Day 2

Sham meant to get another legendary skill vial, and he knew exactly where he’d find them. The only issue was that Asa wouldn’t get a hold of them until the third day of the Loop. It didn’t matter if Sham had to burn some time. After all, it wasn’t like he didn’t have plenty of it.

But that didn’t mean he was going to sit around and wait. The sooner he figured out how to break this Loop, the sooner he… Well, he hadn’t quite thought about what he’d do next, but surely it wouldn’t involve speaking to irritating church members, being spoken to by living skill, and being chased—or… killed—by the prime minister’s personal police force.

His next stop didn’t relate to any of his quests. At least, not directly. It wouldn’t directly Save the Tower, or wouldn’t directly help Sham resolve the Paradox, or even “Pick a side in the coming storm”, whatever in the hells that meant. But having an ally on his side might open more doors. And Riot, for all her flaws, was the one person who Sham thought might help him—given the right motivation.

So he slept away the first night, ignoring the murmurings of Recollections, ignoring its twisted rage at Sham’s decision to add another legendary skill to his arsenal. He waited until the Legion were done with Kryl’s apartment, and then, in the morning—when he knew it was clear—he returned.

There were no boono vials this time, of course. Kryl had seen fit to take them with him, apparently meaning to take every possible advantage in a means to his mysterious ends. So Sham was left waiting for Riot with nothing to do but stroke an initially cautious cat.

‘Tonic!’ Sham called out, keeping his pitch high as he’d seen pet owners. The cat’s ears pricked up, its eyes widening from its position across the room. ‘Come here, Tonic!’

Kryl’s pet ambled closer, pausing still a good few feet away with its front paw in mid-air.

‘Here… boy? Girl?’ Sham continued. ‘Here, Tonic!’

Finally the cat came closer, rubbing itself again Sham’s legs, and leaving many a fine hair stuck to his trousers. But it was worth it for the purring that began to buzz around the room as Sham scratched behind the cat’s ears.

Another half hour or so passed before the door eventually swung open, and by this point Tonic was curled up asleep on Sham’s lap.

‘I would stand, but…’ Sham gestured to the resting animal.

‘And who the hell are you?’ Riot asked, rearranging the hand wrapped around the revolver in her left jacket pocket.

‘Huh. It was “who are you” last time. What’s changed?’

The woman in the doorway curled her lip. ‘What?’ was all the response she gave.

‘This time, last Loop,’ Sham said again, not caring to ease Riot gently into this idea. ‘When you found me here, you said, “Who are you?”. No “the hell”, just “who are you”. So what’s changed? Just my demeanor? Where I’m placed? What would cause you to phrase that question differently?’

Riot paused, sighed, then pulled the revolver free of her pocket, for Sham to see. ‘So you’re mad.’

‘No, but I’m glad we’re getting that one out of the way more quickly this time around.’

The woman stared on at Sham for a few moments longer, her eyes glazing over, and then entered her brother’s apartment, closing the door behind her. ‘I’m looking for—’

‘Kryl, yes,’ Sham cut her off. ‘You haven’t heard from him in a while. Heard he’s missing. I know.’

Riot raised her revolver to point squarely at Sham’s head. For those people who didn’t know they’d just wake up again one and a half days earlier, Sham supposed that the action would be intimidating. ‘Where is he? Talk.’

Sham raised his hands casually into the air. ‘I’m nothing to do with it, Riot. Just a friend. Here to help.’

Riot stepped closer, failing to lower her weapon. ‘Talk,’ she said again.

‘Alright,’ Sham said. ‘Humour me a second, and then I’ll answer all your questions. Deal?’

Riot didn’t reply, so he took this as an acceptance of his terms.

‘Say we were caught in a time loop—’

‘A what?’ Riot butt in.

‘A time loop. The same nine days over and over, to be exact. And each of them ending in the same catastrophic event—the destruction of the Tower. Each time we all wake up yesterday morning, doomed to repeat the same events over and over and over…’

‘Alright!’ Riot tried to interrupt. ‘You’re done rambling. Tell me where…’

But Sham continued speaking over the top of her. ‘Say all that was true. As mad, yes, as mad as it sounds. What would you—you, specifically—do so that I could prove it?’

