The healing is a slow process and eating his energy recourses, nutrients, water – everything that his body needs to rebuild new tissues. It takes over five minutes before he manages to push through the pain and partial paralysis to crawl on the ancient wooden flooring and reach for his radio.
"Lara?"
The seconds before Lara's response finally reaches him are grueling to endure. "Jacob!" Her voice is all business, but he can hear the fear and the stress underneath. "Did it work? I heard the echo."
"Konstantin and two teams made it down, but the rest should have been crushed," he says forcing to keep as much pain out his voice as possible, "Where are you?"
"I'm just reaching the bottom floor. I saw the Atlas. I'm heading towards it now."
"I'm also on the bottom floor. I'll try to find you." A mission that would be a lot easier if his legs below his knees would listen to anything he tried to tell them.
"You're what?"
It's the first time that he hears the strong reprimand in Lara's voice. It could be comical in any other circumstances that someone as young as her would try to lead him in battle, take the responsibility.
"No, Jacob, no."
"We are all weighed by our own choices, Lara. Move upwards, I'll try to find you."
There is no response but he can almost picture Lara with the radio, trying to find the words to say, but in the end, pushing past the emotionally taxing decision.
His body screams the whole way when he forces himself to stand up and drag himself out of the excavation shaft. But he simply grits his teeth and takes deep breaths to go forward: the pain is only momentary after all.
He hasn't been in the Archives for nearly 800 years and his brain tries to block out the destruction that meets him. The water is up to his waist when he wades through the passages and looks for visual cues of his whereabouts amidst the maze. Dead Trinity soldiers float past him and the smell of sulfur is irritating his lungs.
He quickly decides to abandon his jacket as it's only weighing him down. It's an awfully minor sacrifice in the grand scheme of things but he has had the jacket since looting the inventory the Soviets had left behind them. He had worn it during his time with Alya, and Sofia had grasped the lapels whenever he had carried her around as a toddler. But as always in his life, everything is to be lost.
He is on the smaller tunnels, choosing his routes as a compromise between getting to the Atlas, and though that, to Lara as fast as possible and avoiding the Deathless.
No living Trinity soldier crosses his path which only increases his trepidation.
"We've got her," bursts from his radio after fifteen minutes in the claustrophobic, half-submerged tunnels, and with no notion from Lara, he hastens his steps, making himself dive and maneuver through even smaller gaps and tree roots to reach the main hall more quickly. The only available piece of luck is that the water is not ice-cold so far down thanks to the geothermal warmth and the blazing Greek Fires.
"Jacob?" Lara's voice comes to him when he is closing in on the destination.
"Lara!"
"I've got the Atlas. But they managed to set the place on fire. Where are you?"
There are no two words on what having an uncontained fire in the tunnels will cause with the sulfur. Still, he can only let out a long breath that Lara is still alive, elbowing her way out. "About two rooms away from the main hall. Is the main entrance still standing?"
"Yes, but the fire and the debris are blocking it."
He stops, visibly stops, for a second to think, "The statue of the guard with the insignia askew on its shield?"
He presses forward while waiting for Lara's confirmation.
"Yeah."
"There is a small passage behind it, I'll meet you there."
Finding her alive and not too worse for wear fills his chest with relief but his heart is still heavy with the journey ahead of them.
But it's a small victory, one step into the right direction and he almost grasps her by the arm when they get close enough. He can see the satchel that bulges against her back. There are words that he almost wants to say but nothing is enough for the heroism she has shown today.
On the other hand, Lara eyes him with relieved hesitation. She is scared, maybe more so than he had realized on the radio. But what strengthens his certainty that he made the right call is the quietly voiced, unsure thank you that she gives him. She is someone who is ready to sacrifice herself for others but doesn't expect anyone to do the same for her – or for herself to be worthy of that.
"Come on," he reassurers and pulls her to the right, into another crossing.
They wade and swim their way through the low passages. However, the worst happens when they reach the next larger room, the Archive of Greek history, and the Trinity soldiers cooped there open fire at the Deathless.
The sulfur causes everything to explode in seconds.
Lara's instincts are fast, and she dives immediately like him, but he uses his strength to kick them deeper as the shockwave and the rumble from the stone echo around them, piercing their ears, squeezing their bodies like a vice, and clouding the water.
