Easier to run
Chapter 25
The sense of touch returned to her first.
Her limbs draped with crisp, cool cotton. Something warm and soft in her hand.
She fought against her weighted eyelids, won and found herself lying in a dimly lit space. She looked down her body.
Fingers interlaced with her own.
Lara let her gaze track across the owner's hand and along their forearm. Resting there on the crook of their elbow was a bob of fine black hair, splayed over both skin and mattress.
Oh, back here again.
In theory she should have rallied against the fantasy, but as far as dreams went, this one was far from terrible. So far, anyway. And after her ordeal of the past few days, she didn't think there was anything wrong with a few minutes of escapist self-delusion foisted on her by her subconscious. No doubt there was more horror waiting for her in reality. She was entitled to a break.
And it was nice here in her fantasy. No pain. Just soothing quiet; a cotton wool haze masking every perception. Everything so soft and beautiful. Especially Sam.
Lara smiled. She was seized by an unsuppressable desire to run her fingertips through her companion's hair.
She flexed her digits in the first step of an attempt to free them.
Sam's head shot up. "Lara?"
"Hey."
In her skull, the response sounded stronger than the croak that dribbled out from between her lips.
Not that it seemed to concern the filmmaker. An eye blink later, she had Lara's cheeks sandwiched between her palms and her mouth against the archaeologist's. The kiss was forceful enough that it pressed the Englishwoman's head back into her pillow.
Lara wasn't complaining, though. After the creepily cold, death-tainted kisses of the Pythia and Natla, Sam's lips were life embodied – warm to the touch, but drawing their heat from a deeper heart-pumping fire that neither of the other women possessed. It was one of the things Lara had always admired, and then loved, about her one-time best friend.
As their mouths moved against each other, the Englishwoman heard a voice – her own – murmur at the back of her mind, "You're getting a helluva lot of action these days, Croft." It made her smile mid-kiss.
Suddenly Sam pulled back. "Shit, I'm sorry." She wiped the back of her hand across her nose. "I shouldn't have done that."
She wouldn't meet Lara's eyes, but the archaeologist could see that she'd been crying. Even with her nostrils pink-tinged and her eyelids slightly puffy, she was still beautiful.
Regardless of how right it was, Lara's single thought was "Fuck it."
She seized Sam's shirt by the neckline and drew her down into another kiss.
I love you so very much. I wish I could be the one showing you every day.
Lara released her companion, and slumped back amongst her bedding.
"Mmmmm, I like this dream," she half-chuckled, half-whispered.
She let her fingertips wander back to Sam's face; over her lips and soft, slightly mottled cheeks. It just felt so incredibly real.
Sam continued to stare at her, mouth agape.
Lara frowned, "What?"
"Don't you remember anything?"
"Remember what?"
The tidal wave of adrenalin seemed to recede then, along with her contented smile. She suddenly felt like she was lying stranded on a beach post-shipwreck, completely exposed to exhaustion as if it was the tropical sun beating down on her.
In addition, she was suddenly aware of the IV line entering her body through her right inner elbow, and sticky patches under her shirt where something was attached to her chest.
"What happened?" she asked.
Sam swallowed but it didn't flush the shakiness from her voice. "Lara, you – you died."
"Huh?"
"Your heart stopped. Twice."
"I don't understand."
"Doctor Stone thought you might be brain damaged. She wasn't sure if you'd wake up."
"What are you talking about?"
Sam exhaled slowly. "Perhaps it's better if I show you?"
She turned and from somewhere behind her hauled out a Macbook.
She helped Lara sit upright then and climbed onto the mattress alongside her companion.
An instant later the filmmaker jolted away. "Oh," she winced. "Me sitting here; it doesn't hurt, does it?"
"No."
Strangely it didn't. At least not in the obvious way. What it did was remind Lara of the girls' college days; lying side by side as they watched DVDs in bed on the laptop. Lara in her flannel pyjama bottoms and an overstretched T-shirt; Sam in skimpy sleep shorts and a vest that left little to the imagination.
The combination of her Japanese heritage and outgoing American upbringing meant that Sam had always been more physically affectionate than her flatmate. But even she didn't miss an opportunity to make innuendo-slathered comments about how their movie nights started like a cheesy lesbian porno.
