Day 4

Finally, the front door creaked open.

‘Thought you were gonna let me starve,’ Sham muttered as Riot returned, her eyes narrowing as she entered her brother’s bedroom.

The hours had crawled by ever slower, the day turned to night once more, and the night back to day again. All the while, Sham had become more and more aware of his stomach rumbling and his muscles growing tired. With his condition, he needed to eat at regular intervals to keep his energy up, and without having eaten anything for over twenty-four hours by this point… his body was beginning to pay the price.

Riot responded by throwing something onto the bed. A brown paper bag, some kind of liquid seeping through the very corners, leaving dark patches. ‘Food,’ she said, gesturing to it. ‘Eat.’

Sham raised his eyebrows in indignation, but was too hungry to complain. He reached for the bag, whipped it open, and looked inside at the strange white lumps that laid within. ‘What’s this?’

‘Food.’

‘Yes,’ he continued, ‘What kind of food?’

Riot stared on at Sham for a few moments, her nostrils flaring. Barely, she managed to keep her calm. ‘Steamed rice balls. Eat.’

Sham shrugged, reached into the bag, and was about to grab at one of his balls when a question was blurted from Riot’s lips.

‘Why?’

Sham looked up, dropped the rice ball back into the bag. ‘What? Don’t just say “why”. Give me some context here or something if you actually want your questions answered.’

‘Why lie to me?’ Riot continued, unabashed by Sham’s intentionally irritating response.

‘I didn’t!’ Sham replied.

‘Kryl. He’s a friend.’ Recollection had the words echo around Sham’s mind once more. OK. A small lie, then, but he wasn’t exactly about to tell Riot that.

‘You said you knew my brother. That he’d mentioned me. But if he’d mentioned me, then you’d know I was his sister. Not his…’ She trailed off, not wanting to voice an idea that to her was surely horrifying.

‘Then I got some facts mixed up. Big deal! I still know him.’

Riot raised an eyebrow. ‘What’s his favourite meal?’

‘What? I don’t know.’

‘What skills does he have?’

‘You know it’s bad form to ask someone that,’ Sham replied.

‘OK, then,’ Riot continued. ‘An easier one. What colour are his eyes?’

Sham paused, licked his lips again as he considered. ‘...Brown?’ he guessed.

‘Green,’ Riot replied, pointing to her face. ‘Like my own.’

‘Moron,’ Recollection muttered.

‘Alright,’ Sham admitted. ‘So I don’t know him. Doesn’t mean I’m not trying to help him. If you’ll just take these chains off my—’

Riot took a step forward, her eyes fixed on Sham, coming to a stop just out of reach. She’d sized him up. Considered his reach. Kept her guard up. ‘We have established that you are a liar, yes? So how am I supposed to trust a single word that comes out of your mouth?’

‘Because…’ Sham started. ‘Because…’

Fuck it.

‘Because we’ve been here before. Not…’ He gestured around the room as best he could. ‘Not here here, but similar. We’ve both looked for him before.’

Riot’s response was simple. ‘What?’ she asked.

‘Well, maybe “before” is the wrong word. But we’ve definitely looked for him. In… another time. In a different loop.’

The woman’s brow seemed to twitch. ‘What are… what on the gods’ green earth is that intended to mean?’

‘Kryl… Kryl and me, we’re trying to stop someone, right? Someone who is for whatever reason set on destroying the capital. Starting at the Tower.’

Riot’s eyes widened. Sham ploughed on regardless.

‘And every time she does it, every time she destroys it, I’m thrown back in time. And I think your brother is, too. I’m just trying to find him. To help him. Me and him, we’re on the same side. We’re just trying to stop this woman.’

‘Then why haven’t you?’

Sham tilted his head back. Sighed. ‘You say that like it’s easy.’

Riot looked on at him for a moment, her now noticeably green eyes boring into Sham’s brown ones. Her brow twitched again. She gulped. ‘I think…’ she finally said, ‘I think you need professional help. I know someone who—’

‘Yes, you said that last time too.’

A quizzical expression shot across Riot’s face. She moved to respond, but Sham cut her off again.

‘Look,’ he continued. ‘Let’s face it; I’m not gonna convince you, am I? Not this Loop, at least. But maybe next Loop. Or the one after that. And it would be an awful lot of help if you could give me something to help convince you, next time.’

Riot’s eyes glazed over.

‘What? What harm could it do? Just tell me something private, and—’

‘I’m not going to do that,’ Riot cut in.

‘Why not?’

‘Because you’re a stranger! And quite possibly mad!’

Sham sighed, licked his lips. He should’ve anticipated Riot taking this much convincing; she always did. ‘OK, say I’m mad. Then nobody would believe anything I got to say, would they?’

Riot pulled a face, shrugged her shoulders.

‘And if I’m not mad, if this time loop really does exist—’

‘It doesn’t.’

‘If it does,’ Sham went on regardless. ‘Then I have a way to convince you, next time around, don’t I?’

The woman in front of Sham made no response, so he pressed on.

‘Look, what’ve you got to lose? You don’t even have to give me context. Just give me something—anything—that might convince you next—’

[COMMAND] GIVE ME SOMETHING: SUCCESS

Alright. Fine.

‘They took him with a gold-hilted blade,’ Riot suddenly spat out.

‘What? Who? Kryl?’

Riot shook her head. ‘No. Just… just tell me that. Word for word. In the mind-bogglingly unlikely situation that there is some time loop—’

‘There is.’

‘—then tell me that. Got it?’

