Prolonging the Inevitable

He woke and felt blood, or at least he should have. Rather than feeling the hot blood dripping down his flesh and soaking into his pores, his sensors registered the fact that his body was bleeding profusely.

Sensors registering bleeding? What?

Cyrax's mind couldn't understand why he was feeling so strange, so out of place. He recognized the room that he was in clear as day. His first true memory of life had taken place in this room, as he had been welcomed as a member of the Lin Kuei, an elite group of assassins that were trained from the time they could walk till death. You could never escape the Kuei. He could just remember being a scared little boy with his widowed mother, begging her not to leave him in this strange place with these masked men. She had been a poor street urchin her during her whole seemingly damned life. She had never known a home, except on the streets, and her mother had died in childbirth. Her father had died one month into her mother's pregnancy. She had only wanted her son to experience some semblance of structure and belonging that she herself had never experienced during her life in the emperor's city.

The saddest thing about her life was that no one even knew her real name, not even her own son. She was just referred to as the "street rat" or that "girl dressed in rags". He had no recollection of a father at all. The Lin Kuei didn't even ask for her name, for they didn't care why parents were leaving their children, and their offspring never had any contact with their parents again anyway, except for Sektor. He had had physical contact with his family. He had actually been his own father's assassin. He killed him without even asking one question, except the method to kill him from his instructor; Kai Lin. Cyrax's mother had been simply mom to him. When he was about eighteen, and fully honing his fighting skills, he had been told by his teachers that she had died. When he had asked if he could go on a short leave for her funeral he had been informed that she had died months previously and was buried in an unmarked grave in an unknown field somewhere in Outworld. He could honestly say that at the age of eighteen he had not even missed her, but now it felt as if he had missed the closure of part of his life without being at her funeral.

He was now a man now at twenty-six years of age. He regularly went on hired missions for his clan and was rarely ever at headquarters. He spent one day out of the week in-between missions at his home to regroup and be briefed for the next mission. Making a life out of ending others was not something that he was exactly proud of, but the rewards that he had received as result of his work had been worth the sacrifice of doing work that was deemed evil. He had learned the disciplines and skills of the martial arts that took many a lifetime to learn. Cyrax had reached a center within himself that gave him the peace of mind of understanding himself despite the fact that he killed for the profit of his ninja brothers. He teachers praised him for his understanding of the way things had to be in order for the clan to survive. He was the envy of all of the students his age, except for Sub Zero whom had reached a different level of enlightenment entirely.

The ice ninja as he was referred to was to be special, different from all the others. Sub Zero would be the clan's chosen one and leader of the Lin Kuei in the next generation. He was to bring the clan to its' full glory, at least that was what the legend had said. He could manipulate one of the elements, ice. He was a water elemental that had run cold, turning the supreme element of water into ice. The clan had frozen his soul. When the Lin Kuei had seen the frozen depths in his eye that had to have him. They had attacked his family and had taken him from his home. They brought him to the temple when he was too old to let go of his family and be their warrior. He wouldn't be able to focus his whole being to them. He was too precious a commodity to let go so easily, so the masters had taken his training in a totally different direction. He had been tortured and brainwashed by them so that he would forget his former life and dedicate himself totally to the clan. Sub Zero had no thoughts except how to best please his teachers, but all "good" things must come to an end, and they did, especially for Sub Zero. He had realized what had happened to him as a child. The brainwashing had worn off thanks to Smoke, his only true friend. Smoke was the only member of the Lin Kuei that somehow retained a fragment of goodness somewhere in his killer heart. The only reason that his masters had kept Smoke around was the fact that he was an excellent fighter and he had served his clan well his whole life. Sub Zero had escaped and was now a renegade somewhere in the vast region of the Outworld.

Smoke was now ordered to go after and kill the ice warrior when they had both decided to run away together when they had been made aware of a nefarious plot that has been concocted by the head of the clan, Specter. None of the students had ever seen him, for only the other instructors had the discipline or the understanding of his immortal existence to comprehend his words correctly. He spoke in basic but his words always meant something more than what was said. It was his way of speaking with hidden meaning that kept the clan loyal to him. The ninjas were so in awe of his greatness that they followed him blindly, without thought. Specter was the man that all in the clan wished that they could be, for he was infinitely wise and powerful. Cyrax had envied him until he had experienced just how powerful and evil he could be. The past few days had been nothing but a blur of motion and pain, but at the center of it he had seen him. The man whom he had prayed to the Elder Gods than he could glimpse just for an instant. He couldn't remember what had clearly transpired though, just the sickly evil smile of Specter's face. His leader had simply stared at him with this controlling look, as if Cyrax was just some toy he could play around with. It had been the first time that he had cried out in mental anguish since his mother left him at the clan's headquarters over two decades earlier. He had begged the Specter to do something, to stop them, whoever they were from hurting him, but no mercy was given, but the pain did stop when he had lost consciousness and had sank to the bottom of black lagoon that it was.

He had awakened in this room in his present state; cold and in pain, but oddly his body could not comprehend the agony.

Must be the endorphins, Cyrax thought, but he found that he didn't know what endorphins were. The word was there but the meaning was missing in his overloaded mind. He looked around the room and to his disbelief the room had been warped somehow. The room looked the same, but the color was wrong and twisted. The usually dimly lit meditation room was bright in his mind and everything in the room was a green shade. He could feel the parts in the room that were cold; he could even see the chill of the chamber. There was a number flashing in glistening green in the right-hand side of his vision from top to bottom. It appeared to be a serial number of some sort. He felt liquid rolling down his arm, or rather registered the fact.

I must be going out of my mind, crossed through his brain but his body felt no panic. He placed his hand on his neck to where it "felt" like he was hemorrhaging, and although he had touched his neck with his hands he felt no moisture or sensation for that matter. He brought his hand to his eyes and was amazed at the sight before his eyes. The blood was black almost like oil. He brought his hand to his nose and smelled it, or at least he tried. Instead of there being a distinct smell of oil a word flashed green in his vision: Oil Compound. He looked down at his hand and saw that his yellow gloves were gone, having been replaced with metallic ones coal black in color. He reached his other steel clad hand to remove the gloves but they would not come off. He struggled to pull them off until it suddenly dawned on him that his whole body was encased in yellow metal. He wanted to cry out but no sound came forth from his larynx, if he still had one. He put his hand on his chest and felt no pulse. His brain was struggling to understand what had happened to him since the day before, but he got the painful "feeling" that it had been a while since he had been conscious.

"I see that you're awake."

He whipped his body impossibly quickly around and faced the figure behind him.

"How do you like your new body, impressive is it not?" The figure gleamed at him with an indistinct smile

Cyrax tried to gasp when he recognized whom it was, but nothing came. System Overload, Temporary Shutdown Commencing flashed in the view screen and all went black.

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-GHOSTWRITER155