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.

‘Will you stop it with that fucking memory?’ Sham bellowed.

He launched himself up from his position hunched over his rickety table, swiping the whisky bottle from it before it could crash to the ground, and then he hurled in the corner of the room. Such a quick movement for such a hungover morning. Too quick a movement. If Sham had known that he’d be reliving this morning after for—apparently—a fucking eternity, he might never have drunk so much.

‘Who are you kidding?’ Recollection slurred.

‘Oh, shut up,’ Sham spat through the last of the vomit. It sat, pooled, in the corner of the room, and Sham for a moment considered cleaning it up. But what was the point? Chances were that he’d fail to stop Julya again, that he’d be back here with a clean slate—and a clean floor—in nine days anyway. Until then, he could live with the smell. At least until he sobered up some.

He staggered over to the sink and blinked his rusty reflection into focus. He looked better than he had on the last few Loops—Vigour had seen to that—but hangover still gripped him tightly.

‘Not my domain, sorry mate,’ Vigour said. ‘Even the strongest body is gonna struggle with how much you drank last night.’

‘Last night?’

‘You know what I mean. Last night in the linear, non-time-looping, external onlooker sense.’

Sham ignored the living skill and splashed some water on his face. It cleaned away the dirt and the last scraps of vomit, but did little to cleanse him of his puffiness, or of the pain that reverberated around his head with every movement.

‘Maybe a Hardened Liver vial this time?’ Recollection whispered. ‘Or Poise? Fluke? How many more of us do you want to cram in here?’

He splashed some more water on his face, dried it off with a dirty towel. With his eyes closed, he couldn’t help but see the sight he’d been trying to keep out of his mind. Riot stood at the bottom of a grand stairwell, clutching at her reddening stomach. She looked up at him—looked up at them—with wide, fearful eyes. ‘Oh,’ she murmured.

‘Is this you, Recollection?’ Sham asked.

‘Me? No. I could stop it, but you’re obsessing on this all on your own.’

‘Stop it, then.’

‘No.’

Sham blinked to his reflection, sighed. Just when he was starting to think he was getting some control over these skills… Well, then he realised that he wasn’t.

An echo of Julya’s firing weapon rang through his left ear once more. In the reflection of the rusty mirror, Sham saw Riot hold her stomach, heard her groan with pain. But when he turned around, he saw nothing. He was alone.

A whole new Loop. A whole new chance at stopping Julya, at trying a new strategy. But there was one thing he had to do first. Sham grabbed his old jacket from the hook and staggered for the door.

Kryl would be grabbing his boono about now, probably, if he chose to make use of them on this Loop. The skill vials would just then have been created, with news of them starting to seep out across the city. Someone, somewhere, was having the bright idea to launch this Citizen’s Police force. And the Loopkeepers were celebrating the beginning of a new Loop.

But none of this concerned Sham, for instead he ambled to the nearest tram stop, meaning to pay Riot a visit.

He fumbled with his sleeves as he stood on a crowded tram, noticing their worn fibres, their faded colour, and found himself missing the jacket that Riot had given him. Even if it had once belonged to some stranger. Maybe she’d see him wearing this and offer it to him again, once he got there. Sham found himself clinging to this idea.

Sham finally arrived at the grand apartment building that Riot had taken him to five days ago.

‘Four days from now,’ Recollection corrected him.

He waited outside, close to the door, for someone to enter or exit, and found that he wasn’t waiting long. An older woman—not old, by Sham’s standards, but certainly older than him—eventually bombed outside, her brow furrowed, a quickness in her step, and Sham caught the door behind her, slipping inside. He took the stairs up to Riot’s apartment, not the elevator, because such a device still worried him with all its whirring and clunking, and then stopped in front of her door.

He patted at hit hair, trying to slick back down the area by his crown that always stuck up at weird angles, and then found himself smoothing down his shirt, too. And then, finally, he knocked.

Riot opened the door in silence, stared at Sham, and then walked away, allowing him access.

‘Riot,’ Sham said, entering and closing the door behind him. ‘Hi. I was just coming by to make sure—’

‘Your breath stinks,’ his friend interrupted him.

Sham smiled. He was used to such abrasive commentary from Riot, knew not to take it to heart—it was just the way she was. ‘Not my fault,’ he replied. ‘Not my recent fault, anyway.’

