“Sometimes you act like a young man, and sometimes you act like a little boy. You are a brilliant boy, but I have seen enough of your mistakes and missteps to know that you lack the wisdom that comes with age, Jack. Zee assassins are
Jack laughed, short and haughty. “Batman didn’t have superpowers, Pop.”
“I don’t care. It is make-believe.”
“Maybe there are people out there with abilities that are different from ours, Pops, ever think of that?” Jack demanded.
“Hogwash.”
“Hey, Pops, look at something for me.” Jack snatched at the curtain on the chiseled window and stabbed a finger at the toiling albinos in the central court of the emerging city. “Those cave people were just like us until a few generations ago, and look how much they devolved. They think you and me have superpowers, right? So how can you say there’s not another bunch of people who are further evolved than us?”
Fastbinder shook his head tightly. “The Albinoids are not devolved, Jack, just degraded. They’re genetically zee same as us.”
“Okay, fine, so they were normal humans and then they degraded. So maybe somebody else was a normal human and then they advanced—and maybe they had something that helped them advance.”
“Jack, you are in a fantasy. Zee assassins do not have superpowers. We are all just people, zee Albinoids, us and zee assassins. Some of us simply have better brains.” Fastbinder stalked to the door, waving down Jack before the teenager could speak again. “It is time for you to grow up. Jack.”
“We should never have breathed life back into them,” Chiun said.
“No kidding.” Remo caught a female captive under one arm and reached for the scummy-looking man whose pores oozed nicotine. The scummy guy was making a high-pitched siren sound, but it stopped when Remo paralyzed them both.
“This is for your own good,” Remo told the middle-aged woman who was trying to scramble up the walls.
“You can’t make me go back in there!”
“You stay here and you’ll starve to death,” Remo pointed out. “There’s no other way out.”
“I’d rather die!”
“That’s just the terror talking,” Remo said reasonably. He stepped up onto her rock—the rock she had climbed for two minutes to reach. She goggled at him. “How’d you—”
“There, there.” He paralyzed her and leaped down to the landing with her slumped on one shoulder, then inserted her into one of the sockets in the watercraft pod. It was the least damaged of the three salvaged pods. They wouldn’t use the other pods. After all, there were only eight survivors. The neat row of nonsurvivors stretched across the back wall of the cavern where they had landed.
“If you intend to send the other floating prisons into the river as a decoy, then these bodies should be placed into them,” Chiun pointed out.
“Keep your voice down, will ya?” Remo said. “You know what Fastbinder will do with the ones that arrive dead?”
“Feed them to his subjects,” Chiun said with a shrug. “Shh!” Remo hissed, but it was too late. The paralyzed captives were practically having seizures with their eyeballs. “Nice goin’, Chiun.”
“Fastbinder will be suspicious of the disappearance of the captives when the decoy pods arrive empty. But it is you who is Reigning Master. Naturally, I accede to your authority,” Chiun sniffed.
“Which is your way of saying this is gonna be a real disaster and you want me to look like the moron instead of you. What’s so hilarious?”
“Remo,” Chiun said, wearing a smirk, “I could never look like a moron, and you never couldn’t.”
Remo rolled his eyes and stepped into Pod Two, weaving his arms and finally bellowing, “Hey!”
This failed to get the attention of the struggling captives, until Remo lifted the glow stick and began waving it slowly back and forth. The captives found blessed distraction from panic in the swaying point of green light.
“My name is Remo and I’ll be your tour guide today. Not sure where we’re going or what we’re going to do when we get there, but! know one thing—it’s, going to be the ride of a lifetime. In fact, it’s gonna be the last ride of your lifetime unless you do what I say, okay?”
He briefly explained that he would have gladly made them all unconscious, but they needed to stay awake to keep their lungs saturated with oxygen. “Every breath could be your last one for minutes at a time, so make them last, people! Thanks for joining us today. I’d like to remind you that gratuities are not included in your tour price and are graciously accepted.”
All he got in response were rolling eyeballs. “It’s like we’re going into Splash Mountain with a bunch of Cookie Monsters,” Remo said.
Chiun offhandedly tossed Pods One and Three into the river current and gave them a few minutes’ start before stepping onto the last pod and nudging away from the shore with one sandaled toe. He crouched alongside Remo at the rear of the pod.
“We’re gonna kill them all. Little Father,” Remo said morosely as the pod picked up speed.
