"Stay still, imbecile!" Chiun barked.
Like a demented tailor, the old man attacked Remo's steaming T-shirt. The cotton sheered away in long strips. As it fell to the floor, the acid continued to chew at the material.
Once the shirt was gone, Chiun sliced off the growing holes at Remo's knees. He came away with two circles of cloth with widening holes at the center. He threw them to the floor with the steaming T-shirt strips.
When Chiun at last stood back, Remo looked down on his tattered outfit. He was shirtless with two holes in his knees and a pair of smoking loafers. He glanced sheepishly at the Master of Sinanju.
"You think maybe you could skip over this part in the Sinanju Scrolls?" he asked.
"If not for the ever vigilant eyes of my dead ancestors, I would be tempted to throw out the entire chronicle of your apprenticeship and claim the records were lost when you burned down my house," Chiun replied thinly.
"That sounds like a no," Remo sighed. "And I didn't burn down our house."
Scuffing his soles on the concrete floor to remove the excess acid, he turned his attention to Amanda.
She stood panting near the door. Beyond, the storm still raged in the greenhouse.
"I-I can't believe this," Amanda stammered.
"Yeah, my boss has tried to kill me a couple of times, too," Remo commiserated. "If he's thinking of making it a regular thing, I'd ask for a raise and a better parking space. Say, you wouldn't have a spare shirt around here?"
Amanda glanced at him. "Oh," she said. "There might be some clothes in the offices."
She pressed a button on the control panel and the outer doors hissed open. In a daze, she headed into the hallway. Chiun followed her out.
Remo cast a final glance into the greenhouse.
The storm was powering down. The electricity had been cut to the lightning and the fans. Only a little liquid still drizzled from the overhead nozzles. The ground steamed. The acrid air burned Remo's nostrils.
Whoever was operating the environmental controls was admitting failure and shutting off the systems. Remo left the small control room, his face as dark and doom-filled as the dissipating clouds in the big glass greenhouse.
IN THE SECURITY Room on the other side of the CCS complex, Herr Hahn switched off the monitors one by one.
For a long moment he sat alone in the silent room, staring at the dead black screens.
This simple killing was apparently going to be more difficult than he had originally thought. Without realizing it, a smile slowly spread across his broad face. In the pit of his stomach, a new emotion.
Excitement.
It had been a long time since Herr Hahn had faced a real challenge. These two promised to give him something his professional life was sorely lacking.
Like a man with renewed purpose, Herr Hahn got to his feet and waddled out into the dimly lit corridor.
Chapter 7
The sunrise was new.
He had been in this place many times now and it was always night. But there it was. Or nearly was. Although the sun had not yet actually peeked over the horizon, Mark Howard knew on some instinctive level that it was coming even as he walked along the empty Folcroft corridor.
Through the closed and barred windows he could see the sanitarium grounds bathed in the purple of predawn. The same color streaked the sallow sky.
It was always winter in this place. It remained the same even as the rest of the world enjoyed the change of seasons. Dark shadows painted the land. The tree trunks were arms, their dead branches fingers. Grasping, clawing for the dawn that had been so long coming. Finally, almost here.
Mark was used to the dream by now. It had started the first week he'd come to work at Folcroft. For months it was a nightmare, but he'd had it so frequently now that he had built up a callus in his mind.
When he passed the same window at the end of the hall, the same owl sat in the same branch of the same tree. Its eyes glowed the same color as the sky and the land. He saw for the first time that the swollen moon was gone.
Mark was looking out the window when, with a loud hoot, the owl suddenly flapped its big wings. His heart tripped when the night bird took flight. It vanished in the pale darkness of early morning.
That was new, too. He had gotten used to everything being the same. The changes in the dream this time were bringing back some of the earliest feelings of dread.
He pulled his gaze from the window.
Mark could see now that the hallway was not as misshapen as it usually was. The angles were normal, not twisted. The lines of ceiling and floor led straight to a single door at the far end of the dusty corridor.
It was like any other hospital door at Folcroft. Wires crisscrossed the off-center Plexiglas window. The Beast lived beyond that door. For a year now Mark had almost glimpsed it in his dreams. It was a thing that lived on fear and in shadow. It played at the fringes of his unconscious mind, never stepping into the light, never taking a form that Mark Howard could fully understand.
He was only happy that the Beast was trapped. The door was a prison that kept it locked away.
As Mark approached the heavy door, he expected to feel the chill that always came at this point in his dream. Along with it, the same inhuman rasping voice he always heard.
They never came.
More changes. A corruption of the familiar that made all of the old terrors seem as fresh as that very first dream all those months ago. His steps growing more cautious, Mark approached the door.
Before he even reached it, he saw that it was ajar. Another first. A small security chain hung slack in the space between door and frame. So fragile. Not enough to hold the monster within.
His heart thudding, Mark reached the door. Hands framing the small window, he leaned in close. Most of the familiar shadows had fled. He saw now that the room was tidy, like the rooms of all Folcroft patients. A thin sheet draped a plain hospital bed. And on the bed was an emaciated figure with a face as pale as the crisp white linens under which it lay. Mark blinked. There was no sign of the Beast. And when the voice spoke, it came not from the figure in the bed but from Mark Howard's own mind. The time is nearly here....
Something stabbed into Mark's shoulder. He jumped, grabbing for whatever had touched him. His fingers wrapped around something cold and dry.
Nearly here... nearly here. .. nearly here...
"MARK, WAKE UP. "
The voice spoke with crisp irritation. The dream fled and Mark Howard's tired eyes blinked open. He was sitting in the office of Dr. Harold W. Smith. The CURE director stood over him, shaking Mark with one arthritic hand. Smith's lemony face was drawn tight with annoyance.
"Dr. Smith," Mark said, embarrassed. He suddenly realized that the thing he had grabbed on to in his dream was Smith's gnarled hand. He released it, his face flushing.
Smith straightened. "We were in the middle of our morning meeting," he said. "I had taken a moment to retrieve something from the mainframes. When I looked up, you were asleep."
"Oh." Mark cleared his throat. "I'm sorry. I've been having a problem with..." His voice trailed off. "I'm sorry, Dr. Smith," he repeated.
A notch formed on Smith's gray brow. "Is there something that you wish to tell me?" he asked. When Mark looked up, he found Smith peering intently down at him. The look of accusation of a moment before had begun to change to one of concern. There was almost a paternal glint in those cold eyes.
"It's something-" Mark shook his head. "I can't really describe it right now. It's something strange."