June 7, 2045 - 10:55 AM

The crash of Margo's feet against the van floor rang out through the garage like gunfire, her muscles tensing up. The driver stood four feet away from the van's doors, his uncanny expression tinged by the milky glow of the lights above them. The gun tempted Margo, tugging on her hand as if a string harnessed the two of them together. But she couldn't yet. There was a chaos down in the Rabbit Hole that ironically had its own method of functioning. No outside influences allowed. Otherwise, the chaos would no longer belong to the Rabbit Hole.

It would belong to Psychwatch.

Margo stepped out, finally escaping the paralyzing gaze of their Sentient driver. Jack followed behind her. The garage was a dimension separate from that of true reality. Not a single ray of sunlight reached them. No windows, no light entering through the slit at the bottom of the garage door. Just a spectral brilliance emanating from the rows of fluorescent lights above them. The walls and everything else were dark green, and the smell of burnt rubber from the tires permeated the room. Something Margo would never discover thanks to her mask's security.

She jumped at the sound of snapping fingers, her rabbit ears wavering with the sudden jolt, and she looked back to find Jack pointing at an open door behind them. There was an odd black scribble stretching across it, and upon a closer look, Margo realized it was a supposed to be a rabbit. A poorly scrawled one at that.

Another long row of lights trailing across the ceiling greeted the two doctor-cops as they passed through the door, and they stood in an unwelcoming hallway. Garbage sprawled across the floors. Soda cans. Trash bags. Condoms. Nausea briefly sparked in Margo's stomach as several ambiguous stains came into view, another thing she was relieved she couldn't smell.

A bloody handprint stretched across the wall toward the elevator. Small red blotches dotted the buttons on the panel, and a larger mess of blood splashed across the wall beside them, draining into the elevator itself. It was a light reddish-brown. Dry. Not soon enough to expect a bleeding corpse behind the doors, but not old enough to scrape off so easily.

For a moment, the diminutive crime scene took her attention away from the mission. Her monstrous colleague Jack pressed the down button with a roll of his eyes, and Margo swore she heard him mutter, "You're gonna fucking die in there."

"No, I'm not," she hissed, her eyes piercing into the elevator doors before her.

Jack turned toward her. "What?"

"I heard what you said. No matter how many times you say it, it's not going to happen."

"I didn't say anything, Sandoval."

Margo forced out a sardonic chuckle. "Sure, you did."

The elevator doors parted ways, and the first thing the two of them saw within their vessel to Hell were the words FUCK PSYCHWATCH sketched across the wall with a marker. A small black box protruded from the ceiling at the right-hand corner of the elevator, a single red dot blinking in and out of existence on its front. The officers took a gander at each other, finally coming to an agreement. That was the device that would scan their masks and let them down.

With shortening breath, a sign of the fear coming back for another round of mind games, Margo stepped in, Jack following. The doors closed behind them.

There were eight white lights the size of pills wedged into the ceiling above them, a brighter glow in that room compared to the garage back outside. Margo looked around their portable coffin, hoping to count the bodies forced into it. She jumped away from the wall after finding more bloody handprints, another line of red cascading down to the floor.

"Please hold still," a monotone voice spoke.

The feeling in her arms and legs vanished. She was nothing more than a statue.

The red dot on the black device overseeing them turned green, and six consecutive flashes of bright green light filled the chamber, the sound of each flash like a dart speeding through unbroken silence. When the flashes stopped and only a green dot remained, Margo attempted to move again, straightening her back with another worrisome gasp for air.

"Access granted," the voice said. "Stand by."

The light turned blue. And with the muffled clanking of gears, the elevator began its descent.

"It's finally happening," Margo whispered.

The blue light fired out to the floor, filling the space between Margo and Jack. Starting off a pale blue, Margo saw other colors emerge in the blur before her, and the illusory shape grew appendages that eventually took the forms of arms and legs. All the while, the voice repeated "Stand by" over and over.

As further details came into view, Margo and Jack realized the holographic entity before them was a woman.

The voice went silent as the projection's remaining soft edges solidified. Standing before them was a young woman around Margo's age, possibly younger. Blonde hair trailed down her head, and irresistible blue eyes shimmered behind a white origami rabbit mask, the ears dangling playfully in front of her like fishing rods cast into the water. Unlike the doctor-cops, her mask exposed everything below her nose, making way for small red lips and a pale face, and she greeted them with a smile radiant of innocence. She wore a blue dress with a white apron on top, and it didn't take too long for the most rational of people to recognize that she was bait.

