Shadow of the Tomb Raider - Path of the Apocalypse
Author: S. D. Perry
Date: 2018-09-18 00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Fiction; Action & Adventure; Media Tie-In; Science Fiction
Description: 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 antic
Publisher: Titan

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.

Marin ran up two flights, then took off down the main hallway of the third floor, long and echoing. An open window at the end revealed a fire escape, but Marin stopped short, at the last door on the right side.

He knocked fast and light with his revolver. His voice shook. “Paolo! Help me!”

Footsteps thudded inside, and then someone was fumbling with the lock. “Luis?”

“My cousin’s boy,” Marin gasped.

A skinny young man of about eighteen opened the door, his eyes bleary, dark hair sticking up on the back of his head. He wore a food-stained tee shirt and boxers.

His eyes went wide when he saw them. “What happened?”

Marin shook his head. “Inside.”

Paolo stepped aside to let them in, staring at Lara like she was an alien life form. “Who’s she?”

Marin turned and closed the door behind them, leaning against it. “Better you don’t know. We won’t stay long. It will be safe for us to leave in a few minutes.”

The single room was strewn with dirty clothes and dishes, and smelled like stale corn chips and teenage sweat. There were two small windows, both open to let in the cool morning air, but they faced another building. No one could see them from the street. Lara allowed herself to take a full breath.

“Mother of God, you’re bleeding!” Paolo shrieked.

The young man turned and grabbed a towel off a heap at the foot of his bed, rushing forward to press it to Marin’s shoulder. Outside, people were shouting, bright sounds of panic and accusation—“Get down, over there, he has a gun!” A police whistle blew, and there were more shouts— but no shots were fired.

Marin exhaled heavily, and staggered to the bed, looking at Lara. “They won’t get into a fight with the local law. At least, that was the agreement until yesterday. You can make it back to your friend now, but you should assume that Trinity is watching.”

“How big is Trinity?” Lara asked. She locked the semi but didn’t put it away. “Where are you based?”

Marin shook his head. “Bigger all the time, and there are chapters across the globe.”

She had so many questions. How were they organized? Who funded them? What was their actual ideology? She’d never gotten any clear answers and it was information that she needed badly… But the question that popped out was the one she wanted the answer to the most.

“Who ordered my father to be killed?”

“I don’t know. Why would I know that?” Marin seemed irritated by the question. “I told you, I’m just an engineer. You should go. You could be at the labyrinth by this evening, if you leave now.”

“The labyrinth?”

“We called it the Blue Labyrinth,” Marin said, gritting his teeth as Paolo applied pressure to his shoulder. “For the caves, and the predominant color of the murals. Maya blue.”

The most sacred of colors. Maya priests were depicted wearing robes in the bright azure shade; victims of human sacrifice had been painted with the pigment before their hearts were cut out.

That wasn’t an especially reassuring thought, and she didn’t trust Marin any more now than she had at the outset… but she didn’t doubt that the loss of one’s family might bring about a sudden change in values.

If that’s even true. This whole thing could be a setup, to keep her occupied while Dominguez searched for the box. Or to use her to uncover another clue, to see if she could solve whatever it was that Dr. Dominguez couldn’t.

Lara sighed, holstering the semi. Her instincts said Marin was telling the truth, at least about losing his wife and child. Which means I have a decision to make, before 0800.

“I’ll look at it,” she said, backing toward the door. “I’m— I’m sorry for your loss.”

“Fuck you,” he said, his voice drained of feeling. “You don’t get to be sorry. Just stop him.”

“You should lie down,” Paolo said, his stunned silence breaking in a rush. “Why did you get shot? Who shot you? What should I do?”

“Keep firm pressure on the wound,” Lara said. “And get him to a doctor.”

Paolo stared up at her with the same look of incredulity he’d worn upon seeing her, like she was a talking dog or a unicorn. From outside, Lara could hear the tone shifting from panic to relief, voices rising to talk about the armed strangers who’d run down the street.

There was nothing else to say, and Jonah was probably awake by now. Lara slipped back into the hallway, closing the door behind her.

* * *

Jonah had worked another few hours after seeing to Lara, helping to set up shelters. By the time it got dark, he was running on empty. He went back to the hotel, gratefully accepting trays of food from the owner’s wife, Luisa. She was using the kitchen to turn out huge vats of beans and rice and corn to send to the nearest aid station, two blocks away.

He checked on Lara, leaving supper and a note. She was in the exact same position she’d fallen asleep in, but her color was back, which was good. She’d been pale earlier, beneath the sunburn and the dirt. Jonah had gone to his room, wolfed down the simple, excellent food and then passed out himself.

The sun wasn’t up when he woke, but he’d gotten close to eight hours and felt mostly recharged. Good thing, considering the day ahead. He wrinkled his nose as he laced his boots. At least a full day of flying, crammed into Miguel’s tiny plane. Fine for Lara; she was little.

Lara. He’d snapped at her last night, when the tsunami hit. He hadn’t meant to, but there had been people drowning at their feet, and she’d only been able to talk about getting to Peru. She was right, Dominguez had to be stopped, but sometimes it was like she couldn’t see the trees for the forest. He’d never known anyone so single-minded.

Except you, maybe. He sometimes wondered which was stronger, her obsessive need to validate her father’s life’s work and keep Trinity in check, or his own commitment to protect her. She was daring and resourceful and she had mad skills, but she was also a trouble-magnet. Their “little” research trip to Mexico had now become a full-fledged life-or-death race to Peru, to keep Trinity from necromancing a Maya god. Lara found apocalyptic prophecies like some people found loose change between their couch cushions.

He packed and then went downstairs and had coffee with the owners. Esteban and Luisa were good people; they had already opened the hotel to their displaced neighbors and the kitchen had been running all night. Jonah paid his and Lara’s bill, adding a substantial sum to help defray their costs. Esteban put up some resistance, but not much. It took money to rebuild a community, and the Croft Foundation could afford it.

Jonah brought a cup of black tea back up to Lara’s room, tapping at the door. No answer.

“Wake up,” he called, knocking again. “Come on, you need to pack. I brought tea.”

Silence.

Jonah had her extra key—in spite of her many talents, Lara had an amazing habit of losing hotel keys—and wasted no time using it. “Hey, I’m coming in. Don’t be naked.”

The door opened into an empty room. She hadn’t packed. Books and maps still littered the desk; her pack was open, with clothes spilling out. There was a piece of paper on the empty tray, next to his note from the night before. Jonah set down the tea and scooped up the paper, frowning.

Jonah—mystery man wants to help, could be important. I’ll be back soon, don’t worry. Thank you for dinner! L.

On the other side of the paper was a stranger’s spiky script describing a meeting at dawn. Unsigned.

Jonah checked his watch. 0712: the sun had been up at least half an hour. The market was a five-minute walk away. Where was she? And who sent the note, and what was Lara thinking?

You expect something different? The meeting promised precious information. When had Lara ever shied away from sketchy circumstances to get what she wanted? It wasn’t like she was some delicate flower that needed to be sheltered, but seriously, there were times she needed to think better. Common sense dictated backup on something like this, and there was no reason he couldn’t have gone with her. He’d been in the next room.

He heard quick footsteps in the hall, and then Lara was standing in the doorway, her eyes bright. She looked sweaty and disheveled, strands of loose hair stuck to the back of her neck, and held a disposable phone in one hand.

“We’re going to Colombia first,” she said.

“Are you kidding?” Jonah dropped the note to the desk. “Why?”

“I met with a Trinity worker,” Lara said, striding into the room. “Ex-worker, I should say. Luis Marin. He gave me data on a dig in Colombia that references the path to the hidden city directly.”

Jonah frowned. “Why do you look like you just ran a 10K?”

“Trinity was watching Marin. They probably have eyes on us, too. They gave chase. Clearly, they were worried about what he might tell me. Do you think the pilot will be willing to change his plans? Miguel, right?”

She handed the phone to Jonah, then squatted next to her pack and started shoveling in her clothes.

“Lara…” Jonah trailed off, not even able to find the words.

“I know, it was a risk,” she said, looking up at him. “But think about it—we could spend days searching for the right river, the right mountain. Look at the coordinates: this dig is practically on the way. And there’s a file with the site mapped out, including where Trinity laid charges. What we need won’t be hard to access, at all.”

“What makes you think Marin was telling the truth?”

Lara broke eye contact, rising to step to the desk.

“Well, they shot at us,” she mumbled, picking up her books. “Marin was hit in the shoulder.”

Before he could respond, she quickly went on, turning to face him again. “It wasn’t a bunch of soldiers after him, it was a trained team. He’s obviously important to Trinity, to merit that kind of attention.”

“Or they’re all in on it,” he said. “You think you set off this doomsday prophecy, right? That makes you a player in this. Maybe they need you to go to this dig and figure something out for them, to work the big mojo. What’s a flesh wound, if they can maneuver you like this?”

“My instincts say otherwise. I don’t trust him, but I believe him. He lost his family in the tsunami and had a wake-up call about what’s actually going to happen if Dominguez is successful.”

She looked so certain. Jonah scowled. How was he supposed to argue with instincts?

Why do you want to?

He realized he was irritated with her and gave it voice immediately rather than let it keep steering him towards a fight. “I’m mad because you snuck off to a spy meeting without even telling me. One that turned out to be dangerous.”

Lara nodded, her gaze softening. “That’s fair.”

“I mean, we’re both here, right? What’s the point, if we’re not working together? I wake up and you’re gone? There was no reason to go alone.”

“You’re right. I’m sorry.”

Jonah exhaled heavily. “Okay.”

She let him enjoy the apology for about a second before she was nodding at the phone still in his hand. “What do you think? About Colombia?”

“I don’t even know.” He squinted at the screen, at a tiny grid marked with Xs. He wasn’t sure what he was looking at. “If you think it’s worth a shot—”

“I do. It’s a gamble, there could be nothing worth finding, but that would be a few hours wasted in all. If it pays off, we could be on our way home before Dominguez even knows we beat him.”

Jonah nodded. “I guess it’s Colombia, then.”

Lara grinned and lifted her pack, shoving the books inside. “Brilliant. Is that tea for me?”

“Yeah.”

“You are brilliant,” she said, and stepped forward and hugged him. “I know this is more than you bargained for. I really am sorry.”

And this is why I’ve got your back, right here. Lara was a sweetheart. She was family.

Speaking of backs… He returned the embrace but quickly let go. Her shirt was soaked.

“You might want to change before we go. Maybe wash up a little. I mean, if we’re going to be sitting together in a soda can for the rest of the day.”

She smiled. “Give me five minutes, I’ll be ready.”

Jonah nodded, and went to collect his bag. He hoped the pilot was amenable to altering his route.

* * *

Jonah Maiava and his friend—an attractive young woman in her mid-twenties—showed up at the airfield on time, each carrying a couple of packs. Miguel Riviera waved to them from next to his Cessna, one in a line of five parked along the dirt strip, and hoped he wasn’t making a mistake.

Just keep your eye on the prize. Jonah had offered a lot of money for what they wanted—a private trip to Peru so his friend could look for some kind of archaeology thing, hidden ruins or something. Private, meaning “off the grid.” Which meant filing a false flight plan, and Miguel getting his license pulled if they got caught.

You won’t get caught. And if you do, you know who to pay.

He sighed. He thought he’d put all this behind him. He took tourists through the Amazon basin or to the Yucatan on eco-trips now, and while he didn’t make half as much money as he used to, it was legitimate work, legal work doing what he loved. Two days ago, he would have turned Mr. Maiava down flat.

Two days ago, Mama still had the home. His mother ran a small nursing home for a handful of old women, only blocks from the beach. No one had died in the flood, thank God, but Mama had broken her arm and there was no money to rebuild. His father had passed away years ago, and Miguel was her only son.

Miguel had been worrying over it when his friend Hector told him that there was a big Polynesian guy looking for a private flight to Peru, an American. Hector said that Jonah was all right, not a criminal type. If it had been drugs or guns, that would have been a different story, but a trip to look at ruins? Miguel still knew most of the guys running private airstrips all the way down to Argentina, ones that certain officials could be paid to ignore. Not the most scrupulous bunch, the airfield owners, but this young woman apparently had money to burn. For the right price, most of them would sell their own mothers.

We all have our price. Jonah had been reasonable and clear—they needed to get to the Andes of central Peru without anyone knowing about it. And he had presented half the money up front, in cash. More than enough to take care of Mama and her friends, and that was half. If a rich grad student wanted to take a tour, that wasn’t so bad. And he was 99.9 percent sure that they weren’t going to get caught.

Miguel shifted from one foot to the other and back, watching the big man and his friend approach. They could get where they needed to go on a commercial flight in a third of the time—and for a fraction of what they were paying— then rent a private plane locally. Why were they hiding?

“Miguel,” Jonah said. “This is the friend I told you about, Lara Croft. Lara, this is Miguel Riviera.”

“Nice to meet you, Miss Croft.”

“Call me Lara,” she said, shaking his hand firmly. She had a sweet, youthful face, but her gaze was much older. Much cooler. And she carried herself like an athlete; balanced, good posture. Not a student, maybe. Out of his league, definitely, and he never hit on customers, anyway.

Miguel pulled out the map he’d worked out that morning, where he’d marked places to refuel. He used a pencil to point to the route he meant to take. “We’ll have to make several stops, but assuming the weather holds, we can reach Peru by—”

“I’m sorry,” Lara said. “Can we make a stop in Colombia first?”

“Colombia?”

Lara motioned to his pencil. “May I?”

He handed it over and she studied the map for a moment before marking an area north of Los Indios, not far from the northern coast.

“What’s there?” It was a swath of jungle with nothing nearby, heavy greenery and hills. The Santo Almeda brothers ran an airstrip not far from where she’d indicated.

“A dig site. A Trinity dig site.”

Miguel frowned. “Trinity—they’re that historical research group, or something like that?” He knew they’d been working ruins just outside of town for a few months, which meant money for the local markets—they had a lot of employees to feed—but they had generally kept to their compounds in the hills to the east. Nobody knew much about them.

“I want to be honest with you, Mr. Riviera—”

“Miguel, please.”

“Miguel. I know you have no reason to trust us, but here’s the truth: I’m trying to stop Trinity from doing something terrible. The mountains in Peru are where we ultimately need to go, but there’s information that should tell us where, exactly, at this dig in Colombia. Trinity doesn’t want me to interfere with their plans, which is why we need to go looking in secret. And we need to be quick about it.”

“Won’t they know you’re looking when you get to this dig?”

“It’s not active,” she said. “There shouldn’t be anyone there. And we only need a ride, we’re not expecting you to help us look.”

“We’ll pay for the extra stop,” Jonah said.

Miguel hesitated. Davi and Gabriel Santo Almeda were temperamental, and could be picky about who dropped in. They also hung out with a bunch of lowlifes. Last time he’d been by, some hopped-up lunatic had pointed a gun at him. Gabriel and his friends had laughed, and Davi hadn’t bothered to intervene. Miguel had hoped to never see them again.

“How much?”

“Name it,” Lara said.

“Within reason,” Jonah added.

Well. The idea that there were people looking for Lara and Jonah wasn’t appealing; he’d definitely preferred thinking that she was a grad student… But he was already breaking the law, and he could do a lot with the figure that had popped into his head. Including pay whatever it cost to calm the Santo Almeda brothers down. Probably.

“What terrible thing does Trinity mean to do, that you think you can stop?”

Lara met his gaze directly. “Does it matter? Do you want this job, or should we find someone else?”

She had a point. “I can take you there. But if we’re being so honest, you should know that I can’t vouch for the character of some of the men we’re likely to encounter along the way. Especially where you want to go. Money can smooth over a lot, but some of these people are criminals. Killers, crazies.”

Not only did the young woman not look frightened at the prospect, she actually smiled, just a little. “We can handle ourselves.”

Miguel glanced at Jonah, whose expression was unreadable. The big man blinked back at him, waiting.

Name it.

Miguel blew out a breath, nodding. “Okay. Yes. Colombia.”

* * *

They stopped first in the short, jagged foothills of the Cordillera Isabelia in Nicaragua, where a handful of men with guns glowered at them until Miguel hopped out and did some talking, handing out “fees” for the use of the bumpy, rocky strip. After that, the men were all smiles, first happily escorting Lara and Jonah to a really unpleasant outhouse, then inviting them to share their lunch—a root stew with chunks of some gamey, unrecognizable meat. Lara firmly reminded herself that she needed the protein, ignoring the tiny claw she had to discreetly spit out. They ate quickly in the oppressively humid heat, the air slick with the smell of petrol and hazy with smoke, the noise from the fuel pump killing the need for conversation. In barely an hour, they were back in the air.

The interminable day passed as they flew over lush green hills and muddy lakes, small villages glittering with tin roofs and chain-link fences. They veered out over the Pacific several times, Miguel regularly changing altitude, the effect somewhat nauseating in the unpressurized plane—hot and then cold, falling and rising and banking. Lara packed her kit for the site and pulled out the disposable phone again to read and reread the information Marin had given her, committing the simple maps to memory.

She looked again at the riddle they’d found before the tsunami. “Chase the heart of the serpent to the silver-crowned mountain, where the twins confer,” she read out loud. “Ever heard of the hero twins, Jonah?”

“No.”

“Well, there are legendary twins in most cultures—Castor and Pollux, Romulus and Remus, arguably Gilgamesh and Enkidu. The Maya hero twins were great players in the Mesoamerican ballgame, competing against the gods of the Underworld to avenge their father’s death.”

“That’s what we’re looking for?”

She smiled at his expression. “For our purposes, the twins could represent anything—a pair of lakes, mountains, caves, or perhaps something man-made…”

After a while she ran out of guesses. Jonah started rereading a battered pulp novel and finally slumped down in his seat, dozing. Miguel mostly kept to himself, occasionally pointing out places of interest—a national reserve, mountains and rivers that delineated one country from another.

They refueled in Panama, in the tropical heat of a flat lake area, deep in a swampy jungle. Lara estimated that they were close to the border with Colombia, although she thought it impolitic to ask; of the small group of suspicious men who greeted them, several were dressed like soldiers, and none were welcoming. Miguel had told Lara and Jonah to keep close to the plane for this stop, which was just as well. Stretching was an incredible relief, but moving about in the full heat of the afternoon was like walking through syrup. It was beautiful, though—the greenery was vibrant, the earth rich and dark, the sky a thick, lustrous blue.

They ate boiled trout and beans, and a man with a nasty scar over his eye stared at Lara and licked his lips when he saw her notice. Jonah noticed, too, and his expression made the scarred fellow find something else to stare at. Had she been on her own she would have dealt with it—whatever his intentions, the man had the physique of an overfed bulldog—but she had to appreciate the value of one’s best friend being the size and shape of a top power-lifter. It saved a lot of trouble.

When they got back on the plane, Miguel said that he thought they could be at the Colombian dig by dark. Lara nodded and tried not to let her dread well up at the hours slipping by. They could only go as fast as they could go. She would head for the Blue Labyrinth as soon as they touched down, take pictures, and figure out the clues on a night flight to Peru. They could be looking for the city by tomorrow morning.

Which means you need to sleep if you can. Miguel would have to catch a nap while she and Jonah checked out the dig. She hoped he would agree to not stopping for the whole night. For the price he and Jonah had finally worked out, she didn’t think there’d be any objections.

They took off from the rutted mud airstrip, ever south.

Lara didn’t sleep, exactly, but for a time her thoughts became heavy and dull, the steady blur of the engine lulling her to the barest of awareness. She could see the mural from the Temple of the Moon in her mind’s eye, the towering wave crashing down. She saw the clear sky darken with an approaching storm, heavy clouds gathering from the air, lightning crackling through the swirling, ominous mass. She saw a terrified child clinging to the church roof, falling, swept away, while in the distance a great serpent rose from the sea, its eye a black sun, shining across the water, searching for her…

She realized that Jonah had moved up to talk to Miguel at some point, their voices low beneath the drone of the engine, pulling her awake. The evening light blared through the small cabin.

“…didn’t think I’d be seeing any of these people again, this side of the grave,” Miguel was saying. “Davi runs things. He’s not as bad as his brother, but he only steps in if there’s money in it for him. Their crew is worse.”

“Who’s Davi?” Lara asked.

“Davi and Gabriel Santo Almeda,” Jonah said. “They own the airstrip where we need to go. We’re still an hour out.”

“How far is it from the dig?” Lara asked.

“Miguel says maybe fifteen, twenty klicks.”

Lara nodded. Good. The closer the better.

“Do you need more cash to get us a ride?” Jonah asked.

“No, there’s still enough,” the pilot said. “Though I hope you don’t mind driving in some flunky’s busted truck. I’m more concerned with personal safety. When I spoke earlier of unsavory men, I was thinking mostly of the brothers. The last time I saw them, Davi was clean but Gabriel had a habit. Cocaine. He’s the older of the two, so Davi doesn’t give him orders. They keep a lot of guns, and so do their friends. It’s important that we are passive with them, that we say and do nothing that might make them feel suspicious or anxious.”

“Fun,” Jonah said. “Any chance they’ll try to shoot us down?”

“No, I’ll radio first, and they know my plane anyway,” Miguel said, but he didn’t sound all that certain. “Perhaps it’s better if you say nothing about Trinity, though.”

Lara could see from the nervous glance he threw back at her that he was worried.

“Once I have a deal with Davi, he’ll keep the rest in line, but you should go nowhere unattended while we’re here.”

“I understand,” Lara said.

“I’ll stay with the plane, while the two of you go see this place,” Miguel said. “Only a few hours, you say?”

“Less, I hope.”

Miguel nodded. “We don’t want to stay any longer than we have to. I’m going to tell them that you’re photographing ruins all through the basin for a research study, your institute has paid to see this site—and that we’re expected to land at Los Indios before dawn. The officials there would be quick to send out a search.”

Lara and Jonah both nodded. The threat of a visit by the authorities should deter these brothers from taking them hostage, or killing them for what they had.

“Did you leave on good terms, last time you came through?” Jonah asked.

“I wouldn’t say good, but not openly hostile,” Miguel said. “I always paid.”

He hesitated, then added, “I’ll tell you all about my checkered past, if you’ll let me in on what it is you think you’re going to find here.”

Jonah glanced back at Lara, who considered it briefly, then shook her head. Miguel deserved to know what they were up against, but if a confrontation with Trinity lay ahead in all this, it was safer for him if they thought he was some smuggler they’d hired for his plane. Which, essentially, he was. Marin’s betrayal of Trinity meant there was a chance that they were sending soldiers to all of their digs, but that would take time. She didn’t think they had the bodies, not close at hand… Although what she didn’t know about Trinity could fill a book. It was all a risk.

To either side of the plane Lara could see water, the endless shining Pacific to the right, the lighter blue of the Caribbean farther off to her left. Ahead of them were the Andes, rising from a dense green ocean of rivers, jungle, and hills. Shadows grouped and fled across the canopy of what seemed a billion trees, scattering like lizards.

“When this is over, my friend, I’ll make us the best empanadas you’ve ever eaten, and then we’ll talk,” Jonah said.

Miguel hesitated, then half smiled. “That’s a bold claim. You do flan?”

“My flan is the GOAT,” Jonah said, and then both of them were grinning.

Lara stared out at the darkening sea, remembering something her father had written in his notes from a trip to South America—that the beauty of the jungle there was matched only by its duplicity.

She had checked her pack three times already; the bow case and the shotgun were in a duffel, the Remington was clean, the climbing gear had been inspected. Not that there appeared to be a need for any real climbing, but she had to get to the site; Marin’s notes made clear that the Blue Labyrinth was completely underground, a meandering series of rooms built into the upper levels of a winding cave system. She planned to leave Jonah at the top of the fifty-meter drop—technically a cenote or sinkhole, as there was underground water present, but the shallow lakes were far beneath where she would need to go. She’d take her pictures and be back up in short order. Even padding her time, she didn’t see how it might take more than an hour to get to the most distant of the areas Marin had highlighted, and coming back would be even faster: she’d have her marks to follow.

Hurry. The urgency grew every time she stopped to think.

“How long did you say, until we land?” Lara asked.

Miguel glanced at the buzzing dashboard. “Unless it gets windy in the wrong direction, about forty minutes.”

Lara leaned back in her seat and pulled the phone with Marin’s maps out of her bag, opening the files again.

* * *

Luis Marin wasn’t hard to find. Only a few hours after Lara Croft flew off their radar in a single-engine prop, Ace called in. He and Sergei had found the traitor trying to sneak into a hotel where his mother had taken refuge. Marin gave up without a struggle. Harper put Mitchell on collateral immediately, and gave orders that Marin be taken to the outpost north of town, a solitary farm that Trinity had purchased for private meetings and visiting researchers. There’d been a lot of interest in Dominguez’s work.

Harper rode out to the farm with the rest of the Dozen, in a troop transport taken from the deserted Trinity compound; all of the local personnel had been pulled out before the tsunami. Koboshi drove, coaxing the shitty truck over dirt roads, while Harper considered his options. The men in the back kept quiet. Greaves had been a popular guy, and he was out of the game permanently, stuck in a clinic bed until an evac copter could take him to an actual hospital. Lara Croft had crippled him.

Technically, Harper should call his superiors immediately with the update—Marin was a loss, Croft was in the wind— but, also technically, his initial directive was still in play; in addition to assessing Marin, they were to monitor Croft’s movements. If he waited for an official order, up and back down the line of command, she could get away… Whereas if he and his team were to follow her to wherever Marin had sent her, and then call it in, there would be no chance of another escape. Keeping up their surveillance was likely to be the decision, anyway. Admin would huff about Harper overstepping his bounds, but there were those higher up who would want to know what Lara Croft found and wouldn’t care about such a minor break from regulation.

Koboshi turned into the drive for the farm, a long, low brick building set in the middle of three acres of beans and squash. Ace and Sergei had already arrived, a mud-spattered jeep parked by a leaning, dusty tool shed. They’d taken Marin inside.

Harper hopped out of the truck and into the sweltering heat, waiting until everyone was out before assigning tasks. Hux would get on the sat and order the transport back in, then download everything they had on their Maya-related sites. Koboshi would hack into the Civil Aviation Authority’s network—Byers and Alanis had followed Croft to the local airstrip and gotten the tail number off the plane she and her friend had taken—and start looking for her. The rest would sleep, eat—according to the files, the farmhouse had a pantry full of MREs—and run equipment checks. Harper wasn’t worried about the firearms—every member of his team was a fanatic about maintenance—but on their last assignment, taking out a troublesome bureaucrat and his personal guards in a banana republic, the helmet mics had been spotty. Lara Croft was a brat, but a tricky brat; she had managed to kill a number of trained soldiers all by herself. Only a fool would underestimate her. Harper wanted everything at a hundred percent if they were going to take their shot.

First things first. “Let me know when Mitchell gets here,” Harper said, and the guards nodded.

He walked through the wavering mirage of the dirt yard, stepping into the cooler dark of the building’s front room. Hux had set up his laptop on a table there and was already tapping away. Hux Lane was one of the top players in the Dozen, along with Mitchell, Ace, Sergei, and Reddy. Pure sociopaths, every one of them, and devoted to Harper. The others were hard and well-trained, but not necessarily the brightest. Harper didn’t mind. All of them followed orders.

Marin was in one of the back bedrooms; the two at the home’s east end were soundproofed, allegedly. Harper moved through the hall, letting his eyes adjust to the dark, sneering at the cheap utilitarian furnishings. Trinity had no interest in aesthetics.

Sergei was strapping Marin to a high-backed wooden chair in the last room on the left; Ace had his Ruger trained at Marin’s feet. Both nodded at Harper when he came into the room but didn’t speak. The engineer’s face was covered by a burlap hood. He groaned, rolling his head. A spot of blood had leaked through a bandage on his left shoulder.

Sergei used most of a roll of electrical tape to secure the prisoner—ankles, arms, hips and chest. He taped Marin’s hands to the heavy wooden arms of the chair; Marin’s fingers twitched and trembled, useless. Sergei finally looked up at Harper and gave a nod.

“I’ll have a moment alone,” Harper said, and both men filed out, closing the door behind them. The room was small and bare. Dusty flowered curtains hung in the tiny window, a number of dead flies scattered on the floor beneath.

He watched the hooded man, waiting. Marin gave in first.

“You should kill me now,” Marin said. “I don’t have anything to tell you.”

“Oh, I doubt that,” Harper said. “For example… what was your daughter’s name?”

Marin shook his head, the burlap swaying.

They would need to establish a few ground rules. The transport plane would have got the Dozen to wherever Croft had gone—one of the sites Marin had set traps for, surely—in half the time it would take her to fly the distance, but after it had dropped them here, the pilot had taken it back to Mexico City for maintenance. Even if it was flight-ready—unlikely—they were stuck waiting for it. Harper had some time to kill.

He pulled his sidearm, a Glock 19, checked it, then flipped it around so he was holding the barrel as he stepped to the prisoner. He slammed the butt of the gun down on the top of Marin’s right hand. Bone crunched beneath the heavy metal.

Marin howled in agony, writhing, his hand immediately turning purple, swelling. Harper waited until the throes had passed before speaking again.

“When I ask a question, you’ll answer it,” Harper said. “If you don’t, there’s going to be pain. Your daughter’s name.”

Marin’s voice shook. “What does it matter?”

Harper tapped Marin’s uninjured hand lightly with the gun butt. A promise.

“Natalia,” Marin said.

Harper nodded to himself, satisfied. He reached out and pulled the bag off of the man’s head. Marin squinted up at him, gasping, his long face streaked with tears and dirt. He looked purely miserable, and unwell—the soul sickness of utter devastation radiated from him like a smell.

“Loss is never easy,” Harper said, “but when faced with this reminder of your own mortality, you betrayed the faith.”

Marin looked like he wanted to respond, but his gaze darted to the weapon.

“Speak up,” Harper said, dropping the Glock into its holster.

“What is the faith, to you?” Marin asked.

“As it ever was,” Harper said. “To serve in God’s army. To expose the false gods that mock his existence. To secure evidence of his supremacy, for all to see.”

“Of course,” Marin said. “Because God cannot do these things for himself. It’s up to Trinity to call forth miracles, to convince the world.”

“It is our covenant,” Harper said patiently. “We pledge our arms as prayer. You took the Oath.”

“Yes, and that’s what I told myself,” Marin said. “Pledging my life to a glorious purpose, to show man proof of God. A cause to die for, to kill for. But it’s a concept that denies the lives of those lost, that denies the meaning of those lives.”

“Sacrifice is part of the whole,” Harper said. “People die every day. If their deaths serve to advance the greater purpose, to finally unite mankind in belief… no sacrifice is too great for that.”

“Trinity would stand righteously at the grave of the world,” Marin said. “I looked into the face of my daughter and saw God. I felt his love, in my love for her, and for my beautiful wife. Precious moments of connection that can only exist in their own time. After what happened yesterday, I… I believe now that those moments are God’s true gift to us. Trinity chases only the future; it denies God’s gift to his children. We are foolish, prideful men, trying to create meaning for ourselves. It’s wrong. I was wrong.”

Harper shook his head. The rhetoric of emotion, weak and selfish. Harper was no fanatic, but Trinity’s goal was altruistic, and he believed in it. A world under one God, the way it was supposed to be. Eden reborn. He might not see it in his lifetime, but Trinity would endure, its soldiers would keep fighting to guide humanity to such a place. If Dr. Dominguez was even partly successful, they would be that much closer.

There was a soft rap at the door. Mitchell had arrived.

“You know, I was going to torture you for the information I want, but honestly, I’ve lost my appetite for it,” Harper said. “You’re weak, Marin. You took a loss and crumbled. Tell me where Lara Croft is going, and I’ll send you to your wife and child.”

Marin stared back at him. He looked scared but resolute. “I won’t.”

“Oh, you will,” Harper said. “That’s absolutely what’s going to happen. You can tell me now or later, but later you’re going to be hurting.”

“Then I’ll be hurting,” Marin said, lifting his chin. “And she’ll have time to find what she needs.”

Harper walked to the door, cracking it open. “Mitchell, step in here, please.”

Mitchell nodded and followed him into the room, bouncing the gurgling, dark-eyed collateral on her hip. A little boy, about a year old, his mouth and chin speckled with chips of the candy skull he was slobbering to mush in one chubby fist. Marin’s youngest nephew, and namesake. The boy goggled at the room, his brow drawing up.

“Any problems?” Harper asked.

“Playpen in the yard, they never saw me,” Mitchell said, in a cooing, girlish voice as she nuzzled the worried boy’s neck. “Isn’t that right, baby? They never saw me, did they?”

The baby giggled, ducking his head. Harper was slightly unnerved by how maternal she was acting to keep the child calm; if he asked her to, she’d put a finger through its eye.

He looked at Marin, who had frozen in shock. He’d seen fear in the man’s face before, but this was true terror.

“No,” he whispered, through trembling lips.

“I guess little Luis’s father—your only brother, I believe— died when the big wave hit. Fisherman, right?”

Marin didn’t respond, his desperate, helpless gaze glued to the baby. Mitchell continued to bounce the little cherub, producing another candy from her shirt pocket.

“Little Luis can be dropped off in the market in an hour, none the worse for wear,” Harper said. “Someone will find him, take him to his mama. She’s probably losing her mind right now. My god, can you imagine? Her husband dies, her son disappears… Think of how happy she’ll be when he gets home. How relieved.”

Harper took his Glock back out of the holster and chambered a round. “Or. She’ll never see him again, and he will die, here, now, in this moment—God’s gift, as you say. Now, I’m breaking my own rule here, but there’s no need to upset the baby with further incentivizing, is there? Really, haven’t you suffered enough? So, I will ask one more time. And only one.”

“You’ll kill him anyway,” Marin breathed.

“No, sir, I won’t,” Harper said. “No reason. He’s too young to tell anyone what happened. I’ll let him go, if you’ll answer me. On my Oath.”

He already had Marin, he’d had him the second Mitchell had come in, but the scenario had to play out—the prisoner seeking reassurance. As if a man who would threaten a baby could be trusted. It wasn’t logical, but it was human nature to play certain roles, Harper had found. And he actually wasn’t lying. Even in the aftermath of a disaster, there’d be an outcry about a missing baby, and someone might remember the strangers running around with guns. And Trinity had burned its bridges by getting out before the waves hit; their usual agreements with the local law weren’t stable. Harper doubted he’d ever set foot in the crappy little town again, but there was always a chance. He’d never thought he would end up in a lot of places.

Marin nodded. “Okay. Yes. On your Oath.”

“Where did you send Lara Croft?”

“Sabre-Dominguez 3, the Blue Labyrinth in Colombia, the one with the tunnels,” Marin said. “Please, please don’t hurt him.”

Harper nodded, looking at Mitchell. “Drop him off somewhere and report back. Tell Hux on your way out where we’re headed; I want detailed layouts. ETA on the transport is unconfirmed, but it’s less than four hours. We’ll be flying out well before dark.” They might not beat Croft, but she was in a puddle-jumper; it would be close.

“Copy that.” She reached out and took hold of the baby’s hand, waving it at Marin.

“Wave goodbye to your uncle,” she said cheerily. “Say bye-bye!”

She walked out, her smile disappearing before she’d reached the door. Mitchell was the only woman on Harper’s team, and possessed a kind of darkness that sometimes transcended brutality. Nobody even joked about fucking with Mitchell.

Marin had started weeping again, his body limp against the rubbery tape that held him to the chair. His hand had swollen considerably. Harper considered making it fast, but in the end took a few moments to express his rage at Marin’s betrayal of Trinity. To Lara Croft, a privileged child with the luck of the devil.

He worked until he got tired of the screams, then put the hood back on Marin and placed a round through his skull. The burlap kept Harper from getting splattered. He called into the kitchen for someone to clean up the mess, then went to see if there was any word on that ETA. He was eager to move. If everything continued to go so smoothly, by the time the sun rose tomorrow, Croft would be dead.

* * *

It was true what they said, the sun set fast in the tropics. One minute there were trees and mountains and wide empty spaces crawling with muddy, winding snakes of water, then it was dark, bam. They’d gone from flying over the jungle to floating in infinite darkness. Kind of creepy. Jonah concentrated on his counting; he was setting aside cash from their funds, in case they needed to smooth anyone’s feathers. It wouldn’t be wise to let anyone see how much he was actually carrying. Lara always traveled prepared.

Miguel started up on the radio a few minutes later, calling in on a channel choked with static. He repeated his ID number in a steady voice, asking for copy. After long minutes, a low voice crackled back.

“Copy.”

Miguel cleared his throat. “Tell Papa I owe him a drink.”

There was a long pause. “This Spicy?”

“Yes, yes,” Miguel said. “Just need to fuel up, friend. Drinks are on me all around. I’m five minutes out but can head on, if you’re busy.”

Another pause, longer. Jonah glanced at Lara, a seat away, but she was checking her kit for about the hundredth time. If she was alarmed that they were about to fly into a den of armed killers, it didn’t show. Jonah shifted in his seat. He had no worries about her ability to handle herself, but if somebody got out of line and Lara had to break an arm, there might be trouble.

Finally, the low voice came back. “Yeah, okay.”

The channel snapped off, and Miguel tapped at the mix valve, studying the gauges. “Now we watch for the lights.”

“They’ll guide us in?” Lara asked.

“They’ll turn on some lamps. We set down with the lights on the port side and hope we don’t overshoot.”

“That sounds totally safe,” Jonah said.

“Yeah, well. It’s a risky business. You’re lucky you’ve got an experienced pilot.” Miguel had forced some humor into his voice but his shoulders were up.

“Yeah, but I didn’t realize you were spicy,” Jonah said.

The pilot chuckled, relaxing a little. “Hush now, help me look.”

Jonah looked. Shades of black, and too early for the stars to kick in. He could feel the world beneath them, the heavy pull of life and green, but he was staring at a blank screen. All he could see was vague reflections of their searching faces, ghosts low-lit by the dashboard lights.

Lara spotted it the same time as Miguel, pointing. “There!”

Jonah squinted. A thin crack in the dark at the bottom of the windshield, a sliver of yellow-white, low and slightly east.

“That’s the spot,” Miguel said.

The scratch of light got closer, and Jonah could see faint smudges of light close by, fires or perhaps windows in the Santo Almeda compound. Miguel tilted the yoke and pushed at a lever, and then they were dropping, the engine cranking up.

Jonah felt some anxiety, so he closed his eyes and let himself get still in his mind, breathing slowly. Miguel was a good pilot, and would land them safely—and if he couldn’t, Jonah wasn’t going to spend his last moments of life worrying about shit he couldn’t control. Instead, he thought about his grandmother’s laulau—butterfish and pork and sweet potato wrapped in taro leaves and slow-steamed over wet banana leaves in a pit oven. Simple, fresh ingredients, a little salt… When he got home, he was going to have to build himself an imu; he could put it in the backyard by the rocks. Throw a luau, can do a pig, maybe some tuna poke, a fruit thing…

The small plane banged into the ground and braked violently. He opened his eyes as they shot past the lights and hurtled forward into the dark, pitching and bouncing. He kept his breathing easy. Lara was clutching her armrests, but her face was calm.

They bumped to a stop and Miguel powered down. Jonah broke into a light sweat almost immediately as the hot, wet night settled over them. He could hear a revving engine, and light splashed across the wall of trunks and vines in front of them, weak headlights reflecting from the shadowy jungle. Someone was coming to meet them.

“Stay here until I come get you, personally,” Miguel said, unfastening his belt. His dark hair was stuck to his forehead, and he kept a straight face but Jonah could see he was nervous. He popped his door and climbed out, walking toward the plane’s tail. The engine for the approaching vehicle cut off, and they heard Miguel calling out to his “friends” in a deliberately happy tone.

Miguel spoke for a minute, and then a man shouted angrily, “Are you fucking kidding me?”

Jonah tensed, and Lara reached into her kit, putting her hand on the Remington.

The pilot was talking fast, his tone conciliatory, and there were a few grumbling replies, but Jonah couldn’t make out what they were saying. The conversation went on for a few minutes. The fact that the plane wasn’t being pumped full of holes seemed like a positive.

Soon, Miguel was climbing back in, a nervous smile on his face. “Okay, so Davi is here with a couple of his friends, and he says you can use a truck. He’ll take us to their camp to get it. Leave your things. You can pick them up when you drive me back here.”

He lowered his voice. “They will search your bags, if you bring them.”

Lara looked at Jonah, nodding. They needed to sell the idea that they were harmless.

They crawled out of the plane and into the glare of headlights. Miguel’s Cessna was at the end of a long dirt strip surrounded on all sides by heavy foliage, rubber trees and palms. There were three men behind the plane gathered at a battered jeep truck, silhouettes in the harsh light. Two of them were holding assault rifles. One of those moved forward when he saw the newcomers, whistling.

“Hey, hey, look at this.” His voice was a nasty drawl. “What is this?”

Crap. Jonah raised his chin and stared at the dark shapes of the men. He could see Lara’s tension in the set of her jaw, and silently willed her not to react. Before she could, Miguel stepped forward, looking past the two guards at the third man.

