Thank you to my wonderful reviewers! This chapter does not deviate from the script too much, but I thought, in this case, it was for the best. Besides, it leads to the next chapter, which finally brings in a very favorite character.
Chapter III: Down the Wormhole
She was flying. Her body was stretched out like a diver, arms strung out above her head, as she was sucked through a winding, worm-hole like, Technicolor vortex. Up and down were indistinguishable as she traveled through the vortex. Light and darkness became one and the same. Her mind had no ability at all to process what was happening or how it was happening. All other coherent thoughts did not return to her until she made jarring contact with solid ground. Even then, it took a few minutes for her brain to start operating lucidly.
Once she managed to regain the air which had been knocked from her lungs, Alice did a quick mental inventory of her body. She cataloged any pains, satisfied to find nothing more than minor aches caused, no doubt, from her rather inelegant landing. No bones were broken, which she was quite grateful for. Her head was pounding slightly, but, other than that, she was perfectly fine. Standing proved to be a trial, as the travel through that freakish tunnel had disoriented her, making her surroundings spin before her eyes. She blinked through the vertigo and waited patiently for the world to halt its mad rotations. Harsh buzzing noises which sounded like the blaring alarms from those science fiction movies, the ones that sounded whenever the spaceship had taken a hit, bounced off the walls. Their amplified sounds exacerbated the pounding in her head.
Alice had landed on grass, but quickly deduced that she must have landed on the only grassy part of the area. She did not bother to consider why there was grass when she was clearly inside some sort of building, and it was obvious it was not the same building she had run into just a few minutes ago. The hallway looming in front of her was flooded ankle-deep with dark water. Thick cables hung exposed from the ceiling, sparking dangerously. Light panels drifted on precarious hinges, threatening to drop any second on the next unsuspecting person to walk under them. Lights flickered on and off, producing an eerie pattern of shadows on the walls of wherever she was.
Yes, that was her chief problem, was it not? Alice had no idea where she was. She had known the mirror was some kind of a portal. In all likelihood, she had been transported to a different dimension or plane of existence. She knew of such things, had even known people who had experienced inter-dimensional travel (whether intentional or accidental), but she had never had any personal experience of it. The young Slayer had never really harbored a desire to visit other dimensions. In fact, she had not even meant to enter this portal; she had merely wanted to touch it to see if it would work for her.
Look but don't touch next time, Alice, she mentally admonished herself.
This was troubling, as the girl had no way of knowing whether or not she could get back to her world. Aside from that, no one knew she was here, so there was no guarantee of aid from her world. But she knew this was where the white-haired man had gone since she had clearly seen him enter the mirror portal. This was also where her boyfriend had been taken. She had no way of confirming that for certain, but her gut was telling her loud and clear she was on the right path to finding Jack. Besides, the man had as good as told her Jack had been taken here when he mentioned her boyfriend having to face some kind of charges.
Alice formulated the bare bones of a plan, the details of which would have to be worked out later once she learned more about this place. She would find Jack and rescue him from whatever peril he was currently facing first. Then she would find a way to get them out of this world. As far as plans went, she did realize hers was rather slapdash, but it made her feel better having some kind of strategy in mind rather than traipsing blindly around a foreign world.
The girl started walking, splashing through the filthy water. She shivered as the water sloshed up over the top of her boots and soaked her feet. A few yards down the hallway, there was a corridor to her right. She glanced down the corridor, noting the grungy yellow double doors at the end. After a few moments of careful thought, she decided she would rather take her chances with the door than to have to continue to trek through cold, murky water.
The doors led out of the building to the purplish gray-cast skies of the outside world. The girl carelessly stepped out before taking one swift glance at the end of the concrete ledge in front of the door, which was only about two feet wide. There was a total drop-off beyond the ledge. It looked like it was a long way down. Alice squeaked in terror and stepped back, splaying herself against the building as if she were glued to it. Her heart froze within her chest and her bowels and legs liquefied. For reasons unbeknownst to her, she had always had a crippling fear of heights. Even after becoming a Slayer, when dropping up to sixty feet could be accomplished with little to no damage, she had retained this fear. She preferred to keep her feet no more than six feet above the ground at all times.
