“Liu, there!” she shouted, gesturing urgently between the wooden bars.
As Liu spun around in the direction she was pointing, the nomad clashed its swords together, sparking off an energy beam that zipped downward in a humming red-orange shaft. He leaped out of the way and saw it go skimming harmlessly past him, blowing the ground at his feet to smithereens.
Liu considered scrambling for cover, decided there was nowhere to run that would offer any protection, and rapidly moved into the offensive. He ran toward the diving nomad and flipped high, striking it in midflight, slamming it right out the air.
The guard hit the ground with a loud crash of armor, dropping one of its forearm swords.
Scooping up the sword, Liu plunged into battle against the original pair of guards. One of them flew straight at him, slicing out with its own blade, but Liu sidestepped and quickly kicked the sword from its hand, breaking it in half with the concentrated force of his strike. As the other nomad swept in for its assault, Liu leaped at it with his legs outstretched and his knees close together, landing a kick that spun it wildly off at an angle, hurtling toward a collision with the chamber wall.
Liu wasn’t foolish enough to think that would give him any room for a breather. There was still Baraka, and the nomad he’d disarmed a moment ago.
He looked around, saw them coming at him from different sides – Baraka to his left, the guard to the right – and braced for their attack.
Baraka charged first, but something about the way he moved, a slight hesitation in his stride, made Liu realize that the mutant was only distracting him. He pivoted toward the nomad just as the creature rushed forward and, using the two halves of the energy sword for leverage, rammed them into the wall, swung around them, and delivered a smashing kick to the guard’s face.
There was an audible snap! as the nomad’s neck vertebrae broke apart. Then it folded to the floor in a twitching heap.
One to go, Liu thought, stealing a quick glance up at Kitana to see if she was okay.
His eyes opened wide. The nomad he’d sent flying across the room had recovered, and was now climbing up the side of Kitana’s cage, clinging to it like some huge, armored beetle.
“Kill her!” Baraka shouted at the guard, and then sprang at Liu with his clawblades extended, his robe flapping back from his body.
“I don’t think so,” Liu said.
Readying himself for certain pain, Liu deflected Baraka’s jabbing blades with his bare hands, feeling their razor edges bite into his palms and fingers. Then he launched himself toward the wall with a series of handsprings, yanked out the energy-blade fragments he’d shoved into it, and began to scale the wall toward the cage, the notches cut by the blades service as improvised handholds.
Blood streamed from the cuts in his hands, sliming his knuckles, running down his arms to his shirtsleeve. Liu ignored the wounds scrambled upward, his eyes locked on Kitana. She’d been holding off the nomad with a cyclonic barrage of spin kicks, but it had hung onto the cage, and was now prying apart the bars in an attempt to get inside.
Summoning all his strength, Liu pushed back from the wall with both hands and feet, leap-frogging onto the roof of the cage. For a long moment he did nothing but try to steady himself on his legs. Then he reached down, grabbed the nomad by its epauletted shoulders, and hauled it up onto the top of the cage with him.
They went at each other with an exchange of kicks and blows that were so fast they seemed to blur together, battling from one side of the cage to the next, their movement causing it to sway precariously at the end of its guy line.
Shifting and ducking in an evasive pattern, trying to pace himself, Liu glanced down to get a fix on Baraka, spotted his grotesque upturned face below him… and suddenly registered that he hadn’t seen something else that he most definitely should have.
Hadn’t seen Kitana inside the cage.
She’s gone! his mind screamed. Gone!
He felt a soaring, heartstopping panic that momentarily wiped out all rational thought, and opened him up to a blow from the nomad that rocked him back toward the edge of the cage roof.
As Liu struggled for balance, the nomad stepped in front of him, then pulled it arms in against its sides with a jerk, ejecting two small, arrow-shaped knife blades from its elbows. They fired out at Liu, barely missing him, then returned to their launch pods like boomerangs.
