“You cannot escape your destiny,” Regina whispered in her head. “I warned you…I always tried to warn you. But now you are here. You went down the rabbit hole, Alice, and now you’ll never be free. The city will rise and you’ll rise with it…”

Regina was coming after her. No longer speaking, she pushed through the worm stalks, her mouth opening and closing, her arms tentacles, bloodlessly white and set with huge pulsating suckers. They reached out for her daughter. They would coil around her and crush the life from her in this secret jungle of tube worms.

(Alice)

She was coming fast now, snapping right through the wavering tube worms. Knocking them aside, felling them like trees, screeching her displeasure in Javy’s head with a white-hot explosion of noise like a thousand squealing rats.

(Alice)

Inside her helmet, Javy’s head shook from side to side. That awful noise. God, that awful noise. It put her guts in her throat, made her shake even as sweat rolled down her face. Her entire body seemed to be throbbing with pure terror.

(Alice don’t you dare turn away from me)

Javy realized she had stopped now and the tube worms had given way to a forest of seaweed and green kelp. Strands and ropes of it knotted up the suit, slowing her forward progress. She was stuck in the weeds like a fly in the web of a house spider. Regina’s white tentacles were seeking her out, sliding through the weeds like eels, their suckers puckering now like pink, hungry mouths.

(ALICE DON’T YOU DARE TURN FROM ME)

Javy knew that the city was powering the apparition that stalked her. But it couldn’t do a damn thing without her mind, without her twisted, disturbing memories and the raw psionic force of her imagination. Only she could break the connection between them. Only she could unplug her mind from the socket of the city and exorcize Regina.

(ALICE ALICE ALICE ALICE)

Regina squealing in her head, Javy fought from the weeds and snaking reeds, tearing through them just as Regina’s coiling tentacles were mere feet away, her fish-mouth opening to reveal a set of fine needle-like teeth. Her eyes were huge and dead like those of a barracuda, her hair swimming around her narrowed skull like the snakes of Medusa.

Javy escaped and exited the city after a mad journey down one tunnel after another, but even then, she knew she had not escaped at all.

21
TEN MINUTES
TO MIDNIGHT