The last of the sun’s rays set over the tall building tops of the Diplomatic District as Sham, accompanied by just the same person as last time, set out for Government Plaza. Perhaps another Sham and another Mona were walking down this same street at this very moment, inches away but for the distance of time. Or maybe not; physics had never been one of Sham’s strong suits.

They hurried on, brushing through the crowds of tourists and the last of the commuters, caring not when they had to barge through, push people gently aside. Soon, the great architectural monstrosity that was the Tower loomed over them, piercing the cloudy heavens above.

The streets grew emptier and emptier as they approached the Plaza. But it wasn’t just the heavy blanket of night that had citizens heading home; a greater and greater police presence encouraged people away. Sham was only allowed to progress further into the centre of the city as he was accompanied by the burgundy-uniformed Mona, otherwise he, too, would have been turned away.

The Citizen’s Police had taken his note seriously, then.

Of course, they should have done; he was trying to help them, after all. And his information would have matched up with their internal intel—from whoever had sent them after the Target in the first place. But Sham had had enough contact with the Citizen’s Police force now that he didn’t exactly trust them to be wholly capable of doing their jobs correctly. So the police presence here was… a pleasant surprise. One that meant they might actually stand a chance of stopping the Target, this time around.

The latest pair of officers waved Mona—and by extension Sham—through, and soon enough, they were on the stony courts of the Government Plaza. Just as before.

Except… not. In this timeline, dozens of men and women dressed in burgundy patrolled the square, their posture upright and alert, some accosting those few citizens unfortunate enough to be crossing the plaza at this late hour.

‘How’s she gonna do it?’ Mona asked as they pressed diagonally across the square for the steps at the base of the Tower.

‘What?’

‘This terrorist. What’s her plan, here? You say you know what she’s going to do, so I ask you… how?’

Sham gulped. The truth was a little hard to believe. Sure, he could tell Mona that the Target herself was going to explode in a blinding light the likes of which he’d never seen, with a range completely unknown to him because he was ripped apart before he could see the full damage. Or he could, you know, say something a little more comprehensible.

‘The skill vials. The ones your police force has. You had any?’

Mona’s mouth quivered. ‘No. Not yet. Been told I can…’ She trailed off for a moment. ‘Been told I’ll get some later.’

‘Plenty for you when you get back here. Gulp down whatever you want.’ Recollection had Captain Dickhead’s words from the previous timeline echo through Sham’s mind once more. Not so much had changed in this version of events, then, if Mona was receiving much the same pushback.

‘Yes, yes…’ Sham muttered under his breath to the living skill that existed in his mind. ‘Enough of that.’

Mona shot him a curious expression that suggested she’d caught that he was talking to himself, but said nothing of it.

‘She has them. The target, she has… more than you could possibly imagine. Dozens of them, in the inner lining of her coat.’ Sham glanced at his young acquaintance, caught sight of wide eyes. ‘And she’ll use them. Here. She’ll be more powerful than—’

‘Wait.’

Sham stopped, turned to face Mona.

‘No,’ the young officer said, gesturing for him to continue, ‘I mean… Wait, why is she gonna use them here?’

Sham pushed his brow together. ‘Well, to overpower everyone that—’

‘No, no. I get that. But if it’s power she wants… has… Then why doesn’t she consume the vials, you know, before launching an attack on the Tower?’

The time traveller gulped, considered this question that he had no good answer to. ‘I… I don’t know,’ he finally said. ‘But that’s how she’ll do it.’

‘I don’t—’

‘You’ll just have to trust me on this,’ Sham said as they reached the bottom step that led up to the grand double doors at the base of the Tower. ‘It’s what she’ll—’

Sham was interrupted by the sound of gunfire. A lone shot erupted on the far side of the plaza, one of two distant burgundy dots holding its source in their blurry hand.

‘Is that—’ Mona started.

‘Who else could it be?’

Sham and Mona began towards the target at precisely the same moment as every other person in the square, though he was the only one not in uniform. More and more gunfire erupted as the officers of the Citizen’s Police force grew closer to the one they hunted, yet the Target did not fall.

