Day 8

A frankly ridiculous volume of stomach juices and half-digested food was erupting from Sham’s mouth. He could do little to stop it, do little to focus on anything but the blinding pain erupting around his skull. He wretched again, powerless at the hands of his own bodily functions. Though separate—and more graphic—than his condition, it was a perfect representation of it; his body inflicted its own compulsions upon him, his quality of life be damned.

Sham heard a tutting behind him, glanced over his shoulder. Only now did he realise he was outside, on his hands and knees in a pool of his own juices which were seeping across a tram stop and over the edge of the pavement to the street itself. He pushed his lips back together, swallowed hard, tried to stop the vomiting.

[HARDENED LIVER] ENOUGH NOW: FAIL

Enough? No. Not yet. You have a whole day of indulgence to get out of your system.

A whole day? No.

What was the time?

He looked up. No sun in the sky. Night. Damn.

Sham had wasted a whole—

His train of though was interrupted by another wave of nausea, and then the subsequent eruption of stomach juices.

He’d wasted a whole day on… On what? He couldn’t remember, so drowned was his body in the alcohol he tasted in his mouth and rising acids.

‘Bloody disgrace,’ muttered a passer-by, a man who’d just alighted a nearby tram.

‘Yeah,’ Sham called back to him between spits of vomit from mouth, ‘I know.’ He felt another rising wave of nausea, forced it back once more.

[HARDENED LIVER] ENOUGH NOW: SUCCESS

Enough? Fine. But just you try functioning with this much poison still in your system.

He’d been a fool. A damned idiot. He’d known just how little time he’d had left to stop this attack, yet he’d spiralled out of control anyway. One dirty coffee had led to another, and then a whisky, and then… Well, more alcohol, presumably.

Sham staggered to his feet, stumbled for the support of the nearby tramstop. An old woman looked at him not pitifully, but with an absent-minded expression on her face. She was on the opioids, perhaps.

What was next?

Right, yes. The Target. Stopping her. He’d… he’d had some kind of plan. Some… seed of a plan, at least; one that perhaps sprouted and blossomed over the course of the twenty-four or so hours hidden from Sham’s memory.

‘Isn’t this what you’re supposed to be for?’ Sham asked of the voice within, clasping his horrifically painful head as he did so.

‘I can help you remember, yes… But there must have been a memory to begin with. Last night, you were…’

Even Recollection didn’t seem to fancy spelling out the truth of the matter. Too messy was the last night and day even for it.

The seed, then. Before he’d started drinking. In the cafe, he’d…

‘Go on…’

Sham roared with frustration as he failed to search his mind for the appropriate memory, eliciting surprised gasps from those few around him waiting for the tram. Then causing them to take a few steps away.

‘I don’t remember, alright?’ he said, ostensibly to himself. ‘I don’t remember. And this… is… what… you’re… for. You’re a Legendary grade skill. It’s not supposed to—’

‘Is that what you’d use me for, then?’ Recollection droned on in its oddly familiar voice. ‘So that you might drink yourself into oblivions and still remember enough to function in the days after? Is that what I’m for? A Legendary skill, yes. And yet here I am, stuck in you. Believe me… I am just as disappointed in you as you are in me.’

Sham blinked back his frustration. ‘Perhaps we could have this conversation at another—’

‘Fine.’

MEMORY UNLOCKED (RECOLLECTION)

The stony spectacled eyes of Zeus stare back at you. You’re left with only two options, you realise: either leverage some other form of power with which to take down the Target, or simply… talk her down. And a Common Command skill just ain’t gonna cut it.

Past Sham was right. A Command skill wasn’t going to cut it. Not at this level. But it wasn’t like he had a whole lot else to play with either. Which left…

...Another form of power.

His plan of action began to slot into place even through the misty fog of a dehydrated mind. Who was out there who yielded enough power to take down someone as strong as the Target? Who possessed top tier skills? Who had swollen in number over the past few days?

There really was only one last plan of action available to him.

Sham straightened out his back, winced through the pain, and began taking heavy strides back to the centre of town—and, more specifically, to the headquarters of the Citizen’s Police.

There it was—the enrolment office. Just as it had been eight days earlier, in Sham’s time, which would also be one day from now. It was grand, now. The great red banners had been unfurled, the gas lamps freshly dusted and illuminated the impression iron archway that had once fronted a pocketwatch store.

It had come to this. To returning, grovelling, to the people he’d once signed up with, who he’d since sworn off, been hunted by, arrested by. Only these people, as flawed—and likely corrupt—as they were, possessed enough power to have even the faintest glimmer of a chance of stopping the Target.

But to enter would be to get arrested again. Would be to have his testimony sworn off as the ramblings of a man trying to shift the blame. He’d tell them the truth—that a terrorist had her eyes set on the Tower—but he’d do so via proxy.

A young boy sat across the road, kicking a worn, slightly deflated ball back and forth. He was of the scrawny kind—the type that you knew wasn’t popular amongst his peers, as tragic as it was to admit that. He was the kind that Sham had been, all those years ago.

