantic hands the rock shuddered with a second explosion, further away this time. Somewhere beyond that she heard Draza screaming, but he sounded oddly distant somehow, and a heartbeat later she realized she was free of his embrace.
Her heart was hammering in her head and she was on her hands and knees on the cliff's edge sucking in lungfuls of the thin cold air when Jeff and Chloe swam dizzily into view. Jeff was carrying the grenade launcher; Chloe the pistole she had found in the tunnel and her usual saunter.
"What the hell was that?" Nate's anxious voice seeped through the ringing in her ears. "Elena? What's happening down there?"
She was too busy coughing to answer him. "Someone almost got her pretty neck snapped," Chloe offered reproachfully, taking a knee in front of her. She picked up the fallen pistol by the muzzle and offered it back grip first, smiling her sweetest smile. "And what did we learn?"
"Fuck you," Elena panted, snatching the Beretta out of her hand. Chloe laughed, Jeff helped her up, and she spat thick dark blood into a snowbank as the world drifted back into focus and adrenaline burned away her pain. When she didn't see Draza anywhere, she glanced queasily over the edge, at the water roaring down to the river far below. Nate and Tenzin were clamoring in her headset, wanting to know what was going on, complaining that they couldn't see the cliff from their tower.
"It's okay; Jeff killed him," she replied, gingerly feeling for missing teeth with her tongue before repeating her words in Tibetan. Her mouth was sore and bleeding from the backhand she had taken but at least all of her teeth were in their proper place.
"Talk and walk, people," Chloe demanded with a wave of her gun as she moved off toward their flanking position, and Jeff followed her lead. Elena hesitated, wondering if it was too late for that now, but there was no time to argue. She caught up to them in the cold shadow cast by the tower reaching up out of the wallwalk on their right, pacing just behind Jeff.
Until the report of a sniper rifle snapped through the air, freezing them in their tracks. Elena flinched at the sharp sound, unable to help the startled gasp that escaped her as the echo bounced off the surrounding peaks and towers.
"That's me, that's me," Nate reassured through his mic, and she felt stupid for forgetting that he had the sniper in the first place. "Some idiot in a mask is goofing around with a propane tank in the big tower on my left. Think I winged him, but he's still up there."
Elena glanced down at the ground. At the big black shadow they were standing in, the shadow of a tower that looked almost as tall as the mountain. On his left… She looked to the others and saw the same realization on their faces, but by then a bright orange blur was spinning down at them, and it was too late.
A shot rang out and the tank woofed and licked at them with fiery fingers, a burst of red heat and broken metal. Jeff fell on his ass with a shout, taking her crashing down with him as he threw an arm out for balance. As she hit the ground beneath him she heard a screech from Chloe, and because she was on her back Elena had an unobstructed view of the sky and mountain, and Chloe flying past them both in a swirl of snow and fire and blood. Her hair was lashing around her head like a whip as she flashed down beyond the cliff, dark against the white waterfall.
Elena rolled out from under Jeff and they bolted in opposite directions as gunfire erupted in the air, FAL and sniper rifle and the rough clack-clack of an AK. The men in the tower were shouting again, English and Tibetan indistinguishable from one another over the shooting. Chloe's dying scream faded behind her, but the terrible sound was echoing in her headset as Elena plunged between broken pillars and shattered stone blocks, never daring to look back.
In the tower on his left, a man all in black was humping the air like a frat boy, taunting his friends on the cliff directly below him.
Tenzin opened fire an instant before he did, FAL cutting the air with its unmistakable shot pattern as Nathan emptied his own rifle into the tower. A spray of blood fountained satisfyingly from a black-clad shoulder, and the masked man leapt into cover against the tower window and poked the nose of an AK-47 out, blindly spraying a clip in their general direction.
"Yeah, you better hide!" Nathan yelled across the yard, and Tenzin was bellowing a tangle of words that probably meant the same thing. Similar shouts from Elena and Jeff were buzzing in his other ear, accompanying Chloe's fading howl.
