Deadly Genes

A breeze pushed in from the long corridor behind him. It carried a hint of fresh air into the foul-smelling basement. The clean air made the smell in the cellar seem all the worse.

As Remo stepped farther into the room, his senses detected something more in the cool wind on his back.

A stronger pressure of air. Something pushing through the natural breeze. Something fast.

And in that moment of realization, the thing became airborne.

Remo flung himself to the dirt floor. Parallel to the earth, he tucked his shoulder sharply in, executing a tight roll. He ignored the fresh stabs of pain in his scars.

Flipping to a crouching position, he was just in time to see the startled face of Ted Holstein soar overhead.

Ted had thrown himself at Remo's back with such ferocity that he flew several yards into the dank cellar. He dropped to all fours, springing to his feet the instant he'd landed. He wheeled around, snarling angrily.

"You're fast," Ted commented.

The hunter's face was smeared with dirt. His eyes were wide, staring blind hatred at Remo.

Behind him, another creature dropped through the ceiling hole. Evan Cleaver skulked rapidly forward. "You were supposed to lead him over to me," Evan growled, flashing fangs.

"He moved too fast," Ted replied, voice low. Evan kept coming, moving out around Remo. He was trying to get their prey between them.

Remo noted the effortless movements of the two tiger creatures. But though they had grace, they were not artful. It was all pure instinct with them. And in that moment, Remo knew that this was not like before.

When Sheila Feinberg had created her army of tiger people years ago, Remo had been injured. His Sinanju abilities had already deserted him. He had stood helplessly by as Chiun fought the battle that he could not join. But these creatures were nothing special. He saw that now. With their snarling and snapping, they were little more than wild beasts. Certainly nothing to be feared.

And as the dawning knowledge that all his worries had been for naught began to set firmly in, Remo Williams did something the beasts before him did not expect. He laughed. Long and loud. "What's so funny?" Ted Holstein demanded, confused.

"You, snagglepuss," Remo sniffed, tears of mirth in his eyes. "You're already dead and you don't even know it."

"He's bluffing," Evan hissed. He was between Remo and the rear door. Blocking escape.

Remo took a deep breath, feeling the power that was his Sinanju training flood every corpuscle of his being.

The pain in his shoulder had fled. He was alert, infinitely aware. Every movement they took-every soft pad that dropped to the floor-he heard.

His senses were alive in Sinanju.

Remo kept his arms away from his body, hands open. He watched Ted, but kept his body attuned to Evan, still moving behind him. He smiled.

"Try me, puddytats," Remo challenged. And as one, the two tiger creatures lunged.

CHIUN BOUNDED BACK from the swinging paw. MacGuire's hand swept viciously past, throwing a wild gust of air into the Master of Sinanju's face. Thin beard fluttering in the wind, Chiun's eyes grew wide.

"You are in league with the fiend!" he cried.

"I am now," MacGuire snarled. "I just met Dr. White. Nice woman. Don't much like her taste in beverages." He made a show of tasting the vile potion, the aftertaste of which still coated his tongue. "But I think I found a chew toy to cleanse my palate."

He sent another hand toward Chiun, fingers curved in a move as old as the jungle itself. Splayed claws were meant to rip open the flesh of prey. But unfortunately for Trooper MacGuire, Massachusetts did not yet allow its state troopers to grow claws.

Chiun snagged the hand as it swung toward him, arresting its motion. Bony fingers encircling the trooper's hand, he applied pressure with his own clenching fist.

Bones crunched audibly.

Yelping in pain, MacGuire flung out his free hand.

Chiun's countermovement was invisible to the beast before him. But its effect was obvious.

A sharp tug. Trailed by a horrid, wrenching pain. MacGuire was left staring dumbly at the bloody stump where his hand had been. The severed hand dropped to the bed of rotting leaves at his feet, fingers still curled in attack.

The trooper let out a shriek of agony that ended with the sharp point of a single long fingernail in the center of his broad forehead.

Animal scream dying in his lungs, MacGuire crumpled in a heap to the moss-coated ground. The Master of Sinanju let the body drop. MacGuire had been changed since their arrival.

