I am seized as soon as the carriage comes to a stop, pulled from the cart and down onto the cobblestone path before the Tower. Enforcers and Brutes fill the yard and I am granted barely a glimpse of the colossal clock holding dominion from the Tower's spire before I am shoved into motion and pushed through the gate.
The Brutes follow behind as we funnel into the Tower. Garbled voices spew from the radio of one of the Enforcer's holding me, the barked instructions sounding just as frantic as my own beating heart. The largest set of doors to the Tower are already open, revealing a smaller inner chamber. We step over the threshold and I become sandwiched inside the lift with an uncomfortable number of soldiers. As we ascend I take the opportunity to study our surroundings; the Brutes' oversized statures make it difficult to see much of anything but I notice that the lift is grander and more ornate than any of the public lifts in the city centre.
Gliding to a stop, the doors open and the lift begins to empty. I am pulled forward once more, my feet landing upon the soft fibres of a rug. Glancing up, my eyes stretch wide to take in the enormity of the room.
Great, peaked windows line the walls on all sides, offering impressive views of Babel's skyscrapers and farmlands. The spaces in between the windows are polished stone, dark and glistening all at once. The ornate chandeliers dangling from the rafters barely manage to illuminate our barren surroundings, the casings of dead bulbs left to fester atop the cobweb-ridden crowns.
The room's most striking feature is the statue displayed prominently at it's centre. Marching towards it, I recognize the Madam's likeness immediately. The statue is twice my size and has been rendered to display the Madam in all of her glory, her false hand hidden in the folds of her robe and a haughty look etched onto her face. As we pass beneath the silent, disconcerting figure a shiver runs down my spine. Averting my eyes from her stoic glare I find the Madam's trademark phrase engraved at her feet.
Progress is Power.
Beyond the statue lies a wide, sweeping staircase. We follow the train of carpet up the shallow steps, ascending en masse until we reach the top. The room's largest window leers over us, it's glass peak joining at a sword's point. The crowd around me parts, revealing a strange collection of scientific equipment and instruments, some of which I recognize only from the pictures I've seen in books. Before it all is an unremarkable desk and red velvet chair. A half-eaten plate of food has been pushed to the corner of the desk and the chair is turned away from us, it's occupant scribbling away and apparently indifferent to the crowd gathered behind her.
My arms ache under the Enforcers' iron grip but I fight the urge to shake them off. As I draw shallow breaths I curse my heart for hammering so mightily and betraying my nerves. Either moments or days pass while we wait but nothing happens, the air filled with only a distant ticking and the maddening scratch of pen against parchment. An eternity of limbo and the parchment is finally shoved away, the pen placed neatly alongside it. We watch as the red chair slowly swivels in place, bringing the Madam around to face me.
Her eyes are dark and full of a startling malice. I don't so much as flinch, meeting her gaze head-on and leveling her hatred with my own.
"Well," The Madam's voice is soft, bordering on the edge of a weapon, "Look what we have here."
I remain silent, biting down on my tongue and curling my hands into fists behind my back.
"You're a long way from home, Runner." Leaning back in her chair, she brings her fingers together in a steeple with her metal hand. "Are you lost?"
"Far from it." I growl.
"Such fire." She shakes her head slowly. "I don't know why I expected anything less."
My temper blooms and I cast my gaze to the ground, fighting to regain my senses. The Enforcers' hold on me is too tight, the number of Brutes too high. Red presses in and I press back, refusing to let the rage pull me under.
"Leave us." The Madam's command shocks me out of my torment. I look up in surprise, stumbling when my arms are abruptly released and the Enforcers and Brutes disappear down the stairs.
I remain very still, my lips pressed tightly together until the doors slam shut and the Madam and I are left alone in the cavernous hall.
"You have a lot of faith in these restraints." I roll my shoulders to loosen them. "You should know that I don't require the use of my arms to kill you."
"You aren't going to kill me." A knowing smile spreads across her sunken face. "You need me."
"Don't count on that."
"None of you would have survived this long if it weren't for me." The smile widens, a glint in her eye causing my stomach to knot. "For years now, I have been sustaining you and your people. I have brought food, water, life to this desert. But of course," she tilts her head, a silvered lock of hair brushing her shoulder. "You know all that. And you know that what I've already accomplished is a pittance compared to what's coming."
