Christopher Golden - Uncharted - The Fourth Labyrinth

With a roar that managed to be warning and battle cry and profanity all in one, Sully hurtled down the sheer slope with his gun and flashlight both held out in front of him. One of the hooded men reached Jada, grabbed her leg, and brandished the curved blade they all seemed to carry. Sully shot him in the head, but Drake knew the shot was pure luck. At that angle and speed, careening out of control, Sully’s next move was no longer his choice to make.

“Sully, no!” Drake shouted.

The words echoed off the walls as Sully lost his footing, moving too fast, yet managed to lunge at the three remaining killers, passing right over Jada. He crashed into them, knocking two of them backward, and they all fell sprawling and rolling down the tunnel into the darkness, Sully’s flashlight shattering and winking out.

The scuffling from that darkness chilled Drake’s blood.

“Son of a-” he began.

Jada cried out for her godfather. Drake slid and skidded down the tunnel toward her, stepping over the man he’d shot and calling out for Sully, hearing only the whisper of movement below. Jada stood, recovering her flashlight and shining it down into the dark, and they both saw the figures twisted around one another. The three hooded men struggled with Sully, one of them clamping a hand over his mouth. His eyes were wide and gleaming in the beam from Jada’s light, and Drake wanted to look away, sure that any second a curved blade would slice Sully’s throat.

“Down here!” Olivia shouted behind them. “There are more of them down here!”

“Drake!” a low voice called.

He didn’t turn. The voice belonged to Henriksen, and he put together what it meant. The man was wounded but alive, and if he and Olivia and others-given the footfalls Drake could hear-were starting down the sloped fork, it meant they had won back there at the split in the corridor.

“Let him go!” Drake roared at the hooded men.

They did not, but neither did they cut Sully’s throat. Instead, they dragged him deeper into the tunnel, scrambling back into the darkness.

“Crap!” Drake barked. It was just like Welch. They had lost the fight and were retreating, but they were taking Sully with them.

Drake spun as Henriksen came down the slope toward him. The wounded man had lost his gun but still held a flashlight.

“Give me that,” Drake demanded.

“He’s as good as dead,” Henriksen snapped.

“No,” Jada said. “They took him! They didn’t kill him!”

Drake snatched the light from Henriksen. “I’m going after him.”

He started down into the forgotten heart of the labyrinth, and when he sensed Jada behind him, heard her footsteps, and saw her flashlight beam merging with his to illuminate the darkness below, he didn’t argue. With her father dead, Sully was the closest thing either one of them had to a father. They would save him together or not at all.

Drake stood in total darkness, his forehead pressed against hot stone, trying to contain the urge to scream. He could hear the rustle and click of Jada going through her pack nearby, putting a fresh set of batteries into her flashlight. She spoke in a low voice, but he barely heard the words. Was she trying to comfort him or herself? He couldn’t be sure. Probably both.

How much time had passed since the hooded men had dragged Sully away? An hour and a half? Two?

At first it had felt as if Drake and Jada were giving chase, and he had believed they could catch up with the murderous bastards. He had reminded himself that if they’d wanted Sully dead, they could have killed him right there in the tunnel, and they hadn’t done it. But still the image of Sully struggling with the hooded men as they hauled him into the shadows haunted Drake. Would it be the last time he would see his friend and mentor alive? After a time, he forced himself not to think about it, focusing entirely on the pursuit.

But soon the chase gave way to something more closely resembling a search. They had followed the twists of the labyrinth, ignoring blind alleys thanks to the diamond markings that indicated the proper path. They stopped from time to time to listen for the sounds of scuffling or any hint that the killers were up ahead. Sully would call out, Drake had told himself. But the only scuffling they heard was the sound of their own shoes on the stone floor, and the loudest sound was the pounding of Drake’s heart inside his chest.

After fifteen minutes, Drake had begun to fear that they had been wrong in assuming the hooded men would have taken the marked route toward the center of the maze, and they had backtracked to search the side tunnels and blind alleys. With no trace of the killers and no shout from Sully, they’d had no choice. Some of the tunnels led to dead ends, though in a couple of places Drake thought there might be some mechanism that would lead them to a secret chamber. Other avenues ended in a collapsed section of the maze, and twice they came to places where the labyrinth had given way and the underground caverns had opened up enough that the sea had made its way into the subterranean world. Turgid water ebbed back and forth.

Those sunken rooms were full of water, but Drake saw a glimpse of the split at the top of a cave entrance in one, and he thought the tide must be going out.

There had been more shafts as well, and Drake had rounded a corner too fast and plunged into one, barely catching himself on the edge. He had managed to haul himself up, bathed in the heat and glow coming from the volcanic vents down below, but the flashlight he had taken from Henriksen had been lost-sacrificed to the volcano.

Eventually they had given up on dead ends. They had begun searching not for a secret passage where the killers might have taken Sully but for the center of the labyrinth. Drake thought they might try sacrificing him to Poseidon or whoever else this temple had been dedicated to, and if that were to happen, it would be in the worship chamber.

And now they had found it.

“Damn it,” Jada muttered.

Drake heard a soft thunk and realized she had dropped one of the batteries. He froze, thinking they were going to be trapped down there in the dark and wondering how they would ever find their way out, and then the light snapped on, so bright that he had to shield his eyes.

“Sorry,” she said, moving the beam from his face.

“I thought you’d dropped a battery.”

“I did. One of the dead ones.”

Drake only nodded. Neither of them smiled. They had lost the heart for the banter that had kept them going for the past few days and allowed her to focus on something besides her father’s murder. Now neither of them could think of anything but Sully meeting the same fate, a head and torso in a steamer trunk left on a train platform somewhere.

Jada looked tired and pale. They still had water and food in their packs, but Drake wasn’t hungry. It was all he could do to stop himself from shaking with fury, though he knew the rage only masked his fear for Sully and the sadness he felt in his bones. More than once before he had been convinced Sully had died, only to discover otherwise, and they had been in dozens of tight scrapes. He liked to tell himself this was because Sully was a tough son of a bitch, but he knew there had been just as much luck involved as toughness or determination.

They had to get him back.

“Come on,” he said. “We’re not going to find them just waiting around.”

Jada shone the light around the worship chamber. The flash had flickered out while they were descending the three steps down into the room, and she had stumbled and fallen to her knees. It was only sheer luck that she hadn’t broken the flashlight. They were going to have to be more careful; their only flashlight might be more important to their survival than the water bottles they carried.