Dawn was breaking over Thornmere.
June Seddon had thrust a carefully wrapped parcel of dry biscuits and cake crust in Aurora's direction before promptly falling asleep, her head lolling about as the carriage rattled on. Confused, Aurora had accepted it, and placed it tidily in her lap without eating anything. She wasn't sure if this was supposed to be her only food until they reached their destination, and for that matter, how long it would take until they reached their destination. If she needed to ration it, she would rather remain hungry for as long as possible.
Could it really be... they were the ones escorting her to the convent?
She was almost certain she could outsmart them. And completely certain she could outrun them. Why make a daring escape from a convent one year from now when she could avoid the convent altogether? Accept a life as an adventuress, starting out with nothing but the clothes on her back.
Or... perhaps...
"The first thing I'm going to do when I leave Thornmere is buy a newspaper," Elda Hughes said blissfully, clasping her hands together.
"A newspaper?" Aurora echoed. "You can buy one here..."
"No, my dear, you don't understand, I mean a proper newspaper - not a doctored one. One with real news - real news from the outside. It's been so long, I don't even know who the current ruler is."
Aurora looked at her lap, feeling uncomfortable. Of course, the current ruler hadn't changed. It had been the same king since she was born. She would have heard otherwise... but something compelled her not to say anything.
"How long until we arrive at the convent?" she finally asked.
"Convent?" Elda repeated back blankly. "You're not going to a convent, you silly girl. I've found a position for you as a lady's companion."
Aurora glanced up, her eyes widening. "A lady's companion? You mean a domestic servant?"
"No, not quite, my dear. Your day to day life will be much the same - everything will be provided for your comfort in exchange for your companionship. It's my nephew's wife - they have only been married a little over a year, but she is often left alone. He is determined to work, you see, despite his fortune. Oh, but of course, I haven't answered your question. How long...? How long? Let me see..."
Elda Hughes held up her hand with only the thumb extended.
"It should take forty-five minutes to get to the gate, but a little bit longer to reach the station," she murmured, extending her index finger, "so we'll call that an even hour."
"...station?"
Oh, but of course they would need to change carriages. This carriage didn't belong to her parents, and the man at the helm was not one of their servants. He had probably only been paid to take them so far.
"And then we must wait for the next train to Cogborough. Of course, I haven't been able to get my hands on the schedule, but Cogborough is not terribly far from here - the trains will be frequent enough. I doubt we shall have to wait longer than an hour. It might even be faster to take an airship but we shall decide when we arrive - boarding and alighting can be rather a pain, but it beats sitting around twiddling our thumbs... so let's say three hours to Cogborough..."
Aurora watched as the lady extended three more fingers and glanced to her other hand.
"Cogborough's capital is the Foundry, of course, so we can switch to a local train when we arrive there. That should get us to Rueborn village in less than half an hour - and I believe my nephew has provided transport for us from there. We will have a late lunch at the cottage - that's where June and I shall be living from now on."
Aurora was aghast.
Elda had mumbled a lot of unfamiliar names and words to herself.
"So you'll be staying there as well?"
"Yes. I've been communicating with my nephew since my husband passed," Elda said with a rueful smile. "He is the only family I have left, and I am his only family, although admittedly we have never met."
She narrowed her gaze sheepishly upon revealing this, and sighed.
"I thought he would forget about me once he was married. I arrived in Thornmere when I was a girl of nineteen, long before he was born. My husband was a gentle man, but he was eccentric - an old soul, who was born at the wrong time. We settled in Thornmere because it seemed to be the only place left on earth that matched his pace."
Patiently, Aurora listened.
"My family knew that I was safe with him, but of course, the circumstances were very strange - for forty years, I have been suspended in time, adhering to gender and class roles that any other woman of my upbringing has not had to adhere to since well before my time. My nephew, he communicated with me in code and let me know that he would support me if I chose to leave."
"Thornmere isn't that bad..." Aurora said with an uncomfortable laugh.
She watched the scenery as it passed - vast fields of green separating grand houses, now waking up as morning reared its head.
"It is a dreadful beast to outsiders," Elda told her, "founded by a nobility that feared its own irrelevance. You should not have been raised this way, Aurora. It was never in you, not from the day you born."
The conversation came to a slow halt as Aurora mulled over the information that was fresh in her brain.
She was still utterly confused. It was a lot to take in.
Deep down, however, she had a strange premonition that she had been saved from something much bigger than her. Something she was soon certain to comprehend.
---
When she next opened her eyes, June Seddon was shaking her awake.
"We're here," June announced softly, as if she were waking up a very small child, although her grip on Aurora's shoulder was strong enough to leave a mark.
"I'm awake," Aurora muttered.
