They looked at each other for a long moment. “Are you saying . . . we might become monsters?” said Hazel.
“Sometimes I worry we already are,” said Owen. “We all did . . . questionable things during the rebellion. You, me, Jack, and Ruby. Because we thought they were necessary, justifiable. And that was for a good cause. Now we’ve been cut loose, no one to answer to but ourselves, because nobody has the power to stop us if we choose not to be stopped. I find that frightening sometimes. Power corrupts, and the Maze has made us so very powerful. I fear what we might become. What we might let loose without even realizing. That’s why I’ve always tried not to use my powers unless I absolutely had to. Because I had so little control over what I might do, or become. I’ve always struggled to stay within human limits. To stay human.”
“I don’t feel any different,” said Hazel, frowning. “I’ve done . . . remarkable things, but I’m still me.”
“How could you tell?” said Owen gently. “How could I tell? Neither of us were born heroes, or ever intended to be, but we made ourselves over because we had to change to survive. We became legends because the rebellion needed legends. What else have we made of ourselves because we thought it necessary?”
“I wish you’d stop asking questions you know damn well neither of us can answer. We just did what we had to, same as everyone else. Look, we have come a long way from the original question, and this sure as hell isn’t the time or the place for a philosophical discussion. I am standing in stuff I don’t even want to think about, breathing green-tinted air that is probably doing unthinkable things to my lungs, directly under a city crawling with Hadenmen, who would be only too happy to rip off both our heads and make them into plant containers. We can discuss all this mystical shit later. Right now all I care about is whether you can slow these bloody fan blades down enough for us to get past them. Will you at least give it a try, dammit?”
“Of course I’m going to try,” said Owen. “But we will continue this discussion at a later time.”
He turned his attention back to the churning fan blades. They looked large and solid and completely unyielding, and he didn’t have a single clue how to affect them. He felt none of the anger or need that usually sent the power raging through him like a violent storm, sweeping away his obstacles. And even when he did have it, he had all he could do to focus it in the right direction.
Focus
. . . The word reverberated in him, suddenly full of significance. He turned his thoughts inward, blanking out the tunnel and the fan, trying to concentrate on how it had felt when he focused the power, and a memory slowly surfaced. He seized hold of it, pulling it into the light, and the concept, the feeling of focus, stirred in the depths of his mind. It was like suddenly seeing a whole new color, hearing a new musical instrument, but more abstract than that. A whole new concept of experiencing the world. And a surge of power pushed its way out of the back brain, the undermind, and all the way into his conscious thoughts, where it immediately became as obvious and familiar a thing as breathing.
He reached out with his mind as he might stretch out his hand, and touched the metal fan blades. They slowed under his touch, trembling as they fought against a force they could not resist, and then slowed still more till they were barely turning. The central motor groaned loudly, like a thing in pain. Hazel pounded him on the shoulder, grinning from ear to ear.
“You did it, Owen! You did it!”
“Damn right,” said Owen. “Now stop inflicting bodily injury on me, and climb through before the fan decides it’s malfunctioning and sets off an alarm.”
“Alarms, alarms,” said Hazel, stepping cautiously between the barely moving steel blades. “You’re obsessed with alarms.”
“One of us has to be,” said Owen, following her between the blades. He then released his will, and once again the blades resumed their normal speed. The feeling in his mind quietly shut down, retreating back into the undermind, the back brain. But now he knew where to look, he was sure he could call it back again. If he felt it . . . necessary.
“So, what did it feel like?” said Hazel interestedly.
“Like dancing,” said Owen. “Or painting. Mental grace under discipline. Bringing the raw material of the world into order. Does any of that help?”
“Not a bit,” said Hazel. “Right, let’s get a move on. We should be nearing the entrance to the main system soon, and then we’ll have access to any part of the city we want.”
“Good,” said Owen. “I can’t wait to breathe some fresh air again. My lungs feel like ashtrays.”
“Before you start off again,” Oz murmured in Owen’s ear, “there is something on that subject I feel we should discuss. According to a file I’ve just discovered in the city computers, there’s a reason why the air in the sewers is so foul. It’s poisonous. A rather deadly nerve gas, introduced into the systems by the Hadenmen, to kill off whatever might be living down there.”
