Mortal Kombat: Annihilation (3 page)

“I beat Shang Tsung,” Liu said. “I can beat Kahn.”

“Yes, you beat a great sorcerer to win the tournament,” Rayden said in a sobering tone. “But you are no match for Kahn.”

Liu opened his mouth as if to speak, then snapped it shut, shaking his head in frustration. Kitana moved closer to him and put a hand on his shoulder.

“I share your anger,” she said levelly. “Kahn killed my father and stole my mother. He took the family I loved from me. I want him destroyed, but I won’t lose you to Kahn.”

“If anyone’s going to kill Kahn, it’ll be me,” Sonya said. It was hard to tell whether the cold sparks in her eyes reflected the light of Rayden’s torch, or had been struck by her inner fury.

“No,” Kitana said. “Shao Kahn has lived for eons. His power is immeasurable.”

Sonya gave her a headstrong look.

“Listen to her,” Rayden said. “If we do this right, no one should have to fight Kahn. To save the earth... we must close the Portal.”

“So close it!” Sonya snapped. “You opened the last one, didn’t you?”

“It is not that simple. Kahn was clever. He buried the body of his bride on Earth. Resurrecting her gave him access to this realm.”

The silence that followed bore down on Kitana with a weight that was almost physical.

“My mother,” she said. “Kahn used my mother.”

“And so will we,” Rayden said. “By reuniting you with her, Kahn’s spell will be broken. Your mother’s soul will be at peace. And the Portal closed.”

“Listen to yourself!” Liu said, his voice full of disbelief. “This is insane!”

“I’m with Liu,” Sonya said. “I don’t buy any of this. I say we just take our best shot with those zombies outside.”

“Rayden, we can beat them–”

“
Enough!
” Rayden interrupted, his voice loud enough to make them flinch. “You feel your hearts racing. Adrenalin clouds your senses. You think you are ready for what comes next. But believe me, you are far from it.”

Silence again. This time it was crushing. Liu and Sonya deflated perceptibly, their eyes drooping, their shoulders sagging.

Rayden observed their reaction and went on in a softer tone. “I am telling you this for your own good. I have no powers in Outworld. We will all meet again in two days at the top of Mount Gaia. Hopefully by then we will be prepared for everything that lies ahead.”

“And what exactly is that?” Sonya asked.

“To get to Sindel we will have to go through Kahn’s generals. His warriors will fight to their deaths... or ours.”

“What’s so important about Mount Gaia?” Liu asked.

“If we are in trouble, we can call on some old friends there.” Rayden’s eyes traveled over the faces of the others again. “You will face unimaginable odds, formidable foes. Face it, we’re screwed.”

Their jaws dropped as one.

Rayden suddenly broke into an impish grin.

“Only a joke, relax,” he said. “You can’t go into battle without a sense of humor.”

Liu sighed and turned to examine the cave walls. While Rayden had spoken, he’d noticed that they were covered with odd markings resembling Egyptian hieroglyphics, accompanied by arrows pointing off at various angles, and what almost might have been an intricate track grid – the equivalent of a subway map, if subways had existed in whatever forgotten age they were etched into the bare rock.

“Are these supposed to be directions?” he asked. “Because if they are, I can’t read them.”

“Kitana will guide you,” Rayden said. “And I will guide Sonya. We both have used the velospheres many centuries before.”

Sonya raised her eyebrows. “What’s a
velo
–”

Rayden forestalled her question with a wave of his hand, gesturing toward the back of the cavern.

Squinting into the green-tinged gloom, she saw spheres of different sized – some up to fifteen feet in diameter – in a hangar that had been carved out of the earth itself. All were parked on stone pedestals along a tunnel that
whooshed
with rushing wind. Something almost like train track ran through the tunnel, which in turn lead to a maze of other connecting tunnels, each with its own track.

Liu once again found himself comparing what he saw to a subway station – only one that operated on some unremembered, and perhaps unimaginable technology.

“What do these things do?” he asked.

“Once inside, you can travel anywhere on Earth in mere hours. The inner winds propel you,” Kitana said.

