Love the idea of the top hat which sets the whole journey on a steam punk journey. The belching buildings conjured up a real sense of place. Loved the package putting more weight on his arm that the whole mess on his conscience as of course we are now hooked into what the hell is the mess question and want to read on. Think you need to fix the last sentence as it doesn’t quite make sense. The specific use of time (or passage of time) is a good device for making something honed and personal to ‘the occupant’. However as a matter of style I should either decide to use digits for numbers or the written version , mixing them up looks a bit undecided. Liked the phrase ‘the furtive figure of elegance’. So we have something that has to happen ‘now’, connected to a package ( too cliche if it was a bomb). A sweaty man in a top hat from a budget hotel darting through a steam punk like cityscape and a mess that happened two years , four months and seventeen days ago…all a good set up for hooking the reader in.
Writearound