The Lazarus Engine – Chapter 16
The Escape
The cab had barely gone two blocks when the horse screamed.
Thorne leaned out the window. In the fog ahead, a shape was moving—low to the ground, fast, with a metallic glint. The horse reared. The cab driver lost control, and the carriage veered into a lamppost.
Gray was thrown against Thorne. The door burst open. They tumbled onto the cobblestones.
“What was that?” Gray gasped.
Thorne pointed.
Crawling toward them across the street was a mechanical hand. Not the one from Pound’s workshop—this one was larger, more articulated, with fingers that clicked and reached like spider legs. It moved with terrible speed.
“Charlotte’s,” Thorne said. “She’s not letting us reach the Institute.”
The hand lunged.
Gray swung her truncheon. The brass fingers caught it mid-air, wrenched it from her grip, and threw it clattering into the fog.
“Run!” Thorne pulled Gray down a narrow alley.
The hand followed. Its fingers scraped against the brick walls, leaving deep gouges. It was fast—faster than a crawling thing should be.
They burst onto a wider street. A coal wagon stood unattended, its horse unhitched. Thorne grabbed Gray and pulled her behind it.
The hand scuttled past, searching.
“Where’s the operator?” Gray whispered.
“No operator. It’s following sound. Or heat.” Thorne pressed himself against the wagon. “Don’t move. Don’t breathe.”
The hand paused. Its fingers twitched, as if listening.
Then, from across the street, a door creaked open. A servant girl stepped out with a chamber pot. The hand turned. It scuttled toward her.
“Hey!” Gray shouted. She stepped out from behind the wagon. “Over here!”
The hand stopped. Turned. Clicked.
Gray threw a brick. It struck the hand’s palm, and the fingers curled inward, catching the brick. For a moment, the hand was distracted.
Thorne grabbed Gray’s arm and pulled her into a side street. They ran until the fog swallowed everything.
Behind them, the hand’s clicking faded.
They stopped in a doorway, gasping for breath.
“We need a horse,” Thorne said. “Or a new plan.”
“We need to capture one of Charlotte’s people. Find out where she is.” Gray looked around. “That servant. The one who opened the door. She saw the hand.”
They retraced their steps—carefully, quietly. The street was empty now. The coal wagon was gone. But the servant girl was still there, crouched behind a barrel, trembling.
Gray approached slowly. “It’s all right. We’re not going to hurt you.”
The girl looked up. Her eyes were wide, but her face was calm. She opened her mouth and spoke.
“Mors vincit omnia. Mors est ianua vitae.”
Latin. “Death conquers all. Death is the gate of life.”
Thorne knelt beside her. “Who taught you that?”
The girl pointed to her own chest. Then she pulled aside her collar. On her skin, just above her heart, was a small brass gear—implanted, like the dental implants in the previous story.
“Charlotte’s mark,” Gray said.
The girl spoke again: “Expectamus in turri. Media nocte.”
“We wait in the tower. At midnight.”
“The clock tower,” Thorne said. “Not the Royal Institute. She changed the location.”
The girl nodded. Then her eyes rolled back, and she collapsed.
Gray caught her. “She’s alive. Just unconscious.”
“She’s a messenger. A decoy. Charlotte wanted us to find her.” Thorne stood up. “She wants us to go to the clock tower.”
“Then that’s where we go.”
They left the servant girl in the doorway, pulled her cloak around her, and walked toward the one place in London where time never stopped.
The clock tower at Parliament.
Midnight was three hours away.