Season 1, Episode 5:
Raiders
I
Perspective played a significant role in Lara Croft's line of work.
For instance, the wide path through the wheat field meant that somebody had beaten her to the cave. On the other hand, it made it infinitely easier to travel through the field via motorcycle.
Lara was certain that this was the most vast wheat field on the planet. But she was thankful to have sun and steady terrain for a change, instead of rain and snow and steep mountain slopes and crevices too wide for even an Olympic jumper to cross. Her only complaint was that she felt only mildly humid in her black leather jacket, but she knew she would be thankful for it in the chill of the subterranean.
If Lada had her way, she would conduct her explorations exclusively in places like this. But nobody ever buried anything worthwhile where it was easy to find.
This time, however, may be an exception. Satellites had recently detected a cave deep within the British countryside; a cave which had never been seen before. In fact, all previous recordings of the area had shown nothing but a solid rock wall. Some shrugged it off as the result of a mining expedition, although there were no records of any excavations in that area.
Lara knew from experience that anything appearing out of nowhere meant danger, adventure, and more than likely something supernatural.
All specialties of Lara Croft, Tomb Raider.
And, of course, there was the chance of something to sell to the curators back home.
The path finally ended right outside the cave, and sure enough, the competition's jeep was parked outside it. It was a dirty old thing; most likely bought cheap if they hadn't had the nerve to steal it.
Lara shut her bike off, leaving her with nothing but the calm breeze and a grumbling plane overhead.
She dismounted, approached the darkness stretching eternally into the earth, and switched on her flashlight.
"Ready or not, here I come,"
II
Lara knew that nearly every hidden cavern began with either a puzzle or a trap. Granted, the two were often paired up.
Shining her flashlight around the perpetual darkness, Lara found that she was in a room as wide as a foyer. What remained of the floor ahead of her was made up of stone tiles with symbols carved into them. A seemingly random assortment, thanks to either the cave's other visitor or ages of decay, had fallen into the gaping chasm of blackness beneath, which called out to Lara as if it were starving.
The remaining tiles led to an archway, although there were several possible routes.
One path to the archway; dozens to the darkness below.
"Thanks for the head start, friend," Lara said, picking up a long stick and moving onward.
"I like forward to meeting you. Assuming you're not down there,"
She placed the end of the stick on a tile and leaned on it like a cane. When it kept still, she carried on.
Lara found that the symbols were Roman numerals, and found another test of perspective. On the one hand, some may call her a stupid cheater for skipping what was most likely a simple multiplication riddle. On the other hand, she didn't see the point in wasting time and energy on mathematics when she could devise a much simpler solution herself.
"Work smarter, not harder," she whispered, moving straight ahead when the next tile passed the test.
"You know, they say talking to yourself is the first sign of madness," somebody called out from behind her. His voice was cocky and smug; qualities which Lara recognized in tourists, collectors, and competitors, all of which irritated her.
"But maybe I'm not one to talk,"
She turned around to look at her latest hindrance. She was expecting an oversized camera or a condescending hat, but his attire was actually no more complex than her own; a simple green shirt, beige jeans, and hiking boots. He was traveling even lighter than her; a flashlight in his hand, three grenades on his belt, and a pistol in a shoulder holster. Lara had brought all of that and another gun.
He had spiky black hair, and a chiseled chin with a stubble that suggested a very particular amount of care in looking like he didn't care. His mouth seemed rigged to a swashbuckling smirk which Lara wondered if anyone had ever been charmed by.
Perhaps she just didn't see it. Perhaps she was either too smart or too thick.
"You in the jeep or the bike?" He asked.
"What makes you think it's not both?" She retorted.
"Well, I can't imagine why anyone would wanna run off and leave someone like you behind in a place like this, unless they fell down there, but I feel like I would've heard them screaming on the way in...Mind if I join you?" He stepped out onto the same panel Lara had started on.
"Watch it!" Lara snapped as he came closer. "You could kill us both!"
"Hey, relax, I'm not some kinda amateur, alright?" He managed to sound somewhat serious.
"I've been doing this my whole life." He offered his hand; his knuckles were cracked and blackened.
"Nathan Drake,"
Lara looked at her own hands, which bore just as much damage despite the fingerless gloves she always wore.
Perhaps this man was more than his game show host demeanor. Lara silently admitted that there didn't appear to be much more that differed between them. She would let him tag along, and if he proved to be incompetent after all, she could always simply leave him to his fate.
She shook his hand.
"Lara Croft,"
"There. Now we're not strangers," he flashed his schoolboy smirk.
