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The doctor barged into the room, a scowl on his face, which was knocked cleanly away as Andrew drove his fists down, hard, on the back of the man’s neck. With a bellow, the doctor struck the floor, facedown, the syringe in his hand skittering away beneath the cot. As the doctor turned his shocked face around to look up at his attacker, Andrew brought his bare heel down on the side of the man’s face with all his weight. Something gave beneath his foot; the man’s jaw, he suspected. The doctor screamed and a spray of red blew out through his teeth. The young woman in the hall drew a sharp, squealing breath. Andrew stomped the man again. The doctor’s fingers fluttered against the floor like frantic, fleshy spiders. Blood poured from his mouth, nose, and ears.

“Don’t kill ’im, sir!” squeaked the young woman. “He ain’t that bad!”

Andrew stumbled backward, his teeth set against each other, his eyes burning with rage and terror. Had he killed the doctor? Had he taken a life?

He spun about to face the young woman, who was younger than he’d imagined, dressed in a white pinafore and cap. Her hands covered her mouth and her eyes were huge and terrified.

“Sorry, Dolly,” he managed, then raced out of his room and down the hall toward a set of narrow stairs, as the drunks in the ward—deep in their own isolated cells—howled and cheered him on.

***

Sunday, January 11, 1903, East River

“Buddy, you alive?” A thick Irish accent, bemused.

Andrew could not open his eyes. It felt as if someone had stitched the lids shut. His skin was crusted, gritty, and drawn up like a shrunken wool suit. His head pounded and his mouth tasted of dead fish and sludge. The world beneath him bobbed and rocked. “Leave me alone,” he muttered.

There was a guttural laugh, then, “Guess that answers me question. Would that me sainted grandmother could see me now, pullin’ sodden ne’re-do-wells out o’ the river to let ’em sleep it off on my boat. She’d tell me, ‘Jimmy, you just put another star in your heavenly crown!’ ”

Another voice, humored, said, “And your sainted grandfather would say, ‘Jimmy, when you go fishin’ you’ll get some to keep and some to toss back. This looks like one that you should just toss back.’ ”

There was more chucking, and the first man said, “Look at me, young man.”

Andrew still could not open his eyes. Every cell in his body ached. “I can’t,” he mumbled.

Someone nudged his shoulder, though not roughly. However, the jostling made his whole body ache. He tried to turn away but he hurt too much to move.

“You lost your girl last night? That make you jump into the river, try to kill yerself?”

“I …”
Did I jump into the river last night?

“Or did you get into some fisticuffs and the winner o’ the bout threw you off the wharf? Either way, we found you floating, knocked out, and got you out ’fore you drowned or got run over by some barge or other.”

Yes, he jumped into the river. He remembered. The images came back slowly, like light oozing through the cracks in heavy wooden shutters.
I killed the doctor. I got out down the back stairs to the laundry and out onto the street. I made my way east two blocks. I heard a siren and knew they were looking for me. I jumped into the river
.

“I jumped into the river,” he whispered.

“Girl trouble, then?”

I can swim. I must have hit my head on something
.

“Just looking to cool off,” Andrew said.

“In the middle o’ January, then? Did it cool ya off enough?”

“Guess so.”

“Lost your shirt and shoes and coat in the fall?”

“They took them from me,” Andrew said, then realized it was best not tell them any more.

“Ah, then. Was you gamblin’?”

“Sure. I was gambling.”

Andrew opened his eyes. Two fellows in boatmen’s wear and greasy caps stood over him, hands on hips, grinning. One was missing several of his front teeth. The other had a beard big enough to house several nesting birds.

“Welcome to the
Tilly-Ann
,” said Bushy Beard. “Best tugboat on the East River.”

“Thanks for rescuing me,” said Andrew. He pushed against his elbows to sit up but his head reeled so violently he fell back down.

“Best stay put a while,” said Bushy Beard. “You don’t take up much room, and my sainted grandmother would think bad o’ me should I send you off too soon. Rest. We got an extra jacket for you, to keep you warm.”

“Thank you,” Andrew whispered.

“What’s yer name, anyway?”