Visions of a storm and rain-soaked hangar flash before me. The Madam chuckles mirthlessly, her voice drifting through the fog.
"I can only imagine your disappointment when you saw the rain. Who could have imagined that a bit of water would be all the protection I needed against the legendary Runner?"
"What is it you want?" I snap.
"Temper, temper." She tuts disapprovingly. "I believe it was you who demanded an audience with me. I would have been perfectly content to let you die down in that vault. That was quite the stunt, by the way. Precious, really that you thought you could destroy my labs using my own gunpowder."
At this she spins around, pulling open one of the desk drawers and withdrawing something from inside it. Registering the object she has clenched in her hand my chest seizes and my lungs constrict.
Tawny's detonator.
"Where is she?" I shout in an attempt to disguise the fear in my voice.
"My insolent ex-employee, you mean?" The Madam holds the detonator up to the light, turning it this way and that. "Don't worry about her. The treachery of your rebel friends will be duly dealt with. I'll even take special care of the coward who alerted me to your plans."
Tawny, Simon, Geoff. Any member of the underground could have betrayed us. Disappointment finds me but not surprise; it was always a risk to trust the Babelonians and I lost the right to feel blindsided by people's cowardice long ago.
"It just goes to show." The Madam muses. "You can't really trust anyone, can you?"
Red flares, making it near-impossible to speak. Luckily, the Madam seems content to prattle on, undeterred by my silence.
"I, myself learned that lesson the hard way." She gestures vaguely with her hook. "Take it from me, Runner. You'll make it much further in this world if you rely only on yourself." Coal-black eyes shift from her prosthetic back to me. "Good advice too late, I'm afraid."
"I wouldn't take it, anyway." I say through gritted teeth. "But if I ever need pointers on how to become a pathetic, lonely old hag, I'll look you up."
Fury sparks and I prepare for the Brutes to be re-summoned. Instead, the Madam straightens in her seat, studying me with a renewed interest.
"You're all so eager to cast me as a villain." She taps her chin. "Tell me, what do I have to do to get you to understand that I'm not trying to hurt you? I'm trying to help you."
"Help us?" I spit. "How? By making us guinea pigs for your sick experiments? By trapping people inside this dome?"
"They were never trapped. My Babelonians arrived of their own free will and have always been permitted to leave. Whether or not they chose to take their chances with your rebels was up to them." A smirk ensures that I understand her meaning. "No, I wasn't blind to my citizens disappearance these past few months; I knew that there must be some sort of underground railway in operation and that my missing explosives expert had something to do with it. Believe me, I have been been onto your rebels' entrepreneurial bit of trickery for months."
"But you couldn't do anything about it." I let my tone hold a trace of smugness. "You knew people were escaping and still, they kept slipping right past your fences."
"Because I allowed them to." She bites and I grin at seeing a vein protrude near her brow. "The barriers I put in place for our safety may have caused some difficulties in leaving but finding a way through was never impossible; if people really wanted to go, they could." She blinks, as if having just come to a realization. "Perhaps that's what's made you so angry. The fact that people could have chosen to leave and join up with your lawless savages but they didn't. Instead, they decided they were better off with me."
I shake my head fiercely, refusing to be caught by her snare. "You can't judge people for the decisions they make when they're scared."
"Oh, I disagree. In my experience, it is when they're scared that people display their truest colours. Either one of us is a testament to that."
"You don't know a gods' damn thing about me."
"You'd be driven mad by the things I know." The Madam places the detonator delicately atop the desk before swivelling back around and rising to her feet. She takes her time in speaking, smoothing the wrinkles from her robe and drawing herself to her full height. "I may tuck myself away in this tower but I've paid close attention to what goes on outside it's walls. I've always taken a keen interest in the stories of your exploits and not only because they continually lead to my doorstep." She moves closer. "You were a girl from the streets, brought up struggling hand-to-mouth in the Commons. You made a life of thwarting authority and eventually clawed your way to the top of the desert heap. Last I heard you had made yourself chieftain, I suppose congratulations are in order."
Red pulses again as she begins to circle me, a buzzard considering it's meal.
"You see, I paid attention to your journey because it reminds me so very much of my own."
"I'm nothing like you."
"How ungracious of you. It was always my belief that us City girls should stick together."
