{E Pluribus Unum, Part III / The Bite, Part I}

☆☆☆

Rabbits were everywhere.

They hopped, danced, and twirled. They taunted Alice as she sat stuck in a liminal space.

Her brain melted into pudding as she stared, dazed and confused, at the leaping hares. She couldn't focus on anything except the rabbits, not even on Robin and Steve as they giggled and found everything funny.

"Come on, now!" Clive said, trying to hand Alice the gardening shears. "Use these and cut yourself free!"

"I can't," Alice said, words slurring slightly. "You—you aren't really real. You're imaginary."

"Just because something is imaginary," Clive said with a snort, "doesn't mean it cannot interact with your reality. Oh, the simple mind of humans. I'll never understand."

Clive started to cut the binds around her wrists, ignoring her feverish mumblings.

"You aren't real," she muttered. trying to wiggle out of his way. "You aren't real...you're an imaginary friend...is it hot in here?"

Unbeknownst to Alice, she said that last question much louder than the others.

"It's hot, all right," Steve slurred, overhearing, "'Cause I'm here!"

Robin gagged.

"Ew, you're such a dingus!" she said, elbowing Steve.

The two of them cackled. Alice's fever was so high and she was so dizzy, she didn't even have the energy to retort.

She didn't even notice that her binds were getting looser as Clive—the hallucination Clive—cut them.

"Morons," Robin crowed. "They messed up the drug."

"They messed it up!" Steve echoed. "Morons!"

"Hey, morons!" Robin called.

The two of them continued shouting, "Morons! Morons!"

"Quiet down," Alice mumbled. "They'll...they'll come kill us."

Too late. The door buzzed open, and the Russian general entered with his goons in tow.

"Oh, bollocks," Clive said, glancing over his shoulder. "Alice, I've got to dash. Can't let them know I'm here. But I've loosened these restraints, see?"

He pulled on the torture chair's restraints, showing Alice that they were loose enough for her to slip out of now.

"I'll leave these shears behind your chair," he continued. "Whenever you're ready, give them hell, love!"

With that, Clive winked and faded away.

Alice felt so sick, she couldn't even register what just happened.

"Would now be a good time to tell you I don't like doctors?" Steve slurred, chuckling at the general, Dr. Zharkov, Vlad, and Anatoly as they towered over him.

"Let's try this again, yes?" the general said. "Who do you work for?"

Steve's glassy-eyed gaze found a spot on the wall to focus on. Staring straight ahead, he said, "Scoops. Scoops Ahoy."

He and Robin giggled.

"How did you find us?" the general asked coolly.

"Totally by accident," Steve said.

The general glanced at Dr. Zharkov, Vlad, and Anatoly and muttered something in Russian.

Dr. Zharkov went to his table and picked up a menacing tool. Alice, in her daze, couldn't even tell what it was.

"What is that shiny little toy?" Steve slurred.

His and Robin's giggly, punchy demeanor changed when the doctor grabbed Steve's hand and tried to force one of his fingers into the tool. Steve cried out, and Robin rushed to his aid.

"There was a code!" she shouted. "We heard a code."

"What code?" the soldier Anatoly asked.

"'The week is long,'" Robin repeated. "'The silver cat feeds when blue meets yellow in the west...'"

Alice tried to stay awake, to keep her eyes open while her friends were being interrogated. She felt so, so nauseous, and so, so sleepy...

Alice felt the way she did last fall when her powers were corrupted. She felt like she was floating in space, like everything was an illusion. Was she dreaming, or was this real life?

Alice drifted off to sleep sitting up in her torture chair, exhaustion and sickness overwhelming her.

☆☆☆

Alice stood in the middle of the woods at a fork in the road.

Well, it was more like five forks—a total of ten potential paths—arranged in a circle.

A sign nestled amongst the bushes pointed arrows in all different directions, boasting of various potential pathways.

"Welcome to the Liminal Landscape!" a scratchy voice said from above. "Can I interest you in a map?"

Alice looked up, expecting to see a rabbit. Her heart dropped when she saw her old cat Mews lounging on a tree branch.

