Alice did not know how she was able to stay so calm right now.
She was soaking wet and freezing.
She was being roughly made to follow a burly man with a bad temper to some undisclosed location upcity.
She had no idea what the Stone of Wonderland was, but somehow it was in her pocket.
Her best friend (well really, her only friend) had turned out to be a tea-head.
And on top of that, her favorite coat was at the bottom of the lake, where she was unlikely to see it again.
Oh, and she'd managed to make enemies with a Cheshire Cat.
And been terrorized in the hull of that boat - for a night that had felt like an entire year.
Yet somehow, she was calm.
The three men escorting her refused to talk to her or acknowledge her presence beyond pushing her in the direction they wanted her to go. She didn't know their names, but she mentally referred to them as One, Two, and Three. One was the biggest of the them and was clearly the leader. The other two were slightly smaller, but still much larger than her. Escaping was not an option and they knew it. They did not even bother to hold on to her.
Alice considered trying to run, so she could at least say she'd tried. On the way upcity they took a motored boat through a network of grimy canals, and she considered jumping out and trying to swim away. All she had to do was throw herself over the edge of the boat. But in the end her sensible side won out. She couldn't swim, and the men had guns. She doubted that she could even get out of the boat without one of them grabbing her first.
At least they had left her hands untied.
She could not stop her teeth from chattering. The sky was covered in gray clouds, and the sun had not yet risen high enough to disperse them. Eventually, from pity or perhaps annoyance at the noise she was making, Two offered her his coat to put on over her soaked dress.
She did not bother to thank him, but she felt better with the coat wrapped around her. Warmer. Now she could think.
She needed to find out why the Stone of Wonderland was so valuable without anyone finding out that she had it. Surely Jack had known before he gave it to her, but since he hadn't bothered to tell her she was going to have to find out on her own. When these men had first apprehended her, she'd assuaged her panic with the optimistic hope that this was all a misunderstanding, and that Jack would be waiting at their destination to clear things up. But as they walked on she realized with sudden clarity that she could not count on him. She'd heard from Hatter that the Dodo was regarded as one of the most merciless characters this city had to offer. Yes, perhaps Jack was friends with him. But would the Prince of Wonderland risk his alliance with the Resistance over an oyster?
Not likely.
For some strange reason, Alice did not feel afraid. She should be – she knew that. But it was as if someone had put her on a drainer and distilled all the fear right out of her. She wasn't sure how she would survive this, but somehow, some way, she was going to find a way to get herself out of this mess.
They left the canals somewhere midcity and entered a tall building. Then came a climb of what must have been fifty flights of stairs. Why her captors hadn't chosen a building with a working elevator was beyond her. Why go to the trouble of a long climb when there were contraptions built to take the work out of this whole tall building problem? She grit her teeth and kept putting one foot in front of the other, slowly ascending what seemed like an endless staircase.
Finally, they emerged onto the rooftop. Alice's legs had turned to jelly. And that was before she made the mistake of looking down. They were very high up. This must have been one of the tallest buildings in the city. She felt nauseated as she looked over the edge and saw the canals far below.
Was the Resistance headquartered on top of this building? With dismay, she realized their journey was not over yet. They were taking a zipline.
Hatter had told her about these. Sometimes the gangs used them to get around the rooftops. Apparently, the Resistance did too. It was more efficient than climbing up and down buildings. Of course, efficient was not the same as safe. This zipline looked old and poorly-maintained – like everything else in this city.
Alice screwed up her courage as the men took the line and harness, and One, the leader, strapped himself in. He did it casually. Clearly this was an everyday activity for him. One of the other men clipped a long coil of rope to the zipline's harness and held on to one end. Then he gave One a healthy shove, and he was off, zipping away across the rooftops toward one so far away it was barely visible.
After a few minutes, she knew that One must have reached the other end and taken the harness off, because Two, who was holding the lead rope on this end, started pulling the harness back one coil of rope at a time. It seemed to take forever, but finally the harness came bobbing, bit by bit, up the line. Now it was Alice's turn.
