Day 2

‘Let’s go through what we know so far.’

Riot was standing in front of her freshly recreated timeline wall, using a long wooden back-scratcher as a pointer. Sham wasn’t quite sure what it said about his friend that she owned one of those already—was it just a side effect of riches that you purchased such obscenely luxurious items?

The trio of men watched as their host pointed to the point in the very top-left of the wall—threaded in to the rest of the timeline with a blue string, rather than the typical red.

‘This is the first Loop,’ Riot said. ‘Or before the first Loop, if you would prefer to count it that way. This is the moment that Gresley Manwaring obliviously created the circumstances that would reset Haven back to the 5th of Harvest over and over. Here, he set Julya against our Prime Minister, and pointed her at you—’

She gestured to Asa.

‘—to give her the tools to do so. Which happens…’

Riot followed the blue thread with the pointer, landing them on another event, marked ASA GIVES JULYA VIALS.

‘...here, on the 11th Harvest. For the next two days, Julya…’ Riot glanced to Sham. ‘I don’t have her last name.’

‘Emerson,’ he said.

‘For the next two days, between the 11th and that fateful night on the 13th, Julya Emerson consumes the few skill vials that her body can handle in such a short period of time. Based on our battles with her so far, these are Fleet of Foot, Vigour and Fluke.’

‘No,’ Recollection murmured. ‘Not that last one.’

‘No,’ Sham cut in.

‘No?’

‘No, not Fluke. Something she told me a few Loops back. She suggested she doesn’t take the Fluke vial until she reaches the Plaza.’

‘Right,’ Riot said, scribbling out “Fluke” on the notes on her timeline, then flicking her pointer to the last event. ‘And then battle commences, Julya becomes overwhelmed by the force of the Citizen’s Police, and is forced to consume more vials. These vials prove too much power for her body, letting out… well, you know what happens next: We go back to the beginning.’

Riot strolled the full length of the wall, back over to the left.

‘However. There are many other events that lead up to the three key events in Julya’s journey. The first, Gresley Manwaring radicalising her, we cannot impact, as it took place essentially out of the Loop. Which leaves two: the provision of the skill vials, and the battle at the end of the Loop. Let’s start with the vials.’

Asa leant forward. ‘Like I told Sham, I ain’t doing nothing that could put the queen’s forces breathing down my neck once this is all over. I seen what they can do.’

Sham noted that Asa didn’t called Queen Elmira “the posh bird” in Kryl’s company.

‘Tell us, then,’ Riot said. ‘What are the limitations of your cooperation?’

‘I’m giving her the vials. Gres, he don’t know about the Loop. He wouldn’t understand if I broke on our agreement. So I’m stealing them, and I’m giving them to her.’

Riot pursed her lips. ‘Well that makes that nice and clear, I suppose.’ She whipped a piece of card off the wall from the ASA STEALS THE AUTOMOBILE event, one that Sham hadn’t had a chance to read. She turned to Sham. ‘So just what good is bringing him here?’

‘Oi,’ Asa grumbled, but followed it up with nothing more.

‘What’s the other event that we can intercept Julya at?’ Sham replied. ‘The attack on the Tower, right?’

Riot nodded. ‘Looks like that’s where this is headed, yes.’

‘Do you have a piece of paper? Something to write with?’

Their host pulled forth a piece of A5 size card.

‘No,’ Sham said. ‘Bigger. Much bigger.’

Riot nodded, began scraping around the notes piled around them.

‘I got a look at the document the sailor traded us, see?’ Sham said. ‘The floorplan of the Tower, the one that Asa gives Julya with the vials, on Gresley’s request. But I never got a good view. Not really. Asa, however… I’m betting that in all those Loops, you snuck a look at it a couple of times?’

Asa nodded.

‘Think you can draw it out for us?’ Sham asked, as Riot passed him a huge sheet of largely blank paper. He passed it on to Asa.

‘Got a voice in my head that thinks so, ain’t I?’

Thirty minutes and two glugged cups of surprisingly sugary tea later, Asa had sketched the entirety of the plans—or, at least the entirety of the relevant areas: the ground floor, the stairwell, and the Prime Minister’s quarters.

