Mortal Kombat (15 page)

There was none of that here, which was why Liu and his two White Lotus companions had decided to sneak into the village, sticking to the shadows behind and beside the huts and few public buildings, removing their sandals so the stones and dirt of the street didn't crunch beneath their feet. Dressed entirely in black, they weren't seen or heard.

Lights were burning in the Temple of the Order of Light, and Liu had decided to go there. Perhaps one of the monks could tell him why it was so quiet – why he had this uneasy feeling inside that something was amiss.

As they approached the bronze door of the great circular building, Liu Kang motioned for his companions to remain hidden behind the trees near the temple while he took a look inside. Creeping up to one of the open windows that looked in on the great library, Liu heard voices.

"Yeah, Jim. Yeah–"

Sitting with his back to the wall, Liu pulled a throwing star from his belt and lifted it above the sill. He angled it so he could see the room reflected in its highly polished surface.

What he saw got his attention.

Two men were sitting on a mat. One of them, a young boy, had one end of a noose around his beck and a submachine gun pointed in his direction. The man to whose neck the other end of the noose was attached was speaking into a telephone.

"Yeah," he said, "I understand. Yup, I gotcha. Bye."

The man put the phone back in its flat, boxlike cradle, and the boy strained against the leash. The bigger man gave a hard tug and the youth fell forward. Senmenjo-ni walked to the boy's side to make sure he stayed down.

"Sorry," said Moriarty, "but something' must've happened out there. I've got orders to frag ya. But I'll make it quick and painless, I promise."

As Senmenjo-ni stepped aside and Moriarty raised the gun to the boy's head, Liu Kang stood, drew back his arm, and prepared to fling the throwing star at the killer's hand.

Instead, Liu found himself with the wind knocked out of him as he flew sideways. And then there was a terrible blast from inside the temple.

Though Jim Woo's TAC-SAT phone was hung up, the receiver bounced, riding two spikes of electricity – one from the mouthpiece, the other from the earpiece.

Woo looked at Schneider and then at Shang Tsung, and quickly scooped up the receiver.

"Hello?"

He waited: all he heard was static.

"
Nada,
" he said, checking the connection, listening, then replacing the receiver. "The line is very dead, but not from this end. It's like it got–"

Woo's eyes fell on Rayden.

"Got
what
?" Shang Tsung demanded.

Woo said, "Like it got fried from Tim's side. By a bolt of electricity of some kind."

"Or lightning," Shang Tsung said. A guttural sound rolled from the wizard's throat as he faced the Thunder God. "Is this your doing, Rayden?"

"
Unlike you,
" the Thunder God said, "
I keep my word. But I only promised not to leave here. I said nothing about sending lightning.
"

Shang Tsung considered what Rayden had said, then nodded. "That's true, Rayden. But while you may have saved the shepherd at the expense of my man, I promise you'll pay for that life tenfold, starting with your own. Goro," he said, "it's time for our surprise."

Drawing himself up to his full height, Goro smiled wickedly as Shang Tsung's hands began to smoke anew, and a second red bolt split the sky.

When the bolt of lightning erupted from somewhere above his head and struck Tim Moriarty and Senmenjo-ni, Chin Chin felt his ears ring like the temple bell, and the noose go slack. When he saw the leather strap burned in the middle, and Moriarty nowhere to be seen, he dove for cover beneath a heavy wooden table near the entrance of the room.

And when the echo of the thunder died in his ears, he heard the sounds of struggle from without.

Crawling through the library, which was thick with dark smoke that used to be Tim Moriarty and Senmenjo-ni, Chin Chin reached the window, put his fingers on the edge, rose to his knees, and looked out – ducking again just in time to avoid the wavy blast of ice rushing at his head.

For all his years of sneaking around and being snuck up on, Liu Kang hadn't seen the pole coming. But his reflexes were still sharp, and the instant he felt the blow on his side, he rolled away, got to his feet, and backflipped to buy himself some distance to meet a second attack – only to be caught in the fiery aura of whatever had exploded in the library. He'd managed to protect his face with his hands, but the explosion knocked him down again. And when his foe, who was crouching and was untouched by the blast, fired a projectile of his own, a sheet of ice that flew from his mask into the library window, Liu Kang knew whom he was facing.

