The Cradle of Life (21 page)

Only the flash of the gun barrel in the window opposite her alerted Lara to her danger. She spun and saw him slipping out from behind the half-shut door of a storage closet, the noise of the still-blaring alarm covering the sound of the door creaking open, the rustle of the gun being drawn, the scuffing of his shoes on the floor as he stepped forward.

She continued her spin, turning it into a kick, catching him on the wrist even as he squeezed the trigger.

The gun went off and skittered across the floor.

He slammed her back against the counter with his left hand, grabbing her throat like a vise. Lara dropped her chin, easing the pressure. He punched at her face with his right fist, or tried to—she caught that arm with both hands and yanked forward, twisting him up and onto the counter.

She jumped to her feet—just as bullets began flying everywhere.

The other man was firing at her from the Orb room.

Lara reacted instinctively, lifting the man lying on the counter by the scruff of the neck, raising him in front of her like a human shield.

His body shook like a leaf in the wind as gunfire tore into him. He gurgled once and was silent.

Lara dropped him and dove to the floor.

“Bloody hell.”

That was Terry.

“What?”

“Our trigger-happy friend hit something in the walls—some wire or something. I've just lost visual.”

“Where?”

“Everywhere. All I've got is static.”

“Wonderful.”

“Stay put. I'm coming.”

“No—stay where you are. Likely he's called for help. You can catch them as they come in.”

A sound came to her then, over the alarm, and she paused. Metal on metal. It took a split second to recognize it—a clip, being slid out of a gun.

The man in the Orb room was reloading.

Lara drew her own gun and sprang.

The wall behind her exploded and she hit the ground again, pieces of the counter flying around her. She heard a thump and turned to see a lab technician—where had he come from?—sprawled in the doorway to the computer room.

The man in the Orb room had tricked her. He'd had a second gun—kept that trained on her while ejecting the clip from the first. Hoping to goad her into attacking. It had worked—she guessed the technician's appearance behind her had distracted the gunman just enough to save her life.

In any case…

This boy was clever.

“I'm glad,” the gunman called out. “That would have been too easy.”

Good God
, Lara thought in disgust.
One of those
. Men who liked a challenge, particularly when the opponent was someone like her. She seemed to draw them like flies.

“Mmm.”

Terry again.

“What?”

“My turn for a clever idea, I think,” he said—and then the lights went out.

“Ah. Thanks.”

“Sure. That ought to even things up a bit.”

“Let's hope.” Lara slid sideways along the back of the counter, making her way across the room. She heard the other man's footsteps heading toward her.

She stopped. He stopped.

Silence, except for the low humming from another row of computers along the wall next to her.

“I'm waiting, Lara!” the man called out. “Give me your best!”

She risked a peek. He was standing in the very center of the room, a machine pistol in each hand, spinning slowly.

Lara frowned. From where she crouched now, she didn't have a good shot. She'd have to risk moving, but there was little cover to her left, none to her right, and up ahead—

Up, she thought, and raised her gaze to the ceiling. The strangely mirrored ceiling, directly above her, and the gunman.

She took aim and fired over his head.

The ceiling shattered, splintering into massive, razor-sharp shards. The gunman was moving even as the first of those shards began to fall. He dove to the ground, rolled, and a split second later was back on his feet.

Nice reflexes, Lara thought, measuring the distance he'd traveled.

She fired over his head a second time.

He dove to the ground again, rolled in exactly the same fashion, and got to his feet once more.

Lara stood right in front of him.

“Careful what you wish for,” she said, and clocked the man. His eyes rolled back in his head and he fell to the ground, unconscious.

Lara raced into the Orb room. Her eyes fell on the display.

She pictured Reiss, wherever he had gone, checking his watch, anxiously awaiting word of the Orb's translation.

“Sorry to disappoint, doctor,” she whispered, pulling off her pack, “but the only person deciphering this particular key is going to be me.”