At the time, Lara had tittered politely in response; all the while sneaking sniffs of her best friend's hair and, when Sam was most absorbed in the film, letting her gaze travel over the American girl's exposed breastbone. Lara always felt like a heel after such evenings and lazy Sundays together. In a way it was worse than knowing Sam was out partying and probably shagging some random hook-up.
Back in the present, Sam opened up a video editing suite. She enlarged the preview screen.
Lara glanced from it to her former friend. She was genuinely surprised. "You've been working?"
Sam looked a little guilty about it. "It's been two days, Lara. Just sitting here, looking at you in – I don't know – a coma, I had to do something or I was gonna go crazy."
Two days.
Lara stared at the scene before her. The camera was trained on the patch of earth and rock that marked the entrance to Apollo's lost temple. Natla's personal army was standing about, some with assault rifles aimed at the crevice; others facing away as they scanned the surrounding landscape with its scattered boulders and scrub.
Apart from the sound of a breeze intermittently buffeting the camera's microphone, there was silence. Until Sam's voice broke it. "It's been almost four hours with no contact. Shouldn't you send someone down there?"
Natla sniped back, "The only one who needs to be worried is you. If Lara doesn't come back, it's not in my interest to let you go."
Even removed from the events by time and a computer screen, Lara felt rage stiffen her limbs. Evidently Sam felt it too. She laid a hand over Lara's fist.
"Just keep watching," she murmured.
Time leapt forward in the video. The sun had almost set, casting the mountains' bruise-purple shadows over everything in the valley.
The clip cut to choppy footage of bush and rock. Even before her bloody, raw hands came into the shot, Lara recognised her voice. Incoherent mumbling interspersed with shallow, throat-shredding rasps.
Looking at the video, she could have been watching a low-budget zombie movie she was that disconnected from events on-screen. She didn't recall any of it. It was only through logic that she was able to place the camera as the one attached to her backpack strap.
Sam's voice yelped in the recording, "Oh my God! Natla, the feed's back. I..." The excitement in her voice faded. "I don't know where that is."
She immediately switched her address to her former friend. "Lara? Lara, can you hear me?"
There was no opportunity for the archaeologist's past self to respond.
The film jumped back to the open expanse as one of Natla's lackeys barked, "Over there!" Instantly his rifle was at shoulder height.
There was movement in the right corner of the screen. The camera zoomed in to capture Lara as she lumbered into the clearing.
Lying in bed, staring at herself, the archaeologist gasped, "Christ."
Even that response didn't seem strong enough.
Sam nodded, "And I thought you looked bad on the rescue ship after Yamatai."
Lara in the video was streaked in blood and dirt. Her flesh was almost as grey as the coat of dust draped over her hair and shoulders. If she sounded like a zombie in the previous clip, she was the walking dead embodied in this one. She staggered stiffly from leg to leg; her left arm swinging limp with every step. In her right hand, her pistol rested forgotten. She was trembling violently and had switched to expelling a horrible keening sound with every wheezed breath.
The worst was her face. Terrified eyes darted around ceaselessly; blind but searching. They stood in stark contrast to her skin. The latter was smeared and filthy, glistening with sweat and barely coagulated blood that had trickled down from the reopened tear on her forehead. Whatever she had been through underground had left the wound looking ominously black and unhealthy.
But there was no TLC to be had from Natla's personal army. Two soldiers had rounded on Lara and were yelling commands.
"Hold it right there!"
The Englishwoman shuddered to a stop. But that was where the obedience ended. She raised her pistol at the same time a rivulet of blood snaked out her left nostril and over her quivering lips.
"Put your weapon down," the merc demanded.
His squad mate added, "Drop it or we'll shoot."
Lara, the wounded leopard, growled back from between clenched teeth. Other men were advancing, essentially cornering her. As disorientated as she was, some part of her recognised the escalating threat. Eyes wide, dilated pupils entirely circled by white, she began waving around the gun, pointing at each of them in turn.
"We're warning you," the first soldier threatened. "Put. It. Down!"
"You have 'til the count of three."
The video cut to Lara's personal camera. The edit triggered a shift in audio, and for the first time a word sifted out of the garbled nonsense rolling around in her mouth. She recognised it as Archaic Greek. "Anax..." King.
"One..." The guard shouted. "Two..."
He nodded towards his team, and they all settled their rifle butts against their shoulders; steadying them in preparation to fire.
"Thr –"
"NO!"
Sam leapt into the space between the men and Lara.
