Day 9

Sham gasped for air as he resurfaced into the real world.

He’d half-expected the world to have continued on without him. For Julya, perhaps, to have made her way up the Tower, or for Kryl to have overwhelmed her.

But he awoke, it seemed, only a fraction of a second after he’d been dragged into that strange place. Kryl still stood at his side, and Julya remained where she had been, her hand placed on Sham’s chest.

Sham and Julya shared a kind of meaningful eye contact for only a fleeting moment, and then both jumped into action once more.

‘Showtime!’ announced Vigour.

As Julya swung clenched fist towards Sham’s face, he felt his own arms moving to block it. Vigour had his forearm blocking the swinging fist long before Sham would have managed it on his own, and the two unnaturally strong fighters bounced off one another at the force.

Kryl sank to the floor, reaching for a revolver on the ground at Sham’s feet. It was his revolver, he realised—the weapon that he must have dropped during his fleeting encounter with the Fringe.

‘Pay attention!’ Perspicacity cried, wrenching Sham’s head back to face the woman he was trying his best to stop.

But Sham had been distracted a fraction of a second too long, and a semi-crouching Julya slammed into his chest, Vigour unable to move his body in time to escape.

Sham fell to the tiles, hard, involuntarily releasing a heavy breath from the force of the impact.

Julya fell in on top of him, her eyes manic, her eyes…

‘You see it, don’t you?’ Perspicacity asked.

He saw it. In those eyes—behind those eyes—a nothingness. A parasite, eating at Julya’s brain. The void incarnate, pushing its host into terrible action. This woman was a victim. Not just of society, of the systems of Haven that worked to keep the poor, poor, that worked to keep the powerless, powerless. She was the victim, too, of something supernatural; something beyond Sham’s understanding. And there, behind her eyes, was the evidence—if you knew what to look for.

‘Beautiful…’ Joy added.

‘No, not—’ Sham started, but cut himself off when he and Vigour moved to block a fresh attack from the woman now pinning him down.

The blow against the bone in his forearm was met with pain, but Recollection quickly whisked the thought away, allowing Sham’s body to focus on the task at hand.

Julya launched another fist at him, then another. Each was met with the same response from Sham—his forearms bearing the brunt of the force. Her flailing movements grew more and more desperate, until Vigour made the instinctive move not to block her arms, but to grab them.

The Target roared at Sham, but his attention was drawn away by the man staggering across the hall.

Kryl. With revolver in hand.

‘It’s—’ Sham started.

The revolver in Kryl’s hands clicked. And again. And again.

‘—empty.’

Another flailing arm swung out to hit at Sham, this time aiming for his ribs—but again the living skill inside Sham moved his arms to stop it. But even with such strength in his system, this couldn’t go on forever…

‘Vigour, the stomach!’ Perspicacity cried.

‘I know what I’m bloody doing!’ Sham’s arms pushed hard against Julya’s, with with the force of gravity on her side, he was losing.

‘No, you don’t. Us and her, we draw on strength, but didn’t you notice her breathing was still vulnerable?’

Sham heard a groan from the typically angry living skill, and suddenly his arm twisted, sending a pointed elbow into Julya’s stomach—hard.

The woman collapsed from on top of him, falling to the floor, if only for a moment. Both of them scrambled back to their feet, and stared one another down.

The silence was broken only by the charging Kryl. He roared with sheer, unadulterated anger—the type that Sham would’ve attributed to a Vigour vial, if he hadn’t known any better—and threw himself at the winded woman.

But with Fleet of Foot already in her system, Julya was faster. She stepped backwards just in time to avoid Kryl colliding with her, with the monarchist instead only clipping her with one of his outstretched hands.

‘Nice try,’ Julya snarled.

Sham prepared himself for the woman to launch another attack upon him, her greatest threat. He steeled himself, allowed Vigour control of his limbs, and licked his lips.

But instead, Julya turned, and she ran.

