The Many Deaths of Ms. Croft

Lara blinked and peered down the short hallway in front of her, shadows
blending granite flagstones into a misty grey. Somewhere far
above--perhaps as far as a mile--the sun shone brightly on the
jungle-covered ruins of a M tem temple. Lara's research concerning
certain legends had led her to discover a hidden entrance to a deeper
labyrinth, which supposedly contained a massive calender stone forged
of pure gold. Such an artifact would match the decor in her main living
room quite nicely.
The stone beneath her foot sank suddenly, no further than a
centimeter. Instantly, Lara turned to run--too late. The floor ten feet
before and behind her shattered like glass. Her frightened yell was cut
short into a pained, liquid groan as she landed among the serrated
spears that had lain hidden beneath the false floor for uncounted
generations.
Breath glubbed in and out at a panicked, frantic pace, and tears
welled in her eyes as her shredded heart twittered madly against one of
the many shanks of stone piercing her body. Gurgling, she tried to push
herself up, but her right arm had been torn nearly all the way off, and
one of the spears in her belly caught its serrations on her spine. One
leg kicked weakly, with a thick spike piercing the hollow of her hip
and protruding from her buttock; the other lay twisted at an unnat
an
angle by the fall. The last air in Lara's lungs bubbled out through the
ruins of her shoulderblade; she began mouthing a silent prayer, but
shock and blood loss stole her life before it was finished.

---
The problem with cliches was that they were so very often based in
fact. In the movies, when confronted by a monster, women always
scream. Lara had determined by the age of five that she would never
do so--that pause, those precious few seconds, never failed to get the
woman killed. And so it was that much of Lara's last moments were
filled with self-loathing. For years, she had been facing monsters that
Hollywood could never dream of, and never once had she let the fear
reach her throat. She was stronger than that; she was better
than that--and, by God, she was not a cliche. But there are
certain times when the impulses of the lizard brain cannot be ignored;
moments when training and conditioning and experience give way, and raw
instinct comes to the fore.
When the tyrannosaurus rex burst through the fog and jungle two
miles below the surface of the earth, Lara had dropped her shotgun and
let loose a long, terrified shriek. And it had gotten her killed. Her
scream--a beauty by Hollywood standards, long and full and holding
nothing back, ended with a sickening crunch as the rex's maw clamped
around her belly with the top half of her body filling its jaws. Its
tongue pushed against her breasts and pinned her to the roof of its
mouth, squeezing her breath out in a short grunt. Lips bared in a
silent continuation of her scream, she kicked and thrashed against the
ground outside, trying to wriggle back out, but she succeeded only in
widening the gashes piercing her belly. With her torso held in place by
its dry, pebbled tongue, the rex began to work its front teeth back and
forth; it enjoyed the way its prey scratched and clutched inside its
mouth when it did this, and Lara was too big for it to eat in one bite
anyway. Drawing a breath of stale, dead air from the rex's own throat,
Lara let out a hoarse gurgle as the dinosaur finally chewed her in
half. Keening silently in terrified pain, she managed to force on hand
out through the rex's jaws. The hand scrabbled spastically ast tst the
rex's lips as it turned her over with its tongue and brought its huge
jaws to bear on her. Lara had one horrifying moment of ripping pain as
its teeth crunched through her torso sideways, snapping her ribcage and
tearing most of her head from her shoulders.
Her hand hung loosely from its lips as the rex chewed her two more
times, then sucked up inside as the lizard swallowed. Stooping forward,
rex picked up Lara's lower body by her hips, slopping viscera against
its chin. Bones snapped and flesh ripped, kicking her feet with the
chewing motion; the king of the dinosaurs swallowed again and roared
its triumph, then turned and lumbered into the hidden jungle.

---
Teeth bared, Lara ran, the black leather of her catsuit sliding
against her body. Somewhere behind her, American soldiers shouted and
cursed as they searched for her. Behind her sunglasses, her eyes ran
with tears; a pair of weeping wounds stitched fire through her gut with
every step she took. The empty pistol in her hand was dead weight; she
tossed it aside as she fled down the corridor.
She had to get out, she knew, asteroid fragment or not. She was
wounded, tired, and out of ammo--and an entire military complex was
searching for her. If they caught her, they'd most likely torture her
to death, trying to determine which foreign government she worked for;
they'd never believe that she was simply an archeologist trying to save
the world. Blood on the heels of her boots made her skid as she rounded
the corner, but she quickly caught her balance and sprinted forward.
Sudden, burning pain cut through her, and she tumbled to the floor. Had
she been shot again? What was going on? Pushing herself up on her
hands, she tried to get to her feet--but her legs didn't respond. Teeth
bared in anger and panic, she rolled over to see what they'd done to
her.
At first, she didn't understand. A slop of internal organs had
replaced her legs, and a woman's lower body, dressed in black leather,
writhed on the ground several feet away, as if trying to run.
"Oh..." she breathed as a dull ache settled in her lower torso.
Blinking in shock, she twisted back onto her stomach and began pulling
herself down the hall, stiff-armed. She had to escape, she had to find
a first-aid kit. Her breath shivered in and out in breathy moans as she
fought down panic. Behind her, her legs kicked and flumped against the
wall, their skin-tight leather sheath showing red highlights from the
nearly-invisible laser beam a yard above them. Held by their own
weight, Lara's intestines dragged out into a twenty-foot tangle before
she stopped, panting, with her head hanging. Above her, unseen, a
mobile beam reached the top of its vertical sweep and hummed downward.
Lara blearily tried to focus on the tip of her french-twisted ponytail
as it swung mesmerizingly in and out of her field of vision. She jerked
once as the laser beam cut down into the back of her head, and her
shoulders gave a slight quiver. As it burnt through her cheekbones, the
upper half of her head flopped forward as if on hinges and fell off,
spilling the partly-cauterized upper hemisphere of her brain onto the
stainless steel floor. The rest of her upper body swayed slightly, then
collapsed. For a few minutes more, her heart pumped blood out of her
ruined body, and her lungs dutifully inhaled and exhaled. Slowly, the
motion ran down, then finally stopp§ "