Christopher Golden - Uncharted - The Fourth Labyrinth

A huge block of stone in the wall of the cave pushed inward, falling onto the coin jars. They shattered, spilling coins all over the floor, just as a torrent of water rushed in through the hole the block had left behind. The rumbling and grinding went on. Another block slid from the wall, then a third and a fourth, and water crashed in, filling the vault with all the power of the river. So much water flooded in so quickly that in moments it began to rise around them.

Jada reached the stairs first, helping Suarez out of the rising water, which already had reached the second step. Drake and Sully were right behind them, but Sully turned to look back into the vault.

“What about her?” he said.

Drake turned to see Olivia in the middle of the maelstrom formed by the half dozen raging torrents coming through the walls. Treasures were flooded, knocked over, swirling and sinking, and Olivia screamed not in panic for herself but in anguish over the loss of the gold. She clutched the Minotaur statue to her chest as if it were her child, trying to keep it above the swiftly rising water.

“Come on, damn it!” Drake shouted, wading back toward her.

“Nate!” Sully called.

“Just go,” Drake snapped, waving him on. “I’m right behind you!”

The water had risen with stunning speed, washing around his waist now and still churning into the vault.

“Olivia! Drop the statue and swim!”

She glared at him with such hate that it stopped him cold. Olivia struggled to hold the heavy statue and forge her way through the maelstrom inside the vault. Drake swore and pushed toward her again, the river still flooding higher.

Something underwater must have tripped her, because she went down with a splash, submerging instantly. Drake thought she would drop the statue then, but there was no sign of flailing arms until suddenly she surfaced twenty feet to his right.

But Olivia was not alone. The dying Minotaur held her from behind, its gauzy white eyes shining in the light from the chandeliers above. The floodwater had knocked over the braziers and put them out, but the candles still burned. At first Drake thought the Minotaur had found the strength to attempt to survive and was trying to drag Olivia toward him and toward the door, but then he saw the way one of its clawed hands was tangled in her hair and the other gripped her throat, and the two of them sank under the water together.

Drake hesitated, furious with Olivia and with himself. Then, over the roar of the water, he heard Sully shouting to him from outside the vault and knew he had to go. He turned and slogged back toward the door, the floodwater swallowing him.

By the time he reached the steps, the water was up to his shoulders. As he climbed the submerged steps, he saw a flashlight up in the corridor and realized Sully had waited for him.

“Go!” he called, struggling out of the water and up the last step.

Sully hit him with the flashlight beam-Suarez must have had it in his pack-and shouted at him to hurry.

“Turn around!” Drake snapped as he ran toward Sully.

Then the water reached the top of the steps and began to pour into the corridor, and Sully’s eyes widened as he understood. They had a hundred feet or more of corridor to cover, and the water would keep churning, keep rising, until it matched the level of the river-at least ten feet above them.

The water washed around their legs, flooding along the tunnel. Sully stumbled once and Drake caught him, but they kept going. Up ahead they saw Jada helping Suarez up the stairs of the secret passage into the worship chamber. Suarez slipped and fell and didn’t rise again until Drake got there to help Jada with him, the water already above their knees.

They had to drag Suarez the last couple of steps and through the opening of the hidden entrance, where the altar remained rolled back from the stairs. Panting, bent over, with a single flashlight and only Suarez’s gun, they staggered out of the worship chamber, past the corpses of Massarsky, Garza, and the younger Minotaur, even as the water rushed up the stairs after them.

Three more steps took them out of the worship chamber, and then they were in the short tunnel that brought them to the rocky shelf of the riverbank, where the waterfall roared and the white hellebore grew as it always had.

Suarez died there only moments after they had set him down gently, too much blood lost from the wound in his side. Drake sank to his knees beside the man, sick to the bone of death and greed.

“Thanks for not killing us,” Drake whispered before he reached out and closed the dead man’s eyes.

He glanced at Sully and Jada, who were leaning against each other, exhausted and drained. Then he sat back on his haunches and glanced around the vast cavern, waiting long seconds to see if any of the Protectors of the Hidden Word would spring from one of the tunnels and try to kill them. No one appeared.

Far up in the ceiling of the cavern, he thought he could make out tiny slits of morning light.

“What do we do now?” Jada asked.

“What your father would have wanted,” Sully replied.

Drake nodded, rising wearily to his feet. He stared around at the blossoms on the walls among the moss and vines.

“Exactly,” he said. “We rip it all down, and then we burn it. We make sure white hellebore-the real thing-stays a myth.”

“We could set a charge, blow the tunnel under the Treasure Mound,” Sully suggested.

Drake shrugged. “Why bother? Once we close it up, the entrance is hidden, and the government forbids anyone from excavating.”

“Perkins left two of his people on guard. What do we say to them when we get out of here?” Jada asked.

Sully laughed. “Tell ’em they got lucky.”

Drake clapped him on the back, and the two of them smiled at Jada.

“Better yet,” Drake said, “tell ’em they’re fired.”

Five days later, Luka Hzujak finally got his funeral. The autumn sun cast a golden hue across the quiet beauty of the cemetery. Woodlawn was one of the most famous burial grounds in New York City, an oasis of peace and quiet in the Bronx. Jada said she had chosen it for that reason, and Drake could understand.

In late October, there were as many red and gold leaves on the ground as there were on the trees, and with every breeze they skittered across the broad lawns, catching on tombstones and statues of angels. Aside from the distant rumble of car engines that seemed the eternal background music of New York City, the only sounds were the wind in the leaves and the voice of the minister.

Drake stood on Jada’s left, Sully on her right. She had wept as any grieving daughter would, but she held her chin high. Her father had loved nothing better than unraveling the secrets of history. Even if he hadn’t been attempting to beat Henriksen to the discovery of the true history of Daedalus and his labyrinths, once Luka knew about them, he would have been unable to resist the temptation to learn more. But his intentions had been pure.

Drake knew that he and Sully usually could not claim such innocent ambitions. They walked a fine line, often on the razor edge of both criminality and greed. Olivia had been willing to hurt anyone-kill anyone-to fulfill her desire for gold, and the idea of turning people into puppets for her personal amusement had inspired her. It was easy for Drake to think of her and to know that he and Sully were different. Like Luka, they loved history and the thrill of uncovering its secrets, but half the excitement came from the fact that those secrets were so often treasures. They wanted the rewards that came along with the risks they took along the way, and that was certainly part of their motivation.

How different did that make them from Henriksen? That was the question that had been haunting Drake ever since they had emerged from Diyu, beaten and exhausted. He and Jada had watched over Sully for a day and a half in a Beijing hotel suite, where they had checked in under false identities and prayed they wouldn’t be arrested. Though he hadn’t been given enough doses to alter his mind permanently, the poison he’d been fed needed to work itself out of his system.