The Camera Loves You 28


By Asynca, who has weird images of playing this chapter like a level.

Thanks to Ingelheim for being my crash test dummy.


The rooms Sam and I were taken to were on the top floor, I suppose to prevent us from being able to easily escape out the windows. After I'd spent a good three minutes trying to pry the door open and found myself face-to-face with a pistol, I went to investigate the window, anyway. Pulling the curtains aside, I saw several men milling around on the ground below, smoking together. When one of them saw me, he waved and saluted. The movement caused his jacket to fall open and I could see a gun tucked in his belt. Okay, so the windows were out.

While I was pacing back and forth, trying to figure out what to do, I ate all the complimentary biscuits from the kitchenette.

The kitchenette drawers had two butterknives in them, so I put one of them in my pocket. It was so blunt I couldn't imagine what use it would be, but it was steel so it was better than being empty-handed. There was nothing else very useful in the room, unless I particularly wanted to pull apart lamps and steal the coat-hangers. They were wooden and probably useful for something, but I didn't know how I'd carry them so I left them in the empty wardrobe.

Any second now, Ms. Natla would come marching in here, having seen the footage of Pierre dead and Larson offering to take the Scion. The ruse would be over. I wondered what she'd do to Larson, but most of all I was worried about Sam. She knew Sam was what mattered to me. If she wanted to punish me, she'd do something to her.

"Lara?" I didn't think I'd heard properly at first, and Sam had to call me a couple more times before I realised it was her, and her voice was coming from under the bed.

I got down on all fours and crawled underneath it.

There was a small grate on the skirting board between the rooms, and I could see an eye in it. "Sam?" I whispered.

I could see the eye narrow as she smiled. "Oh, my God, Lara…"

I ran my fingers over the grate as if I could touch her, but the holes were too small. "Are you alright? How's your ankle?"

She cringed. "It hurts," she said. "But it doesn't matter. How do we get out of here?"

I bit my lip, shaking my head. "I don't know, her men are everywhere." We watched each other for a moment. "Can you even run?"

She nodded faintly. "It still works," she said. "It just really hurts, and I'm really exhausted. All my muscles are shaking. I was trying to drink from a glass before and my hands were going so much that I hit it on my teeth."

"Oh, Sam…" I ran my fingers over the grate again. If only I could carry her out of here like I'd carried her down the mountain in Yamatai.

"Lara, she's going to know when she sees the footage."

I exhaled. "I know. It's only a matter of time." I thought for a second. "How much footage did you take?"

"Including the stuff from the hotel? About twelve hours," she said. "Nearly a hundred gigs."

Something occurred to me. "How fast can you speed up playback on the actual camera? Only up to thirty-two times, I think I remember?" She nodded. "And a hundred gigs would take quite a long time to transfer to a laptop, wouldn't it?"

"Maybe fifteen minutes if she's got one of those fast card readers."

"Okay," I said, thinking. "Okay, so we've got at least fifteen minutes from when she gets to her room, which may already have happened. Hang on a second."

I crawled out from under the bed and stood in the centre of the room, looking around. There just had to be something in here I could use. As I panned my eyes around the room, they came to rest on something on the ceiling.

The smoke detector.

I had such fond memories of going to investigate people smoking in their room when I was doing room service at a hotel in London between terms. I assumed the safety standards would be reasonably uniform in the European Union, especially when it came to tourist hotspots.

I scrambled back under the bed. "Sam," I said. "I need you to help me with this. There are smoke detectors on the ceiling. If only one of them goes off, staff come to check if there's a fault or someone's smoking in their room. If more than one does, the system automatically calls the fire service and the fire alarm goes off."

"Okay," she said. "So how do I start a fire in here?"

"Break the lamp open and hold a piece of that complimentary note paper near the open wire. Be really careful to hold it a little away, though, because if you touch it the wire will break." I looked back across the floor. "Then pull a chair up to the smoke detector and hold the paper there."

