Chapter 20
CHAPTER 20
Shadow opened his eyes and sucked in a wheezing breath. He tried to sit up, but there was something solid over him; fortunately, his hand struck the obstruction before his head could. The darkness receded as his eyes adjusted to the dim light. His breathing echoed around him, amplified by the tight space, as his vision wavered and spun, blurring and focusing wildly for several seconds.
When he could finally see clearly, he realized he was looking up at a small window. The soft, weak light originated from somewhere beyond the window. He shifted to get a different angle, hoping to see more than a shadowed, featureless ceiling, but a series of aches and stings cascaded through his body and halted him before he could.
He gritted his teeth and dropped his head onto the padded cushion beneath him. Everything hurt, everything felt heavy, and he had no idea where he was—apart from someplace cramped and dark.
I know this place. Alice told me about it.
And I…I remember .
Images flashed through Shadow’s mind’s eye—halls with dull artificial light, men in strange uniforms, a chamber filled with long, silent pods. These images had never been wild imaginings; they were memories from when he’d been brought here—from when they’d locked him in the dark.
Lifting his head again, he looked down at his prone body. His gown—which should’ve been pale green—was made gray by the poor lighting, and his feet were lost entirely to the lingering darkness at the opposite end of the pod. Various tubes and wires were embedded in his body along the way. He could feel their points beneath his skin, shifting with his every tiny movement.
He willed himself out of the pod, seeking that strange energy that had allowed him to phase in Wonderland, but it was gone. It didn’t exist here.
The king is hunting…and Alice needs me .
Those thoughts sliced through his confusion and fear. His heart sped as he groped in the blackness with both hands, sliding his palms and fingertips along the walls and ceiling of his pod. He stilled when his claws caught on something—a handle of some sort. He curled his fingers beneath it and yanked it down. There was a hiss of air being released, and the lid rose, allowing more light to flow in around the edges.
Shadow planted both palms against the lid and shoved up against it. He felt it strain as he pushed it faster than it was designed to move. Once it was high enough, he sat up.
Though his range of motion was limited by several of the connections embedded in his skin, his head spun, and his stomach flipped at the sudden movement. With shaky hands, he clawed at the tubes on his forearm, pulling one loose; the needle that slid out of his flesh as he tugged on the line had to be at least three inches long.
“Emergency disengagement activated,” said a gentle, feminine voice from the lid overhead. “Please remain still to avoid injury.”
The color of several of the tubes changed, and something icy cold flowed through his veins, washing away his lingering disorientation. A moment later, Shadow’s throat constricted in panic as the remaining lines and tubes moved on their own, producing fresh, dull pain as they withdrew from his flesh. He watched them recede with wide eyes. It wouldn’t take much of a leap in imagination to see them as living creatures, as writhing parasites that had been feeding off him from the inside.
After the final connection—this one at the base of his skull—had withdrawn, the voice said, “Please remain in your immersion chamber. An attendant will be with you as soon as possible.” There was a brief pause before it added, “Your wait may be prolonged due to a communication error with our monitoring systems. Thank you for your patience.”
Shadow raised a hand to the back of his neck. Apart from a small lump, there was no sign that anything had just been buried in his skin—in fact, the spot was now oddly numb. All the spots where a needle had been injected were numb but for the one from which he’d removed the first tube, which also seemed to be the only one that was bleeding.
He grasped the side of the pod and hauled himself over. His legs refused to support him when his feet first touched the floor. He collapsed, keeping his torso upright only because of his desperate grip on the edge of the pod. With a grunt, he pulled himself onto his feet. The room teetered and turned around him, and his stomach revolted, threatening to empty itself of whatever meager contents it currently held.
For a moment, he staggered backward and waved his arms to catch his balance. His tail brushed against something solid behind him, and he stiffened it, producing just enough force to push himself forward. His flailing hands swung overhead and came down, latching onto the lid of his pod. As his weight bore down upon it, it swung closed. He leaned against the pod and caught his breath. His body was too heavy, too weak—it felt like his bones were made of rubber, and, despite the numb spots everywhere, every one of his muscles ached.
