There wasn’t time for a skill check. There wasn’t time for Sham to Command, Magnetise, or even use Vigour to overpower the captain and forced him to lower his weapon. All Sham could do was hop between revolver and target and stare the stranger down. ‘You shoot me,’ Sham said, ‘and your new associate will not be happy.’

The captain’s finger remained firmly on the trigger, pulling at it ever so slightly as he met Sham’s stare. ‘Move,’ he said.

But Sham remained still, his feet planted firmly—or at least as firmly as his disease-ridden body could manage—where they were. ‘Or what?’ he replied, as though the revolver mere inches away from his chest wasn’t in itself an answer. He was surprised to find that he didn’t fear the bullet, now. Though he knew for near-certain he’d wake up again at the start of the Loop—gods willing Kryl didn’t manage to break it this time around—there was still the matter of blood and pain. But he could live with blood and pain. Or… not live, as the case may be.

The captain’s finger tightened on the trigger of his brass revolver. His eyes narrowed.

Behind Sham, he could hear footsteps edge closer. They hit the boardwalk gently, barely making a noise. It was the movement of someone small, of someone young, and agile. It had to be Riot who was approaching, not Mona’s father.

‘Move,’ the captain said, pulling the trigger further.

Sham could see, at this distance, that the trigger was a minute fraction of an inch from making the revolver fire. But still he held steady. ‘I’ve been shot before,’ he said, trying to disguise his trembling fear with a smile and a joyful tone. ‘It doesn’t tend to—’

The captain pulled the trigger.

And… it clicked.

Nothing else happened.

Sham succeeded no fluke skill check, no external factor seemed to stop the weapon from firing. And yet, here they were: two men staring at each other with wide, blinking eyes, either end of a misfiring revolver. In the absence of any skill checks, Sham could only account for this strange turn of events as some kind of miracle.

It was Riot, in the end, who moved first. Sham saw the revolver rise out of the corner of his eyes, being pointed squarely at the sailor’s temple. ‘Drop it,’ she said.

The captain’s head swivelled to Riot, his eyes narrowing as though he was comprehending her for the first time. His hands didn’t move, though, keeping his revolver pointed at Sham’s chest.

‘I said… drop it,’ Riot continued, her voice carrying not quite the same level of conviction as it had first time around.

The captain pivoted on the spot, turning the revolver to Riot in a fraction of a second, but neither of them firing.

‘Drop it!’ Riot said again. ‘It’s broken anyway.’

‘If it is broken, then why it is I should drop it?’ the sailor responded.

‘Because…’ Riot was starting, but only Sham’s eyes were on the trigger. Only Sham spotted the tightening finger, the revolver about to fire—and successfully, maybe, this time. Lightning didn’t strike twice, and all that.

There was nothing else for it.

Before Sham really realised what he was doing, he dropped his jacket to the ground—folded note included—and launched himself into the sailor, head first, tackling him to the boardwalk. The stranger’s weapon fired in the struggle, the shot ringing out across the harbour, but Sham didn’t have time to check that neither Riot nor Mona’s dad had been hit. He and the sailor wrestled for the weapon for a moment as they fell, Sham feeling cool metal at the very tips of his fingers as he reached for it...

[VIGOUR] ALMOST… GOT IT...: FAIL

Might have been an idea to check out your surroundings before jumping into action, here.

...But soon found the ground give way between them—they’d run out of pier in their grappling.

Sham gasped as cold air surrounded his lungs. He kicked at the water, trying to pull his head back above the surface, but in the dead of the night it wasn’t so immediately clear which way that was. He gasped for air the moment that water gave way, though his finding of the surface had been purely by chance. As he gasped, he heard a similar noise not five feet to his right, and glimpsed the sailor coming up for air.

Floating in the water of the river, only able to touch the bed with the very tips of their pointed toes, the two men looked at one another for a moment… before the grappling continued.

The sailor still gripped on tight to his revolver, which he was using now as a blunt instrument. Fortunately the resistance of the water slowed the man’s attacks, meaning that each hit landed with only a fraction of the power that it might have otherwise.

But even dampened attacks would wear Sham down before long. He grabbed at the sailor, bringing him close enough that he didn’t have such freedom of movement, and headbutted him once.

