Christopher Golden - Uncharted - The Fourth Labyrinth

One of them lunged at Drake, his blade whistling through the shadows in a wide arc, aimed for his throat.

The gunshot made Drake flinch even as he tried to dodge the killer’s knife. But the hooded man fell short, his lunge losing momentum, and he crashed to the rocky ledge at Drake’s feet and twitched once, then went still.

Jada stood behind him, gun in hand, looking like she might throw up. Her weapon was still holstered; she had managed to pick up his Glock. Amid the chaos of gunfire and voices, bloodshed and brutality, he darted forward and snatched the gun away from her. A hooded woman-one of the first females he’d seen among them-raced up, metal climbing claws like brass knuckles on her hands, ready to slash him to ribbons. Drake held his breath when he took aim and shot her in the chest.

They had no time for hesitation, but it would haunt him. Even in self-defense, killing haunted him. Almost always, he thought. Corelli might have been an exception.

With a glance around, he spotted Olivia up against the wall of the ravine, gun held out in front of her, firing at the hooded killers still swarming up from over the ledge. But Perkins and Garza were nearby, and they had firepower to spare. The semiautomatic weapons’ fire ripped at the air, the echoes punishingly loud.

Drake grabbed Jada’s hand and dragged her back into the tunnel that led back up to the torture chamber. For a moment, they were out of sight of both sets of killers. Drake turned to her, put a hand under her chin, and forced her to look up at him. Her gaze was far away, and he worried that she was in shock.

“Jada, listen to me.”

“I shot that man.”

“If you hadn’t, he’d have gutted me,” Drake said. “You saved my life. But we’re both on borrowed time here. Whoever wins out there, they’re going to kill us, so we’ve gotta run for it.”

She blinked as if coming awake. “If we try to go back, they’ll catch us. We’ll never make it to the surface.”

Drake shook his head. “No, no. I don’t want to go back.”

Jada glanced at the end of the tunnel and saw one of the hooded men straddling a mercenary on the ledge, slashing at the ex-soldier’s throat with a curved blade. Arterial blood sprayed in an arc.

“We can’t walk down the cliff paths. We’ll never get past them, and even if we did-”

“There isn’t time,” Drake said, his heart like a tiger trying to smash free of its cage. He thought his chest might burst, it was hammering so hard. “There’s only one way we’re surviving the next hundred seconds or so.”

One of the hooded men slipped into the tunnel, spotted them, and cocked back a hand in which he clutched a throwing knife. Drake shot him twice. Twelve shots left in the Glock’s magazine before he’d have to reload. The killer and his blade hit the rock floor at the same time. The man dragged himself to his knees, blood raining from his chest, and reached for the knife.

It was Jada who put the third bullet in him.

She had her own gun out now, the two of them staring at that opening, waiting for more of the killers to come for them. But through the opening, they could see the flashlight beams slashing the darkness, and enough of that light bounced off the walls that they could make out the dim outline of the tunnel across the ravine.

Jada stiffened and then spun toward him. “You can’t be serious. If we fall short, we’re dead.”

Drake holstered his gun. “We don’t jump for it, we die anyway.” He shoved his flashlight into his backpack, working fast, zipped it, and slipped it back on. “Sully’s waiting for us, kid.”

Jada swore, snapping her gun back into its holster. She kept swearing over and over again, the profanity like a mantra as she jammed her flashlight into her backpack and then turned to look at him defiantly.

“It’s gonna be-” he began.

Jada punched him in the arm. “Just shut up and run.”

Drake felt a strange, mad surrender then. Not to death but to fate. An old song floated into his mind, one Sully played from time to time: Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose. He’d never understood just how true that was until this moment. Free, exhilarated by his terror and hope, he took Jada’s hand, and they ran to the tunnel’s end and onto the ledge. Their hands unclasped just as they reached the edge, and then they launched themselves full speed across the twelve-foot gap.

For an eyeblink, Drake felt weightless, with the jagged rocks below and the slivers of moonlight high above. Then gravity took hold, and they began to fall. He windmilled his arms to keep balanced in the air, and then he slammed into the far wall, cracking his head against it. He slid to the ledge, then spun around and saw Jada land on her belly, legs hanging out over the yawning darkness below. Her fingers scrabbled for purchase and found none, and he knew she was going over, knew she would die broken and bloody.

He caught her wrist, throwing himself backward so he wouldn’t be pulled along with her. He slammed the heel of his boot against the remains of a support that once had held up this end of the missing bridge. The rocky ledge scraped his back and legs as he dragged her up on top of him, and for a moment they lay there, hearts racing together. Then a stray bullet struck the wall above them, sending tiny shards of rock flying, and they were in motion. Drake rolled Jada off him, and the two got to their knees and turned to look at the scene playing out across the ravine.

Half a dozen hooded men were still scaling the wall below the opposite ledge. Many lay dead, crumpled in bloody heaps around the mercenaries and protectors who were still trying desperately to murder one another. Olivia remained pinned against the wall, with Perkins putting himself between her and the hooded men. At least five of the mercenaries were down, wounded or dead-he figured probably the latter. The Protectors of the Hidden Word didn’t seem like the wounding kind.

Henriksen let out a primitive, furious roar and grabbed hold of the hooded man who’d been trying to cut him open. The big Norwegian, a blond silhouette captured in the illumination from someone else’s flashlight, slammed the hooded man against the wall twice, then a third time. The echo of cracking bone mixed with the sounds of death and battle, and then Henriksen hurled the man into the ravine.

Then he spun and stared right at Drake.

“He’s looking at-” Jada started.

“Us,” Drake agreed, standing up and waving. “Jump! It’s your only shot!”

“What are you doing?” Jada demanded.

But even as she spoke, Henriksen stooped and snatched the gun from a dead mercenary, slung it across his back, and retreated a couple of steps before sprinting for the edge.

Olivia screamed and pushed past Perkins, taking aim and firing while Henriksen was airborne.

The Norwegian crashed into the wall and almost fell backward into the ravine before Drake steadied him. Only then did Drake realize that Olivia had missed. Across the gap, she shrieked in anger and started shooting at the three of them. There were still hooded men trying to get to her, to cut her throat, but she was more concerned with trying to make sure they died first.

Perkins knocked her back against the wall, saving her from a blade that whistled through the air and would have caught her in the chest. But the action cost him, and as he turned to take aim, two of the hooded men descended on him, their blades rising and falling, blood spattering the lens of his flashlight so that its beam was darkened with spots of shadow that had been his life, now extinguished.

Still, the odds had changed. Assault rifles tended to have that effect. The last few hooded men came over the ledge and were shot before they could make it a handful of feet. The mercenaries were going to win this, but either way, Drake knew that he, Jada, and Henriksen needed to be gone.