“And both of them worked for Kahn,” Jax said bluntly, finishing her thought.
Liu shook his head, unbelieving. He looked as if he’d been slapped hard across the face. “First Jade… and now you, Rayden?”
Rayden simply stared at his tattoo for a few seconds, then turned to the others, knowledge flooding into his eyes.
“It is true,” he said. “I led you into this trap. But I did so unwittingly.” He rubbed his chin, all the pieces of a confounding puzzle finally coming together for him. “This tattoo is a family crest, endowed by my father to my brother me. It alone allows safe passage between realms for the bearer and his charges.”
The thought lines on Sonya’s forehead deepened and lengthened. Maybe Rayden had seen the light, but she was even more terribly confused than before.
“If it’s your family’s, how can Kahn’s side have them, too?”
“Because my father is one of the Elder Gods, and only they can bestow such a marking,” he replied, seemingly excited by his own powers of deduction.
“Your dad’s an Elder God? Funny you failed to mention that before.”
Preoccupied, Rayden ignored Sonya’s comment. Things were continuing to fall into place for him, and it wouldn’t do to be distracted. “Don’t you see? It must have been my father who lied to me… who opened the Portal himself. He knew I would trust the gods.”
“Wait a minute,” Jax said. “If you and your brother were the only ones to actually get these crests…”
The rest of the sentence hung in the air with a gravity that bore down upon the entire group.
“You’ve come to the right conclusion,” Rayden said after what seemed like a very long time. His voice was slow and halting as he read their expressions. “Shao Kahn… is my brother.”
Liu could hardly believe his ears. “Why would your father betray you and choose Kahn?”
“Because, Liu, power is the most important thing to my father. But he always wanted to keep it in the family… and he knew I wouldn’t join him.” He paused a beat. “Years ago, he decreed that his heir to the family throne must be strong enough to kill his own brother in battle if necessary. I beat him, but I could not kill him. And for what was deemed my weakness, I was banished to the realm of Earth.”
“For not killing your brother?”
“Back then, my father believed Earth was a pitiful and inferior world,” Rayden said. “Whatever became of my brother, I did not know… until now.”
Jax ran a hand over his nap of black hair.
“Man,” he said, “you got one dysfunctional family.”
Kitana’s eyes returned to the gap in the temple wall. She had heard battle cries vaulting upward in the near distance.
“Our time is almost up,” she said.
Rayden nodded.
“Kitana’s right,” he said. “And only one thing is certain… Kahn must die.”
“This time you’re going to kill him?” Liu asked.
Rayden looked closely at him.
“I could not murder my brother then, and I cannot now,” he said, expelling a deep sigh. “I can do no more for you.”
Stunned, the others watched him turn away, then gaze out at their approaching enemy through the broken wall.
“So what do we do?” Liu demanded.
Rayden kept his back to them.
“You will do your best,” he said. “That is all that can be expected.”
There was another seemingly endless silence. Peering outside, Sonya saw a splinter group of Extermination Squad warriors clambering toward them across the rubble of the city… close enough for her to hear the gritty crunch of their boots stamping down on scattered, tumbled, debris.
“They’re almost here,” she said.
Jax frowned with utter despondency. “We’re screwed Totally screwed.”
“I can’t believe this is happening,” Liu said. “After everything we’ve been through–”
“Listen to me, all of you!” Kitana cut in. Her eyes were stern and fairly reproachful. “Liu, not Rayden, is our best hope!”
Liu retreated visibly from her insistent gaze.
“I want to fight Kahn,” he said. “But I… I don’t know if I’m ready.”
She stepped forward, the dark pools of her eyes holding steady on his own, seeming to reach deep inside him – reach into his secret heart.
“If you believe in yourself, Liu,” she said, her voice softening, “then I believe in you too.”
He considered her words.
Hesitated.
Considered them some more, looking around at his friends.
They were all nodding.
