The steam carriage tore through the English countryside, a black iron bullet leaving a trail of thick, choking smoke.
Inside the cabin, the tension was suffocating.
Napoleon gripped the steering levers, his knuckles white. The brass pressure gauge on the dashboard was pinned in the red zone. The boiler strapped to the rear axle groaned with every bump in the road.
"We are approaching the outer toll road, Sire," Napoleon shouted over the engine's roar.
Alex didn't blink. He stared through the reinforced windshield.
Through the thinning fog, the sprawling mass of London came into view. A dense forest of brick chimneys belched black coal smoke into the grey sky. It wasn't a city of light and culture like Paris; it was a brutal engine of industry and commerce.
And the engine was burning.
"Stop the carriage," Charles whispered from the back seat.
Napoleon hit the heavy iron foot brake. The carriage skidded, the massive metal wheels locking up and tearing a deep rut into the muddy road.
They jerked to a halt.
A quarter-mile ahead, the road to London was completely blocked.
Two massive freight wagons, laden with heavy timber, had been dragged sideways across the dirt path. They formed a solid wooden wall.
Behind the wagons stood a dozen men.
They didn't wear the red coats of the British army. They wore heavy black wool overcoats. They held long, polished muskets.
Rothschild's private security. The Liquidators.
"A barricade," Napoleon said, his hand automatically dropping to the flintlock pistol at his waist. "They knew we hijacked the machine."
Alex's golden eyes spun. He zoomed in on the men.
Click. Whirr.
He saw the rapid pulsing of their hearts. He saw the cold sweat on their foreheads. He saw the tight, disciplined way they held their weapons. These weren't conscripts; they were highly paid professionals.
"Twelve targets," Alex calculated aloud. "Armed with standard-issue Baker rifles. Effective range, two hundred yards."
He reached for the heavy iron door handle of the carriage.
Before his fingers touched the metal, a shadow moved in the back seat.
Charles unbuckled his leather harness and leaned forward. The boy's face was pressed close to the glass window.
Charles didn't look scared. He looked ravenous.
The ambient heat he had drained from Major Thomas's boiler was already burning off. The boy's metabolism was a black hole, constantly demanding entropy.
"They are warm," Charles whispered.
His breath instantly frosted the thick glass.
Charles reached for the rear door handle. He wanted to go outside. He wanted to feed on the thermal energy of the twelve men behind the barricade. He wanted to freeze their blood in their veins.
Alex felt a sudden, sharp spike of paternal terror.
It wasn't fear for Charles's safety. It was fear of what Charles was becoming. The boy had crossed a line in Dover. He didn't just want heat to survive anymore; he craved the intoxicating rush of human entropy.
Alex's hand shot backward.
He slammed his palm flat against Charles's chest, pinning the boy hard against the velvet seat.
"Sit down," Alex commanded.
Charles gasped. Instinctively, the boy's body reacted to the physical contact. The thermodynamic void activated.
Charles drained the heat from his father's hand.
The temperature transfer was instantaneous and violent.
Alex gritted his teeth. A sharp hiss of escaping steam filled the cabin. The skin on Alex's palm turned a sickly, bruised blue. Frostbite instantly crystallized across his knuckles, creeping up his wrist.
Agony flared up his arm.
"No," Alex rasped, his voice dropping to a dangerous, vibrating growl.
He pushed his own internal furnace higher. 106 degrees. 108.
He forced boiling heat back down his arm, fighting the boy's unnatural suction. The frost on his knuckles melted, turning into blistering red burns.
"You only consume what I give you," Alex ordered, glaring at his son through the rearview mirror.
Charles stared back. For a second, the boy's golden eyes flared with defiance, like a starving animal denied a meal.
Then, the glow dimmed.
Charles slumped back into the seat, pulling his oversized grey coat tighter. He looked like a disappointed child again, pouting in the cold.
"Yes, Father," Charles murmured.
Alex pulled his blistering, frostbitten hand away. He flexed his stiff fingers. The Golden Ichor inside him instantly began repairing the damaged tissue, but it cost him precious calories.
He turned back to the windshield.
"Ram them," Alex said.
Napoleon blinked. "Sire, the boiler pressure is critical. If we hit solid timber—"
"I said ram them, General," Alex snapped. "We have eleven hours and fifty-four minutes. The market does not wait."
Napoleon swallowed hard. He grabbed the steam throttle with both hands and shoved it all the way forward.
The carriage lurched violently.
The heavy iron wheels spun in the mud, then caught traction. The massive machine rocketed forward, picking up speed with terrifying momentum.
