Mr. Jay’s limousine, Oxford
I am sitting in the dark of the limousine, not quite sure of what I am doing. It still puzzles me why I agreed to go meet Mr. Jay, whoever he really is. Maybe somewhere inside my mad brain, I am still me—a loyal member of Black Chess.
Rocking to the bumps in the road, I don’t try to ask questions or make conversation with the unseen passengers inside. I already have so much on my mind. Forget about the choices and decisions for now. I still need to know why I had to kill everyone on the bus in the past. What was the purpose of doing so? Why was it essential to Black Chess that every student on it died?
I take a deep breath, also thinking about what happened to me after the circus. I am sure I saw the gathering of the Inklings in Lewis Carroll’s studio when I had my vision in the Garden of Cosmic Speculation. Lewis, the March Hare, Fabiola, Jack, and me. And the little girl; who was she? Most important is: when and how did I change and become the Bad Alice? What happened to me?
“Mr. Jay will be pleased to meet you,” the woman in the dark tells me.
I say nothing. What’s to say? I don’t say I am pleased to meet him too, but I have questions that are eating at me.
“He has always believed in you,” she continues. “Never has he doubted that you would embrace the darkness inside you.”
“Did he say that? I mean, most people think they are on the good side of the scale, even when they are the most evil.”
“Not Mr. Jay. He loves evil, embraces it, and is proud of it. That’s why he is the head of Black Chess. But you must know that.”
“I haven’t remembered everything yet.” I play along. “But I am sure it will come to me. Can you remind me what Black Chess really wants?”
“That, you will have to remember for yourself. We never talk about it.”
“Ah, we’re after the Six Impossible Keys.” I am pulling her leg.
“Not exactly. We’re after what the Six Keys are for.”
“Of course,” I say. “Can’t wait to remember. How long until we arrive?”
“Not much longer,” she says. “We should be there in about—”
Her words are chopped off by a sudden crash against the vehicle. It’s a deafening echo of metal scraping against metal.
“What the hell?” she says, panicking.
I try to grip something in the backseat, but there isn’t anything, so I rock to the left and smash my head against the window. The blood on my forehead alerts me of the fact that the car is flipping over and looking outside the limo’s window, I realize we’re on the edge of a cliff.