At a signal, Ilsa switched off the lights.
In that first hush of darkness, Konrad Blutsturz stepped off the stage like a silent juggernaut.
The darkness meant little to Remo and Chiun. Actually, it helped. Their eyes, trained in Sinanju, knew how to turn the dimness into clarity. But the eyes of their opponents saw only blackness. People milled about them in confusion.
That made it easier to pick them off. A chop here, a pressure on the neck nerves there. Every hand that reached for them was turned into a handle to use against the attacker.
Grunts and groans and panicky screams started to fill the room.
Remo's ears picked out a different kind of sound in the noisy confusion, a heavy tread, not human, not flesh. Remo looked toward the stage. He saw the dim outlines of a wheelchair, but it was empty.
Then there was a loud, thunking sound, simple, harsh, final, like an ax digging into a tree trunk. Into a spongy tree trunk.
Someone screamed shrilly. "My arm! My arm!" The tart scent of blood floated to Remo's nostrils. "Chiun! There's something loose in this room," Remo warned.
"Yes," said Chiun, kicking the legs out from under two assailants. "I am!"
"No, something different."
The hazy shadows of milling bodies blocked Remo's vision. He had a brief glimpse of an arm rising and falling, and at the end of that arm there was a swordlike blade.
Every time the arm fell, someone screamed and another body thudded to the floor.
The screaming turned into wholesale panic. Remo moved, sighting on the flashing blade.
"Chiun, get these people out of here! They're being massacred."
"I am massacring them," said Chiun, knocking two heads together.
"Chiun! Do it!" yelled Remo. He moved toward the electrical field he sensed just ahead.
The thing towered over Remo, its movements strange. He circled behind the man or thing or whatever it was. Remo had learned one thing years ago, a great truth that Chiun had impressed upon him. When facing an unknown threat, never attack first. Observe. Understand. Only when an enemy revealed his weakness to you was it safe to go on the offensive.
Remo did not know what he faced in the blackness of the auditorium. His feet grazed fallen bodies, dismembered limbs. The floor was slick with blood, and the scent of it stung his nostrils with the sickness of wasted life. The thing was too tall for a man, yet it had a manlike heartbeat. Lungs, tired, laboring, respirated with difficulty.
At the same time, the thing carried an electrical field, low but powerful. Remo poised for a first feint. Suddenly light spilled through the opened double doors. Chiun had broken them down.
Remo saw the thing clearly then. It was Konrad Blutsturz, no longer a withered old husk in a wheelchair, but a thing half-man and half-machine, his face terrible with rage and wrinkles.
"Ilsa," Konrad Blutsturz shouted. "Do not let them escape! Any of them."
"Nobody's escaping," said Remo. "Especially you." Konrad Blutsturz turned at the sound of Remo's voice, his face contorting wordlessly.
He raised his titanium arm. It descended toward Remo, the curved blade snapping out from the forearm. Remo dodged the blade easily. It retracted, ready to slice again.
Remo slipped behind him. The blade mechanism appeared to be a spring-loaded sickle that retracted into the artificial forearm like a gigantic switchblade.
Remo poked with a steel-hard finger and broke the spring. The blade dropped, swinging uselessly on its hinge.
"I'd take that back," Remo said lightly. "It's defective."
"I will not be stopped now. Not by you."
"How about by me,'" Chiun said.
"By neither of you," said Konrad Blutsturz, his face wild and twisted.
"Be careful, Little Father," warned Remo.
"What is it?" asked Chiun in Korean as they circled Blutsturz warily.
"Bloodsucker. They've turned him into some kind of robot." said Remo.
"I can see that." snapped Chiun. "What I wish to know is what are its capabilities."
"Let's find out," said Remo.
"Let's wait." said Chum.
"He killed Ferris. We owe him for that." Remo moved in.
Bhatsturz' titanium hand clicked into a fist. He sent it sweeping before him, back and forth, back and forth, like a mace.
Remo ducked under his weaving arm and let go with an exploring kick.
Blutsturz' leg gave with the blow. The eight-foot figure wobbled on one leg until the off-balance limb found its footing.
"It is strong," said Chiun. "And nimble for a machine."
"It's only metal."
"Titanium," said Chiun worriedly. He slashed at the metal hand with his fingernails, which scored the metal, but the arm did not paralyze with pain, the way flesh would.
"It does not feel pain," said Chiun.
Konrad Blutsturz lunged for the Master of Sinanju. Chiun spun in a double-reverse movement that took him clear of the lumbering man-machine. He swept out an arm and took Remo by one wrist.
"Hey!" said Remo.
"Come," said Chiun. "We will fight this one another time. His techniques are unfamiliar."
"Nothing doing," said Remo, slipping loose.
Konrad Blutsturz bore down on him. Remo met him halfway. This time Remo went for the flesh-and-blood arm. He sent a two-fingered nerve thrust to the elbow joint.
"Arrh!" howled Konrad Blutsturz. He felt the shuddering bone-shock of Remo's blow. He clutched his elbow with his other hand, not thinking. His titanium fingers grabbed too hard and he screamed again at the pain he inflicted on himself.