Judith White was not only close by, but she also had a fast-working version of her formula. And Chiun had allowed himself to be lured away from Remo.

The old man left the state trooper to be reclaimed by the earth. Hands clenched in knots of furious ivory, the Master of Sinanju raced from the rear of the crumbling warehouse.

REMO DUCKED BELOW the two springing hunters, rolling to the right.

The two hunters had launched themselves headlong at him from opposite directions and were moving too quickly to arrest their forward momentum. Their great surprise at the sudden absence of their quarry turned to yelps of pain as they plowed into one another headfirst. Together, they tumbled to the dirt floor. They rolled back to their feet with surprising swiftness.

"Did puddy get a bang on him head?" Remo sympathized.

"Asshole," Evan snarled.

"Hey, I don't remember Sylvester ever calling Tweety an asshole." Remo frowned.

Beside him, Ted lunged forward, both hands clawing down at Remo's chest.

He was fast. Remo was faster.

"Do I look like a ball of yarn to you?" Remo asked.

One forearm swept Ted's hands harmlessly away. With his arms no longer stretched out before him, Ted lost his balance. And in that split second, Remo launched a balled fist into his attacker's chest. Bones crunched audibly. Splintered sternum and ribs exploded into heart and lungs. Ted was dead before he hit the ground.

Even as his partner fell, Evan sprang forward, teeth bared menacingly.

There was no need to play with this one. The movements of these creatures weren't as graceful as Remo had thought. As Evan thrust his fangs toward Remo's neck, Remo realized he was facing nothing more than a poor dumb animal whose behavior was programmed by twisted science. It wasn't Evan's fault he was what he was.

Remo showed Evan the compassion that Man alone of all the creatures on Earth could demonstrate to a lesser animal. As he flashed forward for the kill, Remo's flattened palm caught Evan just above his slathering fangs. Facial bones cracked, shattering to jelly. Evan had struck a solid wall. He joined Ted Holstein on the dirt floor.

Remo looked down upon the bodies. It was a victory without satisfaction. These men weren't to blame for what they'd become. The responsibility for all of this rested squarely on a single set of shoulders.

A fresh sound came from far above.

A few more gunshots followed the first. Shouting voices. Panicked.

Remo spun from the hunters' remains. Racing to the pile of collapsed debris, he scampered to the top. Flexing calf muscles propelled him up out of the basement and onto the ground-floor level. He ran to the source of the commotion.

In his wake, silence flooded the macabre graveyard.

Chapter 31

The first floor of the warehouse split off in two separate wings. The main section was the large part of the building that faced the street. The other was a long addition that extended over the waters of Chelsea Creek at the rear of the property.

The gunshots he'd heard came from the direction of the river and so when he jumped up through the basement hole Remo struck off into the narrower wing of the musty old building.

He found a group of hunters hustling away from an alleylike loading-dock tunnel. Beams had collapsed from the low roof. The men were forced to climb awkwardly as they hurried back toward Remo.

There were six of them in all. Three trained their shotguns back on the door through which they'd just come. The other two bore one of their fellow hunters.

The man they were carrying had a vicious chest wound. Blood seeped into the cloth of his gray shirt, staining it black.

"What happened?" Remo demanded, racing up to the men.

Darting eyes were terrified. Orange, lateafternoon sun shone through dirty windows, illuminating faces shiny with frightened perspiration.

"It was her!" one of the men panted fearfully.

"Where?" Remo pressed.

"The stairs. She jumped us before we could stop her. I think the shots might have scared her off." They hurried past him, hauling their bleeding friend.

When they realized Remo wasn't with them, two of the men glanced back. They were just in time to see the old wooden stairway door sigh softly shut.

JUDITH WHITE MOUNTED the stairs five at a time.

Her heart thudded madly. It was the fear of a hunted animal.

She was the mouse, cornered by the cat. A fox chased by hounds. A gazelle stalked by a lion.

