GLORY DAYS ｡STEVE HARRINGTON

CHAPTER THIRTY ; THE INTERROGATION OF WILL BYERS

"To the tunnels, monsters, the Upside Down, everything," Mike nodded, not bothering to be rude to her like he usually would. 

"Whoa, slow down, slow down," Steve held his hand up, clearly not fully sure what was going on. 

"Okay, so, the shadow monster's inside everything. And if the vines feel something like pain, the so does Will," Mike explained easily, and Stella's eyes trailed up to the ceiling to see more of the blue line drawings stuck to the plaster. Those must be the vines. 

"And so does Dart," Lucas piped up. Stella was aware that Dustin's slug was called D'artagnan, Dart for short; she couldn't bring herself to give the murderous beast a name. 

"Yeah, like Mr Clarke taught us," Mike continued, becoming fully immersed in his theory. "The hive mind."

"Hive mind?" Steve crossed his arms, his eyes a little wide at all the unfamiliar words being thrown his way. 

"A collective consciousness," Dustin clarified. "It's a super-organism."

"And this is the thing that controls everything," Mike took the drawing of the Shadow Monster again, pointing to the large, menacing figure. "It's the brain."

"Like the mind flayer," Dustin muttered, and Stella tilted her head in uncertainty.  Lucas clicked his fingers at the curly haired boy, immediately understanding what he was talking about, as did Mike. But Max, Steve and Stella had no idea. 

"The what?" They all chimed in sync, causing the other three boys to groan. 

After five minutes of rummaging through Will's belongings, Dustin grabbed a book Stella could only assume was Science-Fiction related. The entire group (excluding Will and Joyce) then gathered around the kitchen table, waiting for Dustin to explain.

He threw the book on the wooden surface once he found the right page, pointing to a drawing of some sort of alien in a robe. "The mind flayer."

"What the hell is that?" Chief Hopper asked, voicing exactly what Stella was thinking. He clearly wasn't in the mood for any bullshit, the last twenty-four hours not serving him much relaxation. He was on edge, always expecting something to pop out at him -- not that Stella blamed him. She was still recovering from everything she had gone through only hours earlier. It was now creeping past midnight and she felt like she could fall over on her tired legs, but she was far too terrified to shut her eyes. 

"It's a monster from an unknown dimension," Dustin replied, speaking as if everything was common knowledge. "It's so ancient that it doesn't even know its true home. Okay, it enslaves races of other dimensions by taking over their brains using its highly developed psionic powers."

"Oh my god, none of this is real. This is a kids game," Hopper groaned, not in the mood for whatever Dustin was talking about. 

"No, it's a manual," the boy corrected, not having any regard for Hopper's hesitance. "And it's not for kids. And unless you know something that we don't, this is the best metaphor-"

"Analogy," Lucas muttered.

"Analogy? That's what you're worried about?" Dustin raised his voice, his eyes nearly popping out of his skull. "Fine. An analogy for understanding whatever the hell this is."

"Okay, so the mind-flamer thing," Nancy began, though she was cut off by Dustin. 

"Flayer. Mind-flayer."

Nancy sighed. "What does it want?"

"To...conquer us, basically," Dustin responded. "It believes it's the master race."