Sham’s journey home could only be described as a “stagger”. He staggered to the tramline, his legs trembling as he scoured his pockets for his government-issued transmit pass. He staggered for a seat at the back of the tram. He staggered—well, “fell” might have been a more appropriate word here—off at his stop, and made it up the stairs with just enough energy spared to collapse into bed fully clothed.

Though his body was heavy with the all-encompassing fatigue of his illness, he couldn’t sleep, for he couldn’t still his mind.

‘You’re looking at his grave,’ Asa’s voice rang through Sham’s head once more.

Sham had stared blankly at the criminal for a few moments more, not misunderstanding him, but stunned by the revelation. Kryl had been at the heart of Sham’s investigation. He’d figured: find Kryl, and find the Target. Find the Target, and save lives. Both The Paradox and the Save The Tower quests would get completed. Sham would get experience points, and he might even get that Vigour upgrade that his illness-stricken body so desperately needed. So this… this had been a curveball.

Sham’s blank stare had prompted Asa to say it again, but the amateur investigator, this time, had waved it down.

‘Why?’ he’d asked. ‘Why’d you do it?’

‘Tried to steal from me,’ Asa said, matter-of-factly, accompanying his confession of murder with a shrug.

‘Steal…’

‘Yes.’

‘Steal what?’ Sham asked.

‘Same thing you were here for. Same thing everyone would want, if they knew it was here, innit? The vials. Figured he was the one who told you they were here.’

‘Like I said… nobody told me they were here,’ Sham responded. ‘I just…’

‘...Lucked upon ‘em,’ Asa finished. ‘Sure.’

Sham wasn’t quite sure the criminal believed him. Maybe he wasn’t as dumb as he looked.

Hours later, lying in bed, Sham mulled over this revelation once more. The path to this destination was starting to make sense to him. Kryl wanted to stop the Target, same as him. And he remembered the same days Sham did, that was clear. So what was the best way to stop a superpowered maniac? Stop them ever getting the powers to begin with. It had to be that the Target would arm herself with the vials that were sitting in Asa’s warehouse right now. And if they hadn’t been there… Kryl would have succeeded.

Instead, however, he’d met with the bottom of the harbour.

So what did this mean for Asa, and his criminal enterprise? Were they somehow in league with the Target? Or would the Target steal these vials from them, as Asa had implied people might do? Sham cursed himself that he hadn’t thought to ask at the time, but the brain fog had already well and truly swept into his head by that point.

If only Sham had been stronger. If he’d had Vigour, or some heighted mental skills, or—

Only then did he remember the skill upgrade he had banked.

[SELECT SKILL UPGRADE]

[Seasoned] // [Heart of Janus] // [[Command]]

There it was: the choice he’d need to make.

It made sense that Seasoned and Heart of Janus had been the first two options; few other skills had he made more use of over the past week, and so these were the two with the most recent experience assigned. The third, as always, was a surprise—the one assigned at random by the System. Command might not have been Sham’s first choice of skills, but he could definitely think of situations where it might have come in handy.

He might have held more power over Asa, got more information out of him. He might have stood his ground with the Citizen’s Police, back in the Church of the Loopkeepers, and avoided the first jail saga. He might even have insisted on the Vigour skill vial, and, more importantly, he might have actually got it.

In the past, too, there were situations where such a skill might have been useful. Sham couldn’t, however, see how it could’ve saved him from losing Her. But other skills might have.

Skills such as Vigour.

What luck it would have been if Vigour had been the wildcard upgrade choice. Even a Common grade might, now, have him back on his feet and able to continue the investigation, rather than lying unable to move in a filthy bed.

But there was hope, at least.

If he continued the investigation, if he unlocked more achievements, completed more quests, he’d earn another skill upgrade. Maybe multiple. Maybe the cure to his ailment was out there, and he just needed to push himself in order to get it.

‘Lots of “maybe”s in that brain of yours…’ the voice murmured.

Sham opted to ignore it; he hadn’t the energy. Though he would be lying if he said he wasn’t worried about its source. Was it the first sign of a deranged mind? He’d always heard about the mad talking to themselves—perhaps this was how it started. Or perhaps it was trauma from the explosion. Brain damage, of a sort. Maybe he hadn’t even survived the explosion at all, and he was being made to relive the days leading up to it in some hellish form of penance.

No.

No, that wasn’t a helpful avenue of thought.

He needed to focus on the investigation. He needed to keep going, to push himself out of bed, to find the Target. To stop her.

Sham pressed his hands into the broken mattress, meaning to force himself upright. He managed nothing but to cause a wave of nausea to wash over him. A wave of nausea that resulted in, well, vomit. Splattering across the floor.

He hadn’t been this bad in months. He hadn’t been—

A knock. On the door.

Followed by two more.

