She had done precisely the opposite of what Maria had told her. Not that she had much say in the matter. Now, locked in a room with only two chairs, either side of a plain, metal table, with only an empty ashtray in the centre, Laila wondered what she could possibly do without the pilot there to help her. They had left her here with a fresh set of clothes that didn't stink of decades of decay, a pair of boots that mostly fit and little but the walls to look at. She couldn't see any way out of this and had no idea what was happening.
One minute about to get racy with Maria, the next sat in the exact same place, but, she could only assume, in a different time. She wasn't stupid, no matter how she acted. Sure, there were a lot of things she didn't know, but that was because she didn't need to, but she had watched movies and tv shows. She'd seen time travel before. Or she could be dead and this was only some elaborate hell created to torture her. She wasn't ruling that one out just yet.
When the door opened and an important looking man strode in, hair slicked to his head, chin she could break rocks on and an air of authority that she could practically smell, she looked up with hope that, if nothing else, he could tell her where Maria was. Why they hadn't arrived here at the same time, she could not imagine.
The man dropped a folder onto the table, along with a bag that clunked as it struck the surface, the noise resounding against the nondescript, bland walls that had provided no entertainment at all. The man withdrew a packet of cigarettes from his top pocket, took one out and lit it with a flip lighter that he took from his pants pocket, making Laila wonder why he didn't have them in the same pocket. He tossed the packet onto the table and pointed to it in silence, but Laila could only grimace. Another man entered and Laila recognised the sergeant, who stepped to the side of the door, cigar clamped in his mouth, and placed his hands behind his back as he stood, stiff and straight, staring at nothing.
"This is all just some kind of mistake." She leaned forward, giving the man her most innocent smile. "I got lost and ..."
"What year are you from, ma'am?" The man sat down before flicking ash into the ashtray and then starting to flip through the folder filled with paper.
"I'm sorry? What?" That caught her by surprise and she scrambled to think whether she should answer truthfully. "I don't know what you ..."
"The year, ma'am." He leaned his head upon fingers rubbing his forehead, elbow on the table, before finally glancing at her. "It's not a difficult question."
But it was. In every movie or tv show she had seen, they had all said how important it was not to mess around in the past. Something about butterflies and hurricanes. If she told him anything and it changed the past, how would it affect her life? Her time? Then again, if this was the past, she seemed to remember they didn't have any problems torturing people, and she had no tolerance for pain.
"2025. Look, I don't know what's happening here. I didn't do it." She held up her hands in surrender, sitting back and crossing her legs. "I'm just a singer. My plane crashed and I just want to find my pilot and get home. You can't miss her, she's ..."
"She? Your pilot. She's a she?" From behind the man in charge, the sergeant scoffed around his cigar. "Well I never did. We got ourselves a real Amelia Earhart!"
"Sergeant." The man in charge didn't shout, but the sergeant snapped back straight.
"You have her? Look, you've got to let us go. We have to ... I don't know, but we can't stay here. It'll, um, something about timelines." She waved away her own confusion before tapping the table surface. "Whatever, it's, like, bad for me and her to be ..."
"We haven't found another lady, ma'am." Now the man in charge tapped a finger, cigarette smoke curling from the ash growing at the tip. "We found a man, not two hours ago. He was wearing this."
Resting the cigarette in the ashtray, causing Laila to waft away the smoke trailing upward, the man in charge reached for the bag, upended it and something tumbled out. A watch. Not any ordinary watch, though, because Laila recognised it. The strap, at least. She had bought that watch for Toby at Christmas. A smart watch that he had then gone on to annoy Laila with by using it too often and for things he had no reason to use it. A smart watch. In the past. That wasn't a butterfly, it was as bad as a 737 landing with all the plans on how to make it. She reached for it, but the man in charge pulled it back.
"'It's happened again'. That's what someone said, before. 'It's happened again'." She waved a hand in the direction of the sergeant, who scowled over his wet, bedraggled cigar. "It was him. Toby. This watch is his. Where is he?"
"We could only get the watch afore he disappeared again, ma'am." The sergeant stirred, chomping at the cigar that had clearly given up any hope of getting lit. "We tried to get him outta the wall, but ..."
"Sergeant!" Now the man in charge did shout, but he didn't look at the sergeant, who, once again, snapped up straight. The man leaned forward, picking the cigarette back up and taking a long draw. "You never mentioned a man. You and your, female, pilot is what you said. Why hide that? Did you come here with a purpose? How many others in your group? Why send women? What does this ... watch do? Have you come back in time to sabotage the experiment? If so, why?"
