An explosion rattled the corridor, bits and pieces of the detonated propane tank flying through the air and making Nate and company duck and cover their heads as they sprinted down the hall. Being at the rear of his group, Nate was back to firing over his shoulder at their pursuers as soon as the blast was finished, while Chloe shouted directions from the lead.

"Watch out for that toolbox!" her voice cut through the din, warning the others behind her. It came too late to keep Nate from tripping on the stray object which was sitting in the middle of the floor, and he tumbled head over heels with a cry of surprise. Charlie heard him go down and turned to cover for him, firing rapid shots from his pistol and driving Floki's goons back around the corner for shelter. Nate was on his feet again, and Charlie rushed ahead through an open steel door into the adjoining hall. Firing blindly around the rusty door as he swung it closed, Nate kept the thugs at bay as he slammed and locked it behind them. It would only be a temporary setback, he knew, but in times like these, every second counted. Not a moment's hesitation passed and his footsteps were thundering down the corridor after his teammates.

This section of the mine's superstructure was set up in a roughly horseshoe shape, besides a few short hallways branching off the main body of the building, with the two legs of the horseshoe on the two sides of the river, and a bridge connecting them on one end. In the middle of the "U" was a collection of pipes, hoppers, and conveyor belts for processing the raw material produced down inside the mine's many dark shafts that were cut into the mountain, and at the open end of the horseshoe a small, flat plot of land was cut out of the side of the river on which sat some abandoned machines that had at one time fed the hungry rock crushers. Nate's rescue had begun on one end of the "U", where it connected to the gondola station, and now they had been chased almost all the way to the other end of it, where they hoped to find an exit back onto the mountain. Overall, he reflected to himself while chugging his legs furiously, things had gone pretty well since making it off the cable cars. Which probably meant something was about to hit the fan.

Windows whipped by Nate in a blur as he kept step with his partners, only a pace or two behind Charlie, while Sully and Chloe were in the lead by several yards. His teeth gritted in determination, he was leaning even harder into his run when the windows blew out behind him, and Nate and Cutter both instinctively dropped to the ground. Shielding their heads as machine gun fire came from the opposite side of the river, sweeping down the hall and showering them in a storm of glass shards, the two men crouched low behind the protection of the wall until it all blew over. Up ahead, with their backs pressed to the wall beyond the last shattered pane, Chloe and Sully called to them to make a break for it.

"C'mon, mate," Charlie said, slapping Nate's shoulder. "Let's run!" The Englishman bolted, still keeping as low as possible in case of another strafe of gunfire, and Nate pulled himself up to follow. He started running, also at a half crouch, when he heard Chloe scream.

"RPG, RPG!"

Oh crap. Nate reigned himself in and frantically looked in the direction she was pointing. "Get down, get down!" someone shouted. Nate tried to move, do something, but suddenly it was like he had two left feet and he just ended up tripping and falling on his backside. An explosion erupted a few yards ahead, between him and the others, and everything was a confused jumble of flames and smoke and flying debris. Nate's vision went white as he was temporarily blinded by the flash, and his ears were ringing painfully; he found himself reduced to curling up on the floor to protect himself from falling rubble until everything cleared out enough for him to see, or even hear, again. When he could finally make sense of anything, he was faced with another alarming reality.

That last explosion seemed to have pushed the dilapidated building past its limits: the corroded supports beams were giving way under the strain, and the corridor was now dipping down at a steep angle toward the river. Some fifteen feet above him, Chloe and Sully peered out of the remains of the hall on the other side of the blast and called out to him, while behind him he heard the steel door suddenly burst open. "Oh, hell!" Nate cursed, grabbing onto the edge of the nearest window frame to keep from sliding off the end of the floor. Floki's goons came tumbling through the opening in a disorderly mess, equally taken by surprise at the sudden pitch of the hall. One tumbled straight past Nate and fell to the ground below, while the others scrambled for a hold on the slick diamond plate floor. From his position, Nate picked off a couple of them as they slid, but one of the men managed to catch a window a little higher up, and pulled out his own gun to return fire. Guns blazed as Nate risked a wary glance over his shoulder, realizing that he needed to get out of there, and fast.

