Tomb Raider: The Ten Thousand Immortals (3 page)

Chapter 4

L
ara was back at her friend’s bedside the next day.

There was a new patient in the old woman’s bed, and a new visitor sitting in the old man’s chair. Lara had taken his example and brought a book to read to Sam. She knew that coma patients could often hear, and it soothed her to read. She had settled on Aesop’s Fables. Between stories, she talked about all the things she and Sam had got up to at school, reminding Sam of the stunts she’d pulled and of the games they’d played together. She felt closer to her friend than ever, and more and more resolved to help her in any way she could.

When she arrived on the third day, Sam wasn’t in bed 1. The bed had been stripped and was being remade by an auxiliary.

Lara felt the blood drain from her face, but she was determined that she wasn’t going to panic. She’d left her number. If anything had happened, they were to phone her, any time, day or night. Surely they would have called her.

Lara turned back to the nurses’ station and forced herself to smile at the young man sitting there.

“Can you tell me if Samantha Nishimura has been transferred to another ward?” she asked. “She was in bed 1.”

“Um… I just,” said the young man, hitting some keys on the computer.

Lara glanced at the badge pinned to his tunic.

“That’s Nishimura, David,” she said. “N-I-S-H—”

“Yes, I’ve got it,” he said, smiling up at Lara. “Samantha Nishimura is undergoing tests. She should be returning to the ward soon.”

“Has there been any change?” asked Lara.

David pointed towards the doors to the ward as they opened.

“See for yourself,” he said with another smile.

Sam was being pushed onto the ward in a wheelchair. She was sitting up, and she was conscious. Lara could hardly believe it. Her friend was still pale, and she looked frail in her hospital gown with a blanket folded over her legs, but she was awake. The respiration tube was gone, and all that remained were two narrow tubes in her nostrils and an IV in one arm.

“Hey, Sam,” said Lara. She didn’t want to sound too excited, but she could feel herself shaking. Sam looked up at her, her eyes huge, with dark hollows beneath them. She said nothing, and Lara followed the wheelchair to bed 1.

The nurse gestured Lara away, and the privacy curtain was pulled around the bed as she waited. Moments later, it was pulled back, and Lara was able to sit with her friend.

“Don’t tire her,” said the nurse as she left.

“I won’t,” said Lara.

Mostly, Lara was relieved to see her friend conscious. Sam didn’t seem to want to talk, so Lara did most of the talking, and then she read to her for a while.

“Just tell me you’re going to be OK, Sam,” she said after she’d finished reading one of the stories in the book she’d brought.

Sam looked at her for a long moment, and then said, “Why do you call me that? Who is Sam?”

“It doesn’t matter,” said Lara. “Relax. Would you like me to read some more?”

“No,” said Sam, and she turned her head away, so that Lara could no longer see her friend’s face.

Lara reached out to touch Sam’s hand, but Sam pulled it away.

Lara had been at the hospital for an hour, and she was worried that she might be tiring Sam. Her friend had suffered an overdose, had just come out of a coma, and who knows what tests she’d been put through.

“I’ll come again tomorrow,” said Lara, putting the book away and getting up. When she was a few yards from the bed, she turned to look at her friend. Sam looked so small and frail, and Lara still couldn’t see her face properly. She was worried for Sam.

Lara stopped at the nurses’ station again. David had been replaced by the nurse who had wheeled Sam onto the ward.

“I wonder if there’s any chance I could speak to Samantha Nishimura’s doctor?” asked Lara.

The nurse looked at her, questioning.

“Miss Nishimura, bed 1,” said Lara.

“Yes… Nishimura,” said the nurse, checking a clipboard hanging from the desk. “You’re in luck. If you’d like to sit in the visitors’ room, her doctor is due on the ward shortly. I’ll ask him to come and find you.”

“Thank you,” said Lara. “I’d be very grateful.”

“Miss Croft?” asked the petite doctor as she entered the visitors’ room. Lara stood and offered her hand.

“I won’t, if you don’t mind,” said the doctor. She smiled. “I wash my hands a hundred times a day.”

“Of course,” said Lara.

“Let’s sit down, and I’ll update you on Miss Nishimura’s condition. You’re her next of kin?” asked the doctor.

