Lily's walking carefully, so she doesn't trip when - some kind of fabric? Meets her foot. Might be a towel, was there some kind of spill?

(The television is off, she notices suddenly. She's not sure when that happened, and she hasn't heard anything.)

Whatever. 

She finds the light switch and flips it. 

There's a guy a bit older than her, maybe, but not by much, lurking over near the door to the office.

He pulls the door shut, sharply; the sound it makes is a little loud.

She does not jump. Really. Anyone who saw her startle was imagining things. 

She does, however, turn and say after only a moment's pause, "Oh, hey, do you work here? I wanted to do laundry."

"We're closed."

"Well, your sign says you're open, your electricity works, and I need to do laundry."

"We don't have enough staff."

Eye roll. "I never see more than one employee here, so."

"But - look, dude, I get you don't want to be here. I don't want to be here either. I'll do my laundry, I won't break anything, and I'll be out of your hair."

"...Fine. Don't go into the office or out the back."

"I won't."

"Do you have a door stop?" She gestures at the open front door. "Or working air?"

He turns and fiddles with a thermostat by the office door; there's a thump and rattle as the air conditioning kicks in. He then heads back towards and past her, shouldering her out of his way, and picks up a jacket on the floor - the thing she'd bumped into. 

He doesn't say anything else to her as he stalks towards the front, kicking her laundry basket inside so he can close the door -

But then he turns to her, says, "That machine's my clothing. Don't touch it," with a gesture at the machine nearest him (which is currently off) - 

And then heads out the front door, slamming it behind him.

Okay. Fine. 

...Lily was an asshole, and she'll probably regret that when she's less exhausted and overheated and stressed, at least in terms of 'that was a totally unnecessary bridge to burn.'

But something in the air here - and by 'something' she means the heat - has her temper on edge, so she doesn't regret it yet. 

She doesn't touch anything she was told not to touch. She just takes her clothes to the washer furthest from the dude's, counts how much change she has - makes a face, and triages so she's just washing what she needs most, and what'll fit okay in one of those tiny dryers, especially since she just knows these are going to need two dry cycles...

Sorting is a bit soothing, actually, and she finds change in one of her pants pockets - not enough for more laundry, but maybe she can get a cold drink from the vending machine...

She goes to find it - it's pretty near the back -

The TV's back on. It's just showing static, but - it'd been off earlier. Not even on static when she was shuffling around in the dark, and the dude hadn't messed with it she's pretty sure - but she hadn't exactly been paying much attention to it.

It's distracting. She doesn't really like static, and she's started getting little black flecks in the corner of her eyes the last few minutes, and - yeah, they don't combine well. She turns the TV back off. Hopefully it'll stay that way.

And - onward to shitty vending machine coffee.

It's when she's walking back to the benches at the front, iced coffee in hand, that she sees the tooth.

It's a front tooth. It's got a bit of blood on the end, and it's an adult-sized tooth. Something about it sends hairs rising on her neck - which is silly, probably two dumbasses got into a fight -

She gives the tooth a very wide berth while walking around it. At least there's no one here to see her. And then - well, the laundry machine's kicking up a racket, and she's briefly worried it's hers -

But, no. It's the dude's machine. It's kicked back on or something, and it's rattling around violently. Water's running down the front in a thin little rivulet, tarry and black. It smells - sharp, strange, and - familiar -

She's going to have to walk past it to get out, is her first thought, and then her second is to wonder why she's suddenly terrified - her third that she's leaving - her fourth to worry about abandoning her clothes -

Her feet are smarter than the scared animal part of her brain. She heads for the front door at a fast walk, but she's not going to be able to avoid going by the machine -

The rattling gets worse as she approaches, black fluid sloshing out - not rattling, thuds, something slamming into the inside of the machine, something large - and then it rocks and tilts -

She starts to run. The door opens in - it'll slow her down, and there's no good cover - she can yank it though, move fast -

Not fast enough.

The machine begins to fall, and the lid opens, and a skeletal thing surges out. It's human, or was, or should've been - It moves strangely, the entire left half of its body crushed, its spine curved in, sinews of black dirt and water the only thing holding the shattered bones together. They make it look melted, fuzzy, and it's a jittering static in her perception, like it's not all the way in reality -

It surges for her before she can get the door open even a little. It's going to beat her to it.

She falls back, tries to get the row of washers between her and it - she needs a weapon -

It's uncoordinated, at least, and not very clever - it tries to go over the washers and fails.

Well. At that. It's strong, and fast, and determined, and it's not able to knock washers over with one move, but - it's going to get through.

Lily sprints for the back door, grabs a mop she passes on the way just in case - back door pushes to open, she should've gone for that first, she's an idiot - not the time.

It gets loose.

Lily gets maybe within three feet from the door before it's on her, shattered arms reaching to grab her, the skull's mouth chattering open.

She swings the mop around. Tries to get the end in the thing's mouth - tries to hold it off, to make sure it at least pushes her toward the door.

She trips. Her back hits the door.

The mop shatters in its jaws.

It looms over her, mouth open, for a single long moment.

Lily bares her teeth, fear turning rapidly to rage.

It twitches, a little, black static dripping into reality -

And then everything she sees is green.

She falls.

She doesn't know for how long.

 

THE END

 

OF

CHAPTER

ONE

 

She doesn't lose continuity of experience.

Which makes dropping from the sky onto a cheap plastic bench - the same faux chairs as in the laundromat - without injuring herself at all -

Surreal. Her stomach's swooping around like she's falling, wind is rushing past her - it's nothing like falling in a dream, but, also, nothing like falling in reality.

Lily had been trying to prevent the fall from killing her. That - obviated entirely - she sits, stiff, and tries to get control of her breathing.

There's someone else here. A girl - a bit younger than Lily, maybe late high school, maybe a very weedy college student - standing about a dozen feet away. She looks about as startled as Lily feels.