Finally Nate landed a lucky shot, and the thug tumbled head over heels out the end of the corridor. Nate quickly holstered his gun and turned his attention to an escape. Metallic squeals and pops came from above him, letting him know that his time was up. He quickly leaped from the end of the hall and grabbed a pipe, swinging from it to land on a platform nearby. As he landed he heard the sound of the whole section of building breaking off and collapsing into the river with a crash. Without even stopping to view the devastation, he ducked behind a rusty steel plated wall for cover as he reassessed his situation.

Scarcely had the noise died down and bullets began cutting through the air from two directions, ricocheting off the wall Nate was hiding behind. It only took him a moment to spot one group of thugs standing on the opposite edge of the collapsed corridor from Sully, Chloe, and Charlie, and another group firing from the windows on the other side of the river. His current position gave him just enough cover from both sets of goons, but only if he squeezed himself into the corner as tight as he could, and it was only a matter of time before the guys on the other side of the river found a more advantageous spot to fire on him. He could see Chloe and the others boldly returning fire from their end of the hall, helping keep the group of thugs in the hallway busy, but the other was staying well out of their sight. Nate frowned: he was pinned down pretty well here. The only route of escape seemed to be climbing up the outside of some of the machinery in full view of both sets of goons. Such a brazen act, though daring, was a pretty much sure-fire way to wind up in an early grave.

Then Nate's eyes fell on a ladder leaned up against the edge of the platform he was standing on, with just the top two rungs visible. "That might work," he said to himself. He looked across the river, flinching as several more bullets bounced off the other side of the wall behind him, then bolted from his hiding spot.

The maelstrom of bullets only increased as he came into the open, but Nate didn't stop. He grabbed the top rung of the ladder and pushed, planting his feet a few rungs down as it came away from the edge and he ran off the platform, hugging the ladder closely as it carried him out and over the river. The yell that came from Nate and echoed through the canyon started as one of triumph, like he was on an amusement park ride, but quickly morphed into a cry of panic and confusion as he spotted a pipe crossing through the ladder's trajectory which he had not noticed when he was scoping out his escape. He came to a violent stop against the pipe just after the ladder passed through vertical and he half hurled himself, half was flung from the top, spinning crazily through the air towards the other side of the river. He fell on the roof of a tin shed, crashing through the corroded sheet metal like it was cardboard, and landed in a heap on top of some broken crates before rolling off onto the floor.

His eyes slowly fluttered open, the weariness at the absolute beating he had taken over the last few days beginning to catch up with him. Above him, a hazy beam of light shining past the curled edges of torn roofing filtered down through the dust his explosive entrance had stirred up,casting a sepia glow on the scene inside. Nate sat up with a groan and pushed himself up out of the pile of splintered wood. He limped forward a couple tentative steps and cast a glance at his surroundings. Among the wreckage, it caught his eye that there was a piece of plywood that had been laid over the top of the crates but now was cocked at an angle and halfway falling off, a number of books and crinkled sheets of paper scattered in front. Someone had been using this little shed as an office.

The next thing he noticed was the little leather-bound book pinned under the corner of the makeshift desk, and his eyes widened. "No shit!" he breathed. He hurriedly lifted the plywood and scooped up the journal. Letting out a chuckle as he flipped through the pages to verify it really was Newton's, Nate said, "This must've been Floki's little study. Ha!" He pulled the elastic around it again and tucked the book in his back pocket. "This is the second time I've had to take this thing back from him!"

Nate pushed open the sagging door and stepped outside, only to immediately have a fist catch his jaw, bodily spinning him around to bounce of the side of the shed. "Aww," he moaned, rubbing his chin as he turned to face the threat. "Cheap shot! Gotta warn a guy."

