"These enemies are among us now," said Konrad Blutsturz. "They are in this room. One of them is white, the other is not."
"I think he means us, Remo," said Chiun, in the crowd.
All heads turned toward the squeaky sound of Chiun's voice.
"Now you did it, Little Father," said Remo.
"You see them," called Konrad Blutsturz. "Now deal with them!"
The crowd exploded. Remo and Chiun were inside a boiling tangle of humanity that was clawing, squeezing, groping for them.
Chiun whirled in place like a miniature dervish, and the people in his immediate vicinity flew away frorn him like gravel off a flywheel.
Remo took the opposite tactic. He grabbed the reaching hands and pulled them toward him. Bodies followed Remo's yanking motions, colliding into other bodies.
Konrad Blutsturz watched in amazement touched with admiration. Two men against hundreds. Two unarmed men against a disciplined mob. And not only did they remain untouched, but they continued to advance on the stage, effortlessly, inexorably.
It was at that moment, unnoticed by the furious mob, that Konrad Blutsturz rose from the crushed wheelchair to his full height.
Towering on the stage, he sucked in a triumphant breath. He could smell the sweat of humans in conflict, see their frenzy, almost taste their bodies. Even in this elemental state, they were but masses of organs and tissue and bone. He was all that and more. He was titanium and servo motors and over six feet tall. And as he willed it, his artificial knee joints whirred, and like a telescope stretching out, he rose from six feet to six and a half and then to a figure of flesh and blue metal that stood over eight feet tall.
He held out his left arm, and at a thought, there was a loud snick and a shining blade of metal clicked out from his forearm and into place.
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.
"Ilsa," he called in his anguish.
Remo got behind the shuddering form. He kicked at the back of the knee joint or where the knee joint should be. Konrad Blutsturz went down on one metal knee. But almost as rapidly, he rose to his full height again.
"Come, Remo," said Chiun nervously.
And when Remo did not come, the Master of Sinanju intervened.