"Hello?"

"...Hello."

"Where. Is this."

"Dunno."

"I think I'm dead? And the other two people here thought maybe they might be dead, too, so - possibly a very boring afterlife. So. Uh. Sorry."

"Oh."

"Okay."

So maybe the thing killed her. She doesn't feel dead, but. Who knows.

"Uh, what's - here - and where are the other two people?"

"First... Not much. We're in some kind of like, industrial courtyard. There's smoke stacks and gates, though I haven't been able to open any. But the air's been still, the sun hasn't moved even though I've been here several days, there's literally nothing but the three - four - of us, and whatever we appear on, and - "

"The other two are on a couch. They didn't fall, they just appeared, and - they're staring at something, and they can't move and never blink, but I can't see what they're looking at. They talk if spoken to, but - I think they struggle with it? They both died after me, and they both remember me dying."

" - They might've known something about you coming, they were shouting something earlier and stopped right before you fell out of the sky, but I didn't hear what."

"...Was a weird green light involved for anyone else? That's what I saw right before I - started falling."

"And some kind of weird undead monster right before that."

"The other two remember being brought to a place a lot like this, and being forced to look at something - I think they said something green, yeah, but it was like they were fading out - and then they were here. For me..."

She thinks - and flinches. "I - I don't know - "

She puts a hand to her head.

"...If this is some weird fiction shit that's going to cause an aneurysm if you think about it too hard - please don't."

Snort. "A dead person having an aneurysm. That'd be something."

"Yeah, well, the traditional alternative is - "

"...Is?"

" - Hey, something up?"

Nothing's up.

But she'd turned to face the girl more, and there's something - beautiful over there -

Lily stands and starts trying to get a better look.

"Hey, wait - that's where the other two've been stuck staring - stop - "

She tries to get in Lily's way.

She pushes the distraction out of the way. (She's stronger than she looks.)

She's normally strong, too, deceptively so - but her body moves aside as easily as pushing away paper. She doesn't fall over or anything, at least.

She does keep trying to stop Lily.

She doesn't hear.

What's she's looking at - it's so much more beautiful than mere reality. It's everything she's ever wanted, twisted together and revealed in the light. It's hers, and so too is shown how to get everything she could possibly ever want - if only she could see -

And everything she wants is reaching for her in turn. Of course she has to grasp it. Could she do anything else and remain herself? 

"You're bleeding!" she screams, helplessly, "Stop, you're bleeding, you're going to die - or worse - "

She can't see the cause of the bleeds. It's not information her mind will let her acknowledge exists in the same reality as her.

But her shirt and hands exist in her reality. She takes the shirt off, tearing it, and - she can't get in the other girl's way, but she needs to stop the bleeding -

She doesn't hear.

But there's something on her arm - annoying, how can she reach for everything she deserves, everything she desires, with a bandage on her arm? 

 — Bandage?

There's blood on her arm, at her feet. There's a girl trying to wrestle some semblance of a bandage over - over -

There's wires sticking through Lily's arms. No. Thicker. Cords? Or - tendrils - they won't focus in Lily's mind - black, and there's static dripping with the blood -

Everything beautiful and desirable is still in front of her. Still in reach even of her mutilated arm. She just needs to ignore the pain, just for a moment, needs to keep her eyes fixed on her goal - 

What sort of person will she be, if she turns back now?

— A person who exists —

She closes her eyes. 

(She'll claim it was easy, some day. She'll never know if that's true or not.)

"My power is my own!" she snarls, or something in her does, wild and furious and burning. 

And then her knees buckle. 

Oh thank fuck.

She drags the other girl the fuck away from the mysterious evil patch of air, hissing, "Close your eyes!" She needs to get something in between them, some visual barrier - there's basically just the couch, and it's far - her head swims briefly - she starts pressing her balled up shirt to the other girl's wounds, and then drags her behind the couch.

Her eyes were already closed, and, well, opening them won't be a problem.

She passes out.

Lily's Dream, Age 7

Lily's angry. She always is.

This time, she's angry because her parents are getting rid of her. They say they're not. She knows they are. Why else send her to some horrible town she can't find on a map, where there isn't even TV service, to stay with a man they've never once mentioned? 

They say he's her great-grandfather. That she should respect him and do what he says. Mother is tense the entire drive down, and Lily keeps the anger in her chest bottled up until it buzzes under her skin.

She hasn't even gotten to really bring anything. No books (her parents found out one of them was stolen from the library, so Lily lost book privileges), no games (she stole a Game Boy cartridge from a classmate two weeks ago), not even any music (she didn't even actually steal anything there, but her brother decided to lie; plotting her revenge has been her only source of entertainment that isn't staring out a window, since she's not allowed to talk while mother's driving).

Everything here looks poor and dusty and old, and Lily's skepticism rises. Her perfect rich mother is out of place, here, and her fancy city car is complaining about the pot holes and the dust.

But there'll be an old man on his porch, and her mom won't even get out of the car, and Lily won't turn around to say goodbye - 

An old man with wrinkles on his face like mountains, who looks like someone made him out of the dust. An old man who lives alone, joints swollen with arthritis but eyes keen beneath all the wrinkles, with grey coarse hair and threadworn clothes. A house with no AC, no TV - no electricity at all - and water from a well. A house where the only rule is no alcohol is to cross the property line. She hates it, she decides, before she gets out of the car.

She hates everything. 

(She'll wonder, months later, while she's seething with anger that her parents have decided to take her back, why they ignore him, why he lives here alone, abandoned by his family when he's spent his whole life fixing things. She'll be in his workshop, surrounded by the pieces of something she's repairing - she'd taken over all these finicky jobs, and she'd started to daydream about taking over the whole shop. She'd been learning how to use the register that last week, and no one minds if she's rude to customers. She'll be sitting cross-legged on the floor, and he'll be at the desk, and he'll look so, so sad, and say - Not a single one of us should have to say a single word to the people who've broken us, little dustbunny. And I hurt your grandmother more than anyone has.)

