Deathstalker 04 - Deathstalker Honor

poison down.”
    “Yeah,” said Owen. “Maybe.”
    They pressed on through the increasingly narrow tunnels. The curving brick walls all looked pretty much the same, but Hazel still seemed fairly confident about where she was going. Owen didn’t have a clue where he was, 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