It was a horrible feeling. A complete loss of control. Utter, utter helplessness and abandonment. She had seen Remo in the basement. Unbeknownst to him, she had watched through a crack in the baseboard on the far side of the cellar as he went up against her two sacrificial lambs.

It hadn't been much of a fight. Ted was dispatched so quickly she didn't even see Remo move. Judith fled before he finished off Evan. She didn't need to stay. She knew what the eventual outcome would be.

Hit the landing running.

Up the next flight.

Six steps at a time now. Faster, faster. Next landing, next flight.

Barely slowing, barely breathing.

She had more of the original tiger solution but she now knew that it would do her no good. The old files of BGSBS stated very clearly that alcohol dulled or even killed the bacteria on which the new gene coding lived. Most of the men in the area had a blood-alcohol level high enough to blind a herd of bull elephants.

Judith had lucked out with the ones she did find. Ted Holstein had sobered up after her morning attack. Evan Cleaver appeared to have dried out a bit, as well. Trooper MacGuire had been unquestionably sober.

The rest?

Drunks. All drunks. Last landing.

Judith pounced forward, slapping a palm against the creaky old door. A plume of displaced dust flew up into the air as the door swung wildly open. She moved inside, quickly shutting the door behind her. Her attic room.

High above her, the tired wooden beams on which she had spent many a night sleeping off her ghoulish feedings stretched toward the distant wall.

Windows lined all but the wall directly behind her. To her left was the parking lot, to her right, woods.

Judith raced toward the last set of windows. During more prosperous times, the long dead business that had once occupied the warehouse had built a new wing out over Chelsea Creek. The four-story wood addition rested on huge pylons that had been constructed atop concrete platforms in the river far below.

At the grimy windows, Judith looked down at the river. Overflow from a dam farther upstream made this area of the waterway treacherous. It was a long drop into swift-moving rapids.

Judith spun from the window, looking desperately across the big empty attic. There was nowhere else she could go. She was trapped.

"Some plan," she muttered to herself.

Footfalls on the stairs. Light as air. Inaudible to a common human. She might have missed them herself if she hadn't been specifically listening for them.

Two fingers poked into her pocket and removed one of the slender tubes of tiger-gene formula. Her plan was bleak. No matter how she looked at it. But perhaps there was another way.

Wild-eyed, she waited for the door to open. And for her new species's final reckoning.

REMO SENSED THE MOVEMENTS coming from the attic room. From the way the animal carried itself, it was either Judith White or another of her tiger creatures.

At the moment, the animal that lurked before him wasn't his primary concern.

He had smelled the smoke before he'd even gotten to the staircase. The gunshots of the retreating hunters had drawn others. Huddled together in the parking lot far below, the men had apparently gotten the bright idea to smoke Judith White out. To this end, they'd set fire to the building.

The wood was catching quickly, too fast for Remo's liking. The stairwell was already filling with black smoke by the time he reached the closed attic door.

The first hints of flame at the bottom of the stairwell four stories below crackled into his peripheral vision as he pushed the old warped door open.

Inside, he found nothing but four empty walls. Judith White was nowhere to be seen. Ever cautious-sensitive to the flames licking up below him-Remo stepped into the vast, airy room. In his wake, smoke wafted into the chamber.

"Here, kitty-kitty-kitty," Remo called. A creak from above his head.

She'd been hiding on the rafter directly above him. Judith dropped, deadweight.

Remo bent double, catching her falling bulk on the meaty part of his back.

As her claws brushed the cotton cloth of his T-shirt, Remo flexed his back muscles and jerked left. Judith White flipped off his shoulders. Twisting, she landed solidly on both feet, facing Remo, her teeth bared viciously.

"You heal quickly," Judith commented, nodding to the spot where her claws had raked his shoulder and chest.

"Good genes," Remo explained thinly.

Her smile was feral. "Better genes," she replied. She dived at him again.

Remo had prepared for her. He was ready to stop her forward momentum as he had with the hunters in the cellar. But as his hand flew out from his side, Judith White did something unexpected.

At the last minute, she dropped low, beneath his rocketing fist.

