The Lazarus Engine – Chapter 20
The Engine Stops
The counter-measure buzzed against the engine’s housing. The great gears stuttered, then slowed, then stopped altogether. The heartbeat faltered. For one precious second, there was silence.
Then Charlotte threw herself onto the engine.
“No!” she screamed. “You can’t stop it! He’s almost alive!”
She grabbed the main gear with her bare hands and tried to turn it. The brass teeth bit into her palms. Blood smeared the metal. But the gear did not move.
“The counter-measure is blocking the current,” Thorne said. “The engine can’t wind without electricity.”
Charlotte looked at him. Her eyes were wild, desperate. “Then give it electricity. Use your heart. You’ve been dead. Your heart has stopped. It can restart his.”
Thorne shook his head. “That’s not how it works. The engine can’t transfer a heartbeat. It can only mimic one. Your father’s heart is beating because you’ve been feeding it power from the victims. But that power is running out. In a few hours, his heart will stop again.”
“No.” Charlotte pressed her bloody hands to the glass chamber. Inside, her father’s heart was still beating—weakly, irregularly, but beating. “There has to be another way.”
“There is.” Gray stepped forward. “Let him go. Let him die peacefully. Bury him beside his sister. End this.”
Charlotte looked at Gray. At Thorne. At the clock. Eleven fifty-nine.
“The third winding,” she whispered. “It was supposed to bring him back.”
“It brought you back,” Thorne said. “To life. To the world. To the people who care about you. Isolde. The servants. Even me.” He took a step toward her. “You don’t need an engine to be alive, Charlotte. You already are.”
Charlotte’s hands fell from the glass chamber. Her shoulders sagged. The mechanical hand lay twitching on the floor, forgotten.
“I’ve spent ten years building this,” she said. “Ten years. And now—”
“Now you can spend the next ten years living. Really living. Not chasing ghosts.”
The clock began to chime.
Midnight.
Thorne held his breath. Gray reached for her truncheon.
But nothing happened. The engine did not wind. The hearts did not stop. The great clock chimed twelve times, and the only sound was the echo of bells.
Charlotte fell to her knees.
“It’s over,” she said. “It’s really over.”
Thorne knelt beside her. “It’s just beginning.”
He pulled out a pair of handcuffs—not for her, but for the engine. He locked the counter-measure onto the main gear, ensuring it could never turn again.
Gray helped Charlotte to her feet. The young woman was crying—silent tears that cut tracks through the blood on her face.
“Constable Gray,” Thorne said. “Take her downstairs. Get her to a doctor.”
Gray nodded. “What about you?”
Thorne looked at Victor March’s body. At the glass chamber. At the heart that still beat, but would soon stop.
“I’ll stay. I’ll make sure he’s buried properly. With his sister.”
Gray led Charlotte toward the stairs.
At the top of the steps, Charlotte turned. “Dr. Thorne. The mechanical hand. It has a memory. It recorded everything—every heartbeat it stopped, every engine it wound. You can use it as evidence.”
Thorne picked up the hand. Its fingers were still. But deep inside, he could hear a faint ticking.
“Thank you, Charlotte.”
She nodded and descended.
Thorne stood alone in the belfry, the clock silent above him, the dead man’s heart beating its last.
He placed the mechanical hand in his satchel.
Then he sat down on the cold stone floor and waited for dawn.