Soft music trickled through Steve and Billy's Bloomington apartment in the early morning hours as a movie title screen played on loop, the occupants of the living room sprawled out in sleeping bags and dead to the world.
Billy poked his head around the corner of his room, Steve knocked out on his bedroom floor and reeking of the dark liquor they only let the high schoolers take sips of. With his cigarette pack tight in his hand, he carefully stepped out into the main section of the apartment and crossed to the door. He took a glance toward the kids who'd taken over his living room as he pulled the front door open, slipping out when none of them stirred.
The night air bristled through his sweats, forcing him to draw his jacket tighter as he descended the stairs. Although his eyes had been set on his own car parked not too far off, he came to a stop as they fell on Jonathan's car only a few spaces over.
"Will?" he asked with furrowed brows.
The teen's head lifted from his own fingers, perched on the trunk of his brother's car. "Oh, hey," Will said softly.
"When did you come out here?" Billy left his own car behind, walking over to the green beater.
Will shrugged, still growing into his frame. "A little while ago, I guess. Everyone else passed out and I couldn't sleep."
Billy hopped up onto the hood next to him as he shuffled over. "Do you mind?" he asked, lifting the cigarette pack up.
"No, go for it," he replied nonchalantly, letting go of an airy sigh that clouded out as his eyes trailed upward to the dark sky.
He glanced over to Will as he sparked a cigarette before stuffing the pack into his coat pocket. "Everything okay?"
Will chewed on the inside of his cheek as he scanned the stars, absently tapping his feet together as they rested on the bumper. "I felt something last night."
Billy's skin chilled, his cigarette lingering at his lips.
"It felt like before," he quietly said. He grew quiet, taking in the twinkling lights above. "It didn't last long, but still...something changed." He sighed. "I haven't told the others."
Although goosebumps littered his skin, he asked, "Why not?"
"Because they wouldn't understand." Will lowered his head, looking to Billy. "But I thought you might."
Billy stayed quiet for a moment, cigarette still burning as he rested the hand holding it on his knee. "It made the hair on the back of your neck stand up, right?"
Will's lips parted gently, ears pulled back as he searched the recognition in Billy's eyes. "Yeah," he agreed quietly.
"I used to get a feeling like that, like it was her hand on the back of my neck," Billy told him with a sigh. "But it was different this time."
"It felt like last summer, the night he took you as his host."
A chill rippled down Billy's spine, but he took a deep drag of his cigarette to cover it. He let out the smoke as memories of being puppeteered lingered, shaking his head. "We killed him."
Will hesitated. "I don't think it was him."
Billy's brows furrowed, looking back to the brunet. "Then what?"
"It was fleeting this time," he replied. "Last summer, it was constant. This only lasted moments."
"So, what do you think it was?" Billy took another puff, the nerves wracking through his body begging for it.
Will ran a hand along the back of his neck. "You know how Tate pulled Nina out? The gate opened, but only for a little while?"
"You think...someone opened a rift?" he asked hesitantly.
"Only for a few moments, but yes," Will replied.
Billy ran a hand along his arm, unsure if the biting chill was still just from the soft night wind. "Will, she couldn't be over there. We saw...we saw them take her away. And Nina said their powers diminish over there-"
"What if she didn't open it to get out?"
Billy's ears drew back, another ripple of goosebumps running down his arms. "You mean, she opened it from this side?"
"When...when I went missing, they used a fake body to get people to stop looking," Will said. "We don't know what happened in the ambulance once they took her, not really."
"Will."
"The voices, the songs."
"Will."
"Billy, I think she's still alive."
||
Dr. Zharkov lifted his head as Tatum stepped into the decrepit viewing cell, an all too cheery smile on his face as the door sealed behind her. "Good morning, Tatum," he greeted, leaned against the desk at the back of the room with his hands folded on his knee.
Tatum ignored him, craning her neck around the room filled with a handful of armed guards.
The main sector of the cell was still empty, fresh blood slowly drying on the floor where Yelin met his end. The trap door rattled as an extensive huff emitted from behind it.
"Hm, curious," Zharkov mused as he rose from the desk. "It was asleep until you got here."
Tate glanced from the guffaw of the hidden demo-dog to the doctor. "Surprising, when you're the one who feeds it."
Zharkov grinned. "Maybe it'll get another meal."