At this distance, Sham could only make out the general gists of her movements. She dipped and dived, ran for cover, kept moving—all of which seemed to allow her to evade the stray bullets of the recently hired officers. It wasn’t natural skill that kept her alive. She’d already consumed some of the vials, of course. She was lucky. She was agile. She was a keener shot than any Sham had ever seen before. This was the work of Legendary grade skills.

‘Gods damn it, Asa,’ Sham muttered to himself, receiving a curious glance from Mona in response.

‘You got a plan here?’

‘Yeah,’ Sham replied as he watched more of the officers fall. ‘Shoot her.’

‘Right!’

They scuttled for cover as they grew closer, using the plinth of a long since toppled statue to shield themselves from the Target’s bullets.

‘Shoot her,’ Mona repeated, the skepticism heavy in her voice.

‘Yes,’ Sham said again. ‘But we’re gonna have to—’

A chunk of stone was knocked from the edge of the plinth as a stray bullet collided with it.

‘...Get closer,’ the time traveller finished.

Mona gulped, fear in her wide eyes, but nodded. Sham was relieved to see that she was still a woman strong enough to meet the enemy head on.

They bolted onwards, crossing the huge swathes of space between the plinth and the next piece of cover, both of them managing to avoid life-threatening injury in the meantime. Up ahead, a good twenty feet away, a man in burgundy uniform gasped for air as his lungs filled with blood. In his hand, he clutched a force-issued revolver.

Just what Sham needed.

‘I’m gonna…’ Sham started, nodding to the weapon on the ground.

‘See if he’s OK?’ Mona guessed.

‘No.’

Sham took a deep breath, risked a glance in the Target’s direction, and then bolted out towards the weapon that was quickly losing its owner. Bullets whizzed overhead, closer this time, and Sham wasted no time in ripping the weapon from the dying man’s hand.

‘Sorry,’ he mouthed to him, and then ran back for cover. There was nothing he could do for him now. Not with the Target still alive. Not with her still firing.

‘What now?’ Mona asked. ‘And don’t just say “shoot her”. We’re gonna need a little more of a plan than that, I’m thinking.’

Sham considered this. Searched for an advantage. The Target had access to all the Legendary grade skills she could possibly want. And she’d have consumed the most useful ones already, if she had any brain on her. So that didn’t give Sham much to work with. She’d overpower him, she’d shoot faster than him, move with more strength, more speed. What did Sham have to offer that the Target didn’t?

SKILL LIST

Hardened Liver (Common)

Seasoned (Uncommon)

Heart of Janus (Rare)

Recollection (Legendary)

Charm (Rare)

There. That was it; the answer. The Target might have access to all the skills she could possibly want, but who would think of the sorts of skills that Sham had accumulated over the years? These were the skills developed over a life unfulfilled. The skills of scroungers. Of drunkards.

Not skills that anything would think to seek out.

‘I got something,’ Sham said. ‘The… barest bones of a plan.’

‘What is—’

‘Just get closer. Stick to cover. I’m gonna distract her.’

Mona nodded.

Sham, breathing deeply so as to force himself to be calm, peeked over the cover of the stone wall and glimpsed the situation beyond.

There were few officers still standing. And they wouldn’t be standing for much longer. If Sham didn’t act now, the Target would push onwards into the Tower, and there would be no way left to stop her. This was it; his hero moment. Now or never.

Sham surprised himself by choosing “now”.

He plunged his stolen revolver into the back of his trousers, stood from his cover, and raised his hands into the air. As he pressed forwards, the last of the Citizen’s Police officers fell—Mona excluded—and the Target shifted her attention to him.

‘You,’ she spat.

‘I’m unarmed!’ Sham shouted.

[HEART OF JANUS] UNARMED: SUCCESS

It wouldn’t matter too much to her if you weren’t.

‘Yes,’ the Target responded, ‘I can see that. What is it that you want?’

Good. The plan was working already.

‘To stop you.’ Better not to lie with every parting of his lips, Sham figured.

