-And she's not alone. This girl is blinking a little owlishly at her at the sudden light. "What?" she snaps.

Ah!

Bina startles at the person just standing there.

"...What the heck were you doing standing around in the dark?"

"I was about to go out. Most people take 'no lights' as a sign."

"...It's a 24 hour laundromat and your sign says you're open."

Beat. The girl swears. "Just- Stay out of the employees area. Okay?"

"Alright? I really just want to do my laundry."

"Fine, good, have at."

And she stalks out, the door rattling on its hinges.

...Weird.

Bina walks back to the vertical load washers near the front, and starts putting her clothes in one - noticing that one of the washers, the one nearest the door, has kicked on. Must have been between cycles or something, Bina doesn't really know how washers work.

She finishes loading (she has about three loads worth), fills the thing with coins, then sits down to take stock of how much change she has left.

Not much. Especially not if she wants to get her laundry properly dry, which'll probably take more loads since the dryers are smallish.

She stretches, yawns, thinks she sees something dark flickering out of the corner of her eye - when she turns it's gone.

Must be the late hour getting to her.

It's going to be nearly three by the time the washers finish and she has school tomorrow, this is extremely unlikely to be fun.

She goes over to the uncomfortable plastic bench thing near the front window, tries to lay down, can't get comfortable at all.

Bina sighs and gets up, wandering to the back where she vaguely remembers a vending machine, maybe she can get a canned coffee - 

And stops.

The television's on again.

She could've sworn it was off, but now it's showing flickering static.

She investigates, rapping it on the side - it remains staticy - then shrugs and turns it off.

Then to the snack machine!

The only thing she can really afford is some cookies, so she gets those and starts walking back to the front - 

There's something on the ground.

Something white and small.

Is that a tooth?

It is. She picks it up, it's a tooth, and there's a bit of blood on one end, like it was knocked out -

The hairs on her arms stand on end.

Her roommate was asleep when she left.

No one knows where she is.

If she vanishes...

A wet, sloshing thud startles her, nearly giving her a heart attack, but -

It's just the washing machines. She's sleep deprived and scaring herself.

She sets the tooth down on a table - whoever lost it probably wants it back - and walks back to check on her laundry.

Except it's not hers making the racket. It's the one near the door.

It's shaking horribly, like it's off balance, and there's some kind of thick black liquid draining from the lid. Smells weird. Sharp and dry. Looks like dirt, maybe.

She checks the dials, to see when it'll stop - but it's broken. The dial says there's no time left, after all.

She considers leaving it be, but curiosity overcomes her. She opens the lid - and it's just clothes. Really, really dirty clothes, but clothes.

She closes the lid, feeling silly, and goes back over to the bench. At least the machine's stopped.

Bina sits down, yawning and stretching, and - 

THUD.

THUD THUD.

Bina jumps. The broken machine's jerking. It stops.

The wiring here must be faulty. Well, no way she'll be able to sleep with it doing that, so she gets up, hops over the growing puddle of icky black water, and starts to lever the machine aside so she can reach behind and unplug it.

She's reaching back - 

And there's an arm at the edge of her vision.

She jumps, screams, and falls back, her shoulder banging into the other washing machine.

But there's nothing there.

Bina takes a few deep breaths, chalks this up as something to talk to her therapist about...

The machine thuds. Rocks, at first away from her, then towards - 

And crashes to the ground.

Something comes out, and - it's like someone scribbled it into reality and forgot to color it in, pure white with harsh black lines defining edges. It's like a human but not, too big, dragging itself on its arms, its legs broken and twisted and malformed.

It doesn't move like a human. It moves in shutter-stop motion, like an old film reel with half the images taken out. Intent. Quiet.

Bina jumps away as it lunges out of the machine at her, grabbing an empty trash can as she rounds the bank of washing machines - which does nothing - then turning to run for the door - something latches onto her ankle, she goes down hard, banging her hip on the unforgiving floor -

She grabs the nearest thing to hand - a vacuum cleaner - tries to kick the thing off while hitting it in the head - it doesn't even notice -

It surges up her body -

And freezes.

Bina's heart rate starts to slow.

Heh. That. Was a thing. It's. Not doing anything now, just opening its mouth -

And.

Green.

She falls. She doesn't know how long or how far.

But she lands, on a little plastic bench in the middle of a strange courtyard.

There's someone there.

"-hello?"

Ahhhh?

Wherever Bina is, it's daytime, the air thin and still.

At. Least there's no monsters here. (She takes a frantic look around, but no, she's in some kind of - maybe loading area, this place looks industrial - and all there is is a weird old television, two people on a couch apparently watching it while arguing, and the person talking to her.)

"Ah. Hello? What. Happened. Where am I -"

"I'm- not sure. I'm...pretty sure I died? But this feels like a really shit afterlife. It's some kind of industrial loading area, and there's a load of gates, but they're either locked, or heavy enough that I can't move 'em." Pauses. "You falling from the sky is new though, those two just sort of...appeared on the couch."

"...I. Was. Doing my laundry, then - being chased by this person-monster thing. It stopped, and opened its mouth, and there was - green - and then I was falling."

She stands, feeling only a bit woozy, and glances over at the couch people - who're focused on her now, and seem a bit surprised.

"Did. Everyone here die?"

"I think so. They," ey gestures to the couch people, "don't really remember much. Just being brought to...well, this area? Or something similar? And looking at...something. And then being here."

"...What's that thing they're looking at? It looks like the TV from the laundromat."

It squirms a bit out of the corner of her eye, but she hasn't slept in a while, so.

Bina walks around a bit, feeling - extremely jittery - and contemplates glancing at what they're watching.

"Some kind of monster I think? I can't quite figure out what it's supposed to be. Who are you anyway?"

"Bina Miryala, I'm a journalism student over at McGill? Who're you?"

She can see the screen now - it's flickering, static, like before, but... There's patterns in it.

Shapes.

They're...

Beautiful.

"I'm Ant. You're a college student? That's cool. I want- wanted to go to college when I finished school, but I wasn't sure we could afford it..."

"Yeah, it's - nice - "

She starts walking towards the TV, trying to get a sense of what it's showing her.

There's.

Little green lights.

Pretty things.

Almost like tendrils, reaching towards her.

"-Bina?" Ant sounds almost concerned. "I- should you look at that? Perhaps you shouldn't-"

"She's so - pretty - "

Bina stretches her hand out, the lights passing through her arm once and then twice. It's hot and cold and prickly all at once.

Funny.

She can't feel that arm anymore.

Ha, hahaha - 

But -

That's - 

Not that funny -

A tendril reaches for her eye, and she can't look away (why would she want to look away?).

But the tendrils aren't really tendrils, they're shapes. Special shapes, teeth coming into focus as she glimpses her arm, hazy red falling past the bright glowing green.

That's.

That's blood. Isn't it.

She. Doesn't think she should be seeing that.

Ant tries to get between Bina and- and whatever is going on. Ey isn't sure. But Bina's the first person who's actually seemed...interesting.

Her line of sight's disrupted.

That should be upsetting.

Isn't it?

(She can still see the green. The tendrils. They're - writhing around Ant, reaching for her - )

(If she can just - close - her - eyes - )

The green fades.

Feeling in her arm returns.

Bina grabs herself, the humming wire now embedded in her right arm scraping against bone, and passes out.

-Shit. Ant does eir best to catch Bina, and lower her to the floor. Ey pulls off eir jumper to wad up as a pillow, tucking it under the woman's head.

Bina remains unconscious and bleeding.

And then - 

Bina's Dream: Age 6

 Bina is six-and-a-quarter years old. She's visiting her grandmother in Hyderabad.

Grandma is cool. She has a cane and a cigar and used to work in the newspaper so she knows all the stories.

Bina is drawing. A special drawing. Don't worry, she'll be able to finish it.

She has plenty of green crayons after all.

It's just her and her grandma and her friend Ant right now. Her parents are sleeping.

