The Lazarus Engine – Chapter 29
The Countdown
The Royal Observatory at Greenwich sat on a hill overlooking the Thames. By day, it was a place of science and precision—the home of Greenwich Mean Time, the prime meridian, the line that divided the world’s clocks. By night, it was a silhouette of domes and telescopes, dark and silent.
Thorne arrived at 11:30 PM. He had come alone, as the letter demanded. Gray was somewhere behind him in the fog, invisible, waiting.
He climbed the hill.
The gate was unlocked. The door to the Octagon Room was ajar. He stepped inside.
The room was circular, lined with telescopes and chronometers. In the center, standing beneath the great equatorial telescope, was a woman.
She was young—mid-twenties—with dark hair and pale skin. Her hands were scarred, just as Crowne had said. And on her wrist, she wore a brass gauntlet—smaller than the mechanical hand, but similar. Its fingers twitched.
“Dr. Thorne,” she said. “Thank you for coming.”
“Who are you?”
“My name is Mary Smith. But that’s not my real name.” She smiled. “My real name is Mary March. Victor March’s niece. Charlotte’s cousin.”
Thorne’s blood ran cold. “March had a brother?”
“A younger brother. He was not a scientist. He was a farmer. He died of consumption in 1845. But before he died, he had a daughter. Me.”
Mary touched the brass gauntlet. “My father never spoke about Victor. He was ashamed of him. But after my parents died, I found letters. Descriptions of the engine. The dream of resurrection. I wanted to finish what my uncle started.”
“By killing innocent people?”
“By perfecting the engine. Cornelius Ashe was a test. His heart had never stopped. I wanted to see if the engine could stop it. It could.” Mary raised the gauntlet. “And now I want to see if it can restart.”
Thorne looked at the telescope above her. At the chronometers on the walls. At the brass gauntlet on her wrist.
“Charlotte stopped. She surrendered. She chose life.”
“Charlotte was weak. I am not.”
Mary pressed a button on the gauntlet.
The room filled with a low hum—the sound of an engine warming up. Thorne felt his own heart skip. He reached for the counter-measure in his pocket.
But Mary was faster.
She raised the gauntlet and pointed it at Thorne’s chest.
“Your heart has been stopped before, Dr. Thorne. It should be easy to stop again.”
The hum grew louder.
Thorne’s vision blurred. He felt his pulse slow. His knees buckled.
Then the door burst open.
Gray stood in the doorway, truncheon raised. She threw something across the room—a small brass disc. Pound’s second counter-measure.
It struck the gauntlet.
The hum stopped. The gauntlet’s fingers went limp. Mary screamed and clutched her wrist.
Gray ran to Thorne. “Are you all right?”
He nodded, gasping. “The counter-measure—it worked.”
Mary tore the gauntlet from her wrist and threw it to the floor. It lay there, ticking, its gears spinning uselessly.
“You broke it,” she whispered.
“We stopped it,” Gray said. “Now you’re under arrest.”
Mary did not resist. She stood quietly as Gray read her rights. Her eyes were empty.
Thorne picked up the gauntlet. It was still warm.
“Mary March,” he said, “you will stand trial. You will go to prison. But you will not become your uncle. You will not become Charlotte. You will become something else.”
“What?”
“A warning. To anyone else who thinks death can be conquered.”
Mary said nothing.
They led her out of the Octagon Room, down the hill, into the waiting carriage.
Behind them, the great telescope pointed at the stars.
And the chronometers ticked on.
Midnight came and went.
The world did not end.