"How did you get here? I didn't see you following through the field,"
"Parachuted," he answered smugly.
"Ah. Must be easy for you, having the resources to fly to all your-"
Something swooped down from above and struck Drake, sending him over an edge on the far side of the room. Lara saw his fingers clinging to the ledge, dropping his flashlight on the floor.
She shone her flashlight at the thing in front of her, but it was still as silhouetted as it had been in the dark. Its ears were pointed like horns, wings hung from his arms like the tails of a cloak, and it glared back at Lara with wild scarlet eyes outshining her flashlight.
"Hang on, Drake!" Lara shouted, drawing one of her pistols.
"Already on it!" He called back, his voice straining in a daunting but appreciated show of fear.
The winged creature shrieked at Lara, standing on its hands and reaching at her with its clawed feet. It seized her arms and took to the air.
Lara was suffocated by darkness and deafened by the creature's shrieks.
She fired her gun in the hope of hitting its leg and breaking its hold. Her gunshots were followed by a sound like rocks splashing in water.
She couldn't tell if she had been flown around the chamber, or if she was being carried back up to the surface.
The creature's claws loosened.
In a split second, Lara had to decide which of the two items she held was the least immediately helpful.
She traded the gun for the winged creature's ankle.
It let out its loudest, most gargling shriek as Lara climbed up its leg like a rope, avoiding slashes from its wings as she moved.
Meanwhile, Nathan Drake had managed to get one elbow up on the stone tile.
He liked to think of himself as a world class climber. He also like to have somewhere to put his legs; below him there was only dead space which led straight to hell, for all he knew.
"How the hell do these things stay up?!"
He heaved himself up, reaching out with his other hand and securing a hold on a lump of rock protruding from one of the tiles. He pulled himself onto his stomach and reclaimed his flashlight with his free hand.
He realized that the rock felt like ice. It was bumpy, as well, like the scales of some kind of reptile.
Drake looked up and found that the stone had claws.
He looked further up, and came within licking distance of a forest of black, dagger-like teeth.
"Aw, crap! We're already at the monsters?!" Drake yelled as the beast picked him up by the shoulders. It lifted him so high that he felt like he was once again dangling over the infinite darkness.
The creature glared at him with red eyes from behind a long, scaly snout. A tail waved behind it like a wolf preparing to pounce.
Drake couldn't tell for sure due to the monster's shadowy appearance, but it seemed to be wearing a coat.
The monster's claws moved up to Drake's throat. Breathing became a struggle, and it became impossible when the monster exhaled its hot, putrid breath right into his gaping mouth.
Drake took a grenade from his belt, replacing it with his flashlight. He pulled the pin out and pried the monster's jaw open.
Here, pal. Have a breath mint, he thought. He would have said it aloud, but couldn't manage it through the asphyxiation and coughing up the rancid breath.
He shoved the grenade into the monster's mouth, and prepared to make his escape.
The monster's claws only got tighter.
"Shit…" He hacked.
The monster's crimson eyes narrowed at him. Nice try, they said to him. I'm not some simpleton like Eddy or Navarro who panics at the sight of a grenade. You can take me out, but you're coming along for the ride.
He thought his vision might be fading; it was hard to tell when he couldn't see much in the pitch black room to begin with.
All there was were the monster's bloody eyes.
"Look out below!"
There was an ear-splitting shriek, and then something collided into the monster.
Drake skidded along the ground beside the two beasts. A tile crumbled away beneath him, and he barely grabbed onto the end of the reptilian monster's tail.
He breathed and coughed desperately as he began climbing. His mind raced with ideas for quips, but his throat wasn't ready for them.
He hated being unable to joke. It was as if something had been cut from him. He was incomplete. Inadequate. Ordinary.
The tail dropped, and Drake managed a bellowing, "Oh, crap!"
Lara reached down and caught the severed appendage.
"God, you're heavy," she strained as she pulled the tail under her arms, stepping carefully backwards as she pulled Drake up.
"It's gotta be the tail," he coughed as he surfaced. "No way I weigh more than one-eighty with all the climbing and running and getting-shot-at I do every day,"
"Then let's go for a sprint!" Lara picked him up and they ran for the archway at the end of the room.
"Alley-oop!" They each hopped off of one of the recovering creature's heads, leaping over the remainder of the tiles and landing right in front of the archway.
As they ran into the next dark corridor, they drew their guns, aiming their flashlights forward and their firearms back.
But the monsters were gone.
"What the hell were those things?!" Drake questioned.
