"Oh god," she breathes raggedly. I fold me hand over my mouth at the sight of him, face swollen and bloodied and arms hog tied to a wooden chair at his back. The blood from his face is smeared all over the fine mahogany desktop and the marble floor.
"Wally," she grimaces, darting to his side in a heartbeat and grabbing for the ropes that kept him confined.
"Don't," he coughs, shaking his head weakly. "He's got a hook up, Shelia. Under me, take a look." Lara's brow twists and she kneels next to him, peaking under the chair. She exhales forcefully. A red light blinks, I can see it through his knees. Hook up to what?
"What is it?" I mutter restlessly. Under us, the men, the dozens of men with guns and knives and murderous intent were shifting around, yelling orders to each other and fumbling over our trail. Eventually, they're going to notice the loosened grate we came through. "Lara, what is it?"
"An IED. They're installed an IED under him." Her tone is sparked with a raw panic that I've never heard in her before. My stomach drops heavily into my pelvis. "I'll disarm it. Should be easy enough." She doesn't sound as sure as she usually does.
"It's a weight sensor, Lara." I can only see the back of her from where I'm standing, gun gripped tightly in my hands. She stops fumbling with the ties, she stops moving almost completely. She just stares at him for a long moment, her shoulders quivering.
"No," she bites painfully.
"You need to get out of here, Lara." He nods at me. "You need to get her out of here."
"I'm not leaving you," she snarls, ducking to the floor to study the explosive again. "I can disarm it, just give me-"
"We're being watched, Lara," he says sternly, grabbing her manic attention. In the corner of the ceiling, a camera swivels on its neck and focuses impassively on the scene. Her breath hitches in a dangerous way as she stares it down. "Whoever on the other end sees you messing with it, he'll turn this whole place into a crater. Lara, you've got to leave. He's out for blood this time."
She squeezes her fingers into solid fists by her head as she struggles to find a solution. "I dragged you into this," she hisses through a clamped jaw. "I'm sorry, Wally."
"Make it worth something," he says quietly. "He's in a secret level under the building. Lara, he's not what he used to be anymore. Something's happened." The camera makes him pause, and Lara's frozen in place beside him. He sighs and looks at her, really looks at her, and he speaks very softly. "I'm not getting out of this one, Shelia. But you still can. You can end all this."
Her fingers tangle in her bangs and she leans over him, wrapping her arms around his shoulders tightly. "I'm sorry," she whispers , strained.
He levels his gaze hard into hers as she goes to stand. "Make sure that bastard suffers."
She nods, looks at me with fire blazing behind her eyes, then looks at the camera. Stiff, she jabs her finger in its direction. "I'm coming for you, you son of a bitch."
She grabs me hard in the crook of my arm before shooting the camera right through the lens with the Desert Eagle I didn't know she'd had in her grasp. Without a word, she kicks the giant office doors open, slamming the slab into the two guards standing watch outside. I shout as one of them fumbles for the huge machine gun strapped to his back. Before he can get his hands around himself, she whips him across the face with the neck of her own firearm and unloads two bullets into the side of his head. I shut my eyes involuntarily at the sight of his skull imploding, and can only hear when she downs the other one.
She takes off down the hallway with my wrist in her steel grip. The length of it is empty; they must still be searching the grounds. "The gunfire is going to call them in," she growls. "We need to find a way under the building."
Her earpiece blips back to life and she mashes her index finger into its side. "Zip, is there a way farther down? A cargo track, an elevator?" Between her pounding footsteps and the hot lava pouring out of my heart, I can't make out his answer. But suddenly she stops, looks around, and kicks open one of the many doors we'd run passed. I follow her in, and she calls me over to a pretty small access panel on the wall of what looks like some kind of laundry room. The side of her fist slams into it, and it slides open.
On the other side, another metal grate. Lara doesn't bother removing this one carefully, though. She threads her fingers into the treads and pulls, straining all of the muscles in her arms all at once. The porous metal buckles slowly at first; as the center begins to go convex, her fingers dribble with blood.
"Lara," I urge quietly, placing the flat of my palm against her shoulder. She ignores me, and the thin metal cuts deeper into her hands. "Lara, you're hurting yourself-"
The grate rips off at its soldered joints. She whips it across the room and it clatters noisily against the opposite wall. She turns towards me, bloody hand braced against the wall and brow low, eyes dark, mouth in an unnerving line. "Get in," she growls. Her pure wrath makes me freeze up like a deer in headlights.
"Lara, please. You need to take a deep breath or something-"
"Samantha." She's the only one who's ever made my name sound like a weapon. I flinch into the tall vent, watching her as she hoists herself up. "Go," she urges, pushing me along by my back. I can the feel the wetness of her blood seeping into my top with every touch.