All four members of this motley crew stared down at the sketched plans sprawled across the table, studying them minutely.

On the first piece of paper, Asa had sketched the ground floor. This area, here, was an open space, with only the cover of a few pillars and a particularly grand reception desk to hide behind. At the rear wall on either side of the ministerial elevator shaft were a pair of wide, curving staircases, and where Julya would need to head first if she again forsook the elevator.

On the second large sheet, Asa had sketched the stairwell itself—a uniform spiral of dual stairwell that merged towards the top of the tower, a bridge between them on each level. A bold and majestic design, if Sham was gonna comment on it, but now was hardly the time.

And then the ministerial chambers. At the very top of the Tower was a large room with two sets of rising seats against the two longer walls—enough for every member of parliament to sit in during a session. Then, at the back, through a pair of red curtains, one last stairwell which led up to the Prime Ministerial apartment. The home of Enoch Chambers himself, and Julya’s final destination.

Sham perched on the edge of the table as he studied them, feeling the tired gears of a tired mind doing their very best to turn, to come up with a plan to end this, to come up with a way of fulfilling his promise to Riot, to Kryl, to Asa. This process would have been made so much easier by an unlocked Reasoning skill, he noted. Throwing some of those skill checks in here right about now might have helped him get somewhere.

His eyes lingered on the elevator shaft, and the notes scribbled next to it in Asa’s rough handwriting. One stop per floor. Ministerial override—direct passage to chambers of parliament.

There was something there. An opportunity to be seized, if he could just work out how to separate Julya from her jacket filled with those legendary grade skill vials. If he could just—

Sham felt skin on the top of his hand. He glanced down to see Riot had placed her hand on top of his as she leant over the table. Eyes snapping to Riot, he saw her blush gently, but she didn’t move that hand. He smiled at her, and suddenly any fear that Riot had at her actions seemed wiped from her face. In fact, she even smiled back.

‘Later,’ Sham mouthed to her. ‘After we break the Loop.’

Riot nodded her agreement, and Sham turned back to the table just in time to see Kryl raising an eyebrow, his eyes trained on his sister’s hand. The man glanced up, locked eyes with Sham, and flashed him a non-verbal challenge which Sham stared back in kind.

‘It’s still too much,’ Riot said, her eyes having now returned to the sketch. Always in business mode, that one. ‘There is nothing here, as far as I can see, that gives us any advantage over Julya Emerson. Nothing. Unless there’s something I’m missing?’

‘There is the higher ground,’ Kryl said, pointing to the tops of the staircases, on the first floor.

‘That won’t do us much good once she has that Fluke vial in her. We’ll get jammed guns, misfires, find our sights are out of alignment. We’ve been through that once before.’

Kryl pursed his lips, but said nothing, only nodded.

‘I may…’ Sham said, the first pieces of the puzzle finally clicking into place, ‘have some thoughts about that.’ He looked up. Three faces stared back at him.

‘You gonna spit it out or what?’ Asa asked.

‘Mona,’ Sham said. ‘We get to her at the right moment, once she’s realised the Citizen’s Police ain’t all that they’re cracked up to be, then we might be able to get her on side. And she’s strong, that one. If we can get her on side then we might just be able to get all of them on side.’

Kryl raised an eyebrow, but the expression didn’t seem like it was out of disbelief, but out of curiosity. ‘Who? Who “all”?’

‘The Citizen’s Police?’

‘All of them?’

Sham shrugged his shoulders. ‘The ones on the Plaza, at least. How’s that for a team? Not just three of us no more.’

‘If it can—’ Kryl started, but his sister cut him off.

‘Sham,’ Riot said, her tone short. ‘You know what that means?’

Sham nodded. Of course he did. He was dooming someone to their fate; that wasn’t a decision he made lightly.

‘What?’ Kryl asked. ‘What is it? What does it mean?’

Riot looked to Sham, wordlessly asking if he wished to explain. Sham nodded for her to. ‘The reason Mona signs up with the CP is because her father gets shot. Because he dies, stumbling across your sailor friend on Plenty Harbour. We would be condemning the man to that fate, with no Loop to undo it.’

