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.
Chapter 21
Alice lay still, too disoriented and scared to move. She’d just woken from a nightmare—but the nightmare had been so vivid, had felt so real, that she wasn’t entirely certain she was truly awake.
The immense pain that she’d felt in that nightmare lingered, but it was merely a phantom of itself; the oddly cool sensation flowing through her veins was chasing it away. Swallowing thickly, she struggled to ease her breathing and slowly ran her hand along her abdomen to where she’d been shot. There was no blood, no wound, no pain as she applied pressure.
I was dying.
She’d felt it. She’d felt her heartbeat slowing, fading; she’d felt her lungs burning as she battled to draw in her final, desperate breaths; she’d felt ice creeping up her limbs toward her chest and had known it would steal whatever life remained in her when it reached her heart. And she’d stared at Shadow, who lay motionless beside her, his eyes empty and blank, throughout—she’d stared until he disappeared.
Over and over, Alice had repeated the words in her head.
This isn’t real. Shadow’s not gone, he’s awake. S
hadow’s alive.
Before long, all she’d been able to do was whisper his name as she bled out.
There was movement in her peripheral vision; suddenly, Shadow was above her. Except…his face was thinner, sharper, and he was splattered with blood—a lot of blood. At least some of it appeared to be his own, trickling from a cut over his right eye and his swollen, split lower lip.
“Shadow, wh—”
He slipped his arms beneath Alice and lifted her as he brought his mouth down on hers. His kiss was both familiar and foreign, reminiscent of the kisses they’d shared in the simulation while somehow being wholly new and unique. The sensation felt stronger, more powerful, more…real.
They were real.
We made it!
Joy surged within Alice, and she forced her heavy arms up to loop them around his neck. This was Shadow. Her Shadow. The one who’d been there for her from the beginning, who’d helped her, believed in her, and loved her even when he’d thought her mad. And he was here with her, in the real world, in the flesh.
He’d saved her.
Alice curled her fingers in his long, black and gray hair, parted her lips, and returned the kiss. She tasted his salty, metallic blood—along with something more undefinable, something entirely him.
“Alice,” Shadow rasped against her mouth before deepening the kiss and holding her tighter against him.
This kiss wasn’t about seduction or blazing desire—it was a grounding kiss, confirming that they were real, that they were alive, that they were together. They’d never kissed one another with such desperation and relief; no other kiss had ever been so comforting.
When they finally pulled away from one another, Alice searched his face, frowning at the cuts and swelling, at the first hints of bruising evident through his gray, suede-like fur. Easing down on the cushion beneath her, Alice lightly touched the side of his mouth near the split.
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