Whoa, I surprised even myself with this chapter - gosh, I can be evil sometimes. ;-)
harshlightofday - (Linzi, right?) - If you hate cliffhangers, you're going to go nuts at the end of this chapter. HeeHee. And, yep, I really like annoying my characters. LOL
Lady Lara Croft - I'm glad you liked it! I figured it was time for some out and out action.
Thanks to both of you for your reviews. :-)
With regards to this chapter - the Liz Hurley reference is aimed at the 2000 version of Bedazzled. Just thought I'd clarify that so you didn't think I'd gone totally loony. And no, this isn't the end. There's a lot more to come yet.
In The Deepest Recesses Of The Soul
"Gero!" Lara snapped his name, spinning around to take in her new surroundings angrily, suddenly sick of his games. "Gero! Gero, I know you can hear me, come out and fight me!"
There was no answer, only deathly silence and a chill in the air. It was so, so quiet. Lara sighed in frustration and, picking a random direction down the passage she had been transported to, stalked off.
"Whoa!" was Kurtis' initial reaction to his change of location. He too spun around, wondering what had just happened, looking for Lara or Gero or anybody. There was nobody. Just Kurtis and his shadow and no sound but silence, alone in another passageway carved deep into the rock.
"Lara?" he called, but there was no reply. "Lara," he muttered to himself tetchily, suddenly deciding that if it wasn't for her then he wouldn't be in this mess, and he too began to walk.
"'Takeshi's Castle', eh?" Bryce sounded intrigued as he examined the leaflet that Akira had given Hillary in the sushi bar. It was all in Japanese, so he didn't understand a word of it, but Akira and Takeshi were still with them and had kindly translated. "Nothing to do with you, then, Takeshi?"
Takeshi laughed. "No, my name is very common. The show is very popular, lots of people will see you on the television."
"And it's basically one hundred people getting slowly whittled down to just a few as they all try to do strange, physically demanding games?" Hillary sounded apprehensive, to say the least.
"Sounds fun," said Bryce, handing the leaflet back to Akira. "We're in."
"We are?" Hillary squeaked.
"We're on holiday, and dammit, we're going to have fun. Akira, Takeshi – we'll meet you at the sign-up stand as soon as it opens tomorrow. Right now, we're going to go back to our hotel and get some sleep."
Hillary smiled politely at their new acquaintances and then turned to follow Bryce, groaning. "I can foresee disaster, Bryce."
"Nonsense. It'll be fun."
The labyrinth was never-ending. Twist after turn after dead end, going round in circles, Lara was getting nowhere, finding only deserted rooms with locked doors, useless equipment or yet more corridors branching off. The glaring electric lights at regular intervals bathing the area in a harsh yellow and the almost constant presence of doors gave Lara no reason to feel wary. There was obviously no one around except for Gero, and she was too angry with him to feel frightened. Above the sound of her angry footsteps crunching violently along the stony floors as she fought to navigate her way out, Lara thought she heard movement, and she immediately came to a dead stop, whipping her gun out of its holster and turning to scan the area with its barrel. Nothing and no one. Again. She sighed in frustration and let her weapon fall to her side, hoping that Kurtis was faring better than she was.
His Boron X raised ready to take out anything that might appear in front of him, Kurtis trod carefully and quietly along his own chosen path in the maze of tunnels, finding little to use as landmarks by which to track his progress. The area that he had been transported to was dark, the electric lights being fewer and some turned off, the doorways a rare occurrence. The silence and the shadows were too clichéd to make him feel anything other than intensely cautious.
He suddenly became aware of a presence behind him, and he spun immediately to fix his aim.
"Lara!" She stood there before him, standing with her weight offset to one leg and her hand leant casually against the wall, a satirical smile on her face that widened as he let out a long sigh and let his gun drop, raising his eyes skywards in relief. "Thank god it's you," he drawled.
"Kurtis, darling!" she said, returning her weight to her feet and taking a few strutting steps towards him, her voice cracking in mock glee as she spoke. "So good to see you!"
"O…k…" Kurtis regarded her with slight suspicion, a little taken aback by the uncharacteristic show of spoof sass, especially at such a seemingly inappropriate time. "You, er, find Gero?"
"Oh, I'm sure he's around here somewhere." She reached the point in front of him where normally one would stop to continue a conversation face to face at a comfortable distance, but she continued towards him and Kurtis found himself taking a step back towards the wall, completely bemused by her bizarre behaviour. "Although," she continued, backing him up against the wall and placing her hands on his collarbones, "I don't think there's much use in looking for him if he doesn't want to be found. He'll come out when he's ready, and when he does, we'll kill him, simple as that."
