Sorry it took me so long to get this chapter out, everyone. My boyfriend was up to visit me for my birthday and so I took a break from writing to spend some quality time with him. I do want to thank all my readers and reviewers and also extend a welcome to the newcomers!

Chapter XXII: A Father's Fury

The Queen of Hearts surveyed the group of Suits standing before the dais with a critical eye. It seemed their number had shrunk in size from the original amount she had sent out to capture that little tramp of an oyster who had stolen her ring. Even more galling was the lack of said oyster girl. Her eyes narrowed in tandem with the clenching of her fists. She had specifically ordered they bring the girl back to her alive so she could have the pleasure of removing that head with its snarky little mouth herself.

Why could none of her servants demonstrate even the slightest bit of competence?

They did not come without captives though. Her traitorous spawn had been dragged back here, his hands held behind his back with two Suits standing behind him. The prince glared up at her with eyes that appeared to be swollen and red. She tilted her head to the side, her brow wrinkling at that. Had he been crying over his predicament? While she knew her son to be a disgusting excuse for a Heart, an insult to her womb, she had never known him to be a coward.

A glance at the other captive showed that he, too, was sporting extremely bloodshot eyes. It took a few moments before she realized she recognized this second captive. It was that proprietor of the Tea House who had turned out to be a member of the Resistance. Like her son, this man was a traitor to the crown. Who knew how much information he had sold to that rabble? The delicious heat of anger suffused her blood, no doubt bringing a flush of color to her cheeks. If there was one emotion the Queen of Hearts had never had any problems feeling on her own, it was most definitely Rage.

"Your Majesty…" Number Ten, her Minister of Clubs, spoke tremulously. He stood in front of the group, his hands clasped before him. The man was practically shaking in his boots as he gazed up at her with remorse and fear.

"Where is the oyster?" the queen demanded succinctly. That was the first problem she wanted to address.

"She…she…" her servant stuttered. He wiped his sweaty brow. "I'm afraid we ran into complications with detaining the oyster, Ma'am."

"Complications?" At the venomous note in her voice, fawning courtiers which hung about the throne with near slavish devotion drifted back to become nearly one with the walls.

Number Ten swallowed nervously. "Well, you see, Ma'am, we had captured her and the prince at the Hospital of Dreams. We were bringing them back as you ordered when…" He halted his sentence and turned to glance at the teashop owner. "This one showed up to try his hand at a rescue attempt."

The air fairly crackled around the queen. She raked her glance over this man, wondering how such a pitiful wretch of a creature could ever work up the nerve for such an act. What stood in the throne room now was a broken down husk of a man. Even she could see that.

"We think it was some kind of a distraction, Ma'am, something to draw the Suits away from the girl so she could get away," Number Ten went on to explain.

"You let her escape!" the queen spat, rising to her feet. Her husband shot her an anxious look, which she completely ignored.

Number Ten flinched, his hands instinctively rising up to rub at a neck he likely feared would be relieved of its top weight very soon. He was right to worry, for the queen was feeling wrathful enough to remove the heads of the entire lot standing before her and perhaps some of those sycophants hugging the walls just for the sheer fun of it.

"Well, no, Ma'am, the girl did not run away. She…she started fighting the Suits in an effort to save this man. As you know, Your Majesty, she's very strong and fast. Even with the greater numbers of the men…she…was cutting them down quite easily."

Well, that explained why there seemed to be far fewer Suits than before. She regarded Mad March who was nearly impossible to read due to that ceramic rabbit head which showed no expression. "Why didn't you stop her?"

The formerly dead assassin shrugged indifferently, an act which he knew infuriated her. "Couldn't lay a hand on her till we reached the casino…or so I was told."

"Told? By whom?" No one had the authority to command Mad March save for herself and Carpenter. She certainly had not been there, and nor would she had issued such a daft command. That left only one other person, but that was preposterous. Carpenter did not involve himself in such matters. He cared only for his work in the laboratory, which was how the queen preferred it.

Mad March was silent. Number Ten was wringing his hands anxiously.

"Number Ten," the queen barked.

The man flinched again. "Carpenter, Your Majesty. He was there, brought by Resistance agents who had been working undercover in the lab."

