The bullets are like tiny whistles, you know, those ones that only dogs can hear. What's worse is the sound they make when they connect with flesh. It's not a ripping sound, or a tearing sound. It's not a wet sound, like I thought it might be. It's a dull, low sound. Thump. Thump. People make a lot of noise when they fall over, I realize. Metal clatters against the stone of the staircase and hulking bodies spill over as if they were containers of tacks and nails.

The man in front of me startles the instant the first one falls. Followed some sounds, he told the others. Heard something on the east side of the house. I threw stones and held my breath in the outcropping, but I made the mistake of looking at him as he walked passed. People, you know, they can feel it when you're watching. It's instinct. So when he flings his head in my direction and grabs me hard, yanking me from my hiding place, I'm kicking myself in the ass and sweating bullets.

Then that gut-turning sound. Thump. Thump. He shouts angrily and takes a handful of my hair in his fist, tugging me in front of him. Into the milky fog he stares blindly for a long while. The steel of his gun's muzzle is cool against my temple and my breathing is coming in short, ragged bursts. This was stupid.

"Miss Croft is early, ya? He wasn't expecting her for at least a day." He grins into the cup of my earlobe, cheek slick with nervous perspiration. "But who are you now, little girl? Some fresh bait?"

"Don't shoot," I plead in whispers. "Jesus Christ, please don't shoot me."

"Oh, little mouse. Do not fear." His free hand wanders crudely from my throat to the curve of my clavicle. "Master Vymes will want to have a bit of fun before-"

This one isn't a thump, because the bullet doesn't hit flesh. It hits his skull, burning my cheek as it slices passed and explodes his left eye. Warmth splashes over my neck and shoulder as the gun falls and he flops over like a mannequin. Like he was never alive at all. I don't turn around to look at him. I don't touch the blood all over my back. Stiffly, I walk back into the fog and bite my lips together.

She's there, waiting for me with a damp cloth ready in her hands. I pace into her in a rigid way, afraid to release the breath I'd been holding; my entire body quakes violently as her arms take me in.

"Hush, it's alright," she coos into my ear. I much prefer her lips there to the dead man's. The cloth mops up my throat and shoulder gently as I resist the overwhelming urge to completely fucking freak out. "I'm sorry, Sam. Thank you."

I nod in a frozen way. It's all I can muster. She looks me over with her brow furrowed tiredly and strokes my burned cheekbone with her fingertip. After a moment of tense silence, Lara shakes her head and puts her finger to her right ear.

"I'm here…Yes, everything's alright. We'll be in shortly."

I give her a kind of curious, kind of dead look.

"It's Zip. He's opened our communications so we'll be able to navigate without getting turned around. He knows the security systems Vymes uses as well."

I bite my tongue tightly and open my mouth to speak. She cocks her head at me a bit. "I'm sorry. I…I shouldn't have insisted. I shouldn't have come. I'll slow you down in there."

She sighs. "Perhaps. But you're here now." It's not very reassuring. I hear Zip's voice buzz. "Yes, we're headed in. The guards are down."

Buzzing.

"But…that's daft. He's never had that much muscle before."

Buzzing.

"…I see. Well, I'll just have to be accommodating then."

"Muscle?" I ask.

"Men. Lots of men, on the inside. They've not been alerted of our presence yet, but three men missing and a few bloody puddles on the front porch are going to be a pretty obvious giveaway."

My shaking makes my rigid body go lax again. Don't think about it. Just don't think about it. "So…what's next? Kick the front door in?"

"No. We're going incognito. There's a complicated vent system in this building that's traversable; we'll enter through the exhaust vent at the south side. Zip's sending the passageway now." She pulls a small PDA from one of her waist pouches and holds it up to the sky. Green letters flash "'transfer complete' on the screen before a set of blueprints loads. "This will take us right to the bastard's office."

I swallow hard. "Lara, that guy said he was expecting you. You know, before his head exploded all over me?"

She's quiet for a handful of seconds. "I figured he would be. We both have reputations that precede us."

"I don't want to die, Lara," I blurt out, frustrated with the way my body's reacting to the gruesomeness of the last ten minutes. I brace myself for a pointed glare and a verbal slap, but instead she heaves out a sigh and threads her fingers into the hair at my forehead.

"I'm not going to let anything happen to you, Samantha."

For once, hearing my full name actually gives me a sense of relief. I'm with Lara, and nothing can hurt me when I'm with Lara. That guy didn't even have time to blink before he was dead, and he was really just desserts. My lungs fill completely for a first time in a while. "Okay…yes. Okay. I'm okay. Let's do this." This guy blew up her home, his men beat her senseless and he's gonna answer for that.

