Author's Note: Yes, I know I'm horrible for going so long without adding a chapter—stupid writer's block. Before I wrote this chapter, I went back and did a lot of editing on the previous chapters, so if something confuses you, you may need to go back and skim the other chapters. If you haven't tried listening to the playlist while reading the story, I recommend it—it adds to the experience.

Warning: In this chapter it is mentioned that the character was raped. It is not in any way depicted and there are absolutely zero details given, but if the mention of such things upsets you, you may want stop reading at the line "surrounded by evil" and pick up again at the line "She was in the cafeteria when it happened".

Disclaimer: I only claim ownership of Ava, Melody, Sinaaq, the physician, August, Alice, Jessalyn, and the Guardians. This chapter will be focused on Alice.

Song(s) for this chapter: Where Is My Mind? by Yoav ft. Emily Brown, White Rabbit by Jefferson Airplane

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Chapter 13: Go Ask Alice

Alice found herself in an unfamiliar forest in the dark of night. The only light she had was the light of the swollen, silver moon. Once her eyes adjusted, she was able to see that she was in the middle of some sort of campsite. She walked around, taking in the details—the ones she could see anyway. The camp looked like it had been abandoned; it also looked as though it had been ransacked a long time ago. All that was left were the remains of a fire pit, crude furniture, and shreds of tents. Alice didn't understand why she was here or where "here" even was. It was eerily quiet and still.

As she strained her eyes to see farther, she noticed that enormous vines, about as big around as tree trunks with thorns like swords, had taken over the forest. Large flowers, big enough to encase a full grown man, randomly interspersed on the vines, were closed up for the night.

The sound of a twig snapping broke the silence, echoing all around and startling her. She whirled around to meet the maker of the sound and found herself face-to-face with a pair of massive, glowing, silver eyes. She gasped sharply…

Alice clutched her head, groaning in agony as the vision faded. Once the pain subsided, she uncurled from the fetal position she had been in and stared up at the ceiling. She exhaled loudly as she tried to relax and slow her racing heart. The visions were becoming more frequent and vivid. Stupid dreams, she thought. It's these damned images that landed me in this hell-hole in the first place. The thought made her eyes sting.

This "hell-hole" was a mental institution. There were people there of all ages, with a number of issues ranging from ADHD to Schizophrenia and so on. The worst cases—those considered a danger to others—were kept away from the rest of the "guests". The windows were barred, the premises was surrounded by a tall fence, completed with barbed wire coils on top, and the only places without surveillance cameras were the bathroom stalls and showers. Parents of the upper middle class and higher paid a fortune to hide relatives here, for however long the institution deemed fit.

Alice turned her head to look at the picture of her parents that was sitting on her night stand. There was no glass in the frame, in case she would get any ideas about hurting herself. She scowled at the picture and slammed it face-down. Yeah, I love you too, guys, she thought bitterly. Knowing that she would be unable to focus on trying to sleep, she got up and decided to go down to the girls' recreation room to throw a few punches at one of the punching bags. She threw on a tank top and some track pants, headed out of her room, and started down the hallway.

It was almost midnight and everyone else was asleep. The only sound was the padding of Alice's feet on the linoleum floor. She sighed. Even though she had been at the school for seven years, it never seemed any less creepy, especially at night. She hated it. She hated everything about this place from the off-white walls, to the off-white ceilings, to the off-white linoleum floors, to the too-clean hospital smell.

She was used to being the oddball in the family—the black sheep if you will—but she had been utterly shocked and horrified when her parents told her they were sending her away.

"Concerned for her wellbeing" they had said. Alice snorted. The only thing they were concerned about was putting up with a "troubled" daughter.

Her and her parents had never seen eye to eye on things; when she started having visions things got worse. At first, it was just little things like extremely accurate episodes of déjà vu, and then it escalated to specific events like plane crashes and school shootings.

That was when her parents had started sending her to counseling. When the quack psychiatrist couldn't "fix" her, her mother had called a pastor to come speak to her to see if she was "surrounded by evil".

The pastor her mother had found had been a fraud. Really, what do you expect when you look for pastors, specializing in exorcisms, online? Alice thought with a derisive snort. During their one and only "session", which the man had insisted be in private, he had subdued and raped her. No one had believed her when she had tried to reveal what had been done.

Finally, when no other option had presented itself, her parents had decided to send her to the institution in hopes that they could "cure" her.

Alice clenched her jaw and blinked back the tears that had begun to sting her eyes. She thought that if she went long enough without talking about her dreams or her ordeal that the school would tell her parents she was fine and send her home. It almost worked. Almost.