"What?" The rage in that one word was palpable. "What did they want with him?" That was a silly question. Of course the Resistance would target Carpenter, as he was the means by which the queen had affected her grand plan. It was he who had devised a way to extract the emotions from the oysters, of keeping them in a perpetual dream-like state for the duration of their captivity. He was the key to all her success.

"It would appear, Ma'am, that Carpenter is the father of the oyster girl," Number Ten clarified.

There were a few sharp intakes of breath. The queen was surprised by this information, but she covered it well. Instead, she laid an icy glare upon her son. This revelation finally answered some questions for her.

"I knew there was a reason you singled her out," she said to him.

But none of this explained why the oyster girl was not here in the throne room, waiting to be decapitated, as she had ordered. Before she got to the bottom of the matter with Carpenter—who was also decidedly absent from the throne room—she wanted to know what happened to the oyster girl and her ring.

"Where is the girl?"

Number Ten drew in a deep breath. "She…well, you see the men sort of backed her up to the cliff edge without realizing it. And…one thing led to another and it would seem the girl lost her balance…and…fell." He looked away from his liege.

"She what?" It was not that the queen was distraught over the girl's apparent death. She was peeved to have been robbed of the chance to watch the girl die with her own two eyes. But dead was dead.

"I am sorry, Your Majesty. It was an accident, I swear it," Number Ten pleaded.

"Did you at least search her before you dropped her off the cliff?" the queen asked. The Tweedles had brought back the girl's confession of the ring's location from the Truth Room. It would seem the girl had hidden the ring in her own world. At first the she had been driven mad by fury over the notion. But then doubt began to niggle in her head. There was a chance the girl had been lying, had deliberately written down a false location just to throw them off the scent. After all, the girl had known there was no way she could return home without the ring.

"No, Your Majesty," Number Ten confessed. "The prince claimed the ring was still hidden away."

Her eyes flew to her son, who was silently observing the entire exchange. "And you took his word for it you incompetent oaf! Tell me you at least searched Jack and the other one."

"We did, Ma'am. Neither of them has the ring," Number Ten replied.

Jack took this opportunity to speak up. His voice was curiously harsh with emotion. "You'll never find the ring, Mother! Only Alice knew where it was hidden."

"Be silent, you traitorous scum!" she scolded. Turning her attention to Number Ten, her eyes flashed. "You failed me. I cannot abide failure! Off with—"

"Dearest," her husband cut in, "if I may make a suggestion. The girl's not going anywhere. Why don't we let Number Ten take some men with him to search her body just to be thorough?"

The queen glared at her spouse, but there was a modicum of sense to his words. Number Ten also had proved himself to be resentfully invaluable in the past. It would be difficult to find a replacement to equal his caliber. She did not like to be thought of as one who gave second chances, for she felt such a thing made her seem weak. But she was also a woman of practicality. So, with extreme reluctance, she nodded her head.

"Very well. Number Ten, assemble some men and go back to the bottom of the city. Dig through what's left of this girl and see if she had my ring."

Number Ten bowed graciously, his entire body quaking from relief instead of fear.

"But first, tell me what happened with Carpenter. He seems to be missing." She swept her gaze over the group once more, crossing her arms over her considerable bosom.

"He's in the infirmary, Ma'am…took a blow to the head," Number Ten answered.

There was something else, too. She could see it in the demeanor of her servant, the nervous way his eyes continually darted around. One did not rule over an entire people without perfecting the ability to read those people through subtle cues and nuances of body language.

"Number Ten," she said impatiently.

Number Ten sighed dolefully. "Mad March was forced to incapacitate him because once the girl fell…" He looked away from the queen before finishing his statement, "he woke up."

When he awoke, he remembered nothing at first.

He immediately had to shut his eyes at the stab of pain which spiked through his head from the overhanging fluorescent lights. All he knew for the first few minutes of consciousness was the sensation that his head was about three times its normal size and an overwhelming urge to vomit. He could feel and hear the beat of his heart through every pulse of blood which circulated through his head.

The man slowly sat up while squinting at his surroundings, which currently appeared to be a collection of fuzzy, indistinct white and silver shapes. He did not need to see to be able to surmise that he was in a bed. The mattress was stiff with crisp linen sheets stretched tightly over it. A hospital bed came to mind, which, when added to the unremitting throbbing of his skull, pointed to him being in some sort of medical facility. He swept a hand up to the back of his skull where the pain was most persistent. There was a sizable knot on the occipital bone.