“Missed that, Lara,” Terry said into her ear. “Say again.”

“I said I'm going offline,” she told him. “Can you give me the lights again, please?”

“Ah. Roger. Hold on a minute.”

The lights came back up. Lara slipped off her headset, then pulled the digicam out of her pack.

Fastening it around her neck, she flicked the cam on and pressed the transmit button.

 

“Crop circles,” Bryce said. “There's your proof—what about crop circles?”

Hillary raised an eyebrow.

“Crop circles?”

“Like in Devonshire. Farmer goes to sleep, next day wakes up and his whole cornfield's been whittled into the shape of a cigar. Who do you think did that, hey?”

“You've been watching too many Hollywood movies,” Hillary said.

“It was in the paper.”

“The Tattler,
I suppose.”

Bryce glared. The two of them were in his trailer working. Or rather, he was working, and Hillary was giving him a hard time. Being very close-minded, Bryce thought. The evidence was right in front of the man—what didn't he understand?

Bryce was about to go at him again when the computer beeped. He spun in his chair, turning away from Hillary to face a bank of video monitors.

Right now, only a single screen was active. It showed a portion of the Orb's surface—one of the images that Lara had taken in the Luna Temple. The beeping indicated that the computer's analysis of the image was done.

“That's the last one, isn't it?”

Bryce looked up to find Hillary leaning over his shoulder.

“Yes, that's the last one,” he said. He keyed in a series of commands and the image disappeared, to be replaced by a series of wave functions scrolling down the screen.

“Can we hear what it sounds like now?”

Bryce nodded and punched in another command.

A series of tones issued from the speakers at the far end of his workspace. Cacaphonous, distorted—it sounded to him like someone playing the vibraphone—with a cat instead of mallets.

“Ow.” Hillary wriggled a finger in one ear. “And this is supposed to be the translation?”

“It's not made for our ears,” Bryce said. “My guess is, these tones will activate the Orb.”

“And what happens then?”

“I don't exactly know,” Bryce admitted. “But here's my point.”

He held up a printout of the Orb. “This thing is over two thousand years old? Where on Earth did the technology exist to make something like this?”

“India, apparently,” Hillary said.

“Be serious.”

“Perhaps Egypt.”

“No.” Bryce shook his head emphatically. “Nowhere on Earth. This Orb is not a product of human civilization. This—” he waved the picture in front of Hillary's face—“is alien technology.”

Hillary still didn't look convinced.

Bryce was about to recount the evidence yet again when the monitors at his workstation came alive.

A woman's face stared up at them.

“Lara!” Bryce and Hillary shouted in unison.

“Gentlemen. Keeping busy?” Her voice—marred by a burst of static—came over the speakers.

“We are,” Bryce said hurriedly. “Breaking the code, as it were.” He started to tell Lara his theory about the source of the technology they were dealing with, but she listened for only a brief moment before stopping him.

“Bryce. All that is very interesting, but besides the point. You understood the medallion?”

“Yes. The markings are sound waves. We've translated all we could see on your images, roughly half the Orb—”

“Good work. Let's finish the set.”

“You're in Reiss's lab?” Hillary asked.

“I am. Though the good doctor himself is absent at the moment. Still, he's been good enough to leave the Orb for me.”

“Sporting of him,” Hillary shot back. “Where's Sheridan?”

“Watching my back,” Lara replied. “No comments, please.”

“My lips are zipped,” Hillary said. “However…”

Their conversation continued; Bryce focused his attention on the images coming over the monitor. Lara had turned the digicam forward, so he could see the lab as she walked through it. The facility was state-of-the-art, from what he could tell of the electronics. There was a Cooper-Janson relay box, a half-dozen Nystrom servers, and—

“Hey!”

The camera passed over a brushed metal machine, about the size of a small refrigerator.

“Is that an Earth Simulator?”

“Down, boy,” Lara said. “I'll see if I can bring one home for you.”