Tomorrow Bina and her grandmother will talk about stories. Grandma will tell her lots while they sit on the bus with the open roof and look at the buildings.

But not now.

Now's for talking about monsters.

Ant leans close, eager to see what Bina's drawing. Bina's better at drawing than Ant is.

"No peaking," says the kid, hunching over her drawing. "It's not done yet!"

"Your mother says you've been scared and haven't been sleeping, Little Bean," the grandmother says.

Bina ducks her head, hoping her grandmother will go back to the crossword.

But her grandmother continues - "Are you afraid you'll get sick again?"

Bina shakes her head, then says - "There's monsters. At night. I know they're not real, but they're gonna get me..."

"Oh, Little Bean, who told you monsters aren't real? They are."

(Mom and grandma will fight about that all afternoon.)

(But this is later in that conversation, before the fight. Bina's done drawing. She's sitting on an armchair with her grandmother.)

"How do you prepare for the monsters, grandma?" Bina asks.

"Don't second guess yourself, Little Bean. Pay attention to what's around you, and don't listen to people saying it's all fine. If you think you're in trouble, you probably are."

Bina nods. And opens her picture, letting grandma and Ant see it.

It's a funny little monster. Scrunched up. Because it's in a bunch of places at a bunch of times, little Bina explains.

It's cool, but also terrifying. And Bina needs to be ready, and needs to know that not everything is fine. (Ira never lied to Ant, not about the important things.) So Ant won't lie to Bina. (Ant would like Bina to actually wake up.)

"I think I'm in trouble. Right now. Really, really bad trouble," little Bina says, she doesn't know whether to her grandma or Ant.

Grandma says she knows.

"Can you help grandma? You always know what to do..."

"No, Little Bean, not this time. Remember? Granny's dead. Nine years from now, of a stroke.

Oh.

Yeah.

"Is there a magic charm for the monsters?"

"No Little Bean.

"No magic charms or spells. There are no shortcuts for monsters, not the real ones. Real monsters are beaten the hard way or not at all. By being faster or smarter or luckier or better prepared than they are."

Oh.

That makes sense.

Bina starts to tear up.

"Oh Little Bean, don't cry. There's no time for crying now."

She holds out her scarf then, red with a faint pattern of flowers.

Bina takes it -

And wakes up.

"Oh thank fuck! I thought you were gonna die on me there." (Ey's shaking slightly. There was a lot of blood.)

There still is a lot of blood. Bina's sort of lying in a puddle of it.

She tries to sit up, and her arm spikes into a sharp agony. She tries to cradle her arm, but that just jostles the thing piercing her. Her vision goes grey before steadying out. Kind of.

A wire's trailing from the not-TV, threading through her palm and then her forearm near her elbow. There's a jagged end sticking a few inches out of her forearm.

The wire's rubbery and wrong, humming against the bones of her wrist and worming into her teeth.

"I - I need to get this out - " she says, trying to keep her voice steady.

Touching the wire hurts, but it doesn't pass through her hand.

Her shirt won't make good bandages. Her jeans would be even worse. She doesn't really feel comfortable asking someone she just met if she can borrow eir clothes.

But.

Her grandmother's scarf is beside her.

(She tries not to think too hard about that.)

"Can you tear the scarf in two? I'll need a bandage of some kind..." Bina says, taking a few deep breaths. She isn't panicking. She's kind of gone past that.

"Yeah. Yeah. I can do that." And ey does, seeming a little less shaky for having something to do.

"Thanks. ...You, uh, might want to look away."

-Yeah. That's a good idea. Ant closes eir eyes.

And Bina grabs the central length of wire, taking three deep breaths and then yanking. It jerks out of her arm, a spurt of blood following behind it, and she ties the first bandage with her teeth and free hand.

Now. Now comes the hard part.

She has to go slow. The wire's touching the delicate bones of her wrist, and there's a lot more of it.

She starts to pull... And has to stop, panting and shaking, only a third of the way through.

She glances over at the couch people, but they're too far away to help, and she really doesn't want to bother Ant for this, she can tell when someone has a phobia.

Bina. Is going to have to just tough it out.

Her head feels barely tethered to her body as she continues pulling.

She has to stop again, then realizes she hadn't been breathing and sucks in a few quick breaths through her teeth.

Almost there. Only six inches left. Hardly anything, really.

She tightens her grip, pulls, and keeps pulling -

And the wire comes free.

She tosses it away from her, ignoring the wet slithering sound as it hits the cobblestones, and ties the second bandage in place. She can't get it very tight, and the scarf's rapidly soaked through with blood.

Bina wants to rest, but she's too close to the not-TV. She can feel it like the vibration in the air near an active power line. 

Bina gets up, back firmly to the not-TV, and says, "Ant? I'm done. I - could use some help moving away."

(She isn't convinced she won't fall over if left to her own devices.)

Ant opens eir eyes, and pointedly doesn't look at Bina's arm. "Sure, here, let me-" Ey shifts to the side opposite the injury and carefully wraps on arm around Bina's waist to help her up.

"Thanks."

Bina's pretty tiny, and does try not to lean too hard on Ant, but there's some shuffling and stumbling involved as Bina approaches the couch people. Behind the couch seems like a good place to rest.

"You didn't come in the same way, did you?" asks the man on the couch as they make their slow way over.

Bina squints blearily at him. "No...?"

The woman sighs. "I'm Sun-ja Hyung. This is Grandimir Petrovich, the laundromat owner. You weren't grabbed by that woman?"

Bina considers shaking her head. She's probably too unsteady. "No? There was a woman in the laundromat but she left. I... Need to sit down..." Her feet feel increasingly far away, and she barely manages to stumble the last few steps, even with Ant's help.

Ant glances sideways at the mention of the woman, and slowly helps Bina sit down behind the couch. "I mean. I didn't come that way either," ey points out. (But ey was here before the others.)

"So. What? This's some kind of weird afterlife tied to the laundromat? Something weirder? ...I think I need water. And sugar. I'm. Dizzy."

Sun-ja and Grandimir are meanwhile starting to argue about what the not-TV even is. Sun-ja thinks an alien. Grandimir thinks that's ridiculous. Bina tunes them out.

Ant looks around, trying to see if there's anything ey can find that has sugar and liquid to help replace some of the liquid Bina's lost.

There's piles of sugar beets over through an iron gate, and a tap on one wall near it with a bucket full of some kind of black tarry stuff under it.

Well. Ey's already dead. Can't get any worse right. Ey turns the tap on to see what comes out.

More black tarry stuff. Smells faintly sweet. There's a label in French above the tap - "thick juice."

Ey swipes a finger through it and tastes it - is it drinkable?

It's sickly sweet and tastes faintly similar to blood, and is probably too thick to outright drink, but it does seem edible.

Well. It's the best ey's got without trying to get to those beets. Ey carries the bucket back to Bina. "If you'd prefer sugar beets I can try to get those..."

"...Ugh, no. Thanks." She tries the syrup and makes a face - it's overwhelmingly sweet to her, and tastes jarringly metallic. "...I might try exploring some. There might be other food? It - those're latin letters on that smokestack over there. People built this place once. There - there's got to be something." She doesn't sound convinced of it, but she doesn't particularly want to try raw sugar beet or the weird tasting syrup until she's desperate.

Well.

More desperate.

"Wanna hand?" Ant offers. "I'm apparently a pretty good crutch?"

She accepts with a "Thanks," and sways slightly as she stands.

It's really not pleasant, but she suspects she won't get much better just sitting there.

She looks around, spotting a garage-style gate that's probably much too heavy, an iron gate through which she can see piles of beets - and there's something wrong with the sight.

That much sugar in one place, the factory should be swarming with flies. But it's completely, utterly still.

Next to the iron gate is a smaller door with a simple frosted glass window.

"Have you been in there?" she asks, gesturing in the vague direction of the smaller door.

"No. Honestly? This place freaked me out a little bit, didn't want to go exploring on my own."

