The air felt stale through the cloth mask of the Lin Kuei. In and out his cold breath melted by the heat of the sun, just barely a whisp of smoke to reveal the nature of his blood.
Kuai Liang leaned against the stone wall that surrounded the island past the long walk toward the courtyard. Beside him, to his left, an old friend watched the horizon with him. Nicknamed Smoke, his gray hair flowed almost to his shoulders where it, like the sea, would crash along the surface of his shoulders.
His attire black and grey, much unlike Sub-Zero and the other Lin Kuei, and yet a member all the same. The ancient tradition of the clan was passed onto many generations, many different men and women of similar bloodline as Sub-Zero, and otherwise.
"Well met." A voice emerged from Kuai's right.
It was as if the foam of the sea had formed into the shroud of and cloak over the figure of an older man, his head hidden deep beneath the raft of his conical hat.
"It is Tundra." Kuai responded, Smoke remained silent.
"What news have you?" The robed figure approached, slowly, but stopped at a body's length from the two.
"I have nothing, Lord Raiden." Kuai returned, his eyes finally met with that of the Thunder God's. "Not regarding Quan Chi, at least."
"Your brother is certain to follow through with his plans to replace the Lin Kuei with machines." Raiden read the low nod from Kuai, but he knew more than he let on.
In an old timeline Smoke and Tundra would have been on a mission to assassinate Shang Tsung, but upon arrival find that half of the Lin Kuei had been deformed and distorted into the bodies of machines. The impulses of their brains trapped into the cold robotics of the future Tundra had desperately fought against.
Now?
"Adamant, Lord Raiden." Kuai continued, "every day a new project. I have done my best to stop him, but he is family, I cannot do what I know needs to be done."
"He believes this is the future, the way of all mankind." Smoke added.
"Madness. Plain and simple." Raiden explained in as little words needed, for the he knew the end result of the cyber initiative. "I would much prefer the culture and traditions of the Lin Kuei continue as they have for thousands of generations."
"As would I." Kuai agreed.
"How can we stop it? Bi-Han has brought with him only his supporters, besides us, his trusted friend and brother. He has also, after Kano's death, taken hold of the Black Dragon while they wait to return to Earth Realm." Smoke pondered, for the two of them against Bi-Han's army would be suicide.
"Once the Black Dragon are in the hands of Kabal, we won't have to deal with them, but there are still my brother's supporters." Kuai Liang couldn't find the answer either.
"Seek out the spectre." Raiden caught them in their throat. "The revenant they call Scorpion."
Kuai Liang fed Raiden a glare, but he dared not speak as the words plagued him to understand this suggestion. It came from the Thunder God, who must know a vast wealth more, but to throw them from the bottom of the iceberg into the fires of hell he could not understand.
"Scorpion would kill us as well." Smoke prodded for another suggested.
"You are not his enemy. Your brother is too arrogant to know that, Tundra." Raiden pushed firmly, "and the Earth Realm fighter Jax will aid you as well."
"The one with the arms?" Smoke turned to Kuai, having only seen the man when they confronted him at the bridge. "They were frozen solid, likely amputated. He'd be useless to us."
"My brother has changed that." Kuai Liang could see as the doctors worked hard on the officer over the course of that night. His brother loomed over them, assured Kuai that this would save him. Change him for the better.
"When?" Smoke broke the spell of Kuai's thoughts.
"Now." Raiden urged before he dissipated into the air that crackled with energy around them.
"Now." Kuai agreed.
The spires jutted up in the distance, the beach a thin line of sand that stretched along the edge of the island's flesh. To one side, a small jungle of twisted souls awaited the lost to drown within its haunted forest, but there was another set of woods where the trees were sparingly placed, and the land a green and grey maze Kuai Liang chose to summon the hell specter.
To each side of him, barring the thin trace of the spires that edged the rest of the island on the side that held the tournament, he was surrounded by nothing and no one. A lone and lost member of the Lin Kuei, unaware that as he head moved beyond the walls of the courtyard to descend into this untraveled region of the island, he had already been followed.
There was no real means to summon the entity known as Scorpion, save for being Quan Chi himself. A journey of truth and dare, Kuai Liang stood in the middle of the rows of near endless trees like spikes beneath the bridge that hid the spy behind him. The only hint of another soul caught him too late when the click and clack of chains raced out toward him. Kuai Liang ducked under the spear that buried itself into the thin tree just inches from him. He reached for the chains, his blood pulsed as the metal froze in his grasp and stretched out toward its master.