The City. Her words jumble together and I shake my head in an attempt to make sense of it. "You're from the City?"
"A stone's-throw from your own birthplace, I'd wager."
I keep my expression blank although my mind is reeling. Choosing my words carefully, I opt to play along. "Why did you leave?"
"Leave?" A bitter laugh escapes her. "How could I possibly stay, after what they did to me?" She raises her metal hook hand so suddenly that I fall back a step, flinching when the razor's edge of the appendage comes to rest against my cheek.
"You remember the dungeons, don't you?" Her whispered question causes my skin to crawl. "The walls, the pain. The deep-seated terror at knowing that any moment could be your last."
I resist the urge to pull away, shutting my eyes tight as the phantoms rise up to greet me.
"Memories like that never truly leave you, do they? They burrow their way into the deepest corners of our minds, festering and reminding us that human beings are capable of inflicting unimaginable pain upon one another. That home of ours? The one that you're fighting so hard to keep safe? That place cut the hand from my wrist. I lost a piece of myself because I dared to steal a loaf of bread."
A shiver works it's way down my spine. The Madam's hook digs in further, releasing a sticky trickle of blood. "That was the day I learned that the world was never going to give me anything in fairness. If I wanted something, I was going to have to take it, myself."
I ease my eyes open, finding her face only inches from mine. Her gaze has softened, dulling her features and making her appear maternal, almost kind. What's reflected causes my stomach to turn and bile to rise in my throat. She is looking at me with complete and utter understanding.
"Still think we're nothing alike?" She withdraws her hook, studying the red-painted tip. "We took different paths, that's all. Some would say that the Madam and the Runner are just two sides of the same coin. We came from the same place, endured the same challenges, overcame the same obstacles. The difference between us is that I did something good with my life. I brought people comfort, safety. I brought them rain."
She raises her chin, her chest swelling in triumph.
"And what about you?" The accusation is hissed. "The Runner is the name on everyone's lips but all I have seen you bring is bloodshed. Death and destruction: that will be your legacy, Runner. You destroyed the one thing that was keeping people alive. If it weren't for you, the Irrigator would still be running and this dome would still bear fruit. An entire society's way of life is dying and it's all your fault."
"That drill was an abomination." I stammer. "It was run by slaves, people torn away from their families. My own brother..."
"The Irrigator was a means to an end. You can't have progress without sacrifice. If a hundred people have to suffer so that tens of thousands may live, would you call that evil?"
"Justify it all you want." I tell her. "At least I know the difference between what is right and what is wrong."
"You're a child." Disgust laces her tone. "Try and look a few inches beyond the reach of your nose and maybe you'll see something more important than yourself."
She returns to pacing, her movements surprisingly swift with a stride that betrays her small stature. I find myself watching her hypnotically, tracing her movements and hanging on her every word.
"That army of savages never stood a chance with you at it's head. I shall have to tell them as much when they arrive." She pauses in her pacing to make sure she's captured my attention. "They'll be here in a mere three days, isn't that right?"
I blink, the denial slipping from my lips too quickly. "No."
"There's no point in lying to me." Her eyes are in shadows but her statement is matter-of-fact. "In addition to giving away your little gunpowder plot, that rebel traitor was kind enough to deliver the information about your army's plan of attack."
I stumble, nearly losing my footing and careening down the stairs. Cruel laughter joins the clanging of bells as the Tower clock begins it's daily vigil. The sounds buffet me on all sides and I realize that this hall must be housed in the spire above the dome's infamous belltower.
"I warned you." Her taunt rings louder than the bells. "The things I know could drive you mad."
Her accusations land in heavy blows, confusing and disorienting me. The colour red tightens it's grip, the whispers growing louder and more insistent. When my tormenter steps free of the shadows I find her in sharp contrast; the very picture of self-control while I struggle to keep from plummeting.
"Poor little girl." She slips effortlessly back into her matronly persona. "To come so close, only to trip at the finish line."
We're not finished.
Not yet.
"Don't feel too bad. I daresay you have been an excellent adversary." The Madam uses her hook to lift my chin and force my eyes into hers. "But you have too much heart and not enough brains to truly be worthy of someone like me."