Her eye disappeared from the vent. I could hear her trying to smash the globe, so I went and did the same. I'd already figured out the best way to do it from Ms. Natla's tent, so I had the paper curling into ash almost straight away. Legs a little unsteady, I climbed onto the table and held the paper under the fire alarm.

It was only a few seconds before it began to screech; it was so loud that standing so close to it was deafening. I hopped down off the table, and only a second later I could hear Sam's alarm through the wall. The fire bell started in the hallway, and the main lights blacked out leaving onto the emergency lighting.

There was shouting in the hallway. I opened the wardrobe and took out a coat hanger,and then ran over to the door and hammered on it.
The door opened, and it was the same man before with the same gun.

I hooked the coat hanger into the gun and yanked it out of his hands.

It went clattering across the floor and I went after it. When my hands closed on it, I spun it around and shot towards where I could see a head. The man flopped against the floor. There was another man after him, silhouetted against the dim hallway lighting. He obviously couldn't see me as well as I could see him, because he hesitated and that allowed me to shoot him, too.

I looked down at the gun; it was much too quiet for a normal pistol. I'd never seen a silencer before, but I guessed the attachment on the end of the nose must be what they looked like.

I corner-checked the hallway and nearly lost my own head as a chunk of wood was blown out of the doorframe. Grabbing a pillow, I tossed it in the hallway and while they were distracted and aiming at that, I stepped out and shot them both until they fell.

Sam's door was very close to mine, so I ran out and tried the handle on it. "Sam!"

It opened. She looked terrified, but her eyes were lit with hope. I took her hand and lead her at a fast jog down the hallway towards the exit arrow sign. We didn't have the luxury of being careful with her ankle right now.

Unlike our hotel in Athens, Hotel Rex did actually seem to have a few other patrons. We'd run out of our wing into a central hallway and I nearly shot one or two of them accidentally. In the half-light it was hard to distinguish been men who were tourists and men who were working for Ms. Natla.

At the lifts, there was a group of men watching everyone who was ignoring the In Case of Fire Do Not Use Elevators sign and piling into the lifts. Before they saw us, I pulled Sam into the stairwell and away from the other people trying to evacuate. There were men in the stairwell, too, but for some odd reason they were really slow to draw and I got both of them down before they hit me.

"You're a really good shot," Sam commented as we struggled with the stairs.

The thing was, I wasn't that good, at least not with a pistol and especially not with how shaky my exhausted arms were. It normally took me a lot more rounds to get people down and they were normally firing just as many at me. I doubted Ms. Natla would hire amateurs, so it didn't make much sense.

The stairs only lead as far down as ground level. I listened at the door, and then pulled it open. It fed into a small alcove near reception and there were already quite a number of people running out of the building past us. When I saw Ms. Natla at the reception desk, I pushed Sam back into alcove behind me.

"I don't care about your policies," she was telling what looked like a young duty manager. "I'm telling you to turn it off immediately, there is no fire!"

The manager had a checklist in her hand and she was clearly trying to follow it. "I'm sorry, Ma'am," the girl said. "But I can't switch it off. After the alarm has started only the fire service can."

Ms. Natla took the checklist from her and threw it across the floor. "Tell me where the box is!" she demanded, advancing on the duty manager as she backed against the wall. "Just tell me where it is!"

"In the basement," the manager said, holding her hands up and looking quite confused about how angry Ms. Natla was, "But you can't open it without the key, only the fire service has the key!"

"We'll see about that," Ms. Natla said, straightening. She reached out and grabbed the jacket of a man who was passing her. "You! I thought I told you to unlock the windows." He mumbled something and she jabbed one perfectly manicured finger towards the ringing bell. "Then what's this? What is this?" When he didn't answer, she released him. "This is unbelievable. I won't have the police arriving in the middle of this. Do something about it. If there are bodies, get rid of them."

