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"Sub-Zero!"
His friend's stolen name came to his lips before he'd realized he was saying it. But there was no one else of the Lin Kuei who would have taken those colors, no one else who gave off an aura of power as clean and crisp as a winter's night, even if now there was a more than a hint of filth and grime in the familiar coldness. No one else.
Behind his mask, Smoke grimaced. This wasn't what was supposed to be.
It could have been him there instead.
It should have been him there instead.
The metallic figure lay prone, unconscious -- or nonfunctional, nonoperational, whatever one might call a human-shaped object of questionable sentience knocked unresponsive by violent blows -- and Smoke had found himself at the cyborg's side before he had even realized that he'd arrived, far beyond the thundergod who'd transported him there, having called upon his power and accelerated himself without consciously intending to do so. He'd left Raiden behind in a heartbeat.
Or perhaps it was that the deity didn't feel the same urgency to attend to a fallen warrior. Well, Sub-Zero had never been Raiden's comrade, after all.
As Smoke lifted the heavy torso, cradling the unyielding metallic shoulders with the crook of his arm, he glared over at the being in white, who had fallen in casual step with the man who had defeated the thing that wore the colors and power manifestation of his best friend. This new arrival was mortal -- apparently an American, no less -- but wore a face that resembled the Lin Kuei monstrosities, and Smoke hoped that for his sake, for the sake of any alliance that might be forming as the modified human talked companionably to Raiden, it was not by choice. He could never trust one who would choose such a fate. Only the most arrogant and foolish of the Lin Kuei had gone willingly, after all, and he had never trusted those like Sektor. And yet.
It should have been me, Thundergod. You fool.
Such words could not be spoken -- with the enemy forces coming from two different otherworldly realms, with powers like nothing of those of mortal men, the thundergod was an irreplaceable ally -- but since nothing Smoke had seen had indicated that Raiden understood the barest sense of human feelings or motivations, let alone an ability to read an individual's thoughts, Smoke felt free to curse him in his mind, and had been, ever since--
--but then his friend's head (helmet? was there still a skull in there? a brain? thoughts that were not programming?) went heavier in his arms, as though the spirit inside were slipping deeper into unconsciousness... or the processor were powering down; either way, it made Smoke's breath catch in his throat. He gasped again: "Sub-Zero!"
By this point, Raiden and the masked American had come within listening range, and the thunder god's deep, indifferent monotone answered Smoke's inadvertent cry. "That which made him Sub-Zero no longer exists."
He could still hear the rasping, metallic voice of Sektor before their battle, and then the cold hands of the countless other Lin Kuei who had suffered the transformation. In the forest, they had pulled at him with their steel, inhuman fingers before sending bolts of electricity to stun him, making the world go white before his eyes, and although his nerves were burning, he had never felt so cold. And Raiden had rescued him then. Why had it been different when his friend had been facing the same scenario?
A strange sensation began bubbling up inside him, and he felt the smoke plumes that were his constant companions twist slightly in response to this irritation, but he kept his tone level. "He is my friend. What they did to him... it is..." There were no words to describe it, and too many, and he ultimately went with one that was true but not the truth, "...hideous."
And to his surprise, it was the mortal who agreed, the one the blond policeman had called Kabal, and came to Sub-Zero's opposite side while the deity at fault remained silent and still. "You're right. We gotta help him if we can." Even with Smoke's honed strength and natural gifts, lifting the metal body wouldn't have been a simple task, so when the other man propped up Sub-Zero's other side, Smoke grunted in quiet appreciation. As the two mortal men slowly and awkwardly regained their feet, Smoke raised his gaze to Raiden's, and although there was no reading what was going on behind the crackling white of his eyes, after some long seconds, the thunder god seemed to understand what was being asked of him, and, raising his hand, teleported the group away.
***
"Kabal- what?" The first thing the returning group saw as they materialized in the run-down temple that was serving as the headquarters for the Earth realm's main line of defense was the blond SWAT policeman lunging toward their group, then aborting the motion as he saw just what was returning with the god of thunder. "What- you-"
"Relax, Stryker," said Kabal, although Smoke could pick up a hint of remorse under the metal-enhanced voice, so like and unlike Sektor's. Despite the mechanical supports, there was no question that there was a human being underneath. "I'm- well, I'm not fine, but I'm living, and in some ways I'm better than fine."
