When the first volleys struck the Temple on the only side where a full-out assault was viable, chaos ensued as people ran around in terror, uncertain as to what was happening. But Tomas, who'd tried numerous times to contact Kuai Liang on his wrist comm only to fail, wasted no time in charging to the wall to lead Elites and Masters both. The teenage students were already leading the smaller children to the catacombs deep under the Temple to hide, and many servants joined them. But on the wall, the cyber-ninja arranged every warrior he had that hadn't been killed by a fireball because this is where the enemy would attack.
After the fiery volleys had started, their first warning that something worse was coming had started as a low trembling. Not the simple vibrations of marching or running footsteps, but a tensing and flexing of the crust like the thing itself was roiling below them deep in the bowels of the earth. In the dim morning light, the Lin Kuei who'd scrabbled to the walls as the volleys pounded the Temple now swayed in time with the strange palpitations. Then came the sound: a terrible noise Tomas had heard many times before, yells and screams, and the fierce battle cries of men and monster broke out.
"Tarkatans!"
The shriek came from the ledge immediately above Tomas. He had sent Cyrax up to that level when the attack first began to lead the warriors up there while he and Bi-han led the ones down here. In less than a second, he saw the enemy as well. Tarkatans spilled over the snowy brink less than a mile away, running at break-neck speed towards the Temple.
For a long moment, nobody moved. Bi-han was the first to react. "Find the Grandmaster!" he barked at Kaito, a Japanese Elite, as he grabbed the young man by his tunic and shoved him towards the door.
"He's not answering his comm device," Tomas reported.
"He might've been caught in one of the blasts," the Cryomancer replied, and it was apparent he didn't recognize his own insensitivity at the statement. The cyber-ninja agreed with him, but couldn't bear to imagine such a thing.
Further conversation became impossible, however, washed away beneath a torrent of orders from both men, and equally loud acknowledgements from the other Lin Kuei warriors. Edenian arrows as thick as rain came whistling onto each level's catwalk, and thudded and glanced off the wood and stones. Some found a mark. Then the Tarkatans screamed again, waving their armblades while the Edenians continued firing their arrows at anyone they could get a clean shot at. The Lin Kuei warriors, particularly the Elites who'd yet to see battle, looked out in stunned amazement, frozen with fear.
Brazen trumpets sounded from somewhere beyond the brink. The brutish monsters surged forward, some against the wall, others where the Temple huddled against the jagged butte behind it. There the biggest Tarkatans were mustered and rapidly scaling the rocky stone before reaching the gates and fighting to break them in.
Tomas, of course, reached deep into his heart to summon the powers of the Enenra sleeping inside of him, and in seconds, he'd summoned a vast cloud of smoke that he willed into a wall to cloak the Lin Kuei forces. It wouldn't fool the enemy for long, but it should at least buy his warriors an opening salvo or two. A good thing, that, since moments were all he had. The haze grew dark, thickened by an array of half-obscured shapes, and the Tarkatans were upon them, scaling the walls as easily as insects.
They paused, thrown for only an instant by the hellish black smoke, and in that instant, the Lin Kuei attacked. He heard the screams of frightened Elites and the crash of bony armblades on metal weapons. Bi-han's kori sword raked across the face of a mailed Tarkatan, and the cyber-ninja plunged through the barbarians like a whirlwind, cutting down foes right and left. Soon, Smoke hammered at a particularly big Tarkatan who wore a mismatched set of armor, dancing around each other as they traded blow for blow. Quickly frustrated by his inability to get the upper hand on this monster, the Enenra threw up his hand and his kunai spear plunged into his opponent's throat, sprouting from it like a grotesque metal flower. When the Tarkatan opened his mouth to scream in pain, only blood came out. By the time he fell, Smoke was fighting someone else.
After that, things ran together. The morning was full of shouts and screams and heavy with the scent of blood and smoke, and the world had turned to chaos. Bony armblades hissed past Smoke's ear and clattered off walls and pillars. He saw Bi-han in the melee, now fighting with a kori sword in each hand. The cyber-ninja himself stayed in the thick of the fight, sliding from opponent to opponent and darting invisible in and out of the shadows to destroy the passing Tarkatans. Sage, one of the Elites, was cut down from behind while she sliced at a monster in front of her, and later, Tomas stumbled over Graham's body. The handsome face had been smashed in with a powerful armblade, but the cyber-ninja recognized the green tunic and the pinky ring on his finger that once belonged to his long-dead mother.