(She'll stare at him for several long moments, tools held loosely in her hand. And then she'll bend her head and go back to work, and she'll make dinner for him that night with vegetables the neighbor gave her when Lily helped carry in groceries, and when her parents come to take her away, she won't say a single word to them, not ever.)

(But that's then.)

This is now, and now it's several weeks into her stay, and she's scowling at a stupid broken radio because there's nothing to do here except poke things in her great-grandfather's shop. She got bored of stealing a couple days before. No one here reacts, not really. Her great-grandfather's sitting nearby, only half watching her, a weird level of inattention that feels like freedom, not neglect. 

"I wish you were here," she says, suddenly, picking up a piece and turning it over in her hands. He dies not very long after her parents steal her away, she knows that, but...

"I'm sorry I'm not, little dustbunny," he says, and his voice is as real as ever. Tired, and a little amused. "I'd like to be in your audience."

Turn. Turn. Turn. "I want you to fix it. Lots of stuff's broken here." She doesn't know at seven what's wrong with this stupid thing; she does at twenty, and her fingers travel of their own accord to repair it. "I think including me."

He looks pained. "I know," he says, voice raw.

"Can you tell me what to do?" she asks. "What the catch is, how to fix this?" She picks up another piece of the radio.

"No," he says. "No one can tell you that, little dustbunny. There's no shortcuts, here, no tricks with glue or thread. Not when something important's broken."

"Then what do I do?" she asks, hands tightening on something metal until pain shoots up her arm.

He's before her, then, kneeling in the midst of what had been a total mess the last time this happened. Then, the only thing she couldn't fix was a radio. His hands, large and dry and cracked, envelope hers.

"You get up, little dustbunny, and you give her hell," he says, and the metal thing slides out of her hand, leaving behind something - else - 

"Hey, wake up, come on - "

It's almost a mantra. She hasn't been able to stop the bleeding. Not really. She doesn't know why, and every moment's turned into an eternity while she's been trying.

"Please wake up - "

She does.

She feels horrible, and only somewhat because of the blood loss.

And because of the wire through her right arm. That's contributing pretty nastily to her feeling horrible. The end looks severed, covered in blood and laying trailing behind her back towards the - thing on the other side of the couch, but it's in sight, so. The other end, the one sticking out of her wrist, isn't, and she - knows, somehow - that it's still attached to the thing. It's buzzing, vibrating against the bones it's rubbing against.

It only passes through her arm twice, but -

The wire - her mind's trying to analyze what happened - the wire entered at the base of her palm, slides through and comes out her wrist, and she's not going to be able to bend it, not really - and then back through her forearm -

"You're awake. Thank fuck. C'mon, help me get the bleeding stopped, we need to press down on it..."

"The wire," she says, groggy. "It won't stop bleeding until the wire's out."

" - What wire?"

Oh. Of course.

"We're seeing different things," she says, awareness coming back a bit with the jolt of adrenaline. That idea shouldn't be as scary as it is, but... Lily relies a lot on her perception of reality functioning like it should. "I'm seeing a wire - thicker than that, a cable - through the holes in my arm. It's - making everything worse - "

She scowls down at the wounds, like that'll make the mystery cord appear. "Explains why I can't get the bandage in place - but I can't see it, so I don't know I can help remove it."

"I'll get it. You - get the bandages ready better." ...That's the girl's shirt. The girl is topless. Okay. "I have a knife in my pants pocket."

Deep breath. "Roger." She digs through Lily's pocket, as gently as she can, emerging with the kinda large pocket knife Lily carries around, and then starts cutting her shirt into strips, then scowls at the soaked fabric and stands to remove her pants and cut those up. She's trying to leave enough she'll still have shorts, but - stopping the bleeding's more important.

She puts together makeshift bandages pretty quickly.

Good, because Lily isn't waiting for her. She needs the thing out, blood loss or no. "It's gonna start bleeding more," she warns, as she moves to grab the wire, but -

There's something in her left hand. She glances at it, baffled, and -

That's her great-grandfather's screwdriver.

...She doesn't want to touch the wire, at all, but the screwdriver's handle is basically insulated -

She hooks the shank behind the wire. She'd expect this to be incredibly awkward, but it works okay. Then, to the other girl - "Ready - now - "

She yanks, and the wire slithers back through her arm.

She gets the bandage in place - she's made little pads, like makeshift gauze, to go over both wounds, and broad ties so she can pull it tight while hopefully not cutting off circulation just on a pin point.

"Wrist's more delicate," she says, "So you might wanna go slower." She still can't see the wire, but - she saw the screwdriver, and she saw how fast Lily moved, and how the wound distorted a little then started bleeding more.

"It's already fucked," she says, voice shaking. (That hurt.) "I - there's a big cord through it - "

But the cord was obviously small enough to avoid her bones, and - her fingers are tingling, but not too bad. Logically, she should remove it slowly and carefully.

She's going to need to touch it. There's no convenient loop on the other side, and it's already kind of a miracle yanking the bit in her arm out the way she did didn't already fuck up her wrist more.

She doesn't want to touch it. She especially doesn't want to touch it long enough to be careful.

...She cuts a strip out of her shirt and hands it to Lily. "Use this for insulation," she says.

" - What?"

"You just used a screwdriver to pull something in your arm out. I'm guessing it's bad to touch directly. So. Use this." She pushes the cloth at the girl again.

"Thanks," she says, numbly. (She could've asked before pulling out the part in her arm. She should've asked.)

She takes the fabric and grabs the cord with it. It's not so bad like this, and the fabric's tacky with her blood, which means it sticks okay.

And she starts to pull. Slowly.

