She closes it and hands it over.

It can join the screwdriver. "Let's go. Somewhere not - here."

"Yeah."

"There's a normal door, over behind us - I couldn't get it open, but - "

"The rules are working differently, I think, for each of us."

"Yeah. They are." Not very good, she doesn't think. Not when she doesn't know what those rules are, or if they could change.

She tries to stand. She's... Even mostly able to. (She tries harder not to look at the thing on the other side of the couch. The two people there are in a stupor, reacting to nothing. She doesn't like that, either.)

She helps the other girl stand. Of course she does.

And then they can make their way, one stumbling step at a time, to the door out of the courtyard.

[A small crack.]

It's hard. Lily's woozy, and the world's thin. Like the omnipresent, unchanging light's a dust that's settled on everything, choking and cloying and making everything - hazy.

The world's strange. The gate they're walking past - there's mounds and mounds of some kind of root vegetable behind it. It smells sickly sweet, maybe rotten. They won't be able to slip through the slats of the gate, though, and -

There's no flies, no insects trying to get into all that sugar.

It's creepy.

The door beside the gate isn't a ton better, but... The glass in the little window in it looks thick and opaque, and there's no other windows pointing toward the courtyard. They won't have to be careful of the - thing. And Lily knows how to pick door locks, though padlocks like on the gate are a lot harder without real tools.

But - the door opens easily in her hand. It's unlocked, to her at least.

It looks like an office, inside. Lily hesitates, but - she's tired of fear.

"Let's go in," she says.

Tight nod.

And - in.

It's clean inside, at least, and - being inside feels nice. Soothing, even if the room looks old fashioned.

Lily scans the office as they step in. It's dark inside, which - is soothing, actually, she likes being away from that weird fake daylight. There's a calendar on the wall that she steps closer to, squinting at, because something about it seems - odd...

JULY

1911

(And written in the square for Monday the 17th, circled, the previous days crossed out - )

FACTORY CLOSED

FOR

EXPERIMENT

She gets a brief sense of vertigo, because it's July 17th right now, but it's a Sunday -

Oh yeah. 1911 calendar.

She's - not sure 'why does someone have an antique calendar in their office' is the right question, here.

"...What year is it for you?" she asks her companion.

"...Twenty eleven. I died - "

Deep breath. "I died July fourteenth. A Thursday."

"It was July seventeenth, twenty eleven for me. Sunday."

"So - we're from the same time, but there's a century old calendar that thinks it's nineteen eleven in an abandoned factory..."

"This office doesn't look modern." She glances around, searches for clues...

The door is shut behind them, and the lights are on.

Lily nearly jumps out of her skin, spinning around.

" - That didn't change, the lights didn't turn on," she says, quickly, "The door didn't swing shut, there would've been - a sound, some wind, and lights don't go fully on immediately, there's always a tiny ramp up - "

She needs to focus. Analyzing the weird helps.

"A discontinuity."

"The air feels different, too."

"More real," she confirms. "Okay, so - let's look around. Just - carefully. Maybe don't both stare at some newly revealed thing at the same time, in case there's any more - perception hazards, I guess."

"Well, I've got more blood to lose if there's another..."

Twitch and - deep breath.

"One of us needs to stay fully able." Fuck, she hates this. Hates weakness, hates acknowledging weakness even more. "I'm already invalid, and - you couldn't see the last one. So. Probably I should open things first, just... Carefully, and if it's suspicious I hand it to you to get out of our way."

She doesn't really like that, but. "Okay."

Letting someone else do the analysis, the searching, itches, but - she can stare at everything already revealed. Go over it with the most critical gaze she can.

Lily starts skimming papers. This - seems to be a sugar factory, Astre Sucre. 1911, still, everything supports that, and none of it looks like a prop. All of the pages have real text, and they feel right, and the numbers look - like they belong there. The picture on the desk looks - normal, too.

She reports some of this, the bits she's more sure of.

She can't find any mentions of experiments on the seventeenth, not yet, though there's some receipts for stuff that might be scientific equipment.

She doesn't get much more, either.

She does, however, find a tangerine, which she waves in front of Lily's face. "So, if this thing isn't secretly full of maggots only you can see - you need fluids and sugar."

If it's secretly full of maggots, Lily can't see them either. She doesn't trust it.

...She's really thirsty and kinda woozy.

"It looks okay."

"Cool." She peels it, quickly and efficiently, and hands the pieces to Lily.

She gets a cabinet open in that time, but - it doesn't have anything odd, either.

(She's being careful to leave everything as she found it. It's slowing her down.)

She eats the tangerine pieces. It's the best thing she's ever had.