"I've no idea," Lara panted. "But I'm certain we'll be meeting their friends any minute now,"
III
He thought he would never think it, but if he had the choice, he would rather have had snakes.
The sasquatch, or whatever the hell this shadow demon was, had barely slapped him, but it had felt like like the butt of a rifle. He knew from far too much experience.
He heaved himself up from the stone floor reddened by lantern light, steadied his fedora on his head, and drew his whip. Maybe this would be his last battle, but he was going to fight for every second.
"That your genius plan?" A voice hauntingly similar to his own rugged tone laughed behind him.
"Bait him away with a whip?! Handsome as Chewie is, he ain't one of your girlfriends, doc!"
Even without looking back, he could feel the futuristic gun aimed at him. He looked over his shoulder at the match's referee.
"You're a bastard," Indiana Jones growled at him.
The red-eyed, shadowed man smirked at Jones, who felt like he was being tormented by his own demonic reflection.
"I know,"
"Get on with it, will you?!" the other ref snapped from behind the sasquatch.
"Show us if you're good enough for the mistress' army or not! There are much greater threats to convert when we're done with you!"
Jones caught a glimpse of her over the lumbering sasquatch's shoulder; another shadow with long hair and red eyes, aiming some kind of sci-fi gun at him in case he tried to flee.
"Better keep goin', doc," Jones' doppelganger whispered in his ear, prodding his back with his gun.
"You think Chewie's scary, wait 'till you see what she can do to you,"
Jones stepped forward and cracked his whip at the sasquatch's feet. It roared and backed away, baring its sopping teeth.
"Alright...But you're both up next when I'm done with him! You hear me?!"
"You don't understand yet, do you, Dr. Jones?" the woman responded, her voice echoing in Jones' ears.
"You don't make the rules. You never have,"
The sasquatch lunged at Jones. His snarl sent black saliva hurtling into the archaeologist's face.
Jones darted to the side, and cracked his whip in the sasquatch's eye. He let out a victorious grunt that was drowned out by the beast's pained roar.
He went for another crack at the sasquatch's chest, but it caught the whip in its monstrous hand and pulled out of his grasp. Jones stumbled forward and into the beast's reach.
"Alright, wrap it up, Chewie," the shadow-Jones said. "I don't wanna waste too much time on him if he's not good enough for the mistress,"
The sasquatch took each of Jones' arms and placed its foot on his stomach. It pushed with its foot and it pulled with its arms.
Jones stifled a scream with his teeth as his shoulders cried out in the most exerting agony.
None of the things he expected to think of stayed in his mind. His father. Short Round. Marion. They only blinked momentarily in his thoughts.
He only saw snakes.
Snakes covered the floor. They were the floor. They were the walls and the ceiling and every the lanterns and the fire burning within them.
He looked at his doppelganger and its friends; their shapes were recreated by hordes of snakes slithering over and between one another in some slimy embrace.
His arms were caught in the jaws of two humongous pythons. Their teeth sank into his flesh like syringes pumping him full of poison.
A third python screamed in his face. It screamed as its scales melted like hot wax. Blood oozed off of its skull as it scorned Jones with hundreds of agonized voices.
All voices that Jones had heard before.
The python's melting eyes were filled with bullets. It reeled back, its two brothers clutching its face as the serpents faded from existence.
Jones ducked down and swiped up his whip. He looked up and found his reflection pointing its gun.
PEW!
Jones spun around and shoved the sasquatch into the projectile's path.
"You're quick on the trigger," he said, retreating to his saviors' side as the beast writhed in pain.
"But I can think just as fast, friend…" He looked left and right at his new allies; a man and a woman, younger than him, but clearly seasoned adventurers.
"Thanks,"
"Don't thank us yet," Lara responded as she reloaded.
"That's nice," the other Jones scoffed as the sasquatch lumbered to his side.
"Think your way around this one, then,"
The shadow woman shut its eyes, and suddenly the chamber was shaking. Pebbles and dirt fell from the ceiling and landed in the rim of Jones' hat.
"Aw, crap, please tell me they're not gonna bring it all down on us!" Drake yelled.
The wall behind the shadowy creatures burst apart, revealing a flying juggernaut of a machine that Jones imagined would even put Jules Verne to shame. It roared like the propellers of millions of planes, and its windshield glared at Jones and his newfound allies like the face of God peering down from Heaven.
"Actually, I think I'd prefer being buried alive now," Drake muttered, lowering both his gun and his jaw.
"Get down!" Jones shouted.
The trio hit the stone floor as the room was flooded with a barrage of bullets made from some kind of red light.
The wall behind them was decimated. The assault stopped long enough for Jones to look back at the darkness that had been opened.