It's grating against her bones, she thinks, the vibrations worsening. It hurts, and something worse and weirder than hurts, a screaming in the back of her teeth.

She keeps pulling. She pulls, constantly, unceasingly, until it's out.

It's a good thing she has someone here. She sways and nearly faints again, and she's definitely not fast enough to get a bandage on herself.

That's a lot of blood.

It's okay. She's here, and she's been holding the bandage ready and close since the other girl started pulling, and she's fast with it. She gets Lily's wounds covered.

Once the bandage is on - they're not bleeding as much as she'd been afraid they would. They haven't soaked through yet.

She prioritizes stopping the bleeding - and then goes to catch the other girl as she sways.

She leans, exhausted, shaky.

They - can't stay here.

Lily picks up her great-grandfather's screwdriver again and puts it in her pocket. "My knife?" she asks.

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.

She sighs, relieved, when the tangerine doesn't seem to immediately cause Lily to pass out or act weird.

"...We should get those blinds open, on that window," she says, gesturing behind her. "See if the area with all the beets has changed, too."

"Risky," she says. "But - yeah. Keep me in the corner of your eye?"

"Roger."

She stands with her back to the window - against the wall beside the desk, so she can see Lily's expression without looking at the window too much.

And she rolls up the blind.

Sunlight spills into the room. The world outside looks real - the light's bright, and the sun's on the horizon behind the buildings, and from the birds she's guessing it's dawn. She can't see much - they'd walked up a few steps to get in here, and the windowsill is high up, but... It looks normal. Everything does. A busy hum of life.

Nothing fascinating. Nothing like before.

"Looks fine," she says.

She turns and peers out, gaze jumping around far more intently than the other girl's had. "There's people out there," she says, suddenly, and -

There's a noise from a door - one across from the wall with the calendar, an interior door they'd registered but not thought too much of -

She tenses and turns.

Lily does the same.

The door slams open, revealing a heavyset white woman holding a box. Her clothes are old fashioned, and she looks like the woman in the picture Lily saw.

She's also very surprised to see them, but she doesn't let that stop her long, launching into rapid, accented French - asking what they're doing here - where are your clothes you're practically naked, close the window girl - is that blood? What happened?

...Lily rolls down the blind and doesn't say anything. 

She responds almost immediately in just as rapid French. Her accent's textbook perfect the first few words - then shifts quickly to fall into sync with the woman's accent, at least a bit.

Her friend got hurt, and the clothes got bloody, and she made a bandage from her clothes, but she wasn't very good at it so a lot got wasted - her friend needs water and sugar and medicine, pretty urgently, the wound looked bad -

The woman's pushy, conversationally, barely leaving any gaps for other people to talk in - but the girl can hedge her way in successfully. She gets out a first aid kit, and shoos the girl out toward the back room with an admonishment to get clothes and instructions on where the sink is, and get a wash basin while you're in there, and some cloths, the coarse ones.

She'll just - go do that, then?

Yes, yes, go.

She keeps ranting, about safety now - over a hundred days with no accidents, a personal best, and then the factory is closed, and she's having to deal with scrapes instead of setting up, and she told them to make sure the staging area was safe, did those idiots leave a hook or something lying around - she gets out her supplies and commandeers Lily's arm, carefully removing the fabric. The blood's dried on it, and she's leary of opening the slowly forming scabs - but it's kind of inevitable. They weren't very stable scabs yet.

She feels very abandoned. 

Her French is crisp, awkward. A thing of formal school rooms and rare brief conversations if someone doesn't speak any English, not anything really chatty. Still - they need information. 

"Something strange happened to me and my friend," she interjects into a brief pause in the ramble. "Something strange is going to happen here, today."

Does she technically know that? No. Is it pretty obvious? Yes.

"Nothing strange will happen today, no matter what stories people have been sharing. It's all sound scientific principle - we'll be turning on one little lightbulb. You'd think more people would be glad of getting a day's pay just to look at a little thing to help with the experiment..."

"Oh. How's the lightbulb work, then?"

...When in doubt, play along.

"It's very complicated, but - well, the version with a lot less math is that we influence things just by viewing them. There's no such thing as a neutral observer, and some things are influenced a bit differently by observation from other things. I've found one that makes electricity like for light bulbs, and I'm confirming it still works at this size. It's very safe - fifty people will make only a little energy."

She looks at the edges of Lily's wounds and frowns. "These need to be cleaned, they look hours old - you should've gotten medical care sooner - where's that friend of yours?"

"Here," she says, voice soft, from behind the woman. "I have water and cloth."

(She's been watching them the last minute or so. Listening.)

"Give that here," she commands, then starts cleaning Lily's wounds with a professional touch. The antiseptic she's using - seems to be distilled alcohol - stings horribly. She keeps rambling about the experiment while she works - she'd normally just use a galvanometer, to get proper data, but, well, the girls know her husband - he's quite the showman, and he wanted something nice and impressive and symbolic. A lightbulb, to represent the new age. All very nice poetic things, though she thinks it can get a bit silly (she says, very fondly) - the man even went and got some gel from the theater, a kind they use for props, to put over the lightbulb so it won't just be a normal 'dull white light.' And, well, a physicist he may not be, but he's a very good salesman, and if he thinks this will help get her attention for her experiment and then more funding...

And then to suggesting the girl see a doctor, this wound looks nasty...

(She's been very quiet since returning. She gave the woman the washbasin and cloth, gave the other girl a cup of water and another piece of fruit, and - she's put a long coat over herself. Her legs are still bare, but something about it... It helps her fade into the background a bit. She's watching, still.)

Lily's been quiet too.

Things are starting to connect. To resonate.

"That light," she cuts in with, voice firm. "The cover for it. It's green, isn't it? A bright green, like limes."

She pauses in putting her medical kit back together and turns slowly to evaluate Lily, like she's seeing her for the first time. And then, voice soft, slow: "How in the hell did you know a thing like that?"