Sham stopped talking, waiting for Riot to answer. Nothing came.

‘Go on,’ he prompted her. ‘How would you get me to prove it?’

Riot licked her lips, her eyes narrowing. ‘I’d tell you—’

‘The gold-hilted blade,’ Sham said.

Riot dropped the revolver from her hand.

The two of them stared at one another as the weapon made a heavy thunk on Kryl’s carpet. Sham’s instinct was to jump towards it, to commandeer it, to point it back at the person that had pointed it at him only moments earlier. He suppressed this instinct.

‘How… How could you know that?’ Riot finally said.

Sham smiled what he hoped was a kind, friendly smile.

[MAGNETISM] A FRIENDLY SMILE: FAIL

A nice attempt, but a little too snarly. Perhaps smile more with the eyes, next time.

‘You listened to what I said, yeah?’ Sham asked. ‘About time loops and…’

‘No,’ Riot replied, shaking her head. ‘No, there’s other ways you might have come across that information. You…’

Sham raised his eyebrows expectantly. ‘What?’ he asked. ‘What other ways? You—another you—gave me that phrase specifically because nobody else would know. And you knew Kryl was involved in all this, so I’m willing to bet that he doesn’t know either. So just how am I supposed to know this, if I haven’t heard it from you in another time?’

Riot’s eyes dropped to the weapon on the floor, then back to Sham. He would’ve let her pick it up again, but she made no attempt to do so, instead only slouching into the nearest armchair. ‘Say… Say I believe you. You’re saying we’ve spoken before?’

Sham nodded. ‘Several times. We… we’ve crossed paths because our investigations overlap.’

‘Investigations?’

‘Yeah. Me looking into the woman who destroys the capital, you…’ Sham caught himself, realising what he was about to say. But he was already too committed to change the topic. ‘You looking into the disappearance of Kryl. Of your brother.’ He added that last bit for his own benefit.

A pause. Riot licked her lips in the way Sham had noticed before. In a way he’d caught himself doing since meeting her. ‘And he’s… He’s OK?’

Sham shook his head slowly. ‘I don’t know. I’ve found him once, but he won’t talk to me. I was actually hoping…’

But Riot was staring now at the floor, her head between her hands.

‘It’s hard to comprehend, I know,’ Sham said.

‘Yes.’

‘But you believe me?’

‘I think…’ Riot started. ‘I think I do, yes.’ The answer seemed to surprise both of them.

[ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED] CONVINCE A FRIEND

They both went silent, and Sham was happy to allow the woman a few minutes to process this admittedly rather mind-blowing information. In the meantime, he contented himself to stroke Tonic’s head, scratch behind his ear. He’d never noticed just how soft cat’s ears were. He’d never really thought about animals at all, really.

‘Can I ask,’ Sham suddenly found himself saying. ‘What’s the significance? Of the gold blade?’

‘Gold hilted blade,’ Riot corrected him, casting her eyes towards her lap. She didn’t continue.

‘I know you don’t remember this,’ Sham continued, ‘But in another time, I think we were even… friends. You can tell me. Whatever it is. Even if it shines a bad light on you. I—’

Riot’s head snapped up. ‘On me? No, not a bad light on me.’

‘On who, then?’

Riot gulped, her stare returning to the floor. She opened her mouth to speak, but no words immediately came forth.

‘On who, Riot?’ Sham prompted her, his voice light, gentle.

‘I… there’s…’ she drew her gaze up to meet Sham’s, this apparently taking major effort. ‘There’s a reason nobody else knows this. It’s hard to talk about. Especially with a stranger.’

‘I’m not a—’

‘No,’ Riot cut Sham off. ‘Maybe not to you, but to me, you are. And I still don’t know if you really—’

Sham sighed a sigh loud enough to cut Riot off. ‘You like order,’ he said. ‘Much more so than most. And I think that “order” to you means justice—though you don’t care if this takes a form outside of the law. You’d go to extreme lengths to ensure that justice is served, especially when family—when Kryl—is involved. But there’s more to you than that.’

