Christopher Golden - Uncharted - The Fourth Labyrinth

“Is it the volcano?” Olivia shouted, looking at Nico.

The old Greek did not move. He seemed resigned to whatever fate held in store for him. His eyes were narrowed as he tried to make sense of the noise from above.

Then the rumbling subsided and the last bits of grit rained down from the ceiling. Whatever had happened, it was over as abruptly as it had begun.

“If it was the volcano, we’d be dead already,” the short, stocky thug muttered. “It’s the fortress.”

Henriksen flashed him a dark look. “Corelli?”

The stocky man-Corelli-looked at him, dark certainty in his eyes. “Explosives, Mr. Henriksen. The assholes brought the whole place down on top of us. We’re not going anywhere.”

“Oh, my God,” Olivia whispered. Her gaze turned haunted. “I can’t die down here.” She looked around at the walls as if they were about to start closing in.

Drake frowned, shaking his head. No way. He couldn’t even let himself wrap his mind around it. The hooded men had used explosives to destroy the rest of the fortress ruins, trapping them down here? They used daggers. They were killers from another era, all about stealth and secrecy. Explosives?

But there was no other answer. It wasn’t as if Henriksen would have trapped himself down here voluntarily.

“What do we do?” Nico’s son said, his Greek accent think and frantic. He stared not at Drake or Henriksen but at his father. “What are we going to do?”

“There are other ways out,” Jada said, turning to Henriksen. “Those hooded men-they got out with my godfather, and they didn’t go back the way we came in.”

Henriksen trembled, gaze shifting around the room. Drake thought others, watching him, might have thought he shook in fear, but he understood that the man was filled with anger at having been trapped like this-at having his will thwarted. At length, Henriksen aimed his flashlight at the huge stone slab of the door to the secret passage at the rear of the chamber.

“We figure out how to open that door.”

“And what if we can’t figure it out in time?” Olivia demanded.

“There’s another way,” Drake said. As they all turned to him, he pointed at Olivia. “Please tell me that camera is waterproof.”

Drake raced out of the Chinese worship chamber ahead of them. A crack had appeared in the wall of the corridor outside and chunks of stone had broken off the support pillars in the hall, but he knew that would be nothing compared with the damage they would encounter if they attempted to retrace their steps. They had only one chance of getting out of the labyrinth quickly-perhaps at all.

There had been four worship chambers in Daedalus’s original design for this junction in the secret heart of this labyrinth. Two of them had been destroyed, collapsing into the cavern formed by the earthquake of 1954. Now even more of the stone floor had calved off into the large cavern. The others followed Drake with their flashlights as he led them to the sheer ledge. Below, the sea churned in and out like a watery bellows.

“You can’t be serious,” Corelli said. “And you thought Olivia was nuts?”

Henriksen shot him a dark look. “Shut your mouth, idiot. We could all die down here.”

“Yeah. I’d like to avoid that,” Drake said.

Jada stood on the verge of the chasm. Drake took her arm and pulled her back a foot or two. Part of that ledge had given way already. After the explosion, cracks might have formed to make it even more unstable.

She did not try to pull her arm away but glanced up at him.

“How far do you think we’d have to swim underwater?”

Nico and his son were back in the entrance to the Chinese worship chamber, whispering quietly to each other. Corelli shook his head, scratching the back of his skull in doubt. But Henriksen’s eyes were lit with anticipation. Drake had to hand it to him; the man was motivated.

“There’s no way to tell,” Drake said.

“I don’t know how long I can hold my breath,” Olivia said, walking up to the edge and looking down into the roiling water.

“Look, the tide is low,” Drake said. “It could still be going out; I don’t know. But we’re not going to get a better shot than this for another twenty-four hours.”

Jada, Olivia, and Corelli all looked dubious. But Drake noticed the Greeks watching him and thought he saw interest and encouragement in their gazes. They were locals, and they looked as though they thought he might not be entirely crazy, after all.

“The camera,” Drake said, looking at Olivia. “I asked you before, is it waterproof?”

Olivia nodded. “Supposedly.”

“And there’s a waterproof pouch in my pack,” Henriksen said, gesturing to the backpack Corelli carried. With his wound, Henriksen apparently had given up the burden. “We can double up protection.”

“And if the camera’s ruined?” Olivia complained. “What then?”

“Then we come back,” Henriksen said sharply. “Or I do, with or without you.”

“We could try through those stone doors,” Corelli argued. “There’s gotta be a way to trigger them open.”

“If there were any easy way, we’d have found it in the Temple of Sobek,” Henriksen argued. He looked at Drake and nodded. “We go.”

Drake shook his head. “No. I go.” He made his way to the edge and sat down, taking off his boots and then stripping his khakis off. He balled up the trousers and stowed them in his pack, hesitated, and then decided to put the boots back on. The climb down would be jagged, and even underwater he’d hesitate to be barefoot. Despite their weight, he decided he was better with the boots than without them, although he knew he looked ridiculous in his boxer briefs and boots.

He swung his legs over the edge of the broken floor, then turned back to Henriksen. “You’re filthy rich, right?”

Henriksen nodded gravely. “Yes. Yes, I am.”

Of course, Drake thought. The guy wants treasure. The rich want to get richer.

“You’re a man who wants the best of everything. Who spares no expense?”

“That’s right.”

Drake smiled. “Good for you. Give me your flashlight. If you’re that particular, I’m guessing it’s waterproof.”

Henriksen walked over and handed his flashlight to Drake. His boot shifted and a piece of the cliff broke off, but he scrambled backward in time.

Drake turned to Jada. “I’m going to see if there’s a way through. It may not be far to the outside, or if it is, there may be air pockets along the way, even open caverns. I figure no more than half an hour. If I’m not back, you’ll have to move to plan B.”

“What’s plan B?” Corelli asked.

“Anything but dying,” Drake replied.

He checked that his pack was tightly zipped and then turned around and slipped over the edge of the shattered floor. There were handholds, but halfway down a chunk of stone broke off under his fingers, and he slid the last ten feet, turning as he fell. He turned his ankle on the debris below as he landed in the churning water at the edge of the cavern, and he bit his lip to keep from crying out.

“Are you all right?” Jada yelled, her voice throwing haunted house echoes all across the cavern.

Drake tested his ankle and found it only a little sore. He shone his flashlight upward to find the entire group, including the Greeks, staring down at him.

“I’m good,” he said with a wave. “I’ll be back.”

He told himself that they wouldn’t hurt Jada, that if they had any intention of doing so, they would have done it already. And then he dived into the water, surfacing a moment later. The flashlight beam illuminated a patch of the water, unaffected by being submerged, and he felt a sliver of relief. He shifted over to the left side of the cavern, where he could scrabble along the wall and his boots would not drag him down.