The stars cleared from his vision, and though he kept a smile on his face, Nate felt dread settle into his belly. A few feet away and staring him down was a man with bulging biceps, shoulders to make professional football players cry, and a jaw like something carved in granite. The beast of a thug walked toward him with confident but casual strides, as if Nate was nothing more than a stray cat to evict from his yard. As he approached, a radio clipped to the thug's belt squawked.

"Baldur, Report! Have you subdued Drake?"

With a venomously carefree grin at Nate, the thug apparently known as Baldur stopped and answered the call, speaking slowly into his radio in a deep baritone, "I have him here. Give me three minutes- tops."

Nate chuckled nervously, raising his fists, but hesitating to be the one to instigate a fight with the behemoth before him. The man Baldur shoved his radio back on his belt and then swung at Nate with such force that Nate felt the displaced air from the punch as he ducked aside. Immediately, Nate dodged a second swing, the thug's fist glancing instead off of a piece of angle iron behind him.

"Heh, betcha that hurt, big guy!" he taunted as he regrouped, circling then man while looking for an opening.

Baldur grinned and cracked his knuckles. "Didn't even feel it."

Nate's smile withered, his voice like a deflating balloon as he squeaked, "Oh, crap."

Every shot sending a jolt down her arms, Chloe's .45 Defender spat bullets like fire at the thugs across the river. She gritted her teeth and kept her weapon firing as fast as it could until she exhausted yet another clip and was forced to duck back behind the corner to reload. Cutter, standing and firing from over her head, kept the barrage going along with Sully, who was lying on his stomach and firing from down low, making quite the effective onslaught against their foes. A limp arm dangled off the edge on the other side of the break in the hallway on their side, bearing witness to the three treasure hunter's work on that group. It was now down to just the guys across the way- at least for now. Chloe pulled the slide back on her gun then blew the bangs out of her face with a puff out of the corner of her mouth.

"How many more are there? Can you tell?" she asked as she turned back to the fight.

"I count thre- make that two," Cutter said, then drew back himself to reload.

Chloe picked up where she had left off in sending a deadly volley across the expanse before them, but spared a glance down at the last place she had seen Nate before he disappeared. Every once in a while she saw irregular flashes of movement that made her think he was probably caught in yet another brawl with some guy. "We've gotta get down there," she grunted between spurts of gunfire. "He might need help."

It took only another minute before they silenced the last of the thugs across the way, and as the shooting fell silent, Chloe turned on her heel and shoved her pistol in its holster, then began running toward the door nearby. "Come on," she called. "Let's go make sure he's alright."

Following behind her, Sully said to no one in particular, "I'm sure he's holding his own. I taught him how to take care of himself."

Chloe wrinkled her nose as she pushed open the squeaky door to step out onto the mountain. "Ugh. Please, spare me the details."

Sully looked confused. "Huh, whaddaya mean?"

Nate ducked as the crowbar swished overhead by mere inches, and he lashed out in a wild sweeping motion, the bone in his forearm striking Baldur's wrist at the same time the bar clanged against some angle iron. The combined forces of the two impacts wrenched the crowbar from the lieutenant's hands, and it went spinning wildly through the air and scraped painfully down Nate's back. Still better than Mr. Brick House hitting me in the face with it, he thought.

Nate followed quickly with a punch to Baldur's thick gut, then tried out a kick, only to have his foot stopped mid-swing by the Icelander catching it in both of his hands. Before Nate even had a chance to look startled, Baldur, with a flick of his wrists and a jerk of his arms, flung him against the side of a hopper to fall ignominiously to the ground. As Nate struggled to pick himself up off the gritty concrete, Baldur slammed his closed fist against a red button on the wall with unnecessary violence, and a nearby conveyor sprang to life with a mechanical clatter.

"Time to take out the garbage," the lieutenant growled as he stalked toward his fallen adversary. Nate groaned and felt himself getting hauled up by the front of his Henley. He urged his body to fight back, but was suddenly slammed down on the conveyor and felt the prongs on the feed chain catch his holsters, carrying him at an alarming rate toward the rock crusher at the top. Baldur climbed on below him, his feet propped against the next set of prongs, presumably to make sure Nate didn't escape at the last minute.