The foreign captain spat out blood and grabbed at Sham’s head, failing to gain a purchase only because he was drenched in water.

Sham glimpsed Riot at the side of the pier. ‘Shoot him!’ he cried out, his voice muffled slightly by the lick of the waves against his mouth. ‘Shoot him!’

No immediate response came from Riot, though Sham could still see her standing there, weapon raised, in his peripheral vision.

‘I can’t!’ she finally said, as one of the sailor’s hands found its way to Sham’s head, dunking him under the surface.

A kick at random happened to land in the softness of the man’s groin, and soon the pressure was released enough for Sham to pull his head above the water again.

‘Shoot him!’ Sham roared again.

‘I might hit you!’ Riot replied.

As points went, that was quite a good one. So it meant a change of strategy was needed here. Instead of fighting the man—never a good tactic for Sham, really, unless there was a heavy object nearby that he could fling at his opponent—Sham focused on wrenching himself free of the man’s grasp, meaning to make for the edge of the pier.

But the sailor kept close, grabbing at the back of Sham’s jacket and wrenching him backwards below the water once more.

Sham’s feet made contact with the bottom, so far down had the sailor wrenched him, and he planted his feet on the seabed and pushed himself back up to the surface. He burst free of the water with a splash that caught the sailor by surprise, and used the opportunity to grab ahold of the side of the boardwalk. He held out his arm for Riot, knowing that he wouldn’t have the strength to pull himself up on his own, and found himself smiling as his friend grabbed down for him.

As they hauled him back onto dry—dry...ish—land, Sham caught sight of the sailor again out of the corner of his eye, grabbing at the side of the pier. His initial instinct was to rush over, to stop the man hauling himself up.

But that wasn’t what the captain was doing. Instead, he only used the side of the boardwalk for support while he raised his weapon once more.

‘...Ah,’ Sham said.

The sailor wasted no time on this occasion, pulling the trigger immediately, with it pointed firmly at Riot.

The weapon only clicked. Again. But this time Sham could at least account the mis-fire to damp gunpowder.

‘Looks like—’ Sham started, but found himself cut off by Riot storming over to the man and slamming the heel of her chunky boot into the man’s head.

The sailor dropped back into the water.

Riot looked up at Sham sheepishly.

‘Nice,’ he said, pacing back to where he’d dropped his jacket and yanking it back on.

‘Yeah? I didn’t know what else to—’

But at that moment, they both remembered that there was another person on the boardwalk with them. The old man. Mona’s father.

He stood where he’d been all along, his eyes wide, his legs trembling. It was at Riot, not Sham, that he stared—and Sham attributed that to the revolver she was gripping and the fact that she’d just knocked someone unconscious with her boot.

‘You tell no one, understand?’ Sham said.

[COMMAND] TELL NO ONE: SUCCESS

Yeah. After what he’s seen, he’s gonna do whatever you tell him. Wouldn’t want to get on your bad side.

Mona’s father nodded.

‘No one. Not even your family. There’s… there’s people who will come after you if you mention that you were here.’

‘If they’re not here already…’ Recollection slurred. He wasn’t wrong; Asa’s men could already be out there, lurking in the darkness.

Mona’s father gulped, nodded again, but still remained where he was.

‘Well?’ Riot said. ‘Go!’

The old man’s eyes widened, and then he hurriedly turned on the spot and disappeared back towards the road.

‘Not quite as elegantly handled as I’d envisioned,’ Sham commented.

Riot shrugged, looked down at the unconscious man floating face-up in the bay. ‘What do we do with him? Leave him?’

Sham shook his head. ‘No. We should… We should put him back on his boat. Hopefully when he wakes up, he takes off, and Asa won’t have to be any the wiser about all… this.’

‘You told me to shoot him,’ Riot reminded him.

‘He was trying to drown me! I was panicking!’

Another shrug. ‘Fair enough.’ She moved towards the edge of the pier, crouching down to reach for the captain, but stopped when she realised that Sham was staring into the darkness surrounding the pier. ‘We expecting anyone else?’

