Chapter Two
15 years later…
Nearly everyone who knew him believed that David Hatter led a charmed life.
He never seemed to be lacking money, though he was never seen working and constantly carried an air of roguish scruffiness.
He could get into any club, bar, or restaurant he wanted with nothing more than a smile and a few jokes.
He was always drinking, but never drunk.
He was friends of a friend of a friend's cousin with everyone on the entire planet.
People couldn't count the number of times he had simply walked backstage from a concert he certainly didn't have tickets for, and was more often than not found drinking with the band members before, after, and occasionally during a show.
He was generous to everyone, although most of the gifts he gave were originally borrowed from someone else. He'd order a round for everyone, then be nowhere to be found when the bill came by.
Men envied his easy personality and impossible fashion that only worked for him. Women couldn't get enough of his quick wit, crooked smile, and magician's hands.
Rumors abounded, each more incredible than the last. He had been offered a modeling contract after someone saw him shooing a pigeon away. He was the secret boy toy of a famous actress. He was an exiled Morrocan prince. He was telepathic.
But the truth was far stranger than any whispered gossip.
David Hatter was Lost.
He had been Lost ever since he could remember, but felt it much more keenly as he grew up. Something was missing. His life was off-track, but he didn't know what track his life should be on. Probably shouldn't be on the track anyway. Better to be on a bus, on tracks. People had a tendency to fall off when on tracks.
So he ignored it.
He drowned the feeling in drinks and clubs and parties and women.
Women like the blonde who was looking toward him with a tight dress and a sensual smile.
"Hey."
Adjusting his trusty hat, and smiling that crooked grin, he introduced himself. "I'm Hatter."
"I'm thirsty."
His smile grew exponentially. "Let me help you with that."
But then something changed this normal exchange of smiles and drinks. As she reached out to pat his hand in thanks, something clicked. The moment her skin touched his, his whole body reacted like she was an electric charge. His hair (the bits that weren't gelled up already) stood on end, goosebumps spread across his arms, and like a broken compass that had suddenly found north, he knew with his whole being that he had found his Way.
Trying recover from whatever had happened, and hoping the blonde didn't notice, Hatter walked to the bar and ordered her whatever pink girly drink she had asked for. As he waited, he tried to suss out what had just gone on.
She was special, somehow. He glanced at her critically. He had been with prettier girls, certainly, and even flirtier ones, if one could believe it. But what he felt had no connection to her looks. She was a part of making him feel unLost, and he was going to find out everything about her.
A few drinks later, he had learned that her name was Charlotte (she mentioned a last name too, but was drinking as she slurred it. Chance, or Chase, or something.), and that she was getting married soon.
"I'm out on a stag spree!"
"I think you mean hen night."
"What?"
"Whatever lucky young buck has the pleasure of being betrothed to you is out on a stage spree. You, my lovely bird, are on a hen's night."
She furrowed her brow, then stuck the tip of her tongue out as she smiled. "Wow. Smart and cute. You are one of a kind."
"If you say it, it must be true."
Charlotte giggled, then grabbed his hands. "Why do you have so many rings?" She asked, examining his fingers.
"In case I need them, love." He answered, returning the favor. A ring set with a central ruby and surrounded by green stones caught his attention and he leaned in for a better look.
Charlotte leaned forward to meet him. "Wanna know a secret?"
Hatter grinned charmingly. "Love to."
"I stole that ring from my mother." She whispered, eyes sparkling with mischief.
"Naughty," He mock scolded as she smiled.
"She says I can't have it until I'm-" she paused, and Hatter felt she changed whatever word she was going to use, "older. But! It's so pretty, and powerful, and I just love the way it looks. It comes in a special box, too."
She reached into her bag and pulled out a small case made of spiraling wood. It rested on a silver base with a round emblem on top. This caused another small electric shock, as if it also was a shining beacon to his Way.
He fiddled with it gently at first, then tried to pry open as it stubborn stayed shut.
Laughing girlishly, Charlotte reached over to cover his hands with her own. "It's got a hidden catch," she explained, and pushed down on the small silver top while twisting the bottom.
With a quiet click, the box spilt in half to reveal the ring's resting place.
"Clever," he remarked as he examined the case.
"Let's see how it looks on you!" Charlotte chirruped. He moved the ring box to his other hand as she tried each of his fingers until the ring slid comfortably onto his left pinkie.
"There! Perfect." She beamed up at him as he stared at the ring. It felt… odd, somehow. Almost like it was familiar to him – or rather, more like he was familiar to it. His right arm started tingling, and he flexed his wrist to get rid of the pins and needles.
