Something touched her head and Laila sprang backward, tumbling from the chair and swatting furiously and aimlessly with her hands before her eyes had even opened properly. That didn't help her shoulder, which grumbled and ached as she continued to scoot herself backward until her back pressed against a wall. Only then did she see Maria laughing, grimacing and clutching her side, but still laughing. Laila couldn't even manage to find it embarrassing.
She practically launched herself to her feet and wrapped her arms around Maria, burying her head in the woman's shoulder. The night had passed slower than she liked, with Maria's breathing switching between laboured and strong so often that Laila had thought the pilot would die despite all they had done. After long moments, Maria pulled herself from Laila's arms, spotted the shirt brought for her and started to struggle into it.
They said nothing for a long while because they didn't need to. Laila had sat beside Maria for hours on that single chair, and had eventually fallen asleep resting her head on the unforgiving mattress. She had watched over the woman that, only hours before, she would have passed in the street and not given her a second glance. Well, maybe a second glance. Those eyes were truly striking. Eyes that pored over Laila that very moment.
"I got your backpack from the other room." Laila coughed, turning away to the pack. "It still has water. And I got your rifle. I'd have used it, too, if I needed to. I've been to a gun range. Once."
"I'm sure you would have made anyone regret it if they attacked us in the night." She didn't mean that because she mimed Laila's flailing arms, tongue poking out of her mouth, eyes all wobbly, then winced as she tugged at her stitches. "I'm joking. Thank you for caring."
Laila didn't get angry about the impression. She must have looked like an idiot, wafting her arms around as though that would hurt anyone. In fact, it probably did look funny and she made a tight laugh at her own expense. That was unusual. She tended to laugh at other people for looking and acting like idiots. This island had changed things. She handed Maria one of the last bottles of water, the rest back at the makeshift camp, and pulled the chair back. She had questions.
"You said you knew what was happening." Now she put on her serious face, because if Maria knew what was happening, they could get home. "What is it?"
Maria took the bottle, shook her head and cracked the seal, unscrewing the cap in silence and taking a long drink, her throat rising and falling. She had a long, sweeping neck. Yet another thing Laila found attractive, but this wasn't appreciating sexiness time. This was explanation time, if Maria could. After the long drink, Maria wiped the top and held it out for Laila.
"There's a history to it. This whole thing with World War Two, the name of the base, it's been running around in my head since we got here. It's ... well, it's crazy is what it is." She turned and dangled her legs from the bed. "Back in the Corps, there were rumours. You see, there's this conspiracy theory? Everybody calls it the 'Philadelphia Experiment', but it was debunked hard. Total loony tunes stuff. But, in the Corps, there were still rumours."
As crazy as it might sound to Maria, it couldn't be more crazy than the things they had experienced here on this island. Maria looked about ready to dismiss what she was saying, still making those disbelieving nods as though she couldn't even trust herself, trust what she was saying, but they had nothing else. Laila wanted to hear it, whatever it turned out to be. She touched Maria's knee.
"Keep going. No judgement." Maria caught her hand and squeezed, taking a breath.
"Back in '43 they wanted to make ships at sea invisible." She paused, waiting for something. Laughter? A scoffing remark? But Laila remained attentive.
"I know this!" She wracked her brain for things that were unimportant to her, but she had caught little bits of information about. "Like with the planes, right? They make them in a special way so that they look no bigger than birds on their tv's"
"Like that, yeah, but actually invisible. Like, not able to see it when you're stood right next to it invisible. It's crazy! I ... the thing is, according to the conspiracy theory, it kind of worked." She started to get into it, her other hand moving to illustrate. "The USS Eldridge docked at Philly Naval Yards. They used this combination of metals and electro-magnetics, fired it up and it vanished. A whole ship. A whole bunch of people supposedly saw it, but then, later, nobody said they saw anything. Some kook wrote a book about it. There was a movie. Everything."
"So, that's what might be happening here?" Laila thought about that. It might explain some things, but not everything. "But, we went back in time. Didn't we? Were we imagining that?"
"No, because the Eldridge becoming invisible wasn't all that happened. Allegedly." There it was again, the look that said Maria couldn't believe what she was saying. "At the exact same time as the Eldridge vanished ... I can't believe I'm even considering this ... at that exact moment ... the USS Eldridge appeared. In Norfolk, Virginia. Almost two-hundred and eighty miles away."
She paused, allowing that bit of information to hang in the air between them. The ship, Laila assumed it was a ship, she had no idea what all those letters meant, had moved hundreds of miles away. That sounded a little more like what they had experienced. At least, the part when the siren first wailed and the island, for a split second, started to disappear from under them. It wasn't crazy. Was it? It still didn't explain everything, but they didn't need everything explaining. They needed to know how to stop it.
"Okay. Not that crazy. Okay, it might sound crazy, but we know, don't we?" She looked down at the hand that Maria held. The pilot's hand shook, trembling. From pain, or whatever, but she was human after all. She was scared. Maybe. "We know that something weird is happening and this ... this ship thing is no more crazy than what we've seen, right? So, what does it all mean for us, here?"
