The Lazarus Engine – Chapter 13
The Experiment
Thorne’s hidden laboratory was beneath the shared morgue, accessible only through a trapdoor behind the skeleton display. Gray had not known it existed. When Thorne lifted the iron ring and pulled open the door, she stared into the darkness below.
“You’ve been keeping secrets,” she said.
“Surgeons are entitled to their mysteries.”
He descended a wooden ladder. Gray followed.
The underground room was smaller than she expected—ten feet by ten, with brick walls and a dirt floor. But every surface was covered in scientific equipment: galvanic batteries, copper wires, glass jars filled with preserved organs, and in the center, a brass table bolted to the floor.
On that table lay a human heart.
It was preserved in a glass chamber, connected by tubes to a small steam engine. The engine was not ticking. It was waiting.
“Whose heart?” Gray asked.
“Samuel Briggs. The dockworker I revived. His family donated his body to science. I kept the heart.” Thorne touched the glass chamber. “It still remembers the current that restarted it. It still wants to beat.”
Gray stepped closer. “You’re going to try again. To restart it.”
“I’m going to replicate Charlotte’s engine. To understand how it works. To find its weakness.”
He pulled out the brass engine from Wells’s chest—the one that had been ticking without fuel—and placed it on a workbench. Then he connected it to the galvanic battery.
“The engine’s power source isn’t coal or steam,” he said. “It’s electricity. But not from a battery. From the human body. The engine harvests the victim’s own bio-electrical energy. That’s why it ticks without fuel—it’s feeding on the residual charge in the nerves and muscles.”
“Like a parasite.”
“Exactly. And the more hearts it stops, the stronger it becomes.” Thorne flipped a switch. The engine began to tick faster. “The first victim—Wells—was a test. The second—Hale—was a refinement. The third—whoever she chooses at the Royal Institute—will be the final proof.”
Gray watched the engine tick. “What’s the weakness?”
Thorne pointed to a small valve on the engine’s side. “This. The regulator. It controls the flow of electricity. If I can build a device that overloads the regulator, the engine will consume itself. It will draw too much power, too quickly, and burn out.”
“Pound is working on that. A counter-measure.”
“Pound is working on a block. I’m working on a destroyer.” Thorne unrolled a fresh sheet of paper and began to sketch. “But I need a live test. A heart that has been stopped and restarted. My heart.”
Gray grabbed his arm. “Absolutely not.”
“If I don’t test it, we won’t know if it works. If we fail at the Institute—”
“Then we find another way.”
“There is no other way.”
They stood facing each other, the ticking engine between them.
Then Gray did something Thorne did not expect. She took off her coat, rolled up her sleeve, and placed her bare arm on the brass table.
“Use me.”
Thorne stared. “You’ve never died. Your heart has never stopped. The engine can’t use you.”
“But I can still feel pain. I can still tell you if the counter-measure works.” She pointed to the galvanic battery. “Hook me up. Run a small current through my arm. I’ll tell you if it hurts. If the counter-measure blocks the pain, we’ll know it works on living tissue.”
“That’s dangerous.”
“So is letting Charlotte murder hundreds of people.” Gray’s eyes were steady. “Do it.”
Thorne hesitated. Then he nodded.
He attached copper wires to Gray’s forearm—one at the wrist, one above the elbow. He connected them to the battery through a variable resistor.
“Start low,” Gray said.
He turned the dial.
Gray’s jaw tightened. Her hand clenched.
“I feel it,” she said. “A buzzing. Like bees.”
Thorne increased the current slightly. Gray gasped.
“That’s enough. Now the counter-measure.”
Thorne picked up a small prototype Pound had given him—a brass disc no larger than a shilling. He pressed it against Gray’s arm, between the two wires.
“Now?”
The buzzing stopped. Gray’s hand relaxed.
“I don’t feel anything,” she said. “It’s gone.”
Thorne removed the counter-measure. The buzzing returned. He pressed it again. The buzzing stopped.
“It works,” he whispered. “On living tissue.”
He disconnected the wires. Gray rubbed her arm, but she was smiling.
“Then we have a weapon. Now we need a plan.”
Thorne looked at the clock on the wall. 4:00 AM.
Twenty hours until midnight.
“We go to the Royal Institute,” he said. “We let Charlotte come to us. We let her try to stop my heart. And then—”
“And then?”
“And then we show her that even the dead can choose to live.”
He placed the counter-measure in his pocket, next to the ticking engine.
The experiment was over.
But the real test was yet to come.