It was Kryl’s turn to shrug. ‘We hesitate for the life of one man?’

‘Kryl!’ Riot snapped at him.

‘No,’ Sham butted in. ‘No, he’s right. He’s one man. We’ve got to look at the big picture, here. This ain’t just about one life. It’s about tens of thousands of them. If that’s the price that we have to pay, then… I’m alright with that.’

Riot’s face paled some. ‘Are they speaking to you, Sham?’ she asked.

He shook his head. ‘No. This is all me.’

‘That’s a life you’re talking of ending.’ With these words, a scowl formed on the woman’s brow, as though the true meaning of them was only just occurring to her.

‘Yes,’ Sham snapped back. ‘One life versus thousands. Tens of thousands, you say.’

‘Thousands aren’t dying, Sham.’

He felt his nostrils flare, bit back the rising ire of Vigour. ‘Aren’t they?’ he retorted. ‘Let’s say this Loop goes on forever, if we don’t stop it. Every single person in this city doesn’t get any more life beyond the 13th Harvest. Before the explosion at the Tower. What is that, if not dying?’

Riot’s face didn’t soften, but she did at least hesitate on her words. ‘That’s semantics.’

‘That’s death.’

‘That’s—’

Kryl stepped forward. ‘I hate to say this, but Mr Tilner is correct. It is one life versus the entire city—his included. We do not need to be gods to make this decision, we only need to be rational.’

‘Rational,’ Riot scoffed, but said nothing more of it.

‘Alright,’ Kryl said, clapping his hands together. ‘We track down this… Mona, at some point in the next few days.’

‘No,’ Sham cut in, ‘not “we”. I’ll do it. I know her.’

‘As you say. And if all goes according to the plan, we have the forces of the Citizen’s Police on our side. May I ask… do we think that’s enough?’

Asa looked up from what was surely his eighth cup of tea since his arrival this morning. ‘You ain’t seen how many vials I give her.’

But Sham had. He’d seen the jacket Julya wore. The one with many pockets stitched into the inside, the perfect size for a vial in each. ‘Thirty or so, I reckon.’

‘Oh,’ Asa said. ‘So you have seen them.’

Sham raised his eyebrows. ‘Yep.’

‘So you got a plan for her, or…’

Sham stared down at the floorplans between them, scouring them for any sign of advantage. It had to be here. It had to. He’d made too many promises to fail, now.

‘One moment,’ he told the other three, then strolled away from the table into the spare bedroom—the one in which Riot had put him up all those Loops ago.

He ambled over to the window, stared down at the people passing by below, oblivious that in seven days they would die. Again. For the hundredth, possibly even thousandth time.

‘I need help,’ Sham said.

‘Well, duh,’ said Perspicacity.

‘Yes, we could see that,’ Recollection added.

Sham ignored the cheek the living skills were giving him. ‘I can see it. The solution. Almost, like. It’s just out of sight, like it’s below murky waters.’

‘Someone who weren’t a right plonker would’ve got it by now,’ added Vigour.

‘We do happen to know…’

‘...but what happens once we tell you?’

‘Do you keep us locked down tight again, darling?’

‘Or are you gonna give us some moments to breath?’

Sham stared out at the road below. He’d been in the Loop enough times, now, to know that the sewer drain was blocked at the end of the road. On the second day of the Loop, that wasn’t a problem, but come the fourth, when the rain began…

‘Tell me,’ he said. ‘Then we’ll talk about giving you your freedoms.’

‘Well that’s just it, Sham…’ Recollection murmured. ‘If you’re going to break this Loop, you’re going to have to let us out.’

‘Tell me,’ Sham said again, and Recollection swamped his mind with memories.

Back in the living room, Sham gripped the edges of the table, as though holding on for dear life. He stared down at Asa’s sketched floorplans. It was there. In front of him. The answer. With his living skills’ help… the answer.

‘What is it, Sham?’ Riot asked, her brows raised at spotting his strange expression.

‘I… I know how we do it,’ Sham said. ‘I know how we break the Loop.’