It was uneasy to swallow, as the cold air stuck in her throat. A metal film formed along the valley of her tongue she desperately and dryly spat out to rid of, but the taste of her own blood had stained her maw and the smell of cold apathy slapped against her near bare flesh from the frozen metal walls around her.
When she came to, Kitana thought she were in Earthrealm, an industrial freezer, or some metal box. She had only been there a few times, but she didn't remember much after the blood loss siphoned her from consciousness.
The prick and crinkle of flesh that hardened around the sliced wound above her breast had already begun to heal, but the sting still licked at her as she struggled to get her bearings.
When her eyes opened and the tiny world around her became clearer, she was shocked to find Mileena before her. She looked savage, more Tarkatan than Edenian. The left side of her skull shaved and the right extended in thin dreads, she wore a linen cloth mask of muted pink or purple that was caged by white teeth, much like the maw hidden behind the cloth. Kitana gazed down, the fabric was linen all the way down, an easy cloth for the Tarkatans to afford, dyed in the same mooted purple with black hem lines, rips and tears around the cloth like she had fought for years in this outfit. Her arms had bands around them just above the elbow bend and muted pink wraps at her wrists that covered the edges of black leather gloves with cat-like claws that protruded from the knuckles of her right glove.
Savage, she thought, but anyone that saw Mileena might think of that word, no matter how she were dressed.
It had been ten or so years since Kitana saw her sister, she realized, and almost didn't recognized herself in those yellow Tarkatan eyes that stared back like a foreign creature.
As she accustomed to the pain at her chest from the healed cut, and the arid wasteland of her blood stained mouth, her body yearned for water, but she dumped the river of those thoughts at the realization that the eyes that stared back at her couldn't have been Mileena's.
"You're not her." Kitana was certain.
"I am Mileena, Kahnum of Outworld." The imposter pulled down the mask to reveal the same face as the clone Shang Tsung had created of Kitana.
"She never was." Kitana rebutted.
"I would have been if it weren't for Kotal Kahn, and you!" Mileena approached from a great large metal door that was appeared shut tight behind her.
Kitana never felt a gust of wind or heard any noise to alert her that anyone had entered the chamber and Mileena's steps made no sound with the metal floor.
"D'Vorah killed me, but my fans demanded my return." She added, "Kronika had no choice but to pull me from the cogs of time, sister."
"What are you?"
A sai point raised to Kitana's chin, but it never touched. It could never touch.
"I am so loved by all of Outworld, yet you thought you could control me, and could demand how I lived my life." Mileena continued, "if it were you that was left on to die, do you think as many people would have cared?"
She refused to answer. There was no need to play along, Kitana, though convinced by the voice and the movements, could see in the eyes that this was not Mileena. This entity knew her only from a distance and could never understand her like a sister.
"How many times did you try to create the perfect version of me after Liu Kang defeated Kronika and Shang Tsung?" Mileena knelt before Kitana.
Not left to roam her chamber, Kitana, though nearly naked and left to freeze, was bound at the wrists with chain. To weak at first to tug on them, she couldn't move far if she tried.
"What are you so afraid of that you couldn't kill me?" Mileena pierced Kitana's throat with the sai and as the Edenian gasped, she watched the metal pierce cleanly through her open maw and right out from the top of her skull with her hand like it was just air. Kitana flinched, but no prick, no blood, and no touch every harmed her.
"I was afraid of losing you." Kitana spat, and wished she hadn't just as quickly as it covered Mileena's face in the form of a wide toothy grin.
"Hate her or love her," Raiden pulled away. He tucked his hands in his robes and turned his back on Kitana, only the profile of his face downcast and an eye glared back at her as he spoke, "you couldn't fathom to lose another part of yourself. Your own blood."
"I'll be the death of you." She returned, her eyes wide and her anger flared as her face flushed pink and red. She stood as best she could though she stumbled and staggered in the chains.
Raiden turned and laughed with a hearty grin, only to catch himself in the moment, frown and return to form, "sorry."
"What even are you?"
"Raiden is a god, a man deified. Shinnok an Elder God, created by the Titan Kronika." He explained, "I am something older than all of them, there at the creation of time itself. The first evil."
"The universe isn't evil."
"Nothing really is, nor anything truly good, but I am the dark thoughts in your head. I am the first act of violence, and I am the first feeling of hatred in the heart of the first living thing."
She slumped, dangled even, but not in defeat, but exhaustion. As she struggled fought to stand, her wound pulsed and her body collapsed under itself. She was dehydrated, freezing, and mentally exhausted.
She dared not express weakness before this entity, but her body had tired of the persistent war, of the game and the chase, and the beatings it had taken up to this point. Now weary of itself in what felt like her final moments should she not escape, she could only hope the entity would leave her alone.
"You, Liu Kang, and Raiden have no idea the damage you've done to the very fabric of reality itself with your selfishness." Raiden leaned down to her level, "I'm tired of the balance of good and evil. You tipped that scale, and now I'm going to break it."
"Flood the realms with evil?" She took what little strength she had left to gaze up into Sindel's eyes.
"No, my daughter, I'm going to make it end. Time, space, good and evil."
If she could touch her daughter, Sindel would have reached for the cheek, but instead the cold eyes of the entity in the form of her mother pulled herself back up to her feet and turned to the door.
The entity faded and Kitana caught a glimpse of a dark skinned man with metal arms enter the room as the lights faded from her mind and the world turned to darkness.