‘Frankly, this whole jail thing is—’

‘I don’t care,’ Captain Dickhead interrupted Sham.

‘...Right.’

Sham was sat in a cramped, tiled room in the Citizen’s Police headquarters, the only decoration being worrying brown marks on the top of the skirting boards. So worn the room looked for having only been in operation for a week. An uncomfortably bright arc lamp hung from the ceiling, the buzzing almost as unbearable as the silence would otherwise have been.

Captain Dickhead had entered the interrogation room wearing an expression somewhere between a gleeful smile and a malicious snarl. Of course it was him; that was quickly becoming a constant, and Sham couldn’t rule out the possibility that the captain had manoeuvered himself to be here, to act as the inevitable tormentor.

‘Who is she to you?’ the captain demanded.

Sham could only assume he was referring to the Target. ‘Nobody!’

‘A lover?’

‘No, nobody. I’ve just been unfortunate enough to cross paths with her. Multiple times. I just happened to have learned what she’s—’

‘Multiple times? Unfortunate?’ the dickhead repeated, spitting the words back at him with no regard for airborne saliva. ‘You make it sounds like its been some kind of coincidence that you’d have run into her so much.’

‘It is.’

‘Oh, it is, is it? You just happen to run into a domestic terrorist multiple times in the biggest of the world’s three cities?’

‘OK, look,’ Sham said, leaning forwards. ‘Let me level with you: the first time it was an accident, yeah. And I might have started seeking her out. But that was only because—’

‘Because you want in on it.’

‘—I was trying to stop her.’

The dickhead smirked. ‘Stop her? You? You know that this is precisely what the police force is for, right?’

Sham released an unintended sigh. His body was pounding, aching, screaming to be shut down. This was all… too much. ‘I wanted to be sure, alright? Didn’t want to… didn’t want to waste your time. I know how important it all is.’ He hoped the compliment would raise him in the eyes of his interrogator.

The captain paused, considered these words. ‘And the Loopkeepers? Why were you there? At their church? Is she one of them?’

‘No. I… Maybe. I don’t know.’

‘So the docks? That relates to her too?’ the captain asked.

‘No,’ Sham instinctively responded, and then caught himself. A lie here wouldn’t hurt. Not when it shifted the blame for murder away from him and instead onto someone who… while not yet a murderer, soon would be. ‘I mean, yes. Yes, she was there. I was trying to stop her. That man… he got—’

‘You don’t seem sure.’

‘What?’

‘First “no”, then “yes”. Doesn’t take a mind like mine to know that you’re hiding something.’

Sham sighed again, put his face in his hands. Felt sleep lapping at the shores of his mind, even in this uncomfortable seated position.

‘Oh I’m so sorry if this is frustrating for you, Mr Tilner.’

‘It—’

‘I’m being sarcastic.’

Sham nodded. ‘Yes. I got that.’

‘So this message that you so kindly left us,’ the captain continued, ploughing on despite his sarcasm landing so badly. ‘Telling us where she will strike. We’re supposed to trust it?’

‘I’m… I’m on your side. I just want—’

‘Let me assure you, Mr Tilner, you are not on the side of the law.’

‘I just want to stop her, OK?’

Head pounding. Stomach acids rising.

‘The issue here is… We’ve seen absolutely no evidence that you oppose her. In fact, the evidence we have at hand—your involvement with the Loopkeeper vermin, your presence at Plenty Harbour—this all points to you being on her side.’

‘She is going to kill people,’ Sham continued, snarling through flared nostrils. ‘I just want to stop that.’

Vision beginning to fade. Blackness. Spots.

‘But you know we can’t trust—’

‘Trust me or don’t,’ Sham continued, shouting now through a thick fog that only he could see—or couldn’t, as the case may be. ‘Just be there. Get your officers and go to the Plaza. Go now. Look for her. Stop her.’

The illness was growing. Reaching into every corner of his body, seeking out every last glimmer of energy that Sham had reserved.

The captain snorted. ‘Yeah. Like we’d—’

But Sham didn’t hear the end of that sentence, as his heavy head plummeted towards the table.

Sham awoke to distant voices.

‘I hear the Fringe has grown closer again. A few miles this time…’

‘...Oh? Again? How close is that now?’

His head rang with the great church bells of pain. His back ached from having been rested on such a hard surface.

‘They say at this rate, it’ll be at Harbourage’s borders within a year or two.’