"Hi there!" she giggled, her voice high and evoking false purity. "Welcome to the Rabbit Hole. If you haven't figured it out yet, I'm Alice!"

"All this attention to detail," Jack said, "and yet no British accent? Where's the consistency?"

Alice let out a childish laugh. "You're funny," she smiled at him. "And handsome. Is this your first time coming down here?"

"Fucking hell," Jack muttered with a roll of his eyes.

"Aww, someone's grouchy! But don't worry. The Rabbit Hole will cheer you right up!"

"Is that so?" Margo reproached.

Alice turned away from Jack, maintaining her artificial glee. "Of course! Anything you want, you do it. You won't have any parents or cops or even Psychwatch getting in the way of that. Just..."

The holographic girl vanished from their sights, returning three seconds later. The dress and apron were gone, but the mask remained. She strutted around the officers sporting blue lace lingerie and white knee-high socks. The feigned innocence was no more. From the way she moved, it was obvious she was in charge.

"Let everything go, baby," she concluded, her voice lowering to a seductive contralto.

"That's more like it," Jack said, and unbeknownst to them, a smirk worked its way across his face. "I thought I'd have to hear that grating fucking voice for the rest of the ride."

Alice chuckled, marching over to Jack, her hips swaying from side to side. "Yeah, I'm not a fan of it either, baby. But everybody digs the whole 'innocent schoolgirl-slash-fictional character' look. Guess it's the taboos surrounding it that gets them excited." She leaned against the wall, another valiant smirk crossing her face. "How about you, handsome? Does this get you excited?"

Jack shrugged.

The holographic seductress before him put on a playful frown. She blinked out of existence once more, and when she returned, she was half naked. She cupped her hands around her bare breasts, carefully stroking her nipples with the tip of her pointer fingers.

"Come on," Alice grinned, standing inches before Jack's face. "How much do I have to take off to get you going?"

"You've gotta be kidding me," Margo groaned, turning away from the scene before her.

"I'll admit, I like what I'm looking at," Jack replied, "but it's not the same when looking's the only thing you can do."

"The two of you are almost there. You just gotta keep it in your pants a little while longer." Alice looked down at Jack's crotch. "I can only imagine what you've got in store."

The elevator slowed to a halt.

"That was fast," Margo said.

"Halfway, actually," Alice replied. "This is where I lay down some ground rules and answer questions."

"So that whole striptease thing was unnecessary?"

Alice laughed, leaning her arm on Jack's shoulder, although he didn't feel it. "Honey, I'm a preview of what you'll see down there if either of you are lucky. And since the two of you already have each other, you're already luckier than most people heading down."

"We're not a couple."

"Guess that makes me free for you to take to Wonderland, Blondie," Jack told Alice.

Alice giggled, biting her lip as she stared at the man with another feigned expression of lust. "Maybe if you filled yourself up with some Mist, I could take you there."

"Holloway, don't you dare," Mason barked into his piece.

Alice disappeared. Her projection reappeared in the center of the room, standing tall with her hands behind her back. She was completely naked. No panties. Bare feet. All she wore was the rabbit mask. A thousand thoughts ran through Jack's head as he studied every inch of her. The only question was where to start first.

"This was a fun ride," she said, "but it's time for me to get serious. If anyone here has a weak stomach or a will to live, we can return to the surface."

"We're fine," Margo muttered .

"Yeah," Jack slurred, fighting every urge to wipe the saliva off his mouth, not that he could with the mask on.

"Glad to hear." Alice cleared her throat. "Well, first thing's first. If it isn't obvious, clothing is entirely optional down here. You can wear as many or as few layers as you want." She faced Jack again, her fingers carefully massaging her clit. "It's more fun with hardly any, though."

Jack wanted to drop another quip. But his mouth was dry, and the suit was tight in a rather inconvenient spot, especially in that moment.

"You can do whatever you want to whoever you want," Alice continued, and she brought her fingers to her mouth and licked them. "Pleasure is all that matters, whether or not it costs another person their comfort or safety. Drugs. Violence. Sex. Any impulses you have, you don't have to be ashamed of them anymore. As they say, all the best people are crazy. Questions?"

"Why does this place even exist?" Margo hissed.

Alice glanced at the officer, not uttering a word. She flashed a condescending smirk before returning her gaze to Jack. "Any questions that aren't fucking stupid, handsome?"

"Yeah," Jack rasped, gripping the handlebar on the wall as if letting go would end his life. "Who the hell are you, really?"

