Page 12 - Indies Roundtable 2nd Anniversary Edition

South Kensington
London, 1899

The boy sat in the room, staring
blankly at the white wall.

Occasionally he would glance
nervously around him as if taking
in his surroundings for the first
time and when he became agitated,
he would rub the rough stump of
scarred skin where his middle
finger should have been.

He barely registered the
approaching sounds in the corridor
outside his room and appeared not
to notice when an observation
hatch slid open in the door and
after a few seconds somebody
spoke.

“I say, Wells, the boy doesn’t
look right in the head if you ask
me, you say you found him sitting
in one of your machines? Where’s
he from, who is he?”

“That’s just it, he hasn’t made a
sound since that first day three
years ago. I freed his hand, had to
lose the finger of course, too badly
damaged. Then, just after that, the
machine malfunctioned and
disappeared. Since then, not a
word has passed his lips.”

The boy rubbed the scar on his
hand and stared at the wall some
more.

He had nothing else to do.
He had all the time in the world.