Page 76 of Escaping Wonderland

Shadow’s heart leapt when Alice’s picture appeared on the screen. It was accompanied by droves of information about her, including her height, weight, measurements, and several tabs of notes—including one markedDirector’s Notes.

Terror, at once cold and fiery, spread outward from a pit in Shadow’s stomach to suffuse his entire body. Beneath her picture was a list of vital signs—all of which were blank.

“No, no, no,” he rasped, lifting a hand and pressing the textured side of the pistol’s grip to his forehead as he raked the tips of his claws through his hair. “No. She’s not gone. Not gone.”

The reporting system is deactivated. There’s still time. I’m not too late.

Breath shallow and ragged, he scanned the information frantically until he discovered what he needed—Patient Location: CA-17-49B. The designation meant nothing to him, but there was an option beside it that he pressed immediately—Navigate to Patient.

The device’s display changed to a map; the pulsing dot at the center must’ve been him. Shadow staggered to his feet. He bent his arm, keeping the device facing toward him, and straightened his gun arm, settling it atop the other to ease the tremors coursing through his limbs and provide his weapon with some stability. Despite the unsteadiness in his legs—his knees felt as though they might buckle at any moment—the throbbing ache in his head, and the sharp pain in his ribs, he hurried into the hallway.

The corridor stretched on in either direction for what must’ve been hundreds of feet; Shadow couldn’t judge the distance while his vision kept bending and blurring. He shook his head sharply, but it only gave him temporary clarity. There were no guards in sight, and dozens of doors, each with lettersand numbers printed on their faces, lined either side of the hallway. A small vehicle sat only a few paces away. It was some sort of cart with six wheels, two seats up front, and a long bed on the rear—long enough to fit a person who was lying down.

Shadow moved to the vehicle, leaning his hip against its side for balance as he studied the controls—a wheel positioned above the level of the seat and two pedals on the floor. He didn’t understand why it looked so…normal, so familiar, when he’d never seen anything like this in Wonderland.

Because I am from this world—Alice’s world—whether I consciously remember it or not.

A soft chiming sound called his attention to the device in his hand. A message had appeared on the screen—Enable auto-navigation for current route in vehicle CZCX97?

Shadow tappedYESwith his thumb. The next message instructed him to enter the vehicle’s operator seat and activate the auto-navigation on the control screen. He twisted to check the hall behind him; it remained deserted, but he’d moved too fast. A sudden bout of dizziness made it feel like the corridor was tilting and spinning around him, and his body pitched to the side—away from the cart.

He thrust himself back toward the vehicle, inadvertently over-correcting. Fortunately, the cart had no doors, and—after a couple more bumps that were insignificant compared to what he’d suffered at the king’s hands—he found himself sprawled across the front seats. He adjusted his hold on the pistol, grasped the steering wheel, and hauled himself into a sitting position. His ribs screamed in protest, but he didn’t have time to be slowed by them. Once his legs were in the cart, bent at ridiculous angles to fit, he pressed the prompt to engage the auto-navigation.

The cart lurched forward with a barely perceptible hum. Its wheels rolled silently over the floor as it drove down the hall.Though it moved faster than he could have on foot in his current state, impatience—intensified by worry—sparked in Shadow. He leaned back and glanced down at the pedals. One of them would make the vehicle move faster; he knew it instinctually, though he had no idea which one was correct.

Leaving himself no time to debate the matter, he lowered his foot onto one of the pedals. The vehicle darted forward, gaining enough speed to force Shadow back against the seat.

Doors passed on either side with soft whooshes of air, and the cart’s control panel lit up with an alert about the speed, but Shadow paid no attention to any of it. His focus remained on the device in his hand; he watched as the dot representing his location sped along the map’s corridors. When the vehicle took its first turn, the whole thing tipped on two wheels, threatening to roll over. Shadow threw his weight in the opposite direction. The cart slammed back down and regained the speed it had lost in the turn.

All the while, Shadow muttered under his breath, feeling the words more than hearing them with his own ears.

“She’s all right, she’s alive, it’s not too late, she’s okay…”

He pressed the pedal down harder and used the map to anticipate upcoming turns, easing his foot off the accelerator and shifting his weight to keep the vehicle from tipping each time he reached one.

This facility was more unsettling than the swamp full of sleepers in Wonderland—because this place was so silent, so unnatural, and the fact that these sleepers were hidden in pods, out of sight, only made it somehow worse. There were so many, many more sleepers here. Shadow had already passed what must’ve been hundreds of them, if not more. Each was unaware of their state, unaware they were immersed in a false reality, unaware ofthisworld.

Where were the guards, the attendants? Even if the king had disabled the security system, shouldn’t there have beensomeonearound? Did they really leave all these patients, all theseprisoners, unattended?

The device in Shadow’s hand chimed again. The message on its screen saidDestination Ahead.

He lifted his foot off the pedal. The vehicle continued forward another hundred feet or so before bringing itself to a smooth stop in front of a door that hadCA-17-49stamped on its face. Shadow leapt out of the cart and rushed to the door, allowing his legs no time to falter, offering the pain wracking his body not a single thought more than he already had. He slapped the button on the wall. The door slid open, and Shadow rushed through.

Alice’s pod—CA-17-49B—was the second from the left. Shadow charged to it, stopping himself by throwing his arms over the lid. Ragged breaths burned his throat as he peered through the little view window.

It washer—small, delicate, pale, and unmoving. Her eyes were closed, her face strained as though she were in the grips of a nightmare. And shewasin a nightmare—Wonderland.

He flicked his gaze to the wall mounted screen over her pod. It displayed her vital signs, all of them in red with little alarm signals flashing beside them; she was alive, but she wasn’t well.

Heart pounding hard enough to cause twinges of pain in his damaged ribs, Shadow hurried to the foot of the pod, where a small control panel was positioned. He scanned through the options; none of it seemed right, and much of it was meaningless to his conscious mind. Perhaps if he had time to think, to remember…

He selected an option. It opened a submenu which included one command that caught his attention—Emergency Awakening.

“Stay with me,” Shadow said, stretching an arm along the top of the pod. He laid the pistol down and flattened his palm atop the pod’s lid as though he could touch her through the metal. He pressed theEmergency Awakeningcommand.

Supervisor clearance required to proceed.

Shadow tapped the screen over and over with increasing franticness, but it didn’t change.

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