After minutes that lasted eons, he finally looked up and around. Here inside the Temple, the enemy were all vanquished or vanished, their bodies mingling in heaps with those of the Lin Kuei. Somehow, in spite of their heavy losses, they had won the battle when he wasn't looking. In the distance, however, still running across the Arctic plains like a mad, neverending sea, were more Tarkatans. More than enough to finish the rest of the Lin Kuei off.
This was Reiko's doing, Tomas surmised, because what other monster with a grudge against the Lin Kuei was running loose in the world? As he slumped wearily against a pillar, he vaguely admired how perfectly the Outworld General had attacked them. His strategy had been absolutely perfect. What was worse, he undoubtedly knew it was perfect.
Where in the hell is Kuai Liang? he thought, but only for a moment. Then he was moving and shouting orders again.
"Retreat to the catacombs!" he yelled at his people, and then tapped his wrist communicator and repeated it to everyone, no matter where they were in the Temple. As he bolted towards the catacombs with Bi-han and the other surviving warriors in tow, his fingers flew over another set of buttons. In a brief second, the connection was established. "Attention, Ft. Albany. Arctika is under attack. I repeat, Arctika is under attack…"
It happened so fast that Olivia scarcely realized she was already moving when the Grandmaster aimed the ice jet at her and nearly froze her where she stood. She yelped a little as she dropped to her knees and scrambled below the desk, her heart pounding wildly in her chest when the blue stream of cryogenic power barely sailed over her head and hit the wall. She was acutely aware of the immediate crackling of ice spreading across the surface behind her, and felt the chill of it even a foot away.
"Dad, stop!" she screamed, even though she knew it was an exercise in futility. He belonged to Reiko right now, and no amount of talking was going to change that. "This isn't who you are!"
She barely had a second to move before she saw, underneath the crack between the floor and the desk, his feet stomp around to pull her out. Using her own powers, she quickly froze the bottom panel and then booted a hole through it. Just as he threw an ice ball at her hiding spot, she dove through to the other side, narrowly escaping his attack yet again.
"Dad, it's me!" she cried as more explosions rocked the Temple and debris sifted from the ceiling onto the desk. "Your little Livy! Don't do this!"
Her supplications fell on deaf ears, and he stepped around the computer panels to attack her once more. The rage that marred his face twisted his features to match his actions. His body shook with such anger that his aim was no longer true, and he threw his ice ball as hard as he could physically force himself to. This time, however, he found her gone. Shouting furiously, he picked up the desk chair and hurled it into the wall on the other side of the room. Drywall and plaster cracked around a new hole. But Olivia saw none of that.
Fantastic, she inwardly scoffed as she dove through the floor, teleporting through the sheets of pulsating white ice. I can't begin to fight him without hurting him, but he's absolutely determined to kill me. What was worse, she reasoned, was that he was infinitely more skilled at combat than she was. So how could she defeat the Grandmaster - a tremendous challenge for her even just in training - without hurting him? Fighting him like this would be like trying to tranquilize a grizzly bear with her bare hands.
The way she saw it, there was only one thing she could do.
Olivia emerged from the icy tomb behind him and leaped at his middle. As predicted, her father fell face-first onto the floor, and she fell with him. But she wasted no time scrambling onto his back and trying to thread her arms beneath his armpits to pin his arms behind his head. She succeeded for all of a second, and was about to slip a single, ice-charged hand to his shoulder where it married his neck in order to stun him. But realizing what she meant to do, he quickly turned the tables on her. With a strained grunt, he reached over his shoulders to grip her robes before he hefted her over him and slammed her hard into the ground.
Olivia lay on her back, looking up at the ceiling as she wheezed to catch her breath, involuntary tears leaking from her eyes as she frantically clawed at her chest and flopped onto her stomach. But before she had the chance to recover, he kipped up onto his feet and promptly kicked her beneath her armpit. She gasped and struggled to breathe as sharp pain drilled into her side. The older Cryomancer continued to kick her in the ribs, refusing to stop even when she screamed a pathetic little shriek and choked on air, crying hysterically in both fear and pain. Finally, her father stomped her back before he took a step back to catch his own breath.
Satisfied that he'd neutralized the threat, Kuai Liang started to walk towards the portal, but Olivia, ever tenacious, refused to let him go. Though her face contorted in pain, she promptly pushed herself onto her hands and lunged at his ankles. He toppled to the floor with a grunt. Then he growled deeply in his throat as he scowled over his shoulder at her, pushed himself to all fours, and mule-kicked her in the face. Stars exploded through her vision and she tasted copper in her mouth as she wilted. Thick ropes of blood mingled with drool spilled over her split lip.
