Day 1

MEMORY UNLOCKED (RECOLLECTION)

Your head lays heavy on the cold wooden tabletop, the first of the thundering hangover already beginning to kick in. You stir from your deep stupor to the thudding of feet against door. If it’s you that they’ve come for, so be it.

‘Fuck!’ Sham shouted as he bolted upright, swinging his head away from the rickety table from which it had been resting. In the jolted movement, the empty bottle of whiskey wobbled, then fell to the floor where it crashed into a thousand pieces. But Sham didn’t care; knowing his luck, there would be another Loop, then another, then another… Whatever happened in this timeline didn’t matter. It was only the next, or the one after that, or the one after that… Whichever one that Sham was able to finally break this infinite cycle.

But this time, something was different. This time, armed with the knowledge of the previous Loop, Riot might just believe him.

Though Sham might not need her to.

Sham staggered up from his seat, feeling his sweat-ridden clothes stick to the wood as he peeled himself way. He worried not about changing clothes, about washing, because time was of the essence. If he could get to Kryl’s apartment quick enough, he would catch him.

The time traveller clutched at his head as he bombed down the metal staircase, each time his foot hit step a throbbing pain reverberating around his temple. He charged out into the street, catching his foot on the pavement and running a little to keep his balance. He—

[HARDENED LIVER] THERE SHE BLOWS: FAIL

Up comes the stomach acid!

—wretched onto the cobbled streets, as well as his left shoe, while he ran across the road towards the tram stop, but didn’t let himself slow throughout the process. He ignored the cries of the pedestrians he pushed through, allowing himself to accept the pain and the aches that were beginning to overwhelm him only once he was safely sat on the back seat of a tram.

And then it all hit him at once. The throbbing hangover, the tenderness that ran through his damaged body, it all became too much.

Sham passed out.

He couldn’t have been unconscious for long, as he awoke when the tram was just passing through the Diplomatic District, though only then because a fellow passenger’s particularly bony elbow was digging into him. As Sham stirred, suddenly hyper-aware that he stank—and not just of alcohol—he peered up at the old woman next to him. He found that she was scowling, and took the expression to mean that her wayward elbow was not an accident.

Sham resisted the urge to elbow the old woman back, but found himself intent to glare into her eyes and hold his gaze until she looked away, embarrassed. The elbowing stopped suddenly, at that point.

He looked out the tram window, staring by accident into the morning sun, and blinked back the pain that throbbed throughout his temple. The journey slowed as the tram entered the Sunrise District, with tram stops placed every hundred yards rather than dotted only sporadically throughout the streets, as they were in the Harbour District. At least Sham lived in an area that even had the tramlines, he supposed.

When he finally arrived at the tram stop outside Kryl’s apartment, Sham spent a few moments peering up at it, ensuring that there were no Legion inside. Making sure that there wasn’t any movement. Or, if there was movement, that it belonged only to the resident.

‘You seem so sure that he’ll be here,’ Recollection sneered.

‘Came here last Loop. You saw.’

‘Yes, came here last Loop, as you say. But this man… this man remembers the Loops. There is nothing to say that he’ll do the same this time around, or the next time around. This man isn’t trapped by the—’

‘He’ll want the boono,’ Sham interrupted, taking care to keep his voice low so as to not draw attention. ‘You remember what happened on the Loop he didn’t have it.’

An image of Kryl’s body blossomed in Sham’s mind—blurred beneath the murky depths of the harbour’s waters.

As Sham blinked the memory away, he saw it: a man in a finely-pressed suit, hurrying up the external stairwell of Kryl’s apartment building. A man he’d met before, ever so briefly, on the previous Loop. Kryl himself.

Sham took a quick glance each way up the street, searching for the telltale black of the Legion, and then, satisfied that they were not yet here, followed up the stairs for Kryl’s apartment—and to finally confront the man he’d been searching for all this time.

He didn’t bother to announce himself as he pressed the front door open, cringing only slightly when the hinge creaked.