To illustrate this, Rayden walked up to the main track and dropped his torch into the tunnel. Its flame was instantly extinguished as it was sucked out of his hand by the windstream and carried off into the labyrinth.

Sonya did not seem persuaded by his demonstration.

“You can count me out,” she said.

Rayden placed a hand on each of her shoulders. “We need help, Sonya. I will take you to find your Special Forces partner, Jax.”

“Forget it,” she said. “If I die, that’s fine. But I’m not losing anybody else.”

“Alone, you are vulnerable,” Rayden replied. He kept his eyes steady on her. “But if you work as a team you two can overcome much. The sooner you learn this, the more valuable you are to the rest of us.”

She looked at him another moment, and finally nodded.

“We have to take action, too,” Liu said, motioning toward himself and Kitana.

Rayden looked at him. “You two will travel to the Hopi Mesa.”

Liu’s eyes were question marks. He was having enough trouble comprehending why their group had to split up without Rayden adding this latest wrinkle to the situation. What purpose could there be in traveling to some godforsaken place in New Mexico?

As usual, Rayden seemed able to read his thoughts as quickly as they occurred to him.

“You did great last time, but you will need help for what we’re about to face,” he said. “Seek out the counsel of one called Nightwolf. I will find the Elder Gods and demand answers for what Shao Kahn has done.”

Soaring nearly a mile into the dark Outworld sky, its base surrounded by the ruined, scattered monuments of vanquished worlds, the tower stood as a hideous testimonial to Shao Kahn’s power. Built not of rock but the skeletons and carcasses of warriors who had fallen in combat against the sorcerer’s forces, it had risen to its vast height stage-by-stage over many centuries; crushed by the weight of the upper levels, the bone piles of its foundations had long ago been ground to ash. Within its thick, asymmetrical walls, captive souls seemed to voice their torment from beams and columns composed of their own mortal remains. Each structural groan, each rasp and creak that tore the silence, seemed a mournful plea for release, and every now and then a ghostly howl would leap into the distance from the ramparts, chilling the blood of man and beast alike.

Kahn’s grand hall was located within the uppermost turret of the citadel and, like some perverse game hunter, he had taken pains to surround himself with grisly mementos of past triumphs. On the curved walls of the chamber, flames burned in sconces made of human skulls. The throne from which he malevolently eyes his courtesans had been recast from the armor of those killed by his own hand. Its coverings, and the banners and curtains that hung from the ceiling, had been sewn from their flayed skins.

Seated on his throne now, Kahn leaned over the armrest and dropped a long, segmented Outworld worm into a glass tank at his side, then waited for it to be torn apart by the pair of vulko crabs that scuttled toward it in a feeding frenzy. Though he enjoyed watching them attack the worm in what he chose to call his battle pit, the real entertainment would come when they began to fight over their still-twitching food and savagely lopped off bits and pieces of each other. Before long, the tank would be filled with pulped innards, severed limbs, torn, mutilated eyestalks and other sensory organs...

“You think this is a game?” a voice said behind Kahn, causing him to turn from his voracious little pets with a start.

The tall, cloaked figure of a man had glided up beside the throne, his shadow stretching to the hidden rafters, his black eyes gleaming like slivers of polished onyx from a face that was otherwise concealed by a draping hood. Though the room was without the slightest whisper of a breeze, flames danced and flickered in their skull brackets as he moved silently past them.

“Father, where have you been?” Kahn said. His mouth twisted into a smile. “The Portal is open. Earth is under attack. It is glorious.”

Those bright eyes remained inscrutable within the folds of the hood. “Tell me, did you make Rayden beg for his life before destroying him?”

“Rayden is of no concern to us,” Kahn replied, his smile shrinking around the edges. “As long as–”

Before Kahn could finish his sentence, a powerful hand shot out from underneath the figure’s cloak and grabbed hold of his breast guard, lifting him partway off the throne.

“You let him
live
?”

Kahn struggled vainly to free himself, but the iron grip just tightened on his battle leather. “Father – Lord Shinnock – he could not be stopped...”

“
I have no use for excuses!
” Shinnock roared, and flung Kahn across the room as effortlessly as if he were a child’s rag doll.