Stryker had been the first to reach the group, but instead of reaching out to help support the weight of the cyborg, he'd reached out for the coarse tubing that ran from Kabal's chin to the center of his chest, running his fingertips lightly down the pipe. "I heard, I saw -- you were a goner! -- but I didn't think it'd be like-"
"I don't remember what happened, and I don't think I want to," interrupted his partner roughly, as he reached with his free hand to release a hiss of air from a pressure valve behind his back. "I'm fine. We can trade reports later. For now, can you help me take this?" He raised his shoulder, and the cyborg clanked heavily in response.
Instead, Stryker stepped aside to let another man through, an even bigger one, dressed in the garb of one of America’s native peoples, who immediately lowered his own arm enough to take on Kabal’s burden, allowing him space and the ability to adjust the other side of his respirator. The hiss as Kabal balanced the pressure of his air tanks echoed Nightwolf’s intake of air through his teeth as he pulled himself to his full height, taking more than his share of the cyborg’s weight.
“I can manage him,” Smoke protested, but the shaman shook his head.
“The Lin Kuei may have technopaths among their ranks, but you are not one of them,” said Nightwolf, in a tone that defied argument.
“Hey, yeah,” interrupted a similarly no-nonsense voice, this one female. “Weren’t you the guy who said Jax should be given the choice whether we put prosthetics on him?
“Say what?” said the large man accompanying her, and took large steps to reach Smoke’s location. “Give me that,” he added roughly, lifting Sub-Zero’s prone form beyond Smoke’s reach, and taking him out of Nightwolf’s control as well, singlehandedly bringing the cyborg over to the dais that had previously served as Raiden’s strategy conference table. Freed of his load, Smoke controlled his impulse to go immediately beside his friend, rerouting his energies into a slight bow in the direction of the two Special Forces members.
“Miss Blade. Mister Briggs. If I offended you, I apologize. I simply thought that a choice might- might have been-” His voice caught in his throat, and he finally allowed himself to move closer to where the body of his friend lay, and he couldn’t help adjusting the splayed metal feet so that they lined up properly, more like a sleeping human than a tossed-aside toy. “Welcomed.”
“Thanks for the concern, man,” muttered Jackson Briggs, and stretched his metallic arms behind his back, popping the joints in his back. “Like being able to grab stuff, but thanks.”
“Now, go find a waiting room or something already while we play around with his programming,” said Sonya Blade. She adjusted her computerized wristguards and tightened her ponytail. “Have a seat, have a beer, something.”
Nightwolf walked to the opposite side of the table and leaned over the nonfunctional cyborg. His large hands probed and flitted over the mechanics with a delicacy that belied their size. “There’s an access panel in the chest. There just may be something that can be done.” He looked up, his warpaint-framed eyes empathetic.
Smoke searched for the words, ignoring the twist in his stomach. “Please help him. He is my friend. And it should have been me there, on that table. If...”
“Relax,” said Sonya, coming from behind to put her hand on Smoke’s shoulder. “We’ll do our best.” Suddenly, she clenched the thick cloth of his uniform as her other arm went to her face, and she coughed violently into the crook of her elbow. “But I wasn’t kidding. Go wait somewhere else... please?”
It wasn’t the first time someone had had such a reaction to his power, and Smoke could do nothing but acquiesce. As he left, walking surely and without a backward glance, he heard the voice of Kurtis Stryker.
“That’s how I always felt around this guy here.” His words were accompanied by the unmistakable sound of clapping a well-muscled shoulder. “Always told him if he didn’t give up smoking he’d be on a respirator by the time he’s forty. And look at him now.”
“Too soon,” rasped Kabal. “Idiot.”
***
This, Smoke thought wryly, must have been what expectant fathers felt waiting for their wives to emerge from the delivery room. The image had come up time and again in modern entertainment, which, contrary to popular belief, was a point of study among the Lin Kuei, nearly as valued as water-walking or wall-ascending. After all, blending in culturally was also a form of invisibility, as one who was clueless of the world, or spoke an archaic tongue, would not escape notice. If he recalled correctly, this scenario also required the father-to-be to carry cigars to celebrate.
