Shadow of the Tomb Raider E-Book

S. D. Perry

• Herausgeber: Titan Books
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Seitenzahl: 396

Beschreibung

The official tie-in novel to the Shadow of the Tomb Raider video game.In a brand-new adventure, Lara Croft must evade the agents of Trinity and discover an ancient secret. When a mysterious stranger offers to help Lara uncover a clue that could give her the upper hand, she embarks on an expedition to a system of caves in Colombia. However, once they learn of Lara's plans, Trinity will stop at nothing to reach the location first. Trinity believes they can turn the tables on Lara, but in the darkness of the underground caverns, there are terrors in the depths that neither Lara nor Trinity anticipated.

Leseprobe

CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Chapters

Acknowledgements

About the Author

PATH OF THE APOCALYPSE

PATH OF THE APOCALYPSE

S.D. PERRY

TITAN BOOKS

SHADOW OF THE TOMB RAIDER: PATH OF THE APOCALYPSE

Print edition ISBN: 9781785659911

Ebook edition ISBN: 9781785659928

Published by Titan Books

A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

First edition: September 2018

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

© 2018 Square Enix Limited.

All rights reserved.

SHADOW OF THE TOMB RAIDER, TOMB RAIDER, CRYSTAL DYNAMICS, the CRYSTAL DYNAMICS logo, EIDOS-MONTRÉAL, the EIDOS-MONTRÉAL logo, and LARA CROFT are registered trademarks or trademarks of Square Enix Limited.

SQUARE ENIX and the SQUARE ENIX logo are registered trademarks or trademarks of Square Enix Holdings Co., Ltd. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

Published by Titan Publishing under license from Square Enix Limited.

Cover artwork by Charly Chive, Michael Verhaaf, and Arnaud Pheu.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

For all the women who kick ass, and the kick-ass men who admire them

Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.

ANAÏS NIN

The most difficult thing is the decision to act; the rest is merely tenacity.

AMELIA EARHART

Luis Marin was writing a report at Trinity’s airfield east of town when he found out that the world was ending.

It was late, dark, and only the flight controller and two guards were awake at the small compound, which was little more than a radio room and a few offices attached to a long, single-story barracks. Marin sat in an office off the radio room, using one of Trinity’s encrypted computers, a small fan buzzing air across the side of his face. It was quiet except for the fan, and the faint snores from the open rooms down the hall. There was bunk room for twenty men but there were only a handful here, pilots and mechanics for the helicopters parked outside.

A soft, warm breeze that smelled like machine oil drifted through the propped door behind Marin. The guards leaned on the walls outside and smoked and talked about football. The controller sat in front of a scrolling screen in the radio room with headphones on; Marin could just see the back of his chair, his slouching shoulders. Marin didn’t know the man and he hadn’t introduced himself or said a word after looking at Marin’s ID, only nodding him toward the offices. His nametag read YELTSIN. He had graying hair and an old, sour face.

Marin should have been home helping Eva pack, but he had been called out to assess the structural stability of a new area discovered at the cliff site dig. He’d spent all afternoon and evening measuring rocks and running formulas while impatient workers paced around him, gossiping about Lara Croft, who’d been seen in town. Marin knew the name—he guessed everyone in Trinity’s upper ranks knew her name, after what happened in Siberia. Marin wasn’t worried, but then, he wasn’t a soldier. Lara Croft was somebody else’s problem.

Since he had to drop the GPR unit back at the airfield, he’d decided to write up his summary in the relative quiet there. Once he got home, packing would warrant his full attention. They were only moving to his cousin’s rental for a short time, perhaps a few months, but there was a lot to get sorted. With Natalia teething, it was unlikely that Eva had gotten much done.

Marin tapped at the keys quickly. He was tired, but running on nerves. Dr. Dominguez had been looking for the sacred artifacts for a long time, but there had been a flurry of activity in recent weeks that suggested he might actually be getting close to finding them—the Key of Chak Chel, the Box of Ix Chel. A dagger and a silver box, both hidden, although Dominguez was sure that the dagger was here in Mexico, perhaps buried at the cliff dig. Marin had worked the other Maya sites, he’d read the reports, he knew what could happen if the items were found. Dr. Dominguez had personally assured him that there were plans in place for an orderly evacuation if the dagger was discovered, before it was touched; the great cleansing was supposed to kick off with a tidal wave, when the “key” was taken from its hiding place. The Doctor had local roots, too; surely he wouldn’t let anything bad happen… And Trinity had a full squad of soldiers here, and teams of workers; if, God forbid, the prophecy was triggered early, there were enough men to lead an emergency evacuation. There would be damage, certainly, but no one would die.

If Dominguez is even successful. He’d claimed to be close more than once, but he’d been searching for years. This could be another false lead… Since Natalia’s birth, Marin’s vague plans to move his family to a new home had sharpened into a deadline. The structure his grandfather had built had withstood many a harsh storm, but it was close to the water. Too close. He felt bad about the other coastal villages that wouldn’t have Trinity to help them, but his family would be safe, his friends and neighbors would be alive.