"Mews?" she said. "What the hell are you doing here?"

"You're dreaming, Alice," Mews said. "I'm not Demogorgon chow in your dreams."

Even Alice's dreams—which were always strange and unusual—seemed even more so today.

"Those Russian drugs are messing with me," Alice said, slapping her hand against her forehead. "I need to get them out of my system somehow."

"Oh, don't worry," Cheshire Mews said, arching and stretching her back. "You will. Your powers are working overtime to sweat them out of you. Crashing isn't pretty, but you'll sober up much quicker than your friends will."

For a second, the forest around Alice morphed. The trees turned purple and Mews stretched into an anteater. As quickly as Alice could blink, everything switched back to normal.

"I need to wake up," Alice said. "I need to help my friends!"

"Relax," Mews drawled. "It'll be all right. You just need to pick a pathway, and you'll wake up in no time."

"I don't have time for these stupid mind games!" Alice snapped. "My friends and I are in real danger right now! Like, live-or-die danger!"

"Ah, death," Cheshire Mews said. "It's not as scary as we think."

The cat leaped from the branch and landed by Alice's feet.

"But I don't want to see you die," Cheshire Mews continued. "It's not your time—yet. Follow me."

Cheshire Mews dashed down the fork straight ahead, and Alice had no choice but to follow.

As they walked through the odd wilderness, Alice tried to get a good, clear look at the trees. The harder she focused on them, the more they evolved into a bright, dripping mess. They changed colors and seemed to melt like a Dalí painting. 

Even the path she walked wasn't stationary. It twisted through the trees into a tight spiral and unraveled, seeming to drop Alice and Mews back to the 10-pronged fork in the road.

"This place is a nightmare," Alice grumbled as the landscape morphed again. "I hate it here."

"Would you rather be getting the third degree from the general and his goons?" Cheshire Mews hissed—literally, hissed. "I didn't think so. Keep walking!"

It was evident Cheshire Mews harbored the same bad attitude the real Mews did. Alice resisted the urge to roll her eyes and struggled to keep up with her old cat. This time, they turned left down a path.

"Where are we going?" Alice said. "What's happening?"

"I'm taking you where you need to be."

"Which is?"

"You'll see."

Alice stopped short and let out a scream of frustration.

"No! No I won't see!" she snapped.

Cheshire Mews froze, turning slowly to glare at Alice.

"And why not?" she asked haughtily.

"I'm sick and tired of—this!" Alice said, waving her hands in the air. "Of the dreams, the hallucinations, the freaky stuff!"

"Alice—"

"No! I'm not done!" Alice screamed, pointing an accusatory finger at Mews. "Ever since I woke up from that damn coma, my life has gone off the rails. I'm tired of it! I don't even care about being normal anymore. I'll keep my powers, I'll walk down the school hallway like a fucking flashlight, whatever. I just want to be okay! And lucid! And not drift off to Wonderland whenever shit gets too hard!"

While Alice ranted, the forest around her began to fade. She didn't realize it, but she was waking up.

Cheshire Mews, however, noticed the changing surroundings.

"Uh, Alice—"

"You aren't real, Mews!" Alice snapped. "You're just another hallucination, like those godforsaken rabbits."

Without thinking, Alice held out her palm and sent a blast of heat and light toward Cheshire Mews. Mews hissed and skittered off into the woods.

Alice blinked, and she back in the Russian base. She still felt like shit, but at least she was awake.

The blast of energy she had sent toward Cheshire Mews had actually sent Anatoly and Vlad flying. They hit their heads on the wall and instantly passed out.

The general, in the middle of his interrogation with Steve and Robin, whirled toward her.

"You!" he snarled. "I thought we sedated you enough to send you to dreamland. Zharkov, drug her again."

Dr. Zharkov stalked toward Alice. She wiggled her wrists, noticing that the straps actually were looser than before. 

Just before he could stab her neck again, an alarm sounded.

Steve shrugged and snickered, as if he expected such a thing to happen.

The general stormed out, instructing Dr. Zharkov to watch them and wake his fallen comrades.

Zharkov had just lightly kicked Vlad with his boot when the door to the interrogation room swung open. 