Well, if the other, more technologically inclined warriors could do something for his friend, he’d be happy to provide some -- ah, but here wasn’t the place to be glib about his natural power displacement, not when a soul hung in the balance.
Tundra...
He and Tundra had left the Lin Kuei compound to see if there was anything that could be done for the original Sub-Zero, even though the tracker embedded in his uniform -- and shouldn’t that have been a sign of the Lin Kuei’s decline in and of itself? its fixation on technology? at the time it had seemed a stroke of genius, but he should have asked himself whether that level of scrutiny was necessary -- suggested there wasn’t, that the tracker had met its end in fire, and that meant that in the best of circumstances, so had Sub-Zero’s ceremonial mask, which no Lin Kuei would take off without good reason.
And now, he thought, running his hand distractedly through his hair, look where it had gotten them. When the full impact of Tund- of Sub-Zero the Second’s kidnapping by their former allies had hit him, he’d torn off and mutilated his own headgear. He had his own reasons for wanting to keep the mask, but no longer could he bear being readily identified with a clan that was, in his mind, no more.
Honestly, letting his hair free from constantly sticking to his neck was truly an idea he wished he had considered sooner, as the feeling of wind and whispers of power through his hair was the only thing that kept his body and mind soothed enough to function, even if the remnants of the man he had been for as long as he could remember raged at him in the back of his mind for this insult to the clan. For some reason, that voice sounded less like himself and more like Sub-Zero the Elder, even though he and Bi-Han had never been friends. Perhaps the voice of Kuai Liang’s conscience had fled that robotic husk and implanted itself in Smoke’s soul.
He pulled at his hair a little harder and shook his head. Foolish thoughts from a foolish, anxious man. If he could stand the idea of seeing his best friend’s shell opened up and dissected like a malfunctioning appliance, he’d be watching the process of whatever they were doing, even if he would be no help; it was to his great shame that he could not even imagine the thought. He could only imagine what might be in there -- organs encircled by wires, oil diluted by blood, or worse yet, perhaps nothing human left at all -- and he wasn’t sure he could tolerate finding out and have the courage remain to fight for the earth realm.
So he buried his head in his hands, feeling the firm pressure of his wristguards against his fingers, and waited, so still that even as the tendrils of smoke rose from his body, small piles of ash began to accumulate in an irregular circle around him, like a distorted, dusty shadow.
He wasn’t sure how long he sat like that, but eventually, he became aware of an approaching presence, large and almost too hulking for a human. But of course, Jax Briggs had lost part of his humanity to the Outworld forces, had the metal to show it, but was still clearly in possession of a soul. Smoke hadn’t really thought about it before, but the special forces officer was one of the most encouraging figures on their side. Obviously, a pair of arms cannot compare to one’s whole being, but nonetheless, somehow the man’s presence was a reassurance.
“Yo, uh, hey,” started the other man nervously, as though he thought somehow it were possible for a Lin Kuei warrior, particularly one who heard air currents like music, to be unaware of an approaching presence. He looked up from his hands and tilted his head the slightest degree to express listening.
“Just thought you should know... we’ve done the best we can do, and we’re gonna try turning him on in a sec. You probably wanna be there, right?”
As if that required an answer. Smoke rose effortlessly to his feet, despite that he had been sitting still for so long, and made a faint gesture for the other man to lead the way back.
The access panels in Sub-Zero’s chest were still splayed open, and Smoke found that he couldn’t stare directly at them, almost as though his friend were indecently exposed. It was ridiculous -- a warrior does not shy from the human body; a bare form is nothing more than a vulnerable piece of meat -- but served to emphasize just how far from a human body Sub-Zero’s form was now.
“Thought you said you were ready to turn him on?” said Jax. Nightwolf shrugged.
“I wanted to check the settings one more time. If he connects to the LK network, we’ll have no choice but to shut him down permanently, so I wanted to make sure-”
“Yeah, but are you sure? Have you done this before?” cut in Sonya, who was sitting to the side of the dais, legs crossed, drinking a cup of coffee.
“Relax, Lieutenant Blade,” said her commanding officer, raising a metal hand in her direction before turning to the Native warrior. “So...”
“It’s the best we can do,” admitted Nightwolf; Smoke resisted the urge to massage his temples or the bridge of his nose out of stress. “So, Major Briggs, if you can just close him up...”