The man in black stopped to reload as Nathan fired his last shot and traded the empty sniper rifle for his Beretta. Tenzin was still sending bursts of bullets into the air, and the nonsense he was speaking seemed to take on a tone of frustration. The guy in the tower stuck out his AK again and resumed firing at their position.
Does he think that's gonna touch us from way over there? The recoil of the man's weapon of choice was bad enough even without the inaccuracy of blind fire at range; the gate outside was scattering chips of green stone as the stray bullets found it, but the tower itself was barely being hit and the doorway around him not at all.
He didn't like this distraction. "Something you don't want me to see?" he thought aloud, training his pistol down towards the ground floor in time to see a pair of dark figures running for the stairs. As he did a sudden volley of grenades popped up and over the boards at his feet; two, then three, and a fourth, giving him no time to take aim at the invaders. They were meant for Tenzin up high, instead falling short or bouncing off the broken ladder to roll perilously towards him.
"Tenzin, get outta there!" he yelled, abandoning the doorway, rolling-jumping-running out onto the landing above the gate as Elena growled something staticy in another language. Nathan glanced over his shoulder and recognized the raiders storming their tower. Flynn bore an AK; Lazarevich a pump-action shotgun.
It was the shotgun that decided him. He ran straight off the end of the landing and took a flying leap over the gate as the grenades went off in his wake and the man in the tower shot at him, hitting the ground in a hard roll. The explosions behind him reverberated in his earpiece along with the FAL's signature rattle, and he almost ran back in the gate to try and take the enemy from the rear, except they outnumbered him three to one with their friend in the tower shooting at his back. Four if you count that shottie. All it would earn him was a sloppy death, even if they were out of grenades.
He hopped down the well, dropping into a damp cave where the air was bitter cold, even worse than the cutting wind on ground level. The moron in the mask was awkwardly trying to shoot straight down at him out of the tower window, and Nathan quickly cleared the spot before a grenade came bouncing after him.
After it had blown at a safe distance, the only sounds were the low murmur of a waterfall and his own hard breathing. Uncomfortably he realized that the noise he was missing was the gallop of Tenzin's FAL. Three and three, then, he thought, almost positive that Chloe had been killed by that propane tank. He jogged down one of the tunnels that diverted from the main cave, towards the rush of falling water and sunlight shining on tall gray rock. At least one of the enemy had seen him come down here; he had to keep moving.
So much for outflanking them.
Elena climbed up hesitantly through the hole in the floor, gripping her gun so hard her hand ached. At first she thought she had gotten turned around and run all the way back around to the tower that Nate and Tenzin were defending, but then realized that she was in the nearly identical tower across the courtyard, where she was supposed to be in the first place with Jeff and Chloe. This one was painted red rather than the pale green of the first, and looked to be abandoned.
She took the stairs to look over the landing at the first tower, after casting a careful eye at the upper loft above her head to be certain that she was alone. She couldn't see from here whether or not her friends were still where she had left them, though the shooting had stopped and the air was quiet but for the constant breeze. There was a lean black FAL propped against the doorway and she considered picking it up if only to search through the scope for a better view. But she was just awful with a long gun; they were too heavy, awkward to hold, and the recoil was just ridiculous. It would only get her killed.
Leave it; go with what you know. And she knew her pistol best of all, so she left the landing, rifle, and the building altogether. In a flagged stone square outside she found a grenade to partner the one already on her belt. The view to her left was spectacular, jagged blue-gray rock capped with snow and ice and ancient abandoned towers beneath a breathtaking expanse of sky, but she only had eyes for the dark shadow moving into the tower she had just come out of.
When she saw the gas mask hiding his face, she thought of Chloe. He was all in black, and wounded, from the half-slouching way he was holding his assault rifle, and more importantly, he hadn't seen her. Since she wasn't about to go running in after him like an idiot, Elena crouched inside the square and waited. She had a good view inside the building from here, of both entrances above and below, the trapdoor and ladder to the loft; if he left the place at all she would know.
