Deathstalker 05 - Deathstalker Destiny

Wolfling,
    "the Maze protected itself by jumping forward through Time. When it reappeared around the baby, everything was as it had been. You never did understand the nature of the Madness Maze. What you see is merely the physical manifestation of something far greater. The tip of a very large, very alien iceberg. The Maze is just the intrusion into our reality, into our mere three dimensions, of something far greater; a mere fraction of an alien device so vast that one glimpse of the whole thing would blast your reason away."
    "How very metaphysical," said Silence. "I'll be impressed later, when I've got time. All that really matters now is the Darkvoid Device. Parliament sent me here to find and obtain it, and bring it back to use against the Recreated, to save the homeworld and Humanity. Nothing else matters."
    "It's not that simple," said Owen. "Giles thought he could use the baby's power to stop a rebellion. Instead, the baby murdered billions of people. Who knows what he might do, when he wakes again? This isn't a weapon we dare use, Silence.
    We don't know how to aim it, focus it, or even turn it off. That small baby could actually be a greater threat to Humanity than all the Recreated put together."
    "That's theory," said Silence. "I have to deal in facts. The Recreated are a threat now. And I have my orders."
    "We'll stop you, if we have to," said Owen.
    "Humans," said the Wolfling. "With your species on the edge of extinction, still you bicker and quarrel. Come with me, fools. The Madness Maze is waiting for you. Perhaps you can learn wisdom from it, in the time you have left."
    The Madness Maze was right back where it had been, as enigmatic and unsettling as ever. Beyond it lay the city the Handenmen built, after Owen released them from their Tomb. The once bright and shining silver towers were dark and lifeless now, the mathematically straight streets silent and deserted, with no trace anywhere of the augmented men who created the city to be the wellspring of their rebirth.
    "They all went into the Maze," said the Wolfling. "Every last one. It called to them, in a voice their original creators would have recognized, and they could not stand against it. They all went in, and none came out. That is the nature of the Maze; to judge and condemn the unworthy. They all went mad, or died, and the Maze took them into itself forever. Their time was over. They were incapable of becoming."
    "Becoming?" said Hazel sharply. "Becoming what?"
    "Only the Maze can answer that question," said the Wolfling. "And you must go into the Maze to ask it."
    Hazel scowled. "I've never liked the word must. And besides; that damned thing almost drove me crazy last time. I'm in no hurry to give it another crack at me."
    "You have no choice," said Wulf. "The baby is waking. His fate, your fate, and Humanity's fate all meet their destiny together, here, at the heart of the Maze.
    Either you go in, and complete your journey at last, or everything you have done
    and stood for has been for nothing. The Recreated will destroy your species, and you will die, alone and incomplete and far from everything you hold most dear."
    The four humans looked at the Madness Maze, and felt it looking back. At first glance it seemed straightforward enough. A simple pattern of tall steel walls, shining and shimmering, but the more you looked at it the more complex you realized it was. The pattern unfolded before their eyes like a continuously blooming flower, becoming ever more subtle and intricate, like the folded convolutions of the brain. The walls were twelve feet high and only a fraction of an inch thick, and Owen remembered clearly how deathly cold they had been to the touch. The paths between the walls led to knowledge and madness, inspiration and evolution or a terrible death; the birth of a new kind of Humanity, or the death of the old. In the Maze was every dream you ever had, including all the bad ones. Perhaps especially the bad ones. Birth is always painful.
    It was calling to them. They could all feel it, on levels they couldn't comprehend or resist. As Hazel had said, only partly in jest, they had unfinished business with the Maze. Or it with them. Silence looked at the shimmering structure before him, and tried to remember the good men and women of his crew it had killed, but still something drew him to it. He had never passed all the way through. He had turned back to save Investigator Frost, because the Maze was killing her, and he