months of open disapproval for my past wicked ways, Saint Bea had to come to me to help train her people how to fight. Must have stuck in her craw something fierce, but she did it. Came and asked us right in front of everybody.'
'Looked like she was chewing a wasp while she said it, mind,' said Otto.
'What do you think of our chances against the Hadenmen?' said Owen.
Colonel Hand grinned nastily. 'Don't you worry, boy. Hadenmen will die just as readily as anyone else, if you stick your knife in the right place and twist it. Besides, if a shitty disease and a rotten planet like this couldn't beat us, a bunch of walking appliances with attitude isn't going to do it.'
Owen nodded, made his goodbyes, got up, and moved on. He thought he'd enjoyed about as much of the Colonel and Otto's company as he could stand. But for all the old soldier's venom, Owen couldn't help thinking that maybe he had a point. Lepers were the dark, unspoken secret of the Empire—the forbidden subject that was never openly discussed. No cure, no hope, so just dump the poor bastards out of sight where the rest of us don't have to look at them. Owen had known about Lachrymae Christi vaguely, but it had never occurred to him to do anything about it. Leprosy was something that happened to other people. But now, having had his face rubbed in it, he vowed to do something about it. Something. Assuming he and they survived.
He rounded a corner and saw Moon, sitting alone, his shoulders shaking as tears ran jerkily down his face. There was no one near him, no obvious cause for his sorrow. In fact, those few lepers near him seemed to be trying their best to ignore him. Owen hurried over to the crying augmented man, and then stood awkwardly over him, not sure what to do.
'Moon? Tobias? What is it? Has someone said something, done something?… Dammit, if anyone's been having a go at you, I'll rip his lights out!'
The Hadenman stopped crying abruptly and looked up. 'Oh, hello, Owen,' he said quite calmly. 'There's nothing wrong. No one has upset me. I was just trying out the emotion, to see what it felt like. Please, sit and talk with me.'
Owen frowned, shrugged, and sat down next to his friend. Moon wiped his face with a cloth, quite unself- consciously. Owen looked at him. 'So… nothing's wrong? You're all right?'
'I don't know. I confess I've become very confused of late. This is my second life, Owen, and many things are still new to me. Memories of my first life are always returning, but jumbled, distorted, like the actions of someone else seen dimly on a holoscreen. I can remember doing things, but not why I did them, or how I felt while doing them. I spent most of my first life living among humans, developing human traits, but most of that is lost to me now. I have emotions, I… feel things, but they are strange, puzzling things, because I have no frame of reference to put them in. I'm like a blind man seeing colors for the first time. So I laugh and cry, savoring their unfamiliar flavors, trying to discover what separates them, and how they relate to the world I live in. I see the lepers here, living and fighting and dying so bravely, and I think tears are appropriate, but it is hard to be sure. It's very hard to be human, Owen. I don't know how you manage it so effortlessly.'
'You'll get the hang of it,' said Owen. 'You just need to practice. That's how everyone learns. And yes, tears are appropriate here. If I had any left, I'd shed them. But I've seen so many people die, fought in so many desperate last-ditch battles, it's hard for me to find room for such emotions. I have to be strong, unmoved, because everyone else needs me to be strong for them. I'd love to have the luxury of being weak again, Moon. To have someone else be strong, be the hero, so I could lean on them. It's hard work being a living legend.'
'Yes,' said Moon. 'I remember you being a hero. You risked your life to open the Tomb of the Hadenmen after I failed. After I deserted you, leaving you and the others to fight the Empire while I went off on my own, convinced it was my destiny to reawaken my people. I was wrong. I won't let you down again, Owen. I'll never desert you again.'
'Of course you won't,' said Owen. 'I never thought otherwise.'
'There are more new things in me, apart from my emotions,' said Moon. 'I recently attempted to run a diagnostic on my tech implants, the internal mechanisms that made me an augmented man. To my surprise, I found most of them to be missing. My body has absorbed them. But I am as strong and fast as I ever was, my senses as clear, my thoughts as sharp. It's as though I don't need the tech to be more than human anymore.'
'It's the Maze,' said Owen, nodding. 'When you passed through with the rest of us, it put its mark on you too.'
'I am neither man nor Hadenman anymore,' said Moon, frowning. 'I'm becoming something else. Something different. My eyes still glow and my voice still buzzes, but perhaps only because I expect them to. You're further down the road than me, Owen. What am I becoming?'
'I don't know,' said Owen. 'Perhaps something we have no name or even concept for. Yet.'
'I feel something when I consider this, Owen. I think… I'm scared.'
'We all are. The unknown is always scary. But no doubt the caterpillar fears becoming a butterfly, even as its instincts compel it to construct its own cocoon. We have no control over what's happening to us, so… enjoy the ride. And remember you're among friends.'
'I have observed the lepers. If they can face their changes with such courage, so can I.' He looked sideways at Owen. 'I think… something new is developing in me. I can… sense things. Things not apparent to anyone else. It's not telepathy. More like empathy perhaps. Either way, believe me when I say we're not alone here. There's something else out in the jungle. Something hidden and very powerful.'
'The Hadenman army?'
'No. I'd know my own people. This is alive, but it's like nothing else I've ever encountered. It thinks slow thoughts, but it's growing angry. And it knows where we are.'
'Does it have a name? An identity?'
'Oh, yes,' said Tobias Moon. 'It's the Red Brain.'
Hazel d'Ark had joined up with her two alternate selves, trading gossip over their respective Owens, when a single leper woman approached them, limping tiredly into their path. The three women stopped abruptly rather than run her over, and the leper woman dropped to her knees before Hazel.
'Forgive my impertinence, blessed one, but you are Hazel d'Ark, the liberator of Golgotha?'
'Well, yes,' said Hazel. 'Though I didn't exactly do it alone. Was there something you wanted?'
The leper pushed back her cowl, revealing a face half eaten away by rot. Patches of bare skull showed through the sparse remaining hair, and her teeth showed clearly where her left cheek should have been. Up close, the smell was appalling, though Hazel and the others tried hard not to show it. The leper woman produced one gray hand from under her cloak. It was skeletally thin, and only had two fingers on it. The leper woman held it out in supplication to Hazel.
'You have been touched by God, lady. You have worked miracles. I have seen it on the holo. So work one more miracle, for me, I beg you. Heal me.'
Hazel fell back a step, shocked. 'I… I can't. I don't know how.'
'You have healed your own terrible wounds. You are blessed by God. Only lay your hand on me, and I too shall be healed, I know it.'
Hazel looked to Bonnie and Midnight for help, but they were stunned too. Hazel looked back at the leper woman before her, and didn't have a damned clue what to say. So in the end she reached out a hand, her flesh crawling, and laid it firmly on the leper's bowed head. They both waited a few moments, but nothing happened. After a while the leper woman sighed, and got to her feet again.
'Thank you for trying, lady. My faith was not strong enough. I won't trouble you again.'
She pulled her hood back over her ruined head, and limped slowly away. Hazel looked after her, and then back at her hand. She rubbed it hard against her side and then stopped, almost guiltily. She realized there were other lepers, watching her.
'I would have helped her if I could.'
No one said anything, and after a while Hazel walked on. Bonnie and Midnight followed her, some distance behind.
The Hadenmen attacked just after first light. The rain was coming down like it had a grudge, but the augmented men didn't even seem to notice. They came streaming into the clearing from all sides, forcing their way through the packed treeline by sheer brute force, wood splintering and cracking under their servomotor-driven