‘There goes the element of surprise…’ Recollection remarked.

‘Tonic?’ a voice called out from the bedroom.

The cat peered up from its place on the settee, and meowed in Kryl’s direction.

From the bedroom, Sham heard a heavy draw slam shut, and heard two pieces of glass clink together. The boono.

As Sham walked into the apartment, the bedroom door swung open, revealing the man himself. When Kryl caught sight of the visitor, he wore no fear in his eyes, betrayed no jolt of alarm, only surveying Sham with a curious gaze.

‘Kryl,’ Sham said, nodding.

‘Mr Tilner,’ the resident replied, returning the nod. ‘I did wonder when we might meet.’

Sham held his hands in the air, meaning it as an act of reassurance, that he was carrying no weapon. Not that he’d be able to work a damned revolver if he had one, but Kryl, perhaps, didn’t know that. ‘I’m not here to harm you.’

Kryl remained silent for a few moments, pacing into the room as he placed the two boono vials in his jacket pocket. He kept to the apartment’s perimeter, well away from Sham. He moved with a sense of an abundant caution ‘I know,’ he finally replied.

‘We want the same thing.’

Then Kryl paused, narrowed his eyes. ‘Oh?’

Only then did Sham begin to doubt the man’s motives. How much evidence did he really have of that? ‘To stop the explosion. To break the Loop. To talk the Target down.’

Kryl raised an eyebrow. ‘The Target?’ he repeated back to Sham, edging around the room in a movement which mirrored Sham’s own. ‘I suppose you are referring to Julya?’

‘The woman who—’

‘The commoner with the death wish, yes.’

‘Commoner,’ Recollection repeated.

‘And so you have come here, uninvited, to… what?’ Kryl added.

‘Well, I… I thought two heads might be better than one. Thought that if we combined our knowledge then we might be able to, you know, talk her down.’

Kryl laughed—an abrupt, pointed action. ‘Talk her down? My dear, the only way we stop her is to kill her. But there are other pieces on this board that must be in place first…’

‘I’m not…’ Sham started. ‘Kill her? Is that why you have those boono?’ He nodded to the vials clinking in Kryl’s jacket pocket. By this point, the two men had circled one another so much that it was now Kryl who stood by the door, and Sham in the interior of the room. The cat, Tonic, stared up at him with drowsy eyes.

‘The boono? A means to an end, as they ever were. You don’t get to be as successful as I am without paying that price, Mr Tilner. That’s a lesson your people might do well to learn.’

‘I—’

‘I’ve seen the way you run around. Making progress, sure, but sharing much the look of a headless chicken as you do so. Bumping into my sister in the process.’

Riot. That was a point. The Loop left unchecked, Riot would come here, searching for her brother. Would get wrapped up in all this. Might again suffer a dreadful fate at the hands of the Legion. Sham found that he just couldn’t let that happen.

‘You should tell her,’ Sham said. ‘Tell her you’re not missing, that you’re just busy. That—’

Kryl shook his head. ‘I don’t want her involved.’

‘Yes, because that’s been working so well these past few Loops, hasn’t it?’

‘Worked out just fine until you appeared.’

The two men fell into silence, glaring at one another from across the room.

‘You had imagined this meeting would go better, hadn’t you?’ Recollection gloated.

Finally, Kryl turned to place his hand on the front door. ‘Stay here, and the Legion will have their way with you,’ he said, his voice low.

‘So what?’ Sham replied. ‘Then I’ll just wake up this morning again, won’t I?’

‘Mr Tilner, you seem to be under the impression that they will be only interested in killing you. The truth, I assure you, is much, much worse than that.’

When Sham said nothing, Kryl spoke again.

‘Torture.’

‘Yes,’ Sham replied, ‘I know. And I ain’t know that I care. Ain’t gonna be worse than what I’ve been subjected to my whole life.’

Kryl’s eyes narrowed. ‘Still. I would rather you weren’t caught up in this. Not on my account.’

