THE FUTURE: OXFORD STREETS
T om is a terrible driver. If he keeps driving this way, we’re either going to crash into something or get caught by the Reds who are chasing us on motorcycles now.
“Give me the wheel.” I push him over.
“But, you’re bleeding.”
“I can’t None Fu while I’m dying, but I think I can still drive. Look for a gun or something in the back. Do something useful.”
“There is a sleeping dog in the back,” Tom says.
I smile when he says that. That dog was so hungry that when he was fed he felt good enough to sleep through such a chase. “Don’t wake him up,” I say. “Just find a gun and start shooting at the Reds.”
“There is nothing back there, only water hoses.”
I use a lot of what’s left of my power to stare back at him, hoping he will get the message.
Tom smirks and tilts his head. He knuckles his fingers and pops a few pills. “You’re thinking what I’m thinking?”
“Glad to know you’re smart enough to think what I am thinking .” I veer the truck against a couple of motorcycles and squeeze them against a wall.
“Water hose wars it is,” Tom chirps like a child. What can I say? He’s a Wonderlander, after all.
Behind me, he starts hitting the Reds with full-throttle water bullets.
“You remember I’m here for the keys, don’t you?” I shout back.
“I know.” He struggles with the pumping hose but is doing a good job at keeping the Reds at bay. “That’s what I was going to ask about. How did you find me?”
“I found the note.”
“What note?”
“The one where I kept your address with a scribbling saying that I kept the keys with you.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Alice.”
“What do you mean? We must have had a deal or something. I must have kept the keys with you after the war. Or why do I have this note?”
“True, I was in possession of the keys once.” He sounds like he is keeping something from me again. “But you couldn’t have possibly made a note to come and take them from me.”
“Why not?” I want to face him, but I am busy with the wheel, totally ignoring my bleeding nose, although my blood is staining the wheel by now, and my vision is dimming.
“Because you know I lost the Six Keys a long time ago.”
“What?” I almost hit the brakes. “You lost the keys?”
“Not that they are of any particular use anymore. We lost the war when the Queen grabbed hold of the Six Keys,” Tom says. “But you already know I lost the keys. Oh, wait. I mean, the real version of you in this world knows that. Of course, you don’t know, because you’re not really from this time.”
I am too dizzy to think about this paradoxical situation. “I just want to know how you lost the keys, and how come I found this note.”
Tom takes a moment to think it over. I trust he has figured out the puzzle. “I get it now.”
“What is it? Please tell me because nothing makes sense in this future anymore.”
“Mr. Tick and Mrs. Tock.”
“What about them?”
“They don’t really want you to die,” Tom speculates. “They wanted everything that happened to happen the way it did.”
“How so?”
“They have access to the future. They planted the note so you’d follow it because they knew I stole the keys from you.”
“You stole them.” The truck bumps against something on the road. I speed up to cross it, realizing I have so little strength in me now. “I thought I gave them to you.”
“Don’t worry about this part,” Tom says. “What matters is that Mr. Tick and Mrs. Tock, or whoever hired them, thought I have the keys and wanted to find them through you. They planted the note because they knew I wouldn’t open up to anyone, even you, about their location.”
“Even me?” I am dizzy, not sure if I am catching every word, barely able to drive ahead. “Why wouldn’t you tell me about their location?”
“Because in this future I trust no one. You could be the Cheshire disguised, for all I know — and don’t talk to me about him being unable to possess Wonderlanders,” Tom says. “I am only opening up to you because I know you’re from the past because if you find the keys and put them in the right hands, you can change the future.”
“And that’s what they want exactly,” I say. “They want me to return with the keys so they can take them from me.”
“You’re getting the picture now. Think of it—why isn’t there another Alice from the future? They must have done something to her so she wouldn’t warn you or tell you the truth.”
“It’s hard to comprehend all of this,” I say. “But I get their plan to get the keys now. I get it that they thought you’d give me the keys only when you realized I am from the past. What puzzles me is how you lost the keys.”
“Didn’t exactly lose them,” he says. “I handed them to the wrong person.”
“Who?” I enter a dark tunnel, wishing I could lose the Reds in here.
“I gave them to Jack.”
And with that, the darkness drapes its curtain of deception down on me. Because let’s face it. In the future, Jack is not Jack. He is the Cheshire, fooling Tom. Having fooled me as well, making me think that Jack affected him so much he loved me. The Cheshire never changed. A nobody, disguising in people he meets, parasitizing on their thoughts and emotions, just like the sneakiest of devils.
My hands give up on the wheel. My strength withers. And I fall on my head.