Page 62 of Escaping Wonderland

A chill skittered down Alice’s spine, and she looked at Shadow. “What’s wrong?”

“The air feels…bad.” He looped his arm around her waist and drew her against his side. “We know why the king was coming here. We just…” Shadow turned his head to look down at her, his eyes solemn. “We just need to be careful and keep alert.”

It was at moments like this that AliceknewShadow had changed; he was different from when they’d first met. He was more lucid, more himself. Something drastic had shifted within him, and it had started during their visit to Miraxis’s house.

“What are we going to do?” she asked. “We can’t just…go in there and confront him.”

Shadow walked forward slowly, and she matched his pace, though part of her didn’t want to take even a single step more toward Rosecourt. The urge to turn back, to find a quiet place to hide with him, tolivewith him, swelled in her chest and made her throat tight.

But it wouldn’t really beliving. This place wasn’t real, and they would never be able to live here peacefully. Their lives would alwaysbe in danger so long as they were in Wonderland, so long as their bodies—their real bodies—were left to waste away in the real world.

“That absolutely wasnotmy plan,” he said unconvincingly.

Despite the situation, Alice couldn’t help but smile. “I don’t believe you ever really have a plan for anything.”

“I have all sorts of plans all the time! Like goad the Hatter into anger, or irritate Jor’calla, or toy with Miraxis, or… You know, the specifics don’t matter. I’m anexcellentplanner.”

“I believe specifics are usually required when you’re planning something. That’s why it’s called a plan, Shadow.”

He threw up his free hand, palm turned skyward. “The best plans are adaptable, which means fewerspecifics. You really just need the general gist of the plan. Any more is a waste of time.”

Alice nodded once. “Okay. We can do this.”

I hope.

She faced forward, and they continued to walk along the tunnel. The mist only seemed to thicken as they moved. It was reminiscent of the swamp of sleepers; Alice cast those unsettling memories aside.

“So…we’re going to confront the king and his army with your beltful of knives, overcome them, and force him to tell us how to get out of Wonderland,” she said.

“That is the essence of the plan, yes.”

“That sounds like a terrible plan. Shouldn’t we worry about their guns, or that he has at least twenty or thirty robotic soldiers?”

“I’ve never much worried about any of that before.” His hold on her tightened. “Though the stakes are much higher now.”

Alice curled her fingers into his jacket and tilted her head, resting it against him as they walked. “You can disappear.”

His voice was uncharacteristically thick when he said, “But you can’t.”

Those words bolstered her—because his caring was evident in them—while also reminding her of the immense risk they were taking. Shadow was different from everyone else Alice had encountered in Wonderland so far; he was unique. But there was something different about the Red King, too, something inherently more dangerous—and it all had to do with Jor’calla’s cryptic words aboutbeyond.

Alice had no doubt that the king knew this was a simulation. She just couldn’t figure out how he knew, or why he was able to come and go as he pleased.

The road continued straight—toostraight, if that was possible. After experiencing all the nonsensical winding pathways and unnatural angles in the rest of Wonderland, this road, a seemingly normal road, was totally out of place. That only enhanced the unsettling air around it.

Alice’s unease increased with every step. She couldn’t ignore the possibility that they’d find a dead city, its streets piled with corpses and its gutters flooded with crimson streams. The king meant to cull Wonderland, after all. He was marching on Rosecourt tokillpeople.

A wall materialized from the mist. It was at least fifteen feet high, and as Alice neared it, she realized that it looked to be made of concrete—though the concrete was covered in layer upon layer of colorful graffiti, much of it faded by age andweather. The road ran through a wide gap in the wall, to either side of which lay two massive, rusted metal doors, neither of them attached to the concrete any longer.

Shadow guided her through the gap.

The mist cleared instantly, and Alice halted in shock. There’d been no sign of the tall, vibrantly colored buildings lining the road beyond the wall a moment ago, no sign that there wasanythingon the other side of the wall but more fog, and yet she now stood on a bustling city street.

The buildings were painted in colors that were sometimes complementary but were just as often clashing, and their architectures presented some of the same odd, impossible angles and shapes that had been so prevalent at the Hatter’s. Alice could only liken it to a child’s crayon drawing made real—none of it seemed right, but everything was clearly what it was, regardless.

Ten-foot-tall flowers and oversized plants were visible in great concentration all over, many of which were in crooked planters along the sidewalks or comically cramped balcony gardens on the buildings. Most prominent of the vegetation by far were the roses. They grew in vine-like tangles that clung to the sides of buildings and in bushes around the few open common areas in addition to within the planters, the blooms varying in size—the smallest were the size of golf balls, while the largest were likely wider than Alice was tall. Regardless of their size, their petals were all the same shade—deep crimson.

Dozens, perhaps hundreds of people milled about in the streets. Most were human, but many were aliens of countless species. Their clothing was so varied it defied categorization—fashions from numerous historical Earth eras clashed with more modern attire and an eclectic array of alien clothing.

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