Chapter 22

"...Bears."

Lara holstered her Ingrams - as they posed little threat to the quartet of brown behemoths that bore down on herself and Max. She leapt towards a column of rock, her fingers grasping the top, and pulled herself up. She was in the middle of unslinging her BAR when Max, camera secured on his back, tried to follow her...

And failed.

He smacked into the side of the formation and fell to the floor in a heap. The first of the animals was nearly upon him as Lara hefted the large rifle and pulled the trigger. The recoil of the big weapon threatened to throw Lara from her perch, but she held her ground and sprayed fire into the bear.

It howled in pain and shrank back from Lara's assault, as did the others. This reprieve gave Max the chance to get to his feet, grab Lara's outstretched hand and join her atop the rock formation.

"Thanks. I understand the Jungle Gym now..." he conceded as he readied both camera and sidearm.

"Pity you didn't spend a little more time on it, you might be an appetizer now."

"This is so screwey...bears don't just attack - and they work alone - and HOW IN THE HELL DID THEY GET IN HERE?"

Max referred to the door that they had just come through. It had been a rather uneventful two days for herself and Max. They had landed, made it out of the airport without any difficulty (an envelope passed from Lara to the watch commander made that feat possible) and proceeded up the barely-passable roads to the mountain.

Max had been disappointed in the area. He had expected the Soviet national anthem to be playing constantly from an undisclosed source, and for troops to be goose-stepping all over the place. Instead, he said that it was 'Alaska with crappy cars.'

The trek to the mountain had taken them six hours - largely due to the poor conditions of the roads and the slow speed of the traffic on them. When they were in sight of the steaming mount, Max insisted that they stop and get a picture in front of it. Max pulled a small digital camera from his satchel and set the timer.

The silence of the area was deafening. Lara and Max had started to become increasingly more jumpy as their trek continued - they were constantly expecting an attack which never came. They camouflaged the car inside of a lava tube near the coordinates of the artifact and started inside. They wandered the smooth lava tubes for over a day before coming upon the door, covered in the ancient writing and made of a very strong metal that Max had never seen before.

At least the super-alloy explained how this piece had survived countless eruptions. Lara toiled over the door for a while, as there was no obvious way to open it. They decided to camp for the night, Max having a good deal of trouble sleeping de to the heat and the prospect of sleeping in what was essentially the barrel of a magma gun. However, traipsing though miles of lava tube had worn him more than he wanted to admit, and was soon asleep.

The following 'morning' Max was gearing up, he noticed that one area of the normal rock wall had a much cooler infra red signature - like that of the door. Lara did not seem that thankful for the tip, but soon had the doors open and they stepped inside.

While the lava tubes had been smooth and fairly constant, the area inside the door was very rocky with all types of nooks and crannies to hide in, or on top of...

As they were doing now.

While it was possible for the bears to reach the heightened position where Lara and Max stood, their approach made them perfect targets for firearms - and the fight did not last long. Even Max's managed to eliminate one of their adversaries with his pistol, which now ejected spent cartridges to the left.

When the smoke had cleared, and the ringing ears ceased, Max turned to Lara.

"This place has been sealed forever, how are these bears in here?"

"I find it best not to ask those questions."

"And how in the hell is it light in here - we're a couple hundred feet below ground, for Christ's sake..."

"You'd prefer darkness..." Lara said in accusatory manner.

"No. What now?"

"We press on, of course."

"Of course."

The large chamber in which they had fought the bears bore a single exit, directly opposite their entrance point. The path seemed to lead upwards, Lara paused for a moment, then withdrew a flare from her pack, lit the item, and threw it up the passage.

"Geez, that's bright."

"That's the idea - to see."

"Have you ever heard of a flashlight?"

"Have you ever heard of closing your mouth and running your little camera?"

"Okay. May I ask what you're doing?"

"Looking for traps."

"Don't let me stop you."

Lara turned from Max and continued to study the passage before her. Through her years of this type of work, she had developed a sixth sense about traps, and the hall before her was an excellent place to set something up.

Normally, she would have done a much more casual inspection, but having Max along made things more complicated. He was not nearly as quick as she, nor did he possess her sense and knowledge of trap placements and such.

She was on the verge of allowing a boulder to turn him into a pancake. The man had not stopped whining since they had parked the car. Lara was well aware of the temperature and did not need a constant reminder of the relative heat - they were under a volcano. Then, he had complained about the time that they were spending down there. Lara was prepared to spend a full week searching under Koryaksky - Max was free to leave any time he wished.

Then, he had found the switch to open the door. Lara was an expert in her field and had years of experience - and he just blundered into it. Did he not realize that these moments were the most precious in Lara's life? She was only too aware that there were a finite amount of tomb-esque areas in the world, and that each moment she spent in an unexplored room was beautiful and to be relished - for it may never happen again.

He had cheated her by finding the door switch, and she was not at all amused by that fact.

