Reports from London and Geneva tell of progress in the reanimation of corpses through the means of Electric Galvanism, but I believe we are truly the first to turn our attention to the application of electricity at the formation of life. The foetus is a creature of pure possibility, imbued with the essence of the divine maker’s spark – if only we can pass through the child a current of our own making, one in tune with the world itself, then what new depths of understanding might we reach in that unceasing quest to comprehend our own nature?

Ada glanced up at Olympe, heart racing. This was it. The record of Olympe’s creation.

Olympe was engrossed in a diagram of a Leyden jar for storing electricity. Turning to one side so the notes were half-concealed by her arm, Ada read on. Her hands shook as she turned the pages. It was sick – terrifying. The duc had experimented on Olympe’s mother while she was pregnant.

And they’d thought the Revolutionaries were the monsters for locking Olympe up.

Maybe they’d been protecting her from someone far worse.

13 mars 1779

I confess myself curious as to an unknown aspect of the child. We began this undertaking with a human foetus, and it was more than clear once it was birthed that it was human no more – no matter how much the mother dotes on it. It is cold like a lizard, with eyes like a devil from hell itself. Yet still one question plagues me. What of its soul? To be sure, the foetus must have begun with one. What have our actions done to its God-given soul?

She turned the page again, devouring the cruelty and the horror of the duc’s words, noting the dates, the other ‘failed’ test subjects cast aside until each and every word detailed Olympe’s life of confinement and torture.

She had to show this to Camille. If they were searching for useful information, surely this was it.

But she hesitated. They would have to leave these notes here, the duc couldn’t know they’d set foot in his grisly hideout. She would never get a chance again to study his methods, the theories at work in the miracle that created Olympe.

Quietly, Ada drew a clean sheet of paper, quill and ink to her, and began making her own notes as she read.

28 janvier 1787

Subject age: eight years, twelve days.

Report of findings: It responds with no alarm to an electrostatic charge, but the scalpel blade and boiling water both have harsh effects upon its epidermis.

I have been concerned by recent reports about the conduct of our young trainee doctor, Comtois.

That explained how the Revolutionaries had known about Olympe to kidnap her in the first place. Comtois must have been involved in the duc’s work before defecting.