Shadow of the Tomb Raider--Path of the Apocalypse Read online

  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-pitch
ed 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 b
roken.

  “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.