Now the Grandmaster, having jumped to his feet already, thrust his hand into her hair, her tangled white tresses long since unraveled from the messy bun she'd pinned them in earlier. He paid no mind to her squeals as he mercilessly hauled her to her feet by her hair, and then kneed her hard in the side of her thigh just below her hip. A terribly loud and painful crunch briefly overshadowed the chaotic noise and distant screaming coming from the rest of the Temple. Olivia's face contorted in agony before she shrieked her pain and collapsed onto the floor like a rag doll. On the ground, she curled into the fetal position, bawling as she weakly pawed at her leg, which was now bent at an acute concave angle at the knee, the toes on her foot pointing directly at her other one, the whole thing slumped on its side in an unnatural way. Just above her knee, her femur jutted through her skin and pants, splintered at the edge.
"Daddy," she cried through her tears as blood quickly soaked her pant leg and began to pool around her. She covered her face with her hands, truly scared. "Please stop this."
The Grandmaster said nothing, only sneered. A large kori sword sprang from his palms and he stood over her, poised to end her. Olivia couldn't bear to look at him, the father she loved and trusted so implicitly, as he prepared to kill her, and yet, she couldn't force herself to look away either. Laying on the ground, hopelessly bruised and battered, her broken leg shrieking in agony from her hip to her toes, Olivia met Sub-Zero's cold, blank gaze and inwardly prayed to whomever was listening that he at least finish her off quickly. That was the only mercy he could show her right now. She inhaled deeply, waiting for him to move.
And then: "Self-destruct in 60 seconds. 59...58...57…"
Almost as if the announcement startled him, the Grandmaster lifted his unfeeling eyes and glanced around in bewilderment. Red warning lights continued to blare in time to the countdown. As if he realized his time was too short to fight with her, he abandoned her and darted around the control panel. She couldn't see what he was doing, but Olivia heard the steady clacking of keys as his fingers effortlessly flew over them and typed a command into the system. Within moments, a portal formed inside the metal ring and he bolted through it without giving his gravely wounded daughter so much as a second thought.
When the portal winked out of existence and left only the blaring red warning lights in its wake, Olivia let out a long, shuddering sigh of relief that quickly collapsed into hysterical tears. Even though she hadn't died yet, it didn't matter. When the portal self-destructed in a few short moments, she'd die anyway. Goddammit, she cried in self-pity, if her father was that determined to kill her, he could at least kill her himself and spare her from the torture of time to think about it.
"Help me!" she wailed, though she knew no one could hear her over the explosions and the shouting. "Oh, God, please help me." Her voice broke into a pathetic little whimper by that point, and soon she began to sob.
"20...19...18...17…"
Through her hysterics, she vaguely wondered how much it would hurt being blown up. But she wouldn't get the answer to that question that day. A new voice rang out, "I'm here, Olivia! I've got you!"
Two spindly but strong arms threaded themselves beneath the young Cryomancer's armpits and heaved her towards the door. The jarring motion on her broken leg set it into a new, nauseating wave of agony, and Olivia screamed with each inch she moved. Millimeters crawled by like miles, even though in truth, she was sliding quite fast away from the portal. And she still didn't even see her rescuer. Her tears were too hot and blinding to see much of anything.
"9...8...7...6…"
They were just outside the portal room now, and her savior's face now briefly came into focus: Miyuki. The Cryomancer had soot smeared across her cheeks and forehead, but otherwise looked fine.
"Duck your head, Olivia!" she managed to cry out just as the countdown reached one and she instinctively threw up her hands to protect herself.
A shield of ice sprang from nothingness at the exact moment the portal exploded, but she never stopped pushing her cryogenic power towards the blast. Arctic blue met burning orange, and Miyuki howled in determination as the force shoved her back ever so slightly. Debris clanged loudly off the ice shield, and water from where the fire melted it dribbled onto the floor. On either side of them, flames licked their clothes but couldn't quite touch them. Seconds became hours, but eventually, the burning chaos stopped and Miyuki dropped the kori shield onto the scorched ground. Weakened by the heat, it immediately shattered, and pieces of ice spun and scattered in all directions.
"Olivia," she breathed in concern as she dropped to her knees beside her and frantically examined the damage to her leg. "Oh, God," she muttered.
The Elite wanted to fight with her aunt and tell her to leave her alone, but her voice came out in choked sobs instead of angry insults. "It hurts," she whimpered. Deep down, she imagined she wasn't talking about the broken bone.