A heavy wave sloshes over them and Jacob can instantly deduce that they won't be able to advance through the intended route. However, with the already tight passages, they'll soon run out of air as the unleashed water from the upper floors will have nowhere to go. The builders had designed the place with rudimentary plumbing to keep the Archives dry from glacial run-off, but as the place was already swimming, it won't be enough to lower the water level faster than their lungs will hold.
He can see Lara's head turn wildly to look for an exit and he hopes that the Scribers' Hall with the higher ceiling will be intact enough, but it's terrifyingly far when they haven't had the time to prepare their lungs for a longer dive. He'll survive, no matter what— he'll always survive, he thinks wryly — but Lara is mortal despite the notable skills that she has shown.
He grabs her by the arm, gently at first not to cause panic and take any more air by the struggle, before pulling her arm over his shoulder to his front while reaching for her other arm and linking her arms in front of his chest. Slowing down for the action is taking precious seconds, and he prays in his mind for Lara to get his idea and abandon her stubbornness for receiving help on the first go.
There is a brief moment of hesitancy when she probably tries to understand what he means, but the fact alone that she isn't releasing her grip from her other arm, gives him the reassurance to start kicking and diving forward in the tunnel, using his instincts and memory alone to advance in the inordinately murky waters. He picks up as much speed as he efficiently can when Lara relaxes herself completely on his back to use as little air as possible and presses her face against his shoulder blade to have something to focus on while keeping the air in. It's difficult to maneuver with the floating debris and the bow on her back but they have no time to stop and leave it behind.
Once, he nearly swims straight into a wall, softening the contact with his hand at the last minute. But the passages are filled all the way to the ceiling. The anxiety seeps into his stomach when he can feel Lara place three fingers against his chest.
One tunnel and a turn later, it becomes two and the slight itch against his upper back tells him that she is having to blow off CO2 to increase her lung capacity.
His own lungs are not far from burning either. The Source gives him strength, but the earlier extensive healing limits him.
They reach the Scribers' Hall when Lara places just one finger on his chest. He kicks them upwards as fast as he can and prays for there to be enough air to breathe.
When the waterline finally becomes visible, he sticks his head above first to get a fleeting glance at potential hostiles, but fortunately, the water reaches almost to the ceiling giving them a respite.
Lara breaks the surface a second later but inhales water on the way, forcing violent coughs from her lungs as he kicks to keep their heads above the water and hopes that she doesn't lose consciousness.
He takes fast, deep breaths to get his oxygen levels to stabilize as he watches Lara cough and grasp onto the cracks on the ceiling with her eyes watering. Eventually, she meets his gaze, and he tries his best to offer her dry sympathy amidst the underground hell they are in. It's sobering, yet, somehow assuring – human – to see the need to survive on her face. It takes some of the weight in his heart to see that she still has enough emotions and heart to care for herself, especially given her age. He would be much more worried if she didn't feel anything.
And still, he can see the determination to appear on her face, the decision to survive, and the will to do everything in her power to achieve it; he nods at her in reassurance.
"One more dive, not as long as this one, and I have my hopes that we'll find an opening to the second floor. I'll carry you."
She nods at him, and he can see the vulnerable thanks on her face amidst the brutal reality that she would have already died if he hadn't come to her aid. In a similar fashion, he thanks the heavens for guiding him here. They swim to the other side of the hall, and this time, they oversaturate their blood as much as possible before disappearing under the surface, Lara's arms finding his upper body without guidance.
Miraculously, the stairway hasn't collapsed and they both heave for a few seconds when they finally get stabile rock underneath them.
The water meets them on the second floor too. However, they are an extra party in the battle that is fought there. They try their best to avoid Trinity soldiers and the Deathless. But for more than once, Jacob watches quietly from the side as Lara swims ahead of him to plunge Trinity members into the water by hitting her climbing ax through their back and sometimes breaking their neck afterward.
He, on the other hand, secures their route, tells her where they keep their Greek Fire storages – albeit he is alarmed by how much the Deathless have expanded the capacity – and watches Lara's back.
The Trinity members are clearly after her but with both of their radios dead by the explosion and the prolonged dive, they have no idea where Konstantin and his A-team are, nor what is happening above ground in the Valley. But whereas the Trinity members are weakened by the real danger, shouting to each other in panic, and shooting at everything that moves with the fear of the Deathless, Lara comes alive when being cornered.
It's yet another side of her. Into the Gulag, she had been desperate and determined, on the way out, betrayed and vicious; now, she is set on surviving. Her fear is still there but it's accompanied by purely instinctive logic.