How long had he been in that pod?
How long had he been in Wonderland?
Swallowing thickly, he surveyed the room. His pod was but one of many—at least thirty more stood in a row beside it, split almost evenly to the left and right, each with the same thick bundles of cords, tubes, and wires connecting it to the wall. A single door stood at the center of the wall opposite the pods with a blank screen mounted on the wall five or six feet away. The lights were turned low, leaving the glowing screens over each pod that much more vibrant in comparison. All the displays showed what appeared to be vital signs—pulse rates and oxygen levels and other things he couldn’t understand—along with names and a small string of letters and numbers. The name over his pod was Kor, Vailen.
Shadow growled as pain blazed in his skull, so intense that it felt like his head would split in two. He raked his claws across the top of the pod, scraping metal. Memories flashed through his mind in rapid, violent succession, too quick and disjointed to make sense of—gunfire, explosions, screams, fire. An alien sky set aglow by the flames surrounding hundreds of dropships as they descended from orbit.
Doesn’t matter now. Need to find Alice. Need to hurry.
He thrust the memories aside and stumbled toward the door on the far wall, turning to look across the screens over the other pods. No Claybourne. No Alice. His chest constricted with another surge of panic—he didn’t know how big this place was, how many rooms awaited him, how many pods like these were scattered throughout the facility. There wasn’t time for a prolonged search; who knew if the passage of time here even matched Wonderland’s?
“Focus,” he said. He turned back toward the door, and his eyes settled on the dark screen on the wall.
Shadow hurried to the screen. Each step was a little more solid, a little more confident, than the last, but his fingers were clumsy and slow as he fumbled with the screen’s controls. Exhaustion pressed in around the edges of his consciousness, making his eyelids feel as heavy as the rest of his body. He fought it.
“Coming, sweet Alice. Coming.” Somehow, he found his way into a program named Patient Directory . The touch screen display brought up the characters of the human alphabet.
Flattening a palm against the wall to keep himself steady, he entered Alice’s name one letter at a time, only to realize he wasn’t sure how to spell her last name. He held his extended finger in the air and struggled to recall the spelling rules of a language he doubted was his native tongue.
C-L-A …
He hesitated. What was next? I ? Y ?
The nearby door slid open before he could settle on the correct letter, allowing slightly stronger light to spill in from the hallway. Shadow pressed himself against the wall as a male human stalked into the room.
The human had long, dark hair, and was athletically built. He held something in his trembling right hand—a pistol.
He stopped three or four paces away from Shadow’s pod, aimed the gun toward it, and fired six shots. The firearm went off with explosive force, each shot punctuated by the high ping of the projectiles punching through the metal lid.
Shadow flattened his ears, but that didn’t stop them from ringing as the final gunshot’s echo faded.
“Fucking nuisance,” the man growled. “Now you’re a real fucking ghost.”
Shadow knew that voice. He knew it very well. This human was the Red King—and he was alone and vulnerable. The fires of hatred and rage reignited in Shadow, dumping adrenaline into his veins and filling his limbs with renewed strength.
The king is vulnerable beyond.
Clenching his jaw, Shadow crept toward the king, his bare feet silent on the cold floor.
The king strode up to the pod, keeping his gun raised. “You deserve to suffer, but I’ll take this victory gladly. Vanish now, you—” The king leaned forward and looked through the window on the pod’s lid. He released a frustrated roar which ended just as Shadow—who’d closed the distance between himself and his enemy to a single pace—brought his leading foot down.
Shadow had overstepped; in his effort to maintain balance, his toe claws tapped the floor lightly.
The king spun to face Shadow, swinging the gun around. Shadow lunged forward, one hand darting out to catch the king’s wrist before the gun’s barrel came to bear. But the king closed the distance between himself and Shadow quickly, eliminating the reach advantage afforded by Shadow’s longer limbs.
