Read Online Mortal Kombat: Annihilation by Jerome Preisler - Free Book Online Page B

he grabbed hold of Smoke’s spear and, with a tremendous show of strength, pulled the cyborg toward him and connected with an uppercut that sent Smoke sailing across the thicket.
    But the mechanical combatant was far from down for the count. Landing on his feet, he cannonballed up from the mist on rocket-powered boot-thrusters, his head smashing Jax backward into the mist, which closed around him like a heavy curtain.
    Smoke scrambled after him, raking his eyes left and right, trying to seek him out amid the thick, concealing billows of vapor – and was greeted by a full-on metal first to the face.
    His head lashing back, Smoke released harsh, grating sound that might have been a groan in a human throat. Then he collapsed.
    “Gotcha,” Jax said. “Gotcha one good .”
    Sonya and Mileena, meanwhile, remained locked in a death struggle, barreling on the ground after a fierce exchange of kicks and blows. Rolling on top of Sonya with a snakelike hiss, Mileena whipped a sai from a concealed harness and thrust it down at Sonya’s face. Sonya bucked and reared underneath her, mercifully slipping the attack and knocking Mileena off her perch. As Mileena tumbled to the ground on her back, Sonya grabbed the sai out of her hand and then brought the short-staff down across her windpipe, pressing down with all her strength until her arms and legs stopped flailing and went limp.
    She was still bearing down on the lifeless body when a hand suddenly fell on her shoulder.
    “Hey, relax,” Jax said. He nodded toward the pulverized snarl of metal, synthetic flesh and circuitry that had been his opponent. “It’s over, Sonya. We beat them.”
    She whipped her head around, looking straight at him, something almost feral in her expression. For a moment, he could have sworn she didn’t have the slightest idea who he was. Then her eyes came back from some faraway place – a place Jax really didn’t think anybody in his right mind would want to go with her – and filled with recognition.
    She slowly released her grip on the staff.
    “You and those stupid arms,” she said, gasping. “I thought I was gonna have to save you again.”
    “Again? What the hell are you talking about?”
    “Forget it.”
    Sonya glanced back down at Mileena’s corpse.
    “She was a pretty good replica of a human being, but it looks like we got another cyborg here,” she said, and pointed to the griffon-like tattoo on her shoulder. “That’s exactly the same as the mark we on Cyrax.”
    “It’s like a goddamned nightmare,” Jax said, watching the tattoo start to move, its wings flapping as it became three dimensional. “I don’t know how much longer I can take this shit. These suckers–”
    He stopped talking.
    He looked at Sonya.
    She looked back at him.
    They both had heard the Extermination Squad pushing through the wooded tangle behind them, and from the sound of things they were coming much too close for comfort.
    “We better roll,” Sonya said. “ Pronto .”
    Jax nodded, and a moment later they were dashing off into the mist.

CHAPTER TWELVE
     
    For Liu it began the same way it would eventually end – with the sense that he was dreaming or hallucinating, helpless to control the surreal flow of events into which he had been swept like a leaf in a gale.
    His eyes flickering open, he tried to move, discovered that he couldn’t, and then realized that he was buried in sand up to his neck.
    This can’t be real , he thought with a surge of claustrophobic panic. Can’t be .
    He tilted his chin up off the desert floor. Night was still with him. So was Nightwolf. The young Native American was a few feet away, circling him with a torch.
    “Glad you could join us,” he said. “We’ve got a ton of work to do.”
    Liu squirmed and felt sand trickle down the back of his shirt, a sensation that heightened his terror to a degree that was almost overwhelming.
    “ Let me out! ” he shouted. “ I don’t have time for this! ”
    Nightwolf’s