At first, as a boy from rural Kentucky, Jeremiah couldn't understand what a Sinanju was. He soon learned.
The training began three days after Nuihc liberated Jeremiah from the train.
It started with the breath.
"Life is breathing," Nuihc had explained. "Men do not breathe. They puff on what little air they need to keep their torpid bodies trudging forward. They breathe with their lungs, and even then only with part of them. You will breathe here."
With sharp fingers he pressed a spot in the pit of Jeremiah's stomach. The fingers hurt. This was something that Jeremiah would grow accustomed to. His new Master did not mind causing him pain.
At first finding the breath was hard.
Coaxing, holding the boy's belly and breathing in rhythm with Jeremiah, Nuihc taught the boy to breathe. Once he found it, Jeremiah caught on quickly.
He remembered the day. They were in an old, abandoned meat-packing plant in Illinois. When that first breath came to him-the first real breath in his entire life-Jeremiah had promptly vomited onto the floor.
"What's that smell, Master?" he asked, gagging on the rancid air he now breathed which had, until a moment before, seemed blessedly clean.
He would never know that his senses had been opened and he was smelling the stench of the cow blood and viscera that had soaked into the slaughterhouse floor for a hundred years.
The instant Jeremiah asked the question he felt the sting of Nuihc's hand across his face. It was pain that rattled his teeth and made his eyes water. The slap raised a red welt that would not heal for three weeks. Nuihc's face was a furious sneer.
"When I instruct, you listen," the Master said. Jeremiah listened.
He listened through those early years and into his preteens. All the while learning to control his body, to do things he had never imagined were possible. But whatever he did never seemed to be enough for his Master.
"You are a pitiful excuse for a pupil," Nuihc said one day after his eleven-year-old pupil had attempted a task eight times but only performed flawlessly seven of those eight times. "You are so obtuse you have no idea the great gift I am giving you. I should find another to train."
"Please, no, Master. I'll do better."
"You will," Nuihc had insisted. "Or I will kill you."
Jeremiah had no doubt that his teacher was telling the truth. The young man struggled to improve. The first years were difficult. But Jeremiah learned. Never, of course to the level of Nuihc's expectations. That didn't surprise Jeremiah. Thanks to Nuihc's constant intimidation, Jeremiah now fully understood how truly worthless he was. All the abuse, all the scorn that Nuihc heaped daily on his pupil's young shoulders was deserved. Jeremiah was no good as a man or as a pupil. He showed disrespect every time he didn't perform flawlessly.
This was the thing that injured Jeremiah most of all. More than anything, he wanted to show his teacher how much he meant to him. He thought that if he could do one thing right, match even a single move, he might demonstrate to Nuihc what was in his heart. The great love he felt for the man who had saved him from a life as a freak.
The training of his body was a welcome diversion from the growing powers of his mind. The beast that lurked in his brain was a monster that was impossible to tame. But it could be distracted if he concentrated on something else.
Jeremiah trained hard. Sometimes Nuihc would go away on business. At those times Jeremiah could have relaxed his regimen just a little. Fearing that the beast might get loose, the young man trained even more. He hoped that his diligence would not go by unnoticed.
Always when Nuihc returned he failed to notice the improvements his pupil had made on his own. Jeremiah realized it was his own fault for not trying harder. Quietly he would vow to work harder the next time.
When he was twelve years old Jeremiah killed a man.
Nuihc told his pupil that this was an honor. Masters of Sinanju of the recent age had begun to put this aspect of training off until their students were more fully developed. Nuihc's own Master and teacher-who, Jeremiah learned, was Nuihc's uncle-had not allowed his protege to know the thrill of the kill until he was well into his twenties.
What the boy did not know was the psychological reason this important aspect of training was now delayed. The physical could be taught at an early age, but only an older mind could be fully prepared to understand why the work of assassination had to be done. But it was a different kind of psychological conditioning Nuihc was after.
Jeremiah's first victim was a bum off the streets of Chicago. A gibbering indigent whom no one would miss. When Nuihc dragged the terrified man before Jeremiah, the Asian did everything but wrap him in a presentation gift bow.
Jeremiah didn't want to do it. In training he had shattered wood and stone with his hands and feet. But a living target was something altogether different.
The vagrant's hands were tied together and hung on a big rusted hook suspended from the ceiling. He wept in fear. Jerenuah Purcell wept, too.
"You weak infant," Nuihc spit as the boy shook and the old drunk blubbered. "You will do this thing or I swear I will tear your limbs from your worthless carcass."
Nuihc had taunted and threatened until Jeremiah could take it no more. Squeezing back the tears, he launched a pulverizing foot into the hanging man.
It wasn't a death blow. Jeremiah had gone for the hurt, not the kill. In his mind he still hoped that there would be some way to spare the pathetic bum's life.
The bone was more brittle than he had expected. The man's hip shattered like a dropped teacup. And then he howled.
An awful, nightmarish cry of animal pain the likes of which Jeremiah Purcell had never before heard.
"You did not kill it," Nuihc complained, unmindful of the feral cries of the pathetic man.
The vagrant twisted in agony, one leg hanging loose.
"Finish the task," Nuihc ordered.
Jeremiah didn't know what to do. He was shaking so badly by now that when he tried to deliver a killing blow of mercy into the chest, he only succeeded in shattering the man's sternum. There was another cry of pain. The bum's head slumped over his frail chest. Blood mixed with water streamed from his mouth. But he continued to breathe.
Jeremiah couldn't take the moaning. Still shaking, he pressed his hands to his ears trying to blot out the sound.
With a spark of fury, Nuihc grabbed the boy by the shoulders. He sent a hard palm across Jeremiah's face.
"Finish the task, dog!" he snapped.
There would be no argument. There never was with his teacher. This time when Jeremiah tried, the mercy was not for the old man but for himself. Steadying himself, he sent his palm into the old man's chest.
All he wanted to do was stop the bum's whimpering and protect himself from Nuihc's wrath. He had intended to send the already shattered bones into the man's vital organs. But his will was greater than he knew.
His hand went straight through the chest. He felt the warmth of the man's insides. Held the struggling heart in the palm of his hand. Felt the muscle contract once.
Then it stopped.
The man grew still in death.
Jeremiah was horrified. His blood-soaked hand made a horrid sucking sound as he pulled it free. When he looked to his teacher, he saw for the first time a new look on Nuihc's face. There was a glint of savage satisfaction in the Korean's hazel eyes. And Jeremiah understood. Only in delivering death could he hope to satisfy this man who meant so much to him.
The next death was easier. The next easier still. Each death caused another little piece of Jeremiah's soul to die. But that didn't matter. Murder was the only way he seemed able to touch his Master's cold heart.
The boy who was slowly growing into a man thought that he could feel the bond growing between himself and his teacher. He was wrong.
Jeremiah had called Nuihc "father" once. It was a slip of the tongue, spoken in haste. When he realized what he'd said, Jeremiah was relieved. It was a word that he had longed to speak to this man who had given so much to him. After he spoke it, he looked up at Nuihc with hope.
Nuihc had slapped him across the face. It was the last time Jeremiah ever spoke the word to him. But in his heart Nuihc was the only real father he had ever known.