Day 1

MEMORY UNLOCKED (RECOLLECTION)

Your head lays heavy on the cold wooden table top, the first of the thundering hangover already beginning to kick in. You stir from your deep stupor to the thudding of feet against door. If it’s you that they’ve come for, so be it.

There was a plan just beginning to form in the back of Sham’s mind as he cleared it of the memory. He could feel it. He could feel it growing. He occasionally found himself catching glimpses of it: how he might defeat Julya. How he—and those on his side—might get an advantage over her. But this growing tree was still far from bearing fruit.

He would work on it.

For now, however, there was a job to be done.

QUEST: LOOPBREAKERS, ASSEMBLE

Form the team that will, at last, break the Loop.

Riot was on board.

Sham knew that; he’d just been there, two days ago in his timeline, or seven days from now in the Loop. But that left others. Kryl, to start with—who almost certainly hadn’t forgiven him for the grotesque murder of his friend, even if the Loop had un-done it. And this trio wouldn’t be enough, alone. They’d proven that already, once before. But who else?

Asa would perhaps be helpful for his added firepower, for the crates of vials he was willing to part with—but was Sham willing to consume any more, in his fragile state? Would he allow Riot, or even Kryl, to damage themselves further, in the same way?

Then there were the Citizen’s Police. They would be on Government Plaza, either way, creating enough of a fight for Julya that she would be forced to power up, oblivious that their presence was a key factor in maintaining a Loop that was driving those who remembered it insane. Captain Dickhead wouldn’t listen to him, of course, but there was someone else who would join the CP who might—as long as her father was involved in an accident on Plenty Harbour in a few days…

Gods, if only he could rid himself of this eternal hangover.

Sham hobbled over to the sink, consciously avoiding the shattered fragments of whisky bottle that he had dropped as he awoke. He splashed himself with the cool, refreshing water, and then swung his open mouth under the tap, gulping it down. Only once he’d begun struggling for breath did he move away from it, wiping the excess water from his beard with the back of his hand.

‘See, this kinda shit is why you ain’t get any girls,’ Vigour said.

‘Hey, he’s got that pretty one with the short hair, actually,’ Perspicacity retorted.

‘Does he, though?’

Sham shook his head to clear it of the disembodied voices, then immediately regretted doing so as it caused it to ring out with pain. ‘Look,’ he muttered to himself—or, more precisely, the beings inside of him. ‘Look what you did.’ At that, they remained quiet.

He looked up, stared at himself in that same old rusty mirror, challenged his reflection on whether he was up to the job. Whether he could do all that he needed to do.

QUEST LIST

SAVE THE TOWER

Prevent the Target from unleashing devastation.

LIFE IN THE REVOLUTION

Pick a side in the coming storm.

INVESTIGATE THE BODIES

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

LOOPBREAKERS, ASSEMBLE

Form the team that will, at last, break the Loop.

He wasn’t sure. Gods, of course he wasn’t sure. Never before had he achieved goals even half as weighty as those still before him. It almost seemed hopeless… but he was just going to have to give it his best shot.

It had taken him a good while to get out the door, in the state he was in. The many gulps of water hadn’t done much yet to ease the pain in his head, but the liquid volume was weighing on his stomach, and any fast movement made him want to hurl it back up again.

The hurtling tram he took on the way to Riot’s did little to ease that nausea, especially as it made turns a bit quicker than Sham would have liked. He concentrated on the poster in front of him, an image of a well-dressed father figure handing a shiny pocketwatch down to his son. This tramline did venture into the Sunrise District, Sham supposed, where its residents might be able to afford such a thing. His tired mind dwelled on the thought for a moment, and when he blinked back into reality, he realised he was approaching his stop. Riot’s stop, rather.

Sham stood, gulping back nausea, and pulled on the cord to signal the driver to stop. As he alighted, he gazed up at Riot’s towering apartment building and wondered, just for a few moments, whether this would be the very last time he visited. What would be their dynamic once this was over? Would there be a relationship between them at all, once the Loop wasn’t there to break down the wall between classes?

He shook his head—gently, this time. There was no reason to dwell on the matter. It changed nothing. What needed to be done… needed to be done.

