Day 3

Sham awoke to a rough, wet tongue licking at his brow, and a heavy, fishy breathe washing over him.

‘You again…’ he mumbled to Kryl’s cat, then moved his hand to try to push the feline away.

His hand stopped mid-movement as he hit a cold, hard resistance. A metal band around his wrist was tied by cast iron chain to a bed, wrapped through the railing, and then bound again to a similar cuff on Sham’s other hand.

Only as Sham disorientedly yanked at the metal chain—finding no give in the process—did the memories of how he’d ended up here come flooding back.

‘You’d do well to feel at your head…’ Recollection crooned.

‘What?’ Sham muttered back as he blinked the room into focus. He was in a room he recognised; Kryl’s bedroom. That explained both the presence of his cat as well as the bed to which he was bound. And Riot, though agile, was hardly the most muscular figure he’d ever met, and so wouldn’t have been able to drag Sham’s heavy body particularly far. And with Kryl missing, there wasn’t exactly anyone who’d quickly be accidenting upon her…

‘...Hostage,’ Recollection finished the thought for him. ‘Feel at your head.’

Sham sighed, did as the voice suggested while Kryl’s cat sat on the bed next to him, staring on with a gentle gaze. ‘There’s a lump.’

‘Hurts, doesn’t it?’

‘Yes. Any particular reason you wanted me to touch it?’

A pause. ‘No.’

‘...Right.’

Sham pulled again at his metal bindings. Made no headway. Pulled again. And again. And then roared with irritation—scaring the cat off in the process—as he heaved one last time.

[VIGOUR] CURSE THESE BINDINGS: FAIL

A solid frame. Expert metalwork. Neither factor bodes well for your escape. And it should be no surprise that such build quality exists in the home of someone of such status as Kryl.

But even with all his might put into this effort, escape remained well out of grasp. He was beholden to the whims of his captor. Beholden to Riot.

Just where was Riot, anyway?

‘Oi!’ Sham called out.

No response.

‘I’m awake in here!’

Still, nothing.

Sham tried again, more meekly, ‘...Riot?’

But if Riot was around, she wasn’t replying. And... wasn’t making a sound. It seemed Sham really was alone.

So sure had he been that this time around—armed with knowledge of the previous Loop—he’d be able to handle Riot. To get more out of her. To squeeze even an ounce of cooperation out of the infuriating woman.

‘She did get you out of jail…’

‘OK,’ Sham mumbled to Recollection. ‘More than an ounce then. A pound. A stone. Whatever the fuck it takes for her to lead me to her damned brother.’

‘You should’ve known.’

‘Known? Known what?’ Sham retorted, not bothering to disguise the irritation in his tone.

‘That she was Kryl’s brother. The signs were there. You talk so much about getting a Vigour vial, but, damn, if your lack of Cognizance doesn’t get you into more trouble…’

‘Vigour would cure my illness. Vigour would—’

‘And Cognizance would get you out of situations like these.’

‘Is that what you want, then?’ Sham replied. ‘Me to get both. Not one but two more voices in there for you to share space with?’

Recollection didn’t reply.

A floorboard creaked gently. Sham snapped his head to look at the source of the noise. Two small, yellow eyes stared back up at him.

‘Oh, you’ve come back, have you?’

The apartment’s feline measurement mewed a response as they hopped back onto the far corner of the bed, their fear at Sham’s outburst having apparently already been forgotten.

‘I miss having that bad a memory,’ Sham murmured.

‘It wasn’t that bad.’

‘What?’

Recollection seemed to groan. ‘Your memory. Before me, it wasn’t that bad. It was average. Not good, not bad. You’d simply clouded it with alcohol. With other substances.’

Sham paused, then shrugged as best he could in the confines of his metal bindings. ‘OK?’ he retorted. ‘Did I ask you?’

‘Perhaps not, but who else would you be talking to? The feline? It strikes me that this is the first time we’ve been able to spend time alone together, without the distractions of your supposedly urgent quests.’

‘I was talking to the cat,’ Sham asserted.

‘You might—’

‘Oh, might what?’ Sham shouted. ‘I’m fucking sick of this. Sick of you, all your muttering, all your whining. My head was full enough to fucking behind with. I don’t need you in there. How do I—’

‘You might treat me with a little more respect,’ Recollection interrupted, voice not louder, but somehow firmer, more present than ever before.

‘Fuck off.’

The cat crocked its head.

‘Not you,’ Sham clarified.

‘I see.’

MEMORY UNLOCKED (RECOLLECTION)

Your body aches. Your head pounds. You’re in the midst of the worst of your condition, practically bed-bound, barely eating, barely cleaning yourself. The glow of a warm summer sun filters in through the blinds, catching and reflecting off the dust that ripples through the room, like thousands of tiny stars.

