Tomb Raider: The Ten Thousand Immortals Read online

  “An overdose? I don’t know. She wasn’t on any medication that I know of,” said Lara. She ran through her mind, trying to remember if there was anything at all that Sam might have been prescribed.

  “She’s been dealing with a serious emotional trauma. She’s been depressed. She’d have told me if she’d been prescribed something. She might have seen a doctor about it though.”

  “That’s helpful,” said Chandyo. “Was she having trouble sleeping?”

  “She was tired all the time, and scared,” said Lara. “She had nightmares when she slept. I worried for her, but we’re close. We talk a lot. We live together. We saw each other almost every day.”

  “Did she take recreational drugs? Does she have a history of taking any illegal drugs? If she does, you should tell me.”

  “No. Absolutely not. I’ve known her a long time. She liked to be in control. She knew how to have fun. She didn’t need anything like that.” Lara was sure of that, at least. “I’d really like to see her now.”

  “OK,” said Doctor Chandyo. “She’s in Ward 4E...”

  “Thank you,” said Lara, as she walked briskly away, cutting the doctor off before he’d finished speaking.

  “Prepare yourself, Miss Croft,” he called after her.

  Lara stopped as Chandyo caught up with her.

  “Miss Nishimura is very ill. She’s on a drip, and a ventilator is helping her to breathe. You should be prepared for a shock.”

  Lara held out her hand to shake once more.

  “Thank you, Doctor Chandyo,” she said. “I appreciate it.”

  Lara walked away. If he only knew what she’d seen on Yamatai, the kind doctor would not have felt the need to warn her about a bit of medical equipment.

  She took the lift to the fourth floor, used the hand sanitiser as instructed, and entered the ward. It was quiet. Some of the patients had visitors, mostly sitting beside the beds in ones or twos, but they were speaking quietly or not at all.

  One elderly man, wearing a raincoat, despite the warmth of the room, was reading aloud gently from a battered book that looked like an old Penguin classic. Lara caught a few words of the text as she stood at the reception desk. She heard the name “Mr. Micawber.” He was reading Dickens. He was reading David Copperfield.

  Sam was in bed 1, tucked away in the corner of the ward. She lay flat on her back in a hospital gown, a tube down her throat, helping her to breathe. Her hair looked oily black against the clinical whiteness of the pillow.

  Sam’s Portuguese/Japanese heritage usually gave her a glowing, golden complexion, but her skin looked sallow now, and her eye sockets almost bruised.

  Lara sat down, away from the IV on its stand and the machine monitoring the girl’s respiration. Sam looked like a girl, not like the young woman she had become. She looked young and vulnerable. Lara took her friend’s hand.

  “What did you do, Sam?” she asked, knowing that she would get no answer. “How can I help you?”

  Lara sat with Sam for ten or fifteen minutes, thinking of all the good times they’d had together. She remembered all of Sam’s antics at school. She had always gone her own way, been a free spirit. She had never cared what others had thought of her. She had come to the school an outsider, just like Lara, and that was how it had always been. It didn’t matter; they’d always had each other.

  Lara was determined that she would help Sam now.

  What was it, exactly, that Doctor Chandyo had told her?

  The note!

  Lara took the note out of her pocket, slipped it out of its envelope, and began to read.

  Dear Lara,

  My very best friend!

  It’s all too much!

  I know that you understand. You were there. I don’t think that I can bear it any longer. You saved me once, but I don’t believe that I can be saved again. I don’t think I can be saved from Her. It isn’t your fault. Know that I don’t blame you. I just can’t live with what happened at Yamatai.

  Your true friend through all eternity,

  Samantha Nishimura

  Lara tucked the note in the envelope and put it back in her pocket. It was her fault. Sam would never have gone to Yamatai if it hadn’t been for her, and none of this would ever have happened. Lara resolved, there and then, to do whatever it would take to bring Sam back.

  She reached out to squeeze Sam’s hand.

  “Hang in there, Sam,” she said. “Don’t you dare die.”

  Visiting hours were over, and, one by one, people were leaving their loved ones.

  “I’ve got to go now,” said Lara, “but I’ll be back. I’ll be back just as soon as I can.”

  The ward was too quiet as she was one of the last to leave. Lara turned to look back at the old man in the raincoat. He had stopped reading, and sat, silent, the book resting in his lap. He was holding the hand of the woman in the bed in both of his, tears streaming down his face. She was clearly dead. He hadn’t called for help.

  Lara hesitated for a second and then walked away. Let him have his moment, she thought. Let him have one last moment.

  Chapter 3

  Lara returned to the flat hungry and tired. The natural consequences of a panic attack, and of dealing with Sam’s crisis. The hunger she could deal with immediately. Tired could wait.

  She fixed a sandwich from the contents of her fridge and grabbed a bottle of water.

  All the way home, Lara had been thinking about Sam and Yamatai. She had a vivid picture in her mind of Sam, bound and kneeling before the ancient, haggard creature. Himiko was more like a corpse than a woman. Her figure was almost skeletal, her skin stretched over the bones, desiccated and papery.