Alice gasped. "Great question!" She cleared her throat. "My appearance and personality are based on a twenty-year-old girl named Emily Bannister. She visited this place two years ago, where she was raped and murdered. Don't bother looking for the body. She was brutalized to the point she became unrecognizable, and her corpse was thrown into the furnace with countless other bodies."

"Oh my God," Margo whispered.

"Atkinson!" Mason shouted through her and Jack's earpieces. "Search Psychwatch records for an 'Emily Bannister.'"

"Deactivating sound cancellation," said the robotic voice from the black box. And suddenly the subdued sound of electronic music rumbled beneath them.

"Anyway, brilliant question, handsome," Alice continued, her flirtatious smile unmoving. "So now that we're approaching, I'll just get the important stuff out of the way. Please remember to keep masks on at all costs. Anonymity is key down here."

Margo tapped her mask with her knuckles, the terrified feeling returning to her body. Although, she was pleased to admit it didn't pack the same punch as before now that she was ready.

"And anyone with deeper motives beyond having a good time is fucking dead," Alice said, and the elevator stopped for the last time, the music louder than ever beyond the doors. Alice smirked for the last time as she delivered her last words of advice: "It all comes down to this: be a bitch. Not a snitch."

The room went dark. The projector turned off, and the lights blacked out. The doors proceeded to peel apart.

And the Rabbit Hole appeared before them.

Beams of bright red light blinded them, dancing along with the thundering, hypnotic music filling the air. Everywhere they looked was bathed in color. Red. Blue. Green. Each flash took another bit of their vision, darkening the rest of the cavernous room as they stepped out of the elevator. As her eyes readjusted, Margo could see bodies. Hordes of people condensed together in one enormous mass. All of them gyrating along to the music that thumped with a deafening boom like the sound of warfare. The music evoked too many emotions at once. Fear. Sadness. An odd sense of liberation. It was beautiful and simultaneously the most terrifying thing she'd heard in a long time.

"Holy shit!" Holden shouted through their earpieces. "Holy fucking shit, they're actually in!"

"It's too bright," Margo said, but the music drowned her out, and she raised her arm above her eyes as she and her colleague marched on.

The room was colossal, strobe lights and lasers discharging from every corner. When she looked back at the elevator door, she discovered the shaft transporting it to and from the surface was nothing more than a cage towering up to the ceiling.

That could've come crashing down on top of us, she thought, but even her mind wasn't an escape from the world around her. The noise always found a way in.

She looked back at Jack, hoping to catch him before he could run off and satisfy his urges. But he stood firm, marching forward with only his mission on his mind and no other concerns to speak of. Not even the implants planted in every orifice in his face worried him any longer.

Is he already high off the Mist? she thought.

A set of stairs appeared before them, and two benches occupied by partygoers surrounded it. Four total, two to each bench, every one of them sporting a rabbit mask. To her right, Margo heard a man grunting and gasping with excitement, grabbing the wall beside him with one hand and the cheek of the woman beside him with the other. Three of his fingers inserted into her mouth, and he slumped into the seat as she pleasured him, her hand stimulating his erect penis. Both of them were stark naked, and that was how Margo, Jack, and the rest of Psychwatch came upon the woman's wounds.

"Keep going!" he said, apparently screaming the words considering Margo heard him over the pounding music.  "Keep going or I'll tear your fucking face off!"

Margo looked away in disgust, hoping the other patrons to her left would make for a far less discomforting sight. Instead, she saw two boys in their late teens, maybe early twenties. One had a Blue Caterpillar in his hand, the dreaded narcotic exuding from the tube and his mouth as a neon blue vapor. The other boy slumped over on his side, a Blue Caterpillar in one hand and a dagger wedged into his wrist at an angle. Blood dripped from his arm like a leak in a pipe, but the boy had no thoughts about it. Margo wanted to read his eyes, but they were hidden in the shadow of his mask. He was breathing, at least.

"We'll get them later," Mason said.

"Goddamn it," Margo whispered, turning away once again, and she and Jack advanced up the stairs.

There they stood before the edge of the atrium, just as Slater had said. Neon and lasers took their eyesight once more, and the music was louder than ever. Margo could feel her bones and teeth rattling with every electronic pulse, as if her intestines were set to explode out of her. Rabbit masks and ears shrouded the faces of every dancer on the floor, not a single one of them sporting the hybrid gas mask that Margo and Jack wore. Most of them could hardly even be described as dancing. More accurately, swaying. Writhing. Fucking everything within grabbing distance. Most of them hardly wore anything, at most their pants and shoes and at least nothing but the skin on their backs.