"Come on," he urged his newfound allies as he pulled himself up.
"In there?" Lara questioned. "There's no telling what's waiting for us!"
"It'll get us out of here! That's a start!"
"Aw, hell," Drake muttered.
The adventurers bolted for the darkness with another round of blinding bullets on their tail.
"Slippery nerf-herders," the shadow woman said through her teeth.
"Relax, Leia," Jones' doppelganger slipped an arm around her waist.
"The others will get 'em. And even if they don't, then the mistress will,"
IV
Jones, Croft, and Drake felt like they had barely gone anywhere, and yet they found themselves in a chamber as pitch dark as the one they began in. It was as if the tomb, or whatever it was they had entered, had moved around them.
"And the award for weirdest tomb ever goes to…" Drake whispered as he lit his flashlight.
Lara lit hers, and Jones reached into his pocket for a match, which he struck against the stone wall.
It was a narrow hallway stretching into the darkness. There was nothing save for a few statues of some dog-like deities high up on the aged walls.
"You like to go old school, huh?" Drake managed an exasperated version of his sly smirk.
"Dropped my lantern fighting the animals in the first chamber," Jones responded. "So what brings you two here? This your idea of a romantic getaway?"
"What? God, no! I'm here on an expedition," Lara retorted.
"Yeah, me too," Drake added. "I don't even know her,"
Jones looked back at them, the flame of his match illuminating only his smirking teeth.
"Give it time,"
"Considering we just saved your life…" Lara began, marching up to him until her forehead barely brushed the rim of his fedora.
"I would appreciate it if we earned a little gratitude beyond some stereotyping comments,"
Jones' smirk softened, but remained.
"You're right. Sorry. Just the nerves after being attacked by something out of Buck Rogers. And you two seem like you know what you're doing...Dr. Henry Jones,"
"Lara Croft,"
"Nathan Drake,"
"As in Sir Francis?" Jones asked.
"As in descended from," Drake held his arms out as if ready to bow.
"Sir Francis Drake didn't have children," Jones said.
"Unless you mean to say that you're his bastard," Croft added, folding her arms and mimicking Drake's smirk.
"I thought people in your line of work would know…" Drake lead the way down the hall, unfazed by Lara's comment.
"History isn't always what you read in the textbooks. And speaking of what we don't know; what the hell are those shadow things? One of them looked a little like you, Henry,"
"I have no idea…"
By the matchlight, Lara could see his stubbled face go pale. His eyes were shadowed by his fedora, almost recreating the appearance of his malevolent double.
"They talked about someone called the mistress. Could be the leader of their cult or a deity they worship. They were testing me; if I could beat their pet, then somehow I'd be good enough for...Whatever the hell their boss is doing,"
"Perhaps they were people who came in here before us," Lara suggested. "And this mistress turned them into what they are now,"
"Could be...Doesn't explain where they got that flying thing from,"
"Something outta Buck Rogers," Drake quoted. He looked at them over his shoulder.
"I'm guessing you're older than you look,"
They walked for a good minute without saying a word. They each drew their guns, keeping them at their side as they surveyed every statue, every brick, every cobweb.
Finally, Jones broke the silence.
"What do you mean old?" He said. "That only came out a few months ago,"
Drake looked at him again, this time with the most befuddled of expressions.
"Months? Try decades, doc,"
"That's true," Lara added. "Buck Rogers was back in the 20s or 30s,"
Jones' illuminated face glared at both of them.
"Alright, wiseasses; you tell me what year it is,"
"'96," Lara answered.
"2010," Drake answered.
They stopped. Drake turned around and looked at Lara; they each reflected the other's anxious look.
"Please tell me you're joking," Lara urged.
Drake shook his head. "What about you, doc?"
"1939," Jones said. "As far as I know, anyway,"
"Great," Drake groaned, throwing his head back and running his palm down his face.
"So either two of us are crazy, all of us are crazy…"
"Once upon a midnight dreary…"
"Or our tall, dark friends are screwing around with time somehow,"
"Did you hear that?" Lara aimed her pistol at the surrounding darkness.
"Hear what?"
"I did…" Jones exchanged his match for his whip. "Sounds like somebody down here is a Poe fan,"
"You tellin' me you didn't catch that, Nate?" A gruff old voice called from the darkness ahead of them.
"Sully?" Drake shined his light down the corridor, where he found the outline of his mentor, complete with a cigar between his teeth.
