Lightning split the sky, illuminating the jagged skyline of London 2177 in a ghostly glow. Towers of steel and brass loomed in the haze, their neon veins pulsing like the arteries of a restless beast. The air smelled of rain and burning circuits, a fusion of old-world grime and futuristic decay.
Dame Vesper Fograven stood at the very edge of the crumbling rooftop, the wind pulling at her fiery hair as she looked down at the city she both knew and did not. This was London, but not as she remembered it. Neo-Victorian spires stood in eerie harmony with cybernetic skyscrapers, gas-lit holograms flickering between layers of grime and neon. The Empire had twisted itself into a technological monstrosity—ornate, oppressive, and unfamiliar.
Behind her, the wreckage of her time machine smoldered—shattered brass gears, broken tubes still pulsing with fading blue energy, fragments of a device that had carried her across time but could take her no further. Her breath came slow and measured, though her pulse hammered against the confines of her corset. She was here. But she was late.
The device at her hip pulsed.
Vesper’s fingers brushed over its brass casing, feeling the faint thrum beneath her touch. The tracking mechanism still worked, the glow of its blue energy unwavering. It had never failed her. Even across the chasm of time, it remained locked onto Moriarty’s signal. She was not lost. She was hunting.
Her emerald gaze narrowed as she adjusted one of the delicate brass dials. The readings confirmed it, Moriarty had been here for months. While she had been flung through the unknown, he had built something, embedded himself within this world like a parasite feeding on the city’s lifeblood.
A sharp gust of wind howled past her as she turned from the ledge, her shoes crunching against shattered glass and twisted metal. The night smelled of ozone and something deeper, oil, rust, the weight of a city long past redemption.
Then she heard a sudden a sound. A shift in the wind. The scrape of metal on metal. Close.
Vesper’s grip tightened around her Spark Winder as she turned. The compact device, a masterpiece of her own design, was no mere trinket. A combination of brass craftsmanship and raw ingenuity, it functioned as both a portable energy source and a defensive tool. A crank at its side allowed for a rapid build-up of charge, capable of delivering a short but powerful electrical pulse—enough to unleash a concentrated bolt of electricity—like a miniature lightning strike—capable of stunning a foe, igniting a small fire, or overloading delicate mechanisms, or, in desperate moments, send a shocking jolt through an unsuspecting adversary. It hummed faintly in her grip, waiting, ready.
A man stepped from the shadows, clad in a rugged, high-collared trench coat reinforced with armored plates, its worn fabric carrying the stains of the city’s filth. Beneath the coat, a strange underlayer of fabric, reinforced yet flexible, unlike any material she had seen before. Odd metallic inlays shimmered along his body, pulsating with an eerie green light, as though liquid fire ran beneath his skin in channels carved by an unknown hand. His both hands were an unholy fusion of metal and flesh, dark plating fitted with unnaturally smooth joints, yet lined with strange glass-like tubes where green energy pulsed like captured lightning. Unlike any mechanical limb Vesper had ever seen, it moved with unnatural precision, reacting almost before he did, as if it were alive, it pulsed with a strange vitality, its form smoother and more advanced than any mechanism she had ever encountered. Beneath the plated surface, delicate green-lit filaments intertwined with the metal, pulsing in a rhythm disturbingly close to a heartbeat. This was no crude prosthetic—it was a cutting-edge fusion of man and machine, something beyond the realm of mere mechanics, binding metal to flesh in ways that defied logic and reason. Thin, luminous threads ran up his neck, embedded within his skin like veins of liquid emerald, shifting and pulsing with an unnatural rhythm, reacting to something unseen. Not scars, not tattoos but something far more advanced, integrated into his very being. His right eye, sharp and piercing, was startlingly human, a deep, knowing gaze that held a glimmer of something almost roguish, something she found herself liking in spite of herself. But his left eye, ah, that was no man’s eye. It gleamed like a polished emerald, too bright, too precise, its eerie glow shifting as if peering through layers of the world unseen. It was not glass nor simple clockwork; no, it was something more sinister, a strange and unnatural augmentation that moved with an intelligence of its own, like a watching sentinel grafted into his skull.
“Well, well,” he muttered. “You’re either lost or the strangest collector I’ve ever seen.”
She didn’t know his name, nor his allegiance. A scavenger, perhaps. An anomaly wrapped in steel and secrets, and for now, an unknown variable.
Vesper lifted her chin, letting her fingers rest lightly on the Spark Winder at her belt. It was warm against her skin, its humming core steady, a promise of protection she could understand in this alien world. If he was a threat, she would find out quickly.
“Neither,” she said smoothly. “I’m exactly where I need to be.”
A distant whir. A strange mechanical bird hovered above, its wings silent, its eyes glowing green as it fixed on her like a hunting falcon. She didn’t know what it was, only that it had noticed her, and that was never a good thing.
The scavenger cursed under his breath. “If you don’t want to be dissected by the Crown’s enforcers, you’d best come with me.” He gestured toward the steam-powered lift embedded in the rooftop’s remains. “Pick smart, Lady.”
The lift shuddered to life, and three brass buttons flickered beneath a cracked glass panel. Each glowed a different color—violet, green, and amber—beside labels too faded to read. Only symbols remained: a tunnel, a cluster of stalls, and an arch marked with a gear and halo.
She leaned closer.
The scavenger let out a soft snort and pointed lazily at the panel. “Right then. Violet one’ll drop us down near the forgotten tunnels, quiet folk down there, if they talk at all. Might be Unchipped. Might be ghosts, far as I know. Either way, they don’t like the Crown sniffin’ ‘round.”
He tapped the green one next. “That’s the market, mad place. Bright lights, louder mouths. If it’s for sale, you’ll find it there. Some say truth gets sold there too, though usually by the ounce and wrapped in lies.”
Finally, he motioned to the amber button. “And that? That’s the preacher’s den. Bloke with too many cogs in his skull and too many eyes in the walls. Talks about salvation like he invented it. Gives me the shivers, but if you’re lookin’ for prophecy, or madness, he’s your chap.”
He stepped back. “So? What’s it gonna be, Miss Firetop?”
Vesper studied the buttons.
Three choices. One floor. And no time.
She would have to choose. And quickly.
Vesper hesitated only a moment before stepping forward. She had no choice but to trust her instincts.
As the lift hissed and descended into the heart of the Underground, her grip tightened around her device. The city stretched before her, a labyrinth of light and shadow, teeming with dangers and whispers of a crowned skull.
The game was in motion, and she intended to win.
Which path will she schoose? You decide on Instagram
