There's No Place Like Hawkins//Stranger Things. SH

THIRTY SIX

"William Byers."

"Do you know... Do you know who I am?"

"A doctor."

"Have we met before?" Owens asked him.

"I don't remember." Will told him.

Cat could feel her heart start to break. There was something wrong with one of her favourite kids and there wasn't anything she could do to help.

"Hmm." Owens hummed. "You don't remember me? How about, uh..." He pointed to Mike. "How about this guy here?" Mike raised his hand and waved slightly at his best friend, scared that he wasn't going to remember him. "Know who that is?" Will stayed silent and Cat's heart broke even more. "It's all right. Take your time." Owens reassured him.

"That's my friend." Will answered eventually. "Mike." Cat smiled slightly, glad that he remembered his best friend.

"What about me, kid?" Hopper asked the small boy. "You remember me?" Will turned to him and shook his head, no. "They tell me you helped save me last night. You remember that?" Will shook his head again.

"What about this young lady, here?" Owens asked, pointing at Catherine. "Do you remember her?"

Will answered straight away, which was unusual considering he took a small while to remember Mike. "That's Catherine. The one he wants out of his way." At that, Hopper pulled the teen closer to him as if doing that would somehow stop the monster from going after her.

"Do you remember anything about last night?" Owens asked him. "About what happened?"

"I remember they hurt me." Will told the doctor.

"You mean the doctors?"

"No. The soldiers."

"The soldiers hurt you?"

"They shouldn't have done that." Will said. "It upset him."

Owens pulled out a polaroid of the drawing Will had done of the shadow monster. "You say, 'Upset him.' Is that him?" Cat gulped and buried her head into Hopper's side, wishing she was as far away as possible from that monster- even if it was just a drawing of it. Will nodded his head, silently answering the doctor's question. "Okay." Owens took the photo from Will. "Okay, I wanna try something. It's gonna seem a little odd at first," Cat rolled her eyes. At this point she just wanted something normal. Like lying on her couch with Steve and watching 'Grease' for the billionth time. Where was the normal anymore? "But I think it's really gonna help us understand what's going on." The doctor turned to Will. "Is that okay?"

Will nodded. "Okay." They watched as another doctor wheeled in a box and at a closer look, Cat saw that part of one of the tunnel's vines were inside it.

"Now," Owens spoke, "Will, I want you to just let us know if you feel anything. Okay?" The other doctor pulled out a blow torch and turned it on. He held it above the vine, which started writhing around in its box. "Do you feel anything?" Owens asked the young Byers boy.

"Little sting."  Will stuttered out.

"It stings?" Owen asked. "Where?" The creature let out a screech and Cat flinched at the noise. The doctor moved the flame closer to the creature and everyone watched anxiously as Will clutched at his chest.

"My chest." Will told Owens.

The closer the doctor moved the flame to the creature, the more pain Will felt, and the more Catherine's head started pounding. "How about now?" Owens asked as the torch moved closer to the vine.

"It... it burns." Will answered. Catherine stayed silent, trying to not draw any attention to herself as she clutched her pounding head, the pain increasing by the second. The creature in the box started screeching even more and Will let out a scream, repeating that it was burning.

"Where?" Owens asked him.

"Everywhere." Will groaned. The beep from the monitor that was attached to him increased. Cat closed her eyes, holding back a scream from the intense pain in her head.

"That's enough." Joyce yelled, just as Catherine collapsed, a scream leaving her lips. Hopper managed to catch her before she went completely limp on the floor. Joyce yelled at the doctor again, more scared than she was before after seeing Catherine collapse. "That's enough!" she screamed.

"Stop! You heard her!" Hopper yelled, picking up the teen he saw as a daughter and lifting her from the hospital floor. "That's enough!"

The doctor finally pulled the blow torch away from the creature, turning it off. The monitor continued to beep rapidly as Will slowly calmed down. "Sweetie... Sweetie." Joyce comforted. "It's okay." Hopper walked around Will's hospital bed and gently placed Catherine in one of the chairs, running a hand through her hair.

***

"Our best guess right now is it's some kind of virus which is causing this neurological disorder." Owens told both Hopper and Joyce in the hallway, outside Will's room. "Now, when... when a typical virus attaches itself  to its host... it duplicates, right? It spreads, essentially hijacking the host." He explained. "A virus is alive. It has an intelligence. That's not... That's not unusual. What is so unusual here," he gestured down the hallway, "this virus... the infected hosts seem to be communicating. It has some sort of a hive intelligence, and it's connecting all the hosts. The good news is a virus can be cured. We... we're gonna continue to run tests. We're gonna see what we find."

"What happens when he can't remember anything? When there's nothing else there?" Joyce asked, stuttering. "And, can you find out what's wrong with Catherine? What happens when my boy is gone?"

***

Edited: 27/4/2020

Edit 2: 10/9/2021