Oh, I'm certain it will. "Where's your fearless leader, then?" she asked, folding her arms over herself as she wandered in further away from the door. She regarded the other guards, several of which had their turns 'keeping her in line.' "I kind of miss the bastard. He never calls."
Zharkov rolled his eyes as her voice dropped with distain. "He just landed."
Tatum hummed in acknowledgement, letting her eyes fall on the small trap door as it rattled. It doesn't want to be here. The thought pushed through her like a wave, drawing her brows in. Home. "That's new," she murmured to herself.
A key swipe from the outside jostled the door open, Ozerov and a small fleet of men entering with too much excitement to be hesitant.
"Ah, there's our golden girl," Ozerov said with a laugh, shedding a hefty fur coat before he tossed it behind him. "I hear you have something to show me."
"Another failed end in a long line of them, but sure," Tate replied, arms still tucked tight around her.
Zharkov grumbled to himself before raising the walkie talkie from his side. "Send fifteen."
Orlo's first, she thought. Her eyes panned the parade of guns ready to stop her at any turn, Zharkov and Ozerov the only ones not set off by her presence. "Somebody better have tissues for me. This is gonna be a shit show."
Several of the guards glanced between one another, their English not polished enough to understand her. She swore at them in Russian so often a few forgot she was American at all.
Ozerov, however, produced a handkerchief from the pocket of his uniform and held it out to her with a smile too keen for the upcoming events of the evening.
Unease filled her stomach as Tate unfurled her arms and took the outstretched cloth. "It'll be red when you get it back."
Ozerov shrugged. "Keep it."
Tatum bundled the handkerchief in her palm and stepped back closer to the cage as the hefty outer door opened up. She wondered if Hopper had the chance to let the others know what was going on, or if the guard presence on their floor was too stacked to get a word out. Would it work if they knew what was coming?
Would any of this plan work at all?
Orlo, even worse for wear than she had remembered, emerged with a guard on either side of him, thin arms gripped tight over his scrubs. Panicked eyes fell on Tatum. "What is this?"
Hopper kept quiet, she thought. "It's okay," she said gently as the inner cell door buzzed open. "Just protect yourself, like we practiced."
Orlo's eyes widened as he passed her, pushed into the cell and sealed inside. "Tatum, I don't-"
"Just like we practiced, okay?" she repeated with an assuring nod just outside the cell, eyes begging him to understand.
"Yelin didn't come back yesterday," Orlo said breathily, wrapping his hands around the bars as he looked to Tate. "Is this...is-"
Tatum locked her eyes to his, only the bars between them. This is it. "Trust me," she whispered.
"Back up!" Zharkov barked, snapping a finger to signal the guard on the control panel. "Begin."
"Trust me," she repeated as she took a few steps back.
Orlo's chest heaved, his thin presence suddenly large underneath the clothes that hung on him. He swallowed hard, slowly turning to face the trap door as it began to raise.
"Touch me and you're dead," Tate warned as she glanced back to the guard, tucking the handkerchief into her pocket to leave her hands free as her attention moved back to the cell.
The demo-dog forced its way under the door before it could raise fully, growling low and deep as it stalked out. Its head turned from side to side slowly, pawed feet scratching against the concrete floor. Its face suddenly bloomed, unleashing a deafening roar.
Orlo's panic turned solid as he raised his hands, Tate's months of guidance filtering through his mind at once. Anger. This place, he thought. He took a deep breath in, pushing forth the energy coursing through his veins as the monster lunged.
Tate extended a hand less than a second after the being stopped in its tracks, holding back the scream of joy that filled her chest as she exerted no energy at all. She feigned it on the surface with ease, gasping.
Orlo dropped his hands defeatedly as Tatum took the weight of the creature from him. "I'm sorry," he said aloud despite the fire licking up his forearms.
"I told you," Tate gruffed, moving her hands hard and sharp to the side to send the demo-dog back through the tiny door. A bead of blood dripped from her nose as she turned her head to Ozerov, making sure they all got a good look at her instead of Orlo before she retrieved the handkerchief from her pocket and swiped it along her upper lip. "It doesn't work because your experiments can't work."
Ozerov hummed in thought, evaluating Orlo as he reclined against the bars, still whimpering gently in fear. "I want to see another one."
Good, she thought. She pulled open the cell door as soon as it unlatched, offering out a hand to Orlo. With her face half hidden from the audience in the room, she winked as she helped him out of the bloody confines.