“For these purposes, yes,” said Lara. “She has no family resident in the UK.”

“Very well,” said the doctor. “I’m Doctor Southgate, and I’ve been overseeing Miss Nishimura’s care. As you know, she’s out of the coma, and we’re running some physical tests. An overdose can affect liver and kidney functions and cause other damage. We need to assess her quite carefully.”

“Of course,” said Lara.

“We also have to do a psychiatric evaluation,” said the doctor.

“I understand,” said Lara. “She left a note. This is a suspected suicide attempt. There are procedures.”

“There are,” said the doctor. “There has been one particular anomaly since Miss Nishimura came out of the coma that you might be able to help us with.”

“Anything,” said Lara.

“She’s Japanese,” said the doctor, “but she has an Anglo name on her records. Does she have or did she have a Japanese name?”

“I was at school with her,” said Lara. “She was always Samantha...Sam.”

“Several times, she has said that’s not her name,” said the doctor. “It’s not uncommon for coma patients to become confused or to have memory loss. This appears to be different. Do you know if her Japanese parent gave her a pet name?”

“Her father,” said Lara. “I never heard of one. I don’t remember her ever mentioning it.”

“Once or twice, she’s called herself...” The doctor looked at her notes. “She’s said her name is Himiko.”

Lara froze. She said nothing.

“Does that sound familiar?” asked the doctor. “Any help you can give us would be very useful.”

“No,” said Lara. “I’m sorry. How long will Samantha be in hospital?”

“She was in a coma, and there could be organ damage. With this new information, I’m going to recommend some neurological tests, and there’s the psychiatric evaluation. It could be some time.”

“Is she in any danger?” asked Lara.

“She’s out of the coma, and that’s a very good sign,” said the doctor. “The oxygen is a precaution. She’s stable. I’m going to run those tests. Let’s wait and see.”

“Thank you, Doctor Southgate,” said Lara. “I appreciate it.”

“You’re welcome,” said Doctor Southgate. “Don’t look so worried. Things are looking promising.”

Chapter 5

L
ara returned to the flat and to the Book. It wasn’t just about making Sam better anymore. The doctors had healed her body from the overdose, but, overnight, things had become much more serious.

“This is about Himiko,” she said. “This is about Himiko and Yamatai, and it’s about saving Sam from the Sun Queen. The doctors can’t do that. She needs me now.”

Lara went back over the pages that she’d read the night before. She went back to the notes on immortality and spiritual transference. That was what Himiko had intended. She had needed Sam’s body.

The notes on the Ten Thousand Immortals jumped off the page at her. It was all about Himiko striving to be immortal. Lara tried to put it out of her mind. She needed to concentrate on Sam. She turned the page.

On the following page was another handwritten addition in fading ink that simply read “Golden Fleece”.

The Golden Fleece
, thought Lara.
The Golden
Fleece
...

She flicked through the pages until she found the section on explorers and adventurers. The chapter on Jason was extensive, but she quickly found the reference to the Golden Fleece. She wanted to confirm her own understanding that the artifact had healing properties.

“What are you thinking, Lara?” she said, closing the Book. “This stuff isn’t real… It can’t be real.”

Lara strode into the kitchen and grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge. She began pacing. Part of her didn’t want to accept what she was considering: That somehow, Sam had been possessed by the Sun Queen. But she couldn’t ignore it, and archaeology might have a solution. Lara found some nuts and grabbed an apple from the fruit bowl. She picked up her laptop and went back to the Book to settle in to do some research.

Three hours later, Lara ordered take-away. After she’d hung up the phone, she went back into her contacts, scrolled down the list, and hit dial.

“Professor Cahalane,” she said. “I’m sorry to call you so late, but I need your help.”

“It’s always a pleasure to hear from you, Lara,” said Cahalane. “Why don’t we meet up, and I’ll see what I can do?”

It was getting late, and Lara was tired, but she couldn’t rest. She made tea and went back to the Book to read more about the Golden Fleece.

The world was a wonderful, mysterious place, and she’d seen things with her own eyes… Things that she couldn’t easily explain. When science could give her all the answers, she’d listen. Right now, however, Sam needed her help, and she had nothing to lose.