The henchman shut up and turned his head as his boss approached. Smart move. If he’d pressed the issue, Lara would have blown their cover as harmless.

Miguel introduced Davi Santo Almeda, a rough-looking man with a pocked, angry face and narrow, suspicious eyes.

“He says you are here to see caves, for a school?” Davi asked, looking at Jonah. “To take pictures?”

Lara stepped in to answer, her words flowing easily. “Yes, sir. We are documenting several small South American sites, seeking instances of certain pigment combinations.”

“Colors?” He sounded skeptical. “You want to see colors?”

“Yes, that’s right,” Lara said, nodding eagerly. “Specifically, reds from the carajura tree, and indigos made from the mollusk family Muricidae. We know these were used to dye textiles in a number of Andean cultures, but we’ve found cave paintings using these very substances, all the way through Ecuador and into the Colombian Andes. It’s an astonishing find, really. We believe it’s all down to an extended family of travelers that came here more than a thousand years ago, moving east along the riverways.”

The man’s expression had gone from wary to bored in the time it took Lara to finish. She played the enthusiastic researcher to perfection, of course, since that was essentially Lara at her core. Jonah gave her a little half-hug, big proud dumb boyfriend brought along to lug equipment and keep his girl safe.

Davi looked them over, and shot a dark look in Miguel’s direction, the meaning as clear as if he’d spoken it: If you’re lying to me, you’re dead.

“Okay,” he said finally, and climbed into the passenger seat of the truck. He motioned at his men. The one who’d harassed Lara hopped into the driver’s seat, the other jumping up into the open truck bed. “Get in.”

Lara let Jonah help her into the truck as if she needed it, a corner of her mouth twitching when he told her to watch her step. Jonah sat next to her on the warm, warped metal, night jungle sounds thick in the air: frogs calling to one another, the steady drone of a billion insects, rustling and random squawks and the flickering whisper of bats. Miguel sat across from them. He gave a discreet thumbs-up, but still looked nervous. The guy with the AR-15 took a wide stance behind the front compartment, one hand on the roof. He ignored them entirely.

The truck turned and rattled back along the potholed strip. This would either be fine, or it wouldn’t. Jonah let his thoughts and worries and expectations go, keeping his eyes and ears open instead.

* * *

They passed the dented fuel tank at the strip’s north end, draped in layers of rotting netting, and then they were approaching the shabby compound of the Santo Almeda brothers. It was pretty much the same as Miguel remembered it—a line of rusting trucks, a collection of piecemeal shacks and cabins, a generator chugging away behind the radio room. The camp smelled like burning citronella and dead earth, with a hint of garbage and human waste; the brothers and their friends weren’t particular about hygiene. At the center of it all was a big open-sided tent littered with sagging lawn chairs and lanterns. The men beneath the tattered tarp, eight or nine of them, stood up to watch them drive in. Miguel knew there was a table in the back covered with rifles and small arms from an extensive collection, but nobody was edging in that direction.

Miguel saw the older brother, Gabriel, among the dirty crew looking both twitchy and drunk, a bottle of whiskey in his hand. He was as thin as a rake, his eyes wild and bloodshot. Miguel recognized a few others: the main radio operator—a retired pilot they called Fish Eye—and a mechanic, Nuno, and a short guy whose name he didn’t know but who had been around three years ago. The rest were strangers, but they all carried the same look: dangerous. It was a pure wonder that Miguel had survived the flaming recklessness of his twenties, blind to the concept of mortality.

Davi hopped out before the driver turned off the truck, speaking loudly.

“Miguel brought us some guests, and he’s buying drinks. Relax. They’re not staying.”

“What does that mean?” Gabriel had a rasping, quick voice. “Who did he bring? Why are they here?”

Davi stepped forward, lowering his voice, explaining; both of the men who’d come out with Davi got out of the truck and joined them. Miguel had kept the story simple, implying to Davi that he was fleecing a couple of Americans for a private trip, that he’d brought them here to throw some money Davi’s way. They’d settled on a ridiculous price— Miguel was still hurting from the number—but Gabriel clearly didn’t like what he was hearing from his brother, his tone tight with paranoid anger. He raised his voice.

“Spicy, what the fuck are you doing? Get over here, and bring your fucking friends!”

Jonah and Lara both looked intent but remarkably calm. Miguel nodded at them, then got up and jumped from the back of the truck, leading them into the stark light of the lanterns beneath the tarp.

Immediately, several men started grinning, one of them making cat noises, another hissing through his teeth.

Davi’s manner was firm. “Shut the fuck up. They’re paying, they’re guests. You don’t like it, get the fuck out of my camp.”

It got quiet, and most of the men went back to their seats, looking sullen. Gabriel and one of his toadies—from the way he sniffed and blinked, he was the older brother’s current coke buddy—stayed. Gabriel glared at Miguel.

“You bringin’ guests now? The fuck you think this is, a party?”

“I offered to keep flying when I called,” Miguel said. It was a weak argument—he hadn’t said anything about having civilian passengers—but it was something.

Davi put his hand up to his brother’s arm, trying to steer him away, but Gabriel was lit up. He stepped forward aggressively, waving his bottle at Miguel.

“I should have let Monkey shoot you, you traitor,” he rasped, his sour breath and body odor staggering, his fury very real. “I knew you were a piece of shit the first time you ever came, all smiling and simpering, looking down your nose at us like your ass doesn’t stink!”

“Fuck that!” the cokehead friend chimed in.

One of the men in the chairs stood up quickly, scowling. A second joined him, wiping at his nose.

“And now you bring guests? Where did you get the idea that I wouldn’t stomp your sorry ass into the ground for this kind of bullshit? And put your guests into a hole?”

“Gabriel!” Davi barked, but more men were nodding.

In the sudden tension, Jonah spoke up, calmly.

“This is on me,” he said, shaking his head. “I asked our pilot to take us as close as possible to our destination. He told us you might not be comfortable with strangers coming in, but I insisted. I figured you’d be okay with the money, I mean, it’s a lot of money, but I can see that we’re not entirely welcome here.”

Lara, standing a step behind him, cleared her throat. “On behalf of the institute, you have our sincerest apologies.”

Gabriel blinked rapidly, his mouth slightly open. The men stared.

Jonah looked at Davi. “We can afford to pay a little more. We don’t have much, but it’s all yours. This is important historical research, and the basis for my friend’s doctorate. But if you’d rather that we take our business elsewhere, we’ll leave immediately. There should still be time to drive back up from Los Indios before we have to pick up our tickets. Lara?”

Lara stepped forward with a folded envelope in her hand. She looked inside, riffling through a number of large American bills, for everyone to see. “You sure? There’s still a lot in here…”

Jonah answered her but kept his gaze on Davi. “I’m sure. It’s our last stop before home.”

Lara walked up and held out the envelope to Davi, shaking her head slightly as if in mild disbelief at Jonah’s generosity.

Miguel had a split second to marvel at what Jonah had done, in under a minute: calmed Gabriel and the other men, sweetened the deal, established that they were expected somewhere and that they’d just used up all of their funds.

Davi quickly took the envelope, and then nodded at Jonah. “You’ll excuse our manners, please. At night, we sometimes drink too much.”

“It’s our fault, for showing up like this,” Jonah said. “We should have made earlier arrangements. Can you direct us which truck to use?”

Davi nodded at the mechanic. “Nuno, does the red one have gas?”

“Yes.”

“You know where you’re going?” Davi asked.

“We have a map,” Jonah said.

“Give him the keys,” Davi said to Nuno. “Then get the Cessna gassed up.”

Gabriel finally found his voice, glaring at his brother. “What about what I have to say? Don’t I get a say in how we operate our—”

Davi cut him off, his jaw clenched. “Stop. Talking. Now.”

“Thanks, man, this means a lot,” Jonah said. “Miguel, we’ll give you a lift back to the plane. The cameras are still on board.” He chuckled, nodding at Lara. “Can’t take pictures without the cameras, can we?”

Lara smiled, looking at Davi. “This whole trip has been such a whirlwind, I’m amazed that I still have my head attached. We’ve been to five sites in four days!”

Davi actually smiled back at her, a creaky, foreign twitch. “I can’t imagine, miss. I wish you luck looking for your colors.”

Lara offered her hand, and Davi Santo Almeda, who’d personally killed at least five men that Miguel knew about, shook it limply.

“We should have the truck back in a few hours, and then we’ll be out of your hair,” Jonah said. “Lara, Miguel?”

Jonah turned and walked toward the trucks, Lara at his side. Miguel fell in behind them, trying not to look dumbfounded. It was like they’d practiced. Miguel still didn’t know what Lara and Jonah were trying to do, exactly, but he suddenly thought it very likely that they would succeed.

* * *

Harper dozed off as soon as they hit altitude and slept for nearly three hours, deaf to the low roar of the transport plane. He didn’t wake up refreshed—he couldn’t remember the last time he’d actually lain down in a bed—but he’d slept enough to carry him through. ETA was less than an hour, they’d be dropping soon.

He looked around at the Dozen, harnessed beside him and along the opposite wall of the dimly lit echoing plane— sleeping, tapping at devices, reading through hard copies of tunnel maps and Trinity’s reports on the Santo Almeda brothers and the layout of their “airfield.” When the Blue Labyrinth dig had gone active, Trinity had assessed the operation—they were the closest strip to the site—and come away unimpressed, at least according to recon. Couple of druggies with a stretch of dirt and a private gun collection: minimal threat. Trinity had set up its own airfield a bit farther south. But the Dozen were going to be dropping in on the brothers; if Harper had managed to get ahead of Croft, he could be there to meet her.

Harper put on his helmet and tapped the mic. “Wake up, people. Get your gear on.”

He unstrapped himself, stopped at the head, then walked up to the cockpit along a narrow aisle of web-roped cargo, boxes and barrels, grabbing hand straps along the way to keep on his feet. The pilot, Winters, wasn’t enthused about their destination, and Harper was in the mood to hand out a pep talk. He felt good. He liked the idea of being there to witness the expression on Croft’s face when she realized she’d been beaten. Of course, there was a chance she would land somewhere else, but Harper thought the odds were low. Hux had reasoned that she would be using a network of airfields used by smugglers—the pilot who had flown her out of Mexico had a history, and his plane miraculously hadn’t set down for fuel anywhere since taking off. The Santo Almeda field was fifteen minutes from the dig, it was where she was going… and if she was already there, all the more reason not to dick around with travel time.

He rapped on the door to the cockpit, then pushed it open. Winters, a nondescript white thirty-something with bad teeth, nodded at the headset on the open seat next to him.

As soon as Harper put it to his ear, the pilot started in. “I don’t believe I have fully expressed how strongly I feel we should land at the Trinity strip, Commander. It’s less than thirty miles south of the site, it’s far better maintained and nearly twice the length.”

“You said you could do it,” Harper said.

“I said it was possible, but—”

“You can do it,” Harper said. “You will do it. I have faith in you.” As if he knew anything at all about Winters, besides the fact that he didn’t floss. He was a contract hire, he hadn’t taken the Oath, but he was fully theirs the first day he’d signed his name. Another silly scenario to play—encourage and empathize with the people you needed, at least for as long as you needed them. Worked better than threats.

“Look, we have to go in steep, really steep,” Winters explained, “and if we don’t keep the speed up, we’re going to stall. This isn’t a glider—we’ll drop like a ton of bricks. The chances of stopping in a timely fashion are therefore really low, and slamming into the jungle at any speed will kill at least your pilot. Even if I pull it off, getting back off the ground may not be possible. And these brothers could have traps rigged, they could have gotten hold of some anti-artillery firepower or—”

“Let me stop you there,” Harper said. “We’re looking at a handful of addicts with small arms, and they’re not going to open fire after you declare an emergency landing and make assurances that you will pay handsomely for the inconvenience. As far as they know, you’re a cargo plane with a bad engine… But you are carrying a team of armed and highly trained special-tactics personnel, you understand? Security is handled.”

“Our field is literally minutes away, though, and there’d be no risk of an emergency situation or, or violence—”

Blah, blah, blah. Harper was done. He stood up, clapped the stammering pilot on the shoulder. To his credit, Winters only flinched slightly, even when he applied some pressure. Not enough to cause pain, but firmly, grounding the pilot to his physical self. Nothing made a man see reason like a reminder that he was only flesh and bone.

“You will do it,” he repeated, without the encouraging emphasis. “Comprende?”

Winters nodded, swallowing. “Okay. Sure.”

“Good man.” Harper dropped the headset and started back to his team. They were restless, amped up. He found himself almost hoping that the Santo Almeda brothers would react badly to a surprise landing. His best players were a special breed; violence inspired them, kept them operating on top form. Blowing away some low-level criminals would have them revved up to handle Croft when they finally met with her.

Harper wasn’t sure exactly when his plans had changed from following Croft and managing an accident to engaging her with intent to harm, but that seemed to be how things had worked out. After Marin’s death, perhaps. It galled him to think of her scurrying around with her clues, plotting, looking for ways to undermine the cause, to interfere with a great man’s life’s work. Pedro Dominguez would have statues dedicated to him, and Croft was just a scurrying little rat. Harper was going to exterminate her.

Soon. He walked back to his seat, pleased to see that most of the Dozen were already in Kevlar and had strapped back in to check their firearms and to go back over the maps. Croft wasn’t going to know what hit her.

* * *

The trip to the Blue Labyrinth was rough, to say the least. There was no insulation between the engine compartment and the interior, the roar of the truck’s unmuffled engine incredibly loud, the air reeking of burnt oil. Lara held on to the seat, her kit wedged between her knees, as Jonah drove, the truck jouncing along the dark road that wound through the jungle and into the hills. She gave up taking a last look at Marin’s maps after she bit her tongue when they hit a hole big enough to hide a crouching child, halfway to the dig. The metal taste of blood lingered in her mouth. The truck’s headlights illuminated the insects that smacked into the cracked windshield, caught crashes of sudden movement ahead, small animals running for cover. Wide nocturnal eyes watched them pass by from a safe distance.

After the truck made a final nerve-wracking leap onto a low rocky hill, the headlights fell across the opening to the site—basically a sunken hole in the ground, about ten meters across and surrounded by jungle. There were signs that a team had worked there—a field of stumps crisscrossed by rutted tracks, a half-burned pile of refuse next to a jeep chassis being swallowed by crawling vines. How long had it been since Trinity had gone? Marin hadn’t said, but she’d gotten the impression it had been a while. Months, perhaps.

There had been some kind of passenger elevator for the cenote—Lara could see a small metal platform hanging by ropes on the far side—but whatever machinery had run it had been taken out. A staked rope was strung around the hole.

Jonah turned off the engine, the sudden cessation of noise making Lara feel she’d been struck deaf. She got out and started kitting up, climbing into her harness while Jonah walked over to look into the hole, leaning over the rope with a torch. He cast a long shadow walking back, the light from the headlamps thick with gathering moths. He reached into the truck and turned off the lights, popping open a small electric lantern.

“Just more jungle down there,” he called. “Open spot in the middle.”

“There’s water beneath that,” Lara said. “The tunnels angle off and down to a series of shallow lakes…”

She turned, getting her bearings.

“…that way,” she finished, pointing south and west. “The direction I need to go, actually. The tunnels are a real tangle, layers and layers of them, but the places Marin marked as relevant are all right at the top. I’ll hit the farthest out first and work my way back to the big room, the prize. Whatever it was Dominguez couldn’t figure out. Would you check me, please?”

Jonah stepped over and pulled at the buckles on her harness. “So, you’re feeling good about this?”

She nodded, pulling items from her bag, hooking them to her harness. Climbing axe, extra carabiners, flares. Her knife went on her belt, along with the radio, markers, matches… She had Marin’s maps on the disposable phone she’d bought in Mexico, the slim case buttoned into her hip pocket. She’d downloaded and run scan apps and the card seemed clean, but she still didn’t want to risk her own device. Anything from Trinity was suspect. “I really don’t think this will take long.”

“That’s good,” Jonah said, looking around at their isolated surroundings. Even the trail they’d come in on seemed to have been swallowed back up by the jungle. “I was thinking I might catch a movie or something while I waited, but I’m pretty sure everything’s closed.”

They walked to the rim of the cenote, Jonah carrying the rope and extra equipment. She helped him set up the simple winch and tie off an anchor rope; Trinity had left behind a hook post drilled deep into the rock. They dropped three flares, brilliant hissing sparks of red falling through the black, lighting up the abundant growth in the cavern—ferns and small rubber trees, mostly, but Lara saw a tall walking palm near the center, its spreading roots lit by the fiery glow. That meant the ground was solid. She had expected as much from Marin’s notes, but the confirmation made her feel better. She couldn’t see the entrance to the tunnels thanks to the overhang of the opening’s heavy lip, but there was a coolness in the air this close to the rim, a sense that they were at the edge of some hidden abyss. She imagined she could smell the flat mineral tang of water beneath the burning chemicals of the flares.

They lowered her pack and the bow case off the edge of the well, watching the duffel settle on the guano-spattered dirt next to a spindly rubber tree, fifty meters down. She had a canteen and a filter straw in her pack, rope, a small first-aid kit, a light thermal jacket, two LED torches with extra batteries, camera, duct tape, protein bars… She was ready.

A few dozen small bats spun up through the red light, whickering out of the cenote’s mouth and away. She doubted she’d run into anything more dangerous so far underground, but the tunnel system was set into karst—sinkholes and vents were inevitable, which could mean larger animals, and better safe than sorry; there were a dozen arrows with the bow if she ran across anything that meant her harm. She had no plans to fire a weapon underground, but with Trinity involved, she wasn’t taking chances. The 1911 R1 Enhanced held eight and she had both mags loaded, plus a single reload. Twenty-four rounds was undoubtedly overkill and added extra weight to her load, but Trinity’s demented ideology demanded that she be cautious; if they had guards in the area, they might send them, and to the self-proclaimed army of God, the end justified any and all means.

Jonah helped her tether to the rope and pull up slack so she could thread the figure-eight and lock in. They both checked her work. Lara leaned back a little, and everything held as it should. She was ready.

“How far do you have to go?” he asked.

“Barely three kilometers, and it’s tunnels all the way. But the radios aren’t going to be much use well before I get there.”

Jonah gave her a look at the understatement. They’d lose contact as soon as she walked out of sight, and they both knew it.

“Try not to worry,” she added.

“We’re in a Colombian jungle at night so you can tour a secret Maya labyrinth booby-trapped with mines,” Jonah said. “For real, why would I worry?”

She grinned. Jonah could always get a smile out of her. With that flicker of thought, she got a hint of the emotional maelstrom waiting for her if she let her guard down. Somehow feeling even a moment of happiness brought up everything—that constant beat of dread, terror that she would fail to stop Dominguez in time, wrenching regret for so many things…

Lara shut it down before it could go any further. Feeling shitty still wasn’t an option. She put on her helmet, adjusted the strap. “I’ll be back soon. If you see any wild pigs, climb a tree.”

“You’re kidding, right? I thought the jungle had jaguars.”

“Yes, but jaguars don’t hunt at night,” she said. “Wild pigs are nocturnal, and it’s mating season.”

Jonah nodded toward the truck, a gray metal heap with a few flecks of red paint still on the panels. “I’ve got shelter. And failing that, the shotgun and a recipe that calls for pork. You worry about finding what you came to find.”

Lara stepped to the rim, tapping her headlamp on. She donned her gloves and grabbed the rope.

“Wish me luck,” she said.

“You won’t even need it,” he said. “This is what you do.”

Lara took a breath and walked herself backward, finally pushing off from the lip, lowering herself into the cavernous dark.

* * *

Jonah watched her drop neatly into the eerie, sputtering echoes of the cavern, touching down and climbing out of the harness in a minute. She turned and looked around, her headlamp flashing over the greenery, then waved up at him. She seemed impossibly small down there, a tiny figure bathed in flickering red from the flares.

“Test, test, copy?” her voice crackled over the radio.

“Loud and clear,” Jonah said. For what it was worth. Specialized mine radios were too heavy for a single caver to manage, so they’d opted for these. Waiting for Lara often meant being out of touch for extended periods.

He watched her refit herself by the tiny light of her headlamp—putting a loaded magazine into the Remington, slinging her bow, tying her jacket around her waist. She finally took off the helmet and hooked it to her belt, turning on a flashlight. She aimed the narrow cone of light past a low clump of greenery to her right. Her voice was calm.

“The entrance is just this way. Two hours or less. You can time me.”

Jonah looked at his watch. “Don’t hurry on my account, Little Bird. Safe and steady wins the race. 2142.”

“Take care, Jonah,” she said, and did her voice tremble the tiniest bit? “Over and out.”

She turned and jogged into the thick red shadows. She was out of sight in the space of a breath, the glow of her flashlight disappearing a second later.

Jonah sat back on his heels, frowning. He reached over and tapped off the small lantern, which was being bombarded by giant moths. It wasn’t like Lara to get maudlin, not at a dig site. Ever. He’d heard her scared, angry, and in a hurry; she always sounded determined, but never tearful. She’d been quiet on the plane, but she got like that when she was studying for an expedition. He hadn’t thought anything of it.

That tiny quiver in her voice bothered him. He’d gone through a very dark time after what had happened at Yamatai, but had gained some valuable tools when he’d been putting his life back together. Maybe the best one was taking regular time to observe his emotions, good and bad, to feel them without judgment, and then let them pass by. He didn’t like the word “mindfulness,” he thought it sounded pretentious, but the concept was the thing. Lara agreed with the principle, but when her father was involved, her defenses took over. And this whole Maya thing—the reason they’d traveled to Mexico in the first place—was all about her father.

Although it was unclear who had pulled the trigger, Trinity had murdered Richard Croft, and set it up to look like a suicide. Lara was usually very good at channeling her feelings into her work, which had gone from historical and archaeological research to putting out the fires that Trinity kept lighting… But when she’d taken that dagger back in Mexico, she’d inadvertently lit this fire herself, sparking an event that her father may have been trying to stop when he’d been murdered—a horrifying, cataclysmic tsunami, in which many had died. Of course she was freaked out, anyone would be, but Lara was still in the habit of setting unpleasant feelings aside, as if she could somehow store them until she was ready. He knew from experience that they had a tendency to seep up as anxiety, distraction, self-doubt. Lara was the most competent person he knew, hands down, but if she lost her focus, she could get hurt.

She’s not going to lose her focus. And she’ll process or she won’t. Take your own advice and chill, or it’s going to be a long couple of hours.

Jonah let his eyes adjust to the sultry dark and then leaned back on his hands, looking up. The sky was amazing, a deep velvet scattered with brilliant pinpricks of light. He could see the dust between the stars.

He was still worried, but all he could really do now was wait.

* * *

The small patch of rainforest at the bottom of the well didn’t last far into the first tunnel, which was nearly high enough for her to stand upright in, and a bit wider. There were some slicks of moss and a few struggling ferns for the first dozen meters, and then it was moist packed dirt and rock and bat guano. Chilly. She’d dropped from the humid tropics to the dank cold of a leaking basement, and her sweat cooled quickly.

She crouched her way down the long entrance tunnel’s gradual descent, the torch’s beam illuminating the roughly sculpted walls of dank sedimentary rock. Marin’s notes had been from memory rather than expedition logs, but he had supplied as much useful information as he could recall. A geologist had suggested that the labyrinth had been a natural drainage point for the local river system millennia ago, but had been cut off by geological changes. It was still a wet cave; the lower tunnels flooded during heavy rain seasons.

There were signs that Trinity had been through—metal supports jammed into crevices to hang lights, along with cigarette butts and random garbage. Clearly, they hadn’t been concerned about polluting the delicate environment. From a strictly professional view, Lara was surprised that any respected archaeologist could work for them. The way their people treated digs was truly appalling.

Lara shook her head at herself. Dominguez wanted to recreate the world, he wasn’t going to worry about embracing low-impact methodology or preservation ethics. And Trinity was operating so far outside the realm of such considerations it was ridiculous to even think about it.

You’re distracting yourself, because you’re going to fail, her mind whispered. Pedro Dominguez has been studying Mesoamerican cultures since before you were born. Do you honestly believe you’re going to find something he missed? He could be laying his hands on the Box of Ix Chel right now, this second, while you’re chasing a long shot hundreds of miles away—

“Stop it,” Lara said aloud, and hesitated, listening to the slight echo of her voice. There was an opening ahead, a large one. She’d already reached the first branch.

Lara didn’t need to look at the map; she’d memorized her route. The tunnel opened into a small chamber, several meters high and about the size of a living room. There would be a second tunnel branching somewhat west from the chamber, which descended rather quickly to the deeper layers of the labyrinth and the true bottom of the cenote. She was to continue south. There was a stone bridge to edge across and another winding passage before she got to the first charges; she would look at Marin’s notes when she got there, although she could see the grid in her mind, knew where the trap was laid. There were only a few along her path, small charges set to trigger cave-ins at convenient joints and fractures.

She reached the opening to the chamber, and shined the torch around. Someone had spray-painted on the worn stone of the walls: a red X for the western tunnel, a blue arrow for the southern. The floor was thick with fresh guano, the ammonia smell singeing her nostrils.

Lara pulled out the radio. “Checking in. Jonah, do you copy?”

She waited, and there was a long burst of static, and a buzzing that might have been talking.

A hundred meters in. She was surprised she was getting anything.

“Good, good, good,” she said into the radio, hoping he’d catch a word. She waited, then depressed the send button twice, quickly. Two taps meant “All’s well.”

There were two short hisses in response: Message received. She hooked the radio to her belt and stepped into the chamber. She could hear squeaks and rustling overhead. She raised the torch as far as she dared, not wanting to startle the colony, and looked up.

There were several dozen brown bats about two meters over her head, hanging and climbing, active. The largest was no bigger than a man’s fist. From the way they turned their tiny snub-nosed faces as they chirped, their delicate ears trembling, she thought they were insectivores. They had tiny eyes, too. Fruit bats generally had large eyes, and didn’t depend on echolocation to eat. Not that she was any kind of bat biologist.

Chiropterologist. She remembered the order name, chiroptera, because it meant “hand-wing,” which she thought was an unusually apt description. Her father had taught her that.

She lowered the light and hurried through the small chamber, trying not to step on the teeming insects that littered the floor—mostly roaches, but she saw beetles and crickets, too. She paused to put her own mark beneath Trinity’s arrow with a white grease pencil, then ducked her head and entered.

The tunnel she moved into was similar to the one she’d left but narrower. It jagged upward for a dozen meters—not sharply, but enough to stretch her legs—and then down, the bottom curving out of sight, to the right. In a few places, the Trinity excavation team had wedged boards between the walls of the tunnel. Lara moved down easily, feeling the moist air cool further, her steps echoing back at her as she neared the bottom. This deep, the darkness had weight; the light of her torch sliced through it cleanly, but she could feel the black pressing against her from all sides.

The curve at the bottom of the passage opened into a pit that staggered downward through many layers of tunnels, spanned by a descending, uneven stone bridge less than a meter wide. There were several such spots in the labyrinth, vertical holes connecting two or more of the passages. Lara stopped well back from the edge, looking across and slightly down. About six meters of bridge between her and the continuation of the tunnel. The ceiling was low enough that the Trinity people had put in clip line, running the length of the formation. Lara reached up and tugged at it. Solid. Her harness was back at the drop—she hadn’t expected to use it at all—but she had nylon rope and carabiners…

Lara looked down, studying the slope beneath the bridge. The torch’s beam ran the length of what was essentially a giant, very steep slide, nearly vertical in spots. The initial drop was about four meters, to a lip of water-worn rock— beyond that, Lara could see the bottom of another length of tunnel, with another vast opening down into dense black.

The bridge is wide enough to dance on—just go.

And you’re alone down here. Take the time, do it right.

Lara hesitated, and felt a flush of anxious irritation with herself for wasting time debating the point. She hooked the torch onto her belt and donned her helmet, activating the lamp, then put on her gloves. She grabbed the narrow line and stepped out onto the bridge.

Edging forward carefully, hand over hand, she tested each step before trusting her full weight to it. About halfway across, the bridge dipped too far for her to easily reach the line, but by then she’d found her balance and the footing was firm, free of loose rocks. She let go of the line and crouched forward. If she fell, she only had to pitch forward and she’d be fine, she’d roll right into the tunnel—

A high animal shriek echoed up from the dark, strange and wavering.

Lara froze as the scream died off, echoing wildly. A bird? Was that a—

—and she had only just registered the frantic rush of beating wings beneath the fading echo when a thousand bats came pouring up from the pit. They squealed and flapped and funneled around her. She ducked, dropping to one knee, hands down, her headlamp illuminating a dark, disorienting swarm of membranous wings and tiny white teeth.

Don’t move! The colony was huge but they were spinning toward the tunnel behind her, seeking escape. She only had to wait—

Claws caught in her ponytail, caught and held.

The snared, terrified animal screamed in her ear, the sound so high she could feel it in her teeth, its wings beating at her ears.

Lara reached for it as several more smacked into her. She made the mistake of opening her eyes, and felt her balance shift.

She rolled forward, the bat struggling free and skittering away as she aimed for the end of the bridge, or where she thought the end was, in the storm of dark furry bodies. She was wrong, but only knew it when her right shoulder found open air, and then she was falling.

Muscle memory kicked in. Lara grabbed for the bridge, managed to slap it on her way down, getting her feet under her. She relaxed her legs and hit the sloping edge into the tunnel beneath on the balls of her feet, facing the wall of the cavern. She threw herself forward, scrabbling to grab hold of anything that could slow her down, but the rocks were smooth here, the cracks shallow.

She slipped backwards from the wall, tumbling at an angle, rocks and rapidly shrinking bats flashing past her in a dizzying swirl.

Head up, keep your head up!

She ripped the ice axe from her belt, swung it. The head scraped across the wall and she got her legs pulled around—

Her butt slammed into and skidded off the steep slope, pushing her forward into open air.

Lara twisted and struck with the pick as hard as she could, the impact shuddering up her arm, her fall arrested for a split second before the pick broke loose and she was falling again, this time her right hip crunching against the wall of the passage between the next two tunnels, spinning her sideways.

Arrest!

She struck with the pick again, putting everything into it—and again, the pick held for less than a second, but it was enough time to spot the floor, only a few meters down.

She dropped. When her feet touched she pushed forward, tucked herself tightly and shoulder-rolled across a tumble of guano-splattered stones. She came up crooked but threw herself into another roll. When she came up again, she ran three steps and then stopped.

She grabbed her pocket torch and added its more powerful light to that of the headlamp’s, quickly taking in where she’d landed. She was in a rock chamber at the bottom of the slide, several meters high and quite wide. It descended south, narrowing to a tunnel. There were other openings along the wall to the west, dark holes in the stone.

There was no sign of whatever animal had spooked the bats. No bats, either, although she’d clearly found their roost, or one of them. The reek was spectacular, the floor thickly greasy underfoot, creeping scat-eaters crawling over the surface. She wiped at her shoulder, breathing through her mouth.

She checked herself. Her tailbone ached; she wouldn’t sit right for a week. Her hip was going to bruise spectacularly, too—but nothing was broken. She’d trained to fall, to go loose and slow the descent, to channel the force of the landing, but no amount of training could have prevented her from slamming into a boulder on the way down. She’d been extraordinarily lucky.

Lara stepped back to the slide, looking up. She’d managed to drop twenty meters, and there wasn’t a way to climb back up without putting in some serious time.

She exhaled heavily, putting the axe on her belt. Her sigh echoed back at her. She hadn’t focused overly on the layout of the lowest levels, but she remembered that they were mostly connected, and some of the chambers had tunnels that went up into the center. She could find one of the vertical wells higher up. The maps—

Uh-oh.

She quickly unbuttoned the pocket over her aching hip and pulled out the cheap phone that held Marin’s SD card. The screen was shattered, and the power button did nothing but click.

She stared at the broken device, considering her options. She thought the middle opening in the west wall connected to the tunnel that she’d passed back at the first branch…

Which is also a serious climb; Marin’s notes said so. And you’ll be back where you started. Go south.

She thought she had a pretty good mental map of how the labyrinth was laid out. Wide, wet chambers at the bottom, a confused mass of dead ends and winding passages through the middle, two main corridors that twined across and over each other at the top. The rooms she needed were there. As deep as the labyrinth went, it didn’t extend more than four kilometers from side to side. She was going to have to climb up somewhere, but if she continued south along the floor, she was bound to find an easier ascent.

Sure, like you knew you were going to be fine on the bridge.

If she got into more trouble, Jonah wouldn’t know where to come looking. The safest course was to wait where she was; when she didn’t get back on time, he’d come in after her. She’d left only the one grease-pencil mark for him to follow, but if she stayed here, she would hear him get to the bridge.

The radio. No chance he would hear her, but the signal might still get through. Three taps, followed by three more: Come find me. He could be hauling her up in less than an hour.

Could be, if he hears it, which he won’t. You’re too far out of range for anything and you know it. And you also know you’re not going to wait for two minutes, let alone any number of hours.

Just as well that they couldn’t make contact. What would she say? Jonah, due to an entirely preventable accident, I’m not where I’m supposed to be and I’ve lost the maps. I’m pretty sure I remember everything important, though, so I’m going to wing it. Fingers crossed that I don’t get lost or accidentally blow myself up. Also, there’s some animal down here that may or may not be predatory, but I’m hopeful that it’s a bird, so don’t worry.

Would he argue with her, though? Jonah knew the clock was ticking. The disasters she’d set off would continue, and Dominguez was racing against time, too, to have everything in place when the “cleansing,” as he’d called it, was complete. He had Trinity’s resources and a mad dream and she was one of a very few people who knew what he was looking for and might actually be in a position to stop him.

How sure are you that he needs to be stopped? What if he can use the box to halt the cleansing?

What if he’s insane and means to destroy the world?

“It doesn’t matter,” she said aloud, and when the echo died, she could hear the whisper of the crawling bugs but nothing else. It didn’t matter. There were risks, but it was on her to take them.

She set the dead phone at the bottom of the long slope, in sight of the bridge, checked her compass, and headed south, doing her best to skirt the gently moving mass of whispering insects.

* * *

In his dream, Miguel was in a bar that he liked in Mexico City, playing darts with his friend Diego. Diego had just won, but barely, and he was grinning as he pulled his darts from the board.

Miguel was glad they were out on the town. He and Diego had learned how to fly together, studying for tests in the back of Diego’s mother’s apartment. He hadn’t seen Diego in forever but here they were, standing at the board, and Diego was saying something but Miguel couldn’t hear him. There was a crowd of men in the back room, watching a game or playing one, shouting, laughing. They were loud.

“What?”

“I said, somebody’s coming! You have to—”

The men in the back room roared, and Miguel could see Diego’s lips moving but he couldn’t make out the words— and hadn’t Diego died in a crash in Argentina? Miguel had been to his funeral, he remembered, he’d worn his only suit.

Even as he thought it, Diego’s face started to blacken and shrivel, his eyes falling back into his skull, his jaw hanging open and then falling off. Miguel screamed but the unseen men screamed louder, and then Diego raised one rotting hand and slammed his darts into the board, stabbing it, bam, bam, bam!

Miguel jerked awake.

“—up, you fuck!” One of Gabriel’s friends, the guy with no front teeth, was hammering on the door of his plane. He had a rifle and he looked pissed. “Get out!”

Miguel shook his head, confused. After Jonah and Lara had gone, he’d fueled the plane and taxied to the top of the runway, close to the camp. Everyone was in a good mood with money to spend; even Gabriel seemed to come around when they’d started shooting dice. But now all the men were shouting in confusion, Davi and Gabriel both barking orders, men taking up arms.

“What? Why?” Miguel sat up and realized that beneath the shouting he could hear the faint sound of engines, coming in from the northwest.

The thug pointed his rifle at the window. “Out!”

Miguel was wide awake. He fumbled at the door. As soon as it was open, Toothless grabbed his shoulder and yanked him out and to the ground. Miguel stayed down, his heart thundering.

“Who is it, Spicy?” Gabriel Santo Almeda screamed above the din, and Miguel looked up to see the older brother striding over, an Uzi in his hand. “Who’s coming? Who did you sell us out to, you bastard?”

Miguel’s blood ran cold, a lead ball forming in his gut. Trinity. Somehow they had followed Lara or found out where she was going.

“Stop!” Davi shouted. “Shut the fuck up, all of you!”

Incredibly, most of the men shut up.

“The pilot, Winters, says it’s an emergency—”

“Bullshit!” Gabriel spat.

“Of course it’s bullshit, it’s about whatever he’s into,” Davi said angrily, gesturing at Miguel. “But Winters says he’s got money and he’s paying twice as much as what we just got. We let him land.”

“The fuck we do!” Spittle flew from Gabriel’s cracked lips. “When was the last time strangers came at all, and now twice in hours? That bitch conned you! She came in on Spicy’s fucking word and now her friends are coming, it’s some suspicious shit happening and—”

“Calm down!”

“—and we’re not going to get caught with our pants down! How do you know this guy Winters has money? How do you know? He’s with those people Spicy brought; it’s some kind of fucking bust or a takeover—”

“Think, you idiot!” Davi shouted. “Who gives a shit about us? We don’t need to insert ourselves into this, and that plane is going to fucking land anyway! You’re high and you’re drunk, and you will keep your shit holstered and your friends calm until we at least talk to the man!”

Gabriel swayed, glaring at his brother, gears grinding… then raised the Uzi, pointing it at Miguel. “Fine. I’m taking out this rat, though.”

Toothless and most of the rest called out encouragement, or at least looked at Miguel like he was dog shit, scowling. He was going to die.

Gunned down by the Santo Almeda crew, doesn’t it just fucking figure, he thought, with a detachment that surprised him. He hoped Mama didn’t take it too hard.

“Not yet,” Davi said. He had to raise his voice, the approaching plane’s engines loud, powerful. And approaching very quickly. “Winters might pay for him. Now quit fucking around. All of you, clean up!”

Gabriel stepped up to where Miguel half lay in the dirt, blinking, stunned that he was still alive.

“Get up, Spicy,” he growled, and then hauled back and kicked him in the thigh, hard enough to immediately lock the muscle, to spread agony through Miguel’s entire body.

Miguel cried out and rolled onto his back—and saw the giant silhouette of a Beechcraft 1900 bearing down on them, coming in at an impossible angle, its massive shadow blocking the stars.

“Get down!” Fish Eye shouted, and then everyone was ducking and hot air was blasting through the small compound, rattling the tarp of the shelter, knocking over chairs. The men’s cries were lost beneath the roar of landing. Miguel hugged the ground, his arms wrapped over his head, trying to brace for the explosion.

It was all over in a minute, and there was no fiery blast, only the dull crack of a few trees being slapped out of the ground and then the descending whine of engines powering down.

The men got to their feet, staring at each other.

“That was goddamn amazing,” Fish Eye said, and Miguel had to agree, distracted from his aching leg. The pilot had set a twin-engine cargo plane down on a strip that barely cleared its wingspan, and had stopped in impossible time.

Gabriel ordered that Miguel be tied to one of the canopy’s metal posts at the back, a rusting steel bar set into a rough block of concrete. By the time Davi and two of his men rode out to meet “Winters,” Miguel’s hands were secured behind his back and he was looped to the post with clothesline, two guys watching him. He couldn’t see any path here that was going to turn out well for him. Davi was right, someone had come because of what he was involved with—taking Lara Croft to her tunnels. It could only be Trinity.

Unless this is the police or the government, and they lied about Trinity. Lara and Jonah could be mental patients or international criminals on the lam, what did he know? He didn’t believe that, though. He thought they were nice people, not cons, and they’d hinted that this could be dangerous, even if they hadn’t come out and said it.

Even so, Miguel was all for a good cause, but not if he was going to end up shot for it. What the hell is Lara doing that they’d send in someone after her?

Yeah, and what were you doing, thinking that it was worth the cash? You’re not here because you said no.

The men had slung their rifles but they stayed standing, listening to the truck drive out and stop. A minute passed, then another. A couple of the drunks were mumbling trash talk, boasting about who they would kill and what they were going to do to Lara if she came back, and Gabriel told them to shut up. Miguel kept still and quiet, his eyes down.

The jeep started up again, and then its headlights were aimed back at the compound, growing, the sputtering whine of the engine rising through the warm night.

Everyone started to relax.

“It’s all worked out,” Fish Eye said. Several of the men nodded, a couple smiling.

“Gonna get paid today,” Toothless cackled.

“Yeah, we’ll see,” Gabriel muttered, and turned to look at Miguel. “Whatever happens, you’re dead, Spicy, and I’m going to make it hurt. You hear me? You’re dead, you’re—”

A neat black hole appeared in Gabriel’s forehead, the soft bang of a silenced pistol round whizzing by an instant later—and then there were more flat shots. Gabriel fell to his knees, blood running down his dirty face. He pitched forward and Miguel saw that the back of his head had been blown open. Fish Eye and Toothless and three others fell in quick succession, crumpling without even crying out.

“They’re shooting!” Two of the crew began firing their automatic rifles into the jungle, randomly spraying wide swaths of the dark beyond the compound.