“Andrew Le Prince.”

“Huh. Don’t know no Le Princes ’round here.”

“I think I’m the only one.”

“Well, then, Only One Le Prince,” said Bushy Beard, tugging an oily jacket from a wooden peg on the wall and dropping it over Andrew, “you sleep and stay out o’ our way while we deliver our cargo upriver. When I think you’re back among the living enough to survive, I’ll set you off.”

Andrew nodded, his eyes closing.

He slept.

He slept.

He awoke to men laughing on the deck of the tugboat. He had no idea how long he’d slept, but he knew he couldn’t stay there any longer. He had to get out. He had to get back to Riverdale. He had to …

To what? What am I supposed to do? Mother will have the police and Bellevue thugs looking for me. I can’t go home. I have no money with me. I gave it all to the hookers. I can’t go to my stepfather’s office building. He cares little for me, and seeing me in such a state would only make things worse
.

Andrew crawled from the cot and leaned against the sticky cabin wall, waiting for a wave of nausea to pass. Then he looked out the small square window at the riverscape and the borough of Manhattan along the shore. So many people. Good. Evil. Sane. Insane. Healers and killers. Honest men and liars.

His father had been an honest man. Quiet, introspective, a lover of nature and of his family. Andrew had known him just a short while, for he had been shot to death while hunting when Andrew was seven. Reports in the newspaper listed the death as a suicide, but he had overheard his mother speaking to one of her friends in the kitchen, saying, “I can only imagine that Mr. Edison has decided to rid us of Adolphe as he has Louis!” Then she broke down into tears, and he had fled to his room.

Honest men and liars.

The liars seemed to have more power than the honest ones.

Andrew picked up a small folding knife on a shelf beside the window. As the boat rattled and bobbed along, he opened the knife, took a deep breath, ran the blade along he flesh of his thumb and watched the flesh part. The pain was at once red hot and chillingly cold. Bright red coursed down into the palm of his hand. His blood this time. He was sure of it. His life’s blood, inherited from his father, and from his grandfather, Louis.

Louis Le Prince.

While Andrea never spoke the words, Andrew knew that his grandfather had difficulties with Edison, who patented his moving picture camera as the first, when Louis Le Prince had in fact been the inventor. Louis made the very first film at Roundhay Gardens in England in 1888. Edison felt threatened. And then, two years later, Andrew’s grandfather disappeared. Killed? Perhaps. No one truly knew what had happened to the man.

“Edison,” Andrew snarled. “Had you not been born it could be my life would be joyful and not plagued with such dismay!”

He slammed his wounded thumb against the glass of the tugboat window and the blood spattered out into a sunburst. He drew his index finger along the red, up, down, across, diagonally, creating a startlingly macabre image against the lowering sun. It looked like an archaic medieval pattern, a centuries’ old stained-glass design, gravely meaningful but beyond his understanding.

Yet the blood on the glass, the light and the shadow it created, stirred something ancient and deep inside Andrew. It hummed in his veins and made his arms tremble and his heart clench. This was not the shadow of his soul but something different. Something powerful he could control. Something he could wield.

This was revenge.

The humming became a roar behind his ears, but he did not black out. He felt wildly energetic and alive. Grabbing his jacket, he ran out to tell Bushy Beard to let him off the boat. He knew how he could reclaim his sanity.

Revenge!

***

Sunday, January 11, 1903, Glenmont Estate, West Orange, New Jersey

The west garden was frost-laced, the bare limbs of the apple trees sparkling with the ice that had fallen as early morning sleet. Now, as noon approached, the garden had a fairylike quality that Mina loved, enhanced by a white winter sun. The boxwood hedges shimmered and the sheen atop the fishpond reflected the overhanging branches of the stately oaks and maples. Edison sat on one of the garden’s marble benches, clutching his hat in his hands, leaning over his knees and staring at the dead grass. He knew it was colder than his body had registered. He knew he should put his scarf and hat back on. But physical comfort was never a priority. What mattered was his work, his progress, his reputation. It was a constant battle to be faced and won.

