Mona crept closer to the open window, peering around it ever so slowly.

‘What are you doing?’ Sham hissed. ‘Are you trying to get us seen?’

The young woman waved his anxiety away, and then bit her lip as she poked her head above the frame.

‘So you’re one of them,’ Lew was saying, inside the room.

Sham, seeing that Mona hadn’t been spotted, joined her at the window. The interior of the room was decorated much like Riot’s apartment—that is to say, the choices of furniture seemed intentional rather than scraped together, and the decorations… existed. This was a flat owned by someone with money.

‘Remember the keys…’

Yes. The keys. Lew had access to countless properties, but none of the resistance’s research so far had shown Lew to be wealthier than the average residence of Sunrise. What Sham was looking at, with his head poking up ever so slightly over the window frame, was government-owned property.

‘I’d hoped our information was flawed,’ Lew continued, stroking a strand of the woman’s hair out of her eyes. ‘You seem… such a lovely young thing.’ The smile faded from his face.

‘What?’ the woman replied, recoiling at the change in demeanour. ‘Back at the cafe, you said… you said you’d help me. With whatever I was going through. You said—’

‘Oh, and I will, my darling. I will. The best thing I can do for you is keep you out of Warren’s grasp. Do you know what he does to people like you? Dreadful things. Honestly—dreadful. I wouldn’t want to fill that mind of yours with such ideas, but suffice to say, if I gave you to Warren, you wouldn’t have a mind left to fill.’

The young woman took a step back, but Lew grabbed at her wrist. She looked up at him with wide eyes.

As Lew swung his other hand, clenched, towards the woman’s face, Mona moved to intervene.

Acting out of instinct, Sham whipped his hand to his colleague’s chest, holding her back. She turned to face him with a furrowed brow, and with flaring nostrils.

‘Lew can’t see us,’ Sham said. ‘He can’t. Or Enoch will learn what we’re up to. And all this… will be for nothing.’

Mona gulped as she considered this words, then nodded, and Sham released his hand from her torso.

‘Never thought I’d see the day that Sham Tilner doesn’t stick up for the—’

‘Shut up,’ Sham hissed under his breath. Recollection was right, of course—this might have, logically, been the right move to make, but it still didn’t sit right with Sham. Every fibre of his being wanted to burst through that window, just as Mona had been going to. But he couldn’t. Not if he wanted all this to end.

Inside, Lew smacked another fist into the woman’s face, and she crumpled to the floor. ‘You speak of this so-called “loop” and I give you to Warren. And he will do much, much worse. You understand, or do I need to beat a little more fear into you?’

In reply, the woman only whimpered.

‘Good,’ the officer of Legion said. ‘Now…’

He crouched down, as if to whisper into the woman’s ear. Both Mona and Sham leaned in closer to hear what this monster had to say.

‘Now, head to Crater. There, you’ll find your sort; a new church, the… “church of the Loopkeepers,” I believe. Find a woman called Ariel. She’ll keep you out of trouble, if she knows what’s good for her.’

Lew Sawyer turned for the door, leaving the young cafe worker weeping onto the floor, spots of red beginning to stain the cream rug. At the door, he paused, then pulled a hip flask from his pocket and took a swig.

‘Yeah,’ Sham muttered. ‘Bet you need a fucking drink after that.’

The pair of resistance members watched as the door slammed shut behind Lew.

Sham straightened up, and if the woman inside had been looking at the window, he would’ve been in full view.

‘What are you—’ Mona started.

‘Now,’ Sham said. ‘Now we can help her.’ He’d expected follow-up questions about Lew, for Mona to ask about their tracking of him, about how finding a way to kill him was surely the priority. But she said nothing, and immediately concentrated her efforts on smashing the glass window in.

The woman inside screamed, but Mona held up her hands to gesture that she wasn’t a threat. ‘It’s OK,’ she said. ‘It’s OK. We’re not with… We’re here to help you.’

‘No. No, no, no…’ the strange mumbled, shaking her head and scuttling backwards across the floor.

‘I promise, miss…’ Sham started as he pulled himself through the shattered pain, but a stare from Mona said “let me handle this.”

‘Can I ask your name? Mine’s Mona. What’s yours?’

‘V…Verd,’ the woman replied.

‘It’s nice to meet you, Verd,’ Mona continued. ‘Can me and my friend here’ — she pointed to Sham — ‘help take a look at those wounds?’ Though she received no answer, she began approaching the woman ever so slowly. Eventually, Verd nodded.

Mona placed her fingers gently on the woman’s face, guiding her head in the direction of the light, so she could get a better view. ‘They’re deep,’ she said. ‘Didn’t think a weedy fucker like him could…’

‘It was…’ Verd started. ‘I’m so stupid. I should’ve… I shouldn’t’ve…’

‘Hey,’ Mona said. ‘It’s OK. Nobody’s stupid here, alright?’

