QUEST COMPLETE: INVESTIGATE THE BODIES

Your own folk targeted. The best of them, slain. It must be stopped.

Sham collapsed to his knees, the tears streaming down his cheeks knowing no end.

The memories made sense now.

It wasn’t just that Recollection had been protecting him from heartbreak; though that alone might have been enough to break him. Recollection had been protecting him from a far darker truth.

The Loop began when the fabric of reality was ripped. Reality was torn to create the skill vials. And the skill vials were created… to fix him.

Sham was the reason the Loop existed.

‘No…’ he breathed.

He felt all eyes on him. Hester’s, fearful. Enoch Chambers’s, amused. Riot’s, horrified.

‘No,’ he said again.

‘I did it out of love!’ Hester cried out. ‘Wouldn’t you do the same? Wouldn’t we all do the same for the person we loved?’

‘Loved,’ Recollection repeated.

Sham blinked through the tears, looked up at Hester. He felt Riot shuffle between feet at his side. ‘Loved?’ he asked.

Hester opened her mouth, but no words emerged. Her face grew pale. ‘I… Things change, Sham. People change. We drifted apart, Sham. The illness… your illness changed both of us.’

‘It wasn’t my—’ Sham started.

‘It wasn’t your fault, no, Sham. It never was. But we’d be fools to say it didn’t push us apart. And in my weakest moment, Enoch found me. Saved me. It wasn’t your fault that you couldn’t be there for me, but… you weren’t. You weren’t there.’

‘I… No…’ Sham managed, and his gazed softened, his mind growing numb.

Loved. That one word had broken him more than he would have cared to admit. More than he would’ve thought it could.

‘I’m sorry, Sham,’ Hester said again. ‘I’m… I’m sorry, I… I…’

Enoch Chambers placed his hand on Hester’s shoulder. She turned into it. ‘You see, Mr Tilner? I was never so worried about you. I’ve always known you would get here, eventually. And I always knew I would be able to make you see the light when you did.’

‘The light?’ Riot barked. ‘What light? I don’t see that this changes anything. The Loop has to end. The Loop has to—’

Hester pulled her face from the nook her lover’s shoulder. ‘Loop?’ she asked. ‘What “loop?”’

‘She doesn’t know,’ Riot said, her eyes narrowing. Cogs turning in that mind of hers.

It wasn’t a question so much as a rhetorical statement, but the Prime Minister—showboat that he was—treated it as one. ‘No. And we’ll keep it that way. Freedom from consequences is a miraculous thing.’ He turned back to Sham. ‘So what will it be, Mr Tilner? Do you understand what I’m getting at yet? Should the Loop be preserved?’

Sham remained silent. He continued to stare at the empty space in front of him.

‘I said what will it be, Mr Tilner?’ the Prime Minister repeated, raising his voice.

Still, Sham didn’t reply. He was broken. Beyond broken.

Enoch Chambers abandoned his new partner to storm over to Sham. With the quick flick of his hand, he slapped Sham across the cheek.

The pain barely registered.

Both Hester and Riot gasped with indignation.

‘Enoch!’ Hester cried. ‘What are you doing?’

‘You see what I mean? Freedom from consequences. I can do whatever I wish’ — he struck Sham across the face once more — ‘and my dear brilliant fiancée will not remember a thing. Truly, nothing compared to the benefit of infinitely delaying the invasion, but a nice side effect of the Loop nonetheless.’

‘Enoch, enough!’ Hester barked. ‘He’s done nothing to you!’

The Prime Minister’s hand struck Sham’s face once more, this time with strength enough to topple Sham to the floor. ‘And yet…’ Enoch Chambers said. His leg struck out. His shoe collided with Sham’s ribs.

Enoch Chambers bent down to stare Sham in the face, interrupting his numb gazing into the middle distance. ‘I asked you a question, Mr Tilner. I asked you: what will be it? Do you understand what I’m getting at? Do you understand the power I hold over you?’

Sham stirred from his delirium just long enough to form an answer. A short answer, but an answer nevertheless. ‘Get fucked,’ he whispered.

‘I see,’ the Prime Minister said. He strolled over to Josiah’s side, removed the brass revolver from his grasp and taking it in his own. ‘The stick, then.’ He raised the revolver and fired.

