Alice

Run, she thought.

Run! Faster!  She had to get away. They were coming for her. What if they caught her? What would they do to her?

No!  Mustn’t think about that!  There would be time for thinking later, but right now she had to focus on a way to escape. She looked about her, searching for anything that could have been a possible way out. What she found did not lighten her spirits any.

She was in a dark street, in a dark city, with no one around, save her pursuers.  She had to make a choice, and quick, or face….

Don’t think about it!

She focused her mind on finding a way out of her trap, excluding any thought regarding the dreadful consequences of capture.

She ran down an abandoned back ally, figuring it to be just as good a place to flee as any. She dashed down the corridor, noting with more than a hint of nostalgia the pockmarks that scarred the walls that flew past. She came barreling around a corner, flying past at something in excess of 30 kilometers per hour. She was running so fast, in fact, that she had no time to stop when she discovered the man on the other side of the bend, and consequently bowled him over.

Her heart leapt into her throat, panic gripped her chest. It was over. It was all over. She had finally made a mistake and had run right into the arms of her waiting enemies. Now they would surely…

But wait. This man was not wearing body armor. Nor did he bear the signature angular rifle carried by those who would harm her. In fact, this man did not look anything like any of the people that she had spent the better part of the last four days running from.

He looked up at her for the first time, allowing her to really see him. He looked remarkably collected for a man who had just incurred a high speed collision with a woman whom he had never seen before in his life. He stood about five foot ten, with a receding hair line and shocking blue eyes. He dressed casually, wearing clothes one might expect to find in a considerably wealthier part of the city than this. When she looked into his eyes, she detected not a hint of fear. Surprise, yes. But there was no fear in this man.

At first he just looked at her, as if studying her, betraying nothing beyond a mild sense of surprise. But after a moment, a smile began to creep across his face, transforming his worn features into an expression she suspected he rarely donned. 

And then he said something that made her blood run cold in her veins.

“Alice.”

Alice was stunned. She wanted to get up. She wanted desperately to run from the man that had suddenly become a worse horror than those from whom she had originally been fleeing.

But something kept her back. With every ounce of her being, she wanted to dart back into the security of the reality that had ceased to exist just moments before. But at the same time, and quite contradictorily, a part of her wouldn’t allow it. A part of her knew that for her own sake, she needed to stay with the stranger.

So there she stood, gawking at this man whom she had never meet, yet felt closer to than anyone she could remember.

When he spoke again, it was with no trace of his earlier confusion. “Yes, it is you, isn’t it?” he muttered, apparently more for his own benefit than for hers. A look of dawning comprehension had crept across his face, a direct foil to the expression on hers.

“My name is Leon, and I am a friend.”

Alice gazed up at Leon. She knew it. She had known it since she first saw him. She had known it for her whole life. But that couldn’t be, she had never seen him before today, she had no memories of him at all. Still, she could not deny what her heart was screaming at her.

She knew him. Didn’t she?

And then the universe exploded.

It was as if everything in the world around Alice spontaneously turned into fire, noise, and pain. Through the agony that now engulfed her, Alice felt herself being lifted from the ground by a great, invisible hand, flung across the narrow ally with all the force of a hurricane. The force of the blast sent her hurtling head over heels into a nearby wall. CRACK!

The pain of the initial explosion was suddenly dwarfed by the throbbing ache that now consumed her head. She lay slumped against the wall she had impacted.  Somehow mustering enough strength, she brought her attention to the scene unfolding before her. Through tear blurred eyes, she saw Leon pulling out a pistol she hadn’t even realized he’d had. That is, her eyes saw it. Her mind was too busy attempting to explain her sudden decent into hell to pay any attention to anything as trivial as a gunfight.

All the same, it didn’t take long for it to produce the only logical answer.

They found us.

The thought crackled across her mind, awakening her and clearing her head faster than any other bit of information possibly could have. Alice staggered to her feet-not an easy task when attempting to recover from what she assumed was a grenade of some sort-and took in her surroundings.

The area was aflame with violence. From the ally from which she had come, there were…..well, she was not really sure what they were. They had metallic heads, obviously robotic, but they’re bodies were made out of something that looked vaguely reminiscent of muscle. They were human in shape, but could stretch and twist in thoroughly inhuman fashions.  They sported what appeared to be guns on their wrists. But not guns in the traditional sense. These were apparently stored in their arms until they were needed, at which time they would flip into the machine’s waiting hand.

