It took a few minutes for her eyes to adjust to the darkness around her. Lara found the chamber she had entered was cavernous in size, stretching back much further than she could see. Water dripped from the distant ceiling and echoed in discordant rhythm with her footsteps as she considered her surroundings.

The concrete walls were blasted with slime, no doubt the result of the creature Boaz hauling her foul bulk through this chamber as she had waited to be released. A faint stench of decay still remained. Lara wished that she had a flare or a flashlight to lend more light to her surroundings. Perhaps the orange glow of Kurtis' weapon might have sufficed, but it was now unresponsive in her hand. Lara slipped it inside her backpack and drew her Scorpion-X instead. She did not wish to become a meal to anything that might be hiding in the shadows: the Strahov complex was still a dangerous place to be.

Lara soon noticed that her surroundings were becoming brighter. She also glimpsed a trail of blood at her feet. Instinctively her grip upon her weapon tightened as she continued on.

She knew that there must be a light source emanating from somewhere. Through the gloom she looked up and caught glimpse of an observation room set up high in the rafters. Here the distinct shape of a metal catwalk terminated in a ladder. Lara holstered her weapon with a smile and approached the far wall to climb it.

She reached the catwalk proper to find traces of blood upon the metal railings. Lara quickly drew her gun again and approached the door leading onto the observation room.

A large window of plexiglass greeted her, revealing indistinct details of the room beyond. It looked very much like the security booth where she had turned off the power to the Biodome earlier. A table and blue plastic chair stood beside a bank of blinking monitors and computer terminals, now unmanned and seemingly abandoned. The walls were an off-colour shade of white. Another door led off onto a fire exit.

Lara holstered her weapon, turning aside to study the metal door leading into this room. It was plastered with yellow-and-black signs warning Strahov personnel of various dangers. She noted with amusement her failure to don a hard hat before entering this area.

The door had no visible handle, being of the design which opened with the use of a keycard. Lara still had her high security pass from the Bio-Research Facility, and she removed it from her backpack and quickly slid it into the indicated slot. The keypad failed to light up. Lara frowned and tried the pass again. The door mechanism still did not respond. She was about to try it a third time when realization dawned on her. The explosion back in Eckhardt's lab must have knocked out the power again.

"Great," she muttered darkly to herself, "now I'm stuck inside this hellhole…"

Lara clenched her fist about her security pass in frustration. The room through the window beyond was her ticket out of the Strahov, but it remained just out of her reach. She had entered the arena through the underwater passage leading from the Vault of Trophies, and that way was now closed. There was no chance that she could reach the upper levels by herself. This was the only exit.

Anger rose up hot inside her. She drew back a foot to strike the impassable door for whatever it was worth. The next moment there was a crack like thunder. She almost jumped out of her skin when the door blasted clean off its hinges.

What on earth…?

Lara ripped her gun from its holster and spun around, her heart pounding. She found herself staring at a familiar figure down the barrel of her Scorpion-X.

"You don't look too pleased to see me."

Lara bit back a gasp as Kurtis emerged from the shadows. He looked terrible. His face was frighteningly pale as he lowered his outstretched hand. The other hand clutched at the catwalk railing beside him. His dark t-shirt was drenched with blood, the red print which reminded her of King Solomon's Seal torn apart to reveal a gaping wound in his abdomen. He looked as though he might collapse at any moment.

Despite her shock Lara still retained her senses. Her aim never wavered as she took a step back and removed the safety on her Scorpion-X.

"How do I know you're not Karel?"

"Karel?" He shook his head in confusion. His left hand was now pressed to his bleeding stomach. "What the hell are you talking about?" She noticed him tighten his grip upon the railing beside him. She could see that this support was the only thing which was keeping him upright.

Her expression softened a little.

"Hold out your right hand."

"My right hand? Can't you see that I'm spilling my guts here?"

She gestured threateningly with her gun.

"Just do it, Kurtis."

He stared at her in confusion for another moment, but then seemed to realise that arguing with her was futile. With some difficulty he braced his shoulder against the catwalk railing and removed his hand cautiously from this support. It was slippery with blood.

"Jesus, woman," he muttered, holding out his hand towards her. "Show a little less sympathy for the guy bleeding to death, would ya?"