She watched as the lady, assured the other passenger was soon to follow, awkwardly dismounted the carriage. She practically bounced on the pavement outside, like a small, harmless animal, her bulky travel case in tow.
"Are you hungry, dear? We can pick up something at The Pitstop," Elda called from outside. "We have about twenty minutes until the train arrives."
Aurora realised she hadn't eaten any of the provisions that June had given her earlier and sheepishly stuffed them in her travel case before she too stepped out of the carriage. It tilted slightly as she, the final passenger, hopped out into the street. Her vision was still blurry from such a brief, heavy sleep, but she instantly knew that there were a lot of people around. She could hear them. It was like being a bubble of sound.
"Crikey, haven't seen one of those for a minute."
"...and just look at how that young lady is dressed, why my great-grandmother had a gown like that, my mother keeps it in her attic..."
Elda quickly grasped Aurora by the elbow, and the three women began to walk towards the entrance of a tall, stone building. Aurora didn't have much time to take in her surroundings, but she supposed she was "outside" now. Strangely, she felt very little.
Would she miss Thornmere? She wasn't sure.
The Pitstop, it transpired, was a window where one could buy a small selection of magazines and food that had been prepared and packaged for convenience. Elda immediately purchased the newspaper she had been longing to get her hands on, and June purchased a sandwich 'just in case', although Elda reminded her that she had packed enough food for a journey of several days when she had been told it was merely a few hours.
Aurora smiled meekly, and turned her back so that she glance at her curious surroundings.
The place seemed almost as solemn as a church, with golden morning light streaming through windows much taller than Carnall House had been. Even the ceiling was made of glass, and there was a wide, deep trench separating the two islands where people were waiting. Aurora stood on her tiptoes to glance down, to see what looked like a flattened staircase made of iron. She supposed this was what a road looked like on the outside.
"But how does one get down?" she pondered.
The only stairs she could see arched over the road allowing passengers to pass freely between the two islands.
"We'll be leaving from this platform so stay put," Elda was saying. "Don't go too far, Aurora dear."
Aurora glanced at her in bewilderment. She had absolutely no intention of leaving their side.
"I've never seen a train before," June confessed giddily as she took dainty bites of her just in case sandwich. "I'm rather excited, but goodness, I wish there was a place to sit. It's quite tiring standing around like this."
"You're not spectating, June, you need to get on as quickly as possible. Trains aren't like carriages - they won't wait for you, you know."
Train. Actually, now she thought about it, Aurora had heard that word several times that morning.
She had a vague idea that trains were things that existed because they had been mentioned in books, but she couldn't conjure up an image of one based on the paltry words she had read.
"We're travelling by train?"
"Yes dear, this is a train station, after all. What did you think we were doing?"
"...taking another carriage."
"Nobody travels by carriage anymore. Not for a good hundred years or so. Those who can't drive automobiles or don't have an automobile usually travel by train. They're very convenient."
"I'd like to learn how to drive an automobile," June said dreamily to herself.
Elda, to her credit, said nothing, because her facial expression said it all.
In the distance there was a whistle, and Elda directed her two travel companions to ready themselves. June, with her travel case in one hand and a sandwich in the other had to be yanked back after she strayed too close to the edge of the trench to see the train arriving. Aurora, meanwhile, shrunk back behind Elda.
She must be dreaming - surely.
She could feel people's eyes all over her, like insects were crawling on her skin. She could sense danger. She wanted nothing more than to go back to Thornmere and accept her punishment knowing she would never be crowded like this, never have to hear this much noise, and never have to fear the vastness of an unknown place.
And that's when she saw it - the maw of a great, black machine, billowing steam like a dragon breathing fire as it rapidly approached.
---
Of all the places Aurora had passed through that day, Rueborn village felt the least uncanny.
An automobile, it transpired, was like a steam-powered carriage. On more than one occasion, June had burst into tears of abject terror, but she never wailed quite as much as she did in the automobile as the roaring wind ripped her bonnet from her head, and it flew off into the distance like a hideous bird.
"Oh the speed, make it stop! We're all going to be thrown from our seats."
"Ignore her," Elda told the driver. "You'll be fine, June! We're almost there!"
June hated the train. She hated it from the minute it arrived. She hated riding it - the way that the scenery streaked by like bleeding water colors. She foretold of a terrible crash and hugged herself, trembling, for the entire two hour journey. She refused to board the local train at first, and demanded they abandon her there in the Foundry. They were unceremoniously saved from stranding her, however, when an unsavory looking gentleman tried to sell her a pocket watch, and she practically overtook them in her haste to board.
Aurora knew why she was here, but she couldn't understand why June had also come along.
June Seddon's life had been symbolic for every young woman in Thornmere. There had been a shortage of men in her youth, and being one of the sillier, more vapid girls, had watched as her friends were married off, one by one, without finding a match for herself.