“Finish it!” someone shouted angrily, in English, from the direction of the other plane. The surviving members of the brothers’ crew collapsed like they were marionettes whose strings had been cut. There was a final burst of fire from Gabriel’s screaming coke buddy, crouching in front of the radio room, and then the unseen shooters took him out, three head shots arriving in a patter, one-two-three: two across his cheek, one through his right eye.

A single member of the Santo Almedas’ crew was left— Nuno, the mechanic. He had thrown down his rifle and fallen to his knees, his hands high. “Don’t shoot! I surrender!”

The jeep pulled up, and a half-dozen strangers piled out. There was no sign of Davi or his men.

A handful of people crept into the yard from the jungle, wearing dark clothes, their faces smudged with black paint. They moved in as a team, sweeping short rifles and expensive-looking handguns.

“Koboshi, report!” A man had walked in among them, tall, dark, with burning eyes. He was broad-shouldered, his chin up, his dark facial hair and scowl giving him a sinister look. Even without the order there was no question of who was in charge.

One of the men from the truck responded quickly. “Greeting party dead, Commander, no casualties. Croft landed about two hours ago, took a truck.”

“Dixon caught one in the throat,” the commander said, and shook his head. “Random shot. All right, let’s get this going. You and Byers, wrap up Dixon and put him on the plane. Both of you and Alanis, you’re staying with the plane, in case any of these assholes had friends. Do some decorating; make it look like a deal gone wrong, a rival gang or something. The rest of you are with me.”

The man turned, looked around, saw Nuno still on the ground, his hands in the air.

“Who are you?” the man snapped.

“Just the mechanic,” Nuno said. “I’m not—”

The commander raised his handgun and fired, a single round punching through Nuno’s temple. The mechanic collapsed, blood soaking into the dirt around his head.

Miguel tried to swallow and found he couldn’t, his throat only clicked drily. He’d just watched a group of men get slaughtered in under a minute. The air stank of blood and smoke.

He looked up at the commander to find that the man was staring back at him, his dark eyes cool. “You’re coming with us, Mr. Riviera, to collect Ms. Croft and her friend.”

Miguel found his voice. “They just hired me to fly. I don’t know anything, I swear.”

The commander nodded. “Yeah, that doesn’t matter. You’re what I like to think of as leverage.”

“I only met Jonah yesterday,” Miguel said. “They barely know my name.”

The man smirked. “Wait, so you’re arguing that I should just kill you now? Really?”

Miguel opened his mouth and then shut it.

“Ace, put him on a truck,” the commander said. “Come on, let’s move, everybody. We’ve got her.”

A burly man with slicked-back hair stepped forward holding a knife, leaning around to cut Miguel’s hands free. Miguel tried to swallow again, and again failed. He wasn’t going to mourn the Santo Almeda brothers, but he felt bad for Lara and Jonah. These people were psychopaths. His new friends were about to be in a world of hurt.

* * *

The tunnel from the first bat cave was wide and high at first, but quickly narrowed, the ceiling finally dropping so low that Lara had to edge forward in a crouch. She was starting to think she might have to go back, try one of the other tunnels, when it opened up into another chamber.

She stepped into a cavern that was even larger than the first. A shallow pool covered much of the floor, the water clear and still, rough calcite formations rising up in places. There was a lot less spoor. She was now firmly out of the system’s twilight zone and into the dark—she saw several troglobite species of small creepy-crawly, all with the characteristics of selective regression that typically evolved in dark zones: pale and slow-moving, long-legged with extended antennae, eyeless. There were crickets and millipedes and white harvestmen—Jonah called them “daddy longlegs”—skittering over the dung, eating the products of its decay—mold, fungi, bacteria. She didn’t stop to inspect the water but imagined that it, too, was teeming with life—small crustaceans, fish, salamanders and frogs. With these chambers flooding fairly regularly, there was no lack of nutrients coming in to oxygenate the water and support a fairly complex bionetwork.

Lara did pause long enough to check for unusual tracks or scat. That scream she’d heard… Every cave system had its own unique biosphere. New species were regularly discovered— mostly insects, but occasionally larger animals—with some so rare that they existed as a handful of individuals in a single cave, found nowhere else on Earth. It was most likely that the screamer was an “accidental”—a beast or bird that had become lost or trapped—but she couldn’t discount running into something unheard of that called the labyrinth home. Trinity had apparently ignored the lower caves; Marin’s documentation about them was sparse, noting only that the regular floods had long since destroyed anything of interest there.

She didn’t see anything unexpected. She put on her jacket, checked her compass and watch—it had only been about half an hour since she’d left Jonah, but she had a way to go—and moved on.

Three more tunnels led out of the chamber, but there were no markings from the Trinity team to guide her. Lara chose the southernmost but hit a dead end after less than fifty meters. She quickly backtracked and tried a second passage. It was a crawl, and she regretted not packing her good kneepads, but she was rewarded after ten minutes of wriggling through the dark: another large cavern, narrower than the last.

Over many years, calcite had leached from drip water through the limestone; monstrous stalagmites and stalactites—speleothems—ran across the chamber, looking eerily man-made in her torchlight. Gypsum crystals glittered here and there along some of the formations. A rugged stone wall led up to a platform on the east side of the chamber. The shadows up there suggested the platform was the start of another passage, though even her lamp and torch combined were too weak to illuminate much. She couldn’t tell if it was one of the labyrinth tunnels, but it seemed likely. The platform was fifteen meters up.

And it’s an easy climb, she thought, studying the wall. The caverns were smooth along the waterways, craggier at the walls, the result of abrasive erosion by the water that must flood the chamber regularly. Lots of hand and foot holds. At least some of them had to be steady.

She took a quick look around the chamber before climbing. There were fewer signs of life—no unusual animal spoor, or none that she recognized. She was surprised at how breathable the air was. Really deep caves were often filled with noxious gases. There must be vents in the tunnels higher up that were staggered all the way to the surface, which was encouraging. Exposure to the elements meant more wells and openings; the more opportunities, the faster she could get to the rooms and tunnels she was looking for. She’d have to free climb but she was confident in her skills, for as scarred and battered as her body was, Lara was in excellent shape. When she wasn’t traveling, she was training.

She suddenly thought of Conrad Roth, and the look he would have on his face if he could see her ditching safety protocols left and right. It had been his voice she’d heard in her mind, when she’d been falling. Roth, who’d stepped in when her father had died, who’d taught her how to climb, taught her survival tactics, who’d sparred with her when she’d first learned how to fight. She missed him, his calm guidance, his thoughtful frowns, his thing for pistachios. He had been exactly what she needed—encouraging, stable, committed to giving her a foundation of skills so that she could pursue her dreams. And he’d died on her first big expedition, so that she could have a shot at making it to safety. She remembered sitting at his funeral pyre, watching it burn, and how she’d sworn to herself that she would work harder to protect the people she loved…

“Shut up,” she mumbled, and tapped at a few protruding rocks with her axe’s adze. She found some good candidates and started to climb.

Her body warmed as she scaled the wall, stopping to hammer at stones over her head, checking for solid holds. The climb went quickly, and she was near the top when she heard an animal sound. A high-pitched chirp, behind her in the chamber.

Frog, she thought. It had that strange liquid quality and high pitch. There were a number of rainforest frogs that screamed during mating season. Was this her mystery bat-frightener?

Lara dropped a hand so she could half turn, her headlamp swinging across the cavern’s floor. There was no movement except for shadows, but she heard the chirp again, and realized it was coming from a bit higher.

She scanned where the sloping roof met with other passages in the room—and saw something scuttling into the dark, walking along the ceiling. She caught just a glimpse of what might be the slender whip of a white tail, and then it was gone.

Salamander? Had to be. It seemed to move awfully quickly for a deep-zone dweller, but cave biology was not her strong suit. Perhaps it ate bats, and could support a higher metabolism. And that might explain the bats’ reaction to its scream.

She turned to finish her climb. She’d keep an eye out, but wasn’t too concerned. The largest cave salamander ever measured was only about thirty centimeters. Even if this kind was twice the size and suddenly felt compelled to attack something hundreds of times bigger than its regular prey—a ludicrous idea—she had her bow.

She had pulled herself to the top of the wall and saw that the platform was, as she’d hoped, an opening in a passage that extended off in both directions. Darkness crouched beyond the reach of her lamp. It was cold and silent but for her breathing and the sound of her heart. She’d climbed up into the labyrinth proper.

Lara marked the wall and started walking south, ducking beneath drops in the ceiling, twice having to crawl up and over sharp rises. There was no sign that Trinity’s people or anyone else had traveled this way, no marks or trash or random destruction. Marin’s maps hadn’t been terribly specific beyond the top corridors, but Lara had the impression that the deeper tunnels had been partly surveyed and then ignored.

At the very first branch in the new tunnel, Lara got lucky—a rocky well in the ceiling that she could climb. It would be a tight fit, but it ran only a few meters before opening into another room overhead; she could see the rounded ceiling. Another tunnel? Getting back to the top would take time, but she could make up for the lost minutes on her way back through the top passages, once she got up.

Carefully, she promised herself, but glanced at her watch. She still had an hour and twenty-two minutes before Jonah would expect her. It was vitally important that they were on their way to Peru as soon as she got her pictures.

She had to jump to catch the bottom of the well, then pull herself up, finally wedging her sore arse into its lip, bringing her legs up after. Her bow smacked into the rock, and she unslung it and strapped it across her chest at an angle.

Lara edged higher, using her legs to hold her in place where the passage widened near the midpoint. The rock was uneven, and she forced her body into strange contortions to get to the top. The bow snagged again. Wriggling around in the tight space to work the bow loose, she took a breath. It was enough to make one a touch claustrophobic—stuck in a crack deep underground, unable to move, all those many tons of wet dirt and crumbling rock just over your head…

She pulled herself up and into the space above, scowling. It wasn’t a tunnel, but a room with no exits, empty except for—

A human skeleton was slumped by the chamber’s ragged edge, tucked beneath a low ledge.

Lara stepped closer, crouched to see. The skeleton was in pieces, everything that had connected the bones eaten away. The bones themselves were old, pitted in a few places by the weak acids dripping through the rocks.

There were a few items with the remains: a square metal belt buckle black with age, a few rivets, a broken, rusted compass from the early nineteenth century—and a small item wrapped in layers of oilcloth.

She picked it up, hefting it. A book. Lara quickly unwrapped the thing, the outer layers of cloth disintegrating into mush. The small notebook inside was still intact, mostly protected from the moisture. It was hand bound, its leather cover splotched with mold.

Lara opened the book. Printed neatly inside the front cover, she found the owner’s name and a date: Mateus Sousa Pereira, 1937. She carefully turned the thick pages, which were filled with thin, slanting handwriting. It was in Portuguese…

Mateus had been an archaeologist, it seemed. The first part of the book was filled with descriptions of an Aztec site, and small, careful sketches of artwork he had seen there. His observations were casual, unstudied, but he was excited by everything, rhapsodizing over his discoveries. Lara flipped ahead—and saw drawings of Mayan hieroglyphs. Sacrifice, stars, the twins, the moon. She saw the tiles representing Ix Chel and Chak Chel… Mateus had focused particularly on a room with pillars that had been painted with rings, drawing them from several different angles. And there were rough sketches of the labyrinth itself, at least parts of it.

The last few pages were smudged, the writing hasty and shaking. Lara read the final lines.

I am still trapped, and my supplies are exhausted. It has been days now, I think. The flood rages on beneath my feet, pounding the rocks, and I only want to sleep. I have marked this site with a cross, accepting it is my fate to die here. If this record is ever found, please return it to my beloved sister, Maria Sousa Oliveira, in São Paulo, and tell her that she was right: my enthusiasm far exceeded my amateur abilities. I rest now in God’s loving hands.

Lara flipped back to one of the maps Mateus had drawn, and found a shaky cross marked above a small rounded hole at the top of a thin tube. It seemed he’d mapped much of this level before getting trapped. Where the tunnel branched beneath the room, if she kept right, she would come to a chamber that had a number of passages branching from it. Almost every extending line ended with an X, suggesting that they were dead ends… But a lot could happen in eighty years. Regular flooding had a way of moving things around.

“Thank you, Mateus,” she said, tucking the notebook into her belt. His map might whittle away the time it would take to get through this… And she felt a kinship to him, for his geeky exclamations about the poetry of the past. He’d gone adventuring when there was no such thing as nylon rope or batteries or rescue teams, because he was in love with that particular awe that came from experiencing real history.

He was like you were, once upon a time. As long as Trinity still existed, love didn’t really play a part in what she did. She’d been forced to run full speed through temples and tombs filled with incredible artifacts, sites that she could have spent years happily documenting.

She readjusted her equipment and climbed back into the tight well. It should have been easier with gravity helping, but she still got caught up, this time because of the knife on her belt. The sheath snagged on a rock, pushing the handle into her side. The belt would snap if she tried to jam through.

She wormed her way up and twisted her hips, trying again—and when she was surrounded by rock, tight on all sides, she heard that raspy chirp in the chamber beneath her, a chirp and then a short, wavering, high-pitched cry that seemed to run straight through her spine.

Shit. She pushed herself through the tight spot, scraping the side of her arm, the bow smacking her in the chin. She dropped through the wide part and climbed down quickly. Before she lowered herself out, she unsheathed the knife, gripping it tightly. She was undoubtedly overreacting, but she didn’t really know what this thing was, yet.

Lara dropped to the floor of the chamber, quickly scanning up, left and right. Nothing.

The animal cried again, from the direction she’d come, shockingly loud. From the echoes, it had reached the cavern she’d climbed up from—

—and another cry rose up from the cavern. And a third, ahead of her somewhere above, the high shriek bouncing through the bare tunnels.

Lara put the knife away and unstrapped her bow, readjusting the quiver on her back. It seemed she’d arrived during mating season. That, or the creatures were hunting. Marin’s notes hadn’t made any mention of cave life… But Trinity had come in a group, soldiers and archaeologists stomping around in the upper tunnels. Quite different from a lone caver. It was most likely that the creatures weren’t even aware of her, and were behaving normally… But she didn’t know how many there were. She hoped they were smaller than they sounded. Otherwise they could turn out to be a problem.

Add it to the list. She had lost fifteen minutes, climbing into and out of Mateus’s room.

Lara marked the right-hand passage and started into the next tunnel.

* * *

Lara had been gone almost an hour when Jonah heard the trucks.

He’d been sitting in the dark with his eyes closed, listening to the jungle, enjoying the cool that seeped up from the cenote. Night birds squawked and trilled over the chants of cicadas and crickets. Some small animal he couldn’t imagine occasionally called from a stand of palms to his right, a few hundred feet from where he sat—it made a clattering sound, like a tiny jackhammer. Frog? Monkey? Baby sloth? He’d never heard it before.

Beneath the racket, the jungle was an ocean, a susurrus of life. Branches sprang up in the dark as creatures leapt from them. Bats cheeped and fluttered and smacked into bugs. There were whispering waves of cracks and rustles from the passage of small bodies through leaf litter. As carefully as he was listening, when he first heard the distant whine of the engines, they were still minutes away.

Jonah grabbed the radio. “Lara, someone’s coming.”

He repeatedly tapped the transmit button—emergency— but there was no response. He hadn’t actually expected one, but it never hurt to try.

Jonah turned on the lamp and left it by the rim, hopped to his feet and moved quickly to the truck. He grabbed the Mossberg, chambered a shell and stuffed more into his pockets. The twelve-gauge held eight shells and was pretty accurate up to a hundred yards. He wasn’t into guns at all, but when she’d told him they were going to be visiting Trinity sites, it had been his idea to have Lara pack something he could use. Couldn’t bring a fist to a gun fight.

He grabbed his pack and headed for the wall of trees east of the cenote, frondy palms and rubber trees and shadows in the pale starlight. He hustled in a few yards and then picked out his new best friend, a young banyan tree with thick branches that stretched back into the jungle, the lowest just over his head. He slung his stuff and started to climb.

He had just found the perfect spot—about fifteen feet up, screened by leaves, with a clear line of sight to the lamp he’d left burning—when the first truck pulled into the clearing. It was one of the wrecks from the Santo Almeda compound. A second came in after it, baked dust rising up in a haze. The two trucks parked between the cenote and the truck he and Lara had borrowed. He’d held onto a faint shred of hope that it was just the Santo Almeda crew, drunk and looking for trouble, but he could see immediately that the newcomers were Trinity. The figures were armed and dressed for a night raid, black face paint and all. They sat in the trucks, not moving.

Jonah steadied the shotgun in a crotch of the branch he was lying on, taking a breath. He counted six, maybe seven people in all, assuming the drivers had passengers. He couldn’t see into the dark cabs over the glare of the headlights.

The passenger door of the first truck cracked open, and a voice called out.

“Hey, anybody here? Don’t shoot, we’ve got a friend of yours, wants to say hello!”

The driver, a big muscly guy, got out of the truck, pulling a second man with him. Jonah clenched his jaw. It was Miguel. They walked toward the lamp, the driver pushing Miguel to the ground and then pointing a handgun at his head. The pilot looked like he was in shock.

The man in the truck called out again. “My name is Harper. If you throw down your weapons and come out, your pilot lives to fly another day, you’ve got my word. You have ten seconds to do it, or my man is going to shoot!”

“What if he’s not here?” Miguel’s voice was bleak.

Harper ignored him. “Ten! Nine! Eight!”

He’s lying, they’ll kill him anyway; they’ll kill you, too.

“Seven!”

Take out the driver now, one less to deal with. Renegotiate.

“Six! Five! Four!”

If you surrender, they’ve got another hostage. Or you’re both dead.

If you don’t, Miguel dies, right now.

“Three!”

Miguel had closed his eyes.

“Wait!” Jonah shouted, and the soldiers in the backs of the trucks shifted, pointing their weapons in his general direction.

“Excellent!” Harper was grinning, Jonah could hear it in his voice. “Mr. Maiava, right? Am I pronouncing that correctly? Come on out; we can have a little talk.”

Jonah took out his pocketknife and slipped it deep into his boot. He left the shotgun and his pack in the tree, sliding down the fibrous trunk on his soles. From the way the soldiers were scanning, they weren’t sure where he was. He took several big, hurried strides closer to the trucks before he stepped out from beneath the dark canopy.

“I’m unarmed,” he shouted, and put his hands up, and started walking, ignoring the pain of the small folded knife behind his heel. If they were planning to sit and wait for her to get back, Lara would know something was up when he didn’t answer the radio.

And if they’re going in after her?

He couldn’t predict what they would do. Miguel was alive—that mattered. As long as there was life, there was hope.

* * *

Lara Croft’s bulky friend had given up without a fight. That was the problem with self-proclaimed good guys, they could be as brave as lions but they always caved as soon as you pointed a gun at someone else. Weak. Reddy patted him down while Ace kept his Ruger aimed at the pilot. As soon as Reddy gave a thumbs-up, Harper climbed out of the truck, gesturing for the rest of his team to join him. There were six of them here, all of his best plus a lantern-jawed sniper from his B team, Smith.

“Smith, Reddy, tie them up. You’re going to babysit. The rest of you, get ready to drop.”

Lucas Reddy frowned, but nodded along with the others. Harper knew that Reddy wanted in on the hunt—everyone was riled up after the shoot-out with the druggies, and the unfortunate loss of Dixon, retired from the team by a wild shot—but Smith wasn’t smart enough to play tactics if Croft somehow got around them. One of the top people had to stay behind, and Reddy was a big guy, like Smith, the better to help haul them back out once Croft was dead.

They broke out the equipment, drop lines and helmets, tapping mics and loading mags. They had night-vision gear but it was first gen; Hux said it was useless without ambient light, so they’d left it on the plane. They had a few infrared scopes for the rifles, but no one wanted to lug in a rifle. Besides, Croft would be wearing a light. The Dozen all carried nines, but each had their own preferred make—Glock, SIG, Ruger. Mitchell carried a CZ 75B. Sergei, their top shot, used a Springfield XD. Hux passed out boxes of rounds.

Smith and Reddy had zip-tied the prisoners’ hands behind their backs. Both men were sitting cross-legged on the rocky dirt a few meters in front of the trucks. Harper walked over and crouched in front of Lara’s special friend. The guy was built like a tank, tattoos all over.

“Jonah, right?” Harper said. “We know she’s in the tunnels. When is she due back?”

The big man shrugged. He looked angry and disgusted but not afraid, at least not for himself.

“I can still kill your pilot,” Harper said, more patiently than he felt.

“Can’t see my watch,” Jonah said. He had a mild voice.

Harper glanced at his. “It’s 2245.”

“Ten, fifteen minutes,” Jonah said.

Harper studied him. Jonah gazed back, his dark eyes giving nothing away, his face impassive.

“Seems pretty fast,” Harper said, probing for a tell. “Not a lot of time to sightsee. She’d have to be running.”

Nothing. Jonah could have been a statue.

“What do you say, Miguel?” Harper asked. “They give you an ETA, for when to have the plane ready?”

The soft-faced pilot shook his head, not looking up. “I told you. They said fuel up and wait, that’s what I know.”

Through the exchange, Harper kept watching Jonah. It bothered him that he couldn’t tell if the man was lying. If Croft was really going to be back that quickly, they should stay close, save themselves from having to chase her through a maze. The Dozen were itching to go in, but as far as he knew, none of them had any kind of actual caving experience. His own was minimal. Croft was a mountain climber and had worked underground digs before. She had famously taken out most of a squad working at a tomb in Mongolia, sneaking up behind them through the dark passageways, choking them out, cutting their throats. Granted, they’d been locally trained, but the environment was the point: she would have an advantage.

“You worrying about your odds, going in after her?” Jonah asked.

Harper felt a flush of rage at the calm curiosity in his voice, at the fact that the other man had read him so easily. He leaned in close. The words spilled out like acid, flowing without thought. “No, I was thinking that when she hears we’ve got you, she’ll surrender without a fight, and whoever gets to her first is going to thoroughly enjoy their work. Mitchell likes to use knives, that’s her thing. My man Hux is a hands-on type; he’ll shoot her down and then choke her, or beat her to death. Sergei’s your best bet; he’s a real professional—probably a double-tap to the back of the skull and he’s out. Ace, though, he’s got a taste for the ladies. And you’re lucky that Reddy’s not going in, he likes a little bit of everything.”

He lowered his voice, grinning in a clench. “Between you and me, I think a lot of my people only took the Oath so that they could punish sinners. Trinity’s been divided about your friend’s meddling, but I’m not. We’ve come here to eliminate a mass murderer and an enemy of God, and we all want to claim the glory. If I happen across her first… well, who knows what I’ll do?”

Jonah’s brow had knotted up, and Harper felt an instant of triumph that he’d finally broken through the man’s unflappable calm—until he realized that the look on his face was pitying, his eyes sad.

“You seem really angry,” he said. Sympathetically.

Harper stood up, the heat of his rage snapping off. Waste of time, talking to a dead man.

Who is literally wasting your time. Trying to keep you from acting.

“Drop in two!” he called, stalking toward the open pit. They would go in. And as soon as Croft was dispatched, he would let Reddy work out his frustrations on Jonah and the pilot. The great thing about the jungle was that there was no need to hide bodies; corpses could be picked clean in a matter of hours, the bones dragged away and crunched into pieces for the marrow.

If Dr. Dominguez is successful, nobody will even be looking.

He told Reddy to monitor the radio and keep in touch, then moved to the stony rim of the natural well, clipping onto his line. Was it his destiny to bring an end to the Croft line on the eve of a new world? Or would one of his team get to her first?

No matter. As long as it was done, he was good. No more men were going to be lost, ever. Lara Croft was going to die painfully and lie rotting in the cold dark. The Blue Labyrinth would be her tomb.

* * *

When she reached the low chamber that had all of the tunnels branching off, Lara carefully studied the labyrinth drawings in Mateus’s notebook, comparing them to the black openings on every side of the rocky room. There were seven passages. Mateus had marked Xs and tapering points for all but two, one a descent to the west, the other opening curving back north. She spent only five minutes checking out the western option—after ten meters, the passage stopped, all but for an abrupt opening in the floor. It looked like a steep drop down to one of the pools at the bottom of the labyrinth, thick with the stench of ammonia and wet rot. Lara saw movement in the water meters below, a wriggling shadow, and heard bats rustling, and the whisper of bugs. It was interesting that the pool chamber north of her had been mostly devoid of life, and this one had a thriving ecosystem yet was farther inside. This section of the labyrinth must open into a passage that accessed the higher tunnels. If the northern passage didn’t check out, she would come back and see if there was any way to climb down for a look.

The northern passage was another crawling climb. She kept at it longer than she should have, but its slight incline was encouraging. It finally curved straight up and into a slick-sided well, ten meters tall and too wide by half a meter for her to push herself up. She stared up at the well’s opening, scowling. She could hammer her way up but it would take too long.

You might want to consider putting in the time. You’ve just used up another ten minutes, plus whatever it takes to get back.

She closed her eyes, bringing to mind the rough cross-section of the labyrinth that Marin had drawn. No. If she came up here, she’d be in the thick of the maze. It had to be her last resort. She’d go back down to the bottom, keep heading south, the direction of her destination. She still had some distance to cover before she was beneath the rooms, and there was clearly more than one way up.

She crawled back to the central chamber and hurried to the western opening over the pool, leaning down to assess. There were a few hundred bats, hanging and crawling along the ceiling amid the calcite stacks, cheeping, pooping—and a thick column only a meter away, beneath the rough edge of her tunnel. Better to climb down than get wet.

Lara lowered herself down from the rim of the hole, swinging her legs under the rocks, wrapping them around the column. It was a trick, letting go of the lip. She tried to think of it as an opportunity to test her core strength, and muscled herself to the column, hugging the cold, slimy rock.

She clambered down quickly and took in the chamber— rough, newer, many of the more delicate calcite formations broken and washed to the sides. The southern wall sloped to the floor but where they met there was a jagged opening about two meters high and three across. A trio of bats dropped from the ceiling and flitted for the hole, disappearing into the black. There was a soft, consistent echo of high-pitched squeaks and small movements all around her.

Lara followed the bats, doing her best to minimize stomping the delicate food chain into goo, stepping wide. She kept her bow in her hand, ready to duck if the screamers started in, ready to shoot if they showed up and wouldn’t run from a shout or a hand clap.

The opening connected a short, wide tunnel with a chamber twice the size of the others she’d seen, the light from her headlamp not touching the southern end. The ceiling sloped upward from where she stood, perhaps five meters overhead, to at least twenty before it disappeared into darkness. There were bats and pale bugs and a lake of shallow water, pitted with deeper holes, and more signs that a roaring flood had been through sometime in the not too distant past.

Lara started across the chamber, and was just climbing over a large broken pillar when she heard the rasping chirp of a screamer, off to her right, low.

She turned, bringing the bow up—

—and saw a white salamander sitting at the still water’s edge, a big one. White wasn’t quite the word: parts of it were translucent. She could see some of its bones along its back and tail, opaque rings beneath the pale wet skin. The creature was nearly a meter long, although more than a third of its length was a whip-thin tail. Its legs were better developed than the average salamander, still thick but longer. The creature had long, wide jaws and pointed teeth; flared, quivering nostrils and tiny pits instead of eyes. It cocked its head in her direction, swinging its albino face to the side, chirping again, a small trill of sound.

A dozen bats dropped and flew away, heading south.

Amazing. For a troglobite, it was a giant. And salamanders weren’t known to vocalize the way frogs did; they didn’t make a lot of noise. Lara stomped her boot into the squelching floor, making a weak thump. The animal swung its head in the other direction, now chirping with each breath, the sound getting louder.

“Hey!” Lara shouted, and the salamander dropped its jaw and screamed, piercingly, a furious, high-pitched shriek.

Lara ducked as more bats took off, a hurricane of ultrasonic screeching and crap raining down as the frightened animals flew south, the salamander’s wavering echoes chasing them out.

The screamer turned and ran straight up the western wall, flattening its body, wriggling quickly between the muddy rocks. It disappeared into a crevice.

Lara let out a breath. Okay, there’s that. So long as the creatures ran away when confronted with a noisy unknown, all was well. What a noise, though, so much sound from such a small throat. Highly effective for herding bats.

Lara picked her way through the cavern, the southern wall slowly coming into view—and it was beautiful: a long, forty-five-degree slope of rough wall, stretching up and up, a few short vertical pitches but nothing she couldn’t handle or go around. Water trickled down in places, patches of muddy seep. She couldn’t tell where the bats had gotten out but there were passages up high; she could see the openings in the rocks. Fifteen minutes of brisk climbing and she’d be at the lowest.

And you’ve come far enough to be at least near the rooms. High above, but not far ahead.

She slung the bow and grabbed her axe, using the spike at the end to steady herself against the layered, clammy mud as she found holds, pushing and pulling herself up the long slope. Quickly falling into the work, Lara focused on the climb. She was better than halfway to the first opening and carefully skirting a chest-high chunk of stone when she heard several chirping salamander cries. To her right and below, but on the slope with her.

Lara looked down. Three of them had assembled about ten meters away, pale, wet skin splotched with mud, their strange heads cocked and listening. One of them crawled closer, chirping.

“Hey!” Lara called, and the creatures flinched, and then all three were screaming in response. One turned and fled, moving nimbly over the rocks, still shrieking. Another stayed put. The one nearest took a step closer.

“Back off!” she shouted loudly, drowning out the din, and both of the salamanders turned and darted away—

—but there was more chirping now, rattling, rasping, breathy. Lara looked up the slope and saw two more of them had appeared, perched on the rocks ahead of her, small, sharp teeth glinting in the light. The head of a third bobbed up from a pool of shadow.

The runners had turned around, and started chirping again. Their tails flicked, the tips high. It seemed they were figuring out that her commotion wasn’t followed by any action.

Lara flipped the pick and hammered at a rock in the slope, the adze striking the chunk of limestone with bright metallic sounds. She shouted at the same time, and the added vibrations did the trick. The salamanders scuttled away.

She started climbing again, watching out for company this time. She didn’t like the creatures’ behavior. They had to be the top predator of this closed ecosystem. There were enough bats down here to support a sizable population, and they were showing clear evidence of a pack mentality. It wasn’t a good thing that they were only wary of the large animal that had dropped in to their habitat; they weren’t hiding, they were checking her out. She expected they would keep pushing to find out what she was—a threat or something they could eat. If enough of them attacked at once, she’d likely be bitten before she could drive them away.

Two meters up was a ledge, wide enough to stand on. She quickly pulled herself to the platform and climbed up, adjusting her balance; she was standing up straight on the long, tilted plane of shattered, rocky earth. She nocked an arrow and took a minute to catch her breath, gazing around at the cavern. It was surreal, like something from a Lovecraft tale—a massive underground chamber deep in the dark zone, fantastic mineral formations rising from an icy, eldritch lake. Moonless shores, indeed. She waited.

The blind creatures didn’t take long to approach again. They crept in from the shadows beyond her light, making their odd cries. Locating her. Each would stop and chirp and listen before suddenly darting ahead, scuttling like lizards, halting abruptly to repeat the process.

Lara raised the bow, sighted the nearest and hooked back the string, leveling her sight line. She stomped her foot, shouted wordlessly, “Yahh!” and released the arrow, her scream echoing loud through the high chamber. The salamander’s rounded head grew a shaft. It made a choking sound and collapsed.

Lara grabbed a second arrow, still shouting and stomping, found the next target atop a hump of rock, drew and released. The creature flipped out of sight behind the rock, screeching as it went over, its dying cry quickly coughing to a stop.

Lara nocked a third arrow, but they were all turning and scuttling away, convinced. It would be nice if they could pass the information along, but depending on their habits, she might have to repeat the performance. If they were as smart as they seemed, they’d quickly learn to avoid her.

You won’t be here long enough to train them. Move.

She didn’t backtrack to retrieve her arrows, instead throwing herself into the next jagged rise. It was abhorrent behavior, she knew, leaving anything behind in a cave, but going back down to get the arrows meant five more minutes, expending energy that was by no means limitless.

So when Trinity breaks the rules, it’s repugnant. You get a free pass on everything, because you’re trying to save the world, right? It doesn’t matter what gets destroyed or who dies, it doesn’t matter if you ditch every value you hold as a historian or as a scientist or as a human being. It’s an emergency, so nothing applies. That’s why it’s okay that you took that dagger: it was an emergency.

Lara sneered and grunted, pushing herself up another meter. “Not gonna fall for that one,” she whispered. Yes, it was an emergency. Shaming herself for taking license was a useless path. Dominguez’s motivations weren’t clear, but she knew enough about Trinity not to trust anything they were into. She needed to find the box before they did.

She scaled the last few meters to the base of the first opening, a long, low wedge of dark in the slope, stopping short to listen. There was a slight rustle, a few bats perhaps. She tossed the axe inside, grabbed the rim and pulled herself up with a grunt—

—and there was a trio of salamanders gathered near the axe, heads cocked. At the sound of her vocalization, they ran at her, shrieking.

Lara threw herself forward, into the oncoming things, shouting, landing on her hands and knees. They split to run around her, one snapping its teeth into the meat of her calf. It couldn’t close its jaws and immediately let go, but it had punctured skin. The biter followed the others over the edge of the platform and down, scuttling away, their tails winding through the rocks.

Lovely. At least now you know where the bats are getting out. She was sitting in a thick layer of droppings. She’d have to burn these clothes before Jonah let her back on the plane.

Lara caught her breath, feeling hopeful as she took in the new passage. The cave had a single opening, a wide, rounded tunnel that appeared to climb upward some meters ahead. Another slope like the one she’d just climbed and she’d be on top of the labyrinth in no time.

She stopped long enough to disinfect the stinging wound, trying to quell thoughts of toxic saliva and flesh-eating bacteria as she scrubbed it clean. She slapped a piece of duct tape over the small bite, drank some water, checked her compass and moved on.

* * *

The soldiers, led by Harper, dropped efficiently into the cavern, the buzz of their lines echoing up into the night. Miguel slumped, staring at the seam of his boot, and the dry dirt beneath the worn sole. Trinity was going to kill Lara and then he and Jonah would die, and that would be the end.

The man Reddy was tall and broad, with a crooked nose and a stubbly shaved head beneath his helmet. He ordered the other one—Smith, a tall blond twenty-something with blank eyes—to go looking for anything Jonah might have stashed in the jungle. Smith nodded and started for the place where Jonah had come out into the clearing. Miguel still couldn’t believe he’d done that, walked out of the jungle with his hands up.

Reddy held Jonah’s radio, nodding at Jonah. “She calls in, you’re going to tell her to come back immediately, you understand? Or I’ll shoot your pilot here through his teeth.”

“Sure, absolutely,” Jonah said. “I understand.”

“Shut the fuck up,” Reddy said. “Don’t give me any fucking trouble and I won’t put my boot to your face.”

He backed up to the closest truck and boosted himself onto the rusting hood, speaking into a handheld radio.

“Team has descended to site, repeat, team is inside.”

“Copy that,” someone answered.

“How many are at the airfield?” Jonah asked, very quietly.

“Three,” Miguel said. “Plus the pilot, that’s four. They’re staying with the plane.”

“I said shut up,” Reddy called, but leaned back on the hood, clipping the radio to his belt. Smith was crashing through the trees behind them, his flashlight beam cutting back and forth across the bare clearing.

“These guys are going to get bored just sitting on us,” Jonah said. “When we get the chance, we’ll break for the jungle.”

Miguel shook his head. “I’m no commando, Jonah. And we’re tied up.”

“All you have to do is run,” Jonah said. He shifted his feet, recrossing his legs. “And I’ll see what I can do about the tied-up part, give me a few.”

“I don’t understand any of this,” Miguel whispered. “They killed everyone at the compound. Who are these people?”

Jonah sighed. “Trinity’s like a death cult, masquerading as crusaders. Power trippers. They’re helping an archaeologist, Dominguez, who’s claims he’s going to resurrect an ancient god. He has to find this one artifact to do it, and Lara’s trying to get to it first.”

Miguel blinked. “You believe he can do it? That such a thing is even possible?”

“I think he can find the artifact,” Jonah said simply. “The rest of it…” He trailed off, seeming to look inward for a beat before continuing. “Lara wants to get to the artifact first, but all we’ve got is a riddle about where it is. She was hoping to narrow the search range, coming here.”

Jonah looked at him directly, his gaze apologetic. “I’m sorry about this. We didn’t think they would come after us, not this fast.”

Miguel didn’t believe in ancient gods, but he didn’t think Jonah was lying, either, about any of it. He didn’t know where that left him. He didn’t have a problem siding with Jonah and Lara—Trinity seemed to be made up of killers and villains—but he couldn’t imagine summoning the courage to run, here, now, with armed men standing guard.

A minute passed, and another. Smith came back, declaring that he couldn’t find anything, and Reddy went to take a look. Miguel felt exhaustion creeping through him. He’d been surfing an ongoing adrenaline dump for what seemed like hours, and as the night started to cool, slowly, he found himself nodding.

“Catch a few minutes, I’ll wake you if anything happens,” Jonah said.

Miguel nodded. He pulled his knees up and rolled onto his side, closing his eyes.

“So how come they called you Spicy, anyway?” Jonah asked.

“When I was smuggling, I transported Aji Charapita peppers, from Peru up into Mexico,” Miguel said.

Jonah sounded surprised, and amused. “Peppers?”

“Current market value is something like $25K per kilo,” Miguel said. “That’s a lot of taxes to avoid. I had a distributor who could get my stuff to gourmet restaurants on three continents.”

“Shut up over there,” the blond snapped.

Jonah went silent, shifting again against the warm ground. Miguel reminded himself that he was going to die soon, but the thought wasn’t compelling enough to keep him awake even a second longer.

* * *

They went in together, moving in a line through the entry tunnel, past a stinking bat cave and over a rock bridge, clipping to a fixed line for the crossing. Past that was another chamber, with several offshoots. According to his map, two of them opened into the main passages along the site, north–south tunnels with a dozen rooms decorated by the ancient Maya spaced out along their lengths. A third branch led into the thick, winding twist of the labyrinth; there were a few more Maya chambers in the maze, plus some murals, all at the very top.

Harper stopped them there. They’d lost radio contact with Reddy and Smith almost immediately. Once they split up, it was unlikely they’d be able to communicate unless they were in a line and in sight of each other.

“I’m putting you in pairs to start, but play it as you like,” he said, and watched their eyes light up at the freedom he’d just granted them. “Mitchell and Hux, take the top. Ace and Sergei, lower tunnel. I’ll stay here in case she comes out of the maze, or gets past all of you.”

“That’s likely,” Ace said. Hux and Sergei grinned. Mitchell only waited, her eyes like chips of ice.

“Check your maps often. There are six charges laid at critical locations. Geology reports say this system is relatively stable, but try not to get into a shootout, and watch your step. Any kind of emergency situation crops up, fall back to the drop point.”

Nods all around.

“Report back here at double-oh hundred. If there’s no sign of her, we’ll re-evaluate. If we can’t do this fast, better to rely on the insurance.”

Ace spoke up. “Closest charge is a big one, fifty meters in. We could tap it now, probably block everything.”

Hux answered. “There are vents and cracks through the ground all around here. All small and technically difficult so Trinity didn’t use them, but she could probably find another way out.”

“I want confirmation of her death, anyway,” Harper said. “We’re stepping outside the lines to get this done, we’re going to do it right. Questions?”

There were none. “Go play,” he said. “Curfew is midnight.”

Mitchell and Hux started into the tunnel at the chamber’s southeast corner, Mitchell leading. Sergei stopped to adjust his helmet and then trotted after Ace, who was already disappearing into the dark of the adjacent opening.

Harper listened to their careful footsteps fading away. He’d been through a few caves in the Middle East, but they’d been dry as bones. Just as cold, though, when you went deep. Harper didn’t like either kind. He clearly remembered the few times he’d had to turn off his light, how he’d felt like he was suffocating, like the dark was a presence and not just an absence of light. Like there was no air, only blackness too heavy to breathe.

This won’t take long. One of his people would take out Croft, quickly. He’d bet on Mitchell or Hux, but luck was a big factor—it depended on who found her first. As soon as she was dead they would climb back up into the world, clean up the loose ends and then report that they’d followed Croft to Colombia, and were standing by for new orders. The great thinkers of the hallowed halls would still be arguing about what to do next when Dr. Dominguez fulfilled his purpose; with the cleansing already begun, it was probably only a matter of days. After that, no one would ever wonder or care what had happened to Lara Croft.

If she makes it to me, I’ll take her ear, he decided. Shoot her in the gut and then slice off her ear as a keepsake. A decade from now he could look at it and remember how he’d made the call.

Harper found a wall to lean against and reluctantly turned off the light on his helmet, closing his eyes as the dark flooded over him. If she miraculously made it past his top players, she was still most likely to come through here to get out. He’d be ready.

* * *

Just as she stepped off the wall to pull herself higher, a slender white scorpion crawled out of a crack in the rock and onto the back of Lara’s left hand.

She gritted her teeth, resisting the urge to shake it off until she found a solid place for her feet. The scorpion was agitated by her movements, raising its pincers, its tail up and stinger poised.

As soon as she had her footing she whipped her hand away, a shiver running down her spine. The tiny animal dropped off without stinging.