Margo shifted her eyes away from the hellish debauchery before her, scanning the area above the dance floor. A set of metal stairs lead up to a second floor, a balcony overlooking the rest of the atrium. She could see stained glass gleaming on the walls, opaque windows that didn't go in or out. Those must have been the suites.

Looking even closer, she saw four bodies dangling from the balcony with chains around their necks.

"Jack!" she said, and she turned to him and repeated louder, "Jack! Look over there!"

"What?" he shouted back, squinting, and he found the bodies. "Well, shit."

They turned again, eyes directed at the gathering of partygoers before them. Men and women, women and women, men and men, all ages, all body types, having their way with each other. One older man, grossly obese and clothed with nothing but a mask that left the bulk of his bloated face exposed, had his hands around the hips of a far younger woman as he took her from behind. The way she squirmed and gagged hinted only at violation and disgust. Two other men, half-naked, held each other close as they kissed until one clamped his teeth around the lip of the other and bit it off. The man collapsed to the floor, shrieking an ear-splitting scream as blood poured from the mutilated flesh where his lip used to be. Looking beyond them, the two Psychwatch officers detected multiple bodies splayed out on the dance floor. In particular, another young woman. Her shirt was ripped open, her breasts ravaged by stab wounds and grisly lacerations. The people moving around her progressively nudged her mask off with their feet, and by the time it slipped off her face, Margo saw she died wearing the most terrified expression she had ever seen. Nothing left in those eyes, only a scream being the last thing to leave her tongue.

Margo couldn't scream. She wanted to more than anything else. And she could've since no one would've heard her over the music. But she couldn't.

Jack shoved her to the side, flicking his fingers in her face to nudge her in the right direction.

"What the hell are you doing?" she shouted at him.

"Look over there!" he replied. "Tables and chairs and shit. That's where Slater was the last time he was here!"

"Alright, but don't touch me!"

"Why not? At least you're getting touched by someone you know."

"Yeah, and this 'person I know' is the one I want to be as far away from as fucking possible!"

Margo gasped. Profanity wasn't something she was used to uttering. Even if it was far from their biggest problems, it didn't feel right that it came from her of all people.

"Sandoval, Holloway!" Mason shouted into their pieces. "Cut your shit out and look for Slater!"

"Mason," Margo replied, she and Jack trudging toward the tables, "where are Andrade and Kusanagi?"

"I don't know! They should've been there already!"

"Commissioner," Holden croaked, "I think their van got trapped midway. I'm not picking up anything from them."

Mason growled. "Alright, just look for Slater and be on the lookout for Andrade and Kusanagi, too! Wherever the fuck they are."

All hail the great Commissioner Mason, Margo thought, and it surprised her to hear herself chuckle at that, especially with the deafening music around her.

The two Psychwatch officers scurried across the dance floor, Margo doing her best to look away from the horrendous activity. She stared at the floor instead, shiny and smooth as polished stone, reflecting the strobe lights back at her. Every color that flashed through the room overtook it. But even that disgusted her once her shoes came in contact with a bloodstain large enough to swallow her hole along with other substances she didn't want to think about.

Another set of steps came between them and the cafe-looking portion of the atrium. Rows of neon lights trailed around the walls of the portion, casting a blue glow on the furniture and patrons. Because of those lights, Margo once again saw another part of humanity she tried her hardest to ignore, as detrimental as that would've been to her profession. The least disturbing sight was a woman penetrating another woman with a strap-on, white powder packed around their mouths and noses. The body of an older man lay underneath an overturned chair, his face pulverized to nothing more than slimy fragments caving into his own skull like a crater, brains oozing through the cracks. Another young lady sat at a table all alone, her shirt yanked down, exposing her pale skin and small breasts. Her left arm lay across the table, carved open from her wrist to the crease in her elbow. Unlike the others, her mask covered every inch of her face. Margo tried reading her eyes, but she saw nothing once again. She couldn't determine if she got the high she wanted from plunging a syringe directly into her exposed veins, nor would she learn if the young woman even flinched. Or if she'd ever realized she had killed herself by slicing her arm open like that.

"No point in saving her," Mason said. "She'll be dead by the time we get there."

"Yes, ma'am," Margo whispered, but the explosive intro of the next song playing drowned her out.

"Check the bathrooms, Sandoval," Jack said. "I'll keep looking around for that asshole out here."

