Page 5 of Escaping Wonderland

You weren’t supposed to feel pain in dreams. You weren’t supposed to feel pain in simulations.

The foliage to her left rustled. Alice went silent, lowered her hands, and lifted her head, eyes darting toward the sound.

The vegetation shook again; the movement was closer than it had been the first time. Something was coming.

Alice scrambled to her feet and retreated several steps. The soft grass beneath her soles tickled as it brushed between her toes, but she was only passingly aware of the sensation. Her breath was ragged, and her heart pounded rapidly, but she couldn’t tear her gaze away from the moving foliage, couldn’t turn and flee.

A white figure leapt from the vegetation and halted a few feet away from Alice. Her eyes rounded.

The being standing before her was a praxian; she’d seen his kind often in her home city, Apex Reach. His skin was pale but had a faint, purplish undertone like an old bruise, and his hair was long and white, framing a sharp-featured face that was almost skeletal. Overly long, pointed ears stood out from his hair. His nose was a light shade of gray, wide and flat, and therewas a patch of white hair on his chin that only enhanced the angularity of his face. The deep, dark hollows around his eyes contrasted his bright pink irises, making them nearly glow.

He was dressed in a white suit that was tailored to his lean frame, and the high-collared shirt beneath his jacket matched the color of his eyes. It was the sort of clothing she might have seen at one of her father’s formal parties—a sleek combination of modern and traditional.

The praxian straightened the collar of his shirt, settled his gaze on her, scowled, and said in a reedy voice, “You’re late—and in the wrong place, on top of that.”

Alice’s brows furrowed. “What?”

“You were supposed to get here an hour ago, and you should’ve arrived twenty yardsthatway.” He pointed in the direction from which he’d come. “Now scurry along, he’s waiting for you.”

“Who is waiting for me?” Alice shook her head and took another step back as the praxian advanced. “I-I’m not supposed to be here. This…this isn’t real. None of this is.”

The alien huffed and closed the distance between them. His movements were quick and twitchy. His hand darted out and closed around her wrist, and he tugged her arm. “Come along. We mustn’t delay any further; we have much to do to prepare you.”

Alice gasped. “Wait. Stop! Who’s waiting? Where are you taking me?”

She tried to yank her arm back, but his grip was too strong despite his thin frame. She had no choice save to stumble along behind him.

“No time to explain,” he said, quickening his pace. “When the Red King calls, we all must answer! Hurry! Hurry, now. We’re late, late, late.”

They plunged through the foliage. Leaves and petals battered Alice’s face and body; she raised an arm to shield herself, but it made little difference. She didn’t know who this praxian was, where he was taking her, or who was waiting—didn’t know whether she was safe.

Safe? None of this is real! This is a simulation, and the only chance I have of getting answers right now is by following this stranger.

The underbrush—not that the term seemed appropriate when most of the plants were taller than Alice—ended abruptly. She staggered when her feet slapped down on solid ground.

She was now standing on a meandering path, constructed of purple paving stones, that twisted its way through the woods all around. It seemed to start here, in the middle of the woods—though it was possible that this was also its end—and followed no logical trail, doubling back on itself in several places.

“Come on, come on!” the praxian urged, tugging on her arm again.

“I’m moving as fast as I can!” Alice said, breath ragged.

“Faster, faster.” The praxian led her along the path, following it exactly around every unnecessary turn and nonsensical loop, even when two steps across the forest floor could’ve brought them to the next section and avoided dozens of yards of extra walking in the process.

Even if Alice had had any idea of where they were when they began their journey, she would’ve been lost after only a few minutes; the purple footpath obliterated her sense of direction and made it impossible to gauge travel distance, and every tree they passed looked both wholly unique and exactly like every other tree in the forest.

After what might’ve been a few hours or only a few minutes, Alice stopped paying attention to those details—she sensed that thinking too hard on such things was to court madness.

Thisisn’treality. There’s no logic behind any of this, so there’s no point in trying to apply any.

She found herself paying attention again, however, when they passed a house. It was a small building, oddly quaint despite its surreal surroundings—it was reminiscent of an old-fashioned country cottage, though there was something alien in the angles of its windows and the oval shape of its door. The windows were dark, and the building was quiet. The praxian didn’t give the structure so much as a glance.

He seemed not to notice anyof the houses that popped up with increasing frequency as they pressed onward. Each was different from the last, and each had a touch of familiarity in its design but possessed some strange feature that made it seemwrong. They were of wildly different shapes, sizes, and colors; the only commonality between all of them was that none were set more than six or seven feet off the path.

As the houses grew in number, the trees thinned, and all the plants gradually dwindled to a far more reasonable size.

“There it is,” the praxian said, a mixture of relief and exasperation making his voice even higher than before. “Hurry, girl, hurry!”

Alice looked up to see what he was referring to, and her brows fell low.

---