SONYA'S POV

With my hands placed firmly on the asshole's shirt, I pulled him to where the two of us were face to face. "What do you know about the Brotherhood of Shadows and their alliance with Outworld?"

The cocky son of a bitch smirked at me. "I have no idea what in God's name you're talking about, Major. Mileena didn't seem too kind to the thought of her undead sister being around, even if she's under Quan Chi's control."

I was surprised... He knew that Kitana was dead. "How did you know Kitana died at her mother's hands?"

"Long story short, I had to do a bunch of Shao Kahn's challenges to get Mileena as my girlfriend, challenges which included teaching a blood ninja how to behave like an Earthrealmer, killing off four demon sisters, and, you guessed it, defeating a revived Kitana. God, that was nasty..." He unconsciously turned his head and wiped his lips on his shoulder as they quivered in disgust. Something nasty must've happened after he beat her.

Shaking my head, I turned and slapped the bastard across the cheek. He was pretty damn good at changing the subject, but I still had him restrained in the chair. "Nice try, buddy, but you aren't getting out of this interrogation that quickly... Now I'll ask again: What do you know about the Brotherhood of Shadows and their Outworld allies?"

He continued to deny. "I don't know anything. Seriously." This interrogation was beginning to prove useless, and as such, I switched to a much more personal topic.

"Alright then... What do you know about Kano and the Black Dragon?"

He thought for a moment. "Hmm... Kano... Oh, I remember now. He's the guy with half his face replaced by the Terminator's head, right?"

I nodded as he continued. "Well... First, he got knocked out by a freakishly fast guy with a mask. Then he got slammed into the wall by Shao Kahn for making a witty comment. The last time I saw him was shortly before I did the second-to-last challenge."

I smiled, the visualized thought of Kano getting his ass kicked making me feel quite good. "That's... wonderful to hear, actually."

"Okay, Major... Now can you let me out of these cuffs? I have a portal to work on."

I almost didn't want to break this jackass's feelings, but I inevitably had to. "Unfortunately, no. That portal now belongs to the OIA. We'll begin using it to explore into Outworld, which means..."

He interrupted me. "Then at least let me go through the portal and never return. If this is the way my technological contributions to society are going to be treated, I'd rather live out the rest of my existence in Outworld."

I stepped back, crossing my arms. "Sorry, can't do that. You don't have the adequate level of clearance."

Looking at me with a smile on his face, the cocky son of a bitch moved his eyes down to the restraints holding his arms to the chair. It was then that I noticed they were placed over his grey long-sleeved shirt.

Then he did something that shocked me.

With a quick pull, the restraint broke free from the chair as he began to push with his legs, breaking the restraints on them as well as he stood up from the chair.

MARKUS X'S POV

Sonya certainly seemed shocked by my easy escape of her chair's restraints... Nanotech clothes were one of the things I had worked on alongside the portal, to give me the strength of my old armor, and at least some protection from weapons. I smiled as I stood up, kicking the chair to the side of the room as Parsek watched.

"Well, it seems we have ourselves a little situation. As much as I'd love to abide by your pathetic and nonsensical rulings, I think it would be best if you stopped treating me like your prisoner and more like someone willing to negotiate."

She pointed her wrist-com at me before responding, her face still resolute. "Continue..."

And so I did. "You want people to help you deal with threats to Earthrealm. I want to get to Outworld so I can get back together with my girlfriend. How about we strike a deal?"

Crossing her arms, the busty blonde gave me her best poker face. "What do you have in mind?"

"I want a few things, actually, chief among them being access to everything you've confiscated. I need some of my newer technology for any assignments you send me on considering that Raiden, God help him if I ever see him again, didn't bring my armor back with me. In exchange for you giving me back access to what is already mine, not to mention allowing me to travel to Outworld, I offer my wide level of home-grown technological innovations to your Outworld Investigation Agency."

Sonya pondered over my offer for quite some time. Eventually, with no other apparent option on the table, she consented.

"Fine... But the moment you betray the OIA is the moment that you become a traitor to the United States. Understand that."

I merely nodded as the Major typed something into her keypad, unlocking Parsek's bonds and opening the door in the wall. The two of us walked out, almost free men, but not yet.

PARSEK'S POV

The room we entered into was like nothing I'd ever seen, except in movies. The layout of this facility looked like something SHIELD would have put together, with Markus's stolen portal against a wall, surrounded by all sorts of other technical equipment. From what I could tell, the device was connected to the wall, assumedly powered by something high tech like a nuclear reactor.

We stopped in front of what appeared to be a reasonably intact suit of armor, vaguely similar to the one Markus had bought from that Canadian inventor years ago, but far more streamlined.

Picking up a plate of the armor, Markus looked it over. "So, what have we got here?"

Sonya stopped, seemingly trying to ignore Markus as best she could. "This is all we have left of one of the Earthrealm warriors, Sub-Zero. His body was cremated, but we took his armor and saved it, thinking it could potentially be of later use."

Picking the helmet of the armor up, Markus turned it around, looking at it from all angles. "I don't suppose I could use this to help me with any of my work, could I? After all, it's not like you have a specialist who knows how to best use some of these things..."

Rolling her eyes, Sonya continued walking. "We can discuss that later."

The two of us continued on, stepping in front of a large collection of computers. "What's this?"

Sonya looked at me with a seemingly interested appearance. "These are the computers we're using for a primary project of ours. Remember the armor from earlier? It belonged to a clan of cyborg ninjas called the Lin Kuei."

I saw Markus facepalm as Sonya continued.

"My former CO, Jackson Briggs, used a fabricated system override key to free Sub-Zero's mind from his cyborg body by disabling the restraining systems that suppressed his higher thinking abilities. Sadly, he died before we could save his override key and transmit it to the rest of the Lin Kuei. If that had happened, we would've freed them from the conversion process and crippled another Outworld ally."

I watched as Markus sat down, getting to work. "Alright, I'll get started. Never liked Sektor and Cyrax that much anyways..."

After a short period of working, Markus kicked back and span around in his chair. "Well, that problem's fixed. I made a quick brute-force unlocker that should easily bash aside any security that tries to disable it. Those Lin Kuei won't know what hit them."

Removing a flash drive plugged into the machine he was working on, he handed it to Sonya, who walked off with it. Within hours the data would be streaming to everywhere in the world, courtesy of the easily accessed international satellite system. This would also include the Lin Kuei base, where assumedly the computer would rebroadcast the virus to every single cyborg connected to that computer. I could only wonder what would happen at the Lin Kuei base as the program took its toll...