The woman smiled. ‘That’s… not gonna happen.’

‘Fine. To talk, then.’

[HEART OF JANUS] I’M HERE TO TALK: SUCCESS

Look at that raised eyebrow, that twinkling in her eyes; you’ve got her attention.

‘About what?’ She looked at the burgundy shapes dotted around her. ‘About all the killing? You know, this was the weakest resistance yet. Didn’t even need the vials. Was this your doing? Or did Enoch really think this would be enough?’

‘Enoch?’ Sham answered, his mind scrambling for the reason he’d know that name. ‘The… the Prime Minister? What’s he got to do with—’

‘Don’t move!’ Mona shouted, standing from behind an overgrown perimeter hedge with her gun in hand, seizing the opportunity to act while the Target was distracted. But it was too soon. Sham had more lies prepared, more methods of distraction. He’d been planning to shift the Target into Mona’s reach, to give her a better chance at stopping her. He should’ve been more clear. Should’ve explained it.

Should’ve done a lot of things.

The woman they sought to arrest only smiled. She reached for her jacket, began pulling it slowly open.

‘I said don’t move!’ Mona repeated, her voice laden with wrath.

‘Gonna have to shoot if you want to stop me,’ the Target gloated, pulling a skill vial from the interior of her jacket and raising it to her lips.

Mona did just that. A shot echoed across the plaza as a round escaped the barrel of Mona’s revolver… and buried itself in the ground at the Target’s feet.

The Target looked down to the mark in the tiles, then back up to Mona, an eyebrow raised. ‘Maybe I should have been clearer. You’re going to have to shoot me.’ She finished the vial, tossed it aside, and then pulled another few free of her jacket.

‘No,’ Sham found himself saying. ‘No, you’re not… You don’t do that here. You do that inside. We’re… we can still stop you.’

‘Things change,’ came the reply.

‘No,’ Sham said, reaching for his hidden weapon, pointing it at his unphased target. ‘No, I don’t understand. I never got answers. Why are you doing this? What’s Asa got to do with it all? And Kryl… how does he know what you’ve been planning? I don’t—’

‘We don’t always get our answers,’ the woman replied. ‘Sometimes there’s no—’

Another shot rang out.

Bullet hit flesh, this time.

The Target screamed, roared some unintelligible noise at Mona, as though truly unable to believe that she would do such a thing. She ignored her bleeding leg, marched forwards.

‘Got some luck in you, eh?’ the Target spat at the last surviving officer on the plaza.

Mona fired again. Missed. Again. The gun jammed.

‘Some luck,’ the Target continued, ‘But not enough.’ Soon she was upon Mona.

Sham’s revolver arm faltered. He shot, but missed—though whether that was to do with some luck quotient or his own incredibly amateurish marksmanship, he could not say. It could well be the latter; when would a guy like him have had the chance to wield a firearm? Before he had a chance to fire again, the Target had her hand around Mona’s throat.

She gripped it tight. She raised Mona effortlessly from the ground. And she broke the woman’s neck.

‘Why?’ someone—Sham—screamed. ‘Why? Why do you do this?’

‘Because I’m sick of dying!’ the Target roared back. ‘And this is the only way!’

Sham watched as the woman pulled skill vials from her jacket, began downing them with an intensity that Sham had only seen in the dusty mirror of grimy bars. ‘What? Who says?’

He saw the first strand of yellow light.

Cracks were forming already in the Target’s skin. Her face warped, her mouth twisting into a snarl.

‘The voice!’ the woman shouted at him.

Sham’s intention had been to interrogate the woman further, but the light grew quickly bright. The cracks in her skin widened, her body no longer able to contain the sheer power that lurked within.

He felt himself be torn apart mere seconds after the first light had ripped through the Target’s flesh. The wave of power washed over him, consumed him, sending a blinding, searing pain through every crevice of his pitiful being.

Once again, he thought only of Her as his life was taken from him.

And then, again, he was reborn.

Day 1

‘Oh, fuck me,’ Sham groaned.