"Why do I have to do that?"

Jack quickly shifted himself toward her, sinister red light swallowing them whole. "Because I'm not sure if you've noticed," he replied, "but every single person in this place—both male and female—has been staring at you since you got here!"

Don't look back at them, she told herself. You're not going to like what you see.

"They like them cute and untouched, y'know," Jack added, low as a mumble. "Things that don't last very long."

Margo looked back. And not a single moment since then had she ever felt more watched. Never more violated by the looks in their eyes. The slobber drifting down their chins. The blood on their hands. The fluid dripping from...

She bolted to the restrooms.

She saw the signs spelled out for her in bright red neon. But as she ran toward them, they only grew more blurry, as if she were fleeing from them. That was what she preferred. Most people would. But her mission came out on top. Her life, her safety, completely meaningless by comparison.

By the end of the day, the Rabbit Hole could take her. Cute and untouched no longer. Just warm, plundered flesh.

She stopped her sprint, overtaken by a powerful fit of gagging. Her head was suddenly lighter. Her hand shot up to her face, but the mask got in the way. Her nails clinked against the metal, preventing her from carrying out her impulse and vomiting once again. Nothing helped. It had to escape her. Even if she had to breathe that Wonderland shit in.

Instead she fought harder, throwing herself against the wall, knocking the oxygen out of her lungs. The air rushing through the mask sounded with a metallic roar. She swore at herself, cursing every ounce of her existence. But as much as she got in the way, she only shoved this discouraging form of herself to the side, looking ahead to see the bathrooms down a corridor right in front of her.

With the weight of the world itself on her shoulders, she stumbled forward into the hallway, gripping her stomach as if her guts would burst from her torso. The first door she came across was the women's restroom, an unusual noise coming from the door.

When she opened the door, the shrill, inhuman screams of a teenage girl greeted her, pinned to the floor as three other individuals sporting rabbit masks dragged a switchblade from her stomach to her chin. Her pitiful wailing worsened into a gargle as blood gushed from her wounds onto the floor beneath her. And as the doors closed before Margo, she saw red Xs scrawled across the eyeholes of their masks.

She yanked the mask off her face and vomited onto the floor once again, clawing her fingers into the wall to keep herself from collapsing into her own puke.

"Jesus Christ," Mason growled, building into a scream, "can somebody find out where the fuck Andrade and Kusanagi are before Sandoval gets herself killed?"

"Fuck you, Mason," Margo hissed, her voice hampered by the pain in her throat.

"Wait, Sandoval, what the hell happened?" Jack asked over their pieces. "Did you puke again?"

"Holloway, get back to her position before you get yourself killed! Consider us another group of people you're at risk of pissing off!"

"Just shut the fuck up for once!" Margo hissed again. "Fucking bitch. Let's see how long you last down here!"

The silence terrified her, she hated to admit. The lack of responses. And every bit of profanity that left her tongue felt like another heap of dirt tossed onto her head as she laid six feet deep in the ground. Maybe the hellish music muted her jabs at her so-called "superior." Maybe she thought nothing of Margo's words.

Or maybe Alice was right, and consequence was nothing more than a fallacy down there. Maybe she could take her gun, kick the door open, and open fire on those animals until their skin melted off like candle wax. And if the poor girl they'd bisected somehow survived half a minute longer than she should have, she could've put her out of her misery before turning the gun on herself to erase that image from her head for good.

The gun was in her hand, but she couldn't wrap her finger around the trigger if she tried. Too many thoughts ran through her head, as if a crank were attached to her head, pivoting without end. Her eyes watered, and an acidic sensation ravaged her throat. A part of her wanted to rest on the floor and wait for the other doctor-cops to do her job for her, hoping none of the club's inhabitants took her away. That was what the gun was for.

Get up, she heard. Fucking get up if you don't want to disappear forever.

Whatever it was, it gave her the power to rise from the floor. She slid the mask back on, doubting it wouldn't move from its place again. The kid in that bathroom was gone, she convinced herself. Gone like the others. The boys from Skinner High, Dottie, Royce, Carl, her father, the founders of Psychwatch. The realization the list's expansion was indefinite nearly garnered a chuckle out of her.

She stumbled over to the door to the men's restroom. It took time, but her mind eventually permitted her to reach for the trigger. And with an exhale, she kicked the door open.

Before her stood a man in a pitch-black BufferSuit and a black rabbit mask. As with many other eyes she came across, Margo couldn't read them.