The command had been sent. Remo's hand was already locked into an unstoppable motion. It flew forward, but with nothing to contact it struck only air. It was all he could do to keep his arm from tearing out of its socket.

He lurched forward as the force of the missed blow knocked him off balance.

Before Remo could regain his equilibrium, Judith sprang up at the inside of his outstretched arm. Both hands balled tightly, she shoved Remo's chest with a strength far greater than her slight form would have indicated. As he toppled backward to the floor, she leaped forward, collapsing on his prone form.

In her hand, Judith held a test tube filled with brown, brackish genetic formula. With a savage grin of victory, she tipped the thick liquid into Remo's open mouth.

CHIUN SPIED THE CROWD Of rowdy hunters the instant he broke from the wooded area behind the adjoining building. They surrounded the warehouse into which Remo had gone.

Much of the ground floor was already engulfed in flame. Acrid smoke hung heavy in the afternoon air. Arms pumping furiously, he raced across the vast space that separated the two warehouses. By the time he reached the building, the second story had already ignited. Flames were racing up to the third. Near the old loading dock, the hunters were enjoying a celebratory drink. Someone had retrieved a bottle of Jack Daniel's. from one of the trucks. They were trying to figure out how to pour the liquor into their open beer cans without spilling a drop when Chiun raced up behind them.

"Where is my son?" the Master of Sinanju cried. The voice startled them. Jumping, the hunter with the bottle splashed some whiskey on his hand.

"Watch it, Grampa," the man threatened. He slurped the spilled liquid off his thumb.

"Hey, tha' counts ash your helping," another slurred.

Chiun had neither time nor patience. Plucking a shotgun from the concrete dock, he wrapped a hand around each barrel. He pulled.

With a pained wrench of metal, the two barrels tore up the length of the weapon.

The men were only just becoming aware of what was happening when Chiun's hands became sweeping blurs. The hunter with the bottle felt a tightness at his throat. He only realized that his shotgun had been knotted around his neck when he looked down and saw the stock jutting out beneath his chin. A single skeletal finger brushed the trigger.

"My son, grog-belly," Chiun repeated savagely.

"There was a guy in there," the hunter panted. "Heading for the stairs. After White." Tense fingers groped the shotgun knot at the back of his neck. "Please. You can have the bottle. Just don't pull the trigger."

His plea fell on deaf ears. Chiun was already gone.

None of the hunters could say for certain where the old Asian went, but a few swore they saw a flash of silk kimono hurtling like a fired cannonball into the growing wall of orange flame.

REMO JERKED HIS HEAD to one side. The gene-altering liquid splattered thickly to the dirty floor. Above him, Judith White growled in anger. Her breath was rancid.

The crazed geneticist's elbows were bent and jammed against his biceps, pinning him down. There was a surprising amount of weight to her.

Without his hands free, Remo used the next-best thing. As Judith repositioned her test tube, he bent his knees sharply, stabbing them up into her pelvis. The weight lifted. Judith flew off him, landing in a heap near the stairs.

Remo completed the motion with his legs, slapping soles to the floor. Upright, he spun to Judith as she was scampering to her feet.

Black smoke poured up around her. Flames licked at the wooden door casing. Framed in fire, Judith White was a hell-sent demon.

Judith sensed the fire at her back. It clearly frightened her. Keeping her back to the walls, she moved quickly and cautiously away from the open flames.

She stepped around Remo, leaving a wide space between them at all times.

"You should have taken a sip, brown eyes," she said, hurling the near empty test tube away. The frail glass shattered against the brick wall. "You could have been on the ground floor of the new era. You'd be one of the first successors to mankind."

Remo's gaze was level. "Been there, done that," he said coldly.

Her green eyes betrayed suspicion. "What do you mean?" she asked.

"I met your predecessor, Sheila Feinberg, years ago. She tried using me like a scratching post, too." For the first time, uncertainty clouded Judith White's features.

"What happened?" she asked.

Remo smiled thinly. "I don't see old Sheila on 'Stupid Pet Tricks,' do you?"

