He watched on the monitor as the young one yanked down the switch. When the doors remained closed, Hahn allowed a slip of air to pass his thick lips.
Not that he really expected anything to happen. It was just that, given the strangeness of this situation-
A green light suddenly winked on in the security panel.
Hahn's eyes grew wide. His hands sought out control buttons even as he stuffed his feet back inside the open well beneath the desk. He swept the panel with his eyes.
A breach in the doors. But that couldn't be. The emergency switch was dead. He was sure of it.
The old Asian was still attacking the seal. But now plastic shards had begun to fly like string confetti in a homecoming parade.
Impossible! He was using his fingernails to whittle away at the supposedly invulnerable polymer. Somewhere, somehow, a break had been made in the airtight seal.
He glanced at the monitors. This couldn't be happening.
Hahn was watching two screens at once. The young one was across the room while the old one and the girl stood under the door overhang. Through the murky air Hahn thought he saw something that gave him hope. He zoomed in on the roof.
Yes. There it was. The acid was rotting away the securing bracket. No sooner had he focused the camera than the metal twisted and snapped. The roof lurched and collapsed.
Two dead, one left. Hahn reached for the control panel.
The overhang was no longer there. There was no protection, no way out. Hahn could cut off the sprinklers on half of the room, concentrating the downpour where the young one stood.
Hahn flipped the last switch. Gripping tight the edge of the control panel, he threw his attention back to the monitors. To watch the younger man finally do as he was supposed to. Melt into a pile of steaming flesh and bone.
THE DELUGE that would have turned a common man to sludge failed to kill Remo Williams for one simple reason. Remo Williams was not a common man.
He was off at a sprint even as the acid was falling. It hadn't even touched ground before he was nearly out of range.
The nozzles had been turned off to the right of the greenhouse. That was where Remo ran.
Remo was running full-out even as he felt the first drops of acid kiss the back of his T-shirt.
As he ran, he rolled the skin of his back, flexing and twisting the muscles. His skin became a life-form independent of the rest of his body, rippling in undulating waves. The movement kept his shirt out of complete contact with his skin, preventing the acid that was bleeding into the disintegrating fabric from finding root in soft flesh.
He was at a crouch once he reached the storm line. With a fall and a roll he was out of it. Acid that had pooled on the floor chewed away at the knees of his pants.
The nozzles where he'd been standing clicked off with a drizzling hiss. In another moment he was sure the ones directly above him would switch on.
He was out in the open now. Exposed. There was no longer any place for him to hide. His eyes strayed to the remnants of the door arch.
Even if Chiun had survived under all that metal, it would only be a matter of time before-
Remo blinked. The twin doors into the control room were no longer closed. The clear panes had been pried apart. A narrow gap opened into the room beyond.
A weathered face appeared in the narrow opening. Chiun's worried expression changed to a look of agitation.
"Remo, act your age," the Master of Sinanju admonished. "It is unseemly for the Transitional Reigning Master of Sinanju to be stomping around in rain puddles."
With that, Chiun disappeared.
Above Remo, the nozzles switched on. It no longer mattered. Remo was already gone.
He took a running leap over the collapsed roof. "Banzai!" he yelled as he dove over the twisted debris and through the open door. His palms hit the floor in the small control room and he flipped up and over, landing on the soles of his smoking loafers. "Tah-da!" he announced, throwing his arms out wide.
Amanda was standing next to the Master of Sinanju. Rather than be impressed, she wore a frightened expression.
The instant Remo hit the floor, the Master of Sinanju jumped forward, tapered fingernails flashing out like deadly knife blades.
"What are you doing?" Remo asked, twisting away.
"Stay still, imbecile!" Chiun barked.
Like a demented tailor, the old man attacked Remo's steaming T-shirt. The cotton sheered away in long strips. As it fell to the floor, the acid continued to chew at the material.
Once the shirt was gone, Chiun sliced off the growing holes at Remo's knees. He came away with two circles of cloth with widening holes at the center. He threw them to the floor with the steaming T-shirt strips.
When Chiun at last stood back, Remo looked down on his tattered outfit. He was shirtless with two holes in his knees and a pair of smoking loafers. He glanced sheepishly at the Master of Sinanju.
"You think maybe you could skip over this part in the Sinanju Scrolls?" he asked.
"If not for the ever vigilant eyes of my dead ancestors, I would be tempted to throw out the entire chronicle of your apprenticeship and claim the records were lost when you burned down my house," Chiun replied thinly.
"That sounds like a no," Remo sighed. "And I didn't burn down our house."
Scuffing his soles on the concrete floor to remove the excess acid, he turned his attention to Amanda.
She stood panting near the door. Beyond, the storm still raged in the greenhouse.
"I-I can't believe this," Amanda stammered.
"Yeah, my boss has tried to kill me a couple of times, too," Remo commiserated. "If he's thinking of making it a regular thing, I'd ask for a raise and a better parking space. Say, you wouldn't have a spare shirt around here?"
Amanda glanced at him. "Oh," she said. "There might be some clothes in the offices."
She pressed a button on the control panel and the outer doors hissed open. In a daze, she headed into the hallway. Chiun followed her out.
Remo cast a final glance into the greenhouse.
The storm was powering down. The electricity had been cut to the lightning and the fans. Only a little liquid still drizzled from the overhead nozzles. The ground steamed. The acrid air burned Remo's nostrils.
Whoever was operating the environmental controls was admitting failure and shutting off the systems. Remo left the small control room, his face as dark and doom-filled as the dissipating clouds in the big glass greenhouse.
IN THE SECURITY Room on the other side of the CCS complex, Herr Hahn switched off the monitors one by one.
For a long moment he sat alone in the silent room, staring at the dead black screens.
This simple killing was apparently going to be more difficult than he had originally thought. Without realizing it, a smile slowly spread across his broad face. In the pit of his stomach, a new emotion.
Excitement.
It had been a long time since Herr Hahn had faced a real challenge. These two promised to give him something his professional life was sorely lacking.
Like a man with renewed purpose, Herr Hahn got to his feet and waddled out into the dimly lit corridor.
Chapter 7
The sunrise was new.
He had been in this place many times now and it was always night. But there it was. Or nearly was. Although the sun had not yet actually peeked over the horizon, Mark Howard knew on some instinctive level that it was coming even as he walked along the empty Folcroft corridor.
Through the closed and barred windows he could see the sanitarium grounds bathed in the purple of predawn. The same color streaked the sallow sky.
It was always winter in this place. It remained the same even as the rest of the world enjoyed the change of seasons. Dark shadows painted the land. The tree trunks were arms, their dead branches fingers. Grasping, clawing for the dawn that had been so long coming. Finally, almost here.