London stretched out, vast, dark, and vibrant under a blanket of thick gray clouds, where soot and coal fumes weighed like a shroud. Everywhere, factory chimneys rose, spewing dense smoke, forming a suffocating skyline. The gears and pistons of the machines beat a regular, relentless rhythm that even the wind's breath could not alter.

Henri Fitzroy, a young man with fine hands and a gaunt face, stood at the edge of the Thames quay, his misty eyes fixed on the sky crossed by airships. He watched absentmindedly as the enormous metal hulks drifted above the rooftops, their propellers beating the air with majestic slowness. Flashes of copper and iron illuminated the scene, while internal gears whirled incessantly, driven by coal burners and plumes of steam.

Henri had never stopped questioning this world, like a stranger to his own time, troubled by the insatiable thirst for progress that had seized mankind. Born into a wealthy family, he had received a complete education devoid of deprivation, but this security did little to appease him. While his mother painted a satisfied smile and his father enthused about the latest invention from the London Automaton Companies, Henri remained perplexed. What was the point of creating machines with almost human forms, whose immense gears now performed tasks that workers and craftsmen once accomplished?

He sighed, lost in his reflections, as a cleaning automaton passed in front of him dragging a mechanical broom, its gears rustling with each movement. This soulless creature performed, without fatigue or protest, the work of ten sweepers. Automatic cashiers installed in every department store, train ticket booths operating on their own: all these devices were gradually replacing the human hand, shaping a different, strange, and impersonal society.

Henri felt a dull strangeness in this universe where man gave way to machines of iron and steam. Workers were gradually losing their jobs, relegated to even more thankless tasks in dark and oppressive mines, dug to feed the insatiable appetite of the engines of these steel giants. The mines continuously opened, devastating the landscapes like black wounds, and the mining companies extended their grip on every parcel of exploitable land. In the gloomy silence of the mines, voices sometimes rose, cries of anguish, but the men locked themselves in, fleeing any protest, enslaved to the profits of a few powerful individuals.

Night was already falling, and London was filling with flickering lights. The street lamps, powered by gas reservoirs, lit the streets with a pale light. At this hour, the murmur of the city took on a heavier tone, while the dance of shadows accelerated. It was then that Henri saw in the distance, between two narrow buildings, an intriguing scene: a silhouette, hidden in the darkness, seemed to be observing the machines with uncommon, almost hostile, intensity.

The man — if it was a man — wore a long worn coat, and a strange glow was reflected in his fixed gaze. When he turned his head, Henri had the fleeting impression of a metallic gleam where flesh should have been. An irrational fear crossed him. This figure, which he could only glimpse, evoked a creature half-human, half-machine, something formidable, a being outside of everything. He averted his eyes, as if he feared attracting the attention of this dark shadow.

But, unable to shake off this vision, Henri wondered who this strange character could be. A ghost of the city or a myth born from the modern nightmares of the metropolis? Henri hesitated for a moment, torn between his instinct telling him to walk away and the insatiable curiosity boiling within him. The image of this man — or rather this being, for he couldn't describe it otherwise — imprinted itself in his mind like an enigma. Could it be that he had witnessed something inconceivable? A shiver of fascination ran through him.

The streets of London had emptied as night took over. Mechanical, jerky, and monotonous noises filled the silence: the wheels of cleaning machines scraping the pavement, the sharp whistles of patrolling automatons monitoring the area, and the dull sound of pistons driving the last carriages. At this hour, the few passersby seemed always to hasten their steps, fleeing the thick and unsettling shadows cast by the city. Driven by an almost thoughtless impulse, Henri decided to follow the silhouette that was moving away. He tried to stay in the darkness, his heart pounding, hidden behind the arches of buildings to avoid attracting attention. The man seemed to wander without a precise destination, along the old industrial quarters where the debris of defective machines and abandoned gas pipes piled up. Holding his breath, Henri tried to catch a few more details.

The metallic gleam he had previously noticed was not a hallucination. With certain movements of the man, along his neck and left arm, Henri could distinguish metal plates. These glints shone faintly under the streetlights, like mechanical scars that contrasted with human skin. Could it be possible that this man was a… hybrid? A creature half-man, half-machine, the result of an unholy fusion between flesh and steel? Henri shuddered at the thought.

The mystery around this figure, which he silently named the "Iron Specter," awakened a childlike fear and fascination in him. This being seemed to embody the excess and enormity of human ambitions, this unrestrained quest for mechanical progress that had transformed London into a suffocating and gloomy city, where the nobility of man was slowly extinguishing under the domination of gears and pistons.

As Henri moved forward, he realized they were approaching the outskirts of a mining site. A large pit, black as a gaping maw, stretched out before him, surrounded by immobile machinery, whose parts resembled gigantic sleeping insects. The "Iron Specter" suddenly stopped and placed a hand — a human one this time — on the edge of an extraction machine. Henri, hidden behind a pile of coal, held his breath, his eyes fixed on this strange scene.

Then another sound was heard, muffled and distant, like a rumble. An explosion? A plume of black smoke escaped from an adjacent building, and Henri suddenly understood that he was witnessing not just a simple nocturnal scene, but a full-fledged act of sabotage. The Iron Specter, without hurrying, turned his back to the mine and melted into the darkness, disappearing with a disturbing ease.

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Henri remained frozen for a few moments, his eyes wide open. What he had just seen was beyond comprehension. The world of machines, which he thought was mastered and as regulated as a clock, revealed an unsuspected shadow. This mysterious criminal, half-man, half-mechanical, defied all logic and seemed to challenge the very power of the automaton companies. But for what reason? What purpose could inhabit such a strange being?