The American woman stood centred in the frame, arms flung out as a simultaneous barrier and truce gesture.
Somewhere off camera, Pierre Dupont groaned, "This is another of their games; some bullshit trick. You should have them both taken out. Spare yourself more trouble."
Natla snorted in response and promptly called out, "Get out of there, Miss Nishimura."
"Please." Sam grimaced. She looked behind her at Lara. "She's clearly not herself, but I can fix this. Just get these guys to back off a bit and let me talk to her."
"You have one minute."
"Right, okay."
The mercs lowered their weapons as Sam took a step towards her former best friend.
Lara watched in horror as her past self, still snarling, trained her Colt on Sam. In her frantic, feverish state, there was no distinguishing friend from foe.
The archaeologist glanced at her companion propped up beside her in the hospital bed.
Sam was looking back at her, sadly. "You really don't you remember any of this?"
"No."
"Lara, seriously, you were tripping off your tits. I've never seen you like that before. It was beyond terrible."
The Englishwoman frowned. "I could have shot you."
"They could have shot you." Sam shrugged, "Just chalk it up as the one time I wasn't completely useless and I got to save you for once... You know, cancelling one of the, like, twenty-five life debts I owe you."
That was such an awful way of looking at herself.
"Sam..."
Eyes on her chest bone, the filmmaker shook her head, "Just keep watching, okay?"
In the video, Sam was desperately trying to reassure Lara. They both were clearly terrified. Sam's raised hands were trembling as much as the pistol in Lara's fist.
Her voice was shaky too, with the cheerfulness in it as forced as her smile. "Hey, Lara. It's Sam. Do you remember, sweetie? Sam. Best friend, flatmate, travel buddy, smokin' hot camera freak, all that. Sam."
She tested another step.
In response, Lara's second hand closed over the pistol grip. Her ramblings increased in volume and intensity.
Sam's grin wavered. "It's alright, Lara, it's alright. No one's going to hurt you, I promise. But I need you to put your gun down, okay? Can you do that for me, babe? For Sam. Please."
The Englishwoman's breathing had become shallow gulps. She didn't move.
Sam mimed the action of lowering a gun. "Please, Lara."
Slowly the Englishwoman's fingers loosened their hold on her weapon.
Even slower, her arm began its return to her side.
Sam beamed at her. "That's it. That's my girl."
The video cut back to show the entire clearing.
Lara was smiling at Sam, her eyes for a brief moment actually focused.
Then her pupils rolled skywards. Her head followed suit. She could have been examining the clouds, she seemed that absorbed in what was above her.
While she was still staring – her skull thrown back, her mouth gaping in wonder – her body toppled sideways.
Her right shoulder struck the ground first. Her head bounced next.
She started twitching then, her body convulsing as if she was being subjected to multiple electric prods. Eyes clenched shut; her hands were claws; knees drawn up to her chest.
As soon as it started, Sam began running towards the archaeologist.
Natla's voice warned, "Stay back."
Midstride, Sam glared over her shoulder. "Fuck you," she spat, and continued dashing towards Lara.
By the time she dropped to her knees next to her former friend, the seizure was over. Lara lay loose-limbed and serene-looking. To the casual observer, she could have been having a nap. She made no movement; nor sound for that matter.
The video jumped to footage from the archaeologist's earpiece camera.
Sam's worried face was in close-up.
"Lara?"
Taking the Englishwoman by the shoulder, Sam rolled Lara onto her back. She shook the limp form more insistently. "Lara?! Hey! "
Sam frowned at her companion for a second, before her expression melted into open-mouthed horror.
"Oh shit!"
The documentary maker lifted her head and yelled across the clearing. "She's not breathing. Natla, do something! Please! She's turning blue."
There was a scuffling noise off camera and Natla's voice added coolly, "Stay where you are, Doctor."
Sam swallowed hard. "Lara…" Her voice quivered as she addressed the body alongside her. "I need you to come back to me, okay?"
Gingerly, Sam placed her palm against her companion's breastbone. She pressed her other hand over it, weaving her fingers together. With arms locked out, she pushed down hard on Lara's chest. Five compressions later, she pinched Lara's nose closed, tilted her chin and breathed into her mouth.
The archaeologist's chest rose once and then deflated. She remained still.
Sam disengaged their lips. She looked on the verge of tears. "Fuck, I don't know what I'm doing."