"Woah! Woah! Slow down there, cowboy!" With every question, the man in charge had hammered a finger on the table, sending ash cascading from the cigarette, but Laila did not have people talking to her like that. She was Laila! She shouted like that! "I didn't mention Toby because I thought he was dead, okay? And he wouldn't be the first and ... wait ... what do you mean you tried to get him out of the wall? What the hell? Do you mean he got stuck between the drywall?"
The sergeant looked about to answer, but the man in charge lifted a hand. He crushed the cigarette into the ashtray and tapped another from the pack, taking it out with his lips and lighting it, once again, with a nonchalant flick of the flip lighter. The lighter clattered onto the table and the man in charge picked a strand of tobacco from his tongue, rubbing it away to the side before turning on the chair, leaning back and rubbing his forehead again.
He sat like that for some time, smoking, eyes flickering as the blue/white smoke drifted upward, casting a feint pall in the air. The room had no ventilation, no windows, and the smoke lingered above their heads as the man in charge still remained silent as though considering what to say next. Outside, the sound of people running came, muffled, through the door. A lot of running and some indistinct shouting.
"Sergeant. Go see what all the fuss is about." The sergeant saluted but the man in charge didn't reply. He continued to watch Laila until the door closed. "No, ma'am, he didn't mean in the drywall. He meant in the wall. A concrete wall. He didn't survive."
Laila felt more upset about that than she could have expected. She and Toby weren't close, as such. He was too single-minded and had nothing but the business side of things on his mind, while she wanted to enjoy her fame while still working toward a future where the fame and the money might one day dry up. It hit her, though. He didn't survive. Three words that should say more about the man that had guided her career, even if she was about ready to fire him.
The noises outside had started to become more frantic, the running around more determined, the shouts louder and the man in charge turned an annoyed head toward the door, but soon turned back to press his gaze down upon Laila once again. She didn't know what he wanted from her. She had told him everything she knew, which was admittedly very little, so what more could he want? She couldn't answer half of his other questions if she even knew what he was talking about.
"Sir, there's this, I don't know ... like an Amazonian woman out there. She ..." The sound of gunfire erupted, not too far away and the Sergeant ducked inside, hand rising to the hat on his head. "All I know is, she ain't American, Sir. This little lady's been a'lyin' to ya."
"No. No!" Laila suddenly realised what that meant. These people were at war and if they didn't think Maria was American ... "She is American! Her grand-parents were American! Don't hurt her!"
By the look on the man in charge's face, he didn't believe her, stamping the cigarette down into the ashtray, he started to gather up the folder and the sheets of paper that Laila hadn't managed to catch a look at. As the sergeant left again, the door standing open and Laila wondering if she could make it without getting shot, the man in charge reached down for the smart watch, only for his head to whip around as the siren began to blare once more and everything started to become weird and painful once again.
Laila snatched the smart watch from the table, dropped to the floor and curled into a ball, snapping her eyes closed, opening her mouth as Maria had shown her and waited for the painful, rising and falling and echoing sound to grow to its inevitable crescendo. She chanced a quick glance at what was happening, seeing the legs of the man in charge race to the door and then become indistinct, fading between being completely real and insubstantial. Then she could only hold her eyes tighter than ever as the reverberating, bitter sound clawed into her head and the only senses she could use were her sense of taste and smell.
When the sound came to an end once again, she knew, even before opening her eyes, that she had moved again, or slipped through time, or stopped being dead, for the moment. The smell of tobacco had gone, replaced by that musty, rotting smell she had become used to. As she began to open her eyes, she could see it was night once again. And, as she pushed herself up, she touched a finger to her upper lip to find blood trailing from her nose once again, but she couldn't waste time worrying about that.
Jumping to her feet, she found the door had fallen off its hinges long, long ago. Stepping over the remains, she tried to remember the path the sergeant had led her along to get to that room and did her best to recreate it in reverse, in the black of night. Everything looked different at night and she started to become confused, only to hear a sound coming from the other end of the building and she began to race that way, slightly too-big boots flopping around on her feet, but she could run in them better than those beautiful shoes she had already ruined.
Stumbling back into the barracks room, she saw the two beds, the hurricane lamp still burning between them. On the table by one bed, she saw the cup she had put down what seemed like so long ago. On the floor, the other had rolled to a stop under the bed, but she saw no sign of Maria. Then she heard a grunt from the far end of the barracks room and reached to pick up the lamp by the handle, making slow, cautious steps along the run of rusted, broken beds.
Maria! Laid on the ground, the rifle mere inches away from her fingers. Laila could still see her breathing, the rise and fall of her back, but that wasn't all she could see. A puddle of blood had started to spread out around the pilot and, if she wasn't dead yet, she may soon follow Toby and Genna into death, because Laila didn't know the first thing about first aid.
If first aid could even save her.