The closer they got to the tower, the more it became apparent that Chief Petty Officer Anders was both right and wrong about his colleagues. They were all gone, alright, but not vanished. Not all of them, at least. Laila could hardly breathe as they passed through the temporary streets and alleys of the compound. Tears once again flowed, but not for herself or Maria this time. She cried for the victims of this broken, ruinous experiment.
There were bodies alright, dead, though not in any way that Laila could have imagined. People stared out from walls, half-subsumed in the structures, hands reaching out for help that never came and could never have saved them, faces twisted in grimaces of pain that Laila could not imagine. Other bodies, burned beyond recognition. Still others contorted into positions no body, not even the most flexible gymnast, could ever achieve, bones broken and mangled, protruding from flesh.
Still others like the ones they had found at the battle, cut into pieces, one half preserved as though they still lived and breathed, the other decayed and rotted into dust. Maria's face looked taut and drawn, even her usual, implacable self tortured by what she saw. The closer they came to the tower, the worse the atrocities became, until they reached one man, one recognisable man, skewered by a walkway that revolved around the base of the tower, sloping upward as it clung to the structure.
"That's him." She paused before the man, looking into eyes she had seen alive not so long ago. "The man in charge."
He still had the remains of a cigarette nestled against the webbing between two fingers, ash still attached, ready to fall at the slightest movement or breeze. Maria inserted herself between the man and Laila and silently guided her away, moving them both onto the ramp that would carry them up the tower and, hopefully, to a control room that they could switch off, or blow to hell and put an end to all this horror.
"We can't think about them." Maria paused, turning to look into Laila's puffy, tear-strained eyes. "It sounds cold and callous, but they've been dead for us for eighty years. These? These are all just memories, shadows of things that happened long before we were born."
"No. No! They are, were, real people!" This was not how she was. She didn't care for people, it wasn't in her nature, but ... how could she not? "So many of them and they must have died in such pain and fear."
"I know. I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry, but we have to keep going." Maria rubbed Laila's arms, trying to smile but it came across as little more than a thinning of her lips. "Or we could be next."
With a last dip of the head to catch Laila's eyes, Maria gave a solemn nod before turning away and continuing around and up the ramp, the enormous dish above them providing shade from the Sun, but no protection from the chaos caused by this machine, and Laila could only follow in silence, wiping her cheeks and eyes with the sleeve of her shirt, the gun, the 'Thompson' feeling so very heavy in her hands.
She had learned why Maria kept pushing the barrel away and now held it as close to how Maria held hers, pointing down at all times, finger beside the trigger, held across her body instead of almost at arms length, afraid to have it close. Now, however, it looked as though they had no need of the guns and she hoped, desperately, that they would have no need of the explosives that felt like a dead weight on her back.
They passed more bodies, embedded in the superstructure of the tower, as though they had shifted from where they had stood to two or three feet to the side, trying to inhabit the same space as unforgiving metal and only the metal could claim victory in that battle. The ramp continued to curve upward until they reached a platform that surrounded the tower, practically useless fencing along the edge, crates of materials ranged in haphazard patterns as though in the middle of moving somewhere else.
And then the siren came once again, louder than ever. Like something from myth, calling giants to war. It echoed from the tower, and Laila felt her stomach turn, rushing toward Maria, grabbing hold of her so tight that she doubted she could ever let go. Then the other noise began and it sounded more like the building and rising of an engine, revving beyond tolerances, becoming a fevered whine that tore at her senses, threatened to stop her heart, but Laila refused to let go of Maria, and Maria's arms surrounded Laila as the sound battered at them with no remorse or pity.
Maria fell. There was nowhere for her to fall from, but Laila, eyes tight shut, felt Maria drop, dragging at Laila's arms and Laila almost lost her grip on the woman she had come to care so much for. She opened her eyes as she fell, too, her chest crashing against steel grating, sending air bursting from her lungs, and still she refused to let go as she saw Maria dangling below.
The tower looked completely different. Gone were the new, pristine structures and metal surfaces, replaced by broken, rusted metal that creaked and groaned under her weight as she dug her fingers even deeper into Maria's body, refusing to let her go. A part of the walkway ramp had collapsed under Maria, or it had collapsed long before and Maria had appeared in the wrong spot, either way, she teetered on the brink of falling with only Laila's weak arms holding her still. Until Maria swung up a leg, causing Laila to howl in pain, her shoulder feeling as though it would dislocate all over again.
The booted foot missed the still intact walkway, but she swung again, catching it with her heel before letting Laila go with one hand and inserting her fingers into the gaps of the gridded surface. She, too, howled as she hauled herself up and Laila reached over, grabbing the back of Maria's belt and pulling with all the pathetic strength she could muster until Maria fell onto the walkway, turning onto her back and clutching at her side, where a patch of blood had started to appear.