"I thought you were gonna stay with the plane,"
"Maybe I got tired of playin' second fiddle to ya, Nate," Sully growled. "Or maybe some of those goddamn shadow people ambushed me while you were screwin' around down here…" He took his cigar between two fingers, flicking ashes off to join the centuries-old dust coating the floor.
"Sully…" Drake whispered. "Oh, god...I'm sorry…"
"Sorry ain't doin' shit for me, Nate. There's no lucky bullet-catching-notebooks or anything that's gonna bring your friend back this time. You're just gonna have to deal with it,"
"You have some significant experience there, don't you, Lara?" Another outline appeared beside Sully, speaking in a serpentine German accent. He was taller, thinner, and wore a fedora similar to Jones'. His hands were in his pockets, and his head was down, as if he couldn't bear to look at the adventurers.
Lara said nothing. Her head burned with familiarity as she begged silently for this new shadow to not be who she thought it was.
"Didn't you know? The mistress can call the dead to her side, as well...Do you know how long it takes for a human to starve to death, Lara? I still don't. Time lost meaning for me in the Iris' temple. I watched my skin cling tighter and tighter to my bones. I wasted my breath calling for you until my throat became a desert in my neck. As neutral as you claim to be, Lara, you've brought the worst pain imaginable upon me,"
"I was still a kid, Werner!" Lara's mind throbbed with the image of her mentor decaying into a skeleton over the countless weeks, months, years he may have spent in the Iris' temple.
"So you couldn't have been competent enough to save me until you'd gathered a little more dust?!" Von Croy spat. "If that's the case, then I must now be ten times the archaeologist that you are!"
"The temple was closing and you weren't budging!" Lara retorted, blinking whenever a tear threatened to escape her eyes.
"It's your own fault as much as mine!"
"Would you say that if I had escaped and you had been trapped?! Of course not. You left me to rot, Lara...Left me to become just another ancient thing in an ancient place,"
"And you profit from it, Junior!" A third outline; older, shorter, with a beard, a hat, and glasses. He spoke with a thick Scottish accent, and walked with the natural authority and presence of a professor.
At the sight of him, Jones became as still as the statues glaring down at them.
"Not only in wealth, but in integrity! Each and every time you walked over the remains of some unfortunate predecessor, or stumbled upon the fresh corpse of your latest rival, you felt good, didn't you? You survived what they could not and that made you feel like God!"
"Dad…" Jones whispered. His fist clenched around his pistol.
"Every man and woman before, equally as entitled to greatness as you, no more than overlooked, decaying testimony to the legacy of the great Indiana Jones…" He said the name like he was struggling to swallow the most repugnant substance to ever pass a person's lips.
Jones aimed his gun at the three shadows.
"Henry!" Croft and Drake cried.
BANG! BANG! BANG!
Bullets burrowed into the foreheads of Victor Sullivan, Werner Von Croy, and Dr. Henry Jones, Sr.
Their heads dropped, but they remained standing.
For a while, there was nothing but the adventurers' breathing and the smell of smoke.
And then there was a voice in their ears.
"Shame. I thought it was one of my more convincing performances,"
Sully, Von Croy, and Jones Sr. approached their proteges, their head and limbs swaying limply as they moved. Their boots scraped the stone floor as if they were being pulled.
They came into the light, each one a black and lifeless recreation of their true counterparts. Out of each back spewed a watery tube like a tail.
Or a puppet string.
The adventurers' eyes followed the strings down to a puddle on the floor.
The puddle opened its crimson eyes.
The three false corpses splashed back into it, and then it became a wave charging at the adventurers.
They turned to run, but they were each grabbed by the neck in a clawed hand.
"Naga leave now," a black-furred creature like one of the statues overhead cackled in Lara's face. Its massive yellow jaw threatened to either chew her head away bit-by-bit, or suffocate her with its pungent breath.
"Naga leave ever! More soldiers for mistress! More fun for Experiments!"
"No jokes from Drake?" another one, a female, purred as she traced the pointed ends of her two scorpion-tail-like antennae along Drake's stubbled neck. She exhaled through her nose, sending Drake into a coughing fit.
"Meega like jokes. Mistress likes jokes. She give Drake special job if he jokes,"
"For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels named Lenore…" the last one did not look at Jones. His head was down, as if lost in thought while something else piloted his body for him. Jones thought he looked deader than the fake corpses.
"Nameless here forevermore..."
"These are my comrades," the voice of the puddle echoed in the adventurers' ears.