"Ahhhhhhh!" Dustin screamed, wielding a long lightning rod like a lightsaber.

He zapped Zharkov in the chest, remembering his secret handshake with Steve. The evil doctor convulsed before falling against his tool table and hitting the ground.

"Holy shit!" Alice said. Suddenly, she didn't feel so sleepy.

"Hey! Henderson!" Steve said cheerily while Dustin and Erica untied him and Robin. "Crazy, I was just talking about you!"

Willie helped Alice out of her torture chair.

"Get ready to run!" he instructed the older teens.

"Wait!" Alice said as Willie dragged her toward the exit. "I have to check something first!"

"Al, hurry!" Dustin yelled as she doubled back.

She looked behind her chair and gasped.

A pair of gardening shears glinted in the fluorescent light.

Alice didn't have the time or mental capacity to figure out why Clive's tool was here when he was very much not real. She picked up the shears and followed the Scoops Troop out of the room, stumbling the whole way.

Erica, Dustin, and Willie had commandeered some kind of transport cart. Alice, Steve, and Robin got shoved into the back of it, and two of them squealed like idiots. 

One of them gripped a pair of shears for dear life, sweating and nose bleeding the whole way.

"Jesus, slow down!" Steve groaned, gripping the inside of the cart for balance.

"Hey, what is this, the Indy 500?" Robin said.

"Indy 300," Steve corrected.

"No, dingus, it's 500!"

"It's 300!"

"Let's say a million," Alice snapped. "It's too hot back here, and your idiotic yelling isn't helping!"

Steve and Robin cackled, not sensing the tension of the situation.

"What's wrong with them?" Willie asked his compatriots in the front.

"I have no idea," Dustin said glumly, keeping his eyes ahead.

Distracted worrying about his sister, he almost didn't notice when they made it back to the elevator.

"Dustin, watch out!" Erica shouted.

He slammed on the brakes a millisecond too late, and their cart smacked into a stack of barrels.

"You guys all right back there?" Dustin asked.

Steve, Robin, and Alice just groaned, too confused to say anything else.

"They're fine," Willie said. "Let's go."

The trio of younger teens jumped down from the front of the cart and unlocked the back.

"Come on," Dustin said. "We've got to go, now."

"Let's go!" Erica echoed.

They clapped their hands at the older teens, unsure of why they were reacting so slowly.

The trio stumbled out as Dustin used a stolen keycard to open the elevator door.

"Hurry!" Erica said. "We've come this far. I don't want to be a commie prisoner now."

Alice staggered into the elevator, still holding the shears. Robin and Steve snickered and whooped, dancing around as the elevator began its ascent.

"Where did you get those?" Dustin asked, gesturing to the gardening tool.

"I found them in the torture chamber," she mumbled. "Figured they'd come in handy."

Dustin nodded, but side-eyed Alice, figuring there was more to the story. He'd figure it out later...after he figured out why Steve and Robin were goofing around so much.

"You look like you're surfing!" Robin said loudly, laughing as Steve balanced on an empty transport cart.

"Surfing! Yeah!" Steve echoed. "Al, check me out, I'm surfing!"

He wobbled back and forth giddily.

"They seem drunk!" Willie said, watching the crazy behavior.

"Why would they be drunk?" Dustin asked. "Alice, what happened to them? And to you?"

It had taken him a second to realize, but Alice's nose had been bleeding steadily since they rescued her. Also, her eyes were glassy, and she looked pale.

"Those bastards drugged us," Alice slurred.

Dustin rushed to Steve, who had just wiped out on his "surfboard" and tumbled to the ground.

He giggled madly while Dustin placed a hand on his forehead.

"He's burning up!" Dustin said.

"You're burning up," Steve mumbled. 

Dustin continued to try and check on Steve, but Steve pushed him away.

"Noooo," Steve said. "Ow! That hurts."

He tried to wiggle away from Dustin.

"Steve, hold still!" Willie demanded.

"Dustin's hands are cold," Steve whined. "Like little ice cubes! Like a polar bear! Alice has warm hands! Let her check me out—whoops! Double entendre!"

