001. the head of the tempest [holo]
In accordance with her own personal and cultural funereal customs, Leila is dressed in all black--jeans and dangerously high leather ankle boots, a sheer black blouse, her hair pulled back conservatively to the nape of her neck--but she is getting sick of it in the Los Angeles heat. She sighs and closes her eyes for a split second when she steps into the little room where her sister kept the window air conditioner, but the coolness she feels is unfamiliar--the second she opens her eyes again, the sight that confronts her is jarring, completely strange, and seems almost sterile. Leila spins to find the doorway again, swallowing thickly out of burgeoning anxiety, but nothing is there. She is still, counting the seconds, and she closes her eyes a second time, meditating and counting as she forces herself to not let herself panic, to just breathe--one, two, one, two, wondering if maybe she's wandered deep into the Otherworld by accident.
She reaches out with her senses, and the response--solid walls, nothing surreal enough to suggest she's walking in the world of dreams--is all too real. This is real life, and it's in real time, too, but she cannot figure out why without further investigation, and she doesn't trust this capsule; briefly, horribly, and hilariously, she thinks of a horror movie she saw as a teenager about people trapped in chambers like these in deep space with monsters burrowing into their ribcages. Disinclined as she is to wait around for any potential parasitic aliens, however, she begins examining the space in which she has landed, smoothing down the material of her blouse and discerning she doesn't have her phone with her, either, though she suspects even if she did it would do no good.
"This really is happening," she says, out loud, mostly to herself.
Which means something has gone very, very wrong. Leila mentally runs over the assortment of inventions she has in the apartment, but she doesn't think any of them could have done this, at least not without also disintegrating part of her leg or something equally monstrous, and consequently she needs to figure out--
"What is that?" She reaches for the tablet, instantly intrigued, if cautious. She lifts it and flicks it on, head tilted to one side, eyes narrowed. "Oh, for fuck's sake. Really? Really? Is this some kind of sad practical joke? I know Dr. Morrow isn't in on it, that's for sure."
She glances up and around, one hand balanced on her hip, the other clutching the tablet. The conclusion she has come to is that one of her compatriots from at home is entertaining himself, or trying to cheer her up after her sister's funeral last week, but Leila is fairly clearly not amused, expression cold, tone razor-sharp.
"I don't know which one of you is responsible for this, but when I find out, I'm going to slap you into last week. Are you boys that bored back in Baltimore? How did you get to me all the way across the country, anyway, some kind of trigger device?"