Finally, he nodded back.
“Together, we can do this,” he said.
“Yes,” Kitana said, and took firm hold of his hand. “Together.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Crouched behind a toppled pillar at the side of the highway, Rayden watched Liu and the others leave the temple and go racing away from the Outworld forces, sprinting from one place of concealment to another. Their disappointment in him was troubling, but far more was at stake than his image… or their injured feelings.
At any rate, he mused, it was ridiculous to be worrying about that now. The game was well in play, why not have some fun with it?
He waited until the little group was out of sight, then leaped onto the pillar, waving his arms at the Outworlders.
“Who wants a piece of the Thunder God?” he shouted. And took off running.
Sprawled on the floor of Kahn’s war room, Jade touched her fingers to her mouth where the sorcerer had just struck her, and winced in pain. When she brought her hand back down it was covered with fresh blood.
“It was not my fault,” she said, glaring hatefully at Kahn. “I did everything you ordered.”
He walked around the council table where Queen Sindel, Motaro, and Ermac were seated.
“Your job was to lure them to an ambush,” he said. “If they have escaped, then you have indeed failed me.”
Jade rose onto her knees.
“Your men were too slow,” she said, trying to keep the desperation out of her voice. “We never could have stopped them alone.”
“Listen to her,” Sindel chimed in. “She speaks the truth. We would have died trying.”
Kahn’s face quivered with rage. “You, Sindel, are already dead. And you–” He thrust a finger at Jade and lowered his voice an octave, imposing an icy calmness that made it all the more monstrous, “–you will be soon.”
With a powerful hand, he grabbed her by the neck and lifted her off the floor. A scream tore from her lips, but it was instantly cut short, becoming a choked, incoherent gurgle as he continued to shake and strangle her, his fingers pressing into her windpipe, squeezing, crushing…
Her eyes bulged. Veins popped out in her temples, her face shading from red to blue a dark oxygen-starved purple. Still Kahn dug his fingers into her throat, feeling flesh and muscle tissue give way underneath them.
When he was sure she had reached the brink of death, he flung her at a stained glass window depicting a hideous, toadlike creature with pale yellow eyes and stubby, membraneous flippers instead of legs – a creature which suddenly assumed three-dimensional life, its pink, wet tongue shooting from its mouth, wrapping around Jade’s body, and pulling her into its gullet.
A moment later the head withdrew from the room and became a flat, inanimate image again, the glass of the window unbroken.
His fit of rage at a momentary ebb, Kahn turned to face his other lieutenants… paying special attention to Sindel.
“You will mount a defense around my newest temple,” he said. “Prepare for Rayden to make one last attack.”
She arched an eyebrow. “You said Rayden was no longer to be feared–”
Her dissent stoked his temper again. Snarling, he smashed his fist down against the massive table. Cracks splintered across the dragon emblem on its surface and unaccountably filled with a seep of blood-red lava.
<
br /> “I am to be feared!” he shouted. “For if you fail me now, I will feed your rotting corpse to the worms.”
With that, he turned, stalked over to his throne, and slumped down into it, contemplatively propping his chin on his knuckles.
At the table, Motaro trotted over to Sindel’s side.
“Your hallowed position atop the wormpile appears most tenuous,” he said, his voice full of mockery. “Now your future will be our opportunity.”
Ermac snickered in his chair.
“Get out! All of you!” Kahn roared from his throne, angrily silencing them.
The lieutenants took one look at his violently trembling face and melted away from him, moving quickly toward the enormous double doors, leaving him alone with his dark thoughts.
Or so he thought, anyway.
“You had me believing your plan would actually work, but you underestimated Rayden and his humans yet again…”
Kahn rose as his father glided out among the room’s hectic jumble of shadows, skirting their edges, but never quite leaving their embrace.
“Everything is under control,” Kahn protested. “I have ordered Sindel–”
“Never mind her. If you think yourself to be the ruler of all realms, you must be the one who stops them.”