"It is exceptionally freaky. I think I might be too low on blood to be freaked out properly, to be honest... With the two of us, though, we can look out for each other."

"Yeah," Ant agrees, smiling shyly. "We can."

Onwards to the door then?

Onwards!

The inside of the door's window is clean, and there's nothing inside that tries to eat them, which is always a bonus.

It looks office-like, and Bina steps shakily inside, glancing around. It's a bit dim, but - there's a calendar on the wall. It says it's July, 1911, and the seventeenth - a Monday, it had been a Wednesday - is circled in green. Someone's written "factory closed for experiment" in the box in French.

One hundred and two years ago, to the day.

"Uh..."

-

Retcon.

"-yeah," Ant agrees with that sentiment. "And my French is kinda crap, but I'm pretty sure that that says something about being closed for an experiment. So. Uh. What?"

"It says that, yeah, I'm not sure what - "

The open door is suddenly shut, and either their eyes adjusted really fast, or the lights just turned on.

Bina startles slightly, and - "There's no breezes here. How..."

The air feels less thin. More like reality. The office isn't at all dusty - it looks like someone just stepped outside briefly, not like it was abandoned. There's a really old fashioned phone on one desk. No computers.

Ant gives a little shiver. "Not spooky at all," ey mutters, a touch sarcastically. "-should we see if the phone works? Try calling someone?"

"Good idea."

How to use the phone isn't very clear - it doesn't have a dial, or any even vaguely familiar interfaces - but they can figure it out eventually.

There's static on the line, and none of the numbers they know work.

Bina leans against the desk, frowning, and starts to look around some more.

- Is that a tangerine on those books?

"Why is there a tangerine on those books?" Ant goes over to poke it, to make sure ey isn't seeing things.

It doesn't explode or try to eat them.

"I'm not sure but it sure looks edible."

Ant grins, and brings it over. "Meal fit for a royal."

"Heh."

A problem quickly occurs: she can't exactly easily peel it one handed.

Well. Ant can take care of that then, ey still has both hands. Ey splits the segments up while ey's at it.

Muffled "thanks!" around a mouthful of tangerine as Bina tries to not eat it too quickly and only kind of succeeds.

There's a sound, then. Bina turns, and spots another door into the room.

Ant looks as well, tense again where ey had been starting to relax somewhat.

The door bangs open to reveal a middle aged white woman holding a box, who's initially rather surprised to see them there.

Her surprise doesn't last long, and she launches into rapid-fire accented French. Bina's having a hard time following her, but she's probably asking about their presence and the blood. Maybe.

She doesn't give Bina or Ant time to respond, instead launching into a tirade that implies she's assuming it was a workplace accident, shooing the two aside so she can set her box down and then get out medical supplies. She tells Bina to get off her bandages - carefully - then goes to fill a washbasin and get Bina a cup of water.

And don't touch the box she was carrying. At all! It's dangerous. Or eat anything else in here.

Bina blinks, and then translates the parts of that rant that needed translating for Ant. (Part of this is figuring out what was even said).

Ant frowns at the woman, but reaches for Bina's arm. "Here, let me," ey offers.

Bina lets em help.

While the woman's in the other room, in English: "So. Uh. That was weird. ...I think we need to get her perspective on what's happening? 'When is this' might be hard information to get without sounding bizarre."

"Ask if her calendar's right? I forget the date all the time."

Bina nods, and when the woman comes back with a glass of water - well, her first reaction is gulping the water down, but then while the woman's wetting a cloth she asks, "Is your calendar right? I keep forgetting the date. And have you seen the people out there on the couch, across the loading area?"

The woman starts gently cleaning Bina's injuries, and says, "Yes, of course it's right. And the word you're looking for is 'podium.' Couch is a thing people sit on. A 'podium' is a wooden thing you stand on in front of crowds. I've seen the podium out there, and the people too. Last time I was there we'd finally hit fifty pairs of eyeballs. Just enough for the experiment."

She furrows her brow at the puffy edges of Bina's wounds. "Do these go right through your arm? How did that happen, and when? These look like they've been left dirty for hours."

"Maybe half an hour ago?" Ant suggests. "An hour at most. And what do you mean 'eyeballs'?"

"Oh, the experiment involves people looking at it. Nothing ominous, no matter what you may have heard. All it'll do is turn on one little light."

"-What exactly are they looking at? Because the TV out there seemed pretty ominous to me."

"Just an observation engine." Then she prattles on a bit about how she wanted to have it turn a dial to measure the output, but her husband insisted if they were going to shut down the factory for three days there should be a show. They've hooked the observation engine up to a lightbulb - metaphoric and all, dawn of a new era - and her husband even got one of those cover gels they use in the theater to color their lights. Insisting a plain white light would be much too boring.

Bina - has a terrible thought, slowly growing and itching in the back of her mind.

She breaks into the monologue as the woman's putting away her supplies.

"The cover for the light. It's green, isn't it? Lime green. Like the fruit."

(Like the not-TV snakes).

The woman stops, and turns to seriously look at the both of them. Slowly: "How did you know a thing like that? You don't work here, do you?"

"No."

(There's an echo of a noise, in the distance. Like someone shouting, far away.)

Ant looks around, trying to track the source of the noise, trying to-

"Neither of us do," ey adds, just in case eir presence was in question.

The noise doesn't repeat, not yet.

"Who are you?" the woman asks. "Why are you in my office? Are you on the run? Did someone hurt you two? Is that why you have no clothes?"

"I'm pretty certain I'm dead," Ant says, casual and offhand.

"...You certainly don't seem like a ghost," the woman says, dubious.

"Yeah, that's where my theory kinda falls down..."

"I don't know how I'm here either, we were in a loading area - it was empty except for us and two others - and the world was strange, and I walked in here and then the door shut and the lights turned on and I think this is timetravel, I really hate timetravel - "

"...Did you say timetravel? Like in a novel?"

There's a wind picking up. It doesn't seem to be affecting the woman at all.

"-Time travel is problematic. Does anyone like time travel?"

"My friend Amy!" she says, before frowning when her hair whips into her face. Is there a window open?

Ant doesn't have hair to be tossed in a breeze, but ey does look around for a window, frowning and shivering slightly from it.

There's the window from earlier, but it's firmly shut.

Something's wrong, and Bina stands even as the woman questions them. A familiar sense of panic beats in her breast, she can't breathe, it's like she's being squeezed through a tube, she needs to get out - 

She starts for the door, stumbling, knocking over the chair. Her grandmother's scarf goes flying about her in its two pieces, caught by the wind.

Ant follows after her, half reaching out, obviously concerned.

The woman shouts something, but the wind snatches away her words.

The wind ignores her, even as it swirls around Ant and Bina, until their eyes are both watering and the room is lurching.

Ant does try to catch Bina's hand now, eyes narrowing and then closing against the force of the wind, but unwilling to be parted from Bina.

Bina's hand wraps around eirs, vice-like, as the world spins and ends around them.

And then a pop, and everything is still and quiet and thin like before. The lights are off again.

Bina's hair falls flat in front of her face.

History has changed. Follow the cracks.

"Are you okay?" Ant asks Bina, voice low.

"I - think so?"

"Okay. That's good." Beat. "What just happened?"

"I don't know. It was really weird. Is - things feel different. I think. I don't know."

"Yeah, earlier I- had this. Weird sense of. Deja vu? I think?"

"Yeah. I - think we should maybe get out of here."

"Yeah. Yeah. Let's do that."

Door?

Doorwards.

There's writing on it.

What kind of a maggot grows in the corpse of a day?

Like earlier - 

But - 

No, that wasn't there - 

Was it?

Bina's head hurts.

"I. Do you remember that?"

"Yes, but like...also not?"

It's like there's two hers with two memories and they're overlapping, crashing into each other, glitching and jagged in her head - 

"I don't like this."

"No. No. This is... This is weird." Pause. "And that's the dead person saying that."

"Just when I think this place can't get worse..." Sigh. "Well, nothing for it."