Had she not turned her head so as to not view the terrifying scene before her, she would not have glimpsed the white-haired man a few yards away. He saw her and gaped at her in bewilderment. Undoubtedly, he was shocked at her presence in this world. He recovered from his shock quickly, though, and immediately ran in between two buildings.
Alice forced herself to breathe and let go of the building she was clinging to like a lifeline. If she had any hope of recovering Jack, she would have to chase this man yet again. Trying her best not to think about the petrifying drop-off only a few feet away from her, she ran in pursuit of the white-haired man.
She stopped in front of the bridge the white-haired man ran across as her nauseous fear returned. It brought with it the awful gelatinous sensation that assaulted her legs. Her fear dwindled just slightly when she saw the man had joined up with two men in those horrid dark suits, dragging the unconscious form of her boyfriend up the steps of the building across the bridge.
"Jack!" she cried in a strange mixture of horror and relief. Her legs solid once more, she pushed herself across the bridge.
The doors to the building shut, closing Jack inside. She reached the porch and saw the doors bore the same white rabbit insignia she had noticed on the white-haired man's lapel: a white rabbit behind a large green shield bordered in gold, with an open eye at the center. A white banner ran across the shield with the words White Rabbit written on it in large black letters. Alice did not know why, but she had a peculiar sense of déjà vu as she stared at the symbol. She felt there was something significant about this white rabbit. It was something she ought to know, but the thoughts were slippery as eels.
A strange whirring sound from above interrupted her musings. She walked to the porch railing to investigate. Alice gasped at the sight of a strange hovering craft with large wing-shaped structures projecting from the front of it. It was equipped with powerful search lights, which lit up the ground below and all but blinded her with their brightness. The wide shafts of light traveled the bridge and up the porch steps, catching the underside of Alice's right forearm which hung outside the protection of the roof. As she watched in fascinated horror, the light painlessly burned a bizarre green mark into her white skin. The mark nearly covered the entire surface area of the underside of her forearm. She hesitantly reached out her other hand to run a finger across the mark which curled down her forearm in winding tendrils. It felt like it had melded completely with her skin.
Um, okay, maybe it's time to go inside. She ran back to the door and, finding it to be unlocked, swung it open to step inside. No gun-toting men in dark suits had been waiting on the other side as she had anticipated. Instead she found herself standing alone in yet another long corridor. This one looked to have been invaded by the jungle. Vines draped the walls and floors, coating the place in a thick layer of greenery. At the end of the darkened hallway there was a room lit up with white light.
Not knowing where else to go, Alice walked toward it. As she got closer, she noticed there was a small table in the room with a small crystal bottle sitting atop it. It was halfway filled with red liquid. The room itself was free from the vegetation which occupied the hallway outside it. It had thick, white padded walls with what looked to be small metal mail slots in the middle of each wall.
Alice looked down at the bottle and flipped up the tag which had been tied around the neck. Curiosity, it read. She flipped it over to read what was on the other side and frowned when she saw it said killed the cat. Curiosity killed the cat. Wow, isn't that the truth? Well, she was not curious enough to taste the red liquid so she set the bottle back down. Curiosity had gotten her into enough trouble as it was.
She walked over to one of the metal slots and kneeled down. She pulled back the panel and peered through it. There was a person curled up in the fetal position in a room very similar to the one she was in. He was dressed in a long brown over-coat, had shoulder-length filthy brown hair, and was wearing a pair of broken glasses. Alice gasped and her blue eyes widened considerably as recognition set in. This was the homeless man whom she had given apples to in place of spare change earlier in the day. On his face, curving around his eye and stretching from his cheekbone to his forehead, was the same green mark which had been etched into her arm.