Lily sets her jaw, expression firm.

"You don't work here at all, do you."

It's not a question.

"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."

" - What? No, my nose started bleeding when we stepped through, it's not - "

Didn't it? Why hasn't she wiped it off...

"I'm fine."

Her head hurts, too.

"...I didn't notice. Sorry." She should have.

"It's fine." She rubs at the dried blood a bit. It flakes off. "Has anything changed in the room?"

"No, I don't see anything new..."

"...But."

In bold, tarry letters on the window -

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

"Was that writing there before?"

"I - no, it can't have been - "

Her nose starts bleeding again. A few little drips.

"...But we saw it, and thought - someone wrote that, someone who hasn't been caught - "

"And there's only one way to find out if they're friendly."

She holds her nose closed until the bleeding stops. It doesn't seem too bad...

"Two timelines. One with the writing, one without. And - they're colliding in our heads."

"The collision happened when we snapped back here."

"Yeah."

"So."

"No more changing the past."

She laughs suddenly. "Just like that?"

"Just like that, as easy as one two three."

"We'll find a closet to hide in next time."

Giggle. 

"Well, if it's 1911 again, at least no one will know to comment on us coming out of it."

"We'll leave it out of the story later. Closet jokes do get old."

Small blush. But... "Dunno I have anyone to tell that story to."

Lean.

"Well - if you have any bizarre adventures when I'm not there... You'll have me."

"Just like that?"

"I think the point where you've timetraveled half naked with someone is the point where you're officially friends."

"Maybe so."

"Speaking of... C'mon. I don't want to sit around in here now..."

"...Yeah."

And up?

Up!

She manages to stay steady on her feet, at least.

Always good.

She detangles from the other girl, but only slowly, and she keeps her hand near hers.

Having the girl next to her still is... Weirdly reassuring, actually.

She straightens her clothes - then -

"My knife and screwdriver are gone."

"Could they have fallen out?"

"I mean, these are women's pants, so, the answer is 'it's a miracle they ever fit.'"

"Let's find them, then. And also get you some cargo pants."

"Unless you happened to see a ghostly department store anywhere..."

"Can't say I have."

She starts searching the floor - under things - weird implausible places -

But finds no tools.

She glances on the desk first pass, then - 

"There's a hole in the calendar."

A deep one, a circle punched right over the '17' day, swallowing it. Lily steps closer, and... It goes all the way into the wall.

"Want me to stand over here in case something jumps out at you?"

"Sounds good."

Now - what's in the hole?

- Her pocket knife. No screwdriver. But, in the back... A crumpled up piece of paper.

"Well, found my knife."

She retrieves that and the paper, unfolding it carefully.

It's incredibly small, a thin strip with a single line written in pen - in the same handwriting she saw while snooping.

L. Do not cross own history. Back bad, forward worse. Events lock. t = ψ - J

"...I think it's from that woman. Josephine." (Her name had been on some papers.)

"Don't cross our own history - if we go forward, events lock. And an equation, but - I don't get it."

"Can I see?"

She nods and hands it over.

"So... Math symbols get reused a lot, and what each means can be context dependent, but..."

"Pretty sure given the context we have - that t is for time, and the Greek letter would be a wave function. That's not, like, really an equation though, so I think she's just saying that class of equations applies? Or 'time is a wave' type thing."

"...I do not know physics."

She smiles a little. "Sorry. Have you ever heard of Schrödinger's cat?"

"Uh, in a poorly explained high school physics class. Something about how if you haven't seen something for yourself, and it could have two different states, then until you observe it both are true. So the cat's both alive and dead."

"...Kind of. Anyways, that was a thought experiment making fun of a rival interpretation of quantum mechanics, it's not directly related. But Schrödinger's equation was the first thing that popped into my head looking at that - though that isn't, like, actually that equation, it just has the same symbols."

"...It's quantum mechanics, pretty much."

"Well, that's literally all Greek to me. I'll just hand any time machines to you, how about?"

"I'll brush up on my practical engineering, then."

Snort.

"Anyways - I get the feeling my screwdriver isn't here, or - it isn't here and now."

"Yeah. Sorry."

"Thanks."

"It was - a weird dream screwdriver, I didn't have it before I passed out. So maybe it's just... Stopped being real."

That idea makes her weirdly sad.

"...You know, equations or not, I'm increasingly sure this isn't running on physics."

"You're just now thinking that?"

"I did say increasingly."

She huffs out a laugh. "Fair enough."

Smile.

Then: "...Are we heading back into the courtyard?"

"...I think we have to."

"I want to try getting out of here, and... That's where I entered."

"You fell out of the sky."

"Do we have a way up?"

"Don't think so."

"...What if we just left, normally?"

"I couldn't get through any of the doors or gates, but - you could, and that window opens onto the courtyard. If it won't open - it's just glass, and there's heavy things here."

She really, really doesn't want to go back in the courtyard. So.

"Worth a try."

"I can try, if you want to step back."

"...Think I'd rather be jumped at by some unknown than be too near this door, honestly."

"Fair enough."

She raises the blinds, then - the courtyard full of sugar beets looks the same as it did through the gate, and...

The window slides open without any issues. She leans out and looks down. "It's only a bit of a fall - about two meters, I think?"

"I can jump that."

She nods.

"Let's get supplies together - and maybe leave a rope out the window? In case we learn we actually do need to go back the other way."

"We'll see what we can find."

The most useful stuff's probably in that store room, though Lily does want to take the medical kit Josephine had been using earlier... Josephine hadn't exactly gotten to firmly securing her dressings, so, that's also a priority... A bag of some description would be convenient, and obviously they need a rope...

Some way to carry water, too - the stuff out of the tap seems to be potable still - but it's a really full store room. They can assemble a good variety of things.