Marin was making his final recommendation, that a geologist be consulted before blasting any deeper at the cliff dig, when Yeltsin sat up bone straight in his chair, and started hitting buttons.

A klaxon blared through the barracks and the guards out front ran inside, voices high and panicked over the screaming alarm.

“What’s happening?”

“What is it?”

“Evac, emergency channel!” Yeltsin shouted, and Marin stood up, his heart thundering. He grabbed the radio off his belt and turned it on, but there was nothing being broadcast.

The guards’ radios started to crackle. Sleepy-eyed men were piling into the hall, and Yeltsin turned off the wake-up alarm. Marin could hear the orders being delivered over the guards’ radios, and Yeltsin flipped a switch so that the gathering pilots could hear.

“—detected, initial wave expected within ten minutes. Evacuation is mandatory for all Trinity workers and staff. Proceed immediately to designated emergency evacuation points. External communications strictly prohibited. Repeat, seismic tremors have been detected—”

Yeltsin started snapping directions at the blinking pilots. “Mendes, you’re up first; you’re picking up the Doctor and his guards at the main compound—go. Abadi, Teller, take the big birds in behind him, get everyone else. Juan, you’re on the dig, there are workers waiting—I’m going with you. Everyone else, grab a ride. We’re headed to the Huerto strip an hour east.”

Marin couldn’t believe what he was hearing. The men were already moving, grabbing bags and running out the door.

“No! Wait! We have to evacuate the town!” He sounded just as desperate as he felt.

Yeltsin was the only one who even looked at him, and that was barely a glance. “You heard the order.”

“You don’t understand!” Marin’s voice was a strangled, high-pitched shriek. “This is where I live! There’s a plan to get everyone out!”

No one listened. Outside, he heard the first helicopter engine whine into life, then a second.

“Wait!” he cried. “The wrong protocol has been activated! Stand down! Everybody stand down!”

Yeltsin turned his sour gaze back to Marin. “You’ll shut up, and board one of the helicopters. Now.”

Frantic, Marin switched to the command channel on his radio. He was technically part of the sciences division but he had pull; he’d been with Trinity for a long time. “Captain Trent, respond! Commander Polis! Dr. Dominguez, this is Luis Marin, somebody please respond!”

There was a brief silence, and then he heard Trent’s voice, terse and clipped. “Orders are from the top, Marin. Mandatory evac.”

“I have to get home!” Marin pleaded. Captain Trent had been to his house, had met his wife when she was still pregnant. “Please, my wife can’t get to the compound in time!”

Silence. God, what about Tomas? His brother sometimes slept on his boat in the fall. This can’t be happening!

“Remember your Oath, Luis,” Trent said, and then the radio went dead in Marin’s hands. Yeltsin nodded at one of the guards, whose eyes narrowed as he stepped toward Marin. He held an assault rifle and was built like a bouncer.

“Go sit your ass on one of those birds,” the guard said.

Marin nodded wildly, the radio dropping from his numb fingers, clattering to the floor. He grabbed his phone as he stumbled for the door, into the dark where the engines were rising and the first rotors were starting to spin. He would warn them. Eva would have time to get to higher ground, at least; Tomas could ride farther out to sea, he could…

The guard’s hairy hand reached over his shoulder and snatched the phone out of his hands. “No communications. Now get on the—”

Marin turned and tried to grab the phone. The soldier shoved him, hard. He fell backwards a few steps, black despair welling in his gut as the soldier pointed the rifle at him.

“Get on the fucking bird!” the guard shouted, and Marin turned and ran into the night, ignoring the threats to open fire. There were no shots. He ran as fast as he had ever run, pounding west through stands of palm and open land, refusing to consider that he would never make it home in time, that it wasn’t possible. The drive was half an hour and he was on foot, but he thought of his daughter’s face, and his wife’s soft, dark eyes, and ran faster. Behind him, the first helicopters took to the air.

Remember your Oath, Luis. To serve Trinity. To sacrifice everything, if that’s what it took to promote the cause. Captain Trent had just told him in no uncertain terms that his family was already as good as dead, and Trinity expected him to bear the loss.

Marin was staggering and breathless and still far from home when he heard the roar of the ocean, and the first distant screams.

The sun rose over the receding waters, shining brightly on the dead that littered the streets. The long, hot Mexican morning gave way to another tropical day, steam rising from the pools and rivers that lapped at the tsunami’s devastation. It was chaos. Lara and Jonah joined the uninjured and walking wounded, desperately working to save what lives they could. Lara lost sight of Jonah after a while. She hoped he was finding a pilot who was ready to fly.

She dug through piles of crumbling adobe and broken wood, waded into broken homes with other rescuers, helped splint bones and carry bodies. The cries of the bereaved and the injured and the desperate beat at her the way the sun beat down on her trembling arms, the way horror and guilt beat at the edges of her heart.

