“And - the experiment that it mentioned -“

She nods.

Her brain is buzzing, buzzing, buzzing, like a bumblebee in flight, and there’s still that repetitive flicker, flicker, flicker at the deg of her consciousness. She’s not even sure, now, whether it’s from sleep deprivation, blood loss, or mysterious otherworldly nonsense.

Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz -

The woman eventually bustles back in, hands Amaris a glass of water, and sets to cleaning her wounds.

”- dear, this can’t have been a cargo hook, it seems to have gone through your arm in two separate locations! Was there some sort of pitchfork? One of the cosette wheels?”

“- she, um, doesn’t speak - we actually think that it might’ve been something to do with the ‘experiment’?”

”Oh. Oh, dears, I don’t know what nonsense you’ve heard, but the experiment really isn’t so intimidating as all that. We just need fifty pairs of eyeballs, and all we’re going to do is turn on one, harmless little green-tinted light.”

“... um. Eyeballs?”

“Just observers, dear, observers, don’t believe the rumors! We just need fifty people to look at this wonderous, marvelous, innovative device, and it is going to supply enough electricity to power a light. And the energy production of the machine moves up exponentially with every additional observer - sixty people could light a thousand lights, seventy people could light a million. It is going to be the start of a new era of energy production! Just you wait, I’ll show my every critic, I’ll show them all! - in any case, dear, this is going to sting, we don’t want these to get any more infected, now do we? -“

She carefully applies rubbing alcohol, and, squinting, sends a bit running through each puncture wound, using a little eyedropper.

It feels like being flayed alive, bitten by a thousand ants with wirejaws and venemous dispositions - like having fire, distilled, run through channels of her body that should not be - it feels like buzzing, buzzing, buzzing, like a swarm of a a hundred bees, each made from fire and ice and bitter acid - like the smell of ozone and brick dust, sharp and biting, and the kiss of a woman as green as death -

She doesn’t visibly react.

Caden winces on her behalf.

”- I don’t suppose you tell us more about the device?” he asks, in slow but competent French.

“It is what I call an observation engine - a revolutionary discovery! A particular symbol, when carved into a conductive surface and indirectly observed, produces electricity, and the surrounding machine channels the electricity to the light bulb. I wanted to use a galvanometer, like a woman of respectability, but no! My husband, my dear, he insisted that if we were to close the factory, it would not be for a needle - but he knows how to sell sugar, and who am I to contradict him? If he thinks that a little colored light will make people sit up and pay attention, then perhaps it will.”

She takes out a bit of gauze, and wraps both of Amaris’s puncture wounds with it; the blood scarf-halves are thrown on the table.

Amaris moves her arm, experimentally, and then proceeds to wrap one half of the still-bloody scarf around her neck, and wrap the other around her uninjured wrist. 

- she needs to know, for sure, if this experiment really sounds as closely associated with the - whatever it is - as it sounds like - and one pattern had stood out to her, when she stared into the beautiful, beautiful abyss -

She grabs a loose piece of paper, and a pen, and draws something.

She presents it to the woman, tapping it with the end of the pen.

“How the hell do you know what that...

You don’t work here at all, do you.”

She shakes her head.

There’s a small wind, picking up. She can feel her hairs standing on end, feel the breeze on her face, see the flicker flicker flicker flicker pick up the pace, like a clock, ticking down to some invisible destination -

“Are you on the run, from some sort of malfeasance? Is that how you got that injury? - I am not cold hearted as I sometimes seem, I may be able to protect you -“

“I think that we’re not the ones who need protecting, here - I think we’re supposed to stop you - there’s, there’s something wrong with the device, or with the symbol, or they are something wrong, they’re - I died, days ago, and it collected me, and it collected my - and its controlling his brother, and - and it wants people to look - don’t give it what it wants, don’t -“

The wind picks up and up and up until it’s like a maelstrom, until Caden can’t hear himself speak, until Amaris and him can hardly breathe - the flicker seems like it’s screaming, the air seems like it’s screaming, the world is spinning faster and faster and faster - 

- Caden grabs onto Amaris’s hand, he can barely stand but he doesn’t want to be stranded or seperated -

- Madame Duboise is yelling, now, but they can hardly hear her speak -

Amaris pulls Caden closer, and then they’re both toppled over with the force of the wind -

bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

The wind is gone, and the lights are as they were, and the flickers and buzzing are as they were, and the air feels cool and thin and not-quite-real.

She stands, slowly, offers her arm to help him up, and stares at the dark, gooey inscription on frosted glass.

What kind of maggot grows in the corpse of day?

She knew it then, and she knows it now, and nothing she could call it would be quite right, but -

“The Botfly,” she croaks, quietly.

Caden looks up, startled, at the writing, and then nods, slowly.

“I - I guess we need something to call it. That works.”

She nods, too.

And then - she makes a habit of being perceptive. Her dream with her grandmother had emphasized it. She notices things.

The place in the calendar which had been circled, in green, has a hole punched through it, and through the wall’s plaster. She peers at the inside of it, after some hesitation, and plucks out a piece of paper, and a pen.

It’s the same piece of paper that she drew the botfly’s symbol on, back in time, now with an added annotations.

”Do not cross own history”, it begins. “Back bad, forward worse. Events lock. Complicated.”

... that’s her handwriting - and, for that matter, her preferred phrasing. And it was on the same paper...

She shows it to Caden.

Caden sees an empty piece of paper, annotation aside.

“I, um - are those the rules of time travel? You can’t interact with your past selves, going backwards in time is - difficult, dangerous - but going forwards in worse, the whole thing is really complicated?”

Shrug.

She turns her back to the door, and, in a mildly awkward motion, opens it.

He walks out.

There doesn’t seem to be a couch, there, anymore.

”I hate this place so much - the couch is gone, Sandy and Wendy are gone, I don’t know whether the Botfly is still there but it probably is, I want to get out of here - you fell down from the sky, could you, I don’t jump back up, could I follow you, I don’t know how any of this works, we just travelled back to 1911 there has to be some way to travel to the real world -“