As he slowly accustomed himself to the brightness and throbbing, blurry memories began to sharpen into focus. He recalled being snatched away from his work in the laboratory by two of his own technicians. He had been working late into the night, a breakthrough in how to prolong the use of the oysters. Then they brought him to that place, that rooftop area, and held him there in spite of his indignant protests.

And then she had come.

Alice.

He remembered everything then. He was Robert Hamilton, an oyster, a scientist, a professor, a husband…a father.

"Alice," he moaned, dropping his face into his palms. "What have I done?"

Guilt, grief, and shock hit him like a tidal wave. He doubled over as the nausea roiling in his stomach intensified. Over and over in his mind that dreadful scene replayed. Alice, though injured and unsteady on her feet, taking on a whole group of Suits just to try to reach that crazy young man who had come galloping in on horseback. Alice being backed up to the edge of the cliff, seemingly unaware of the danger just inches behind her. Alice taking a hit to the face, throwing her off her balance.

Alice falling, the boy screaming.

There had been a sensation of a dam breaking inside his mind, unleashing a torrent of memories which had been out of his grasp for years. She had tried to tell him before on the rooftop who he was and who she was. But he had spurned her. He had found the notion of having a child, let alone she being that child, completely absurd. But once the memories had unlocked, Robert Hamilton found himself brought to his knees, his daughter's name tearing from his lips in a howl of anguish.

He had woken up…just in time to realize his only child had fallen off a thousand-foot high cliff. Oh what a fool he had been. He just had not realized the price for his foolish arrogance would have been so steep, too steep for his shriveled heart to bear.

Oh god…what have I done? My baby…oh my little girl, please forgive me for failing you…But, of course, his child had no more capacity to forgive than he did to undo what had been done.

"Sir, you're awake! Oh, do you need a…tray or bucket…?"

Robert ignored the voice. Gorge was rising in his throat, threatening to spew out without a moment's notice. But he swallowed it down, shaking his head and whispering words of denial over and over.

"I'll go and get something for the nausea," the person assured him.

Once he had the urge to vomit under control, Robert lifted his head up, his hands still clasped over his face. He drew in a lungful of air and raked his hand through his short curls. A few tears welled up in his eyes and slipped down his ruddy cheeks.

With his vision more or less cleared, he saw that he was indeed in the infirmary of the casino. It appeared he was in a private room as well. The staff member who had spoken to him had closed the door behind him when he left. Robert immediately strode over to the door, unmindful of the spinning which resulted when he stood. As he had suspected, the door was locked.

Yes, of course they would lock him in. Once he had seen his daughter fall to her death and reacted, they would have known his memories had been unlocked. He recalled being bodily restrained by Number Ten. But, after that, his memories grew hazy. Mad March must have struck him. It was the likeliest explanation for the large knot on the back of his head. After all, he could have ordered the reanimated assassin to kill them all. It was a shame he had not had the chance.

Robert Hamilton had never considered himself to be a particularly violent man. For all intents and purposes, he had always been a pacifist, one who tried to see peaceful compromises win out over calls to arms. But now the wish to do violence was rising up within him, igniting in his blood. The queen's face drifted before him and his fists clenched with hatred. His daughter's blood was on her hands. The Queen of Hearts had stolen him from his beloved wife and child, had stripped him of even the memory of them. She had ruthlessly forced him to adopt a new identity just so he could work for her. He had created the emotion extraction method, he had developed ways to distill and separate different emotions. That man on the rooftop told him he had been adjusted to work in the laboratory. Well, that strange little fellow had been right, but Robert had done more than just work. He had basically built this woman's economy, her center of power. She had turned him into an equally ruthless, single-minded, heartless monster. How many men and women had been taken from their families like he had been? Hundreds, perhaps thousands. The numbers stretched out ominously over the period of a single decade, opening up a bottomless pit of guilt. So many lives had been destroyed because of him.

