There was no way to judge it, but Laila felt certain that that was the longest, most tortuous event yet, setting her entire body numb, and then a tingling sensation began coruscating through her as soon as she thought it. Opening her eyes became a task in itself and when blurred images started to come into focus, she saw drops of blood upon the floor where she lay. All that became forgotten when her mind erupted into focus, thinking only of Maria, and she looked up to see her hand, fingers gripping tight to another hand and she practically dragged herself and Maria together, almost colliding their heads as they kissed.
Both of them ran their hands and eyes over each other, checking to see that they had emerged uninjured and only then did sounds snap back into their hearing, the doleful wailing of the siren rising and falling, but beginning to fade. They laughed into each other's faces and Maria wiped away the blood running from Laila's nose, mirroring the two streaks like two tears falling from Maria's. This time, though, blood crept from Maria's ears, too, and though Laila had no medical expertise at all, she considered that blood from the ears and nose could not be a good thing.
"Wait. Shush!" Maria pressed fingers against Laila's lips, even though she hadn't said a thing. Not yet, at least. "Can you hear that?"
Laila swatted Maria's hand away from her mouth and narrowed her eyes as she listened, but her ears still hummed with the resonating sounds that had caused so much pain and heralded their passage back in time again, probably, but, at that moment, they had no way to tell. She looked around and the building, the armoury, looked little different to before. Maybe not quite as dirty. Lighter. Then she did hear it, but Maria had already started to move, her injury seeming forgotten for the moment.
She followed as Maria crept back into the warehouse, drawing the pistol from its holster and slowly, quietly, pulling back the hammer. She moved like a cat, making no more noise than one and Laila felt like a blundering bull elephant in comparison, but she could hear they were getting close to the sound. A moaning, with indistinct words interspersed. When Maria whipped around a set of crates, bringing the pistol to bear, Laila expected her to fire, but she didn't and Laila poked a hesitant head around the crates to find a young man, curled into a ball, rocking back and forth.
"Hey. Hey. It's okay. It's over." She slipped between Maria and the man, wondering if she should touch him, then settled for patting him on the head. "There, there."
The man scuttled backward with a yelp and, for some reason, he looked awfully familiar to Laila, terrified eyes flashing between Laila and Maria before focussing only at the gun that Maria pointed at him. With stuttering movements, he lifted his hands in surrender. He looked as though he had cried more than Laila had, streaks of tears tracing down his cheeks, but he looked unharmed. Reaching out, Laila tried to get Maria to lower the gin, but she wasn't having any of it.
"How many others in here?" She made an aggressive step forward. "How many?"
"None. No-one. They're all gone. They're all ..." His lip began to tremble and Laila started to feel a little pride in herself for not reacting as badly. Of course, he might have experienced worse than her. Might have. "First the Japs just ... appeared. We pushed the Japs from this hellhole last year! They just came from nowhere, killing folk. Then the others ... oh, god! The others!"
He began to wail again, hands gripping his head, digging in nails so hard that beads of blood began to dribble from his hairline. He made incomprehensible noises, shaking his head, eyes wild and never stopping from moving this way and that. Maybe he had experienced worse, after all. Whatever had happened had clearly broken the man's mind and he started rocking once again, saliva dripping from the corner of his mouth. And still he looked familiar.
"I know you!" She fell to her knees in front of him, pulling his arms away from his face and tilting up his chin. "You just got married! I saw your photo. Your wife is super-hot."
"Laila!" Maria growled and Laila shot her a glance. "Inappropriate."
"It is? Oh, right. It so is. Sorry. She's pretty. And you looked ... male." She shrugged her shoulders at Maria, before looking back at the man. "Listen ... what's your name?"
"Anders. Chief ... Chief Petty Officer Anders. Gale Anders." Trembling, the man looked as though he had started to calm down. "You know my wife?"
"No. I just saw the picture? In your locker. Long story. Listen, this experiment thing you've got going on here?" She nodded and Anders copied her, frowning. "Well, it's totally gone wrong, okay? Like, it has gone catastrophically wrong and we need to stop it. Do you know how? To stop it, that is."
For some reason, that seemed to confuse Anders and his frown deepened even more. Once again, he cast his eyes between Laila and Maria and the gun, but, this time, it was as though he realised that something wasn't quite right. He started to lift himself up, grabbing a nearby crate, and began to shake his head.
"You shouldn't be here. This is a secret facility. I have to ... I have to ..." He looked around and then down, realising he had a gun at his waist, hands falling to it.
Laila almost felt the crack herself as Maria struck Chief Petty Officer Anders on the temple and he dropped like a stone back to the floor, collapsed into an awkward ball against the crate. Before Laila could even say anything to Maria, the pilot had turned away, back to the crate she had opened in the future, now closed, and cracked it open once again. But that was wrong, because the crate was firmly closed when Maria had opened it before. They had changed things and Laila couldn't imagine what that could mean for the future, she wasn't that smart.