The White Lotus warrior reached into his belt for his throwing star, only to find that it must have fallen out; without taking his eyes off the dark shadow that was his enemy, he used peripheral vision to try and find something with which to defend himself. Without a weapon of some kind he knew he was doomed: without a weapon, he would never be able to withstand an assault from Sub-Zero.

The infamous ninja was not someone any mortal warrior wanted to face. While it was presumed by the few who had encountered him and lived – the very, very few – that he himself was mortal, his ninja skills bordered on the supernatural. Coupled with his mysterious ability to radiate waves of cold, and to move with the speed of a blizzard, they made him a force with which to be reckoned. Moreover, when Liu Kang's friends Guy Lai and Wilson Tong did not run to help him, he suspected that the ninja had already dispatched them. That too was a trademark of Sub-Zero and the Lin Kuei band: divide and conquer. Victory, not honor, was all that mattered to them.

But Liu Kang was too busy to mourn his friends. Whatever had caused that blast in the library had blown out the twisted remains of a submachine gun. Having hooked his foot beneath it and thrown it up into his hands, Liu Kang was able to use the broken weapon to parry a renewed attack from Sub-Zero's pole.

High, low, low, jab, high, jab.

The slender wooden weapon seemed like a propeller in Sub-Zero's hands as he whirled it this way and that, trying to strike his opponent. Liu Kang was able to block it with the twisted barrel of the gun, then with the stock, then the barrel again.
If only the gun hadn't been twisted into an otherwise useless mass in that explosion!
Even a ninja was not immune to bullets.

Then the stakes got higher as Sub-Zero flipped off the tip of the pole and exposed a seven-inch serrated knife.

Jab, jab, slice, jab, slice.

Liu Kang wasn't able to see Sub-Zero's face beneath his mask, couldn't tell whether he was trying to kill him or just playing prior to a serious attack. Then the ninja managed to slide the bottom of the pole into the trigger guard of the gun, and wrested the broken weapon away. Liu Kang was once again weaponless – though in that same moment, he began to wonder if he were defenseless.

In the time it took Sub-Zero to rip the gun from his hands, Liu Kang noticed a faint golden glow coming from his hands. He remembered having used them to protect his face and realized that the explosion might have done something to them. This wasn't the time to wonder what, how, and why, but when Sub-Zero swung the pole at him again, from above, Liu Kang didn't jump out of the way. Instead, he dropped to one knee, reached up, and grabbed the pole: as soon as the wood touched his palms, he thought about the fire and the pole erupted into flames.

If Sub-Zero was surprised, he didn't show it. Tossing the flaming pole aside, he breathed another icy blast at Liu Kang, who held his palms toward his enemy, once again thought of the strange glow, and sent a sheet of fire racing out to meet the ice. The two waves met between the adversaries, raising a wall of steam between them and giving Liu Kang a chance to dive to his left, through the open window of the library.

Somersaulting as his shoulder struck the door, Liu Kang was on his feet in an instant and facing the window. There, breathing hard amid the dull orange glow of the lanterns, Liu felt he stood a chance against the ninja, who relied on darkness to work his deviltry.

Time was measured by the rapid beating of his heart, and the attack never came. Instead of relaxing his guard, Liu continued to stand with one hand raised in front of his face, the other angled in front of his chest, his left foot resting only on its toes, prepared to deliver a roundhouse kick if necessary.

When he'd leapt through the window, Liu had seen the boy cowering under the table, and asked, "What happened here?"

"I–I'm not sure," said Chin Chin. "I was about to be shot when white fire exploded over my head and shot through the window."

"It originated in here?" Liu asked.

"Yes. One moment the room was as you see it, the next moment there was heat and thunder everywhere. And then it was quiet again."

Liu said, "Whoever sent that fireball saved us both."

"But who could have done it?" the boy asked. "Kung Lao has forbidden the practice of magic, and we have been taught that the gods no longer interfere with the lives of mortals."