"Ah, ah," Zharkov suddenly said as the guards that brought him in began to move for him. "Fifteen, use your powers." He gestured to the desk at the back of the room. "Take a pen."
Orlo glanced to Tate briefly before turning his focus beyond the string of armed guards. He raised a hand, two fingers focused in on an inkwell pen. The pen lifted for just a moment but clattered back down as he let out an exhausted sigh, nearly doubling over. "I'm sorry."
Zharkov grumbled, waving an absent hand.
The guards secured Orlo's arms, quick to drag him out of the room as Zharkov made the call for Aella to be brought down.
Ozerov stood still in front of the open cage, his eyes trained on the lever door at the back as a thoughtful hand perched on his chin. "Hawkins was crawling with these, no?"
"The gate in Hawkins was left open," Tate said, handkerchief draped in one hand as she folded her arms, careful not to bump her sore ribs. "And what lives inside began to crawl out."
His brows quirked as he tipped her head to her. "There are hundreds of these inside?"
"Try hundreds of thousands," she countered with a soft scoff.
Ozerov hummed, taking a few steps back as the outer door opened and Aella was pushed through. "Welcome, dear," he greeted the once college student, words so sweet they tasted sick.
Aella's upper lip rose gently in disgust as she looked around, it slipped as she spotted Tate. "What's going on?" she asked, brought before the open cell door.
"It's okay," Tate assured as the brunette was shoved inside the cell, wrapping a hand around one of the bars as she was locked in. "Protect yourself, like we practiced."
Aella's eyes searched hers for a moment before nodding, much quicker to the punch than the others as she turned within the cell towards the scratching behind the wall. She took in a deep breath and shook her hands out as the small door began to raise.
The demo-dog bounded out quick, enraged by its lack of human consumption as its harsh claws nearly shredded the concrete beneath it.
Tatum gasped as he hands jutted out, mirroring Aella's stance but the only one able to hold off the beast. She took it all, blood beginning to fall from one side of her nose as she forced the creature back several feet, it still writhing and snapping as Aella pulled her arms in and backed up hard against to bars. "It's okay," she told her, careful hands moving the demo-dog back behind the door.
Aella struggled to catch her breath, a hand resting on her stomach as she watched the trap door slink down and seal the beast away. She swore to herself in Russian as her own cell door opened, grappling for Tate's hand as soon as it was offered.
"You're all right," Tate assured as she brought the brunette out of the cell.
"Zharkov, I thought you said you had something for me," Ozerov sighed, watching Aella as she was escorted out of the guard filled room. "The beast is lovely, but...not what Stepanov asked for."
Tatum shook her head as the doctor fumbled to explain himself, blotting her upper lip with the handkerchief. "I've told you from the beginning, Oz. You can't force the same results when you haven't set up the same experiment. This power isn't injectable," she lied clean through her teeth. "Brenner was a madman and even he created us on accident. We were an off shoot. A byproduct. You can't disrespect the science and expect to be rewarded."
Zharkov seethed, pushing through the crowd of guards to point a sharp finger in her face. "You do nothing but disrespect science by just existing. You do magic in my lab and refuse to share it! I know you're not telling me everything!"
"The only difference between science and magic is knowledge, which you lack severely," Tate bit back, unphased by her personal space being invaded. It was a luxury the Russians had taken from her. "You can't stand that you don't understand it. That you'll never understand it."
White hot pain struck Tatum's face as the doctor's fist connected with her mouth. She staggered back as the skin of her bottom lip split, the all too familiar taste of iron tingeing her tongue.
Tatum's eyes stayed sealed to Zharkov's as a hand raised to her lip, assessing the damage as rage boiled deep inside of her. "You wanna see magic, doc?"
A dozen clicks sounded around her, every rifle in the room aimed on her.
Ozerov laughed nervously, wedging an arm between the two. "How about we finish the trials, no?"
"Great idea, boss," Tate said flaty, eyes still locked to Zharkov's. She wiped her lip gently with the handkerchief as she took a step back, gaze unwavering. She knew exactly what she wanted to do to him.
The tight air in the room shifted as the outer door opened once again with 018, better known as Martyn, escorted through by stiff upper arm grips.
Ever quiet in his solid frame, Martyn's eyes panned the room, having to look at Ozerov twice before falling on Tatum. No more than thirty and his reason for his sentence in Kamchatka unknown, he held her gaze with calm blinking. Setting aside his native Russian, he instead reverted to French as he spoke. "Is this what we planned for?"