“Poisonous!” said Hazel after this had been passed on to her. “But we’ve been breathing it for ages! Why aren’t we dead yet?”
“A fair question,” said Oz. “And one that has been much on my mind ever since I discovered the file. By rights, all the flesh should have melted off your bones by now.”
“It must be another of the Maze’s changes,” said Owen. “Emerging in us when we needed it. As usual. Just another way in which we’re no longer human.”
“Don’t start that again,” growled Hazel. “It’s the first really practical change the Maze has come up with. Keep moving. We’ve a way to go yet.”
They set off down the tunnel again. Owen tried breathing shallowly for a while, and then gave that up on the grounds it was too late now anyway. The rest of the journey was largely uneventful, until they reached the entrance to the main system and found their way blocked by a massive steel seal. A single great slab of solid metal, it filled the tunnel completely, and defied even their combined strength. Owen and Hazel took a step back, breathing heavily, and considered the matter.
“This was only ever supposed to be closed in emergencies,” said Hazel, “to prevent flooding in the main system. It’s a mechanical lock, because electronics and water don’t mix too well, and I haven’t a hope in hell of cracking the locks without very specific heavy-duty equipment.”
“The Hadenmen shut it,” said Oz. “To keep out people like us probably. Since the lock’s not electronic, I can’t help you. And the even worse news is that while there appears to be a manual override, it takes four people to operate it, working simultaneously. Security again.”
Owen and Hazel checked the four hand controls, simple wheels set at the four corners of the slab, but no matter how hard they stretched, their arms didn’t even come close to reaching more than one wheel at a time. It had to be four people. Hazel kicked the seal disgustedly, leaving a small dent in the metal.
“Stupid bloody thing. I didn’t come all this way just to be stopped by a bloody lump of steel. Stand back, I’m blasting the bastard thing.”
“You’d need a disrupter cannon to get through something this big,” said Owen. “And then there’s the alarms—”
“I am getting really tired of hearing about the alarms. I am not wading all the way back through the sewers, Owen. Either you come up with something, or I am blasting the seal and risking it.”
“All right, I may have an idea,” said Owen. “We got past the fan by fine-tuning my power. How about trying the same thing with yours?”
Hazel looked at him. “Run that past me again. How could my power help us here?”
“Well, you can summon an army of alternate selves to back you up in battle. Maybe if you concentrated hard enough, you could call up just two, and have them stick around long enough to work the other controls.”
“Damn,” said Hazel. “That is bloody brilliant! I take back everything I said about you. I’m not sure it’s practical, but it’s certainly worth a try.”
She stood frowning at the floor for a long time, trying to concentrate. Like Owen, her power usually emerged only under great stress. In the heat of battle, when she needed her other selves to be there, they just were. Hazel had no idea why some alternates turned up rather than others, or even what they really were. The best guess seemed to be that they were other versions of herself from different time tracks, people she might have been if history had gone differently, but she had no proof for that. None of them had ever stuck around long enough to answer questions. It was equally possible that all the other Hazels were just figments of her imagination, somehow given life and substance by her Maze power. It made just as much sense.
The more she thought about it, trying to re-create how she’d felt during those past battles, the more it seemed to her that there was a direction she could reach in, a direction as real as any other, but not limited to the world she lived in. She reached out, and myriad ghosts with her face seemed to sense her presence and turn their heads in her direction. She concentrated on her need for just two people, and two hands reached out to take hers. There was a sudden puff of displaced air in the tunnel, and suddenly two new women were standing in the tunnel before her, hacking and coughing in the green-tinted air. Hazel shot a triumphant glance at Owen, and then realized his jaw had dropped down almost to his knees. Hazel frowned and turned back to look at the two other selves she’d summoned.