"Oh my god. What's happened to you?" she whispered in dismay.
A door slammed. It had been the door to the room she was in.
"Hey! Let me out!" Alice screamed. She ran over to the door, slapping her palms against it.
The ceiling started advancing downward. She cursed and braced her arms against it, hoping her Slayer strength would be enough to keep her from being crushed to death. The problem escalated when the walls on the sides starting closing in on her.
"Stop!" she shouted. "Stop it! Let me out!"
The movement did stop. Luckily, it had only boxed her in an area that was quite a bit smaller than it had previously been. The table with the crystal bottle had mysteriously disappeared. She heard the snick! of one of the metal panels being slid open.
The face of that damned white-haired man peered through the slot at her, looking eminently satisfied. "Good, we have her," he remarked unctuously.
"Who are you?" Alice demanded hotly. "Where the hell am I? What have you done with Jack?"
The man grinned dementedly. "Temper, temper. You shouldn't have come after me, little oyster," he chided.
"Hey! Come back, you asshole!" she shouted as the man's face disappeared. Through the rectangular slot, she saw the man saunter away, snickering to himself.
I am going to beat him with that cane if I see him again, she promised herself while cracking her knuckles.
The box lurched to one side, throwing Alice against the wall. It lurched again as it was lifted off the ground. She had frightening visions of it being dropped off one of those ledges or down a hill where she would be left to roll around inside of it until she vomited all over herself.
While the box moved forward to whatever destination these people had in mind, Alice was busy drawing up a plan to escape from this claustrophobic prison. She had decided punching through the walls or ceiling would be a last resort. If there were a less destructive way to accomplish what she wanted, she would rather try that route first. Also, one tended to accrue nasty splinters and gashes when punching through solid objects.
"Latch. Maybe there's a latch or something," she muttered to herself.
She pulled a pin from her dark curtain of hair, and started sliding it underneath the padding on the walls. When she reached a point of resistance that made a metal clinging sound, she smiled victoriously.
Bingo.
She twiddled the pin around, eventually forcing the latch to slide to the open position. The bottom of the box swung open.
What she had failed to realize was that one of those hovering crafts was transporting her box over a large body of water. Consequently, her box was hanging hundreds of feet in the air. Alice yelped in surprise and fright, just barely managing to grab onto the side of the box as gravity enforced its will upon her. Hanging onto the edge of the box, she gulped and looked around her. There were dozens of other boxes, identical to one she had been trapped within, hanging right alongside her. One of them must have been carrying that poor, slumbering homeless man.
In spite of how much she wanted to, the girl knew she could not help him now. I'm sorry, she thought before she let go of the box and allowed herself to plummet into the depths of the lake.
The water was deep; deep enough to safely enfold a girl who had fallen hundreds of feet. Alice gritted her teeth when the slicing cold bit into her skin. She had not taken a breath when she had allowed herself to drop. Her absolute certainty that she was going to die from the fall had stolen all ability to breathe from her. She had merely closed her eyes and let herself take the plunge. She did not even know why she had let go. A split second after the decision had been made the girl had greatly regretted it.
Under the water, when Alice realized she was very much alive and very much in need of oxygen, she kicked her legs and moved her arms. The direction of the surface was not instantly obvious, but instinct knew where to take her. Breaking the surface had been glorious. She gulped up the air for a few minutes before taking stock of her predicament. She had dropped herself in the middle of the lake, it appeared. It was a big lake, too. With a doleful sigh, she aimed her body toward the land which had the towering buildings. She scissor-kicked her legs and began forward crawling to it. How long it would take to reach land, she could not say, but she was ever grateful for preternatural endurance. She knew how to swim adequately, but this was not something she did on an everyday basis.
Let's just hope there are no giant squid monster-things in this lake. That thought spurred her on faster.