"I know," she sympathetically replied as she smoothed the young Cryomancer's hair away from her face. "I broke my leg once too."
"My father…" she trailed off before she began to bawl like a child again.
"Just breathe, Olivia," Miyuki calmly told her as she yanked her belt from her jeans and carefully wrapped it around the Elite's leg above the break. "I'm going to get you to your mother. Just breathe."
"I don't want to move," she wept. "It hurts too much."
"Unfortunately, you don't get a choice in the matter," her aunt replied before she gripped her shoulder and stunned her unconscious.
Inside the catacombs, shadows moved and lurched in the overwhelming darkness, though flickering candlelight touched the stone floor underfoot and brushed against a long procession of stabilizing pillars carved into the black rock that marched ahead, two by two, far beyond sight. Between the pillars, the effigies of the dead, which had been carved by Himavat long before the Lin Kuei took up residence here, sat on stone thrones against the walls, their backs against the sepulchers that contained their mortal remains.
Long ago, Kuai Liang had somewhat re-purposed the catacombs as a shelter should the Temple ever befall a natural disaster or come under attack. He had not disturbed the bodies of the dead, but he had ordered Cyrax to install thick, military-grade blast doors over a half-foot thick at the start of the tunnels as well as a computer station with security monitors connected to discreet security cameras mounted around the Temple. There were several cots stored here as well as emergency supplies including military food rations and cases of bottled water, compliments of General Blade.
Once inside, Tomas made a beeline for the computer station and flipped on the distress beacon so Sonya could find them before he input the codes to shut the blast doors. He wasn't quite sure how long the blast doors would delay Reiko, who, as far as he could tell, still only used primitive technology in battle. But with any luck, they would keep the Tarkatans out until Sonya arrived with backup roughly three hours later. And they would bring guns. Big guns. At the thought, Tomas suddenly realized how much he missed Alex.
The older children as well as the Elites had already erected numerous cots and now, the wounded warriors were laying on them, moaning in pain. Interspersed between them, the younger children were crying in fear on their spots on the floor, not quite understanding what was happening. Cyrax was busy doing a headcount while the other Masters and the uninjured Elites tried to tend to their comrades. Samantha, along with Tomas' children Danika and Connor, were the only Hydromancer healers present at the moment - Anya had not come down with the others when he'd ordered the retreat - and the three teenagers were hard at work trying to heal who they could. Unfortunately, they did not have the nurse's knowledge or strength yet, so at best, their help was minimal.
"Who did this, Táta?" Morgan asked him as she pressed a thick, gauzy pad against a gash cutting through her forehead. She tiredly slumped against the cavern wall to the ground. "Who's attacking us?"
"I have a sinking suspicion that Reiko is behind it," he muttered before he turned back to the computers.
"He is," Kailyn now chimed in as she waded through the warriors and promptly wrapped her arms around him. Tomas vaguely caught sight of several deep cuts up and down her arms, marking her in thin stripes like a tiger. "While I was fighting a Tarkatan, I touched him and saw that Reiko leads them."
"I suspected as much, manželka," he tiredly sighed, resting his head on her shoulder, burying his face in her golden curls.
"There's more, my love," she now whispered, and it was then that he realized she was trembling.
Frowning, Tomas pulled away from her. "What is it, Kailyn?" he asked.
Her eyes filled with tears. "Rain is back," she declared. "Elder Gods help me, Rain is back. And he's serving Reiko."
The Enenra looked at her in shock, but before he could say anything, Tommy had pushed his way through his comrades and said, "Where are my parents?"
Tomas looked at his nephew. "Not now, Tommy."
The teenager scowled. "What do you mean, not now? My father is the Grandmaster and my mom is the only nurse in the Temple. We kind of need them here, in case you hadn't noticed."
"Olivia's missing too," Jamie added as he joined his twin's side.
"Many people are missing," Bi-han now coldly told them both. "We must think of protecting those who made it down here. There is nothing we can do to save the others right now. They're on their own."
"That's crap!" Tommy yelled. "I'll go out and find them if you're too scared, Uncle."
Bi-han raised his eyebrow at him. "You think I'm scared?" he asked, crossing his arms and gazing at the boys sternly.
"Enough of this," Tomas interrupted before a family feud got started. "I can look for them and any other survivors on the cameras."
