Frost sat listening to the echoes of her less than delicate flop onto the pallet long after the action had taken place. The steel walls of the tiny room made it into a rather spectacular echo chamber, and the lack of anything soft to absorb sound only enhanced the effect. The entire building was built that way, with cold metal walls and harsh florescent lights.
"It's like a prison,' she noted upon her arrival. Perhaps its inhabitants liked the familiarity, as quite a few of them spent most of their lives behind bars. Except unlike most prisons, this building burrowed deep into the ground, rather than towering up. For the young ninja, it might as well have been a prison; even though she had entered of her own free will, it was made very clear to her that she would not be leaving anytime soon.
She hadn't been surprised by Mavado's decision. It is a well-known concept that traitor and thieves make bad company, as one never knows when they will strike again. Having proved herself to be both a traitor and a thief, or at least an attempted thief, Frost was expecting to be closely watched. Still, the security camera was a bit much in her opinion, and currently it was keeping her from using the toilet in her cell, much to her annoyance.
Mavado's interest in her remained a mystery. None of the information she was planning on using as leverage was any good, if his word was true. He had even claimed that her promise to tell him where the clan headquarters was no good, as he already knew the location. Unfortunately for Frost, Mavado was as unreadable as her sifu when he wanted to be, and she couldn't tell if he was lying during their first meeting. It didn't look like there would be another meeting either. She hadn't seen anyone who looked important since she'd been "escorted" to the lower levels of the building.
Frost felt invisible despite the camera. No one was paying her the slightest bit of attention, except for the occasional quick glance. And while she hadn't been locked inside her room, many doors became inexplicably locked when she wished to pass through. The only other indication that someone noticed her continued existence was the hushed voices the few people in the halls switched to when she was around.
They don't want information, they don't want my fighting skills, they don't want me to work, hell, they don't even want sex. What the fuck do they want? Frost thought irately. She'd been puzzling over this for the past few days and had come up with no reasonable conclusion. The only clue she had to go on was that the one person who had seemed interested in her had left in a body bag hours after merely staring at her, and she had no idea what to make of that. The only thing she was sure of was that she was going to get to the bottom of this, one way or another.
--
Jax's nervous pacing was beginning to grate on Sub-Zero's nerves, though he wasn't sure why. It was probably because he was anxious himself, though he wouldn't let it show.
The entire room was filled with restless individuals, some of whom he hadn't seen in years. He recognized the police officer and the Native American from Shao Kahn's last invasion of Earth, and there were several Edenians he vaguely remembered. Their names will come when I'm less distracted, he reassured himself, although the blanks he was drawing were alarming him.
The separate factions of Raiden's warriors were huddled in their own small groups, and the lin kuei master felt conspicuously alone. Smoke had stayed behind at the temple to keep order and organize what he could, as circumstances permitted. Sub-Zero trusted no one else enough to attend with him, not even his fellow masters. Once or twice he had caught some of his fellow Earth warriors watching him curiously, but thus far no one had mentioned Frost's absence.
Rather than listen to a certain movie star's incessant chatter, he began counting the ceiling tiles to pass the time until Raiden arrived.
--
There were one hundred and seventy six bolts holding Frost's room together. She had counted them many times since she had arrived. She had also counted the number of bolts in the hallway, the amount of metal tiles it took to make the floor, the exact count of steps it took to go from one end of the hallway to the other, and the number of doors. She would have counted the windows, but there weren't any. The counting habit she had picked up from her former sifu, thinking it was a way to familiarize oneself with the surroundings. Her current belief, however, was it was actually a bit of obsessive compulsiveness on his part.
Her sifu was finding his way into her thoughts more often than she would have liked. At first it was just her fantasies of what she would say when they met again, whether or not she would deign to spare his life. Lately, much to her embarrassment, she had begun wondering if he was worried about her, if he was still looking for her. There was even a twinge of jealousy when she considered the possibility he had taken another student.
There had been quite a bit more time for thinking lately, as there was less and less activity in the part of the building where she was kept. In fact, upon further consideration, she was sure she hadn't seen anyone in the past few hours. Zero traffic in a building supposedly full of people was certainly an oddity. Time to figure out what's going down, Frost thought, before heading out her door.
--
Sub-Zero was actually beginning to worry when Raiden finally appeared with a flash of lightening. However, the look of apprehension on the thunder god's face did little to ease the tension in the air. The entire room fell silent.
"The Earth is in grave danger once again," Raiden spoke quietly, but no one had to strain to hear him. "The Dragon Kin and his army are a greater threat than you have ever faced."
"Just once I'd like to face a threat lesser than I have ever faced," quipped Johnny Cage, before a glare from Raiden silenced him.
"The Dragon King's army cannot be stopped by bullets, bombs, or anything the Earth's armies may fight it with," Raiden continued. "You cannot kill that which is already dead."
"But wouldn't destroying their bodies effectively keep them from attacking," the cop Sub-Zero now recognized as Stryker asked.
"They would have to be burned to ash, or they would reform," Raiden answered gravely. "That much fire would have dire consequences of its own."
"So how do we stop them?" Jax inquired sarcastically. "Do we just ask them politely to stop kill us?"
"No, there is a simple solution, albeit it won't be the most easy to achieve. The army is made up of the bravest, strongest warrior souls, but few are willing subjects. You must break the hold the Dragon King has over them."
"How exactly are we to manage that?" Cyrax asked with more than a tinge of cynicism.
"I don't know yet. The most obvious way would be to destroy the Dragon King himself," Raiden said. "But that would require more warriors than we can spare. The invasion must no fully enter Earthrealm or we will be overwhelmed."
"So all we have to do is stop an unstoppable army from completing an invasion that has already begun, while defeating a dragon king; all of which will require more power than we have," Sonya surmised in disgust.
"Exactly. And the Red Dragon will be trying their hardest to sabotage your efforts. It also appears that Quan Chi has made an alliance with the Dragon King as well."
So what have we got going for us?" Johnny asked.
"The OIA will do our damndest to keep these bastards out," Sonya declared.
"Edenia will spare nothing to defend Earthrealm," Princess Kitana spoke next.
"The Lin Kuei are ready to defend out home," Sub-Zero answered, though he added to himself, 'If we don't fall apart first.'
"Fujin and I shall fight at your side," Raiden said. "We must hurry. The undead do not rest, and they will not stop until the invasion is complete."
--
The doors weren't locked anymore. There was nothing but empty rooms behind them. Frost had searched room after room, floor after floor, but as far as she could ascertain the building was completely empty. No people, no machines, not even a rat.
"Her first panicky thought had been that there had been a bomb or some other cause for evacuation, and she had been forgotten in the rush to leave. The rational part of her mind, however, noted that there hadn't been an alarms or people rushing past, or even screaming. Surely an organization like the Red Dragon wouldn't have been that orderly.
That didn't explain how several hundred people had slipped out from under her nose. Her training with the lin kuei may not have been complete, but she would have liked to think that something should have caught her attention. 'Only thing left to do is look for clues,' Frost thought before heading down the next hallway.