A pause. ‘That soon?’

Sham groaned as he pulled himself upright, blinked the surrounding room into his personal existence. Plain white walls towered above his position on a small concrete ledge, interrupted only by a small slit window. On the far side of the room, metal bars separated him from a corridor, down which the two voices were murmuring. It was a jail cell, again, yes. But not like the large one he’d been in before, back when Riot had bailed him out. This was a private cell, reserved for the prisoners of… high importance.

Sham had never been important before.

It took him a moment to comprehend the implications of the light pouring in through the small window. It wasn’t night any longer. It was… the day of the attack.

Day 9

This wasn’t where he’d wanted to be right now.

He’d wanted to have a plan of action. A way of stopping the Target. A power—whether that was internal or external—capable of bringing her down. Instead, however, he was trapped in a jail cell a half mile away, with no means of escape.

These last few days… could have gone better.

Sham slumped over to the cell’s bars, pressed his head against them, trying to get a better bearing of where he was. Two burgundy-clothed shapes continued their conversation at the end of the corridor, stopping abruptly only when Sham coughed. Pointedly.

‘Better get back to him,’ a woman’s voice sighed. There was a sadness to it, a strain. As though she was forcing a liveliness that wasn’t truly there, deep down, in her soul.

Footsteps echoed around the otherwise empty corridor as the officer of the Citizen’s Police grew closer, growing more and more into Sham’s field of vision, until…

Sham gasped audibly, took a step back from the bars of the cell. There, standing in full Citizen’s Police garb, was a familiar face.

Mona’s.

She was signed up to the force already, in this timeline. Here she was, ready to face and fail against the Target, ready to watch the Tower get destroyed, ready to die. Everything was barrelling towards the same outcome.

‘What are you looking at?’ Mona asked.

Sham realised he’d been staring, shook his head. ‘Nothing,’ he mumbled.

‘Good.’ Sham’s partner from another timeline nodded, and sat down on a small, wooden rickety chair, one almost at odds with the fresh and new building they were situated in. Perhaps it had been repurposed from the previous owner. From the pocketwatch storekeeper.

Everything would end just as it had last time. Sham was failing. Perhaps he already had failed, being trapped in here. There was…

He had no time.

No time, no means of escape, and no plan.

All Sham had was his peculiar collection of skills and a few quests that really, really, needed completing, if he was going to save lives.

QUEST LIST

THE PARADOX

Investigate those involved with the Night That Never Was.

SAVE THE TOWER

Prevent the Target from unleashing devastation.

LIFE IN THE REVOLUTION

Pick a side in the coming storm.

Two of those were rather time sensitive, and the last one Sham still didn’t have the mental space to properly think about. There were implications there, he was well aware, but they’d have to wait at least one more day.

His skills—Hardened Liver, Seasoned, Heart of Janus, Recollection—none of these seemed to afford him any way to get out of here. He’d need to get creative. He’d need to think. He’d need—

Sham remembered the skill vial rolling around his inside pocket. The one Asa had given him in payment for making the exchange with the strange sailor.

Perspicacity.

If he was shrewder, maybe, he’d work out a way out of here. It was worth a—

‘Just know this: you should give it some time, between vials. Or there can be… side effects.’

Gresley’s words rang through Sham’s head once more. He knew it was Recollection’s doing. That this Legendary grade skill seemed to feel possessive over Sham, that it didn’t want to share him with another. But that didn’t mean Gresley was wrong. There could certainly be—

‘Side effects,’ the words erupted in his skull once more, spoken again exactly as Gresley had a few days earlier, but somehow louder this time. As though Recollection was moving the words to the very forefront of Sham’s mind.

But there was another option in that pocket, too.

Sham stood, turned away from Mona, and pulled the Charm boono he’d found at Kryl’s apartment from his jacket. Without allowing himself a moment of hesitation, Sham pulled the cork from the top of the bottle and downed the contents in one gulp.

‘Good choice...’ Recollection murmured. ‘Forget Perspicacity. You don’t need her.’

‘Hey,’ Sham said, turning back to his guard with wide, sad eyes. ‘Are you OK? You seem a little…’

He trailed off, let the end of the thought hang in the air.

[CHARM] I’M HERE FOR YOU: SYSTEM ERROR

Seek reset.