Lily gets the makeshift rope secured inside, then tosses it out the window. "I think I'm more comfortable with jumping than you," she says. "I'll go first."

"I'll try not to fall on your head when I'm coming down."

"Thanks. Though I'll catch you if you do."

They've dug up two packs - Lily takes both down with her, sets them aside, then straightens and stands somewhat under the window. "Ready."

"Here goes..."

She gets a bit of vertigo, but - gets out of the window just fine.

Good.

The loading area is - she can see the road out of the factory entirely if she takes just a few steps.

And she can see where it all ends in a haze of white.

She can, too.

"Keep going?"

"Let's get to the edge, at least. See if - it changes at all."

"Okay."

She walks, a bit slowly, in step beside the other girl.

The edge of the world doesn't recede. Doesn't define. It's just - a soft white emptiness, like a blank page.

There's nothing beyond the gates out of the factory, nothing at all.

"...We should poke it."

"Maybe with a stick, or... We can tie a pebble to a string, toss it out and see if we can get it back..."

"Stick first."

The world's entirely devoid of animals, but - not plants, and while there aren't exactly ornamental bushes here, weeds are stubborn things. She finds something with a sufficiently woody stem, and -

Pokes the nothing.

The stem vanishes into the white, at the same sharp point as everything else. It meets no resistance, but - the feel of it changes a bit.

It's lighter, and when she pulls it back, the end of it is sheered clean off.

"...Ah."

"So..."

"Jump into a thing that's probably going to cut us into bits or - dissolve us or something - or. Try to find another way."

"Or go back into the courtyard."

She makes a face. "Or go back into the courtyard."

She laughs.

She shouldn't. It's not really all that funny. But.

"Nothingness it is, then?"

Smile. "I am already dead."

"...Maybe we both are. And this was just - "

"Waiting."

"I'll lodge a complaint if it was. That was a dumb enough twist when Lost did it."

She laughs, louder than she has before. "Good to know you've got taste."

Grin.

"So. How're we doing this?"

Everything else they've poked one at a time, with the other out of the probable blast radius. It seemed safer.

Nothing about this part is safe, is it.

"Hold hands and take a running jump? Don't think I've lost too much blood for that."

"Sounds - right, to me."

She holds her hand out to the other girl. "We keeping the packs?"

She takes the hand, holding tight.

"Yeah. Might be useful, still."

Sharp nod.

And - back up.

And run.

She falls into step with the other girl, jumps at the same moment -

Falling into nothingness doesn't hurt, at least. It doesn't feel like anything at all.

 

THE END

 

OF

CHAPTER

TWO

 

And Lily wakes up.

Her back's against the rear exit. Her hip hurts from where she fell - her shoulder -

Her arm is screaming at her. It's bandaged, still, just like it was, but there's no pack on her -

She's alone.

The laundromat is empty. The mud still on the floor - no sign of the monster - the laundry machine on its side -

There's a clock in her line of sight. She'd glanced at it, briefly, incidentally, forever ago, while she was getting her forgotten coffee (it's on the floor, glass shattered, coffee in a puddle around it).

It'd been two nineteen - basically at two twenty - and that'd been a little bit before the machine started. Acting up. Before she'd tried to run. That hadn't been long.

The clock says it's two twenty, nearly exactly.

Time hasn't passed.

And there's no sign of the girl she met in the - other place -

She doesn't have very long to freak out.

The front door opens.

The boy - the one who works here - is standing in the door, and he looks surprised.

Only for a moment, though.

Then he looks angry.

"I told you not to touch anything."

She gets to her feet. "I didn't. Your undead monster - "

"Don't you dare call her that."

He closes the door behind him. Locks it.

Lily doesn't wait for the click.

She slams into the exit - it has a push bar, it's easy - and she runs.

There's an alleyway, and then a little circle of dirt - and a steep slope plunging from that into a dig site, a massive square sunk into the ground in preparation for future development. It's nearly pure mud, and there's machines scattered about, a single trailer-office pushed back from the edge of a massive hole in the middle - and a single exit, a slightly less steep ramp out that ends at a locked gate in the wire fence that curls around the entire site.

She can climb fences.

That's an awful lot of open space, but - hopefully the dude doesn't have a gun.

She flings herself down the slope as fast as she can without injuring herself.

And into - something.

A body. Bones with sinews of nightmare, a cracked human skull turned to stare at her. It's grown, in some ways, the rope-like not-flesh bubbling around the bones, but - the skeleton's still the same. Still the monster that attacked her.

It's entirely inert.

Lily doesn't mind gross.

She should've kept running.

She does.

But first - she spends far, far too long staring at that skull, a sick feeling in her gut.

The man appears to be pursuing her. The door clangs open, slams shut.

Yeah. Hence: run.

But her hip's hurt, and her arm's screaming, and her head is - something's wrong with it, but she can't stop - and her chest hurts in a way that has nothing to do with the air she can't get -

She's not as fast as she needs to be, and she realizes that within a few seconds.

She flings herself out of the line of sight of the end of the alley, gets behind a backhoe that'd been off to the side - there's enough plausible places she could've hidden closer to the alley that hopefully he won't find her immediately, and this one was kind of awkward to get to and nearly at the edge of her range - she barely reached it, actually.

He pauses at the exit, and - doesn't, actually, immediately look for her.

He's too busy staring at the crumpled form at the base of the ramp.

Convenient for her.

The cab door's locked, but not well - Lily gets it open, carefully, quietly, and - checks he's not over near her - opens the door and slips in. It looks in good condition.

Lily closes the door behind her, crouches down in the wheel well, and pulls out her knife. There's no keys, so, she's going to need to hot wire this...

She's never stolen heavy machinery before, but - the basic principle is similar, and this looks like a pretty damn old piece of equipment, and her pocket knife has a lot of other tools...

She absolutely does not have the right tools for this - she explores the cab a bit anyways -

...And finds a drill.