Kahn’s voice was almost beseeching. “You are an Elder God! Sway the balance in our favor.”
“You fool!” Shinnock hissed. “Destroying their temple has them searching for answers. All along I have warned you that we cannot risk their involvement.”
Kahn stared at him uncertainly. “What does this mean?”
“It means our destiny now lies in your hands alone,” Shinnock said. “I can do no more with the Elders.”
There was silence. Kahn looked at his father, his features tightening as he realized that his options had been reduced to one, and only one of the many he had thought would be open to him…
And then, finally, he nodded.
“You chose me, father,” he said slowly. “Trust me now, I will not disappoint you.”
Watching him from the shadows, Shinnock was hardly encouraged.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The deeper they went into Outworld, the more bits and pieces of earth they had seen jumbled into it, like chunks of broken glass in some careless amalgam.
They had passed the cracked marble minarets and spoiled garden walks of the Taj Mahal.
They had passed the sagging curves and blackened, leaning columns of the Parthenon.
They had passed the wreckage of the Golden Gate bridge, its span littered with the bloody, mutilated bodies of motorists who had been caught by surprise when it ruptured the resistant skin of time and space.
And now they had come to the Temple of the Order of Light.
Liu’s home.
On Earth, it had been a place of subdued, meditative beauty, its walled gardens adorned with gently flowing fountains and gleaming marble walkways.
Not it was a crumbling, sooty ruin, its ceiling draped with cobwebs, its shrines leaning crookedly out of the ground.
Flanked by his inhuman cohort, Shao Kahn sat at the far end of the decay, sensing the final battle was close at hand. Behind its ebony throne, Shinnock stood bundled in shadows, his head cocked to the side like some nocturnal predator that had picked up the scent of its next meal.
He bent closer to Kahn, whispered something in his ear.
Kahn nodded and rose to his feet.
“My army is coming, herding the mortals to their doom,” he said, and then turned to Sindel. “Prepare to welcome them, O Queen.”
Liu and his friends made their way up the broad steps leading to the temple, their eyes determined and unblinking. They could see Kahn and his lieutenants across the long courtyard.
“Get ready,” Liu said. “If we die here… we will die in battle.”
They were within a dozen yards of their enemies when a familiar voice called out across the courtyard, shouting a single word in an unmistakable tone of challenge:
“Kahn!”
Both groups turned in the direction of the voice, and were astounded to see Rayden stagger into the temple through a side entrance near Kahn’s throne.
He had been badly beaten. His clothes were shredded. His short-cropped hair was slick with sweat. There were ugly lacerations on his face, his lower lip was split and bleeding, and his right eye was swollen shut.
He took three wobbly steps toward the throne, and then sagged to his knees as though all the strength had leaked out of him.
“Where is my Extermination Squad?” Kahn snarled with lunatic anger.
Rayden squinted at him with his one good eye and managed a painful grin.
“What… Extermination Squad?” he croaked.
At the head of the stairs, Liu turned to the others, the look on his face both proud and heartbreakingly sad.
“Rayden didn’t abandon us!” he said. “He lead the Outworlders away from us… saved us.”
Now Shinnock slid from his island of shadows and studied him coldly, his glowing eyes visible under his hood.
“So good of you to join us, son,” he said. His voice was like a hollow wind blowing up from some dry, dead forest. “In less than one hour, the merger of realms will be complete.”
Rayden looked up at him. “Father, this does not have to happen. You alone have the power now to end this–”
“Stop!” Shinnock exclaimed. “I do not want to remember you this weak.”
Rayden shook his head sorrowfully. “It is not weak to value life.”
Shinnock came closer to him, the loose fabric of his robes moving around his body like ripples of black water.
“I offer you one final chance to return to my side,” he said. “To rule all the realms with your family.”
Rayden was very still for a moment. Then he swung out his arm, pointing back at his band of human champions.