The human’s fist connected with Shadow’s jaw, and Shadow’s head snapped aside. His knees wobbled, and the king pressed his advantage, throwing more strength and weight behind his gun arm.
Shadow’s eyes rounded as the trembling weapon turned toward him one degree at a time, its barrel yawning like a black hole, ready to snuff out light and life. He grasped the king’s jacket with his free hand and pulled the human closer still, driving his knee into the king’s gut.
Grunting, the king doubled over, but he wasn’t long deterred. He hammered his fist into Shadow’s defenseless ribs over and over, each blow producing more pain than the last. Shadow refused to relinquish his hold; to do so would mean death. He curled his fingers tighter. The tips of his claws pressed into the flesh of the king’s wrist. The human’s pained growl became a shout as Shadow twisted his hand, forcing the claws deeper.
The gun fell from the king’s hold and struck the floor with a dull thud. The king punched Shadow’s ribs again, and something crunched under the force.
Shadow staggered aside as the breath fled his lungs, forced out by the immense pain clutching his chest. Instinctively, he willed himself to phase, to escape, to reappear anywhere other than right here, but this wasn’t a simulation, wasn’t a game; this was reality. Whether it was the aftereffects of being in the pod or not, right now, when it mattered most, Shadow was slower, weaker, and more unsteady than ever in memory.
Pain was real here. And death was forever.
The king took advantage of Shadow’s imbalance, wrapping his arm around Shadow’s torso and tackling him to the floor. Shadow fought without conscious thought, clawing, swinging his arms, and writhing, desperate to escape as the king tried to pin him. The human’s hands clutched at Shadow’s throat, but Shadow twisted his head and bit down on a few of the groping fingers, sinking his fangs deep. The coppery tang of human blood danced across Shadow’s tongue.
“You fucking rodent, just die!” The king rained blows upon Shadow, who threw his arms up in defense; it wasn’t enough to spare him from several heavy strikes, all of which landed with dull, meaty thwaps .
Alice’s face formed in Shadow’s mind’s eye, so beautiful, so happy.
Happy . That wasn’t how Alice looked now. If she yet lived— she’s alive, has to be, must be —her features were drawn in agony, her skin deathly pale, her dress stained with her own blood. And this human—this mortal man, whose eyes were madder than anyone’s in Wonderland—was the one who’d done it to her.
A second wave of fury rose from deep inside Shadow, blasting fire into his limbs. It didn’t matter how many people had suffered at the king’s hands, didn’t matter how many hearts he’d torn from his victims’ chests, didn’t matter how much blood was on his hands—he’d harmed Alice.
There could be no forgiveness for that. No mercy.
Shadow raked his claws across the king’s face, opening the flesh in a set of cuts from the man’s left cheekbone to the right side of his chin. The king reeled backward, and a spray of blood flew from the cuts to splatter Shadow’s face.
The king lunged again after an instant. Shadow bent his leg, managing to plant his knee against the king’s sternum and halt the human’s forward momentum. When the king lashed out with both arms, Shadow caught the king’s hands in his own, curled his fingers to bury his claws in their backs, and growled as he twisted his hips, heaving the king aside with his knee.
Shadow rolled with the king and came down with his knee atop the king’s gut, driving his weight down on that point of impact.
The ensuing struggle was desperate and chaotic, occurring in a flurry of swinging arms and grasping fingers. The king landed several more solid blows, but Shadow gave back twice as many, unfazed by the punishment he’d received; his pain was dulled and distant now, and what did it matter anyway?
Finally, Shadow closed a hand around the king’s throat and leaned forward, using his other arm to fend off as many of his foe’s flailing attacks as he could. The king clamped a hand around Shadow’s wrist and pulled desperately while his face darkened, shifting gradually from bright red to purple. His eyes, though bulging from their sockets, remained locked with Shadow’s, their bright, hateful gleam stronger than ever.