Sham nodded. ‘Gold-hilted blade. Yeah. I got it.’

‘I’m not sure why I’m even asking this but… You will definitely remember? I could smell the whisky on your—’

‘I’ll remember,’ Sham said, cutting the woman off before he hand to hear any more about his alcohol consumption. ‘Trust me, if nothing else, I’ll remember.’

Riot paused, looked Sham up and down, then nodded. ‘Right.’ She turned away and began to exit the room.

‘Wait, where are you going?’ Sham demanded, raising his bound hands towards her. ‘I’m still stuck here!’

‘And I still don’t know if I can trust you. If I’m honest, all this talk of time loops has only made me think that you might be mad. And I can’t rule out madness as a reason that Kryl might be—’

‘I didn’t take Kryl!’ Sham cried out. ‘I thought we were starting to strike a rapport here. You don’t have to believe me on the Loops, but you gotta believe that I’m looking for your brother, just the same as you. And two pairs of eyes have gotta be better than one.

‘I know you don’t believe me but I know you. In a past timeline we might have even been friends. I know you’re only doing this’—Sham shook the chain—’because you care about Kryl. So we can move past this. If you’ll just let me go. If you’ll just stop treating me like… like an animal.’

Riot paused again, eyed up the metal chain that was binding Sham to the bed.

[COMMAND] TIME TO LET ME GO: FAIL

No. Not when it comes to Kryl, and whether you’re responsible for his disappearance; Riot can’t take that chance.

‘I’m sorry,’ Riot whispered, her eyes deep with sadness then turned away once more. She closed the bedroom door gently behind her and left Sham, still, bound and alone.

‘Oh, fuck off, then,’ Sham shouted after her.

‘Her too, huh?’ Recollection slurred.

The second day passed more slowly than the first. The steamed rice balls—which were actually more tasty than Sham had expected, though maybe his ravenous hunger had something to do with that—were all gone by the time the sun had set once more. Sham could only get a sense for the time of day based on the light slipping through the crack under the bedroom door, for there were no windows in the room, it being at the interior of the building. Occasionally, two black paws reached under the door as Kryl’s cat tried to return to his visitor, and Sham—rather foolishly, maybe—threw it a rice ball that it quickly devoured. But when it failed to make any further progress, or failed to receive any more food, it quickly became bored.

And so Sham was left alone with nought but the living skill for company. He’d learned his lesson, though, and didn’t engage with any of Recollection’s taunts or dark memories that Sham had forgotten he possessed. As the time passed, all there was left to do was to—

The front door to Kryl’s apartment slammed open. Sham’s heart raced. Through the slit beneath the bedroom door, he saw a singular pair of footsteps enter. They trod lightly towards the bedroom, as though their owner was small, thin.

Riot had returned. Sham felt his worries soothed by the revealed identity of the intruder. But when the bedroom door swung open, very different concerns took their place.

Standing in the doorway, gasping for breath, Riot glared at Sham with dark bruises forming on her face, patching of dried blood on her cheeks and clothes.

‘You didn’t tell me…’ Riot snarled, pausing as she gasped for air, ‘You didn’t tell me it was the Legion after him.’ The woman blinked, swayed, as though all energy had been knocked from her.

‘I didn’t know…’ Sham started, but let his response tail off, instead replacing it with, ‘What did you do?’

Riot staggered forwards, placing her arms on the bed for support—well in reach of Sham if he wanted to grab at her. He didn’t.

‘Went… looking for Kryl. His usual… haunts.’ Riot’s words were studded with painful breaths, and she reached at her ribs with the worse of her groans. ‘Came across… Didn’t find him, but found… them. Escaped, but…’

‘Escaped? You escaped from the Legion? How?’

But Riot didn’t reply, her breathing faltering, her eyes closed.

‘Riot?’ Sham prompted her.

No response.

‘...Riot?’

The woman collapsed to the bed.

‘Riot?’ Sham said one more time, shaking the woman by the shoulder to prompt her. But still there was no response. Sham puts his fingers to Riot’s neck, checking for a pulse. He found it quickly, and strong, too; the woman in front of him was just unconscious.

‘The keys…’ Recollection muttered.

‘Yes, yes.’ Sham waved the living skill’s words away. ‘I know.’

Heaving the unconscious Riot closer to him, Sham swept her body for the keys to his release. He couldn’t help but feel uncomfortable about touching the woman in such a manner—they weren’t that close, after all—and the keys, when he eventually found them, were in a pocket far too near to her privates than he would have liked.

Sham pushed the keys into the lock on his metal bindings, and felt a release as they unclasped. He breathed a sigh of relief, dropping the key and touching at his newly-freed wrists. There were deep red bruises where the edges had been, though these patches were noticeably far lesser than that of his captive.

The time traveller hopped off the bed and around the unconscious Riot, then found himself confronted by two wide yellow eyes in the doorway.

Kryl’s cat looked once at Sham, then to the unconscious Riot, and then back to Sham again. A pang of guilt rang through Sham’s heart as he followed the cat’s gaze.

Riot’s body was slumped visibly uncomfortably over the side of the bed. Her breathing faltered occasionally, the pains of her injuries present even in her unconscious world. She was weakened. Vulnerable. If anyone found her now… Well, he couldn’t just leave her here, could he? The Legion would return at some point, and… There was no telling what they’d do. And Sham wasn’t sure he could live with that, even if the Loop began anew and this version of Riot didn’t come to remember it.

Sham breathed a sigh of despair as the cat ambled up to his owner’s sister’s body, and muttered, finally, ‘...Gods damn it.’