She was in the cafeteria when it happened—a vision hit her so hard she screamed and collapsed, dropping her tray. The nurses said she was mumbling incoherently about things that did not exist; things like another world burning, ripping itself apart, snowing one minute and forest fires the next. She had said there were large plants that corrupted people, made them soulless. She had said evil was coming and they weren't prepared.

After her migraine and her nosebleed were treated, the school's psychiatrist upped her dosage of anti-psychotics and notified her parents that her stay with them would be longer…much longer. Even though the nurses watched her take her pills, she had managed to get around that; throwing up wasn't ideal, but it worked. She knew she was not psychotic and she'd be damned if she was going to let those bastards keep her in a medicated fog.

Aside from her "visions" Alice had always thought of herself as a relatively stable, normal person when it came to the question of sanity. Even now, the only thing different about her was that she could predict things—usually things like attacks; they were not delusions as the things she saw always came true unless she was able to intervene.

She was not paranoid and she had no desire to harm herself or others. She had never been depressed until her parents had her locked away, but her depression manifested in anger more than any other emotion. The thing that scared her the most about herself was her ability to turn all her emotions off. She had been doing a lot of that lately. It had gotten to the point where she was forgetting how to turn them back on—except her fear of being apathetic forever.

Alice was brought out of her thoughts when she realized she was standing in front of the doors to the recreation room. She shook herself to clear her head and reached for the door handle. No sooner had her fingertips touched the cold metal did she hear something she hadn't heard on her walk down: the sound of heavy breathing behind her. The hairs on her arms and the back of her neck stood up on end and her breath hitched in her throat.

Somewhere in the back of her mind, it struck her as odd that the breathing sounded like the heavy panting of a dog, rather than a person, as there were no animals allowed on the grounds. You're just being paranoid, Alli, stop that, she thought, but her gut told her she wasn't; her gut told her to run.

Without another thought, she bolted down the hallway to her right as fast as her legs could carry her. As she ran, she heard a clicking sound behind her like a dog running on linoleum, but if this was a dog it had to be something bigger than a Great Dane. Alice did not stop to look behind her, she just kept running down hallway after hallway, trying not to let her bare feet slip on the slick floor.

As she cleared a corner, she nearly ran into a cart of medical supplies; she hadn't realized that she had reached the medical wing. She managed to dodge the cart, using more grace than she remembered ever having, but whatever was behind her was not so lucky; it crashed into the cart, making noises loud enough to wake the whole building.

Alice ran to the end of the hall and then risked a glance at her assailant. She wanted to scream, but no sound came out as she stared directly at the pair of silver eyes from her latest vision; attached to those eyes was the largest wolf she had ever seen.

She wasted no more time gaping at the animal and began to run down the next hallway. This one ended in a door that had Roof Access written on it in big black letters. It was probably locked, but trying to open it was the only option she had right now. She grabbed the knob and turned it, surprised when the latch clicked and the door swung open. She threw it all the way open and started up the stairs, pausing only to slam and lock the door behind her.

By the time she reached the roof, she was out of breath and shaking with effort. She looked around, seeing nothing but the school grounds, which were out in the middle of the woods somewhere, far away from any other town. Great! I did the dumb, horror-movie chick thing and got myself cornered on the roof! Now what? She thought as she looked around, but saw nothing that could help her climb down.

She heard the door when it imploded at the bottom of the stairwell and she heard when the wolf made it to the top of the stairs. She turned around to face it, steeling herself against the terror that made her heart thunder against her ribcage. With each step the creature took toward her, Alice took a step back.

This dance continued until she found herself at the edge of the building. She took her eyes off the wolf long enough to see what was below her—the institution's outdoor pool. She could kid herself into thinking that landing in the pool would save her if she fell, but she wasn't stupid enough to believe it.

Still, falling to her death sounded much more appealing than getting mauled to death by a giant wolf—since those were her only two options. Turning her attention back to the wolf with a defiant gaze, she raised her right middle finger in salute, and then let herself fall backward off the roof.

The air rushed past her, but only for a moment before she hit the water. Funny, she had not imagined it would happen so quickly, or that she would survive the initial impact. It hurt like hell and knocked the wind out of her, but she found herself surprisingly unharmed. She headed toward the surface of the water, noticing that it tasted like salt instead of chlorine, but she didn't think much of it, after all, it wasn't the weirdest thing that had happened that evening.

When her head broke the surface and she was able to look around, she saw that she was no longer in the swimming pool, but instead found herself wading in what appeared to be a vast ocean.

Exhausted from her chase with the wolf, Alice's eyes rolled back in her head and she sank beneath the waves.