She grins lopsidedly at me, pauses, and squeezes the back of my head lightly before setting off along the side of the mansion. The seemingly intimate contact leaves my mind sweetly elsewhere. I follow her close, within arm's length; it isn't long before she finds what she'd been looking for, a small access panel at the base of the building. Suddenly I realized why that black catsuit she was wearing had to be so tight; any loose clothing was gonna make a hell of a racket in the echoes of the metal caverns. Thankfully I was wearing painted on skinnies.

She drilled open the vent panel with a tiny drill bit and shooed me in, telling me, "Don't touch the walls" as I passed. It's roomier than I was expecting; you could crawl on your hands and knees with a good amount of space on either side. She follows me in and closes the panel behind her. It's a comforting gesture.

"Alright," she mutters, squeezing her way in front of me. "Give me the drop, Zip."

"One left ahead, then right, left, left, and up." In the silence of the vents I could hear him without too much struggle. Zip in a professional setting is kind of a weird thing to experience since I'd only known him casually and not for very long at all. I'd heard him ball busting and teasing and being a little heartfelt and all that, but now he was communicating and he sounded like he knew what was going on. It's pretty badass.

I'm not exaggerating when I say half of the time navigating those four turns was spent swallowing the huge lump in my throat and the other half trying to keep my eyes on the ground and not directly in front of me, as Lara's butt was the only thing I could see and I didn't know if the ground was waterproof.

At a big wall, she stops and points up. The vent ascends probably about eight feet up; I stand awkwardly and press myself close to her.

"Watch it. There's a swivel-neck up there. Looks like a recent install."

"Fun," she smirks, though I can't tell where in the emotional spectrum it would land. "Wait here," she gestures at me. I nod and hold my arms to my chest. From her side she withdraws a small device and pulls a black cord out from the top of it, swinging it in the small space before tossing the shiny end into the ceiling. It stuck tight.

"What's a swivel-neck?" I whisper.

"A mechanized gun that detects movement. It's meant to focus on the ground levels but it can adjust its trajectory if it needs to." She tugs at the line for good measure. "Good thing it isn't in this turn."

"How do you know?"

"It would have shot at the line," she says triumphantly. Her confidence gives me a little mental boost. "The boards need to be kept close to the machine, since the transmission signals are very weak. So they'll be up here somewhere…hang on, I'm going to take a peak." She shimmies up the line and drops onto the second level, disappearing over the edge for a long while. Above, I hear some kind of tinkering, small noises, and a couple of impatient grumbles. Then, a dull, ambient noise I hadn't even noticed leaves the air.

She shuffles forward and winks at me. "Come on then." I grip the line and hoist myself up; she takes my back when I get close enough and guides me to the edge. We're so close when my knees connect with the metal that I can feel her fingers twitch against my chest and see her pupils shrink despite the opaque darkness. My heart quivers as I lean in, brushing our noses together. She exhales in a tight way, thighs on either side of my waist stiffening; her brow is knit, eyes half-lidded. She presses her parted lips to my forehead, lingers, and pulls away.

"You're playing a dangerous game, Sam." I'm about to make a smart ass comment about her own life choices, but right then we start hearing activity on the second level; it sounds like ghosts murmuring to each other, or cattle shuffling around anxiously. We'd been inside for maybe twenty minutes.

"They know we're here."

"Already?"

"Must have found the bodies outside. They'll check the perimeter before they move in. We'll be at the office by then." She clears her throat and continues forward, wiggling her way out of my grasp. I really just wanted to hold her down and kiss her until she turned blue, but the noise they're making is only getting louder, more pent up. I'd have to seduce her later.

"Two rights and a left, Lara. You'll be right on top of him."

"Right where she likes to be." I really shouldn't be making jokes right now, but he softballed it in, seriously. I unclench my muscles as I hear him laugh.

"Oo, watch out. She knows you already."

"Oh yes, you're so sharp you're going to cut yourself," she drawls into her receiver. "Quiet now, we're nearly there."

Lights shine in from the office room, fluorescent and headache-inducing. Just as we make the trek, Lara stops short and turns to me. "Sam. You need to stay behind me. For this entire exchange, you need to be behind me. Are we clear?"

"Why? So you can be a human shield? I can't watch you go down again, Lara."

"I need you at my back because I need someone watching it." She hands me one of her dual pistols, taking my hands tightly in hers. "If you see someone, shoot them. In the windows, in the ceiling, anywhere, you shoot them."

I don't want to shoot anyone. "Okay."

She slams the butt of her heel into the grate and it crumbles, sending her rocketing to the ground with her gun ready. She hits the floor hard on her feet, pointing her Desert Eagle right at the desk. I drop down after her, lining up with the pistol clenched to my chest, praying no one thought about bursting in.

She inhales sharply, pain wringing in her throat. I spin around to see what's wrong. In the desk chair, there is a man. A man, duck taped, bloody and tied. And the man isn't Vymes.

It's Wally.