Lara did not register this comment. Her eyes were too busy frantically searching his palm. Her shoulders sagged with relief when she saw no trace of the Nephilim symbol which had been imprinted upon Karel's hand. It was Kurtis after all.

She slowly lowered her gun as Kurtis awaited her response. He was breathing with considerable effort as he steadied himself against the catwalk railing. Lara returned her gun to its holster. Although he remained silent she could sense his distress.

"What happened?" she said. Her voice was very quiet. The question seemed to hang in the air for a moment, emphasising the metallic silence of the Strahov. She took a step forward and moved across to help him.

"Boaz," Kurtis said. He shot her a look. "Bitch skewered me right through the stomach. I guess killing her didn't go over too well."

Lara smiled at this. Her smile disappeared as soon as her gaze fell again upon the gaping hole in his abdomen. The wound continued to bleed at an alarming rate despite the pressure that Kurtis was applying to it. His hands were saturated with blood.

"I don't understand how you are still standing," Lara said. "The last time I saw something as bad as this the man was already in the morgue." She helped Kurtis to drape his right arm across her shoulder, and she took the bulk of his weight as she slipped her left arm around his waist. She frowned a little at how heavy he was. "Either there's something you're not telling me, Kurtis, or you make one very convincing ghost."

Kurtis laughed. He quickly regretted this action as he promptly doubled over with pain. Lara paused and waited for him to regain his composure before they struggled through the doorway into the observation room beyond. It was eerily quiet inside, a stark contrast to the bustling activity of the building just a few hours earlier. Lara carefully stepped over the mangled door before helping Kurtis into the blue plastic chair set against the far wall.

"I don't know about your ghost theory," Kurtis managed with a grimace, "but your guess is as good as mine. I think I'm running on borrowed time here."

Lara slipped her backpack from her shoulders and rummaged inside for a roll of bandages. She soon found an unused medipack and ripped open the packaging in earnest.

"I'm going to wrap the wound as best as I can," she told him. "The power is out, so we can't count on calling for an ambulance. Do you have a phone with you?"

Kurtis shook his head. Lara avoided his gaze as she unfurled one of the bandages and wrapped it loosely about her fist. She did not have a phone either. It had been lost when one of the police dogs in Paris had taken her backpack. She would just have to try and get him to a hospital herself.

Kurtis seemed to sense her innermost thoughts.

"We can take my motorbike," he told her. "It's parked outside. Hopefully the engine hasn't frozen stiff in this weather."

Lara nodded absently, ripping a piece of gauze from the thick wad inside her medipack. She directed Kurtis to remove the pressure from his wound, and he lifted his shaking hand as she pressed the gauze to the wound and instructed him to hold it firm. This he did as she unrolled the bandage from her fist and wrapped it tightly about his abdomen. She worked quickly and without speaking, and Kurtis slipped his hand away when instructed as she secured the bandage with a firm double knot.

"Keep pressure on the wound," Lara said. She turned aside and returned her supplies to her backpack. "If the skewer hasn't hit any major organs then you might just have a chance."

Kurtis smiled grimly as she returned her backpack to her shoulders.

"Thanks, I feel very reassured." He made to stand up again with her help, but hissed through his teeth at the pain caused by this movement. His right hand reached out to steady himself against the chair. "We better make tracks. Don't think I'm gonna stay upright for long."

Lara's grip tightened about his waist. The blue plastic of the chair was now covered with his blood.

"Just hold on, alright?" Kurtis struggled shakily to his feet and together they crossed the room and made for the nearby fire exit. Lara paused and shifted her weight in order to reach out and push open the metal bar affixed to the door. "You've made it this far - you even managed to climb a ladder - so I wouldn't write you off just yet. We should make it to the hospital in time as long as we don't run into any more of Eckhardt's creations…"

XXX

Despite her reassurances Lara noticeably quickened her pace once they had reached the bottom of the stairwell. The pair continued with faltering steps down another dank corridor of the Strahov. The building was worryingly quiet; not even the low hum of the fortress' heating system could be heard as they passed through the sterile corridors and empty security offices. The remainder of Eckhardt's soldiers had obviously abandoned their posts as soon as an explosion had rocked the lower levels.

Kurtis had hardly spoken since they set off, concentrating instead on the effort of putting one foot firmly in front of the other. Lara could sense that something else was troubling him. Finally he seemed to give up the pretense. She felt his hand squeeze her shoulder ever so slightly.