Not out of the Tower, of course, but for the grand staircase that marked the beginning of the journey to the top—where both Enoch Chambers and the jacket full of vials were waiting.

The race was on.

Sham charged after her, the sound of boots hitting tile echoing around the Tower’s immense atrium. He heard Kryl spring into action, too, at his rear—but out of the corner of his eye saw the man charging up the opposite staircase.

‘Julya!’ he shouted at the fleeing woman, ‘Please! Stop this. We can work out some other way! I want him gone too—you just have to trust me!’

[MAGNETISM] FOR REAL THIS TIME, HER LAST CHANCE: FAIL

It was worth a shot.

Nothing. The woman he’d hunted all these Loops continued charging upwards, her speed outpacing Sham’s. If this was a race to the top—and it bloody well certainly was—then all signs pointed to Sham losing. He’d need to think of something fast. He’d need—

‘Luck on your side?’ Perspicacity asked, just as the fleeing woman slipped on the edge of one of the cold, hard steps.

Julya winced as her shin hit a corner of stone, her instinct being to clutch at the bruised area—an instinct that she quickly overcame.

But the pause was enough for Sham to close the gap, having launched himself up the steps two at a time. Julya had Fleet of Foot in her system, sure, but Sham had a larger build on his side. A larger stride.

He snatched at Julya’s waistband just as the woman sprang into action once more, the elastic stretching and then snapping as each pulled in opposite directions.

The woman screeched through clenched teeth as she turned, ripping her trousers free, and faced Sham down once more.

‘She moves faster than us…’ Recollection noted.

‘But we know what she’ll do next, don’t we? We’ve seen it before,’ Perspicacity said. ‘Vigour?’

‘On it!’

Sure enough, Julya did just as she’d done before—launching herself at Sham’s waist, meaning to tackle him down the great stone staircase.

But the living skills had anticipated it.

Fractions of a moment before the Fringe-infested woman sprung at him, Sham found that he was already moving. He slipped a foot across the smooth surface of the stairs, gliding to one side just enough that he would not be hit by Julya’s full force.

As she soared into him—or, rather, into the spot he’d been standing just a second earlier—Sham pushed his strength into his arms. It was his turn, now, to launch himself at the other, and with Julya not having her feet planted firmly, she was unable to stand her ground. Sham slammed her into the bannister at the side of the great staircase, and bit back the vertigo that erupted in his stomach.

They’d made it almost to the first floor, which stood a great height above the first—to accommodate the great atrium designed to impress or intimidate those who first stepped foot in it. From here, any further levels would not be quite so far apart, but this one… Well, it’d be quite the fall.

Julya grunted as her ribs were pressed into the side of the stone bannister, Sham forcing her head and torso back some over the edge.

‘Careful, darling…’

‘I don’t want to have to kill you!’ Sham shouted.

Julya roared back a strange, animalistic noise. Through frothy mouth, she spat, ‘You’re going to fucking have to.’

Sham felt his limbs grow stronger, Vigour feeding himself into them. He had the opportunity to throw the woman, to push her from the staircase to slam into the hard floor below.

But he hesitated a moment too long.

Julya used Sham’s own strength against him, twisting with the direction of the applied force and slamming Sham into the stone bannisters. Like Julya, Sham’s instinct was to grab at the area of pain, but Joy quickly had him not worrying about it.

‘All good, my love!’ she crooned as the injury suddenly seemed to stop mattering quite so much.

Julya could have pushed the advantage, could have seized the moment to rid herself of Sham by pressing him over the edge. But her attention was so inextricably fixed on the man at the top of the Tower that she instead turned away, continuing the sprint up the staircase at her great Fleet of Foot-assisted speed.

‘It’ll take more than luck to stop her now…’ Recollection murmured.

Yes. It would. But there remained hope; a short figure had just arrived at the top of the staircase, having charged up its opposite number.

‘Stop!’ Kryl shouted, raising that same empty revolver.

Sham pressed onwards, not thinking for a moment that Kryl would be enough to stop Julya, armed with only an unloaded weapon.