He nodded.

The lift was beside the stairwell alcove, and when Ms. Natla strode towards us with her heels clicking against the marble floor, my heart rose to my throat. She couldn't have been more than five feet away from us as we were pressed against the wall of the alcove. Behind me, Sam had her hand over her mouth trying to obscure the sound of herself panting.

I heard the lift call as it arrived at ground level, and she stepped into it. When I was one hundred per cent certain she's left, I dragged Sam across lobby and toward the conference room. Someone saw us and I heard a man shout, so I pushed the door to the lobby shut behind us and jammed the butterknife into the hinge.

It was a short run to the conference room, and inside, there was a man packing our possessions into a garbage bag. He looked up when he heard us enter, but he didn't draw his weapon. Instead, he tried to do a runner to the other door.

I didn't really know what to do since he was clearly working for Ms. Natla, so I fired until I finally downed him.

I searched his body and found a gun, cocked it and handed it to Sam. "Point this at the door and shoot anyone who opens it."

I rushed over to the table and emptied out the garbage bags, trying to stuff all out possessions and electronics into our belt bags. As I was rifling through everything, I realised that although our holsters were still on the table, someone had already removed our guns and ammo. No loss, I thought, thinking I'd prefer to keep the guns I'd taken off Ms. Natla's men, anyway.

I clipped Sam's belt-bag around her waist while she was aiming at the door, and then went to investigate whether or not it was worth taking the dead man's shoes and putting them on Sam. While I was holding the sole of the man's foot against mine for sizing, Sam shrieked and started shooting.

"Hey, hey, watch it!" It was Larson's voice. "I just had my hair done!"

She lowered the gun.

I did actually raise my own gun at him as he approached, just in case. He gave me a strange look and pushed the nose away from him, handing Sam something very small. It was dark, so I didn't know what it was until she announced it. "The memory card from my camera!"

"Sorry about leaving the camera," he said. "She'd notice too fast I'd've taken that. It was already hooked up to her laptop."

"Thanks," I said to him as Sam tucked the card in her pocket. "Are you going to give us the Scion, too?"

He shook his head. "I reckon it's not over yet," he said. "I don't know what to do with it, but giving it to the one person she's after definitely ain't the right thing to do."

I decided to defer to his wisdom on this one, considering I'd been wrong about him several times before. "Okay," I said. I stood and watched him for a moment as I tried to close the zip on my bag. "Won't she find out someone helped us?"

He shrugged, gesturing for us to follow him. "She has a pretty high opinion of you, I don't think she'll guess. She did yell something at me about stopping you leave, though, so if she ever asks you, you never saw me here." He shot me a grin. We tailed him to the door of the conference room. He gave me an appraising look and then pushed it open. "You know, I've killed quite a lot of people for her. If some other person had done the things you've done, she'd just have had me shoot you. I think she has you way up there with her damn Scion thing." Instead of his shotgun, he had a pistol in his belt just like the other men. He took it out and cocked it. "Anyone would think you're the one that's going to give her those powers."

He checked the corridor, and then we kept moving. I jogged after him. "'Those powers'?"

He nodded. "I don't know all the details, and she certainly wouldn't tell me if I asked, so I keep my mouth shut. From what I've heard, that Scion thing makes stuff, like, creatures. It makes them, and it keeps them alive indefinitely. I reckon you could put it in a room with someone, and they would live forever."

There was an exit sign in the corridor ahead of us. I wanted to get as much information out of him as possible before we reached it. "You think she wants to be immortal?"

He shrugged. "At the very least." He opened the door for us and checked around. Someone called to him and he waved, holding us back inside until the person had gone. "Go," he said. "The parking lot is that way." He dropped something into my hand. "Her keys. The numberplate is on the tag. It's a Silver Lexus."

I stared down at them for a moment, and then looked back up at him. I could have hugged him. "You helped us again," I said. He ruffled my hair. It was such a warm gesture and it reminded me what Pierre had said about him having a daughter. "You must be a great father."