"Is he dead?"

Lara did not meet his gaze.

"Yes." She did not particularly wish to elaborate about Karel's involvement at the moment. That was a conversation that could wait for another day if they both managed to live through this. "Eckhardt is dead, Kurtis. The Shards killed him just like you said they would."

Kurtis seemed to relax at these words. Knowing that his father's murderer was finally dead must have brought with it a sense of closure. She wondered whether he was disappointed that he had not been the one to kill Eckhardt himself.

"Did he suffer?"

Lara knew the answer that he wanted to hear.

"He did."

There was silence between them as she left him to digest this information. Occasionally Kurtis spoke a few words of instruction or gestured with a weak nod, directing her along the route he had originally taken through the Strahov. Lara could not tell whether they were making any real progress as they struggled on. Every corridor was beginning to look the same.

She hitched his arm a little higher over her shoulder and urged him onwards, grimacing at the strain of supporting his weight. She had no idea how long it had been since Kurtis had been injured, but she knew that every second was going to make a difference. His chances of survival were gradually slipping away.

They had passed through an endless number of corridors before Kurtis spoke again.

"My father was betrayed to his death." His voice was thick with emotion. "He thought that my mother was in danger, but he found himself walking into an ambush. I'd been estranged from him for years. We spoke one last time before it happened." He stumbled a moment and Lara paused to help him recover. "My mother sent me the Periapt Shards and my Chirugai – the bladed weapon you saw me using earlier. That was when I first went after Eckhardt."

Lara cast her eyes to the floor.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I lost someone to Eckhardt as well." At least she thought she had, until Karel's startling revelation barely an hour ago. Lara frowned to herself but did not mention this to Kurtis just yet. He had enough problems to worry about. "He was a mentor as well as a friend... I guess you could say he was like a father to me. We weren't on the best of terms when it happened, but still. It hurts."

They had reached the exit they were looking for without even realising it. Lara stopped to help Kurtis lean against the wall beside them, then braced her feet and pulled open one of the heavy double doors set before her. She found herself looking out onto the interior of a familiar warehouse.

She turned back to Kurtis with a scathing look.

"You followed me inside the Strahov?"

Kurtis smirked at her annoyance.

"Hey, I figured there was no point in both of us trying to find a way in. You seemed like you knew what you were doing."

Lara would have scolded him if not for the seriousness of the situation at hand. Instead she returned and helped to support his weight again, leading him out through the doorway as she muttered obscenities under her breath. The warehouse before them stretched for a considerable distance, filled with packing crates and shelves of steel piping. A metal catwalk ran along the perimeter of the walls. Lara had been sneaking along that same catwalk just a few hours earlier.

"How did you get past the guards?" she asked.

Her question was soon answered as a dim shape loomed out of the darkness. It was a dead guard, lying sprawled at their feet with a huge gash along the base of his neck. He was still wearing his gasmask. Lara was glad that she could not see his face.

"Oh, you know," Kurtis replied, following her line of vision. "Old-fashioned patience, I guess."

They passed two more bodies before they reached the edge of the warehouse. Lara found the garage door before them standing partway open. Thankfully there was sufficient space for them to pass through, and she and Kurtis ducked underneath the gap and beyond into the room full of huge metal containers where Lara had first entered the Strahov.

They half-walked, half-stumbled through the side door and out into the unforgiving cold of night-time Prague. Kurtis' motorbike stood expectantly against the brick wall of the building in front of them, dusted with a fresh layer of snow. The wind howled threateningly as they approached it.

Lara fished Kurtis' keys out of his back pocket with some difficulty. Then she helped him onto the bike and kick started the engine before climbing on behind him, wrapping her left arm firmly about his waist. She twisted the throttle with her right. There was a roar and a sputtering of snow as the motorbike sped out of the alley and screeched a sharp turn out onto the street.

Lara was so intent upon the road before her that she was shocked to feel Kurtis' fingers gently entwine themselves with hers. She made no move to brush off this gesture. On the contrary, she gripped his hand a little tighter as she urged the bike onwards in search of a hospital. She was just glad that Kurtis could not see the colour rising in her cheeks. It had nothing to do with the cold.

XXX

This is my first ever posted fanfic, so I would really appreciate some feedback. If enough people like this then I will post some more :)