When he did come slinking back out into the sun, he turned briefly towards her hiding spot and she tensed, steeling herself for a fight. But he somehow thought better of it and started for the courtyard instead, and she made herself wait until he had almost cleared the stone gate. Catch me if you can, stupid. She hopped over her cover, jogging casually into the tower behind him.
He whipped around with his rifle up as she knew he would. Elena took a hard left and dropped down through the hole in the floor, whirling away as she landed, and scrambled up the stone wall beside the tower to double back on him as the man in black charged through the doorway after her.
Behind him now, she tore a grenade from her belt and thumbed the pin out, underhanding it just inside the door. "Here!" she yelled, and leapt off the stone wall as the bomb went off behind her. A rewarding howl accompanied the blast, hollow and muffled through the walls of the tower.
She dragged herself back through the trapdoor warily, in case the guy had survived somehow and was waiting up there to kick her in the face. But he was dead in a black heap on the floor, blood leaking out of the gas mask and his rifle lying a few feet away. Elena allowed herself a breathless laugh and dismissed the idea of rolling him over to pat him down for ammo or a spare grenade; that would take too long and he looked heavy besides. "Predictable," she told the dead man, kicking his leg on her way out.
Out under the open sky, the sun was not enough to take the bitter bite out of the air, and she was thankful for her tall boots, snug down coat and all the layers between. Her nose was cold though, and her ears. As she stepped out of the tower's side entrance, Elena was greeted by the dark, distant sight of jagged rock against a gray sky streaked with white.
And much closer, the huge black barrel of a grenade launcher. "No, don't!" she squeaked, stumbling backwards.
Jeff slumped his shoulders, letting the Hammer dip harmlessly aside. "Shit, it's you. I thought you got barbecued to death with poor Chloe." He grinned at the guy she had killed, tugging absently at the brim of his ball cap. "Nice."
"Holy shit am I glad to see you," she breathed in greeting, dismissing the dead man with a wave of her gun hand, and nodded at the weapon he bore as casually as he did a camera. She had a tendency to be more of a danger to her friends than the enemy with the Hammer in hand. "You take anybody else out with that thing?"
"I can't even find those assholes." He glanced uneasily behind him and then over her own shoulder at the hole in the floor, adjusting his cap again. It was a nervous habit of his; the day her producers had introduced them he had tugged and twitched at the stupid thing so much she had made him bare his forearms to prove he wasn't some fidgety addict covered in needle marks. "You're the first person I've seen since the cliff."
"Lazarevich and Flynn are running together," Nate informed them quietly through the headset. It was good to hear his voice. "Jeff, you gotta get up high with that grenade launcher; climb up one of these towers and cover Elena. Stay by the courtyard, out where he can see you," he said, speaking to her now. "I'm coming to you."
She followed Jeff around the gate to the inner yard through a cut in the ancient rock. There had been a sally port here once, she imagined, but the inner gate had been shattered long ago and lay in pieces on the ground. Now there was only an old dead hole in the stone wall. Among the scattered fallen beams out in the courtyard was a man in gray and black, but he was dead too. "Tenzin?" she ventured into her mic, even though she thought she knew the answer.
"I'm sorry." Nate had a touch of guilt in his tone. "They took us by surprise."
She had been expecting as much. "Yeah, same here. Chloe's gone, you know," she added, hoping it didn't sound like a spiteful response to the news he had just given her. "That dumbass in the mask. I killed him for it."
Beneath the wallwalk that shadowed them from overhead, Jeff touched her on the arm and gestured at the corner tower looming above the postern and stairwell, directly above them. She nodded and kept her back to the wall that faced the courtyard, waiting as he shouldered the grenade launcher and leapt for a handhold to scramble up onto the landing and towards the tower.
