The line on the rope snapped taut, almost yanking it free from her palms. They warmed from the sudden friction, and if not for the water she was sure there would have been an awful burn. She turned back to Snake, who through gritted teeth and fury buried in the wells of his eyes was mounting an ever-forward march towards her, deeper and deeper into the water. As she neared him, she began slowly backing up to the shore, knowing there was nothing that could be done of the burning fuel that was pressing ever closer to igniting. Not far off, she heard the waterfall's steady growl.

Vines was still yelling for her attention, and when Snake had crossed the halfway mark, he gestured with a momentarily free hand to their other companion. She disliked the idea, but realised its importance, and she left Snake to his own devices, not mounting the shoreline but leaving a larger gap between herself and Snake. It made enough of a difference Vines was close enough waded shin-deep in to shout in her ear.

"We have to get out of here, that's—"

"I know, defoliant!" She ignored his incredulity. "A ways back, Snake sustained a wound on his other leg, back of his thigh—"

"He told me!" Vines screamed.

"If we need to, drag him with us, we're not going to get a chance to recover." She looked towards the cliff. She heard the distant snap and boom of small arms fire, but with few attempts to actually shoot at them. Much further upstream, a few of the barrels had managed to leak into the water and ignite, but the river's speed swallowed too much of the fuel for the flames to do more than snap and leap prior to a quick drowning. Lara made no attempt to try and make sense of such senselessness. "Look, you know the terrain better than we do! If there's anything you can do, do it, because they're hunting us down now! They're not going to stop until we're finished!" The line behind her tugged hard, and she tugged back in assurance.

"There might be a shed nearby, if we're close to where I think we are. I've never been this deep into the valley before, but—" Vines expression changed, and she didn't bother to ask.

Lara swung her head around. Snake was gone, and the rope was trailing downstream without a hint of tension.

She yelled first, his name initially, and then repeated it loud enough she could hear herself. The volume of it stung her larynx, as when she inhaled, she was certain she was taking in the fumes of the defoliant that had begun its aquatic saturation. From further south, she spotted a rapid, desperate clawing come up from beneath the water's surface, and then succumb to the pull again. Before her mind had even enough time for logical recognition of what she was seeing, she'd flung herself into the water, hurtling downstream after him.

As she swam, she could feel her feet knock and scrape at the malevolent edges lining the riverbed. A sudden warmth rippled along her shin, hot enough to leap just beyond pleasant, and Lara knew that she'd ripped open her leg on one of the edges. The pain was a rumour her brain refused to spread. Her arms shot out one after another, rotating in turn, stroking the water. Her lips felt torn and tight, dehydration thrown into overdrive from the mossy clay of the river, and in her mouth she could taste a miserable sensation like filthy glass.

In just a short time, she'd caught up with him, but stopping was infinitely worse than she'd imagined it. The breastroke halted by a yank at his shoulder, she tried to right herself in the water and found it reluctant to let go. She didn't know how far they'd traveled, feeling like ten metres, maybe more, but she could no longer touch the riverbed without submerging her face in part. Snake was dazed but conscious, and once she'd gotten hold of him, he was able to bring himself out of the horizontal freefall he'd succumbed to. Lara still found herself none the less doing most of the swimming; his face was drawn with the mark of his wounds.

Hair plastered to her face and capable of resisting the current only in part, Lara allowed her head to surface only to see the river alight with flames rushing ever closer.

"Lara!" Vines was shouting at her further upstream. She was surprised at the space traveled in so short a time. Distantly, she could see the rope, now lifelessly beached. He was just beyond it.

"Here! Malcolm, here!" She waved a free arm and found Snake impossibly heavy. He might have been over a hundred kilos. He was doing everything possible not to sink like a stone or be swept off the termination point of the river, opening into a waterfall loud enough to eat their thoughts. She felt its vast roaring proximity as much as heard it. "We're here!"

On the second attempt, it seemed to take, and Vines spotted them both, shoulders hardly above the waterline. He sprinted over, beginning a clumsy wade into the waterline. "They started igniting it before they threw it off, we've got to get out of here!"

"Here, help me with him! He's bloody heavy!" A quick glance on Lara's part and she could see he was right. North of them and the water was rapidly becoming an inferno. She leveled her gaze only at Vines, who was already waist-deep. The flames were already past their previous point of crossing, and would be at them in moments.

"He's pale!" Vines had one hand wrapped around her forearm, and the other locking onto Snake's. The veins in the young man's neck were like tensionwires suddenly at their breaking point as he pulled with the entirety of his body weight, legs pulling back. Lara was trying just to keep them from being stolen by the undertow.

"I think he nicked himself while we were under, I don't—" It was already there, first an orange threat then an anguished rage flowering red light along the riverbank. A tendril extended brilliant heat behind her, beyond her, between their connected hands, and she screamed, "No!"

"Lara!" Snake made a grasp for her. Vines yelled, but she didn't hear. Lara severed the connection and tumbled backwards, blazing ribbon slipping around her into a gulf. In just a heartbeat, she was surrounded on all sides. The river had become an avenue of red and orange, and she let herself drift away. There was no choice. Already, her skin was tight with the pain of the agonised heat.

Beyond the calm and the adrenaline intoxication, somewhere Lara heard Snake howl her name.

In moments, the waterfall took her, and there was the white of its rapids taking all of her in its absolution. Then, blankness.