Scorpion retracted the chain after the ice had broken the links. It didn't need a spear for him, he began to spin the jagged edge and tossed it again toward the Lin Kuei. Kuei Liang allowed the chain to wrap him at the wrist, the cold of his essence would only freeze and shatter it, Scorpion knew his just as well as he, but this time he stood and let it coil, and tighten, and tug him toward the specter.
"I am not your enemy!" Kuai Liang spat, but did not fight the pull.
"The Lin Kuei are my enemy." The Specter through his voice forward as he tugged the cold body closer.
"I did not kill your family Hanzo. It was not the Lin Kuei!" Scorpion tightened his grip on the chain and yanked Kuai Liang closer to the ground, all the better to shut him up.
"Hanzo Hasashi is dead, I am his vengeance." Kuai Liang, unable to convince the specter shattered the chains as Scorpion approached and jumped to his feet to fight back.
Scorpion dropped the chains and trailed metal for fists as they quickly exchanged strikes. Left, right, block, hit, as Scorpion edged the Lin Kuei on his toes, he noticed there was little effort in this fight. Too easy for him.
Kuei Liang stepped and dragged back, quick retractions to keep up with the specter and neared the jagged point of the broken spear's edge in the tree as Scorpion pushed him back. He could see the depths of the whites of those eyes that stared deep into his pupils and realized there was no means to reason with Scorpion on a level he could with any normal human. This was not a human, but an entity, an idea. Scorpion was vengeance incarnate.
"I will show you who killed your family!" Kuai Liang spat. "The swear the lives of the Lin Kuei that I will help you kill if I fail."
Scorpion paused.
Silence.
This was his only moment to reason, as it were, with the specter.
"I know who killed your family, Scorpion. I can take you to them. I will help you kill them for they ruined the Lin Kuei as well."
"Lin Kuei still survive."
Scorpion watched the eyes of the young Lin Kuei member for the truth, for his soul, and could feel the cold heart beat with heat and strength, and a little of fear. "The Lin Kuei is as good as dead under my brother."
"The child that plays with machines?" Scorpion recognized the idea of Bi-Han, but saw him pictured as dead in his mind. Kuai Liang nodded.
"I'm going to stop him." Kuai Liang added, "and considering the task, I need your help."
This gave Scorpion another pause. His eyes narrowed, his hand dropped to the hilt of his katana, but the Lin Kuei member refused to defend himself.
"If not the Lin Kuei, then who?" The first breath of reason Kuai Liang had heard from the specter's echoed voice.
"I can take you to the man that knows and I will help you kill him." Scorpion shook his head at this as Kuai Liang tried to bargain, so he pushed further, "I don't ask that you trust me, only that you hold me to my word."
"Actions speak louder than words."
Kuai Liang nodded. "That they do."
Some time ahead, Kuai Liang had gathered Smoke at his side and only four other members of the Lin Kuei that had continued to push against the cyber initiative his brother forced onto them.
Down a long winding hall into the depths of the first and largest spire, the Lin Kuei and Black Dragon were held nearly in the same chambers. Now under the control of Bi-Han until the Black Dragon could be returned to Kabal on Earth Realm, Kuai Liang knew it would not be easy to get out should a fight ensue, assuming the specter never answer the call.
The portal doors, fastened metal with a small pad that Kuai Liang had to press his thumb to in order to gain entrance widened for the group. Inside, Bi-Han stood by Jax with folded arms as two men in white coats looked over the American Bi-Han had deformed.
"We're busy." Bi-Han excused his brother, not even a glance given.
"We're going to talk." Kuai Liang pressed.
Bi-Han called out to Sektor and Cyrax, back turned toward his brother. The two tall cyborgs, designed in red and yellow respectively, approached the door to push the intruders out.
"You are not the Sub-Zero our Grandfather wanted you to become!" Kuai Liang spat and pushed through with Smoke before the cyborgs blocked the other Lin Kuei at the door. "You will make time for me, or I will deactivate these toys of yours."
"Shit ,son, time for a show." Jax sat back and watched.
Bi-Han turned toward his brother. He stripped the mask from his face and tossed it to the cold metal floor.
"Grandfather is gone, as are the old ways of the Lin Kuei." Bi-Han returned with vitriol in his spit. "Welcome to the 90s, brother, this is the new era and we need to step forward into it if we're to survive, evolve."