"I do," Nate said softly. "Let's kill the other two for good measure."
"Go on, I got you." Jeff was winded from climbing, exhaling hard through his nose, puffing static into Nathan's earpiece.
A heartbeat later he heard the scuff of running boots on rock. "Watch it up there," Elena breathed in warning, "I didn't know if you were trying to save me or murder me before."
"Sorry. Next time I'll let him twist your head off first, if you prefer." Jeff chuckled at his backhanded apology.
Leaving the green tower, Nathan came upon a postern in the stone wall beyond the gate and covered stone stupa. After looking over the edge of the cliff at the sad sight of Chloe's body and what was left of Draza's, he had backtracked here to see if Lazarevich and his pet were posted up where he and Tenzin had been. So far all he found was blood, bullet casings, and another body.
"Yeah. Wait, what?" Elena's voice was edged with distraction.
He had a wide view of the courtyard from the other side of the postern. Jeff stood on the snowy roof of the tower directly across from him, aiming over the nose of his grenade launcher. Off to Nathan's left was Elena, beneath the high tower connected to the low by a wooden tower walk. Her pistol was up and her back against the wall as she frowned anxiously at the open doorway and sally port behind her. Her mouth moved and he saw a flash of teeth an instant before his headset relayed her whisper of, "Oh, fuck me."
"Yes, ma'am," he replied lightly, prompting a snort of laughter from Jeff. "What's wrong, someone there?" Nathan pressed, when she had nothing to say to that, and Elena caught sight of him across the yard and looked away again just as quick, watching the door.
She was fidgeting with her gun, switching hands back and forth and going from a one-handed grip to two, and in her eyes was a look he knew well. It was an urgent, restless look, full of desperation and something that might have been pain. The look of impatience.
Nathan went wide around a stray propane tank to get closer to her, eyeing the adjacent postern. He had to watch her back if she was going to do what she was probably about to do. Sully had accused him of being impatient once or twice and Chloe was even worse, never one for laying in wait when she had the option to come in hot and hard. Elena put them both to shame, walking a fine line between fearlessness and foolishness. She was wildly impulsive in a firefight, reckless and willful and determined to a fault.
As he rounded the raised stone well, movement in the tower room caught his eye; the glint of low light on a shotgun barrel, black armor, a bald head. Nathan was close enough now to see the blood on Elena's lip and hear her whispered curse without the headset, and he knew she had seen Lazarevich too.
"Don't, he has a shotgun!" he warned, but as the words left his mouth the Serbian bolted from the tower room, roaring flame and buckshot as he charged between them. Elena leapt backwards and Nathan did the same, only he damn near tumbled down the well facefirst when he whacked his hip on the rim in his urgency to escape the shot. He heard another roar, this one human, and when he looked up Lazarevich was bulling right at him.
Nathan ran, weaving around the stupa and support beams beneath the wallwalk to put something between himself and that shotgun, pawing at his belt for a grenade. When he risked a glance behind him to gauge his throw he was equal parts relieved and dismayed to see Elena on Lazarevich's heels. Her handgun spat a hail of bullets as Lazarevich fired forward at him, unaware of her until blood darkened his armor and the back of his neck. Then he swung his weapon around one-handed and sent back a spray of shot, but she kept her distance easily, dancing out of range and returning fire as she had the chance. Forgotten for the moment, Nathan added his bullets to hers to take their enemy from both sides.
Outdistanced and outnumbered, it was Lazarevich's turn to run. He ducked around a stone stairwell and tower gate coated in cracked red paint, bouncing a grenade at them to cover his retreat. Nathan held back, sliding to a stop in pink snow as it exploded.
For an instant he forgot to breathe as he looked round for Elena after; surely she had seen the likely course of escape and it was in her nature to give chase, but she was coughing and cursing in one ear. As the smoke and debris whirled away on the high mountain wind he saw her reeling away from the red gate, and behind her loomed a big ugly face behind a big ugly shotgun.