She let the men wrap the harness around her legs and clip it in. The clips, she noticed, were well-rusted. She wondered if the same could be said for the zipline itself. She held on with shaking hands and squeezed her eyes shut, stopping herself from uttering the words of protest that came to mind.
With a push from Two, she was off.
She couldn't resist the urge to open her eyes and look around. Big mistake. She had never been this high up in her life. The canals looked like tiny lines below her, and she couldn't even see the docks they'd come from. If this line broke she was done for.
The air roared in her ears and pushed against her still-damp dress. Oh, how she wished for warm sunlight instead of the drab grayness that filled the mid-morning sky.
She saw the end of the line approaching, she wondered if she was supposed to slow down somehow. If she was, they hadn't said anything to her about it.
She watched the approaching rooftop get bigger and bigger. Then she saw One, waiting on the edge of the roof. Wait, was he supposed to catch her? At this speed?!
As soon as she cleared the edge of the roof, the man grabbed her and half ran, half dragged his way across the roof, pulling on her to slow her momentum. They stopped just before the end of the line.
Breathing heavily, he wiped sweat from his brow, then started to unclip her. "Hey, you know you're supposed to pull down, right? That's how you stop," he said nonchalantly.
"What? Why didn't you tell me that before I went?" Alice demanded.
"Thought you knew. It's obvious."
Alice felt fury rising in her, but she bit her tongue.
She wrapped the borrowed coat around her and turned away from him, surreptitiously patting the pocket of her dress as she did so to make sure the ring was still in there. She took a few deep breaths to calm her racing heart and watched the zipline, impatient for this journey to be over with.
After Two and Three arrived, she hoped that she had seen the last of ziplines. But they had three more to traverse before the morning's travel was over with. It was easier the second time, and she actually found herself enjoying the wind in her face, though not the precarious feeling of having nothing but a harness between her and the ground. This time, they showed her how to apply the brakes, and she had a much smoother landing.
At the end of the last line, they took her to an armored door at the top of the building. Once inside, they went down two flights of stairs, and then, to Alice's relief, boarded an elevator that took them the rest of the way down, all the way to the basement. Compared to most of its kind in the city, it was in surprisingly good condition. It even gave a small celebratory ding when they arrived. When the door opened, one of the men stepped forward with a strip of cloth, and blindfolded Alice. He spun her around three times, then they started walking, with his hands on her shoulders to guide her. They walked for a long time, and Alice guessed that they were in a tunnel of some kind, perhaps even one leading to another building. She heard noises off to her side occasionally. The sound of wheels on a wooden floor. Voices talking. The sound of hammers and saws as they passed a building project.
Finally, they passed with a swish through a pair of swinging double doors.
When they took her blindfold off, Alice found herself in a windowless room, brightly lit by fluorescent lights. Several long metal tables where joined together in the center of the room, at which were seated five men and two women. Several men also stood guard along the edges of the room. The walls lined with a mismatched array of bookshelves and filing cabinets, and covered in maps of different areas of the city. The bookshelves were filled with many things, very few of which were books. Alice spotted a life-sized baby doll, a set of fine china, and a set of beakers that would have been at home in the tea lab at the casino.
She did not have much time to look at the knick-knacks on the shelves, however. A man, seated at the head of the table, stood up and came over. He looked her up and down slowly, then turned to One, Two, and Three.
"Well," he said. "I suppose this is the oyster I've been hearing so much about?"
"Yes sir," one of the men answered. "She was down by the docks where the cat said she would be. She slipped out of his boat but we caught 'er in the water nearby, hiding in the water like a drowned rat."
"Oh dear. How ever did you escape from the boat? Oysters aren't supposed to be that clever. Ah, but wait, you don't need to answer," he interjected as Alice started to speak. "I know you're awake. Yes, you're a very special oyster aren't you? And that's why Hatter kept you hidden in his shop for so long. What was your name again? That's right, Alice."
"Who are you?" Alice asked, surprised by how steady her voice was. She knew that she should be more frightened of this man. She should be scared half to death right now, among these people who clearly meant to harm her. But she could not afford to give into her fear.
