Royal Pain || Stranger Things

thirteen || mind games

     "If the tons of murdered people inside and the creatures roaming around won't do it first." Tatum ran a hand through her hair, sitting on the edge of Jonathan's bed. "I wasn't honest about seeing Eleven, either."

     "You didn't see her?"

     "No, I did. More than once. The first day I saw her, I took her to the school. The reason why she was outside when I was about to knock on the door was because she wanted to see Mike. She was tired of being pent up in that cabin, so I gave her a ride there. She didn't speak to him, but once she saw him, we left. And Hopper is the one that's been watching her. It's his cabin."

     Nancy's eyes were wide. "Oh, my God. Mike's going to be pissed. Well, what about the other time you saw her?"

     "After I got back from your house that night, she asked me to come over. When I left at lunch, I went to the cabin just to help her clean up, but we found a bunch of old files hidden in a hatch. It had a bunch of information on her, including what happened to her. She was taken as an infant from her mother because her mum was involved in the MK Ultra experiments. She found a picture of her mother with that guy that used to keep her in the lab. Brenner? She did the sensory deprivation thing and found her. She found her mum in the void and she cried for so long." Tatum shook her head lightly, still able to hear El's screams in the back of her head. "I haven't heard from her in a couple of days, though. I tried radioing her in the woods, but there was no response."

     "You should go get her."

     Tatum's brows furrowed, standing up from the bed. "What?"

     "You know what she can do. You should go get her. You can take Jonathan's car."

     "Nancy, I don't know how to drive."

     Nancy's eyes squeezed shut. "You're right. I can't leave Jonathan like this." She racked her brain for an option before a light bulb went off. "There's a BMX bike in the backyard. I think it still runs."

     "Let's do that!" Tatum said, the two nearly bursting out of the bedroom.

     "I am the police!" Hopper yelled into the telephone in the living room, not noticing the girls pass behind him. "Chief Jim Hopper! Yes, the number that I gave you."

     Nancy and Tatum shimmed out the back of the house without answering questions from the middle schoolers, finding the old green motorbike resting on its side.

      "I don't know where the keys are." Nancy said as she handed the brunette one of two walkie talkies she grabbed off of the kitchen table, pulse racing.

     "I've got it." Tatum, having propped her cricket bat inside of her backpack and clipped the walkie talkie to her jeans, crouched down next to the engine, doing magic in Nancy's eyes and bringing the bike to life as she sparked a few wires. "I'll be back."

     "Be safe, Tate, please."

     Tatum flicked on the dim headlight on the front of the bike, swinging a leg over. "I will. I always am. Don't tell them what I'm doing. Hopper will lose his shit."

     Nancy held up her hands, agreeing fully as Tatum raced out of the backyard and around the front, the hum of the engine disappearing down the road.

     Although barely able to see the road, Tatum followed a well-known path into the woods albeit at a slower speed than she would have preferred. The air was sticky with anticipation of the night, an unsettling chill running up her spine as she forced the throttle down as far as it would go, only to spot a figure lingering in the road just shy of the street's cut off.