"Or not," said Kurtis incredulously. "Only way to kill him is the Tip? And that means you dying? Remember?"
"Alright, fine. We'll find a way to subdue him and escape. Doesn't matter! We'll take things as they come." Her hands went up to his shoulders and slid down his arms, and he found himself pressing back into the wall as far as he could go, absolutely terrified by her apparent interest.
"Well, we're not going to be able to subdue him long enough to escape these caves if we can't even get ourselves out of these tunnels, so I think we should be getting along, don't –" Kurtis said nervously, trying to break free before she interrupted both his words and his actions, pushing him back to the wall hard as she spoke.
"Kurtis, you're so nervous!" Her hands suddenly returned to their previous gentleness, and one slid down his side as the other rested on his chest, her body moving in even closer. "You shouldn't deny yourself anything."
A sudden wave of something approaching terror swept over him, and he forced himself out of her grasp and deftly stepped out into the middle of the tunnel as she moved in to – he presumed – kiss him. "What are you, now? Liz Hurley?! What are you doing?!"
"Kurtis! Relax! Calm down!" She moved towards him again but this time he was ready and he grabbed both of her wrists and pushed her away, leaving her stumbling back a couple of steps to keep her balance. With his own hands now free, he quickly took his gun up again and aimed at Lara, where she was now leaning against the wall looking vaguely annoyed.
"Karel?" he said, more confused and grasping at the only solution he could think of at that moment than worried that the enemy had returned.
Lara sighed and started fingering her lower lip in a show of checking her makeup, but was obviously fully aware that she was in fact just emphasising her mouth. "Do I look like Karel?" she asked, a hint of boredom in her voice.
Elsewhere in the tunnels, in an area bathed in harsh yellow light and lined with doors, another Lara found yet another possible exit locked.
"Damn," she swore to herself, aiming a light punch at the door in frustration. Sighing heavily, she turned away and plodded the few metres to the next door. Listening carefully before trying to open it, she heard a faint humming. She smiled to herself, recognising the sound immediately as one familiar to her from Bryce's hang-outs – it was electrical equipment running. Raising her gun ready to aim and fire, she turned the handle and smiled again as the door clicked and opened under her duress, revealing an empty room populated only by several computer workstations, a couple of servers, a few printers, and some filing cabinets. A base of operations. Perfect.
In answer to Lara's question, Kurtis' eyes travelled down her form and then back up again, settling on those lips she was so enthusiastically pouting.
He had to admit, "Well, no." The fact that she hadn't tried to kill him pretty much ruled in her favour as well. The Boron X dropped once again and he took a lazy few steps towards her. "So just what is going on with you, Lara?"
He hadn't realised he'd got so close until her hands darted out and latched onto his flak jacket, spinning him around to the wall and holding him there, trapped once again. He swallowed nervously and looked down at Lara with just his eyes, head held firmly back against the hard stone behind him as far as he could make it go.
"Just taking advantage of a dark, deserted, underground tunnel," she quipped, and then before he knew what was happening, she was kissing him.
"Bryce would have a heart attack if he saw the IT security in this place," the other Lara said dryly to herself as she waggled a mouse on the nearest computer to remove the screensaver and found the workstation open and ready for viewing, no password or locked keyboard to challenge her.
She sat down at the desk and began to glance through the applications running. The computer wasn't Windows based, and none of the command lines active were ones she recognised, but Bryce had taught her enough to get by. She began to search through the files and programs on the computer, thankfully only a few to look through. It wasn't long before she stumbled across some sort of text file, a schedule with links over to other files detailing plans, operations, missions, surveillance. Her eyes flew over the documents as she opened them, widening in realisation as it slowly became clear the scope of the activities the cult was up to. Cheney wasn't exaggerating when he'd said that the Rebirth Cult was a threat.
The things they were planning…sacrificing herself or not, Gero had to go.
He knew that she was strong, but Kurtis was surprised at the effort it took to push Lara away. After what seemed like an age, he managed it, and stood with Lara's hands still gripped onto his jacket, breathing heavily in shock and staring at her with wide eyes clouded in confusion.
He wanted to ask her what the hell was going on, who was she really, if this was some sort of ruse would she let him in on it, but he couldn't quite get the words out. His turmoil didn't last for long, however, as the irrational part of his brain soon won out, he glared at his common sense before tossing it out of the window, and then he kissed her back.