"We were led astray from our true purpose by some of your contemptible species. We thought we were happy, until the mistress found us and extracted the parts of us that had forgotten our true calling. She improved those aspects of us that were still sensible. She will do the same for you. You will no longer be slaves to all those parasites in your minds and in your hearts. Honor. Sincerity. Generosity. Kindness. Love. All the things that the worst parts of you believe you enjoy; you will be free of them all. Truly free,"
"But we have to be good enough for your mistress, right?" Jones wheezed as he pried at the despondent monster's claws.
"There's no point if we're not strong enough,"
"Doc Jones want die instead?" The creature holding Drake asked, grinning at Jones and licking her yellow teeth.
"I might," Jones coughed.
"And the silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain…"
"You misunderstand, doctor," the puddle continued. "The mistress can easily grant you more physical strength, but she seeks soldiers with other kinds of strength. The kind which the most powerful entity in the universe might lack, and which may be plentiful in the feeblest insect,"
"And what makes you think we're qualified?"
"Youga three show it lots already," the creature holding Croft said, tilting his head as he shared his filthy grin with all three adventurers.
"Show it fighting Lizard and Bat in dark. Show it getting away from Falcon. Show it shooting fake-friends,"
"Then why don't you get on with what the mistress did to you and all those others?" Jones demanded.
"Not just yet," the puddle responded. "You three are unique. The mistress has asked that you be tested one more time…"
"Thrilled me. Filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before,"
The three dog-like shadows each brought a clawed hand over their respective captive's eyes.
V
"Nathan Morgan,"
Drake's eyes shot open. He was still in a narrow corridor, but not the same one as before.
It was illuminated by torches along both walls. About a third of a large symbol was drawn on the floor; the rest went underneath the left-hand wall. The air was polluted with a smell like car fumes and tobacco.
The dog creatures, the puddle, Lara, and Henry were gone.
There was only a shadow ten feet away from him. It was on its knees with its head down, as if praying with its glowing red eyes open. It had no hair; only a pair of horns like a devil.
"How the hell do you know my name?" Drake aimed his gun at the devil.
"I know everything, Nathan," the devil replied, his calm voice in Drake's ears.
"I see everything. I see you crying in your mother's arms. I see you decaying into dust on an uncharted island, alone and forgotten,"
Drake gave a nervous chuckle. "Guess that means I make it outta this one, huh?"
"You body does, at least," the devil wrapped a threat in his casual, matter-of-fact tone.
"Once, Zoran Lazarevic asked you how many people you'd killed. You never answered him. Now I ask you, and you will answer me,"
Drake swallowed, and seconds later, he answered.
"I don't know…" That was the truth. In his mind's eye, he could see several armored mercenaries bleeding from the chest, or shrinking into specks within deserts and forests miles below. But each image seemed like a variation of only three or four different moments.
It didn't feel like armies of people dying. It felt like one person dying over and over again.
"Estimate, then," the devil said as if educating his own child. "Tens? Hundreds? Thousands?"
Drake was silent once more. It didn't feel like thousands, but then again, he hadn't been counting.
Perhaps it was millions. Billions. Trillions.
"They were mercenaries," Drake finally gasped. "They were hired to kill me and my friends. It was them or me,"
"Oh, I'm not debating that. If someone is trying to kill you, it's only practical to kill them first. What I'm wondering, Nathan, is how you're able to sleep so peacefully each and every night. You see, I knew someone before the mistress found me. He killed countless people as well. He was on a crusade to eliminate anyone who threatened the innocent. You might say his intentions were more noble than yours. He barely ever slept, and when he did, he was torn awake after reliving every bloody moment in his dreams. So if he couldn't sleep, then how can you, Nathan?"
Drake lowered his gun. His mind was strangled by the question which he had smothered at the back of his mind all these years.
Then he found something and latched onto it, desperately prying himself free of the stranglehold.
"So what are you saying? It's okay to be a mass-murderer as long as I feel bad about it?"
"I'm saying that you're more mentally ill than you realize. You're addicted to a lifestyle that lets you validate yourself by outliving the people around you. They're dead and you're alive, and that fact is a constant comfort to you,"
Drake aimed at the devil's forehead. Despite the burning lanterns and the humid stenches, he was freezing.
"You're right," he grunted. "It is a comfort...Because I did what I had to do to protect my friends!"
BANG!
The devil didn't look up. He smacked the bullet away as if it were a fly.
Drake blinked, and then the devil's fist was flying towards his face. He was quick enough to duck, but was rewarded with the devil's knee in his chin. He was pulled back up, where he felt the devil's horns in his forehead.
The devil pried his gun away, clutched his throat, and pinned him flat on the stone floor.
Drake's head throbbed and his ears screamed as he pulled at the devil's arm. He felt claws pricking into his blocked neck.
