Judith nodded, impressed. Clearly she hadn't sensed them either. "What can I say. That's exactly why I wanted your input, brown eyes."
Despite her seeming calm, she was being cautious. With small sidesteps she was circling back.
Remo expected her to dart for the woods, but instead she inched closer to the building. The broken picture window was above her shoulder.
"Sorry to disappoint you, Mittens, but that stuff you're holding isn't exactly the freshest fish in the tank."
Judith's face clouded.
"How new is this?" she hissed to Howard.
"I'm not sure the exact date," Mark replied. "But it was taken some time in late 1971."
"This is more than thirty years old?" she demanded, a hint of worry melting the certainty in her voice.
"I feel your pain," Remo said. "I'm good, but even I'm not that good."
He and the Master of Sinanju continued to advance. They came slowly, as if trying not to spook an animal. Judith White seemed to be doing rapid calculations in her head. Mark Howard stepped in front of her.
"There's no reason this new species and the human race can't live on the same planet peacefully," he said to Remo and Chiun.
"No deal, kid," Remo replied. "The human race wasn't born yesterday, you know. Mankind turns its back for two seconds and it'd wind up on a platter with an apple in its mouth."
"Be reasonable," Mark warned.
"Reason is for man, not beasts," Chiun said. Remo was surprised Judith White hadn't fled by this point. Her behavior seemed to go against every animal instinct for self-preservation. He could sense her growing fear, as well as see her struggle to overcome it.
He and the Master of Sinanju were nearly upon her when they suddenly sensed another presence nearby. The third heartbeat had just registered to their ears when a new figure sprang into view in the open window.
The tan face relaxed the instant it spied the two Masters of Sinanju.
"Hell and damnation, fellas, am I glad to see you," Bobby Bugget said, breathing relief. "I got scarder 'n all hell the way you left me last night. I been hiding out all day in the-" His face dropped when he saw Judith White. "Uh-oh."
"Get out of here, Bugger," Remo warned.
But even as he spoke the words, he knew something wasn't right. The singer's heart rate was off. They hadn't detected him as they approached. An average human had no such ability to hide his life signs.
Bugget had been alone in the warehouse. Bugget had disappeared along with Judith White's case of genetic material. Most important, unlike the first time he'd been dosed with the formula, this time Bugget had been sober.
Chiun had realized it, too.
"My songsmith!" the Master of Sinanju cried as Bobby Bugget hopped up onto the windowsill. With a growl, the singer launched himself at Remo. Bugget alone wouldn't have been too much to worry about. Remo had dealt with these creatures before. But simultaneous with Bugget's attack, Mark Howard lashed out.
He couldn't kill Howard. Not when there was a chance of bringing him home alive. And thanks to Bobby Bugget's fat songwriting yap, he couldn't kill the singer, either. Not without cheesing off the Master of Sinanju.
It was only an instant. A split second of thought, a mere fraction of equivocation.
But that minuscule moment of hesitation was enough.
And in that tiny moment of fractured time, Judith White's darting hand flew forward.
It wasn't intended as a killing blow. Had that been the case-Howard and Bugget be damned-Remo's system would have gone on automatic, dismissing the conflict of mind, killing her instantly. It was a tiny nick. Just on the forearm.
Flecks of glistening red speckled the clapboards of the Lubec Springs office wing.
Blood. Remo's blood.
And then she was gone. With a single leap she was up to the low roof of the one story building. A hand caught the rain gutter and she was swinging up and over.
Bugget was still in the air, flying for Remo. A howl of triumph rose from deep in his throat.
It was a triumph short-lived.
He had scarcely come within two feet of Remo when a flattened palm caught him dead center in the forehead.
It was as if Bugget had been hit by a bus. Bones shattered back into his brain. Eyes widened with the shock of death and the singer belly flopped to the ground.
Remo dropped his hand, whirling for Howard. But the Master of Sinanju had already swept between them. The assistant CURE director didn't see the fluttering hand that darted forward, nor feel the slender fingers that pressed against his bruised temple.
Mark Howard's eyes rolled back in his head and he collapsed into the arms of the Master of Sinanju. "Chiun?" Remo pressed urgently.
"I will see to the Prince," Chiun hissed, nodding sharply. "Go. "
Remo didn't need to be told a second time. Flexing calf muscles, he launched himself to the roof in a single bound.
Judith White was gone. "Not this time, sweetheart."
She wouldn't have gone to the road. Wouldn't risk being seen. The forest meant safety. That eliminated south and west. Picking east, Remo flew to that edge of the roof. He spied a set of fresh imprints in the grass below.
There were no others running through the woods this day to confuse her tracks. These marks had been made by White.
In a blur, Remo was back down off the roof and racing full out for the forest. Broken twigs marked the route she had taken. Remo dove in after her.
Fear had made Judith White clumsy.
As he raced through the woods, Remo easily spotted the deep heel print that marked the spot where she had changed direction.
He tore off the same way.
Two miles into the woods, Remo began to smell the closeness of the Atlantic Ocean. The underbrush grew thicker, and the ocean sounds louder as he drew to the edge of the forest. When he broke through a patch of wind-whipped brush a mile later, he found himself standing at the edge of the world.
He was on a bluff high above the Atlantic. A blanket of drab clouds pressed down to the whitecapped waves.
Craggy black rock stabbed off in either direction along the rough shore. Perched at the farthermost point of the jagged finger of rock stood a lone figure.
Judith White's face registered no surprise when Remo emerged from the woods. Brown eyes trailed him as he stepped across the thin strip of tousled-hair grass that separated forest from rock.
"We've got to stop meeting like this," she called over the roar of the ocean.
Despite her seeming calm, he could hear the nervous thump-thump-thump of her beating heart. "That's about to be arranged."
Remo was at the base of the outcropping. Although he was still far below her on the angled basalt, Judith took a cautious half step back.
A hundred feet below, the crashing waves of the Atlantic attacked the shore.
"It's kind of fitting that it would end this way," she called down. "For your species, I mean. Did you know that life here on Earth began in the sea? A couple of spontaneous aggregations of dissolved organic molecules that were born from inorganic chemical reactions. Three and a half billion years later, here we both are."
"Not for much longer," Remo commented, eyes dead. "I like the new arm, by the way." He noted the plastic container clutched in her regrown arm. As if protecting something even more valuable, her other hand was clenched tight, fingernails biting deep into the palm.
"Starfish DNA," she explained. "I'm from a species that likes to plan ahead. I just wanted to thank you for your contribution, Poppa. None of the other men I've ever met were worthy to become father of the new Earth. But between your genes and mine, look out, world."