Escaping Wonderland

by Tiffany Roberts

“What happened?” she asked.

  “The king and I found one another,” he replied, voice hoarse.

  Alice’s eyes flared. The king? She tore her gaze away from Shadow to take in her surroundings. Though she and Shadow were no longer in the simulation, they were still in Wonderland—or at least the asylum that housed Wonderland. “Where is he now?”

  “Showed him true death.”

  Perhaps it was wrong to feel relief over someone’s death, but she couldn’t help it now. Though she’d recently dealt with death when she’d lost her father, Wonderland had given Alice her first experiences with violence and bloodshed—the worst of which had been perpetrated by the Red King.

  “We need to leave,” Alice said, gently brushing her fingertips over his cheek.

  Shadow nodded and removed one arm from around her, leaning away to pick up a small black tablet from the foot of the pod—a gun lay beside it on the padded bed. He winced and held the device to her. “This has a map on it. Could you use it to find a way? I…my head is too fuzzy, and I can’t…I can’t remember enough.”

  Pushing herself up with her hands, Alice took the tablet, but she didn’t remove her eyes from Shadow. “How hurt are you?”

  He glanced down at himself for a few seconds before returning his gaze to hers. “I’m sure I’ve had worse. I just can’t remember it.”

  Frowning, Alice settled her hand just over his hip and slowly ran it up over his hospital gown. He stiffened and sucked in a sharp breath through his teeth when she reached his ribs.

  “Just a little tender,” he said in a strained voice.

  “I barely touched it… Oh, Shadow.”

  How badly was he hurt?

  “I’ll be fine,” he said. “Barely felt it, thanks to all the drugs they must’ve pumped into me.”

  Alice’s frown deepened, but she chose not to press him on the obvious lie. Despite the concern eating away at her from within, there wasn’t much she could do to help him while they were in this place.

  She carefully pulled away from him and climbed out of the pod, keeping the tablet in hand as she moved. Her legs were unsteady at first, feeling terribly weak, but Shadow—holding onto the pod to anchor himself—offered her his arm in support. She was suddenly aware of every spot on her body where a needle had been embedded; they were highlighted by patches of numbness beneath which that strange, cold sensation lingered.

  Alice looked around the room. She’d been drugged when they first dragged her in here, and her vision had been too blurred to see much of it. The pod had looked like a coffin to her at first glance; it might as well have been one, in the end, had Shadow not saved her in time. There was one pod to the right of hers, and at least twenty-five more to the left—meaning that, just in this room alone, there were nearly thirty people trapped in Wonderland.

  How many of them actually belonged here? How many people in this facility were like Alice, imprisoned unjustly and against their will?

  How many of them desperately needed treatment, real treatment, but instead were subjected to that surreal, chaotic, dangerous simulation?

  She turned her face back toward Shadow. Why was he here?

  Whatever the reason, Alice didn’t care, and she wouldn’t allow them to keep him here. Shadow was hers.

  “Were there other guards or workers out there?” Alice asked, turning the tablet in her hands.

  “I didn’t see anyone on my way here. The device said the security and reporting systems were deactivated. I think the king turned them off before he came for me.”

  “This was his?”

  Shadow nodded. “And it’s totally unsecured. I was able to use it to override your pod and force you awake.”

  An unsecured tablet that could override systems in this facility? Alice leaned forward and pressed a kiss on the corner of his mouth as elation warmed her, fighting back the chill that had settled into her body since waking. This tablet, so plain an unimportant at a glance, was their way out. “Good. I’ll figure out a way to lock the door so we can have a few minutes to think.”

  She swiped her finger over the screen. It came on to display Alice’s picture—her file was open. Brows lowering, she skimmed the document.

  Patient suffers from intermittent explosive disorder, depression, delusions, and paranoia. Family has reported violent outbursts and threats, and patient exhibited those tendencies while being transported to facility.

  Alice tightened her grip on the tablet as disbelief, horror, and anger flooded her.

  Family has reported…

  Lies!