Lara joined a chain of survivors, handing bricks back along the line as they tried to find anyone still alive beneath a broken building. It was exhausting, monotonous work, but she was grateful for something to focus on. To try to focus on, anyway. She didn’t see the sodden rubble that passed through her fingers; all she could see was the marvelous dagger she had held the night before, carved in the shape of a serpent, decorated in bright blues and greens, with a wicked-looking blade—a Maya artifact like no other, the Key of Chak Chel itself. She’d wrenched it from the hidden altar in the Temple of the Moon, where it had lain undisturbed for centuries. Agents of Trinity had been minutes behind her— she’d had no choice.

When she’d pulled the dagger free, she’d felt its power, and the first pulse of dread, a bleak feeling that had only grown since. Even as the temple had trembled around her, she hadn’t really comprehended what she’d done—thoughtless, hurried, afraid, her only focus had been keeping that power from Trinity’s hands.

And you failed. Dr. Dominguez and his people had outgunned her, taking the relic off of her like she was a child. The tsunami had hit only minutes later.

She saw the dagger, but it was Dominguez’s words that she heard, again and again.

By taking the key, you’ve set the apocalypse in motion. Do you realize the tragedy you have unleashed?

My fault. Taking the dagger, the key, had set off the first of the prophesied cataclysms—the “cleansing” that would prepare the world for the rebirth of a Maya god. The tsunami had been triggered by her own hand; every face she looked into was wracked with pain or loss or heartbreak, because she had acted.

What else was I supposed to do? If she hadn’t taken the dagger, Dr. Dominguez surely would have. What had he said? With this key and the silver box we can remake the world—without weakness, cruelty… But pushing the blame onto Dominguez meant little when she could hear the cries of parents searching for their missing children.

And how many more people are going to die, if we don’t find the hidden city before Trinity does? She saw again the mural in the Temple of the Moon where she’d found the dagger: the tsunami, the storm, the earthquake, the erupting volcano. If she couldn’t find the Silver Box of Ix Chel before Dominguez, all of it could come to pass.

My fault.

She ached and sweated and stayed focused on the physical toil, on the sound of her pounding heart, so that she wouldn’t have to hear the sorrow of the people she’d hurt.

She’d joined a trio of locals hauling buckets of mud from a drowned well and was starting to stagger when a warm hand landed on her sticky, filthy shoulder.

“Emergency crews are here from inland,” Jonah said. “You need to rest.”

“I’ll rest on the plane.” Lara tipped out the tin pail of heavy black sludge. “Please tell me you found one.”

“Yeah,” Jonah said. “There’s this guy, Miguel, he says he can get us to Peru under the radar. Single engine with floats. We’ll have to stop in a couple of, ah, private airstrips, but he’s willing, for a price.”

Lara dropped the bucket and turned. Jonah stepped back and studied her, frowning a little. He looked like she felt— grimy and dazed with exhaustion—but something loosened in her chest at the sight of him.

“When do we leave?”

“Tomorrow morning,” Jonah said. “Right now, you and I are going back to the hotel and—”

The thought of waiting another night was insupportable. Dr. Dominguez and his Trinity goons were actively looking for the Silver Box of Ix Chel, and she’d been forced to hand over the key.

Lara shook her head, blinking up at the merciless sky, rich and blue and horribly bright. “We should leave today. Now, as soon as possible.”

To find yet another lost city, to prevent yet another prophecy of catastrophe being fulfilled, her treacherous mind whispered. More dead with more to come. The friends you’ve lost, who’ve suffered horribly, who died for you. These poor people. But it’s all Trinity’s fault, right?

Black dots swam at the corners of her eyes, and suddenly Jonah’s arm was around her waist. She leaned into him and took a deep breath, trying to clear her head. How long had she been awake? Since yesterday she’d been beaten up, knocked out and half-drowned. The cut on her thigh burned, and with Jonah’s steady arm to sag against, her muscles spasmed and twitched, rubbery from overuse. God, she was tired. She felt heartsick and broken.

“We can’t go today,” Jonah said patiently. “Miguel’s out looking for survivors along the coast, along with every other pilot in the area. And you’re going to go lie down, right now.”

“We have to get to the box before they do,” she said, but even her voice was weak, and then he was walking her away from the well, past straggling groups of men and women carrying food and buckets and tents, past crying children and heaps of baking wet debris. She let herself be led, too tired to even be embarrassed when he had to carry her through the flooded lobby of their hotel and up the stairs.

He helped her to the hot, dark cave of her room and made her sit on the bed and drink a glass of water, warm and flat and inexpressibly sweet. She lowered her exhausted body to the soft mattress while he started digging through her backpack for a protein bar, but she blinked, and he was gone.

Lara sat up, wincing at the instant scream of a thousand unhappy muscles. The shade on her window was up, a cooling breeze cutting through the thick heat of her room, smelling of mud and salt. It was dark outside. Her boots were at the foot of the bed and there was a clean bandage on her thigh.