We crawl through another silvery labyrinth for uncounted minutes, the only sound between us the scrapping of our boots and knees against the metal. I don't know Wally beyond the few words we'd exchanged by the plane, but there had been an energy between them that I had had only seen with her and Zip. A brotherhood, I guess. How had Vymes gotten him, anyway? He'd dropped us out of a plane. How could he have possibly snagged him? And who was this Vymes? Coming after Lara for an object was one thing, but to kidnap a friend and brutalize them, that was something else. My arms start to shake at the thought of coming face to face with a man like that-
The ground under us shakes violently as something behind us bellows and ignites the air with sudden heat. An explosion. Before I can think about where it undoubtedly came from, the bolts holding the vent together crackle and give, ripping the slabs like aluminum foil. It tears apart, and unlike the system we had been in before, there isn't a room for us to land in. I shout as darkness blooms under me and we fall blindly into the strange pit. It's only air for a full three seconds, then a gritty slope connects with my back and sends me tumbling crazily, spinning down into a dim glow. The slope teeters into solid ground eventually, though the fall is unbearable enough for me to remain still even after the fall had stopped.
I sit up slowly, gripping the back of my head for a moment before noticing the odd texture of what I'd landed on. Dirt? But weren't we still inside the building?
"Lara?" I call in an edged way. The atmosphere blinks with a dull orange light. It looked like a cave of some kind, or something. Either way, we'd definitely found our way underground. I stand, wobbly, and squint in the poor lighting. A shadowed figure, not far from where I'd fallen, lay still on the crumbled earth.
I stumble to her side and drop to my knees. "Lara," I urge, taking her shoulder to turn her onto her back. My breath catches in my throat as she barks a low sob, just one, and mashes the heels of her palms against her eyes. Her chin quivers and her teeth bite together as she suppresses herself, as she always does. She knew, and I knew, where that explosion had come from.
I couldn't find it in myself to tell her that it was okay. I try to touch her, but I'm received with a harsh slap to the contact. "Don't," she hisses. I hang my head, guilty though I can't say why. She picks herself up, leans limply on a column of rock for a second, and gathers her weapon.
"Vymes!" She shouts, voice like lightning and thunder cracking against the silence. I would not want to be on the receiving end of that frustrated anger.
Nothing, and then, an uneasy shifting in the parts of the environment we couldn't see. A shape rises out of the ground, a wet and dripping shape that exuded a foul smell. It grew, and grew, until it nearly touched the ceiling; twisted fingers slammed into the ground on either side of it as a cave opened at its highest point.
An echoing groan oozed from it. "Ahhh,"the cave breathed. "Miss Croft. Here at last."
Its voice wasn't like a voice at all, but more like something without a mouth trying to imitate a voice. I swallow hard and close my throat to keep myself from screaming. Despite her earlier misdirected animosity, she allows me to crowd her back. This is seriously fucked up. Two glowing orbs bulge out on either side of the cavernous hole, like eyes bearing down into us.
She curls her nose smugly at the massive thing. "Looks like the Water of Hecate wasn't what you were looking for after all."
It stretches closer, moving and dripping like its body was made of loose mud. The smell got worse as it approached; it alone made my hair stand on end.
"Sharp tongue," it gurgled, as if struggling to form words. "Should have cut it out of you, little thief. Should have cut it out."
She raises her gun to it, but I have a feeling bullets wouldn't do much; it'd be like shooting at a swamp or a puddle of water. "You have a lot to answer for," she grimaces.
"Little thief, with little toys." It draws right up to her, mouth sinking like an endless slimy corridor, rowed with rock-like teeth. "Wolf bitch, you knew what that Water would do to me."
"You commissioned me to fetch it, and so I fetched it." She put biting emphasis into the word 'fetch' each time it was uttered. "You thought it would make you immortal. Who was I to spoil your ridiculous dream?"
"No dream," it wailed. "Immortal, yes. Deathless, forever. But like this, in this towering, infected, unbeautiful body. You did this to me."
"You did this to yourself," she spits. "You were a disgusting man before. The only difference is that now, your outsides match your insides."
It roars mightily in protest and slams its decaying head into the ground. She shoves us aside, out of its course by just a few inches. Parts of its face splash against my shoes and pants and I immediately have to stop myself from puking my guts out.
"Come face your end, little thief!" Its not-a-voice warps even farther, becoming intelligible. "You cannot kill me!"
She hoists me up from the dirt by the back of my shirt, hiding us behind a wall of stone. She doesn't look scared, just more pissed off. "I missed Shangri-La for this," she bites, taking a small vial from her toolbelt and popping the cap off with her thumb. She unloads her pistol and pours the fine white liquid into the cartridge, covering the bullets, and reloads.
