It took Krahe a short while to work out the hovercar’s manual trols, but before long, she had the mae whirring a meter off the ground. A momehey went shooting off into the distance, s over the city that made up over half of Sector 8. While she had a particur goal in mind, it was a ways out, leaving plenty of time to overlook the subterranearopolis.

  “Neo Babylonia. This city, I mean,” Krahe said.

  “Why the name?” Casus asked.

  “The towers. An a myth of man’s attempt to build a tower so tall they could reach God. The myth ended with the destru of the tower and the creation of the world’s many different nguages. There’s also the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, a wonder of the a world, which the city somewhat imitates. See how the tallest buildings are all stacked o the pilrs, with the tallest being the o the pilrs. bined with greenhouses atop the smaller buildings, you have another sort of hanging gardens.”

  “A yth, given the parallels it has with Zastreon’s history…” the Banisher said. His attention quickly returo being taken up by the sery, and no wonder.

  On the side of a nearby tower, Tower 6, an enormous ad for Wolf and Raven cyberics shone, depig the pany’s twin mascots bedecked in steel. It had been there for as long as Krahe knew — the building had been sabotaged by a disgruntled engineer so that it could only dispy this one ad, forever. At the time, this made sense, as Wolf and Raven had only just stepped into the cyberics market and none believed they could hold up against fierpetition and corporate warfare. However, this particur ad, which had been inteo only run for a few days, had in the end assured their success by turning most of Neo Babylonia onto their products. They were good cyberics sold at a paratively cheaper price, as far as Krahe remembered — nothing of io her, but fantastic for the on end user.

  They tinued in this manner for what seemed like hours, if not days. Time was far more gruehan in a dream, but dream time still seemed to apply to aent. Taking advantage of the deserted ndscape, Krahe swept down to just above street level, flyiween the buildings. Iy, turrets would have sprung up to shoot her down for doing this without permission, but no such thing took pce here. She pulled back up when streets begaing — she didn’t remember the ey of Neo Babylonia, after all. The bird’s eye view, sure. But she hadn’t seen many streets from ground level.

  The hovercar’s radio came alive, and, despite Krahe’s instinctive attempt to turn it off, it tinued pying.. It was a mashup remix from an aheatrical produ and an animation from the early 2000s. A piano line and operatic vocals led into the dark and sorrowful voice of a male singer, a er. He sung of dreaming the impossible dream, fighting the uable foe, of bearing with unbearable sorrow and righting the unrightable wrong. Of how that was his quest, no matter how hopeless, to be willing to die so that honor and justice may live. Even when she ged the station, the song stayed the same — the only sigton even worked was the sound of a raven’s caw whenever she pressed it, barely audible through the music. Clig her tongue, she gave up and just left it alone.

  “And the world will be better for this, that one man, sed and covered with scars, still strove with his st ounce of ce, to- touch the untouchable, break the unbreakable…”The er’s sorrowful vocals abruptly cut to a determined, defiant rap, and simirly, the instrumental dropped the more reserved aspects in favour of electro that mimicked the inal piano li a vastly elevated level of energy. It was vaguely familiar, in that she thought she might have heard it once or twice at some point, but she couldn’t pce when or where. Krahe figured this must be some sequence of Casus’ presehat his maion within her memoryscape somehow influe in small ways. At least, that’s how she rationalized this occurrenbsp;

  Casus, khat his presence couldn’t induce such ges. He khat this was a matter of Lady Bd’s subsind, and he had the good mao n it up.

  As they pushed on, simir phenomena began to take pce. Faces appeared on Neo Babylonia’s great spires, and by Lady Bd’s rea, it was clear that she not only reized them — she hated them. Unbidden, bck tendrils sprung up from the earth at the bases of the offending edifices and began to envelop them, reag above the clouds and to the cave ceiling, transf the great pilrs into grotesque, grees. Eventually, they at st reached the end of the city, stretg out into a desote waste, with aed road running through it. They flew over a subterranean ke from whose floor emanated a pale-blue glow, enormous cables snaking out onto its shore and towards Neo Babylonia. The road entered into a yawning tunnel in the cave wall, far off the ground level, and they ehe passage.

  Krahe he hovercar at a rest stop. It was down a left turn at a split iuhrough a set of great bulkhead doors. Despite being a rest stop it was in fact the size of a small town, in no small part due to also being the access point for one of Sector 8’s many surface elevators.

  They spent a short while walking around the deserted town in silence, until Krahe noticed an abrupt shift in Casus’ demeanor, as if he was hearing a versation that Krahe couldn’t.

  “It appears my time is up for now. I shall return again, assuming you do not emerge before then,” he said.

  With that, he walked into the door of a random building. When she peered inside, Krahe only saw the interior of a grimey fast-food restaurant, if it could be called that.

  Akaso