Panic overwhelmed her. She shook her companion hard. "Lara, don't do this. Come on. Wake up! I need you." She turned then and screeched, "Natla, pleeeease!"
The businesswoman and DuPont were still arguing over the possibility of the two young women setting up some sort of trap. Ultimately the employer won out over the employee, ending the discussion with a sneered "Samantha may be a drama queen but she's not that good an actress." She added brusquely, "Stone, go."
Moments later, the red-haired doctor was kneeling across from Sam, medikit in hand. As weary as she always looked, that same demeanour was oddly reassuring in a crisis. Especially when her unflappability was counterpoised with Sam's fluster.
This was Stone's element, and she worked quickly and decisively. Natla only hired – or enslaved – the best. Watching her in action proved Stone was no exception to the rule.
A split-second assessment of Lara had the doctor muttering, "She's gone into v-fib."
She immediately tore open Lara's shirt and sports bra. She was busy cutting through the backpack strap, when a panicked Sam finally found her words. "V-fib? What does that mean?"
"Her heart's lost a healthy rhythm. It can't pump blood."
"What do w– ? "
Stone started a fresh set of compressions on Lara's chest. While she pumped, counting to thirty, she muttered, "In the bag, get the AED. We need to reset her heart."
Sam rummaged in the medikit and hauled out a red box with a heart icon and AED acronym marked in white on the lid.
"Switch it on. Follow the instructions."
Stone continued CPR while Sam obeyed the defibrillator's audio commands. Despite her trembling hands, she managed to plug the two electrode pads into the device, and attach them to the left side of Lara's rib cage and the right side of her breast bone respectively.
Immediately Stone took over operation as the device stated simply, "Shock advised".
"Stay back," the doctor yelled.
The AED counted down and Stone initiated the jolt. Lara twitched slightly – nothing as dramatic as on television – but continued to lie unresponsive.
Stone started a new round of CPR. By now there were several faces looking down on the resuscitation efforts. Natla hung back but Dupont, Larson and a handful of mercs were watching up close. Most were simply impassive observers. Some, like the giant pseudo-lumberjack, stood with knitted brows. A couple – including Dupont, of course – seemed to be relishing the sight of Lara bare breasted.
She couldn't imagine there was anything arousing about her battered ashen flesh but then she still didn't really understand men when it came to base wants. Time and again, she'd seen their lust for wealth, power and sex overwhelm sense at moments when they needed their full wits about them.
The results were always detrimental to their well-being and, in turn, beneficial to Lara, whose only real desire was for answers. Or Sam, she was forced to admit whenever she let herself brood over her greatest longings.
It felt completely surreal to Lara to be witnessing her own waltz with death. She was conscious of her mortality; she'd had enough near-fatal encounters with dangerous men, creatures and environments to alert her to her risky flirtation.
When you sat for hours hiding from furious armed thugs or waiting for bleeding to stop, you had a lot of time to think about luck and destiny and how much longer you could realistically outrun the Reaper. For the past five years it had felt like she was frequently balancing on a tightrope, taunting Death to follow her out over the abyss.
She just never got to see it like this – in glorious full-colour HD.
Sam's video gave the archaeologist a front row seat to the morbid spectacle. Everyone looking down on her lifeless body made her feel like she was lying in the casket at her own funeral. She felt a chill skitter over her arms and up the nape of her neck in an unwanted caress.
Onscreen, the AED emitted a wail. "Flatline. Flatline."
Stone's eyes darted to the men around her. "We need to get her to the medical tent. NOW!"
It was Larson who scooped Lara up in his arms. He sprinted for Stone's chambers, tailed right behind by the doctor and Sam.
One corner of the tent was set up like an emergency room, complete with hospital trolley. "Lie her there," Stone ordered.
Lara was deposited on the trolley. Lying like that on her back, the camera remained pointed at the ceiling. Still, faces kept appearing above her.
Stone uncapped a needle. While she administered the shot into Lara's left arm, she murmured, "Sam, I need you to carry on with CPR."
"But I don't know what – "
"Thirty reps, exactly like you were doing before. Larson, wheel over that cart."
The trio worked steadily; Stone slapping electrocardiogram leads to strategic spots on Lara's chest while Sam pumped at the archaeologist's heart.
It was on the third round of compressions that a jagged set of waves appeared on the ECG monitor. Still, the machine's shrill alarm never stopped.
