Mortal Kombat: Annihilation (6 page)

Kitana turned to Sub-Zero.

“You must use your powers!” she said. “We have a common enemy. But we cannot stop Kahn without your help.”

Sub-Zero considered her request in silence, his eyes unreadable. At last he nodded.

Moving up to the edge of the shattered overpass, he extended his hands in front of him, concentrating, his fingers quivering slightly as the ambient moisture around them drew into little clouds of condensation, hardened into frosty crystals, and then began coalescing into a wide, flat sheet of ice that arced out to close the broken span.

All this happened in a split-second, making it appear to Liu and Kitana as if the ice bridge had flowed, solid and fully formed from his hands.

Now he stepped off the ledge, motioning for Liu and Kitana to follow him, leading the way to the far side of the stream.

They were nearly across when a thin, leathery rope hissed up from the flaming gorge below them and coiled around the bridge. An instant later a ninja in yellow-and-black flipped onto the span, using the rope to pull himself up from below.

Liu’s eyes grew large as he realized that the rope was snapping at his feet with the fanged, wedge-shaped head of a serpent. That it was, in fact, a monstrous
living thing
... and that the man at the end of it was the Outworld warrior named Scorpion, yet another of the adversaries he’d supposed destroyed in Mortal Kombat.

Unless, of course,
everyone
on Outworld had an identical older brother, he thought.

“Scorpion!” he shouted, his voice full of astonishment. “What do you want with us?”

Scorpion’s only response was to shoot another snake rope from his palm. It whipped out at Kitana and wrapped around her waist. She pulled against it, putting her entire body into the effort, but the footing was too slippery, and she went skidding helplessly over the ice bridge, unable to regain her traction. Before Liu could do anything to stop him, Scorpion yanked Kitana toward him and teleported away, taking her along as he faded into thin air.

“
No!
” Liu screamed, reaching out for her. “
Kitana!
”

But he was too late. It was like trying to hold onto the afterimage one sees after flicking off a television in a darkened room.

Both were already gone.

Liu looked at Sub-Zero with a kind of impotent dread, massive chunks of stone crashing down around him, the bridge under his feet beginning to melt and weaken from the heat of the rising lava.

“I’ve got to find Kitana,” he said. “Where could he have taken her?”

“Kahn wants you to go after her,” Sub-Zero said. “Don’t.”

“But without Kitana it’s over. We’ve lost. And there’s no way to–”

“You were on your way to find help,” Sub-Zero interrupted, perfectly calm despite the inferno raging around him. “Stay your path.”

“How do I know I can trust you?” Liu said.

“You don’t,” Sub-Zero replied cryptically, and backed across the bridge.

And then he vanished as mysteriously as he’d appeared, the shadows of the cavern seeming to rearrange themselves around him.

Scared and confused, terribly alone, Liu hurried toward the passage leading to the surface.

“
Telos roma ula-yar inhotis
...”

Nestled in the Himalayan foothills, its entrance flanked by columns that had been cut into the base of a soar, cloud-soaked mountain, the Temple had been ancient when those majestic slopes were young – as had the man who knelt within it, his head bowed in reverence, his lips whispering a prayer in a language that had not been spoken on Earth for millennium.

“
Akhatis torem margatal loronu meklos
...”

As Rayden completed his invocation, the hundreds of glowing candles around him bent and flickered in the soft breeze fluttering through the shrine. He rose then, moving deeper into the mountain, the breeze growing into a fierce, gusting wind that rushed over the flames and made them undulate like tiny dancers, whipping them together until the temple was washed with incandescent brightness.

Suddenly the shrine transformed, became something
other
, as if whole layers of reality had vaporized in the firelight, revealing a fantastic dreamlike perspective underneath.

Water seeped from the walls and pooled around Rayden’s feet, then began to fall impossibly upward from the floor, wetting neither Rayden nor the candles. Before his eyes, the mythic wall carvings of three Elder Gods – icons that Rayden knew represented faith, courage, and love – seemed to momentarily become animate, then recede into the moss-covered stone. The ceiling above blossomed open to reveal a magnificent celestial infinity that swirled with brilliant, delicately interwoven ribbons of light.