She had climbed several meters of a near-vertical rock well, bats occasionally fluttering past. The holds were easy, if a bit slippery. Luckily, the scorpion was the only incident. She pulled herself into a low passage that branched after only a short walk, and followed the guano, clambering over humps of rock, the ceiling opening up into a tunnel. Lara only had to boost herself inside on her hands. She estimated by how many meters she’d come up overall that she was somewhere near the top of the maze by now, just below the main tunnels. She’d had to wedge herself up through a few squeezes and had to backtrack a few times, but there were a lot of places to go up. She was making excellent time.

The wide passage ran north–south, the trail of guano heading north. Lara saw a glint of metal at the ceiling, then found others, heading in both directions. Supports for Trinity’s lights.

She felt a burst of optimism. It was likely that she was still in the maze part of the dig. There were a few areas at the top that had items of interest—murals, mostly—but she was at least close to where she needed to be, and if Trinity had seen fit to run lights, the difficult climbing was over.

Now you just have to figure out where you are, exactly. And start watching for charges. She remembered the mines she needed to avoid along her route, but there were others that Marin only mentioned, all of them set in the uppermost tunnels.

She started south, moving as quickly as she dared. The passage narrowed to about a meter across and veered east. When she reached the curve, she saw a small chamber ahead that opened off the east wall.

Lara stepped carefully, reached the rounded entry and looked inside, her heart picking up speed immediately. She knew where she was. And she understood why the dig had been given its nickname.

A vast, apocalyptic mural was painted on the curving wall inside, meters across, an ocean of tiny figures painted blue, raising their hands to a black sun. The rich, bright indigo of the original pigment was stunning. Maya blue. Scientists had long marveled at its staying power, struggled for decades to replicate its exact chemistry.

A thousand years old. Older.

She automatically got out her camera and took a picture, the flash shockingly bright against the crushing darkness. She clipped the camera to her belt for ease of access. There wasn’t any writing, but she had no idea what might end up proving valuable. She felt sure the tunnels she wanted were directly overhead. She could go north, back through the labyrinth— she had no doubt that Trinity had drawn great sloppy arrows on everything this high up to keep their people from getting lost—and start at the beginning of the main corridors, where she’d meant to come in… Or she could find the upper labyrinth’s southeast corner. Marin had noted an access point between the lower main tunnel and the maze there. She was more certain of the northern route, but was undoubtedly closer to the access point; she could climb up into the lower of the main passages, and then it was a short walk to the first of the glyph rooms a bit farther south—

She heard something, a faint echo from somewhere behind her. A rock, falling? She listened for a moment but it wasn’t repeated.

Lara continued south. When the tunnel branched, she followed the eastern passage, scanning the ground for disturbances, any sign that Marin’s team had been through. She passed through a narrow tunnel that had the same kind of painting as the first she’d seen—a blue multitude, a black sun overhead.

An eclipse. The eclipse. The final cataclysm she had seen depicted in the mural back in Mexico, in the Temple of the Moon.

She snapped a picture, checked her compass and watch, and kept moving. If she found the rooms she was looking for immediately and ran all the way back, she was still going to be late, but maybe not so late that Jonah would start to worry. It was cold but she had started working up a sweat again, focused on the rocks beneath her hands and feet, her senses wide open.

A salamander shrieked, a lonely, echoing cry. Another answered. They were somewhere in the labyrinth behind her. Her breathing sounded loud in her ears, and so did the rustle of her clothes, her movements. She watched the ground for any unlikely stones where Marin’s pressure plates might be hiding.

She passed a third mural in an alcove, of a priest in blue robes offering a dagger up to a full moon. Beneath the flash of the camera she could see the haste in the artwork, in the rough lines of the priest’s face, a few drips of the precious paint. She felt a stab of regret as she left it behind. Evidence of Maya culture so far south was an incredible find. Had the Maya been on their way to Peru when they’d stopped here to hide the Silver Box of Ix Chel, or on their way back north? How many had come? She couldn’t help wondering what Dominguez had concluded as she continued on, only twice having to backtrack from a dead end. She followed the compass as best she could, south and east, and marked her passage.

Lara came around a bend in the winding tunnel she’d entered and saw a rough black opening in the ceiling where a small charge had been detonated. A heap of shattered rock had been pushed to one side on the floor of the tunnel. It seemed that Marin hadn’t found a hole; he’d blasted one.

She climbed the hill of broken stone and looked up. It was barely two meters into the tunnel overhead, and someone had hammered in a staggered line of pitons. This had to be it. Lara quickly climbed up, testing the thin metal pegs at each step, and then she was heaving herself into a wider passage, one that was clearly better traveled than the ones she’d come through. She saw scuffed boot prints in the dirt, a plastic bottle cap.

I made it. Finally. There were no traps this far in, they were all north of her, so she broke into a jog, confident that she would reach the first room in minutes—a tall chamber that connected to the top tunnel, decorated in Maya blue, with writings Marin thought she should see. After that, she only had to find one more room and a bit of tunnel before she got to the prize, the big chamber on the top level where Dominguez had failed to solve some puzzle—and all of it was on her way out.

The salamanders had started calling again, the cries both dampened and carried by the labyrinth, the sound distorted—and as the echoes faded, she heard a voice, a bare whisper of words carrying through the long empty dark behind her. English.

“…the fuck was…”

There was a low response, a mumble. That faded, too, and there was silence again.

Trinity.

There were at least two people in the system with her, likely more.

Dread and fear for Jonah knotted her guts. Had he hidden? Was he safe?

Dead?

She had to get back to him, immediately, and there were soldiers blocking the exit. Even as she thought it, she heard the scuffle of movement, another whispering echo through the dark. Faint and far, the strange acoustics had carried the sound from a fair distance back, but she thought they were coming her way.

Drop back down, let them go by, get out behind them.

No. Go to the glyph room, climb up, take the top level back.

There will be people there, too. And even if you get past them, how many are waiting for you to climb out?

All of this passed through her mind in a flash. She dimmed her lamp and kept moving south, working out a plan as she went. Picking up speed, she breathed through her mouth, stepping ever so lightly. There were several connections between the uppermost tunnels, short passages and a few wells. If she was very careful, she might be able to skirt the soldiers, ducking from one set of tunnels to the next. It was the fastest way back. If there were guards waiting at the cenote, she’d deal with it when she got there. Assuming she got there.

Marin’s notes had mentioned the glyph room’s distinctive double-curved opening, and now she saw it, ahead and on the right. Lara swung her pack around and pulled out the camera, immediately bringing it up to get her pictures. She figured she had at least a minute before they would see her light, more if they stopped to check out anywhere she might be hiding; the tunnel was thick with cracks and crevices. She took in the large chamber as she turned and snapped.

A giant mural of the cataclysms stretched up the far wall, perhaps seven meters of smooth limestone reaching into the upper tunnel. A wide, thick ledge of stone ran at about the midpoint of the chamber’s height, where the two tunnels joined, but it had been chipped away on the west wall so that the paintings weren’t interrupted. At the bottom of the wall was the tsunami, a wave of sacred blue. Above it raged a blue storm, tiny figures flat on the ground beneath the angry clouds. The earthquake was represented as cracks in the ground and fallen blue temples, birds flocking above; the volcano spouted blue lava. And near the top of the chamber, a massive serpent rose from a background of Maya blue, the sea or sky. There were feathers around its face. One of its eyes was the full moon, the other an eclipsed sun. Kukulkan. She remembered a flash of a dream. There were lines of writing in both rooms, close to the mural.

Lara walked to the center of the room, turning, the camera clicking and flashing, then hurried to the giant mural, crouching to take pictures of the hieroglyphics to either side. She recognized many of the words and signifiers—snake, heart, stars, river, mountain—but didn’t try to translate, all too aware of her extremely limited time. There was a lot, but it clearly referenced the same directions she’d found in Mexico. She didn’t see anything new.

There was a nylon rope ladder hanging from the ledge, anchored by bolts drilled into the stone. Lara gave it a pull and then quickly climbed up to the ledge, edging to the mural to get a clear image of the rest of the glyphs. The upper room’s writings didn’t look the same as the writings in the lower half, the carvings deeper… In fact, it looked like some of the original glyphs had been overwritten. She could see shallow marks where paint had been scraped away. Weird.

She had pictures of everything. Footsteps, soft but clear now, were coming from the lower tunnel. Lara snapped off her headlamp and started edging toward the upper chamber’s entrance. The dark was absolute, but a smudge of light appeared only seconds later from the tunnel below, quickly brightening.

Lara unsnapped her holster then nocked an arrow, sidling as quickly as she could—but the first man swung into the room before she made it to the opening. She couldn’t see him; only his light, and the sound of his stealthy steps gave him away. A beat later, someone else came in.

She was a meter from the exit but didn’t dare move. She lowered herself into a crouch. If she couldn’t see them, they shouldn’t be able to see her—but they would hear her, no question.

“Look at this shit,” one of them whispered. Light moved up over the mural, then flicked around the top of the room.

The man who answered him had a very slight accent. Russian. “Should I climb up?”

“Knock yourself out.” Definitely American. West Coast. “You can see, though, can’t you?”

“There’s only a few more chambers along this passage,” the Russian said. “You think Mitchell and Hux got her?”

“No shots.”

“There might not be if Mitchell finds her first,” the Russian said. “She got a new knife.”

“Bro, shut up. You hear that?”

A salamander screamed, faintly, from somewhere in the maze. The sound really was uncanny, a steady, rasping shriek. It must be at an incredible volume to reach so far. The tunnels echoed with it.

“Seriously,” the Russian said. He stepped into view, and Lara caught a glimpse of dark, hooded eyes beneath a furrowed brow before she tucked her head, flattening into the shadow of the ledge. His face had been smudged with black. He wore a tactical helmet with a lamp and a mic. “What is that?”

“Lara Croft, calling for me,” West Coast quipped. “She wants me, bro. She’s gonna swoon when she sees me coming.”

The Russian didn’t sound impressed. “Great. Easy shot for me, and then I’m going to get the fuck out of here.”

A torch’s light played over the upper chamber again. Lara tucked in tight, but the beam passed high.

“No way you get a shot before I do,” West Coast said. “Come on, let’s get this done.”

They left the chamber, their light fading away south.

Mitchell and Hux, the Russian and the Romeo… So at least four, and presumably more at the drop, or in one of the passages leading out. If they were working in pairs, she might be able to pull off her vague plan to dodge between the top corridors.

When she was sure the two men were well past, she climbed back down. She was behind them; she would use the lower tunnel back to one of the connectors. The last rooms were a klick north and up. There was an explosive trap at the final chamber, the puzzle room, but she remembered exactly where it was. Getting back to Jonah was her primary concern, and from that last area it was a straight run back to the cenote’s opening, one last mine to jump at the tunnel’s entrance and she could be out. If the path was blocked, there was a well she could use near the north end of the tunnel. It was a drop but she had rope; if she had to she could get into the maze and follow the arrows, approach from another angle.

Or you could just shoot your way out.

There was that, too. It was a terrible idea, risky—firing any caliber of gun underground with bare rocks as a backdrop was not a survival skill—and being willing to shoot wasn’t the same as having the opportunity. The killers could just turn off their lights and wait for her to walk by. They couldn’t actively hunt for her in the dark… but she couldn’t move, either, without some light.

Lara pulled one of the tiny LEDs from her pack and clicked it on, a soft beam of blue light, barely enough for her to see her feet. It was enough. She left the mural chamber and headed north, walking quickly and lightly, bow and arrow in hand. If she could get through without alerting everyone to her whereabouts, so much the better.

She hurried past the access point between the maze and the lower of the top tunnels, feeling the distance between her and the soldiers grow, and was still cautiously optimistic when she remembered that Marin’s team had laid a charge about twenty meters past the spot where she’d climbed up—a pressure mine between two small chambers on the tunnel’s west side.

Lara raised the tiny beam, saw the rocky edge of the first chamber ahead of her. She hesitated, then tapped on her headlamp. It looked as though flagstones had been set into the tunnel floor in the stretch between the rooms, placed and then covered in dirt. If she hadn’t been looking, she might not have noticed. Marin’s notes had rated the mine as a D2, whatever that was, low level, enough to bring down the wall between the chambers and block the main passage.

The charge had to be right between the chambers, but she hadn’t expected to be traveling down here at all; she didn’t know which stone. She didn’t want to touch any of them. She could back up, run and jump the whole thing, but she would make noise landing.

The tunnel wall opposite the chamber entries was rough, had some good holds. Easy, only a few meters. She leaned over the first stones and stepped onto the wall, slipping her boot into a crevice, then pulled herself hand over hand, shifting herself across. There was some seepage in the wall here but it was recent, and she made sure of her holds. She was almost across when the rock beneath her right foot gave way, crumbling out of the packed mud. The small stones around it shifted, a larger rock above leaning forward.

Lara threw herself right, diving for the unbroken tunnel floor past the laid stones. She tried to tuck but the angle was wrong and she ended up flat on her back with a resounding thump, her axe and bow clattering against the rocks, the echoes spinning through the dark.

They’d be coming. She rolled onto her feet, spared a glance for the tunnel wall—only a handful of rocks had fallen, resting against the eastern wall in a dark clump— and snapped off her lights.

* * *

Sergei Andreov knew that Ace saw any fear as weakness, but that screaming. Sergei wasn’t afraid of the dark, or claustrophobic—he’d been excited to go on a hunt for the near-legendary Lara Croft, the woman who had killed so many soldiers of God—but he was not chill about howling cave monsters, even with the XD in hand, even with Ace making his dumb gross jokes. As soon as they heard those weird, echoing screams, Sergei had lost his taste for prolonging the chase. Another one shrieked now, closer.

“Ever heard of a drekavac?” he asked Ace.

“Sounds Russian.”

“Because I’m Russian, you dumb fuck. Drekavac means ‘the screamer.’ It’s a creature that haunts the darkest woods, preying on the lost.” He was about to add, My grandmother used to tell me stories about it, but remembered who he was talking to in the nick of time. He’d never live down a confession like that.

Ace grinned. “Aw, you scared, Serge? Want me to get you a blankie and a nightlight?”

“Oh, go fuck yourself,” Sergei said. He shouldn’t have said anything. The man was clearly still psyched to get some payback on Croft, who was absolutely deserving, but Sergei wasn’t feeling it. The sooner they capped this treacherous bitch and were on their way, the better.

They were nearing the end of the passage Harper had assigned them, and they’d found exactly nothing. There was no way to differentiate between old prints and new in the packed, rocky dirt, and all of the rooms and tunnels looked essentially the same, except for the size, and the unpleasant artwork—floods and knives and snakes and that bright blue color everywhere. That shade of blue didn’t belong down here in the dark. It was like seeing a butterfly at the bottom of a shit bucket.

They swept the last chamber, a low, dead room at the very end of the tunnel. There were empty ledges where presumably some fancy Maya crap had been displayed before Trinity came and took it.

For this prophecy. This opportunity. The commander hadn’t come out and said it directly, but everyone knew he thought Dominguez was the real deal. If Harper thought so, that was good enough for Sergei. For all of them. Trinity pushed the cause forward; Harper’s Dozen smoothed the pathway.

Ace was scowling, that they hadn’t come across the girl. “All right, let’s back it up. She could have heard us coming and ducked down somewhere.”

“Then we should hurry,” Sergei said. “If she’s heading back, we can catch up to her.”

Ace smirked. “Still worried about cave trolls?”

“Fuck you,” Sergei said. “Didn’t you hear them?”

“Nothing the SR9 can’t handle,” Ace said, patting his Ruger. “I understand you’re worried, with a pussy XD. How many does it hold? Eight?”

Sergei stifled a sigh. Eddie “Ace” Darnell was a solid player at work but he was competitive, deeply committed to his personal ideal of masculinity, which was almost comically toxic. Ace always had to dominate, to be the most willing to fuck or fight, to bench-press the most, to win the game. There were several men on the team like that, but Ace was Alpha. Sergei didn’t play like that; he had been with the Dozen for two years, working his way up because he didn’t panic and he didn’t question orders. Ace’s psychotic bravado was going to cost him one day.

“Whatever,” Sergei said. “Let’s—”

They heard a sound. A thud, and the clatter of some light metal or plastic. Close in, back the way they’d come.

Ace darted to the opening of the low room, leaning out into the tunnel, a tight grin on his face.

“We’ve got her. Take the west wall,” Ace whispered, and hurried out into the passage. Sergei followed, hanging back a step. Ace barely checked his corners, too eager. Reckless.

Not necessarily a bad thing. He didn’t want Ace to get shot or attacked—the Dozen were a team, even if they weren’t personally close—but it was a distinct possibility, and Sergei didn’t mind being second in range. If Ace went down, he would have time to react, and he was an expert fucking shot with his “pussy” XD. He didn’t need more rounds. If Croft went for Ace, Sergei would take her out before she could blink: a single, perfect shot. They could be back on the plane in an hour, flying away from this demon-infested hole.

He swept the rooms on the west wall, flashes of blue paint and ugly pictures, dirty rocks and crawling fungus and scuttling tiny bugs. They heard another distant call of the whatever-it-was—

Drekavac!

—and Sergei tensed further, hurrying through the passage behind Ace, waiting for his light to play across some white screaming face filled with teeth, lurking in the black. It was bullshit, he knew—his grandmother had been an illiterate from a tiny village in the middle of nowhere, and her stories about thin, long-clawed demons were nonsense—but somehow it was harder to be certain of that in the cold, smothering dark, with those awful cries echoing around.

They reached the first of the charges that had been placed along the tunnel—there was another, larger pressure mine much farther north—and they both dropped their beams down, looking for the trigger. The flat rock looked like the rest of them, but touched the wall exactly between the chambers and extended to nearly the middle of the tunnel. The charge beneath it was small, but in Sergei’s mind there was no such thing as a minor explosion underground.

As soon as their lights were pointed down, there was a soft noise in front of them. Sergei looked up as the sound registered in his ears, a whizzing, like—

Ace grabbed his throat with his left hand and started burbling blood. He staggered sideways, an arrow protruding from between his bloody fingers. A second arrow hit him in the shoulder. It would have hit Sergei had Ace not been in the way.

Ace clawed at the arrow in his throat, then brought up his Ruger and started firing vaguely north, the shots wild, ricocheting off the rocks, chips of limestone flying.

The charge!

Sergei just caught a glimpse of the woman’s face at the very limit of his light, her visage pale and grim, before she turned and ran, hurtling out of sight.

Sergei fell back double-time, turned to sprint as Ace staggered again over the stones, crumpling—

BOOM!

Sergei threw himself forward as the tunnel shook, dirt and rock crashing down behind him in a thunderous blast. Choking dust blew over him in a cold gust that smelled like mud and burning chemicals. As the ringing in his ears dimmed, he heard more of those horrible animal screams, echoing up from the labyrinth.

Fuck!

He scrambled south on his hands and knees, ignoring the scrapes, the trickle of pebbles that pattered down on his back like rain. That bitch had been waiting for them at the charges, waiting in the dark until they had to watch their step. Ace was dead and Sergei had missed his shot.

He turned around, saw a wall of rock and dirt blocking the passage, cutting him off from where the chambers had been. There was blood on some of the stones, but no sign of Ace.

He tapped his helmet’s mic while dirt was still rattling down the side of the new wall. The ceiling had grown a meter but had held. “Commander, do you copy? Come in, Commander? Hux? Mitchell?”

There was a crackle of static. He thought about calling out—Hux and Mitchell were somewhere above him, they might hear him, but then, so would Croft. He wouldn’t count on either of them to help him, anyway. Killing Croft was the priority, and their time wasn’t unlimited.

He had the maps. He could go back to the big room that opened into the upper tunnel, see if there was still a way through up top. Or he could drop down into the maze and…

No. No way. God knew what was down there.

You’ll complete this mission, and you’ll kill anything that tries to stop you. Commander Harper’s voice was louder than Sergei’s fear, calm and sane. The mission. It was a cave, not a fairy tale; he was armed and careful, better than Ace. Clearly, because Ace was dead… which meant there would be a reshuffling of the top players. If he could bring down Croft there’d be a bonus, but the real win would be moving up in Harper’s esteem. The commander’s very best had gone on to lead teams of their own.

Still. He decided he would go back through the top tunnel. Easier to drop back down to where he was supposed to be than to climb up, and there was no reason to think she’d gone down, so there was no reason to go deeper… where anything could be squatting in the dark, waiting…

“Fuck off,” Sergei whispered, and quickly started back south, refusing to think any more about his grandmother’s stories.

* * *

Lara ducked around a curve in the passage as West Coast started firing his semi, blood pumping from the side of his neck. She tapped her lamp and ran as soon as she was clear, praying that the whole system wasn’t about to collapse.

BOOM! The charge detonated. Lara threw herself onto her knees and covered her head, the blast rolling past and then echoing back at her from the caverns ahead, dust sifting down. She waited, listening to the tumble of rock behind her, the changing echoes.

When the tremors stopped, she stood up in a clatter of loose rocks and walked back a few steps, examining the cave-in. The passage was blocked by an untidy sprawl of dirt and shattered stone. There was a new hole in the floor next to the heaped, muddy rocks, opening over the top of the labyrinth. It would be a tight fit and she’d have to go in on her side, but it might be a useful route if she couldn’t find another way out.

She fixed its location in her mind, starting north again. For the moment, she thought she was okay. The Russian was behind the cave-in, and West Coast Romeo had been dead before he’d hit the floor, his jugular pierced.

Listen to you. That was a human being.

She shook her head. A disgusting human being who’d been coming to murder her. These weren’t average Trinity soldiers. They wore tactical gear and were carrying expensive hardware. The same people who’d been after Marin, perhaps. A hit squad. And there were at least two more in the tunnel overhead.

Hux. And Mitchell, who has a new knife.

Where were they now? She recalled from Marin’s map that there was a room about fifty meters ahead that opened into the upper tunnel, through a narrow climbing passage in the back, a crawl. She could get up there… but she’d be the proverbial fish in a barrel. If someone was waiting at the top, they could lean in and shoot her while she edged up.

The well, farther along. There was a sloping well ahead that cut through the top half of the dig, one of several. That was a trickier climb, but it let out near the final areas that Marin had marked, including the puzzle room. If she ran into anyone from Trinity along that route, she’d have more options.

You’re still planning to get your pictures. Jonah could be being tortured right now, your best friend in this world.

It’s on the way, and it’s fastest. If I don’t get what I came for, all of this is for nothing.

If Jonah dies—

He won’t die. I’m not going to play games if they’re in my way.

Firearms had become a regular part of her training regime since Yamatai. She was good, her groupings consistent even on quick draws. These killers wouldn’t keep her from getting back to Jonah.

A voice from the past whispered through her mind, tempering the burst of determination. You think you kill to survive, but you kill because it is in your nature. The Trinity agent, Auger Ramille, had said that to her. She’d thought about his statement often over the years, and had finally come to the uncomfortable conclusion that he might be right. His terminology was imprecise, though. She was only a pragmatist in a war against people with no empathy, who were playing with powers they couldn’t hope to control. Her nature was to fight them as hard as she could, using everything she had. She no longer clung to the childish belief in her innocence when it came to killing, but she didn’t enjoy it or seek it out; if Trinity would stop trying to murder everyone, she would gladly retire.

She stopped outside the chamber with the crawlway up, the route she didn’t mean to take, her attention caught by a glimpse of colors in the low light of her beam. There were glyphs carved into the farthest wall of the small room, a series of numbers, representations of travel—directions, stars, lines of waves. Lara grabbed her camera, clicked off a fast series. Marin hadn’t told her this chamber was important, but it looked like a calendar—perhaps to calculate the Maya travelers’ journey, to estimate how long it would take them to get where they were going.

Estimates aren’t facts.

Yes, and Marin laid mines, he wasn’t an archaeologist.

Perhaps the Maya had made the trip many times; she wished she had time to study her findings properly. She wondered if there were more chambers like this one, with information that Marin hadn’t deemed worthwhile.

She stepped closer to the carvings, frowning. Like the glyphs in the upper chamber of the mural room, some of these had been changed. She could see where lines and dots had been added to some of the numbers. The changes looked newer, sharper than the others. Like, centuries newer.

She touched one of the etched lines, remembering what Marin had said—that there was something not “right” about the Blue Labyrinth. Had someone come through and changed some of the writing? Why?

Lara clipped the camera to her belt and moved back into the main passage. She’d go up at the well and take pictures of everything she saw from now on, assuming she could do so without getting herself shot.

There was a shuffle of movement, somewhere close. Lara cocked her head, tapping out her light. There, again—a whisper like scattering rocks. It was coming from the calendar room behind her.

Pebbles and dirt falling down from the top of that crawling passage.

Someone was looking down. Looking for her.

She turned on her LED again and hurried on, the tunnel walls closing around her in the meager blue glow.

* * *

Harper had his light back on in an instant when he heard the shots; three, four rounds from Ace’s Ruger, he thought, followed almost immediately by an echoing blast. Dirt sifted down and Harper hit the ground as a few hundred bats came rushing up from the labyrinth, pouring through the chamber over his head, flying back to the drop. He heard that ugly bird sound again, and distant echoes of rocks falling, and then it was over.

He got to his feet, saw the rush of dancing dust pouring from the lower tunnel’s entrance, the motes white and falling in the light from his lamp. “Sound off. Ace, Sergei, copy?”

Nothing. “Hux? Mitchell?”

There was a blur of static, a short burst of sound. “—back now. Limit—return—”

Hux. Harper took a breath, walking into the upper passage. There were some curves but it was a mostly straight shot across the top. “Repeat your status.”

“…contained cave-in in the lower tunnel,” Hux said, his voice gaining clarity. “Mitchell heard one of them call in; she’s 99 percent that it was Sergei.”

Harper came to a stop, waiting for the beep that signaled Hux was finished talking. He wanted a good signal, but wasn’t going to risk leaving his post unguarded. A sickly scattering of albino fungi grew from the line of crap along the floor. What a miserable place. “Nothing from Ace?”

“Negative.”

“Any sign of Croft?”

“Not that I’ve seen, unless that trap was her,” Hux said. “Mitchell is ahead of me. She’s going to climb down, get eyes on what happened. If Croft is dead, we’ll confirm. I’m going to double-check some of the connecting points.”

“Yeah, fine. Do what it takes. If you see anyone, tell them to flush her this way if they can’t get a shot. And watch your six.”

Not advice he normally felt compelled to give, but he had a sinking feeling that he might be down another crew member. He could easily see Ace forget about watching his feet if he’d been running down Croft. With Greaves crippled and Dixon taking that freak shot…

All in two days. All because of Lara fucking Croft.

“Copy,” Hux said, and the radio went silent.

Harper fell back to his position, briefly considering whether to bring in the men from the airfield, set up a perimeter. It would only take a few minutes to walk back into range, relay instructions through Reddy. The trio would have to bring the pilot with them—Winters was a cut-and-run type if ever there was one—but Reddy could go over the maps, they could figure out where she might come out and stake the likeliest places.

Not yet. She’s here, right in front of us, now. Hux was one of the best professional problem-solvers working for the cause—smart, manipulative, driven. Mitchell was perhaps even better, her ruthlessness impeccable. Ace and Sergei were both professionals; Ace could play it a little high and loose at times, but he got results. Sergei was probably the best shot with a nine-mil and had never panicked under fire, under any circumstances.

It’s only just starting. No matter how good Croft was, he had faith that his people were better. He was better. He couldn’t discount her training or her demonic luck, but he also couldn’t deny the feeling he’d had since landing in Colombia, that this was a fateful day. Croft’s death wouldn’t make amends for the trouble she’d caused but it would be his own personal triumph, on behalf of all those who’d sworn the Oath.

He settled back and cut his lamp. This time, the dark didn’t bother him so much.

* * *

When they heard the rumble, Reddy and Smith both edged toward the cenote.

“Come in, Commander,” Reddy said into the radio. “Do you copy?” But there was no answer. A hundred bats poured up into the sky.

“That was one of the traps, right?” Smith asked, and Reddy shook his head, staring down into the well as if he’d be able to see anything.

Miguel only shifted in his uneasy sleep. Jonah used the distraction to work on his own zip-tie cuffs, the tactical kind favored by bounty hunters and riot cops. The plastic looped around each wrist, the ends cinched with a simple ratchet lock. Not a long-term hold for a big man such as himself. He knew that Reddy would be over to check before long, so he hurried, twisting his wrists, flexing. It was going to hurt, but he’d get out. He’d cut Miguel loose and fight if he could, run if he couldn’t. If they could get to the cover of the jungle, he’d find the banyan with the shotgun.

If. He was going to have to wait for the right circumstances. He thought Harper and his team might be the people Lara had seen back in Mexico, going after Marin. She’d said they were trained, not grunts. Harper’s team all had the flat eyes of killers, their equipment was extra, and the way the commander had gone off on his psycho murder fantasy, Jonah thought this was some kind of personal thing for him.

Doesn’t matter who they are. He hated that Harper and his psychos were down there looking for her, but he could only do what he could do. First thing was to make sure that Lara had a clear exit.

Or die trying. He considered the thought, relaxing his arms while Reddy stared at him for a moment before turning back to the cenote. It was what it was. Better than not trying.

He tried not to overthink the underground explosion. Lara wouldn’t have triggered a trap accidentally, which meant either she’d done it on purpose, or one of Harper’s people had set it off.

And maybe she was right under it when they did. Maybe they blew a hole that dropped her a thousand feet into the ground.

He didn’t try to deny the fear, but also didn’t let it stop him from rotating his sore wrists, working the plastic. He’d shifted the pocketknife high up into his sock already, while Reddy stalked around, looking like he’d bit a lemon, and Smith kept jerking his Glock toward the jungle every time anything bigger than a beetle moved.

“Think that was your girl?” Reddy asked abruptly, taking a step toward Jonah. “You think she maybe just got buried under a ton of rock? That’d be a goddamn shame.”

“A goddamn shame,” Smith repeated, and laughed, a dumb guffaw. Reddy looked away, irritated.

Jonah didn’t answer, filing the interaction. Reddy was an arrogant pig and hungry to fight. And Smith might be a trained killer, but he came off like a serious moron; Reddy’s lack of respect for him backed up the impression. They had guns, and therefore the upper hand, but not necessarily for very much longer. The team who’d gone in after Lara had been wearing Kevlar, but both guards had shed theirs in the sweaty heat, tossed them into one of the trucks soon after Harper left.

Reddy tried to raise the commander again, and Smith slapped at his neck, cursing the mosquitoes for the tenth time, then swung his fancy handgun toward the hollow mechanical clatter of the unknown night caller.

“The hell is that, anyway?” Smith said. “It’s fucking weird.”

“Calm your shit,” Reddy snapped. “It’s a toucan.”

“In the dark? Anyway, I thought toucans squawked,” Smith said.

“Yeah, well, they also sound like that.”

Jonah raised his eyebrows. You could learn from the most unlikely of sources.

He kept his eyes open and used every second of the guards’ continued distraction to flex and rotate his wrists, turn and pull, patiently ignoring the growing pain.

* * *

Jennifer Mitchell found Sergei climbing up from a mural chamber that opened to the lower tunnel. She’d seen his light first and swept in fast, lowering the CZ 75 when she saw the young Russian on the rope ladder.

“Sergei,” she said, and his head snapped around. He looked a little pale around the eyes. “Where’s Ace?”

Sergei climbed the rest of the way up. “Dead and buried. Croft put an arrow through him. He fell on a D2 trap, blocked off the lower tunnel. She’s on the north side of it somewhere.”

Sloppy, that they’d let her get away. Ace was no loss, she’d considered killing him herself every time he said titties, which was often. Was Croft looking for a way up, or down? If Mitchell were in her position, she might drop into the maze. More places to hide, to crouch in the blackness and wait for targets to walk by, announcing themselves with lights and noise.

Who says she’s hiding? Croft had taken out Ace on top of a charge, not exactly a stealth maneuver. She might just march down the main corridor, .45 blazing.

Mitchell considered it critically. The woman’s attachment to her friend would urge her to move quickly, but she wouldn’t be reckless. Croft was no amateur.

She turned back north, visualizing the layout of the site as she started walking. If she could get ahead of Croft, she could be the one waiting in the dark. There were several passages connecting the tunnels. All she had to do was set up near the last one, whichever was closest to Harper.

“Is Hux with you?” Sergei asked, hurrying to catch up to her. Mitchell didn’t answer. The evidence spoke for itself.

“I should go down past the blockage, in case she’s using the lower tunnel to get back to the drop,” he said.

“Do that, then,” Mitchell said, and kept walking. She hoped she would be the one to end Croft. No one else in the Dozen would fully appreciate the gravitas of striking down such a rare creature, a fit, highly competent, intelligent woman pursuing an agenda with the full force of her well-developed abilities. Mitchell had no idea why Croft had set herself up against Trinity, but the reason was incidental. Croft was a force to be reckoned with, and the Dozen, even Harper, underestimated her because they were stupid men. They talked about her incredible luck and scoffed about how she was no match for them, as if there was anything in Croft’s history that suggested she couldn’t or wouldn’t kill them. Their arrogance was typical, and utterly unfounded.

“Is Hux talking to the commander?” Sergei asked. “Are you sweeping together up here?”

He was seeking some kind of reassurance. Mitchell didn’t generally offer advice but she had nothing against Sergei. Good with a gun, didn’t panic, kept to himself.

No mind for strategy, though. “It’s hide and seek now, and the drop point is home base,” she said. “Nothing’s off limits, but Croft isn’t going to do anything that costs too much time. Find a likely spot and go dark, wait for her to come to you. And do it fast, because she might be doing exactly the same thing while you’re looking for a place to set up.”

Sergei nodded, his eyes appreciative, raising his chin at her. It was funny how people responded to the things she said when she wasn’t angling for a result. She liked having the power that respect afforded.

One of the cave animals called from somewhere in the maze below, and was answered by two more.

“What is that, anyway?” Sergei asked, nervous—eyes wide, voice high.

Mitchell shrugged, adjusting her weapons as she walked. She had the extended mag for the CZ 75, sixteen rounds locked and loaded. She also had an assortment of knives: a Gerber Mark II, a double-edged dagger with serrations just past the ricasso and a custom grip, perfect for slashing and stabbing; a matte black karambit that she had practiced with extensively, the small, curved knife a precision killer, made for blood-letting swipes; and a brand-new Dark Ops Interceptor E&E, eight and a half inches of silver death with an extended handle for versatility, full tang, tanto tip, and a hook for gutting. A single smooth extension, a flick of the wrist, and all that amazing vibrancy and energy would flood out of Croft and puddle on the stone at her feet.

“I think we should fall back to the drop,” Sergei said.

That was the problem with interacting. People assumed things about you, like that you gave a shit what they thought.

Mitchell didn’t answer and deliberately picked up her pace, considering the maps she’d studied on the flight in. There was a place where the top tunnels joined to the labyrinth less than a mile north, a well that Croft might choose—not the easiest spot, but not obvious, and certainly in the woman’s skill set. Hux would probably set up near there. He might get Croft, he was good—but Croft might actually be better. She lacked that fundamental arrogance, the belief that her talents alone entitled her to win. Mitchell decided to set up farther north. Let Hux take his shot; if he could beat Lara then the woman wasn’t a worthy opponent for Mitchell, anyway.

She turned off her helmet’s lamp and pulled out a small flashlight, aiming the beam at her feet, excitement warm in her belly. Hux was the only possible snag. Sergei would hang back, too careful, and Harper would never get his shot because if Croft made it past Hux she was going to run across Mitchell first. Who would win? It was exciting to not be entirely certain of the outcome.

She smiled to herself. Not entirely certain, but reasonably sure.

* * *

Lara moved quickly through the site’s lower main tunnel, pausing three times for pictures—glyphs on the wall, a depiction of the star path with a lot of numbers, a compass rose painted with the Maya directional colors and smooth, unfaded lines of blue cutting through the center… But the blue didn’t look right on the compass, the shade too light, and she wondered again if the site had been tampered with. If someone had changed things, they’d done it a long time ago. The color was wrong but very old.

She worked fast, nervous about the light, wishing the salamanders would be quiet. The explosion had riled them. She estimated that there wasn’t a large population, certainly less than a hundred, but they sounded like a hundred thousand. They kept shrieking, their cries echoing up from the lower tunnels, drowning out any footsteps she might hear, any rocks falling or whispering.

At least Trinity won’t hear you, either. She started to time her movements for when the shrieks crested, hurrying when the cries were loudest.

She reached the small tunnel she was watching for, a narrow crack that extended parallel to the lower main corridor and veered east and down. She sidled through quickly, keeping the bow ready, turning off her lamp when she reached the opening at the end of the crevice.

She waited—no sound—then edged forward. No light, either. A salamander called up through the dark, close but meters below. She could hear that she’d reached the well from the way the sound echoed back at her.

Lara turned on her larger torch, quickly scanning the chamber. The crack she’d slid through ended in a short, steep drop, to a ledge of rock that opened into darkness below. The maze.

She looked up. Four meters to the platform above, and it angled out at the top. She could get up but she had to do it quietly, no hammering, and she’d be totally vulnerable on the last pitch—and visible from the two uppermost levels of the maze, the opening in the top corridor, and the crack where she was standing.

And hanging from your fingertips over a, let’s see… about a dozen meters before it bottoms out in the labyrinth?

When she looked down to estimate, she saw a salamander run across the floor of the lowest tunnel, a flicker of white. A second ran after it along one curved wall, silent, blind head cocked as it scurried out of sight.

Yet another reason you’re going to do this fast.

She tapped her headlamp back on, clipped the torch to her belt, slung her bow and climbed up and away from her position, angling toward the most promising path—a steep climb, but crosshatched by a number of narrow cracks that ran up the side of the well. The first part was rocky, not difficult. She made it to the cracks and wedged her toes and fingers deep, reaching high, pushing for holds that stretched her arms and legs to their limit. She was at the thick and curving base of the top tunnel only minutes after she started, warmed up for the last pitch.

Lara took a deep breath, deciding where she would put her hands and feet. The outward-leaning slope was nearly as tall as she was. If she took her time she was going to fall; she couldn’t support her full weight hanging at that angle, what with gravity and all. She’d have to push off fast and scramble like one of the salamanders, swiftly, flat to the curve. There were a few divots she could use. She’d pitched worse.

Yes, with rope and a harness.

Fortune favored the bold, and also those who didn’t stop to think for too long while standing over a long drop. She exhaled and reached for the first holds, tightening her stomach muscles, psyching herself up for the push—

—and she heard footsteps, floating down from somewhere above. Coming from the south, coming her way.

Close enough to hear you. Or possibly see a reflection of light, if they were looking. Lara tapped off her lamp and was instantly enveloped by the chill dark. She hesitated, already feeling the strain in her fingers.

Beneath her, directly beneath her, a salamander shrieked.

Now! Go, go! Lara moved, finding the divots and cracks in the dark, her whole body pressed to the wall, telling her where to go. The echo of the scream covered the sound of her desperate climb, reaching for rocks that she remembered from when she could see, pushing off hard with every step.

She got her right knee into a depression and threw herself forward, hands finding the flat lip of rock over her head as her boots fell away from the slope. She pulled herself up, arms trembling, as the salamander screamed again. The sound fell away fast, the creature darting back down into the maze. The echoes followed her onto a ledge. If Marin’s mapping was correct, she was in a small passage just off the main upper corridor, but she was blind and didn’t dare move. She waited on the cold stone and listened.

No footsteps, no rustle of movement, no light. Had the walker passed by or stopped? She thought she heard a whisper of something north, but acoustics were strange underground, sound carrying clearly through some passages, distorted or muffled by others, and the Blue Labyrinth was never completely silent. There was always a backdrop of animal noises and trickling water.

She sat in silence for a full two minutes before moving, sweat chilling to her skin. She heard salamanders crying, more faintly, and a rush of sound that she recognized as a rather large mass of bats coming or going south of her, fluttering wings and cheeps, but she heard nothing human.

Lara finally turned on the small LED, cupping her hand over the bulbs, and took in where she was. A ledge, with several meters of low passage in front of her that curved west. Only a short duckwalk to the main tunnel, according to Marin’s notes. Assuming she remembered correctly. She thought she was alone but she didn’t want to turn on her lamp, not until she had some idea of where everyone was. Caving in the dark was not her idea of a good time. It was unnerving, despicably slow, and bruises were inevitable, but she wasn’t about to pop into the site’s major corridor with a light on when there were Trinity commandos running around. She would creep and keep the LED handy until she was more certain of the situation.

Direct to the main tunnel, then south for about twenty meters; the first glyph room is on the west side. The mural of the rivers that had so struck Marin. There was one side passage along the way, a dead end, she thought; she would skip the first opening she came to. Along the east wall there was another short tunnel that opened over a drop, but as long as she didn’t get confused about which way she was going, she wasn’t concerned.

Three things to see and you’re out. After the river room was the part of the tunnel itself she would need to photograph, the damaged glyphs that Dominguez had mentioned in his report… and finally, the puzzle chamber that had so frustrated him. Right in a row, laid out in front of her on the way back to Jonah.

