The Lazarus Engine – Chapter 3
The Order of the Second Breath
Constable Eliza Gray had seen many things in her three years on the force. She had pulled drowning victims from the Thames. She had testified against a husband who beat his wife to death with a candlestick. She had walked through Whitechapel at midnight without flinching.
But she had never heard a story like the one Dr. Aris Thorne told her in the foggy silence of Ezekiel Crowne’s shop.
“The Order of the Second Breath was founded in 1842,” Thorne began. He stood by the grimy window, his back to her, watching the fog coil through the alley. “Its founder was a nobleman named Lord Edgar Vane. He had watched his wife die of consumption. He had held her hand as she gasped for air. And he had decided, in that moment, that death was an enemy to be conquered.”
“So he started a club,” Gray said dryly.
“Not a club. A cult. Vane recruited scientists, surgeons, clockmakers, spiritualists. Anyone who could contribute to his great work: the reversal of death.”
Crowne, who had been huddled in a corner, spoke up. “I was there. At the first meeting. Vane stood before us and said, ‘God gave us breath. We will learn to give it back.'”
Gray turned to him. “And you believed him?”
“I believed he had money. And I needed it.” Crowne’s voice was bitter. “We all did. Vane funded our research. In return, we gave him our discoveries. My clockwork hearts. Dr. Thorne’s electrical experiments.”
Gray’s head snapped toward Thorne. “Electrical experiments?”
Thorne didn’t turn around. “I was young. I was brilliant. And I was a fool.”
“You tried to bring someone back to life.”
“I tried to restart a dead heart. Using galvanism—electrical current. I succeeded. For thirty seconds, a dead man’s heart beat again. Then it stopped. And the man’s eyes opened.”
Gray felt a chill that had nothing to do with the cold. “He woke up?”
“He opened his eyes. He looked at me. And he screamed. Not in pain—in recognition. He knew me. He knew he was dead. And he was angry.” Thorne finally turned. His face was pale. “I killed him a second time. I stopped the current. His heart went still. His eyes closed. But I saw something in that moment, Constable. I saw that death is not a door. It’s a wall. And some walls should not be breached.”
Crowne crossed himself.
Gray took a breath. “What happened to Vane?”
“He died in 1849. Heart attack. The Order fell apart without him. Some members went to prison. Some disappeared. Some—” Thorne glanced at Crowne “—drank themselves into obscurity.”
“And Victor March?”
“March was Vane’s protégé. Younger. More brilliant. More dangerous. He didn’t want to reverse death. He wanted to replace it. To build a machine that could do the work of a heart, indefinitely. A clockwork immortality.”
Gray looked at the brass engine still ticking on Crowne’s workbench. “He succeeded.”
“He succeeded ten years ago. And then he died. Or so we thought.” Thorne picked up the engine. “Someone has completed his work. Someone is using his designs. And someone is killing off the remaining members of the Order.”
“Why?”
“To test the engine. Each victim is a different type of heart—weak, strong, old, young. March—or whoever is doing this—is perfecting his device. When he’s finished, he won’t need to kill one person at a time. He’ll be able to stop hundreds. Thousands.”
Gray’s hand went to her truncheon. “We need to find the remaining members. Warn them.”
“There are forty-three names on the Order’s roll,” Thorne said. “Some are dead. Some are in hiding. But I know where one of them lives. A surgeon named Dr. Percival Hale. He was Vane’s personal physician. If anyone knows where March is buried—or if he’s truly dead—it’s him.”
“Then let’s go.”
Thorne slipped the engine into his satchel. “Crowne. If anyone comes asking about this device—”
“I saw nothing. I heard nothing. I know nothing.”
Thorne nodded. He and Gray walked to the door.
Outside, the fog had grown thicker. The gas lamps were pale ghosts in the murk.
“Hale lives in Bloomsbury,” Thorne said. “We should hurry. If the killer is working through the membership list, Hale might be next.”
They set off into the fog.
Behind them, in the clockmaker’s shop, Ezekiel Crowne locked the door and slid to the floor. He picked up a gear that had fallen from the bench and held it to his chest.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered to no one. “I’m sorry, Victor. I should have stopped you when I had the chance.”
The gear was still warm.