Well, not entirely because of him. For it was she, the Queen of Hearts, who had made him into the Carpenter. Ultimately, he had been nothing more than a tool, a means to an end. Well, if he had been a tool, he was a tool no longer. For the man being caged within Carpenter had woken up, and he still held all the same knowledge. What had taken years to create and perfect could be destroyed in a matter of hours, minutes even. And that was exactly what he was going to do. Not only would destroying the equipment used to siphon the emotions from the oysters—his own people—serve to prevent that horrible woman from ruining even more lives, but it would also cater to his need to avenge his child. He would make that bitch pay for taking away the life he knew, thus setting in motion this horrible chain of events.

His heart pounded as he envisioned the destruction of the laboratories. A part of him recoiled from the idea. It truly had been an act of genius, something that could have won him awards, possibly a Nobel, back in his world. He was a scientist, a man committed to the pursuit of knowledge, understanding, and discovery. But he also knew such pursuits could lead down dark paths. He should know, for all he had gotten on this path was misery and death. It had to be ended.

Robert peered through the window out into the infirmary proper. The area was mostly deserted with a few beds being occupied by those Suits his daughter had knocked out of commission. Questions about those strange abilities sprouted up in his mind, though there was little chance they would be answered now. Of course he had been told about her mysterious strength beforehand since he had been commissioned to resurrect Mad March with an added boost to his muscle fibers. But he had scarcely believed it could be true.

Infirmary staff roved the area, but there were only a few. If he could somehow figure out how to open this door, it was probable that he could sneak by them.

As it happened, he would not have to open the door, for the man who had been in the room earlier appeared to be returning with a glass of water and a bottle of pills. Robert moved to the side of the door out of view of the window. Keys scraped in the lock and the door clicked open accompanied by the sound of the infirmary medic humming a nameless tune. He waited till the man stepped inside and closed the door, ostensibly leaving it unlocked. They must not have viewed him as much of a threat.

What a huge mistake.

The unnamed man, dressed in a white lab coat and black slacks, stopped in his tracks at the empty bed. "Uhhh…Carpenter?"

He immediately flew at the man, slapping a hand over his mouth to muffle any cries. The glass of water slipped out of the man's grasp, smashing to the floor and flinging shards of glass in every direction.

"It's nothing personal," Robert apologized as he spun the man around and back handed him across the face. Pain lanced through his hand, but it did send the other man's head snapping back.

Alice made punching people look so easy…

He slammed the man's head against the metal handrail on the bed, his heart clenching at the man's stifled cries of pain. Mad March had done the same thing to his daughter, only with vastly more force. Robert winced with guilt as the medic's head flopped aside once he flipped the man around. He was not fully unconscious, but he was close enough that there would be no struggles once he buckled the wrist and ankle restraints onto him. He was just glad the one who had been in charge of watching him had been a man. He would never have been able to do this to a woman.

"I'm sorry…but it's the only way," he said remorsefully while he tightened the restraints. "But, I promise you, it'll all be over soon."

He searched the man's pockets and found a set of keys before pulling the white sheets over the supine form. He really hoped he did not give the man brain damage.

Robert poked his head out the door and, once he was reasonably certain the few staff members were temporarily gone, he stepped out and quickly locked it behind him. Hopefully the sheet covered form of a body would buy him some time.

He started making his way to the exit, passing by one of the beds which held a recuperating, sleeping Suit. Footsteps and conversing voices compelled him to dive down next to the bed and slide underneath. The last thing he needed was to set off alarm bells throughout the casino. That would effectively nip his plans of destroying the lab and freeing the oysters in the bud.

He waited, heart beating furiously and breath withheld, as the voices passed and went out the door. When he was sure they were gone, he slid out from under the bed. Before he got up, however, his eye caught sight of the Suit's side holster draped over the chair next to the bed. One of the guns was still snapped inside it.

A quick wary glance at the slumbering Suit and his surroundings, Robert pulled the gun out and shoved it into the waistband of his trousers.

I want to take this time to make story recommendations because I think this story is brilliant, but, sadly, it's in a category that not many people peruse so it's not getting the attention it deserves. If anyone is a fan of the movie Drop Dead Fred, or, if you haven't seen it, I urge you to do that. The stories are crossovers of Drop Dead Fred and Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland. They can both be found in my favorites. The first one (which is complete) is called The Long Journey Home and its WIP sequel is called Memories of You. Both are written by WENN9366. You guys should check it out!

Oh, also, you should review this chapter…