Sham opened his mouth to speak, to call out, but found that his tired brain couldn’t form them. Instead, he only collapse back into the bed, and found, before long, that he was asleep.

Day 7?

It was night when Sham awoke; the panes of his untreated windows black. He had rested, but he didn’t feel rested. He had slept, but he didn’t feel rested. This was just like the early days of his condition, the days where She had sat at his side, waited upon him. The days before She’d grown tired of his… well, of his tiredness.

Sham staggered to his feet, stumbled over to the sink, his feet hitting the ground heavy beneath him, and undoubtedly waking the downstairs neighbours. He didn’t care.

He reached the sink.

There, in the rusty mirror above, a ghost stared back at him.

A face, gaunt.

A face, wrapped in pallid skin.

The face of a sick man, indefinitely so.

Even Sham’s Great Sobering hadn’t helped. Even not having drunk for days on end hadn’t put a metaphorical bandage on the wound that was his tired eyes.

Sham went back to bed.

Day 7. Almost Certainly, This Time.

This time around, it was day outside.

Hopefully, it was the next day. Day seven. Leaving a little under three days before the Tower was destroyed. Even then, Sham was starting to doubt that it was enough time.

Sham gazed for a second at the light streaming in through his window, catching the dust in the air and forming from it a brilliant, sparkling display. He reached nirvana, then, if just for a moment—as if nothing of the last few days mattered, as though he could watch the specks of dust dancing in the air for an eternity.

And then he realised he was the wrong way around in his broken bed and that the unseen rat was scratching at his walls again. The illusion was broken; life, the universe, and everything… it all was dreadful after all.

Knock.

Knock-knock.

Was this what had woken him up? The knocking from this mysterious visitor? The one who he’d been unable to call out to last night, judging by the peculiar rhythm of their knocks on his door.

This time, his brain—now cleared of fog—allowed him to form the words. ‘Who’s there?’ he cried out.

‘Riot,’ came the response.

Of course it was. Who else would have a knock so planned, so orderly, so predetermined? Such a Riot she was.

‘Door’s open,’ Sham called back as he pulled himself to a seated position. His body groaned as he did so.

The front door creaked slowly open, revealing the strange Riot standing in the drizzle, her drenched dress stuck against her legs.

‘Don’t suppose you want to get out of that rain?’ Sham asked.

Riot nodded, stepped inside, her eyes fixed on the apartment’s occupier. ‘Your bed is broken.’

‘I know.’

The woman raised her eyebrows, but said no more on the subject, instead taking a look around the room and absorbing it. It made Sham feel uncomfortable. Or… vulnerable, even.

‘How’d you find where I live?’ he asked.

Riot only shrugged, taking a seat on the only good chair in the corner of the room. ‘Spoke to the right people.’

‘Bribed them, you mean?’

‘Money speaks, as they say.’

Sham pressed his lips together. ‘Yeah, see, people round here don’t have that luxury.’

Riot sighed—a long, drawn out affair. ‘We gonna get into class war stuff again, are we?’

The tired question stayed Sham’s tongue, an uncomfortable silence engulfing the room. ‘Who’d you bribe, then? Or speak to with money, if that’s how you want to describe it?’

‘Home office.’

‘Right,’ Sham replied, ‘Friends in high places.’

Riot nodded, her eyes fixing on the broken bed once more. ‘Do you want me to get that fixed? I know someone who could come this afternoon.’

‘I can’t afford it.’

‘Didn’t say you’d have to.’

‘But then I’d—’ Sham started, meaning to say “Then I’d owe you”, but he didn’t want to get back into the class warfare conversation again. Not after Riot had derided that topic so.

‘What?’

‘Nothing.’

Riot surveyed him curiously, her eyes landing upon him in a sharp gaze that suggested she knew exactly what Sham had been about to say, but she didn’t want to talk about it either. No topic was as sensitive in the city of Haven so much as the wealth divide. ‘You look terrible.’

Sham couldn’t help but laugh. Laugh more than he meant to. A giggle, almost, lasting all of half a minute. ‘Oh? Yeah?’

‘I suspect poison. Have you consumed some yourself’—she eyed the empty bottle of whiskey on the table at her side—’or is this some external doing?’

‘It’s not poison,’ Sham replied.

‘External, then.’

‘No, not external either. Not poison. This is just my life.’

Riot sighed. Again. ‘Sham, you can’t blame everything on you being poor.’

‘Listen to her,’ the voice said. ‘Poor. That’s all you are to her. That’s your defining feature. When your destinies part ways once more, that’s how she will remember you. Poor.’

Sham shook his head, trying to rid himself of the voice and return to the person who wasn’t a figment of his imagination. ‘Well, I definitely can do just that. But I’m not, this time. No, me looking like shit is just my…’ He trailed off, catching himself just before he opened up to this peculiar stranger.