Still teetering at the edge of the room, trying to distribute his weight so the cage would stop rocking, Liu knew he wouldn’t be able to avoid another direct shot from those things… and judging by the smile on its face, the nomad knew it, too. It was toying with him like a cat having some fun with a mouse that wasn’t long for the world.
“Finish him! Finish them both!” Baraka was screaming below him.
Liu felt his heart jolt with hope and excitement. What was that the warden had said?
Both?
The nomad raised its arms, preparing to release the blades again…
Just at that moment, Kitana flipped onto the cage roof behind it, slamming it in the back with a two-footed flying kick. The nomad stumbled off its feet, its elbow knives firing off and straying from their intended target. One of them took a whistling course past Liu’s shoulder. The other sprang out and grazed the guy line, partially severing it, throwing the cage into a crazy, dizzying tilt. Then they both swung back toward the nomad, stabbing him in the chest as he swayed helplessly off balance. He fell screaming to the ground.
Liu started toward Kitana. The cable frayed some more, its wire strands pulling apart from the strain of the weight they were supporting, and the cage slipped almost a foot closer to the ground. Kitana staggered, almost fell over the side, but somehow was able to retain her footing.
The rope came apart a little more…
And a little more…
Realizing it was certain to break at any moment, Liu jumped straight up, grabbed its upper half with one hand, and hooked his other one around Kitana’s waist. His sudden movement hastened along the inevitable, completely snapping the cable just below the point where he’d caught hold of it.
His scream tearing up from the chamber floor, Baraka tried to scramble out from under the falling cage. But it plummeted to the chamber floor before he could get clear, smashing down on top of him, crushing him underneath it.
Holding Kitana tightly against his body, Liu swung onto the relative safety of a nearby ledge, and then looked down at the shattered remains of the cage. Thick tentacles of blood were spreading around it, creeping slowly over the rough stone floor.
“Baraka died in service to his lord and master, Shao Kahn,” Kitana muttered. “I couldn’t have imagined a more fitting end for him.”
Liu nodded grimly, both arms embracing her now.
“I told you I wouldn’t lose you,” he said, and pulled her closer.
She tilted her face up at him, her smile full of promise.
“I was beginning to wonder,” she said.
Liu hesitated only a moment, then leaned down to kiss her… but before he could, they heard a loud, shrill warning horn from the prison yard.
“We’d better get out of here,” he said, and nodded toward the crawlspace through which he’d rich the chamber. “Our time will come later.”
“Yes,” she said, her eyes gleaming. “And when it does, I assure you it will be worth the wait.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Kahn stood beside Shinnock in his war room, looking out a large, pentagonal window at the corrupt grandeur of his kingdom.
He gestured past a cluster of jutting spires in the near distance. “Behold the seeds of destruction flowering before us!”
This almost seemed a signal for the violent paroxysm that shook the earth a moment afterward. Behind the spires of the city, the Great Pyramid of Giza thrust suddenly into view, its monumental form rising hundreds of feet into the air from a molten chasm, chunks of limestone tumbling from its sides as it breached the realms.
“One more night,” Kahn said, turning
from the window. “Nothing can stop us now!”
“Nothing except your supreme idiocy.” Shinnock glared disparagingly at his son. “How could you believe that the ruination of the Elders’ city – their temple – would not put our plan in jeopardy?”
“It was necessary, Father,” Kahn said. “To convince the mortals that their only escape was through the Portal Rayden created.”
“Had Sindel captured Rayden and his mortals in your trap, she would be here now, gloating at your feet.”
Kahn gave him a shrewd look. “I swear to you, Father, on my soul, all our millennia of planning will soon be rewarded. You will be proud, and legends will be spun of our–”
Both men looked sharply around as the massive double doors of the chamber burst open, and one of the nomad guards from the Shokan prison staggered in. Though they could not have known it, this was the nomad who had fought Liu atop Kitana’s cage. Blood gushed from the creature’s breastplate where it had been pierced by its own elbow swords.
“The princess…escaped,” it sputtered. “Rayden lives!”
