Day 1

(Two Loops Earlier)

‘Morning,’ Sham said, nodding to the head of the Loopkeepers as he entered the repurposed church. ‘Am I first here?’

Ariel didn’t look up as she continued wiping down the old pews, those seats dusty from having not been used in years. In this timeline, at least. ‘Second,’ she said. ‘Riot was here earlier. Helped…’ She gestured to the building around them.

‘I would’ve been here earlier, it’s just…’

‘The hangover. I know. Riot told me. Far be it from me to judge you for that.’

Despite Ariel’s answer, Sham suspected that she was indeed judging him. He resisted his immediate urge to defend himself anyhow. ‘Any word on when we’re expecting the others?’

‘Asa this evening. As for Mona and Tripe… your guess is as good as mine.’ She sighed with exhaustion as she finished wiping down the last of the pews, and plonked herself down heavily upon it.

Sham strolled over to the pew and took a seat next to her. In silence, they stared up at the stained glass window picturing Zeus in all his glory, and existed in this moment of calm. The steady wind caught the boards that patched over the areas where the window had been smashed, causing a mildly unpleasant breeze to pass through the church.

‘They didn’t break in my neighbour’s door, you know,’ Sham said.

Ariel posed him a silent question by turning to him.

‘The Legion,’ he explained, ‘They’ve been knocking down his door on the first day of the Loop as long as I’ve been able to remember it, thinking the neighbour was me. But this time…’

Ariel turned back to the stained glass. ‘Enoch thinks you’ll give up.’

‘No.’

‘No?’

Sham shook his head. ‘He doesn’t “think”, he knows. At least he thinks he does. He’s that kind of man.’

Ariel raised her eyebrows in agreement. ‘We best not reveal our intentions, then. Not before we’re ready.’

‘You’ll keep the Loopkeepers in line?’

She smiled. ‘I’ve managed it so far, haven’t I?’

‘And just how long—’

The doors of the church swung open, and its two occupants wrenched themselves around to face the visitor.

‘Just what the fuck is going on?’ a wide-eyed Tripe spluttered.

Mona arrived shortly after Ariel and Sham had managed to calm Tripe down some, and then Riot mere minutes after that. Of the six-person resistance, only Asa was notably absent. Though Sham had done his best to explain the situation—the Loops, the vials, and the PM’s grip on Haven—Tripe hadn’t seemed to massively grasp it. Riot, however, seemed to have a stronger handle on it.

‘And in the evening on this ninth day, Julya Emerson’s attack on the Tower—or rather her consumption of too many of these skill vials—releases a power which destabilises our reality. Everyone within it, whether they remember it or not, awakes nine day earlier, at the very moment that these vials were created.’

‘So…’ Mona said, her words slow as she processed this information, ‘These bodies that have been turning up, they’re the people who’ve had their skills taken from them. That’s where these skills come from.’

‘Yes.’

‘I get that bit, but… How did anyone stumble across this? Who was it who discovered it?’

Riot glanced at Sham and made a pointed kind of eye contact. ‘Someone in Enoch’s government. We don’t know. It’s not important.’

It was a kind lie, of the sort that spared Sham revealing a very personal truth: that the woman responsible for the vials was his ex-fiancée. That she’d gone down this route to help him. To cure his illness. She had been successful, in a way, back when Sham had the Vigour vial in his system, but now he was back to being fatigued once more.

‘Right,’ Mona said, at just the same moment Tripe asked, ‘And this Fringe—I’ve heard about it in passing, but… what the fuck is it?’

Riot shoot her head. ‘We don’t know. It’s corruption, of a sort. An absence. A void But where it came from? How is it manifesting? We don’t know.’

‘That’s a lot of fucking stuff you don’t know.’

‘We’re working on it,’ Sham said from his corner of the abandoned church.

‘OK, another question,’ Mona started again, having nodded thoughtfully all the while. ‘How are five of us supposed to take down an entire government?’

‘Six,’ Riot said.

‘Where is Asa, anyhow?’ Ariel asked.

Sham waved a hand to signify that it was all under control. ‘Don’t worry about him. He’ll be here when it counts.’

‘OK,’ Mona said again, not deterred, ‘How are six of us supposed to take down an entire government?’

Of all the questions so far, this was the best. But it was also one that Sham, Riot, Ariel and Asa had stewed over in great detail.

‘In another Loop, we had a timeline,’ Riot said.

‘Every point, every interaction with the normal iteration of events, marked on a wall,’ Sham added. He looked to Riot, who didn’t return his eye contact ‘You all should’ve seen it. It was a work of art.’

Riot didn’t react to him. ‘We’ve seen the natural order of events, and how we might stop the Loop, and it boils down to one point on the timeline.’

She paused. Though she might deny it, Riot enjoyed the drama.

‘What?’ Tripe asked. ‘When?’

‘On the evening on the ninth day, we can stop Julya Emerson from exploding.’

‘But…’ Tripe prodded.

‘That doesn’t secure us power,’ Sham finished for him. ‘We stop Julya, and the Prime Minister ensures someone else explodes. That someone else renews the Loop.’

‘Who?’ Mona asked. ‘The Legion? You mentioned they played a part in this, capturing all those Loopkeepers who step out.’

Ariel fidgeted at mention of his, stepping over to the rear of the church where she busied herself with boxes. Sham couldn’t blame her, after all the Legion had put her through.

‘Yes,’ Sham lied; it suited his plan for them to think so. ‘They’re the ones we need to take down.’

‘So we gotta kill some people,’ Tripe said. ‘Big deal. There’s, what, ten of them?’

‘Six.’

