We get on the bus. Everyone is still cracking jokes, and I am still suspicious of the driver. It's the rabbit again. I can't help it and go grab the wheel, trying to save the bus.
"No, Alice,” Adam screams from under the hood. “Don't do it." He still thinks it's me who will kill everyone on the bus. Well, maybe it is me. I am not sure.
Suddenly, Adam pulls his hood back.
It's the heart-shattering moment. It's that moment when I see his face. I let go of the wheel, not knowing what to think. The boy under the hood is Jack Diamonds.
If you switch the letters in Jack Diamonds you get Adam J Dixon, bearing in mind that the 'x' letter in Dixon is translated as the letters 'c', 'k' and 's' in Jack Diamonds. My mind must have come up with this trick to escape the horrible truth that I killed Adam in the schools bus.
At the end of the memory, the rabbit in the mirror appears again. He parts the hair dangling in front of him and I discover it's me underneath. It's always been me.
I sink to my knees and let the mirror fall, splintering into pieces. I don't know what's real and what's not. I don't know why I killed those people on the bus. Did I make up Jack's personality? Was it all in my mind? But how is that possible? How did he save me so many times? Or is it like Waltraud said, that I have never left the ward underground and that it was all in my head?
I stand up and hold the bars in the door's window and start screaming. "I'm not mad," I plead. I pound on the door, but no one answers me. Why would they? I am just a mad girl in an asylum underground. "Who in the world am I?" I mumble, staring at the long ward. It seems endless from where I stand. I need to get out to prove I am not mad. I need to go meet the Pillar. He can't be an illusion of my mind. I don't know how long I can't wait. I am dying here.
Ogier approaches my cell slowly when I don't stop screaming. The hallway is dark, but I recognize him from his white shaved head. "I told you we're all mad here, Alice," he says, and my confusion peaks. Why would Ogier say that?
I only get it when his face shines through the dim light coming from my cell. He stands behind the barred window in my door, and it all makes sense now. He is the Cheshire. I recognize him from his grin. "Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a world to apocalypse." He looks at me for a moment and turns around, whistling as he leaves the ward. As he leaves, I hear him hum the nursery rhyme:
When she was sane, she was very, very sane. And when she was mad, she was Alice.
The END…