‘Your address,’ Riot said as they stood outside the restaurant, the last of the sun rays now long missing from the sky above them. ‘Give it to me.’

Sham screwed up his face. ‘What? No.’

Another eyebrow raised. It was already becoming a familiar sight. ‘Why not?’

‘I’m not in the habit of giving that information out to strangers,’ Sham replied. ‘Not at the moment.’

Riot paused, staring into Sham’s eyes, searching for something within them. She didn’t seem to find it. ‘Fine,’ she said. ‘Whatever. I don’t have much faith you’re gonna be of use anyway.’

Without another word spoken—and without a goodbye—the strange woman turned away from Sham and strolled with purpose in a northerly direction.

On a whim, Sham turned away too, keen to put his encounter with this woman behind him, and found himself heading back to a familiar place—Kryl’s apartment.

He knew he should, logically, be heading next to visit the Loopkeepers. After all, they were supposedly the only other people around that had knowledge of the time jump. They would have answers. Maybe even a way of manipulating this timeline, stopping the target from unleashing her power upon the Tower.

But Sham couldn’t shake the feeling that Riot had been lying to him. Keeping something to herself. Not telling him what she really wanted Kryl for. All he really knew was that she’d dragged him away from Kryl’s apartment—and if there were any clues in there, Sham hadn’t had an opportunity to find them.

The Loopkeepers could wait; Sham knew where they would be. But what he didn’t know was how much longer Kryl’s apartment would be in its current state. If Riot was to be believed, the police would have been to the scene already, responding to the shot from her firearm.

If she was to be believed.

And there was only one way to find out.

Sham approached the fellow time travellers apartment with apprehension, keeping to the shadows of the buildings across the street to disguise his presence. He scoured the residential complex for signs of movement, for signs that the police had indeed arrived. But he found none.

Another mark against Riot.

He heaved himself up the metal staircases, pausing at the top of every flight to regain his strength. Couldn’t Captain Dickhead have given him a Vigour vial too? It would have made his life so much easier.

A movement.

In the shadows, at the corner of the staircase. Gentle feet against iron plate. A metallic ringing.

Sham froze, half expecting an agent of Haven’s police force to emerge from the shadows, to question why he was here. But the shape that strolled forwards—ever so casually—was smaller. Had a pair too many legs.

A pair of cat’s eyes blinked up at him.

‘Hmm,’ Sham grumbled, and then turned away, continuing on his journey up to Kryl’s apartment.

Small footsteps followed him, a bell ringing gently in the quietness of the night.

As Sham reached Kryl’s front door, still ever so slightly ajar, it seemed for a moment to open itself. His heart jumped—perhaps there was someone inside after all? Perhaps the police were here?

But when he looked down, he saw the small black cat nudging the door open with its head.

‘You live here?’ Sham asked, as though he might get an answer. He wasn’t good with animals. Never owned one. Never saw fit to.

‘Meow,’ the cat responded, and then strolled onwards into the apartment into one of the adjoining rooms. Perhaps it felt like it was the residence’s true owner.

Sham followed it, blinking his eyes as they adjusted to the low light of the interior rooms. There was nothing of immediate note; unlike the living area, there were no signs of struggle. The room was inhabited only by a bed with sheets fresh but for patches of black fur—another being created in this very moment—and piece of storage which, upon further examination, housed clothing posher than Sham would ever wear in his lifetime.

He searched the room. Surely this, the most intimate area of Kryl’s home, would give some indication where he might have gone, who he might have been involved with. He ripped clothes out of wardrobe, tossed them on the bed, found nothing. He searched under the mattress—an action met with a glare from an angry black cat—and found nothing. He pulled clothes out of drawers and found…

What’s this?

There, at the back of the middle drawer, was a piece of parchment paper. The author, presumably Kryl, had sketched upon it a map of sorts. Lines and arrows stretched erratically in every direction. Others might not have instantly recognised the area Kryl had drawn, but Sham did. It was his home. It was the Harbour District.

Through the winding streets of the poorest of Haven’s districts, red ink marked a route. The unnamed person was to move—or already had moved—from the central Diplomatic district out to End Street at the very perimeter of the city, down on the coast itself.