"Jeff, you asleep up there?" he barked into his headset, taking aim. Side-stepping wide around the gate to keep Lazarevich in his line of sight, Nathan emptied half his clip into the enemy. He took out his leg first to drop him to his knees in the mud and slush, kept firing until the shotgun fell from limp fingers, and by then Elena was shooting him too even though he was already dead.
"You hurt?" he called, reloading as he jogged towards her. She was shaking, breathless and bleeding, skin dappled with sweat and a fierceness in her blue eyes, pistol hard in hand. Damn, she's cute. If they hadn't been in a fight for their lives he would have pushed her up against that wall and taken her right there in the cold, ripped open his jacket and hers to warm her body with his own. He wanted to twist his fingers through soft golden hair and kiss her until his mouth hurt, to feel that sweet heat between her legs and see her smile at him after with that glazed, satisfied look in her eyes. Later.
"My hero," she laughed, snatching up the shotgun, and then something hot crashed into the ground between them, sending up a wash of dust and broken stone and snowmelt full into his face. Pain ripped the world away and left his heart pounding against his ribs, blood roaring in his ears. He could not see, or hear, or think. When his senses came swirling back to him he was on his knees with one hand on his chest, pistol in the other. Something warm was dripping onto the ground beneath him, creeping slowly between his fingers and down onto the gun that was somehow too heavy to lift.
Elena was shrieking his name. Distantly, as if she were at the end of a long tunnel. Groaning with effort, surprised at how much it hurt just to lift his pounding head, he saw her through a haze of white and red and gray still at the gate. Why does she sound so far away? He tried to tell her to run, but his mouth would not cooperate, and it was full of blood besides. That burst of smoke from overhead sounded far away too, but the shadow that fell across him said that it wasn't. Crap. I should have fucked her against the gate after all.
It was his last thought.
She wanted to run to him, to save him somehow, but Elena was already retreating as the second Hammer shot came whistling out of the sky to kill Nate. She also wanted to slap Jeff across his treacherous face. Anger, confusion and fear were as one as she aimed up at his tower and reached for her belt, ready to quietly whip her remaining grenade up there in a vengeful rage.
Harry Flynn smiled cheerily down at her, grenade launcher held across his chest and one boot propped triumphantly on Jeff's lifeless body.
Revenge forgotten, she leapt over Lazarevich and down the stone steps to dive into the tunnel, helped along by a shot at her heels that made the ground tremble behind her. She plunged into cold, wet air and a wide corridor that ended beside the awful creature carved above the waterfall. This time the sight of it was easy to ignore through the haze of tears. Elena planted her back against the damp wall next to the beast and bit her lip to keep from sobbing.
She took a deep breath to calm her nerves, and another. Cry later, she told herself, you can't survive if you're whimpering down here in the dark. And you couldn't have picked a worse place to run to, dummy. Flynn would expect her to try and get as far away from him as possible, and him up high meant she was down low. Briefly she considered waiting him out with her new shotgun, but the time spent in the tunnel had already been too long for her taste, and impatience drove her from the spot.
Elena left the cave with her pistol riding her hip and the shotgun in both hands. Its weight slowed her down and the fact that she had to bear it without a free hand made her feel awkward and unbalanced, but the protection it offered made her put up with it. If she suddenly came nose to nose with Flynn a single squeeze of her finger would mean the difference between her death and his.
She made sure to double back often and at random, so Elena was dizzy and breathless by the time she rounded the green tower, pausing just long enough to get her bearings and give the place a quick once-over. There were pale spots in the paint where bullets had exposed the raw wood beneath, and a sheen of frost over the blood on the floor. She poked around the tower and behind the gate before abandoning the area, keeping a careful eye on the rooftops bristling against the mountain.
