Deathstalker 04 - Deathstalker Honor

show you everything.”
    He led them into a tall steel tower with no windows, and the door closed and locked itself behind the last Hadenman to accompany them. Most stayed outside, but twenty augmented men remained with them.
    Owen didn’t let it get to him. The Hadenmen might think that twenty were enough to enforce their will, but they’d never seen Maze powers working at their full extent. They were in for one hell of a surprise.
    Moon opened a door that looked like any other and ushered the human party into a Hadenman laboratory. And there at last they discovered what the Hadenmen had been doing with their human prisoners. Owen had to fight for control. They were waiting for him to break down. When he did finally fight back, he wanted to be sure it was his idea. He could feel Hazel shaking at his side. He didn’t dare look around to see how Bonnie and Midnight were taking it. Before them, in a gleaming, spotless room that seemed to go on forever, the people of Brahmin II had been reduced to mere experiments. Some had been plugged into working machines, to see if they could function as Hadenmen did. Wires pierced their skin in bunches, and thin transparent tubing plunged into surgically exposed guts, gleaming red and purple in the unblinking light. Cables disappeared into gaping mouths and emptied eye sockets, and emerged again from gray brain tissues exposed by removal of part of the skull. There was no blood. It had all been pumped away. There were too many subjects to count, men and women who should have been dead, kept artificially alive in hell. All the subjects seemed to be aware of their situation and what had been done to them. But none of them struggled or protested.
    “Why aren’t they screaming?” said Hazel. “Damn, I’d scream.”
    “We removed their vocal cords,” said Moon. “The noise was distracting.”
    “Why aren’t they moving?” said Owen, already knowing the answer.
    “Movement was unnecessary, and might have interfered with the tests,” said Moon.
    “So we severed the spinal cord too.”
    “Why?” said Owen, not looking at Moon, his voice cold as death. “Why all this… horror?”
    “People have changed since we last walked among them,” said Moon calmly. “There are clones and espers and adjusted men, and even miracle workers like yourself. It is vital that we understand the current status of Humanity before we begin improving on it. This whole tower is one great laboratory—floor upon floor, rooms upon rooms, dedicated to discovering the hidden truths of what Humanity has become in our absence. Subjects are tested to the physical and psychological limits that we might better understand the ages-old question: what is this thing called man? Would you care to see our findings so far? Our test results have been most illuminating.”
    Owen grabbed Moon by the arm and forced him around so they were face to face. “Are you proud of this. Moon? Of what you and your kind have done to living, sentient creatures?”
    The question seemed to take Moon aback. “It is necessary. Suffering is transient, knowledge is forever.
    And none of the subjects are wasted. Those who survive the procedures will be made into Hadenmen, and they will never know suffering again. Those who die will supply body parts for the greater good. And everything that is learned here becomes part of the great pool of Hadenman knowledge. Man becomes more than man, by his own efforts. That is the creed of the Hadenmen.”
    “But how do you feel about all this?” said Owen. “About the horror your subjects feel, and the horror of what you do to them?”
    “There was a time,” Moon said slowly, “when that question might have meant something to me. But I have been… improved since then.” “Like hell you have,” said Owen.
    “Let me get this straight,” said Bonnie Bedlam. “All this Hadenman crap is new to me. You’re going to improve Humanity by cutting away all the things that make us human?”
    “I thought you at least might understand,” said Moon. “You were not content to be as nature made you.
    You cut holes in your flesh to make room for metal. You endured transient pain for future gain.”
    “Only because I enjoyed it, metalhead. It was my choice. You took these people’s choice away from them. That’s inhuman. And it stops right here.” Her hand moved blindingly fast toward the gun on her hip, but the Hadenmen around her moved faster. Steel-knuckled fists hammered down in