There's a sticky note on it.

Further instructions in the obvious place.

You're welcome, by the way.

-P12

It's in her hand writing.

...Fucking timetravel.

Maybe - maybe the version of her going by P12 (is that a - timeline? Someone she'll be?) knows where the girl from the not-place is -

(Lily hates fooling herself. Hates trying to hope.)

Whatever.

The 'obvious place'...

Yeah, she can see where she'd hide notes in here. The panel's held in place by screws, and she dropped her screwdriver - the drill's going to make noise if she turns it on, her best hope with the actual hot wiring would be moving quickly -

She might have to bail. She needs whatever message, first.

There's no convenient screwdriver she can find. So... Using the powered-off drill as the world's most awkward screwdriver it is.

The panel comes away easily. The screws were loose, and it only takes her a single turn to get them to where she can remove them by hand.

There's an envelope inside. Not a big one, and a note attached to it - 

You're unlikely to get out of here.

Hide this note, the envelope's contents, and your screwdriver as well as you can. He can't find them.

Keep your arm covered.

He's going to chain you to a gas pipe. The ceiling is unstable.

It will fall at 2:57

And then a scribble. Words scratched out in haste, the way she does when she's doubting herself in her few attempts at keeping a journal.

She tries to feel the original words between her fingers, but - no dice, and she'll need a light source to read them.

The envelope, then - it has a watch, a cheap plastic one, and a thick paperclip.

...Why not keys, or better lock picking tools?

Whatever.

She uses the scissors on her pocket knife to cut a little gash in the fabric of her bra and slides the paperclip inside that. Then... The watch, original sticky note, and 'further instructions' note can all go in the envelope, which... She guesses has to tuck into the other side of her bra. She didn't wear her 'running away from magic assholes' clothes today.

She tucks the pocket knife in her bra, too, after some thought. It's getting a bit crowded in there.

She's going to replace her entire wardrobe with clothing with interior pockets after this. Ones that have zippers.

She picks up the drill - checks for dude, but the coast's clear (she thinks) - and takes a deep breath, and starts on breaking the ignition switch.

It's loud.

But she's fast, and she gets it - drops the drill, rises into the seat as she reaches for the ignition -

The glass to her right shatters, and something surges through it -

A different something than the earlier monster. It looks like someone interpolated several mummies, soaked them in mud, dragged them back out -

And it's very, very fast and very, very strong.

P12 could've fucking warned her!!!

She throws an arm up to shield her face reflexively - and loses her moment to escape.

The thing surges over her, soft wet arms - unyielding arms - reaching to trap her.

She fights back. Of course she does - but she doesn't have much to fight back with, and her fighting skills are the schoolyard tussle kind. Hit fast, hit hard, hit somewhere sensitive - 

The thing doesn't feel pain, apparently. 

It drags her out of the backhoe.

And pins her in front of the man. He stares are her, clearly angry, and says -

"Knock her out."

A hand closes over her mouth and nose.

It won't budge, no matter how hard she struggles.

This is - bad.

(He's going to chain you to a gas pipe...)

She goes limp after a believable amount of time, feigns unconsciousness. 

'A believable time' isn't particularly far in advance of when she'll really pass out, though.

The thing holds on until she does.

This sucks.

She sinks into unconsciousness. 

As promised -

She wakes up. There's a metal cuff on her right wrist.

Conveniently lax. 

She keeps her eyes closed, her breathing slow and even, and she listens. 

"You awake?" someone asks her in a low tone. The woman's voice is hoarse, a little, cracking some. 

...Possible enemy? The note hadn't mentioned anyone else, but, Lily knows herself. 

She cracks her eyes open and peers at the woman. 

She peers back.

"He got you, too?"

(She appears to be in a handcuff, too - the other side of Lily's, actually. The chain loops behind the pipe, where it can't just be slid off.)

That reminds her about all the horrible goop drying on her body.

"...Ugh. Yeah." 

She looks around - they're in a basement, a giant hole in the ground and wall across from them, stairs to the right... Leaning pillars, cracks in the walls -

She doesn't know what time it is - she scrambles for her bra, the watch first - the ceiling will fall at 2:57, she remembers that, it's 2:53 - she needs the paperclip, but it's slipped pretty deeply into the lining - 

"There's something above us, shining some kind of green light around," she whispers. "I think it's been getting closer... And we're chained to a gas pipe and that ceiling is very, very unstable."

"No fucking kidding - oh come the fuck on," she murmurs - and then, finally, she gets a good grip on the paperclip without dropping it.

Her bra is somewhat destroyed on that side, but, whatever. 

She starts picking the lock on her own cuff.

She squints over at the other girl. "You get chained up a lot?"

"Usually the one doing the chaining," she murmurs, and - hah! 

The lock clicks, and the handcuffs come undone.

She muffles a laugh. "Maybe you can show me some tricks," she teases.

...Is everyone here a weirdo.

Whatever, they need to get out ASAP -

That might he a bit complicated, what with the way the door bangs all the way open, and a thing - the skeleton, its movements jerky like an old film with every third frame removed - it drags itself, skittering, down the stairs.

It's fast - too fast, it crashes into the bookcase - it's already rolling, about to lunge - 

(A very, very loud crack echoes from above their heads.)

She freezes a moment too long.

And the other woman throws her over her shoulder and sprints for the hole.

She - somehow - manages to jump into it ahead of the lunging monster - just as the building collapses over them.

They fall.

Lily's Dream, Age 16

The concrete under her is cold and a little uneven, and her thighs are going alternatively numb and angry. She's only in shorts, and - that's dumb, even in the early fall, if she plans to spend this long sitting on the ground. 

She hadn't actually been planning to do that. She'd been planning on going into the library in front of her, getting on their computers...

" - Hey."

She glances up, then - 

"You're alive."

Her voice cracks, even though she doesn't want it to. 