Stumbling towards the door, until something green catches her attention out of the corner of her eye. She turns her head on reflex, and it's just the calendar, the circle around the experiment date in that bright green - 

There's a hole where the day should be. Punched cleanly into the wall, perfectly circular.

"-That wasn't like that before. I'll put money on it."

"Yeah. It's weird." She peers at it, trying to see into the depths. "I think I see something red in there?"

"-do we really wanna risk trying to figure out what that is?"

"....Point. It doesn't look too dangerous?" Squint. "Is kind of long and - maybe fabricy, I think I can get it without putting my hand in much..."

Ant looks around. "Anything we could use to pull it out?"

There's a pencil on the desk, which seems likely. "This, yeah." Bina pokes the pencil into the hole, and it isn't consumed by forces beyond the void, so she's able to hook it around the fabric and pull it out.

"....This is my grandmother's scarf. Half of it." She sounds creeped out. "Didn't I drop that?"

"...Yes?" Ant doesn't sound as sure as ey'd like to.

"And.... There's something else in there.... Look like a piece of paper?" She tries to stick the pencil in, can't quite manage it, hesitates over sticker her hand in, then huffs and wriggles in, barely hooking the paper.

It's small and long, a strip like the fortune in a fortune cookie. She reads it out loud: "B. Do Not cross own history. Back bad, forward worse. Events lock. And an equation? A backwards sort of t, equals - psi minus capital J? Um. I'm slightly regretting not taking physics..."

"Don't look at me, physics is entirely Greek to me."

"I think there's even literally Greek in this. I have no idea what it means."

"-Any clue how to even decipher it? And what was that about crossing own history? Back being bad but forward worse?"

"I don't know! Maybe more timetravel? I hate those stories... You're never supposed to meet yourself in them I think?"

That gets a faint smirk. "Also supposed to be careful that you don't kill your parents and paradox yourself out of existence."

"I'd really hope that's not going to be a problem..."

"-Yeah. That. Would be a problem." Ant looks around, as though this room might have magically acquired a physics or Greek textbook.

It doesn't seem to have.

Bina huffs, then tilts her head - there's shouting outside, the people on the couch. She can't quite make out their words yet.

"Let's- Let's go," Ant says again, heading for the door again.

"Yeah. Let's get out of here."

The door has that strange writing on it, still.

Ant ignores it, pushes the door open.

"Girl!" the laundromat owner shouts. "Bina! Where were you, you better get back - "

"I'm here!" Bina shouts back.

"Could be a bit more polite bout it," Ant mutters.

"Seriously."

And outside; the door gives her a brief headache as she passes.

"What's wrong?" she calls, holding her hand up to block her view of the not-TV. (Getting back to the couch will be... Interesting. Though Ant can likely lead her.)

"That woman's coming back, and you're still there!" Sun-ja calls.

Bina blinks.

Ant does lead her, but looks away, and on edge when Sun-ja mentions the woman.

She keeps her eyes averted. "What do you mean?" she asks.

"You're still in the laundromat, and that woman's about to return, you need to figure out how to get back to your body and run."

"-Yeah. Yeah. You're- It's not gonna be good. If you don't. Bina, you need to go."

"Alright." She swallows, nervously, and looks up at the sky. She fell from there, right?

"I... Don't know how. Maybe if I jumped? To go back the way I came. It doesn't make any sense, but nothing does..."

"-I can give you a leg up? S'worth a shot at least."

"Alright. Let's try this." She heads over to the bench, on the theory it's where she landed. She tries jumping from it, fails, then shakes her head and looks to Ant.

Ant crouches down slightly, just in front of Bina, lacing eir fingers together to form a stirrup of sorts.

She hesitantly steps forwards - her hip isn't too happy about this jumping - and teeters a bit but does manage to rest some of her weight on Ant's hands.

"On three, you jump, I'll boost, hopefully that'll help?"

"Yeah. One... Two..."

"Three." And Ant heaves upwards, with perhaps surprising strength for eir size.

Bina jumps with surprising coordination for Bina, gains a bit of height -

Then falls back down, tries to land, hits the edge of the bench - 

And sprawls into Ant.

"Well shit."

"Ow. Sorry," she groans, rolling off - and quickly shutting her eyes just before she would've seen the not-TV.

"Argh. How do we do this..."

She sits on the bench, head bowed, and then tilts her head back to look up.

The sky's black past a faint blue glow ringing the ground, except - 

"Is that - a star?"

"-maybe? I'm- I'm not sure that was there before?"

"Huh. I wonder if that's - where I came from?"

"Doesn't help you get back there."

"Yeah. I'm not sure how to reach it - a ladder? But it looks way too high - "

She makes a frustrated noise, puts a hand against her head. "Think. Think. This has been - weird places, weird things, maybe - maybe something weird would work?"

Ant looks down, rubs at eir arm. "Maybe just...thinking yourself back? Willing yourself back? I don't know."

"I'll try."

She closes her eyes, tries to - meditate or something, she doesn't actually think she's ever done that before - and thinks about the laundromat, about how desperately she wants out of here -

A minute later, it's very clearly not working. 

She huffs, opens her eyes, and looks down at her hands.

She's still holding her grandmother's scarf.

"...I wonder..." she mutters, glancing up again. It's awfully far, but - she has a magic dream scarf -

"You thoughta something?"

"It's probably stupid, but - what about the scarf?"

"-Way I see it, there's no point in not trying it."

"Yeah."

She looks up, squints, and swings the end of the scarf a few times, feeling silly, before throwing it up.

It's a scarf. Not weighted or anything, shouldn't go far before flopping - 

It soars, up and up and up, the trajectory almost unnatural, the way it keeps going definitely unnatural, a river of red what looks like miles long stretching into the sky - 

And, impossibly, it hooks on the little speck of light, pulling taught.

Bina sucks in a breath, but it holds. Out, and a glance over to Ant -

"Well. That seems to have worked." She hesitates, glances up, and huffs out again. "Come on, I should be able to pull both of us up."

Ant pauses, bites at eir lip, and then nods and holds out eir hand. "Let's get out of here."

"Yeah, let's."

Bina takes eir hand, helps em grasp onto the scarf - it's weirdly slippery, though not so for Bina, so Bina huffs and tells em to hold onto her back.

Ant does as instructed, tight enough to not risk slipping, but loose enough to not constrict.

And she climbs.

It's a long, long way up, but - the higher it gets, it's like that fades from her mind. Like a memory of a long but boring intermission, but happening in real-time.

It's a weird feeling, and Bina doesn't like it one bit, but it keeps her arms working, keeps her from getting bored as she climbs into the sky -

Then the light's close, and - 

She doesn't remember what happens next.

Except then she wakes, from where she was lying down on the uncomfortable plastic bench in the laundromat.

This isn't where she'd been - 

It's - 

She looks around.

There's no Ant.

(Was she dreaming?)

But, no - the washing machine that the not-person came out of is gone, and there's smears of dark sticky mud on the floor.

Bina stands up, shaking.

(Not entirely gone.)

And the door is opening.

Her arm is bandaged and itchy and hot and hurting and something has gone horribly weird.

She doesn't really manage more than a few stumbling steps before the odd woman's in.

"Ah - there was - the washing machine - " she stutters.

Great job Bina. Real smooth. Definitely not going to get you killed.

"-What the hell?"

"I have no idea! The washing machine was rattling a lot and then it fell over and I've been really tired, lately, okay, so I took a nap, and then it was gone."

"-I got rid of that. That's where I just came back from."

Bina sort of freezes. Contemplates punching her, talking, running...

And some little niggle at the back of her head tells her to play things cool. She nods, says, "No clue how that happened," stretches a bit since she just woke up, and starts moving her wet clothes from the washer to the dryer.

"Hn." The woman doesn't turn back to the door, but there's a distinct sound of the lock engaging, and her hands are behind her back.

Bina's not going to start this conversation! Instead she'll just keep doing her laundry. Like a normal person who doesn't have weird dreams or odd wounds.

