Chapter 11: The mountain

Climbing a mountain wasn't an easy task for neither of them. The extreme heat and humidity of the air wasn't helping either as it was even harder to breath - the air that could get into their lungs was so hot, they could almost say it boiled their organs.

They still considered themselves lucky as the lower side of the mountain was richly covered with trees and bushes, almost as thick as back in the jungle. At least they got some shelter from the rays of the South American sun that was burning high above their heads.

It also gave them something to hold onto and push themselves forward from - they had been climbing and walking up the mountain for at least 2 hours now and without any kind of a map or indicator of where to go and where to search for the cave they saw carved in the walls of the underground hall, they felt not just tired but completely lost as well. They just tried to keep the mountain mostly on their left side and the possibility of falling to death to their right.

Sam had been walking in front of the exhausted Rose the whole time, whose leg was aching again. It's been hours since the pain had been intensifying and all the said circumstances above hadn't made it easier for her to bear it. Though the amount of pain this time was still nothing compared to what she felt on the plane.

Sam didn't talk much, he seemed to be lost in his thoughts. As Rose watched him walk ahead of her, she noticed his posture was a bit strange and even though he seemed to be trying to hide it, she could see it in the way he walked that he was struggling. She was just about to ask if he was alright, when he stumbled and fell against the side of the mountain, slightly slipping downwards a few centimeters.

"Sam!" Yelled Rose as she hurried her way towards the man who was now kneeling. His face seemed paler than ever despite the heat and was distorted into a painful grin as he was clenching his injured shoulder with his hand. "What's wrong?" she asked as she felt her chest tightening under fear. "Show it to me!" she ordered the man strictly and to her greatest surprise, a slight and really weak but playful grin appeared on his face as he replied: "Right here and now?!"

"What?" Rose furrowed her brows for a second as she didn't get the joke first but then she softly punched his intact shoulder, hiding an embarrassed smile as she reached for the hand that was hiding the wound. "I want to see it." she persevered softly and finally felt the man gave in.

She gasped when she saw how sore the wound was. The margin was almost purple, and the veins around it started to turn black as some kind of infection was working its way into his body. The claw of the beast must have had some kind of poison on it...

"Oh my god, Sam..." she breathed out the words and her mind started racing between the thoughts that was filling up her mind. They definitely needed to turn back; it wasn't a question anymore. And must had to do it quickly since even flying, it took hours to get back to the nearest city where they could get proper help. And Huxley will be finding Z... But it was either Sam's life or finding the city and wasn't really a question what was the right thing to choose.

"We are going to turn back, now." she said and immediately placed her arms under his armpits to help him up.

"We are definitely not turning back." he answered as he stood up.

"But..."

"There's no but." he opposed between two huffs immediately and just to prove his right, he fixed his posture as much as he could, towering over Rose with his height. "We are close now and I am not letting Huxley get to the city before we do." he said, looking deep into Rose's eyes.

"This way soon we will become I because you're gonna be as good as dead!" Rose yelled at him, keeping the eye contact. She felt angry and she hated how tall he was now and small she felt next to him. She stood up on to her toes while talking to seem a little bit taller but it didn't do much in her case.

They stood there, angrily looking into each other's eyes not saying a word. The only time the eye contact broke was when Sam's eyes wandered towards Rose's lips for a short second - the anger disappearing immediately from his gaze. But then he said:

"I just need to rest a bit." And he turned away from the girl to look for any kind of a flatter area on which they could sit down to gather their strength. "Come on, help me find something to sit on."

Rose felt so helpless at that moment, watching the enormous back of the man getting farer and farer as she stood there, her cheeks slightly burning. He either hadn't understood it was probably his life at stake or he was just simply this... this stupid! Yeah, that was the right word to use. She let out a huge sigh of anger and started after Sam.

"Stupid... Stubborn...Man..." she huffed in a low and angry voice as she stomped after him - though the stomping wasn't as vigorous as she would really wanted it to be for her knee aching too much again.

It took a good fifteen minutes for them to find a flatter area big enough for the two of them to sit and rest on. They sat down immediately, letting out tired sighs, massaging their aching body. Rose took a small bottle of water out of her backpack, that got unpleasantly warm for now, and reached it towards Sam who was sitting right next to her.

"Drink." She said plainly without even looking at him but silently was happy when she felt his hands take the piece of plastics from her.

"Your turn." said the man after drinking up almost half of the bottle in one gulp, reaching it back towards Rose whose only answer was just an angry grunt. She drank too, but not much since she needed the water less than Sam. She put it back into her backpack and was about to pull her hand out of the bag when her fingers bumped into something soft. It was the small, leather bound journal she took from the corpse back in the underground hall.

