Chương 3: Chapter Three: Curiouser and Curiouser

She became aware of herself in stages. The first thing was that she was not dead, which was genuinely surprising considering the circumstances. The second was pain: her side, then her hand, then her collarbone and leg. Not to mention a deep ache that felt less like injury and more like her whole body wished to never stand up again. The third was that the ceiling definitely did not belong in a modern hospital.

Plaster, off-white, water-stained, with a gas lamp turned low at the far wall and casting the room in amber warmth that had nothing to do with electricity. Fuck, she thought. Cora rarely cursed but it felt like she was going to start doing that more often if dying was going to be a regular thing. She turned her head carefully and found a small room that was very full. A glass-fronted cabinet of bottles and instruments along one wall, not quite in any arrangement she recognised, but definitely medical.

A desk buried under stacks of paper, a shelf of books pressed close beside it. A washstand by the window, which had thick curtains mostly drawn. The room smelled of something medicinal and faintly alcoholic, which she chose to interpret as encouraging rather than alarming. In the chair beside her was a man she'd never seen, asleep with his chin on his chest and a pen still in his hand. She didn't get the chance to study him closely, before the door opened.

A young man in a police uniform that would have served a period drama very well entered, notebook in hand. He was perhaps twenty, with the alert and slightly pressed look of someone who had prepared for this moment and intended to conduct it properly. He saw her awake and straightened.

"Miss," he said.

"Constable Hewitt. How are you feeling?" The man in the chair startled awake. His pen dropped. He quickly snapped from sleep to full alert and professionalism in a single motion. Definitely a doctor, she guessed, remembering her rounds in hospitals.

"There we are," he said, as if he had not fallen asleep at all, managing to be both relieved and brisk simultaneously.

"Lie still. You've lost a considerable amount of blood." She had not moved and did not plan to. Her sight caught her own hands on the rough wool blanket. Not quite her hands. Thinner. A small scar on the right index finger she had never earned. Not mine, she thought, with something approaching resignation, before forcing her attention away and back onto the room. The gas lamp, the cut of the constable's uniform, the style of the furniture, the washstand with its basin and jug.

There was no running water anywhere in this room. Wrong era. Wrong body. Wrong everything. No money, no identity, no knowledge of where she was or how she was going to get back. Was this an Outlander situation? Simply the wrong time? Or had she not hallucinated at all and this was a Victorian-looking dimension where elves might be just as real as the creature that bit her? The system screen sat at the corner of her vision, patient and waiting. She carefully avoided looking at it directly.

She had no idea how others would react to it, if they could even see it, and was not ready to find out.

"Where am I?" she asked. Her voice came out lower and rougher than expected. Was that natural for this body, or just the mornings?

"My surgery," the doctor replied. He was at the cabinet now, efficient and unhurried, apparently having decided to pretend that he had not fallen asleep.

"My name is Dr. Cyril Hyde. A constable brought you in last night. You were found in Greybell Lane." He glanced at Hewitt.

"She's just woken up. I'm not certain this is the right time—""Do you remember what happened, Miss?" Hewitt asked, notebook and pen at the ready. Greybell Lane. Not a street she knew.

"I think I was attacked," she said slowly. Dr. Hyde settled back into his chair and began examining her side. It stung. She didn't make a sound. He noted something in his records with a concerned hum. His handwriting was illegible from this angle, though she did try to read.

"You're not the first," Hewitt told her, with gravity, as if he had just been waiting to say something significant.

"The Inspector will want to speak with you, when you're feeling well enough." Two small notifications lit at the corner of her vision. She looked at Dr. Hyde's notes instead.

"The date?" she said. He blinked.

"I beg your pardon?"

"What is today's date?"

"The ninth of September."

"What year?" she asked, the shape of a plan forming somewhere at the back of her mind. The constable's expression shifted to a careful gentleness, as if he were about to deliver difficult information.

"1837, miss. You're in Dr. Hyde's surgery on Crane Street, Londinium. You were attacked last night." 1837. She had suspected this. Hearing it confirmed out loud felt like a punch regardless.

"Do you know your name?" Dr. Hyde asked, gently. Her actual name surfaced without effort. Twenty-nine years of it, on three degrees and a boarding pass now presumably in a different dimension entirely. At the corner of her vision, the gold rectangle waited. There was probably a name on it. But now was not the time to check. She looked at the doctor with what she hoped was frightened confusion. [Bluff] – Passive. [Feign Ignorance] – Passive. She was doing magic, apparently. She would think more on that later.

