Tomb Raider: The Golden Seal

Chapter 13: The Amazon's Tomb

Giselle approached the patient, a seventeen-year-old boy who was hurting himself as he struggled desperately against the straps that tied him to the stretcher. "Keep still," she advised, tapping the syringe a few times. "The less you resist, the less it'll hurt."

The boy kept squirming. Of course, Giselle knew he didn't understand German, for he was a recent victim, an Italian kidnapped during a class trip. She also knew he couldn't hear at all anymore. The last dose she administered had left him completely deaf. But it was necessary to sacrifice some patients for the cause.

She injected the serum and left the room, ignoring the crying teenager. "Close the door," she ordered to Friedrich, the guard. "The inmates are unbearable this morning." And it was true. Through the white painted halls all sorts of moans, cries, and laments filled the air.

"Did you know the Meister has returned from Romania?" Friedrich said, locking the room door.

"Oh, really?"

"He says he'll shut down the experiments, for they're no longer useful. He's found another way to re-breed his race."

Giselle froze. "What? No way!" She took off her lab coat and left the medical device on the guard's truck. "He's already here in Munich?"

"He's just arrived."

"Well, I'll see him immediately!"

(...)

Karel sat quietly at the round table, looking with apathy at the empty chairs surrounding it. The Cabal had an identical room in each of its strongholds: Paris, Prague, Munich, Moscow. They used it for their meetings, decorated with that luminous sphere in the centre of the table and stone gargoyles: Eckhardt and his whims.

The door burst open and a woman in her thirties entered. She was a true Nordic beauty: fair skinned with short, blond hair and shining green eyes. Tall and thin, she radiated an air of superiority that the other Cabal members found annoying, but amusing to Karel. "Meister," she said, greeting him with a small bow.

"What do you want, Giselle?"

"I've been told you're going to cancel the project."

"Indeed."

The young scientist's lower lip trembled, but she controlled herself. Eckhardt hadn't been one to appreciate weakness among Cabal's members, and Karel was even more inflexible in that regard.

"But Meister..." she hesitated, "my experiments are finally working. In three months I'll succeed in isolating the particles and we'll have satisfactory results."

"No need anymore. I found the Amazon."

Giselle sank into her chair, bowed down, and whispered: "How can you believe in that nonsense?"

Upon seeing the flashing cold blue of Karel's narrowed eyes, she knew she'd just made a terrible mistake. "Watch what you say," he hissed. "I won't have my decisions questioned."

"Forgive me, Meister," she said, lowering her gaze, "but...I'm getting some results: patients are finally surviving the injections. And I've created life!"

"So did your sister."

Giselle snorted with contempt. "My sister's Proto-Nephilim was a disgusting and useless experiment. She should have destroyed it in its embryonic stage. I don't do such botched jobs."

"Your sister was a great scientist. One of the Cabal's best ones ever. Eckhardt was wrong in sentencing her."

She again raised her shimmering eyes. "Then why did you let him do that to her?"