After that Nuihc kept the boy on a short leash. They traveled the world. When Jeremiah was thirteen, Nuihc had found steady work in New York. The Korean was playing a balancing act between two rival organized crime figures, getting payment from both sides while working for only one. By this point in his life-five years after his first chance meeting with his Master-Jeremiah Purcell's soul was nearly dead. Over time as the years peeled away, Jeremiah grew colder, more distant. The boy became an automaton. He trained in New York for almost a year. He killed Mafia men and government agents. It didn't matter. He didn't care. The only thing that mattered to him was the approval of the man who would not allow Jeremiah to call him father.
It was while they were staying in New York that something strange happened. At the time Jeremiah didn't quite know what it was. Only that it was frightening.
Nuihc had gone to Washington on business. When he came back, there was fear in his eyes.
It was a subtle thing. But Jeremiah was trained to watch for small things. He could see the fear just below the surface. In Nuihc's facial muscles, at his mouth. It was the same as the fear Jeremiah lived with daily.
In the five years that Jeremiah had known him, Nuihc was always in control. But when he returned from Washington, that control seemed on the verge of shattering.
For hours Nuihc paced the living room of the apartment they were sharing. He didn't say a word to the boy. Jeremiah stayed in a corner, quietly performing his exercises. All at once something in the Master snapped.
"He is here!" Nuihc snarled, suddenly enraged. A rage made all the more terrifying because it was sparked by his own fear. "Here! Now! He will not die! That decrepit old fool has emerged from his cave to vex me yet again!"
The Korean seemed about to lose control. Someone had scared him in Washington. For the teenaged killer it was a frightening thing to even contemplate anything that could scare the teacher he worshiped.
"Who is here, Master?" Jeremiah asked. "What's wrong?"
Nuihc's words hadn't been directed at Jeremiah. He wheeled at the timid voice.
The Korean was an animal. Terrified and cornered, ready to lash out at anything. For an instant it seemed he would take out his impotent frustration on the alarmed young boy.
But by supreme effort, Nuihc managed not to kill the instrument he had trained. He vented his anger on their apartment, smashing feet through floorboards and launching sofas through walls. When he was done, he turned to the boy.
"We are leaving," Nuihc announced. They fled America.
Nuihc brought Jeremiah to a safe place. A castle on the Caribbean island of St. Martin.
There was a legend of a Dutch trader who had built the castle centuries before. When the natives saw the blond-haired, blue-eyed boy who had come to live among them, they assumed the spirit of the long-dead merchant had returned to reclaim his home. They called Jeremiah the Dutchman.
It was at this island hideaway that Jeremiah Purcell completed his training.
Nuihc went away from time to time. Sometimes his business kept him away from the island for months. One time when he left he never came back.
Word came that his Master was dead.
Older now, Jeremiah knew that there were only two men on Earth who could have killed the Fallen Master of Sinanju.
After that, the Dutchman's path was clear. He took up the yoke of his dead Master and set out to complete the task his teacher had failed to finish. The death of the Reigning Master of Sinanju and his American pupil.
As was preordained, he met the men in combat. The Dutchman assumed the powers of his mind would give him an edge in any conflict. But every time he met those two, he failed. There was a special bond between them. The ties of family. Of father and son. Their strength came from their love for each other and their deep respect for the traditions of their art.
After their last encounter, they sealed the Dutchman away in the worst prison imaginable. The prison of his own mind. Heavily sedated for ten years in a mental facility in New York, Jeremiah Purcell only managed to escape thanks to a special mind that came into his sphere of influence.
The Dutchman had never encountered a mind quite like it. It was powerful in a way he hadn't understood. Different from his own. Thankfully, it did not yet understand its own power. That was a weakness that could be exploited.
In slumber the Dutchmen forced his will upon this untrained mind. And he succeeded. It sapped nearly all of his remaining strength to do so, but he escaped. After that, the Dutchman went into hiding.
There were places he could go. Safe havens where the world would not find him. At first the old Caribbean castle was out of the question. His enemies had found him there twice in the past. After his escape, that would be the first place they would look for him.
The Dutchman spent months regaining his strength. Only when he could once more move with stealth did he sneak back to the old island hideaway that had been his secret refuge so many years before.
It was safe. It had been so long since his escape that his enemies would no longer be looking.
He found the castle in ruins. As his plane flew low over the place that had been his home for almost a decade, he saw that the old walls were collapsing onto Devil's Mountain, the ugly chunk of black rock on which the castle had been built. After landing, he was careful to avoid the natives. He didn't want word of his return to get back to the wrong sets of ears.
As he approached Devil's Mountain through the jungle, he could see high above that some of the structure on the fortified side of the castle remained more or less intact.
There was one room where a great deal of his training had taken place. For some reason he felt drawn to this place. It seemed to call to him over the squawks of the fluttering birds overhead.
The Dutchman had climbed the mountain, picking through the overgrown garden and up to the terrace. Much time had been spent on that balcony as a youth. The surrounding jungle had long begun to reclaim the wide terrace.
The French doors that led into the training room were shattered. Old scattered glass had been rubbed smooth from years of tropical downpours. As the Dutchman stepped across the glass, not one piece made a noise under his feet.
He pushed through the doors and silently entered the castle ruins.
The smell inside was rank. The old furniture had gone to rot. Rats and other small animals had made their home inside. Thanks to the curse that hovered over Devil's Mountain, the locals hadn't looted the old furnishings.
The Dutchman walked amid the shadows and the memories.
There was a big stone fireplace on one wall. A set of rusted metal chains hung before it.
At the fireplace the Dutchman stopped. He curled one hand through the thick manacles at the end of a chain. With vacant eyes he stared into the dead fireplace, blackened inside from ancient blazes.
He stared at the past. At the life he had lived. Of the life that had been denied him.
The thick metal in his hand creaked. His life as a freak.
The chain twisted.
He had been saved from that life.
The manacle elongated, exposing shiny, curled silver.
His Master had made him something more than a freak, more than an outcast.
The chain snapped. The links broke, pop-pop-pop. They fell, scattering, around the hearth.
The Dutchman didn't notice. The single ring of the manacle clasped tight in his hand, he fell to his knees. He didn't know how long he wept. It seemed like hours. The metal in his hand was warm and melted into the shape of his gripping palm as he climbed to his feet.
Only when he stood did he finally notice the dark figure that waited in the shadows near the cold fireplace.
"Who's there?" the Dutchman demanded. His tears had dried instantly. He was ready to pounce: He needed a fresh kill. Something to distract him from the horror of life.
"You are as pitiful as ever," said the figure. The voice was thin and reedy.
That voice. The Dutchman took a step back.