The woman on the left had skin so black she looked like a living shadow, and her hair hung in beaded shoulder-length dreadlocks. She wore bright silver body armor, chased and scored with magnificent runes, along with gold accessories like knee pads, elbow guards, and knuckle dusters. She had a gun on each hip, and was holding a short-handled ax. Tall and almost unbearably voluptuous, she looked every inch a proud, capable warrior woman. And yet there was something in her stance, in her face, and in her eyes and mouth that was undeniably Hazel d’Ark.
The woman on the right had dead-white skin, and in the green light looked very much like a corpse that had risen from the embalming table when the process was only half finished. She was dressed in scraps and rags of leather, held together by brightly polished lengths of steel chain. She had rings in her ears and nose, and other less comfortable places, and there were metal studs, needles, and other piercings scattered practically everywhere else on her body. She was whipcord lean, every muscle clearly defined, and her head was shaved bald to better show off the rows of steel studs implanted in neat rows in her skull. She wore a long sword on one hip and an unfamiliar make of gun on the other. Both looked like they’d seen a lot of use. And yet, once again, the face and eyes were clearly that of Hazel d’Ark.
Two ghosts, in black and white, shades of people Hazel might have been if things had gone very differently.
For a long moment the four of them just stood there and looked at each other with varying degrees of incredulity, and then Owen turned to Hazel. “Tell me you didn’t summon these two on purpose.”
“Now, there’s a fine welcome,” said the black warrior woman in a deep rich voice full of humor. “And after I came such a long way to meet you. I’m Midnight Blue. Is that really another version of me?”
“Well, that’s one way of putting it,” said Owen. “I’m—”
“Oh, I know you, Owen Deathstalker,” said Midnight Blue. And then she lunged forward and threw her arms around him, still holding her ax, and crushed him to her impressive bosom with enough strength to drive the air from Owen’s lungs. He’d just started to get his balance back when she suddenly pushed him away, sheathed her ax on her belt, hauled off, and slapped him a good one right across the face. The sound of the impact was deafening. Owen reeled backward from the force of the blow, and might have fallen if Midnight hadn’t grabbed him in a hug again, tears starting in her eyes.
“Well,” said Hazel, “you always did know how to make a strong impression on people, Deathstalker.” She looked at the pierced white apparition. “Do you have any idea what’s going on here?”
“None at all,” said her alternate in a chilling contralto. “I’m Bonnie Bedlam, by the way. Are you sure you’re me?”
“Apparently. I’m Hazel d’Ark. Look around and see if you can spot a crowbar we can use to pry these two apart.”
Midnight Blue held Owen out at arm’s length and smiled at him tremulously. “Owen, you bastard! How could you leave me? Oh, it’s so good to see you again!”
“May I please point out,” said Owen in a slightly breathless voice, “that I am not the Owen you knew.”
“Of course not. He’s dead. But you’ll do.”
Midnight didn’t say for what, and Hazel didn’t think she was going to ask. She looked at Bonnie Bedlam. “Do you know Owen as well?”
“I should hope so,” said Bonnie in her cold voice. “We’re married where I come from.”
Hazel decided she wasn’t ready to ask about that, and looked back at Midnight Blue, who had put Owen down and was pulling his clothing back into place with little tugs and pats, while Owen just stood there and took it, afraid to do anything that might set her off again. She finally finished and smiled at Owen almost shyly.
“Sorry about that. It was just . . . the shock of seeing you alive again.”
“Well, if you want him to stay that way, I should lay off the hugs,” said Hazel dryly.
“I think we could all use a little recent background history here,” said Owen tactfully. “Obviously your lives have taken very different paths from the Hazel I know. Why don’t you start, Midnight?”
“The rebellion’s been over for some time,” said Midnight Blue. “It’s a mess everywhere. Billions dead, whole planets destroyed or thrown back into barbarism. You were killed, Owen, when Lionstone destroyed Golgotha with her hidden planet-buster bomb. Jack and Ruby died with you. I was the only Maze survivor left to try to start things running again. I should have been there with you, to confront Lionstone in her Court, but I walked out on you all when Jack made his deal with the Families. I couldn’t stand for that. Ruby almost left with me, but in the end she chose to stand with her Jack. And die with him, as it turned out.