AUTHOR'S NOTE: "Can I get a minute of not being nervous and not thinking of my dick?"

No. What you'll get instead is a whole lot of angst. And oh yes… there will be blood.

(This chapter is a monster. Want to know the word count for this page, which includes my usual self-indulgent author's notes? All together now: IT'S OVER NINE THOUSAAAAAAAAAAND!)

CHAPTER 4: SIDEKICK

You know, you get a really beautiful view of the coast of Yamatai from this rooftop. And then you can look out toward the east and see the Pacific Ocean extend for miles and miles until finally reaching the horizon line, the only sound being the soft crashing of the waves several stories below. I should have come up here during those last moments of darkness when you can still see the countless stars of the night sky, these rays of light that spent hundreds or even thousands of years traveling fast enough to circle the Earth seven times per second across the infinite void of space just so they could reach your eyes, doing their best to not fade away a little bit longer so you can trace that last couple of constellations with no city lights around to drown them out. I bet this place looks amazing at sunrise, especially on a day like today when there isn't a cloud in the sky from here to Tokyo except those little wispy ones that look like stretched-out cotton balls, and you can admire all the soft pink and orange hues as they slowly give way to the familiar robin's-egg blue. You might even be able to see Venus if you look carefully enough, but I can't remember how to find it. Say what you will about the greatest masterpieces human hands have ever put on canvas, but there's nothing quite like what nature does with its paintbrush.

What a shame that I can't stick around a little longer to properly appreciate the scene. But I guess that's what happens when a bunch of lunatics are hunting you down with machine guns.

I spend my last moments atop the roof looking out to the cliffs where the first member of the Solarii reinforcements climbs off the rope and starts fidgeting with some device that he must have used to propel him on his way. I think it's called a rope ascender; they must be standard issue in places like this where ropes are the only way to get around. I'd say I have maybe a minute to find a place to hide, and that's being generous. There's a big wide-open patch of land below, the only distinctive features being a campsite in the middle and the rusted remains of a long-abandoned military truck stashed away in a dark corner. Not much to choose from. If these guys are here looking for me, they won't have a better chance to find me than right now.

I drop down from the roof and immediately make a run for the truck. I still don't think it'll be enough to just hide behind it. Luckily I can sneak in through the back, so I do just in case some of these guys are especially attentive and might notice a pair of feet behind the truck that shouldn't be there. Through the windshield I can see the first few men reaching the bunker entrance and trying in vain to bust through the door, and there are still others coming from the ship. I could be hiding in this truck for a while, and I'm feeling pretty exhausted from the lack of sleep and excess of action. I pull out the little notebook and start scribbling my thoughts to keep myself awake. I lay flat on my stomach as I write so they can't see me through the windshield. I don't know how many of these guys there'll be but I doubt I'll be able to take them all out on my own, even if I have become a little more, shall we say, trigger-happy as of late.

To think, I've only been shooting and stabbing and bludgeoning people for the last couple hours. This is what Lara's been doing the whole time we've been on Yamatai. It probably doesn't even faze her anymore at this point. Well, not for now. And maybe it shouldn't, because this is all about survival and if she doesn't kill them they'll kill her. It's like what she told me about hunting – there's a difference between killing because you have to and killing because you want to. I guess the reason she's so tough is because she's accepted that in times like these morals and ethics might have to go on the backburner for a while. She fights to break Himiko's curse, a curse that has plagued this island and anyone unfortunate enough to stumble across it for centuries. (Some of us are still skeptical about that – looking at you, Reyes – but make no mistake about it, Lara is totally right and there is something supernaturally fucked up going on here.) But more than that, she fights to protect her friends, to set right what she thinks she did wrong even though, let's be honest, we probably would have ended up here anyway.

And why do I fight? Sure, I may have said I wanted to be helpful, but I've got my own stupid ulterior motives, don't I? I fight because I want to feel like a bad motherfucker. More importantly, I want to score some points with Lara, make her think I can be as tough as she is and see the same things in me that I see in her. But even on the off chance that, you know, the feeling is mutual, we took it to that next level, we got out of the "Friend Zone," pick your cliché – would she ever be happy with me? There are so many worthier candidates for her out there, and she seems more interested in books than boys anyway. But just for the sake of argument, let's say we started going out – how long would it last? With her ambition and work ethic I see no reason why a slacker like me wouldn't drive her nuts, or why she couldn't still be doing this job a year from now, or five years from now, or ten or twenty, or even when she's Roth's age. Do I have another thirty years of this in me? Shit, I don't even know if I'll last another thirty minutes in this place. Any guy who pursues her would have to be able to keep up with her, and I don't know if I can. So what if we go out and it ends up being a serious long-term thing? Like, serious enough to start thinking about living together or even having kids? Yeah, I want a family of my own someday, but I don't want to slow her down and I don't want to take her away from something she enjoys because it's such a huge part of who she is, and I love her the way she is. The last thing I'd want to do is take this fucking amazing girl and completely neutralize everything that – wait, why am I talking about this? I can't even ask her on one date, and I'm thinking thirty years down the fucking road and worrying about kids that don't even exist! How fucking stupid am I? I mean, before Yamatai I could maybe see something possibly working out, and even that was at my most extremely optimistic! What hope is there that we could be anything but dysfunctional now? We both know that someday we'll have to come to grips with what happened here. Hey, maybe we can go to the same group therapy sessions, bond over some traumatizing horror stories about slaughtering all these people who tried to murder us, and top the day off with dinner and a movie so we can pretend we're still ordinary people! Still a better love story than Twilight, right? Sure warms my heart right to the fucking core!