She scooped up her watch from the nightstand. Nearly midnight. She’d been out for hours.

Trinity.

The day was gone, and they were no closer to finding the hidden city. Dread blossomed fresh in her gut, the same dark feeling that had sparked when she’d pried the dagger from its holder.

The power was still out but Jonah had left an oil lamp burning on the desk against the far wall. Lara saw a tray with dishes and the pale square of a note propped against a basin of water. She stumbled to her feet and crossed to the desk, stretching. The tray held a big bowl of beans and rice, a plate of wilted greens, and a half-dozen corn tortillas wrapped in a cloth.

She picked up the note.

Little Bird—We leave at 0800. Eat, sleep. I’m next door. J.

Her eyes prickled at the rush of warm gratitude. Jonah’s kindness was incredible, and she was lucky that he seemed to love her as much as she loved him. She’d have died a dozen times over if not for him. Even after all she’d put him through, all that he’d lost because of her…

She blinked back the tears, recognizing that her emotions were on high pitch, everything at the surface. She couldn’t afford to let despair or doubt take hold, much as she deserved her share; she had to focus on the task at hand. Feeling awful wasn’t going to bring her any closer to the Silver Box of Ix Chel.

Lara quickly washed, then devoured the cold meal, studying a topographical download of the Andes she had on her tablet, tracking tributaries off the Amazon. She wanted nothing more than to crawl back into bed, she was a mass of aches, but she doubted she’d willingly sleep again before this was over. The only advantage she had over Trinity at this point was that they were looking for the silver box in the wrong spot. She was near certain that they’d misread a damaged number from the tomb’s instructions, which was why they had teams in Brazil digging for the Box of Ix Chel, rather than Peru.

She pulled up the pictures she’d taken in the Maya tomb the day before, reading the glyphs again, filling in the gaps.

Hidden manifested place. South, go, river. Fish. Chase, heart, serpent. Crown mountain, twins come together.

There were two color signifiers, at fish and crown.

To find the hidden city, go south along the shore until you find the pink fish, then chase the heart of the serpent to the silver-crowned mountain, where the twins confer.

Jonah had already confirmed that pink dolphins were found all along the Amazon; the Maya would have considered them fish. And she was sure the serpent had to be the constellation Hydra, as the star charts she’d seen on the walls of the tomb suggested. The Maya belief that the will of the gods could be read in the stars had made them keen astronomers. The damaged number in the clue had been a baktun, a Maya time period measuring nearly four hundred years. Trinity had gambled that the marking was the number thirteen, and had followed the heart of the serpent—Alphard, the brightest star in the Hydra constellation—to where the star had been aligned at the beginning of the thirteenth baktun, at the end of 2012. Lara believed the marking was actually an eight. The beginning of the eighth baktun was in the fall of AD 40, at which time Alphard had been aligned farther north; back then, using it as a guide would have led a traveler to the mountains of Peru, not Brazil.

Assuming you’re right. And how long before Dr. Dominguez decides that the glyph is an eight, too, if he hasn’t already? Pedro Dominguez was a respected archaeologist, an expert on Central and South American precolonial ruins; he’d been a colleague of her father’s. How much did Trinity have invested in him? They could already have a team investigating the alternative possibility.

But they don’t have the box yet—Dominguez asked me where it was. Which means I can get to it before him.

The problem was, the directions weren’t particularly specific. The Amazon had over a thousand tributaries, though only a handful that ran near Peru’s dozens of “crowned” mountains, assuming the Maya who’d written the inscription had meant snow—but did they mean snow? The Mesoamerican civilization had reigned on the peninsula for three thousand years, but its people weren’t known to have traveled even as far south as Nicaragua. How well had these distant travelers known South America? Perhaps the “crown” in the inscription simply meant clouds, or some geographical feature that the culture had denoted a crown. And which river’s shore should she follow, if she was right about the baktun? Ucayali? Mantaro? Ene? There were hundreds of kilometers of river to search. Jonah was right, the riddle was too vague… But it was what they had, and it would have to be enough. If Trinity found the Silver Box of Ix Chel first, if Dominguez got his hands on it—

He’ll summon Kukulkan.

Little was known about the god beyond its depiction as a feathered serpent, like the Aztec god Quetzalcoatl. She thought of the stone representation of the entity that slithered down the side of the pyramid at Chich’en Itza, its massive, terrible head swallowing a man whole at the foot of the stone steps. A creator and destroyer, powerful beyond measure.

Is this what he ran across? Is this why they killed him? She’d come to Mexico to look at the sites Trinity had been working at the time her father had been murdered. Both of the sites here were centered on the resurrection of Kukulkan. Had her father been seeking to prevent exactly the catastrophe that she’d just set off?

Lara shook her head, her emotions catching at her. I’m so sorry, Dad. His reputation had been ruined for his “beliefs” about sacred, powerful artifacts and the arcane prophecies surrounding them… and she’d grown up siding with his detractors, until her first disastrous expedition to the cursed island of Yamatai. He’d known the truth all along.

