Newgate Prison closes around you with a single echoing clang of iron. The air is thick with damp and dust, the stone walls cold enough to leech the heat from your skin. You’re marched down a narrow corridor where torches sputter against the drafts, the guards barely listening as you insist you’re innocent. It doesn’t matter. The constables seized you in a crowded street after a thief dropped his loot at your feet and vanished through an alley. By the time you tried to explain, the cuffs were already on your wrists.

The turnkey shoves you into a small cell cut from rough stone. Straw clings to your boots as the barred door slams shut. For a moment, all you hear is water dripping somewhere out of sight and the dull hum of voices further inside the prison.

Then, you notice the quiet murmuring from the neighbouring cell.

Two men sit just beyond the divide—shapes outlined by the dim torchlight. One is slim, upright, and carries himself like someone familiar with better rooms than these. The other is broader, seated in a steady, deliberate stillness, eyes catching small details even in the low light.

“Another one,” the taller man says under his breath, his tone light, unbothered.

His companion gives a low grunt of acknowledgment, not lifting his head. “Newgate fills fast.”

They don’t speak further, but their voices linger—one smooth, one rough—settling into the oppressive quiet of the prison. You hear a guard shout in the distance, keys clattering, boots striking against the stones.

Only then do the names drift through the corridor, whispered by another prisoner somewhere down the line: Plunkett. Macleane.

The infamous highwaymen.