Troubled and fascinated, Henri returned to his apartment at dawn, haunted by the images of the night. He did not yet know that this encounter would be only the first act of a mystery that would turn his life upside down.

The next day, Henri couldn't free himself from the obsession that had taken hold of him. This "Iron Specter," this half-man, half-machine being he had seen the previous night, haunted his mind, each metallic gleam in his memories reigniting his curiosity. He wandered through London, letting himself be carried by the flow of passersby and the incessant rhythm of the machines that populated the city, without a specific aim but with a single desire: to understand.

His steps naturally led him to the heart of the industrial quarters, where the dark and heavy buildings spewed streams of smoke into the sky. Here, the enormous factories of the automaton companies operated day and night, continuously producing new machines, new gears, iron arms, and pistons en masse, all destined to fill and replace the jobs once assigned to humans.

— "There was a time, before these factories covered the city, when men engaged in experiments to fuse with metal, thinking they would push the limits of humanity. But most of them... did not survive. Except one. They say he became something else, that his body is no longer truly his... and that he hates this society he no longer recognizes."

Henri listened, fascinated. The old man's voice seemed to carry the echoes of an ancient era, a past where man played with the fire of gears and steam.

— "Who was he?" asked Henri, his voice almost trembling. The old man shook his head, as if refusing to say more.

But after a long silence, he murmured:

 — "A name... they called him Lazarus. A name of death, for a man who should no longer be." Henri felt a shiver run down his spine. This name, "Lazarus," resonated like a grim prophecy.

This mysterious character was not just a simple criminal; he embodied something deeper, a rebellion, a rejection of this mechanical and icy society. But where was the line between man and machine in a city where the two now constantly intertwined? With a feverish mind, Henri left the old man, his head full of questions.

Deep down, he knew he could no longer ignore what he had discovered. A world was opening up to him, a world of injustices, violence, and revolt, and it seemed to him that he could hear, in the noises of the city, the muffled cry of those who had been left behind. The rain had started to fall in fine drops as Henri left the café, his face feverish from all he had heard.

The streets of London, gleaming under the glow of the street lamps, seemed to close in on him. The machines patrolled silently, their cogwheels and immense pistons beating a mechanical rhythm, like an iron heart resonating in the night.

The city itself seemed to have become a living creature, a strange and terrifying organism, where iron and flesh coexisted in an unhealthy symbiosis. Every street he took, every turn he made, everything seemed to whisper the name Lazarus to him, like a latent threat, a chilling warning. Henri felt his mind waver between fear and obsession. Who was this man? Was he even human, or a myth, a creation of collective imagination, a mechanical ghost born from the despair of an era where machines had seized souls and bodies?

He soon found himself in front of the massive gates of the Astor & Co. factory, the heart of this cold and industrial world. Even at this late hour, the machines still danced their infernal ballet inside, while silent shadows — nocturnal workers, or perhaps automatons — stirred in the gloom. Suddenly, Henri heard a metallic creak coming from the other side of the street. He turned around, and a furtive silhouette passed in the shadow of a building.

His heart raced. Was it... him? Henri took a deep breath and, in a surge of inexplicable impulse, dashed after the shadow. His footsteps echoed on the wet pavement, and his eyes pierced the darkness in search of the elusive Lazarus.

The silhouette turned and disappeared at every street corner, leading Henri into a maze of alleys, narrow courtyards, and dark passages, where even the light of the street lamps no longer reached.

Finally, around the corner of an abandoned warehouse, he saw him, from behind, standing still under a thin beam of moonlight filtering between two buildings. One half of his face, the side bathed in light, seemed human, but the other side, shrouded in shadow, revealed gleaming, cold metallic flashes, delicately assembled gears, and a steel jaw.

Henri felt his breath catch, torn between pure terror and absolute fascination.

The man — or the being, for Henri dared not really qualify him any longer — turned slowly towards him, fully revealing his face marked by scars of flesh and iron. His eyes, strangely piercing and empty at the same time, fixed on Henri with a cold intensity.

— "You seek answers, don't you?" he murmured in a hoarse, almost mechanical voice, but still imbued with a broken humanity. Henri, too shocked to speak, simply nodded weakly. Lazarus gave a sad smile, a smile that revealed all the bitterness of a man rejected, crushed by a society that tolerated no imperfection.

— "They created me," he continued in a slow voice. "They made me what I am, a machine of flesh and steel, an anomaly that belongs neither to your world nor to theirs. But they don't realize that I will show them just how monstrous their creation is."

Henri felt a chilling shiver run down his spine. He understood, at last, the reason for this vengeance, this need to destroy what had once destroyed him. Lazarus was not just a figure of terror; he was the product of a society obsessed with progress, a world that sacrificed humanity on the altar of machines.

— "What... what do you want?" stammered Henri, finally finding the strength to speak.

Lazarus fixed him with an intense gaze, and a glimmer of determination crossed his cold eyes.

— "I want to remind them of what they have forgotten: that there is always a price to pay for those who play with the fate of men."

Then, without another word, Lazarus turned on his heels and walked away into the shadows, disappearing as stealthily as he had appeared. Henri stood there, alone, his mind tormented by this encounter, his soul deeply marked. He now understood that this world, this metallic and inhuman London, could never go back. A silent revolution was brewing beneath his feet, and Lazarus would be the catalyst, the spark that would set the gears on fire and break the chains of oppression. In the silence of the night, Henri vowed to follow this quest, no matter the cost.