"At least some one's learning," Nate muttered to himself. Grabbing the sides of the conveyor, he yanked himself upward, freeing the strap of his holsters, but immediately catching the hem of his shirt in the chain instead. "Ah, shit!" He cast a nervous glance toward the opening of the rock crusher, which was alarmingly close. Regularly spaced tremors shook the conveyor, and Nate looked back to see Baldur walking up the side rails toward him with a grim look on his face, clearly eager to shove him in if he got loose. Nate tugged more frantically on his Henley, finally ripping that part of the hem off just before the lieutenant reached him. Wheeling to his feet, Nate threw a wild punch that connected with the thug's jaw, then grabbed him by the collar and threw him just as he reached the brink of the hopper. Baldur bounced off the outside of the hopper and grabbed the edge as Nate desperately threw himself across its opening to grab the other side at the last second.

Hauling himself up to perch precariously on the lip at the top edge, Nate windmilled his arms for balance while looking around for someplace to go. He noticed an I-beam just a few feet above him just as Baldur lifted his bulk over the side of the hopper, and Nate leaped and pulled himself up to it.

In the momentary safety of his elevated position, Nate took the opportunity to glance over at the hallway where Sully and the others had been, and was relieved to see them gone. Good, he thought grimly. As long as they make it out alive, that's really all that matters. Next thing he noticed was group of revolutionaries swarming onto the roof of the other end of the U-shaped corridor, all shouting and pointing at him, while beyond them what looked like an acetylene torch was being swung by a crane. A noise reminded him that he was not alone, and Nate turned to see Baldur standing on the I-beam a couple yards away.

"You know, you're some kind of persistent," Nate said, turning to look at the thug while keeping an eye on the more distant snipers setting up in his peripheral. "Or maybe just a special kind of stupid."

Baldur glowered at him. "I'm just finishing the job."

Out of the corner of his eye he could see the thugs on the roof lining up their shots. Now or never. As the burly lieutenant charged at him, Nate whipped his pistol out of its holster and shot at the gas bottles on the end of the crane's lifting cable. The acetylene exploded with devastating effect, taking out the entire group on the roof in one fell swoop as well as causing Baldur to falter and his punch to fall short of its mark. Nate took a careful step backward and raised his gun to shoot but the Icelander batted the weapon out of his hand and sent it clattering into the feed wheels of the rock crusher below. On the heels of that blow came another that connected solidly with Nate's cheekbone and sent Nate reeling, both with pain and with trying to maintain his balance on the precarious beam they had found to fight on. The follow through of his punch set Baldur also slightly off balance, and as the brute swayed tentatively Nate reached up and gingerly touched his cheek, grimacing at the pain.

"Well," Nate wheezed, his voice cracking with exertion and sounding embarrassingly high, "how 'bout we call this one a tie, huh? If you're happy, I'm happy."

Baldur snickered at Nate's struggling bravado, and launched at him with zeal, driving his fist toward Nate's gut. Nate caught the punch with both hands, trapping Baldur's arms alongside his body, and kneed him in the chin, sending the Icelandic lieutenant staggering backward. It caught the brute by surprise, and panic briefly crossed his face as he reeled dangerously close to falling, but ultimately caught his balance.

"Let's finish this, Drake!" the man snarled, regaining his composure.

"Let's not and say we did," Nate suggested flippantly. His last hit was lucky, but he knew that Baldur's greater weight would soon tip the scales of this fight, so instead Nate plotted out an escape plan. As the thug rushed him again, Nate leaped off the I-beam and grabbed a pipe nearby, leaving Baldur punching at empty air. The force the lieutenant had put behind his swing was impressive, and his momentum carried him off the edge of the beam, screaming with terror. A moment later came the thump of him hitting the inside of the hopper, and then his scream fell silent as a sickening noise came from the rock crusher. Nate squeezed his eyes shut and thanked his lucky stars he was facing the wrong way to see the carnage.

