'Bunch of damn metalheads,' said Bonnie, grinning nastily. 'I'm going to rip your rivets off.'
'Sounds good to me,' said Owen. He looked at Moon. 'We don't care how many of you there are. Let them come. Let them all come.'
'Right,' said Hazel. 'This madness stops here. No more tests. No more pain. No more death.'
'You mustn't fight us,' said Moon, and for the first time his buzzing voice sounded uncertain. 'This is not necessary.'
'Yes, it is,' said Owen. 'We'll never surrender, and we'd rather die than be made over into you.'
'That… is not logical.'
'No. But it is very human. Dammit, Moon, think.
'That was a long time ago,' said Moon.
'No, it wasn't,' said Owen. 'That was yesterday.'
And he reached out with his mind, trying to reestablish the old mental link that had bound together all those who had passed through the Madness Maze. He could feel Hazel standing beside him, strong and sure and true, and their minds fit perfectly together, like two pieces of a larger jigsaw. Bonnie Bedlam and Midnight Blue were there too, backing them up, like strange echoes of Hazel. Together they reached out to Moon, pushing aside the machine barrier the Hadenmen tech had constructed between them, and the combined power of their joined minds swept the barrier away and linked with Tobias Moon. And he woke up.
The four humans dropped back into their own heads again and studied Moon cautiously. He was breathing heavily and shaking his head. The other augmented men backed away from him, looking at him as if he were infectious. Finally Moon turned and looked at Owen.
'I remember,' he said slowly. 'They made me forget so much when they rebuilt me, but I remember now. I could have hung on to my memories if I'd chosen, but I didn't want to then. I wanted so much to fit in, I was even prepared to give up part of who I was. But now I'm back, all of me, and I know I can't be just another augmented man. Because I'm more than that. Maybe more than they can ever be. So I stand with you, Owen. Even though we'll probably die together.'
'Welcome back, Moon,' said Owen, grinning widely.
'Just in time for the big fight,' said Hazel. 'Looks like it should be a good one. Even though most of us probably won't see the end of it.'
'What the hell,' said Moon. 'I already died once.'
'What was it like?' said Hazel.
'Restful,' said Moon.
'Hell with that,' said Owen. 'If we fight, with our powers and their implanted weapons, we'll die, they'll die, and most of the poor bastards captive here will die. And I won't stand for that. No one's dying here today. I've had a bellyful of death.'
He reached out through the link again, gathering up all of those who'd been through the Maze, and focused their joined minds through Tobias Moon. Together they dived through Moon's mind and on into the joined consciousness of the augmented men, like swimmers of light entering a vast dark ocean. The Hadenmen tried to force them out, their minds backed up by the great computers that linked them all, but Moon was still a part of them, a door into their joined mind, and he wouldn't let them shut him out. The shared consciousness of the Hadenmen. It was a huge place, the product of hundreds of thousands of minds, and at first the Maze minds were lost in the sheer scale of it. But the Hadenmen minds were limited by the logic of the computers they allowed to link them. Owen and the others were fueled by the rage and horror of what they'd seen in the labs, and magnified by the power of the Maze, they combined their feelings into a single hammer blow of outrage that slammed into the joined Hadenman mind and shattered it like a mirror. Hundreds of thousands of separate fragments fell apart, broken on the anvil of a greater faith than theirs. The darkness dissipated, and there was only light. Owen and the others looked on what they had done, saw it to be good, pulled out of their link, and fell back into their own minds.
Owen blinked his eyes several times, gathering his thoughts, and then looked around the laboratory. The Hadenmen still stood where they had been, but the glow in their eyes had gone out. None of them were moving. Hazel reached cautiously out and gave the nearest augmented man a gentle push. It rocked on its feet and nearly fell, but made no move to right itself. Owen had an almost hysterical need to see it fall, and topple all the others like dominoes.
'They're not dead,' said Moon quietly. 'But they are shut down. All of them. Their minds have turned themselves off rather than face what we showed them.'
'Hold everything,' said Hazel. 'We shut them all down? Everyone in the building?'
'Everyone in the city, everyone on Brahmin II,' said Moon. 'I'm still plugged into the main computers. The systems are still functioning, but no one's home to guide them. Hadenmen elsewhere, on other worlds, are unaffected, but the reign of the Hadenmen here is over.'
'I brought them back into the Empire,' said Owen. 'I guess it's only fitting that I should shut them down again. Who knows, maybe some day we can… reprogram them, reawaken their humanity, the way we did yours, Moon.'
'Yes,' said Moon. 'Maybe someday.'
'In the meantime we'd better contact the Empire, and call for a relief team,' said Owen. 'There's a lot of people here who are going to need a lot of help once we unplug them from the Hadenmen machines. We may never be able to undo everything that was done to them, but we have to try. We have to save as many as we can.'
'They're not your responsibility, Owen,' said Hazel gently. 'None of this was. Let it go.'
'Maybe,' said Owen. He looked at Moon. 'You've lost your people again. I'm sorry.'
'They were never really my people,' said Moon. 'I just wished they were.'
'Come with us,' said Hazel. 'Be one of us again. We're your family now.'
Moon looked at Bonnie and Midnight. 'That should be… interesting. Are you two really alternate versions of Hazel?'
'We like to think she's an alternate version of us,' said Midnight. 'And we've decided to stick around for a while, see how things play out in this universe.'
'Right,' said Bonnie. 'I could use a break from running Mistworld, and I do miss a little action now and again.'
'And it'll mean we can spend more time with Owen,' said Midnight brightly.
'Oh, good,' said Owen, and glared at Hazel as she tried to stifle her laughter.
CHAPTER FIVE
Old Hatreds and New Revenges
Jack Random paced back and forth in Ruby Journey's luxurious apartment, waiting impatiently for her to make an appearance. They were running late again, but that was nothing unusual where Ruby was concerned. She never let herself be hurried by anyone, outside of actual armed conflict. He kept himself from looking at the clock on the wall yet again by an act of extreme self-control, and glared around the apartment as though he could force Ruby into appearing through sheer willpower. It didn't work.
There was a lot to look at in the apartment. It had all the comforts money and intimidation could bring, including a few that were technically illegal, though Jack doubted anyone had dared point that out to Ruby. There were thick rugs on the floor, tacky paintings of dubious taste on three of the walls, and a huge holoscreen that covered all of the fourth wall. A glass chandelier, quite amazingly awful in its clumsy ostentation, hung far too low from the ceiling of a room far too small for it. Ruby had one in each room. She liked chandeliers.
Rickety antiques stood next to the very latest in leisure designs, ostentatiously ignoring each other. The antiques looked as though they'd collapse under him if he so much as thought about sitting on them, and the comfy chairs all insisted on giving him a massage whether he wanted one or not. Jack gave them a wide berth. He felt very firmly that furniture should know its place, and not get overly familiar.