Bryce was about to ask if she was kidding when the image on the monitor jumped—Lara focusing the digicam—and suddenly, filling the screen in his trailer, was the Orb itself.

“Beautiful,” he said, staring at the delicate silver etchings on its surface.

“I'll record the rest of the images, then send them to you,” Lara said. “Once you have them—finish the translation and transmit the sounds back to me.”

“Hi-res images, yes?” Bryce asked. He didn't want to be dependent on the quality of capture they got at this transmission speed.

“Of course.”

Lara got started then.

 

This should do it
, Terry thought, and flipped the switch.

For a second nothing happened. The wall of monitors before him remained unchanged—row after row of screens filled with only static.

Then, one by one, those screens came to life.

Terry smiled. Look at that—he'd managed to do something useful while he waited for Croft to scan the Orb. Found a control panel and rerouted the system video feed, bypassing the circuitry that had been shot up. He could monitor the lab again. A quick survey of the facility told him that Lara was still the only one—or rather the only one conscious—in the entire lab complex.

Standing around like this made him itchy—Terry wasn't used to being support staff while someone else waded into the fray. Even if that someone was Lara Croft. It was part of what had raised his hackles about the military, the idea of living his life as a little cog in some big wheel's plans. Not for him taking orders blindly—nor sitting behind a desk and giving them.

He wasn't down on Croft for waiting here—not that at all. It made sense for her to be the one going after the Orb. Though he still wasn't certain about this whole Pandora business—sounded more like something out of a fairy tale than a legitimate bioweapon. Still, Jonathan Reiss was involved, and Jonathan Reiss had a pretty legitimate reputation in some of the circles he'd traveled in.

He flicked a second switch now and brought the cameras out in the mall back on-line. The crowds were out in full force now—

Then he froze in place.

Reiss and another guard were running flat out for the lab entrance.

“Croft!” he shouted into his headset. “Lara!”

A split second later, he remembered. She'd taken off the headset to use her digicam. He had no way to warn her Reiss was coming.

This was bad.

This was worse than he'd expected.

Not only was the command post deserted, but the doctor couldn't reach Sean at all. Given the very,
very
specific instructions he'd left regarding the Orb, how important it was to keep it guarded at all times…

Reiss shuddered involuntarily and tried hard not to dwell on the implications. Of what he would do if, in fact, the Orb was not where he had left it. One thing was for certain—this was no ordinary containment breach, not a case of something toxic getting out of the lab but of something—someone—breaking in.

And that someone had to be Lara Croft.

The guard with him keyed open the main door and reached to shut down the alarm. Reiss put a hand on his arm.

“No,” he said. “We don't want to let them know we're coming.”

The man nodded and stepped forward into the security room. At the all-clear sign, Reiss drew his gun and made to follow.

Suddenly he stopped and looked around.

The doctor had the strangest feeling someone was watching him.

 

Crouched in the shadows opposite the main door, Terry hesitated.

He had a shot at Reiss. Not a good one—the angle was bad, a filing cabinet near the door blocked most of the doctor's body—but Terry had made a career of taking hard shots.

Killing Reiss would end this whole thing. Pandora would never be found.

Terry hesitated.

Reiss walked through the door, and out of sight.

 

Lara came around the front of the Orb, stepping over Reiss's man, still out cold on the floor. She was somewhat surprised he was still unconscious—she hadn't hit him that hard, had she?

“There,” Bryce said in her ear, and Lara stopped where she stood and focused the digicam on the Orb's surface.

“Excellent. This is the last one we need,” Bryce said.

“All right, then.” Lara clicked the capture button and heard the whir of the Panasonic writing to the flash card. “We're done.”

“Not until you send me the images,” Bryce said, and Lara was just about to pull the flash card out of the digicam when she heard a faint, just barely audible noise coming from behind her.

Her eyes darted around the room and came to rest on the Orb. And the reflection she saw in it.