Focus, damn it! She couldn’t get sidetracked. Nothing else mattered if she couldn’t prevent the rebirth of a world-killer. Maybe Dominguez was trying to stop things from getting worse but she couldn’t assume that—how could she, knowing that Trinity was supporting him? He’d said he would save the world from what she’d done, but also that he’d remake it. How could he remake something without destroying what already existed?

All you know is that the box has to be found. So, find it.

She picked up the thesis on gods of the Maya mythology that she’d borrowed from her father’s library, leaned closer to the lamp, and started to read.

Sometime later, she heard light footsteps in the hall. Light and sneaking.

Her holstered Remington was on the nightstand. Lara stood and in two quick steps the deadly weight of the .45 was cool in her hand. She dropped the holster on the bed and walked softly and quickly to the archway by the bathroom.

Outside, the footsteps stopped in front of her door. She heard fast, high breathing—a child?—and the door moved very slightly in its frame as someone leaned their weight against it.

A beat later, the interloper was pushing an envelope beneath the door.

Lara stepped forward, flicked the lock and pulled the door open. A young boy fell into the tiled entryway, letting out a squawk. She immediately lowered her weapon. The child scrambled to his feet, his eyes wide and fixed on the shining handgun. Lara moved it behind her back. The boy couldn’t be more than ten years old.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“Nothing! He paid me to bring a note, that’s all! He said come very early. I wasn’t doing anything bad. I can go now, yes? It’s only a note!”

She’d been proud of her fluency in Spanish since they’d arrived, but he spoke so quickly that it took her a second to understand.

“Who was this man?”

The boy’s thin mouth trembled, his gaze darting away. “A man! He’s just a man, a stranger. I don’t know him, I swear, I would tell you if I did!”

“Okay,” she said, gently. She thought he might be lying, but he was also terrified. “I’m sorry I scared you. You’ve earned your money. You should go home, it’s late.”

“Yes, yes! I’ll go now!”

The boy nodded vigorously and was gone in seconds, pounding for the stairs. Lara closed and locked the door before sliding a single sheet of paper from the envelope.

I can help you find it. Come to the market at dawn, if you want to stop them. I’ll look for you.

The note was unsigned.

A trap? If so, it was rather theatrically laid. It would have been just as easy to walk up to her door with a gun as send a child with a note. Anyway, if Trinity wanted her dead, they could have killed her when they’d taken the dagger from her.

On the other hand, her brief interaction with Dr. Dominguez had shown him to be charismatic, and his talk about stopping an Armageddon meant he was likely to have followers. What if the note was from some acolyte who had decided to take Lara out of the equation, and had talked themselves into playing cloak-and-dagger, rather than going for a direct hit? She’d certainly run across far stranger things.

And what if it’s exactly what it says? Some perfectly sane person who wants to stop Dominguez?

What if he doesn’t need to be stopped? What if he’s the answer to what you started?

Lara sighed, then went to put on her mud-caked boots. The sun wouldn’t be up for hours yet, but she wasn’t going to sleep anyway, and she might as well make herself useful while she waited. There was no question that she would meet with the note writer. If this cautious stranger knew how to help her find the Box of Ix Chel, or even the mythical city where it was rumored to be hidden, that could cut days off their search.

She took a minute to quickly give the Remington a once-over—Roth would have chided her for not cleaning it before she slept—and buckle on a shoulder holster beneath a clean overshirt; she didn’t want to scare anyone else. Guns were an unfortunate tool of her trade, but they were often the only effective measure when it came to interactions with rifle-toting killers. Trinity had probably evacuated all of their people when the tsunami hit, but she wasn’t going to take chances.

She scribbled a note to Jonah on the back of the message and left it on the desk, hoping she’d be back before he even woke up, turned down the lamp, and let herself out.

* * *

A few minutes after Mitchell reported the kid’s departure, she called in again from her stakeout across the road from the hotel.

“Commander, she just came out the front door.” Mitchell’s voice was cool. “Turning south on Hidalgo. On foot.”

On the other side of town, Damon Harper tapped his inconspicuous collar mic, pleased. “You and Greaves stay on her. Leave Byers to watch for her friend. And let me know when she gets somewhere.”

“Copy.”

Harper nodded at the pair he had brought with him to watch the spot where his own target had holed up, a dilapidated rental owned by the target’s cousin. The bungalow had escaped the worst of the tsunami due to its location on a low, leafy hill, away from the coast. Plenty of cover, an easy stakeout. “Stay here. I’m going to see what Croft is up to. As soon as Marin moves, say the word. Don’t lose him and don’t get seen.”

Both men nodded. They weren’t his A team—except for Mitchell, all of his top players were catching some sleep— but they were highly qualified and hungry to move up the ranks. Harper didn’t work with novices.

He cast a last look at the crappy shack where the traitor Marin was staying, his lips curling into a sneer. He fucking did it. He used that kid to pass along something to Croft. Disgusting. How many of the faithful had died through the centuries to keep Trinity alive, to promote the cause? And Marin wanted to hand their hard work off to an entitled, reckless woman. A dangerous one.