"Alice," said Dr. Hyde, reading from his notes, and she went very still.

"The lodging house on Pell Street lists an Alice Darling among their residents. A flower girl, no family. The constable found you close to the area." He looked up.

"Is that you, Miss?" A pause followed. Slightly too long for someone who knew their own name.

"I don't…" she started, faking hesitancy.

"I don't know." Alice was, luckily, her middle name. She could answer to it with some practice. Though given what had shown up on that screen when she first arrived here, Alice probably meant a lot more than just a name in this world already. She answered a few more questions with tired confusion. Dr. Hyde gave her water and something bitter and told her to sleep. The amber light blurred as whatever he had given her did its work. She slept.

* If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it's taken without permission from the author. Report it. When she woke the second time, she was alone. Finally. Warm light fell through the curtain gap. Through the window came the sounds of the street waking: the steady rhythm of hooves on cobblestone, the jingle of a horse's harness, a woman somewhere below calling out about sales. The room was slightly cold and smelled only slight less alcoholic than last time.

She did not know how long she had been out but it felt like a different day at minimum. Cora sat up slowly and took stock. The wound was dressed and seemed to be healing well, which was something of a miracle given what she knew about medicine before antiseptics were invented. The body she had arrived in had been killed the same way Cora had, stab wounds, by some unknown person, for reasons she did not yet have.

She thought briefly about the voice she had heard in the alley (sweet dreams, dear girl) and the unhurried footsteps retreating. However curious she was, that was a matter for another time. For now: the system. She focused on the corner of her vision the way she had read about in books, and it sharpened, expanding into a clean-edged golden rectangle, full of white text. She may have focused too hard on expansion, for there was so much more information now.

STATUS Name: Alice Darling The name attached to this body by its previous occupant. Retained by default. Race: Human (Common) The standard classification for naturally-born inhabitants of this world. Common: the lowest tier of this race classification. Class: Novice Thief Achieved during the Age of Hearing. Common tier. Ceiling: Rank 2 without lateral class change. Skills available through this path: stealth, deception, manual dexterity, opportunistic acquisition. Novice: the first tier of any class.

Level: 2 (Rank: Ignota) The first and weakest rank. Includes levels 1–20. The vast majority of the population never leaves this rank. Title: Chosen One RESTRICTED. Definition unavailable at current level. Conditions Malnourished: Caloric and nutritional deficit accumulated over an extended period. Chronic. Minor Anaemia: Iron deficiency. Stab Wound (healing): Penetrating injury, right side, below the ribcage. Treated. Bite Wounds (healing): Penetrating injury, multiple sites. Treated.

Persistent Cough: Respiratory condition, probable environmental cause. Anathema (Alien): Not native. Not invited. Not leaving. Permanent condition. Attributes Vigour Lv. 3 (12/30) Physical capacity. Stamina, endurance, life force. Vigour depletes under physical stress and active skill use, and recovers with rest and treatment. Acuity Lv. 6 (52/60) Mental capacity. Clarity of thought, memory, processing speed. Acuity depletes under mental stress and passive skill use, and recovers with rest and treatment.

Skills Tier 2 (Uncommon): RESTRICTED Tier 1 (Common): [Arithmetic] Lv. 1 · [Advertise] Lv. 1 · [Bluff] Lv. 1 · [Britannian Language] Lv. 1 · [Convince] Lv. 1 · [Disguise] Lv. 1 · [Drop Safely] Lv. 1 · [Feign Ignorance] Lv. 1 · [Francian Language] Lv. 1 · [Garden] Lv. 1 · [Hide] Lv. 1 · [Lie] Lv. 1 · [Maintain Alias] Lv. 1 · [Map Building] Lv. 1 · [Mending] Lv. 1 · [Notice Detail] Lv. 1 · [Observe] Lv. 1 · [Pick Pocket] Lv. 1 · [Prusijan Language] Lv. 1 · [Reading and Writing] Lv. 1 · [Recall] Lv.

1 · [Silent Step] Lv. 1 · [Spot Tail] Lv. 1 · [Sprint] Lv. 1 · [Squeeze Through] Lv. 1 · [Local Slang] Lv. 1 · [Tailoring] Lv. 1 · [Threat Detection] Lv. 1 · [Vault] Lv. 1 · [Weaving] Lv. 1 Quests Main Quest: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland Everyone who falls down the rabbit hole becomes something. The question is what. Sub-Quest: Find the White Rabbit The girl whose life you are living? Something got her. Find out what, before it finds you. Sub-Quest: Off With Her Head You are not supposed to be here.