"Right," Stone exhaled. "We've got something to work with."
She reached for a pair of resuscitation paddles from the crash cart. "Clear." She applied them to Lara's chest.
In response, every wave on the monitor collapsed.
For three seconds, there was nothing but a perfectly flat line, as ominous as the shoreline before a tsunami. Then the chaos of roiling, irregular waves returned to accompany the device's shriek.
Even louder was Sam's voice. As pale as her former friend, she was bawling right next to the Englishwoman's face. "No! Fucking NO!, Lara, you can't do this!"
"Stand back."
Stone shocked Lara again.
The same dead calm.
The same hysterical screaming from Sam. "Goddammit, Lara! Come back! Please, come back."
Stone had her palms on Lara's chest, pumping hard once more, when the ECG beeped. The doctor's gaze travelled from her patient to the monitor and then to an equally surprised Sam.
"Rhythm," Stone explained. "We've got a stable rhythm."
The video stopped abruptly there, with the camera focused on the filmmaker's desperately relieved face.
Lara realised Sam was squeezing her hand. She turned to examine her companion. She didn't have the energy for more of a response so she just winked, "I suppose that counts as a happy ending."
Sam wouldn't look at her former friend. She frowned instead at the women's interlaced fingers. "You crashed a few hours later again. It took a really long time to bring you back. Doctor Stone almost gave up."
Lara had a pretty good idea what persuaded Stone to keep trying. And for once it wasn't Natla's vicious bullying.
"Thank you. For not giving up on me."
Sam continued to address their hands. "Seeing you like that was the scariest thing I've ever experienced. And I've been soul-sucked by an evil sorcerer queen."
She swung her face towards Lara. "You've been out cold for two days. I was worried if it went on much longer. I wouldn't put it past Natla to smother you in your bed, and then put a bullet through my head."
Lara rested her free palm on top of Sam's hand. "I'm sorry for putting you through that." Then she leaned in and pressed her mouth against the filmmaker's.
Almost immediately Sam's lips parted, allowing Lara deeper access. But as soon as the tips of their tongues met, she disengaged from the kiss.
The filmmaker frowned, "You seem different. And not the usual shell-shocked, banged-up different for you."
Lara could see a vastly different version of herself sauntering out of that cave; sitting next to Sam right now and worming into her heart with feigned sincerity and secret lust. The thought nauseated her.
Sam asked, "What happened to you down there?"
"You wouldn't believe me if I told you."
"Try me. I think I'm better equipped than anyone else in this place to believe you."
Lara let the corner of her mouth twitch into a smile. "You're probably right."
It was the archaeologist's turn to stare at her hands. "I was forced to see myself as I really am. I – I faced some harsh truths."
"Like?"
"How I can't compartmentalise who I am any more. Every desire, every action; I'm entirely culpable for the outcome, good or bad. I can't blame anyone or anything else. And I realised I've made so many mistakes as I fought this truth; how much I hurt myself and others as I pitted these different parts of myself against each other."
She looked up at Sam. Her companion's mouth was shaped in a perfect o; her brow creased.
Suddenly Lara was self-conscious about her epiphany.
"Does – does that make sense?"
Did it even really happen?
For an eye blink Sam stared at her. Then she seized Lara in a hug.
The embrace… It felt so good to be in her arms – to simply be held for the first time in half a decade – that tears sparked.
Lara murmured, "Am I dreaming again?"
The whispered response. "I almost lost you."
The archaeologist tried to steady her voice. "I thought you hated me. I thought that you'd never forgive me."
"I thought I did hate you. But I don't know how I feel anymore, Lara. You've hurt me so badly, but I owe you my life. And then I watched you die." Sam clung tighter to her companion. "Looking at you like that, all I could think was that we never settled anything. I still feel so much for you."
It felt alright to admit it. "I never stopped loving you, Sam. I just didn't know how to walk away without hurting us both."
Sam had started crying.
Lara detached herself from the embrace. She rested her forehead against Sam's instead, and ran her knuckles over the American woman's cheek as the latter whimpered, "I love you, Lara. I love Steven. I don't know what to do. I can't marry him if I feel this way about you. I'm so confused. I need time to figure this all out." She hiccupped, "I – I just want to go home."
"I'm going to get you home, I promise. Then we'll figure this out toge– "
She was interrupted by another voice, drawling from across the room. "Aaaw, will you look at the adorable baby lesbians."