The devil pressed the gun's barrel into his cheek, and he gasped for air that never came to him.
His eyes darted about the room, searching for anything that might inspire another genius, unorthodox escape plan. But he kept coming back to devil's glowing eyes.
Moments later, that was all he could see.
And all he could think about was how the legendary Nathan Drake was going to die on his back in a forgotten tomb.
"Don't be scared, Nathan. I'm going to fix you now,"
VI
Lara opened her eyes and found darkness.
She switched on her flashlight; another stone corridor, this one with what appeared to be a third of a symbol etched onto the floor.
The air was damp, more like a cave than a tomb. There was another smell which Lara wasn't certain of, but it seemed to her like machine oil.
Something yanked her left arm behind her back, and something else clasped over her mouth.
Lara back kicked at her assailant, breaking free of its hold. She darted around and aimed her flashlight and her pistol at it, earning only a split second's look at it before it threw something on the floor, flooding the corridor with a cloud of black smoke.
The darkness made it a challenge to tell what she had seen. It might have been wearing a cape. It might have wings, like the bat creature from the first chamber.
"Do you know fear, Lara Croft?"
She felt something like a serpent coiling around her ankles. She went to jump, but the rope jumped with her and snared her.
Lara landed on her front and was dragged across the stone floor at an alarming speed, as if she were being pulled by a silent motorcycle. The corridor went on for ages, as did the black smoke. By the time she was able to aim her flashlight and her gun behind her, she was sure that she had traversed the equivalent of several city blocks.
"Do you know pain, Lara Croft?"
Lara fired twice; the second bullet cut her free.
She rolled to one knee, pointing the light and her gun at her opponent, but it was nowhere to be found.
Only more smoke.
"I know pain,"
Just like the others, the voice echoed in her ears. It was deep; not as much so as the puddle creature's voice from earlier, but still enough to seem like the voice of an enraged god.
"I...Know...Pain…"
Lara looked up; the bat-man was perched upon the ceiling like a gargoyle, looking up at her with its glowing red eyes, and breathing hungrily from its monstrous jaws.
"I can't get rid of it. I thought if I could do some good, then it would stop. But I've been doing good all my life, and it only gets worse...The only way to stop it is to share it…"
Lara put a bullet in its head.
A corner of the bat-man's head came splattering to the ground at Lara's feet, and yet it only blinked as if a gust of wind had blown in his face.
"The mistress lets me share it with everyone. I've never felt as free as I do now in her service…"
Something emerged from the hole in the bat-man's head. It was a diminutive head with red eyes just like its parent. It hopped out of its hole and spread its wings.
It was followed by another.
And another.
And two more.
Three more.
And then there was a swarming cloud of them heading straight for Lara.
"I'm going to share my pain with you, Lara Croft,"
The bats screeched like a scalpel was being twisted in each of their guts.
Lara stood up, running-and-gunning as the swarm closed in on her.
She faced front and stopped just short of a wall she was certain wasn't there moments before.
She was in the cloud; the bats scratched and bit at every inch of her. She lashed out at them, but they clung to her. Their fangs were in her skin and in her bones.
"You'll be scared, but that's alright. We were all scared at first…"
Lara fell to the floor, sheltering her head under her arms, which were punished for their sacrifice.
The stone room and the smoke were gone. There were only the bats.
She clamped her eyes shut. The bats were still there.
The only thing keeping her from screaming was the thought of the bats diving into her gaping mouth.
"But you will be free…"
VII
Indiana Jones opened his eyes and immediately fired his gun.
The first thing he saw was the bullet slowing to a halt in the air. It didn't fall.
The next thing he saw was the middle part of a huge symbol etched on the lantern-illuminated floor.
The last thing he found was the shadowed figure across from him. It sat cross-legged, as if it were meditating, but its crimson eyes stared unblinking at Jones. It had long hair down to its neck, as well as a beard. Instead of a right hand, it had only a single long claw like a sickle attached to its arm.
The bullet came speeding back towards Jones.
He hugged the right-hand wall, dodging it.
It reversed and went through his right bicep.
Jones screamed, and the bullet made another trip. He screamed louder, and it went through his arm once more.
He almost fell, but he kept his balance. His face was burning and wet with sweat. What little of his arm he could feel felt like it was being crushed. He looked at the meditator, who kept staring at him in the engaged but emotionless way that a researcher stares at test subjects through a one-way window.
Jones charged at him. He wasn't even a third of the way when his body decided to shoulder-charge into the left-hand wall. His side erupted with pain, but he kept moving.
