The Lazarus Engine – Chapter 11
The Blueprint
Ezra Pound led them to a hidden room behind his workbench—a tiny chamber lined with shelves of old journals and rolled-up diagrams. In the center, on a wooden pedestal, lay a single sheet of vellum. It was yellowed with age, the ink faded to brown, but the drawing was still clear: the complete schematic for the Lazarus Engine.
“The master blueprint,” Pound said. “Victor March gave it to me for safekeeping in 1849. He said, ‘If I die before I build it, destroy this.’ I couldn’t. It was too beautiful.”
Thorne leaned over the diagram. The engine was larger than the pocket-sized versions they had found—the size of a human heart, with chambers and valves and a tiny boiler. But the annotations in the margins were what caught his eye.
“The engine requires a prime mover. A heart that has already been stopped and restarted. The heart of the builder.”
“March was planning to use his own heart,” Thorne said.
Pound nodded. “He was dying. Consumption. He knew he had only a few years. He wanted to build an engine that would replace his failing heart—keep him alive indefinitely.”
“But he died before he could complete it,” Gray said.
“He died because he tried to complete it. The first prototype failed. Stopped his heart for good. His daughter Charlotte found the body.”
Thorne traced the diagram with his finger. “The prime mover. If Charlotte is building this, she needs a heart that has been stopped and restarted. Whose?”
“Yours, Dr. Thorne. Or someone like you. A person who has crossed the threshold and returned.”
Gray looked at Thorne. “Your experiment. With Samuel Briggs.”
“My heart stopped for thirty seconds. The engine could use it as a prime mover. Charlotte could wind it and keep it ticking forever—keeping me alive as a prisoner inside my own body.”
Pound’s face was grim. “Or she could stop it. Permanently. The engine works both ways. It can restart a dead heart. It can also stop a living one. From a distance. Without trace.”
Thorne rolled up the blueprint. “We need to destroy every copy. Every engine. Every gear.”
“You can’t,” Pound said. “She’s already built dozens. Hidden them across the city. Each one is a potential weapon. Each one is a ticking clock.”
Gray moved to the window. “Then we find her. Tonight. Before she winds the final engine.”
“She’s not at the mausoleum,” Pound said. “Not anymore. She’s preparing for the demonstration. The public resurrection. She wants witnesses.”
“Where?”
Pound hesitated. Then he pulled a folded newspaper from his pocket. The headline: “Royal Institute to Host Midnight Lecture on Galvanism – Dr. Aris Thorne to Speak.”
“But I never agreed to that,” Thorne said.
“Charlotte arranged it. In your name. She wants you there. She wants the crowd. She wants to show them that death can be conquered—by killing you in front of them.”
The clock on the wall ticked toward 2:00 AM.
Twenty-two hours until midnight.
“We have to cancel the lecture,” Gray said.
“No,” Thorne replied. “We have to attend. But on our terms. We’ll set our own trap. Pound—can you build a device that blocks the engine’s frequency? A counter-measure?”
Pound’s eyes lit up. “I can try. I have March’s notes. If I work through the night—”
“Do it. Gray and I will go to the mausoleum. We need to see what Charlotte left behind.”
Pound handed Thorne a brass key. “For the crypt. Vane’s mausoleum. It’s in the cemetery behind the manor. Be careful. The dead don’t like to be disturbed.”
Thorne took the key.
They left the workshop and stepped into the fog.
Behind them, Ezra Pound locked the door and began to work.
And somewhere in the darkness, a brass hand ticked.