Sham didn’t immediately respond, thinking that if he laid his eyes on one of Asa’s associates, then that would confirm his answer. But they weren’t where they’d been two Loops ago. They weren’t… They weren’t here. Something actually had changed. ‘No,’ he finally said. ‘I guess we’re not.’

They hauled the unconscious body back onto the pier with some difficulty, and Sham would’ve been the first to admit that Riot had done most of the work. Fortunately, his friend didn’t feel the need to comment upon it, though he did feel the familiar gaze of pity upon his tired body. Or maybe it was just his imagination.

‘It wasn’t.’

Holding the man by one arm each, they dragged him back down the boardwalk to his boat, his feet making a gentle thud as they dragged across each plank and onto the next. Riot brushed her hands together as they finally dumped him down once more, but Sham realised that they maybe had an opportunity on their hands. An opportunity to get a little more information. A few more pieces of the puzzle.

He retrieved from his jacket the piece of folded paper that had been Asa’s payment for this crate of vials and carefully opened it. His stomach dropped when he realised what it was.

‘What?’ Riot asked. ‘What do you have there?’

‘Floorplans,’ Sham responded. ‘Of the Tower.’

It had taken a few splashes of water to bring the sailor back into the waking world, though he didn’t seem pleased to have returned—especially when he realised that he’d been bound to the boat with thick rope. He shouted something in some language Sham didn’t know, but he understood the meaning as being along the lines of “fuck you”.

Sham flicked the document open in front of the sailor, making sure to do so with the dramatic flourish that he thought the situation deserved. It was a touch that was for his benefit rather than anyone else’s. Sometimes you needed to treat yourself a little like that. ‘What’s all this, then?’ he asked.

The man repeated whatever—likely foul—word he had previously shouted in his mother tongue.

Sham opened his mouth to make a threat, but found that Riot made it for him in the form of a cocked revolver. It was up to him to act the voice of reason, then. ‘What is it?’ he demanded again. ‘Why are you giving this to Asa?’

‘Asa?’ the man replied. ‘I know no Asa. I know this is what was price for vials. That is all. I know no Asa.’ The fact that he repeated that last line again suggested to Sham that the sailor was trying to convince himself of this fact too.

‘Whoever you’re giving it to,’ Sham continued, ‘they must have given you some indication why they want it. That’s all I want to know. Once I get that answer, you go free.’

Riot adjusted her grip on her weapon to punctuate Sham’s sentence, doing so with more exaggerated a movement than was perhaps necessary. Maybe she was treating herself a little too.

‘I know nothing. You think I know? I am only little worker bee. Buzz buzz. Double blind, yes? Nobody know who they are dealing with.’

‘Then I don’t know what we’re going to do with you,’ Riot added.

Sham shot her a look, warning her to back off. He was pleased at how well this double act was working, considering they were making it up as they went along. No rehearsals were necessary when you found you were naturally in sync.

‘Aite,’ Sham continued, ‘tell us what you do know, then. Anything you know. Anything that might justify my friend here letting you go.’ He felt perhaps the “my friend” was a touch too far, but the sailor didn’t seem to notice that he was leaning into the gangster stereotype. Perhaps the language barrier was coming in handy.

‘I tell you; I know—’

‘Nothing, yes?’ Riot interrupted, bringing her revolver closer to the man’s temple.

‘Give us something, mate,’ Sham added.

The sailor furrowed his brow, his gaze digging into the deck below, as though deep in thought. Eventually, as if sensing that Riot was about to dial up the aggression, he sighed. ‘OK,’ the man said. ‘I know this: your masters, the people who want this…’ He gestured vaguely at the document.

‘Floorplan.’

‘Floors plan, yes. The people that want this, they not want this for themselves. They are… middle men, they say. Want this for new ally.’ The sailor put his hands into the air. ‘And that is all I know. I am honest, here.’

Sham looked to Riot, seeking out eye contact, but his friend was keeping her gaze firmly on their prisoner.

‘That enough?’ she asked.

‘Not sure,’ Sham replied. ‘It’s something. But I don’t know what, just yet.’

‘Then I suppose we’re making a trip to Asa to find out?’

‘Yeah,’ Sham said. ‘Yeah, I think we just might be.’