  Tabitha and Jonathon had done this? Why? Why would they have sent her here?

  She pressed one of the tabs in the file marked Director’s Notes. Her eyes widened as she read.

  High marks for attractiveness, but patient is too spirited. Will need to be broken in before suitable for play. Recommend time with patient Edward Winters (alias: the Hatter) for reconditioning.

  Family unconcerned with wellbeing; would prefer loose ends tied up.

  Candidate for cleaning program—family will not question patient death.

  Alice’s anger and disbelief warred with one another. She didn’t want to believe she’d been betrayed, that her father had been betrayed. She was supposed to have been able to trust Tabitha—Alice’s father had meant for Tabitha to be a mother to her, had hoped Tabitha would one day care for Alice as though she were the woman’s own daughter.

  Though Alice and Tabitha had never been able to build such a bond, Alice had never thought her stepmother capable of this.

  Shadow placed a hand on her arm; it was only then that she realized she was trembling.

  “Whatever that says, Alice, we can deal with it later. We need to go now, right?”

  She would’ve agreed with him were it not for the links included at the bottom of the document—communication logs marked CLAYBOURNE T. Alice clenched her jaw and opened the logs. Stinging heat built beneath her skin as she read the communications, and her rage swelled to new, titanic proportions.

  “She did it,” Alice said in a low voice, “and she wasn’t even subtle about it.”

  “Who did what, Alice?” Shadow asked, his hand tightening slightly.

  “Tabitha. My stepmother. She bribed the director of this place—the king—to have me committed here. To make me disappear. My father left almost everything to me, and his will superseded what she would’ve inherited otherwise, which meant I would either have to die or be deemed incompetent to subvert his wishes. And it’s all right here.”

  He frowned deeply; even here in the real world, even now, it was strange to see him without that grin.

  “So, what do we do with this information, then?” he asked. “We still need to go, don’t we?”

  “No, Shadow. We don’t need to go anywhere. We can stay right here. This”—she lifted the tablet—“is our escape route. We can contact the authorities and wait for them to come to us. This is all the evidence we need of the wrong-doings going on here.”

  Shadow’s brow was creased with worry. “But I killed him, Alice. And killing someone…that’s not okay here, is it?”

  Alice reached up and cupped his jaw. “He shot at you, didn’t he? That’s why you have the gun?”

  He nodded. “I was out of the pod when he came in. He fired into the pod before he knew where I was.”

  A fresh wave of relief swept through her; she’d come so close to losing him. They’d come so close to losing each other. If he’d taken any longer to wake himself up, they both would’ve been dead by now.

  “It was self-defense, Shadow. You were protecting yourself. And no matter what, I will not let anything happen to you.”

  She would fight for him in any way possible.

  His nostrils flared as he took in a deep breath. He covered her hand with his own and brushed the pad of his thumb over her skin. “This is the only way?”

  “It’s the right way.” She leaned forward and gently pressed her forehead to his. “Everything will b
e okay. I promise.”

  He closed his eyes and slipped his arms around her. “I trust you. I love you.”

  A different kind of warmth coursed through her; it soothed her, lifted her spirit, and made her heart race. “I love you, too.”

  She embraced him, careful not to squeeze because of his ribs. The feel of him only reminded her how much thinner he was out here. He’d been just as tall in the simulation, and had been leanly muscled, but this…he seemed to have wasted away in reality. How long had he been imprisoned here?

  When she finally—reluctantly—pulled back from him, she returned her attention to the tablet and navigated to the main menu. Within a few moments, she’d managed to discern their location—the Liddell Psychiatric Hospital, only twenty miles outside Apex Reach, the city in which she’d spent most of her life.

  That discovery settled her even further; her father had been well-connected in Apex Reach, and she’d met many of his friends and acquaintances over the years—including the chief of police.

  A search on the net turned up the contact information for the police headquarters. She didn’t waste a moment in making the call.

  “I need to speak with Chief Farland,” she said to the operator who answered.