Her arm itches.

The woman is quiet for a moment. "What did you do to your arm?"

"Banged it on a part of the bench that was kind of sticking out. I'm clumsy."

"Hn. Hurry up. Don't want to keep the Green Lady waiting."

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Bina isn't quite able to smile but is able to look serious and nod a bit. "I need to get my laundry in a dryer, first," she says. "It'll get wrinkly if I don't dry it." Maybe scary lady will get bored and wander off if Bina keeps inventing tasks and give her a chance to run? She thinks there's an exit in the back. It might be a fire door, which'd be bad, but Bina at least hopes she's a faster runner...

She doesn't seem immediately inclined to move.

There's abruptly yelling from the back room - in French. "Hey, c'mon, let me free. I won't call the cops, I swear!"

She kind of mechanically keeps doing her laundry even as her mind spins and shrieks and gibbers.

"Sounds important," she says once her voice seems slightly more even. "Someone getting in the plan's way?"

"Someone sneaking around where she wasn't wanted. Or needed. But the Green Lady will take all kinds of friends."

Gambling that the weird lady doesn't speak French: "Stuff she's shouting seems pretty concerning, like, medically? I've heard tying people up sometimes cuts off circulation, so checking on her might be good."

"-I thought I'd been more careful."

She crosses to the room the voice came from. Pauses, looks back at Bina, but doesn't say anything before leaving the room.

She'll start inching - slowly, quietly - for the back door, moving a bit quicker when she's likely to be visible from the employee's room - 

And the back door is a fire door. Shit.

More French - something about letting the owner of the voice go, that she's not interested in getting anyone in trouble over this.

"Girl! You speak French! Come tell this woman to stop fighting!"

"I'm sorry I'll be back with the cops she might kill you if you fight!" Bina shouts in really bad French then slams through the fire door and out into the alleyway, already sprinting.

...And realizing she'd forgotten the layout of the digsite. There's a steep slope beneath her, a steep slope to get out of the dig, a giant hole in the middle of the area that wasn't there before, assorted machines scattered around, a trailer over near the ramp out - 

Bina has no idea if she can run that far fast enough but she can start with flinging herself down the ramp in. Flinging is faster than trying to keep her feet on that thing.

The woman can be heard starting her pursuit.

She slides right into something that feels horribly, horribly wrong.

It's not-Ant. She saw it in the laundromat earlier. Whatever it actually is. Except now it seems bigger.

AHHHHHHHH

Okay gross but no time, she scrambles to her feet and away from the luckily not moving thing and - 

She doesn't know that she can get to that ramp, the woman might be faster than her, but she bets she can hide and slowly inch her way around.

She sprints for and behind a not-too-near tractor, which seems to be a bit fuzzy but that's not too weird it's dark and humid - 

"It's okay! I know this is confusing, but this place isn't safe!"

The woman appears to be descending the ramp - at a much more sedate pace than Bina.

She doesn't make any noise, but does brush against the tractor - 

It vanishes and suddenly it's light out, the day thin - 

She yanks back and the world goes back to normal. 

What. What was that. Her hand - 

The hand she'd gotten stabbed in was the one she touched the tractor with.

She peaks under the bandage - 

And sees green.

She takes a deep breath. Tries not to panic. Covers her hand again. Constructs the yard in her mind - and that ramp's not too steep but the gate at the end was shut and she's not sure she wants to try vaulting it -

But the light in the temporary office looked on. 

Maybe there's someone who can help, and maybe if she leads weird woman far enough into the construction site she can double back into the laundromat, get the yelling lady free and maybe break a front window or something (which she should've thought of earlier, brain why).

Bina starts creeping around miscellaneous objects. Sandbags first, like for flooding - why do they have these -

"Girl! It's not safe out here! People die on construction sites!"

Nope she's just going to keep sneaking.

...Are those gas masks.

And government issues body bags. Entire boxes of them.

Bina was already creeped out but she'd like to register that being much, much worse right now.

The woman has stopped, staring down at the not-Ant.

She picks up a gas mask just in case - maybe she can throw it at the woman - and goes to continue sneaking - 

And there's a crack of thunder as it begins to rain.

Fantastic.

Well, nothing for it - she sneaks the rest of the way to the office, the clay and grit dirt under her not-up-for-this shoes quickly turning into a black, sucking mud. The curtains are drawn (weird, these usually have blinds) even though the lights are on, she notices, and that's moderately uncomfortable but there's nothing she can really do - 

She slinks up to the door, taps on the window, but there's no response, so she takes a deep breath, opens it, and goes in, catching something out of the corner of her eye but too jittery to really register what.

She turns into the room...

-

Retcon.

There's a body on the floor.

The FUCK.

There's - there's stab wounds, all over the man's front, blood splattered everywhere and pooled around.

Bina isn't screaming, or freaking out.

This is too unreal for that. 

She - goes into a quiet little place in her mind, and starts acting.

There's nowhere really to hide. Under the desk, but one place is no different than no place. The woman would look there first. And the body is next to the desk.

A thought occurs to her, to check the laptop to see what the man was looking at, so she spins it around, but it's password locked.

It must be Ms Hyung's computer, and Ms Hyung clearly has basic password security because none of Bina's first guesses work. She gets frustrated, starts typing in 'greenlady' - 

And the screen is weird. Ripply. 

Green.

It appears to be radiating from her injured hand.

Radiating. Now that's a fun thought. Like radiation poisoning...

She whirls around then, a sudden thought having her half convinced the woman's behind her - 

She isn't.

But the blood is pulsing like static.

She turns to run, but then stops, looks around - 

Bina can't just always run. And this seems connected to her arm somehow, to whatever happened. She needs to stop, to think, to take control - 

(Somehow this turns into poking the dead body with her stabbed arm.)

There's a flash of green, blindingly bright, and she falls - 

Not far this time.

She lands on her butt in a weird, washed out world. It appears to be the office, sans body or blood. It's light, though, daytime where it had been night.

...Not timetravel again.

There's shouting outside, and she doesn't want to get caught, but she's curious so she peeks, and Ms Hyung is arguing with a woman with a clipboard, shouting about things collapsing... And something about buildings buried beneath the parking lot?

Another woman walks up to Ms Hyung while Bina contemplates leaving a message, and - 

The soon-to-be corpse is behind the other woman.

Crap.

She needs to leave a message - can't talk to him - all she has in her pockets are quarters and that piece of paper from the dream. (What? If that's real... Where did the scarf go?)

She doesn't want to cause too many changes - still remembers the door glitching in her head, the glass plain and then reading 'What kind of maggot grows in the corpse of a day.'

Painting, maybe, and she doesn't have much room, so she goes to carve 'KNIFE'.

The wind picks up. 

And there's something behind the painting.

A message on the wall.

There's writing all over, most of it in black marker. Largest, in the center, reads:

If you are reading this we have Just taken the dangerous way through one of the turning points. If you want to live you must do 3 things before the waveform collapses:

1. On the wall are two package. Open the RED one and hide the GREEN one, not in your pockets, she checks.

2. In the RED package are two pills. Take them Now. They contain phenytoin and will suppress the symptoms.

3. Lie down and repeat the following phrase:

I MUST LIE DOWN

If you do not follow these instructions the seizure kills us.

-B3

Both 'red's are crossed out, with arrows pointing to them from a message that says:

Store is all out of red! Sorry!

-B12

PS, Pharmacy is almost out of epilepsy meds. We'd better get this right soon!

Another arrow points to the second bullet point, from:

On you! Not under the desk!

-B7

With an arrow pointing to it from:

Ouch! That must have really sucked

-B8

There's a pink and green envelope under those, with an arrow pointing at the pink envelope from

Injector. Pills too slow!

-B6

In the upper left:

Why didn't B5 come this way?

-B6

Timeline damage. Ant hit by truck on 14/7/2013.

-B9

Pointing to the 'B3' is

How does she know this? If she went this way, she'd be dead!