So here I am, just writing a confession in a notebook that I'm hoping she'll never read as opposed to just biting the bullet and asking her out. (Or something resembling one; if I write down everything I'm thinking and she somehow finds and reads this someday, she'll think I'm a total basket case – and she'd be right.) I wish I could give a better excuse for not doing it already than just run-of-the-mill neurosis, but I got nothing. I mean, whether she says yes or no, at least then I'd have a straight answer and I can move on with my life. But hey, why shake up the status quo when you've already got something good and un-awkward, right?

"Someday you need to either go for it or get over it," I once heard Sam tell her sister. "Pussyfooting around never got anybody anywhere. I mean, it's bad enough that every freakin' show on television has to drag out the same tired 'will-they-or-won't-they' story arc for six years when everyone knows they'll hook up at the end. I don't want to put up with that drama in real life."

God, I'm such an idiot. A selfish, gutless idiot, and I'll never change no matter how much I may want to so—

Hold on. Wait a minute. Let me call my cerebral stenographer real quick.

Did I just say… the L word back there? Shit, I think I actually said it twice. Where did that come from?

I guess the seeds have always been there, even back when I only knew her as Sam's gorgeous study buddy. But they only really started to grow as I got to know her, as I began to understand that she is everything I've always wished I was. After she climbed that radio tower I told her she was "my hero." I'm sure she just took it as jubilant exaggeration, like something a baseball fan would say after watching someone on his favorite team hit a game-winning home run. But when I look back over the last few years, I realize that every time I have made a conscious decision to better myself, Lara was always the catalyst. I wanted to reshape myself into the kind of man who deserved her affection, or rather the kind I thought deserved it. I know it sounds completely fucking pathetic, and honestly pretty stupid too (who the hell am I to act like I know what she's looking for, or assume she's even looking at all?), but it's true.

Maybe the reason I'm so reluctant to admit these things is because… well, I've never been in love. I don't know how it's supposed to feel or how you know you're feeling it, so even though I think this might be it, I might be wrong. And nobody's ever been in love with me either. I was never very popular with the girls in school – or at least I didn't think I was. I can't tell when or if anyone is interested in me that way. My modus operandi is to just assume that they're not. What signs am I supposed to look for? What's the difference between flirting and just being friendly? I couldn't figure it out back then and I still don't really get it now. I suppose that's a side effect of spending too much time goofing off with my computer instead of other people.

All I know is that what happens in Yamatai isn't going to stay in Yamatai. Whatever she's doing now to keep the full weight of all this from hitting her, this transformation into something she didn't want to be and all the post-traumatic stress disorder that'll come with it, not to mention the pain of becoming an orphan all over again – that's going to stop working eventually. And when that happens… well, think of it like this. I didn't have to talk to her after Roth died. It wasn't like, "Oh look, Lara's sad. I guess somebody has to talk to her some time, so it might as well be me, and right now." I did it because I wanted to.

I know she's strong enough to carry that weight on her own. I think we all know that now, and she's already endured plenty of shit in her life without me. But even though I know it's going to be hard, that there'll be a lot of pain on the way in the near future, I'm ready and willing to lend my muscle… just in case.

I peek out the windshield again to check on the incoming Solarii. It looks like these are the last two guys, but they don't seem to be going anywhere. I think I can hear them having a chat, but I can't make out what they're saying. I pocket the notebook, slowly climb out of the truck to eavesdrop, and pull out the pistol.

"So nobody's going to stay out here?" one of them asks. "That can't be right."

"Boris thinks whoever cleaned out the bunker is still inside and heading for the beach," says the other. "If we find the killer, that's great. If the killer leads us to their friends, it'll be like old Santa Claus came early this year. Besides, you know how Boris gets if we don't follow his orders to the letter."

"No need to remind me," says the first. "I still have the scars from last time."

"If you ask me," the second continues, "I think Boris has it all backwards. I think whoever made the mess in there is somewhere out here and heading for the ship. I'll bet you all the money in my pocket the killer's hiding in that truck over there."

Technically I'm behind the truck now, so you lose.

"Should we go check it out?"