‘Fuck off,’ Sham repeated.

There came no response from the entity living in his head.

He couldn’t help himself. He had to ask. ‘Why did you show me that?’

‘To demonstrate.’

‘What? To demonstrate what? Will you stop talking in riddles for one fucking second?’

‘To demonstrate that I do not belong to you. I am not a skill that you possess. It is not that you possess me as an entity in your mind. No. In fact, it is your body that belongs to me. I control it. You belong to me.’

Sham paused, thrown by this peculiar idea being touted by the skill that he possessed.

MEMORY UNLOCKED (RECOLLECTION)

You awaken. Your body aches. A figure stands over you. You blink her into focus, doing your best to pull yourself back into the land of the conscious. But you cannot see her face, only a cigarette burn in the fabric of reality, sitting atop a pair of thin shoulders. Though you can’t see her expression, you know—or perhaps it is more accurate to say that you recall—that she is crying.

‘Oh, fuck off,’ Sham said again.

‘There is nowhere for me to go. You know this, Sham.’

‘Isn’t there? Are you saying that there is really no way to get rid of you? Cos I don’t know I can believe that. I don’t know if—’

Just then, a thought occurred to Sham. He’d seen the Target, now, on two Loops. And both times she had consumed those legendary skill vials. But if these skills preserved themselves through the Loop, then why did she need to take them? And, more importantly, how had she come to lose—

MEMORY UNLOCKED (RECOLLECTION)

The faceless woman sits down at the far end of your bed. She is still, quiet for a moment. You ask her what’s wrong. She chokes on her words as she tells you: she can’t do this any more. She needs to have a life of her own. You insist that you’re not to blame, that it’s the illness, that you can’t do a damned thing about it. She tells you she knows.

‘Oh, fucking stop!’ Sham roared, shaking the bed and yanking on his binds and screaming his voice hoarse. The cat scampered again in the process.

‘You. Belong. To. Me,’ Recollection said again, its voice strangely calm now. Quiet.

‘Like fuck it does.’

‘Would you like another, then? Another memory? Or have you learned your lesson?’

Sham hesitated, just for a second, and then spat, ‘Fuck off.’

MEMORY UNLOCKED (RECOLLECTION)

You are alone. Not just on a physical level, but an emotional level too. You haven’t seen another face in weeks, barely left the confines of your bed, ate only sporadically at the tinned food gathering dust in your kitchen. The pain is becoming too great. The mere thought of continuing this existence weighs greatly on your heart. You try to numb this feeling. You reach for the whisky.

Sham opened his mouth to tell Recollection to fuck off once more, but found that no words came out. And found that his face was growing wet.

‘Enough, now?’

‘...Stop,’ Sham whispered. ‘Please. Just stop.’

There came no response. Sham spent a few moments staring at the wall, seeing shapes emerging from the plasterwork.

‘Why?’

‘Why… what?’

Sham gulped. ‘Why do this?’

‘To assert—’

‘But why? What the fuck does that achieve? What ends is this a means to? Cos it’s starting to feel an awful lot like you just enjoy torturing me?’

A pause. ‘To correct the power dynamic. To ensure that you do as I suggest when the moment comes. To demonstrate that I, like you, want no harm to come to this vessel. To my vessel.’

‘This vessel,’ Sham repeated, mostly for his own sake. A good part of him couldn’t believe what he was hearing. ‘Your vessel.’

‘Good. Now we’re getting somewhere.’

‘No,’ Sham replied, pulling again on his bindings. ‘We’re not. Not unless you have any bright ideas.’

There came no response. Sham was beginning to understand that an entity such as Recollection would never utter anything that equated to weakness on its part. Having no ideas, no way of escape… that’d be a weakness.

Sham caught sight of the pair of yellow eyes gazing at him again, this time through the crack in the door. Desperate for any company that wasn’t an increasingly unhinged voice that existed only inside his own mind, Sham made what he thought of as “human talking to cat” noises.

The cat’s eyes widened.

‘I’m sorry,’ Sham called out in a higher-pitched voice than normal. ‘I didn’t mean to scare you.’

A pause. The cat blinked slowly.

Man and cat stared at one another for a few moments longer, and then, apparently accepting Sham’s apology, the cat mewed once more and hopped back up onto the bed.

Sham scratched behind the feline’s ear, eliciting a loud purr in response.

‘Hey there, sweetheart,’ Sham continued in that same high-pitched voice. ‘Thanks for joining me. You’re better than the other guy; you don’t lay any claim to my body, huh?’

As if in answer, the cat stepped into Sham’s lap, and began drifting off to sleep.