Mina had asked him to be on time for the midday meal today. They had company—company he wasn’t particularly fond of—and it would be rude to make them wait. He had promised, though they both knew how much she could bank on one of those promises. Edison was rarely on time for anything regarding the family; his work was his
life and had always been. Last night he had stayed at the lab until nearly 4:00
A.M.
, helping prepare the elephant execution film for public viewing. He watched it over and over again, studying the great beast confidently striding forward to its death, unaffected by the poison, unaware of its imminent demise. Though the film was silent, he clearly recalled the sounds of the nervous shuffling of the crowd, the clank of the switch being thrown, the crackling steam rising from the elephant’s feet and the thunderous crashing to the ground. The screams, the laughs, the cheers.

It was a good film, trimmed from several minutes to a minute and a half to get right to the meat of the matter. AC once again proven deadly. Once again, his own DC proven the best by default.

Edison checked his pocket watch. It was ten minutes before one, and certainly Mina would be chatting with the guests who had likely arrived a good half hour earlier. The dining table would be set in the best dishes, the cook would have prepared a feast, and the children would be asked to entertain by playing the piano, delaying the meal a bit more in hopes that their father would soon show up.

He thought he should get his movie camera and film the icy garden. A nice counterpoint to the brutal death of the elephant. Something Mina and the children might enjoy. Something peaceful and gently introspective.

But he just sat, knowing he didn’t have the desire to film icy branches and frosted fishponds. Not today. Surely there would be other winter wonderlands to come along. He’d do it then.

I suppose I should make my appearance
, Edison thought. He pushed himself to his feet and shook off the stiffness that had settled in his bones. He turned up his collar and carefully picked his way across the slippery ground toward the rise and the mansion.

After dinner I’ll return to the lab. I can make my excuses; they know that the most famous inventor and innovator in the country will often have to leave on short notice to take care of business matters
.

“Yes,” he said aloud. “That should do it. That will—”

There was a whistling of air from behind. He began to turn but not quickly enough. Something struck him on the back of the neck with enough violent force to knock his thoughts away and his consciousness into a painful then soft and senseless oblivion.

***

Tuesday, January 13, 1903, outside Horsehead Pub, Auburn, New York

McAllister didn’t recall the name of the wealthy young man with the movie camera, but that didn’t matter. All he wanted to do was obey him.

They’d shared some pints and sausages, and then the young man said, “I’ve never filmed a prison guard, Mr. McAllister. You have such a hard and meaningful face, surely fashioned by your difficult and important work. Would you let me to make a moving picture of you outside? We can stage you as if you are dealing with a prisoner. You can show me how you handle a criminal. Surely we will find a drunkard out there in need of a bit of roughing up, and we can do this before the sun sets and I lose the light.”

Drinks finished, they had gone out back to where the pub tossed its garbage and where stray cats growled and hissed from dim corners, to find just what they’d hoped—a drunk leaning on the rear wall with vomit on his shoes.

The young man set up the camera and posed McAllister with the drunk, telling him to knock him about a bit as if he were already a prisoner in need of correction.

Then the young man gazed deep into the lens and began to turn the crank.

The filming was brief, only a minute, and then the young man barked at the drunk, “Get out of here!” The drunk ran off as fast as his uncooperative legs would take
him, a small trickle of blood running down the side of his face from where McAllister had struck him.

McAllister watched as the young man disassembled the camera and tripod and returned them to the large leather case. And in that moment a strange and perfect calm came over him. In that moment he realized the only thing he must do was obey the young man’s commands.

He had to follow orders. There was no choice.

But choice didn’t matter.

“Tell me what to do,” he said, reaching his arms out toward the young man. “Please, tell me.”

The young man smiled and said, “Oh, I will. I will.”

***

Wednesday, January 14, 1903, Auburn Prison, Auburn, New York

He woke from a long, horrific nightmare in which he was kept prisoner in a small room with a rag tied over his eyes and constant drugs injected into his arm. A man taunted him, saying, “Soon. Soon.” He would try to ask him what was to happen to him soon, but his mouth would not form the words. He tried to scream, and no sound came out. He sweated profusely. He wanted to awaken but the nightmare went on and on.