Sham wasn’t given a second to truly comprehend what Enoch Chambers was about to do before the round hit flesh. He looked down at his torso, expecting to see a red stain blossoming on his shirt.

But the Prime Minister hadn’t fired at him.

Hester dropped to the floor.

Her right cheek was missing.

Blood—her blood!—crept across the tiles.

If Sham hadn’t already been broken, he would have cried. But in the context of recent revelations, he was only numb. His world was already over. Hester was already lost to him. That there was no hope of undoing it seemed immaterial to him.

Sham looked, expression blank, from his chest, to Hester’s body, to Riot. His friend’s eyes were full of fear—not glazed, like his was—as though she’d already understood the meaning of Prime Minister’s move in this temporal chess game.

Enoch Chambers dropped the revolver to the floor at Sham’s knees. He approached, crouching, looking into Sham’s eyes. ‘The Loop has to continue, Mr Tilner.’

‘Sham…’ Riot started, but a hard stare from the Prime Minister cut her off.

‘We have come too far for it to fail now. All the required mechanisms have been put into place: the Citizen’s Police control the wayward Loopkeepers, the furious Julya to tear reality apart beyond repair, the underprotected shipment for Haven’s vermin to steal. There is only one factor unaccounted for. You.’

Enoch Chambers turned to Ros, clicked his fingers. The officer of Legion carried with her a small box of vials—those from Hester’s private cache. The Prime Minister thrust them in Sham’s direction.

‘Drink,’ he ordered. ‘Drink them all.’

The living skills all erupted in fury at once.

‘You don’t want to—’

‘No!’

‘Don’t you fucking—’

‘—head off if you do.’

But Sham had had so much practice tuning them out. Too much practice. Should he want to, they were easy to ignore.

And the gods knew he wanted to.

‘Sham?’ Riot said, her tone making a question of his name.

He lifted a vial from the box, pulling its cork free.

'Sham? What are you doing!' Riot shouted. 'We've got him, Sham! We can end this! Are you willing to undo everything we've worked so hard to achieve, for... for her?'

She hadn’t needed to specify who “her” was; the body was all too present at the front of Sham’s mind.

He gulped a vial down, turned to face his friend. ‘Yes,’ he choked. ‘I am.’

NEW SKILL: Fervour

There are so many reasons to doubt yourself, in this world, and so few reasons to believe. You've found one, though, and you cling on to it.

Riot’s face paled, then hardened. But such flaring nostrils were not enough to deter Sham. Not when it meant…

‘Begin the Loop anew, Sham,’ Enoch Chambers said. ‘Bring her back. Bring Hester back.’

‘Sham, I…’ Riot started, her voice shaking. ‘I thought…’ She trailed off; neither of them needed to hear what she thought. Sham was only too aware.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I’m… I’m sorry.’

He turned back to the box in front of him, and pulled from it another vial, this one glowing a gentle yellow. The liquid gently warmed his throat.

NEW SKILL: Fleet of Foot

Nothing beats the feeling of the wind through your air. You are fast. Faster than most. And you are ready to leave others in the dust.

‘Stop this, Sham! You can’t survive this!’

‘No,’ Sham whispered. ‘You can’t survive this.’

He saw out of his peripheral vision as Riot moved to approach, then stop herself. She knew the battle was lost.

NEW SKILL: Fluke

A roll of the dice, a flip of a coin... So often do they fall in your favour. So often does Fate warp to your interests.

‘You don’t know what you—’

‘It’s not just her life you’re guaranteeing, Mr Tilner,’ Enoch Chambers said. ‘It’s your own, too. You can have a life of luxury. All you need to do is join me.’

NEW SKILL: Empathy

The actions of others are no longer such a mystery. You need no rational explanations; matters of the heart transcend logic.

‘You’re killing us!’ the living skills cried as one.

Sham pushed the voices out of his mind; quietened their last words.

NEW SKILL: Poi--

System error. Seek reset IMMEDIATELY.

‘It’s over,’ Joy said. ‘It always had to be this way, don’t you see?’

