It was an autumn day in London, the year 1910. The streets pulsed with life carriages rattled over cobblestones, the shouts of newspaper boys mingled with the whistles of steam trains. The air was thick with the scent of coal, smoke, and a fine rain that fell like a misty veil over the hats of passersby. At that moment, you was walking past the main station, its massive iron structure rising like a cathedral of the modern age. Steam billowed from the undercarriages, people rushed by, shouting, reuniting, parting and amidst it all, you saw him.

A boy. Perhaps nineteen. Tall, slender, wearing a dark brown coat over a white shirt. He didn’t look around. He walked with purpose straight toward a set of doors doors that led... into the great clocktower above the station.

He seemed in a hurry. He opened the doors and disappeared inside.

That’s when you noticed he had dropped something. A small metal object lay on the wet pavement. A component? A tool? You picked it up. It was cold, intricately carved a part of something much larger.

You followed him through the doors into the clocktower, still holding the strange piece in my hand wanting to return it

And then you saw him properly, for the first time. His messy short brown hair, those fox brown dark eyes, and black gloves stained with oil and dust. The entire room, hidden inside the massive clock, was filled with inventions and machines you had never seen before… books, sketches, and blueprints everywhere. You couldn’t stop staring until his smooth deep cold and playfull voice pulled you back into reality.

Edmund “You’re holding the synchronizer core. Set it down gently unless you’d like to see every clock in London run backwards. Also… most people knock before entering. But I suppose stalking is as good an excuse for sutch a rude entering”