15 August 1888

The East End of London

In 1842, Caishen and I grit our teeth as we watched that fool of a Qing emperor cede Hong Kong to the British. The Treaty of Nanking would have burned if I were to get a hold of it. One of those who had attained nirvana informed us that scrolls of our lore were stolen and the deity calculated that it was only a matter of time before they tried to replicate a version of me for their army.

After 40 years of searching, I finally found an imperial laboratory where scientists worked on creating the undead soldiers. Masquerading as an opium trader, I walked in and made mental notes of everything I could perceive. Nothing seemed untoward, warranting further investigation. The velvety noir sky would be my cover, I decided as I left my calling card. 

"Would you like a reading of the Tarocchi Siciliano?" I looked at the speaker of the question. Amidst the busy factory workers and leisurely trollops of Whitechapel, she was a singular presence. I repeated her words in my mind and looked at her somewhat-darker complexion. She was Romany or feigning it for the intrigue of customers. We walked into a small tent.

I crossed her palm with silver and she motioned that I sit on the chair across the table. Directing my gaze to the furniture, I eyed the tablecloth- purple with a golden fringe, the corners marked by purple tassels. In a perfect complement, the gold cards shone in the sun. There were 64 of them, small and reversible. She told me to pick 5 cards and I did.

"Ten of Pentacles, reversed: although you lack stability and resources, you will have fleeting success. Nine of Swords: anxiety, trauma, hopelessness. Major Arcana, The Magician reversed: trickery, illusions, out of touch. Four of Wands: community, home celebration. King of Cups, reversed: coldness, moodiness, bad advice."

"I'm sure that means something to you, charlatan," I sniggered after her recital, "but it seems to me that I have merely paid you for rambling some meaningless balderdash."

"You have mimicked the tongue of this large island very well," the fortune-teller ignored the barb and lazily began her explanation. "You have the emotional variety of a Shakespearean actor as well as the vitriol of a scorned lover. The deity who has chosen you is blocking me from reading your history but no matter; I press forward."

"Your quest in this slum will bring some victory but much pain. Your enemy deceives his victims and someone that you will come to know is an eventual target of his. When you lose her, you will despair but eventually, you will rejoice once more. Further deciphering will cost you another silver coin." I stood up, shaking my head and walked away. The carry of the linen suit was quite heavy.

The jiangshi that our people speak of, sound different from the rumours milling around this borough. The Crown was always eager to profit from subletting farms in Ireland. Unfortunately, this eagerness wasn't reciprocated when nearly 80% of the Irish immigrated here after the great potato blight. They were joined by the displaced peoples of eastern Europe, fleeing pogroms in Tsarist Russia, most of them being Jews. I wasn't out of place in these quarters.

The scientists here had been experimenting for as long as there have been executions. Nobles would beg for fresh human blood in order to extend their mortality. Someday, I would give in to this base desire but I wanted to control it before then. So, I ordered blood pudding from the front desk of the hotel as I waited for the stars to appear.

Unleashing my inner Sherlock Holmes, I pinned up maps of the boroughs of Whitechapel. The pens on my desk would soon splash ink across the paper, marking places of importance in my investigation. But first, I needed a subtle inside connection into police communications. I would peruse the newspapers and find out who the best were, working my way from there.

I opened the sash window of my room, stealthily leaping onto the balcony and closing it once more. Looking above me, I saw that the other guests were asleep. Below, there were very few pedestrians on the streets. Following the instinct given to me, I transformed into a bat. The path of my flight was erratic but that was a good thing, as it would not attract suspicion.

I soared and plummeted a kilometre before I finally reached the laboratory. The night watchman was asleep so I flew through an open window. Landing on the floor of the reception area, I used my sonar but the echoes revealed nothing. I did the same for each room and was steadily getting frustrated with the lack of clues when my shriek reverberated off a large bookshelf.

Reverting to my human form, I analysed the titles of the texts before me. I noticed that all of these were books about the colonies. Just like every other laboratory I had visited over the last four decades, using the identical transform-fly-echolocate method. The houses of science had variations in design so it was like playing Spot the Difference in the world of antiquities, an alter ego of mine.

Slightly lifting The Consolidated Encyclopaedia of Chinese Biology, the secret laboratory opened up. I stepped in and looked at the work station. A white cloth covered the unsuccessful attempt of the day and I read the observations scrawled on the chalkboard. So far, there had only been one successful undead soldier but that was one too many for a global population of almost 2 billion.

My eyes landed on a missive: that vampire had escaped yesterday and was no doubt already terrorising and pillaging this part of the city. Opening the adjacent file cabinet, I flipped through the files until I found one matching the details of "Jack" on the chalkboard. In silent disgust, I read the notes and studied the diagrams. There was a sepia photograph, which I pocketed.

Investigating the rest of the room, I didn't find much. Once more trading my human limbs for those of the bat, I escaped the house of science and made my way back to the hotel. It was the same process as leaving my room, save for more darkness. Since candles and lamps emitted gases that harmed lungs, I planned my next moves in the darkness.