FADE IN: EXT. LONDON, SKYLINE, NIGHT (SEPTEMBER 1941) The city burns. Searchlights carve white columns through smoke and low cloud. Anti aircraft fire blooms orange in the distance, brief and useless. The sound reaches us a second later: a flat percussion that rattles the air. Below the smoke line, whole neighborhoods glow. Not the warm glow of lamplight. The violent orange of structures burning from the inside out. Brick and timber and curtain and carpet, all of it fuel. EXT. ASHWORTH MANSION, ROOFTOP, LONDON, NIGHT A woman stands at the stone balustrade. Dressing gown over a cotton nightdress. Hair pinned loosely. She holds a china teacup in both hands, the saucer abandoned somewhere below. ELIZABETH ASHWORTH (34) watches the fires the way a harbor master watches weather: with professional attention and the calm of someone who has seen it before. Her posture is immaculate. Her face is composed. She is beautiful in the way that well maintained houses are beautiful: everything in its proper place, nothing accidental. The street below is dark. Not a single fire. Not a single crater. The buildings stand as they have stood for a hundred years, unblemished, their facades sooty but intact. Three blocks east, a warehouse collapses. The sound is like a giant clearing its throat. Sparks rise into the sky in a column of orange and gold. Elizabeth sips her tea. The all clear siren begins its long, wavering note. Elizabeth finishes her tea. She turns from the balustrade