The smile fell of his face and I saw his throat bob. It was a second before he could reply. "Too bad I'll never find out now," he said, and pulled the exit shut behind him.

There were men in the car park, but fortunately there were also a several groups of tourists chatting as they stood by their cars so our movement didn't draw much attention. I couldn't stick my head out to survey the cars, so I just kept pressing the unlock button on the keys and followed the chirps to a silver Lexus.

I climbed into it, taking my axe from my waist and giving it to Sam to hold. The car smelt like Ms. Natla, I thought. Like her, and expensive leather. Sam buckled herself in and went to search through the dash for whatever she could find in there.

The windows were tinted almost black, so no one batted an eyelid as we drove out of the car park. The driveway led to a gate and there was a group of large men blocking it. Clearly their intention was to search every car that was trying to leave. In the headlights, I counted seven.

I rolled slowly toward them.

"I hope this car has a lot of power," I told Sam, and then jammed my heel on the accelerator just as we reached them. It did, and it surged forward and slammed into at least five of them like skittles. It was a sickening feeling to drive over the bodies, but I kept my foot against the floor until the car was well out on the road. Because I was driving so fast, in my attempt to turn I hit over a sign pointing into Hotel Rex. It bounced over the bonnet and back at the men who were still standing. I put my foot to the floor again and kept it there until I couldn't hear gunfire anymore.

We were out of the town on the highway before I realized we'd made it. I wound down the window a fraction and let the wind blow on my face.

"We did it," Sam said, relaxing back into the chair. She laughed once. "Oh, my God!"

I had been smiling and imagining a warm bath and some actual sleep, trying to not think too much about the last thirty minutes when a nagging memory of Ms. Natla pushed its way into the front of my mind. What had she been saying about unlocked windows? Which windows, and why would that have prevented the fire alarm? I didn't even want to answer that question to myself, because I was afraid I knew exactly what she was talking about.

If she'd been expecting me to try and scale the side of the hotel, why did she put men all over the ground?

The more I thought about it, the more I felt extremely uneasy. I'd had a much harder time in Yamatai killing the Solarii. Ms. Natla's men were hardly even shooting at me, and that one in the conference room actually didn't shoot at me at all despite the fact he was armed with a loaded weapon.

I remembered what that man with the torch had told me after he'd Tasered me: they'd been ordered to not injure us.

"Sam," I said slowly as she put her ankle on the dash and examined it. "Didn't that feel a little too easy?"

She looked at me like I was completely mad. "No," she said decisively. "That is not what I would call easy. Any one of those men could have killed us."

"Except they hardly tried at all," I pointed out.

Sam abandoned her ankle to watch me, her brow half-lowered and wavering. I didn't need to spell it out for her. "You think she let us escape?"

In my gut, I knew what I felt. It was time I started trusting it. "Yes."

We were silent for a moment.

"But why would she go to all that trouble to catch us only to just let us go again?" Sam asked. "Doesn't she need you to get the rest of the Scion?"

I tapped my fingers on the steering wheel. I was so tired it was difficult to think clearly about all this, and anything that involved Ms. Natla seemed to turn into a fucking labyrinth. "I've got no idea. All I know is that woman just plays people. I'm sure somehow this fits in her master plan or something." I released a breath. "She probably thinks I'll probably go get the third piece anyway, because she has the first two."

"The first two… Hey, you think that Larson…?"

I was so angry about the idea of Larson being in on this that my heart was pounding. Surely he couldn't be playing me as well, could he? He just reminded me so much of Roth sometimes, aside from all that macho-chauvinist crap he was always spouting. I didn't want to believe it, I really didn't, but he'd just so easily taken that fragment from me. I couldn't ignore how easy it had been for him.

"I don't know," I said finally. "If he is, she has two pieces and there's only one left."