Reiss.

She pocketed the camera assembly and, in one smooth move, drew her gun.

The doctor—and there was another man who'd entered with him, she saw now—dove behind the long counter at the rear of the lab.

Needlessly, as Lara hadn't intended on shooting them.

Instead, she turned to the NEC mapping the Orb and fired.

“NO!” Reiss screamed and charged, but she was already taking out the second NEC, which left only one, and she turned to blast that—

And a shadow passed over her.

The gun flew from her hand.

Someone took hold of the back of her head and slammed her face first into the desk in front of her. Lara's head rang and she tasted blood.

She felt a gun at her throat and at the same instant, her right arm being yanked up behind her back.

“I've had your best, Lara,” a voice whispered in her ear. “Now I'm looking forward to giving you mine.”

Reiss's man—the one she'd coldcocked before. So he'd been playing possum after all.

“That was hardly my best,” she said. “Lackeys don't get my best.”

He yanked hard on her arm and Lara grunted in pain.

This one could be rattled. She filed that information away in her mind and as she did so, a question that had been tumbling around in the back of her head marched front and center.

Where was Terry? And how had Reiss managed to get past him?

The doctor leaned over her and brought his face close to hers.

“Lady Croft. Lara. We meet in person, at last. Needless to say, you've already made quite an impression on me.”

“Charmed, I'm sure,” Lara said.

“I doubt it, but it's nice of you to say so. And I see you and Sean here have had a chance to get acquainted, as well. Wonderful.”

“The pleasure's been all mine,” the man holding her down—Sean—said. “Too bad it's going to be ending so soon.”

The gun barrel pressing on her at her neck disappeared then, and Lara felt the point of a knife on her throat.

“Ah,” Reiss said. “Not just yet, Sean. Not until we're sure the NEC here has done its job, and that we will have no further need of Lady Croft's expertise.”

Lara turned her head and looked at the monitor.

Less than five minutes and Reiss would have Pandora's location.

She couldn't allow that to happen.

She had to do something—stall for time, hope that Terry would arrive, hope that Bryce and Hillary could get MI6 to their location…talk Reiss's ear off, perhaps?

“I'm curious, doctor,” she said. “How does a man go from Nobel Prize winner to terrorist?”

“Terrorist? Please, Lara—I'd ask you not to use that word. It conjures up some very unfortunate images. Lice-ridden, religious fanatics in dirty robes—ugh.” Reiss shuddered. “I remain what I have always been—a scientist, working for the greater good of humanity.”

“I'd be very interested in hearing how Pandora ties into that vision, doctor.”

“I should think that obvious,” Reiss said. “Pandora is—”

Reiss's phone rang.

“Excuse me a moment.” He flipped open the sat phone. “Jonathan Reiss. Ah. Madame Gillespie. Yes. I appreciate your concern, but we are now back on schedule. I'll have the item for you by the close of business tomorrow.”

Lara stretched her neck, trying to see past Reiss to the monitor, to gauge how much longer she had.

Sean slammed her head back down on the table.

“It's not going to be pleasant, Lara.” He leaned closer. “I can promise you that.”

“And it's been such fun so far,” Lara said.

Reiss finished his call and put the phone back in his pocket.

“That's all of them, isn't it?” Sean asked.

“Yes it is. Madame Gillespie was the last.” He crooked a finger at the man he'd entered the lab with and pointed him toward a row of display screens on the other side of the room. “Check the network computers, if you would. I'd like to confirm the financials.”

“You were saying,” Lara prompted. “About Pandora.”

“Yes. Pandora.” Reiss folded his hands behind his back and began pacing. “In a way, it's been my lifelong inspiration. You see, when I was seven we moved to Calcutta. Filthy place. It was there I heard the local legend of a box that purged Alexander of half his army. I filed it away in the back of my mind.”

“Planning ahead?”

