The Cradle of Life (26 page)

Reiss gasped and leaned backward, stopping himself from falling at the last possible instant.

Where had that drop come from?

He peered over the edge and noticed a beam of light shooting up at him from below. Its source was a hole in the floor that looked familiar to him. In fact, Reiss thought, it looked exactly like the hole in the chamber roof—the one he and Croft had fallen through.

He looked up and saw the path he'd been walking on, now directly above him.

“What on earth—” he began, and then he was falling, up toward that path…

Down to the ground.

Reiss pushed himself up on his hands and knees and shook his head.

More of what he and Croft had encountered on the way down. Annoying, but effective as a last obstacle to Pandora. He couldn't help but wonder what sort of technology was involved here—was gravity itself being manipulated? Or was some sort of optical illusion taking place? He favored the latter, given the way shadow and light had been manipulated here in the chamber, and above (Croft's shadow guardians), but he had no way of being certain.

Not that it mattered. Whoever—whatever—had created this place was capable of performing near-miraculous feats—which only made him want to eliminate Croft quickly and get back to the box that much sooner. Get it open and see what sort of biochemical miracles lay within.

Ah. And speak of the devil…

There was Croft on the path twenty feet below him, oblivious to his presence.

Reiss smiled and raised his gun. He had a straight on head shot, no obstacles, and Croft had obligingly stopped moving for a moment.

This was going to be even easier than he'd expected.

Then Croft looked up and saw him.

Reiss swore and fired. She gathered herself and sprang twenty feet through the air to her left—

And landed on the cavern wall, feet first, tilted ninety degrees from the position she'd started in.

“Impossible,” Reiss said.

This whole place was impossible. It was like being trapped in an Escher painting, for God's sake. Down was up, left was down—how was he supposed to know which direction was which?

Silly question, he realized. He'd spent his lifetime acquiring knowledge, and there was really one correct way to learn anything. Experiment and deduction.

Croft had done the experiment for him. She'd jumped left and fallen down. Therefore, at this instant—

Left was down.

Deduction complete.

Reiss jumped left and dropped down through space directly toward her.

Except as he fell, the chamber twisted, and suddenly Croft was on a ledge, above him.

He reached out to try and stop his fall and lost hold of the gun.

Croft's eyes widened and she gathered herself and jumped down toward him.

Wrong, Lara. Reiss smiled in satisfaction as she flew past without stopping. You've miscalculated. Down is—

He didn't get to finish the thought.

Croft fell back
up
through the air at him and caught him square across the chin with her boot.

Reiss dropped to the ground…right next to his gun.

Croft saw. She turned to run.

Reiss grabbed the gun and stood. He brought the weapon to bear and fired.

Gravity was with him this time. Luck wasn't. The bullet missed her by inches.

Croft limped out of sight and Reiss lowered his weapon.

He only had two bullets left.

Better make them count, he thought, and started off after her.

 

“We can't wait any longer.”

Hillary, leaning out the copter door, turned around at Bryce.

“You're not seriously suggesting we abandon Lara?”

“I don't know what the bloody hell else to do!” Bryce shouted, louder than he'd intended.

Hillary glared at him.

“Look,” Bryce said, pointing at the instrument panel, where the low fuel light was flashing insistently. “I don't know how long that thing goes before we actually run out, but I have to think we don't have that much longer.”

Hillary cursed (again, Bryce thought—bad habit he was picking up), and climbed back in the copter.

They rose into the air.

“We'll go back to the clearing,” Bryce said. “We'll siphon off fuel from the other copters and we'll come back.”

“In time, hopefully.”

“In time,” Bryce said. “Besides, don't forget Sheridan's down there, too. He'll—”

“No,” Hillary snapped. “No one knows what the hell Sheridan will do.”

 

The second he entered the chamber, Terry saw the box.

It floated in a pool of dark, bubbling liquid at the far end of the cave.

Pandora. His for the taking.

Somehow he'd managed to beat Croft and Reiss to the prize. Perhaps they were still lost on the steps leading here—God knows he'd had to turn back more than once. No matter. He'd be sure and tell Croft all about Pandora. Afterward.