"I'm going to the ladies room. Don't you go anywhere." Charlotte commanded with a wink, then headed off.
Hatter spared her a smile, then went back to studying the ring. It looked incredibly old. And valuable. And yet, though he could usually narrow in on a price for just about anything, he felt like it was worth more than money, somehow.
A surprised scream pierced through the noisy crowd and caught his ear, and he pushed his way out the back door with a sudden urgency. Turning his head back and forth in increasing panic, he suddenly heard another shriek down an alley. He bolted down the side street just in time to see men carrying what looked like a limp Charlotte into the back of a van.
"Oi!" He shouted as it sped off, and ran after it. Or tried to, anyway. As the car rounded a corner, a strange looking man stepped out from the shadows, his cane clicking on the pavement.
Hatter stopped. He stared at this odd looking man in his white suit and gray jacket and tried to figure out why he seemed so peculiar.
"I'm afraid she's gone." The white-haired man spoke with a hint of condescension as he walked forward.
Hatter scrutinized the newcomer, trying to discern any malice, or ill-intent, or any preclusion to chicanery of any kind, but could feel nothing from him.
His eyes widened. That was it. That's why the man seemed off. Hatter could pick up on the emotions of just about everyone around him if he tried, whether they were eager, or desperate, or blissful, or uncertain, but this man gave off nothing. No emotion, no intent, not a whiff of anything.
"Who are you?" He demanded.
A false smile appeared. "A friend of Charlotte's."
Hatter needed no perception to tell that was a lie.
"Charlotte took something that didn't belong to her. We need it back." The man started to circle him, and Hatter got a glimpse of his white hair parted into two strands. Strange, they looked almost like…
"The ring, David."
Hatter's head whipped around. "How do you know my name?" He asked with an undercurrent of danger. He didn't like this man that he couldn't get a read on knowing his name. It felt like a poker game where the white-gray man had all the cards plus a mirror to see Hatter's hand. Speaking of hands, he realized he had Charlotte's ring on his left and the wooden case still in his right.
"Where have you taken her?" He asked, hoping to keep the man's focus on his questions, rather than his hands.
"Oh, she's quite safe." There was that veneer of a smile again.
"Then bring her back." Hatter grit out through his teeth. Whoever these men were, they certainly weren't looking out for Charlotte's wellbeing.
"I'm afraid she'll have to go back with me to face charges."
Trying to move as stealthily as he could, he attempted to slide the case into his back pocket. As it moved toward his pocket, he felt it twist and heard the lock click, catching the unwelcome attention of his well-dressed visitor.
"So you do have it!" The man growled as he leapt forward, using his cane as a weapon, rather than a walking stick.
After struggling for a minute, Hatter grabbed and shoved the man up against the brick wall with his right hand (which was still tingling, despite how busy Hatter was at the moment), and shouted, "Where have you taken her?"
The long-haired man pushed back with his cane, which caused Hatter to stumble back (and get a distinct view of a rabbit pin on the man's lapel, which also seemed to look familiar for some reason) and the ring case to go bouncing across the alley. Breaking free, the suited man snatched it up and ran through a small opening to the adjoining street.
Cursing to himself, Hatter followed, muttering that if someone could leg it that fast then they most definitely did not need a cane, and carrying one was really quite a dishonorable deception to anyone trying to give pursuit who might have thought they would have the advantage.
He gave chase through streets and doorways and up stairs as they entered a half-completed building. Hatter thought he had finally caught up with his quarry when he skidded around a turn and saw the man had turned into a room with nothing but some metal shelves and a giant mirror.
Hatter started to wonder, What the hell is a mirror doing in a construction-
And then the man jumped into the looking glass.
If he was moving at a more normal pace, he might have stopped and stared for quite some time at the sheer impossibility of someone jumping into a mirror. One could certainly jump at a mirror, and then bounce off or get smacked in the face for their troubles by the ungiving nature of the glass. But that the reflective pane would simply swallow someone whole, as if it were made of water, was deemed simply impossible by the laws of physics.
But he wasn't moving at a normal pace. He was running faster than he had ever run before, desperate to not lose the first guide to his Way, the one that held the key to him getting unLost. And that frantic speed that caused him to hurtle into the glass wall, only to be swallowed as well, nevermind how the laws of physics felt about it.
He fell through a tunnel of light and colors and wind that stole whatever sound he was trying to make. After an eternity, he landed heavily on something solid and that smelled rather nice, whatever it was. With great effort, he lifted himself up and forced his eyes to focus. He then felt like telling his eyes that focusing was of no use if they were showing him nonsense.