"We don't have time to mess around with that. Grab a gun. There's nothing to it, just point anywhere but at me and squeeze the trigger. Anywhere but at me!" Maria thrust one of those guns she seemed to like into Laila's hands, pointing the barrel away from her, before moving to another crate. "It sounds like things have gone a little crazy here since we last came. We can use that. Look for explosives. Detonators. If we have time, we can stop this here, before it messes things up in the future."
"But what about us?" Laila tugged at Maria's elbow, turning her around. "If you blow it up now, what happens to us?"
"I don't know. It'll change the future. Maybe we get on that plane and it doesn't crash. Maybe we never ..." Maria blinked, pausing, before turning away to continue searching crates. "I don't know. Maybe nothing."
"But ..." This was hard. Laila didn't think all that often, especially not about complex things like this. She struggled to find the words. "If we change the past, stop whatever happens to our plane happening, won't that mean we won't be here to change the past and it'll all happen again?"
That made her brain hurt. Maybe even more than getting dragged into the past by some weird, freaky malfunctioning machine. She would never forgive Maria for making her think! But it was true, wasn't it? If they weren't on the island in the first place, how could the thing get blowed up? It stood to reason. Didn't it? She could see that it had caused Maria to think, too, but she was probably more used to thinking, being a pilot. Still, she didn't stop searching the rows and rows of crates. To be certain, Laila put the lid back on that first crate and tried her best to hammer the nails down.
"Alright. I just ... I just thought if we could stop it before most of the bad stuff happened ..." Maria looked back to see the legs of Chief Petty Officer Anders still sticking out from between two crates. "... if we could stop the bad stuff after now, then maybe you might have made it to your gig after all."
The crate in front of Maria opened with a cracking, snapping sound and she leaned in, other hand clutching her side as she rummaged inside. That sounded nice, but even Laila had to realise that if they changed even that much, she would never have even spoken to Maria. She wouldn't have even been 'The Pilot' because Laila wouldn't have even given her that much thought. It would mean they would never have met, not properly. Never have come to know each other. Never have kissed.
No. Laila wasn't having that. That was not happening, no matter how awful things were on this island, she would not give up knowing Maria. Not now. Not ever. No matter if she lost fans for it. Not even if she lost sales! And that little realisation came as more of a shock to her than anything. She would gladly not earn quite as much money for Maria and though it would sound like nothing, pathetic amounts, to someone else, if they knew her, truly knew her, they would now much of a major change in her personality that was. She never knew, she might gain more followers due to Maria.
"Forget the gig." She hefted the gun that Maria had given her, almost dropping it and more than likely looking very much like she didn't know what she was doing with it. "Let's use this time to find the controls and then wait to go back to our own time to finish this."
"That sounds like a plan. A goddamn awful plan, but it's all we've got." Maria smiled before making a circling motion with her finger. "Turn around, princesita. You're carrying the things that go boom."
Laila began to protest, but she knew Maria wouldn't put her in danger. At least, not if she had any other choice. That didn't sound comforting and she scolded her own mind for adding that little snippet of thought. She felt Maria repacking the backpack, reaching around to thrust a bottle of water into her hand before rummaging more stuff around. And all the while, the pack got heavier and heavier to the point where Laila wasn't certain she could carry it all.
Once filled, Maria returned to Laila's front, tightened the straps on her shoulders and fastened the belt around her waist. That made it a little more comfortable, but no lighter. Maria snapped a magazine into the gun, pulled a thing that made the gun click and then swapped that gun for the one Laila held and repeated the entire process. She had more of those magazines in her pants pockets and the pouches on her belt.
"Do I really need this?" She lifted the gun and Maria pushed the barrel to point at the ground. "I doubt I'll hit anything."
"So do I. Just shoot above heads, make a lot of noise, stay down. This? This is the safety. Do not touch it until I say! Nu-uh! Not until I say. And do not shoot at me." That sounded a little redundant. Maria had already told her not to shoot her. Maria pointed the barrel away. Again. "Are you ready for this?"
"Not at all." She tried to smile, to make it funny, but she wasn't certain how funny all this could possibly be. "How long before the siren goes off again, do you think?"
"Either not soon enough, or far too early. Whichever one we don't want it to be." Maria had started moving toward the door. "He said they were all gone, but he was already crazy. Stay behind me."
As they passed the still unconscious form of Chief Petty Officer Anders, Laila had to wonder what happened to him. Did he survive this and get back to that pretty wife? Did he die, here and now? She couldn't help but wonder if their interference had changed what should have happened, but thinking like that had started to give her a headache. She could only hope they had done enough to give him a chance.
A chance to live.