‘End Street’, the voice in his head recalled. ‘An industrial road. Warehouses. Some owned by legit enterprises; most not.’

Sham took some small comfort in the fact that this voice wasn’t still repeating the same words over and over, but it still caught him by surprise, sending a shiver down his spine.

Was this what madness felt like? Maybe he’d broken after all. The mad didn’t think they were mad, did they? So maybe...

No.

It didn’t bear to think about. Not until the job was done. In seven days, he could seek out all the help he needed. Until then, Sham had to focus on the job at hand.

Sham placed the scribbled map on top of the chest of drawers, and slammed the now-empty drawer shut.

Doing so resulted in a loud thunk.

The sounds of glass—or metal—hitting the wooden sides. He edged the drawer open once more, and spotted it. A reduced height. Shallower than the rest of the drawers. Which meant…

He dug his nails in at the very edges of the false bottom, doing his very best to lever it upwards. But it was no use; he couldn’t access whatever was underneath with fingernail alone. So Sham pulled his belt from his trousers, found himself pleasantly surprised that they were only just about staying up without it, and then used the edge of the belt buckle to shimmy the secret compartment open.

The false bottom came off with a groan, some kind of adhesive having previously held it in place. Sham heaved it out of the drawer, eyes peeled for the source of the heavy thunk, and saw them. Vials.

But not the pure skill vials of the Citizen’s Police. No. These were boono. These skills came at a price.

Maybe this was what Riot hadn’t wanted Sham to find; contraband that would put Kryl in trouble. Or… deeper trouble, considering the mess and signs of struggle in the living room.

But how did this relate to the Target? How did this relate to Kryl trying—and eventually failing—to stop her? The Target was armed with pure vials. Not these. So how did they fit into all this?

Footsteps.

Both Sham’s head and the black cat’s head turned at once in the direction of the noise—a commotion on the street outside. A siren. Police arriving in one of their giant brass automobiles.

Back in the Harbour District, Sham wouldn’t have worried. There, the police arriving was a regular occurrence, and no sure thing that it was anything to do with anything you’d done. Out here in the easterly Sunrise District, however, their presence was rare enough that they could only be here for one thing.

Kryl.

And Sham didn’t fancy them finding him in the missing man’s apartment. Maybe he’d escape questioning, but it would cut down significantly on his seven day deadline.

Kryl’s cat meowed worriedly towards the entryway, and the warped tone of its voice pulled at Sham’s heartstrings.

‘Don’t worry, little one,’ he said as he instinctively thrusted the vials into the pockets of his jacket and made for the door. ‘They’re not here for you.’

With that, he charged through the empty apartment and made for the stairs, hopping down two whole flights while ignoring the raging pain in his stomach. Just before he met the police face to face, Sham slowed to a walk, then moved aside to let them pass.

‘Officers,’ he said with a nod of his head, doing his best to disguise his pounding heart, his tense spine.

They ignored him.

Good. That was the best possible result, after all. Not only would that mean he escape questioning, but also that there would be nobody to remember to place him here. That was one of the few benefits of such an average face.

Sham made it out onto the street without risking another look back or up to Kryl’s level. It was a close one, but he’d made it out.

But he’d made it out without the map.

Sham’s heart dropped, and he hurriedly scoured his pockets for any sign of it. It was fruitless, though; he knew exactly where he left it. Thanks to the Recollection skill he couldn’t forget where he’d left it. Back in the apartment, atop the chest of drawers. There was no going back for it now.

How could he have been so stupid? How could he have forgotten such a vital piece of evidence in his investigation? This wasn’t like him. This—

‘Picture it,’ the voice said.

‘What?’ Sham replied, aloud.

‘Picture it,’ the voice said again.

With doubt laying heavy on his heart, Sham stopped walking, tucked himself into the doorway of a nearby building, and closed his eyes. It took him only a fraction of a second to bring the image of the map up once more in his mind’s eye. There it was, in perfect detail. Sham could picture every scribbled line, every twist and turn of the winding red arrow. It was as though he was holding the map fresh in front of him.

‘Huh,’ Sham mumbled, and then asked of the voice in his head, ‘Who are you?’

But he received no response.