Elena looked left before going right, went wide around every corner with the shotgun her shield, and spun to check behind her as often as she dared, doing her best to ignore the dread crawling up her spine. She hated doing this by herself, with no one to call out enemy positions or crack jokes about the enemies they killed, and the silence from her earpiece seemed to get louder with every passing second. Her only companion was the biting wind, as constant as it was unwelcome.
The path overlooking the cliff face offered a long view, stone freckled with fractured beams and broken rock, and it occurred to her that buckshot would be beyond useless at that distance. She traded the shotgun in favor of her 92FS, feeling instantly better for the familiar weight in her right hand. The grip was freezing cold and there was ice glazed in a thin white stripe where snow had collected between holster and gun, but it melted away quick enough.
She made a round of the yard and the cliffside, checked the tunnels twice and got a good enough look at both towers to decide that the villains had the better view. By her third time underground, she no longer felt the cold for her sweating, but the constant quiet was pressing at her impatience so much that she felt bold enough to try and bait Flynn out of wherever he was hiding.
A roar shattered the quiet gray air when she opened fire with her shotgun in doorways and around blind corners before crossing them, risking the noise for a chance to perforate her enemy. Later she banked a grenade off the wallwalk at a suspicious shadow and darted out into the open of the courtyard to try and draw his fire, all to no effect. She even had enough time to load back up on explosives found in odd places before returning to the cliff without being shot at once.
She needed to get higher, find a better view. The stones of the high tower were weatherworn and jagged, with wood here and there in place of mortar. An easy climb.
If I don't get shot in the back. Holding tight to the only friend she had left, trying to ignore the dull soreness under her arms where her nylon holster was rubbing raw against sweat through layers of clothing, Elena jumped for the lowest of the timber beams. She leapt for the next handhold immediately, and thankfully made it to the tower room without getting shot in the back.
A quick survey showed her a pretty sight and nothing else, but across from her building was another, shorter, connected by a timber wallwalk. The protective ramparts were pocked with broken boards, and she dropped down onto the walkway because it looked safer than the open rooftops to either side. Nate was still dead in his puddle of blood by the red gate, but the angle of the roof spared her the sight. Still, she did her best not to look as she ran towards the low tower, checking behind her instead, and jumped across a span where the boards had fallen away, over a thin white waterfall and gray granite monster.
This building was empty save a couple broken support beams and a stray shotgun, she found after her grenade had gone off to no effect. The room had a single, very wide doorway offering a good view in and out, and was a perfect place to get killed in had she been stupid enough to stay there. Elena spun for the door with an apologetic glance for Jeff on the tower roof to her right.
Outside on the landing, she took a running leap back onto the walkway, jogging past broken sections of parapet, whirling to check her six and the skeletal buildings surrounding her. And almost collided with Flynn beneath the high tower as he hopped down out of the doorway right in front of her face.
He was looking behind him, Jeff's grenade launcher in one hand. He saw her the very same instant, lurching aside with such a startled look on his face that she almost laughed, but they were trying to kill each other, and she was already groping for her last grenade.
Elena dropped the pin and chucked her explosive at him as they stumbled around jagged, splintered wood, trying to put distance between each other. Her hand was trembling, slick with sweat, and her heart sank as the grenade flew over his head and bounced out of the tower room behind him to detonate out of sight. The shotgun was across her back and there was no time. She raised her pistol in a panic as the Hammer came up, and felt her sweat go ice cold.
Flynn fired a hasty, free-handed shot at her that exploded against the fragment of rail between them. A red stinging flash made her taste fresh blood, the pain so overwhelming she screamed, but with the wooden barrier there most of the impact had been deflected back at him, leaving her hurt but still standing. He was on his knees as Nate had been, panting with pain, and she was so close she could see the blood dripping out from between his teeth.
She plunged past the broken boards, still half blind from the smoke and settling dust, heart pounding so hard it was all she could hear. Elena rammed the muzzle of her Beretta behind his eye as he tried to stand. The crack of the shot was the sweetest sound ever, a warm spray bloodying her knuckles. "You missed me," she snarled, as he died.