Creatures crawled in search of blood, to terrorize this neighborhood. Rot in their own flesh, they move to and fro slow and hollow. Kung Lao moved amongst them, barely able to handle the foul stench of the rot in these walking caskets.

Hands together, and adorned in the traditional robes of the White Lotus, he would prefer that to the mundane lives of the people he passed on the streets of Hong Kong, slaves and zombies to corporations and their own greedy desires. In his head the chants of home played as each step brought him closer and closer to the scum of modern life within the city caverns of Hong Kong.

Down three streets a path thin and wiry almost as the world perceived him had opened up where a rotund and drunk man blocked the way. He would have chosen another path had it not been for the stench of Outworld and hops on his breath.

"Bo' Rai Cho." Kung Lao greeted him in the alley.

"Nothing?" Bo' Rai Cho wiped the stain of beer from his lips and turned to the monk for answers.

"Not yet." Kung Lao shook his eyes, eyes closed, demeanor as grave as the people of Hong Kong.

"Well," the drunken man peeled himself from the stack of garbage bags he had rested on. "We certainly can't get Ermac find him before us, can we?"

"No, we will search together then."

"We have found him." A voice broke their hope as the entity known as Ermac descended between them.

Bo' Rai Cho and Kung Lao exchanged looks. Empty handed, Ermac lowered to them with such certainty, but yet, no Liu Kang.

"Did you kill him?" Bo' pondered through the haze of alcoholism.

Ermac and Kung Lao exchanged a look, then glanced back toward Bo' Rai Cho.

"Through souls we gathered that have walked these streets long years and cut short, we found the apartment he stayed in before the tournament."

"Was he there?" Kung Lao asked, unsure of the future as Ermac spilled no certainties.

"No. An abused child and his babysitters were there."

"Did you kill them?" Bo' Rai Cho narrowed his eyes.

"We can sense him." Ermac turned away from the drunken man and focused only on Kung Lao, "we know through the eyes of those we have taken that Liu Kang is still in Hong Kong. We can feel it."

"He killed them." Kung Lao leaned over Ermac's shoulder.

"We must find Liu Kang." Ermac urged. "Joking aside, you have very little time left to do so."

"How is this?" Kung Lao pondered how Ermac could know so much and yet present so little with his chosen words. The souls in him, it hadn't dawned on him that Ermac gathered not just the souls of the lives he'd taken, but like Shang Tsung, the memories of them as well. As the thought dawned on him, he remembered Shang Tsung. He held out a hand to stop Ermac from a response he didn't need to hear and added from that bided breath he had held to so deep in thought, "do you sense the sorcerer Shang Tsung as well?"

"We do not, but that may be by design. We were created from the souls within him." He added, "though we have grown beyond what Quan Chi had given us, we are matched only by Shang Tsung's abilities."

"You weren't created to kill your masters." Kung Lao understood.

"We sense that Liu Kang and Shang Tsung are very close to one another, bound together by some force. We knew this before the tournament ended. We have seen his soul."

"Then we must search, all of us together." Bo' Rai Cho pulled from the conversation and surprised the corpse with a hand on its shoulder as he leaned close as if an ear was needed to hear him, "and no more killing."

Kung Lao nodded, he turned from the two and steadied his path out of the alley. The moon began to hang over head and soon enough the light would shine in the darkness and they were no closer to finding Liu Kang.

Though they may have only met before the tournament, Kung Lao wasn't sure how to take Liu Kang. Having deserted the White Lotus, he was an outcast from the order and after the tournament, nothing more than a ghost of a past Kung Lao wished to forget.

Unfortunately, Raiden was just as much a ghost as Liu Kang.

The cold entity lurked forward from the corner of the darkened alley and its dim lit green eyes adjusted as night fell upon it and it turned that white, dried husk of a face wrapped in shredded cloth upon the lively brown of Kung Lao's eyes.

Thousands of gravestones etched into the depths of those ghostly lights that started through him. A grim chill trickled down Kung Lao's flesh like a million spiders all cast down upon him at once to escape and explode outward from his toes. He did not like the feeling of this entity with them, but at the behest of Fujin, and the need to find Raiden, he would have to ignore the murders the corpse would certainly perform under the guise of being helpful.

This is what it meant to be part of the team?

"Are you ready?" Kung Lao nodded to the corpse.

"We are with you." Ermac nodded.

Bo' Rai Cho scuffled through and forward, no time to think, no time to understand.

Time would soon be up for them all.