-B4

She left JF to be killed by I.

-B9

The last bit just reads in blue:

Where did you get the good marker? All I have is this stupid pen!

-B11

She grabs the envelopes - shoves the green one in her bra - and starts fiddling with the injector.

It's hard.

It's terrible, she doesn't know what she's doing and she hates needles - 

But she gets the medicine in her, repeats the phrase as she lies down - 

And just as she thinks nothing's going to happen, she begins to seize.

History has changed. Follow the cracks.

The woman from the laundromat steps into the office, and, for a moment, stares down at Bina's unconscious form. Then she crouches down, and with little seeming difficulty, lifts Bina, and carries her out.

There's someone speaking French.

"Kid. C'mon kid. Wake up."

Bina comes to only groggily.

"Mmmph?"

"Can you understand me?"

Urrrrgghhhhhh noooooo she's sleeping.

But, with some prodding, she tries to talk.

She thinks she does. She's not sure. It doesn't sound like her, slurred and jumbled and wrong...

"-English. Let's try that. You need to wake up."

"Sin keesh?" That was not what she meant. She mumbly tries to correct herself. Then again, trying to explain maybe except she's not really aware what she's saying - 

"-Did you hit your head? Merde. She probably hit you. Hey. Look at me. I need you to try and focus. I'm going to check your head for bumps, okay?"

She mumbles something that might contain 'azure' and maybe 'lime'.

"-I'm going to touch your head now. I'll try to be quick."

And then there's a hand gently running over Bina's head.

"Why do you have so much hair?"

Her vision goes a bit white and she sort of half screams and discovers she's handcuffed to a pipe thing when the metal bites into her wrist.

The hand is abruptly snatched away. "Sorry. Sorry."

She tries to speak but what comes out is jumbled random nonsense - most of it random words, some of it mashes of the random word and what she meant to say when her brain tries to overcorrect.

"Okay. Just- take a minute. I guess he got you pretty bad. That can- jumble words some."

Uggghhhhh.

Bina kind of slowly nods.

She doesn't know why she isn't scared. It's like everything's happening far off, through fog. There's a sort of anxiety spinning somewhere. Not much more, even though this situation is objectively terrifying.

She glances around, to try and get her bearings - 

And, shit, the walls do not look good. And not in a 'hit her head' way or a 'creepy eldritch abomination space bug' way, but in a 'the support pillar is bent, the floor boards are sagging, the foundation is cracked, and there's a giant hole in the base of one wall, a ladder leading down into the dark. 

She knows construction, knows buildings, and that ceiling won't hold for long.

Oh look at that.

Fear.

"Yeah. It- doesn't look good."

They need to not be handcuffed. She really doesn't know how to communicate that, but she does look at their handcuffs. One end connects to her, one to the other woman, and the chain loops behind a pipe.

"I'm going to assume you don't have a hairpin or anything?"

She shakes her head - 

And feels a piece of paper pressing against her breast.

The envelope, from her possibly time-traveling possible alternate or future selves. 

She digs into her bra, somewhat frantic, and pulls it out. The envelope is almost painfully bright green in the dim light.

Opening it's awkward, and difficult, and there's a creaking above - 

There's a watch inside, reading eleven minutes to six, and a paperclip, and a note that says:

Ceiling falls @ 5:57.

Remember the Party!

-B12

P.S. Tell the Corpse I say Hello.

P.P.S. Take the gas-mask!

....Okay that's bad. She shows the watch and note to the woman, and unbends the paperclip so she can start on the handcuffs.

The woman is apparently very good at picking locks, the handcuffs practically fall away.

Creak creak creeeaaaaak goes the floor above them. Like something big and heavy is walking up there, and there's a faint green glow down the stairs.

'Up the stairs' doesn't sound fun, not when there's something up there - possibly the Corpse - and the floor might still fall in under them - 

Bina points at the hole.

(They still have seven-ish minutes until the clock ticks, but it might be safer to call it six or even five.)

(There's a gas-mask she notices on the shelf at the bottom of the stairs.)

She nods sharply. "I mean- crazy lady went down there. But-" She looks up at the ceiling, shakes herself. "Can you move on your own?"

Slow nod as she tries to get up. She's a bit woozy, but not dangerously so.

(The thing upstairs appears to be approaching the stairway down.)

The woman starts towards the hole, moving cautiously, but certainly.

She follows. She has a bit of unsteadiness around the hole where the ground is uneven, but is able to sit down and scoot over to the drop. 

"Wait- gas mask. Shit." The woman looks down into the hole. "You okay to get down? I'll be right behind you."

Shaky thumbs up. "Sheep!"

....Brain how was that related.

Well, whether it was related or not, the woman darts over to grab the gas mask.

There's a human skull attached to an overgrown, pulsing body, staring quietly at her from the top of the stairs.

Bina starts climbing down.

The woman is swearing as she moves - not French now, or not just French - and literally slides over the side of the pit, managing grab onto the edge with one hand to not fall down. Her other hand has the gas mask.

The corpse(?) crashes into the shelving at the bottom of the stairs as it skids after her. It keeps moving, dragging itself through the splinters.

There is probably mud at the bottom of this long fiddly ladder and there is definitely a monster approaching!

Bina jumps down.

And even doesn't die.

The other woman drops after her, landing in a crouch.

Now is a good time for running!

Yes, yes. Running is definitely a good idea!

The corpse makes it to the edge of the hole - 

And the building falls down on it.

And into the tunnel that Bina and the woman are fleeing down.

The woman spins to grab at Bina, clearly aiming to shield her.

It's dark and Bina can't see what's going on.

Gets even darker, though, as something jars her head.

She might be unconscious, now.

The woman is, thankfully, strong enough, and prepared enough, to get them out of the way of most of the debris. And then...

Well. She's going to have to wait until Bina wakes back up.

Bina is a bit scared where she is. She's in Hyberadad, now, missing her test in Geography.

Because there was the bad phone call.

She's all in white, still, white except for the little green flowers on her single glove. There's a thing there. Not a maggot anymore. Things grow up, you see.

Eggs become maggots. Maggots become pupas and then flies.

Like how babies turn into girls then women then old women then...

Then... 

Yeah. She's tired and thirsty now, and hasn't slept well, and the worms in her hand are here even though that hasn't happened yet. 

She has to sit down and rest.

This next part is pretty awful.

And Ant is there. "Hey," ey says quietly, sitting down next to Bina.

"Hey," says Bina, who is eleven and pretty quietly upset. Her head feels like a balloon kind of. Floaty. Not so good. She's about to get real scared and she doesn't want to feel that, but it keeps coming up because it has to happen.

"-Would you like a hug?"

"...Yeah. Yeah I think I would."

This isn't how it goes. She's alone usually. But hugs are nice.

Well. She can have a hug. And Ant isn't going anywhere. So this time she has someone.

Clingy hug. She'd just thought she'd go to Gran's apartment, it was close and she knew the address and how hard could it be, Gran wouldn't have liked all this moping...

And then she notices the street sign, over by the grocers who've already closed to the night. 

Street 72.

She doesn't recognize it. It's not anything like the streets she could recognize.

She's really, really lost, and it's getting dark.

Ant's arms stay around her, tight and present.

"Do you know where we are?" Bina asks. She knows the being lost can't change. That doesn't mean she doesn't want to try.

"No. I'm sorry."

She nods. She kinda knew that would happen.

She looks around, tries to think - "I don't know how to get back. Maybe a map? But this isn't the area with all the shops... And I don't have any money. Well. Local money."

"Maybe we can find somewhere? A school? They sometimes have people around. Or a currency exchange?"

"Yeah. Usually we go to a currency exchange in the airport but we were running to catch the plane, and I don't know if any banks are open this late but we can look. And I think I passed a school on the way here..."

"Let's go try there then?" Ant suggests.

Nod. She wraps her arms around herself a bit, then starts trying to retrace her steps.

