Now
Hours and hours ago, Sam had been getting food for her and Lara. She'd been waiting in line, thinking about Lara, and Amanda and trying to understand the emotions that the whole scene had left her feeling. And then there was the alien thing.
And then there'd the power outage. People screaming, people turning into inhuman things. Sam had ran and in her panic she'd gotten lost.
But now Lara had her hand and was leading her through the facility like a genuine knight in kevlar armor. If Sam hadn't been terrified for her life, she might have been a little turned on. She tugged at Lara's hand. "Sweetie, slow down. My leg is killing me."
Lara immediately stopped and looked at her, then she picked Sam up and carried her into a nearby room. Setting Sam down on a desk, she barricaded the door, then knelt in front of her. "We need to get your pants off. I've got a medical kit."
"You'll have to buy me dinner first."
Lara looked up, meeting Sam's eyes for too long of a moment. Then she looked back down towards Sam's wound. "I'll buy you a gourmet cheeseburger when we get back to earth, deal?"
"Sounds perfect," Sam replied. She bit her lip, gripping the desk tightly as Lara used a knife to cut her pants leg off. The wound looked a lot worse than she thought it did and if Lara didn't need her hands to help, she would have grabbed them both and held on tight.
Hissing through her teeth, Lara opened the medkit. "This is going to hurt, but I'm going to clean your wound. Lucky for you I still remember my first aide training."
"My hero," Sam rasped. She closed her eyes and willed herself not to scream.
It took Lara several minutes to clean the wound and then stitch it. She finished by wrapping a bandage around it. There was nothing she could use to wash her hands, but she did find another kit on the wall, which she added to her pack.
Dazed, Sam watched her move around while she imagined cutting her own leg off to make the pain stop. Which, objectively, would make the pain worse, but sometimes you just wanted to do anything to make it stop. "Lara…?"
"Yes, Sam?"
"Have you found anyone else?"
With a hand still in her pack, Lara froze. She looked over at Sam, then sighed heavily. "I found Alex. I was too late to help him. I'm sorry."
"Oh." Sam absorbed that information, trying to imagine what Alex must have looked like. The thought made her nauseous. She slid off the desk, testing her weight on her right leg. It hurt, but she could walk. It was better to focus on that then on thinking about poor Alex.
"Lara, let me help." She pulled Lara's pack away from her. She kept her voice upbeat, deciding that a positive outlook would help their survival. "You've got all those weapons and your armor, I can carry this. Just pretend I'm a very sexy mule."
After a moment's thought, Lara helped Sam get the backpack on. She strapped a pistol to each side, but kept the shotgun for herself. "How does that feel?"
Sam smiled at her, still a little teary-eyed from the double blow of Alex and her leg. "Like hiking in the Andes."
"What I wouldn't give to be back there, right now." Lara pulled Sam into a hug, and the two women leaned on each other.
Sam buried her face into the crook of Lara's neck. It felt safe here, like this. "So what do we do, now?"
"Get you to the shuttle. Locate any other survivors if we can on the way. Radio for help." Lara stroked her hand down Sam's back. She closed her eyes and nuzzled her nose into the other woman's hair. "You'll be okay. I'll make sure of it."
"When did you get so badassed?" Sam pulled her head back, lifting her hand to Lara's cheek and stroking it lightly. Her other hand rested against Lara's breastplate.
"Necessity. Mother of invention and all." Lara's hand ran up to the back of Sam's neck. It would be so easy to…
Something beeped inside her armor, and she looked down. Sam sighed and hobbled away while Lara pulled out her PDA. "Someone else is still alive."
"They could have waited fifteen seconds," Sam muttered.
"What was that?" Lara flicked the device on and tabbed to her messages.
"Nothing!"
Unsafe. Come to Delta.
Evert
It occurred to her that Amanda had been experimenting with some kind of teleporter or portals, and if those experiments had precipitated the invasion, going into the lab would be like entering ground zero. She tapped out a response.
Your lab was experimenting with teleportation. My tablets warned against that. Are you sure it's secure?
L. Croft
Yes. Portals shut down.
Evert
"Amanda is alive She says my lab is unsafe and to come to the Delta Lab." Lara stowed the device back inside her armor. "So we're going to get you to the shuttle, then I'm going after her."
