An unseasonably warm day dawned over the city of Haven.

Mona had stayed the night at her father’s—something that she was beginning to do more and more as the weeks went on. Her dear mother was long departed, and though her father claimed that he needed help around the house, Mona could tell that he really wanted her there because he was lonely. They both knew it was a lie, really, but it was an illusion that neither of them wanted to shatter.

She stirred from her father’s sofa and shuffled across the room to the kitchen, reaching for the kettle. As Mona filled it with water and switched on the gas, she spotted a note in her father’s handwriting on the counter.

DOWN AT THE HARBOUR, it read. BACK IN A BIT. DAD.

Mona smiled. She knew better than to believe her father would be “back in a bit”. He still worked himself to the bone even with his bad back, and would likely be collecting mooring fees until the early hours of the morning.

She sipped her tea as she gazed out of the dusty window at the city beyond—at the Harbour District, and a few roads over, the Heron Piers. Mona had the day to herself; work wouldn’t be calling her in for two days, and the bright weather made her feel hopeful for the first time in… Well, for the first time in a good while.

Mona took the tram into the Commercial Zone, where she could spend the day staring into shop windows. At fine pocket watches, at delicate dresses, and at glistening jewellery. None of these objects her cafe salary could afford, but there was a certain joy in aspiration, and in imagination. The one thing she did stretch to treat herself to was a chocolate macaron—a new delicacy so recently imported from Harbourage.

She sat on a bench at the side of a small, verdant plaza as she took the minutest of bites, stretching the experience for as long as she could. As she neared the halfway point, she looked across the square to spot a man dressed in a long green robe staring at her. Or rather, she suspected, at the strange and delicious food item in her right hand.

Mona pointed at it with her left. ‘Macaron,’ she cried out, explaining it.

The man in the green robes began towards her.

‘It’s a shop called Little Harbourage,’ Mona explained, gesturing to the road behind her. ‘You’re going to want to head this way, then take a—’

‘I’m not here for the food,’ the man in green said as he took a seat on the bench at Mona’s side. ‘I’m here for this.’

The man held out a small envelope. Mona reached forward for it.

‘You are Mona, yes?’ the man asked, keeping a firm grip on the letter.

‘Yes…’

The man in green nodded, released the envelope, and hurried off to the north without a glance back in Mona’s direction. She watched him go, brow furrowed, and took her time finishing the macaron before turning her attention to the letter.

Mona,

There is a small circle of huts a mile or so into Crater, northwest of Government Plaza. At the stroke of midnight, enter the largest of the buildings.

I can tell you nothing in this letter that you will believe, and nothing that would give you reason to come. But if I know you, you’ll come. You’re the curious sort, after all.

And I’d like to think I do know you, now, after all this time. Even if you don’t know me.

S

‘Gods damn,’ Mona muttered, re-reading the same note several times, as though doing so would make it any less cryptic. The mysterious ‘S’ had one thing right: this was not a summoning that she could ignore. She wouldn’t be able to live with not knowing.

The hours passed slowly, Mona’s mind lingering on the strange note and the contents therein, the mystery taunting and teasing her. But finally the warm sun set over the harbours, day turned to night, and the hour of the meeting grew close.

Mona stared on at the location on the letter. At least, she thought it was the correct location, and the dozens of men and women dressed in green robes suggested that it was indeed—though she didn’t know for sure. Nothing from her half hour of watching the people in green gave her any insight as to the reasoning for her summoning beyond the creeping suspicion that she was about to be inducted into a cult.

A cult she could handle, Mona decided with no real evidence. She’d get out of there before they could get their claws in. That wasn’t a reason not to see what all of this was all about.

She gulped back her lingering fears, and stepped forward towards the makeshift encampment.

Those in green paid her no heed, not a single pair of eyes landing upon her. It was almost artificial, how little interest they paid her; Mona was used to the odd pair of lingering eyes, and had received them in no small number since her late teens. The fact that nobody looked at her at all suggested that it was a conscious effort. That someone had told them not to.

Mona breathed deeply, steeling herself, and pressed on for the building at the rear of the encampment, around the back of where the people in robes were building a large pyre. She pressed one of the two wooden doors inward, and five faces turned to look at her.