He'd brought a lead-lined bag to transport the box in. He pulled it out of his pack and started toward the pool.

Halfway across the chamber, he stopped and sniffed the air.

Gunpowder.

Shots had been fired in here—and quite recently.

So Croft and Reiss had gotten here first after all.

He set down the bag and shone the flash in a wide circle. The beam fell on flakes of dark stone, scattered along the floor by the far wall. He found the spot where the bullet had struck.

A little farther on, he found the blood.

It was Croft's, he knew instantly—it had to be. She was a crack shot. If she'd fired at Reiss, Terry would have found his body.

So she was injured. Reiss was chasing her.

That changed things.

Terry might not wear the white hat these days, but he had been a marine once. Coming to the rescue was still part of the job description, as far as he was concerned.

The key word there being
part,
he thought, as his eyes went again to the box.

 

She was losing blood fast.

The wound was deeper than Lara had originally thought and running around on the leg wasn't helping. Not that she had much choice about that—Reiss was still coming. Apparently he'd decided that finishing her off was more important than getting Pandora in a timely fashion.

Fine. He might have the Nobel Prize, but Lara would wager she had considerably more combat experience than he did.

Unfortunately, being wounded tended to even things out.

Her vision blurred. Lara leaned back against the cavern wall a moment to steady herself.

Reiss had chased her into a part of the chamber they hadn't passed through before. A bridge of some sort, looming high over the pool of acid Pandora floated in. Who knows, perhaps it hadn't even existed before, the way the walls seemed to keep shifting on her.

She looked down a moment and blinked. Now she really was seeing things.

The box was gone. How was that possible? Had Reiss doubled back to take it?

She heard the sound of a gun being cocked and turned.

Reiss stood in front of her, smiling.

Then her vision blurred and two Reisses stood in front of her.

“Lady Croft,” they both said. “You seem to be in a bit of distress. Something I've done, I hope.”

Lara blinked. The two Reisses resolved into one again and he moved closer.

And as he moved, Lara realized that she had one final chance to end this—here, now, on her terms.

Because Reiss was one step away from joining her on the bridge. One step away from being directly over the pool of acid.

Wounded she might be, but Lara knew she had one good leap left in her. One good leap that would send her and Reiss over the edge and into the pool below.

Unfortunately, Reiss wasn't going to take that step.

“So it ends, Croft,” he said, raising his weapon. “Survival of the fittest. And the wisest.”

“I don't think you're either of those.”

The voice came from behind Reiss and now Lara knew she was really injured much worse than she'd thought, because not only was she seeing things, she was hearing them, as well. Impossible things.

Terry Sheridan, who she'd left shackled to a slow boat in China, jumping down on the path behind Reiss.

Terry Sheridan, proving everything she'd ever thought about him wrong, and coming to her rescue.

Except the doctor seemed to be seeing the exact same thing he was, for he'd spun around at the sound of Sheridan's sudden appearance, as well.

“Give me the gun and I'll make it painless,” Sheridan said.

Reiss took a step backward—the step she needed. She launched herself across the path, tackling Reiss and sending both of them off the ledge together, falling straight for the pool below.

Reiss's gun went off and fell out of the doctor's hand.

The doctor's eyes were wide with surprise. He had yet to react to the peril beneath them, had barely registered the fact that they were falling through the air.

Lara knew why—Reiss was a scientist, given to careful contemplation of events unfolding before him. Situations like this, however, didn't lend themselves to contemplation. They required split-second reactions.

Lara was used to dealing in split seconds.

Even as she'd leapt for Reiss, she was gauging the distance to the pool, weighing a half-dozen possible courses of action. As they'd gone over the ledge, she'd registered their relative positions in the air and decided instantly on the best way to insure not only Reiss's death, but her survival.

And that one, she acted on.

She pulled the doctor closer and flipped him over in midair, so that he was facing up toward her. Then she snapped her arms and her one good leg out, pushing off, putting distance between the two of them.

