“Sad?” Riley asked. “No. It’s… reassuring.”

“How?”

“It’s a crazy, fucked up, upside-down, inside-out world. I think he understands that. He lives in that world. Not in a fantasy version of it.”

“It seems to me like he lives entirely in the fantasy.”

Riley chuckled.

There was another security checkpoint. The two passed through, and Dot was forced to hang back, watching them go through. She couldn’t pass herself. It was sealed off like the old kingdom had been. What was the word?

Quarantined.

She found vents, and she climbed through the vents. The vents, too, were quarantine-sealed.

She hated that she was so close. Her king was in arm’s reach, and she couldn’t touch him. He was talking, right this moment, and she couldn’t hear him.

Patience, she told herself.

Patience. A scout had to know patience. She was here to free him, to give him power again, even if it meant him taking her apart and turning her into another kind of life that he could use. Achieving that goal had always been something that would take time.

She searched vents, and she found one that had a gap she could use. She worked at it, wedging her box-cutter into the gap and wiggling it until she could get fingers in the gap. She used strength to widen it further, felt air escape through the rubber seal she’d peeled away, and knew she’d broken through the quarantine protection.

With more work, she was able to get an entire arm through. Screws scraped against metal as she worked them through.

She found her way into the walls, and from the walls, she found her way to a double-layered window with wire mesh between layers. She could see glimpses of the scene from an angle, distorted, by peering through the side of the thick glass pane.

The girl and the woman sitting at a table, separated from King Rinke by another thick glass wall.

Almost frantic, Dot searched the interior of the walls, looking for gaps, anything she could use. Everything was sealed, everything secured.

The answer ended up being the power outlet. She worked at the outlet, clawed at the seal that cemented it to the wall, and moved it enough that sound could get through. Later, when it was quiet, she could get through too.

“…a Red Queen and an Alice, then.”

“Or you could call me by my name.”

“I’m quite fond of Alice. She was a chaotic force in the worlds she visited, you know. She questioned, she challenged. A revolutionary in absurd worlds held captive by their own conventions and riddles.”

“This supposed Red Queen and I are friends, you know,” Alice Riley said.

“I’m not sure I’d go that far,” the Red Queen said.

“They were friends and enemies both in the story,” King Rinke said.