The corridor was clear, and they proceeded upwards for a while, ultimately coming to a small chamber with a pool of water. Lara placed her pistols in her rucksack and a plastic plug on the muzzle of the BAR.

"Ready for a swim?" she asked.

"In that?" Max pointed into the oily-black water.

"Certainly."

"Not a chance in hell."

"I thought that camera of yours would be waterproof.'

"Oh, it is. There's just no way that I'm going into that - who knows what might be hiding down there."

"The last piece of the device is down there."

"You mean we made it, we're there?"

"I was speaking metaphorically. Think of it as a bath - you certainly could use one."

"You're talking to me about stank? Sister, take a whiff on your side of the room."

"I'm going ahead, you may do whatever you wish," Lara retorted and suddenly stepped into the water. She sank quickly and was out of Max's sight in moments.

Max wondered why Lara could always goad him into doing things that he really didn't want to do, then placed various caps and covers on his camera an jumped in as well.

The water was cold, very cold. Max had been cold before, on numerous occasions, but after entering this pool Max had a new appreciation of the phrase 'bone-chilling." It was as if he had neither skin or clothing on.

Max tried to focus in the water, trying to find Lara in the dark blur that was before him. After a moment, he saw what might have been her swimming towards a light off in what appeared to be the far side of the water. Kicking out, Max proceeded towards his friend.

It was hard to judge the distance across due to the water, but Max was just about out of air when he surfaced on the other side. Lara had already exited the water and was rummaging in her rucksack.

"What?" she said in mock surprise, "are you still there?"

Max was about to respond when he felt something brush his leg. Suddenly, Lara was getting farther away and there was a rush of bubbles in his ears.

Then he took in a lungful of the putrid water.

Max had never been a huge fan of water, especially the things that resided in the water, but his true fear was that of drowning. He had faced his own mortality many times, and still it was struggling to breath under water that kept him awake at night if he thought about it too much.

An now he was going to die - in just that manner.

That fact of his impending demise, however, served to calm him significantly enough that he began to wonder why he was sinking all of a sudden. He looked towards his leg, and saw that there was a pinkish-green tentacle wrapped around it. His eyes followed the member to its source - a very large octopus.

Or was it a squid? Max could not remember which was which, but did manage to recall his multi-tool that was in a belt pouch. He retrieved the item and withdrew the blade as his consciousness was starting to fade away.

With as much force as he could muster against the resistance of water, Max stabbed the tentacle. Gouts of black blood welled from the wound and Max could tell that he had hurt the thing by the way it squeezed his calf. Reaching far into himself, he made another strike at the restraint, but the creature was on to him and the tentacle let go.

Just as Max stabbed himself.

Cursing his poor reaction time, Max swam for the surface, trailing blood from his leg. Max felt like the twenty feet to the surface must have taken hours, but his head soon broke the surface of the water. Lara was still there, but had not grasped the situation.

Max took in a great breath and managed to cough out, "squid!"

Lara rolled her head at him, not amused by his joke - Lara's considerable patience was nearing an end. Then she noticed something moving in the water, approaching her companion.

"MOVE!" she shouted as she raised her twin matching pistols.

Max did a variation of the dog-paddle towards the edge of the pool as Lara opened fire on the thing in the water. He shots hit the water with small splashes, making it difficult to see if her attack was having any appreciable effect or not.

Max's fingers were grasping the shore as her weapons clicked empty. She extender her hand to Max and heaved his dripping form from the water. He was immediately on his knees, coughing up water and delivering a torrent of profanity that almost made Lara blush. When he had gotten his breathing under control, Max turned to Lara, his rage very evident.

"How in the hell do you fight a Goddamn giant squid? Huh? It's not like you can use traditional tactics on the thing! Think we can out-flank the sea monster? How do you do this?"

"Calm down..."

"Were you calm the first time you wrestled a 'gator? Okay, I'm a little pissed of here, but I just had my cherry broke fighting killer animals - and please tell me how, in the name of John Buffum, a giant squid got into a volcano in eastern Russia?"

"I said..."

"I know what you said, 'better not to ask' I know..." Max sat down on the cold stone floor. "Okay...I'm sorry. Believe it or not, in some crap-hole like Bosnia, things make a whole lot more sense - you can anticipate stuff. Here, you can't."

"Yes, you can, but it takes a little experience - you're doing very well."

"Really?"

"Still breathing?"

"Yeah...oh, I get it."

"Shall we be off?"

"Will we have to come back through here?"

"Possibly, it's hard to say."

"All right," Max reached into his vest and removed two grenades. He pulled the pins and dropped them into the water. "Gonna show that thing how I play..."

Both he and Lara stepped back from the water. What seemed an eternity later they felt a vibration and a small geyser of water spurted into the room. A few seconds later, the water got much darker and some pieces of tentacle made their way to the surface.

"Good to know you don't hold a grudge," Lara remarked.

"What did I tell you about the sarcasm?"