  Lara had an intense memory of a light, an aura emanating from the ancient Sun Queen, like energy reaching out for Sam as if some magical transference were taking place.

  Lara wondered whether the reality had grown to mythical proportions in her mind, because of the anxiety disorder. She wondered if the panic attacks had blown the experience out of all proportion. Had it been real? Was there any truth in the mysticism that she felt she had witnessed? Was the shaman Sun Queen somehow more than a figment of her fevered imagination?

  Lara took the note out of her jacket pocket and looked at it again. When she had read it the first time, she had blamed herself. Sam had suffered on Yamatai because Lara had taken her there. She knew that was too simple. Lara knew that guilt wouldn’t help her friend.

  “Let’s see. ‘I don’t think I can be saved from Her’,” Lara read aloud. “Her,” she said. “Why the capital letter, Sam? Why did you write Her with a capital? “OK. ‘I just can’t live with what happened at Yamatai’,” Lara read on. “Her. She is what happened at Yamatai. She is what happened to Sam. It’s not my imagination, and it’s not the anxiety. Sam believes it too. Sam believes that something happened between her and Himiko on Yamatai. She believes that Himiko infected her somehow and changed her life.”

  Lara was not a doctor; there was nothing she could provide medically or scientifically to heal Sam.

  Lara was a historian, an archaeologist. She understood myth and legend. She understood history and ritual and mysticism. She understood magic and wonder and belief. She knew about fear and faith.

  Maybe, just maybe, there was more than one way to help Sam. An unconventional way. Something unorthodox. If there was, Lara was determined to find it.

  The Book.

  Lara would begin her research with the Book.

  She put down her plate with its half-eaten sandwich and walked along the wall of bookshelves that ran the entire length of the large room. The Book wasn’t there. She walked back a step. The books moved loosely on the shelf. It hadn’t been put back in the wrong place; it simply wasn’t there.

  Lara thought back to when she had last looked at the Book. She couldn’t remember. Was it yesterday? She g
lanced at the long, low coffee table in front of the couch. Her laptop was there, but not the Book. Bemused, Lara checked her bedroom. She seldom worked in there, preferring to compartmentalise, to keep relaxation and study separate. The only books beside her bed were a couple of lightweight novels.

  “Where the bloody hell are you?” she asked, striding back into the living room. She sank onto the couch and dropped her head, trying to think. She smiled. It was right there on the floor. It was right where she had dropped it when the car backfiring had shocked her into the panic attack.

  Lara picked up the Book, tucked her feet up on the couch, and made herself comfortable. She knew it was going to take some time.

  The Book was often Lara’s first port of call. It was a collection of bits and pieces of information: notes, drawings, clippings, and references collected and added to over a long period of time. It drew together different sources, making connections, asking questions, and posing hypotheses. It had passed through any number of hands, had been annotated over and over again, and was a rich and wonderful resource.

  Sometimes the Book posed more questions than it offered answers. Nevertheless, it was Lara’s go-to research tool of choice. It was invaluable.

  Lara looked first at the section on spiritual transference. There were a number of myths and legends about an entity passing from one body to another through history. The chapter was cross-referenced with immortality. Beings and entities obsessed with life everlasting often took possession of a series of bodies in which to live. The spirit progressed through a succession of corporeal forms. Lara added some brief notes about Himiko, the Sun Queen of Yamatai.

  She skipped through the references to vampires and werewolves, but then came across a note on a person called Ares and a society called the Ten Thousand Immortals. She stopped for a moment. Ares was the Greek god of war. The Ten Thousand Immortals were an ancient Persian elite fighting force. Other than the name, there seemed to be no connection to the subject. A recent addition in the margin in red ink suggested the name was now used by some sort of secret society.

  Lara pulled her laptop off the coffee table and flipped it open. She typed “Ten Thousand Immortals” into the search field, and a page of results came up. She bookmarked the wiki page, and clicked on the link below it. It took her to a home page with a company or society banner. She bookmarked that page too, and moved on.

  The Book was full of anomalies: snippets misfiled among the pages, nonsensical cross-references that should be put right. There wasn’t time now, but she tried to devote some of her study to unscrambling the Book.

  Lara read about the Irish god Airmed, who could resurrect the dead. She read about Hé Qióng, the female deity of the Chinese eight immortals. She had eaten powdered mica, had remained a virgin, and carried the healing lotus flower for mental and physical strength.

  Then, Lara looked at the Sami mythology and read about Beaivi, god of sanity. She cringed at the similarities to Himiko. Both were depicted as female, and both were associated with the sun and had female attendants, Beaivi in the form of a daughter. Lara dismissed her immediately.

  She continued to search through the Book, looking for anything that might give her some ideas about how she could help her friend. There must be something, some ritual or potion, some prayer or superstition, some ancient remedy.

  Lara would do anything to help Sam, she would go anywhere. She would pluck a lotus flower from Hé Qióng’s birthplace if it would help.

  Chapter 4

  Lara 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 s
tood 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.”