Sub Zero gawked at the Lin Kuei temple having been created out of thin air. He had seen it plenty of times before but to have it, the icy mountains around it, and the cold white skies above it suddenly surrounding him was hard to accept right away.
"It all looks so real, does it feel..." Sub Zero crouched down and rubbed the snow from the ice on the ground. The snow flaked and clumped in his hand, the ice was smooth, and both felt cold, "real!" Sub Zero exclaimed.
"It is as real as your memory can make it." Nightwolf's green, ghostly avatar explained.
Sub Zero made a snowball in his hand and then crushed it in his palm, noting the feel of the flakes scraping in between his fingers. He had almost forgotten what feeling anything really was like, his transformation into a cyborg had made his ability to experience any sensation almost non existent. Sub Zero looked up and noticed the banners of the previous Lin Kuei grandmaster blowing in the air, hanging from the outer walls of the temple.
"As real as my memory huh? What memories exactly?" Sub Zero asked suspiciously.
"Go on and see." Nightwolf said simply.
Sub Zero brushed the snow from his hands and approached the large doors. Metal plating with ancient etches of Chinese script and dragons covered the wood like armour. Sub Zero pushed the doors open and stepped inside the main hall. Fires burned fiercely in large sconces, but the walls and ceiling still exuded a chilled atmosphere.
"This is before I became the grandmaster, there is no doubt about it." Sub Zero said.
He turned around to see if Nightwolf was listening, but saw nothing but the doors, closed. He hadn't closed them, nor had he heard them close by themselves.
"What?" Sub Zero asked aloud.
"You are a ghost here Sub Zero," Nightwolf's voice suddenly echoed into his ears, "A ghost in your own mind. This is a world in itself, and the things you do will not have an effect on it for long."
Sub Zero pondered that for a moment. He turned to a candle sitting in a space in the wall. He bent down blew through his mask. The cold air smashed into the flame and extinguished it. He stared at it for five seconds, then ten, then twenty, just watching smoke rise from the blackened candle wick. Soon his eyes felt dry and he had to blink them fresh again. Once he opened his eyes again, the candle was on fire like it was just moments before.
"A ghost you say. Will anyone be able to notice me?" Sub Zero asked.
Nightwolf's reply never came, and so Sub Zero continued on through the halls of his memory. The Lin Kuei temple was always sparsely populated; the clan was very selective in how many members joined and those who did didn't walk idly in the halls, but he was surprised he didn't come across anybody. He finally heard whispers of voices coming from a room up ahead so he peered inside. What he found shocked him.
He remembered this, though only vaguely. Two of his fellow ninja were bickering about something. It was almost exactly as how he remembered it, except for how they looked. Both the men looked like mirages; their forms were wispy and blurred. They looked more like shaped, bluish after images. Their voices sounded like distant echoes. Sub Zero noticed another Lin Kuei walking down the hall that looked and sounded the same as the other two.
"What is this?" Sub Zero asked.
"You aren't here for them, press on." Nightwolf's voice told him.
Sub Zero did as he was told but was still surprised everytime when he saw these ghosts like beings. He had the urge to reach out and touch them but the thought felt inappropriate. The ghosts acted like he wasn't there, and while he technically he wasn't, or they weren't, he felt like the ghost. These were the memories he had of these people, people he had grown to know as his family. It wasn't too different from how things had been in reality.
Sub Zero stopped dead in his tracks when he came to the door he was looking for. It was scarred and splintered from when someone had been slammed against it, hard. It was the door to the quarters he and Bi Han had shared. He slowly raised his hand so that it hovered over the handle like it were a piece of hot metal. He didn't know what to expect, well he did but he didn't know if it would be exactly how he remembered. He couldn't decide if he wanted it to be or not. He braced for, something, and opened the door.
The first thing he noticed was that the door, just like before, had silently closed again in the blink of an eye, like he had walked straight through it. The second thing he noticed was that the people in this room were not blurry ghosts, but picture perfect representations of the real thing. Dark blue cloth intwined with grey metal armour, pale white skin, and two pairs of cool blue eyes framed by skin tight cowls and blue masks. Sub Zero was staring at the memory of himself and the memory of Bi Han.
"You are setting out so soon again?" Sub Zero asked.
As Sub Zero watched his doppelgänger talk, his own lips quivered like they wanted to follow along.
"The grandmaster wishes for me to enter the Mortal Kombat tournament, it is not a short journey." Bi Han said without turning to his younger brother, instead focusing on the gauntlet he was tying to his forearm.
"But you've only recently returned from your mission for Quan Chi..." Sub Zero reminded.
From Sub Zero's angle as a spirt walker, he could see things he hadn't before. Bi Han's fist clenched at the mention of Quan Chi, and Sub Zero saw this angry and disturbed look in his eyes.
"Isn't there someone else that can go in your place? Sektor or Cyrax perhaps? You need time to heal and rest." Sub Zero said.
"I will rest when I am dead. Sektor and Cyrax will be accompanying me to the tournament, they have their own target." Bi Han said.
"The Mortal Kombat tournament is sure to have many dangerous attendees. Are you sure you are up to this?"
Bi Han turned to his sitting brother and gave him a look that reminded Sub Zero how diminutive Bi Han made him feel at times.
"Very sure."
Sub Zero averted his eyes from his brother's glare. He had a hard time meeting Bi Han's stare at times.
"Train hard while I am gone, hone your skills, and perhaps you can join on missions like these. Maybe that will put your worries to rest." Bi Han told him.
Sub Zero, the memory and avatar both, searched Bi Han's voice and obscured face for any signs of tenderness following what he had said. If there was any, it was gone almost immediately. Sub Zero stood and saluted his brother in the traditional Lin Kuei manner.
"Good luck brother."
"The weak rely on luck Tundra." Bi Han said venomously.
"Of course...Sub Zero." Kuai Lang answered.
Bi Han turned and approached the door. He opened it half way and then tilted his head back.
"Good luck Tundra." Bi Han said with a deep chuckle.
Sub Zero didn't know if it was humour or an insult. With Bi Han, insults were usually the bulk of his humour. Bi Han opened the door fully and stepped through. Sub Zero noticed that the surroundings started falling away, and his doppelgänger had disappeared. The Lin Kuei temple and everything in it had evaporated and left Sub Zero and his memory of Bi Han in the white void. Bi Han was walking away from him when suddenly a wall of flames erupted in front of him. Sub Zero took a step back because of the intense heat of the flames, but Bi Han kept on walking like he didn't see the fire. The light from the flames cast Bi Han's shadow far behind him, far enough to envelope Sub Zero. Sub Zero forced himself to run forward with his hand outstretched. He was shouting something incoherent, but he thought it was a warning or a plead, anything to get Bi Han to stop. He watched as Bi Han stepped into the flames and was vaporized, and the flames then died as suddenly as they had began.
Sub Zero fell to his knees. There wasn't anything left of Bi Han, not even ash, save for his shadow. The black shape remained like it hadn't realized it's master had been taken yet.
"Why this? What was this for, what did it serve?" Sub Zero asked in a grief stricken voice.
"You've seen the end, and now you'll see how it came to be." Nightwolf's voice told him.
Sub Zero shook his head. This memory was the last time he had seen Bi Han alive, before he was resurrected as Noob Saibot.
"This wasn't enough? I've learnt of how Bi Han had died, that isn't enough for you to work off of?"
"A corruption as pervasive as this didn't come about over night. It needed to grow, and as the person grows, so does the corruption."