He checks that they are alone and keeps his eyes on the cleared room when Lara crouches to pick up the unused grenades that they had stumbled upon and to do something with them. She is not any different from when he first saw her fight the bear, but now, he cannot escape the fleeting thought that she is what he had hoped to achieve when creating the Deathless. She is a strong-willed, gifted fighter who seeks to protect others around her but still keeps her heart.
It's exceptionally rare and he knows it, has seen only a few like her in all his years, but still, he cannot escape the thought that if he had tried harder, made different choices, maybe he could have helped his people become fighters like her without causing thousands of unnecessary deaths.
It's also the first time that he feels heartfelt inadequacy compared to her. Despite keeping his mind open and harboring the mindset that everyone can teach him something, it's been hundreds and hundreds of years when he has felt like a fledgling with someone to this degree. He has known people who have been ready to jump into the battle after the initial shock, accepting their mortality, but somehow Lara is different, more unwilling to resign to the fate that calls her.
The path to the third floor and the ceiling above it have crumpled but it's something they can't use to their advantage to skip one floor by climbing. Nevertheless, they are forced to be quick to escape the fighters on both floors while using small protrusions on the walls and Lara's climbing axes to get to safety. They manage to steal new radios from the fallen soldiers, but the only updates they get are that Ana is yet to be found and Konstantin and his men are ruthlessly invading deeper into the structure, no matter who falls in their way. Nothing has been said about the Cathedral or the Valley and they hope that it's because these men have been cut off from even thinking about them at the moment.
He watches in silence when Lara uses the grenades to clear them openings in the sealed pathways and uses the Greek Fire barrels to take out their enemies. But he gives her short praises afterward, trying to keep up the faith that they can make it out of here.
He pulls her down to safety and stands up to shoot when the Deathless get a sight of them. He can hear their chanting and it's pulling him back to the fall of Kitezh, to all the bodies of the people he had sworn to protect.
But he and Lara never stop. They fight their way through, avoiding the exploding barrels and Trinity's bullets. Here in the middle, the floors are smaller but ever more fortified to stop attackers from reaching the armory, plus the knowledge and the inventions of their people. Lattices block the doorways, forcing Lara and him to crawl through narrow passages and decorate their skin with scrapes. Their enemies are much more straightforward, though, which gives Lara and him an edge with their stealth. The sea of bodies that begs them to join them and to whom they increase with every well-placed arrow and a bullet is giving him bitter hope that his people can be saved when so many of their enemies are lost here.
But the Archives are becoming a tomb like Syria, Kitezh, and the Bathhouse before it.
However, this time his warriors aren't here, and he is rightfully the one to risk his life – except for Lara. And he will get her out of here if it's even remotely humanly possible when they push upwards, still far from reaching the sunlight.
Ana's body greets them in the back tunnels of the fourth floor from the top. He spots the blond-haired, shorter figure first when checking behind a corner. However, his stop instantly makes Lara slip past him to see the cause herself.
His initial assumption is proved correct when Lara's breath hitches beside him and she moves to tread quietly next to the fallen woman.
Despite not fully meant to, Lara's shot has been serious enough to kill the ill woman. Based on the blueish tint of Ana's skin and her open mouth, he guesses that she has suffocated with the blood loss and her deteriorated lungs.
He glances at Lara who allows herself to be remorseful only for a heartbeat before hardening herself and moving past the body. He bows his head minimally before moving after the young woman.
Ana may not have been their own, but she is part of the line of tragedies linked to the Divine Source.
They are halfway through the floor to the next set of stairs, leaving behind another gunfight when their radios come to life.
"Sir, we've found Ana, dead." There is a long silence after that which they exploit with Lara to round another corner with quicker feet, now having a confirmation that there are soldiers following their steps. Both of them wait for the aftermath but Lara is the more relaxed one after the initial tensing.
"It seems that Croft shot her on the shoulder."
"The Atlas?" Konstantin's voice asks barely constrained.
"We've yet to reach contact with the Alpha team after the explosion, Sir. Croft and a native man were seen last on the third floor before the connection broke."
"Wait for us. And I want Croft alive," Konstantin murmurs quietly, making Lara raise her eyebrows slightly at Jacob as if interested by what they hear, "I don't care what limbs she is missing, but I'll kill her myself."
"The native, Sir?"
"I don't care about these pests. Slaughter. Whatever you want. Get Croft and the Atlas. Now!"
Jacob lets out a small amount of air through his nose. At least they got a situation update.