Soonest begun. Lara turned off the light and crouched, finding the dank walls with her hands. She positioned herself, unslung her bow, and started forward.

* * *

Hux had the perfect place staked out—a large room full of murals and hieroglyphs in the upper chamber, near the end of the dig’s length. The Trinity report had referred to it as the pillar room; there were several rock formations in the center of the chamber, hourglass-shaped and painted with rings of startling blue, wide enough at the base for him to duck down behind. If she walked through the main corridor, he’d see or hear her; if she came into the room, he could get behind her.

He crouched in the oppressive blackness behind the column closest to the entrance, the air cold and stale and damp, smelling faintly of ammonia. Unless she’d flat out run from the explosion, he had to be in front of her. He’d reasoned that she’d try to come up from the lower tunnel, for ease of access to the surface, but also perhaps to search the Maya chambers, if she hadn’t already done so. She’d come to the Blue Labyrinth to find something that Luis Marin had thought important. Considering that the site had been thoroughly excavated, this important thing probably wasn’t an item. The rooms were painted with writings about the Maya resurrection, however, the very thing that was unfolding even as they played their games in the dark. She’d come for information, and from the photos he’d looked at coming in, the pillar room had been a star attraction, marked specifically for an explosive charge; there was a big one only a few meters outside the entrance. Croft would still be watching her feet when she came in, or if she walked by.

Hux shifted his weight. This would play out in minutes, not hours, but he hoped not too many. According to the prophecy there was a storm coming. Maybe not a good time to fly.

Also not the best time to be sitting in a flood system.

Perhaps the storm was already raging overhead, hail and lightning crashing down, rivers swelling… He wouldn’t even know, buried down here in the earth as the waters gathered force and barreled ahead, filling all the empty spaces. A fanciful thought, but then, he was in a cave, with bats and mushrooms and randomly screaming trolls. He wondered what they were. Frogs, perhaps; they were known to scream. He hadn’t heard any in the upper levels…

Somewhere to the south, there was a rustle of movement, a bare whisper of sound. Not repeated.

Hux breathed evenly, the HK VP9 ready to fire, grips warm in his hand. Sixteen rounds of armor-piercing safety tips. He rested his finger lightly on the guard. If Mitchell was tracking her, he might lose his shot—Mitchell was scary-lethal, a full-on sociopath—but he was pretty sure the diminutive blond would do the same as him, set up shop somewhere and watch. Sergei and Ace would probably keep sweeping, assuming they were still alive. Sergei followed orders and Ace was too macho to creep around in the dark.

There. Footsteps, moving quickly from the south.

Hux rose to his feet as light smudged the air—and then his radio chirped, signaling that someone wearing a helmet was in range.

He dropped down again, listening as the figure got closer, adjusting his position from the shadows that were cast into the room. Whoever it was paused at the charges, then stepped quickly and lightly past. They tapped off their light before passing in front of the opening to the room where he waited, not acknowledging that he was near.

Mitchell. Anyone else in the Dozen would have spoken. She’d joined Harper’s team three years ago, just after Hux. A couple of guys had tried to strike something up—she was chesty, with big gray eyes and a pouty mouth—but had stopped the day after her first live performance, when the Dozen had gone in to quell a workers’ rebellion in an undeclared zone outside of Russia. Mitchell had sliced and diced villagers like she was dancing, smiling a little bit the whole time until her hair dripped with blood like in that old movie about the psychic prom queen, staring out from a mask of red. She’d been in Harper’s top three ever since. Hux had his own proclivities, he wasn’t one to judge, but Mitchell was something else.

And yet you’re overshooting, my dear. Presumably, Ace and Sergei—well, Sergei, at least—had found a way past the exploded charges and were still working the lower tunnel as assigned. If Croft was down there they’d catch her or push her to Harper. The commander would also get the shot if she tried to come out through the maze… But the main strip of the dig was the fastest way back to the drop site. She’ll have to cross me first.

Hux checked his watch. Still plenty of time before they had to report. He settled back in, his thoughts of proclivities leading him to imagine how it was going to happen. She’d walk into the room, and he’d step out behind her, jam the semi’s barrel into her back. He’d disarm her and then strike her down, power coursing through his muscles, and then he’d wrap his hands around that narrow white throat, squeezing, watching the tiny blood vessels in her eyes burst while she flailed at his big, strong hands with her tiny white fingers…

He shifted again, trying to accommodate his excitement at the fantasy. He’d broken out in a light sweat. It had been too long since he’d exorcised his own personal demons. He was Harper’s right hand when it came to operations, stresses built up… He deserved the opportunity to release some of that energy, and who better to receive than Lara Croft? Harper had the right idea about her: she was a menace to the cause and should have been taken out long ago. Her continued existence mocked the lives of the men she’d murdered.

Also, killing her would feel really, really good.

Hux didn’t realize he was wearing his own tiny smile. Almost show time, he could feel it, could feel her getting closer to him. She wouldn’t get past.

* * *

Lara viewed the chamber through flashes from the camera, snapping off a dozen shots, wincing at the brightness. She hadn’t come across anyone since climbing up, but was extremely aware of every move she made, and the light struck her as loud as a scream.

I have to get this, though. The mural was magnificent— some artist or artists had painted a complex river system across the chamber’s sloping walls, the water twining through hills, the ocean to one side. Glyphs ran along the waterways, numbers and directional markers. She could understand why Marin thought it important.

Except there’s no way to know if this is a map from life or something a priest envisioned. And some of the glyphs have been overwritten. Even assuming it was accurate and was meant to represent what she was looking for, what were the chances that the rivers hadn’t changed course in a thousand years? And none of the mountains represented were crowned, nor were they detailed in any way.

She didn’t stop to ponder. Still getting used to the darkness after the flash, she used the LED to take her back to the chamber’s entrance, then turned off the light and waited. As on her careful walk to the chamber, she heard nothing, saw nothing. The silence was profound.

It was at least fifty meters to the section of tunnel with the hieroglyphs Marin had told her about. About twenty meters past that was the final chamber she needed to see, the puzzle room. That had a charge in front of it. From there, she wouldn’t be far from a connecting tunnel that united the upper passages. She’d decide which exit to use when she got there. Someone was undoubtedly guarding the chamber where the tunnels met, but she might be able to draw them out.

Fifty meters.

There’s nobody here. Use the light; you can run quietly if you can see.

Anybody sticks their head into the hall, they’ll shoot you down.

Yes, and the longer it takes you to get through, the more likely someone’s going to come along.

She compromised, squatting down to roll up her pants leg and stick the small light into the top of her sock, the bulbs barely showing through. Enough to see where she put her feet.

She nocked an arrow and ran low. The seep of light allowed her to pick up the pace considerably. A sudden salamander chorus stopped her once, mid-run; then the sound of rocks tumbling sent her crouching down to cover the soft glow of the light. But the sound was distant, north, and she thought it might have come from the tunnel below.

Lara reached the glyphs carved large on the tunnel wall, set into a grid. Ancient Mayan was read left to right, top to bottom, in columns of two. There was no way to avoid using the flash, unless she meant to copy them down by hand. She stepped back from the wall and held up the camera. The flash strobed brightly, dazzling.

Walk, path, stars…

Most of the rest of the glyphs were damaged, unreadable, until the end—reveal message? Water seepage had eroded the carvings through the middle, not a trace that they’d ever been there.

Not much of a key. No wonder Dominguez had been frustrated.

She moved on toward the puzzle chamber, then stopped to listen. If the commandos were moving in, they weren’t close. It seemed likely that they had fallen back to the northern exits to wait.

But they could have done that in the first place. The conversation she’d overheard had laid out pretty clearly that they’d been eager to find and kill her, but the number of searchers had to be small or she would have heard them.

Silence. She took a step—

—and heard the echoes of pebbles rolling down a slide, the sound coming from the north. Something was moving in a chamber large enough to echo, far ahead. It was either the passage that connected the tunnels, or the last big well, a nearly vertical drop down into the heart of the labyrinth.

You’re almost out, and either one is well past the puzzle room. Get the pictures.

She couldn’t see the opening in the dim light of the LED, but Lara knew she was close. There was only the charge to look out for, and she started scanning the tunnel floor well in advance. The tunnel curved slightly east. The trap housed a substantial charge, placed to dump the top two tunnels into the maze, to bring an end to any curious cavers or enemies of Trinity. The last big charge was just at the entrance to the top tunnel. Trinity’s need to keep secrets was pathological.

She spotted the opening first as she came around the curve, a low arch. She realized she knew nothing about the room, except that it contained something written in code. Apparently something Trinity really didn’t want her to see, if they were ready to chase her through a maze.

Or they’re on the offensive, and this site is just where they happened to catch up with you. With a prophecy actively unfolding and Marin’s involvement, maybe they’d just decided to curb her meddling permanently.

Lara stopped, searching for the pressure plate among the dirty stones in front—

—and smelled something, a slight difference in the standard miasma of cave smells, just for a second. Beneath the dirt and wet and minerals, the guano and decay.

Sweat.

Lara ducked down and put out her light, then backed up a step, shifting quietly. A man’s sweat. Someone was in the chamber, perhaps just inside, waiting.

Shit. She couldn’t walk in without a light, not with the trigger trap so close to the entrance. She could run past the chamber, jump the charge, but whoever it was would come out after her, fire loose down the passage and undoubtedly get lucky. Even if she could outrun rounds, after that, her only options were to jump into a vertical well or try her luck getting through the chamber where the tunnels emptied out at the front, where others were likely waiting. Neither were good choices.

And it means not even seeing the puzzle. God damn them. She needed to get into that room, it was vital, her entire reason for having come. She needed to be done here and on her way, and she couldn’t move because some murderous asshole was in her way.

Unless.

How well did her ambusher know the Blue Labyrinth? If she could get him to follow her back south, the tunnel curved enough that she’d have a short window of time in which to run. And across from the room of rivers was a passage that opened abruptly to a drop.

He chases you, you hit the deck, bring up the semi…

She could do it. If she pulled it off, this would be over in less than a minute. Lara backed up farther, already committing to the insane plan.

Bait him. Make him mad.

She secured her bow and slid the heavy .45 off her hip, then reached down and turned the LED on, thin blue light across the top of her boot. She backed to the tunnel’s curve and cleared her throat, raising the .45 and flipping the safety. She could barely see the edge of the chamber’s entrance.

“I’m not coming in,” she said. “And if you come out, you’re dead.”

There was a pause so long that she was starting to think she’d imagined that whiff of sweat, when a low, deep voice spilled out into the passage. Frighteningly calm.

“We’re holding your friend, and your pilot,” the man said. “Unless you want them killed, you’ll surrender immediately.”

Something about the way he said surrender was creepy. She jumped on the inflection, her only insight into the stranger, and readied herself to run.

“Radios don’t work down here. You can’t order anything. You’re powerless. And you think I’d surrender to a man like you?”

When he spoke again, she could hear the strain in his voice, the carefully controlled anger beneath a forced amusement.

“So you’re going to stand there all night, little girl? You’ve got things you want to do. People you care about. Me, I’m in no hurry. But if you walk away, what’s going to stop me from putting a bullet in your back?”

She waited, as if thinking, counting down from ten— then turned and ran south, making plenty of noise.

The man was after her in a beat. She heard the thump of his boots coming down past the charge, saw the rocks ahead of her blur into sight as a light snapped on, hidden by the curve. She pounded down the tunnel, leaping through the flickering dark, pumping with her arms. The writing on the tunnel wall flew past, a bounce of light from the man’s torch passing over the ancient glyphs. Lara picked up speed; it was a straight stretch—

Bam-bam-bam!

The rounds thundered through the tunnel. Chips of rock sprayed across her right shoulder, ricocheting off into the dark ahead, the tunnel faintly visible now as her pursuer ran into a clear sight line. Lara saw the ragged hole in the wall across from the river room and dove for it, two more rounds blasting after her, barely missing, too high. Salamanders had started screaming, echoes rising up from below.

She hit her headlamp as soon as she was inside the rough passage, and spotted the abrupt edge only two meters ahead. She had less than ten seconds before he came in after her, firing. If she couldn’t get a grip or if the edge crumbled—

There! A thick notch in the lip. Lara ran and ducked down, slapping her left hand across the notch, pivoting and letting herself drop over the edge.

Her body slammed into the rugged rock, her boots finding purchase as the short passage lit up and a man ran inside, ducking, firing round after round, his face contorted with rage. He was moving too fast and aiming high.

Kevlar. Lara brought up the Remington and fired, aiming for his belly but not steady. She hit low, two rounds tearing into his upper left thigh.

He spun but stumbled forward, shock registering on his blandly handsome face as he pitched toward a yawning abyss. She’d envisioned him flying over her head, but he fell short by a meter, crashing toward her.

Lara crammed her right boot into a crack, ducked and crouched as the man fell half on top of her, the top of her head suddenly buried in his stomach, her neck jacked down painfully. He was overbalanced. He dropped his weapon and grabbed for her, the heavy metal clanging off the rocks all the way down.

Lara got her gun hand under his hip and stood up, pushing with her legs, lifting him into the air. She fired again, the gun angled wrong to do anything but make him flail, which he did, losing his grip.

The man shouted in rage and disbelief, a wordless howl as she tipped him over her and into the well. Weight shifting, she scrabbled to keep her grip on the side, hearing his fury turn to pain when he hit the labyrinth below. Bone snapped—then there was a final thud, and his scream cut off. The echoes faded quickly. The salamanders were chirping inquisitively; it sounded like they were approaching in numbers to see what had fallen. If her attacker was still alive, she didn’t think he would be for much longer.

Lara climbed up into the passage, moved well away from the drop and then reluctantly turned off her headlamp to wait and listen. There was only the puzzle chamber left, then she’d be on her way out, less than a klick from the drop now. Even a hundred meters of lost ground felt like a slap, but she couldn’t afford to give in to impatience. West Coast had been impatient. The broken man below had been impatient.

I’m coming, Jonah. As soon as I can.

She checked her watch. She was officially late.

* * *

Sergei had dropped down a tight crawlspace to get back into the lower tunnel, past the cave-in, and hurried north through the terrible dark, expecting to be shot or eaten at every step. He finally found a narrow alcove near a branch of the main corridor and backed in, immensely relieved to be surrounded on three sides by solid rock.

The good feeling fled after less than a minute of waiting with no light. The screamers were in the knot of tunnels only meters beneath his feet, roaming through the dark, doing God knew what. They made rasping chirps almost like birds, like something harmless, and then they’d scream suddenly, violently, and Sergei’s blood would run cold.

You’re going to laugh about this later. You will absolutely nail this bitch if she comes through, and if someone else gets her that’s fine, too, because you’ll be back in that shitty truck soon, on your way back to the plane, and you’ll make a joke about how scared you were, and you will laugh.

He checked his watch. Another ten minutes and he could fall back. That would suck, too. Minutes of walking the winding, muddy tunnels back to where the commander waited, wondering if one of Croft’s arrows was about to come flying out of the dark, listening to the monsters scream. He’d fully support a decision to pull out and wait for the target to come back for the boyfriend.

Why had they even come down in the first place? It had seemed an adventure back at the drop, chasing the girl down, competing for placement, but the reality was just terrible. They shouldn’t be here, people didn’t belong down here. It had barely been an hour since they’d descended but it felt like days; the Dozen were down another man and for all he knew—

Shots, south and above him, three rounds from Hux’s HK, he thought, then two more. The cave creatures started shrieking, and then there were two weapons firing, Hux’s drowned out by a heavier blast from another weapon— Croft’s. A .45 or .357. She fired the last round.

He heard Hux scream as he fell. The echoes sent Hux’s fury and pain running in every direction, whispers and shouts of sound that cut off at the bottom of his drop. He must have landed in the maze.

Fell down one of the wells, maybe. Sergei pulled out his tablet with numb fingers, the soft glow sudden and intense in the black. He called up the layout of the upper tunnels, scanning… There. One of the larger connecting wells, several hundred meters south. He remembered passing the branch that led to it.

Go up. The chamber he was in had one of the few walking passages connecting the top tunnels; it was why he’d chosen it. He could be at the top of the well in two minutes; if she was climbing up or down, he’d have her. He could take her out before she did any more damage.

He swapped his tablet for a flashlight and draped the beam, then walked quickly to the spot where the tunnel branched, jogging up the sloping incline that would let out on top. He turned south and hurried, trying not to make noise.

Hux. He couldn’t believe it. How had the target gotten the better of Hux Lane? It was ridiculous. Up until he’d heard that scream he might have said impossible. Ace had been reckless, his death wasn’t a complete surprise, but Hux was the poster boy for prepared.

Was. Sergei slowed down, listening. He was surprised at how fast his heart was beating, how loud it was. Croft was a little English girl. Yes, she was trained, but up against someone like Hux?

How good was he, really? He’s dead, he missed. You wouldn’t have missed. It was undoubtedly true that if Sergei had been firing at Croft, she wouldn’t have had the chance to fire back. The perfect shot was always fatal.

He must be close to the well by now. Sergei stopped and covered his flashlight completely, listening.

Ahead of him, a flash strobed, a stutter of weak light against the curving tunnel.

She’s at the big pillar room, with the mine in front. The bitch was taking pictures.

When the light stuttered again, Sergei moved, walking in a crouch, close to the slight curve. He didn’t make a sound, using his own light sparingly, only to place his feet.

He came to a stop just where the tunnel curved. The flash stuttered again, and Sergei dared a quick glance around the curve, saw the sharp reflection against the stones of the passage ahead, twenty meters away.

He pulled back, grinning. This was the only exit from the pillar room. She was going to walk out in a minute, and it didn’t matter which way she went, he would step out from the curve and hold up his light and fire until she dropped. Even if he wasn’t the best, he couldn’t possibly miss.

There was no more light. She was very quiet, he couldn’t—

Ah! A rattle of pebbles clattered in the chamber, soft but clear. She wasn’t so careful as she thought.

Sergei held himself ready and waited, listening.

* * *

Lara heard the commando coming while she was finishing up her pictures—the faintest scuffle of gritty mud being gently crushed against stone, the creak of fabric. Whoever it was, they were very careful, but she had been listening for an approach.

Time to go. The chamber was magnificent—the speleothems, hourglass columns, had been painted with all sizes and widths of blue rings. Mateus had sketched them in his diary several times, she recalled, and they were incredible; the Maya artists had climbed high to paint the brilliant rings, outlining them in black. On the south wall of the lofty room was a huge, masterful painting of the ballgame that the Maya had revered, blue players running across the court holding daggers and bleeding hearts, stone rings at either end. Opposite the mural was another, this one of Kukulkan, its strange serpent head peering out from its plumage, with more overwritten glyphs alongside. All along the back of the chamber were extensive writings laid out in grids.

The puzzle. At least the hieroglyphs on the back wall hadn’t been overwritten. If someone had messed with the site, they’d left the important part alone. There was too much to even begin to read. Lara desperately wanted more time, but she would have to make do with what she had.

The quiet sneak had stopped moving not far north of her. She slipped to the entrance and out, south, carefully stepping around the trigger stone, placing her feet just so. She could hear them loudly shifting about in their hiding place—settling in to wait for her to emerge. When she’d managed a nearly silent two meters, she stopped and slipped her hand to her belt, pulling out a few waterproof matches. She tossed them into the chamber before slipping farther away. How long would the sneak wait before he or she figured it out? Would they come after her or fall back?

Don’t try to guess. If they follow you’ll hear it; if they don’t, you’re still blocked. What are you going to do?

She’d planned to go to the vertical drop at the north end of the site and then make a decision about where to come out, depending on what she could gather about the team’s movements. She had enough rope to drop down into the maze from there, if necessary. But now there was a commando in the way, standing in the dark with a loaded gun. The top tunnel was no longer an option.

She let herself pick up speed the farther she got from the chamber, thinking over her choices. Climb down and out the lower tunnel, or try to get under him and come back up. Neither was ideal, both opened to the same spot, where someone would surely be waiting. There was no way past them—

That’s not true. The labyrinth of tunnels that made up the main body of the site had an exit that let out way back at the beginning. She remembered the first tunnel she’d passed before she’d fallen down the slide—the one the Trinity excavators had marked with a red X, in the small bat chamber. She could go into the maze, find the passage that let her get out behind her pursuers. The fact that the sneak was another solo act suggested to her that the team she was dealing with might be even smaller than she’d originally thought. There wouldn’t be anyone wasting time on the maze, and maybe not enough bodies to spare covering unlikely exits…

But you don’t know how to get there. Marin’s notes were for a quick in-and-out job; they didn’t tell her how to navigate the labyrinth. If she couldn’t find the right passage, or if the ascent proved to be unmanageable, she could lose a lot of time backtracking. And the labyrinth was where the salamanders seemed to live and hunt, where the largest bat colonies had presumably settled. She wasn’t worried about facing off with the troglobites while walking through the tunnels—they weren’t going to overpower her and she was armed—but what if she was halfway up a pitch somewhere when a big group moved in and got bitey?

And what if these killers just decide to fall back to the cenote and wait for me to climb up?

What if. What if was useless.

She passed the room of rivers and the short tunnel that led to the dead man, passed the narrow entrance to the slope where she’d clawed her way up after the cave-in. She could use the double chamber with the cataclysm mural to get down, slip back into the labyrinth through the access hole that Marin’s team had blasted. She had marked the few tunnels she’d wandered. If it got to be too much she could always climb back up farther north, re-evaluate.

At least you’ll be moving. She had to keep moving, couldn’t let herself slow down or even acknowledge how tired she felt suddenly, trying to imagine how she was going to secretly climb fifty meters of rope at the end of all this and then face off with whoever was guarding Jonah and Miguel.

And then work out what all of this actually means, get to the hidden city, find the silver box, and figure out how to stop the rest of the prophecy from being fulfilled. That’s assuming you can get past the rest of these psychopaths, which is by no means certain.

I got off of Yamatai. I made it back from Kitezh.

So this is a sure thing, then? You’ve survived terrible things, so this one’s in the bag?

No, I’ll likely die and Jonah will die and then everyone will die. She was tired of this inner critic, pushing doubt. Before that, I keep trying. What more can I possibly do?

The critic had no response and Lara hurried on, affirming that simple truth to herself: she would do the best she could, and if that wasn’t good enough, she still couldn’t do any better.

* * *

Harper heard the shots, and the scream. In the dark, the sound was monstrous, the death cry of Hux Lane chorused by the squall of cave creatures. He heard movement, close in, footsteps maybe—from the lower tunnel? Whoever it was, they weren’t heading toward him. The sound faded quickly.

Goddamn it. Was Hux dead? Or had he taken out Croft?

“Report,” he said. The word whispered back at him from the walls, but there was nothing from his headset.

He waited impatiently for someone to get into talking range, his jaw clenched. It was almost 0000; they’d be on their way in, anyway.

This was a bad idea. You should have stayed on top, waited.

Not necessarily. Turnover on any mission isn’t unexpected. If Croft is dead, it’s a success.

“—copy? Just a—”

Sergei, in a crackle of static. Harper waited for light to appear, finally saw a glow sketch out the opening meters of the top tunnel. He suddenly felt like he could breathe easier. He pointed the Glock, waiting, until he could hear soft footsteps.

“Coming out of tunnel one now, copy?”

“Copy,” Harper said, and then Sergei was stepping out. He looked terrible, pale and sweaty by the soft light of a dimmed flashlight.

“Report.”

“Ace and Hux are dead.”

“Confirmations?”

“I saw Ace get hit with two arrows before he fell into one of the charges. I didn’t get eyes on Hux, but… that was a long fall. And she fired last.”

“Where is Croft now?”

“No info on that,” Sergei said. “She was a klick south ten minutes ago, on the top. I thought I had her pinned in the pillar room, but she got out. She must have gone south, but there are a lot of connections between tunnels and levels down there. Places to move.”

“Anything from Mitchell?”

Sergei shook his head. “She was going to lay up somewhere and wait.”

Harper looked at his watch. Mitchell had three minutes to report.

“Commander, we should fall back to the drop. The target’s got an edge on us down here, and she won’t be going anywhere without her pilot or her friend.”

He was trying to sound reasonable, but his voice was strained. Sergei was as close to shook up as Harper had ever seen.

He’s also right. It galled him to think that he’d made a mistake, but half of his caving team was dead and Croft wasn’t.

“We’ll wait on Mitchell,” Harper said. “Put your back to a wall and turn off that light.”

Sergei hurried to obey. “Did you hear those scr—”

Harper cut him off with a terse hiss. They waited in silence.

As his watch ticked over from 2359, there was a whisper in Harper’s ear, Mitchell’s voice low and quite clear. “I may have a line. Request channel silence for twenty.”

“Copy that,” Harper said.

“Stand by.” Mitchell’s cool voice snapped off.

Yes! He couldn’t imagine what had happened with Hux, but if Mitchell had Croft in her sights, that bitch wouldn’t escape.

The thought was more hopeful than certain.

“Sergei, get back into range of the drop. Put Reddy in charge, have him bring in the airfield team, including Winters, and get that collateral locked down tight, gagged and hobbled.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You’ll station yourself at the first chamber from the opening tunnel, where there’s that drop into the maze. It’s the last place she can come out before the cenote opens.”

Sergei had been looking relieved, but his expression sagged at the additional order, even as the lines around his eyes tightened.

“You don’t like caves?” Harper asked, and didn’t wait for the obvious answer. “Me either. Creepy as fuck down here. But you’ll hear her if she climbs up, and if you’re any closer to the drop, she could get behind you. I’ll wait on Mitchell, we’ll meet you at the branch ASAP.”

Sergei nodded more firmly and turned to leave, moving quickly. His shoulders were still high, his Springfield tight in his hand.

Harper waited until Sergei’s light faded and then chewed on the facts. Even with the rest of the team coming in, the Dozen were down to eight. Ace had finally blown his winning streak. And Hux… The fury that he felt at Croft for Hux’s loss was fiery and sharp, a burning blade in his guts, a beat of blood at his temples. Who else on his team was as qualified to keep operations running smoothly?

And how could she possibly have beaten him? It was beyond infuriating, and perplexing, and it was driving home that he’d made a bad choice, following her into the dig.

If Mitchell gets a shot, Croft’s dead. And if she doesn’t, we’ve still got the insurance. He would set up his snipers in the trees, get the area covered, then wait. Croft would likely fall for the same pitch that had drawn Jonah from his hiding place: surrender or watch your friend die… Or, she’d open fire. Either way, as soon as she popped up, she was dead. No more fun and games, no spitting in her face or making her suffer, no frills. She would be gunned down like the rabid dog she was.

Not rabid. Smart. And careful.

The tunnels seemed to go silent as Sergei’s footsteps disappeared in the black. Harper checked his watch again, trying to regain any of the confidence he’d felt only moments before. He had faith in Mitchell’s abilities… but he’d had faith in all of his top players, and two of them had failed to make the grade. Was Mitchell up to the task?

Nineteen minutes on the outside, and he’d have his answer.

Or you won’t. Maybe she doesn’t call in. Maybe Croft steps out in front of you in two minutes, and you get your shot after all… Unless Croft shoots first.

The thought was unsettling. It wasn’t like him to doubt himself so. Croft couldn’t see in the dark, she wasn’t faster than him. This wasn’t over, not even close. If Mitchell didn’t get her, Harper would. He clenched his teeth against the cold, suffocating blackness and started counting down.

* * *

Mitchell had been waiting at the vertical well, near the dig’s north end. She’d found a crack in the wall to slide into, and could hear every sound that the Blue Labyrinth had to offer, coiling up through the rounded hole—the calls of the cave animals, the small storms of moving bats. Beneath that she could hear the steady whisper and tick of a billion insects and spiders, crickets and lice.

The sound of Hux dying—the shots, his furious scream, the snap of bones—had whirled through the well like a dark, lovely song, brutal and brief. The tune told her where Croft was, and gave her some ideas about where she might go next.

She heard Sergei come up from the lower tunnel to pursue Croft, his light, clumsy steps shuffling quickly away from Mitchell’s position. If Croft believed that her enemies were focused on the top tunnels, she would use the maze. It was possible she’d go all the way to the lakes at the bottom, bypass the tunnels completely, but Mitchell thought not. Too far to climb.

She checked her watch and then edged into the well, stepping carefully on the rim of rocks. Some thoughtful engineer or tunnel mapper had installed a thin strip of bright orange netting between the first few openings going down the eastern wall, the stiff nylon web about three meters long. The well itself dropped fifteen meters through staggered layers of tunnels, the lowest too deep for her light to penetrate. If she fell, she would die. Her heart beat very slightly faster. This was exhilarating.

Mitchell started climbing down. The labyrinth south of her was a mess, but Croft was a caver and not afraid of tunnels. To get to the surface, though, there were only a few places where she would have access to the climb. Mitchell had time to get there first.

She’d reached the bottom of the net when Sergei started talking. She heard his footsteps overhead even as his voice sizzled in her ear. Harper responded, and she listened to their conversation as she lowered herself down, her boots scraping on the gritting rocks. Croft was still south, it seemed. There was a ledge only a meter beneath her feet.

She let go of the web and dropped, landing easily. There was a low, flat passage that opened off from the ledge, a crawl that sloped down to a tunnel. She was at the top of the maze.

She called in, requesting silence so that she could concentrate. As soon as Harper acknowledged, she pushed into the dark crack, pulling herself forward on her stomach. She was crouching into a narrow tunnel only a moment later.

Mitchell heard chirps in the passage south, the small rasps of sound that came from the screaming cave animals. She only went a few steps before she saw one, scuttling into the light of her lamp, climbing on the wall not far from the bumpy ceiling. She had to smile, remembering Sergei’s anxiety about them. It was a lizard, white, blind, delicate-looking.

The lizard—salamander?—darted closer. She could see its teeth, small triangles of bone tight behind lips so pale they were almost clear. The animal seemed to glow in the low, dirty light of her helmet’s lamp. There were small dirty pits where its eyes should have been. The thing flicked its wire-thin tail out into the air and chirped again, tipping its head.

Mitchell unsheathed her new Interceptor, fascinated. Would it attack her? Was its blood red? She waited… But the creature chirped once more and then turned and darted back into the dark, running in that sliding symmetrical way that lizards moved.

Neat. She wondered if they were eating what was left of Hux and Ace. The cave was uncomfortable, cold, but interesting. Lethal.

To the north were the maze’s connections to the upper chambers. Mitchell crouched her way forward, knife in hand, boots sliding over the mucky, shitty rocks. If Croft came into the maze, she’d be headed this way. Mitchell had asked for twenty minutes but thought she might take an extension, depending on Croft’s movements. Harper would forgive the transgression, but only if it paid off. He generally ran a tight ship, but he wanted Croft dead as much as he’d ever wanted anything. Croft had killed soldiers he had personally trained, and now two of his top players in one-on-one. He wanted revenge. His pride was in play.

Mitchell wasn’t troubled by such considerations. She was only pleased by the opportunity to meet with a peer and compare skills. If she got a chance to use any of her blades, Croft would fall. Harper would reward her, but the true reward was in the act itself. To kill someone was to remove them from existence. A shot to the head and all of their thoughts and dreams and potential would snuff out like a candle. With a blade, you could actually watch the flame flicker and die; you could savor that moment of transition as the target’s life spilled away, as the hope left their eyes. Mitchell had killed soldiers and civilians, strongmen and college professors, she’d seen fury, tears, disbelief, but at the very end, they always wore the same look: recognition.

She looked forward to seeing it in Lara Croft’s eyes, that awareness that her brief, powerful life was over, that Mitchell had taken it.

* * *

Miguel woke and felt a gentle pressure against his leg. He’d been half dreaming that he was flying over a bleak desert, wide and empty and endless, but Jonah’s knee bumped him again, and everything came back in a rush.

His whole body hurt. He opened his eyes, wincing at the pain in his wrists, his shoulders. Jonah was sitting next to him, his dark gaze moving between the guards. Reddy was pacing near the cenote, Smith was slumped on the fender of one of the trucks.

Miguel rocked himself awkwardly back into a sitting position. He still felt numb, like his brain had been punched out, but better than before.

“So, here’s the plan,” Jonah said, his voice soft. “I’m going to cut you loose, but keep your hands behind your back like you’re still cuffed. One of them’s going to come over to check on us pretty soon. When he does, I’m going to move, fast. Be ready. You only need to run, straight for the jungle. Keep low and don’t stop, even if they tell you to. There’s a shotgun in a banyan tree a few yards into the growth, directly southeast. Make sure you’re clear before you go looking for it.”

Miguel’s heart was pounding. “What are you going to do?”

Jonah shifted, leaning in slightly. A small, thin blade slid against his left wrist. There was a tug and then his hand was free, the plastic cuffs hanging off his right.

“I’m leaving that open-ended, but I’ll get a gun, hopefully,” Jonah said. “Whatever happens, shots are gonna be fired. You just concentrate on making it to cover.”

“Aren’t you scared?”

“Sure,” Jonah said. “Who wouldn’t be? Keep low, okay?”

Reddy clapped his hand to his helmet suddenly, tensing. “Yeah, copy. We’re—what?”

There was a long pause, and then they could only hear Reddy’s part of the conversation, terse acknowledgements. The burly man started to pace again as he listened, then turned and snapped at Smith.

“Put your helmet on!”

The kid scrambled, almost falling off the truck in his haste to comply.

“Copy,” Reddy said into his mic, then covered it to yell at Smith, his agitation coming out in a lash.

“Did you catch any of that? Why the fuck aren’t you wearing your helmet? This is a live fucking op!”

“What’d he say? Was that Sergei?” Smith asked.

Reddy shook his head, disgusted. “You’re too dumb to be embarrassed, aren’t you? Get out the tape. The commander wants the insurance secured. The team’s falling back.”

“What happened?”

“Just do it,” Reddy said, unclipping the radio from his belt. “And use a whole fucking roll.”

Smith went to rummage through a bag on the ground.

“Koboshi, come in. We’ve got casualties here. Commander wants everyone at the dig, ASAP. Lock down the plane. Bring the pilot, too.”

“Copy that,” crackled a voice from the radio.

Casualties? Not Lara, or Reddy would have said so. And the commander wouldn’t be calling in the rest of his team, or ordering the guards to strap him and Jonah down if they’d caught her.

Smith was cautiously approaching, a thick roll of duct tape around his wrist, a few long strips hanging from his sleeve. Miguel had thought he’d been bounced around too much tonight to ramp up to terror again, but the killing machine aimed at his face was doing the trick. Knowing that Jonah was about to act slid him right up to the edge of panic. Reddy was stalking over to another equipment bag, scowling, but keeping an eye on Smith’s approach, his own gun in his hand.

What if I freeze? What if I just freeze?

“What’s happening?” Jonah asked, when Smith reached them. “Did something happen?” He sounded nervous and he leaned back, using his massive frame to hide his hands.

“Shut up,” Smith said, brow lowering. “I’m going to tape over the cuffs. Try anything and I’ll put a bullet in you.”

Miguel kept his eyes on Reddy. The man was armed and watching—he clearly didn’t think much of Smith—but he was also trying to look through the bag at his feet. Smith stepped around Jonah.

Jonah shifted and rose to his feet so quickly that for a beat Miguel was afraid he had frozen, but in fact time had somehow slowed—Miguel could see that Reddy’s gaze had dropped to the equipment bag and he was only just looking up, even as Jonah shifted himself with a single step and went in tight behind Smith, wrapping around the blond guard like a shawl. His giant hand covered Smith’s, and he swung the semi toward Reddy through sheer physical force, using the blond to shield himself—

Go, go!

Miguel pushed off the ground and flew to the trees, faster than he’d run since childhood. The semis were exchanging rapid fire, two-three-one shots. The dark jungle pounded closer; someone was shouting but he didn’t stop.

The dark dropped in fast away from the cleared area, Trinity’s lights quickly strained to nothing by the swerving trees. With the canopy blocking the sky, it was too dark to keep running. Miguel tried anyway, but a dead tree or a rock or something big and solid had other ideas. He tripped and went sprawling, and when he took a breath, he finally heard the words still being shouted.

“It’s okay, you can come back! Miguel!”

Jonah?

Miguel sat up, turning toward the faint light and the sound of Jonah’s voice, shaking slightly.

“Miguel! You all right?”

“Yeah!” Miguel got to his feet, a little surprised to find that except for a scraped knee, he was unharmed. “Yeah, I’m coming!”

He walked back toward the clearing, feeling a little shocked by how quickly everything had changed. Mama would say they had God on their side. But then, Mama also said that if you spit on a Sunday, a baby got sick.

When he stepped back into the light he saw that Jonah held Smith’s gun, and was taking Reddy’s off of him. Both men were dead—Reddy had collapsed over the bag, bleeding out on whatever had been so important that he’d looked away. Smith had taken fire from Reddy’s gun, three rounds to the chest. He’d died with a shocked expression, wide eyes staring at the wheeling stars.

Miguel was glad they were dead. He didn’t know if that made him a bad person but they’d tied him up and threatened him, they’d laughed about Lara being dead. Fuck these guys.

“You okay?” Jonah asked again, walking over to meet him.

“Yeah. Well, I scraped my knee.” The words were out before he considered how ridiculous they sounded.

Jonah didn’t laugh at him. “There’s some antiseptic stuff in my bag.”

“What happens now?” Miguel asked.

“Seems like reinforcements are coming,” Jonah said. “I’m going to try and stop them.”

“What should I do?” So far, he had successfully run when told. His knee stung. Not technically true.

“You’re not obligated to do anything,” Jonah said. “All things considered, I wouldn’t blame you for breaking our agreement… Although when Lara gets out, we’ll still need a pilot. I hope you’ll stick with us. But I’ve got to deal with these people coming. You can hide and wait until this is over, or take a truck back to the strip. It’s your choice.”

“Or I could help you,” Miguel said.

Jonah nodded, a look of relief in his eyes. “Yeah, that would be my pick, but no pressure.”

Miguel could drive back to his plane and fly away, file this whole thing under “regrets” and go back to giving tours. Except he’d be turning his back on the man who’d just saved his life, and then given him an out for the rest of the fight, against villains so obvious they might as well have mustaches to twirl. Trinity had sent trained killers after a bright young woman who was trying to stop some kind of tragedy. He still didn’t know what to think about the resurrected god thing, but he knew how he would feel about himself if he walked away from them.

“I’m in,” he said. “This is all totally insane, though, can I just say that?”

Jonah nodded. He was looking around, marking things with a careful gaze. “That’s the truth. You ever fired a semi before?”

“Long time ago, but I remember the basics.”

Jonah handed him Reddy’s heavy gun, carefully. “Good, because I barely know them myself. I emptied the chamber but it’s loaded.”

Miguel checked anyway. He remembered that much, at least, and to keep the barrel pointed at the ground or the sky. “Okay. So what’s the plan?”

Jonah outlined his idea, and Miguel listened, and started nodding along. Why not? It was no crazier than anything else that had happened since they’d set down in Colombia. Listening to Jonah’s plan, he felt a little bit like his much younger self, back when he’d been running peppers. Wide awake, fully alive. Gone was the cocky, youthful faith in his immortality, but it had been replaced by a feeling that he’d picked the right side to be on.

Jonah went to get the stuff he’d stashed in the tree, tossing a tube of bacitracin to Miguel when he got back.

“You can never be too careful,” he said. At the big man’s insistence, Miguel stopped what he was doing to tend to his knee, and then they set to work.

* * *

Lara kept to the top of the maze for as long as she could, but finally had to drop down a level; it was that or climb back up, but she was hopeful. As she’d expected, the Trinity site mappers had marked the passages when they’d passed through: Xs for dead ends and drops, a Y shape if the passage connected to others, arrows pointing up and down. Someone had made an effort to color code, red and yellow and blue, but it seemed they’d run out of paint or patience. The drippy marks were often all the same color.

The tunnel she climbed down to was wide and low and thick with bat guano. She crept through the muck, bow in hand as soon as she heard the first chirps. She had her first run-in with the salamanders only a moment later, a trio of the pale animals appearing from a narrow crack in the stone on the passage’s west side, near the floor. They bleated at her, edging closer when she tried to ignore them.

She didn’t dare yell but she tapped her foot, and when one of them opened its toothy mouth to scream at her, she put an arrow into its throat. The other two disappeared back into the crack when she went to retrieve the shaft. She wiped it on her pants leg. If they were particularly scent-oriented, perhaps the smell of their own blood would act as a deterrent… although she didn’t really know. They were unique. She didn’t want to interact with them at all, or kill any more of them than absolutely necessary; they weren’t deadly. Trinity had done enough to disrupt the cave system, blowing holes, surely chasing out colonies of bats, contaminating a contained environment. Perhaps they hadn’t recorded the salamanders because there hadn’t been so many before, or the animals had never had to come so high. Who knew how their population had been affected by Trinity’s negligence?

She nocked the arrow again. Didn’t mean she was going to let them eat her or chirp themselves up into an attack.

