"You are doing very well." The tattoo gun buzzed in Doctor Brenner's hand as he drew it over the young girls wrist. In truth, he had numbed her arm, neither wanting her to jump about or compel him to stop with her words; and she seemed quite content, sitting in her chair, sucking on a lollipop he had given her as a bribe.
A stark contrast to what Henry had been forced through.
Curiously, she peered at what he was doing. "Four? What does that mean?"
"That's you." Brenner said with a playful tap of her nose. "You're number four."
The little girl pulled a face as she tried to process what this meant. "In that case..." She spoke slowly after a long while, counting out on the fingers of her free hand. "... If I'm Four, does that mean there's others?"
There had been some debate as to whether or not to include her in the main experiment. On one hand, a valid argument could be made about how different her powers were and that perhaps they needed to be studied separately. On the other— in that sense, she then had no peers, and they did want to see how she would do in a group setting. So ultimately, it was concluded that she would join— just by then, others existed that already had claim to the previous numbers.
"Three others." Brenner nodded.
"Will I get to meet them?"
"... Some of them. Eventually." He still wasn't entirely sure where he stood on Henry interacting with her, or any of the others.
Excitedly, the little girl kicked her feet, practically fizzing with glee. "Will they be nice?"
"I'm sure they will." I'm sure you'll make them be so. "Now, stop wriggling, you were behaving so well before."
"Can I have another lollipop?"
A sense of warm fondness flushed through Brenner as he met the little girl's gaze, and immediately he reached for his pocket where kept the candy.
And then he paused.
"...Don't think I don't know what you're doing."
The little girl huffed and with the back of her hand, wiped away a single, bloody tear. "Oh, all right." Then she grinned cheekily. "I'll stop wriggling if you give me another lollipop."
Brenner laughed at her sheer audacity, then reached into his pocket and fished out another one. "Fine. But just this once and only because I really need you not to move."
Content with their bargain, the little girl popped her prize into her mouth as Doctor Brenner returned to his task. And with one final stroke of the tattoo gun, she became Number Four.
A/N: So... Stranger Things: The First Shadow is out on stage! Has anyone here seen it? I haven't. What's it like? Because I'm hearing mixed reviews— some say it's good, some say not so much. XD
I still want to see it though!
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Splinters In Time
FanfictionA young man fights to save his family. A young woman seeks to know where she's from. A young girl searches for her place in the world. And all the while, something is brewing inside of Hawkins... *** (A prequel to my other fanfic, Number Four, cove...