Sham scoffed, paced around the room with his hands at his back, taking in the decadent surrounding. ‘Oh yeah? And just why would someone like you care what happens to someone like me?’

‘Because…’ Kryl breathed an apparently reluctant sigh. ‘Because I’ve seen you care for my sister. When you didn’t have to. And when she doesn’t make it easy—gods know she never does.’

Sham surprised himself with a smile. Kryl, noticing it, replied with a sly grin of his own. ‘No,’ Sham said. ‘Suppose she doesn’t, that.’

The conversation seemed to reach its natural end, and Kryl turned for the doorway.

‘Wait,’ Sham called out to him, forcing the resident to crane his head around as he stepped outside. The questions spilled forth like a waterfall, no effort on Sham’s part being enough to slow them. ‘I got more questions. How did you get involved in all this? Did you just remember? From the Recollection vial? Did you take any other vials? Why are you trying to stop her? And why do you have boono? And—’

Kryl slowly moved his index finger up to his lips, and blew a gentle “shh” sound. ‘They’ll be here soon,’ he whispered. ‘On the next Loop… perhaps I’ll tell you more.’

‘No! Tell me now, damn it. I’ve been through enough of this shit already. You’ve been where I am, surely. Been just as confused as me. So have some bloody empathy, yeah?’

‘You’ve a way with words, as ever.’

Kryl paused for a second, a train of thought passing in front of his eyelids, then snorted gently through his nose. Without saying another word, he turned away.

Sham rushed to the door as fast as his crippled body would allow, and was able to catch Kryl’s eye on the staircase. ‘The Legion,’ he found himself asking. ‘Do they remember?’

Riot’s brother paused on the stairwell for a moment, then shook his head. ‘No. But it’s not quite that simple.’

Sham pressed his lips together, forming a hard line across his face. ‘It never is,’ he muttered, as the man he’d been searching for passed from view.

Once more, Sham found himself alone. What little answers he’d gleaned from his meeting with Kryl only seemed to reveal more questions. What had he meant by there being other pieces on this board? And what was their rightful place? Sham brought up his quest list. Or rather, one quest in particular.

QUEST: SAVE KRYL, SAVE THE WORLD

When it comes to stopping the Target, surely two heads are better than one.

There it was.

Still marked as incomplete. Still progress to be made.

‘On the next Loop… perhaps I’ll tell you more.’

There was hope, then. That if he just managed another eight days, then the mighty Kryl might deem it appropriate to shed more light on Sham’s quests.

‘No,’ Sham said out loud, apparently for his own benefit. ‘Fuck that.’

‘Indeed.’

It was time to take this into his own hands. It was time to take advantage of this Loop. It was time to skill the fuck up.

‘Wait… what do you—’

‘I mean... And I’m so sorry about this, Recollection,’ Sham drawled. ‘But I think it’s about time you got some company in there.’

‘More… more voices?’ Recollection said. This was the first time that the voice had sounded almost… scared. ‘Are you sure that’s what you want? Are you sure your mind can take it?’

‘You know what?’ Sham replied, speaking loudly from his position on Kryl’s stairwell, not caring if anyone heard him. ‘I think my mind is a hell of a lot stronger than you give it credit. I’ve managed you, haven’t I?’

‘But we both know that it’s the Target’s consumption of those very vials that causes the explosion. And we both know that’s what causes the Loop. So why, boy, would you—’

‘No. And you’re scrambling for reasons, now.’

‘No?’

‘No,’ Sham said again. ‘It’s not the explosion that causes the Loop. I didn’t see it last time. And—’

‘You didn’t see it, sure,’ Recollection slurred, ‘But that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. Who is to say you weren’t dead for five days? That without you being there, the Target went about her business as planned? That without your pathetic attempts at interference, the Loop progressed as it always does?’

Sham shrugged. ‘Then all the more reason to skill up. If I’m going to stop it, that is.’