"No. We don't."

"Then who are you two and why are you in my office? Are you okay, are you on the run from someone - ?"

Lily goes to fish her wallet with her license and some modern coins out of her pocket - they'll have dates, and the cards and wallet should maybe hopefully be recognizable as not contemporary material - her hand brushes past her great-grandfather's screwdriver -

She hears shouting as if from far away, and she turns to look at the door to the courtyard, skin prickling.

"Do you hear that?" she says, interrupting the latest ramble.

"No, nothing..."

The other girl shakes her head, slowly.

The sound doesn't repeat.

"...Okay."

"Look - we're not on the run." Probably. "We're not from here. We don't have time to explain everything - something bad is about to happen, or has already happened. We're not from this time - it's twenty eleven in our time, and something about this factory is - "

"Broken," the other girl volunteers. "It's all - we slipped through some kind of crack, and we aren't where we should be."

(A wind starts to pick up. It catches the girls' hair, little flutters, but nothing in the office so much as rustles. The air is still, for everything but them.)

"That's nonsense!" she objects. "My experiment can't possibly have anything to do with jumping through time, and it's not going to cause anything to break - probably not even the equipment, let alone something big enough you could trip and land a century ago!"

"Moving a person through time - let alone two - that'd take enormous amounts of energy if it's even possible, and this - we'll be lucky to get forty watts. Enough for a lightbulb, nothing more."

"Is that all it actually does?"

"It's playing with a loophole in how subatomic particles react when observed, if their possible locations are in specific patterns. It causes a few extra electrons to appear - which won't cause any issue, and doesn't have anything to do with timetravel. And there's no way for it to - time isn't a discrete thing. There's no such thing as a time particle. It's a process."

"So - there's a pattern, and people look at it, and when they do, something comes into reality that wasn't there before."

Gotta hand one thing to the speculative fiction genres. They are very good at pointing out things that might be a very, very bad thing if you don't actually know how they work. 

(...She's just time traveled, and - if this experiment causes it - )

(The wind in the office picks up, nearly lashing her hair in her face. Everything else is still entirely unaffected.)

"Yes. That's why it's so amazing. It's going to change the world."

She turns and lifts her hat and coat off the peg. "Now, I must be going. A lot of people got up very early to help me with this, and I'm already running late..."

She can't respond. The wind is swirling around her - her and the other girl - like a personal tornado. It's tearing at her clothes, battering her, and she can't breathe for a moment -

It smells like the construction site, like cut brick, like -

She can't feel the wind, but she can see, and she cries out in alarm.

The other girl looks terrified, is her first thought, whereas Lily - isn't, as much, though her thoughts are racing - she's fucked up and - they're both going to be erased or something -

The wind nearly knocks her off her feet.

There's a calm voice in her. She can weather this storm, but she needs to bunker down, anchor herself and hold on tight to everything that matters before she falls. 

The other girl isn't managing anything like that. She'll be blown away, the calm voice says, but it's no concern of Lily's.

Lily's not very calm right now.

She gets her feet under her and lunges, crossing the distance to the other girl in a wild bound, and the wind tries to throw her, but she gets ahold of the other girl's hand - 

There's a clatter on the floor, things falling, and then Lily's falling, hand still wrapped in the other girl's.

Her fear snaps.

She catches the other girl, softens her fall, clings back.

Her shock, on the other hand, is shifting into a desperate anger. "What's happening?"

She can't hear over the shriek of the storm, the flashes of static with dreams of being lightning someday thundering in her ears.

She can guess.

She doesn't have much time.

But -

"Don't look at the green light!" she shouts.

And the wind steals away any other breath she could take, any other words she could say, and she tries to mouth more, hopes the woman can read lips - but the pressure in the air is far, far too much - there's spots in her vision -

And, as suddenly as they shifted the first time -

It stops.

The lights are off, and they are sitting in an empty office.

History has changed. Follow the cracks.

"...Nnnnf."

Her head hurts.

" - You're bleeding."

"...Again. From your nose - are you okay."