A notification slid down:
The icon appeared on her home screen between her calculator and her weather widget—a grinning Cheshire cat with jagged pixels for teeth.
Her wallpaper changed to the Hatter’s grinning face. Not a screenshot. Live. His eyes followed her thumb.
The game didn’t launch. Instead, her gallery filled with blurred photos of places she’d never been: a bloody hedge maze, a teapot with rusted legs, a doll with button eyes that turned to look at her.
The phone buzzed warmly in her hand. A voice—low, familiar, and wrong—whispered from the speaker: “You’ve been gone so long, Alice.”
She threw the phone across her bedroom.
Her bedroom door clicked locked.