and the unbroken quiet was beginning to grate on his nerves. The shadow-filled openings in the tunnels they passed began to seem more and more to him like watching eyes and hungry mouths, and he was increasingly troubled by the conviction that there was something down in the tunnels with them, watching and waiting. He concentrated, calling up the enhanced hearing the Maze had gifted him with, and suddenly his ears were full of the crash of his and Hazel's boots on the floor, the rustle of their clothing, and the rushing sound of their breathing. He faded them out and listened to what was left. And there, far ahead, right on the edge of his hearing, was a slow, solid drumming sound, like the beating of a giant heart, and the murmur of regularly disturbed air.
Owen quietly caught Hazel's attention and tapped his ear. She concentrated and then frowned as she heard it too. They drew their guns and their swords and moved cautiously forward, checking each tunnel opening they passed. The sounds gradually grew louder, till the tunnel floor seemed to shake beneath their feet in rhythm to the steady heartbeat ahead. And then they rounded a corner and stopped abruptly as they came face to face with a giant steel fan filling the tunnel from floor to ceiling, its massive steel blades churning around and around, though the sewage it had been intended to stir up was long gone. Hazel gave Owen a hard look, and they put away their weapons. They both glared at the fan. There was clearly no way past it, and the heavy blades swept inexorably around much too quickly to try dodging past them.
'They must have added this after I left,' said Hazel.
'Oz, any chance you can shut this thing down?'
'Afraid not,' said Oz. 'Power is either on or off. No cutouts.'
'I could have told you that,' said Hazel when this information was conveyed to her. 'They cut every corner they could when they were building this place.'
'If we could stick to the matter at hand,' said Owen. 'Oz, shut everything down, and we'll climb through in the dark. Then you can power up again.'
'Ah,' said Oz. 'It's not that simple, I'm afraid. The power system is so unstable, I'm not a hundred percent sure I could start the power back up again at all.'
'Wonderful,' said Owen.
'Look,' said Hazel. 'It's just a lump of metal, when all is said and done. Let's blow it away. A couple of point- blank disrupter blasts should do the job easily.'
'I really wouldn't do that if I were you,' Oz said hurriedly. 'It's all I can do to keep the city systems quiet as it is. Even I have my limits. You start setting off alarms down there, and all hell will break loose.'
'Hold everything,' said Owen. 'You told me you had the city computer jumping through hoops and doing what they were told. What's changed?'
'Well,' said Oz reluctantly, 'it seems I might have been a little overoptimistic in my initial projections. The Hadenmen have revamped the city computers far beyond their normal capabilities, and they've been… fighting back for some time now. I can just about maintain the status quo, but you set off any alarm for any reason, and you are strictly on your own.'
'Wonderful,' said Hazel when Owen broke the news. 'I told you not to put your trust in ghost AIs. All right, we can't shoot it. What does that leave? If we took a really good running start and dived between the blades—'
'They're just heavy enough and sharp enough to cut us in two,' said Owen. 'And I don't think even we could regenerate from something like that.'
'All right, let's just rip the damn thing out of its setting. We're strong enough, together.'
'That would be bound to set off an alarm. I don't want to emerge from the final tunnel to find half a hundred Hadenmen waiting, armed to the teeth with Hadenmen weapons.'
'Then you think of something! You're supposed to be the brains in this partnership! You think, I hit things; that's the way it's always been.'
'I think better when people aren't screaming in my ear,' said Owen mildly. Hazel sniffed and turned her back on him. 'Oz, is there another route we can take that will let us bypass the fan?'
'Afraid not. There are fans like this throughout the system. Whatever route you take, you're going to run into another fan eventually.'
'On the other hand,' said Hazel, turning back suddenly, 'every now and again I get the occasional good idea. Owen, back in Mistport you tore a whole building apart just by thinking about it, right?'
'Well, yes, but…'
'But nothing. How did you do it?'
'Damned if I know, really. I just got angry enough, and the power came to me. A lot of the Maze's changes emerge only when I get mad or desperate enough.'
Hazel nodded quickly. 'Yeah, same with me. I get angry enough in a fight, or pushed hard enough, and my alternates start popping in out of nowhere to save my butt. But your power sounds a lot like a polter's psychokinesis. If you could call up that power and then crank it right down, concentrating it just on the fan, I'll bet you could slow those blades right down without damaging the fan, and we could step through safely. Then you could let go, the fan would speed up again, and everything would be back to normal, all without setting off any alarms. Right?'
'Right,' said Owen. 'That is an excellent idea, Hazel. Really. The only problem is, I haven't the faintest idea how to call up my power, let alone control it. When you get right down to it, we've never really understood what the Maze did to us, or how we do the things we do. Mostly because we haven't had the time.'
'We could have made time,' Hazel said slowly, 'if we'd wanted to. But we've—okay,
'As in so many things,' said Owen, 'we learn by doing. Like a child learning to walk.'
'We should have discussed this long ago. Who knows what we might be capable of?'
'Exactly. Who knows what extremes, of good or evil, we might prove capable of. Who knows… what we might be becoming?'
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.