Fifty yards.
The Liquidators behind the barricade saw the black iron beast charging straight at them. Panic rippled through their disciplined line.
"Fire!" a man in a bowler hat screamed.
A dozen muskets cracked in unison.
A cloud of thick white gun smoke erupted from the barricade.
Lead balls rained down on the carriage.
Ping. Ping. CLANG.
Most of the bullets bounced harmlessly off the reinforced iron plating of the cabin. Sparks showered across the windshield.
But one bullet found a weakness.
It didn't hit the iron. It hit the side window, where the glass met the metal frame.
CRASH.
The reinforced glass shattered inward. A spray of sharp shards hit Alex's face.
He didn't flinch. He didn't close his eyes.
THWACK.
A heavy impact slammed into Alex's left shoulder.
The force threw him back against the velvet seat.
"Sire!" Napoleon yelled, ducking behind the dashboard.
Alex looked down.
A jagged hole was torn through the thick wool of his coat. Blood, thick and dark, instantly began to pool.
But it wasn't the pain that surprised him. It was the temperature.
Alex was a biological furnace operating at nearly 110 degrees. A standard lead musket ball should have instantly deformed, softening against his hyper-dense muscle tissue and superheated blood.
This bullet didn't melt.
It burned cold.
A spiderweb of pure, crystalline frost instantly spread outward from the bullet hole, freezing the blood on his coat. The cold radiated deep into his chest cavity, chilling his lungs.
Alex gasped.
His breath, normally a blast of hot vapor, came out as a thin, icy mist.
The bullet was acting as a thermodynamic sink. It was rapidly draining the localized heat from his shoulder, threatening to plunge him into hypothermic shock.
Alex didn't hesitate.
He reached his right hand across his chest. He dug his bare fingers directly into the torn flesh of his own shoulder.
He ignored the blinding pain. He gripped the metal object lodged in his muscle.
With a brutal yank, he ripped it out.
He dropped it onto the metal floorboards of the carriage.
It clattered loudly.
It wasn't a lead ball. It was a heavy, perfectly spherical chunk of metal, gleaming brightly even in the dim cabin light.
It was pure, highly conductive silver.
Alex stared at the bloody silver lump on the floorboards. The frost on his shoulder immediately began to melt as his internal furnace roared back to life, rapidly healing the wound.
He understood the math instantly.
Silver had one of the highest thermal conductivities of any metal on Earth. It absorbed and transferred heat faster than iron, steel, or lead.
Rothschild didn't just know about the "Glitch." Rothschild understood the physics of the Glitch.
If a dozen silver bullets lodged in Alex's body, they wouldn't kill him through blood loss. They would act as a devastating network of heat sinks, rapidly bleeding his thermal energy into the air until his internal temperature crashed and his heart stopped.
Rothschild had engineered a specific counter-measure.
"Brace for impact!" Napoleon roared.
Alex looked up just as the heavy iron grill of the steam carriage slammed into the timber wagons.
BOOM.
The collision was deafening.
Solid oak splintered like dry kindling. The massive force of the carriage plowed through the barricade, throwing chunks of wood and screaming men into the muddy ditches.
The carriage vaulted over the wreckage, airborne for a terrifying second, before slamming back down onto the road with a bone-jarring crunch.
The boiler on the rear axle screamed, venting a massive cloud of white steam, but it held.
Napoleon fought the steering levers, keeping the swerving, damaged vehicle on the road.
They burst through the tree line.
The fog vanished entirely.
The sprawling, soot-stained skyline of London spread out beneath them, a labyrinth of narrow streets, towering factories, and the filthy ribbon of the River Thames.
In the dead center of the city, rising above the smog like a fortress, was a massive dome of solid stone.
The Bank of England.
Alex sat up straight in his seat. The hole in his coat was still wet with blood, but the frost was gone. His golden eyes locked onto the distant dome.
He pulled the glitching Casio watch from his pocket.
11:42:15.
"He knows," Alex said softly.
Napoleon glanced over, his hands shaking on the wheel. "Knows what, Sire?"
Alex picked up the bloody silver bullet from the floorboard. He held it up, letting the dull morning light catch its polished surface.
"He knows our overhead costs," Alex said, his voice cold and analytical. "He isn't waiting with an army. He's waiting with a ledger."
Alex squeezed the silver bullet in his fist until the metal deformed slightly under the sheer pressure of his grip.
"Drive straight to the Bank, General," Alex ordered, his eyes never leaving the stone dome.
"The market is rigged. It's time for a hostile takeover."