"As much as a ghost can be."

She sits by the other girl.

"So - looks like we got out of there okay, but..."

"This is one of my memories," she says. "Last time I fell unconscious - I dreamed about my great-grandfather. This time..." She stares at the library. 

She looks, too, but watches the other girl out of the corner of her eye.

"That good or bad?"

"Dunno."

"It was the first step on running away."

Serious nod.

"Have you gotten all the way out, yet?"

"Not really."

"They're still alive, and I can't get a restraining order, and - I can't get a needs-based scholarship for university since their income's high, and they won't give me a penny if I don't let them dictate everything about my life. I got a merit scholarship, but... It doesn't cover all my school fees, let alone my apartment."

"So. That sucks."

"They harass me, sometimes - usually through other people, and they spy on me."

"Want me to angrily haunt them?"

She snorts. "What?"

"Being a ghost has to be good for something. I'll want a refund if not."

She giggles. "I think you should ask for the refund anyways."

"...Yeah."

She hesitates a moment, then...

Companionable lean?

Lean.

She sits like that for a little bit, but -

Thunder crackles overhead. 

"I need to go in soon," she says. "I stop debating with myself around now."

"Okay."

"Want company?"

Her body follows the script even if her mouth won't. She stands, bounces a bit to get feeling back in her legs.

"I would," she says, gaze fixed on the library. "I don't want you to vanish again."

"I don't think I vanished, but... I'm dead out there, in the now."

She stands, too.

"I think I've seen your body."

"Or."

"The horror show version of it." 

Small lean?

Her body won't start walking until the first few drops hit her, so, yeah. Lean is good.

"Something weird is going on. I think - I'm timetraveling. There was a note from some other me when I tried to run from the laundromat dude, and - "

"Your skeleton, but. Wrong. Has been - around."

"It attacked me and sent me to the place I met you."

Thunder crackles, and a raindrop hits her nose. Lily's face scrunches up of its own accord and, inevitably, she starts to walk to the library's front door.

"Jake."

"My older brother."

"That's - he works at the laundromat."

"The monster in the courtyard promised me my deepest desires," she says, softly.

And her hand opens the door. There's no library beyond, just somewhere too dark to see.

"And it only gave him my bones."

"I guess so."

She walks in.

The other girl follows her into the dark.

 

THE END

 

OF

CHAPTER

THREE

 

She wakes up alone, in the mud and darkness. She's freezing.

" - Kid? Kid! Where are you, fuck - "

Or not.

She laughs for some reason. Her voice cracks in the middle of it.

"Not a kid."

"Oh thank fuck, you're awake."

"Where are you, and did hyper preparedness include a light?"

"Dunno where I am..." She sits up and reaches out. "Next to some rubble?"

"And next time I timetravel I'll take not carrying emergency lights with me up with myself."

She snorts. "An excellent use of timetravel."

"There's a lot of rubble here, though, don't mess with it - I think it's all unsteady."

"Did the entire building come down?" She tries to stand without disturbing the rubble too much, then. She needs to get out of the mud.

"Think so. We're lucky it all missed us."

She nods, then realizes the woman can't see her and instead makes an agreeing noise.

And her bandages, never well secured, much abused, and now thoroughly soaked, slip just a little bit off her palm.

Green light flares around her, sickening, radiating from the holes in her hand.

It highlights tiny spiderweb cracks in the air.

" - Did you have a light after all?"

She doesn't respond, just stares at the holes in reality where her puncture wounds should be. (It's not even sparing her 'having puncture wounds' - her hand hurts, still, bone deep, and the skin around the holes is very, very badly inflammed.)

"Kid? What's up - "

"...Does the air look weird to you, too."

Green light flicks along the edge of one of the cracks.

"Yeah. It looks... Broken."

"So either it's real or we're both hallucinating. That's just excellent."

She laughs a bit, startled.

"I think some timetraveling me came through for us," she says, a bit hysterically.

"...It doesn't sound like you're entirely joking."

"I'm not."

"Close your eyes, okay? I dunno if this light is safe to look at."

"...Okay. Eyes closed."

"Will you be alright?"

"Hopefully... I've - already looked too close, before."

"...I'd like an explanation at some point."

"Yeah, fair."

"Once I'm over to you and've gotten this covered - or another light figured out..."

"Alright."

"Stumbling around with my eyes shut won't be fun."

"I'll try to figure something out..."

"Try quick. That rubble's been shifting - staying here's not safe."

Yeah Lily's noticed the numerous tripping hazards, and the groans, and the way the sticky mud oozes whenever there's a rumble or a groan or a creak.

So.

She'll move quick, as much as she can through mud that smells burnt, sickly sweet, that gloops around her hips. It's making her a bit nauseous. 

After another minute she figures out that covering just the back of her hand turns the light into something more like a focused beam, because clearly that makes sense, and - "Can you keep talking? Or - sing or something, I can't see very far."

"Uh..."

So she starts to sing. She has a really good voice, though metal songs probably weren't intended for these sorts of circumstances. 

"In the shadow awaits a desire

"But you know that you can't realize

"And the pressure will just keep on rising

"Now the heat is on..."

"...What song is that - ?"

" - Ack, don't interrupt like that, now I'll have to start over..."

"Sorry."

"It's fine."

"A metal band I like released a new album like, only three months ago, I've been listening to basically nothing else since, so..."

"Oh. Cool."

"Uh."

"I'll stop interrupting..."

"Thanks."

She starts back up.

She only twtches a little at the song (especially the 'Even though you don't know what the price is/ It is justified' part).

She's a bit glad when the woman moves to the next song, but, well. She wasn't kidding about being really into this band.

Luckily, it only takes Lily until the end of the second song to find her. (Unluckily, these are weirdly long songs.)

"Got you," she says. "I'm still only using the freaky dangerous light, so, uh."