However, when Lara languidly unclips the radio from her belt after a moment of pondering, he glances at her, surprised but a trepidation brewing in his gut.
"Come and try."
It's not a mirthful provocation, not when she knows that she has killed the man's sister, but it contains the same fire that Jacob had seen witnessed when Lara fought their way out of the Gulag. She doesn't even bother with the reply, closing her own radio after listening to Konstantin's discomposed silence for a second, leaving only Jacob to hear the roared orders and profanities aimed at Lara.
"You can shut it. They won't say anything vital on that channel again now that they know that we are listening to it," she comments him casually, checking the Trinity tactical vest on her to see how much ammunition they have. "Where would they come down from?"
"Lara…"
"This war won't end with Konstantin still alive, the least now that Ana is dead. Where would they come down?" she confronts him, turning fully against him as if waiting for a better counter-argument than just her name.
He stares at her, longer than they would have time for in this ancient, half-crumpled tunnel, but he sees nothing but steel in her – a warpath.
He can understand Konstantin because, at one point in time, he had been the one ready to sacrifice men to fulfill a guest that he had thought to have been given to him by God.
He can relate to the man's madness all too well – and he knows that there is no reprieve.
Moreover, he has to swallow and wet his lips because Lara is asking him to point her to the devil. And for his unease, he believes that she may be capable enough to win this battle against Trinity. He would have never dared to think that thought a month ago, but here they are. And more than that, once again, he feels the sickening anxiety in his stomach that he is unleashing something, someone, an unfettered power against their enemies. And he cannot keep himself from silently praying that this won't end like Kitezh.
He has lost too much to hardened souls.
"Through the grand square on the eastern side," he gives in the end, uncertainty clear in his eyes. But Lara only nods at him to lead her in the right direction.
The mercy she knows is of a different kind than his.
In the end, they are too slow. Trinity's soldiers greet them in the tunnels to the square. The echoes of the soldiers' steps give them only a second of notice to open fire in order not to be ambushed round the corner.
And he and Lara may be armed with rifles, knives, and bows, but Konstantin's A-team is dressed from head to toe in tactical gear and carrying laser-guided guns with them.
They have to retreat in controlled panic when grenades are thrown into their way and collapse the tunnel that they were just in.
"I'll go get Konstantin, can you take care of the rest?" Lara asks him, face set when they get up from their hasty cover amidst the debris.
He doesn't want to split up with her because only he knows the potential way out, but given the army against them, a strategic assault is the wisest course of action. "Go," he agrees.
It becomes a game of cat and mouse in the half-collapsed tunnels with the blocked pathways. But who is hunting who, is something that he isn't sure of.
He isn't a fan of the modern guns, but here he has no other option but to use them with the distance and the speed they provide.
Trinity members are easier to kill than the Deathless but their weapons are more advanced.
He only has his instincts, the echoes in the stones, the ripples in the water.
He grunts out of pain when a bullet bursts through his right bicep. He heals it enough to keep the hand operational, hoping that the illusion of a desperate native pushing past the pain will fool their enemies amidst the battle. But it hurts with the taxation from the earlier healing on his back and lower body.
He gets only brief glimpses of Lara when they are moving along the paths towards the square. But the bodies on his way give reassure him one by one that Lara is still alive and kicking.
There cannot be that many soldiers left anymore but Jacob makes no mistake that Konstantin won't bother with the expendables and that Lara is his only goal.
And, likewise.
So, he sets to offer all the backup support he can, taking risks to catch up with her and not to leave her undefended when her attention is focused on the Trinity leader.
He almost makes it. When he closes in on the square, Lara is aiming for Konstantin but one of the remaining soldiers manages to shoot Lara into her dominant hand, forcing her to give up on the rifle with gritted teeth and a cry of pain.
The next bullet is aimed at her back but Jacob manages to shoot the soldier first, derailing the shot. However, this reveals his location and Konstantin wastes no time to take out the excess. The pain in his stomach tears his insides, forcing him to double over on the floor leaving him exposed to another bullet to his shoulder.
Lara calls his name but like the warrior she is, she doesn't run to him but instead aims for cover from Konstantin's bullets.
The blood pours from the wounds into Jacob's hands and he eyes the square filled with broken pillars and statues, the battlefield for Konstantin to hunt Lara. If Trinity wins, he cannot let them know about his powers, but his powers alone might make the difference between Konstantin making it out of here alive and thus stopping Trinity from pursuing the Valley. And through gritted teeth he sets to heal the wounds, the bullets still in him.