"Our people have survived for thousands of generations, and our culture has thrived only until you stepped in as Sub-Zero. These machines are not the future."
"It's been dying for a long time, you just haven't noticed." Bi-Han added, "father and grandfather were stuck in their old ways. This ancient ruin of a cult. I'm tired of it. Religions die, brother, they're nothing but lies to control people, at least I'm being honest about the cyber initiative."
Kuai Liang approached, his breath faded across his brother's face through his own mask, he wanted to reach out, to hold him, to strangle him, to find some sense of reason within a grasp.
"You're my brother, my blood. Family, all that," Kuai Liang continued, "but you're really stubborn."
"Same to you." Bi-Han smirked. "Always, brother."
"One thing you're not though," Kuai Liang did not return that grin, as if his brother could see, but his eyes bore holes into his own flesh and blood. "Is Sub-Zero."
On Bi-Han's breast was a medallion etched with the symbol a dragon. Come the time it would have been matched the power of something known as a Kamidogu, but even those, like the Lin Kuei in this moment, had faded. He snatched the medallion and tore it from his brother's cloth.
Bi-Han stood unfazed. Jax watched, amused.
"if you're not with me, then you're against me." Bi-Han. "Sektor, Cyrax, kill them."
The machines beeped and hissed as they sprung into action. The Lin Kuei at the door lunged forth with Smoke.
"What gives you the authority?" Bi-Han pushed Kuai Liang back and advanced on him. "What gives you the right to betray your own family, you're own clan?"
"A God." Kuai Liang spat.
"I don't believe in a God." He turned toward Jax and found a hard metallic clap smack him across the face in the form of those hard knuckles he had a hand in creating.
"I don't give a fuck about your vision!" Jax kicked Bi-Han whilst he was down.
Kuai Liang pulled Bi-Han to his feet, and pushed him against the table behind Jax and held him down to strike.
"Help them!" Kuai Liang ordered the officer, Jax followed and joined Smoke that had been knocked back by the red cyborg.
Bi-Han spat into his brother's face and pushed him off. His back cracked and arched into place, his fists raised and his blood spilled between the two brothers.
Before he could react, the room, like a small meeting hall began to fill with Lin Kuei and Black Dragon. The few that followed Kuai Liang were overtaken and their blood spilled beneath cold feet. Smoke, Jax, and Kuai Liang pushed from the cyborgs to the wall, Bi-Han between them.
Cyrax inched forward as its chest split open with two plates that parted to allow a green sticky net that ensnared Smoke. Sector reached out with its forearm, the hulking mass that would have been muscle hid a small missile within it. Bi-Han held him back with a touch, knowing that would not be the best course of action in a metal cell, so Sektor instead activated two nodes on its wrist that began to burn hot with sparks. The cyborg's hand was a flamethrower.
"With you gone, the cult of the Lin Kuei can finally die and my vision can be realized." Bi-Han smirked, smug, an his eyes cast the spell of a man that had long awaited this moment. "Fuck the Lin Kuei!"
Sektor pressed down on the two nodes and as embers emitted from the hole in its palm, the whips of cackling fire reached out to lash it from the floor. From behind, a single motion, what looked like a flash of light severed the cyborg's arm. Bi-Han pulled away from the flames, as did the others behind him, save for Cyrax that turned to extinguish it.
"Get over here!" A voice through in the middle of the conflict and a spear ruptured through Sektor's chest to pull it back with enough force to launch the cyborg over the crowd and into the blade of the specter known as Scorpion. Deactivated, Sektor lay unable to move as oil and blood leaked from its core and stump. Scorpion stood on the head of the cybernetic assassin and pointed his blade toward the Black Dragon and Lin Kuei able to enter the room.
"This one's arm now belongs to me, and every body part I severe from here on. The debt of the Lin Kuei to my clan will be paid in blood." Scorpion then raced toward the line of bodies as the group ahead of him broke from the wall to lunge at Bi-Han and Cyrax.
In a heated grey haze, Smoke detached himself from the core group to pull Cyrax away into the hall where the rest of the Black Dragon and Lin Kuei under Bi-Han's thumb gathered. The metal he struck was harder than his fists could hit, but the machine was slower than his ability to dissipate and reemerge. Body after body he'd use as collateral before Cyrax stopped and waited for Smoke to emerge. When it scanned the bodies alive and dead for the telltale signal of air disturbed around them, its chest opened wider to allow a long saw to emerge and cut through a member of the Black Dragon to surprise Smoke. The saw caught the right side of his chest, but not too deep. He dissipated in a red haze to retreat back into the room.