He and Robin cackled. Steve's words didn't register to Alice, whose mind was half in Wonderland. 

"I'll kick your ass for that later," Dustin said through gritted teeth. "Now, let me see your eyes!"

Steve continued to whimper, but Dustin finally got his cold hands on Steve's face.

"His pupils are super dilated," he said to Erica and Willie. "Whatever shit they gave you guys is still in your system—a lot of it."

"Boop!" Steve said, gleefully poking Dustin's nose.

Although Alice wasn't all there, she was lucid enough to know Steve needed her.

"I can help!" Alice said, dropping the shears and staggering to Steve and Dustin.

"No!" Dustin said, eyes narrowed. "Alice, get back."

"What do you mean 'no'?" Erica said. "If she's as powerful as you said she was, she can fix Steve and Robin like that."

She snapped her fingers to emphasize her point.

"What she said!" Alice slurred, waving her hand in Erica's general direction.

"It's not safe!" Dustin said. "Alice, they drugged you too!"

"I'm fine," Alice said. "I'm completely and totally fine, wine, mine, design...uh, fine."

"You're rhyming!" Dustin yelled. "You're sweating! You're bleeding! You're starting to go crazy trying to heal yourself! You need all the energy you can get to sweat the drugs out before you can help Steve and Robin."

At the sound of his name, Steve attempted to boop Dustin on the nose again, causing the younger boy to smack his hand away. Robin giggled.

"It's like an airplane crash!" Willie blurted out.

"Huh?" Erica said.

"When an airplane is going down," Willie said, "you're supposed to put your own oxygen mask on before you put someone else's on. So you don't kill yourself helping other people."

"Exactly," Dustin said. He put his hands on Alice's shoulders and shook her slightly. "Alice, you're already at least a little more lucid than Robin and Steve. We just need to wait for you to sober up, which should be soon, and then you can help them." He shook his head. "I won't let you die like this."

"We all die my strange little child friend," Robin said, crouching next to the siblings with a crazy look in her eyes. "It's just a matter of how, and when."

"Dusty," Alice said, shrinking out of his grip. "I appreciate you appreciating me enough to not want be killed...milled...willed, but if Steve and Robin don't get help from me now, they're toast. Burned toast, roast, host with the most!"

"Alice—"

"Don't 'Alice' me!" she whined. "Let me try!"

Dustin scowled, tired of fighting.

"You know what? Fine!" he snapped. "Drain all your energy. But when you can't tell up from down or left from right, don't come crying to me."

Dustin stomped off to the corner of the elevator to sulk.

Alice turned back to Steve.

"Okay, Stevie," she said. "Hold still."

She placed both hands on Steve's chest.

However, he shook his head and tried to scoot away.

"Noooo!" he said, sounding like a petulant child.

"I thought you wanted my help!" Alice cried out. "What was all that shit about Dustin's cold hands?!"

"Leave me alone, Henderson!" Steve whined, turning his head away from Alice. "I don't want your help, you big dummy."

"Steve's calling Alice dumb?" Robin said, snickering. "Oh, that's rich."

"What's your problem, Harrington?" Alice said, face flushing red.

"I'm mad at you!"

Alice's skull throbbed with pain, both from the drugs and the annoying situation. This wasn't making any sense. Alice wondered if any of this was real, or was all a result of the drugs.

"So, one second we're fine," she said, "and now you're mad at me?"

"Why are you mad at her?" Willie asked, curiosity getting the better of him. "Did something happen down there?"

"No!" Steve said with a huff. "Something happened up there."

He pointed upward.

"In Canada?" Robin asked with a gasp.

"No!" Steve said. "In Hawkins! And it's something that's been happening for a few weeks, or months! And it's making me sick to my stomach and I—and I just—I don't know!"

"What the hell is happening?" Erica muttered to Dustin as they watched the drama unfold from afar.

"I have no idea," Dustin said, "but I have a feeling I'm not going to like what he says next."