“Hardly.” The doctor laughed. “I just thought it fascinating—ironic—that a tiny germ, invisible to the naked eye, could succeed where the armies of the world had failed. That a disease could defeat Alexander the Great.”

“Pandora isn't a disease,” Lara said sharply.

“No,” Reiss agreed. “Pandora is something altogether different. But I didn't know that then, did I? In any case—” he shrugged “—the story of that box started me thinking. About the function of disease—how in nature, it acts as a curb, a balance if you will, on the too-rampant spread of life. The ultimate predator. Certainly the only one that man still fears.” He looked her in the eye. “I'm not boring you with all this, am I?”

“Not at all. It's rare I get a close-up glimpse of such depravity.”

“And here I thought I was making your last few moments on earth pleasant ones.”

“I'm sorry to disappoint you.” Lara shook her head. “You really believe you'll be able to control what's in the box. Make it another of your weapons?”

Reiss stared at her a moment and shook his head.

“Really, Lara. Now you do disappoint me.”

She frowned, suddenly lost. What on earth was Reiss driving at?

“Excuse me, sir.” The doctor's man—the one he'd sent to check on the network—had returned.

“Go on,” Reiss said. “Have we received payment from all the buyers?”

“Just confirmed, sir. As you can see on the monitor.”

Reiss's gaze went to one of the display screens on the far wall. Lara's followed. The screen showed a map of the world, with five blinking green lights—one on each of the major continents. Lara supposed those lights represented Reiss's buyers. So despite his crack about terrorists—Reiss's clientele spanned the globe. And so would Pandora, once it was released. If the legends were true, it would indeed act like the ultimate predator Reiss had referred to. There would be no stopping it.

A sudden chill went down her spine.

“You don't want to control it,” she said.

Reiss turned to her and smiled. “Ah. Well done.”

“You're using the buyers…they release what you give them, thinking it's just another weapon…and the world blames them for what happens.”

“What's
left
of the world blames them.” Reiss moved closer to her. “Politics bore me. One side killing another over some god or some resource like oil. Trivial compared to the real challenge we, as a species, face. Look around and you'll see it, Lara. The human race is growing weak. As a species, we are failing.”

His eyes glinted and Lara found herself wondering when the change had happened, when the Nobel Prize winner had become a madman.

“I grew up on a farm,” Reiss continued. “On a farm, when the herd is at risk from disease or has simply grown too fat and frail for its own good, you thin the herd. That's what the box is for. To weed out our weak, our feeble. Those races which would have expired but for our ludicrous notion that all men are created equal—that we should help our weaker members to survive. Every organism has a state of balance. Mankind is out of ours. Properly thinned, we'll evolve and grow.”

Sean's grip eased for a moment. Lara was able to twist her head just enough to see the other monitor again—the one displaying the laser's progress.

“You're insane. To think you can control something like Pandora.”

“Not at all. Once I have it in my grasp—before I open the box—I'll make enough antiserum to spare the best and brightest. Heads of corporations, heads of state. Life will go on.”

Reiss leaned closer.

“Are you telling me you haven't looked around and thought, the world would be better off without some of these people? Come now, Lara—the truth.”

Lara looked up at him. “Well, I can think of a few I could do without.”

A soft chime sounded.

Lara looked up at the monitor again.

Reiss stood up. She heard footsteps—lots of them—entering the room. Reinforcements.

Which perhaps explained what had happened to Terry.

“I'm sorry to kill you, Lara. You would have been welcome in my world.” He turned to the man who'd delivered the news about the financials.

“Take no chances. Shoot her right between the eyes.”

“Damn,” Sean whispered in her ear. “Looks like we aren't going to get to play after all.”

He lifted Lara roughly to her feet and pinned her in front of him, his grip so tight that she couldn't begin to think of moving.

The man before them raised his weapon and pressed his gun right up to her forehead.

The barrel was cool against her skin.

Lara tensed and waited for the click of the trigger.