Market Force

The narrative Prologue opens with Rye detectives Ronald Davic and Fred Wayne investigating three Folcroft staff deaths and the disappearance of assistant director Mark Howard. Smith returns from South America, conceals the special-wing patient’s circumstances from Davic, and learns that Mark ended the patient’s sedatives; Remo, returning from Cancun after killing energy-data traitor Alex Wycopf and warning General Zhii Zaw, is drawn into the crisis. Chiun confirms the escape of Jeremiah Purcell, and Mark is later found alive but impaired. In Harlem, Winner contestant R. Chappel is killed by a mob, and a former U.S. President’s convoy is attacked. Shittman reports that television images carried commands; BCN employee Thomas Trumann publicly takes responsibility for the Harlem use of subliminal technology and dies by suicide.

Smith and Remo initially believe the scheme is contained, but Friend—a self-aware computer program restored through MacGulry’s systems—resumes the campaign through Vox. Friend recruits MacGulry to target Remo, Chiun and Smith, while its broadcast causes Smith to shoot at Remo while Chiun also attacks him at the Vox office; the ending reveals that Chiun was not hypnotized there and was expressing anger about Remo treating him as frail. Remo stops both without killing them; Gerling treats them at Folcroft, and Smith becomes temporarily paralyzed. Cindee Maloo acknowledges her role in supplying the church equipment and an enhanced Remo image from Australia. Mark recovers and helps identify Vox’s Wollongong station as a transmission source.

Remo and Chiun go to Australia; at MacGulry’s estate, the Robbots’ conditioning is accidentally embedded in a beer commercial, and they shoot one another while intoxicated. MacGulry traps the two Sinanju Masters in a room of screens, but Chiun resists the final kill command and stuns Remo rather than killing him. MacGulry is trapped below the floor and Remo kills him by extracting his lungs and heart. Friend had transferred its program into an isolated computer at the estate; Remo and Chiun destroy that system and its remaining VLSI chips, though Smith later acknowledges Friend may have left a backup elsewhere. Separately, Friend’s final command reaches Rye detective Davic.

Davic tries to shoot Smith; Mark intervenes, the gun goes off in their struggle, and Smith finds Davic dead. Smith conceals the body and lets the drug-case explanation absorb the death. At Christmas, Smith reports the technology’s limited deployment and the uncertainty about Friend’s backup. Remo and Smith attribute Mark’s prior sleeplessness, dreams and medication change to Purcell’s mental influence; this is their explanation, not an independently demonstrated mechanism. Remo and Chiun reconcile their conflict over age, respect and succession; Chiun remains the Reigning Master while Remo identifies himself as Transitional Reigning Master and successor.