The sewer water surged to their waists, thick with brass-scented blood and the stink of dying centuries. Reg's half-gear burned like a coal in his chest; Isabella's pulsed beneath her ribs in a colder, crimson rhythm. No more shared heartbeat. Just two separate storms.
"Move!" Reg snapped, grabbing her arm. The touch felt different now distant, like reaching through fog. They slogged toward a rusted ladder, veins sealing behind them with wet clicks. Above, reversed bells still tolled across London, each chime peeling paint from the sky.
They burst through a manhole into a Southwark alley at 3 a.m. Fog wrapped them like a shroud. Gas lamps hissed. Somewhere a drunk sang backwards. Reg's new grey hair dripped filth; fifteen stolen years sat heavy on his bones. Isabella moved lighter, faster, her shadow now perfectly synced but flickering with stolen threads she could feel but not yet control.
They ducked into an abandoned clockmaker's shed Reg's old apprentice's place, long shuttered. A single candle. No clocks on the walls. Safe for one hour, maybe two.
Isabella slammed the door. "This is your fault. You chose to repay. You split us. Now the Clock-God sees two leaks instead of one. Twice the hunters. Twice the veins."
Reg rounded on her, aged face tight. "I chose to save your life, you ungrateful aristocrat. The fusion was killing you slower than it was killing me. Now we're separate. Stronger. We can hit the Bishop from two sides."
"Stronger?" She pressed a hand to her chest where her half-gear hid. "I feel every second the Church ever bled from the poor. Thousands. Millions. They're screaming inside me, Reg. And yours? Yours is greedy. I can sense it your half wants to steal more, right now, from anyone."
He felt it too. The gold half tugged at his veins like a drunk at a bottle. One pull and he could sip time from the drunk outside, from the rats in the walls, from.
"No," he growled. "We don't steal blind. Not anymore."
Their first real argument crackled between them. No fused heartbeat to soften it. Just two broken people, suddenly alone in the same room.
Isabella's voice dropped. "Then what? Run forever? The Bishop has the Cathedral. He has enforcers. He has your father's face and your father's plan. We need power. Real power."
Reg's half-gear flared. A vision slammed into both of them at once: Eleanor. His dead wife. Her final thirty-seven seconds, still warm somewhere in the ledger. Not gone. Trapped. The stolen thread that started everything.
Isabella saw it too because their halves were still knotted, even if no longer fused. "Her time… it's calling. We could take it back. Bring a piece of her forward. One honest day, like you always wanted."
Reg's hands shook. The opium tremor was gone, but this was worse. "That's the twist, isn't it? The gear wants us to steal from the dead we loved. From Eleanor. From your mother. From everyone who paid the real price."
Little Thread's voice drifted through the cracked window, soft as rust. She sat on the sill, barefoot, broken watch glowing. "Not the dead. The living echo. Eleanor's sister your sister-in-law, Clockmaker still carries thirty-seven seconds of her bloodline. One drop. One steal. Do it and you gain the power to reach the Cathedral tonight. Refuse… and the veins split wider by dawn."
Isabella stepped closer, steel eyes locked on Reg's. "One life for the century. Her sister won't even feel it. We both loved Eleanor. This is the test."
Reg stared at his hands older now, scarred by choice. The gold half-gear screamed for the theft. The crimson half in Isabella waited, cold and patient.
Outside, Church boots echoed closer. Lanterns swung. The Bishop's voice rolled through the fog: "Come home, children. The Clock-God is hungry."
Reg met Isabella's gaze. Separate. Burning. Still side by side.
"Together?" she whispered.
He nodded once, throat tight.
They reached for the living echo of Eleanor's blood.
The steal began.