Judith had continued sidestepping in a wide arc around Remo. She was moving toward the river side of the attic room.

"She wasn't me," Judith sneered.

"Yeah," Remo replied. "What happened to her was an accident. You deliberately did this to yourself."

Remo's eyes strayed over her shoulder. Apparently, the hunters hadn't been satisfied with simply setting fire to the front of the building. They had torched this rear section of the warehouse, as well. Orange flames had just begun to peek up over the sills of the attic windows behind Judith. She didn't seem aware of the flames at her back.

"Is this the point where you give me the big speech on the immorality of tampering with God's grand scheme?" Judith White said sarcastically.

"No," Remo said. "You've been a bad kitty. This is the point where I put you to sleep."

He'd had enough of Judith White's attacks. It was Remo's turn to act.

She was still several yards away from the rear wall. Remo tensed his legs and sprang.

He was off the floor in a shot. Whirring like an airborne top, he chewed up distance faster than the animal eye could perceive. Only when his feet struck her solidly in the chest did she realize he'd even moved. By then it was too late.

Judith was thrown back by the force of the blow. She landed roughly against the wall, one elbow crashing through a filthy windowpane. Flames instantly began licking up through the new hole. Judith jumped back from the fire, shocked. "Tigger doesn't like fire," Remo observed. He was standing before her in the smoke-filled room. Flames erupted along the staircase wall. The wooden structure of the building was igniting like a struck match. Sections of brick wall began falling away, tumbling to the ground four stories below. And through it all, Remo stood. Mocking her. Mocking that which she had become. And in the primal heart of the animal that had once been Dr. Judith White, a rage as ancient as the oldest living beasts exploded in violent fury.

Careless, unthinking, propelled by hatred, she flew at Remo, face twisted with vicious passion. Hands flew up with blinding ferocity. She was no longer rational. She was a beast, lashing out in hate and fear and rage.

Remo stood his ground, allowing her to fly to him. When she was close enough, he simply reached out and grabbed hold of one of her mauling raised arms.

One foot shot into the air, bracing against her sternum. With a horrible twist and wrench, Remo ripped the arm from its socket. It tore free like an overcooked turkey leg.

Judith shrieked in pain. Shoulder bleeding, she swept the other hand toward him.

Although Remo could have stopped the blow easily, he never got the chance.

All at once, the floor buckled beneath them. The room suddenly listed like a boat caught in a gale. Remo kept his footing, but Judith was thrown from her feet. She fell to the angled floor, rolling down toward the far wall. When she struck the wall, dozens of bricks broke loose and tumbled out into wideopen space.

She pulled herself awkwardly to her feet. It was difficult to stand. Judith turned back to him.

Remo realized what had happened. The ground floor had collapsed around the wooden columns that supported this section of the building. This wing of the warehouse was preparing to fall into the river.

The heat from the fire grew in wicked intensity. Remo ignored it.

Mindless of all but the creature before him, he began to advance on Judith White.

The room around him creaked in pain. The entire building seemed on the verge of collapse. Flames erupted in wild bursts through holes along floor and walls.

"Remo!"

The voice came from above. Louder than the symphony of noise all around him. When he looked up, he saw the frantic face of the Master of Sinanju peering down through a wide hole in the ceiling. Flames curled around his tufts of smoke-tossed hair. Chiun waved them away.

"Hurry," Chiun called. He beckoned urgently. The flames were everywhere now. Wafting clouds of smoke partially blocked his view of the old Korean.

"In a minute," Remo called back.

"This building is collapsing!" Chiun pleaded. "We must flee! Now!"

Remo hesitated. He knew Chiun was right. But he also wished to finish off Judith White once and for all. There would be no satisfaction in letting the fire do the work for him.

She was watching him with her big cat's eyes. A whimper of fear rose from her throat as she hugged her knees close to her chest with her one good arm. Blood poured from the vacant socket of her other shoulder.

In the end, good sense won out. Remo spun from the mad scientist. He left her cowering against the distant wall. With a leap, he made it up to the hole. Chiun grabbed hold of him. Firm hands dragged him onto the roof.

