Warren Murphy - The Ultimate Death

All those in the room released their breaths-for the first time realizing they had been holding them.

The team became engrossed with their patient once more, forgetting, for the moment, the strange phenomenon they had just witnessed.

On the bed, Dr. Harold W. Smith's face relaxed, seeming more at peace than it had been in many years.

Chapter 25

The first danger, Remo knew, was the falling railing. It was sharp at both ends. Sharp enough to impale him if he fell on it.

Remo slipped his fingers around the railing and, using his waist as leverage for his arms, twisted in midair to flick the heavy length of steel a safe distance away.

He relaxed his muscles, and tucked his legs in close to his body in order to avoid any broken bones.

And so fell neatly into one of the giant stainless-steel cauldrons.

Remo landed on his feet, in darkness. The big object was empty. No blood. No floating bone or human matter. Just slick, shiny steel all around him.

Too slick and shiny to climb. Remo prepared to run up one side, knowing that once momentum enabled him to reach the lip he could launch himself back up onto the catwalk.

He was preparing to do just that when the production facility sprang noisily to life.

All over the floor, lights lit and machinery began to roar at an ear-pounding volume.

The floor of the tureen Remo stood upon began a relentless move inward on itself, spiraling toward a trio of narrow holes at its center. Razorsharp stainless-steel blades pounded into view above the holes.

Obviously they had been designed to chop up something, probably an ingredient for one of Three-G's many health products, and funnel the residue down the production line. Remo was determined not to become one of those ingredients.

He hit the spinning metal floor on his feet and leapt out of the deadly trap. At the same moment, a mass of hard-shelled walnuts was released from a storage bin directly above the tureen.

They struck Remo like a dense, crunchy waterfall and carried him back inside the cauldron, where the deadly blades continued to whir remorselessly.

He slid on the floor, feeling the inexorable drag toward its center. He pulled himself to his feet with difficulty. The undulating sea of brown walnuts had buried him to the chest. He could feel the vibrations of the shells as they were crushed beneath his feet.

The jump would be more difficult now. The sound of whirring Servo-Motors came from somewhere in the ceiling high above. He tried to steady himself but felt his legs gliding slowly inward, like water to a drain.

The whirring sound above him abruptly stopped.

Remo did not even have a chance to push off the floor when the second mass of walnuts fell. For a second he scrambled amid them like a drowning man, but the pull from below was too great.

As the machinery continued to rumble its cacophony of death, Remo allowed himself to be dragged to the tureen bottom.

One hand shot up, like that of a drowning man, only to sink back beneath the crunchy morass.

Elvira McGlone released the controls, turned to the nearest TV monitor, and gave a thumbs-up sign. Her eyes were dead.

Mary Melissa Mercy smiled tightly. "The gweilo is no more Leader," she announced.

The Leader leaned forward, the swaying motion of his head lessening as his expression tightened. "You see his body, Missy?" he asked, a trace of eagerness adding an edge to the rasp that was his voice.

Mary Melissa Mercy peered more closely at the television monitor. The noise from the production floor poured out of a tinny speaker at the end of the console. All she could make out in the fuzzy black-and-white image was the shifting pile of walnuts. There was no sign of the gweilo, Remo. "He has vanished below the surface, Master. But no one could survive the chopping blades of that machine. Not even one of these impure Sinanju duck-eaters."

The Leader slumped back in his chair, tired from all his efforts. "My soul rejoices," he said, nodding. "If a carcass should surface, prepare it in the prescribed manner of my ancestors."

"Yes, Leader."

He listened as she left the room. He heard the locks of the heavy metal door clanging back into place as she closed it behind her.

The girl was happy once more. He could tell by the light tread of her heavy shoes. She had become concerned momentarily, but that concern had vanished along with the gweilo. She had reverted back to her innate self-confidence.

The Leader was pleased, as well. His Creed had survived its greatest challenge. He could now fulfill his destiny. The Final Death would now be achieved without interference.

The sounds from the production floor continued to squawk from the small speaker. The Leader was half listening to them when he heard another sound.

A new sound. Different from the rest. It was a sort of wrenching whine, like that of complicated machinery being forced to run backward by a force stronger still. It was succeeded by a rumbling hiss.

The Leader did not hear the three consecutive pops as the blades at the base of the tureen were snapped loose. Nor did he hear the grinding protest as they were wedged back into the mechanism to stop the motion of the floor.

The wrenching sound he did hear was that of the stainless-steel tureen into which the walnuts had been poured. Two hand prints had appeared on its smooth outer surface and were gliding downward, as if the steel were rubber. Tenfinger furrows marred the shiny texture. Halfway down the hand marks separated, tearing a gouge from the top of the tureen to its base as easily as if it were paper.

The screech of metal was unearthly.

The rumbling hiss that had accompanied the sound of the tureen's destruction was that of the walnuts spilling out across the production room floor.

After the noises had died down and the last lonely nut had rolled to a stop, the Leader remained puzzled.

He could not see Remo stepping through the opening, his eyes dead, black pools of menace. He did not see Remo flicking one of the walnuts upward to the catwalk, knocking Elvira McGlone unconscious. He knew only that the feeling of cold dread from before had returned.

A hollow voice boomed out, crystal-clear over the static of the speaker, louder than the loudest machinery.

And the hollow voice intoned: "I am created Shiva, the Destroyer; death, the shatterer of worlds. The dead night tiger made whole by the Master of Sinanju. Who is this dog meat that dares challenge me?"

Feeling his thin blood turning to ice, the Leader of the gyonshi trembled uncontrollably.

Remo Williams mounted the stairs in a single leap. Elvira McGlone was sprawled across the catwalk. He'd take care of her later.

Remo slid past her and moved swiftly along the walkway.

Someone stood at the far end. In the shadows. Mary Melissa Mercy. His final obstacle.

"You just don't know when to quit, do you, duck-eater?" Mary Melissa taunted, her naked green eyes blazing.

"Big talk, coming from a cannibal," Remo returned.

He continued moving toward her.

"We only drink blood. And you have no idea what you're dealing with," she warned. She found that she did not have to force confidence into her voice. "We possess powers no meat-eater can understand."

Remo remained silent.

"Your old friend understands now," she said, hoping to elicit a reaction. None came. "I am one with the Leader. The others you have defeated were nothing. Mere agents of our Creed. The old Korean knew that." She took a step toward him, still in shadow. "If the Master of Sinanju can be defeated, why not his pupil?"

Remo continued to move silently toward her across the raised platform.

Any hesitation Mary Melissa Mercy had felt before was gone. Her adrenaline flow continued in its wild rise. Her heart rate was more than double what it would have been had not the gyonshi infection empowered her purified blood.