He faced the monitors again and let his hands fly across the keyboard. Within moments, the cameras were activated and all revealed Tarkatans swarming through the Temple, destroying everything in their path. Just to be doubly sure that the Lin Kuei warriors sprawled on the ground were truly dead, many of the enemy took to stabbing them with their armblades through their skulls. Beside the remnants of the main gate, no less than five of the Elites, all of whom had been gravely wounded anyway, met their gruesome end. Tomas winced, but refused to look away. He owed them that much.
When they were dead, Tomas sighed and then silently tapped some more buttons, bringing up other cameras, seeing more of the same. But there was no sign of any survivors. He repeated this process several times and began to grow frustrated when he found nothing of consequence. He frowned. Then a new thought occurred to him. What if some of them had gone through the portal?
Renewed by his sudden idea, he pulled up the view of the portal room, and his heart immediately lurched when he saw it. It was obliterated, but not as if it had been destroyed by a flaming volley. Rather, the char patterns intermingled with the shape and placement of the debris suggested that the self-destruct sequence had been activated. Puzzled, Tomas pulled up the data from the portal computer. His cybernetic eyes flew over the words and confirmed his suspicions: the portal had been intentionally destroyed.
It was something only the Grandmaster could do.
"What the hell was he doing?" he mumbled to himself, cycling through surveillance footage from the past hour.
"What did you find, my love?" Kailyn asked, now looking at the screen.
"Kuai Liang activated the portal's self-destruct sequence," he murmured distractedly, and finally caught sight of his friend jumping through the portal. "There," he said. "He went through the portal. That's why he's not here."
"He abandoned us?" Tommy asked, his tone accusatory and furious. "When we needed him the most, he just left?" The Enenra glanced at him and noted that his nephew's cheeks were fire-engine red.
"He also ordered our sentries on the wall to stand down," Cyrax, who'd joined their group alongside Xinyi only moments before, reported. "When one of them asked him why, he struck him and broke his jaw."
"That doesn't sound like my brother," Bi-han now frowned.
"Except he hasn't been acting like himself these last couple of days, has he?" Tomas snarled, his own fury catching up with him.
He tapped more keys and rewound the portal footage even further. Now Olivia was there, confronting him, so he let the video play forward. Unexpectedly, the Grandmaster attacked her and she nobly defended herself, clearly trying to avoid hurting him in the process. But she was losing soundly. Then Kuai Liang dragged her from the floor and kneed her hard enough to snap her leg like a twig. He poised to kill her with a kori sword, but something drew his attention and he bolted off, running through the open portal.
"If Livy was in there when it exploded…" Jamie trailed off, his face now wrenched into a mask of grief. His head sagged to the floor. He couldn't bring himself to say what they were all thinking. No one else could, for that matter.
"Wait, look!" Morgan yelped as she pointed to the screen. And now they saw Miyuki run in and drag Olivia out just before the screen went dark.
With a sudden resurgence of hope pumping through his heart, Tomas quickly typed in more commands. The surveillance cameras instantly switched to real time and skipped down the hall until finally, he saw Miyuki and Olivia hunched behind a mound of debris, the latter unconscious and too wounded to fight anyway. Also on the screen were seven Tarkatans gradually creeping towards them. It was doubtful they knew the Cryomancers were hidden there, but they'd find them in a moment. And by then, both women would be dead because God knew Frost couldn't be counted on to fight them off. The cyber-ninja swore in Czech.
"I'm going to get them," he announced a second later as he tapped several buttons on his cybernetic gauntlet. Before anyone had a chance to protest, he was already teleporting to their location, and silently appeared beside the women a second later.
Miyuki's eyes went wide with surprise, but Tomas quickly pressed his finger to his mouth, the universal signal to be quiet, and she nodded her understanding. Then, he took her by the hand and gripped Olivia's limp palm in his other. Just as the Tarkatans, who were grunting and snarling lowly, peeked around the pile of drywall and shards of wood, the three were already gone, having teleported back to the catacombs.
"Livy!" Tommy yelped when they reappeared amongst the others. He lunged to her side, examined her, and then glanced over his shoulder. "Sam! Get over here! Now!" he shouted at his baby sister.
"Let's move her onto a cot," Bi-han suggested, nodding at his nephews while Samantha quickly finished healing someone and then made her way to them. The Cryomancer carefully scooped Olivia into his arms and then found his way to a cot where Justin, a far less severely injured Elite, was resting. "Move it," he barked at the young man, who couldn't vacate his spot fast enough. Bi-han had that effect on people, Tomas knew.