“That is my family,” he said, the words coming out clearly and forcefully through his ruined lips.
“Then you shall die with the rest of your pathetic human race!” Shinnock growled. He whirled toward Kahn, gesturing furiously down at Rayden, his eyes blazing like tiny novas. “Finish him!”
Kahn quickly approached his brother, gazing down at him with immeasurable contempt. “You should have killed me while you had the chance,” he said.
Rayden met his eyes squarely with his own.
“My brother is already dead,” he said. “His soul, anyway.”
Kahn’s growl of anger was more bestial than human. Stretching out his hands in front of him, he discharged an energy blast that hurled Rayden across the courtyard. He trembled limply toward his friends in a hail of dust and debris, coming to rest a few feet from where they stood.
“Rayden!” Liu screamed.
Overcome with anguish, he rushed toward his mentor and lifted his head in his arms.
“You have passed your final test, Liu,” Rayden said, and coughed up some saliva. Liu could see large spots of red in it. “You are ready now.”
“But I was wrong about Jade. I failed the second test…”
Rayden weakly motioned him into silence.
“No,” he said. “You remained loyal to Kitana in spite of Jade. And now you have found faith in yourself… by stepping forward to face Kahn.”
Rayden’s chest heaved as he struggled for air.
Liu pulled him in closer. “You cannot die!”
Rayden once again mustered a smile.
“I am proud to die… a mortal… like you,” he said.
A shudder ran through him, and he took three little gasping breaths, and then stopped breathing altogether.
Liu remained with him a moment, then set his head lightly back on the ground and strode toward the Outworlders.
“Kahn!” he shouted, his eyes looking straight ahead. “Kahn!”
Pleased by the course of events, the warlord had settled back on his throne.
“Today is the beginning of the end!” he said, wi
th a flourish of hands. He turned to Motaro, Sindel, and Ermac. “Show these young fools the way to oblivion!”
“Mr. Ed is mine,” Jax muttered to Sonya, nodding his chin at Motaro.
“I will take my mother,” Kitana said.
Sonya eyed Ermac and shrugged.
“Leftovers again,” she said.
Shoulder-to-shoulder, the three mortals ran into battle…
Motaro charged at Jax, galloping over the flagstones, his hooves beating up little clouds of dust.
Jax ducked, but he was too close, the Centauran’s deadly tail whipped out and struck him in the chest, smashing him aside. Angered, Jax pounded the ground with a single fist, his cybernetically enhanced strength rocking the entire temple.
Shaken off balance, Motaro was desperately trying to recover when Jax attacked him with a furious volley of kicks and punches. But once again he had gotten too close. Reaching out with both arms, the Centauran snatched Jax up and flung him into a column with such force that one of his metallic arm enhancers cracked into a dozen pieces.
Jax felt a surge of panic.
“You are afraid,” Motaro sneered, sensing his weakness. “For you only have yourself now, not that mechanical toy!”
The Centauran advanced, backing him against a wall.
“Without your weapons, you are no match for Motaro!” he gloated, coming still closer.
Jax stood looking at the creature for a moment that seemed to go on forever, fighting back his fear and self-doubt. Then, his eyes suddenly lighting up with newfound confidence, he ripped off his remaining enhancer and tossed it away.
“Hey, I got everything I need to take you down right here,” he said. “Time to put your ass out to pasture.”
Clenching his bare hands into fists, Jax launched himself at Motaro.
On the uneven marble steps, Kitana and Sindel were flipping over each other and trading vicious martial-arts blows, employing combined foot-hand techniques rooted in Outworld’s distant past… a past both remembered firsthand.
Seeing a momentary lapse in her mother’s defenses, Kitana stepped forward, faked a palm-heel thrust with her right hand, but then quickly shifted, cocked her left arm, and caught Sindel with an upward strike to the forehead.
Mortal Kombat: Annihilation Page 10