Her feet hurt, her nice white flats that she doesn't wear much causing blisters. One of them's popped and really hurts.

There's a school not too far, though it's getting to be firmly nighttime when she finds it. She learns later it's not the school she passed, but that doesn't really matter because this one is dark and locked.

Bina starts breathing really, really fast, feeling faint and dizzy and like she's gonna throw up.

"Hey, hey," Ant puts eir hand on Bina's back. "It's okay. You're going to be okay. We'll get through this."

She nods, bends over a bit, and tries to get her breathing under control.

She doesn't throw up, at least.

"So. A currency exchange," she mutters. "I - I think that'd be good. Then I could get a rickshaw back home, they'll know where to go... I'll have to find someone to ask..."

"Alright. That's the spirit." Ant pauses, looks at Bina's feet. "Would you like a piggyback?"

"I think I would. I'm not sure if that'd work. You're not here yet."

"Worth a shot, right?" Ant turns and crouches down slightly.

Bina climbs on eir back.

It's a bit awkward, but Bina doesn't go crashing to the ground, so.

So they do this. "Which way?" Ant asks, looking around as though that'll give em a clue.

"I go down the hill, to ask the man I found where I can change money," she says, kind of muffled.

"Alright then." Off they can go. Ant starts singing quietly as ey walks - nonsense tunes mostly.

They're able to find the man - Bina has a bit of trouble talking to him, they have different accents and different ideas of 'currency' versus 'money'. He tells them that there's a currency exchange two blocks over that way, by the Western Union, but they might be closed.

Bina yells "Thank you," then, to Ant, "We gotta go fast, they're just closing up when I get there and I don't want to be late. Maybe also with you here the woman there's less suspicious of me, I don't know if people can see you but she thinks I might've stolen the money I have, and the questions are frustrating but I'm able to get the money changed and get a cab back anyways..."

Ant nods. "Alright then, hold on." And starts running in the direction they were directed. (Ey has perhaps surprisingly good balance. Not really being here is helpful for some things.)

It's not the bank.

It's the laundromat.

"This is wrong," says Bina. "This didn't happen."

"-Neither did I," Ant points out, but looks perturbed. "But- this isn't- wherever this is. This is- this is the laundromat my sister works at."

" - Wait, is your sister by any chance a tall redhead," Bina asks, distracted from freaking out at the bad place.

Ant winces a little. "I- yeah. That's Ira."

"Do. You know why she's doing - everything?" Bina shivers.

"Not all of it. But- I died. And well. She'd already proven she'd do anything for me. So- I guess- I dunno. Trying to get me back? I don't know how just-"

She thinks about Gran, who shouldn't have died because it's unfair. 

"Yeah. Yeah, I think - that sounds like a reason."

There's a footstep behind them.

Ant half turns to look.

Bina, but older, her hands in the pockets of a blue coat, with grey pants and blue boots and hat and a red scarf around her neck. She's studying them, and feels very, very different from the Bina Ant's familiar with.

Ant looks between the two Binas, a little surprised, a lot wary.

The younger Bina turns around.

"You're one of the others, aren't you. From the wall," she asks after a moment.

"I'm B-Twelve, yes," the older Bina says. She looks more worn than the Bina from the frozen factory, too. "How's she here?" with a nod towards Ant.

"...Ey, how's ey here. And I don't know. Ey climbed with me away from the factory. I thought that'd mean ey'd wake up in the laundromat with me," Bina says back. 

She's not sure she's supposed to know Ant's pronouns, but the words just past hearing aren't exactly subtle here.

"I don't know either," Ant shrugs. "I just am. And yeah. Ey. Not she."

She recognizes the tired, harried look on her - other self's? - face.

"You're not someone I'll become, are you?"

Twelve shakes her head. "No. I already tried all this. It's your turn, now. We don't have unlimited time, but - you should be able to ask a few questions."

"-How much does time-travel break anything?" Ant asks under eir breath.

"Paradox is what happens when you change a timeline to the point where you couldn't have made the change given the new timeline - stable loops don't trigger it. Small amounts can cause headaches, seizures, and unconsciousness in those affected. I saw a large amount, once. The world... Shattered, around it. Events happened out of order."

"-Shit. That's- So. Badly."

"There's machines that can off-load some of it. You'll find them, eventually."

"What happened? To you and the others of us?"

"I asked that one too. I tried to find a better answer for you then the one that Eleven gave me, but I didn't. Sorry. We don't know."

"The way that I can reach back and interact with your time-line stops before you get to a certain point, just as Eleven's ability to interact with my time-line stopped at almost the same point. I'm pretty sure it's when we go back to try to stop Josephine from activating the observation device in the first place."

"Nobody knows what happens when we do that, but we all keep messing it up somehow and causing a time-loop."

"What would you fix? And uh if I mess up, do I have to help B-Fourteen then?"

"You already fixed it. Jenn didn't get out of the basement in my timeline."

"And no. You're probably the last viable loop. Um, it's a lot of math, but a simplified version of what is happening is that our time-line is looping, but the corruption in this area of space-time isn't. The damage just keeps getting worse even though time is being rewound."

"For the first several times we went through this, the Corpse was the size of a regular teenager. Every time we loop, the damage is more extensive, the cracks are more frequent and the Botfly is more… developed."

"-Botfly?"

"It's that thing in the courtyard, isn't it. It's not a botfly, not really. It's a lot of things. But a botfly is the closest to what it is."

"-So. We need to figure out how to- kill it?" (Does ey even realise ey's talking in plurals? Probably not. It's always been plurals for em. Em and Ira. Em and Bina?)

Quietly: "I think so." Then, to Twelve: "The window in Josephine's office. 'What kind of a maggot grows in the corpse of a day'. What's up with that?"

And they're there, in the memory, jarring and glitching.

"...I don't know. There shouldn't be writing there - it's a damaged memory, like when we go through a crack and change something, but there shouldn't be a crack there. There hasn't been one before. It must be new, or unique to your loop? I don't know. I don't know! I'm sorry."

"Well. Great. That's just bloody fantastic."

She's back to being older Bina, now.

"It's- It feels like it- it has to be important right? If it's there?"

"Maybe. It must be about the Botfly, whoever wrote it..."

"What does the Botfly - no, we're out of time, aren't we? I'm waking up. My knees aren't very happy..."

Ant looks, perhaps, a little sad. "I- Good luck? Whatever Ira's doing--" Ey pauses, breathes. "Stop her. I love her. But this--this isn't right."

"...Yeah." She hugs Ant, impulsively, but still telegraphing it. "Well, here I go, I suppose."

Ant hugs back, and manages a smile. "You've got this."

"Thanks." Deep breath.

And through the door into the laundromat.

"Kid? Kid, you awake? C'mon. Hitting your head this much can't be good-"

She groans and comes to, a bit less groggily this time.

There's a definite sound of relief. "Thank fuck. Something still hit your head. And the light."

"Have a light," she mumbles. "In my hand. 's bad."

"-Maybe you got hit harder than I thought."

Uh she should probably stop talking before she says something like that she thinks twelve had said the woman was Jenn, she's happy this Jenn didn't get squished like twelve's did...

Oh she said that out loud didn't she.

Can she go back to scrambled words please.

"-I'm pretty glad I'm not squished too," Jenn says instead of any of the other options. "You seem to have more intel than me. Care to share?"

She had a dream and talked to an alternate timeline self, it's weird. There was a crazy wall in the trailer earlier and she time traveled and saved a guy from Ira but then it scrambled her brain because she couldn't have saved him if he wasn't dead.

She'd like to stop mumbling now.

Jenn swears again. "Okay. So. Ira's the crazy red head?"

Ant's sister yeah. Ant thinks she's working for the alien space bug god thing in the factory because she wants to save Ant....

Jenn might feel bad for taking advantage of the concussed girl, but the more intel she has the better. "And Ant is...?"

Probably a ghost maybe? Ey thinks ey died in the construction site?