Rayden stood surrounded by three towering walls of crystalline blue water falling into the shimmering heavens. From each of the water walls emerged an ethereal, larger-than-life face. All were identical in their vaguely human, asexual appearance. Their eyes were as forceful and dazzlingly radiant as the sun.

Though this was hardly Rayden’s first visit here, his awe was that of a fresh-faced youth. The Eternal Palace was not the sort of place that ever lots its enchantment – not even for one who had seen the centuries roll by much as days on a calendar for ordinary men.

“I have come to the Eternal Palace because your sacred rules have been broken,” he said, addressing all three deities at once. “Shao Kahn has invaded Earth.”

“As always, Lord Rayden, you are granted but three questions,” one of them replied in a sonorous voice.

Rayden nodded. “Then let me begin by asking why this treachery was ever allowed?”

“We three do not control the destiny of man,” the second Elder God said.

“Everyone possesses the ability to change his fate,” the third member of the triumvirate said.

Rayden bristled. Whether coming from man or god, condescension was easy enough to recognize. He struggled to remain his respectful composure.

“So you will just stand by and watch the ruination of Earth?”

“You were correct in believing Kitana is the key to closing the Portal,” the first Elder God said.

“But if I reunite her with Sindel, how can I be certain the Portal will stay closed until the next tournament?”

“Only when Shao Kahn is destroyed will the future be safe,” the second Elder God intoned.

“Then Kahn
can
be defeated?”

The third countenance let its burning gaze fall upon him.

“You have no more questions, Lord Rayden. But we three have questions for you.”

His expression determined, almost challenging, Rayden simply nodded.

“After living among the humans, do you truly believe them worth saving?”

“More than anything I know.”

“Do you love them enough to sacrifice your own immortality?” the second Elder God said.”

“If that is what it takes, yes,” he replied, his voice unfaltering.

The third Elder God asked the final question. “Are you ready to fight and die for them?”

Once again, Rayden answered without hesitation.

His eyes narrowed, the warrior stood poised on the highest precipice of the vertical stone formation, watching a large red hawk ride a wind current far below, its outspread wings skimming the edge of a raftering cloud. Its cry spliced up to him, fierce, dauntless, conspicuously independent. He nodded with something more than admiration... empathy, perhaps.

Moving closer to the edge of the cliff, the warrior closed his eyes in silent meditation, focusing his concentration inward, gathering his strength. His hair was cut to his scalp. He wore a dark, tight-fitting leather tunic and pants, black cross straps, high laced boots: a battle outfit. In his hands, flapping and billowing in the wind, were the priestly robes he had so recently shed.

With a final brief prayer, Rayden opened his eyes, took a deep breath, and dove off the rarefied summit, flipping from one descending ledge to another, his body as graceful as that of the hawk he had been observing.

Three thousand feet down, his feet touched the ground at the base of the mountain.

He slapped the dust off his sleeves and smiled with the nearest hint of immodesty.

“I’m ready,” he said.

Sonya opened her eyes a crack, realized she was moving.
What’s wrong with this picture?
she thought muzzily. Then it came to her. She was moving, yes, but her legs weren’t, and her angle with the ground was all wrong.

Someone was carrying her.

Her eyes snapped the rest of the way open and she looked down at the metal-sheathed arm hooked around her waist.

“Jax, put me down...” she rasped, coughing dryly.

He dropped to his knees, lowering her to the earth with a gentleness one wouldn’t have expected from a man his size. She scrabbled resistantly free of his grasp and rose to her feet.”

“Chill out, girl,” he said. “Your head got in the way of a flyin’ rock, but you’re safe now.”

“I can take care of myself, in case you haven’t noticed,” she grumbled.

He knew her well enough to leave that comment alone.

Sonya took a hurried inventory of herself, running her hand over her head, wincing painfully as her fingers skimmed over a nasty bump. Her clothes were singed and torn, and one of her legs was throbbing from a bruisy cut on the knee, but that seemed the extent of the damage. She looked around, saw that they were just inside the mouth of a cave. Fissured, contorted volcanic ground spread out beyond it. In the far distance, black smoke brewed into the sky from an immense crown of flame.