Kahn’s eyes glowed red as coins in a blazing furnace. His features convulsed with rage, knotting and twisting until there was nothing remotely human about them. Then he lunged at the wounded nomad, striking out with a ferocious blow that slammed the guard back into a display of battle armaments. The trophies fell from their stands and wall mounts in a clattery welter.
“Enough,” Shinnock said from behind Kahn. “Leave him be.”
“Father, this worthless mutant was supposed to–”
Shinnock waved his hand in the air to silence him.
“Know this,” he said, cold menace in his voice. “You pledged me your soul in the event of failure… and in return, I now promise you that it is a pledge I will never forget. Do you understand?”
Kahn looked into Shinnock’s threatening glare and felt something akin to dread slither through his bowels.
“Yes, Father,” he said. “I most certainly do.”
Liu lead Kitana into the decaying, long-abandoned temple with the others following at their rear. There was no roof atop the barren structure. Its stone walls were crumbled and full of holes. Here and there, faded murals – some of them defaced with graffiti – gave testament to Edenia’s former glory… and present shame, Liu thought, his eyes moving over the vulgar scribblings.
Sindel lay stretched out on an altar at the rear of the temple, Jade standing watch beside her.
Kitana gasped in shock. Her eyes leaped from her mother to Jade.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
Liu was bewildered by the overt hostility in her tone. “She helped us rescue you.”
Kitana opened her mouth to say something, then snapped it shut, at a loss for words.
“You can end this, Kitana,” Rayden said, stepping up to her. “Only your love can reunite Sindel’s body and soul to break the hold Kahn has over her… and close his Portal to Earth.”
She looked at him for a long moment, then nodded.
Liu guided her to her mother’s side. Forcing back emotion, Jade threw her arms around Kitana.
“I want it to be like it was,” she whispered, her lips brushing against Kitana’s cheek. “For you, for us… for Edenia.”
Liu stepped back with the others, easing Jade away from Kitana, wanting to give her some room.
Kitana just stared at Sindel, her features etched with disbelief and a sort of reluctant hope. slowly, cautiously, she reached her hand down to push the tousled hair from Sindel’s face, then ran her fingers across her cheeks, tracing its planes and angles almost like a little girl.
Minutes passed. No one spoke. No one moved. Finally Kitana knelt beside the altar, and with genuine reverence tenderly kissed her mother’s cold, pale hand.
Behind her, the rest of the band watched in breathless anticipation. Liu glanced anxiously at Rayden, who nodded his encouragement, then gestured back to the reunited mother and daughter.
Sindel’s eyes had flickered open. First wide with fear, they quickly focused on Kitana… the fear subsiding, giving way to recognition and a heartfelt smile.
“Kitana?” she said. “Is that you?”
Overwhelmed, Kitana literally forgot to breathe. She gasped a little, her hand fluttering to the hollow of her throat.
“Mother… I have prayed for the day when our love would bring us together again,” she said.
Liu felt a lump growing in his own throat and swallowed it down. Rayden looked over at him, put a hand on his shoulder.
“The Elder Gods have served us well,” he said, coming out of his silence at last. “We can–”
“Wait,” Sonya said suddenly. Tense with surprise, she pointed a trembling finger at the altar. “Sweet heaven, Rayden, look!”
Something horrible was happening to Sindel. Her face had grown sharp and avid, her eyes becoming cruel black points, her maternal smile mutating to a screeching cackle.
“Love?” she said, and abruptly rose to a sitting position. “I never loved you!”
Kitana withdrew in disbelief, drifting backward almost like a sleepwalker.
Sindel sat up straighter, her shrill, witchy laughter brewing to the heights of the temple.
“With such a pathetic child as you, what reason was there to live?” she said.
Kitana’s features hardened. “I should have expected this.”
“No!” Rayden shouted. He moved forward, shaking his head in denial. “It cannot be!”
“But it can, it is, and you are powerless, my so-called Thunder God,” Sindel said.
She released another burst of gleefully malevolent laughter, then snapped her waist-length black hair out at Rayden. Whiplike, it caught him right below his shoulder blade, ripping through his leather tunic.
