Alice and What Came After: Between the Glass

Disclaimer: I don't own anything rights related to Alice—it belongs to those fine folks at SyFy and Nick Willing. Rex, Sid, Nancy, Helen and other things/people of that nature belong to ITV/Impossible Pictures and I'm just borrowing. Sarah, Connor, and Chase are my own creations.

Chapter Four: Erased

It wasn't long before one of Connor's friends knocked on the door, giving them the all clear signal. Connor helped Sarah stand up. "First, you should get checked out and make sure you're okay."

"No, there's no time. I need to get back to my brother."

"Listen, there's no telling how hurt you might be."

"Look, I just need to find Connor. This is my fault. He didn't want to go to Wonderland. He only went because of me," Sarah protested.

"Do you have pictures of your brother?"

She nodded, swinging her backpack around. She fumbled in a pocket for a moment. Out came a small leather wallet. Sarah held it open, letting Connor look at the plastic picture holders.

He took the wallet, staring at the senior pictures of both Sarah and her brother. There was a strong resemblance between himself and her twin. Very strong. The main difference was in another picture, which had Sarah and her brother sitting with their mother, a dark-haired woman with bright blue eyes, her brother wore a pair of glasses.

"How old is he?"

"Twenty," Sarah said. "I'm just a few minutes older."

Connor nodded, staring at his younger lookalike. "So these are from when you graduated high school?"

"The one of us with mum is from college."

"You already graduated college? At twenty?"

Sarah smiled. "Yeah, with honors. Connor's got dual degrees. Not me. I've only got the one Bachelor's. He's an overachiever."

Connor couldn't help but smile at that. Apparently his lookalike shared his brains. "What did he study?"

"Computer science and archeology."

"Why archeology?"

Sarah shrugged, taking her wallet back. "He always loved dinosaurs as a kid. He's even got a lizard and two little beaver-ish creatures."

"Beaver-ish? Like ratty, beavers?"

"How did you know?"

Connor cleared his throat. "Because I have two. They're diictodons."

"What?"

"Diictodons are from the Permian era. That's about 299 to 251 million years ago."

"That's not possible!"

Connor sighed. "They came through an anomaly. In a hospital, here, in Britain. Two of them were left behind. We named them—"

"Sid and Nancy?"

"How did you know that?" he asked with a frown.

"That's what we named ours. Sid is Connor's and Nancy's mine. They have a nasty chewing habit and my mum can't stand them. But they get along with Connor's lizard."

"You have a lizard?"

"He's green and he can fly. His name is Rex."

Connor sank onto a bench. "Rex, Sid, and Nancy. How is that… that can't be possible, can it?"

"What's not possible?"

"Your pets… they're the same as mine."

*~*~*~*~*~*

Connor stumbled into the castle. The doors weren't guarded, which was odd given that the royal family lived there. He went straight into the main great hall where the ruler usually was during the day.

The throne was empty, the cushions faded and torn. In fact, most of the castle looked abandoned.

"Hello? Is anyone here?" he called, going from room to room.

Connor went down a long hallway, where portraits of past rulers hung. There were plaques with the rulers' names and years of rule. He glanced at each one, following the past to the more recent rulers.

He paused in front of the one of Jack Heart and the Duchess. Beside their picture hung one of Jack's son, Damon Heart. Connor looked at the dates of rule, expecting it to be less than a year.

Except there was no end. According to the plaque, Damon Heart still ruled Wonderland. There was no transfer of power to his mother. There was no mention of Alice Hatter either, the true ruler of Wonderland. The portrait of his mother was gone.

"Hello?" he shouted, hands cupped around his mouth.

What's happening here? Damon's dead, right?

The eldest son of Jack Heart had to be dead. Connor himself had pulled the trigger. He'd murdered Damon Heart after he shot Sarah.

He can't be alive…

Could he?

*~*~*~*~*~*

"The same?" Sarah echoed.

"Rex, Sid, and Nancy."

"A lizard and two beavers?"

Connor, the other Connor, nodded. "Yeah. Now, let's see if I can find you in the system. You're from New York, right?"

"Yeah, born and raised."

He led her over to a small laptop. He entered a password, accessing some kind of database. His fingers flew across the keyboard, much like her brother's did.

"Okay, in America, you have driver's licenses?"

"Are you kidding me? Hardly anyone in New York has one!"

"A passport?"

She shook her head. "Social Security cards, school IDs…"

"Social Security. Your numbers and your brother's."

Sarah closed her eyes, reciting her number. She stumbled over Connor's, but her brilliant brother could never remember his own number, so she'd been forced to learn both.

The other Connor typed wildly despite his damaged hands. If they hurt, he wasn't showing it. He scrolled through page after page of results. Writing flicked past on the screen so fast that Sarah couldn't read it.

"What were your parents' names again?" Connor asked.

"Alice Hamilton and David Hatter."

He kept going. "This is not good."

"What? What is it?"

She inched closer to the screen, trying to make out the lines of text.

"According to this, you don't exist."

"WHAT?!"

Connor turned around. "Alice Hamilton exists. So does David Hatter. But there's no record of them having any children together."

"So… someone messed up."

He shook his head. "Something happened today. Whatever you did, when you fell through the anomaly into the future, something changed. That change erased both you and your brother."

"That's not possible. I didn't do anything!"

"Look, I know this sounds crazy, but I do believe you. I believe that you are Sarah Hatter, not some future version of my daughter. There's only one other time that this happened."

"What happened?"

"Evolution was changed. One tiny event changes how humanity evolves. Some people are erased and others replace them. The last time it happened, a colleague of mine disappeared and my present changed. Later, we found her, but she was different. A new name and a subtle change in features and personality."

"Who was she?"

"Claudia Brown was her old name. Only two people in the world remembered her. One of them was my good friend, Nick Cutter. The other was Helen."

"Why only them?"

"They were on the other side of the anomaly. The change happened when they were over there. She only existed in their memories and in a picture Nick had of them. I believed him. I believe him when he called Jenny Lewis by her name. To him, I think Jenny was always Claudia."

Sarah sank to the ground. "If Claudia became Jenny, then what happened to me and Connor?"

"I don't know. I don't even know what changed."

"Helen. She brought me here. Maybe she changed something."

Connor nodded. "It's possible. That's why we're so careful with the anomalies. A slight change can do untold amounts of damage. What year is it… in New York?"

"2031."

"It's only 2010 here."

Author's Notes:

This chapter was a pain in the butt. There's two versions of it. I'm going to post the alternate versions of both this chapter and the last one in the 'Extras' for anyone curious to see what might have happened.

Any thoughts? Questions, comments? Please let me know!

Sorry this took so long to write! Enjoy!