She forgot about it completely so she eagerly took it out, alongside with the artefact and started to study both intensively. She was glad she got something to occupy her mind with while resting, as she still felt too angry and helpless at Sam.

The artefact got her attention first. It seemed like a simple and plain golden orb if you looked at from the front but from the back it reminded Rose of some kind of a small gadget as little trains of gears were visible through small openings.

She tried pushing and twisting the small piece of metal in every direction and every way but nothing happened. Another thing she felt helpless and angry at as she knew the gears weren't in there by accident but she couldn't make them work at all. She felt so frustrated that to her heart's content, she would have liked to just throw it away, far down the mountainside to get it lost under the trees and bushes for another 100 years.

"Can I?" she heard Sam's hoarse question coming from her left side. He must have had watched her helpless battle with the artefact and now felt like he's cleverer... As if... If someone's so dumb to risk his own life for some stupid cities that might never even exist... Well, of course it wasn't stupid at all. It meant everything for Rose too, but if you couldn't live to see it with your own eyes, was it really worth it?

She handed it towards him (accompanied by another grunt that sounded like a muffled 'here'). She was sure he couldn't get any farer with it than her but at the moment his fingers touched the metal, little teeth popped out from every side of the small artefact, making it look like a component of a bigger machine. They both yelled and dropped the item at once, it surprised them both so much. Rose even forgot how mad she was for a second and looked straight into the surprised hazel eyes of the man, her eyebrows being raised high in her curiosity.

The small teeth disappeared again at the moment the metal touched the ground and when Rose got it into her hands again, nothing happened just like before. She then reached it towards Sam without a word, and at the moment he got it into his hands, it worked again.

"You are making it work..." Said Rose, being unsure of her own words. She didn't know how it was even possible, but it was definitely Sam who activated the small gadget.

"Well, this is crazy..." he answered, rotating the small thing between his callused fingers. "How on earth..." he mumbled, looking at it from every side and angle.

Rose watched him, his sweaty forehead, the circles under his eyes and the way he breathed and felt all the enthusiasm leave her body as she felt that going forward was definitely not the right option to make here.

"Sam..." she started, pausing for a second to gather her thoughts and plan out the speech with which she could convince him to turn back finally.

"Rose. No." Answered Sam immediately as he could read her mind, looking sharply into her eyes.

"Is it really worth dying for?" she asked, feeling her temperature rise again. She wasn't someone who could be easily angered but this time it felt like Sam was doing it on purpose. How on earth can someone be this damn stubborn?

"I won't die." He answered simply, pulling up his shirt to show the scars of the three bullets. "I've had it worse."

"I understand that you lost so many years of your life, being locked up and I even understand if there's something you want to prove but this way all you'll accomplish is dying!" She threw the words into his face, pointing his index finger to the middle of his chest. She raised her chin high up as she talked, even sitting Sam was way higher than her.

"It's good to know I have a therapist now!" Sam yelled back and they both stood up at the same time, looking angrily into each others' eyes.

"I- I am not going any further." Stated Rose, her voice was trembling in her helpless anger.

"Then I'll go alone." Answered the man immediately.

"Fine!"

"Fine!" They yelled both.

Rose immediately reached for her backpack on the ground and grabbed the small metal component too, just to throw it towards Sam.

"Here's your stupid artefact!" And she turned away immediately to march her way downwards the mountain, hearing Sam doing the same, just in the opposite direction.

Rose was determined to get back to Sully as fast as she could to ask for his help. Maybe together they would be able to drag Sam down the mountain. They can knock him out and carry him down together if anything, or just roll his unconscious body in the dirt...

Why was he behaving so strangely? Why couldn't he understand he was endangering his own life?

As Rose was thinking and making her way down the mountain she didn't look anywhere but her feet. She didn't even really watch where she was going, she was so preoccupied with her thoughts that were rushing through her brain just like a huge tropical storm, she saw nothing around her.

No wonder she hadn't notice the man who was standing in front of her when she bumped into his chest with all her might. Though it felt like she hit a stone wall with his forehead, the man was so though and steady. When she looked up, all the blood left her face immediately.

The man was tall, very very tall, maybe even taller than Sam himself and his eyes were glowing coldly as he looked down at Rose from his own highness.

"Nice to finally meet you, miss Anderson." He said. His voice was so cold as well, just as cold as his gaze that despite the crazy heat and humidity, shivers started running up and down Rose's body. He was even scarier than the Bestafera itself.

She just stood there, frozen in fear, she couldn't even tear her eyes away from the ice cold, grey eyes as

she listened to the man introduce himself. Though she already guessed who was standing in front of her.

"My name is Huxley Warden."

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