Tenacious and ready for war, the other Lara stalked down the stone corridors following a route she'd planned from a map of the cult complex stored on the computer. Her head was bowed and her eyes raised menacingly as her shoulders, held steady and tense, swung slightly with her walk. Nothing and no-one was going to stop her from killing Gero. If she died, then she died, there was nothing she could do about it, but at least it would be with redemption for her darker deeds after Egypt, and at least she wouldn't be left alive feeling weak and guilty for not doing everything she could. The Periapt Tip was held tightly in her right hand, her strong fingers flexing against it rhythmically, feeling its power and drawing the strength to stay focused from its cold, hard crystal – cold and hard as she needed to be.
Kurtis' Lara broke the kiss and pulled back, smiling evilly to herself as she opened her eyes to find his still closed, his head still bowed towards her, stunned. Her hands found his and she pulled, tugging him away from the wall. His eyes slid open as the movement roused him and, smiling mischievously, Lara began to lead him away down the tunnel, walking backwards.
The complex was massive, but Lara at last reached her goal – Gero's throne room. Deep within the maze of tunnels and caves, it was in the area accessible only by the ledge within the first cavern they had entered, the area off limits to the lesser members of Gero's following, and a pain to navigate. With badly signposted directions and an area only accessible through a near fatal tidal wave, Lara thought wryly to herself, Gero clearly doesn't trust anyone except himself, which is too bad for him, because now there's no-one around to save him from me. Her thoughts were reflected in a small smile, and she flattened herself against the wall of the entrance tunnel and peered around the corner into the cavern.
Atmospheric flickering torches lined the walls, stone benches for the higher members of the cult strung out along the length of the cavern and running parallel was one long deep red carpet, all drawing one's eye to the far end of the room where there sat an elaborate throne flanked by tall free standing candle sticks of black iron. Standing in front of it, leaning down towards somebody sat in it, was a tall figure dressed in combat fatigues much like her own, and her first thought was that it was one of the other soldiers, somehow escaped, but a movement in the corner of her eye took her attention to a wrought iron cage in the opposite corner of the room that she had missed on her first glance, and there inside, chained to the walls, were the remaining members of her team.
She strained her eyes to make out their faces against the distance and the shadows and assured herself that, yes, they were all alive and well and definitely all held prisoner. So the figure by the throne was…
The figure turned to a small pedestal to the left of the throne and reached down to pick up whatever lay there, and Lara gasped as she realised that the figure – was her. Desperate to know what was going on, her eyes darted back to the throne and this time her breath stuck in her throat as she saw Kurtis, lounging comfortably with his eyes fixed firmly on the other her, an almost dazed look on his face. He blinked as he noticed what it was the impostor had picked up and his countenance cleared as he suddenly became wary.
"What's that for?" Lara heard him ask.
"Oh, nothing," her own, stolen voice replied and then Lara watched in horror as her doppelganger began to move around to the back of the throne, its free hand trailing languidly over Kurtis' cheek, its reassuring smile distracting him from realising what was all too clear to the real Lara – the object from the pedestal was a ceremonial knife, and it was heading right for Kurtis' throat.
All that Lara knew about Gero, her previous encounters with him, his words, his voice, everything flooded back to Lara in a jarring montage of memories that slammed into her mind and then, only a split second later, disappeared to be replaced by one singular thought.
"Gero!" she cried out, leaping out of the shadows and into the room, standing before him with that same determined stance that had taken over her body on her journey to the throne room. The false Lara stopped suddenly, the knife hovering only inches above Kurtis' jugular, and her victim, suddenly freeing himself from the almost dream like state he had apparently been in, locked his eyes onto the real Lara's, everything suddenly becoming clear to him.
His breath caught in his throat and the hand hovering in front of him with the knife in its grasp morphed quickly and easily from one of pale skin, manicured nails and long slim fingers into one more masculine, with rougher skin adorned with golden rings. Kurtis reacted without thinking and shoved the hand away, freeing himself from the threat of the knife, and leapt out of the chair and onto his feet, dashing across the room towards Lara and stopping by her side, spinning to face Gero, now standing behind the throne unmasked and smiling in amusement.
"Gero," Kurtis shouted, almost in disbelief. "Why the hell did you –" His question was cut off as he realised that, at least on some level, he had kissed Gero. "Oh my god!" he yelled, covering his hand with his mouth as if he was going to be sick and bending over, one arm across his stomach. "Oh, that is – oh god!"
Lara raised an eyebrow and took in Kurtis' actions with her peripheral vision, keeping her focus locked on Gero. "What?" she asked, succinctly.
"He seduced me!" Kurtis pointed accusingly, still looking horrified.
"Well, in my opinion, it was one of the weaker performances of my career," Gero said, "it's hardly my fault that you were desperate."
"What the hell did you wanna do that for?!" Kurtis demanded, apparently more bothered that Gero had pretended to be Lara than about the fact that he had been about to kill him.