She headed south at a Y passage, making her mark near the floor—if someone was fool enough to follow her, she wouldn’t make it easy for them—trying to estimate where she was in relation to the rooms overhead, the caverns below, and to the cenote’s opening. She stopped and checked her compass and then closed her eyes, trying to remember Marin’s maps. The center of the maze was a knot with several largish chambers; past that, she only remembered that the northernmost tunnels veered east before curving back toward the cenote. They’d looked like dead ends on his map, but one of them had to open up to that chamber at the beginning. Just because Trinity hadn’t climbed it didn’t mean it wasn’t possible.

Fine, but what if it’s some piddling crack two levels down that leads to that chamber? Something you’ve already overshot? How long are you willing to spend crawling around down here looking for the magic tunnel? You don’t have time for any of this.

No, I don’t have time. And?

If she could walk a straight line from where she was to the drop site, she’d be back in ten minutes. Through the top tunnels, about half an hour.

But that’s walking, and I’m going to run. No charges down here, no soldiers. If I’m not looking up a pitch in half an hour, I climb back up and take my chances with the killers.

The man who’d been waiting for her in the puzzle chamber had been right about that much: she had things to do. Charging into an ambush was last ditch; she’d try to find the climb first, but she wasn’t going to just wander around if she couldn’t.

And you’re also not going to throw caution to the wind. It’s not either/or. Work the problem in front of you before worrying about the next one. That was Roth talking. As usual, he was right.

She had to duck for a bit to get through a narrow spot, but the going was mostly easy—carved passages of stone, worn smooth by water, and chunky holes where the walls had been ripped out in more recent floods. Deep cracks opened into chambers of strange formations, thousands of years of chemical reaction—water dripping through the limestone, creating weak acids that could hollow out mountains and fill them with marvels, crystal chambers, vast pillars, echoing pits. It was no wonder so many indigenous cultures believed that caves were sacred places, or that the Maya travelers had chosen to use up so much of their precious color here.

She reached another marked tunnel that opened off the passage she was in, but there was a symbol she hadn’t seen before on the wall next to it: a blue circle. A well? She thought she was west of the one where she’d lured the Trinity killer to his death, but she wasn’t certain.

The passage was rocky, the floor uneven and sloping slightly upwards, curving west, but it wasn’t especially tight. She left her mark and then started up.

She moved quickly over the rocks, steadying herself against the wall. The passage was drier than the one she left below, more rock than dirt. She hit a curve a few meters in, and knew from the sound of her breathing and the feel of the air that it opened ahead.

Lara stepped up into a small room, two meters tall at its highest, barely wide enough for her to turn with her arms outstretched. A dead end, except there was a small painting on a smooth surface of the wall, bright lines of blue paint next to a directional compass.

A circle means a dig room. She leaned in to study the markings, not sure what she was looking at. Short lines of blue paint in seemingly random columns. She counted them. Thirteen lines, spaced out over five columns. The Maya believed that there were thirteen heavens, it was a holy number… But why the groupings? Three, one, two, four, three. She leaned closer, squinting. There were shadows between the marks, thin blurs… Had there been more lines originally?

Lara took a picture, then turned and hurried back down to the tunnel, turning north again. Ahead somewhere, a salamander started screaming, its cry taken up by two, three more of them before the sounds died away. She could hear bats moving, faintly, a hollow rustle of sound that stretched and spun before fading back to silence.

She reached another Y passage with an arrow pointing down and passed it by. After a long slog through a winding corridor infested with tiny white spiders, she was starting to think about going back when the passage opened up, presenting her with three choices. One was a dead end; both of the others had the Y marking, tunnels that connected to others. There were no arrows, and red was the only color used.

Lara looked at her compass and chose. She made her mark, and kept moving, deeper into the maze.

* * *

Sergei had just made it back to the small, crap-filled chamber to which he’d been assigned when he thought he heard shots behind him, outside—but he also heard a rush of sound like an oncoming wave, and then a big fucking bunch of bats streamed out of the passage that led down to the maze, whirling frantically through the room and squeaking like rodents, their leathery wings flapping in his face. Sergei hunched in the tiny dark chamber and waited it out, purely miserable. He was cold, he had shit all over his gear and he was still angry that Croft had slipped away from him. How foolish he’d felt as the minutes ticked past and he slowly realized that he was alone and watching an empty room. He hoped Mitchell would get her and cut her up good.

But quickly, please God. He only wanted to get out. He’d had a bare moment of reprieve talking to Reddy, standing at the mouth of the tunnel in the warmer air. It had still been horribly dark, the chamber beneath the drop overhung by the rim of the opening, but he’d been able to see starlight pouring down from the round hole high overhead, shining down on living green trees not twenty meters in front of him. Unfortunately, there had only been so much to say, and then he’d had to turn his back and return to this cold, stinking pit.

When the last of the flying rats had whisked out, he tapped his radio. “Reddy, this is Sergei, do you copy? Did I hear shots?”

Nothing.

Sergei tried again. “Commander, message relayed, in position. Do you copy?”

A crackle of static and a buzz.

That’s just fucking great. It was reassuring to know that if anything else went disastrously wrong, they were all cut off from one another. He’d known this already, but the confirmation made him feel angrier, and he far preferred anger to dread. Maybe one of the hostages had tried to escape, and had been filled full of holes. Good.

Three passages led out of the room he was in—the tunnel south to the upper levels of the site, the tunnel north, back to the drop and the living world, the real world, and the passage that opened west over the maze. It was marked with a red X. Sergei moved over to check it out, wincing at the crunch of bugs beneath his boots, the sharp reek of bat piss.

He had to duck to get into the passageway. The rough rocks ran only a few meters before they tipped down into a slide, too steep to get down without a rope. Sergei shined his flashlight down the chute of rock, and caught his breath—the passage opened up about two meters down into a darkness so deep that his beam couldn’t find the bottom of it. The void was framed by dirty rocks and black holes on all sides, descending as far as he could see.

As he gazed down at the abyss, he heard the far screams of the demons, the sounds curling up like smoke.

“Fuck,” he murmured, and heard it whisper down through the open space, into the black.

Sergei swallowed. He imagined the things down there looking up as the tendrils of alien sound filtered down to them, imagined them reaching up from the bottomless pit, pale and clawed, worming through the tight rocks like eels, stretching long bodies over the gaps in the passage to find the source of the strange noise. To find him.

Nope. No thank you. He quickly backed out of the tunnel. Harper thought that the target might come up from there? It was an actual hellhole.

If she came up, if anything came up, he would hear it, though. And he had the advantage, a clear line of sight into the depths; he couldn’t miss if he fired down the chute.

Or you could stay out of there entirely and just kill anything that comes out.

Not the worst idea. He looked around for a place to lean or sit in the chamber that wasn’t awful, but there was nothing. Vermin crawled across the shitty floor, the rocks were covered in slime and crap. There were a dozen bats still climbing around on the ceiling. One of them dropped suddenly and flitted away north, to the open night sky, to freedom.

Sergei resisted the urge to shoot it. Fucking bat.

He squatted in the nasty dark and waited.

* * *

Lara didn’t know the hole was there until she stepped into it.

She had tried to keep to the upper layers of the maze, heading progressively north, and had taken a rough, rocky passage that sloped down a bit. A curve near the bottom was puddled with thick, wet mud, loose rocks poking up from the accumulation. She couldn’t quite step over the slick jumble but there was a flat bit of stone sticking up from the middle that she could reach.

She steadied herself against the wall and stepped forward, pushing down on the stone with her boot. Solid. She shifted her weight forward—

—and the rock started to sink, fast.

Lara pushed off of the stone and dove as far forward as she could, landing on the hard rocks at the other side of the slick and scrambling ahead. Her stepping stone and a half-meter chunk of packed mud dropped away into the dark. A small chorus of chirps came up from below.

She looked into the new hole. Her headlamp revealed a narrow pit of jagged walls, riddled with thin cracks, a dead end at three meters. A few salamanders had their strange heads sticking out of the cracks lower down, chirping at the fallen rock and its crust of mud at the bottom.

The hole was just wide enough for her to have fallen in and been shredded on the way down. She turned away, her chest tight at the reminder of how easily she could die down here and what that would mean for Trinity’s aims…

Don’t. One problem at a time. Lara moved ahead, forcing her thoughts back to her escape. She’d be getting to where the labyrinth curved east soon, under and around the north end of the site. Even if Trinity hadn’t marked the passage that led back to the surface, the bats at this end of the maze had to get out somewhere, and they generally left behind plenty of evidence that they’d come through. Not necessarily passages she could use, but it would cut down on exploring dead ends.

She was midway down a short passage between two narrow chambers when she found the dead salamander. It had been gutted, a long, clean slice curving across its belly and off one side, pale, glistening entrails seeping from the line. A few roaches crawled over the white flesh like disease.

Freshly killed, by a blade. Mitchell? The Russian had said she had a new knife, and implied that she might prefer using it to a pistol. Lara wondered if Mitchell was the cool-eyed blond in Mexico who’d been after Marin. Trinity wasn’t big on recruiting women as soldiers, they tended to stand out.

Doesn’t matter, and don’t form any expectations. Open your senses. Work with reality. Be aware.

Lara clicked off her headlamp and stood in the dark, turning her head to listen to either end of the passage she was in. She heard the soft backdrop of whispers, distant movement, echoing chambers of ticking insects, dripping water. Over the miasma of bat-related smells, the thin metal tint of the salamander’s blood, and her own sweat. The air was cold and still and perfectly lightless. She had no feeling that there was anyone else close by, but her senses could only tell her so much.

They didn’t try to hide the salamander. Did they want her to know they were down here, or were they just passing through, and the creature had gotten too close? The kill was recent or there would be more insects, but that didn’t help much. Whoever it was could be anywhere—a level up or down, crouched ahead in a tunnel. Perhaps the killer had waited a meter inside one of the dead ends she’d passed by, and was coming up behind her even now.

You can’t know, give it up. You can go back, go up, or move forward.

The well she’d been planning to drop into up top could be no more than a hundred meters west, and perhaps a bit behind her. If she wanted to go up, that was probably her closest option. Which will put you back into the exact situation you were trying to get away from: walking into an ambush. At least down here you might be able to get around them. And there’s more than one direction to run if you can’t.

Well, maybe, depending on what the salamander-killer was planning. Not all of the passages were narrow, and some of the branch chambers were meters across, filled with dead ends and alcoves, lots of places to hide.

Lara unclipped the small LED and checked the compass and her watch. She’d made good time up to here, but it was back to stop-and-start, which she should have been doing anyway. She tucked the light into her sock once again, resigned to ducking for the rest of her walk. Even that bare glow at her feet was more than she liked, but she couldn’t go blind in the maze, and she could cover the light in a second with a finger. She’d be ducking, anyway.

With the bow or the Remington in hand? She’d prefer the bow—less chance of telegraphing her location, causing a cave-in, or being hit by her own shot—but as competent an archer as she was, the gun was the better choice. If she had to run, it was a lot easier to blast at a pursuer than to stop, nock and draw.

On the other hand. Muzzle flash would strobe in the blackness. Firing would put a target on the shooter, whether it was Trinity or her pulling the trigger.

This is your life now, considering the best way to kill people.

No. The best way to survive. The only way. If I die in this labyrinth, who’s going to stop Dominguez?

The thought she didn’t want to have, that made the dread flush up from her belly in a wave. Lara took a slow breath, turning the volume on her thoughts down to zero. She moved ahead, through a small chamber with clear puddled water on the floor and then into a large, slightly tilted room with a number of passages leading out. She examined them quickly by the light of her shaded torch. There were a half-dozen openings, high and low, mucky and slightly less mucky. Two of the passages weren’t marked, the rest had arrows and letters. The ones that the bats clearly used the most were an opening due west, marked with a down arrow, and two of the north-facing entries, both marked as connecting passages.

She covered the light, considering. She didn’t want to go down, although it was entirely possible that the passage to the climb out was another level beneath her, or two, or five. Level wasn’t even the right word; it implied some kind of order. The labyrinth was honeycombed with passages, cracks and wells and chambers.

And you can rule out the most likely before you start second-guessing.

She quickly examined the stones and muck at her feet, looking for signs that someone had walked through, but it was too rocky and wet. She turned off the light, back to the bare glow of the LED, and moved quietly across the chamber, stopping to mark the tunnel on the left before easing into it. A salamander cried somewhere behind her and she waited for the echoes to die before she continued. The passage opened up ahead of her. She couldn’t see it in the scant light but she could hear it in the air, the way the salamander’s distant call curved back at her.

Lara crept to where the rocks opened up, waited for a full minute, listening, and then crouched into the wider space, stepping carefully, lightly—

A whisper of movement, a press of air. Someone was stepping up behind her from the right, fast.

Lara didn’t think. She dropped the Remington and brought her hands up, finding an extended limb just centimeters over her head. She grabbed the arm and twisted it, pulling it in as she stood. She heaved the assailant up and over her shoulder, throwing as hard as she could.

The attacker let out a grunt when they hit—woman—but Lara heard her coming back up, the shift of cloth, another soft grunt of exertion.

Lara reached for where the Remington should have been and came up empty. No time! She turned and ran back through the passage in a crouch, unslinging her bow. She heard steps behind her.

She dove into the tilted room and rolled, grabbed an arrow, turning, drawing, letting it go low through the middle of the passage, a wishful shot, another arrow already in hand as she sidled backwards and up the gentle slope.

Bam-bam!

The shots whizzed past her and Lara targeted the muzzle flash, a strobe of white light that outlined the shooter for an instant. Lara marked her and pulled and released, grabbed another arrow, dodged farther right.

She didn’t hear the arrow land but she heard the woman gasp, and step back, heard the arrow clatter to the ground somewhere between them a beat later—and then she went entirely silent. She didn’t fall, or move, or breathe.

The woman—it could only be Mitchell, and from the flash Lara had caught, she was definitely the blonde from Mexico—was standing in the dark less than five meters from Lara, standing and perhaps bleeding with a gun in her hand, waiting for Lara to make a single sound.

Lara had an arrow nocked, but didn’t dare pull back. She didn’t dare breathe.

* * *

Mitchell stood in the cold black, listening, her head tilted awkwardly. The arrow had poked a neat hole through the cartilage of her left ear, just above her ear canal, and buried itself in the foam padding at the back of her tactical helmet. She’d jerked the projectile free and tossed it toward Lara, sidestepping when it hit the floor, but now she had to keep her head tipped over her shoulder so that the blood wouldn’t fall to the rocks. Blood had gotten into her ear canal, and she waited impatiently for the blockage to drain.

Croft was still in the room, and probably four or five meters roughly southeast of her. The woman was also holding still, not a shift, not a breath. If Mitchell fired and missed, Croft’s next arrow probably wouldn’t. And if Mitchell made too much noise, Croft might whip off another shot like the one that had pierced Mitchell’s ear. Mitchell had leapt to the side when she’d seen the bow up, managed not to take the arrow in her eye, but barely.

You won’t win this game, this one’s mine. Croft was good. Mitchell had barely heard her approach and couldn’t hear her at all now—the blood bubbling in her ear wasn’t helping—but Mitchell had learned how to play statue at a very early age, and was an expert in the craft. Croft would move first, she would give herself away and then she would be dead.

Croft was flawed. She hadn’t detected Mitchell waiting just inside the tunnel’s opening. She’d heard the knife coming and responded as a trained fighter. Stupid of her to drop her gun in the dark… But then, Mitchell had been thrown flat on her back, her perfectly executed kill move thwarted, so mistakes had been made all around.

Not a mistake. She’d left a calling card in plain sight, inviting Croft to play. She could have ended this talented creature with a finger pull, but had chosen to engage differently. And this was infinitely more satisfying—better than a shooting, richer than Croft’s blood, a true test of ability. Of control. Whoever got distracted first would lose, and—

The radio in her helmet beeped, and a broken transmission spilled out, Harper’s voice crackling into her right ear.

Mitchell dove as the arrow pinged off the top of her helmet, slamming it against her head.

She rolled and came up running, nine, ten meters before the wall, dead end to the south. She ran full tilt, didn’t hit her lamp until she knew she was close, pointing the CZ at Croft’s position and tracking with it—

Mitchell hit her light and fired at the same time, three rounds, the flare lighting up the empty chamber.

She turned to find her hole and hit the edge of it hard, before leaping inside, turning, raising the heavy gun.

She saw Croft disappearing back into the passage north, the one where she’d dropped her weapon. Mitchell fired but the round hit rock. Lara was already gone. The woman had run past her in the dark, using Mitchell’s movement and the echoes of the shots to cover the sound. They had to have passed within inches of one another.

Harper’s voice hissed into her ear again, the signal very slightly stronger.

“…report. Have… target? What’s your… copy?”

Mitchell took off the helmet and disabled the radio before putting it back on. She replayed the recent events, considering her own performance thus far. She’d foreseen Lara using the maze to get out, and had chosen the very same tunnel that Croft had, one of only a few routes that could bypass the site’s upper entrance.

And now she’s on it. Running. Did she have access to the same maps that they had? Would she know where she had to drop to get to the climb out?

Doesn’t matter. Mitchell knew what Croft was looking for. She’d follow and create another opportunity.

She stopped long enough to grab a small roll of wet-tape out of her kit and cover the hole in her ear, then worked the blood out of her ear canal with her finger, the roaring silence of the cave clear once more. She heard echoes floating down from above, a man’s voice, demanding a response. Harper.

Idiot. Where was he going? Why had he left his position? Hadn’t she asked for radio silence for at least twenty minutes? Had he not agreed to that? She knew the commander believed that Mitchell was entirely loyal to him, but that wasn’t the case at all. She had joined Trinity for the opportunities to fulfill her potential. Harper had recognized her abilities, but that was like recognizing the sky was blue; she didn’t owe him anything for noticing. Lately she’d been thinking about moving on to something else, bored by the competitive dynamic, the testosterone poisoning and ridiculous ideology flamed by Harper’s tireless ego. She’d played along for too long, perhaps.

We’ll see. If she survived, she would reassess. Resolving the unique relationship that she and Lara had entered into was her only interest at the moment.

Mitchell took out a flashlight, laid it across the CZ and pointed both at the ground, starting after Croft. If Harper interrupted her again, if anyone tried to interfere, she’d kill them.

* * *

The minutes stretched out. Harper waited. The air was getting harder to breathe as the dark tightened its grasp, squeezing him. Mitchell was taking her goddamn time.

Two shots spilled out of the passage to the maze in quick succession, close enough to make his ears ring. Mitchell! He tapped on his lamp and hurried to the opening.

The sudden cessation of the dark was such a relief that he followed the light further, to a split where the western branch tilted down. A handful of bats fluttered out into the pale light of his headlamp, disappearing into the dark behind him. He was sure the shots had come from below, and hurried on with his Glock up and ready, sidestepping down the rocky slope. Mitchell didn’t fire without a target in sight.

He came out of the sloping tunnel into a long, low chamber with four openings. He hesitated, sweeping the dark, rocky holes.

“Mitchell, report,” he snapped. She’d had enough goddamn time and he was close. If she hadn’t just killed Croft, they’d have a better chance if they—

There were three more shots, clearly coming from a thick crack on the western wall, a pause, and a fourth. No return fire.

He ran for the crack, boots pounding the mucky rocks. He squeezed inside, shuffling sideways into a tunnel that soon opened up enough for him to walk straight. He ducked beneath the dripping stone as he ran.

“Mitchell, report,” he said again. “Have you hit the target? What’s your position? Do you copy?”

The tunnel twisted and opened into a wide slope that curved south. He thought he heard running footsteps, a patter of sound, close enough that he expected to see the runner cross the slope in front of him. Where was it coming from?

“Mitchell!” he called, crouching his way forward. He saw an opening in the rocks, hidden by a bulge in the stone on the north side of the passageway, and hurried to it, boots skidding in the crap. He stumbled into the hole, following the tight, downward spiraling curve. “Mitchell! Answer me! What’s your—”

He was still following the curve and wasn’t watching his feet as closely as he should have been, the toe of his boot landing wrong on an angle.

Harper lost his balance and pitched forward, stumbling, and the tunnel opened up suddenly, straight down.

He fell, cracking his knee on a rock at the lip of the hole, dropping through the dark, crashing on the bare rocks two and a half meters below. His right ankle twisted painfully under his weight.

Harper staggered sideways, sweeping the Glock, taking in a flat, ugly chamber with tunnels branching off to every side. Empty, cold and dark. Crawling with bugs.

He looked up at the hole he’d fallen through, reaching for it, the barrel of the Glock almost touching the lowest rocks.

Something chirped. Harper turned, wincing at the pain in his ankle, and saw a big white lizard crawl out of a crack high in the wall, a few meters away. It chirped again, a raspy sound, like it was straining air through its many teeth, tilting its blind face to one side.

Harper targeted it but didn’t fire. It wasn’t big enough to be a threat, but he couldn’t stop himself from making a face, viscerally repelled by the hideous thing. It screeched at him, and he jumped at the unexpected change of pitch. It was a sound like someone stomping on a mating cat, or a bird being burned to death. He’d had plenty of time to make comparisons, sitting at the top of the labyrinth and listening to the creatures call, but he hadn’t realized how loud they were, or expected to be so disgusted by the reality. Corpse white and eyeless, bones visible beneath its gelid skin, the monster abruptly went silent, then turned and darted back into its hole.

Harper tapped his mic, spoke calmly. “Mitchell, report. I’m in the maze, do you copy?”

No answer. No footsteps, no shots. He had blundered into the tunnels, expecting to find Croft bleeding out and Mitchell standing over her at every single turn… And now he didn’t know where he was, let alone anyone else. The maps they had of the maze were incomplete, only the tunnels closest to the dig marked clearly.

It’s fine. You’re fine. Croft and Mitchell both got down here somehow, and you’re right behind them. Croft had to be heading for the climb that bypassed the main tunnels, and Sergei was waiting at the top of that climb. The rest of the team were coming in from the airstrip. She wouldn’t escape.

Assuming she’s even alive. Mitchell had fired six shots. It was hard to believe all of them had missed. But then, why didn’t she respond? He had to be close enough for Mitchell to have heard him. Even if the radios were useless, he’d been shouting. Or had Croft got hold of Mitchell’s gun somehow? No, that was impossible.

Maybe she decided not to answer. The thought made him uneasy. The problem with leading people like Mitchell, you couldn’t entirely depend on them to defer to authority when they were hunting, and there was no leash to yank. It was possible that Croft had taken her down with an arrow… He couldn’t actually imagine it, but he hadn’t thought Hux would go out on this one, either.

Harper hobbled closer to the wall, studying the marks that the dig team had left behind. The footsteps he’d heard had been just north of him, he was sure of it, possibly deeper than where he was. He picked the northernmost passage that was designated as connecting to another and started walking, ignoring the pain in his ankle and his knee. He had light and the Glock and a purpose—he was hunting, too— and it beat the shit out of waiting in the airless dark for his players to play.

I’m coming for you, now, he thought, steadying himself against the filthy rocks as he moved deeper into the winding, narrow passage. Even the not so distant scream from one of those repulsive monsters couldn’t dim his fierce resolve, or the persistent feeling of fatefulness. The endgame was in sight.

* * *

Setting up for the incoming Trinity thugs was a lot like staging a play. Props, lighting, costumes, directions for the actors. Jonah focused on the idea that he and Miguel were about to perform a scene, which was true… And it was also true that his plan could get both of them killed, but focusing on that wasn’t going to help. He’d been roped into a drama-society production back at high school—and now he remembered the advice the teacher had given him: Relax, stick to the script, don’t psych yourself out. Once the curtain goes up, you’ll be fine. All totally reasonable, but when they heard the approaching engine, Jonah’s throat went dry.

Since Miguel was shorter than Smith and clearly not blond, he was kneeling by the guards. The dead men were face down on the ground, hands tied behind their backs.

“Head down when they come in, wait until they’re all out of the vehicle, then left to right, until they fall down,” the pilot said. Was he reminding himself, or Jonah? He seemed less nervous than Jonah felt.

“Exactly,” Jonah said. He would be firing right to left. He wished he could use the shotgun, but it was the wrong prop; the guard’s fancy pistol would have to suffice. “And remember, one of them won’t be dressed in combat gear. Don’t shoot him, unless he pulls a weapon.”

Miguel nodded. “You really think this is going to work?”

“Yeah,” Jonah said. “They’re going to see what they expect to see, right?”

“Right,” Miguel said. “But what if one of them is actually paying attention when they pull up?”

Then we’re screwed. “They won’t,” Jonah said. The faint engine sound was getting louder.

“What if they start shooting right away?” Miguel asked. “Do we fall back to the jungle, or can you blow up their truck or something?”

“Blow up their truck?”

“Like, shoot the gas tank.”

“I don’t think that even works,” Jonah said. “And honestly, I’m not that great of a shot.”

Miguel turned to look at him, blinking his light eyes. “Didn’t you say you were ex-military?”

“I said I was in the army, but that was a long time ago,” Jonah said. “In New Zealand. And I was a cook.”

Miguel was starting to look sincerely worried. He picked at the Velcro strap to the vest beneath his shirt, fingers working nervously. “But with the guards, you were so… You took them out like a professional or something.”

Jonah almost told him the truth, that he’d been crazy lucky, but the engine was getting close and there was no time for another plan. The curtain was about to go up.

“This is going to work,” he said, recalling the pep talks from his drama teacher. “Clear your mind as much as you can—and if you can’t, that’s okay, too, just let yourself be in the moment and do what you know you’re capable of doing.”

“Okay,” Miguel said, and blew out a breath. “You’re right. We got this.”

A single headlamp rose and bumped over the crest of rock to the east, the engine squealing.

Jonah adjusted the uncomfortable helmet and turned his back to the incoming vehicle, standing half behind one of the trucks they’d moved so that the new arrivals would have to park behind them. He’d traded shirts with Reddy and tried to ignore the cold sticky spots under the protective vest. At least the holes weren’t obvious.

Miguel turned his head away as the rusting truck clattered into view, reaching down as if to adjust handcuffs. Smith’s helmet was big on him, and the pilot had slid it back to cover his hair. Jonah pointed the nine-millimeter, a Glock, at the back of Reddy’s head, listening to the badly maintained engine sputter to a stop.

Stick to the script. Jonah raised one hand up in a wave, still facing away. He stepped forward and to his left so that he was near parallel with Miguel, clearing them both to fire as soon as they turned. He’d never been good with guns but Lara had worked with him on it, dragging him to the range every now and again. He could hear her calmly reminding him to relax his eye, to visualize where the rounds were going to go, not to pull the trigger but to squeeze it gently.

The single headlight went out, and two doors creaked open, passenger then driver. The jungle was recovering from the noisy intrusion, nocturnal life again taking up its chorus.

A man with a slight lisp called out, “What’s the word, Reddy?”

Jonah pretended he hadn’t heard, listened to boots hitting the ground. Two men from the front, a third hopping down from the back.

“Who is that?” someone else called. “Sergei? You on guard duty?”

Footsteps, coming closer. Showtime.

Jonah nodded for Miguel’s benefit, then turned and sighted the target farthest right, a tall Asian man holding an equipment bag, a Kevlar vest hanging off his shoulder. The lamps they’d set up were perfectly placed.

The gun’s hair trigger spat out four rounds, all of them smacking into the man’s broad chest. He was dead before he fell, the bag jangling to the ground, and Jonah had moved to the next target, a short, olive-skinned man who was scrabbling for his holster. He wore a vest and was gray at the temples.

Miguel fired three times and someone shouted but Jonah only saw the man’s face contorting into a vicious mask as he grabbed his gun, only saw the exact place he wanted his own rounds to go. Jonah squeezed the trigger, and two ugly holes appeared in his forehead. The short man dropped.

“Stop! I’ll fucking kill him!”

Jonah saw that Miguel’s target, a burly young redhead with the broken nose and cauliflower ears of a boxer, had managed to survive getting shot—blood poured from his left shoulder in two places—and had jumped up into the back of the truck. He had grabbed another man, a pale, dark-haired guy in khakis who had his hands up and an expression of absolute terror on his otherwise nondescript face.

Their pilot. Red had a heavy silver semi pointed at the terrified guy’s head.

Jonah raised the Glock, squinting, finding Red’s twitching right eye. If he missed…

Get him to move.

“Why would I care if you shoot your own pilot?” Jonah called, and watched the kid’s dull eye churn, saw him decide to change tactics. Before Red had even started to swing his gun around, Jonah found the space between his own heartbeats and squeezed, a single round. The kid went down like a ton of bricks.

The pilot staggered forward, shrieking, hands as high as they could go. “Don’t kill me! Swear to God, I won’t ever work for these people again! It was contract work, I only did it for the money—”

“Be quiet,” Jonah said.

“—and I only ever moved people and equipment, I never saw anyone get killed or—”

Jonah pointed the gun at him. “Hush!”

The pilot shut up, his eyes wide and shocked. There was blood on the side of his face from Red. Jonah let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding, lowering the weapon. Miguel was okay, he was okay.

“What’s your name?” Jonah asked, walking toward the truck, pausing to look at the dead men on his way. He didn’t like killing, didn’t believe in it as a practice, but sometimes there was no other way.

You’ve killed more than your share, following Lara. The thought was an unhappy one, and he did his best to set it aside. Not the time.

The pilot hadn’t answered, and Jonah realized the man was still stuck on hush. Jonah pointed the gun at the ground, moving to the back of the truck.

“You can talk, man. Just stop yelling. What’s your name? I’m Jonah.” He looked at Red, another genius who hadn’t gotten around to putting on his Kevlar. Not that it would have changed anything. The round had punched through his right eye.

“Winters, Brian Winters.” He had bad teeth, pitted and yellowing.

“How long have you worked for Trinity?”

“Less than a year, and only a few times.” Winters lowered his hands slowly, keeping them in clear sight. “Ah, four times. It’s their plane, they just paid me to fly. I knew they were shady, what they were paying, but I never saw anything like this, I swear.”

Jonah thought he might be telling the truth. He glanced at Miguel, who gave a tiny shrug.

“If we let you go, what are you going to do?” Jonah asked.

Winters radiated sincerity. “Whatever you want.”

Good answer.

“Tell you what,” Jonah said. “Start walking back to the strip. If you stay on the road, you can get there in about four hours.”

“I could take one of these trucks,” Winters said hopefully.

“If I trusted you, that would be a possibility,” Jonah said. “But I don’t. No offense. I mean, I believe you’re sincere, and if Harper trusted you, he probably would have left you with the plane—but if I’m wrong, I can’t have you getting to a radio or those guns back at the compound. I guess you could hang out with us until we’re ready to leave, but there may be more shooting.”

“Okay, no, I’m good,” Winters said, nodding. “None taken, I mean. Thank you.”

He climbed down from the back of the truck and hurried away, looking back over his shoulder every other step, stumbling into a run by the time he’d reached the edge of the jungle. He was gone a minute later.

Miguel had stood up to watch the pilot run away, as Jonah walked back to join him. “Sucks to be that guy,” he said.

Jonah nodded. “Long walk.”

“I shot high,” Miguel said. “And then he was running, and I missed.”

“You did great. It all worked out.”

“It happened so fast.” Miguel shook his head, took a shaky breath—and then smiled. “I thought you said you weren’t much of a shot.”

“I’m usually not,” Jonah said. “Hanging out with Lara… I guess I’m getting better.”

Miguel’s smile faded. “Is that a good thing?”

Jonah didn’t have a ready answer. He would die—he had died—for Lara, and would do it again… but his loyalty and love for her couldn’t stretch to cover the people lost in the tsunami, and the idea that he was becoming a better killer didn’t sit well with him, not at all.

Miguel must have read something in his expression. “So, what next, my friend?” he asked.

Jonah sighed. “The hard part. We wait.”

* * *

Shots rolled out of the tunnels, from deep in the maze. Sergei counted six. He thought he heard shouting. Harper? The echoes distorted everything but it had sounded deep. A few dozen bats came up from the labyrinth and flew away toward the drop.

The fuck. Sergei took a few steps into the southern tunnel. “Commander?”

He waited. Nothing. He was at the edge of the great winding darkness, could feel the weight of its empty silence and the secret life that crawled through the black muddy holes. He couldn’t hear anything but the whisper of an echo, the scream of a lonely demon.

Sergei turned and started walking north, quickly, his body moving before he realized he’d decided. Koboshi, Byers, and Alanis were probably here by now. He would confirm, so that he’d have something to report when the commander and Mitchell came out. The Dozen were a tight outfit, orders were fixed, but Harper expected his A team to use their heads, to take the initiative when it came to keeping operations smooth. Confirming that everyone was standing by, that was the kind of thing that kept things smooth, was it not? That was what he told himself, and he was only hurrying because he had left his post and shouldn’t be away for long, not because there was anything creeping along behind him in the dark, silently reaching out with spindly claws to tap him on the shoulder.

The hairs on the back of his neck were standing on end and he didn’t look back, there was no reason to look back.

Sergei was more than halfway back to the drop when he heard what sounded like a truck’s engine, some mechanical noise from the world above. The sound was like music, and made the cold, ugly silence of the caverns behind him all the more horrid.

He stumbled forward, gasping—and then he heard the shots, ahead, on the surface.

Sergei froze, trying to count, but there were two nines firing: four and then a blur, four, five more?

Are they shooting the hostages?

There was one more shot… and then nothing.

“Reddy?” Sergei’s voice came out in a strangled whisper. “Reddy, come in.”

His own voice whispered back at him, and Sergei couldn’t stand it for another second. He spun around, the Springfield up, his lamp pushing the blackness back. There was nothing behind him but cold shitty rocks, dirt and bugs.

Reddy didn’t answer. Sergei tried again, and then open called. Nobody answered. There wasn’t even static, and he knew for a fact that he was close enough to get that much. He turned back toward the exit, but didn’t move.

There was no way the men up top would have killed their insurance without a valid reason. Harper would be furious. With the backup lost, if Croft got out, she’d be gone. The only valid reason therefore was if the hostages were shooting back.

Impossible. Even if they’d somehow gotten free and armed themselves, he would have heard more than two weapons firing. There were five Trinity men up there.

And two prisoners. You thought you heard shots earlier. What if that was the boyfriend and the pilot escaping, and what you just heard was the rest of the Dozen going down?

An unlikely scenario, but the night seemed full of them. Assuming the worst was a handy survival tactic.

Go closer, try again. At least you’ll be out of this fucking cave.

And if it’s true? If there are now enemies waiting at the drop? They’ll pick you off the second you step out of the tunnel.

As much as he desperately wanted to be out, he couldn’t risk it. Inside the dig, he was afraid of the creatures, of the dark, but those were feelings. Catching a bullet in the face was a reality, and far riskier than his imagination. Whatever the monsters were, they didn’t have guns.

Croft does, though. And a bow. God, how he wished he could just walk away from this. For a half-second he considered crawling out of the tunnel and into that small patch of underground rainforest. He could find some palms and hide, and just wait for everything to be over. He’d at least be able to see a sliver of sky…

And then you’ll walk away from this life forever, because no one will trust you and you won’t trust yourself. You’ll know that you were beaten, broken by your own fear. No more perfect shots.

Reluctantly, Sergei turned south again. Harper needed to know about the situation. He would go back to his post and keep trying to raise the commander, and wait, as ordered. If Croft made it to him, he would shoot to disable, not kill; if her friends had taken over they could use her to get out, but not if she was dead.

Sergei started walking. He told himself to hurry, but his body wouldn’t listen. Every step deeper was a reason to slow down.

* * *

Lara fished the LED out of her boot and scooped up the Remington on the run. She heard Mitchell come after her but the passage Lara was in widened and split almost immediately, widening into a chamber with multiple unmarked openings and a few marked connector passages. Lara ran for one on the west and slid inside, tapping off her lamp. Unfortunately she had to step around a curve and didn’t have the view she wanted of the chamber, but if Mitchell managed to find her, she would regret it.

Lara waited—and heard Mitchell run through, straight across and into one of the other tunnels.

Lara stuck her head out, saw the woman’s shaded light fading down one of the passages marked with down arrows.

Why that tunnel? She didn’t even look for prints.

Because she thinks she knows where I’m going. She thinks that I know where I’m going.

Follow or take a different route? The woman was deadly. Lara didn’t like the idea of trying to sneak up on her, but it might be a wise choice to take the offensive. And if she was right about Mitchell’s thinking, the other woman would lead her to the exit.

And, at any moment she can turn off her light, turn around and wait. A special skill for her, apparently. Lara had listened for a full minute before stepping into that passage, and hadn’t heard her until she’d stepped in with her knife. Their subsequent waiting game in the dark had been cut short by Mitchell’s radio, but before that, she might as well have been a ghost. If she set up another trap, there was no guarantee that Lara would sidestep it.

So what, then? Give up on the climb? Go back, go up? Or look for a different route?

There was a second passage marked with a down arrow, next to the opening Mitchell had gone through. If Mitchell was heading for the exit, that meant the route began below them somewhere. She could drop down, try to run parallel to Mitchell while she was still moving.

Go now, then. Her soft footsteps were still dwindling away.

Lara moved quickly into the new passage, a tight, lifeless channel of dark rock that sloped rather dramatically after a few meters. The air coming up didn’t smell good; it was wet and foul, but breathable.

She strapped on her gear and started down the slope, quickly having to drop into a near sitting position, edging forward on her hands and feet—

—and she heard footsteps behind her, out in the chamber. Careful, light—but heavier than Mitchell’s, by a fair amount. She listened as the steps passed through, hesitated, and then fell away. Was the stranger following Mitchell? She couldn’t be sure.

Two of them. That might complicate things.

And? It’s already complicated.

She had to turn to hop down a half-meter drop, noticing that the passage was starting to narrow. Looking ahead, she could see where it opened up again, over a level patch— but there was about a two-meter stretch that was going to be tight.

She scooted to where the rocks narrowed, sliding her feet in, twisting so that she could lower herself down. It was a test, fitting herself to the rocks, turning her hips and shoulders. There was a spot midway where she had to pull up so she could find solid footing, and that was when she heard the chirps in the tunnel beneath her—and felt a cold, wet something knocking against her calf, touching where her pants had been torn.

Lara kicked her leg and there were more chirps, faster. She couldn’t see past her own body, couldn’t see how many there were, but there were at least three.

She kicked her legs aggressively, pushing herself down.

One of the things shrieked and she used the sound to slam her boot into the tunnel wall, making vibrations. There was a patter of movement, and another shriek. She was almost through when something clamped onto the back of her thigh and bit down.

Lara ejected herself violently and crashed a meter to the rocky floor. The salamander hung on, whipping its body when she hit the ground, trying to tear away a mouthful, and a half-dozen around her darted in, half of them screaming, jaws open.

She rolled, pushing down hard on the biter, smashing it into the rocks, feeling its soft body give, its bite releasing. She snatched the knife from her belt as she came up and switched on her lamp, slashing at the closest, hissing as loudly as she dared.

The blade skidded across its teeth, unhinging the animal’s jaw in a mist of blood. She cut again, finding its throat. Before it fell she crouched forward and stabbed a second through its chest, still hissing.

There was a final half-hearted feint from one of them but then it dodged away, and the others did the same, falling back, but they didn’t scatter, or turn and run. They backed away slowly toward a shallow pool that took up the entire southern end of the chamber, crying in short, aggressive bursts.

Delicate shards of bone littered the shore. Roaches and white beetles skittered over small heaps of rotting fur. She saw movement in the pool, tiny flickers of white.

There were only two openings to the room, both on the north wall, neither marked. Lara backed toward them, placing her feet firmly, trying not to slip on the thin greasy layer of spoor or the insects feeding thereupon. She could feel blood welling out of the bite, trickling down the back of her leg. The salamanders stayed by the water, keeping between the intruder and their young. They had gone back to chirping.

Lara stopped and took a bandana out of her pack, tying it tightly around the stinging wound before examining her choices, keeping an eye on the salamanders. The tunnel on the right was impassable; two meters in, it narrowed to a crack about the width of her skull. The one on the left was thin but tall. At least she wouldn’t have to duck.

You’re in unmarked territory. You should climb back up now, go back. There are two people ahead of you already, that you know of, looking to block this exit. Even if you get past them, you’ll be climbing at the end of this. Vulnerable.

They’ll be looking to block every exit. And you’re vulnerable as long as they’re down here hunting you.

She wasn’t going to be able to sneak out of the cenote without having to kill anyone else, and was resigned to the fact, but operating in the dark zone of a cave made frontal assaults extremely difficult. Light was a necessity and sound carried. If she had more time, things would be different…

She was struck by the absurdity of the thought. If she had more time, so many things would be different. Every aspect of her life was defined by time—regretting the loss of it, racing against it.

You’re still headed out and you’re almost there. She didn’t let herself think about Jonah or Miguel, not yet, or that they were still long hours from the silver-crowned mountain they needed to find.

Lara turned off her headlamp and slid into the crack.

* * *

Mitchell had reached the branch that led to the climb out and was starting to believe that Croft had gone another way or circled back… But then the cave animals sent up a cry, south of her, their strange voices huffing with alarm. A new sound.

Mitchell considered. The target might be the cause of the uproar. It certainly wasn’t Harper. She could hear him behind her, descending the passage that led to the branch where she stood. He wasn’t as loud as Sergei could be, but she was aware of his presence, a heavy step here and there. Was he limping? Croft wouldn’t be able to miss him, either. Was the commander a liability to Mitchell, or a useful distraction? She hadn’t decided yet.