"Nah. Even if I'm right, what chance do the two of us have against someone who wiped out the first bunker team? The guys on the ship can take care of it. And Boris can't get pissed at us because we did exactly what he told us to do – go inside and make sure nobody else gets through the bunker. Need a boost?"

"Man, just because Boris kicked my ass doesn't mean I can't climb shit anymore."

I peek out from behind the truck and watch them climb to the roof. Once they disappear I wait a few more minutes before coming out into the open. Then I climb just high enough to look around and make sure the only guys on the roof are still the three I killed earlier and drop back down. The last thing I'd need is for someone on the roof to start shooting at me while I'm making my way across the rope to the next cliff.

I pocket my glasses again and head over to the rope. I straddle it and lean forward so I can lift my feet to grip it. The whole time I can feel my heart thumping harder and harder, so I try taking some deep breaths to relax myself.

Come on, man. Don't be a pussy. It's just like the rope climb in gym class. The teacher always said you were better at it than you showed. You don't suck at this.

It's not that I sucked at the rope climb. I could have kept going if I wanted to. I just didn't want to go any higher than halfway up, two-thirds at the absolute most. Fear of heights, remember?

This is different. This time it's sideways.

It's on an upward angle with a few stories of nothing but air between me and the deep blue sea.

Okay, mostly sideways. Stop being so fucking pedantic about semantics. Climb the rope.

Damn it, inner voice, you are not helping.

I finally get a firm enough grip with both hands and feet and start to slowly shimmy across the gap. My body is trembling like I'm standing in a mild earthquake and my palms are starting to sweat. It doesn't help that the rope keeps wobbling a little. My eyes stay focused on what is directly ahead of me and absolutely nowhere else as I continue to climb.

All right, you're about halfway across. See? This hasn't been so—

A strong gust of wind suddenly whooshes through the gap and blows me upside down.

Bad.

I cling to the rope like a child hugging a safety blanket, shaking even harder than before. It isn't worth trying to right myself at this point; I'll probably fuck it up and either drop all my stuff or just drop. Got to keep going.

Nice and slow now. Focus on the rope. There you go, just like that. Don't look any further down than your feet. And God help you if the wind starts kicking up again…

Finally I reach the next cliff and drop to the ground with a big sigh of relief. I pull out my axe and cut the rope to keep the guys in the bunker from coming back this way – and immediately regret the decision, because now I can't go back this way either. Well, not unless someone happens to come along with a bow and arrow to shoot a rope across or something. You know, someone like—

No. Not her. The whole damn reason I came out here in the first place was so she wouldn't have to do it.

So how am I supposed to get back to the beach? I guess I'll just have to worry about crossing that bridge when it comes. Or swimming past it, as it were.

I decide to stop for a short break and dig into my pocket in search of the—

What the hell?

Where is it?

What happened to that notepad I was writing in?

Shit. I must have left it somewhere back on the other side. I put my glasses back on and I think I can see a tiny ray of sunlight reflecting off something near the campsite. That must be it. How the hell did it even end up there? I certainly don't remember dropping it.

Oh well. It's not like I would have gone through that climb a second time over a stupid notepad that nobody's going to notice or read anyway. If Reyes needs me to get anything else while I'm on the ship I'll have to remember it the even-older-fashioned way. Got to keep moving forward.

Once my muscles are sufficiently rested I pocket my glasses again and pull out the axe. I look out across the sea to what's left of the Endurance as it waits for the ocean to swallow it all the way down to its final resting place, and I pause to silently reflect. For me, seeing Roth's once-proud ship reduced to ruin off the coast of Yamatai is like watching a wrecking ball knock down the house your family used to take summer vacations in. I wonder how it must have felt for Roth. He probably would have assured me that "it's only a ship," that he could always get himself another, but after all those years and so many experiences with it, he had to have seen that ship as something more than just a means of getting from point A to point B.

I guess I'll never know that answer now. But while I know how morbid this sounds, I suppose it's fitting that Roth died on this island. After all, the captain always goes down with his ship, doesn't he?

I hook the axe around the rope leading to the Endurance and brace myself for one last zip line. Now that my destination is finally within reach, I'm honestly pretty surprised that I even made it this far. Sam's the only other member of the crew with as little experience as I have. By all rights, I should have been dead a long time ago. Hell, it probably shouldn't have been me coming out here to begin with, even if we assume that Lara was planning on taking a well-deserved break. A week ago, I wouldn't have considered doing this. I like to think I'm a pretty self-aware guy, but I never would have thought myself capable of what I've done here.

And yet here I am. Part of me is feeling rather impressed by that. The other part is kind of terrified.

I take a few steps toward the edge of the cliff. I'm still freaked out over the long drop to the water; this is going to be a long trip and I hope like hell that my arms can handle it. For the first time, though, I find myself pushing off without as much of the usual anxiety. I just faced off against a whole bunker's worth of trained killers and all I got were some scratches from jumping and climbing all over the place. I'll be damned if I'm going to let a really long rope beat me after all the shit I've been through today.