"I used my powers to knock her out," Miyuki reported when Olivia was laying on the cot. She nervously wrung her hands as if that wasn't okay. "She was in agony and wouldn't move otherwise. But we couldn't stay there."
"That's what I would've done," Bi-han told her reassuringly while Sam knelt beside her sister and began working on her.
"I...I think Kuai Liang did this to her," she blurted out a moment later. "I didn't see it, but-"
"It's okay, Miyuki," her older brother told her as he patted her on the shoulder. "We know."
"This is far above my skill to heal," Sam sighed in exasperation. She was staring at the compound fracture. "I can take care of the other stuff, but I'm not even sure Mom could take care of this without setting the bone first. And I don't know how to set bones."
"It's alright," Tomas gently told her. "Just do what you can. Take that belt off, though. It looks as if her bleeding has stopped."
"Speaking of Mom," Tommy began, now rising to his feet and looking at Tomas again, "we need to find her too."
"Unless Dad murdered her," Jamie mumbled, eliciting a chorus of angry retorts and groans.
"That's not helpful," Tomas reprimanded him at the same time Tommy yelled, "Shut your mouth!"
"Well, she wasn't on any of the cameras!" the teenager yelled back. "If he didn't get her, then one of the Tarkatans did."
"Mom was in the infirmary when the attack started," Sam now declared. "At least, that's what Livy said. She missed breakfast because she wanted to start work early."
Bi-han sighed. "Pull up the infirmary cameras for the last hour," he ordered Tomas, who nodded and tapped the keyboard a few times.
In a moment, Anya appeared on the screen, but their view of her was partially obscured by the door to her office at the back of the infirmary proper. Still, she had been crying into her palms, over what, Tomas could not say. It was almost pitiful the way she looked up with swollen, dark eyes and clutched a handful of tissues from the Kleenex box on her desk before burying her face in them. And then, the walls around her began to shake and she looked up in surprise. She had all of three seconds to think about what was happening before the screen went black.
Tomas typed in more commands and pulled up the camera just outside the infirmary. A host of Tarkatans were milling around, but their presence wasn't what captivated his attention. The infirmary was a smoldering mess with the outermost wall spilled like a fan into the corridor and the rest of it collapsed haphazardly inside.
"The infirmary fell on her," Bi-han deduced. His voice had taken on a somber tone.
"She's trapped in there!" Tommy yelled. "We have to do something!" He looked expectantly at Tomas. "We have to save her."
The cyber-ninja sighed and let his head sag down. "Tommy," he began, his voice painfully quiet.
"You can teleport in there," he continued, not listening. "Pick her up like you did for Aunt Miyuki and Olivia."
"Tommy," he repeated, this time more loudly.
"What are you waiting for? She's probably scared to death. And she might be hurt-"
"Tommy, I can't," he said and he sadly swiveled his head to meet his nephew's gaze. "I don't know if there's any empty space around her to teleport into. And even if there is, if she's pinned by something, and I try to move it, it'll undoubtedly bring it down completely. It'll kill us both. If she's not already…" He swallowed hard as Kailyn gasped and rubbed her eyes.
"If she's not already what, Uncle?" he demanded to know.
"You know what," he told him. His eyes filled with tears of his own when he saw tears overwhelm the boy's. He wove his way through the others and rested his hands on Tommy's shoulders. "We're going to have to rescue her the old-fashioned way. But we can't do anything until the Tarkatans are gone."
"You can't just leave her there," his voice broke. Jamie and Sam both looked from him to Tomas. Their faces were just as forlorn as their brother's.
He swallowed hard. "I'm sorry. But we're going to have to."
MKDemigodZ-Warrior, divide and conquer, most definitely. Also, cut off their only viable escape route.
alwaysdoubted, whatever Reiko has in store for Sub-Zero, it's definitely going to be unpleasant.
The Titan's Shadow, it's okay, no worries! So yeah, there's all this horrible stuff going down, but at least no one was mean to Frost LOL
Guest, I have a strange feeling that it's Jiayi ;)
Phant0mZone, I won't say no, but I will say probably not since Aftermath was meant to tie up some of the stuff from The Curse of the Dragon Medallion. I got stuck on Cyrax's chapter and was lost for ideas. I also need to finish "Coming of Age."
Daniel Barga, I don't know the answer to those questions LOL Tune in to my later installments to find out! ;)
Westcoast Witchdoctor, not quite off the hook like Jack in The Shining. But still pretty creepy. And you know I'm going to keep upping the ante because why not? LOL
ROCuevas, indeed!