With no enemies in sight, Nate's mind began to switch gears as he made his way toward the building across the pipes and machinery. What now? With his friends free, he could technically walk away, leave this fool's errand, and never look back. It would probably be the smart thing to do. But...

No. He couldn't. Floki and Garnier were still going to keep looking, and if they found whatever power was in Atlantis... Well, it wouldn't be good. Nate swung from the pipe and leaped over to grab another that was running vertically up the side of the building. Once more, he had found himself in the place of being the only thing standing between a couple of egomaniacs and a global threat. Perfect.

"How...do I ever...get myself INTO these...situations?" he muttered through gritted teeth. But he knew. He knew all too well how he got himself there.

All he was trying to do was help- to keep people safe. Trying to be a hero. Why did it feel like the universe was punishing him for it?

God, Elena was right.

Do I really want to be Atlas, holding up the sky, all alone?

Keep moving, Nate. Climb: right hand, left foot, left hand, right foot...

He could feel the front he had been maintaining in order to rescue his friends crumbling around him like a bunch loose rocks stacked against a hurricane; the wedding band still on his finger bit into his finger as he climbed, like a continual reminder of his empty deception toward even his closest friends.

Right hand, left foot.

The crushing weight of the the woman he loved leaving him came suddenly crashing down on his shoulders, almost unbearably. If he had known what this would cost him, would he have still said yes to Sully that day in Athens?

Left hand, right foot.

He would have. Sooner or later, he would have, and there's no use pretending he wouldn't. He never would have let Sully- or Chloe and Charlie for that matter- get into something like this on their own. He reached the top of the pipe and, pulling himself up over the edge of the rusty tin roof, Nate paused to catch his breath. Hunched over, his hands on his knees, he breathed heavily as he recovered from all the craziness he had just gone through, then stood and scanned the perimeter of the ruined mining compound, with the smoke still rising on one side from the gas bottles exploding, and the destroyed hallway in a heap on the other. "Alright, which way did they go?" he asked himself, hoping for some sign of Sully and the others. Below him, the roar of the river was a constant drone in the background.

Despite not seeing any obvious signs of more of Floki's thugs around, Nate couldn't shake the feeling that he was being watched, and it bothered him. Multiple times he looked back and forth to see if someone was sneaking up on him, and always saw no one. Must just be my nerves, he thought.

He held his hand up to shield his eyes from the low hanging sun, squinting at something he thought he saw in the distance. As he tried to discern if it was Sully and the gang, a realization suddenly came to his mind.

The crane! Someone was in the crane! He whirled around to look just in time to see the crane's metal hook swinging toward him, about to hit him. "Oh crap-"

The heavy steel collided hard with him, knocking the wind out of him and making his head swim with pain. He felt himself falling, falling, then splashing into the cold mountain stream back-first, the impact with the surface tension adding to the growing list of hurts. The cold mountain water was bracing, swirling around him in dark currents and eddies. In fact, everything seemed dark. Nate stretched out his arms arms and legs in a sloppy attempt to swim, but each limb felt like it was made of lead that was dragging him down, down, away from the light. In the punch-drunken fog of his mind, he wasn't even sure he knew which way was up anymore, but he knew he had to move fast. He had seen where this river led to when he was coming over from the gondola station, so he knew it only got worse from here.

The current rolled him along the bank as he was swept around a bend in the river, tumbling over and over until finally being swept back into the middle. His movements became more frantic, but seemingly less effective the further he went, and he wasn't sure how much to attribute to the increasing strength of the current as it approached the falls and how much might be that he was probably about to go unconscious, but either way, he didn't like it. The garbled sound of his own grunts mixed with the rush of water, until both were drowned out by something louder. More vicious.

