Harley,

My darling boy, the light of my life, my dearest treasure. Here is not safe for you my love, creature of boundless curiosity and darkness, and fear and light.

Here in the tides you must stay, my dear, bobbing against rock and sea-spray. I know it hurts, love. It always does.

It is for your own good, you know. The separation stings harder than any flesh-flaying cliffside or the burn of saltwater in your delicate, red-ringed lungs.

You must keep treading water, Harley. Just until sunrise, my love. The stars will keep you afloat, dozen of blinking eyes, like the lights at home.

You must keep going.

You must not look back, my love. I have sewn your lungs with my own hands, I have coaxed life into the hollows of your bones, traced the curves of your mind with fire from mine own soul.

You are mine, Harley, and yet—oh, how cruel the world is that it cannot see you for what you are, only for what it fears.

Their torches would scar your skin, their pitchforks would find your heart. And so, I sent you to the tides, to the secret swell, where no eye of man may follow. I have given you air, love; I have given you stars; I have given you the cruelest mercy.

Do not let them take you, my creation, my love. You are more than bone and sinew and lunar hunger. You are the wild and the tame, the flicker of impossible things. I have seen your claws glint in the sun, your laughter ripple like silver water, and I have known that nothing in this village could bear the truth of you.

Keep moving, Harley. Let the dawn be your witness. I will not follow you, not yet, but know this: every beat of my heart calls to yours, across the fearful beat of your patchwork heart, across shadow and sun.

I sent you away to protect you, my love. But when the stars fade and the town sleeps, I will find a way to bring you back.

And then… then we will be free.

Harley Porter had not always been this way.

He was once a young, fresh thing, plucked straight from the young gentleman’s college, the sharpest of modern scientific minds. He was the beauty of London, slender and elegant, with a frame that imposed a sense of grandeur and grace upon anyone who watched him.

And Frederick did.

It was a late night at the students’ pub, and Frederick Dalloway was nursing a glass of whiskey, scanning the room for the next bright mind to succeed him. He was not old, not aged, frail or ailing by any means: he was an innovator. A man who pushed through the boundaries of right and wrong, who stuffed the walls of that essential human organ called morality until its vessels burst. That kind of thinking was dangerous here.

He needed a protégée: and along came Harley.

Frederick had approached the young thing posing as a hiring manager, seeking apprentices for the top doctors and surgeons in the country. Harley had needed some plying—a drink or two, a little money for the rest of the week, an immediate confirmation of work the next Thursday—until he held out his hand. His pale, slender fingers outstretched like a promise towards Frederick’s weathered and calloused ones.

And with that handshake: his fate was sealed.

Harley Porter had become his.

Mr Dalloway stood in the laboratory with the sleeves of his white coat turned up, back to the room, watching the street below. People shouted and clambered over each other, spilling from buses, coaches, houses and shopfronts in an effort to avoid the silence of London. Metropolitan ants, he called them, small proponents of life who followed the sugary pull of money, or family, or tradition, or religion until their blind trek had led them into the arms of death.

He resented that. He was not a man led astray by such earthly ideals. He was a scientist: an innovator: a pioneer who sought to rise above such things and redefine humanity itself.

He only turned when Harley arrived, sun catching his golden blonde hair.

“Good afternoon, sir,” the young man outstretched his hand again, fingers unfurling like a lily-blossom blooming.

Frederick met his with a firm shake. “Nice to see you again, Mr Porter. Please, call me Frederick.”

Harley nodded, and set his briefcase down, producing a small notepad and pen. “So,” he flipped to a fresh page, pen poised. “What is it you do here, Frederick?”

Mr Dalloway swept in front of him, lifting his chin with his index finger. “My boy, do you think you are here merely to take notes? To be my shadow in a lab meant for the brightness of human ingenuity?” Harley seemed to quaver gently beneath him, eyes gleaming. “No, boy. You are bright. Show me what you can do.”

He followed behind Harley, boots echoing his on the stone floor, guiding his shoulders until they circled the room and both stood before a table in the corner, lit only by one softly glowing lamp. He withdrew the sheet from the table, revealing a rabbit: pinned down spreadeagle, eyes glossy with the sheen of recent death. Beside it lay a selection of implements, scalpels, scissors, forceps.

“Go, on Harley. Show me.”

The following six months passed without incident.

Harley involved himself in the work bodily, and had not let lack of easy money dissuade him. This one, Dalloway thought, this one is perfect. He had ambition to rival the Gods, and the skill set to follow through.

He had lacked payment on his room at the boarding house, and so slept on the floor of the backroom of the lab, next to Frederick’s bed. Still, he brought home tea and bread and meat and butter and carrots home from market each week, and Dalloway did not question how, as long as Harley did not question the endless supply of specimens and chemicals flowing in either.

For a while, they worked like this, in companionable tandem, both working to overcome the prison of humanity.

Yet, as the days grew colder and nights longer, they became intertwined in each other, breath on neck in slumber and in waking. One night, Frederick awoke to find himself curled into the body of Mr Porter, and did not move until the other man threatened to awaken. They worked tirelessly on a single project: the creation of a single cure for humanity.

That night, a storm broke, its feverish downpour ripping trees from their roots, wind beating upon the pane like the ghosts of London. The two men took shelter in the backroom, gale slipping through the cracks in the glass, whipping the labratory into a chaos of brass and flame and glass and organs.

A clattering noise from across the room caught Frederick’s attention, and he glanced up just in time to see the vial of liquid teeter precariously on the edge of the counter.

“No,” he muttered under his breath. “Not now.”

Before he could make a move, the vial tipped over, spilling its precious contents onto the floor in a slick, amber stream. The liquid hissed as it met the floorboards, seeping into the cracks with a faint, almost mournful sound.

He moved toward the mess with lightning speed, his mind racing. “Harley!” he barked, turning sharply toward the other man, who stood nearby, wide-eyed in the dim glow of the candlelight. “You’ve—” His voice faltered for a moment. “You’ve got to save it.”

Frederick grabbed Harley by the arm, pulling him forward. “Do you understand?” he whispered, his breath ragged with exertion, “Do you understand what we’ve almost done? What you could do? What we could be?”

Without a word, Harley dropped to his knees beside the spilled elixir. The liquid gleamed on the floor like something sacred. His breath came in short bursts as his fingers curled around the damp wooden boards, and he saw, in the back of his mind, the face of the world they could create, the new dawn they could usher in.

Frederick’s lips twitched into a half-smile, hand on the back of Harley’s head, pushing him down to the floor.

Harley pressed his lips to the damp wood, the elixir cool on his tongue as he sucked it from the ground, burning and forcing his throat to constrict.

For a moment, nothing happened.

And then all the world was fire.