Lara needed a purpose, she needed to feel as if she was doing something to help her friend, and history was all she knew. Her experience on Yamatai had shown her there was a nugget of truth in the ancient myths. The Book was full of myths, and if she could find the truth behind the Golden Fleece, the truth behind any of the legends or artifacts concerned with healing, maybe she could do something to help Sam. She had to try.

Everything was in place for her to meet her father’s old friend, Professor Cahalane, the following week. She hoped for good news on Sam’s physical progress before then, but if her friend was going to recover fully, she’d need more help than any doctors could give her.

Professor Cahalane was in London for a lecture tour and was more than happy to meet his old friend’s daughter for dinner at his hotel. Lara had spent most of the week, when she was not with Sam, collating all the material she could find on myths surrounding healing and any artifacts associated with them. She spent days following up leads, but most of them resulted in dead ends. Lara found that her research kept leading her back to the Golden Fleece, and by the end of the week, it seemed like the only viable proposition.

Lara soon exhausted the notes in the Book about Jason, but there was plenty of scholarly information on the web about the man and his myth, about the
Argo
and its crew, and even about the healing powers of the Fleece. There was very little that she didn’t already know. The crucial information, the whereabouts of the artifact itself, had been lost to the mists of time.

That’s where the professor’s knowledge and experience could help Lara. Her father had trusted and befriended him, and Lara knew that she could rely on him. She also knew that Calahane had disapproved of her father’s methods, his practices as an archaeologist. She already suspected that he’d take a very dim view of her quest for a cure for Sam, particularly if it involved something as mythical as the Golden Fleece.

Late in the afternoon, Lara dressed for dinner and caught the Tube at her local station at Piccadilly Circus. She stepped further into the carriage when a man in his early twenties, wearing a baseball cap, came onboard, uncomfortably close behind her. She would have preferred to remain by the doors; it was only one quick stop to Oxford Circus where she’d have to change to the Victoria line. She looked around at the other passengers, as she always did. They were the usual collection of shoppers and tourists making their way around the city. She looked twice at a disheveled older man sitting in a corner seat, but he seemed to be asleep. He looked down on his luck, and the other passengers were giving him a wide berth. Lara glanced back at the man who had slipped through the doors behind her. He had pulled a magazine out of his pocket and was flicking through it, so perhaps he planned to stay on the train for several stops.

You’re being paranoid,
thought Lara.
Get a
grip.

Four minutes later, Lara got off the train. She wondered whether she really was being paranoid when the man with the magazine got off too.

She switched to the Victoria line for another one-stop ride to Warren Street. She stood as far back on the platform as she could, her back to the wall, and watched passengers coming onto the platform behind her. She held her phone at her hip, her thumb on the camera button. If he was there, she’d get a shot of him.

As the air pressure in the tunnel changed with the arrival of the train, she spotted Magazine Man come onto the platform at the last moment, looking around. She snapped his photo. He was clearly looking for someone.

As the passengers got on the train, Lara ducked out behind Magazine Man. She left, hidden among the last of the disembarking passengers. When she could no longer be seen from the platform, she stopped and waited, her back pressed against the wall just beyond the exit.

If he got on the train, thinking she was already on it, she’d catch the next one. If he didn’t… Well, she’d cross that bridge when she came to it.

As Lara heard the train pulling out of the station, she walked the three steps back along the walkway, and darted a look along the platform. It was empty.

She breathed a sigh of relief. Then, she walked briskly towards the exit and the tail end of the disembarking passengers. There was safety in numbers.

Back among the crowds, Lara turned again at the first opportunity and made her way down to the platform with the next wave of passengers. She was on her guard, her phone in her hand, constantly on the lookout for anyone who might be tailing her.

It hadn’t been her imagination. Magazine Man had definitely been following her. Hadn’t he? She was sure of it… almost sure. She remembered the panic she’d felt only a week before and her anxiety over Sam’s condition, and decided it was probably paranoia. Still, she couldn’t be too careful.

Lara didn’t feel much more comfortable when she left the train at Warren Street.

She knew Professor Cahalane’s hotel well; she’d visited it several times before. The Professor was world-renowned, and he was a regular lecturer at the UCL Institute of Archaeology. He always stayed at the Wesley.