Chapter One: Regarding the Prospect of a Long Drop
Lorelle Harker awoke to the metallic stench of blood. Her own, by the familiar smell. She cracked the gunk on her eyelids open and took stock; a cold, damp cell. Perfect. She forced herself up into a sitting position, resting her back against the cell wall. Her clothes, her weapons had been taken. Nothing but a set of rags and for some strange reason a urine-stained cheap black cloth mask on her face. She tore the mask off in disgust and used it to wipe the caked blood from around her mouth.
No candles, but weak light from the barred window. Lorelle dragged herself over to it and felt a sharp intake of breath. Stretched out before her was a cavern of unimaginable size; so huge that she could barely see the distant walls. A vast sea covered half of it, dotted with islands and in the distance what appeared to be a mountain. A soft greenish-blue light permeated everything, shimmering from what appeared to be a universal crust of some sort of jewel shards on the cavern’s roof. At the edge of the sea, a curiously out of place city glimmered with gaslight. How far had the figure said? A mile underground? Impossible, yet here she was. The Neath.
After a few moments of gawping, Lorelle turned a more critical eye to the vista below. Below was the right word; she judged herself to be some ungodly distance, perhaps half a mile, from the waters below. The mortar around the edges of the cell bars was weak, but that was hardly a worry; the drop would kill any would-be escapee. As Lorelle attempted to figure out a way around this slight difficulty, a buzzing sound drifted into her awareness. It grew steadily closer until after a few minutes an enormous gasbag appeared just below the window; a dirigible!
Lorelle tugged desperately at the bars for a few minutes, succeeding in loosening one, but by the time she had done so the dirigible was already some distance away. She sat back and studied the flight path; it looked to be some sort of supply airship, travelling at a fairly steady pace. She judged there was perhaps a half minute window to reach the dirigible, should she somehow manage to get the cell bars open and safely egress. But how frequent was the dirigible? She mused for a few moments, coughing once or twice. It was time to play the patience game.
-~==@==~-
There was food here, thank God, even if it was watery prison slop. Twice a day a shuffling, hooded figure passed by and dropped off a bucket, picking up the previous visit’s bucket (disgustingly, dish and chamberpot were the same vessel - Lorelle could only hope they washed them at all). This gave Lorelle time to plan, to observe. There was the gaoler’s iron cudgel, the possibility of keeping an eye out for some sort of rope, hell, even the option of trying to sweet talk the gaoler into an escape. Far more interesting for Lorelle were the rats; they frequently passed through the cell, and for some reason someone had apparently tied pickaxes to their backs? Tiny, rat-sized pickaxes.
On the morning (Lorelle based this entirely on when she was likely to receive her gruel, being underground) of the second day, Lorelle lay in wait, bucket in hand. When the rat scurried out of one hole in the wall toward another, Lorelle slammed the bucket down over it and dragged the helpless creature towards her. She upended the bucket and grabbed the rat -
"No, please, stop!"
Lorelle screamed and smacked the rat against the wall until its skull was a bloody mess. Hell’s teeth, had that rat just spoken? She regarded the sad little corpse in her hand with some regret as the realisation sunk in, but set her jaw and steeled her gut. She had killed men (or at any rate, thinking beings) before, no sense in getting wound up over it now. She picked the tiny pickaxe from the grisly mess and set to work on the bars.
She worked the last bar free just in time for the buzzing to begin. It was a struggle to fit through the tiny hole, but years of escapism had given Lorelle more than enough practice. She clambered out and held herself dead against the prison’s wall, clinging to her window for dear life. The dirigible emerged from beneath her and she mouthed a quick prayer before leaping from the face.
Lorelle hit the gasbag with a heavy grunt, but her fingers closed true around the metal supports holding it up. She dragged herself bodily up the dirigible’s bag until she was in a more comfortable position and looked back at her brief former home. Her stomach dropped. New Newgate Prison was not, as she had imagined, some impossibly tall tower. It was an enormous, hollowed out stalactite hanging from the roof of the Neath. Thank God she was free of it. Her future lay beneath, in the streets of Fallen London.
[li]