It's probably the cheapest hotel room I've ever stayed at, but they didn't ask questions and the door has a bolt lock, so it's good enough for me. I shove the skulls under the bed and take a look at what I've saved during that mad escape from the flaming ruins of my apartment. Wow. I'm really taking that well. A couple of guys tried to kill me and burn my home down! Pfft. I'm good.

I'm careful with the notes and equipment. I have two laptops but only one charging cable. I have my ruined phone, and my camera. I always have several batteries and a few dozen gigs of SD cards in the camera case, too.

In the clothing department, I had grabbed two pairs of panties, a shirt, a short skirt, and a pair of jeans. That could have been worse. I strip down. The adrenaline is starting to ebb away and I'm tired. My breathing is heavier, my arm hurts, my throat burns and I must look horrible.

God, I'm so shallow sometimes. I grab my camera and pad my way to the bathroom and look in the mirror. "Shit." Yeah, I'm talking to myself, but I need to hear a voice right now, and I've always been fond of my own. It's my second favorite voice in the whole world. I set the camera up. I can edit or blur out the nudity but right now I don't really care. Something compels me to record this. It's the one thing I could never do to Lara, record her at her weakest moments. But I can record myself. I feel like I need to document this.

My left arm is messed up. I untie the cloth I'd used to try to stem the bleeding and it suddenly throbs even worse than it was just a few moments ago. The human mind's ability to ignore something until it's blatantly in your face is amazing. I just wish my mind was still ignoring it because I don't know what to do right now. It's bleeding still and I can feel the bullet moving around in there. Aren't there..arteries and things? My phone is busted and I don't know if this place has wifi so I can't google it.

Google is never available when I need it most. I start running the water. The hot water works, thank god. There's no first aid kits or anything but there's my makeup kit in my purse. I look at my tweezers and then hold them under the hot water. It's the best I can do right now. "How the fuck did Lara do this?!" On an island without hot water? The septic shock after we got to safety had been terrifying and I don't want to experience that myself. It had been bad enough watching her go through it. I don't think she'd cauterized her arm but I know by heart the shape and feel of the scars on her stomach. The doctor said that had probably saved her life.

I should stop thinking about Lara's stomach before I get distracted. "Okay.. Okay I think it's hot enough. It's not boiled but it's better than nothing."

I put the tweezers down, the pointy end hanging off the edge of the sink as I wet a face cloth and then dribble water down my arm. It's scalding hot and it burns. It's not long before my breath is ragged, but I've cleaned it and now I have to get that bullet out. I've already gone this far, I might as well finish it. How hard could it be? Lara could probably do this and not blink.

"Okay..okay. That… wasn't so bad. Once the room stops spinning, we'll be good." I run the tweezers through the water again then stare at myself in the mirror. There are two of me and the room is spinning a little. I put them back down and lean on the sink with my good arm, eyes squeezing shut. I have to do this, I have to do this.

For the benefit of the camera, I speak out loud, "Why do I have to do this? I could just go to the hospital! Except they're probably expecting that and someone might be waiting to ambush me and god knows what those skulls will do to medical equipment. Okay."

No more talking, because I need to bite down on another face cloth as I bring the tweezers to my arm. I would have screamed if it hadn't been for the cloth in my mouth but I know I make a lot of noise anyway. Pain jolts from the wounds like a thousand spikes ripping into my nerves. Tears streak my face, and I dig around until the tweezers close around something.

The bullet drops into the sink and I collapse, my knees buckling beneath me. The only thing keeping me off the floor is the sink.. Shakily, I run my hands under the water, and wash out the wound again before wrapping a cloth tightly around it. The world started spinning some time ago, but I give myself a cursory once over for anything else that might need me to do something, but the bullet and a burn on my leg are the worse of it. I think another grazed my hip but it doesn't look bad. The burn doesn't look that serious either but I turn the camera towards the tub, then carefully make my way to the shower and turn it on. Luke warm water, right? Clean off and treat the burn! Go me! I reach over to adjust the temperature and the world spins out as I pitch forward into the tub.

I come to I don't know how much time later, but the camera is still running and I'm laying in the tub soaked to the bone and shivering. It takes me a good ten minutes to get out and wrap a towel around myself. The bed is warm and inviting, but I pull on some panties and the clean shirt before sitting on it. I look at the room phone, and even pick it up to call Lara.

Something stops me. I look at the floor besides the bed, and think about what's under it. I need to get a message to Lara a different way. Maybe I'm being paranoid, but can you really blame me? I wouldn't be able to handle anything if I was attacked right now and the last thing I want to do is bring attention to Lara.

But I need to know she's okay. I need her to know I'm okay. I need her to know we're both okay because I'm going to make this up to her like crazy as soon as I can. I'm sitting there like an idiot, holding my camera and pointing it at the phone. Finally, I make up my mind and pick it up and tada! There's no dial tone. "Damn it! Maybe there is some wi-fi I can piggyback on."

I turn the camera off and open my laptop. I let it charge, and getting the plug into the wall is more draining than I really want to think about. There's a very weak wi-fi signal but I'll take it. I type off an email to her. My legs don't want to support me so I won't be moving from the bed any time soon.

I'm okay. I'm sorry I ran off. We'll talk when we see each other but be careful there are these guys and they wanted you know what. I grabbed everything I could think of.