The king drove his other fist into Shadow’s ribs.
The pain was immediate and explosive. Shadow gritted his teeth and grunted, struggling to maintain his hold, but a second blow to the same spot proved to be too much. His hand loosened, and the king pried it away, sucked in a harsh breath, and shoved Shadow aside.
Catching himself on an elbow, Shadow tucked his other arm against his throbbing side in a vain attempt to relieve the agony. His tail whipped restlessly across the floor until it bumped into something solid lying nearby.
The gun .
He curled his tail around the weapon.
“You don’t get to win this time,” the king growled, voice raw, as he moved onto his knees. His face was still red—as was his throat—and his shoulders heaved with his heavy breaths. Blood ran from the cuts on his face and dripped off his chin, making soft but distinct pattering sounds as they struck the floor. “I’m in charge here. This is my place. Wonderland is my place!”
Shadow swung his free hand down to meet his tail as the king lunged. The human’s momentum knocked Shadow onto his back. He caught the king’s throat in one hand, but his arm didn’t have the strength to hold back the man’s weight. The king leaned forward and wrapped both hands around Shadow’s neck, squeezing.
Dark spots danced across Shadow’s vision. He slipped a finger behind the gun’s trigger guard and bent his arm to position the weapon between his body and the king’s. Pressure was building rapidly in his face due to his cut-off circulation, his throat was raw, and his lungs burned.
My Alice. You can’t take her away.
He squeezed the trigger six times; the first four produced deafening bangs, the last two only the clicks of an empty chamber.
The king jolted with each shot. His eyes flared somehow wider, and he released a startled, choked grunt, spraying bloody spittle from his lips. The stench of singed flesh joined the blood scent on the air. His eyes took on a glassy sheen as he released Shadow’s throat, leaned back onto his knees, and dropped his chin to look down.
Faint wisps of smoke drifted from the four scorch-ringed holes in his chest. He parted his lips as though to speak but managed only a rattling exhalation. For a moment, his face reddened further, and then all the color drained from his skin. He swayed; Shadow shoved him aside, and the human hit the floor in a heap.
Keeping the gun raised, Shadow sagged down and drew in a deep breath. Both his throat and his chest cried out in agony. His whole body hurt, and he wasn’t sure if he could move—but he knew he had to. It didn’t matter if an alarm had been triggered, didn’t matter if a dozen armed men waited beyond the chamber door, didn’t matter how large this place was or how many pods it housed.
Alice needed Shadow. That was all, that was everything.
With his jaw clenched, he rolled onto his side, sat up, and searched the king’s body. He found a spare, fully loaded magazine and reloaded the pistol. The process came to him with surprising ease, though he couldn’t recall having ever handled a gun in that fashion. He also found a thin, rectangular device that had been hooked to the king’s belt.
Shadow pressed a button on the device, and its screen came on. His eyes widened; there seemed to be no security on the device, and the icons on its screen indicated countless documents. A small alert message, highlighted in red along the top of the screen, announced that the security and reporting systems had been deactivated by administrator override. But it was the icon at the top that immediately caught Shadow’s eye.
Claybourne, Alice .
He touched the icon with his finger.
Shadow’s heart leapt when Alice’s picture appeared on the screen. It was accompanied by droves of information about her, including her height, weight, measurements, and several tabs of notes—including one marked Director’s Notes .
Terror, at once cold and fiery, spread outward from a pit in Shadow’s stomach to suffuse his entire body. Beneath her picture was a list of vital signs—all of which were blank.
“No, no, no,” he rasped, lifting a hand and pressing the textured side of the pistol’s grip to his forehead as he raked the tips of his claws through his hair. “No. She’s not gone. Not gone.”
The reporting system is deactivated. There’s still time. I’m not too late.
Breath shallow and ragged, he scanned the information frantically until he discovered what he needed— Patient Location: CA-17-49B . The designation meant nothing to him, but there was an option beside it that he pressed immediately— Navigate to Patient .