Aurora remembered how her mother would warn her: "You need to stop asking so many silly questions or else you'll end up like June Seddon."
As the automobile began to slow, June's wails became sobs, and in the distance, Aurora spotted a quaint, rather weathered cottage with a vibrant green garden.
"We're here," Elda said, barely suppressing a smile.
Aurora was to stay with the two women until the following morning, when she would be taken to her new home, but the fact that she would be a frequent visitor to the cottage was already implicit, and Elda allowed her to choose between one of the rooms as her own.
Even her own bed back at Carnall Hall had never looked quite as enticing as the bed before her. She was not just physically exhausted, but mentally too. She put her travel case down without opening it, and returned to the kitchen where the three women were to have their lunch.
Elda had unearthed a block of cheese and some bread, and was humming as she set the dining table.
"It doesn't seem so different at first glance, does it?" she asked cheerfully.
Aurora nodded, eyeing everything around her warily.
It was almost worse that things seemed so normal. She couldn't bear living like this, knowing at any moment she might encounter something she could neither explain nor understand. The cottage was certainly quaint, and on the surface looked like it had been plucked right out of Thornmere, but...
She couldn't explain it. It seemed so silly.
The cottage was breathing.
There was humming and rumbling all around her - vibrations in places she least expected them.
Obediently, Aurora seated herself at the table and accepted her crust of bread with a stiff thank-you. Elda smiled at her kindly. She seemed younger and less grey in her new surroundings.
"You'll get used to it, dear," she promised. "It just takes a little bit of time."
---
It's like a cavern, he thought. With each step, the clanging of his foot on the ladder reverberated in the air. It was beginning to give him a headache.
"They've been using ferruxite," someone was saying.
"What, definitely?"
"Yeah, I can smell it from here - can't you?"
"Oh, god, yeah, I can."
Lachlan Clarke was last to jump down from the ladder and as such was the last to discover the entire bunker was permeated with the smell. Sweet as cinnamon, if cinnamon had been mixed with shards of iron - ferruxite, the only source of power humanity would ever need.
"Take inventory," he ordered, retrieving his torch from where it had been clipped to his belt.
"No point, Clarke - they've taken everything but some tables and chairs by the looks of things," Whitman explained, emerging from behind one of the doors, "we don't even know if these are our guys are not."
"I don't care," Lachlan responded, "do it."
It had taken them two weeks to track down this lead - even if it wasn't the group they had been searching for, an underground bunker clearly emptied in a hurry was unlikely to have been used for anything as innocuous as a book club. All they needed was a trace of ferruxite or a piece of discarded metal, and they could bookmark it as proof that someone had been manufacturing weapons down here.
Whitman sighed and removed the fountain pen from behind his right ear. "Yes sir," he muttered sardonically.
Lachlan didn't respond.
The other men who had been standing around listlessly took that as their cue to begin searching. The bunker was lit, but dimly, and all of a sudden the room was filled with the crisscrossing light of torches as each member of the unit conducted their own investigation.
The bunker was buried several feet underground. Lachlan had explored a fair share of abandoned factories and secret sweatshops but he had never seen anything like this before. Despite being a bustling city, the Foundry was a relatively new settlement - no one would have been able to elude attention building something like this today.
It had to be old - from the time before ferruxite.
This had to be their hideout.
Bulletless guns. If someone had told him ten years ago when he decided to try chasing his boyish dream of playing detective that he'd spent two years stuck on a case this serious but equally as absurd, he would have scoffed.
It had dominated every facet of his life.
He practically lived in the Foundry now. His young bride went on their honeymoon alone with her maid. Even the matter of them marrying had been raised and settled in less than five minutes when her father approached him. He'd been about to leave to catch a train to follow up on a piece of intel and hardly knew what he had agreed to, although he had never been opposed to the idea.
He just hadn't been able to think of anything else.
It frustrated him that he couldn't comprehend how the bulletless guns actually worked. It frustrated him that in two years, he couldn't track down even a discarded test model.
All they'd had to go off was evidence on a mounting pile of corpses.
"Whitman, you're with me," Lachlan barked over his shoulder. "We're taking this door - men, divide the rest between yourselves."
Whitman was only two years younger than the lead detective, but was still considered a rookie. The main issue was that he was lazy and defiant - he liked being in the middle of the action and responded well under pressure, but resisted anything he believed was a waste of time.
He just needed to be watched closer than others. Sulkily, Whitman began to follow, twirling his fountain pen in his hands as Lachlan shone his torch into the first room. He hadn't even taken out his writing pad.
With his free hand, Lachlan reached into his breast pocket and pointedly forced his own writing pad into the other man's hands.