"Face me, Lara. Don't be a coward!" Konstantin's sneer echoes around the area before the sound of fired bullets fills the air.
As Jacob rolls to try to get his feet underneath him, he realizes that his body is too exhausted to close his wounds. There are not enough nutrients, not enough energy in him to form the new tissues even with the help from the Source. But he doesn't need to survive, he just needs enough to make sure that they stop Trinity.
"I was meant for greatness! Let's finish what we started in Syria! I would have killed you a million times already if Ana hadn't favored you."
Jacob can see Lara trying to plant an attack at Konstantin but failing and having to dive for cover to avoid being mauled by the bullets. His wounds have closed enough to let him battle himself to his feet and closer to the two. Yet, every step is agony, and he knows that the patches are barely enough.
He gets near the opening to the square below and when the two come close enough, he jumps on Konstantin with his knife. His injuries make his attack crude and Konstantin is immediately on him, managing to shoot him from the close distance. But it creates just enough of an aversion for Lara to attack Konstantin from behind with her climbing axes. The man attacks blindly back but Lara is already diving for cover. However, Jacob doesn't have that luxury anymore and he is forced to collapse on the floor, the new wounds too much on his already ailing body.
But no matter how everyone else stumbles, Lara keeps going, evading Konstantin's bullets and planting her own strikes.
And finally, with one sickening crunch, it's enough.
Trying to keep pressure on his wounds – trying to stay present –, Jacob watches Konstantin fall and Lara take the weapons from the Trinity leader.
"God …chose me for this task."
Lara walks to crouch in front of Konstantin and Jacob can hear Lara's words but without seeing her face he cannot tell if they are out of amusement or pity, "That was Ana. The voice of your God – Ana. The holes in your hands – Ana. …This was never your destiny."
"I did all… all of this… for her. Now, I will join her."
Jacob can read the small huff of air Lara lets out of her nose before getting up and leaving the dying man, kicking the weapons out of his reach on her way.
"Don't you dare turn your back on me, Lara! Do you think it ends here when Trinity killed your father?"
Lara stops mid-way to Jacob, her eyes hardening even more, "My father killed himself," she retorts back coldly.
"I heard he begged on his knees before Trinity shot him; begged for yours too when that failed. Not that I'd see what good that did to the world," Konstantin taunts blood already slurring his speech, "But he was a fool to go against us."
"Shut up. Just shut up!" Lara screams and jumps to hit the climbing ax straight to Konstantin's head with her uninjured hand.
Jacob watches the man slump to the ground and Lara stand by the body for an extra second before visibly collecting herself.
When Lara sprints to Jacob and takes note of his wounds, there is a completely different woman again.
"Jacob, you need to hold on," she begs in a masked order, reaching to put additional pressure on his wounds.
"You have to leave me behind this time, Lara." The words ripple through his lungs and he places his other hand on Lara's arm, no longer bothering himself to try and stop the bleeding. "Lara…"
Lara, however, only shakes her head and strains her muscles as if to ready herself to lift him up, "No. I can't. We'll get you out."
The flaming arrow flying over their heads only stresses his point. The Deathless have overcome the Trinity soldiers on the lower floors. "I'd slow you down too much. Go. I'll get out of here."
"But the Deathless…"
"I know them. I can survive them." Lara looks somewhere past him with anxiety and he can guess that they are running out of time. "Go, find Sofia," he orders but his grip on her arms is already weakening. "Kill me, it's better if they don't find me alive."
"But…"
"It's okay, Lara," he assures, trying to get as much certainty into his eyes as he can.
It's not even a week when he watched her kill a Trinity soldier out of mercy with only a small guardedness on her face, but now, she is battling to accept his request despite knowing about his immortality. "Lara."
The arrow hits closer to them this time and, finally, Lara gets up and swallows to set her face. Her eyes search for a gun nearby and Jacob can see it in her eyes that she already found one but doesn't know how to grasp it. "Crack my skull, it's fast and easy to cover," he guides. It's an awful request to make for her but he is more than thankful that she is ready to take things as they go.
He prays that Sofia and his people will survive, that Lara will find a way out on her own.
He only gets a few seconds of leeway to nod his permission to Lara and close his eyes before the climbing ax pierces through his skull. The pain is excruciating but over before he manages to fully understand it, and then, there is nothing at all.