The lake channeled into a network of canals that snaked throughout the city. The young woman swam to the closest approximation of a dock she could find, and hauled herself up onto the blessedly dry (but dirty) surface. Looking beside her, she recoiled with disgust when she saw a dead rat lying in a wire-mesh trap only a few inches from her face. Beyond that foul spectacle stood a pair of black boots. Alice tilted her gaze upward to find the owner of the black boots dressed in a black slicker and fisherman's hat. He had scraggly brown hair and a face full of dirt and stubble. More importantly, he was also brandishing a sharp knife and regarding her with fearful suspicion.
Alice quickly pulled herself to her feet, falling into a defensive stance. "Drop it! I don't want to hurt you."
The man's eyes darted to her arm, which was still plainly branded with the green mark. He looked back at her, alarm on his face. "You're an oyster!" he shouted accusingly.
Alice frowned. She remembered the white-haired man referring to her as such earlier. "No, I'm a girl, well, a human," she corrected him.
The man shoved his knife back into its sheath and began gathering up his nets and other tools. "I don't want nothing to do with yeh!" he snapped. "Oysters ain't nothin' but trouble. I'm a workin' man. I don't want no trouble, yeh hear?"
Just then, they heard the telltale whirring sound Alice associated with the weird hovering crafts. She backed away from the edge of the canal, watching as the craft carrying the dozens of boxes lumbered past the roofed dock area where she and the slicker man stood. The slicker man was terrified.
"If they see us together, we'll both be dead!" he whispered frantically. He scurried towards a maze of crates and nets behind them.
Alice went after him. "Wait! Sir, I need help!"
"Go away!" he ordered. "Can't help no oyster!"
Why does he keep calling me that? Though she was extremely curious as to why she was being called what was, essentially, a shell with goop inside, it was not the most important issue at stake at the moment. She reached into her pocket, praying she had stashed some cash in there. She pulled out a twenty-dollar-bill. "I can pay you! Look, I have some money," she told him desperately.
The man stopped, appearing intrigued by the idea of money. Alice was happy to see greed cared nothing for which dimension it was in.
"What's that?" he asked, referring to the paper currency in her hand.
Her heart sank. "Twenty bucks," she said hopefully.
"Bucks?" he questioned, looking unfamiliar with the term.
Crap. She should have known her money would likely be useless here.
"Listen, I'm looking for a man who was kidnapped and brought here," she explained. "Could you please help me?"
The man observed her doubtfully. He shook his head.
"Please, I'll pay you back somehow. He'll pay you, I'm sure," she offered.
The man took a few minutes to consider it. She had no idea how she was going to pay him if her currency was of no value here. Alice only hoped the man was not smart enough to wonder how payment would be rendered.
She gave a silent cheer of relief when he nodded. "Thank you so much!" she cried. Beaming graciously, she held out her hand to shake his and introduce herself. "I'm Alice."
The man ignored her hand. He goggled at her in incredulity. "The Alice? The Alice of Legend?"
"Um," Alice replied obtusely, unable to do anything but stare at him in incomprehension. "No, I don't think so. Anyway, the guy I'm looking for was probably in that flying beetle thing that I escaped from. Where is that thing going?"
The slicker man was beaming at her as if he had just found a rare jewel. He seemed a lot more thrilled about her presence than he had just seconds before. Her name must have had something to do with it. Whoever this Alice of Legend was, she must have been a popular character. The feeling of déjà vu assaulted her again. There was significance attached to the name Alice, but she had no time to dwell on it. Slicker man was on the move.
"You just come with me!" the slicker man said in a jovial voice.
His sudden change of attitude disturbed her somewhat, but what choice did she have? She may have possessed super-powers, but she was still stranded in a world she knew nothing about and with no knowledge of who she could trust. She could not expect that simply throwing around some kicks and punches would solve her problems. So, with extreme reservations, Alice followed the strange (and smelly) slicker man.