"You're not going alone." Sam gripped the armor on Lara's arm.
"Sam, I'm not losing you to-"
"You are not leaving me."
Lara looked into Sam's eyes. The fear, the determination there. Other emotions that they had no time to explore. The butterflies Sam always gave her returned, and she shooed them away. "Okay."
"Okay." Sam let go of Lara. "Then lets get going."
Lara stared at Sam for a moment longer, then a smile crossed her face and she couldn't hold back a small laugh.
"What?"
Still smiling, Lara reached for Sam's hand. "Nothing. Lets go."
The way to get to the Delta Lab required some amount of backtracking, until Lara and Sam found an access stairwell down into the depths of Mars City. Going farther into the base was risky, and it made Lara uneasy. She flashed her light down the stairs, then looked at Sam. "Stay close to me. We both need to stay quiet."
Sam just nodded, and started down the stairs with Lara. She reached for her own pistol and held onto it tightly.
Lara became aware of a small red light on one side of Sam's head. "Are you recording?"
"Yeah. I mean we want people to believe us, don't we?"
"You're right. But let me make you less of a target." Lara drew a knife, carefully gripped the camera, and put out the recording light.
"I doubt the recording light is going to draw anyone that us moving around won't alert." Sam squeezed Lara's shoulder. If it made her feel better, than she was going to go with it. Truthfully, the idea made Sam feel better, too.
Shadows danced in the stairwell, a combination of the light on Lara's shoulder and the overhead lights that kept flashing ominously. Down and down they went, every step putting Sam on edge. She thought she heard whispering, and grabbed Lara's arm. "Do you hear that?"
Lara froze, listening carefully. Something fluttered over head and faintly she could hear a child singing.
"And there she stood in mystery searching for the final ring, within a dream within a dream, dream within a dream. And with the ring, with the ring, she took her soul and she swallowed it whole."
The fluttering and the singing seemed to be linked, both growing louder and louder until something whispered in Lara's ear. "Where is my soul, what have you done with it?" The words were followed by a sound resembling a distorted baby's babbling.
Lara twisted around, coming face to face with… a baby. His eyes were white on black and the four insect-like wings on his back fluttered rapidly. His arms had been replaced by monsterous pincers and instead of legs he had an insect's abdomen. Not bothering to look twice at the demented cherub, Lara shoved Sam forward. "Run!"
The babbling grew louder, mixing with the singing until the stairwell was filled with the cacophony of demonic harmony. The twisted cherubs swooped around them. Pincers cut into Lara's shoulder and slashed Sam's cheek. Sam cried out, nearly tumbling down the stairs in an panicked attempted to escape.
Close behind her, Lara was operating completely on instinct and adrenaline. She hauled Sam into her arms and took the stairs three steps at a time. It was deafening in the stairwell as the singing and fluttering and burbling and gurgling reached a crescendo. Lara burst out of the stairwell just as a claw ripped into a gap in the side of her armor. Pain radiated from the gash and she fell, dropping her precious cargo. Lara turned quickly, slamming the stair door shut.
"Sam?" Lara stumbled back to Sam. "Are you all right?"
"Am I all right?" Hysterical laughter bubbled up Sam shook Lara's shoulders, hyperventilating. "Am I all right?!"
Taking that as a yes, Lara slumped onto the floor and shone her torch to get a look at her wound. She was going to need to stitch that up after drowning it in antiseptic. She didn't think they could afford the time it would take to properly clean it, and was actively considering just cauterizing it. "Sam, my kit. I need the med kit."
Still breathing heavily, Sam crawled over. "Shit Lara, that looks bad." She held out the kit. then rested a hand on Lara's knee. "Sorry. I'm just. Freaked out."
"That makes two of us."
"I'm getting my tubes tied when we get back to Earth."
"That also makes two of us." Lara opened the kit, pulling out a bottle and inspecting it. She breathed a sigh of relief. "This should do. It's better than the alternative. I'm going to need your help once I get the thread in."
"Okay. You realize this is going to really hurt, right." Sam shifted closer, craving some kind of contact after the madness in the stairwell.
Taking a deep breath, Lara nodded her head. "Wouldn't be the first time I've had to do this."