“These aren’t just guns; they’re drills, too,” said the major good-naturedly, flexing his prosthetics, and approached the dais to close and fasten the paneling. When his arms finally stilled, and the muscles in his back relaxed, he glanced over at Nightwolf and Sonya, who both nodded. “Okay. That’s it. Here goes nothing.”
He made a small gesture with his right hand -- flipping a switch, pulling a trigger, such a small motion that could start or end a life -- and the room echoed with the soft clanking and near-imperceptible whine of a machine booting up, returning to action, and as the circuitry of Sub-Zero’s body began to light up, red to green, green to blue, Smoke noticed that he was holding his breath.
The process was not a fast one, and to make sure he kept conscious, he spoke, addressing the room at large. “You are... certain this will work?”
It was Jax who answered. “Hell no! I’ve never done this before! It’s not like there’s a manual.”
A sudden flare, red directly to blue, and with a hiss of hydraulics, the cyborg stirred slightly.
For the second time in but a few hours, Smoke teleported without thinking, crossing the gap of a few meters faster than the blink of an eye. “Sub-Zero?” he asked, nervously, hoping against hope that it could hear anything besides the wireless orders of the LK satellites.
But the machine had stilled, and so too had Smoke’s pulse, as disappointment sent his heart into his guts. He looked over at each member of the room, looking for someone with an answer, eyes lingering on Jax’s, who had had the closest of a comparable near-death experience. “Can he hear me?”
The large man shrugged. “He should.”
“Systems seem to be operational,” Nightwolf added. “With no outside interference. So...”
“So just relax,” said Lieutenant Blade, but Smoke couldn’t help himself, and called out his friend’s name again. The new name. The brother’s name. Somehow... some way...
“Yes, Smoke,” echoed the parody of a human voice that characterized all Lin Kuei cyborgs’ speech traits. But under it, under the reverberation and the digitized drawl, it was a man. There was no doubt. His friend was still a person, somehow, despite the abomination that was his form.
And so Smoke could think of no other response than that anyone asks a friend who has been ill, trite but heavy with significance:
“How do you feel?”
But instead of answering, Sub-Zero’s pistons activated, gears turned and tubes shivered, and his friend pushed himself up to a sitting position. It was a painfully human gesture, and one that came with groans of similarly human misery.
It was not the sound of a man saved, but of one in pain. “What is it?” he couldn’t help but ask.
“I remember... the things I have done for Shao Kahn...”
There was no doubt that this was truly his friend; beneath the mechanical buzzing it was the same tone of voice that he had used when he’d heard rumors of his brother’s demise, when he had solemnly sworn to abandon his former identity to seek out revenge. Had they been ordinary friends, Smoke might have attempted an awkward hug, like the officer Kurtis Stryker had nearly done upon the reappearance of his partner Kabal, but even for an ex-Lin Kuei warrior, such a thought was unfathomable.
The hand he placed on Sub-Zero’s shoulder in support was a large enough gesture in itself, though the metal was unyielding when he squeezed, and he could not be certain that his friend knew it was there.
***
“I need to hurry,” said Sub-Zero, his tone at whisper-level volume without any of the distortions that would have been present in a human voice. “They will be expecting me back, or not at all. Lateness will be suspect.”
Smoke ran a hand through his hair, fingers tangling awkwardly through the silver strands. “I know. I know. I just... I just need a moment before you go, Tundra. Just tell me something.”
“Sub-Zero,” said the cyborg, with mechanical reflexivity. “I now know my brother will not be returning to reclaim his title, but it is now...”
He paused. Flexing his metallic arm, he held his hand up between both of them for a moment, and his inscrutable gaze seemed to align with Smoke’s as he made a fist and summoned a frosty nimbus of power. “You might say it’s programmed into me.”
No matter what he was called, his friend was never good with a joke, and on the very rare occurrences that he tried to say something lightheartedly, a waver in his voice usually gave him away. Now there was no such indicator of humanity, and Smoke had no idea whether the cyborg was joking, or whether there really was “Sub-Zero” engraved on his circuits somewhere.
That was thought which only served to remind him that there was something he had to ask.
“Sub-Zero,” he repeated. Lin Kuei garb hid most facial expressions, but seasoned warriors learned to convey thoughts and moods to allies with a twitch of an eye. It was unsettling to look at his friend’s face and see only his own reflection on metal and black glass. “Tell me.”