The coolness of the air outside shocked him. His body had compensated for the heat of the flames. The room had been like an inferno. Sweat beads evaporated from his skin.

Remo paused at the top of the brick wall. When he looked back through the hole, he saw the rear of the building give way. The entire row of windows, the bricks and Dr. Judith White tumbled out together. Moments later, they crashed into the rocks of the Chelsea Creek rapids.

"This is no time for sight-seeing," Chiun snapped. "If you get injured again, you may tend to your own wounds."

Whirling, the old Asian bounded along the length of the brick wall, unmindful of the sheer drop to the woods below. Fire erupted through holes in the broad flat roof.

Remo raced after him to the main warehouse. As he sprang over to the largest part of the building, the rest of the office wing behind him collapsed onto the floating figure of Dr. Judith White. Her battered carcass vanished beneath a ton of bricks and burning wood.

Chapter 32

Dr. Judith White's body turned up five days later. "It washed up on Deer Island," Smith explained to Remo over the phone. "Her name tag from BostonBio was in her pocket, as well as a few credit cards."

"They're sure it's her?" Remo asked. He was sitting on the floor in his living room.

The Master of Sinanju sat on a simple reed mat across from him. Chiun's parchments were laid out carefully at his knees. A quill danced in his bony hand as he sketched Korean characters.

"The coroner says that her arm was wrenched off with what they are terming 'inhuman strength,'" Smith said dryly. "I doubt it is necessary to go much further than that."

"What about the other hand? Did you check fingerprints?" Remo asked suspiciously.

"Unfortunately, Dr. White never had prints taken," Smith said slowly.

"At a high-tech joint like BostonBio?" Remo asked.

"It is not part of their normal procedure," Smith explained. "And anyway, they did not regard her as a security risk."

Remo snorted derisively at this. "What about dental records?" he asked.

Smith was growing concerned now, as well. "Her face was mangled in the fall. The teeth were shattered. What are you getting at, Remo?" he asked. "You do not believe she could have escaped?"

"I guess not, Smitty," he admitted reluctantly. "It's just she was awfully resilient."

"Not this resilient," Smith stated firmly. "The genetic formulas of BostonBio died with her. The BGSBS material confiscated from BostonBio that detailed the so-called Feinberg Method has been destroyed. No one will be able to duplicate the formula. Nor, I suspect, will anyone want to."

"Amen to that," Remo echoed. "What I can't figure out is why she was so fired up to help out humanity."

"What do you mean?" Smith asked.

"That was the point of the whole BBQ project," Remo reminded him.

"I didn't tell you?" Smith said, surprised.

"Tell me what?"

"An autopsy was performed on one of the animals Dr. White brought back to BostonBio. There was a deliberate destructive code buried in the DNA of the animals."

Remo blinked. "Are you saying the BBQs really would have killed people?"

Across the room, Chiun's head snapped up. Remo shot a glance at his teacher.

"Worse," Smith intoned gravely. "She heralded them as the cure for world hunger. However, that was not their only purpose. Dr. White's cure would have turned mankind into creatures like her. The genetic code contained in the animals was a variant of the old Feinberg bacteria formula. If consumed, the meat of the Bos camelus-whitus would have transformed people into things like her. If enough meat was eaten, the change over time would have been permanent."

"So we saved the human race one giant step back down the evolutionary ladder," Remo said. One eye was trained on the Master of Sinanju.

Finding nothing of interest in Smith's explanation, the old man had returned to his writing.

"I had the remaining creature at BostonBio destroyed," the CURE director said. "Since you eliminated the ones in the possession of HETA, every loose end should be tied up."

"Me?" Remo frowned. "I thought you did it." Smith's voice was level.

"Are you joking?" he asked.

"No," Remo insisted. "I told you where they were. I figured you'd take care of them. I said I wasn't going to kill them, Smitty."

"Yes, but surely under the circumstances..." Smith paused, thinking. "It has been several days since you left Medford," he said, his tone reasonable. "With no one to take care of them, perhaps the animals have died already."