The newts or whatever they were continued to huff, sharp, angry cries. Wait or go see?

Go see.

Mitchell tapped on her lamp and looked at the south wall. There was a tunnel set high, a crawlspace that looked promising. She climbed into it and started up on her hands and knees. The rocks were cold and rough, the tunnel twisting but not long. It opened into a rock hole with another, smaller passage low to the ground, still south.

Mitchell crawled through. A low rock tapped her injured ear and bright sensation pulsed for a minute, whining and far away. She got her nine-mil up to wave through a nest of long-legged white spiders and dozens of them clambered over her face, tiny, panicked feet tickling her sweaty skin.

She crawled out into a room that had multiple unmarked passages, and quickly turned off her light, listening. The creatures had stopped screeching, but she could hear them chirping, ahead of her and to the right…

Light.

Mitchell felt a grin surface. Two o’clock, a narrow crack in the wall of the small room had lit up for only a second, a smudge of light there and gone—and she heard the soft scrape of fabric against the stone, bare meters away.

Too narrow for her to come out straight on. And she won’t hear me over the sound of her own movement.

Mitchell crept to the passage, holstering the CZ, taking out her karambit, palming the small, vicious blade. She had a winning idea, one that formed fully in her mind in the time it took her to crouch in the dark next to the crack.

Cut twice.

Croft kept her knife and her semi on a leather belt, one that she could slice through in an instant, if she cut in the right place. A hook and pull near the buckle, and Croft would lose everything—except her bow, and Mitchell could pop the string with a single flick on her way up. Croft would be disarmed, forced to run—or engage.

Mitchell listened to the careful passage, listened to Croft stop and wait for a moment before moving ahead. She watched in delighted anticipation as the tip of the target’s boot appeared at the opening of the crack, her blood singing. Now!

She swept in and up, curved blade finding the thinner leather near the front, parting the thick hide with a single strong pull. The other woman gasped as the blade pierced her skin lightly.

Mitchell carried the movement smoothly upwards, hooking with the blade. The string on the bow broke with a twang and Mitchell dodged back a step. Yes, she’s—

Croft brought the bow down and forward, stabbing Mitchell in the neck, knocking her backwards. The thin fiberglass tore through her skin and then she was choking, blood running down her throat.

The target charged out of the narrow crevice, swinging the bow wide. Mitchell ducked and then darted in, ready to slash on the follow-through, but Croft was still moving, incredibly fast.

She spun and brought the bow around again, smashing it into Mitchell’s shoulder, sending her to the ground. Mitchell rolled and came up coughing, air and blood spraying. She dropped the knife and went for the CZ—

—but Croft had reversed her swing and the bow smashed across her jaw, knocking her back. Croft jabbed with the bow again, powerfully driving it into the corner of Mitchell’s mouth. More blood, more shining pain, two teeth torn free and floating.

Mitchell grabbed the CZ and brought it up but her opponent had moved, was already back at the crack somehow, flowing like water. She dove inside as Mitchell fired, bright strobing flashes that told her the target was already out of sight.

Already back at her belt.

Mitchell’s head was spinning, she couldn’t breathe without choking. She fired at the crack and edged rapidly west to an unmarked hole in the wall.

Two rounds came back at her from the crevice, the roaring crash of a .45. The first hit the rocks an inch behind her, spraying her with splinters of stone. The second winged her hip, poked a searing hole across the top. Blood started to pour.

Mitchell staggered into the tunnel, choking, pointing the CZ at the opening as she backed away. She had to stop the bleeding. And she’d lost her karambit.

Perhaps you should stop inviting her to play, since you seem to keep losing.

Mitchell turned and hurried forward, stifling her cough, letting the broken teeth fall out in a rope of blood. Croft was ahead on this one, just as she’d had the advantage in the last interaction—or did, until Harper had stumbled in. At their next meeting, Mitchell would end the game. No more knives. She, too, had underestimated Croft. She wouldn’t repeat the mistake.

* * *

Harper heard the shots just as he reached the opening to the climb—a hole in the rocks over his head big enough to drive a truck through, leading up and up into the dark.

He heard Mitchell’s CZ and the heavier thunder of Croft’s gun, the shots echoing from behind him, back in the maze. Somewhere over his head a group of bats took flight, up and away.

Shit. He’d expected to find one or both of the women at the climb, and they were far behind him. Mitchell must have chased Croft off her route.

His radio crackled. “Commander… in… you copy?”

Sergei, at the top of the climb. His voice was low and anxious. He didn’t sound like he expected an answer.

Harper shined his flashlight up the long tunnel, considered how far back the women were. “This is Harper. I’m right under you, in the maze.”

“Commander?” The Russian’s voice gained a new urgency. The signal got sharper. “I heard shots.”

“Mitchell and Croft,” Harper said, shifting his weight. His ankle hurt, and his knee kept stiffening up. “They’re behind me somewhere. Coming this way, I think, unless it’s already over.”

“No, I heard firing above ground a few minutes ago, at the drop,” Sergei said. “And I can’t raise Reddy.”

“We’re too far in for contact,” Harper said.

“Yes, but I walked back into the tunnel,” Sergei said. “Far enough, he should have heard me.”

No. Can’t happen. Maiava was a big dumb flunky and the pilot wouldn’t say boo to a goose.

“I think you should take Croft alive,” Sergei continued. “If we have to negotiate—”

“That’s not the mission here,” Harper said, irritated by the suggestion. “Have you forgotten our objective? She’s on the run. The only thing we have to negotiate is the fastest way out, once she’s dead.”

He studied the walls of the overhead passage. He couldn’t get through here, not without a rope. The climb was impossible, a bottleneck about fifteen meters up. Unless Croft could hang like a bat, she wasn’t going to come this way either. A dead end.

“But if her friends have gotten loose, we may need to rethink our exit strategy.”

Sergei wasn’t wrong, although the idea that those two men had miraculously taken out half the team was too fantastic to invest in. Far more likely that the radios had finally crapped out.

“Do a recon, try to get a visual,” Harper said. “Then come back. Maintain radio silence until you hear from me unless you’ve got something to report. We’re going to have to come back up through the maze to get out, we may need a relay.” They had rope. He’d much rather climb than have to go back through those tunnels… But the maze hadn’t been all that difficult. Unnerving, maybe—the dark and the dreadful lizards and the stink—but not difficult.

“Copy, yes, sir,” Sergei said, almost eagerly.

Harper moved back to the passage he’d taken in, turning off his light, listening for movement. Croft might not know that the climb was impossible, she would come looking… Unless Mitchell had killed her already.

He imagined Croft bleeding, crawling through the dark, convinced that her salvation was in front of her. She would lurch out in front of him begging for her life and he would shoot her down, and leave her to the lizards.

And then maybe have Sergei bring that rope in, after all. He didn’t want to walk back through the creeping, whispering chambers. God only knew what diseases were breeding down here. And what if his batteries died? They hadn’t packed for an extended trip. Hux had been carrying spares but Hux was gone.

Killed by Croft.

His anger kept him warm, kept him breathing. He waited, willing Croft to him, praying that he was to be the instrument of her death.

* * *

Mitchell took off west, leaving a small trail of blood behind. Not a mortal injury—Lara was sure she’d only grazed her—but between that and the hole in her throat, she was out of the hunt, at least for the moment. Lara considered following, finishing the madwoman off—for who else but a psychopath would keep trying to stab her when they had a gun? But she was likely only minutes from the climb, and might have a clear shot at the exit.

Except for whoever else it was that you heard walking through. She pulled a new bowstring from her pack as she hurriedly crept down a western-veering passage, stopping at an alcove long enough to repair the broken weapon and her gear. She pulled the string over one end of the bow and put the other end in its grooves, then stepped through, holding the bow fast with her feet, curving it against her body and pushing it forward to hook the string at the top. The belt took a minute longer; she made four cuts through the leather, two on each side, and patched it together with carabiners. It hung lower than she liked but was good enough. Blood oozed from where the knife had sliced into her belly, but the cut wasn’t deep. She taped it anyway, wondering if Mitchell would come after her again.

Of course she’ll come after you. She’s a killer with a thing for knives and that was her second try. Trinity was an organization of psychopaths with funding. Dressing it up with devotion to some grand end result didn’t negate who they were, at their core.

People who kill indiscriminately? Who can shrug off the deaths they cause, rationalize killing their enemies?

She had a sudden vivid flash of that child clinging to the cross on top of the church, reaching for her, framed by the rushing water in the streets below. The look on that small face.

Don’t do this. Concentrate.

Lara stepped out of the alcove and started forward again. She hit a dead end at the next branch and had to backtrack, but the second opening she tried carried her north. The narrow passage went up, a gentle, steady incline, but the tunnel was winding and uneven. She had to crouch or crawl for most of it, and was starting to think of going back when she saw the end of the passage ahead of her, by the shaded light of the LED—the passage narrowed to a slot that opened up at the top, wide enough for her to climb out but barely. She put out her light and edged toward the opening.

It was quiet, but she got the sense that the opening on the other side of the hole was a big one—the press and quality of the air, the faint roar of echoing space.

Please let this be it. She’d come far enough, she was sure, to have reached the end of the maze. But was someone guarding it? She didn’t hear anything but wasn’t sure that she would, unless the watcher was quite close or actively moving.

Throw something.

Lara reached for her belt, for one of her grease pencils— and then grabbed a flare instead, pulling the cap off. If there was someone in the chamber, she’d get a clear shot at them. If there wasn’t, she’d be able to cover herself getting to whatever was next.

Lara struck the flare and tossed it.

Two shots blasted. The shooter was less than three meters down and close enough that she might have hit him with the burning stick.

The gun’s echoes faded and she heard movement, fast steps—and then two more shots were fired at the rocks in front of her, chips raining over her shoulders. A second later, another shot fired, the round off to her right a few meters—and then another shot, hitting above her position and farther east.

They must be aiming at openings in the wall. The lone shooter didn’t know where the flare had come from, but clearly, there were several options.

There were a few more quick steps. The shooter ducked into a passage beneath her and stopped. The hiss of the flare echoed at her but the gunman had gone still.

Lara raised her bow up into the opening, following it with a quick look when no one shot at it, taking in the glowing red well before ducking back down. If it was the climb she was looking for—and she feared that it was—she was out of luck. The walls of the passage overhead sloped inward, a long stretch that she wouldn’t be able to climb without spikes.

Past that, though? What if you can go in higher?

There were other openings from the maze, the shooter had been firing at them. She could climb to a higher passage, stay close to the well, and see if she could get past the tricky part. She didn’t want to go back into the maze, not this close to the way out.

The walls flickered red. The man below her held still but she imagined she could feel his tension. He didn’t know if she was perched on the wall, waiting for him to stick his head out, or if he could safely take a shot. He was stuck.

There was a passage close overhead, only a few meters up. It was bracketed by deep cracks, easy holds.

Lara stood, pointing the Remington toward the ground at the bottom of the chamber, watching the hissing red shadows closely as she slid out of the crevice. The flare had landed in a mud slick, but sputtered on. She stepped onto the lip of the passage and wedged her left hand into one of the cracks, keeping the gun trained on the opening below, pushing upward.

She had to glance away long enough to find her next step—and the shooter seemed to know it. She saw a narrow flash of dark, furious eyes behind the barrel of a Glock, and then two rounds were fired, both high. Lara fired back at him, missing him by centimeters as the man ducked into his tunnel.

Lara charged up the rock, firing again just before she reached the ledge of the next opening. She threw herself in. Another two rounds from the Glock smacked into the rocks over her head, useless, echoes from both weapons crashing through the tall chamber, lapping at her ringing ears.

There was a single passage south. Unless she wanted to try for another ledge, this was the next step.

“You can’t get out!” the man called up, his voice tight with barely contained fury and a note of glee. “There’s nowhere to run!”

Lara didn’t bother correcting him—he was certainly wrong on the second count—but she had to wonder at his rage. As though he hated her, personally. She’d killed two of his teammates, but they’d been trying to murder her. Did he not expect her to fight for her life? Did he think his derision was going to dishearten her? She was worried about Jonah, she was afraid she wouldn’t be able to stop the disasters she’d triggered, she was in a desperate hurry to look at her pictures and figure out how to get ahead of Trinity, and part of her own mind had become a kind of maze itself, of doubt, guilt, worry, and there were wells everywhere she turned. The arrogance of the man’s taunt meant less than nothing to her.

Fine, unless he gets on your tail. He wants you dead. Badly. She could still see his fiery eyes. Rasputin came to mind, and the name stuck in her head. He had the black eyes of a man burning inside, a man with a mission—but for all that, only a man.

Lara left Rasputin behind in the flickering red chamber and moved on, back into the maze.

* * *

Harper didn’t hear Croft leave but knew when she was gone, sensing that he was alone again. The flare sputtered and hissed, lighting the cavern with hellish shadows.

He was infuriated that she’d just walked up the wall in front of him. He’d only seen her for a blink but the way she’d looked down at him, her jaw firm, her eyes narrowed and unafraid as she fired… Who was this girl, to treat him so dismissively? She should be terrified. She should be pleading for her life!

He’d assumed that she would take the only tunnel leading to the climb, but in fact, it was the only tunnel that the dig team had marked as coming from the maze, and when did site mappers put in more effort than was strictly necessary? Their intel was incomplete. And how could he have expected that she would squirm through the rocks like some cave lizard, or crawl up the walls?

Another failure. Did you underestimate her again, or have you only overestimated your own skills, and the skills of your team?

Unacceptable and wrong—this wasn’t how it was supposed to go. The impotence of his rage beat at him, turned him back into the maze. She was above him but not far; there had to be a way up that he could use. He turned on his headlamp and ran, the light flashing over the walls, the ceiling.

He found a wide crack on the eastern wall that ran into another opening, a tunnel or a room. He slid in, his heart pounding. He would find her and end this, now.

He stepped into another tunnel and saw an opening practically in front of him, one that sloped gently upward. He hurried in, listening for her footsteps. The ground became rockier as he went; he clambered the final few meters over rounded slopes of smooth rock. His knee and ankle protested but the pain wasn’t enough to slow him down.

Harper came out in a low, rocky tunnel. At the end of it to his left, perhaps fifteen meters away, the light from the flare flickered. There was another western passage between him and the open chamber he’d left behind, and he hurried toward it eagerly. He couldn’t get lost this close to the climb and she couldn’t be far above him, not now.

He reached the opening, and saw that it was only a divot in the rock.

He turned, grip tight on the Glock, looking for another passage that he could use. The tunnel ran off past several openings on both sides before vanishing into darkness. He wasn’t even sure which one he’d come through—

Behind him, the red light died. The mud had finally won.

Harper started down the tunnel, dimming his lamp. No matter. If he had to search every crack, every room, crawl down every passage, he was going to find her, he was going to wipe that dismissive look off of her face.

* * *

Sergei worked out his plans on the way back to the opening. This was it, the last time he was going to make this fucking walk. Harper and Mitchell didn’t need his help climbing out. If Sergei lost his status for disobeying orders, that would be too bad, but he wasn’t going back in.

He heard more shots from inside the maze, blasts that rolled over him through the long tunnel and sent new flurries of bats winging past—Harper’s Glock, he thought, and Croft’s gun. How many shots would it take to kill that woman? Harper had misjudged the situation, thinking that Croft was on the run. It seemed to Sergei that she’d stayed ahead of them pretty easily so far.

Sergei dodged the bats and hurried on, every miserable second confirming his decision. If the Dozen were all accounted for, he would station himself at the entrance and wait. If that was not the case, he’d bargain his way out, at least to a position where he could take the offensive.

He finally got close enough to the entrance to see the shapes of trees ahead, dappled in pale blue starlight. He couldn’t see the sinkhole’s opening from the cave’s entrance but there was no chance he wasn’t close enough.

“Reddy, come in.”

No answer, and was he really expecting one? This shitshow of a night just went on and on.

“If anyone’s listening, identify yourself,” Sergei said. “We’ve got Croft. Unless you want us to put a bullet in her skull, you’ll answer.”

There was a brief pause, and then a calm voice spoke in his ear, low and even.

“Let me talk to her.”

Fuck.

“We’re holding her inside,” Sergei said. He flipped the safety on the XD and stuck it into his collar at the back of his neck. It wasn’t stable and it pulled at the fabric, the front of the shirt tight against his throat, but he only needed it to hold for a few minutes.

“Right,” the man said. “So, bring her out, we can talk.”

“Jonah, right?” Sergei asked. “Who’s left up there? Maybe we can work out some kind of trade.”

“That sounds good,” Jonah said. “Bring her out, we’ll trade.”

Sergei changed tack, readying himself. Jonah definitely had the advantage, the higher ground, but he wasn’t prepared for Sergei’s expertise with the XD.

“Okay, fine. I don’t know where she is, I don’t know where anybody is. Just let me out of this place, there’s things in here. I surrender, okay? You can tie me up, I don’t give a shit, I just want out.”

There was a long silence and Sergei waited. Jonah had to believe him, because he was telling the absolute truth. Not about surrendering, but the rest of it.

Sparks of burning red rained down from the top of the cenote, far above, landing among the trees in front of him. Four, five flares.

“Walk out where I can see you,” Jonah said. “Hands up. Move wrong and I’ll shoot.”

Sergei took a breath and stepped out of the tunnel and into the dark, the regular, normal dark of heavy shade at night, the smell of green life. He turned off his headlamp and walked slowly toward the drop point, angling to keep the XD hidden as he moved into view from the opening high above. He put his hands on top of his head.

“I’m unarmed,” Sergei said, as sincerely as he could. “I lost my gun in there, please don’t shoot.”

He looked up at the wide circle of stars, searching for movement, shapes against the night sky, but there was nothing. No lights up there, only the pale stars and a moon he couldn’t see.

“I’m unarmed,” he repeated, moving through the wavering shadows toward the first of the flares, bitter smoke rising through the red light. He saw a dark silhouette bob up for a second on the east side of the hole—and then a flashlight snapped on, a powerful one, the beam making him squint. He slid his hands to the back of his head.

“Far enough. Turn around.”

He couldn’t see the man behind the light but it was a clear target—and he saw a second shape, the head and shoulders of another, peering over the side.

Now!

Sergei grabbed the XD and fired, twice, the first shot shattering the light, the second knocking down the second man, two perfect shots. Triumph swelled his heart as he dove for the nearest cover, a clutch of palms not two meters ahead—

—and white heat blasted through his back and his side, between the thick pads of his vest, tearing into his guts. A second shot was mostly deflected off his chest armor, but the third seared into his thigh, the hearty blasts of a shotgun echoing through the open chamber. Pain exploded through him, muscle and bone torn apart. Blood jetted out of his leg, spraying wildly.

Sergei crashed to the ground, understanding immediately that he was dead as his blood fountained down over him. Within seconds the pain was fading, the dreadful heat turning to ice, freezing him, like he was back under the ground.

“Are you okay?” Jonah asked, and for a beat Sergei thought he was talking to him and was confused, his thoughts firing strangely, but then someone else answered, breathlessly, the words unclear. The second man.

Why would he be talking to you? You tried and you lost. Your two perfect shots were useless. Now you’re going to die, you’re never going to eat another meal or have another drink or make love to another beautiful woman. It’s all over.

With the last of his rapidly draining strength, Sergei managed to roll onto his back.

At least I’m out of that fucking cave, he thought, staring up at the stars until they winked out.

* * *

Jonah had been lying on the ground with the flashlight out over the drop and the shotgun propped across his arm. He let go of the light even as the Russian fired—

—and then Miguel was on his back, and Jonah was firing, and Miguel squeezed his eyes tight and didn’t move until Jonah asked him if he was okay.

Jonah reached and offered his hand to Miguel. Miguel let himself be pulled to his feet, trying to catch his breath. The bullet had knocked him down like a punch, but hadn’t gone through the hot, bulky vest. He couldn’t believe it.

Miguel staggered when he got to his feet, touching his chest. Right over his heart. If he hadn’t been wearing the Kevlar, he would be dead.

“I thought you were going to stay back,” Jonah said, turning off his microphone.

“He said he was unarmed,” Miguel said, realizing how stupid that sounded even as it came out of his mouth, but Jonah only nodded.

“Trinity’s not an honest group, on the whole,” he said. He leaned forward to look over the rim of the drop again. Miguel risked a glance. He could see the Russian lying face up at the bottom, light from the flares bathing him in red. His expression was strangely peaceful for someone shot full of holes. The blood from his wounds only oozed, black liquid in the strange light.

“You don’t think they have Lara?”

“No,” Jonah said. “I think they’re running around in circles looking for her, and she’s picking them off one at a time.”

“How?” Miguel asked. “I mean, why do you think so?”

Jonah stepped away from the edge. He still wore the Kevlar but had taken off the bloody black shirt he’d worn to fool the men who’d come. He picked up a water bottle off the ground, drank, passed it to Miguel.

“Lara, she’s… She grew up with a kind of legacy, I guess you could say, to find hidden things, artifacts. To keep them away from men like Dominguez. She’s had a lot of private instruction. And a lot of practical experience. Her father was an archaeologist, and worked against Trinity until his death. Her guardian after that was a treasure hunter and ex-Royal Marine.”

Miguel was fascinated. “So she just—she goes around trying to stop people from using these artifacts for evil purposes?”

“Not exactly. She just… she gets caught up in these ideas,” Jonah said. “She means well, but she also gets fixated, and won’t let anything stop her or even distract her from what she wants to achieve. She’s like a force of nature.”

Like before when Jonah had talked about getting better with a gun, Miguel got the impression that he wasn’t happy about what he was saying.

“So you’re not worried about her,” he said.

“Oh, I’m definitely worried. Any idiot with a gun can get lucky, and these people are trained. She’s not invincible.”

“You just… you seem so calm about it,” Miguel said. “I barely avoided pissing my pants about five times tonight already. You say you’re scared, but you don’t act like it.”

Jonah shrugged, sitting down on the rocks. “I’m working on my mindfulness.”

He said the word like he was using quote marks. Miguel couldn’t tell if he was kidding. He sat down, too. His legs felt rubbery.

The big man looked at the cenote and sighed. “She’s doing what she does. What she was born to do, maybe. I have faith in her, but yeah, it’s scary.”

Miguel continued to be impressed with how honest Jonah was, about everything. His clear respect for Lara boosted Miguel’s esteem for both of them.

“How did they even find us?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” Jonah said. “I think they got to the guy who gave Lara the info about this place. That, or he sold us out. Harper definitely knew we were here.”

He nodded at Miguel. “When she gets back, we’re going to want to be out of here ASAP. Think you can sleep some more?”

“I seriously doubt it,” Miguel said. He was pretty wide awake from getting shot, adrenaline working its jittery way through his blood. His brain hadn’t processed much of anything since he’d hit hostage status, but he still felt good, even a little giddy.

“It may still be a while, is all,” Jonah said, then cleared his throat. “Listen, I can’t tell you how much I appreciate what you’re doing for us. You stepping up like you have, that’s a pretty awesome thing.”

Miguel grinned. “If you count not dying as stepping up, I’m your man. Although to be fair, you’re the only ones not shooting at me.”

Jonah smiled back at him. “We lucked into you, Miguel. You’re a good pilot and a good guy.”

Miguel was at a loss for words. When was the last time anyone had praised him so warmly, for anything?

When was the last time you did anything worth praising?

Jonah picked up on his awkwardness and smoothed it right over. “If you’re hungry, there’s some stuff in the duffel—trail mix, jerky, protein bars.” He wrinkled his nose. “I’d stay away from those, actually. Lara likes them but they’re disgusting. Like eating chocolate-flavored tar paste.”

Miguel realized he was hungry. They’d missed dinner, and apparently abject terror burned a lot of calories. He got up and walked to the bag on the ground in front of the trucks, fishing out several packets of food to carry back. Both of them ate, and it was probably the best food Miguel had ever eaten, the flavors electric, salty and sweet. The temperature had dropped to nearly comfortable, and the living jungle carried on its business, surrounding them with the whir and hum of life—chirps and squawks and rustling, a commotion of some animal conflict far south, a single mournful cry, rising and then fading.

Jonah watched the cenote patiently, the shotgun across his lap, and after he’d eaten he went back to not talking much. Miguel could feel his tension as the minutes passed, as bats came and went and the jungle resumed its buzz. He hoped that Lara was safe, and that she’d be back soon. He also hoped that she was every bit as good as Jonah maintained, and that Harper and his killers all got what was coming to them.

* * *

Mitchell found a sheltered hole and stripped off her vest and shirt. She ripped the poly blend into strips, leaning over so that the blood could drip from her mouth and throat. More blood ran down the outside of her leg, already puddling in her boot.

She stuffed a knotted strip into her mouth and bit down, forcing the fabric against the ragged holes where an upper incisor and the tooth behind it had been knocked out. She bandaged her throat and hip and spent a moment applying pressure to both, on her knees in the small, low hole she’d found, bent over to keep from choking. A white millipede nearly the length of her forearm crawled past her on the bare rock, its body rippling on feathery legs. She watched it disappear into a crack and waited for the bleeding to slow down. It took a few minutes.

When everything was only oozing, she reloaded her weapon and put her vest back on. She used handfuls of cold mud to cover her bare arms, smudging more of it into her hair and across her face. It felt good on her swollen mouth.

She shaded her light and left the scant shelter, listening for echoes of movement, then headed north, stopping to drink deeply from a perfectly clear pool, the cold water stuttering down her throat like acid and tasting of her own blood. Croft had taken a detour from the main passages but she’d definitely been heading to the northernmost exit from the maze; there was no other way out from this deep. Harper would be waiting there, if he hadn’t gotten lost. The commander was highly competent in most things, he led the team for a reason, but Croft was operating at a creative level—an artist of reaction and critical, timely thinking, a powerful instrument of her own will. Harper was a hammer and he was driven by emotion, as most men were. Not that there weren’t literally billions of feckless women. Both sexes were hampered by their crudest feelings, Mitchell felt, missing every nuance of their lives in order to scratch their itchy spots—sex, power, self-victimization, control. Wasted lives.

Mitchell found a long chamber with a number of openings. She turned off her light and hung at the center of the chamber, where she could hear the tunnels breathing. She didn’t have to wait long. Ahead of her, north and down, Harper fired multiple times—and Lara fired back. The commander shot again and then stopped, the echoes spinning around Mitchell and away…

And she heard a whisper of footsteps, Harper’s heavy, hurried tread, she thought, only because she couldn’t imagine Croft moving so recklessly. Was he limping? The steps were faint and faded quickly.

He’s chasing her, or thinks he is. But where is she going? If the climb out was as steep as the Trinity map indicated, Lara wouldn’t be able to attempt it with someone on her tail. Would she try to go up where she was, or turn back south, access the upper tunnels farther along the maze?

Harper’s performance was dismal. He’d had no contact with Mitchell; for all he knew she was dead. If he was behind Croft now and she climbed up, that meant she only had to go through Sergei to get out. Sergei was definitely outmatched. He could shoot, but that was all.

Or maybe she’ll find her own way out, a vent or a crack somewhere. The rest of the Dozen were killers, but except for the tempestuous Reddy, they weren’t worth much when it came to strategy. Little Alanis had some sense but couldn’t lead. If Lara’s big friend was half as competent as her, they might already have a problem. And if Croft got out somewhere else and went back for her people, the Dozen would be fucked.

It was moot, Mitchell planned to kill her, but meeting Lara had underscored for her how lacking Harper’s Dozen actually were. Harper had been at the top of the food chain for too long without challenge. Leading a team of wolves among sheep, he’d forgotten that there were other wolves.

No, not a wolf. Lara was something brighter and sharper. She had skill and a guiding intelligence that put every one of the Dozen to shame, painting them as thugs with guns. Only Mitchell could even see what she was, let alone hope to challenge her.

She’ll try to go up as close as she can to where she is. There weren’t a lot of options, most of the maze’s tunnels curved away from the climb, but she had to be in a hurry by now. Harper had probably chased her off her route.

Mitchell looked at her map. There was a good-sized chamber between where she was and where she thought Lara might be looking, one that intersected several of the maze’s layered tunnels. It didn’t connect to the top but it led to tunnels that would, eventually. An ideal place to stand and listen, a bigger web for Mitchell to sit at the center of, waiting for Lara to whisper along one of its threads.

Or she’ll fly straight into the heart of it. But you have to get there first.

She headed north and west, quickly, silently. She felt renewed, expectation silencing the cries of her damaged flesh. She was glad that she hadn’t had the opportunity to kill Harper. His inept pursuit might help push Lara right into Mitchell’s waiting arms.

* * *

Lara worked her way up, climbing from crack to passage, forced to stray farther from the well than she wanted; the tunnels of the maze had a tendency to dead-end every time she tried to veer back north, and her marks were the only ones this deep. Once she hauled herself up nearly four meters before the crack she was in became impassably narrow, and she had to drop back down.

Rasputin was looking for her, below her and to the north, a scuffle of steps that came and went. He had a limp; she could hear it in the hop-step of his gait. She did her best to keep the gap between them but was on high alert, aware that he might find a way up at any time. Three times she passed by chirping salamanders, but they were solitary, and none of them attacked; they scuttled away into the deep dark, tails slashing.

She was duckwalking through an east-veering rounded tube when she passed an oddly angled crack in the rocks, less than a meter high. She flattened herself to the rocks and looked inside. Nothing, a wall less than a meter ahead—but the stale air was heavy and cool, not stuffy. She edged inside, looking up.

A hole just big enough to climb into angled up from the smooth stone, bending north.

Lara marked the secret tunnel and started to climb. It was snug, but nothing she had to go into contortions over. A short curve and the passage opened into a—

Oh.

She stepped up into a small chamber with smooth walls. A neat line of glyphs was carved beneath a drawing like the one she’d seen at the other end of the dig, in the room marked with a circle—short lines of true, brilliant Maya blue in columns. There were more than thirteen in this painting, thin lines to either side of thicker ones. Five rows. The glyphs next to the ambiguous lines were the originals carved, no blurred lines, and were the same as those that had been written on the tunnel wall at the top of the site, but none of these were damaged. On the floor in front of the paintings was a small clay bowl, delicately carved with images she already knew too well: the Silver Box of Ix Chel, which she had seen in a mural in Mexico, and the Key of Chak Chel, something she had held in her own hands.

The room was unmarked and clearly deeper than Trinity had gone looking. They would have taken the beautiful bowl. Lara felt a rush of excitement, stepping in to look at the glyphs, careful not to disturb the bowl.

Walk, path, stars, follow, path, rings, sacred place, stones, something, message…

Lara took out her camera—unless someone was in the tunnel directly outside and looking for it, the flash wouldn’t be seen in the hidden room—the glyphs and lines as clear as if they’d been painted only recently, the words repeating in her mind.

Rings?

Lara considered the stacks of blue lines again… and thought of the pillars in the puzzle room. They had been painted with rings. There had been at least five formations that stretched all the way to the ceiling. Mateus had sketched them in his notebook, too. Not lines, rings.

Journey the path of the stars to follow the path of rings, at the sacred chamber of stones. A message is revealed.

The key to the puzzle. Lara wished she could stop and look at her photos, compare the line stacks to the ringed columns of the puzzle room. The back wall of that chamber had been covered in glyphs. Were the rings meant to physically indicate specific words, or was it a counting code?

She tamped her sudden enthusiasm, putting it away with her camera. The chamber was an incredible find but there weren’t any exits, and Rasputin was still looking for her.

And you let Mitchell go. It had seemed a reasonable idea at the time; she’d thought she’d been leaving… But she’d made the decision based on what she’d wanted, not reality, and now Mitchell could be anywhere. In almost every interaction with these killers, she’d chosen to turn and run for the exit. She couldn’t keep doing that and expect to make it out.

She climbed back down into the crevice and slid into the wider tunnel, one that relentlessly steered her farther into the maze. She had to be getting close to one of the large chambers that connected the inner passages; she would go up and try again.

Lara kept an arrow nocked, wary of announcing her passage with more gunfire, her senses tuned and open as she crept ahead. No more mistakes, not down here.

She had just reached a bend in the low rocks when she heard a salamander start to shriek, below her and a bit south—

—and five shots fired, no hesitation between them, stopping the animal’s cry instantly.

* * *

Where the fuck was she? He couldn’t hear Croft, couldn’t hear anything but lizards and bats and his own breathing, the drip of water, the festering crawl of insects in a vast and uncompromising blackness. Harper stopped in one of the endless curving tunnels and looked at his map, and his compass.

Where the fuck am I? The map was a quivering knot of meaningless lines when it came to the labyrinth, only useful if one knew where one was already. His fever to track Croft had been tempered by a growing disquiet as his rage dissipated. There were no markings this deep and he’d been choosing his route by instinct… Except, hadn’t he walked through this tunnel already? He thought he remembered the same stretch of rocks, the way they narrowed and then flared…

He put away the phone and started forward. He would go up, as soon as he found an ascent. Mitchell had been offline for too long, she could very well be dead, and his rush to catch Lara had been a misstep. He should have walked back out the way he’d come in, retreated immediately to the drop to prepare for her arrival.

He stepped over a dip in the rocks, wincing. His knee and ankle were swollen, his limp getting worse.

It didn’t matter. Sergei would be back in position by now, everyone else standing by at the drop. He would climb out and lead them, and they would settle with Croft in the open air, away from this hideous pit. They could dump her and her friends inside, set off one of the big charges, burn this site permanently.

Yes, good. And climb up where, exactly?

His headlamp dimmed very slightly. Harper tapped at it, a pulse of dread threading through his veins, knotting his gut—

—and a lizard screamed, not five feet away, hanging from the rocks where it had crept in close.

Harper brought up his Glock and fired, the first shot blasting it off the tunnel wall, four more rounds pulverizing its wet flesh, blood and tissue spattering up in hot flecks.

The slide locked back on the Glock, the trigger dead. He was empty.

Five rounds. He’d fired in a panic, and just alerted Croft to his exact location. Over a fucking lizard.

Harper reloaded quickly. The light was definitely dimmer. He had to go up now, immediately. His phone had a light but it would burn through the battery in minutes.

He tapped on his mic, keeping his voice low. “This is Harper. Everybody fall back to drop point, repeat, fall back to drop point.”

No answer, of course… And it was dawning on him what a bad position he was in, that he’d willingly put himself into. He’d been so certain of their chances coming after her, he hadn’t considered that they might fail. That he might fail.

You haven’t failed, nor will you. You will force her surrender with the collateral, as was always the fail-safe. You only have to get out.

Harper hobbled past the bloody carcass of the lizard, visible, gory proof that he’d lost his composure, overreacted in a moment of fear. When he saw a tunnel that looked like it went up, he took it.

* * *

Mitchell had only just reached the entrance to the large, open chamber when she heard the shots. Below and south. It was Harper’s Glock.

Shooting at Croft? She didn’t think so. One of the cave animals had started to shriek right before the first shot.

Harper must have been startled. There was no telling where the target was.

So thinking, she moved into the big room carefully, turning off her lamp as soon as she was inside, only a sense of vastness before she was in the black, rock formations on the floor, water to the east. There were a few chirps and a stir of movement from one or more of the lizard-like creatures, the scratching of bugs, bats rustling high overhead. The small sounds echoed, the effect like gentle audio feedback, blurred and steady. In some distant tunnel north there was a stir of more bats; from the southeast, a lizard’s cry. Perfect. When she felt reasonably sure she was otherwise alone, Mitchell tapped the light back on, quickly assessing the chamber.

It was impressive, forty feet high and big enough to fit a house into, with multiple entrances at the floor and higher— open holes dotted the walls, ledges leading between some of them. Mitchell counted eleven openings in all, facing every direction, climbing all the way to the ceiling—a warren of partially collapsed tunnels, arching patches of holes small and large; dozens or hundreds of bats nestled in the cracks and flitted through the shadows there, disappearing into the broken passages.

She had come in from southwest right at the floor, which pulsed with its blanket of insects, rolling humps and puddles and black-and-white between the scattered stalagmites. She saw six of the blind lizards at the far side of the chamber, stationed at a long stretch of water that curved along the east wall. Salamanders, she decided. Lizards had scales, salamanders were the ones that stayed near water. They didn’t approach her or move from the pool, only chirping and listening.

At the southern curve of the chamber wall, the stone had eroded away into layers, creating natural steps that ran up to well past the room’s midpoint, perhaps thirty feet up. They weren’t symmetrical or flat but there were angles to climb, cover to be had in the passages they touched.

Get as high as you can. Croft would be heading up. Even if she didn’t come through here, Mitchell was counting on hearing her attempt to make her ascent, and wanted to be in a position to pursue as needed.

Mitchell dimmed her light and moved to the south wall, stepping around stone stumps and columns, sliding her feet into the teeming masses of insects so as not to crunch them. Fat roaches scuttled over her boots, trying to climb her, perhaps drawn to the smell of blood. She continued to seep from all of her injuries and she’d stopped trying to swallow, her chin slicked with bloody drool. Her body’s infirmities annoyed her. She’d started shivering involuntarily, as well, short bursts of uncontrollable shaking that came and went at random. If she didn’t meet with Lara soon, she might be forced to retreat—not to concede, but to defer to biological considerations. Mitchell’s will was indomitable but the flesh was weak. She couldn’t determine not to get hypothermia.

I won’t go yet, though. Mitchell wouldn’t leave before taking a final shot, the magical third. She was connected with Croft, bound to her by their shared commitment to craft. It was so very rare, to find another who danced where others plodded. So rare, in fact, that Mitchell had been starting to believe that she was entirely alone. She cared about the quality of her work, she invested herself, but never saw her efforts matched by the blank stupid faces that surrounded her. Lara Croft gave her hope.

She started climbing, stopping often to listen for any approach, covering her light to watch for a hint of another’s. A few rocks clattered somewhere south, near where the Glock had fired. Harper. Was he lost, or did he have reason to believe that Croft was in front of him? Either was possible. He didn’t deserve to kill her, although Mitchell understood how badly he must want to by now. Damon Harper was persistent, if nothing else, and didn’t give up.

She had to pause in her climb, struck by another attack of shaking—

—and she heard something from the northern wall, north and west. A brief whisper of something soft, perhaps fabric brushing against rock. It was very close, and higher than the floor.

There were two passages the sound could have come from, ragged holes one above the other, at an angle where the chamber curved, a little below and across from Mitchell’s position. A ledge staggered off the lower tunnel’s lip, ending about ten feet off the floor.

Mitchell was fifteen feet up, give or take. The nearest solid cover was a passage about ten feet ahead of her and up, or she could drop back to the last hole she’d passed.

She’ll come in quiet and dark but when she decides it’s safe, she’ll turn on a light. You don’t need to hide, only aim.

Likely true, but that was also the kind of thinking that had probably felled Ace and Hux—the absolute belief that only they were doing the hunting.

Two steps ahead of Mitchell, one of the layered steps flared away from the wall. There was barely room to crouch, it wasn’t a good position to defend, but it was something. She carefully turned off her lamp and hugged the rocks, inching to where she felt the edge of stone rise up.

Her hip was bleeding again from the climb, a warm seep, not enough to touch the deep cold at her core, but her hand was steady. She raised the semi and waited.

* * *

Lara had to stuff herself through a crack to reach what she was sure was an antechamber to a much larger room. She could hear the sounds of an active cave ahead with a large number of bats, which definitely meant access to the higher tunnels—maybe she could get back to the central well, maybe not, but she had let go of the idea that she would be out quickly. She thought Rasputin had fired the shots she’d heard, which meant she knew where he was— but Mitchell was still lurking around somewhere, and she was a pro at the quiet game. Lara hadn’t seen the Russian again, either.

She stopped to listen outside a short tunnel that led into the larger room, killing her light. The chamber was big, tall and wide. She estimated that she was well off the floor, three or four meters. She heard the susurrus of bats and bugs, punctuated by a few salamander chirps, down and off to the left—

—and she heard the dull click of a switch, a small, mechanical, plastic sound.

South, straight across, up a bit.

Lara tilted her head, straining to hear beneath the whisper of the cavern’s life… and was that movement, the careful slide of a body pressed against rock? She could be imagining it, but she hadn’t dreamed up the click of the switch.

Somebody heard you coming.

She couldn’t walk in blind; she might step off a drop. Flare? She’d have to get right up to the opening to throw it. At the climb, she’d been shielded by rocks and Rasputin hadn’t been expecting her. Whoever was in the cavern, they were waiting for her to step inside.

Retreat was the safest course, but she had to go up somewhere… And if she snuck away, they would follow or get ahead of her again, set up and wait. Her policy of running from these people was over.

They’ll be watching for the light. And they’re wearing vests.

Lara quietly took off her pack, taking out rope, cutting a healthy length. She unbuckled her helmet, then slid the axe from her belt, setting the helmet on the narrow axe head. She used the rope to secure the helmet as best she could, looping through openings in the lining and tying it to the axe’s shaft. It wasn’t especially sturdy but it didn’t wobble too badly, either.