“I shall if I can. Quickly.”
Perhaps it was a sign of weakness, or the foolishness of age, but he couldn’t let Sub-Zero go on a potentially suicidal undercover mission without knowing what he had to know, what he had finally put his finger on as the most important piece of information he could possibly hear. More than names, more than spy data, it was a simple question that Smoke needed, no matter how terrible knowing might have been.
“Did it hurt?”
He left unspoken the second part -- when they tore your soul out of your flesh and implanted it into steel? -- but what was unsaid still echoed in his mind, and the awkward twitch of tubing that ran down Sub-Zero’s arms suggested that his friend was human enough to hear it, too.
After a moment’s hesitation, the tubing settled into quiescence once more.
“Smoke.”
Smoke’s right hand had since dropped to rest on his thigh, and his gaze dropped too, but his left was still woven through his hair and pulling slightly; this was a new, sudden habit that shouldn’t have occurred to a man who had worn a hood for over twenty years. But these were times that shouldn’t have happened.
I knew it. It should’ve been me. It should’ve-
And suddenly, the back of his exposed knuckles felt a brushing sensation that was rubbery, and almost sticky. He looked up to again meet Sub-Zero’s non-eyes, and his friend not-quite-stared back. His right hand was extended, and his rubberized fingertips rested lightly atop the hand in Smoke’s hair.
“They shocked me into unconsciousness when they took me,” said his friend, voice mechanical but clearly identifiable. “And Smoke... that is probably the last thing I will ever feel.”
Relief washed over Smoke like the warmth of a campfire for a moment before a wave of frost washed it out. Though the icy feeling started from where Sub-Zero’s hand rested on his, the chill radiated out from Smoke’s own bones and nerves as he processed his friend’s words.
It took effort to keep his voice from quavering as he sought confirmation to his sudden insight. “The last feeling... of any kind?”
The pause that followed was such a natural sign of human hesitation that Smoke felt his heartbeat stutter in his throat. Sub-Zero’s stippled, rubberized fingertips pressed a little harder into the back of Smoke’s hand, as though the cold pressure was supposed to be reassuring. Was pressure all there was?
The robotic voice could produce only the slightest parody of intonation, but at this moment Smoke sensed a memory of Sub-Zero’s dryest voice. “One of the major reasons the Lin Kuei first became interested in cyberization was to create warriors who are invulnerable to pain, even at the most fundamental, instinctive level. Even the most highly trained humans have some level of pain receptors in their brains, after all.” He pressed Smoke’s hand one more time, then removed his own from Smoke’s head, lowering it palm-upward in a gesture that carried the vague impression of a shrug. “Mine are unplugged now. My sense of touch is probably in the Lin Kuei scrap pile now, along with most of my bodily functions.”
“Because the ultimate warrior is never distracted by needs of the flesh,” Smoke murmured. He knew this. And yet he had never considered...
“Smoke. I’ve got places to go. You think too much, human.”
The word choice jerked him out of his reverie, and he looked up in shock and horror, but Sub-Zero had his head tilted in the way that was usually accompanied by the slight eye-crinkling that was the rarest of rare things: a Lin Kuei’s smile.
Before Smoke could fully process what this meant, Sub-Zero had reached out with both arms this time, and pulled him close against his unyielding metal chest. An embrace with an icebox, but it was his friend.
“I feel you more than any other,” intoned said icebox. “Your power activates more of my sensors. It makes me feel more real. Thank you, my friend.”
This was one of the strangest moments in Smoke’s life, and just as he began to process it, raising his arms to return the gesture, Sub-Zero let him go.
“I must atone,” said the cyborg, “but I will be back if my penance goes as planned. And... Smoke?”
Smoke looked up, still struggling to grasp what had just happened. “Sub-Zero?”
Sub-Zero was already clanking toward the door, with slightly more of a spring to his step than had been audible when he’d entered the side chamber. At Smoke’s words, he paused for a moment, then resumed his exit, stopping for a long moment once more at the door.
“Don’t worry,” the cyborg said finally, without turning around. “I won’t get hurt.”
Only once his friend had gone did Smoke allow himself to speak once more.
“I know, Kuai Liang,” he replied to the open air. “You can’t.”