I keep a white-knuckle grip on the axe handle as the wind rushes into my face at about a zillion miles per hour. It's hard to keep my eyes open even just to squint, but I can see the ship rapidly growing closer. And for a while, I'm actually kind of enjoying the ride and I forget that I'm about fifty feet above the ocean. Who would have thought?

It's too bad I took my glasses off, because then I'd have noticed the Solarii standing outside on the deck. I know they're there now because I can hear their bullets starting to whiz past my ear.

Thankfully, they all seem to be terrible shots. (What is it with bad guys and bad aim, anyway? Is it contagious or something?) But the longer I keep zip-lining, the closer I get to the ship and the larger a target the guys on the deck will have.

I look down at the water, then back up at the ever-approaching ship. I hear more bullets passing by and they're getting dangerously close. Only one thing I can do now.

Relax, Alex! It's just like cliff diving!

Wait, that doesn't make me feel any better at all! I've never been cliff diving before!

This is gonna suck.

Now that sounds about right.

I let go of the axe and plummet into the sea.

I clench my eyes shut and stay underwater as long as I can; maybe if I'm lucky the guards will all think I'm dead. Finally my lungs can't go any longer without air and I lift myself to the surface. I glance up toward the deck and am relieved to not see any guards looking for me. I start swimming toward the rocks cradling the wrecked ship.

I wonder how many of these guys are waiting for me aboard the wrecked Endurance. Why did they even go there in the first place? Did they want to steal Lara's iPod or something? Not that I'd blame them if they did, because based on what little I've heard of Lara's library she seems to have pretty good taste in music. And for the record, I've only ever heard her music because she'll play it on her laptop speakers whenever her iPod battery dies. Maybe if I happen to stumble across the iPod while I'm here I could always give it back to her later.

Yeah, I can envision that going over real well.

("Spanish Flea" by Herb Alpert starts playing in the background.)

YOURS TRULY: Hey Lara! Sorry I couldn't find the stuff we need to fix our only ride out of here, but at least I got your busted waterlogged iPod back!

LARA: I love you, Alex! Now let's make love on the beach to songs from In Rainbows before we're inevitably brutally murdered, like that couple in every slasher film ever made!

BOTH OF US: (hugging) BEST TRIP EVER!

For the love of God, Alex, get your priorities straight already. Just manage to avoid drowning for now.

Back to the nagging question at hand: what are the Solarii doing on the Endurance? Well, for starters, they probably figured a guy like me would sneak aboard in hopes of finding something useful. Or maybe they're just looking for useful stuff themselves. Ask a stupid question…

Still, you'd think if they were able to find our ship, they would have found our camp by now. It's not like the camp is very far from what's left of the Endurance. Maybe they've always known where we were and have just been lulling us into a false sense of security, which would mean that they could ambush us and kidnap Sam again whenever they please.

Speaking of Sam, this whole ordeal has had me wondering if she really is a descendant of the Sun Queen. And all this time I thought she was only joking.

I pull myself up onto the nearest rock and take a few minutes to catch my breath. My zip-line axe is gone, but I doubt I'll need that anymore. My glasses are still in my pocket, and I know I'll still need those. My radio is still clamped to my jeans too. Good thing it's waterproof. I should call the others and let them know I made it here.

"Okay, Reyes," I say to the radio. "I'm getting close to the Endurance. What do you need exactly?"

"Alex! We were getting worried." I guess I'd better not tell Reyes how I got here, then. "I'm gonna need a breaker bar and the rest of my kit. I can't fix this boat without them."

"All right," I say as confidently as I can. "I'm on it."

"Lara is heading your way," Reyes says. "You should wait for her."

Holy shit, that girl just never stops.

I wonder if she's listening to the radio chatter. I actually hope she is. I need to let her know that I can handle this on my own. I want her to see that I'm not useless.

"No," I blurt out. "No, I got this."

In my defense, that was a textbook example of Hemingway's "iceberg theory" in action. Give your audience minimal information. Let them discover the rest for themselves.

Or maybe I'm just an idiot with the communication skills of a fucking Neanderthal. Either explanation is plausible.

"I'm heading in," I announce. "Going radio silent."

Here goes nothing.

I get back in the water and start swimming toward the ship, keeping my head above the surface as best I can so I can see where I'm going. The wreck of the Endurance looks even worse as I approach it from the side; I hadn't taken the time to notice, but the ship's been split right down the middle. It's only then that a somewhat important question suddenly occurs to me – was the engine room toward the front or the back? Question number two follows quickly: Why the hell couldn't I have thought of that five minutes ago, when I could have just asked Reyes? The engine room was always more her turf than mine, but I couldn't have forgotten my way around this ship already, could I?

Then again, I suppose that whole "trying to stay alive" thing could be a decent excuse for becoming all scatterbrained.