Sheepishly, Whitman accepted it, and at the very least made a show of opening it up to a blank page.
The first room was almost completely empty - as expected - with only a dented metal table pockmarked with discoloration pushed into the corner. The alarming thing was an open door, that seemed to lead into another dimly lit room.
"Christ, how far does it go?" Whitman muttered. "T-a-b-l-e, table. Okay, the inventory for this room is done - or do you need the exact dimensions? Height and weight? Materials? Distinguishing features?"
Lachlan ignored his companion's inane, sarcastic ramblings and swept his index finger across the table.
He wasn't an idiot. This place had been cleaned out very recently. There wasn't even a trace of dust on his finger.
"Go tell the others," he said quietly, "to have their guns at the ready."
Whitman raised his brow. "You think they're still here?"
Lachlan had already turned off his torch and replaced it on his belt so that he could take his own gun from its holster. "Better to be sure of that before we start investigating."
There was nothing but space - endless open space. Someone must have warned them that the investigation was getting hotter. Where had they gone though? It was impossible to cart that much equipment across the city without someone noticing.
He eyed the door suspiciously. He was beginning to think that they were about to uncover more than just a secret den.
Whitman returned and the two men began to steadily approach. Their entrance into the second room was a careful and meticulous choreography of practiced moves, with Lachlan at the front and Whitman covering him from the back.
"Empty," Lachlan confirmed, "but there's another door. Pray its just a closet."
"I'm praying," Whitman responded with a smirk.
The two men pressed themselves against the wall flanking the door, and Lachman reached out for the door knob. It turned easily, and he wasn't sure if that was a good or bad thing. Instinct gnawed at him from the inside.
He knew before the gunshots started ringing out that they were not alone.
The first shot came almost instantly, splintering the frame of the door. Whoever it was on the other side began firing indiscriminately, and both men sprang into action, throwing themselves down to the ground.
"In or out?" Whitman asked.
"We gonna need that table for cover," Lachlan thought, gritting his teeth, "but we need to draw the shooter to the other room for that to work, and they'd have to be an idiot to follow us."
He'd never been in a shootout that wasn't peppered the sound of bullets and shells raining down.
"Bulletless guns," he muttered to himself, eyeing the splintered door frame. "How the hell do they work?"
"Can we think about that later?" Whitman asked in disbelief. "We need to prioritize survival and apprehending the suspect first."
Snarling, Lachlan began to crawl forward, back towards the door. The splintered wood gave him all the information he needed - he could gauge the height of the shooter, and where they were standing in the room. If he could incapacitate them without fatally injuring them, then he'd be able to hold them for questioning. More than anything, he wanted to get his hands on that gun.
"Wait, we're going in?!"
Whitman began to crawl forward frantically. The two were now sat flanking either side of the door once again with their backs to the wall, shouting to one another over the noise.
"Shouldn't we call for back up?"
"No time - the suspect might escape."
"We came through the only entrance! We've got them cornered!"
"I'm not sure about that," Lachlan said, readying his gun. "There are probably tunnels beyond this door leading to other bunkers across the city."
Whitman faltered and let out groan of displeasure. "Fine," he muttered, "but you're a better shot than me so you go first."
The firing continued as Lachlan got to his feet, slowly sliding up the length of the wall. The shooting wasn't going to stop - there was no need to reload a bulletless gun. He was sure of that. They were made with ferruxite, an indefatigable source that, in only very small amounts, could fuel an entire city. As long as there was a finger on that trigger, they were the ones backed into a corner.
It was a risk. A huge risk.
He dove out, and managed two successful shots through the door before he landed on the other side.
Someone cried out in the room, and there was the sound of something heavy skidding across concrete after it had been dropped. The shooting stopped as abruptly as it had started - they had very little time before it would start up again.
"That sounded like a woman," Whitman muttered, before he disappeared in pursuit.
There was a commotion in both rooms now. Two other members of the unit appeared from the first room, sweat glistening on their forehead.
"Clarke! Two suspects apprehended in the other rooms. Any leads here?"
"One, I think," Lachlan said breathlessly. "Anyone hurt?"
"No, all good."
"Right. I got hit, I think."
Lachlan looked down at the hand he had pressed to his abdomen. As he drew it away to inspect, he was hardly surprised to see it wet with bright red blood, but he was surprised to see just how much he was bleeding. He was starting to feel faint.
"Damn it," he muttered. "My aunt should have been arriving today and now I have to deal with this..."
"Clarke? Clarke?!"
Sorry Aunt Elda, he thought, I might be out of commission for a while. His field of vision was beginning to narrow, fading to black. The pain was too much. He fell to his side and lay limp on the concrete floor of the bunker. The last thing he heard was his subordinates calling his name.