‘Good,’ said a middle-aged, scraggly-looking man standing at the rear of the small church atrium. This man with dark rings around his eyes and a short-haired woman at his side had been the only two facing the doors, as though presenting to the other three occupants. ‘I was just about to start. Take a seat, Mona.’

Mona closed the door behind her, but remained at the edge of the building. ‘You’re the one who sent the message?’ she asked.

The gaunt man gestured to the pews. ‘Take a seat,’ he said again.

‘Do I know you?’

‘Yes, but you’ve forgotten,’ he replied. ‘Take a seat, and I’ll explain.’ He kept his hand raised towards the pews.

Finally Mona relented, and trudged up the aisle to take a seat next to a woman in a green robe. She was the only one dressed like the people outside, Mona noted.

In the corner, perched uncomfortably atop a small crate marked with an owl, a rotund older man with little hair to speak of cast his eyes over Mona. He hadn’t received the same instructions as those outside.

The last of the church’s five occupants, a man around the age of the one who’d sent the message, cast his eyes toward the door once more. He scratched at his arm absent-mindedly. ‘Is that everyone?’ he asked of the man who’d sent the message. ‘I don’t like this. You get in contact out of the blue and get me to come here? I don’t like it.’

‘I told you, Tripe,’ the man in charge said, begging for the other man’s patience with his upturned palms. ‘I’m about to explain. We were just waiting for Mona, here.’

The fidgety man glanced at her, but said nothing to her. ‘Well get on with it, Sham.’

The man in charged—Sham, though surely all these ridiculous names were pseudonyms—took a deep breath. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘Riot and I, we’ve been thinking, for the last four days, just where the fuck to start, and I think we’ve settled on this…’

The short-haired woman piped up. ‘When was the last time you looked at the city we live in and thought it was good enough?’ She spoke with the refined tongue of the Sunrise District.

Mona raised an eyebrow; she was not reassured that this was not a cult.

The woman in the green robe glanced at her, her eyes glazed over. She’d not been surprised by this question. Was she in on it too?

‘It’s OK,’ Sham said, ‘You don’t need to reply. We’re not expecting an answer, because we know exactly what it is. It’s been a fucking long time for us, too. Do you know why that is?’

‘The whisky’s gotten piss-poor,’ Tripe called out.

Sham ignored the man, continuing, ‘Our parents’ generation were promised that it would all get better after the king was overthrown. That we’d get democracy, that we’d be able to improve our living situations. But more than half of us here, we’ve grown up in the Harbour District. All we’ve seen is the poor getting poorer. All we’ve seen is our sort thrown to the wolves.’

Now this… this was something Mona could agree with. But that was how cults got you, wasn’t it? She made sure to stay on her guard.

‘This government? They’re the ones who’ve made sure of it. The rich get richer at the expense of everyone else. At the expense of us. Of our wealth. Of our health. At the expense of our gods-damned lives. They need to be removed.’

Tripe snorted gently; he did not think much of that plan of action.

‘I know; big words. So let’s get specific. Let’s talk about the things…’

Sham trailed off, his face growing grey. The woman at his side—Riot?—hurried to his side, moving her arms to support him. The contact between the two of them seemed natural only for a moment, before they shared a mysterious but meaningful glance, and then jerked themselves away. The short-haired woman blinked back… what was that, anger?

‘Sorry,’ Sham said. ‘Where was I?’

‘The bodies,’ the man on the crate called out.

Sham thanked him with a nod. ‘The bodies. Yes. How many of you have heard of those people going missing, these last few months? Maybe you heard whispers at first, little more than rumours, but then it became friends of friends, maybe even friends themselves? And then, after a few days, they’re found. Dead.’

The strange man called Tripe leant forward. ‘What do you know?’ The man’s tone had changed; where before he seemed vaguely amused by the whole situation, he was suddenly intensely serious.

‘All people from the poorer districts. The Harbour, mostly. Some in Heron. And when they turn up dead, it’s because they’ve had their skills removed.’

Mona’s attention shot firmly to Sham, and the woman at her side snapped her head to him too. This was news to her, too. If it was news to her, then maybe it had nothing to do with the people in green robes. Maybe this was something else.