Riot rolled her eyes, making a dull ache erupt in Sham’s gut, then turned on the spot and ambled over to a luxurious brass drinks cabinet. A glass decanter sat on top, half empty, already open. Sham felt the compulsion to partake rise within him, but gulped it back. In his sorry state, resisting such an urge didn’t even need a skill check.

He watched as Riot poured herself a healthy serving, the trickling sound making the hairs on his arms stand on end.

‘The apartment looks nice,’ Sham said, looking around. ‘But I suppose it always does, doesn’t it? Not like you could make a place like this look bad.’

Riot remained quiet, sipping on her drink, her gaze fixed on the window and the birds flying by outside. So Sham tried again.

‘Didn’t realise I was going to miss that jacket you lent me. Much nicer than this one. But I didn’t realise that until I had to come back to this. It’s all… I dunno, the one you gave me was softer, lighter. A nicer material, like.’

‘Cotton,’ Riot murmured, not turning her head.

‘Yeah. Cotton. Not… well, I dunno what this one’s made of, but—’

‘Why are you here?’ Riot suddenly interrupted him. He could hardly blame her; even as he was speaking, Sham knew his words were absolute rubbish. Largely impenetrable rubbish, too.

‘What?’

‘Why are you here?’ she said again. ‘Come straight back to see me again, in this Loop. That’s, what, four separate Loops now where we’ve met, judging by what you’ve told me? What do I have left to give you that I haven’t already? I’ve told you everything I know, haven’t I? So why, Sham, why do you keep coming back to drag me into this?’

‘Well, cos… you’re my friend,’ Sham stuttered.

‘And this is how you treat your friends, is it? You throw them into the middle of deadly schemes, watch them die, put voices in their head which they can’t quieten? If this is the friendship of Sham Tilner then I’d hate to be your enemy.’ She looked away, and Sham caught the beginnings of tears glistening in her eyes.

‘Riot, I… What’s got into you?’

‘I want you to leave, Sham,’ she said, failing now to make eye contact.

‘But I… But I saved you!’

‘How? How did you “save me”?’

‘Julya, she… she killed you. So I stopped fighting her. Didn’t want to risk succeeding, in case… well, because it would mean we never Looped back. Cos it would mean you were gone forever.’

Riot shook her head. ‘Well maybe that would have been better.’

‘Don’t say that. Don’t make that joke.’

‘I’m not joking, Sham. What’s the alternative? Live out an eternity stuck in this hell? Die every… die every nine days, and remember every last second of it? And live with this… This voice in my head? A voice that can’t resist telling me things that I simply don’t want to hear? Yes, Sham, death doesn’t seem like such a bad alternative right now.’

‘We’ll win.’

‘No, Sham—’

‘Yes,’ he said again, ‘At some point we’ll win. And the Loop will be over.’

‘Yes, maybe. Maybe we’ll break the Loop. But win? That ship has sailed, Sham. Look at us.’ She gestured to their bodies, as if that would have been enough of an explanation. ‘Look at what this has done to us. We’ll not win, cos we’ve already lost.’

Sham gulped back the horror of Riot’s implication. ‘You said you were fine.’

‘Oh?’ Riot crooned. ‘Did I? Did I was I was fine?’

‘Well, you—’

But Riot continued anyway. ‘Well I lied, Sham. Big bloody surprise, I’m sure. How could anyone be fine with these voices inside their head? Can’t see anyone would cope with it unless their minds were unsalvageable already.’

Sham opened his mouth to retort, but… She was right. Sham’s mind was broken, always had been. Or, at least, had been for so many years now, since the illness came. He was a sick man, now just as much as before the Vigour vial. Only now the illness wasn’t in his body, it was in his mind. He was broken.

‘Unsalvageable,’ he heard Riot’s voice say again.

Sham friend turned, saw the expression on his face, and her own furrowed brow and snarling mouth softened. ‘Oh, Sham, no. I didn’t mean—’

‘Yes,’ he said, voice firm. ‘You did. And you’re right; I’m fucked. And I shouldn’t have dragged you into this.’

‘No, I—’

‘I’m sorry,’ Sham spoke over the top of her. ‘I won’t bother you again.’ He turned for the door.

‘What?’ he heard the woman say to his rear. ‘Sham, no. I don’t mean—’

But Sham didn’t hear the end of that sentence because he’d slammed the door closed behind him.