My phone is busted, let me know where to meet you. I love you.

Sam

Of course, I have her laptop so she can't exactly use that to check her mail, but she does have her phone. My head is swimming but I need to check the news.

There's not much about the fire. Just that it happened. I don't think they know who's apartment that is, just yet. When they do the media frenzy will start again. Just when Lara was thinking she'd escape any more scrutiny, too. We'd avoided a lot of it after our first trip to Peru and the expedition to Costa Rica but after the helicopter crashed and we were the only two survivors…I hadn't let Lara near the internet for a month. I didn't want her even more depressed. Bad Luck Lara.

I lean back on the bed. The pillow feels so awesome and soft under my head, and I close my eyes. It's easy to just drift off right now and I'm just so exhausted. Exhausted enough that the jabbing in my arm isn't enough to keep me from succumbing to it.

"Lara?" I'm standing in a puddle of black water up to my knees. There's something vaguely familiar about this, and something really disturbing about it. It's thicker than water. There's blood dribbling down my arm into the water and I realize that I'm standing in a pool of blood. It's as black as the mist left behind by our copies. I try to staunch the flow, but it pours out around my fingers and into the pool. Everything is moving slowly, like a video I've shot with a high speed camera.

The water is rising, and it's at my waist now. It's like wading through a sea of blood but I have to get out! It's so dark, and I'm going to drown. My blood is pouring out of my body to fill this place and I just want to give up. Giving up would be easiest. I'm so dizzy and it feels like everything is spinning.

Just close my eyes and accept it. Lara doesn't have save me any more. Except she's not here. Where is she? The water drains away and I'm standing in a white room. There are four doors. "What is this? What's going on?" There's no answer, but I didn't expect one. That would have been creepy.

My arm is covered in that black...goop. It's too viscous to be water. But it doesn't hurt any more, so that's a plus. I can see something blue glowing through it. The paint from the ritual on Yamatai, I think. It's probably on my face, too, but i push that out of my mind. It doesn't make sense but it does, kind of.

Behind me is that pool, though I don't know how I got out of it. The goop seems to draw together, until four figures are formed. They look like me, but with the inky black eyes and the gaps in their skin filled with more of that black night, though this time there are stars. Their skin is paler, too. The ones I've seen before were pale, but these are like the color of death. I don't remember that from the ruins, but it had been so dark there that maybe I just couldn't tell.

The only thing I can say for certain is they fill me with an unearthly terror. Four doors, four exits and I charge at one of the doors, flinging it open. Grey tendrils grab my wrists and try to yank me in, I'm screaming and use my legs on the door frame to pull away.

One of the evil mes grabs my arm. It burns like dry ice. I scream again and rush to another door as claws rake down my back. This one I open more cautiously but nothing grabs me, so I take my chances and go through it, slamming it behind me.

Jerking awake, it takes me a minute to realize where I am. I put my fist to my mouth and try to slow my breathing. Try to not scream. That was the most fucked up dream I've had in at least a year. I almost wish for Himiko again. Almost. I look at my arm and I think there's a blue mark but it's gone when I blink. My back aches but when I reach back there I don't feel anything. That was crazy. It was just a dream.

Wiping sweat from my face, I slide out of bed and stumble into the bathroom. The wound is bleeding again so I change to a different cloth, then dump cold water over my head until I feel like I've cooled down. It had to have been some kind of fever dream, but for all I know the skulls are telling me something.

For one thing, avoid door number two. Door number three seemed to be the escape, but what about the other two doors? I wish I'd had time to peek into each one. There might have been answers.

I really hate those damned shadow people. That's what I'm going to call them. It sounds better than black watery goopy people and is easier to say. Do they even have their own personalities and thoughts? They're not much better than zombies, really. Zombie copies. Shambling corpses. I can't even bring myself to think of a dirty joke involving three Laras. I really am shaken.

Back on the bed, I turn the camera on and look into the lens. "So I had a nightmare. Not really uncommon for me, right? But this was a new one. I was in a well, I think. Surrounded by water but it wasn't water. It was thicker. Kind of like blood, and black. Sorta like that water in the ruins, but at least that stuff was actually watery. Anyway, my arm was bleeding the same substance, and then four of me grew out of the goop. Just rose up like being reformed, or born. It was disturbing."

I make a note to cut my voice over the video of the shadow people we've managed to capture. "They looked just like me. Like those things in Peru and Costa Rica. They were really pale this time. Dead pale, white as bone, with gaps in their flesh, especially on their arms and cheeks. It's like looking into endless stars when you look into those gaps or those eyes. Which is new because there didn't used to be stars in the darkness."

I shiver at the memory. "There were four doors. I opened one door, nearly ending up the star of my very own tentacle flick. Second door woke me up. No idea what's in the other doors, but I'll probably find out sometime. This dream has meaning, I just don't know what it is yet."

Camera off, I lean back in bed again and check my mail. Nothing from Lara but it's like four A.M. Not that I'm going to be getting to sleep any time soon. I'm just so exhausted but I need to find an ATM. I'm going to need money and it's probably a good idea to go cash for awhile. At least until I know what I'm dealing with.

Paranoia doesn't suit me but tell that to the bullet hole in my arm.