Harper’s team—their official designation was Special Tactics Unit, a brave new term for wet work, but someone had started calling them Harper’s Dozen, and the name had stuck—had been brought in to assess Marin’s loyalty to Trinity and either bring him back into the fold or take him out, depending on his next move. Luis Marin had been with Trinity for more than a decade; he was valuable—a top practical field engineer and a walking encyclopedia of dig sites and trap networks. Unfortunately, his family was local. He’d resisted the evac order and run off, and hadn’t checked in since. Marin had been observed talking to a little boy earlier, the same one who’d just left Lara Croft’s hotel; Mitchell had confirmed it. The only question now was whether Marin had already passed data to Croft, or if he was about to. It was a massive fuck-up on someone’s part that Marin had even heard the orders.

We should just kill Croft. Would that it were so easy. There’d been a stalemate in the upper echelons of the Trinity organization regarding the troublesome woman for some time, one that had yet to be resolved. She had unwittingly led them closer to artifacts they sought, some argued. She had her father’s talent for the work, no question. Others wanted her dead: she fought Trinity’s interests at every turn. Harper sided with the latter group, although his reasons were much more personal. Half the men who’d died in Siberia had been cadets under Harper, when he’d still been a trainer. Croft was an existential menace, a threat to the lives of Trinity soldiers. She had already killed too many.

Harper walked toward the heart of the small town, its market square, down streets lined with huddled, sleeping people, past blocks of bellowing machinery and shouting workers lit up by spotlights. Noisy diesel generators pumped fumes into the humid air. He’d memorized the town’s simple layout on the flight in. The Dozen had been tapped while the waves were still pounding the coast; Croft’s presence had modified their orders, to “monitor developments.” He was pretty sure his next instructions would be a vague directive to keep Croft from upsetting Dominguez’s work, but without a kill order.

Accidents happen, though. Rounds go astray. If the opportunity presented itself, Harper only hoped he’d have time to spit in her face before she died, for all of the good men she’d murdered. And if the traitor Marin managed to relay something of real value to the girl, well, all the more reason to finally solve the Croft problem, wasn’t it?

Mitchell spoke into his ear. “Commander, she’s at the aid station on Rio Po, just north of the market street.”

Harper veered west at the next alleyway, climbing the mud-choked passage between two ruined houses. “What’s she doing?”

“She’s gotten into a line to help unload a truck. Pallets of water bottles, looks like.”

Perhaps it made her feel better, to hand out supplies to the families of the people she’d killed. Technically, Lara Croft herself had triggered the cleansing. Marin’s house had been washed away in the tsunami, his wife and infant daughter still inside. He’d also lost a brother and god knew how many friends and neighbors and in-laws. Harper wondered why Marin had decided to pass information to her but thought he knew the answer. Lara Croft had taken the dagger but Trinity had let Marin’s family die, and by her actions, Croft had declared herself Trinity’s enemy. Who better to serve as an arbiter of Marin’s vengeance?

Great change requires great sacrifice. It was a fundamental pillar of the Trinity organization. Shocked by grief, Luis Marin had lost his way and turned away from their cause, but he wasn’t going to stay lost; one way or another, Harper would take care of him. And if Lara Croft happened into harm’s way, whose fault was that?

Harper stepped over a drowned doll, a tiny fist and one glass eye staring up from the mud.

I’ll bury her, he thought, and found himself smiling at the prospect.

* * *

“It’s just around the corner,” the old woman said again. “But then you’d know that if you visited us more often, Camila.”

Lara nodded. The poor woman was very confused; she seemed to think Lara was her sister, clearly an infrequent visitor even at the best of times. Lara had been helping to unload a truckload of supplies when the white-haired woman had wandered up, attracted by the headlights, lost and looking for home.

They walked slowly south and west. Most of the power was still down, but lanterns had been lit here and there. Shadows grouped and gathered in the piles of wreckage. The cool early morning smelled like salt, mud, smoke. Twice, Lara thought she heard the stop-start steps of a tail behind them, but she didn’t see anything. She found herself studying the faces of the men along their meandering path, watching for any overt signs of interest. Everyone just looked tired.

“Mama!” someone called. “Oh my god, she’s safe!”

A man and a young boy came running from the ruins of a community garden, still strung with decorations from the Day of the Dead festival.

“Thank you for bringing her home,” the man said to Lara, tears in his eyes. The boy hugged the old woman. Catching their mood, the old woman embraced Lara, and made her promise to visit more often. Lara agreed that she would try. It didn’t occur to her until she’d walked away that she’d never learned the old woman’s name.

Lara started back toward the market, studying the sky between the sporadically blaring emergency lights. The night had turned to the soft blue-purple of pre-dawn, and the first birds were starting to sing. Her note writer might already be waiting. Lara stepped up her pace.