  “I’m sorry, ma’am, but the Chief is very busy. I can take a message—”

  “Tell him it’s Alice Claybourne, Daniel Claybourne’s daughter. And it’s an emergency.”

  “Claybourne?” the operator asked. There was a muted conversation in the background, none of which Alice could make out, before the operator said, “I’m transferring the call now. Please hold for just a moment.”

  The line went silent; Alice counted her heartbeats as she waited.

  There was a faint crackling sound on the other end of the call.

  “Alice?” Chief Farland said in a raised, worried voice.

  She could’ve just called the police, could’ve just called emergency services, but their best chance was with the chief—with anyone else, they risked being mistaken as a couple of disturbed patients who’d broken out of their pods and killed the facility’s director, and that had too much of a chance of going bad before they could tell their story. But she knew Chief Farland; he’d been one of her father’s closest friends and had been like family to Alice while she was growing up.

  “Uncle Sean, I need your help.”

  “Alice, what’s going on? Tabitha wouldn’t tell me a damned thing. Where are you?”

  Alice met Shadow’s eyes and smiled. “The Liddell Psychiatric Hospital.”

  Chapter 22

  Blue-white energy bursts pulsed through the thick gray clouds surrounding Shadow’s dropship, occasionally silhouetting one of the other ships in his wing. Apart from those flashes, he couldn’t see anything—he had to rely upon the scanner alone to avoid collision.

  The ship jolted and rattled as a nearby blast disrupted the air, but the shields held.

  “The fleet was supposed to soften them up before we made entry,” said the lieutenant over the comm system.

  Their pre-mission briefing had mentioned an orbital bombardment of the landing zone; had the fleet screwed up, or had the strike simply been ineffective? Shadow had made dozens of drops on almost as many planets during his career, most of which had been under enemy fire, but he’d never seen the sky so lit by anti-aircraft bursts. His heart beat steadily but loudly; he felt as though he were teetering on the edge of a precipice, and he’d be plunged into mindless terror if he fell.

  The ship broke through the cloud cover, and Shadow’s eyes widened as the world opened up below—a world that was all wrong.

  Massive trees, each at least two hundred feet tall, surrounded a large clearing which was crisscrossed with purple pathways that followed winding, nonsensical courses and intersected one another at random without any discernable reason or pattern. A large building stood in the center of that clearing, none of its angles or parts quite matching the rest.

  “This is all wrong, sir,” Shadow called. “Wrong landing zone, wrong planet.”

  “Get us on the ground,” the lieutenant replied.

  Shadow turned his head to look at his co-pilot, but—despite the light of energy bursts in the air all around and the glow of the instrument panels in front of him—the other seat was shrouded in an impenetrable patch of darkness.

  An explosion shook the ship violently. Alarms blared and beeped, and the ship pitched to the right. One of the engines died, and the stabilizer failed. The ship whipped into a rapid spin.

  Shadow’s muscles strained as he wrestled the controls. The world below spun wildly, but one focal point remained oddly, impossibly stationary—the building at the center of the clearing.

  And the dropship was hurtling toward that building.

  The cacophony around him—soldiers shouting, the dropship shaking, alarms blaring—made it difficult to hear his own thoughts. All he could do was fight his losing battle against the controls.

  With a deafening crash, the drop ship hit the building. Wood snapped, splintered, and shattered against the hull, and metal groaned and whined. The initial strike was followed by an immense impact so powerful that Shadow’s world went black.

  He opened his eyes sometime later—it could’ve been seconds or hours, he couldn’t guess—to find himself still strapped into his seat, bathed in the glow and heat of a nearby fire. Dazed but feeling no pain, he unbuckled his harness and stumbled to his feet, placing a hand on the control console to balance himself against the drastic tilt of the floor. He looked to his co-pilot first, and froze as terror—sudden, confusing, and consuming—spread outward from his gut to ice his veins.

  There was another him, another Shadow, in the co-pilot’s seat, slumped back and dressed in a pale green hospital gown. The holes on the front of the gown—bullet holes—were ringed with glistening blood.

