CHAPTER ONE “Right this way, guv.” The boy hurried ahead of Rip, his roughened boots churning the snow and mud to sludge. He kept darting a glance over his shoulder, fully aware of exactly what stalked behind him. John ‘Rip’ Doolan strode through the cold streets behind the lad with his hands thrust into the pockets of his heavy coat. The fingers on his left hand kept twitching, trying to stir some semblance of heat into the limb. Of the right, all he could feel was the heavy pull of the hydraulics in his forearm as the mech hand flexed. Rough work. Rookery work. But it served its purpose. Though the aristocratic Echelon that ruled London city considered him less of a man because of it – less than human – he couldn’t run this line of work without two feasible limbs. Jem Saddler paused at the intersection ahead, blowing into his cupped palms. The work-chafed fingers struck through the end of his gloves. The boy’d lost one the year previous, when the biting cold came in. Not uncommon in Whitechapel, where flats and tenements slumped against each other like slatterns on a winter’s night, seeking warmth against the bitter chill. Few here had coin enough to keep the fires burning all night and from the neat little slash that gaped in the fabric beneath the boy’s arm, the coat had once belonged to