The man was of medium height, and fat. He sported long gray whiskers, a prominent nose, and narrow blue eyes. The sparse hair left on his balding head had clearly not been washed in months. In fact, the only part of him that looked presentable was his outfit, and that only barely. He wore a neatly pressed blue suit that had gone out of style decades ago. Was this slovenly man really the one in charge of the Resistance?
"I," he said with a sneer, "am the Dodo."
Alice had not know what to expect from the Dodo, but this was not it. "What do you want with me?" She asked.
"We'll come to that. First, tell me a little about yourself. I've been so wanting to meet you." His voice was dripping with mockery.
Alice grit her teeth. How was this greasy lardball the guy in charge?
She didn't know what answer he was looking for. Was he doing this to mock her or was this a setup of some kind? "What do you want to know?"
"How long have you been awake?" He asked, circling her and looking her up and down.
"Awake? What do you mean awake?"
"I mean, how long have you been off the drainers?"
She was suddenly very conscious of her glow, which was peeping out from under the sleeve of her dress. She pulled the sleeve down, then said, "Not for long. Hatter bought me from a guy at the docks."
"Oh, how quaint. Who? Who would so foolish as to give you up?"
There was laughter from the others seated at the table. Asshole, Alice thought, her face burning with shame. "I wouldn't know," she lied. "I didn't really know what was happening."
"I see. But you worked for Hatter for some time, didn't you?"
She felt herself getting more tense with each moment that passed. He was standing behind her now, where she could not see him. "Yes, I worked for him. But I don't know anything about his shop. He had me do the cooking and cleaning."
"Ah, but that's not what your esteemed colleague said. He said that you were quite involved with the sale of tea."
She whirled around to face him. He was standing way too close to her. Damn you Dormie! She wondered what else the odious little man had let slip.
"Now, Alice dear, there is something more important that I want to know. That lovely Cheshire cat you spent the night with told me you had the Stone of Wonderland when you came to see him. Needless to say, I did not believe him. But I want to hear it from you. Did you, in fact, have the Stone of Wonderland?"
"I don't even know what the Stone of Wonderland is," Alice said.
The man laughed in her face, and Alice could smell his fetid breath. "You don't know what the Stone of Wonderland is? Oh dear. It's quite important."
"Why?" She took a step back from him.
"Because," the man paused to lick his lips, a gesture Alice found even more repulsive than his breath. "Because, it is the key to the entire tea trade. How else do you think oysters come over from your world? The Stone controls the portal. Really, Alice, I thought everyone knew this."
"Well I didn't," Alice said, feeling thrown even more off-balance by what he said. Why would Jack have given her the key to the tea trade? She'd known the ring was valuable, but this was far beyond valuable. She had the key to the whole economy of Wonderland in her pocket! No, not just the economy. Everything. Everything that made Wonderland the way it was.
"Indeed," the Dodo said. Now, where is the Stone?" He turned to the men who had brought Alice upcity from the Chez's boat. "Did one of you take it from her?"
"No sir," Two answered.
"And why not? Does she still have it then?"
"Um, no," One said. "It was on the cat's boat, and she sunk the boat when she got out."
The Dodo went very still. Then said, "I see."
The three men shuffled uncomfortably as the silence dragged on. Suddenly the Dodo turned on them and shouted, "Now why would you bring her here without the Stone? The oyster is of no use to me without the Stone!"
"We left Lewis down at the docks -" One of them said in a hushed voice, but the Dodo cut him off with a raised hand. "No, no, I don't want to hear it. Go back to the docks and find it. I don't care if you drown in the process. Find it! Don't come back here until you have it."
The three men made a hasty exit, muttering apologies as they went. The Dodo turned to Alice again. "Now you," he said, "have overstayed your welcome." He signaled one of the men at the table. "Lock her up until I decide what to do with her."
Just then, there was a commotion outside the room, and the door burst open. Alice looked up, and froze. Hatter walked in, accompanied by two guards.
"Evening Dodo, everyone," he said nonchalantly, nodding to the group at the table. Then he looked at her, and something indecipherable passed across his face. "Hello Alice."