"Steve," Alice said through gritted teeth, "let me try to heal you. You're not really mad, it's just the weird drugs talking—"

"It's not the drugs!" Steve slurred. He sat up a little straighter and startled Alice by gripping her shoulders tightly. "I'm mad and sick because you don't realize how much I like you!"

Alice's brain started to get fuzzy again. She saw flashes of roses, red and white and red and white and red and white. 

She snapped out of it and focused on Steve's face.

"What the hell are you talking about?" she said, voice shaking.

"I like you, Alice," Steve babbled, his previously glassy eyes suddenly laser-focused on her. "I like you so much. So, so much. And it makes me sad and angry that you push me away! Like you think you'll hurt me with your powers or something. I don't want you to push me away!" 

"Oh my God," Erica hissed. "Is this happening now? Right now, while we're about to face imminent death?"

"Steve's timing isn't the best," Willie remarked.

"Shh!" Robin hissed. "I'm trying to listen!"

Alice, shocked and emotional and still quite high, didn't know what to say.

Steve mistook her silence as a cue to keep talking.

"Alice, I'm crazy about you!" he said. "And I don't care if being with you is dangerous, because being without you is like...it's like being tortured by mean Russians!"

Dustin had heard enough.

"Steve, shut up!" he snapped. "We need to know where you parked your car—"

"No, lemme finish!" Steve cleared his throat and held Alice's hand in his. "If you don't want to be with me, that's fine!" He shrugged his shoulders deliriously. "I can't make you love me, Alley Cat. But if you do want to be with me, even if it's just a small part of you deep down that likes me back, then we should be together. The end."

Alice took in Steve's bruised, bloody appearance and the goofy grin on his face, and she couldn't help but smile back.

"Your timing sucks, you know that?"

"I know."

"But that was really sweet."

"Thanks," Steve said cheekily. "I came up with it myself."

"I can tell. It wasn't well-written."

Steve and Alice giggled.

"All right, stop!" Dustin yelled. "We're almost back to the surface. Steve! Car keys! Now! And when we're safe, we'll have a nice long chat about your inappropriate feelings toward my big sister."

 "Can we make a pit stop at the food court?" Steve said. He kissed the back of Alice's hand. "I want to treat my lady to a snack."

"Can I come?" Robin piped up. "I would kill for a hot dog on a stick."

Dustin glowered.

"You can have as much food as you want—"

Robin fist-pumped the air.

"—but only if you tell me where your car is parked!"

"Uh-oh," Steve muttered. The excitement of young love faded slightly.

"Uh-oh?" Willie echoed.

"The car's off the board," Steve said. "They took the keys! The Russians, they took the keys."

Robin and Alice laughed, finding this whole situation much funnier than it actually was.

"That's a bummer, right?" Steve said, laughing as well.

"Alice!" Erica said. "Did you drive? Do you have a car?"

Alice, still holding Steve's hand, shook her head.

"No," she said, voice sounding faraway and dreamlike. "I—I think I rode my bike. Or I rode on the back of a giant caterpillar...no, no it was my bike. I think. Probably."

The trio cackled, brains still clogged by the drugs.

"Oh, shit," Alice said through her laughter. "I think we've all officially gone mad!"

Dustin, Erica, and Willie shared tense looks, hoping they'd find some way out of the mall before they got caught—and hoping they could keep the dingus druggies in line.

☆☆☆

{Posted on February 24, 2020}

{Edited July 19, 2020; Republished March 4, 2025}

A/N [from 2020] The gif at the beginning of the chapter is from medium.com/alice-s-adventures-in-wonderland/alice-in-wonderland-animated-gifs-33e1fdc2fadd. I found it on Pinterest and thought it looked pretty dope.

This story's going to wrap up soon, so you know what time it is...chapter title hint time!

[47] The Burnouts

[48] Doctor Alice, M.D.

[49] Alice and Steve

a[50] Boss Battle

and...

[Part 3 Epilogue] Happy [Un]Birthday

These are subject to change, but they give a hint of what's to come.

QOTD: What's your favorite store in the mall? I'm a sucker for a bookstore myself!

A/N [from 2025]: Surprise! This week, there's a new chapter being uploaded every day. It's because I have something special planned...