  “I never made it out of the pod,” the other-him rasped without moving his mouth.

  “No.” Shadow backed away. His foot slipped off the edge of the floor and he stumbled, landing on his backside partly on broken wood planks and partly on dirt. He swept his gaze around, only then realizing what should’ve been obvious from the start—the crash had torn both the building and the ship apart. He turned toward the rest of the craft as he regained his feet.

  Dead soldiers were strewn everywhere. One row of transport seats had separated from the rest of the ship, and its passengers were scattered amidst the wreckage and debris.

  The lieutenant lay closest to Shadow. He’d been impaled through the chest by a signpost, the sign for which was on the ground nearby. The hand-painted letters on the sign were still legible despite the blood spattered across them—Hatter’s Tea Party.

  The lieutenant’s dark, lifeless eyes turned toward Shadow. The name plate on the human’s uniform said WINTERS, and Shadow recognized his face.

  Edward Winters. The Hatter.

  This is wrong, all wrong. The Hatter…he didn’t serve with me. I never knew him before… The lieutenant was someone else…

  “Death is real,” the Hatter said in a dried-out whisper. “Death is in Wonderland, Wonderland is death.” His head turned with a slow, jerky motion to face Shadow fully. “You are dead.”

  “No. This isn’t real. You’re not real.” Shadow hurried away from the Hatter and turned around.

  He found himself suddenly surrounded by mist, the ship wreckage nowhere to be seen. He stepped forward. His foot landed in cold water. Dread lodged itself in his throat.

  “I left this place. I woke up. I woke up.”

  “Shadow…” Alice’s voice drifted to him, made ethereal by the fog.

  He scanned his surroundings, searching for her among the indistinct trees, vines, and too-still water. His gaze stopped on a distant, shadowy figure—a figure in a short-skirted dress.

  Shadow ran toward it, plunging into frigid, waist-deep water. The muddy bottom sucked at his feet. With each step, he sank a little deeper, his pace slowed a little more, and his heartbea
t gained speed and volume.

  “Shadow,” Alice called again; she sounded no clearer, seemed no closer.

  He strained against the mud, sputtering and coughing when his head dipped below the surface, pushing himself harder and harder, willing himself toward Alice. But the muck only thickened and grabbed at him ravenously. His head went under again, and he couldn’t straighten enough to get it above the surface. He clawed at the bottom, dragging himself forward, and growled in anger and panic.

  His claws dug into more solid ground. Lungs burning, he hauled himself forward and up a sharp incline until his head finally emerged. Shadow sucked in a harsh breath; the air was like fire as it flowed into his lungs, but it was so sweet.

  Shadow pulled himself onto land fully, tugging his legs out of the mud’s lingering grasp, and looked forward. Alice’s form was still obscured by the mist, but she was much closer, standing amidst a jumble of vines and gnarled branches. He staggered to his feet and hurried forward, catching himself with his hands when he stumbled; his legs felt so light now, after his war with the mud.

  “Alice,” he called. “Alice, I’m here! I’m coming.”

  She didn’t move, didn’t respond; he ran faster, heart pounding.

  He pushed through the branches and vines, breaking and snapping them to clear a path, and ignored the way they scratched and clawed at his fur and clothing. He was close. He needed Alice—only she could ground him, only she could remind him of what was real.

  Though she stood only a few feet away, her form remained indistinct, like a phantom in the mist.

  “Alice!” Shadow extended his arm, reaching for her.

  His fingers caught the fabric of her skirt, and the dress simply fell away to dangle his hand. Shadow’s heartbeat intensified, his chest constricted, and his throat tightened. The dress had been dangling from a cluster of branches with a vaguely humanoid shape.

  “No, no, no,” he muttered, lifting the dress in both hands. There was a hole in its abdomen, surrounded by bloodstained cloth.

  “Not real, not real, this isn’t real!”

  “Yes, it is,” the king whispered from behind him. “And you’re dead.”