The strange woman nodded, biting back tears.

Mona turned to look at Sham, who was standing awkwardly a good few feet away. ‘What do you reckon?’

‘Back to base,’ Sham replied. ‘Tripe can see to her there.’

Mona nodded. ‘OK, Verd, I’m going to help you up, now, if that’s OK? We’re going to go see someone about those wounds…’

When they’d left the apartment building, this time via the front entrance, there had been no sign of Tripe, and Mona had suggested that he was continuing the job alone. Even without Tripe, the church would be the best place for Verd, they figured, and so they had led her to the nearest tram stop, one of her arms wrapped over Sham’s shoulder for support.

Mona had distracted Verd from the strange looks from onlookers glaring at her wounds, and they soon had her rest on a surprisingly empty tram’s worn leather seats.

‘Your accent,’ Mona said, peering over the seats in front of Verd and Sham, ‘Where’s it from?’

Verd shrugged. ‘Not from here,’ she said. Her hand absent-mindedly touched at the swelling in her cheek.

‘You been here long?’ Sham asked, taking cue from Mona that this woman needed distraction. ‘In Haven, I mean?’

‘No, I…’ the woman furrowed her brow. ‘I had to flee my home.’

Mona leant in closer. ‘Flee?’ she asked, her eyes wide. ‘Why? War?’

Verd shook her head. ‘No, it’s… I don’t know. I don’t… remember.’ She shook her head again, something about this non-memory beginning to make her breathing irregular.

‘Where was it?’ Sham asked, trying to quickly move the conversation away from this particular point. ‘Your home?’

‘I…’ Verd started, but then put her face in her hands, beginning to sob. ‘I don’t… remember.’

Mona glared at Sham like this woman’s crying was his fault, like he was supposed to have known that such an innocuous question would lead to this reaction. ‘It’s OK,’ she said, placing her hand on Verd’s arm. ‘You’ve been through a lot. It’s OK.’

‘Tell us about your work,’ Sham said, it being the first question he could possibly think of—and one that surely didn’t lead to answers that involved crying.

Verd sniffed, raising her face from her hands, and blinking back the light of Government Plaza under the midday sun. ‘The cafe? It’s… it’s fine. The people there are… friendly, if not the customer, sometimes.’

‘Believe me,’ Mona said. ‘I know. I used to do the same thing. People can be horrible, sometimes.’

Sham and Mona’s new acquaintance smiled a polite—or sad?—smile, one that signalled she appreciated Mona’s words. ‘Yeah. I thought… I thought I might do something else. Signed up for this new police force. I…’

She trailed off, and again Mona and Sham made a pointed sort of eye contact. They knew the rest of this story; Verd signed up to the Citizen’s Police, and was lucky enough to be one of the recruits given one of those shiny new legendary grade skill vials. But she was unlucky, too, in that the vial given to her was Recollection—one which meant she wouldn’t be blissfully unaware of the infinite nightmare that was the Loop.

‘I…’ Verd said again, her brow furrowed, trying to finished the story out loud.

‘It’s OK,’ Mona said. ‘It’s OK. Don’t think about that now. We have a friend, where we’re going, who might be able to explain things a little better. She’ll make some sense out of it for you.’

Verd nodded, but Sham could see her retreating into herself—the burden of her memories becoming too great.

‘Know that feeling well huh?’ Recollection asked.

They alighted the tram at the northwesternmost stop in the Diplomatic District, apologising to the injured Verd that they would need to walk the rest of the way. Out here, in the Crater, there were no curious onlookers, and Sham was surprised to find that their absence felt like a weight had been lifted.

When they finally arrived at the Church of the Loopkeepers, they found Ariel staring into the depths of an unlit fire in the centre of the courtyard. Her flock—men and women dressed in green robes—darted around her as they saw to their chores, but none seemed to pull Ariels stare away from the logs.

‘Ariel,’ Sham said as they approached her side. ‘We have a new Looper for you.’

The leader of the church blinked as she pulled her eyes away from the wood and cast them instead on the woman that Sham and Mona were propping up.

[HEART OF JANUS] IN THE EYES: SUCCESS

Ariel’s face changes. It’s subtle, and perhaps most would have missed it. But you recognise the lie that takes the form of facial expression.

Ariel smiled a warm and welcoming smile at Verd, hurrying to rush to her side and relieve Mona of one of the woman’s arms. ‘Welcome, my child. Welcome. Let us see to you.’

‘You seen Tripe?’ Sham asked. ‘Thought he could…’

Ariel shook her head. ‘Our brother hasn’t returned to us.’

Sham nodded, ignoring the church-friendly manner in which she had replied, and then assisted Verd towards a smaller building on one side of the makeshift courtyard.

‘Mona, please ask brother Yurn for bandages,’ Ariel said, and their colleague in the resistance hurried off to follow her instruction.