His body swerved right, and the wall and his arm crushed his wounds.
Jones roared in pain as he stumbled to one knee. He clenched his teeth and slammed his eyes shut, trying not to scream again or to cry.
He felt his fedora slide off his head and land on the stone floor.
The agony festering in his arm was painful enough, but losing his hat was enough to make his dripping blood boil.
He opened his eyes to find his fedora, and saw it floating into the air by itself. It placed itself gently atop his hair with condescending slowness.
"Just relax, Dr. Jones," the meditator's voice was in his ears. Jones thought he looked like an old man, but he sounded no older than his students.
"You've performed tremendously, but now it's time to fix you…"
Jones' hand, still clutching his gun, slowly moved up despite its owner's commands to stop. He straightened up and looked at the meditator, who continued to stare at him as his hand rested the gun's barrel on his chest, right over his heart.
"You'll come to appreciate the potential that the dark side offers. I never truly considered it until the mistress improved me, stripping me of everything that was holding me back,"
"I don't care about your goddamn magic tricks," Jones growled. Sweat trickled down his face as his finger wobbled independently on the trigger.
"There are other kinds of power besides strength, Dr. Jones. Surely, you have been reminded of that often enough throughout your adventures. Knowledge. Truth. Wisdom. You have built a career and a reputation out of striving for them. The mistress wants you to have them all. You will be the ultimate holder of knowledge; any and every ancient or distant mystery you crave the answers to, you will have…"
Jones' finger began to pull.
"You only need to give up that troublesome thing inside you…"
Jones thought about shutting his eyes, but did not. He kept them open, looking right into the crimson eyes of the meditator.
It did not blink, and neither did Jones.
He waited there for a minute. Two minutes. Two hours. Two days. He did not know. All he knew was that he wanted the bullet to come. He just wanted it over with.
Even when tears came, he did not blink.
The walls on either side of him began to shake, and then sank slowly into the ground.
At his right, Jones found Nathan Drake pinned down and held at gunpoint by some kind of devil. At his left, he found Lara Croft on the ground in a fetal position and being snacked on by a swarm of bats. A caped shadow like a human bat observed from the ceiling.
The devil released Drake. Jones dropped the gun. The bats left Croft and retreated into the bat-man's skin, sinking into it like stones dropped into water.
The meditator stood up as his allies joined his side.
Jones darted up, his face red and damp with sweat. His gun was on the floor, and he never wanted to touch it again.
"The mistress has something new in mind for you..."
He looked at the three shadows, wanting desperately to shout something hateful at them, but his breathing was too heavy for him to speak.
The meditator's lips curled into a smile.
"You're more like Han than you think,"
A black shape arose behind the three shadows; some kind of doorway. They turned and entered it, and as soon as they were gone, the doorway vanished with them.
Jones looked at his allies; blood oozed from beneath Drake's hair. Lara was covered in red bite marks. They struggled, but ultimately got to their feet.
"You two alright?" Jones asked.
"Yeah," they both lied.
They stood there for a while, thankful that they had been spared their lives a little longer, and fearful that the shadows would return at any moment and stab them in the back.
Finally, Lara looked down at the floor.
"This symbol…" She panted. "Either of you recognize it?"
Jones and Drake shook their heads.
The completed symbol was a circle; blade-like shapes pointing inwards from each edge, like a pit. A word was spelled across it in giant letters.
"Ανοιγμα…" Lara read out. "It's Greek…"
"It means…" Drake exhaled deeply and coughed before answering. "It means opening...Opening to what?"
The chamber shook.
"Oh, come on!" Drake shouted. "Give us a break already!"
Stones crumbled away from the wall one by one, revealing sections of stark white. The chamber kept shaking, and after a while, when more white had been revealed, the adventurers could see that the walls were metal.
Jones looked again at the word. Ανοιγμα. It did mean opening, but somehow he doubted that it was what the symbol meant.
He looked again at the blades encircling the word. It wasn't a pit. It wasn't an opening.
It was a lens, glaring up at Jones, studying, scrutinizing his every move, just as the shadows and their mistress were.
Ανοιγμα.
"Aperture,"
RAIDERS, or Indiana Jones x Tomb Raider x Uncharted
Season 1, Episode 5
NEXT TIME ON JUSTICE LEAGUE INFINITE!
A silent woman tormented for years by a malevolent machine.
A wise and fearless space captain from the far future.
And a time-traveling teenager from the not-too-distant past.
They awake inside Aperture and must work together to survive its gruelling chambers.
No help.
No escape.
No voice.
Coming soon!