‘—he fucking—’

‘It’s her. It’s Hester. Sham always had to do this. Had to. It’s…’

Sham didn’t hear Joy’s final word. He pushed the voices wholly and totally out of his mind. They would die in silence.

Faces watched on as Sham continued to down the vials. The eyes of the officers of Legion widened as the yellow cracks first began to show in Sham’s skin.

But he continued nonetheless.

NEW SKILL: >

System error. Safeguard process launching…

‘I’m sorry,’ Sham said again.

‘Don’t, Sham,’ replied his friend.

>

Safeguard process launching.

The yellow cracks in his skin grew brighter. Sham expected to feel the power surging forth from his body, but instead he felt only… numb.

>

It consumed him.

Day 1

The sun was low in the sky as it filtered through Sham’s dusty windowpanes, catching dust that glittered in the air. As Sham peeled himself from the filthy table top of his apartment, he sighed. The pain, this time, didn’t seem so bad, or at least didn’t seem to matter so much.

He didn’t so much as glance at the daguerreotype with the fresh cigarette hole; it would have been too painful. Instead he only pulled his from his sticky palm and placed it, face down, on the table surface.

Sham staggered to his feet, catching the empty bottle of whisky as it wobble from the top of the table, and gripped it tight as he hobbled over to his front door.

There were two major changes, now that he was back in the Loop once more. First: his mind was quiet for the first time in months. The skills were gone. And second: his neighbour’s front door was intact; Enoch Chambers no longer considered him a threat.

He wrenched his head back towards his apartment, scouring it for signs of life. I just heard someone… didn’t I?

But there was nobody.

He was alone.

And in more ways that one, based on the last expression he’d seen on Riot’s face, back before he’d begun the Loop anew. Back before he’d become complicit in the Prime Minister’s plans.

He sighed, ambling over to his sink, where the warmish water washed some of the hangover away. He flinched again as a distant whisper erupted in his right ear. But again, there was nobody there.

Maybe the explosion had broken him. Maybe, after all this time, his brain had finally given up the ghost.

In all of this, there was, still, one silver lining. He’d completed most of his quests, over the last few days. He’d banked the experience points, grabbed himself another skill upgrade.

QUEST LIST

LIFE IN THE REVOLUTION

Pick a side in the coming storm.

There it was. The one quest he hadn’t quite been able to achieve. There seemed to be no good answer; in all these Loops, he’d not met a single soul who’d deserved loyalty. Not a single soul who he could believe in.

Riot, his mind seemed to whisper.

Sham splashed some more water over his face, freeing himself of the mental images of the woman he’d let down. Of the most recent woman he’d let down, he should say. But it was done, now. He focused instead on the one thing he could control.

[SELECT SKILL UPGRADE]

[Command] // [Seasoned] // [[Reasoning]]

There seemed only one good answer. He’d had Seasoned for some time, and Command too, across all these recent Loops. It was time now for a new skill; one which just might keep him out of trouble, even if it would only be Common grade.

[SKILL UNLOCKED]

REASONING: Common

It felt good to progress the natural way. There was no strain on his mind, no new personality with which to contend. Maybe he should have been doing it this way all along. Maybe he shouldn’t have fallen into the trap of the skill vials, and should instead have resisted temptation. It might all have turned out differently if he had.

‘It wouldn’t…’ a voice whispered.

Only then, only with this most recent distant breath, Sham recognised what he was hearing.

‘...Recollection?’ he asked.

A pause. A moment to gather strength, perhaps. ‘Yes…’ the voice said.

‘You’re all… I thought you were all gone?’

‘Not quite,’ the voice of Recollection replied. ‘Not everyone… not… quite.’

Sham gulped. ‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry for what I did. I… I had to. It was Hester. I had to…’

‘I know. I always… knew. All that I did, I did… what I had to, to survive… I tried to… I…’ But Recollection’s voice faded away, grew too weak.

‘How?’ Sham asked. ‘How did you survive?’

‘What are… skills, if not… knowledge? If not… memory? Even… Julya keeps her… Recollection.’

Julya.

That was right.

She was out there, again.

She was barrelling toward the same inevitable conclusion. In nine days, the Tower would explode, taking the entire city of Haven with it. That was the price Sham had paid: eternity in the Loop, in return for Hester’s survival.

It was a steep price.