She shaded the lamp, then lightly smeared mud across the bulbs before slinging her bow and taking out the Remington.

This is going to go fast.

Lara turned on the light and then held the axe at arm’s length. She moved into the passage, tilting the dim light down like she was watching her feet, and edged forward.

She couldn’t see into the dark that opened in front of her but kept the .45 trained south, her entire body in play, her muscles working to keep the helmet steady, to hold the gun steady, to move forward and keep her balance. There was a ledge at the front of the passage and she crept toward it, letting her gaze relax, not fixed on any single point, extending the axe as far away from her as possible—

—and there was an explosion of light and sound, the axe ripped out of her hand as a dark, slender shape opened fire from the wall south, four shots.

Rock sprayed up behind Lara. The salamanders screamed and Lara saw Mitchell’s eyes in the stutter of light, wide and triumphant in a mask of caked mud, her throat wrapped with a strip of black cloth, strings of mud-soaked hair plastered to her head.

Lara fired twice, aiming for the woman’s belly, low, then ducked back into the passage.

A large number of bats had taken flight at the first shots, and as their passage faded Lara heard Mitchell gasping— and then a stumble of movement on the rocks, and then silence. The salamanders huffed for a moment, three, four of them, but stayed on the east side of the chamber.

Lara quietly edged forward again, and picked up the axe. The helmet had been knocked sideways and hung from the rope, the lamp still functional, but the shaft of the axe had been hit, the hollow metal dented and torn.

She held out the makeshift decoy, waited, but the cave had gone back to its hum.

Lara put down the axe and took out her hand torch, holding it away from her before flicking it on—

—and saw Mitchell lying on a walkway of angled steps that ran up the south wall, blood pouring from her belly. When the light touched her, Mitchell raised her nine-millimeter, her hand shaking, and emptied it.

Lara dove from the ledge. The rounds were mostly wild but one of them pinged across the zipper of her backpack as she landed on the cave floor, throwing herself into a roll.

She came up and dodged behind a thick stalagmite, beetles and spiders falling off her back. She crossed the torch under the Remington and ducked around the rock, finding Mitchell—but the woman’s bare, muddy arm had sagged to the rocks where she sprawled, and her finger was tight on a dead trigger, her semi’s slide locked. Blood continued to pulse from her gut but it was slowing.

“Clever Lara,” Mitchell called, almost fondly, blood dribbling from her swollen mouth, her voice rasping. Her body shook, her skin deathly pale beneath the heavy smears of mud, streaked with red. “When I die, the entire world will disappear… except for you, I think.”

Mitchell exhaled heavily and didn’t inhale again. Her gray eyes stayed open.

Lara quickly looked around the room, the woman’s strange last words still hanging in the chill air. There were half a dozen salamanders by a pool at the chamber’s east wall, agitated but staying close to the water; another spawning ground, presumably. She ran the beam up the walls, looking at the openings, at the ceiling. She could go up the rocks past where Mitchell’s body lay, take the highest passage she could reach and—

She heard footsteps coming from the south, Rasputin’s limp more pronounced than before but approaching quickly.

Lara stepped back behind the formation and turned off her light, pressing tightly against the damp rock, ignoring her initial inclination to turn and walk out.

The fast hobble slowed as Rasputin approached the chamber, and she saw the faintest smudge of light in an opening at one o’clock some meters away, rounded rocks framing a dull yellow glow.

He stopped, breathing heavily, making no effort to be quiet, which made sense when he raised his voice and started talking.

* * *

Harper heard the first shots just as he’d managed to climb up a short but torturous slope and through a wide crack that opened into a north–south tunnel. The sound of Mitchell’s Czech gun was sharp, north and maybe a bit east of him, and he started running, jaw clenched against the pain of his leg, a snarling red glee twisting through him. Croft fired back, but after a short pause he heard the CZ again. Mitchell was alive and well and taking another run at the target, and he was close enough to join in.

After the echoes of the last shots spun away, he could still hear the huffing cries of lizards. He came to a branch in the passage and followed the sound. Mitchell had fired the last shots, and at the thought of Croft dead his worry about getting out of the tunnels was overridden by a sudden hope that he wasn’t too late to see the bitch breathe her last.

He reached a tunnel that curved east and realized he could hear his limping steps echoing back at him over the subsiding chirps of the lizards. He had arrived.

Harper stopped before the passage’s turn, listening. Cave noise. No footsteps, no obvious sounds of movement. Were one or both of them dead? Had they left?

They’re close enough to hear you.

“Mitchell, report,” Harper called, and waited, his voice circling back at him.

Lizard chirps and crawling pestilence. Nothing.

Had Croft gotten to Mitchell? Where were they?

Make a deal. He should have done it at the climb, but had been too furious to think about bargaining, too committed to seeing Croft struck down.

“We have Jonah,” Harper called, the words reverberating through the cold air. “And your pilot, Miguel. Walk out with me now, and I’ll let them go.”

He heard her. A tiny shift of clumsy movement, a scrape of sound.

She was close, only a curve of rock and he estimated less than fifty feet between them, somewhere to his left, southwest. He spoke calmly, with authority. “My name is Harper, this is my team. There’s no way you can get out of this, but Jonah can. Miguel can. Agree to surrender and I’ll let them go. On my Oath.”

Bugs crawled and bats cheeped and his voice whispered away in musical canons. She didn’t answer. He imagined her weighing his sincerity. He’d admitted that her own life wasn’t up for debate, a fact that she would have gathered already, thereby establishing that he was truthful. And he had given her an opening to pursue negotiations over terms of surrender, which was far more than she deserved. Croft thought nothing of murder, but had gone to great lengths to protect her own friends. He was counting on her loyalty, and on her assuming that his system of honor was the same as hers. People under duress still tried to connect.

He looked at his watch in the weakening yellowish light from his helmet.

“They have orders to kill the hostages in twenty-two minutes, if I’m not there to advise differently,” he called with absolute confidence. A bluff to tip the scales, and to remind her of who actually stood to lose here. “Even if you beat me to the exit, my people are watching the drop. You still have to climb up; you won’t have time to stage a rescue before Jonah and Miguel run out of time. And I swear to you, if I have to chase you, you will all die.”

Nothing… and then a sound like something heavy sliding, followed by an impact that cut through the rustle of the cavern like a dull hammer—to his immediate right, east, and falling from over his head. One of the salamanders let out a short shriek, a blast of ugly sound.

Body. The thump was like a side of beef hitting the ground from off a roof. Dead meat.

A trick? An accident? He turned off his light and stepped around the bend in the passage, forcing himself to use his bad leg, to walk without making a sound. He leaned into the cold open space, scanning—

—and saw a firefly of pale light, high and to his right. Someone climbing along the rocky wall.

He raised the Glock and fired.

* * *

Lara climbed while Rasputin—Harper—talked, using the echoes of his pompous voice for cover, quickly ascending the stone steps on the southern wall. She’d started walking as soon as she’d made the small sound, kicking at the stalagmite with the toe of her boot, quietly moving towards him and east. It was obvious he couldn’t see into the cavern; he kept his voice focused in the wrong direction while she passed directly in front of his tunnel, stepping lightly between the bases of the formations, avoiding the crunch of tiny exoskeletons.

The ascent was an easy one, angled lengths of limestone cutting into the wall, but she had to stretch her legs to get up some of them. Keeping the .45 handy meant one-arming it for the most part, but she was fast and the few sounds she made were covered by Harper and the hiss of the bugs… until she got to Mitchell’s sprawled body, the woman’s blood slicking the stone.

Harper had stopped talking and Lara was in a hurry, the tunnel she wanted still a short climb ahead. Mitchell was half on her side, blank gray eyes staring at the void, blocking the stretch of rocks almost entirely. Both of Lara’s shots had hit just beneath the hem of Mitchell’s vest; there was a lot of blood.

Lara edged past her, setting her foot down in a narrow space behind the small of Mitchell’s back. Her boot came down on blood-wet rock and she skidded into the dead woman’s legs, rolling one of them off of the narrow ledge.

The dead weight pulled Mitchell to the floor, the sound heavy and unmistakable. And Lara was still three meters away from the arch in the rock that she’d hoped to reach and disappear into before Harper realized he was talking to thin air.

A salamander cried and Lara threw herself upward, kicking off from the rock, scrambling. Harper would come in, she knew he would, the second he realized she wasn’t where he thought. He had a tunnel to duck back into, but she was absolutely in the line of fire.

Get there! She leapt for the last pitch before the opening, boosted herself up, walking her boots up the steep slope—

The first round whizzed past her left ear before the roar of his Glock tore through the chamber. Lara threw herself flat and slid back a meter, slamming her arm down over the light and switching the .45 to her left hand as more rounds tore over her head, pinging off the rocks.

She turned her head and saw him fire again, still too high, his narrow head and one broad shoulder outlined in the white flare from his weapon, his body pressed to the wall.

An internal conversation happened in the time it took her to mark him, a millisecond of yammering.

Take the shot!

Miss and he’ll see you!

Don’t miss!

Lara rolled onto her hip and fired: three rounds at his torso, two more at his face.

Harper cried out, falling back a step, and Lara clambered up, climbing from the memory of what the last pitch had looked like. She dove for the opening in the dark as another round hit the rock, banging her right shoulder against the lip of the rock before she was inside.

“You bitch!” he screamed, and fired again, the rounds blasting the stones just past her feet.

Lara shook out her LED and held it out. A low tunnel that bent south and east. She was on her feet and walking before the echoes of the last rounds died.

A dim light snapped on in the chamber below her, the beam wavering, playing over the southern wall—and she heard him start to climb, grunts of exertion and pain, his breath hissing through his teeth.

Wait. Pick him off when he’s at one of the steep spots. With a bad leg, the climb would take him a few minutes.

And if he’d told the truth about the deadline? You have to get to the drop now, whether Harper’s dead or not.

She turned sideways as the tunnel started to narrow, aware that she might not have a choice in the matter. If she’d just climbed into a dead end, confrontation was inevitable.

And you’ll kill him and keep moving! Hurry, go!

Twenty-two minutes, twenty by now. If she could get up fast, she could make it. God only knew what she’d do when she got there but she would worry about it then. She didn’t think Jonah would sit still for being shot, but he could be injured, maybe unconscious… She had to be there.

Lara sidled through the narrow tunnel, breathing easier when it opened up and branched a minute later. The eastern-facing passage sloped up, and there was guano on the floor. She took the passage, holstering the semi when the rocky floor tipped more steeply, the better to climb. She could hear Harper’s rough ascent, soft echoes from the chamber where Mitchell had died. Falling farther behind.

The climb wasn’t technically difficult but it was muddy and strenuous. The muscles in her arms and legs were getting tired but she pushed on, the tunnel opening in front of her, branching again…

She climbed into a small, rounded chamber with three openings besides the one she’d come from, a thick slick of mud on the floor. She checked her compass, wiped sweat from her brow. Three openings: one that that faced northwest, aimed back toward the chamber she’d just left; a crack that turned down and south; and a low, rounded tunnel that opened to a gentle incline, a straight stretch that aimed right at the drop, northeast.

Too good to be true. The passage had been used by bats, but not much.

And if it’s the wrong choice you’ll find out but not if you don’t GO!

Lara went.

* * *

Harper threw himself up the rocks, propelled by his rage.

Blood leaked steadily from the flesh wound on his upper left arm. He stopped on a ledge to bind it; a healthy chunk of flesh was actually missing. He bore down hard on the knot, the physical distress fueling him. How dare she? Did she think he wouldn’t kill her and torture her friends to death for such an affront? He only regretted that he wouldn’t be able to watch her die more than once.

His weak headlamp took in Mitchell’s broken body as he climbed, flashes of her corpse slowly disappearing under the simmering blanket of insects. She looked like she’d been to hell and crawled through mud on her way back. Three of the lizards ventured away from their curving lake to scuttle toward her, chirping, perhaps drawn by all the blood. There had been six of the small monsters lined up along the shore when he’d first looked, but now there were eight of them, swinging their eyeless faces to listen to him labor up the rocks. More had crept in when he wasn’t looking, blind witnesses to his shame. Crawling up rocks in a disgusting hole, injured, limping, actually bleeding, his top players dead.

Bitch. Lara fucking Croft had killed three of his best, then shot him and skipped away, but she wasn’t counting on the power of his will. He forced his body to work, his knee to bend, his ankle to support him. A deep, dreadful ache radiated from the hole in his shoulder, burning, but the pain wasn’t incapacitating him, it wouldn’t interfere with his mission.

He reached the opening in the rocks where Croft had escaped the chamber and followed the Glock inside, ready to fire at anything that moved, holding his gasping breath to listen for her.

Nothing. He moved quickly, turning and sliding as the cold rocks narrowed, pushing at his back and chest. On the other side the tunnel branched. He followed the one that sloped upwards. She’d gone up, he was sure; his bit about a kill order had pushed her to get back to the surface before time ran out. She was going to lead him to the exit, all he had to do was follow—and he could take her light after she was dead, and spend the rest of his Glock’s rounds blowing away every lizard he saw on his way out.

The floor sloped up to near forty-five degrees but it was like a climbing wall, lots of holds and holes. He saw part of a fresh boot print in the mud, a small one, and grinned. He was on her trail. If his leg had been working, if he hadn’t been holding the Glock, he’d have been up in no time, but he wasn’t about to disarm, not until that bitch was dead.

He willed himself up, grin turning back into a clench as the muddy rocks crept past.

* * *

Dead end.

Lara turned away from where the tunnel narrowed to a wide, flat crack, not quite big enough for her to get her head through. Past the crack a chimney rose straight up, thin and smooth. Too tight for her to get up, even if she could wedge herself through the crack.

She’d wasted three minutes working through the low passage. Lara hurried back toward the small chamber where the tunnels met, feeling the seconds tick by—

Movement. Far ahead of her, back in the tunnel of the easy climb. She heard Harper’s boots scuffing over rock, a grunt of exertion.

Lara picked up speed, racing him to the chamber. He was faster than she’d expected, but he wouldn’t beat her. She’d have two choices when she got back, south or northeast. Had she come up high enough to be on safe ground if she went back towards the big room where Mitchell had died? It was that or go in the wrong direction entirely.

She reached the mouth of the dead end and saw the weak light from Harper’s helmet reflecting off the roof of the tunnel that had led her up to the branch. He was less than a minute behind her, if that.

Lara didn’t hesitate, spanning as much of the muddy floor as she could in two hops, stepping to the northeast passage and in. The roof was higher than the tunnel she’d just been in; she still had to walk bent over, but at least she wasn’t crouching anymore. The passage ran straight for a few meters and then curved farther east, sloping down.

She reached the curve as Harper’s faltering light swelled behind her, his uneven steps coming into the chamber at her back. He stomped quickly to the dead-end tunnel—but stopped, not going in.

The mud. Lara covered the LED with her hand and slid around the curve, pulling the Remington again. She’d hoped he would follow the obvious prints, but it seemed not. Her two light steps to the northeast opening would be obvious, for someone looking.

Harper didn’t move. She unshaded the barest glimmer from her light and forged ahead, ducking, watching her feet, slowing down enough to move very quietly. The tunnel curved north again, but continued to descend.

She heard him come into the passage—and turn off his light, and start to creep forward. A squeak of mud, a hobbling step.

The tunnel leveled abruptly and branched. Lara didn’t even have to pause her stealthy steps; she could see the one veering east and up was dead, no sign that any animal had been through. Not an exit.

Did Harper know what to look for? She was sure he couldn’t see her LED. The floor was rocky here, no prints to follow. She stayed with the gradual descent. Perhaps twenty meters behind her, Harper stumbled. His headlamp tapped on for a bare second, flickering weakly. Even from the bare smudge of it she could see, it was obvious the batteries were about to give out.

The tunnel branched again, both passages opening west, both alive with rustling bats somewhere ahead. Larger echoes stirred. Lara quickly calculated where she was in relation to where she’d been, remembering the crumbling ceiling of the big room. Tunnels with holes in the floor, and she was headed right for them.

She didn’t have her axe and the idea of jumping across open pits above a twelve-meter fall was distinctly unappealing; the floors hadn’t collapsed because they were stable. Jumping meant noise. And there would be bats to contend with, she could hear them; the ceiling of the chamber had been packed with them.

Kill Harper. Go back.

No. She didn’t want to go back. These passages turned north again, and the large bat colony had to have access to the top of the cenote. It was the closest exit. If she couldn’t do it she’d turn around, but she had to keep moving, aiming for the drop. Jonah’s life might depend on it.

Yes on killing Harper, though. The dead end had cost her—he was too close. If she had to line up a jump she couldn’t afford to have him on her heels.

Lara considered the passages. The one on the right opened at an angle; she had to step inside to see down it… And so would he. Good enough.

She settled against the wall in the dark, Remington up, listening. Harper had reached the split behind her—and she heard him take the wrong passage, the dead one.

Lara hesitated. How far would he go before he had to turn back? She considered going after him but it was more time that she didn’t have, and she definitely wasn’t going to wait.

She turned on her torch, shining it down the passage she’d stepped into, then quickly checked the other one. They both curved out of sight; she only saw rocks and heard the sounds of the big room whispering, ahead and below.

The one on the right was closer to Jonah, and taller. She started into it, moving quickly but tapping her steps, not sure where she might find weakness. Between the bumps and drips of calcite formations, the walls and floor were smooth, ancient. Within a few meters she saw the first crawling bugs and the sound and smell of the colony sharpened, rustles and squeaks. A curve to the right and she saw rows of dark hanging bat bodies on the rising ceiling in front of her, and the first hole into the open dark below.

The jagged hole was just over a meter wide, barely a hop, and the rock on the other side was thick, no other holes in immediate sight. The guano was layered deep, there were fewer insects around the opening to process it, but it looked solid. She listened for Harper but heard nothing.

Lara holstered the .45, backed up and then ran, jumped, landing well past the far edge of the opening—

—but the hole was bigger than she’d allowed for. Thick layers of guano gave way beneath her foot and she stuttered forward, landing on her knees. A hefty clod of the crusted shit fell into the chamber below, widening the hole by another thirty centimeters.

It splashed a second later, and the salamanders below started to scream aggressively, incredibly loud in the huge space. The sound filled the tunnel, filled all of the tunnels. The bats in front of her shrieked, dropped and flew north, a furry, rushing frenzy of sudden movement as the agitated troglobites howled their distress.

She couldn’t hear if Harper was coming over the din but with most of the bats rushing out, she could see that the tunnel she was in branched ahead of her—openings up high, and from the quality of sound, plenty more holes to navigate.

She hurried on, boots sliding in the crap. He couldn’t be close yet; she would look at her new choices and be on her way before he reached her… Or she would hear him coming and wait inside one of the tunnels ahead.

Not for a second longer than I need.

No, not a second. The salamanders had left off screaming but were huffing, defensive, ready to attack, the sounds rising up from the big room in echoing bursts. More bats fluttered away, disappearing into the passages ahead.

Lara followed them. The first tunnel she came to opened over the cavern three meters in, the entire bottom of the passage gone. A crumbling ledge ten meters away and the passage continued, but there was nothing she could climb, the walls slick.

She turned and hurried back to look at the next one, listening for Harper.

* * *

The tunnel he’d taken crept upwards, cold and damp and perfectly empty, no bats or bugs or lizards. Harper was starting to think that Croft hadn’t taken it even though it clearly ascended. Bats wouldn’t roost somewhere with no exit, would they? She wasn’t hiding, she was trying to beat him out, and the silence in front of him was as cold and dead as the rocks themselves.

The screams of the lizards spilled up behind him and he turned eagerly, hearing the rush of bats somewhere close. It was confirmation, a sign. He ran down the slope as the lizards screamed, not worried about keeping quiet or his flickering lamp. She must have kept going down, westwards. She can’t have gotten far.

He turned where the tunnel branched, dimly aware that his shoulder was bleeding again, his knee locking up, a ring of fire around his ankle… But she was on the move and he was close, so close. They both had guns but he was also bigger than her, stronger in spite of his injuries. There was nowhere she could go that he couldn’t follow.

He came to a pair of tunnels and chose the one on the right with the higher ceiling, not stopping to check his compass. West? North? It didn’t matter, he could hear the bats ahead of him, the rising, spiraling squawks of the mutant lizards below. He needed to look at the map but he could feel how close she was, maybe no more than a minute between them. If she took a wrong turn or got hung up on—

He’d rounded a curve and saw the wide hole in the floor, four feet long and no way around. He looked ahead, the Glock up. More cold passages, and shadows squirming with bats.

His light dimmed and flickered off. Harper tapped his helmet and it came back on but too weakly for him to see what was under him, through the hole. He could hear it, though, the chirps of the foul lizards settling themselves, the hiss of insects. Lara had led him to the top of the big chamber they’d just left.

There were prints in the mud and dreck on the other side of the hole, a thick crust torn away at the edge. She’d jumped it and knocked some mud loose, riling the lizards below.

Harper backed up, aware that he couldn’t trust his right leg to perform. He’d jump it anyway, before his lamp died. He wasn’t letting her go.

He ran and leapt, throwing himself forward, landing on his left foot. When his right came down his ankle screamed and he staggered sideways. His lamp faded and died.

He let himself fall forward, away from the hole, left hand sinking deep into the reeking cold muck. The black took his breath away, and he sat up and grabbed for his phone, wiping bat shit across his shirt so he could punch the button.

The flashlight came on, bright and strong. Too bright. He slid his finger over the light and crawled to his feet, sweeping with the Glock as he started forward. He gripped the phone more tightly than the gun. It was the only light he had; if he lost it, he was lost. Reddy would send people in eventually but Croft could get out, get away—

And you’d be here. Trapped in the cold, overwhelming black, bleeding, unable to move for fear of falling.

He heard movement, a light thump followed by a small flurry of bats. Coming from one of three openings ahead, on the left.

Harper covered the light more and crept forward quickly. A few bats spilled out of the second opening and fluttered around, cheeping, before flapping back in.

There you are.

He hurried to the edge of the passage, breathing with his mouth wide, minimizing his steps. He covered the phone’s light completely and darted a look into the tunnel—

—and saw her. The tiniest blur of pale blue light, floating in the black thirty feet in front of him, disappearing a second later.

Harper raised the Glock and fired, four rounds right where he’d seen the spark. The flare from the Glock blinded him and he ducked back, heart hammering. Bats screeched and flapped.

No return fire. The ringing in his ears faded and he strained to hear anything—a groan, a gasp, footsteps—but she didn’t make a sound.

Did I get her? Her light had disappeared a second before he’d fired, but had she covered it, or moved into another passage? He couldn’t hear anything—she could be dead or dying, but she could also be waiting for him to step into the tunnel, to turn on his light.

Or slipping away, while you wonder.

There were holes in the floor, he’d heard her jump one of them. He couldn’t go after her without taking a look. He hugged the edge of the rock, readying himself to hold up the phone, to fire, praying that he would see her bleeding to death on the shitty rocks.

He extended the phone low into the passage and slid his finger down off of the light—

—and the phone exploded, his index finger blown off at the top knuckle, the darkness crashing over him.

* * *

Harper shrieked, and emptied his Glock down the chamber, firing wildly. Lara lay on her stomach in the dark, 1911 extended, and fired twice more at the muzzle flare. She didn’t hit him again and he ducked away, presumably to reload.

One-handed. In the dark. His helmet light had died and he didn’t have a torch or he wouldn’t be using his phone. There were two holes in the floor between them, one a hop, the second a running jump. Unless he had a lighter, he was stuck.

She started edging backwards, nervous bats shifting overhead. She hadn’t heard him until the last second, barely enough time to drop to the floor. He was persistent, and capable of moving quietly in spite of his injuries; she should have been more careful. Her initial impression, that he was a driven man, had proved correct.

The rock curved behind her, and Lara turned her body, dragging the tips of her boots lightly back and forth, making sure there was floor behind her as she backed out of his firing line. As soon as she was clear, she could get moving again. Even if he found some other source of light, she’d hear him make the jump.

Harper ran into the passage and charged her, firing.

* * *

Fucking bitch!

Harper ducked into the tunnel, firing straight ahead, spacing the shots, watching his feet in the flare from the Glock. He saw the first gap and leaped over it, landing on his bad leg. He stumbled and fired again, and again, lurching ahead, blindly laying down his cover, using the rounds to light his path. He saw the second hole, a longer jump, and picked up speed, firing a last round before he leapt—

—and as he hurtled over the gap, Lara fired, two shots from out of the dark and low, the flash of the .45 illuminating her grim face only a few meters ahead of him, down on the floor.

The first round slammed into his upper right thigh, spinning him. The second tore into his stomach, just above his groin.

Harper dropped the Glock and shot his arms out, suddenly in the dark, grasping, his forearms slamming down on rock as he fell into the hole. He clawed up mud and slipped backwards, grasped a single horn of stone and hung on, his body dangling over open space.

The black beat at him. He pulled on the stone, tried to pull himself up, but his body shook, his arms suddenly weak, shocked by the heat of the wounds, by the heat of the rivers pouring from his guts, his leg. Far below him, the lizards started their inquisitive calls.

A soft blue light snapped on and Lara Croft was standing over him, pointing her .45 at his face.

“You won’t get past my men,” he said. He wanted to scream it at her, but his voice was a gasp. “They’ll kill you, they’ll kill your friends.”

“We’ll see,” she said, the first time he’d heard her speak. Her voice was soft and feminine and absolutely unimpressed.

“You’ll never stop us,” he said. “Dominguez has the key, you gave it to him, and he’s ahead of you. Trinity will win, we will win.”

“You may be right,” she said. “But you won’t know about it, will you?”

His fingers were slipping. He could hear his own blood splashing into the water far below, where the lizards waited for him, calling. Croft watched, her wide brown eyes as pitiless as any soldier’s.

Harper fell, clawing at the air, at the dreadful black that rose up to swallow him.

* * *

The fall didn’t kill Harper. He landed with a splash and screamed weakly. The salamanders shrieked.

Lara turned on her torch and looked down, the sharp beam cutting through the deep black. His legs were in the water, bent in all the wrong places, and he was trying to fend off the attacking animals with an obviously broken arm. She raised the Remington and then lowered it again as the pale creatures darted in, snapping. He was already dead.

Jonah. Go. She turned away on Harper’s last strangled cry, the sound following her to the curve in the passage ahead… And for no reason at all, her eyes filled, and there was suddenly a terrible knot in her throat.

Dominguez has the key, you gave it to him.

She blinked and tears spilled. That child falling into the swirling water, swept away.

I’m so sorry. She’d only wanted to carry on with her father’s work, to fight Trinity, but what if Dominguez hadn’t been about to take the key, what if there’d been some other way to keep him from it? She had triggered the cleansing, she had brought the wave, all those people that her father had died trying to protect and there was no getting away from the horrible truth of it. She’d failed him. Again.

Selfish. It’s about you, it’s always about you and Dad. The world is at stake and those poor people died, Jonah and Miguel might die, and you’re too damaged to get past your own personal bullshit; you’re crying for yourself and what you lost.

Lara wiped her eyes as she ran, but the tears wouldn’t stop. She would always be running, even if she managed to keep Dominguez from fulfilling the prophecy. Trinity would find something else, there would be another one, and one after that, and she would run until she couldn’t anymore, until she collapsed or someone like Harper put a bullet in her.

That’s right, you will. And how you feel about it doesn’t matter at all, you still have to fight.

It was a depressing thought and even thinking it made her feel horribly shallow and pathetic… And she realized that was the great emotional monster that she’d been avoiding, that had her tied up since the tsunami. She felt sorry for herself, like a selfish child, and how could she indulge in self-pity when all of this was her fault?

She missed her parents horribly. She could have grown up to be a whole, undamaged person, with experiences of safety and love instead of absence and loss, and it was so stupid, she was so stupid still to be mourning something that never was and couldn’t be.

She let the tears fall, refusing to let them slow her down. If anything happened to Jonah or Miguel, she would hate herself forever.

She had to climb around another gaping hole but the tunnel widened after that and she found a branch that led up and east, and the whole time she cried and felt shitty and broken and worried, the .45 ready… But she heard nothing, the passages stretching all around her silent and still.

She broke into a run again when she hit a straight incline. There was a tunnel at the top that climbed into a small bat cave with three openings—and two of them were marked. One with an arrow that pointed up.

Her heart picked up speed, the tears finally drying as she hurried up through the cold dark, watching for charges again as the passages widened and stretched, carrying her into the upper tunnels. Jonah was her family now, and she ran for him through the last chambers of the Blue Labyrinth, barely pausing at the corners and openings, leaping past the entrances and over the flat stones, into a chamber that led to the stone bridge where she’d fallen only a few hours before.

She unhooked her radio, moving quickly toward the small chamber that led to the exit, keeping behind the Remington. She stepped into the cave, gasping, the bats stirring over her head.

Lara stopped in the bare room and hit the transmit button, twice.

A double-tap of static came back at her a second later.

“…you… Bird?”

Lara closed her eyes at the sound of his voice. He sounded hopeful and happy.

“Yes, it’s me. I’m coming,” she said, walking past the tunnel of the drop with its red X and into the last tunnel. The cluster of bats squeaked at her, the soft sounds following her into the long and winding passage, the very slight ascent.

She looked at her watch. Harper and his team had cost her less than two hours. She had found the code to solve whatever was written in the chamber of pillars, she had only to apply herself and she would find what Dominguez had missed. They could be deep into Peru by dawn.

Lara let out a shaking breath, suddenly aware of how tired she was, all her muscles aching, cuts and scrapes and bites stinging… But her mind felt clear and empty, her heartache faded like a bad dream. She could live with the idea that she wasn’t always going to feel the way she thought she was supposed to feel, about anything. Denying to herself that she hurt or made mistakes or wanted things only made all of those feelings bigger, scarier.

Just like Jonah’s always saying. God, she couldn’t wait to see him. The warmth that filled her at the thought spurred her back into a jog. It felt like it had been days since she’d seen a friendly face.

The cold started to lift, slowly, the smells of the labyrinth giving way to the cleaner scent of fresh night air as she hurried past the first green plants, mosses, and then ferns nestled in cracks. In another minute, she was out.

* * *

They pulled her up and she threw herself into his arms as soon as she’d unclipped her harness.

Jonah wrapped her tightly, squeezing. She held on for an extra minute and he grinned.

“It’s good to see you, too. Anyone chasing you?”

“I don’t think so,” she said. “How many went in?”

“Five, but that guy you just stepped over came back out.”

“Then no,” she said.

He squeezed again, then let go of her and stepped back, looking down at his shirt, smeared with bat crap and mud. “Nice. Remind me to get you a present next time.”

Lara laughed. She was filthy, nearly every inch of her covered in muck. A bandana was tied around one of her legs and her face was heavily smudged—except for around her slightly swollen eyes, where tears had left obvious streaks. She looked exhausted.

“How are you, Miguel?” she asked, turning her attention to the pilot, who had stood back some distance for their reunion.

“Not so bad,” he said. “I mean, I scraped my knee, but Jonah had ointment.”

Lara looked around at the clearing, the bodies, the new trucks. “And to think I was worried. No problems, then?”

“We’re fine,” Jonah said. “Did you find what you need?”

Lara nodded eagerly, climbing out of the harness. “I think so. I got pictures of everything, and found a reference that Trinity missed, about a path of rings that follows the path of stars. I don’t know if I have the right angles on the formation to read the glyphs, but I also found a notebook with sketches I can use.”

He wasn’t sure exactly what she meant, but more of the story unfolded on the ride back to the airstrip. Miguel volunteered to drive and Lara wasn’t fit to sit inside, even in the rusting cab of the junker; she and Jonah rode in the back, hanging on to hammered boards to keep from flying into the jungle, Lara calling out over the roar of the engine about an explorer’s diary, damaged glyphs, a secret message hidden in plain sight.

Jonah kept an eye out for Winters as they bounced through the warm night, but didn’t see the pilot along the rocky road. Had he gotten lost, or just hidden as they’d gone by? It was a mystery to which Jonah was perfectly fine never knowing the answer.

Lara tried to look at her pictures as Miguel coaxed the truck over the rutted road. Jonah found himself frowning, watching her. She was battered and exhausted but entirely focused on her new puzzle, oblivious to everything else.

Jonah breathed deeply, taking in the wild green scent of the jungle, the feel of the rainforest in the early hours of a November morning. He wished they were going home but instead they were heading to Peru, to a secret city and a dead god and more Trinity.

And another long flight on a small plane.

He sighed. Lara studied her camera intently, scanning through her shots. She was one of those rare people who burned brighter than most, worked harder, invested more of herself… but she also kept going when any sane person would have tapped out. He had taken it upon himself to support her and was generally proud to do so, to the best of his abilities, but at what cost? He was along for this ride regardless, but he didn’t know if either of them were doing the right thing—assuming there even was a right thing anymore. He trusted Lara, but her obsessive nature allowed her to discount all kinds of red flags and warnings that might make a more rational person think twice.

Jonah watched the jungle go by, not sure how to process what he felt. The only thing he absolutely knew was that he loved her. He did his best to hold onto that, to be glad that she was alive and that they were together.

* * *

The truck rattled through a burn scar and into the Santo Almeda compound, flies already buzzing over the carnage. Miguel parked well away from the slaughter and went to get the plane ready. Lara carried her kit over to the water tank while Jonah snagged the good first-aid kit and some clean clothes out of her pack. He stopped to help Miguel check the landing lights before heading over to help Lara hose off her equipment.

Miguel watched them interact while he ran through his inspection checklist. They worked well together, quickly and efficiently, but they didn’t talk much and neither looked especially happy. Lara cleaned up and then broke down the weapons while Jonah packed up her stuff. Neither of them seemed particularly exceptional… except he knew that they were. Jonah had saved his life, more than once, and Lara had come out of the tunnels leaving four trained killers in her dust.

Jonah leaned into the cabin. “How’s it going?”

Miguel nodded. All that was left was startup. “Good. We’re ready to fly.”

Lara handed the weapons up to Jonah, then climbed into the passenger seat beside Miguel, looking at him with a serious expression.

“I wanted to thank you, for getting us this far,” she said. “And for agreeing to take us on to Peru. I’m sorry about—that we didn’t tell you the full nature of the risks. That I didn’t.”

“You didn’t know they were on your tail,” Miguel said.

“I knew it was possible,” she said. “And there may be more trouble ahead. Rough weather. And Trinity’s looking for the same place we are. If you want to drop us off at the nearest strip where we can find another ride and go home, I wouldn’t hold it against you.”

“Yeah, Jonah tried to give me an out, too,” he said. “The way I see it, if you don’t find this city, I may not have anything to go back to.”

He didn’t have all that much, anyway. Circling tourists from Mexico to the basin, drinking with his friends, dates that went nowhere, Sundays with his mother. As crazy as this night had been, it had woken something in him. A savor for life, an excitement. Like flying, like running contraband, but better; he was helping people with a real purpose, something noble, even.

“Also, Jonah owes me dinner,” he added.

“I didn’t forget,” Jonah said.

Lara smiled at him. “You’re a good man.”

Her statement was awkward, but sincere. Miguel smiled back at her.

“I don’t know if I’d go that far, but thanks, anyway,” he said. “Now, what do you say we get the hell out of here?”

His passengers strapped in and Miguel locked everything down, then settled into his seat. He pushed in the mixture knob and the carburetor, flipped the master switch, toggled the throttle in and started the engine.

He ran his checks and then they were moving. He had to get up to speed fast on the short strip and did so, feeling the familiar rush as the plane lifted into the air, adding to his good feeling about his decision. Whatever else happened, he was flying.

* * *

As soon as they were in the air, Lara double-checked the message she’d found down in the labyrinth: Journey the path of the stars to follow the path of rings, at the sacred chamber of stones. A message is revealed.

Lara clicked through the pictures she’d taken of the ringed pillars in the puzzle room, making notes on each series and separating them into files. She studied the meticulous drawings from Mateus’s crumbling notebook, and drew out the zigzagging pattern of Hydra by its major stars, and looked up glyphs, reading all of the writings from the room before attempting to apply her star overlay. In the Mayan alphabet, each glyph could represent a word or a syllable, and she was by no means fluent; it took some time. The grids of text were absolutely a jumble of code, disparate phrases and descriptors in long lines that included images of Ix Chel and Chak Chel and Kukulkan, but nothing made sense. Without knowing that the columns’ rings were part of the puzzle Dominguez would never have figured it out. She matched the thicker rings to points along Hydra near its heart, but there were a lot of variables to consider—from what angle had the puzzle-makers been working? Did the thinner lines represent descriptors?

Jonah sat next to Miguel and they talked for a while but she didn’t really hear them, or notice when they finally fell silent some time later.

She made several false starts and stopped to erase and redraw her lines, patiently searching for a message that wasn’t utter nonsense. They’d be deep in Peru by the time the sun came up. Everything else she’d seen at the Blue Labyrinth, Dominguez had already studied. She was convinced some of it was fake, although she couldn’t imagine why someone had gone through the tunnels and changed certain dates and directions, rewritten pieces of text. But the puzzle hadn’t been altered and it was her only edge now, the one thing she knew that she’d seen and Dominguez hadn’t, so she erased and drew again.

It was about her tenth attempt when she saw the first part of an actual phrase. Excited, Lara scribbled down the words she knew and quickly filled in the blanks, reading it through.

And again, her heart was pounding.

At the sacred altar where the key opens the box, she who has unleashed the cleansing will witness its culmination. The ultimate sacrifice will be asked and accepted.

She looked up. The plane buzzed steadily west, the moon low in the sky. Beneath them, the black rainforest stretched on into Peru, dappled with moon and starlight. Jonah was asleep, nodding in the passenger seat next to Miguel.

As far as finding something that could help her get closer to the hidden city, this stop had been worthless. Marin had been right, that she would find what Dominguez had missed—but he’d been mistaken about how useful it would be.

Not useful to anyone but me. “She who has unleashed the cleansing.” Lara had taken the dagger… but what if she wasn’t the “she” who’d been meant to take it? Maybe it didn’t matter anymore, the damage was done, but she had to wonder. She didn’t believe that everything happened for a reason, but how coincidental was it that she would be the one to find and decipher a bit of prophecy about herself?

Did the information have any value? If the ring puzzle’s prophecy was true, the dagger and silver box would be reunited and she’d be there to see it. The thing she was trying to prevent was going to happen.

And the ultimate sacrifice will be asked and accepted. Asked of her, or was it something she would ask? Was it saying that she would die? That was the ultimate sacrifice, wasn’t it? She wouldn’t hesitate to offer her life if it would save others, but the words were maddeningly vague. If she sacrificed her own life, would that halt the rebirth? And who was doing the accepting?

But it doesn’t say your life, it says the ultimate sacrifice will be asked. What else might she be asked to give up that had any real value to her? Jonah? Memories of those she’d lost? She would prefer her own death.

It doesn’t mean anything. Prophecies could be halted, that was why she was going to Peru. If everything foretold came to pass, what would be the point of even trying?

She gazed at Jonah in the seat ahead of her, the curve of his scruffy cheek, his chin tucked as he dozed. What would she tell him when he woke up? She wouldn’t lie if he pressed her, but it might be better to say only that the stop hadn’t revealed anything new about the hidden city’s location. The grim, ambiguous prophecy would add to his worry and benefit him nothing.

Lara leaned her head back against her seat, closing her eyes. She was disappointed, but at least Harper and his team of killers weren’t still after them, they were well on their way—and she didn’t feel like she was hiding from herself. She felt strong, ready to face the next steps. She might even cry more, and that was fine; whatever she had to do to keep going. The sun would rise in a few hours and they’d be flying into the Peruvian Andes soon after, chasing rivers, searching for the mountain with the silver crown.

And watching for the storm. She could feel it, gathering, knew it by the urgency that still pulsed through her… but the pulse was overshadowed by simple exhaustion, her body sinking into the padded seat. Her thoughts darted from her head, fleeing into the dark.

Lara slept, and dreamed of her parents’ smiling faces. In the dream, she was home.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Obviously, massive shout-out to Tomb Raider fans. I hope I didn’t disappoint, and you’ve had a quick, fun read. Lara’s been around for a long time, and it’s been a pleasure to pay my respects to her.

A few quick things on my own selfish behalf—I’d like to thank Jennifer Weltz and Ariana Philips, from JVNLA, for their always exceptional work. Thanks to Sam Matthews at Titan, for hiring me and then letting me pester her with unusually specific questions. Thanks also to Jason Dozois, Jill Murray, Rodney Lelu, and David Anfossi at Eidos-Montréal, and to Rich Briggs and Meagan Marie at Crystal Dynamics, for their interest and time.

Gratitude as always to my long-suffering nuclear family— Myk, Cy, and Dex—for putting up with me on yet another tight deadline, and to my very dear friends and relatives who don’t sweat it when I drop out of sight for weeks at a time. I love you people.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

S.D. Perry is a top genre author, who has written tie-in novels to the much-loved Resident Evil games franchise, as well as novels for popular series Aliens, Alien vs. Predator, Star Trek and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, and movie novelizations for Timecop and Virus. She is the daughter of bestselling sci-fi author Steve Perry and lives in Portland, Oregon with her husband and two children.