He dropped to the ground with a terrible scream of pain, clutching his arm. Sonya and Jax rushed over to where he’d fallen, and were hauling him to his feet when they heard Jade’s voice behind them.
Her tone was as chilling as the words that came with it.
“It’s all over, you fools,” she said. “You’ve lost, been tricked, wasted your precious time on a wild good chase. Now the merger is nearly complete.”
His face aghast, Liu stared at Jade as her betrayal sank in with him. “How could you do this to us?”
Jade smiled.
“It was so easy,” she said. “That’s what made it fun.”
Sindel cackled again, her long tresses standing on end, winding into braids that writhed and twisted like serpents on a medusa.
And then she began to levitate. Snaps of electricity dancing around her body, her eyes bright and wild, she rose up off the altar… up through the collapsed temple ceiling… up and up into the air above the temple, where she released a keening, earsplitting war cry that cut across the pitted Outworld landscape, signaling her troops to arms.
Liu was staring at Jade. “You will die for this!” he shouted.
She gave no answer. The treacherous, wickedly beautiful smile still on her face, she turned and ran from the temple, fleeing through a broken section of its rear wall.
He started after her, but Rayden’s hand clamped around his arm, halting him in his tracks.
“Let her go, Liu,” he said. “Now is not the time.”
Liu looked at him silently, his mouth trembling, his eyes wounded and outraged.
“She told me she would help,” he said. “I trusted her.”
Breaking free of Rayden’s grip, Liu went tearing after her in hot pursuit – only to stop short again when he reached the gaping hole in the wall.
He stood there, his eyes fixed on whatever was outside.
Rayden followed him to the opening. A moment later his normally imperturbable features clouded over with distress.
Out on the royal road, marching toward the temple in a line that stretched to the limit of visibility, were hundreds of Shokan and Centauran warriors reinforced with rank-and-file Extermination Squads.
“It’s an ambush,” Liu said to Rayden.
Kitana had come up behind Liu and was looking out over his shoulder.
“If we go our separate ways, maybe one of us will make it to Kahn,” she said.
“Forget it,” Sonya said bitterly as she and Jax joined them. “We lost. It’s over. Rayden’s plan didn’t work–”
Jax shot an accusatory look at Rayden. “We trusted you, man, and what happens? You take us on a goddamned wild good chase!”
“I don’t understand,” Liu added, also facing him now. His tone was grave and direct, but far less harsh than Jax’s. “You were advised by the Elder Gods.”
Rayden’s throat worked soundlessly. He licked his lips, wrestling with the words he wanted to get out.
“The gods must have lied to me,” he said at last, humbled.
Kitana was incredulous. “How could that be?”
“My faith was blind,” he said flatly. “I have failed you all.”
Jax snorted in disgust. “Hey, forget your gods. And immortals, and all that crap! I say the only ones we can trust from here on out are humans. Nobody else.” His glaze held pointedly on Rayden. “Not even him.”
Kitana shook her head once. “By leading us here Rayden has become mortal, just like you,” she said. “All his powers have been sacrificed.”
“You ask me, that’s even worse,” Sonya said. “How do we stop Kahn now?”
There was a long pause. All of them were looking at Rayden.
“There is more to this than Kahn,” he said. “If Sindel was not the key to the Portal, Kahn must have had someone else open it for him.”
“Well, that’s nice to know,” Jax said, and glanced out at the advancing troops. “While you’re at it, here’s another news flash from the front – we’ve got about five minutes before we’re history.”
Rayden exhaled heavily. As he turned to get another look for himself, Sonya noticed something on his shoulder, some sort of colorful mark under the torn sleeve of his shirt. She leaned in for a closer examination, then tapped Jax on the elbow and pointed it out to him, her eyes large with astonishment.
“That tattoo,” she said. “I’ve seen it before. On a robot. And a woman. Both tried to kill me…”
Mortal Kombat: Annihilation Page 9