He led her up the levels of the city, stopping their journey beside a red telephone booth. About twenty yards ahead was a house which bore an eerie resemblance to the one Jack had been dragged into. There was a digital scroll bar mounted to the roof of the porch flashing the words TEA HOUSE in bright red letters. Before going further, the man she had followed pulled a red cloth out of his slicker and proceeded to tie it around her forearm. His intent was clear. He wanted to cover up the green mark which obviously marked her as an oyster.
"They see you, oyster, you dead," he warned.
"Who's they? And why do you keep calling me that?" she asked.
The man ignored the questions.
"First, I go. Count ten, then you follow. Okay?" he instructed quickly.
"What? Wait! What's in there?" she questioned. She may have had little choice but to trust this man, but she did not want to just walk into a building with such paltry information.
He started running off, but at least he answered her question regarding what was in the building. However, the answer had not really been very informative.
"The man who knows!" he had shouted back.
"Knows what?" she called after him. He had already gone inside the tea house, though.
Alice gritted her teeth in frustration and counted to ten before summoning her nerve and sprinting across the walkway and into the house. What she found inside was noise, and lots of it. The scene looked like some bizarre alternate version of Wall Street, with people shouting at a screen which had various words and numbers flashing on it. They were holding up pieces of paper and waving their arms around wildly. None of them seemed to pay her any mind, which was just dandy with her. The less attention she drew to herself, the easier it would be to find Jack.
She carefully wended her way through the throngs of people, feeling absurdly out of place in her wet blue dress and sodden dark hair. Vaguely, she noticed that the floor was not composed of tile, linoleum, or wood, but of grass. She glanced up at the gigantic chalkboard standing at one end of the room where a man was continuously erasing numbers and writing in new ones in the grids drawn on there. Her sharp eyes read the words on the board.
Bliss. Excitement. Passion. What the hell? Those aren't stock, those are emotions. That doesn't make any sense.
Though thoroughly flummoxed (an emotion she was quickly becoming accustomed to, she lamented), Alice compelled herself to keep moving. Appearing to be overtly confused by everything might just draw the attention she was hoping to avoid. When she came across a section of shelves filled with bottles of various colored liquids, however, the labels on the bottles stole her interest completely. They were labeled with the same emotions she had seen written upon that blackboard. Unease slithered across her skin like spiders, making her shudder with disgust.
She tore her gaze away from shelves when she heard a queer thumping sound. All attention was now directed to the tiny man standing behind a podium at the front of the room. He was banging his mallet against the surface of the podium like a judge at court.
"I have an important announcement!" he declared in a high-pitched, nasally voice. "A new tea has just come on the market!"
Excited whispers followed that pronouncement. Alice listened with avid interest, though her apprehension grew with every word.
"Ever get that guilty feeling?" the little man asked knowingly. "Maybe you abandoned the wife and kids and left them without a crumb to split between them! Or maybe you killed someone! A relative or a neighbor. And it's left that niggling feeling in the pit of your stomach. And it's growing, little by little, into a dull, throbbing pain, gnawing away at you, undermining your confidence, and making you feel sick, and worthless, and fearful."
The room had grown unnervingly quiet. The man pointed his finger at them as if they were all guilty of such acts. Then he slapped the podium animatedly. "Well, fear no longer! 'Cause 'clear conscience' has finally arrived!" He produced a bottle of clear liquid from underneath the podium, and showcased it for all to see, a farcical grin on his face. "The latest wonder of wonders from that remarkable wonder of all wonders, the Happy Hearts Casino!"
After that, the miniscule man promptly fell asleep, bottle in hand. The noise resumed. Alice stood amidst the chaos, dumbfounded and horrified. A drink to clear the conscience? To excise guilt after committing a horrible crime? The young Slayer had never heard of such a thing, nor did she really think it was a good thing. After all, a person might convince himself to do anything if all he had to do to escape guilt was drink some tea with clear conscience in it.
She had never been more grateful to smell the unpleasant odor of the slicker man as he approached her from behind. He took her by the arm, and jerked his head back towards the direction he had come. "This way," he directed. She followed him, thankful to be leaving this madness behind her.
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