I decide to try the front half of the ship first and swim cautiously toward it. My brain keeps trying to diagram the floor plan of the Endurance along the way. Let's see… there's the upper deck, obviously. The second deck had all our bunks and the kitchen and bathrooms. And the next one down from that… must be where I need to go. The only level beneath that is the bilge – that's sailor-speak for "basement" – and I know the engine isn't that far down. That would be too convenient for me. It would also be pretty lousy shipbuilding.

I pull myself up into the bilge and rest for a moment against the wall as the sea breeze rushes through. There's a beam extending from the third deck, so I jump for it. I grab hold of the beam, shimmy over to the deck, and climb up.

And then, as I look around the hallway, my blood runs ice cold.

I was wrong. The engine room was on the other side of the ship. This half of the Endurance is where all the cargo holds were.

"Shit," I mumble to myself.

Well, all isn't lost just yet. Maybe Reyes was wrong. Maybe someone brought her tools over here before the storm hit. Probably not, but as long as I'm here I might as well take a look.

I make my way through the hallway and quickly look around in each cargo hold. It's not a very thorough method, but Reyes likes leaving her toolbox out in the open, so if I don't spot it right away there's a 99 percent chance it's not in the room. Naturally there's no sign of the tools anywhere, which means they must be in the engine room, just as Reyes had said.

So how the hell am I going to get over there? Am I really going to have to swim to the other side just to climb back up? The waves have gotten noticeably rougher since I've been here. Couldn't there be a quicker way to do this?

I head back to where I'd entered and look around for some way to the other side that doesn't involve taking a swan dive from here. And then I spot it – there's a rope extending from the second deck all the way to the back half of the Endurance.

This brings me straight to the next problem. How am I going to cross the rope? I've been zip-lining across them with an axe this whole time, but I lost it when I dropped off the rope during my trip to the ship. So where can I find another?

Fortunately it doesn't take long for that light bulb to go off. I'm pretty sure there was an axe on the second deck in one of those glass cases that you're only supposed to break in case of fire. I remember asking Grim once why we would need an axe if nothing on the ship was made of wood. He chuckled and said, "A fire axe can do more than just cutting wood, lad."

He probably couldn't have anticipated anyone needing it for this though.

So that's the plan. Just get upstairs and somehow take the fire axe and reach the rope without anyone noticing. Easier said than done, but so was everything else I've done today. I turn around and start hurrying down the hallway toward the ladder at the end.

That is, until I spot someone starting to come down the ladder. Shit. And here I am armed only with a waterlogged pistol that probably won't fire.

Wait. Actually, that's not true. I check my pockets and sure enough, the knife is still there. In a way, I guess that's better. A gun may be quick, but a knife is quiet. I definitely don't want to attract any attention to myself, considering I have no idea how many of the Solarii are here. I rush over to the nearest room, lean against the wall beside the door, and flick out the blade.

"This probably won't take long," the guy on the ladder says. Double shit. There's someone else upstairs. "I doubt we'll need anything else down here. I just want to make sure we don't miss anything important." He pauses, probably because whoever's upstairs is saying something. "Don't worry, I'll keep my eyes peeled for that guy."

Oh, great. Somebody must have seen me swimming here. There aren't strong enough expletives in any human language to properly express my feelings about this.

I listen for the cultist's footsteps as he explores the hall and gradually makes his way toward my hiding spot. The crashing waves outside make this a little more difficult than I'd like, but after a few minutes I can hear him on the other side of the wall.

He's going to check this room. I'll have to act real fast.

As soon as he walks through the door I grab him. I throw my hand over his mouth and cut his throat. His blood feels warm against my hand as I gently lower his body to the floor.

"Hey, did you find anything yet?" his buddy calls.

No answer, of course. The dead guy has a pistol with some extra ammo, so I swap my gun for his, tuck it into my waistband, and wipe my hand on his uniform.

Out, damned spot. Out, I say.

"Hello?" the second cultist says. "Can you hear me? Is everything all right down there?"

I can't believe I'm about to say this, but I've already got an idea for how to get rid of this guy. I leave the room, sneak over near the ladder, and wait.

"What the fuck is going on?" the guy mumbles. I can see his feet on the rungs as he starts climbing down.

I don't let him finish. I grab him by the ankles and yank him straight down. There are a couple loud bangs as his head smacks against the rungs, and I back off a bit just before he hits the ground with a solid thud. He starts rolling over and I can see blood leaking from his mouth. Then I grab the ladder to balance myself and start stomping and stomping and stomping and stomping and stomping right on his face. I don't stop until there's a mushy red mess where the guy's head used to be.

I back away from the ladder for a moment and listen for any more footsteps approaching it. The only sound I hear is the waves, so I figure it's safe. I've been getting kind of lucky so far, what with only running into two or three guys at a time, tops. My latest kill (jeez, now I'm starting to sound like Jeffrey Dahmer or somebody) has a sawed-off shotgun slung over his back. I'm not usually too fond of these – they're basically only effective for short-range shots – but I take it anyway, wincing at the mess I just made as I remove it. I sling it over my back and climb the ladder.