Day 3

It was morning before Sham could face investigating the journey on Kryl’s hand-drawn map, so tired was he from scouring the city the day before that all he could do was collapse in that same sweat-drenched bed of his. He could taste the whisky in the sheets—a stale, rancid stench. Either he was still sweating out the toxins two days later, or his nose was working properly again. Too many years of shoving things up it hadn’t done wonders for his sense of smell.

His eyes wandered to the empty bottle sitting on his table. The house was devoid of any fun substances, the last of it having been drunk three nights earlier. Or twelve, depending on how he was counting.

Actually...

That wasn’t quite true, was it? The two vials of boono were there, still, in Sham’s jacket pocket. He hadn’t had time before to read the notes hastily scribbling onto them in the same hand as the map, but doing so had suddenly become top priority.

Not an addict, Sham stressed to himself. Just curious.

He dragged himself out of bed and towards where he’d flung his jacket—not on the coat hook, of course, but over the back of a chair—then fumbled through his inner pocket for the vials. And then there they were: one a pale blue-green, one a vibrant pink.

Sham looked at the pink vial first, holding it up to his eye and staring into it as though that might offer some glimpse of what he was in store for. He could’ve, of course, just looked at the labels, but where was the fun in that? That wouldn’t be enjoying the full experience. Not that he was going to consume them, of course.

He felt the weight of them in his hands—very slight, almost fragile—and then read the labels. There, in a hasty hand, Kryl had scribbled:

Luck (rare) — won’t last long, bad luck to follow

And…

Charm (uncommon) — enough to close a deal. Downside unknown.

They weren’t… bad. Downsides for boono could be a whole lot worse than a little bad luck. And they could certainly come in handy. If Sham had been a little more charming he might not have found himself down the wrong end of Riot’s pistol. If he’d had a little more luck, he might have stumbled across the correct tattoo parlour without wasting an entire day looking for it. It wasn’t until you had the opportunity to possess such skills that you saw all the ways that they might be useful.

Sham felt his grip tighten around the pink bottle with the luck label. He felt his other hand reach over to grab at the cork. And then he—

He put the bottles down on the table. Took a step back.

No. He’d sworn he’d never touch this stuff. Not the boono. He’d keep these bottles handy, sure, but only take them if he needed to. To stop the explosion. That was his line; he just needed to make sure he stuck to it.

Sham recalled the map in his mind as he left his home, seeing it once more in perfect detail, the intricacies of it no less defined than they had been the previous evening. He walked with purpose as he crossed the the streets of the Harbour Distinct, venturing out ever so slightly into the Commercial Zone, until finally arriving at the very start of the map’s marked route.

What he was supposed to see here—if anything—wasn’t clear. This area of the city was just as peculiar as it had ever been, being that it was the only part of Haven where the richest and poorest districts met. Drunks intermingled with diplomats. Scraggly salesmen walked past bustling boutiques. And a newly sober entrepreneur turned investigator stood watching on.

When enough time passed that Sham finally gave in to the fact that there was nothing here in the way of clues, he began following the route down to the harbour. It kept to the back roads, away from prying eyes, and Sham kept his own open for any signs about what he was doing here. He found none. Whatever it was that was supposed to travel this route had either long since done so or had not yet started; either way, there was nothing for Sham to find. Not, that was, until he reached the destination.

By the time Sham reached End Street, he was already feeling the damage he’d done to his body. His fatigue was beginning to engulf him—just as it had done most every day of the past few miserable years. No. That wasn’t quite true. There was a time, there, for the first two years of his illness, that traversing the city of Haven like he’d done today would’ve been unthinkable. But he’d done it today without giving his condition a second thought. Things were improving. He had to believe that they were improving.

On the street in front of him, there stood the same old colossal warehouses as there had always been, for as long as Sham could remember. They were dark and black and dirty and with access to the sea, and… not normally so well guarded.

Sham hung back, far down the road, as he counted the men and women who seemed to patrol the warehouses at the very end of the street. They dressed in muted colours—outfits designed to fit in, but still too posh, too clean to truly blend in in this area of the Harbour District. These people didn’t belong here.

And if Kryl’s map was to be believed, they were guarding something.

QUEST UNLOCKED: GUARDS! GUARDS!

Investigate the warehouse and its mysterious contents.