"Well, from what I could find in the commander's office before I got shot ..." She cursed again, in Spanish, Laila knew now. "They pretty much restarted the experiment straight away. Brought it here, a recently liberated island with a dormant volcano under it that they could use to power the experiment, but they didn't think small, like before. Oh, no! They did the American thing and went big! Real big."
Maria winced, her hand reaching for her side and leaving Laila's hand dangling. She wondered if this med-bay had any pain killers, but she felt certain Maria would have found some when she rummaged through for the dressings. Besides, Laila wouldn't know what to look for. If she ever had aches and pains, she'd just ask others to make her better. Maria didn't have flunkies to do that. She only had Laila. But Laila could do nothing to help.
"Okay. Okay, so, they went big and it started doing other weird things, right? Like sending us back in time. That could totally happen, right? If this thing can move something hundreds of miles in the blink of an eye, that can't be much different than doing it through time?" This 'thinking' thing wasn't among her prodigious talents, but she could do it when she needed to. "Okay. So, it's a machine, right? Not magic. It's not magic? Okay, so it isn't magic. Machines can be switched off? We switch it off. Simple!"
She threw up her hands in triumph, marvelling at her reasoning skills, and well she might. That was some top grade reasoning right there. It didn't take much thinking for her music, it was an instinct for her. The notes and the instruments and the words. They came fully formed inside her head without all that messy thinking. She heard it all in her head, she wrote it down, it became massively popular and she made a lot more money. That was simple. Of course, there were one or two stages in between writing it down getting the money, but that was basically it.
This was actual thinking she was doing here and not a single person back home would believe her. Oh, they would clap their hands adoringly and tell her how much of a genius she was, which she absolutely was, but they wouldn't believe her. Not about any of this, but especially the thinking. They loved her. They adored her. But they knew her. She could imagine the little fade in the eyes, the glassy, rictus smiles they would give her if she told them she had stitched up a bullet wound, front and back!
Maria pressed her hand on to Laila's shoulder, lifting herself down from the examination table, and waved a finger toward the door. She wanted to go somewhere and, for some reason, didn't want to use words, like a normal human being. This woman was changeable! Mercurial! Annoying, if sexy. But certainly still annoying. Words were made for a reason! Other than for songs, obviously. Picking up the rifle, using it as a cane, Maria had Laila supporting her out of the med-bay.
The shutters that Maria had closed over the windows didn't manage to stop the sunlight from pouring in through the thin gaps and the cracks that had appeared in the walls of the barracks after decades of abandonment and it looked like another incredibly bright, probably hot, probably stifling day ahead.
It was only a day! If that, because Laila didn't know what time of the day she had woken up after the crash. Morning? Mid-morning? Midday? It felt as though they had been here days, weeks, months, even. But, only a day. A part of a day and everything that had happened. Genna dead, Maria shot, Toby dead somewhere after having an argument with a concrete wall. That was uncalled for. The man was dead. She may not have liked him, but he deserved at least a little respect. That was Maria's fault! Making her have 'feelings' for people.
Outside and, sure enough, it was far too hot for a morning. Or any time of day. Here, in the compound, Laila still couldn't get used to the silence. It didn't seem as bad inside, where the noises of the outside were supposed to be held at bay by walls and windows. Out here, it just felt wrong. Eerie. Over the jungle, beyond the fence, she could see birds circling, flying, going about their day, but the noises they made didn't reach here. She doubted they would penetrate the invisible barrier even if they called in the trees right next to the fence.
Guided around the edge of the barracks by the limping Maria, Laila could see that broken down, rusting pile of crap that was the satellite dish tower and she had to wonder, did they have satellites in space back then? Didn't they have other things to think about than space, like a big ass war? Maria had stopped, looking up to that tower and Laila followed her eyes but saw nothing different, nothing out of the ordinary.
"Simple, huh?" Maria jerked her chin up to the construct. "Switch it off?"
"What do you mean?" She tried to see what Maria was talking about. Unless the machine was inside the tower? Or behind it? "I'm sorry. I just don't see it."
"Yeah. You do." Hefting the rifle and catching it by the middle, Maria used it to point upward, closing one eye as though picking out a target. "That, the whole thing, is the machine. To switch it off, we need to get inside. Does that piece of crap look safe to you? Simple?"
It did not. It didn't look safe in the slightest for Laila, not to mention Maria's injury. She couldn't even imagine how the thing could keep working while looking like that, all rusted and falling apart. Walkways detached from the superstructure and the entire thing listing as though it were about to topple over. An absolutely enormous piece of crap, as Maria described it, that looked about ready to kill anyone that even tried to get inside.
And powered by a dormant volcano. Beneath their feet was a volcano! They had no way of knowing if all the things that damned machine had done had made the volcano angry. If they switched off the machine, would it affect the volcano? Even if they managed to switch it off, they were still trapped here, on this island. There seemed no easy ways out of this but, she sighed because, with a look at Maria, she could tell, they were going to try.
Caring about people sucked.