‘Removed?’ Mona repeated. ‘Removed how?’

‘I can’t tell you how, precisely, but I can tell you why. The “why” is because the rich and powerful in this city aren’t content with their current situation. They want more. And they’ll cut every fucking corner they can to get it. In this case, they’ll even kill their own citizens if it means they have a chance at artificially-generated skills.’

Tripe opened his mouth to ask a question, but Riot had anticipated it.

‘Yes. You heard him right.’

‘That’s…’ Mona said, ‘That’s impossible.’

Sham shook his head. ‘Afraid not. By your timelines, they cracked it four days ago.’

‘This is… this is madness,’ Tripe said, shaking his head for a much different reason.

‘We’re supposed to just take your word on this?’ Mona asked. ‘Cos this is quite an ask.’

Sham turned to the man on the crate. ‘Asa?’ he asked. ‘I think this is your cue.’

The balding man nodded, stood from the crate, and removed from it two identical glass vials. He passed them to Sham, who in turn held one out for Tripe, and then for Mona.

‘This could be anything,’ Tripe said. ‘This could be fucking syrup for all I know.’

‘Take it, then,’ Riot said.

‘What?’

‘Take it,’ she said again.

‘We got more,’ the balding man, Asa, added.

Mona couldn’t help herself. She pulled the cork stopper free from the top of the vial, and gave it a sniff. It smelt of… it smelt of something from her past. Something sentimental in nature. Something she couldn’t quite remember.

‘If you don’t believe us,’ Sham said, ‘Then don’t drink it. But hold onto it. By tomorrow, it’ll be public knowledge: the government has free skills.’

Tripe eyeballed her with a raised brow. ‘You first, then, mate.’

Mona half-expected it to be a joke. That the liquid in the vial was nothing. Or was syrup, like Tripe had said. Maybe it’d even be boono and she’d need to sleep it off after a few nights. What she hadn’t expected was…

NEW SKILL: Recollection

The dreams of the past grow less hazy. Memories, once so fickle, stick to your mind as a fly to a trap, no detail spared… whether you like it or not.

‘Oh, fuck,’ Mona mumbled, and at such exclamation Tripe hungrily followed her lead.

‘Everyone here is capable,’ Sham continued, ‘each in your own ways. That's why I've brought you here. What we agree to do, here, today, it can't get out. Nobody else can know. And the best way of ensuring that is to keep the number of people who do know to a minimum. What I’m about to tell you… it won’t make sense. It won’t be believable, even, at least not for another six days. All I ask from you is that you listen. No matter how mad I may sound. And then, when it all begins again, when you realise that I was telling the truth, you return here.’

Sham paused, as though awaiting more arguments from those not in the know. But neither Tripe nor Mona said anything, perhaps both of them still reeling from the revelation of the new skill.

‘Haven has lived the past four days—and the five still to come—many, many times. On the ninth day, the 13th of Harvest, devastation will wipe the city from the map, and those who remember will wake up again on the 5th. So it goes, again and again—the period of time between these skill vials being created and the city’s near-inevitable destruction.’

This was mad, surely, but Mona would have said that artificial skill vials were mad only minutes earlier. She kept her mouth closed; she’d implicitly agreed to listen, after all.

Sham stepped forward. A stream of light from the stained glass illuminated his face. ‘We have nine days, and infinity, to take down the government that has thrown this city into ruin. And I intend—with the help of everyone in this room and the vials in that crate—to do so.’

‘So that’s it, then?’ the woman in the robes asked, opening her mouth for the first time. ‘You’re choosing the monarchy?’

Sham shook his head. Vehemently. ‘No. I’m not choosing the monarchy. I’m not choosing the current government, but I’m not choosing the monarchy either. I’m choosing us, the people of this city. We’re not just going to break this Loop. No, that’s not enough. We’re going to take the opportunity to seize the Tower—seize this city—for ourselves. Ladies and gentlemen... welcome to the revolution.’

And then, contrasting with the weight of his last few sentences, Sham laughed.

‘What is it?’ asked Riot, the short-haired woman.

‘I’ve just completed a quest,’ he said.