On the other side of the ally, returning fire with a surprisingly effective hail of bullets were people. Actual people. Not the armor-clad demons that Alice had become so familiar with. There were eight of them, all wearing clothes in the same style as those that Leon bore: nice, but not to the extent of being formal. And they all had guns. Not military grade ones to be sure, small pistols for the most part. Although one woman seemed to have something that appeared to be a remote control of some sort. But why-

Alice’s eyes widened in understanding. She watched as the woman pressed a button on the device.

But this time, she was ready for it. As soon as she realized the insidious function of the device, Alice’s brain had cleared itself of the fog of pain and confusion. Her reflexes kicked into action, hurling her towards the nearest sanctuary available, a large pillar. She made every possible effort to make herself as small a target as she could, held her breath, and waited for the inevitable.

She felt the explosion more than she heard it. It was like the same great, invisible hand that had thrown her across the alleyway now had a hold of her ribcage, and found some gratification  in shaking it until it threatened to splinter. She was hurled to the ground again. Bits and pieces of rock and metal screamed past her, protesting their sudden and inexplicable destruction.  The temperature in the ally spiked at least 10 degrees, and when she again became capable of processing information, she noticed that she was breathing not air but smoke. She gasped in a vain effort to appease her lungs’ desire for proper, life giving air, but to no avail.

With a massive amount of effort, Alice scrambled to her feet and stumbled out of her hiding place.  The condition of the air in the ally was not much better, but at least it didn’t threaten to asphyxiate her with every breath.  She began to take in the area around her.

The entire scene was a wreck. There were bits and pieces of the…the things all around the immediate area.  One of the nearby walls had completely collapsed, revealing an abandoned apartment, complete with destroyed furniture. She stole a glance in the direction of the people who had apparently been defending her.  There they were, all eight of them. Miraculously, every one of them had come out of the affair free of even a single sign of having been involved in it in the first place. They all looked as if they had just come from, or were just about to go to, a semi formal dinner and had been distracted by some spectacle. And they were all looking right back at her.

After a few seconds, the woman who had the remote detonation device began to come toward Alice, walking with a grace befitting a queen. She was accompanied by Leon, who still bore the expression of quiet relief that his face looked so unaccustomed to. The woman was about the same height as Alice, but her heels made her look at least two inches taller. She had long brown hair, flipped out at the ends in the style that was so popular around the upper class. On her face was an expression displaying an odd combination of surprise and relief. And perhaps a touch of arrogance.

No. That must have been just Alice’s imagination.

Or perhaps it was her memory, for it seemed that she remembered this woman too along with all the others that she saw standing before her. That is, she knew them. She had no actual memories of any of them.

The woman was suddenly in front of Alice, staring into her eyes as if expecting something to reveal itself to her. Alice stared right back.

“Do you remember me?” the woman asked.

“Yes.” There was no hesitation. No pause that might have indicated anything other than the utmost confidence in the statement.  The woman’s smile broadened,  threatening to turn into something resembling a grin. 

“Do you remember my name?”

Alice’s mouth opened as if to speak. But nothing came out. She just stood there, dumbfounded by her own inability. Goddammit, she knew this woman’s name! It was stored in her head, just out of reach, but not too far to feel. It was infuriating.

Her failure was blatantly obvious to the woman, and her grin began to wilt a bit.

“Lauralei”, she said. “My name is Lauralei.” “And do you know how we met?” she inquired.

Again, Alice’s augmented brain simply refused to betray the answer. She stumbled with her words, unable to bring any meaningful tidbit of truth to light, until Lauralei realized that she was not going to get whatever it was that she wanted. She was not angry though.  Obviously a little let down by Alice’s failure (for that is how Alice herself viewed it), but she was not aggravated by any means. She just continued to smile that pleasant, happy smile.

“No matter. The only thing that does matter is that you are here, now.” She motioned for the others to come. “Come with us, friend. Come with us and you will be feed, and protected.” Then, the one thing that would have made her stay, regardless of who it was with. “And we will tell you about your…our past.”