9

You spill out of the Gate of Hercules alongside Alexius, Cyril, and a dozen more people holding letters from Dr. Sabbatine. Away from the docks with their mercantile bustle and new construction, you find yourself among the wide boulevards of "Old Byzantium," avenues constructed forty years ago as the real old Byzantium's ancient structures fell hopelessly into ruin. The streets are broad, the marble buildings tall and beautiful in the twilight, the gold of the domes and gables illuminated by gaslight.

Pedestrians swarm all around you, dodging horse-drawn cabriolets to reach the new underground tube stations. Almost everyone on the street is a man, despite the decree the Empress handed down over ten years ago. Your group has to walk against traffic, heading uphill, until finally you can see the laboratory of Dr. Sabbatine through the smoke and the glare.

Contemptuous of Byzantium's love affair with its own past, the doctor has permitted only a single dome as a concession to the local style. But the dome is silver-white, not golden, and the walls and columns lack iconography and ornamentation. Plain, functional, and starkly beautiful, the laboratory represents a very different vision of Byzantium than the self-serving mythology invented by the Empress and her government.

"Well," Alexius cries, "let's go!"

The crowd cheers and starts to hike up the low, sloping hill toward the laboratory. You shoot one last glance at Alexius before the fog swallows him up. He's smiling, but he regards the laboratory with trepidation. What does he know?

You look down at the letter in your hands, tattered now after such a long journey, and wonder what you're getting yourself into….

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