But Riot said nothing, her gaze fixed now entirely on Sham. He had her attention, she was saying.

‘...illness,’ Sham finished, against his better judgement.

The rich woman licked her lips, considering her words, sensing that this was a delicate matter. ‘I see. May I ask what kind?’

‘My body, it… It tires easily.’

‘Tires?’

‘Muscles ache. Brain gets foggy. Body… gives up.’

Riot nodded. ‘I understand,’ she said. ‘My Mum was sick, too. It has… it has an impact not just on the body. On the soul, too, I think.’

Sham bit his lip, returned the nod. As he caught Riot’s eyes, she looked away. ‘And you’re here for medical diagnoses? Or for…’

Riot opened her mouth to speak, apparently found that no words were coming out, and put her head in her hands. ‘I can’t find him,’ she said. ‘He’s all I have, and I can’t find him. I can’t find Kryl.’

Oh.

God.

That was right. She cared for Kryl, that’s how she was involved in all this. Sham’s mind had forgotten this fact for a moment, as foggy as it was. He recalled the image of his grave, little more than a dark patch under murky waters. Couldn’t shift the image. Tried to move his mind off of it, but couldn’t.

‘I…’ he started.

His tone must have carried information that he hadn’t intended, as Riot’s head snapped up at his word. There was a skill at play there, Sham suspected. An ability to read people that he hadn’t specced into.

‘What?’ she said. ‘What is it? What do you know?’

‘I’m…’ Sham started, finding himself with no idea how to deal with such a situation. He wasn’t the most social creature, didn’t have the skills to handle this revelation with the sensitivity it required. But he didn’t have any other choice. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

[EMPATHY] I’M SORRY: SUCCESS

For some reason, this stranger trusts you. She has nobody else.

Riot stared across the room, her eyes already filling with tears. She knew the truth before Sham spoke it. But he still had to say it, for her sake.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said again. ‘I found… I…’

The words were hard to find.

‘He’s gone,’ Sham finished.

The woman across the room from him broke down.

Riot collapsed into her chair, wails and sobs washing over her, any attempt at further dialogue escaping only as muted gasps.

Sham sat on the bed, watching this woman, wishing he could do more to help her, to comfort her. But he hadn’t the skills, and, besides, they weren’t that close. What was he going to do, put his arm around her? Hug her? Offer her a fucking handkerchief? This woman didn’t want any of that from him; it was just her own damn bad luck that she had to find out this way. That she had to find out from him.

By the time Riot’s sobs quietened enough for her to speak, there was a certain ferocity in her eyes. A madness in them, or a wrath. ‘How?’ she said, still only able to speak one word at a time between the gasps.

‘He… he got himself involved with bad people. They…’

‘They killed him,’ Riot finished. It was a little on the nose, but it was, after all, true.

‘Yes.’

‘I… I don’t know what they call themselves. They operate out of a warehouse. Down on End Street, at the edge of—’

But already Riot was standing. Was storming towards the door.

‘Where are you going?’ Sham demanded. ‘There’s no—’

Riot stopped at the doorway, turning her head to face Sham and revealing the mania behind her eyes. ‘Revenge,’ she spat.

‘How? You gonna get them arrested, too?’

Riot paused, touched her hand to her holstered revolver, as if by instinct. ‘No,’ she said, then turned away.

QUEST UNLOCKED: LIFE’S A RIOT

Riot is about to do something stupid. Stop her.

‘Wait!’ Sham cried out. But if Riot heard, she gave no indication, continuing on down the communal stairwell without another word in his direction.

Sham grabbed at his coat, meaning to follow her… and felt the new skill vial rattling around inside.

Perspicacity.

It wouldn’t be his first choice of skill vial in terms of helping Riot—again, Vigour might just have done the job—but it was all he had at his disposal.

‘Just know this: you should give it some time, between vials. Or there can be… side effects.’ Gresley’s words echoed around Sham’s mind, failing to be cleared even with conscious thought.

Sham ripped the cork from the vial anyhow.

‘Three days seems to be enough. Two at a push. But no sooner. It can… hurt you. Hurt others.’ The forced memory continued.

Sham raised the vial to his lips.

‘You don’t need them,’ the headless voice murmured suddenly, its voice somehow… strained. ‘You have me.’

It was only at this point that Sham truly understood to whom the voice belonged. The knowledge flooded him, made him nauseous, made him see the world in a whole new light. The voice didn’t stem from brain injury, or from his ever-crippled mental health, or from the explosion at the Tower, or any of the causes that Sham had assumed had contributed. No. It was none of that. It was the offering that Captain Dickhead had given him, all those days ago.

‘Recollection,’ Sham murmured.

‘Speaking...’ the voice replied in a thick drawl.

Sham put the cork back in the vial.