"Well, forgive me for disgusting you, but it seemed like the best way to subdue you enough to be able to slit your throat – terribly sorry for thinking tactics," he replied sarcastically. "Besides, I was in Lara's form."
"In Lara's form," Kurtis repeated with accentation, "not actually Lara!"
Lara watched the interchange with quiet intrigue and a hint of amusement,but decided enough was enough and spoke up before the spat could continue further. "If you wanted to kill him, Gero, why didn't you just cage him with the others?"
"Like this?" Before anyone could move, the same golden spears that had trapped the soldiers in the cavern shot up through the floor around Kurtis, caging him in, though with a lot more room to move than the others had been granted. He darted forward to the bars, grabbing them in fury and desperately trying to prise them apart, but they wouldn't move. Lara only stared at the spikes, taken aback, as Gero calmly began to walk towards her, knife still in hand. "Because I didn't want to kill him. I just wanted his blood. By taking the blood of a Lux Veritatis with this knife, in this blessed room, and being given the blood willingly, I can drink and become immune to the effects of the Periapt Tip. There's always a get-out clause when it comes to the Knights Templar, they were very cautious people. And you'd be surprised just how much you can get someone to give you willingly when they worship you."
"I doubt that Kurtis would have willingly allowed you to cut his throat just because you were pretending to be me," Lara said, her eyes now meeting Gero's where he stood only two feet in front of her.
"Actually, I think he was rather too busy living the dream to worry about what I was actually doing."
Lara laughed, amused by Gero's assessment of the situation. "I'm going to kill you, Gero," she said.
"Oh Lara, if I believed that, I'd have locked you up with all the others. I know what you've been through, Lara. I know that your outlook has changed. I know what you feel, what you think, deep underneath all the lies you tell yourself to convince yourself that Egypt doesn't affect you anymore. You know as well as I do that a woman such as yourself is more than capable of taking anything and anyone she wants, and you know as well as I do that you're tired of doing the right, honourable thing. Join me, Lara, and I'll give you anything and everything you've always dreamed of. Join me, and be true to yourself."
Lara's head shook and she braced one foot behind her to firm her position as she raised the Periapt Tip to level with Gero's heart and fixed him with a strong, closed off gaze. "I don't want your power."
Gero laughed. "Lara, everybody wants my power."
"Well I don't."
Kurtis only looked on in horror from his cage, powerless to do anything and knowing all too well that Gero was right. Lara was tired of doing the right thing. He had always seen it in her eyes and he had always heard it in her voice, and by god, if he hadn't made it so much worse by treating her the way he had.
"Prove it, Lara," Gero whispered, standing before her open and vulnerable to attack.
Lara's eyes began to water and her lip almost quivered as she spoke, her voice shaking, "You intend to kill thousands of innocent Americans and make it look like China and Britain did it. You intend to kill thousands of innocent Chinese and Britons and make it look like America did it. And whilst they're destroying each other in retaliation, you intend to attack those countries who depend on the superpowers for protection and assert your own rule over them, and then use their resources to crush the until-then unbeatable leading nations. You're planning to assassinate leaders to leave their territories in turmoil and vulnerable and you've already started putting in place measures to ensure that once you have a foothold you'll be able to wipe out any who don't convert to your faith. I can't let you live."
"Prove to me that I'm wrong and do the right thing," Gero said again, as if Lara had never spoken. "Prove to me that you don't want the power that you know you so rightfully deserve, and sacrifice your life to take mine."
Lara faltered, a tear escaping down her cheek, but she sucked in a breath and drew her arm back to strike.
She expected first the initial shock of impact as the Periapt Tip plunged into Gero's body. Then she expected pain or lightening or something as it drained her life away in order to take Gero's, but none of it came.
It took her a moment to register Kurtis' fraught voice screaming her name, a moment longer to realise that the Tip had been torn from out of her hand, and then an increment of time so small that it didn't exist, to begin to see again, and to see that the Tip was moving those small inches through the air towards Gero's heart with nothing guiding it other than that one unseen force that she had only seen in action since she had met Kurtis.
In the split second it took for the Tip to reach home, Lara had spun in slow motion to see Kurtis' gaze firmly fixed on the Periapt Tip as he concentrated on its control, and she had spun back in time to see the crystal shard drive home into Gero's body, blood seeping out into his clothes, and then his body being shoved backwards by another unknown force that sent him flying backwards through the air. No sooner had he begun to move then Lara's eyes were back on Kurtis, and time returned to normal as he too was flung back towards the bars of his cage, where he bounced against them and fell, lifeless, to the floor.
It was then that Lara realised she was screaming.