“That’s the base?” she asked, pointing to the conflagration.

“Yeah. Left it back there maybe an hour, hour and a half ago. Been carrying you the whole way.”

“That was stupid. You’d have traveled faster alone.”

“What, you want me to leave my partner out there as vulture bait? With some kind of hit squad on our ass?”

Now it was her turn to ignore him. Limping slightly form her sore knee, Sonya went over the cave entrance for a better look outside.

She didn’t like what she saw. A mile away, close to a dozen surviving members of the Extermination Squad were heading toward them across the flatlands, their imposing figures silhouetted by the burning remains of the Army installation. The fire itself was spreading in an unchecked tide, igniting the tar and lava bleeding up from the cracked earth.

“All right, forget compassion,” Jax said, still unaware of the gaining posse of Outworlders. “I want some answers from you before you go and get yourself wasted. Like, for instance, where you disappeared to. I mean, we were in the middle of an operation, and you left me high and dry.”

Sonya sighed. As members of a special warfare team, they had been in China stalking an Asian crime boss when she was plucked away by Rayden to fight in the Mortal Kombat tournament. But she would need hours to explain that – and from the look of things outside, they didn’t even have minutes.

“We’ve got bigger problems than our past,” she said, turning from the cave entrance. “We’ve got to keep moving.”

Trying not to show how much trouble her leg was giving her, she moved hurriedly past Jax toward the shadowy back exit of the cave.

“This is what really gets me about you,” Jax complained. He took a quick peek outside, then caught up with Sonya and stepped in front of her, holding out his palm in a “stop” gesture. “You’re gonna have to go through
me
unless you come clean.”

They faced each other a moment in tense silence.

“Have it your way,” she said at last, and shrugged extravagantly. “The world’s being invaded by Shao Kahn. Happy now?”

“Shao Kahn? What the hell country is that?”

Sonya expelled a long breath, grabbed both of Jax’s enhanced arms, and looked straight into his eyes.

“Jax, those guys out there are warriors. From another place or another time, I’m not sure which. But all you really need to know is that their job is to kill us.”

The only word Sonya could think of to describe Jax’s expression was one her grandmother had used way back when:
flabbergasted
.

“Goddamn, girl, what’ve you gotten us into this time?”

“Look,” she said. “It gets a little complicated, but basically me and some friends kicked Shao Kahn’s ass. And let’s just say he’s a real sore loser.”

As Jax stood there shaking his head, Sonya pushed past him into the darkness.

“We have to go now.”

“Into a
dead end
cave?” Jax said, stalking after her. “I’m sorry, but I don’t got a death wish like you!”

She paused several yards ahead of him, letting her eyes adjust to the deeper darkness.

“Jax,” she said, “some things you just gotta see for yourself.”

“Is this for real?” Jax asked, looking around at the arcane machinery of the velosphere’s hangar. His mouth was a perfect gaping O.

“Why don’t you ask them?” she said, and nodded toward the mouth of the cave, where the war cries of the approaching Outworlders were echoing loudly in the gloom.

Jax hopped into the waiting velosphere without another word. Sparing a glance over her shoulder before she followed him, Sonya saw that the warriors were already through the cave entrance and racing in their direction, their faces warped and ghastly in the pale green glow coming from the walls.

“I take it Amtrak’s out of the question,” Jax said, strapping himself in.

Sonya peered out through the globe’s entry port. Now the Outworlders had split into two groups – one of them pouring into the wind tunnel track and rushing for the velosphere, the other circling around to the hangar. They were about to be surrounded.

“Just do what I say! Lean hard to the right! Now!”

Jax didn’t put up an argument.

A moment later there was a rush of air, and they were swept down the track to safety.

Liu stood under a seamless night sky that stretched toward the horizon like a velvet cloth, the torch in his hand spilling daubs of feeble light over his features but doing little to push back the darkness.