The market had stayed open overnight, a gathering place for searchers, a central receiving site for incoming supplies. Locals were passing out coffee and had set up stands to make food—the cool, early air smelled like fish and fry oil. The muddy square was littered with tents set up between puddles of standing water. There was a makeshift triage station, though the most seriously injured had already been transported out.

Lara gratefully accepted a bottle of water from a teenaged girl who was carrying a laundry basket of them, and wandered to where a small group had gathered by a fire, clothes and tarps hanging from lines all around the dancing flames. She took a drink and turned in a slow circle, observing the active square. She thought she saw a young blond woman in tourist’s clothes turn away a little too quickly, but she was gone before Lara could relocate her. An older man, thin and sallow, stared at her for a beat too long, but then walked away, out of the market area.

Okay, I’m here. So where’s the guy who invited me? She took another sip of water, trying to be inconspicuous. She probably looked ridiculous, standing around and pretending not to be waiting; spycraft was not her forte.

After a few minutes, she wandered toward the shops at the square’s west side, where, by the poor light of a few electric lanterns, a number of vendors were raking mud out of their stores, family members with buckets picking up broken glass and wood and not a few dead fish. She had just reached the northwest corner of the square, where a bakery and a tavern bordered a narrow alley, when a low voice spoke from the shadows.

“Ms. Croft.” The man stayed in the dark alley, taking a step back so she could join him.

Here goes. Lara glanced around and quickly followed him into the alley, her heartbeat picking up speed.

It was the man she’d seen before, the one who’d stared at her a little too long—tall, thin, early forties, with an unhealthy cast beneath his bronzed skin. His dark eyes were rimmed in red.

“There’s not much time,” he said. “I lost the two men following me, but they’ll be looking. Listen. My name is Luis Marin, I work for Trinity.”

Lara nodded dumbly, tensing. She hadn’t expected that.

“They’ve—he’s going to do it,” Marin said. “Pedro Dominguez. If he unites the key with the box, he’ll raise Kukulkan. The world will have to be destroyed before it can be recreated, and all those children, the babies…”

Marin’s eyes welled up, his expression anguished and twitching, but he spoke firmly. “You must find the hidden city before Dominguez gets there. Find the silver box, keep it from him.”

“Where is it?” Lara asked. “Is there a map?”

Marin shook his head. “No. But there are more Maya sites in South America. Dominguez spent a lot of time at a dig in Colombia that had inscriptions about the city… And there was a mural with a river system, and mountains. A whole room dedicated to it. Drawings of the cleansing, depictions of a giant serpent.”

Serpent. “Kukulkan?”

“I don’t know,” Marin said. “I’m—I was an engineer, not an archaeologist. I know there was something about the dig that wasn’t right, I’m not sure why… But there was also a puzzle Dominguez couldn’t solve, about the path to the hidden city where the Box of Ix Chel is. His report said there were missing tiles, damage… I know it’s important. He didn’t want anyone else to find the site, he ordered us to set up traps. I led the team that planted them.”

He grabbed her hand as he spoke, pressing a small, hard square into her palm. His fingers shook.

“The triggers are all pressure plates, easily avoided if you know where to look,” he went on. “The coordinates, everything you need is on this card. There’s an extensive cave system surrounding the dig, but the rooms you’re looking for are near the surface, at the top of the tunnels. This will take you a few hours, no more.”

“So there may be information that I may be able to interpret,” Lara said.

Marin continued as if she hadn’t spoken. “The maps of the dig are rudimentary, but I had to draw from memory. I didn’t dare try to log into the database, I’m flagged by now, but there’s enough there to get you safely in and out. It’s likely that they know I’m trying to get you information about one of the digs, but there are a number of sites relating to the rebirth; they won’t know which one. And I’ll die before I tell them.”

Lara didn’t pocket the tiny SD card. Marin came off sincere, but that counted for exactly nothing.

“I appreciate your good intentions, but as I said, time is of the essence and—”

“Don’t you think I know that?” Marin interrupted, searching her with his haunted gaze. “If I’d had time, I could have saved them. The future is just a dream; it can be taken from you in a moment. Last night, my wife, my baby…” His voice cracked as he gestured at the devastated town.

Guilt rose up in Lara’s throat like bile.

His eyes hardened suddenly. “Dominguez has to be stopped, I see that now. I see everything now. I’m paying for what I’ve done. But you took the key, you brought the waves. I thought about killing you, but you owe more than your life. He has the key now because of you. It’s your responsibility to stop him.”

Lara didn’t answer, her personal sympathy for him drying up. He wasn’t wrong about what she owed, though.

He nodded at the card in her hand. “I can give you this. It will help you, I know it.”

Lara reluctantly tucked the card into her pocket. She didn’t dare plug the card into anything that could track her or corrupt her devices, but it wouldn’t hurt to buy a cheap phone and take a look before they got on the plane. They’d fly over Colombia on the way to Peru. Depending on the exact location of this place, perhaps—

She froze. Her eyes had finally grown accustomed to the alley’s shadows, still black as night even as the sun’s first rays spilled over the square, and she thought she saw movement. A flash of shadow beneath the muddled dark, at the alley’s far end. It was low to the ground, half hidden by an overturned garbage bin. A cat?