"I'm going to rip your pretty legs from your hips, Croft," it howls. "I'm going to eat your guts in front of you."
Before I can stop her, she rounds the corner and fires three shots. Two of them connect with its reforming head. The bullets seem to burn huge holes through it, drilling into the gory mud and solidifying their tracks; it teeters back and bellows like a train speeding passed my ears.
"What have you done?!" it shrieks, grotesque body reeling.
"Did you think this would surprise me?" she snarls, advancing with her weapon in front of her. She fires twice more; it twists away from her manically, moving so fast and unnatural it was frightening. "Did you think this would catch me off guard? I found the Water of Life, Vymes. Your men walked right passed it when they broke into my home and violated our agreement." She shoots again. "It's the antithesis of the Water of Hecate. You walked right passed your death and you were too stupid to realize it."
"You think that will kill me?!" it shrieks, whipping itself at her wildly. It slams into her side and wraps its slimy tendril around her, squeezing. She gasps for air, and drops the gun soundlessly into the soft earth.
It speaks again, but I'm deaf to it. I can hear her ribs cracking as it constricts. Her lips fold over my name as she struggles; she extends her index finger down to point at the gun.
It looks at me.
I freeze up.
"What's wrong?" Its strange mouth curves into a macabre grin as it twists toward me, breath like rotten meat. "Do I disgust you? Do I scare you?" Its eyes flicker like candles.
Yes. My body refuses to move.
"The Water of Hecate, Miss Croft told me, turns your body into a reflection of your soul. Hungry, bored. Greedy, it said. Ugly. This is what my soul looks like."It turns back to Lara, writhing against its slippery body. "Do you think she would look any different?"
"She isn't like you," I whisper, shaking badly.
Its grin stretches. "No? Let's see then."
It reaches into itself, into its chest, and pulls from it a glass ball containing a black, scittering substance. The ball drops through its muddy hand and shatters, leaving a wiggling splatter pattern where the unholy looking liquid spread. For a moment it lets go of Lara, leaving her suspended, before slamming into her and crushing her to the floor. I scream as she's immediately enveloped by its beastly arm.
"How lovely. I had no one to scream for me when I became this-"
Just as soon as it speaks, its arm explodes. Intense blue light rockets up the center of it and blows it apart the way a firework might, sending pieces scattering into the walls. Where Lara once lay under him, something else rose. IT looked like a woman, but not like Lara; its body was long and narrow and taller than she had been, and its skin was luminous. Its hair moved like living silk in many sheets, wavering and shifting as if underwater. Her hands were decorated with long, sharp claws.
It turns to me. Its mouth isn't normal; it's unhinged and open, huge thin fangs on display. Before it can do whatever it was planning to do to me, Vymes roars and throws its remaining arm into her. It evaporates like a shadow entering light.
She turns, and pounces, tearing into his torso effortlessly, savagely. It continues to shriek and grab at her, but each time failed miserably. The screaming is unbearable. Reflexively, I grab the gun she'd dropped while they're distracted.
She finds what she's looking for deep inside the monster, passed a cage that maybe resembled ribs and a throbbing, car sized organ. "There you are," she smiles. Her voice is tripled and deep. With one pull, she tosses a naked human man from the oozing mass.
The mud stops moving, and the man gasps awake like he'd just escaped a horrible nightmare. I stare at him, and he stares at me, before she's on him.
He manages one single 'No', before she twists his neck violently to one side. His dead weight makes an awful sound against the dirt.
And then her head snaps to me. She gets in three steps before I completely lose my shit and shoot her in the shoulder.
Her eyes go wide as dinner plates and body changes back startlingly fast, as if she'd always been Lara. It was like watching the photo develop backwards. The bullet hits her like a moving vehicle, sending her reeling onto her back.
"Christ!" she shouts , grabbing at her fresh wound. "Did you just shoot me?"
"Lara?" I stutter, trying to get a grasp on everything that just happened. "Is that you?"
She only manages a strangled groan. I lean over her and press my head to her stomach; I'm seriously on the verge of passing out. The bullet wound doesn't look like any bullet wound I've ever seen; it's already sealed and scarred over, running with just one drop of blood. Still, she rolls with repressed pain.
"Vymes is dead," I breathe, in case she hadn't felt his spine snap in her hands.
"What?" she grunts, struggling to sit up. I don't let her.
"You were possessed by that Hecate stuff. Killed him like three seconds ago. Then I shot you and you woke up." I cough into her abdomen. A sudden urge moves me to take the empty cartridge from the gun and pour whatever 'Water of Life' shit was left in it onto her.
I stutter out a rattled groan. "Can we go home now?"