Riot beckoned him in quickly as she opened the door. ‘Come in, come in,’ she said. ‘Tea is brewing as we speak. You want one?’

‘Yes please. Milk, no—’

‘Sugar, yes,’ Riot replied. ‘I know.’

Sham waited as Riot pottered around her kitchen, staring up at the near-blank wall. ‘Slow progress?’ he called out.

‘It takes a while to get everything off it. Lots of pictures. Plus, I treated myself to a long bath.’

Sham bit back his jealousy; a bath would have done him some good right about now.

As if Riot had read his thoughts, she called across the room, ‘How you feeling, this morning? Rough, if I remember correctly?’

‘Rough might be an understatement.’

Riot placed on the coffee table not just a large cup of tea—strong, how he liked it—but also a plate containing a thick, doorstop sandwich, and a pile of thick-cut chips.

‘I…’ Sham started.

‘Eat,’ Riot said, ‘Feel better. You can thank me later.’

And so he did. With every mouthful, Sham felt an ounce better, and he hated that he was not in the state to fully appreciate the meal that Riot had prepared for him. The bath, Sham suspected, was a lie—Riot had spent her morning creating for him the perfect hangover cure. She’d remembered.

‘You know how to do it?’ Riot asked from the far wall, studying it with a hand on her chin. ‘You know how to break it?’ She moved to wrap some red thread around another point, marked as “ASA GIVES JULYA VIALS”.

Sham waved her down, and then realising that she would not have seen, added, ‘I’m getting there. I got… ideas. It’s coming to me.’

Riot turned, and a raised eyebrow suggested that she wasn’t entirely convinced.

‘Just… trust me, alright? And have that timeline finished.’

‘What are you going to do?’

‘Me?’ Sham replied, ‘I’m gonna go get Kryl.’

Riot nodded. ‘OK. Kryl. And you reckon the three of us is going to be enough to take her down?’

‘Not at all,’ Sham said. ‘But don’t bother cracking out your posh teacups; the other guy I have in mind doesn’t have an eye for the finer things in life.’

‘Kryl, I’m sorry,’ Sham said for what had to have been the twentieth time.

‘Sorry? Sorry?’ the posh bloke replied. ‘I saw what you did to him, remember? That was not simply some alcohol-induced rage—and I suspect you have plenty of experience with those to know. That was barbarism. Pure and simple.’

‘No, it—’

‘Oh, no, no no no. Do not try to deny it, Mr Tilner. I have seen the far remnants of civilisation. Those furthest from any of the three cities. I know what the worst of them are capable of. And even they do not come close to being able to do what you did to Harcourt.’

Sham took a step forward across the back room of the casino. The forgotten crowd glisten on the plinth between them. ‘Are you telling me this ain’t driving you mad? That that voice in your head hasn’t made you do thing you wish you hadn’t?’

The monarchist grimaced. ‘Nothing like—’

‘Nothing like what I did, no. I can believe that. But I got four voices up in here, Kryl.’ Sham prodded his temple. ‘And they’re all speaking. All the time. Five voices in one mind. Course it’s gonna break, every now and then.’

‘Are you using madness as an excuse for violence?’

‘Excuse?’ Sham replied. ‘No. I’m not giving it as an excuse. I’m giving it as context.’

‘You consider that enough to make me forgive you?’

‘Forgive you? Gods, no. I ain’t after your forgiveness.’ Sham resisted the urge to put emphasis on the “your”.

‘What, then?’

‘Patience. One more Loop, with me. With Riot. I think we can do it. I think we can break it.’

Kryl raised an eyebrow. ‘Think? Or hope?’

‘For Riot’s sake, you better believe it’s the former.’

The monarchist licked his lips, as members of his family seemed to do so often.

‘Look,’ Sham said. ‘Go to your sister’s. Wait there. I’m going to introduce you to the last member of our little conspiracy.’

Kryl pressed his lips into a fine, pale line, but said nothing of Sham giving him orders. ‘And then?’ he asked.

‘And then we’ll work out how to break this thing.’

Enter, Loopbreaker #4.

A man who’d done his very level best to avoid taking sides. A man whose actions were at the centre of it all. A man who had survived so many Loops and the memories of them.