The cloud rushes forward, igniting me with an intoxicating sense of power and certainty. Killing her would be so simple. Too simple. I can't shake the nagging warning that she's taking pleasure in goading me but it's difficult to think clearly.
I'm running out of time.
"Where is he?" The question that's lingered on my lips every day for these past nine months bursts free. I am granted only the tracest moment of hope before fear turns to fury and the Madam gives the cruelest, most infuriating answer possible.
"Who?"
"You know who!" I shout, barely managing to keep from lunging at her. "I know Will isn't dead, I know what you've turned him into. Tell me where he is!"
"The one who bombed my water drill?" A pitying look pushes me closer to the brink. "Are you really still upset about that? For gods' sake, he was just a boy."
The lonely tick tick of the clock keeping count at our feet is the only sound in the aftermath of her strike. With each tick I force the cloud further back, drawing from the strength taught to me by a person who—even if he had lived a thousand years—could never be described so simply.
"Just a boy." I repeat softly. "He was so much more than that. He was brave, strong...smart in ways that you could only dream of." Courage finds me once more. "He was everything."
"An infatuation. Simply another weakness."
"No, not a weakness." I take back control. "A strength. That's what love is." With the cloud banished, my words come more easily. "I wouldn't expect you to understand. You don't deserve to understand. Maybe your story would have been different if just one person in the whole of your miserable life had cared for you. Maybe you would have found a way to innovate without causing so much suffering. Maybe you'd be remembered as a hero and not the psychotic scientist brought down by the Runner."
The look on her face is murderous, the knuckles on her hand bone-white. I straighten, stretching my arms back in their restraints.
"It's not too late." I tell her. "We can both rewrite our endings. Tell me what you've done with Will," I swallow, my plea born of desperation. "Please. I need to know."
Long seconds pass without her expression wavering. She stares at me wide-eyed, the vein in her forehead bulging and her already-thin lips disappearing into her sallow complexion. In between ticks of the clock her face begins to warp and twist. My heart sinks as an evil smile works it's way across her face.
"It's almost too easy with you." She spews her ruthless venom. "All that legendary prowess and yet you are extraordinarily predictable. All I need do is yank a little on your string and you'll come running."
"May you burn." I whisper.
"Rumours of your growing army whipped Babel into quite the frenzy." The gods, themselves couldn't stop her talking now. "I couldn't have asked for a more welcome distraction from our drought. You played your part beautifully, Runner. Truly."
The ground tilts, the scene turning sideways.
"Not only did you effectively divert the Babelonians' attention, you also went and did me the favour of wiring up the labs for destruction. If I had one criticism, it would be that you took your precious time in arriving. But you know what they say," Her creepy smile widens, "Better late than never."
"What are you talking about?"
"Why, your prize, of course." The Madam sweeps her arms wide, encompassing the crooked space. "Or rather, your unfortunate warriors' prize, since you won't be around to share in the spoils. My Brutes and I will be bringing the stores of food and water with us, of course and the labs will be long gone but anything left will be ripe for the taking."
There is an ominous shift as the pieces fall into place. It was all a plot; an elaborate scheme to lure me into Babel. Seeing Will on the battlefield all those months ago was no accident and neither was the Madam's failure to get the Irrigator running again. She always intended to abandon Babel the minute we arrived at it's gates.
And I did her the favour of walking directly into her trap.
"Babel's time is over." The Madam moves back to her desk and nonchalantly presses a switch embedded beneath it. "And unfortunately, so is yours."
The doors to the chamber burst open and the Brutes and Enforcers stampede back inside. Distantly, I realize that we were closely surrounded the entire time and that I likely never posed any real threat. As the shadows fill my peripherals the Madam's hand falls back to the detonator. She turns it over and over, pinning me in place with her punishing glare.
"Tawny's handiwork was always a beautiful thing to witness." She rotates the dial on the detonator without ever taking her eyes from me. "I wouldn't want to deny you seeing the show."
The detonator emits a high-pitched whine. I stare at the device, heart seizing as I register Will's last hope clutched in the talons of a madwoman.
"It almost seems a shame," The Madam sighs, glancing to the window and looking out across Babel's silent streets. "To leave this place and destroy everything that I worked so hard to create." For a moment she appears almost sad, her eyes glazing over before her grip on the detonator tightens. "But that's progress for you."
Decision made, she presses down on the trigger.