“Go today, now,” Marin was saying, taking a step backward. “God have mercy on us all.”

The low shadow humped forward, became a crouching figure. Lara didn’t stop to think. She grabbed Marin’s hand and pulled him back into the square, turning to run.

Edging quickly along the north border of the market was the blond woman she’d seen earlier, the tourist, flinty-eyed and holding a pistol down by her waist. Weaving toward them through the tents in the middle of the square was a heavily built guy with a shaved head and a steel SIG just inside his bulging sports coat.

Shit! The only open direction was the way she’d come, past the families cleaning up the shops. Lara hesitated—if they meant to shoot, people could get hurt—but there was no other option. She broke south. Marin stumbled a step to catch up, then ran at her side.

“Get down, get down!” Marin shouted, waving his arms.

There was a shot from behind them, muffled by a silencer but loud enough to draw attention. Lara scrabbled for the Remington as men and women shouted and ducked. She drew the .45, cocked and locked, but left the safety engaged, all too aware of the innocents on every side.

Their pursuers didn’t care. Another shot behind them, a third, and wet mud pocked up behind Marin’s feet. Lara dared a look back and saw four people after them, two more men in addition to the couple, all carrying top-grade firearms. They were dressed in civilian clothes but they could only be Trinity.

“This way!” Marin grabbed her arm and pulled her right, into the open door of a fabric shop. A round tore into the doorframe a handspan behind Lara’s head.

“Through here!” Marin ran for the back of the empty shop, as its proprietor called out from the street in anxious terror, “Get out of my store!” Lara hurtled after Marin, vaulting a cutting table, knocking bolts of brightly colored cloth to the floor. They ran past the counter, Marin leading them toward an unassuming wooden door in the back wall. He stumbled over an open box of ribbon but managed to keep his feet, turning his head to see that she was still with him, his eyes widening as he looked past her.

The next two shots were fast, bam-bam, and one went high, but the other punched into Marin’s left shoulder, blood splashing and immediately spreading down the front of his canvas shirt.

Lara shoulder-rolled across the wooden floor and spun on the balls of her feet, low, bringing up the Remington, flicking the safety off. The couple had followed them in, the big guy in a shooter’s stance with his nine-mil raised, the blond in the doorway behind him. There were people running through the street behind them. Keep it low…

Lara aimed for the guy’s right knee and fired, the .45 round obliterating his patella. He screamed and crashed to the floor, a hundred kilos of thrashing weight rocking the rickety boards.

Marin had pulled his own weapon, a .38 snub-nosed revolver, and he fired at the blond woman, who was taking aim with a cool eye. The discharge was deafening. The round missed but she was forced to duck back into the street. The big guy on the floor was left alone, hyperventilating.

They ran together for the shop’s back door. Marin’s left arm hung limp at his side.

“Stay close,” Marin gasped, his voice tight with pain, and kicked the door open. Behind them, Lara heard the woman shouting in English over the panicked cries of the citizens.

“North end, go, go!”

Marin led her into a narrow alley that ran between the backs of more shops, rotting garbage slick and stinking beneath her boots. She stumbled after him, five running steps south through the muck, the end of the alley opening into the street a dozen meters ahead. She glanced back, saw shadows and garbage bins. How long before they pen us in? Ten seconds? Twenty?

Marin turned suddenly and side-kicked an unmarked door, hitting the latch directly with his heel. The lock held but the wood around it splintered, the door swinging open almost gently into a dark storeroom.

Lara ran after him, whacking her hip on a shelf she couldn’t see, and then Marin was pushing through a swinging door ahead, outlined in a rectangle of early-morning sunlight. Lara followed him into the front room of a closed souvenir shop, shelves of mugs and banners and painted shells dimly visible by the breaking dawn through the large front window. Marin hurried to the door, turning the lock as he looked out at the street. He glanced back at her, his expression set in a grimace—the bloody patch on his shirt had nearly reached his waist—but his gaze was clear, calculating.

“Straight across,” he said, opening the door, and took off for a block of apartments across the street, four stories of windows and peeling paint. Lara kept the Remington close in and aimed at the sky, her gaze flickering south and then north as she ran after him. She saw people about, but no one was running or pointing anything in their direction.

There was a young couple on the front step, locals, the woman holding a little boy’s hand. The man had set down a battered suitcase to unlock the door.

Bastard. Marin had seen the family before deciding their next step.

The mother saw them coming and pulled her child close, squawking for her husband to get out of the way. The door was open. The man turned with an expression of surprise, and then Marin was barreling past him, through the entrance and up a worn flight of stairs. Lara caught the woman’s terrified gaze as she ran past.

“Come inside, the street is not safe!” Lara called in Spanish, pounding up the steps after Marin.