Whether Asa Cuttle liked it or not, he was going to have to pick a side. And that’s exactly what Sham told him, down in that familiar grimy warehouse on End Street.

‘I’m not fighting,’ he said.

‘I’m not asking you to. But you have to do something.’

‘You reckon you can give me orders? Me?’

‘I’m not giving you orders, Asa,’ Sham replied. ‘I’m telling you: if you want this Loop broken, then you’re going to have to work with me.’

‘What, then?’ Asa asked. ‘Not give Julya the vials? Not rob that bloody automobile? If I go and do any of that, they’ll know, Sham.’

‘Who will?’

‘The posh bird and her friend.’

Sham narrowed his eyes. ‘You’re talking about… Queen Elmira?’

‘Yeah, like I said: the posh bird.’

Sham waved his hands in surrender. ‘Alright. The posh bird. Sure. But how’s she gonna know you aren’t following orders if you don’t steal that vials?’

‘Cos Gres is the one who tipped me off, ain’t he?’

Ah. That made sense. ‘Alright. Steal the automobile. Give her the vials. But come with me, now, and we’ll work out just what you can do.’

‘Nothing that’s gonna get me killed?’

‘Yeah, Asa. That’s the idea.’

Sham noted the criminal’s widening eyes as he led him to the Sunrise District. They weren’t eyes of wonder; this was a man who’d been here before.

‘Presumably to steal from it!’ Joy laughed to herself.

No, instead, Asa had to have been wondering: just how the hell did Sham have friends in these parts. Still, he kept quiet, near-silent the whole journey until Riot’s front door opened, revealing their host’s brother standing inside.

‘You,’ Asa growled, pulling his revolver free of his holster and raising it in Kryl’s direction just as his enemy did the same.

‘Woah!’ Sham said, stepping between them. ‘We’re all friends here. We’re all friends here, isn’t that right, Riot?’

‘That is correct, yes,’ she replied. ‘Put your weapon down, Kryl. We need him on side.’

‘You need this man?’ Kryl answered. ‘This absolute scum of the—’

‘Kryl!’ Riot shouted, her tone of voice clearly indicating the scowl that had appeared on her face.

‘See,’ Asa said, ‘This is why people like me hate people like you. To us, we’re all people, ain’t we? Rich and poor. But to you, that ain’t true. Rich is people, poor is “scum”. Ain’t that right?’

The two men glared at one another, and Sham found himself beginning to regret stepping between the two raised revolvers.

‘You’ve got differences, sure,’ Sham said. ‘I’m not asking either of you to forget that. All I’m asking you to do is put them aside for just one single fucking Loop. You think you can do that?’

Of the two men, only Asa’s grip on his weapon softened.

‘He killed me,’ Kryl said. ‘Hard to forget that.’

Asa smirked. ‘Did I? You ain’t look all that dead to me.’

‘Alright, enough!’ Riot said. ‘I’m am sick of you men turning everything into a competition as to the size of your genitals!’

‘Do you mean a dick-measuring—’ Asa started, but focus from Riot and her intimidating scowl cut him off.

‘You,’ Riot said, prodding her index finger into her brother’s chest. ‘Get off your high horse and do what you have to to end this thing, yes?’

She turned to Asa.

‘And you, you need to know that you two have a common friend. Gresley Manwaring would not be impressed to know that you are bickering so.’

Asa lifted an eyebrow. ‘You’re with Gres?’

‘I’m what happens when a man like Mr Manwaring begins to remember the Loops,’ Kryl replied.

After a moment’s consideration, Asa pointed his weapon away from Kryl and splayed his hands—the universal signal for “alright, I guess I won’t shoot you”.

It took Riot scowling at her brother for him to, eventually, do the same.

‘One Loop,’ Sham reiterated. ‘That’s all I’m asking.’

‘One Loop and we can break it?’ Kryl asked. ‘Am I to assume that you have a plan?’

‘The beginnings of one,’ Sham said. ‘Come back, here, tomorrow morning. We’ll have the timeline finished.’ He gestured to the wall at his rear, string wrapped around pins and moving from one event to the next. ‘Come back tomorrow, and I’ll have a plan.’

Asa smiled. ‘Aite. Let’s end this fucking thing.’