The shell-shocked expression on his face hadn't changed at all. Reiss still looked like a deer, caught in the headlights. An apt comparison.

He was about to meet the same fate.

The gun smashed off the rim of the pool and skittered across the cavern floor.

Reiss plunged into the acid.

For a split second, Lara saw the expression on his face finally change, from shock to sheer agony as the black, bubbling liquid touched him.

She jumped down on him, landing feet first, simultaneously pushing him farther down into the acid and pushing herself back up into the air.

She flipped and rolled to the ground just outside the pool.

The soles of her boots were smoking where they'd touched acid.

“Fitter? Wiser?” Lara shook her head. “You weren't either of those, doctor.”

A skeletal hand shot out of the pool, clawed for the rim…and failed.

The last of Dr. Jonathan Reiss dissolved before her eyes.

She turned and saw his gun lying in the dirt. Operating on instinct, Lara picked it up and tucked it into her waistband.

And here coming toward her, through the far end of the chamber, was Terry.

“Nice work there.” He smiled, nodding toward the pool.

“Thanks.” She hesitated. “And thank you for coming back, Terry.”

“You're welcome—Lara.”

She smiled. “You know that's the first time you've called me that. In a long time.”

“I know.” He set down his pack on the ground. “Here. Let's take care of that wound.”

“I'm fine,” Lara said.

“Yeah. Just the same.” He eased her down to the ground and pulled some supplies out of his pack.

“Hillary? Bryce?” Lara asked as he tended to her wound.

“They're fine. They're up there—” he nodded toward the surface. “In a copter.”

Lara nodded, then frowned. “Wait a minute. Bryce is in a copter? He's not flying it, is he?”

“He is. Not doing a half-bad job, either. Though I'm glad it's not my copter.” Terry started to wrap the wound—looser than she would have liked.

“Here—let me.” Lara took the gauze from his hand and finished dressing the wound. Terry helped her to her feet when she was done.

“I'm not fooled, you know.”

“About what?”

“I know the only reason you helped was to prove I was wrong about you.”

Terry smiled back. “Come on. Let's get out of here.”

He slung the pack over his shoulder and turned to go.

It was only then that Lara saw the other bag hanging from around his neck and the outline of what was contained within it.

Pandora.

The gauze in her fingers slipped through her hand.

“Terry.”

He turned to look at her.

“No. We can't.”

He saw where she was looking and his eyes widened in surprise.

“You're joking.”

She shook her head.

“We just leave it here? When it's worth a fortune?”

“Millions of people could die.”

“You're being melodramatic. No one will actually use it…”

“You'd take that chance?” She shook her head. “Terry—”

“WHAT?” He advanced on her, eyes blazing. “You want to tell me again about those millions who could die? It won't happen. And I'm not going to leave this here on the chance it might. I served my country, then I served my time for going out on my own. I've helped keep this away from Reiss. I deserve my reward. I'm taking it.”

He turned to go.

Lara stepped in front of him.

“That's the longest speech you ever made, Terry. Congratulations. Too bad it's all just a load of self-serving bull.” She stared into his eyes. “What happened to you, Terry? What happened to the man I knew in Chasong?”

“I became wise in the ways of the world, that's all.”

He took a step forward and she blocked him again.

“You have authorization to kill me? Better do it then. Because if you think standing in front of me is enough…”

He moved then, too fast for her to do anything, and cracked her across the face.

Lara fell to the ground, stunned. She blinked away tears.

“You don't have it in you to stop me, Croft. Because when it comes down to it, all your beliefs, all your ideals—they're just words. They're not real. I am. And you've loved me. I don't care how strong you think you are. You're not going to choose them over me.” He stared her in the eye. “Now move.”

She hesitated.

Terry was right about one thing. It was time for her to make a choice. Her beliefs, her ideals…or him.

“Fine,” he said, shrugging. “We can just stand here all day long and argue, and—”

But she wasn't listening. Because at the same time Terry had shrugged, his arm had started to move toward the gun in his waistband.

Split-second reactions, Lara thought, and her fingers closed around the grip of Reiss's gun.