"-Time travel and ghosts? Okay. Today just keeps getting better. Think you can move?"

Ugggghhhhhh maybe.

"It won't be pleasant, but staying still is probably more dangerous."

"It's dark." She's still concussed so her brain doesn't stop her from saying "The light in my hand can help but it's bad to look at."

"-Is it okay for you to look at?"

"Already did. It didn't daze me second time."

"Okay then. You're going to need to be my eyes." There's a sound of fabric tearing. "Blindfold," Jenn explains. "Alright. My eyes are covered."

"'s a big pile. Behind us. Lotsa stuff behind. 'snot good. But's a tunnel ahead. Tha-way," she half mumbles, tugging on Jenn's arm to orient her correctly. "Some stuff. Mud's high. Can 'splain when we walk."

She'll pull Jenn forward and around any big pile - and mark stuff she stumbles into. Her knees are still speaking to her but it's a strained relationship at this point.

And she explains. Her coworker not showing up, going to the laundromat late, meeting Ira, the corpse-thing climbing out of the washing machine, getting - eaten? Vanished? - and falling, Ant, the weird alien space bug god thing, the couch-sitters, Josephine... She's gotten to climbing up the magic dream scarf when she spots a flickering light ahead.

"Uh there's a light. A normal one I think. I'm gonna cover my hand, okay?" She does, fiddling with the bandages. "Okay should be safe to look."

Jenn takes the direction well, and makes sounds at the points where the story seems to need them.

When Bina tells her it's probably safe, she pushes her blindfold up free from her eyes.

There's a flickering light up ahead. White-toned. Almost certainly electronic.

"I don't think it's the corpse-thing but it might be Ira..." Bina whispers.

Jenn hums, and casts around looking for something to use as a weapon.

They've gone well past the debris, until there's not even pipes. She could backtrack into the dark, possibly.

She'll make do. If they can catch the crazy lady by surprise, she likes her chances. "Stay behind me," she warns Bina, and starts to advance quietly.

Bina nods, and does.

The hallway around the bend is short and empty, except for a flickering television sitting face-up in the mud.

"What the-?" Jenn doesn't drop her guard, not really but she's staring at the TV, with perhaps a little more attention than she's paying to other things.

"That's the television from the laundromat."

"How does it still have power?"

"I don't know! Spooky woo-woo? I didn't exactly get a manual..."

"Yell if anyone appears," Jenn says, and moves closer to the TV, poking at it cautiously.

"I'm not sure that's a good idea - " Bina hisses.

The television sits there, innocently. The screen just shows static.

Jenn can admit that no, it probably isn't. But this isn't right, and she wants to figure out how the hell this thing has power. She pushes a little harder.

She doesn't mean to push it over. But that doesn't change the fact that she does.

It settles into the mud, sinks a bit -

And then there's a flash of green, a fall -

Back in the tunnel, Bina's kind of freaking out.

"Alright. Nothing to-"

-And, in a flash of brilliant green, Jenn is gone.

What.

Bina's brain declines to produce words for the next few seconds, instead just screaming.

The first words it makes are: 'She's dead! She's dead because you didn't stop her from touching the TV and it's your fault and now you're all alone in the dark!'

That last thought makes her feel even guiltier, like she's making this about herself, and she has the irrational urge to check under the TV, like when you know your keys aren't in your pockets but you still keep checking - 

Except this time she's lost a whole PERSON.

Argh! She needs to think. Jenn probably isn't dead, just timetraveled, she'll probably be right back - 

Except Bina doesn't think Jenn knows not to change things. She could come back with her brain leaking out of her ears and that'd be Bina's fault too -

Which means Bina has to go after her.

Okay. No problem. Easy.

How does she do this.

She tries touching the TV first. There's a bit of a sizzle, but the black stuff isn't around it. Maybe it's like a charge? Whatever. She then adopts the same pose Jenn had, feeling silly - 

She doesn't have her scarf.

But she does have her hand.

So she unwraps it, shines the green light around - 

It's the same dark hallway.

But then Bina gets scared, covers her arm back up, and goes to check the bricks for secret messages. Nothing, and the TV isn't moving even though her brain has her jumping at shadows - 

Okay. Think. She needs to go after Jenn. But a weapon wouldn't hurt, and there's gotta be something around the other bend in the hallway, so she'll check that first - 

And, well, it's not really a room. She's not sure how it's underground. The ceiling should have collapsed, and it has in one distant spot. There's some new supports around the hole. Within the cavern are piles of machinery and pipes and gunk, all covered in sticky mud. It's all rusted. Must have been here decades.

Or a century. To the day.

This is the factory.

She could find Josephine's office - 

Except this looks like a distillery area, and must be pretty distant from the office. She came here for a weapon.

She looks at the pipes, but they're too big, and has to stamp on the part of her brain informing her she's just stalling. She picks up a brick. It'll have to do.

TV next. She retrieves it from the mud, angles it upright. It's still on.

The image is just static. There's something trying to be seen in it - 

She slams her eyes shut, except it doesn't feel quite the same as the botfly - 

She reluctantly opens her eyes, then waves her hand over the screen. That same weird green rippling. She pokes the screen, hoping maybe that'll clear the image.

It halfway does. She tugs the bandage on her hand down a bit, and the image clears.

It's her, in the laundromat, when she was turning off the TV way back when.

Bina tries to tell her to run, but it doesn't work.

The TV goes dark.

...The timing fits. On, off when Jenn kicks it over, on when Bina pulls it back up, and then off again. Here and in the past.

She considers turning it back on except that's probably a horrible idea, so she comes up with what might be a worse idea and raises the brick to smash it.

And sees the cracks. Like broken glass, except someone removed the glass. Hovering in the air, lined with green.

Maybe this is what it looks like when someone returns - 

Except it's responding to the light in her hand.

And millimeter by millimeter, the cracks are unbreaking.

Like damage to the timeline.

She touches it, of course. It feels disappointingly normal. Smooth but not slippery, and really, really cold. 

She contemplates licking it, then tells her brain to stop being stupid, and instead pushes at the crack. It moves, slightly.

Busting through would be a bad idea. Like jumping through an actual pane of glass, not the safety stuff in the movies. She'd get cut into bloody ribbons.

But she's got a brick, and there's no time like the present.

She throws it, and the brick hits the center of the dwindling crack.

And she starts running as soon as it leaves her hand, because if she looks before she leaps she'll never leap and this isn't a choice, not really, she needs to help Jenn - 

It occurs to her to grab a piece of reality. The first one bounces off her fingers. The second breaks. But the third she gets.

And then she falls, trailing a glittering halo of broken time behind her.

And Jenn is falling - through time? Is this what happened when Bina time-travelled?

She isn't entirely sure what to do, but she at least has some experience with falling, and knows enough that when she sees the ground rushing towards her, she readies herself and-

And bends her knees as she lands, pitching herself forward into a roll, coming up ready for someone to attack her, looking around hurriedly.

She's in the laundromat. It's quiet, dark, and apparently empty.

-Well. Shit. Anyway to find out what time and/or date it is?

There's a clock on the wall, declaring it to be 1:53 - probably AM, given how dark out it is. No calendars out here.

-Okay. Okay, The laundromat collapses on top of them, so it can't be forward, and it can't be some weird alternate present (...okay, it could be, but Jenn's trying to minimise the weird.) So. It's...probably the past.

(...And she still has the gas mask looped around her wrist, okay then.)

Alright, second thought: anything look weaponisable? She's got no intention of letting the crazy lady get her this time.

There's some cleaning supplies in one corner, an empty trash basket, the front door, back door, and office door.

She keeps the cleaning supplies in mind, and approaches the office door, on near-silent feet, listening for any other inhabitants.

No one audible.

Okay. She pushes the office door open, and looks inside.

It's different than she remembers it being. A rack of clothes on the wrong wall, no clock on the desk, assorted other tiny changes.

She notes the differences, trying to be clinical, trying not to think about the fact that, in a little while, she's going to be tied up in here.