‘No,’ Julya growled as she quickly close the distance between herself and Kryl.

A shot rang out.

‘Wait, what?’

It took Sham a moment to realise that it wasn’t the revolver in Kryl’s hand that had fired—even when its accompanying noise didn’t sound familiar. Even Kryl blinked, glancing with disbelieving eyes at the weapon in his grasp.

Julya slowed, too, though that was in no small part due to the small round that caught her in the lower leg.

Sham glanced down to where the sound had originated—in the atrium below. There, in the centre of the tiles, a lone man stood with a revolver in his hands. He was old, overweight, and balding so much that someone might not use the word “balding” so much as “bald”. But what was most important of all was that it turned out he wasn’t a complete coward.

‘Fucking knew you three couldn’t manage, didn’t I?’ Asa said.

It was a question that Sham didn’t feel worth answering. Asa would have to wait. Instead, he focused back on Julya, who was still charging up the stairs despite the not inconsiderable amount of red fluid seeping through the clothes on her right leg.

‘Fringe’ll do that to you, I reckon. Nasty stuff.’

She was slowed, yes, but even with the wound, the Fleet of Foot was enough to keep her moving quickly. Or perhaps it was just the threats of the Fringe. Or that Sham might catch her if she didn’t.

Sham didn’t dwell on the matter; whatever the reason, he still needed to catch her. And fast. This most certainly was not going to plan.

The staircases grew shorter and shorter as Sham, Kryl, and the woman they pursued grew closer to the top, each floor smaller in height than the last. Even with Vigour in Sham’s system—and even with a cousin of his in Julya’s—their breathing grew heavy. Sham pushed himself to charge through it, leaving Kryl behind some and even gaining a little on Julya as they grew closer and closer to the top.

But then Sham saw it: at the top of the next flight of stairs, he saw the shadow of a giant clock hand, the patterns of the translucent glass panes that existed at the very peak of the Tower.

They’d arrived at the top.

They’d arrived at the top of the Tower, and Sham hadn’t stopped her. And the elevator—Riot and jacket full of skill vials included—would be on this floor.

He’d… fail—

An arm swung out in front of Julya as she reached the very top of the last flight of stairs, slamming into her head. She fell to the ground. Hard.

Though Sham could not see its owner’s face, he recognised the deep black shade of the uniform.

Another figure reached the top of the staircase. This one’s face Sham could see, and it was a man he’d met before. Josiah; the de facto leader of the six-man team known as the Legion, the Prime Minister’s personal police force.

‘Up,’ Josiah ordered him, accompanying his words with the flick of his finger. ‘Boss wants to speak with you.’

Sham hesitated.

The man followed up with a raised revolver. One that pointed squarely in Sham’s direction.

‘Alright then…’ Sham mumbled, raising his hands and beginning to step up the last staircase.

Thoughts, anyone? he asked the voices in his mind.

‘Nope,’ Vigour replied.

‘Stay wary,’ Perspicacity suggested. ‘We’ll find something.’

This was not as reassuring as it was perhaps intended.

As Sham reached the top of the stairs, arms still raised, he saw the elevator on his left, its brass metal grate still open. Two more members of Legion stood at its entrance, weapons raised on the woman inside.

On Riot.

She stood, licking her lips to suggest that she, too, was desperately wracking her brain for a solution, and gripping something tight in her arms.

‘Give it to her,’ ordered another officer of Legion that Sham recognised—a short, gaunt-looking woman—and wrenched Riot by the arm in Julya’s direction.

In Riot’s arms, she gripped the jacket.

That was the “it”. That was what they would give to her.

Sham understood, now; the Prime Minister wasn’t risking anything. The Legion were always here on the final day. Enoch Chambers would not risk Julya slipping past his Citizen’s Police. No, he was too clever for that. If she got passed them, then she would be weakened to fight an even greater challenge. If she wanted to beat them, she’d need every skill she could get her hands on.

And so the Loop would begin anew.