"Perhaps these are more than mortals we are facing," Liu said. For though it was true the priests taught that the time of the gods had passed, the Thunder God Rayden was still the patron deity of the Order of Light. And the flame that had been sent here was designed to save the boy without destroying the scrolls and the books. That was the reason it had been discharged through the window: Liu's having been struck and empowered with the ability to radiate flame was probably just a very lucky consequence of Rayden's efforts to save this boy.

Unless you believe in fate,
Liu Kang told himself,
in which case perhaps I was supposed to be there.
But it was difficult to believe in fate, and in the benevolent protection of the gods, when he thought of his loyal friends probably lying dead outside. Why save him and not them? If anything, they were younger and more innocent.

But this was not the time to ponder philosophical matters. There was a town to secure, and when that was done he still had his mission. He glanced at his watch and thought of the lighted '2' – of the other lives that were still at stake.

Walking on the tips of his feet, Liu made his way to the window. Standing several yards back, he fired a burst of flame into the night, then quickly looked to the right and then to the left. Sub-Zero was nowhere to be seen – though in the fast-fading glow, Liu saw the bodies of his comrades, their dead eyes open, thin red ribbons of blood around their necks. They'd been garroted with a thin cord that ninjas carried – caught from behind, unable to cry out as the wire or nylon was slipped around their throats and pulled tight.

Sad and angry, Liu knew better than to run into the night, the ninja's element, seeking revenge. Someday he would face Sub-Zero again and things would turn out differently. In the meantime, somewhere out there was Sonya Blade, and he must get to her side as soon as possible....

When Shang Tsung's hands began smoking again and the red flash exploded, Rayden's white eyes narrowed. He peered unflinching into the evil lightning, watched without fear for himself as it struck the earth between Goro and the wizard, and saw a tall shape begin to coalesce amid the ruby glow... a shape that was dimly human in form but clearly not in nature.

Shang Tsung said, "It occurred to our all-knowing Lord Shao Kahn that perhaps I underestimated the Order of Light." The magician sighed. "Well, perhaps that's so. No one likes to admit his weaknesses, but I'm only human after all. Just like Mr. Woo and Mr. Schneider and this would-be pull-plugger of a woman who I am compelled to believe was never my ally at all." The wizard cast her a knowing sideward look. "Is that not so?"

She rose from the trench and said proudly, "I'm Sonya Blade, agent of the U.S. Special Forces."

Shang Tsung reacted with surprise. "With so much on its mind, your mighty government has targeted
me
? I should be honored."

"
They've
targeted you at the request of the British government in Hong Kong," said the woman. "As for me, I came here to get Kano."

"He's wronged you?"

"Three years ago he killed my fiancé, Cliff LoDolce."

"The martial arts
sensei
?" asked Shang Tsung. "Kano was responsible for that?"

Sonya nodded once.

"Then Kano must have attacked him from behind," Shang Tsung said, "or in the dark. LoDolce was said to have been a supreme martial arts master. Kano would never have dared to fight him."

"It was from behind
and
in the dark," Sonya said, rage in her voice. "When Cliff refused to use his skills to fight for the Black Dragon Society, Kano shot him with six slugs from a .45."

"That's Kano," said Shang Tsung, "a living overstatement. And you vowed to find him. How almost unbearably touching."

While they were speaking, the red bolt had faded and the new arrival stood in the darkness. Rayden could see clearly what the others could not: that the being had a normally proportioned human body and head, though the lower half of the face was covered by a green mask with a series of horizontal slashes on either side. Liquid dripped freely from the openings; where the saliva struck the ground, puffs of smoke arose.

Acid,
thought the god.
There was only one Outworld creature who was like that.

"Kano is a crude and heartless fellow," Shang Tsung admitted, "but in my defense, he's not entirely without value. He is extremely greedy, and coupled with his physical prowess and ruthlessness, that makes him effective. Although I must admit," Shang Tsung said as he stole a glance at the new arrival, "had I all of it to do again, I would never have hired Kano or any mortal to do a god's work. Try to save a piece of your soul and look what happens."