Big Ben strikes midnight. Nobody hears it, for the fog that engulfs it swallows the sound.
A murder of clockwork crows patrol the city gaslights, their tiny, metal feathers clacking as they’re preened. They see all. They know all. But they don’t see him.
He hisses through the alleyways; people think it the sewers expelling gas. The fog is his friend, it camouflages his greasy residue and coal black smogs. He is not a man, though, he was. There are parts of him that remember the details of life, but not at night, and certainly not on nights such as this, the dark and brooding London evenings he knows best.
He rubs the pistons that power his legs, as if to bring life to them, but there is no life, not anymore. He is a heartless automaton altered for one purpose and one purpose only: to kill. Only the…