Mona glanced at him, a nervous, sad smile spreading across her face. ‘I’m…’ she said, then seemed to catch herself—was she about to open up to a prisoner? What had come over her?

But Sham knew the answer to that question. It wasn’t something that had come over her, but something that had come over him. ‘Is it to do with why you’re here?’ he asked Mona, pressing on. ‘You must have a reason for joining. You want to do good, right? Help people? Or—’

‘Get justice,’ she replied. Her voice was croaky, little more than a whisper. A wetness appeared in the corners of her down-turned eyes.

‘Justice?’ Sham responded, trying to match her gentle tone. ‘For… for what?’

‘I… I don’t know if I should be telling you.’

Sham forced a smile, a shrug. ‘I’m locked up. What harm can there be?’

Mona paused, studied the floor for a moment, considering Sham’s words. Finally, she tilted her head and raised her eyebrows in agreement. ‘My father,’ she croaked. ‘He was killed recently. I joined… I joined to find the person responsible.’

Interesting.

Having joined the Citizen’s Police earlier in this timeline, something had to have changed. But if her father’s death was the inciting factor, then it had to have happened in both timelines. Something made this timeline ever so slightly different. Something Sham or the Target—the only known variables—had altered.

‘How’d it happen?’ Sham asked.

Mona shrugged. ‘Wrong place at the wrong time, it sounds like. He was a dockworker. Plenty Harbour. Stumbled across…’

But Mona’s voice faded from Sham’s ears as he made the connection. He didn’t need Recollection’s power to see the old man fall to the pier once more, though the Legendary skill showed him nonetheless. In the memory, Sham could see it; there was a striking resemblance there, one that he hadn’t noticed amongst the stress of the situation.

It was his fault, then. His doing that Mona’s father was—

‘No,’ Recollection murmured.

Sham resisted the urge to reply, “No?”

‘She joined the CP in the other timeline, you remember? His death had to have happened regardless. He stumbled across the meeting, got himself murdered, even if you were not the one making the trade. Your hands, this time, are clean.’

This was the very first time the voice in Sham’s head had made him feel better, rather than worse.

‘...captain promised he’d find him. Let me have at him,’ Mona was finishing.

Ah. More pieces of the puzzle slotted into place. That was why it had to be her watching him, of all people. Captain Dickhead knew exactly what he was doing; putting a secondary victim of the murder on the docks to watch their prime suspect. Though that supposed…

‘Do you know? Who did it? Did you find the person responsible?’

Mona swallowed back pain, raised her head, a familiar intensity returning to her eyes. ‘No,’ she said. ‘But I will.’

Captain Dickhead hadn’t gotten around to revealing that piece of information to Mona yet, then. That Sham was involved with her father’s murder. It meant, perhaps, that he might still stand a chance at charming his way out of here, thanks to his new boono.

‘You know…’ Sham started.

Mona leant forwards, entranced. Sham could get used to this Charm stuff.

He continued, ‘They’ve arrested me cos they think I’m in league with someone. A dangerous someone.’

‘I’ve seen the briefing.’

‘Then you understand. Really dangerous. But I’m not in league with her. I’ve been trying to stop her. But Captain Dickhead—’

Mona’s face snapped towards Sham, a surprised, genuine smile on her face.

‘—has got it all wrong. You know what he’s like, though, don’t you? Leering, slimy…’

‘...Chauvinistic,’ Mona added.

Sham raised his hands in agreement. ‘Exactly! This isn’t a man who knows what’s best.’

‘And you do?’ Mona pressed. ‘I can’t just let you—’

‘I do, yes. I’m your best shot at stopping this woman,’ Sham continued, and then, bracing himself, added what he thought was the killing blow. ‘I know how to stop the woman who was on Plenty Harbour.’

[HEART OF JANUS] A MEANS TO AN END: SUCCESS

It’s a lie. A dreadful one. But you’ll do what you have to to get out of here.

Mona’s eyes grew suddenly and overwhelmingly sad once more. But there was no room for doubt in them, no room for distrust. She’d bought the lie in its entirety. If Sham was going to feel guilty about pulling on this woman’s heartstrings so, he’d do it later. Right now, there was a job to do, and just over an hour in which to do it.

‘Alright,’ Mona said, rising to a stand and pulling out the key chain from her belt. ‘But you don’t leave my sight, understand?’

Sham nodded, said nothing more, not risking changing his old partner’s mind.

‘Then let’s go stop this fuck.’