A glance down revealed that he was standing on a mound of grass with some marigolds, or maybe they were dandelions, growing on it, and that the patch of grass was at the end of a hallway filled with water, with offices lining both sides. There were lights and wires and ivy vines hanging everywhere, and it looked thoroughly abandoned.
"Hello?" He ventured, then saw the white-headed man go splashing past.
"Oi, you!" He shouted then gave chase again, although part of his mind observed that it seemed the man was going slower this time, and that he wasn't even really trying to stay hidden.
After sloshing through a few river-hallways, Hatter burst out the doors and backed up hurriedly from the edge of a very, very long way down. Heights didn't particularly bother him, but the prospect of falling off a fifty story building certainly did.
Hatter looked around with furrowed brows. The houses looked like most dingy houses in a bad part of town, except for the fact that instead of streets, there was a mile-long drop, with only a few sidewalks crossing the gulf between buildings.
Some movement caught his eye, and he saw the pale man (who almost blended into the colorless landscape) ducking down yet another alley. While running atop of rubble and moving through weeds, Hatter couldn't shake the feeling that this was all familiar somehow. That he had seen these buildings, or buildings like these buildings, before. Just before he rounded the next corner, something made him pause. He peeked out from behind a neighboring tree just in time to see men carrying an unconscious Charlotte up some stairs of the structure across from him, with the pale gentleman following behind. The doors closed, revealing twin emblems of a rabbit head above a shield with a red eye in the center, and a banner that read "White Rabbit" floating across the bottom.
Cautiously opening the doors, he saw nothing but a maze of office walls covered with plants. Before he could decide how bad of an idea it would be to go inside and get more lost (he was lost… wasn't he?), a strange sound drew his attention up to the sky. Flying out from behind one of the skyscrapers was what looked like a giant metal bug. It had huge steel wings, and a large searchlight coming from the front. The light panned across his hand, and he felt his skin start to burn. Deciding that he would take creepy viney hallways over flying metal cockroaches with burning headlights any day, he ducked through the doors before the light could do anything else.
Once inside, he walked as quietly as he could, trying to listen for anything that sounded like a guy with long white hair or an unconscious Charlotte waking up. Turning into a new hallway, this one with trees growing in it (was every building abandoned here? Or was it a really committed green technology fad for corporations?), he suddenly noticed some light at the end of the hall, illumination that looked more florescent than the soft patterns of sunlight shining on the plants.
He hesitantly made his way toward the sterile glow, noticing that there was a white table with a bottle of some sorts sitting on it, filled with something that looked uncomfortably sticky and red. Noticing that it had a label, Hatter picked it up in order to read it. It was labeled "Curiosity" on one side in a formal looking font, and when he turned it over, he saw a handwritten message finishing with, "killed the cat!"
Deciding that that was more than enough of his daily dose of eerie, Hatter quickly put the bottle back on the table. He looked around and noticed that white walls looked almost like mattresses, with small mail doors embedded in each one. He bent down and slid one open, only to find rows and rows of boxes full of comatose people, many with strange green marks on their faces and arms.
Thoroughly unnevered, he backed away quickly. Boxes of unmoving people never meant anything good, from what he could figure.
It was then that the walls started to move.
Not in a 'oi, might want to slow down on the drinks, mate' kind of move, but the kind where the table with the creepy bottle was gone and the walls themselves were distinctly moving towards each other in a rather rapid fashion.
Hoping the walls might change their mind on moving, Hatter pounded on the nearest white wall (Oh God, they were padded. Padded walls. That was never a good sign.), and was momentarily gratified when it stopped. Then the ceiling came down.
Like one of those shrinking block puzzles, each wall moved in after the others in a coordinated manner, giving Hatter the impression that they would keep getting smaller until he was the size of a mouse.
The walls finally stopped just short of acquainting Hatter's knees with his face. One of the slits opened, revealing the dratted white rabbit man who caused all this infernal mess.
"Good. We have him. Take him away."
"Oi! Freak! Let me out of this thing!" Hatter shouted, kicking the wall for emphasis.
"Temper, temper." The gray-suited man smiled condescendingly. "Shouldn't have come after me, little Oyster."
Hatter had two reactions to that. One was anger, with a great urge to yank his little white pigtails, and the other was a feeling that even if he didn't know what an Oyster was, he knew he wasn't one.
Any other reactions were overridden by an overwhelming sense of panic as he felt the little padded box rise into the air. As he pounded the walls a few more times, only to have the box swing alarmingly back and forth, he could hear that same smug voice call out, "Must dash. Running late."
As he stifled his urge to shout back, "Yeah, go on and hop it!", Hatter suddenly wondered where the hell he was – and if he'd ever find his way back out.