Kahn crashed against a wall in a tangled heap, gasping as the air went out of him.

“We have broken the sacred rules to open the Portal!” Shinnock hissed. “If the Elder Gods learn of our plot, we shall both suffer the consequences.”

“I do not understand.” Kahn gathered himself up off the floor, his face still contorted with pain. “How can
you
fear the Elder Gods?”

“Until the sixth day has passed, we can take no chances with Rayden and his mortals. Do not underestimate the power of the human spirit. Do you understand?”

Kahn nodded slowly. “I will not fail you, Father. I have another plan for Rayden and his champions. A plan that will lead them straight to their destruction.”

Shinnock watched him from beside the throne.

He stood there regarding his son another moment, and then slipped back into the shifting shadows from which he’d materialized.

Kahn waited until he was sure he’d departed, then turned back to the battle pit, his attention snared by the moist squishing noises coming from inside – sounds curiously unlike the busy clicking and grinding of the mouth parts belonging to his hungry pets.

His eyes widened.

Both vulko crabs were lying upside down on the bottom the tank, clearly dead, the worm that had been their intended meal dripping slime over their motionless carapaces.

Within moments, its acidic secretions having softened their exoskeletons to a kind of soupy, semidigested mush, the worm consumed them whole, sucking them through a yawning orifice in its head.

Again there was silence in the chamber.

Kahn stared into the tank, hardly able to credit his eyes.

Could what he’d just witnessed hold some meaning he didn’t understand? Some ominous significance that related to his father’s warnings? He shook his head in vehement denial. It was a curious reversal, certainly... a fluke. But he was no believer in portents. Why take it as any kind of sign?

Still, nothing like it had ever happened before,
nothing
...

After a very long time, he pried his gaze away from the tank and strode out of the great hall, heading for the stairs that lead down to his war room.

Several levels down, Kahn’s ruling council had assembled at a long table in the war room, a circular hall lined with crude tile mosaics depicting scenes of battle and carnage. All around them, guards in bionic armor stood at stiff attention, their staves and plasma lances upright, their eyes never shifting from the center of the room, alert for any command from their superiors.

“My squads have already claimed thousands of innocent souls on Earth,” the masked general at the head of the table boasted, pointing to an ancient map of the Earth.

“I would have claimed
millions
,” Motaro said.

Sheeva gave the Centauran a disdainful look. “By now, you would be behind bars, on display in a zoo.”

“If the bars could keep you away, I would welcome it,” Motaro replied.

Her temper pricked, Sheeva sprang at him, grabbing him around the neck with all four hands.

“Why Kahn tolerates you two wretched mongrels I cannot fathom, but I will advise him to have you put to death as quickly as possible,” Queen Sindel said, watching them in disgust.

Oblivious to her comments, their struggle intensified with grunts and growls. They were still grappling minutes later, when Kahn entered the room.

“Silence!” he said, his angry tone of voice finally getting their attention. As they subsided, he strode to the head of the war table and faced the general. “What is your report?”

“Two of Earth’s best warriors have already been taken,” the general said with open pride. “Kabal and Stryker.”

“And did you make them beg for their lives before you destroyed them?”

The general shrank a little under his burning gaze.

“Well?” Kahn said.

More of the general’s confidence had drained away. “But master, I thought if I let them live that we could–”

Kahn’s features suddenly clenched with rage, his eyes becoming fiery and inhuman.

“I have no use for excuses!” he bellowed, and without warning lifted his war mallet off the table and slammed it into the general’s midsection. Folding in half, the general went flying across the room, hit the wall, and slid to the floor in a lifeless slump.

The others at the table looked at him, stunned by his murderous outburst.

“It does appear I am in need of a new Extermination General,” he said. His voice had dropped in volume, becoming superficially calmer, but they could sense the fury just beneath the surface, threatening to erupt like a geyser of steam through a thin layer of topsoil.

Motaro and Sheeva exchanged uncertain glances. The dubious benefits of leadership aside, they had ample evidence of the risks lying in a broken heap in front of them.

“To die in duty, or here at my hand. Let the decision be yours,” Kahn said.