The device’s display changed to a map; the pulsing dot at the center must’ve been him. Shadow staggered to his feet. He bent his arm, keeping the device facing toward him, and straightened his gun arm, settling it atop the other to ease the tremors coursing through his limbs and provide his weapon with some stability. Despite the unsteadiness in his legs—his knees felt as though they might buckle at any moment—the throbbing ache in his head, and the sharp pain in his ribs, he hurried into the hallway.
The corridor stretched on in either direction for what must’ve been hundreds of feet; Shadow couldn’t judge the distance while his vision kept bending and blurring. He shook his head sharply, but it only gave him temporary clarity. There were no guards in sight, and dozens of doors, each with letters and numbers printed on their faces, lined either side of the hallway. A small vehicle sat only a few paces away. It was some sort of cart with six wheels, two seats up front, and a long bed on the rear—long enough to fit a person who was lying down.
Shadow moved to the vehicle, leaning his hip against its side for balance as he studied the controls—a wheel positioned above the level of the seat and two pedals on the floor. He didn’t understand why it looked so… normal , so familiar, when he’d never seen anything like this in Wonderland.
Because I am from this world—Alice’s world—whether I consciously remember it or not .
A soft chiming sound called his attention to the device in his hand. A message had appeared on the screen— Enable auto-navigation for current route in vehicle CZCX97?
Shadow tapped YES with his thumb. The next message instructed him to enter the vehicle’s operator seat and activate the auto-navigation on the control screen. He twisted to check the hall behind him; it remained deserted, but he’d moved too fast. A sudden bout of dizziness made it feel like the corridor was tilting and spinning around him, and his body pitched to the side—away from the cart.
He thrust himself back toward the vehicle, inadvertently over-correcting. Fortunately, the cart had no doors, and—after a couple more bumps that were insignificant compared to what he’d suffered at the king’s hands—he found himself sprawled across the front seats. He adjusted his hold on the pistol, grasped the steering wheel, and hauled himself into a sitting position. His ribs screamed in protest, but he didn’t have time to be slowed by them. Once his legs were in the cart, bent at ridiculous angles to fit, he pressed the prompt to engage the auto-navigation.
The cart lurched forward with a barely perceptible hum. Its wheels rolled silently over the floor as it drove down the hall. Though it moved faster than he could have on foot in his current state, impatience—intensified by worry—sparked in Shadow. He leaned back and glanced down at the pedals. One of them would make the vehicle move faster; he knew it instinctually, though he had no idea which one was correct.
Leaving himself no time to debate the matter, he lowered his foot onto one of the pedals. The vehicle darted forward, gaining enough speed to force Shadow back against the seat.
Doors passed on either side with soft whooshes of air, and the cart’s control panel lit up with an alert about the speed, but Shadow paid no attention to any of it. His focus remained on the device in his hand; he watched as the dot representing his location sped along the map’s corridors. When the vehicle took its first turn, the whole thing tipped on two wheels, threatening to roll over. Shadow threw his weight in the opposite direction. The cart slammed back down and regained the speed it had lost in the turn.
All the while, Shadow muttered under his breath, feeling the words more than hearing them with his own ears.
“She’s all right, she’s alive, it’s not too late, she’s okay…”
He pressed the pedal down harder and used the map to anticipate upcoming turns, easing his foot off the accelerator and shifting his weight to keep the vehicle from tipping each time he reached one.
This facility was more unsettling than the swamp full of sleepers in Wonderland—because this place was so silent, so unnatural, and the fact that these sleepers were hidden in pods, out of sight, only made it somehow worse. There were so many, many more sleepers here. Shadow had already passed what must’ve been hundreds of them, if not more. Each was unaware of their state, unaware they were immersed in a false reality, unaware of this world.
Where were the guards, the attendants? Even if the king had disabled the security system, shouldn’t there have been someone around? Did they really leave all these patients, all these prisoners , unattended?