As I pull myself up to the second deck I glance around the hallway in search of – oh, shit. There's a guy on patrol a few feet away. He's not facing me, but he makes a curious humming sound as if he heard me coming up.

So I charge right at him.

He turns around just in time for my fist to meet his face. He staggers toward the wall and throws his hands out to meet it. Conveniently, he does it right at a glass case with a sign above it reading "IN CASE OF FIRE, BREAK GLASS" in big bold uppercase letters and an axe inside.

Well, isn't this nice. Two birds with one stone.

I grab the back of the cultist's head and smash the glass with his face. Some of it breaks, but not enough to pull the axe out without cutting myself, so I pull the man's head back and shove it into the rest of the glass. That ought to do the trick.

I throw the cultist to the ground and pull out the axe as he moans in pain. He's got cuts all over his face and little jagged bits of glass stuck here and there in his flesh. Oh God, it looks there's a piece in his left eye. That's just nasty.

Not as nasty as the big gash I leave in his stomach with the axe though. That somehow still isn't enough to finish the job, so I hack at him again and he finally goes motionless.

I fall back against the wall for a moment to take a few deep breaths, but I can't stop. That probably made some noise. I have to get out of here, so I grab the axe and—

What the hell?

Oh, come on.

Fucking thing is stuck in the guy's rib cage. I can't wait until this day is over.

I put my foot on the dead man's chest (yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum) and tug as hard as I can on the axe until I finally dislodge it. There's an open door not far down the hall, so I go inside in case anyone should come looking for me.

A few minutes go by and nobody shows up, which strikes me as incredibly odd. How can I be wreaking all this havoc down here without anyone noticing? Not that I'm complaining, but I'm getting pretty close to the upper deck, which is where I assume the rest of the Solarii are. And that Boris guy, whoever the hell he is.

I look around the room for something I can use and spot an unfamiliar device sitting on a desk in the back near a window. I walk over to inspect it and immediately recognize it as a radio transmitter, but it doesn't look like anything we had been using. It must belong to the Solarii. Why they chose this room, of all places, to set this up is beyond me, but here it is. So I pull out the shotgun and blast it. Sparks shoot out of the transmitter to announce its demise. Try sending reinforcements now, you stupid—

Wait. You know what? Now that I think about it, I probably shouldn't have done that. One: I just made a lot of noise. Two (and this is kind of the big one): If these guys hadn't already noticed that I was here, the sudden loss of their radio signals would be a huge red flag that they couldn't be stupid enough to ignore.

The short version: I have to get out of here.

I hurry out of the room and start running down the hall toward the rope – and skid to a halt once I hear someone, or rather something, climbing down a ladder behind me.

"Settle down up there," a strong Russian accent says. "I can handle this myself."

I turn and point my shotgun but am too freaked out by what I'm seeing to do anything else. A giant steps down from the ladder and stares right at me, pounding his fist into his palm. He's completely covered in body armor from the neck down and his neck is covered with a thick beard.

Aww, look at this – baby's first boss fight. I should take a picture of this guy and put it on my Christmas tree. And come to think of it, the beard kind of makes him look like an evil twin of jolly old Saint Nicholas.

"Well, well, well," he snarls. "The stowaway lives."

I pump my shotgun as I listen to the excited reactions from above.

"Aww, shit! This is going to be good!"

"I knew that prick was still alive!"

"Kick his ass, Boris!"

That's Boris?

Holy shit. I think I liked him better when I didn't know who he was. That's not a man, that's a fucking tank with a face.

As I stand there with my shotgun pointed and panting heavily with anxiety, Boris just takes a few steps forward and chuckles.

"Go on, you foolish boy," he says. "Take your best shot."

I aim right for that ugly face of his and pull the trigger – and he blocks the shot!

You've got to be kidding me! What the fuck? He blocked it?

How the hell did he do that? What is this guy, a fucking Jedi Knight or something? Well, I call bullshit! Nobody has reflexes that fast!

He takes a few steps toward me. I pump the gun again, and fire again – and he blocks it again.

Oh, great. And here I was thinking it might have been my imagination.

I pump once more, and this time I shoot at his torso in hopes of piercing the armor. No dice.

Boris laughs at me again and reaches over with a big grimy fist. He grabs me by the neck and hoists me into the air and I can't fucking breathe—

"You've been quite the nuisance today," Boris says. "How many of my brothers have you killed?"

He punches me hard in my stomach. As if it wasn't hard enough to breathe already.

"Are you keeping score?" he continues. "Do you people think this is some kind of game? Do you think you are better than the Solarii?"

He punches me again.

"Why resort to all this bloodshed?" he says. "To escape this island? A place you cannot escape so long as Himiko also remains a prisoner?"

"We do it to survive," I croak.

"So do we," Boris counters. "But mostly we do it to free Himiko."

