The Lazarus Engine – Chapter 14
The Society’s Founder
The last surviving founder of the Order of the Second Breath lived in a decaying mansion on the edge of Hampstead Heath. His name was Lord Augustus Pym, and he had been ninety years old for the past decade. Thorne had met him once, at a dinner party in 1845. Pym had been old then. Now he was ancient—a skeleton wrapped in parchment, propped up in a wheeled chair by velvet cushions and sheer stubbornness.
“He doesn’t receive visitors,” the butler said at the door.
“Tell him Dr. Aris Thorne is here. About the Lazarus Engine.”
The butler’s face flickered. He disappeared into the gloom. A moment later, he returned and ushered them inside.
Pym’s study was a museum of failure. Broken clocks lined the mantelpiece. Dusty blueprints covered the walls. And in the center of the room, surrounded by ticking timepieces, sat the old man himself.
His eyes were milky with cataracts, but they fixed on Thorne with surprising intensity.
“You’re the resurrectionist,” Pym said. “The one who stopped a dead man’s heart. Twice.”
“I’m the one trying to stop your daughter’s madness,” Thorne replied.
Pym laughed—a dry, rattling sound. “Isolde is not my daughter. She is my creation. Just like the engine. Just like the Order.” He gestured to a chair. “Sit. Both of you. I’ve been waiting for someone to ask the right questions.”
Gray remained standing. “What is the true purpose of the Lazarus Engine?”
Pym smiled. It was not a pleasant expression.
“Resurrection is a lie,” he said. “A pretty lie that Victor March told himself. You cannot bring back the dead. The soul does not return. But you can replace it. You can build a machine that mimics a human heart, a human mind, a human soul. And when the original fails, the machine takes over.”
Thorne felt a chill. “You’re not trying to bring back the dead. You’re trying to make death obsolete.”
“Exactly. The Lazarus Engine is not a defibrillator. It is a substitute. It learns the rhythm of the heart it replaces. It records the memories stored in the nerves. And then, when the flesh dies, the engine continues. Ticking. Thinking. Being.”
Gray’s face was pale. “That’s not immortality. That’s a prison.”
“Is it? You are already a prison of flesh and blood. The engine is simply a different cage. One that never rusts, never ages, never stops.”
Pym reached into his coat and pulled out a small brass cylinder—identical to the counter-measure Pound had built, but engraved with different symbols.
“This is the final key,” he said. “The regulator that controls all engines. With it, Charlotte can start the third winding. Without it, she cannot.”
“Give it to us,” Thorne said.
Pym held it tighter. “I will give it to the person who promises me one thing.”
“What?”
“Let me be the first. When the engine is perfected, when the resurrection is complete—let them put one in my chest. I want to see the other side. I want to tick forever.”
Thorne looked at the old man—at his desperate eyes, his trembling hands. Pym was not afraid of death. He was afraid of ending.
“You have my word,” Thorne said. “If the engine works, you’ll be the first.”
Pym handed over the cylinder.
Thorne slipped it into his pocket.
“Thank you, Lord Pym. Now stay inside. Lock your doors. Don’t let anyone in.”
Pym nodded. As Thorne and Gray turned to leave, he called out:
“Dr. Thorne. When you see Charlotte—tell her I’m sorry. About her father. About the experiment. About all of it.”
Thorne paused.
“You can tell her yourself. After we stop her.”
He walked out of the study.
Behind him, the clocks ticked on.