Riot’s eyes narrowed.

‘Beneath that cold, abrasive, maybe even paranoid exterior—’

‘Thanks.’

‘—there’s a softness to you. Or… if not a softness, then a kindness.’

Sham remembered a day not a week earlier, by his time, where he’d found his body crippled by the action of the previous few days.

‘The seventh day of the first Loop,’ Recollection added. Perhaps it was this skill’s doing that he remembered the day at all.

Sham had been in bed, feeling rough, and Riot had turned by. She’d been… sympathetic. Gentle with him.

‘And,’ Sham continued, finding his eye contact break, ‘When you were kind with me, you opened up. Told me your mother was sick.’

Riot’s eye twitched.

‘There’s an empathy to you, I guess is what I’m saying. And I know that’s true because when I’ve been kind to you, you’ve taken it in your stride. Like it’s something that everyone should be expected to do. I’m saying… I know you, Riot. Whether you know me or not.’

Sham pulled his eyes back up to meet Riot’s, and they remained quiet for a few moments longer.

‘I suppose it would be lonely, being trapped in a loop,’ Riot eventually said. ‘When nobody else remembers.’

‘Not nobody,’ Sham corrected her, then smiled. ‘But I take your point.’

Riot returned the smile—a sad one. ‘The blade…’

‘You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to,’ Sham replied.

But Riot shook her head. ‘No. I will. I think, maybe, it’s time.’

Sham sat patiently, his eyes trained on Riot, waiting for her to continue. In her own time.

‘Kryl…’ she said. ‘He’s been the only family I have for as about as long as I remember. I don’t remember much of my parents. Only glimpses here and there. Mum passing me an ice lolly on a hot day, Dad bouncing me on his knee. Only glimpses of memory. Happy ones, mostly, but then…’

‘The gold-hilted blade.’

Riot nodded glumly. ‘Yes. It was about the time of the coup. My parents… well, we were a wealthy family, and wealth in the time of the monarchy essentially equated to being among the king’s circle of friends. When the coup began, we fled to the hillsides, or… to a city that I no longer remember. Not in Haven, at any rate. But the new prime minister had far-reaching influence. Suppose the coup would not have been successful, if he didn’t. Agents of the prime minister found us.

‘The new peace was so fragile, I suppose. The balance of power could have tilted either way at the whims of the wind. A family once loyal to the king, even in exile, could pose a danger. And so they killed them. I don’t remember my mother’s death. But my father’s… It was at the hand of a gold-hilted blade.’

Sham nodded silently, allowing Riot the room to continue should she so wish. Silence filled the air between them for a few moments longer, before Riot’s wandering gaze met Sham’s once more. The quiet was eventually shattered by Tonic jumping from Sham’s lap, eliciting a soft thunk from the floor.

‘I saw the agent responsible again many years later,’ Riot continued. ‘I was a teenager by then. I’d almost… I think I’d almost forgotten the memory. Or blocked it out, as they say. But when I saw his face, I knew it was him. The new home secretary, he was—a position paid for with the blood of innocents. Paid for with the blood of my family, among others.’

At these last words, Riot’s voice croaked.

‘What did he…’ Sham started, then changed tack. ‘Where is he now?’

Riot waved a hand dismissively—as though this man were a passing acquaintance rather than the person that killed her parents. ‘Dead. Long dead.’

Sham nodded. ‘And Kryl…’

‘He doesn’t remember. I asked him about it, years back, but… No. Nothing. Blocked it out much like I did, I think.’

Silence filled the void between them once more. Riot’s vulnerability made the room seem smaller somehow, made the distance between them seem smaller.

‘Sham…’ Riot started, and the tone with which she spoke his name made Sham’s stomach drop.

‘What?’ he asked.

‘In these other loops, we weren’t…’ She trailed off, leaving the rest of the question hang in the air for a moment. But before Sham could interpret the question, or even begin to come up with an answer, Riot was crying.

Sham rose slowly from his seat, stepped over towards Riot, and put his arm around her. She cried into his shoulder until long after the sun disappeared behind the tall buildings of the Sunrise District.