Inside the metal cell, the bodies began to squirm like the insects they were beneath Scorpion. Limbs severed, men and woman filled the echoing chamber with screams, but Bi-Han still remained with Kuai Liang across from him.
Jax had parted only to meet Cyrax at the door where Smoke had reemerged.
A solid kick to the ribs, Bi-Han pushed his brother's body to crumble beneath him, so the cryomancer would return with a ball of ice that was shattered as it flew across the room into the wall. The mask near torn from his face and his clothes lined with streaks of blood, Kuai Liang felt his brother at his throat to pull him up against the cold metal wall. His own flesh and blood stared down into his eyes unable to discern family from foe and clenched down on his throat.
"You were to be my greatest machine yet, brother." Bi-Han spat, his own blood spilled on Kuai Liang's face.
Ice would not do the trick, and Bi-Han had betrayed that bloodline already. Instead, he dragged Kuai Liang along the wall a series of boxes that would harbor the supplies needed to make any fixes or upgrades to the cyborgs. A stack of three large crates tucked against the wall and two just ahead. He opened the closest he could reach without letting his brother go and produced a gun from the assortment inside.
A knee to the gut and a kick to the cheek bones dropped Kuai Liang to the floor. This gave Bi-Han the time to check the chamber and aim for his brother, the dying echo of the past.
"You must find me sadistic, and I'd like to believe, brother, you're aware enough to know there's nothing sadistic in my actions." The gun clicked and Bi-Han's finger reached for the trigger. "No, this is me at my most––"
Unable to finish his words, Bi-Han's arm was pinned to the metal wall. A thin sheet of metal to mask over the ancient wood beneath it. A spear then pulled out from the wall and with it, Bi-Han's arm.
Kuai Liang through his haze and the screen of blood that covered his eyes reached out with what little sight he had to find the enflamed form of the specter reach for its mask and reveal a white skull beneath.
Then came the fire.
Kuai Liang rolled as best he could from the flames until he felt someone pull him from the icy floor and Smoke, just as blood soaked as he pull him from the flames. Jax held them both back until the specter's fire died out as the mask of human flesh and cloth covered the burning skull again.
"Actions speak louder than words." Scorpion watched the wormlike body of Bi-Han twist and contort.
His own flesh and blood now bubbles of gas, puss, melted away with Bi-Han's humanity. The cloth burned mostly away, and his skull began to peer out from the curvature of flesh that coiled like a cigarette down around his eyes.
"I hate you!" The mass screamed, the words melted away with his flesh.
Kuai Liang pushed forward past Jax and stood aside the Specter.
"I loved you, Bi-Han! You were my brother!" He couldn't see the face from the wreckage that looked back at him for the last time.
Scorpion approached the mangled wreck and picked up the remains that still writhed even in his grasp. His eyes cast like flames back at the remaining Lin Kuei and a portal of fire consumed him and the effigy to Kuai Liang's bloodline.
Hidden within the confines the spires, what seemed like a safe and empty room burst with blood and haze as Smoke, Jax, and Kuai Liang emerged from the wreckage. The shadows around them cast from the ancient walls closed in only to greet them with a flash of light as two figures emerged to greet them.
"Kuai Liang!" Raiden caught the young Lin Kuei as he fell from his injuries.
Jax caught Smoke around the shoulder and held the cut the at his chest. The two surviving Lin Kuei members gazed up at the God, a female adorned in blue at his left.
"It is Sub-Zero now, Lord Raiden." Kuai Liang could only speak between gritted teeth and hard breaths.
Kitana knelt by his side to survey the wounds and Raiden leaned down to heal them as best he could.
This was a hard moment for Kuai Liang to digest. His new allies, his new brother at his side in Smoke, and a world now lost behind him. To rebuild the Lin Kuei would be a harder task than he could imagine.
Harder even than to convince the dead to help him.
A small ember burned. In his heart, but also across the small chamber. It was not the wood lit aflame, but the air itself as it formed into the specter known as Scorpion. Raiden turned from Sub-Zero to meet the spirit eye to eye.
"We have a great deal to discuss, Hanzo."