"Maria!" Laila scrambled over, uncertain fingers reaching for the wound that she had stitched up, but now had burst open once again. "We have to go back down. We need to ..."
"No!" Maria grabbed Laila's hand, fighting back the pain. "We need ... we need to stop this. Look. Ha! At least we won't change the past now."
Maria's eyes rolled up into her head and she fell back, her breathing coming in fits and starts, but she wasn't unconscious. Not yet. She squeezed Laila's hand, forcing her eyes open and pushed herself upright. She tried to smile, but she wobbled, tilting to one side. Laila had never seen anyone push themselves so far beyond anything anyone could expect of them, but Maria refused to stay down. Her Thompson clattered against the grating of the walkway, fastened by a makeshift strap, and she struggled to her feet, Laila providing support that she felt certain she should refuse unless Maria decided to go back down, to find another medical station and more stitching.
"We can't do this. It's too hard. That last ... thing happened way faster than before. What if it happens again?" She struggled to think of another solution. "Maybe if we blow it up from below? Like ... uh ... bringing down a building?"
"Too big." With her arm around Laila's shoulders, Maria started to limp onward. "'Sides, it might still work. Cables stretch. We take out the controls. Easiest way. I think."
She stumbled, but recovered herself, reaching out for the rusted wall that crumbled under her touch. Only now did Laila realise that even the siren had not wailed as long as it had before, the painful noise it heralded had not lasted as long either, as though the closer they came to the tower and its power, the more compressed the events became, which left her to wonder how soon the next event would come.
Maria had almost not survived that passage through time. If she had died, Laila could not have continued. Not only because she couldn't bear to lose Maria, not now and not ever again, but because only Maria knew how to use these explosives at her back. What could she do? Throw them at the controls? She needed Maria in far more ways than Maria needed her. They both needed something more than each other, though. They needed to win, to defeat this.
Looking over her shoulder, she saw the expanse of the island that had captured them only a day before. Over the tops of the trees, out to the wide, blue ocean beyond. If it wasn't for the fact that the island seemed to actively want to murder them, she could imagine coming here for holidays. Swimming and surfing. Laughing with Maria about how crazy all this was. But, to even begin to think about something like that, they had to put a stop to it.
Maria stumbled, her legs wobbling under her, but she caught herself, clutching Laila's shoulder and trying to give her an encouraging smile. She looked up, squinting, toward the upper layers of the tower, and the dish that loomed above them, listing and tilted at a dangerous-looking angle. The patch of blood had already grown bigger at her side, but it didn't look as though that was going to stop her and Laila didn't think anything could.
"Look. The ramp starts up again there." Laila tried to encourage her, urging her onward, lifting the woman as much as she could. "We'll get there, right? We'll get there and give it a good blowing up. Right?"
"Yeah. A good blowing up. For sure." Maria laughed, but it sounded forced. "Not far now, huh?"
Continuing up the next ramp took longer than before. Maria struggled to keep moving and the general derelict nature of the tower made movement all the more slow and perilous. Parts of the walkway had broken away, leaving only thin strips of unsteady metal to pass across. Other parts had become broken and pitted, rusted to a state where placing a foot in the wrong place could result in a fall back down to the ground without any stops along the way.
All the while, Laila worried that the siren would wail again and send them both tumbling back through time and find someone there that would stop them from destroying this hateful machine. This machine that they should never have built in the first place, but for the fact that they were at war. But it seemed the US was always at war with someone or other. Not that Laila knew who her country had been at war with, but she watched the news, she saw the troops and the planes and the tanks and the ships. Always somewhere. Always an enemy.
If the navy hadn't tried this experiment eighty years ago, they'd try it now, if they hadn't already. How many lives lost because they sought the perfect weapon? It was all too big. Too far beyond her. All she could do was to stop this one. This thing. This experiment. This weapon. At the very top of this ramp, she saw door set into the superstructure of the tower. Once it would have fitted the frame tight, a heavy, impenetrable door that now leaned at an angle against the wall, fallen off rusted hinges.
"I think we're there. I think ..." She howled in frustration as the siren started once again. "No! Just give us time!"
In desperation, she forced Maria forward, almost dragging the woman along, rushing to reach that door, because, if they went back in time, they could find it closed and then they would have gone through all this for nothing. The siren peaked and troughed before that other sound came, roaring in defiance at their pathetic attempts to stop it. A monster. A dragon that threatened to burn them and devour them.
Laila fought through the pain, ignored the throbbing, rumbling sound and refused to close her eyes, forcing Maria through the door, and she saw everything changing before her eyes, flickering, fading in and out, the past and the present occupying the same place and then the sound stopped once again, but Laila couldn't move. She couldn't move and Maria had fallen from her arms, collapsed into a heap at her feet.