He punches me one more time. I don't know how much more of this I can take.

"What a shame that it had to come to this," he says. "You see, all you idiots had to do was hand us the Sun Queen's heir and we might have let you go."

"Bullshit."

"Call it what you will," Boris says with a smug smirk. "It doesn't matter now. Now, you are all dead men walking."

With that, he tosses me like a rag doll down the hall toward the sea. I hit the ground hard and roll to a stop about ten feet from the edge. I'm lucky neither of my guns went off.

"First it was the old man," Boris boasts. "Then we took your captain. I'm afraid it's your turn now, boy." He laughs at me once more as I lift myself to a kneeling position and pick up my shotgun. "You've got a lot of fight in you though. I can respect that. So I'll give you a chance for some famous last words."

Dumb bastard. Hasn't he ever seen an action movie? Any time the villain spends showing off instead of killing the hero is time the hero spends figuring out how to beat him.

But how am I supposed to beat him? Like I said, the guy is a walking tank. It's not like I've got any Stinger missiles that I can fire into his knees, like in—

Wait a minute.

Oh my God, that's it.

"Is there anything you'd like to say?" Boris asks, folding his arms and putting that stupid smug smirk back on his face.

"Yeah," I answer with a smirk of my own. "You ever play Metal Gear Solid 2?"

"What?"

I roll my eyes. "Oh, never mind."

I raise the shotgun and blast him in the knee.

Boris falls to the ground, hollering in pain. Try blocking your face now, asshole.

I aim for his head and pull the trigger once more – and nothing happens.

Shit! I have got to do a better job keeping track of my fucking ammo.

Upstairs Boris's comrades start chattering nervously about how the big guy just got shot. I can hear footsteps starting to gather around the ladder. Well, so much for sticking around long enough to finish him off. I drop the shotgun, pull out the fire axe, and sprint for the rope.

"After him!" Boris bellows.

I leap off the edge and hook the axe around the rope. I grip the handle with both hands as I zip-line across the crashing waves to the other half of the Endurance. As soon as my feet touch the ground I drop the axe and look back. Boris's men haven't even started making their way across the rope, but that doesn't mean I plan on waiting for them.

I spot some words on the wall pointing me toward the crew's quarters, which means I still have to get downstairs. So I hurry down the hallway and hang a right at the end—

And I almost fall into the third deck. The floor on the second deck must have caved in when the ship wrecked, and I can see some water leaking into the hallway below. But it's still great news for me, because now I remember that this path will lead me straight to the engine room. This is the best thing that's happened to me in at least the last few hours.

I jump down into the third deck and land with a light splash. The water isn't deep enough to hinder my progress, so I'm able to just rush right through. Hopefully it can stay that way until after I've made the return trip.

Finally, after spending the entire day on foot, leaping and climbing across a nautical graveyard, sneaking my way through a dark and musty bunker, zip-lining across the sea, swimming to the ship, and taking out nearly a dozen evil cultists who've been trained and ordered to shoot me on sight, I have reached the engine room of the Endurance. But as much as I'd love to just sit down, relax, and bask in my achievement, I still have a job to do.

The engine room is cluttered with pieces of the ceiling and broken or twisted metal, with gas leaking from canisters and some of the big pipes along the walls. There's a ladder to a catwalk which leads to the second deck, which would seem to be my safest bet out of here once I get the tools unless I find some way to climb back up the way I came. Reyes's toolbox is in the complete opposite corner of the room from where I entered, naturally. I open it up to see if everything she needs is still inside. There aren't many tools in the box, and for a moment I wonder if the Solarii have already been here and taken all the most important stuff. The breaker bar is still there, along with a couple of wrenches and screwdrivers. I guess if Reyes needs a hammer, she'll just have to settle for a rock. Or Whitman's head. I kind of prefer the second option.

And that's it. That's the entire haul I've been busting my ass and risking my life for all day. There's something I find strangely hilarious about this.

What isn't so hilarious is the sound of unfamiliar voices echoing softly through the engine room. It looks like Boris's men have caught up with me. I pocket the tools – the one nice thing about losing the notepad is definitely the increased pocket space – and pull out my pistol. I sneak around the back of the engine toward the entrance.

I see someone run out on the catwalk and fire a couple rounds into his chest. His momentum carries him forward and he tumbles over the guardrail, dropping to the floor like a stone in water.

Railing kill!

Then I look back the way I came in just in case anyone else happened to follow in my footsteps. Sure enough, there are two guys splashing through the hall. I take cover and reload as I wait for them to come out.

Once their footsteps become solid thumps I step out and shoot the first moving thing I see. He falls to the ground clutching his leg, and I take cover again as the second guy starts shooting back at me. He hides behind the wall to reload, so I peek out and finish off the injured man.

Now I hear someone on the catwalk again. I take a quick glance and there's a guy with an assault rifle pointed at me. I dive out of the way as he fires.