Shit. There it is. It's all over now. He knew now that he was fighting a losing battle, but he fought anyway, motivated by the desire for this not to be the end. This couldn't be it, he had to live another day, at least long enough to tell Elena he was sorry, that she was right. That he never meant to hurt her. It can't end like this, it can't-

The roar crescendoed, and with the last little bit of strength he could muster Nate flung himself as far away from the edge as possible as he went over the precipice of the waterfall.

"Shit. That was a really long detour. He'd better still be okay."

Chloe looked nervously around as she sprinted down the trail. She could hear some kind of white noise growing steadily louder, and surmised there must be a waterfall somewhere nearby.

"I'm tellin' you, I'm sure he'll be fine," Sully said reassuringly, though with every reiteration it was getting harder to tell who exactly he was trying to encourage.

"They must have had some kind of cars or carts for traveling this distance," Cutter said as he hopped down off a boulder in the path. "Otherwise this is bloody ridiculous how long it would take to walk all the time. If we're lucky, maybe we can find one to use when we get out of here."

The path took them near the edge of the cliffs and then rounded a corner, and suddenly the trio was faced with the waterfall that they had been hearing, where the broiling waters of the mountain river dumped into the valley below. Just as Chloe was about to turn heel and run back toward the compound along its banks, a flash of color stopped her.

Exploding from the turbulent rapids at the top of the falls came none other than Nathan Drake, screaming and flailing his arms in a glorious cloud of spray coming off the cascading water. All three watched wide-eyed and mouths agape as he plummeted until disappearing into the heavy mist at the base of the falls.

"Oh my god."

"Holy shit-"

"Piss. Bollocks."

The trio of treasure hunters stared silently after him, watching in hopes of seeing him climb out onto the banks further down. But the light was fading quickly, and visibility was poor, so after several minutes of waiting Chloe reluctantly decided it was time to move on.

Hesitantly, almost reverently, Chloe uttered, "Nate... I never expected him to go off the deep end like that..."

Another brief silence followed, than Sully gruffly interjected, "We've gotta go after him. Let's go!"

"Yeeeaahh, 'e's survived worse," Cutter said with strained optimism.

Chloe kept staring for a moment, her eyes distant and glassy. She wondered how Elena would take it if this was it. She wondered how she would even break the news to her.

Shaking her head, Chloe replied, "You're right. Let's go."

Floki stared into the ruined shed where his office had been, his expression as dark as the sky behind him. The silence allowed him to hear the quiet footsteps as they approached, but his rage-filled eyes remained fixed on the broken stopgap desk and its contents- including the empty space where one particular item should have been.

"Floki!" his subordinate said smartly, giving a salute.

Wearily, the redheaded commander asked, "What is it?"

The man shifted uncomfortably, clearly uncertain how to say what he had to say. Floki was pretty sure he already knew what was coming, but waited for the man anyway. "Baldur... is dead."

"I know."

The silence that fell between them was awkward for the soldier, but Floki was too caught up in his own thoughts to notice. Finally, he sighed, "How many men do we have left?"

Another uncomfortable squirm, and the man cleared his throat. "Not sure, but... not many." Floki heaved another dejected sigh, and the soldier hurried to continue, "But, Drake is dead! He went over the waterfall, sooo... we win! All we have to do is-"

"No!" Floki roared, turning on him. "We lose!" He jabbed his finger at the man's chest, then gestured at the splintered pile of wood behind him. "He had the astrolabe and now the journal, and without those, we're finished!" He accentuated the statement with a hatchet-like slash of his hand through the air. "So get however many men we have left, and walk that river until you find his dead body and recover the artifacts- if he's dead at all," he finished pointedly.

With a rushed "Yes sir!" the man scurried off to rally their limited troops to mount a search. Floki watched him go, the flames from the earlier explosion still dancing faintly above him and casting an eerie orange glow over the scene. As he scratched his bearded chin, Floki's lip twitched as he continued to muse. "For all Garnier's insistence that Drake is some kind of god, he sure is one hell of a man," the Icelander grumbled under his breath before turning and stalking away.