The world agrees. Do something about that. That was a great deal of text, but her gaze wouldn't move past the Title. Chosen One. Someone apparently thought they were funny. She sat with it for a moment, but there was too little information to form theories from, so she forced herself past it and worked through the rest methodically. The name was not hers, but it was serviceable. She could answer to it. The race: Human, Common, lowest tier.

Being the most unremarkable version of a thing felt faintly insulting, but the more pressing implication was that other tiers existed. Other races existed. Hopefully, they leaned more toward elves and dwarves and less toward actual monsters. The class was not based on her. Alice had not gotten a chance to choose a class, which was annoying, but maybe classes were something everyone had here? Some anime had these class conventions for everyone and not just the protagonist.

Perhaps, it belonged to the previous occupant, inherited along with the body and, apparently, the unknown person who had seen fit to stab them both. The ceiling of Rank 2 was not encouraging, but the lateral changes were the interesting piece. Rank 2 did not sound high and the fact that she could change her class was great news. Something more suited to her current situation would be helpful. Eventually. But what was the Age of Hearing? It read like common knowledge she was expected to already have.

She would have to learn more about this world as soon as she could. The conditions, at least, needed no glossary. Malnourished she had suspected. This body was lean, like it had survived on not quite enough for long enough that too little had become normal. She would need to fix that, although the thought of money, and the lack thereof, could bring her to a panic on its own. Minor anaemia explained the vertigo and the way the surgery had seemed slightly too bright when she first opened her eyes.

The stab wound she already knew about; Hyde had done clean work on it, to her considerable surprise. Again, she could not understate her surprise here. Victorian-era doctors were more like butchers than physicians. The bite wounds, including everything else, were healing faster than expected, however. Even if she had been unconscious for a week instead of the couple of days she suspected, it was still too fast to have as much mobility and clarity as she had.

Another thing that she couldn't ask about because maybe it was normal for this world. The persistent cough arrived on cue, as if the screen had reminded it to. She pressed her hand to her mouth and waited for it to pass. Environmental cause, the screen said. Because of this city specifically, or the weather? She would have to find out. The list was growing so long that she felt anxiety pool in her chest. And then, sitting quietly at the bottom of the list: Anathema (Alien): Not native. Not invited. Not leaving.

Permanent condition. Right. She was a literal alien. Fuck. She moved on. The attributes were more telling than she'd hoped. Vigour Lv. 3 at 12 out of 30 was not good, less than half the physical capacity this body was capable of at its baseline, and the baseline itself was not great. She was not to get into any physical altercations for the foreseeable future. Hopefully. Acuity Lv. 6 at 52 out of 60 she looked at for a longer moment. Either Vigour was very low for this body, or Acuity was unusually high.

Did the mental capacity reflect the previous occupant, or did it reflect her, Cora, arriving in it? She didn't know what an average looked like in this world. She would need to find out, carefully. Again, if other people even had these things. The skills she read through quickly, and then stopped halfway. She went back to the beginning and read again, more slowly. [Advertise]. [Garden]. [Mending]. [Weaving]. [Tailoring]. [Britannian Language] at Level 1, [Reading and Writing] at Level 1.

The functional literacy seemed low for someone who'd spent decades in this world, but perhaps everything had reset when she arrived. Nothing unusual about those skills taken alone. But alongside them: [Disguise]. [Hide]. [Maintain Alias]. [Map Building]. [Silent Step]. [Spot Tail]. [Threat Detection]. [Vault]. Plus two additional foreign languages? A flower girl, Dr. Hyde had said. Cora looked at the quests. The girl whose life you are living? Something got her. Find out what, before it finds you.

Fatigue hit her with the speed of a freight train. She put the screen away and it shrank to a corner of her vision. She lay back. Alice was supposed to be a victim of a random attack. She would play it that way in front of anyone who asked. The amnesia cover would work, she just had to be consistent. She didn't remember much before waking up. She was confused. She was recovering. She would not ask about elves or any other magical bullshit. Goddammit, Alice.

Cora needed to understand what a flower girl did during her nights that required [Vault] and [Spot Tail] to survive.