‘Hey,’ Sham called out to him. ‘Kid.’

The boy looked up at him with increasingly large eyes. Even a child like him had seen enough of the world to know that Sham had been into something rough last night. Even a child like him knew to avoid someone like him. Not unless there was something in it for him.

‘How’d you like to earn five quid?’ Sham continued.

The worried expression on the boy’s face was replaced by one of calculation. Yes, he would like to earn five quid. He’d like that very much.

‘What…’ the child started, ‘What’d I have to do?’

‘Just deliver a note. That’s all.’

The kid licked his lips. ‘How far?’

Sham nodded to the building behind him. ‘Just there. Not far.’

The boy furrowed his brow, looking from the enrolment office, to Sham, and then back to the enrolment office again. ‘How comes you can’t do that?’

‘You’re talking yourself out of five quid.’

‘Cash up front,’ the boy suddenly demanded.

‘What? I… Fine,’ Sham replied, pulling the requisite payment from his wallet and handing it over with his pre-penned note.

To whom it may concern— the note read, Please be advised that the woman you seek will be attacking the Tower a couple of hours before midnight. It will take some force to arrest her, as she is assisted by a great many of those skill vials you have. You’ll need all your men.

Yours faithfully,

And then he’d left the signature blank. They didn’t need to know who was giving them this tip. Considering Sham’s history with them—at the Church of the Loopkeepers and on Plenty Harbour—they’d either not believe him or assume that he was in league with this woman. He didn’t exactly have a good track record with the law recently.

The young boy nodded, rushed away into the Citizen’s Police HQ as though if he lingered too long, Sham might change his mind about the payment. The time traveller took shelter in the shadows of an embassy across the street, and made sure that the lad actually went through with the task he’d been given.

When the minutes passed with no sign of the boy, Sham began to get concerned. Either the lad had disappeared with the money—not an unlikely scenario—or the police had deemed him suspicious, worth holding or perhaps interrogating with regards to the tip he’d given them.

Sham felt a knot in his stomach release as the boy finally exited the CPHQ… and then tighten again much, much, more aggressively as the lad raised his hand to point at Sham, a couple of officers in burgundy standing at his rear.

He bolted.

Sham didn’t pause to cast a glance over his shoulder as he fled through the streets of Haven’s diplomatic district; the pounding footsteps were signal enough that he was being chased. He ploughed round a corner onto one of the main thoroughfares that reached out from the centre of the city like spurs of a wheel, and considered as best he could his plan of action.

His body was worn, tired. Even at the best of times, Sham was not well equipped for being chased. But with all the action of the past few days, his disease-ridden body was struggling more than ever. Up until this point he’d be running on a sense of obligation. Well, that and heaps of caffeine.

So he’d need to lose them soon.

Sham made for a passing tram, grabbing at it as it ploughed down the main road, but failing to get a proper grasp of it. Shit. What now?

[SEASONED] ALL ABOARD!: SUCCESS

Keep going. It takes a left, and then there’s a stop just around the corner. You can still make it.

Sham listened to his gut, cutting the corner on the next left and causing an older man to topple in the process, walking stick flying into the gutter. He didn’t have the time to feel guilty. That would come later.

The tram swung around the bend as Sham reached the edge of the pavement, this time again out of reach—but Sham didn’t try to grab for it, either. He ploughed onwards, charging for the tram stop ahead where the car would come to a halt.

But there was only one passenger waiting. It wouldn’t stop for long.

‘Hey!’ Sham tried to call out, but his voice came out as little more than a whisper, so out of breath as he was. Behind him, he could hear his pursuers’ footsteps growing closer; they were faster than him. Of course they were.

He gritted his teeth together, charged onwards for the tram. The woman at the tram stop spotted him as the tram doors opened, smiled, gave him a thumbs up. The kind soul stood in the tram’s doorway, holding it for him, inevitably much to the chagrin of its driver. But it gave Sham just enough time to hop aboard the vehicle’s rear door. He pushed inside, squeezing between the passengers already crammed in to the tiny vehicle, and then stared out the window, willing the tram to move.

‘Oi!’ the driver cried out, ‘Clear of the doors!’

‘There’s just a couple more!’ the kind woman replied in a sing-song kind of voice.

Shit.

A kind soul, yes. But far too kind indeed.

Sham caught a glimpse of the officers of the Citizen’s Police hop on the back of the tram, and begin clawing their way through the other passengers just as he’d done a few moments earlier. The time traveller fled towards the front of the bus, pushing through the other citizens of Haven like wading through the salty sea.

Groans and shouts erupted around him in protest as he knocked people aside. Again, there’d be time for guilt later. All he could do now was flee.

His body flared with pain, joining the chorus of protest at its owner’s actions.

Feel pain later, Sham told himself. Only time for fleeing now.

He finally made it to the front of the tram, and pushed past the driver who was exiting his box to see what all the fuss was about. Sham ignored his complaints as he hopped through the still-open door of the tram and back out onto the street once more.

There was a flash of burgundy, then a fist, and then Sham saw only black.