SATELLITE [STEVE HARRINGTON]

master of puppets

"I DID NOT MISS DOING THIS," GINNY GRUMBLED, PULLING THE SIDING OFF OF THE NEAREST TRAILER. They'd been doing this for almost a half hour, fortifying the trailer where the gate was. Their plan was to hide in there, once the bats were distracted, so it needed to be sturdy, inpenetrable.

Eddie shot her a sideways look, frowning, as he pulled at the other side. "You've... done this before?"

Ginny nodded. "Old junkyard, abandoned school bus, yucky demodog things that wanted to eat us alive." She grunted, ripping the siding off all the way and starting to drag it across the park to the Upside Down trailer.

Eddie blinked. "Uh..." He jogged to catch up to her, grabbing the other end of the siding. "You terrify me."

"How many times are you going to say that?" Ginny asked, an eyebrow raised as they trotted across the yard.

He looked at her wide-eyed. "As many times as you fucking terrify me."

She chuckled, shaking her head. She helped him bring the siding to the porch, while Dustin worked on using the drill to hold boards, pieces of scrap metal, and the like to cover the windows.

"There's some more scraps we can use over there," Eddie said, pointing towards the trailer opposite his. "Seems like they'll be pretty easy to—"

Ginny cut him off by crying out loudly, stumbling over her feet and dropping the piece of siding. It creaked and thudded when it hit the ground, but she couldn't care— her brain was splitting in two again.

Someone had lit a fire in her skull, and she knew that it was Vecna.

He had to be digging through her mind, searching her memories, probably trying to figure out what they were doing, what their plan was—

Ginny gritted her teeth, as the pain spread down her jaw. She wanted to curl up in the dirt and cry, but she knew she couldn't. She had to fight.

She had to fight, or their plan would be ruined. She had to fight, or her friends might all die.

"Shit!" Eddie fell to his knees next to her, and the sight of his worried expression was enough to pull her from the blinding pain in her skull "Are you okay? Hey—"

Images of him flashed through her mind. Laughing as a stupid fifteen year old when he tried to teach her Breaking The Law by Judas Priest on his electric guitar. Smoking on the hood of his van. Kissing him in the teachers lounge bathroom when they were supposed to be at a pep rally.

It should've been enough to pull her out of the pain completely, but Vecna wasn't giving up. The pain increased by tenfold, her brain feeling like it was ready to explode as Vecna dug through her memories further.

Ginny squeezed her eyes shut, trying to focus on something else, anything else but their plan to kill him. She knew it was working, deflecting her mind to anything other than what Vecna wanted, because the pain lasted a lot longer than when she had been with Max, until eventually— it stopped.

"Ginny? Hey, hey— look at me!" Eddie cried, shaking her shoulders.

Ginny opened her eyes, breathing heavy, to see him and Dustin standing over her, looking terrified. "I'm okay," she told them, her hands shaking and holding onto the sleeve of Dustin's shirt. She nodded. "I'm okay."

They both sighed in relief, helping her to her feet. "What the hell was that?" Dustin asked, panic in his voice.

Ginny wiped under her nose, her fingers unsurprisingly coming away with blood on them. The coldness in her body was overwhelming now, too, making her shiver from head to toe.