He misses me – but he hits a gas leak instead.

The gas explodes, sending shock waves all through the engine room. I can feel the ship sliding off the rocks a bit more and hear more water starting to flood into the third deck. Pipes and canisters and various other chunks of rubble go crashing to the ground.

By now the guy who shot the gas is gone, so I try to get up and run for the ladder. But then the ship sinks a little more, and I stumble and fall on my right shoulder. There's a loud creaking noise overhead and I quickly roll on my back and scoot backwards as a big piece of the ceiling collapses to the floor inches in front of my feet. I keep going a few more inches until my back smacks against a pile of rubble.

Just as I'm about to get up again, there's another loud noise from above. A huge red pipe plummets from the ceiling. It's headed straight for me.

And I'm not quick enough to get away this time.

The pipe lands hard on my left leg and I hear my shin bones completely snap. It is without a doubt the worst fucking pain I have ever felt in my life. Far worse than the time I fell out of that tree – at least that was only a fracture. The screams shred my vocal cords and my eyes start tearing up a little.

As the initial rush of pain starts to subside a little I glance around the room, panting hard and trying to figure out which of the Solarii will get to finish me off. But nobody's there except the two lifeless bodies I'd shot earlier. It looks like the other two guys decided to just get the hell out of here and leave me for dead. Either that, or Boris told them he wanted to do the honors himself.

I try to move the pipe off my leg, but the damn thing is way too heavy and won't move an inch. If I'm going to get out of here, I'll need some help. And something tells me the two guys outside won't be offering any time soon. I reach for my radio, but it's in pieces. It must have broken when I hit the ground.

Great. This is what I get for going radio silent. The one time I actually need to call someone, I can't. All I want to do right now is just tell Sam or Jonah or Reyes that I was wrong, I haven't "got this," and I need somebody, anybody, to—

Hold it. Something's coming back to me.

It's Reyes's voice: "Lara is heading your way."

In all the commotion of the last few hours, I had completely forgotten about that. For the first time I hope Lara wasn't listening to that call.

I wonder how she chose to come out here. Maybe she went with my first idea and built a raft. That would certainly solve the whole "how to get back to camp" dilemma. But the reason I came the way I did was because I thought—

Oh my God. I hope I was wrong about that. Please don't tell me she actually went through that fucking bunker. Not after all the chaos I caused. Not with all those reinforcements Boris sent over there.

God damn it! I was so fucking close! I made it all the way out here! I have the damn tools! And now none of that even matters, because I can't leave!

Now Lara's on her way to hopefully drag my useless ass back to camp. Because, you know, apparently she just hasn't done enough for me already. She helped me study, she got me this job, she taught me how to shoot, she's even saved my fucking life – and what the hell have I done in return? I'm going to get her killed, that's what.

Yeah, that sounds like a real fair trade.

I know she can take care of herself – she's better at it than I could ever hope to be. But she's not invincible. If anything happens to her because she came out here to help me, I swear to God I will never forgive myself. And there's not a damn thing I can do about anything now except sit here, stare at the giant Escape key on my T-shirt, and laugh bitterly at myself for being such a fucking hipster.

AUTHOR'S NOTE

The second half of this chapter was the toughest part of this story to write; once Alex drops off the zip line I couldn't just follow the game anymore. Letting him screw up and search the wrong half of the ship really bit me in the ass. Navigating him through the Endurance when you don't see much of it in the game was a major pain. The first half, on the other hand… that part was too easy. And yes, that also goes for the massive semi-coherent pseudo-stream-of-consciousness wall of angst that is paragraph 6.

The quote at the top of this page comes from "Slow Show" by the National.

Fun Fact #1: Hemingway's "iceberg theory" is all about subtlety and subtext. There's a lot of stuff going on in his work that isn't on the page. He believed that if you know enough details about the story you're telling, then you can let the reader use what you've written as a guide to figure out what you could be telling them but aren't. I mention this because there are moments in this fic where I wanted to try my hand at it, like the beginning of Chapter 3. I'm not nearly good (or subtle) enough to do it for long though.

Fun Fact #2: And now my theory for how Alex got to the Endurance has been revealed in full. In the game when you go to rescue him you overhear someone talking about finding him in the water trying to board the ship. But if he just swims there, then how does his journal end up at the campsite you find outside the bunker? It took a while to reconcile these things, but then I reached a conclusion that had been staring me in the face all along: Maybe he went the same way you did, but he didn't make it all the way across the zip line.

Fun Fact #3: In the game, Alex only implies that he has a crush on Lara and nothing stronger than that, but I figured he should have a stronger motivation than that. And of course I don't just mean an overwhelming desire to feel useful, which he expressed in Chapter 2. One does not simply walk into certain life-threatening peril over a simple crush. But it's remarkable what levels of insanity a person can reach once that magic L word gets involved.

Four chapters down, one to go. Will I stick to canon or write an alternate ending? You'll find out soon enough.