They laid Verd down on a vacant cot in the hut, and Sham found himself thankful that the rest of its residents were outside, busy with tasks that kept the church alive. It gave them space.

‘Thank you,’ Verd croaked, only now that the weight had been taken off her feet returning Ariel’s smile.

‘We will heal all wounds, my child,’ Ariel said. ‘Those of the body first, of course. But while my sister retrieves the bandages, perhaps we can speak of the Loop? Mayhaps it will take your mind off the pain?’

Sham retreated to a neighbouring cot, sitting himself down while he awaited Mona’s return. This was his first opportunity to see how Ariel inducted new members of her church, and he had been curious enough about the matter that he didn’t want to miss it.

Verd nodded. ‘Yes, that’s… The Loop?’

‘The name we give to the past nine days. The eternal days.’

The woman frowned thoughtfully. ‘The… Loop, yes. I… There’s days I remember. Days that nobody else does. Days that—’ As her pattern of thought continued, her eyes widened, her movements and speech becoming increasingly frantic.

Ariel put her hand on the new recruit’s, and in doing so she seemed to calm the woman. ‘Your new siblings at the Church of the Loopkeepers remember, my dear.’

Verd’s eyes opened wide as she recognised the name. ‘Loopkeepers?’ she said. ‘Not the… But I thought Loopkeepers were… were… mad. Were criminals. Were…’

‘Vermin?’ Sham offered.

Ariel shot him a quick hard glare that indicated that such interruptions weren’t helpful. Sham mimed himself zipping his lips shut in response.

‘Lies, I’m afraid, my dear,’ Ariel said. ‘Enough to keep the general population away from us. But useful, in a way; it does rather guarantee our brothers and sisters some peace.’

‘They’re real, then?’ Verd asked.

‘What are, my dear?’

‘My memories. My last few days. The… the yellow light.’

Ariel nodded glumly. ‘Real. Though I’m sure this all comes as a shock to you, we do have methods of…’

Mona entered the hut, fresh bandages in hand, and hurried to Verd and Ariel’s side.

‘Ah,’ Ariel said. ‘Let us see to those injuries, shall we? Just how did you come to suffer them?’

‘Lew Sawyer,’ Mona said as she unfurled the bandages.

Because both Mona and Verd were looking at the reams of white gauze, both of them missed the darkness that flashed across Ariel’s face.

‘Ariel…’ Sham started.

The leader of the Church of the Loopkeepers turned her head slowly to face Verd once more. ‘The… Legion did this?’

Mona paused suddenly, realising the full implication of such information.

‘Yes,’ Verd said. ‘They… they…’

‘Deserve every horror imaginable,’ Ariel snarled.

Verd blinked at the church leader, her mouth hanging open.

Ariel recovered quickly, shaking her head and pushing that artificial expression back to her face—the one with which she dealt with her flock. ‘Ignore me, my dear,’ she said. ‘There is… We all say things we don’t mean, sometimes.’

The new church member said nothing, but surveyed Ariel with curious eyes.

Sham and Mona sat by the fire, so recently ignited, as Ariel ushered her flock into the church to begin their late afternoon service. Sham didn’t need to be there for that—it was nothing he hadn’t heard before a dozen times, and besides, he wasn’t exactly the target audience any more. Ariel had no need to keep him in line.

At Sham’s side, Mona twitched. And again. He turned to see a furrowed brow and a grimace etched onto her face. He didn’t ask the obvious question, and he didn’t need to hear the answer—it would birth conversations that didn’t need to happen yet. Conversations about the price paid for consuming those Recollection vials, and the voice in Mona’s head that she would need to learn to handle.

‘Handle?’ Sham’s own Recollection repeated.

Sham shook his head, twitching in perhaps not an entirely different way to how Mona had just done. But where Sham had the good sense not to ask, Mona didn’t.

‘What?’ she asked. ‘What is it?’

‘Nothing,’ Sham replied. ‘Just… nothing. You’ll know soon enough.’ His eyes scanned the courtyard as Mona considered this answer, landing on the makeshirt church on the northern side. It was makeshift in that, though it had once been a Temple of Zeus in its own right, those days were long faded, and the war had taken its toll. Stone walls had been destroyed, then replaced with wood only yesterday, and would be again and again every nine days until the Loop was finally ended. Remnants of stained glass would, inside, shine patches of coloured light across the flock, adding a dream-like atmosphere to those services.

‘Know soon enough?’ Mona asked. ‘What does that mean?’

But Sham waved her down; in front of him, the doors of the church were opening. Prematurely.

And a familiar face was slipping out the back.

As Sham gulped, Mona turned to face the cause of his distress.

‘Verd,’ she said, as the pair watched the skittish immigrant hurry out of the courtyard as quickly as her short legs would carry her.

‘Yeah,’ Sham replied. ‘She’s gonna be a problem.’