The device in Shadow’s hand chimed again. The message on its screen said Destination Ahead .
He lifted his foot off the pedal. The vehicle continued forward another hundred feet or so before bringing itself to a smooth stop in front of a door that had CA-17-49 stamped on its face. Shadow leapt out of the cart and rushed to the door, allowing his legs no time to falter, offering the pain wracking his body not a single thought more than he already had. He slapped the button on the wall. The door slid open, and Shadow rushed through.
Alice’s pod—CA-17-49B—was the second from the left. Shadow charged to it, stopping himself by throwing his arms over the lid. Ragged breaths burned his throat as he peered through the little view window.
It was her —small, delicate, pale, and unmoving. Her eyes were closed, her face strained as though she were in the grips of a nightmare. And she was in a nightmare—Wonderland.
He flicked his gaze to the wall mounted screen over her pod. It displayed her vital signs, all of them in red with little alarm signals flashing beside them; she was alive, but she wasn’t well.
Heart pounding hard enough to cause twinges of pain in his damaged ribs, Shadow hurried to the foot of the pod, where a small control panel was positioned. He scanned through the options; none of it seemed right, and much of it was meaningless to his conscious mind. Perhaps if he had time to think, to remember…
He selected an option. It opened a submenu which included one command that caught his attention— Emergency Awakening .
“Stay with me,” Shadow said, stretching an arm along the top of the pod. He laid the pistol down and flattened his palm atop the pod’s lid as though he could touch her through the metal. He pressed the Emergency Awakening command.
Supervisor clearance required to proceed.
Shadow tapped the screen over and over with increasing franticness, but it didn’t change.
“What does that mean ? No. No, no, no, no!” He banged his fist on the pod. “Alice, wake up!”
Swinging his hand up to grasp his hair, he stepped back. This wasn’t real. Couldn’t be real. He couldn’t get this close to her only to fail, only to lose her anyway.
The king’s device!
He raised the device and reactivated the screen. A message appeared— Approve emergency awakening CA-17-49B? Vital signs critical. Shadow pressed YES before he’d even finished reading.
The pod beeped, and there was a loud hiss of releasing air as the lid jolted up a fraction of an inch. Shadow quickly snatched the gun off the top of the pod, stepped back, and watched with his breath caught in his throat. Unseen machinery rumbled before the lid, which was hinged near the wall, swung upward.
Alice was revealed to Shadow a little at a time—first her dainty toes and feet, then her ankles, shins, and knees, followed by the bits of her thighs that were visible below the hem of her gown, which was identical to Shadow’s. The fabric covering her pelvis and torso was run through with little bulges and bumps created by the wires and tubes beneath it. Slowly, those tubes and wires disconnected themselves, sliding out of her flesh and leaving no blood behind.
No blood…what if she’s not real? What if she’s a ghost here, like I was there?
Shadow shook his head, dropped the king’s device and the pistol onto the padded bed inside the pod, and grasped the pod wall to hold himself steady as a fresh wave of dizziness washed over him. The needles that had pulled themselves out of him hadn’t left any blood behind either. Only the one he’d torn out of himself had bled at all.
This was Alice. He could sense it, could smell her—her honey and vanilla fragrance was even more pronounced here, was even more hers , and he forced in another deep breath through his nose just to draw in more of it.
His gaze settled on Alice’s face, which was sorrowfully beautiful in that moment—the pain in her expression would tear his heart to shreds if he stared too long, but he couldn’t look away from her.
The last of the visible lines disconnected from her.
Alice’s eyes snapped open. Her back arched sharply, and she clawed at the padding beneath her, mouth agape in a soundless cry. For several seconds, she remained in that position—every muscle tense, the cords of her neck standing out, and bluish veins visible beneath her pale skin. Then she sucked in a wheezing, agonized breath and collapsed onto the padding, chest rising and falling rapidly as she panted.
“Shadow,” she whispered.