"If you do send someone out there, you might want to check the toolshed in the barn," Remo suggested, thinking of Mona and Huey Janner. "And make sure they don't get within sniffing distance when they crack the door."

"Why?" Smith asked.

But Remo had already hung up the phone. "What's your problem?" Remo asked the Master of Sinanju once he'd dropped the phone in its cradle.

"Besides you?" Chiun asked aridly. He didn't look up from his work.

"Ha-ha," Remo said. "You acted like you'd been gut-stabbed when I said the BBQs could kill people."

"A Master of Sinanju cannot be stabbed. Oh, the clumsiest of us has been known on occasion to be mauled by feral kittens, as has been noted in the annals of the House, but stabbed? Never."

"Judith White was no kitten, Little Father," Remo said.

"Perhaps," Chiun replied vaguely.

He wrote for a few long minutes, quill prancing merrily as his knotted hand traced perfect lines. Remo stared at the top of his bowed head the entire time.

As the time wore on, Chiun grew more annoyed. Though he tried to mask it, the quivering tufts of hair above his ears belied his increasing agitation.

At the point when the old Asian could take it no longer, Remo spoke.

"You boxed one of them up and shipped it back to Sinanju somehow, didn't you?"

The shock on Chiun's face faded the instant he glanced up at Remo. He saw that his pupil was only guessing.

"Pah, leave me," he spit, turning back to his scrolls. "You are interrupting my train of thought. I was just at the point in the history where the kitten trapped the foolish assassin in a burning building." He waved a dismissive hand.

Remo got to his feet. He began walking slowly to the hall. In the doorway, he paused.

"You know, Chiun, between the BBQs and this mysterious movie deal of yours, you're building up a lot of secrets lately," Remo warned. "You just better hope Smith doesn't find out."

"Smith knows only that which I tell him," Chiun said with indifferent confidence.

"If you say so," Remo replied. "Just don't say I didn't warn you."

Chiun looked up in time to see his pupil leave the room. His aged face puckered in displeasure. Remo could be so irritating at times.

The old Korean returned to his work. On the paper, he wrote the Korean symbol for ingrate. Although it wasn't much, the mark did help to ease a bit of his great burden of suffering. But only a bit.

EPILOGUE

In a few short weeks, the gruesome murders in Boston passed into the realm of local folklore. Dr. Judith White joined the ranks of the Boston Strangler and Lizzie Borden as citizens of the Hub and surrounding Essex, Middlesex and Norfolk Counties vied to outdo one another over the backyard fence with tales of how they had almost encountered the "killer doctor." Around the rest of the nation, things returned to normal.

In a small room in a strip motel in rural North Dakota-away from all the idle gossip-a lone figure looked critically at herself in the long bathroom-door mirror. She had requested the room farthest away from the office. It offered the kind of privacy she liked.

She had ordered dinner not long before and didn't want to be disturbed while she was eating. The human predilection for rudeness was one of the things about them she most despised.

Judith White examined the sprouting mound of pink flesh at her shoulder. At the moment, it was as large as a baby's arm and hand, but that would change quickly enough.

She considered herself lucky to have had the foresight to include starfish DNA in her new genetic code. The sea creatures were able to regenerate parts that had been torn off. Now she could, as well.

Hers had been a daring plan. One that involved great personal risk. But it had worked. She hadn't been followed. The world thought that Dr. Judith White was dead. She would allow mankind that small luxury. For now.

She flexed and opened the small hand. It was important for its growth that she exercise the new limb. How long it would take to mature, she had no clear idea. But so far, eating seemed to help its growth spurts.

As she wiggled her tiny pink fingers, she heard a car slow down outside her motel room. Rapid feet ran across the gravel drive. All at once, there came a sharp knock at the door.

"Pepe's Pizza!" a harried young voice called from outside. A cold wind rattled the motel windows.

She draped a robe over her shoulder, covering her tiny baby arm. Judith stepped from the bathroom. It was time for Judith White to feed. And she had no intention of having pizza for supper.

With the purpose of a hungry feline, she stalked over to the closed motel door, purring gently.