‘Six?’ Tripe repeated, eyebrows raised. ‘Six of them? Six of us and six of them? What’s the bloody problem?’

‘The problem?’ Ariel shouted from the back of the church. ‘The problem? They’re Legion! This is not your average citizen; these people are monsters. Monsters plucked from the strongest that this city has to offer, and, as far as we might tell, armed with the skill vials to boot! This is not your average fight. We cannot face them on their own terms. We have to separate them, find their weaknesses, and exploit them. Facing them one-on-one would mean—’

‘Death?’ Tripe asked.

Ariel’s nostrils flared, and she shook her head. The expression on her pale face was answer enough.

Riot stepped forward. ‘They’re strong, yes. But that’s not our only problem. We remove one from the equation in the Loop, and Enoch Chambers will remember. We cannot hope to try the same trick twice—the Legion themselves may not remember the Loop, but Enoch sure does. If he loses a member of his security force… well, he’ll make damn well sure he doesn’t, next time around. And, gods forbid, if he discovers who are behind it…’

‘What Riot is saying is, we need to be careful. We need to have all the pieces in place—with no chance of any of them surviving—before we make our final play. In this final Loop, we’ll take out the Legion, but before then, they must survive.’

Mona rose from her pew, beginning to pace around the room. ‘Say I’m on board with this whole… Well, with this whole “murder” angle.’

‘Assassination,’ Riot corrected her.

‘This “assassination” angle, then. If I was on board with that, I’d ask… how can we know our plan will work without facing these member of the Legion? Especially if they’re as strong as you say they are.’

‘I… haven’t discussed this with Riot yet, but I have some thoughts on that,’ Sham replied. ‘It’s not that we can’t face them. We can face them, but they must survive, and they must have good reason not to tell their boss about their encounter.’

Ariel’s box-shuffling came to an abrupt halt.

‘And how are we supposed to do that?’ Mona asked. ‘How can we know for sure that they won’t—’

‘Pride,’ came a cry from the rear of the church, under the stained glass.

The other four present members of the resistance turned to face Ariel.

‘I’m sorry?’ Riot asked.

‘Pride,’ Ariel said again. ‘They’re proud, our enemy. And, of course, we know how fickle a man Enoch Chambers can be. None of them will want to be embarrassed in front of him. If we can manoeuvre them into positions where it’s clear that we’ve made a fool of these sinners, they won’t rush to report it to their employer.’

Sham turned to Riot, asking a question of her with raised eyebrows. She answered with a considered nod. ‘We can work it in,’ he said. ‘If we find the right opportunity.’

‘What about the vials?’ Tripe asked, staring at the spot in the corner in which Asa had been sat atop a crate in the previous Loop. ‘I don’t know where your mate is, but he has some of those vials, right? Or will have some of those vials, if I’m understanding this whole fucking time travel thing right. Why don’t we just…’ He mimed popping the cork and downing one. ‘Why don’t we just power ourselves up and take the Tower by force?’

Sham felt Riot glance to him, but by the time he looked over to her, she’d turned away. ‘There’s… there’s more to the vials that we’ve told you so far. It would seem… I don’t know how to say this.’

Mona leant forward.

‘When the skills are extracted, they take with them their owner’s life force. We think that’s why… We think…’

‘You’re going to start hearing voices,’ Riot cut in.

‘Voices?’ Mona asked.

‘What the fuck does she mean “voices”?’ Tripe added.

‘They’re nothing to worry about,’ Sham said. ‘As long as you don’t fight them. As long as you don’t get so many that it overwhelms you.’

‘And if we do?’ Mona asked. ‘If we do overstep those boundaries?’

Sham shrugged. ‘You’ll be teetering on the edge of madness.’

Tripe flung his arms in the air in despair. ‘Oh, great! Fucking great. An old friend gets back in touch with me after all these years, and not only is he putting my life on the line, but he’s trying to make me fucking mad. Cheers, Tilner. Cheers. Mate, if she could see you now…’

Sham twitched at the second reminder of Hester in the past few minutes, while Riot’s face continued to reflect her usual stoic self.

‘And, what, you’d rather remain ignorant?’ Sham retorted. ‘I think I know you better than that.’

Tripe opened his mouth to reply, but seemed to reconsider; Sham wasn’t wrong.

Riot stepped forward. ‘If we’re done with the questions, I’d like to get to work.’

‘What’s the rush?’

‘Believe me, Mr Owens, I intend to be out of this Loop as soon as possible.’

‘Tripe is fine, darling,’ he said, much to Riot’s distaste. ‘Right. Overthrowing a government. Not what I thought I’d be doing this year, but I s’pose it makes a change from the norm.’

‘Yes, I imagine this is a little more fulfilling than petty theft,’ Riot responded.

Tripe said nothing, but eyeballed Sham with a question along the lines of, “Just how much of our criminal past did you share with this woman?” Only it was probably a little more filled with expletives.

‘Where do we begin?’ Mona asked.

Riot raised her eyebrows—this was the question indeed, she seemed to think. ‘With one of the Legion. Just one. We shouldn’t spread ourselves too thin, and we need to make sure that no one of us is seen around him too regularly; we wouldn’t want to be spotted. I’ve spoken with Ariel this morning, and I think we’ve come to a conclusion.’ She waved the leader of the Church of the Loopkeepers over.

‘These are dangerous souls,’ Ariel said. ‘Do not make the mistake of underestimating them. But there is, to my knowledge, one who is weaker than the rest. I suggest we start there.’

‘And who’s that, then?’ Sham asked.

Ariel took a deep breath. ‘His name is Vince. Vince Perch.’