"Hey!" Zharkov barked as the language fell on deaf ears. "No, none of that!"
"Fight the monster, escape the prison," Tate replied in French, her smirk aching the split in her lip. The only time she had ever gotten to have a real conversation with Martyn it had been about her French classes in England and his travels through France in his twenties. Seemingly unimportant, but everything in the right moment.
Zharkov yanked Tatum's arm, her damaged ribs screaming in pain as his force collided with her side. "Why are you always such a petulant child, huh? Why can't you just listen?"
She only had Orlo and Hopper bristling with fresh powers. Two's not enough. She kept her jaw locked tight as he stared up at him, sure her teeth would be ground to the bone by the time she made it to the surface. "I just told him exactly what I've told the others," she bit. "Protect yourself, like we practiced." Her eyes flickered over to Martyn, no nod needed for the lines to connect. "Go on then, watch another failure."
Zharkov released her arm with exaggeration, hoping to find Ozerov with the same hateful demeanor but instead witnessing an entirely blank expression on his superior's face. He waved an absent hand for Martyn to be moved, pinching the bridge of his nose as he wandered back to the desk.
Martyn held up a flat hand before the guards could get ahold of him, instead strolling into the open cell without a moment of hesitation. "For science," he offered in Russian as the door sealed him inside.
"See, I like him," Ozerov said, waggling a finger in the towering brunet's direction before folding his arms across his chest.
Zharkov himself jammed a finger down on the trap door release, leaned against the desk as the rest of the room watched with bated breath.
The demo-dog emerged, vibrating with the rage of being denied a meal. Drool dripped from its sprouted mouth, jagged teeth gleaming off of the fluorescent lighting.
Tate clenched the bloody handkerchief with one hand, the other waiting with anticipation as the creature reared back.
Energy surged as the demo-dog lunged, Martyn's outstretched hands catching the beast mid-air the moment Tate's own feigned the save.
"I told you they can't do it!" Tate barked as she took control of the monster, her insides fizzling with a pure kind of hope she had forgotten she was capable of. She pushed the demo back through the door despite its attempt to claw at the edges of the small entrance, slamming the door back down as its paws disappeared with it.
He curated an entire fleet of superpowered children, but it only took three of you to stop a massive creature from another world.
"You're catching them before they have the chance!" Zharkov roared as he rose from his reclined position against the desk, his pink skin beginning to turn red as he stormed across the room.
Tate held up her hand, the lights crackling overhead as his body froze under her hold. "I think that's enough," she said darkly.
A cache of cocked rifles rose, aimed solely at a nineteen-year-old.
"How dare y-" Zharkov's voice cut out as he tried to fight the invisible restraint, gasping for air as pressure hugged his throat.
"All right, Tatum," Ozerov cautiously said, attempting to calm her by waving a hand down to release his prize doctor. "Let him go."
Tate's eyes flickered to the General as her hold remained firm on a struggling Zharkov. "Do you know what they've done to me here? I get daily beatings for his failures." Her jaw tightened as she thought of the state she found Steve in at the Hawkins base, of how the bruises still rimmed his face even when she woke up in the Void weeks after her death. "Then again you are the one who likes to beat children."
Ozerov laughed nervously, taking a step back as Zharkov's gasping filled the room. "I'm sorry they haven't been taking care of you, but-"
"You're sorry?" she snapped, ignoring the doctor turning purple under her hold. "You're sorry you stole my dead body and brought me back to life so you could create your own army of super soldiers?" She dropped Zharkov, tossing him to the side as she thundered across the room. Although she didn't lay a hand on Ozerov, he was pinned against the far wall with wide eyes. "You're fucking sorry? Huh?"
Ozerov's beady eyes panned the room behind her, cowering despite having a foot on her. "You do realize there are twenty guns on your back, right?"
"Martyn," she chimed sweetly.
A mass clattering sounded behind her, accompanied by the unlatching of the cell door.
Ozerov's eyes widened as military rifles flew clear out of his men's hands and scattered the edges of the room as Martyn stepped out.
"I'm sorry," Tate said with a tip of her head, "what were you saying?"
"It works," Zharkov croaked from the ground, clutching at his throat to relieve the pain.
Tatum outstretched a hand behind her, flinging the radios from all of the guards' belts before catching one for herself. Nearly pressed against a shaking Ozerov with unwavering eyes, she lifted the walkie to her split lip.
"Do it now."