"The Mind Flayer," Dustin announced, slamming the Dungeons & Dragons encyclopedia on the kitchen table. The entire group had reunited for this meeting. The younger members stood by each other to Dustin's right, my father and Joyce side by side. My arm was over Steve's neck as he helped me support my weight to stand, Charity to my left as he stood at Dustin's. Jonathan and Nancy looked at each other in confusion at the junior-higher's words, a common expression from all of us.
"What the hell is that?" Dad asked the boy.
"It's a monster from an unknown dimension," he explained. "It's so ancient that it doesn't even know its true home." His speaking pace was quicker, excited for the chance to teach us all something. "Okay, it enslaves races of other dimensions by taking over their brains with its highly-developed psionic powers."
"Sorry, not all of us speak nerd," Charity muttered.
"Brain control," I dumbed it down for her, glancing around the group to see if anyone else had been confused. "Mind reading."
"Oh, my God, none of this is real," my father snarked in exasperation. "This is a kids game."
"No, it- it's a manual," Dustin defended, pointing a finger at the man before directing it back at the book. "And it's not for kids- and unless you know something that we don't know, this is the best metaphor-"
"Analogy," Lucas corrected him, and Dustin's eyes narrowed at his friend.
"Analogy," he repeated in annoyance before his voice raised. "That's what you're worried about? Fine! An analogy for understanding whatever the hell this is."
"Okay," Nancy caved in, trying to steer away from another argument. "So, this mind flamer thing-"
"Flayer, Mind Flayer."
"Just let her speak," I sighed, and Nancy looked grateful at my interference.
"What does it want?" she asked him.
"To conquer us, basically," he summed it up. "It- it believes it's the master race."
"Oh, like the- like the Germans," Steve piped up. I winced at that statement.
"Uh, the Nazis?" Dustin fixed it for him, and Steve's face turned pink.
"Yeah, yeah, yeah," he nodded, his voice a bit quieter. "The Nazis."
"Yeah, so if the Nazis were from another dimension, tot- totally," the younger boy continued on. My father rubbed his face in exasperation, turning away from the group in disbelief that this was what we had come to. "Uh, it views other races, like us, as inferior to itself."
"It wants to spread," Mike added, "take over other dimensions."
"We are talking about the destruction of our world as we know it," Lucas finished, and I blanched.
"That's great," Steve said sarcastically. "That's great. That's really great." He went to walk away to take a breather, forgetting that he was helping me stand. I stumbled a bit from the movement. "Jesus..."
"Okay, so if this thing is like a brain... that's controlling everything," Nancy said, leaning closer to the book to read the creature's stats. "... then if we kill it..."
"We kill everything it controls," Mike answered her.
"We win," Dustin said simply.
"Theoretically," Lucas mentioned.
"Sorry to burst that bubble, but isn't your friend still connected to that thing?" Charity brought up. "The Mind Flayer. Doesn't that mean he will die too?" Joyce shuddered at the idea, and my father placed a hand on her shoulder. "Was this not a thought we were all thinking?" The room was silent, and even Dustin seemed to be at a loss.
"We just have to separate him first then," I spoke. I kept my tone firm, knowing that we had to have some kind of hope to keep us going. I didn't want Will to die, but I knew there had to be another way to save both him and Hawkins. "It's a parasite, is it not? We just have to get it out first... then we kill the Mind Flayer."
"Great," Dad huffed, picking the book up off the table so he could read it himself. "So how do you kill this thing? Shoot it with Fireballs or something?"
"No," Dustin chuckled before trying to regain himself. "No, no Fire- no Fireballs. Uh, you summon an undead army, uh, because..." He made eye contact with my father, who was staring at him as if he was insane. "... because zombies, you know, they don't- they don't have brains, and the Mind Flayer, it... it, uh... it likes brains." He knew there was no return from that point. "It's just a game. It's a game."
"What the hell are we doing here?" my father cursed, closing the book and throwing it back on the table.
"I thought we were waiting for your 'military' backup," Dustin shot back at him.
"We are!" Dad yelled.
"Even if they come, how are they gonna stop this?" Mike questioned the older man, growing agitated. "You can't just shoot this with guns!"
"You don't know that!" my father argued. "We don't know anything!"
"We know it's already killed everybody in that lab!" the boy told him.
"And we know the monsters are gonna molt again," Lucas added.
"We know that it's only a matter of time before those tunnels reach this town," Dustin said.
"They're right." All heads turned to Joyce; this was the first time we had heard her speak since coming back from the lab. She gave a sniffle, backing away from us. "We have to kill it. I want to kill it."
"Me too, Joyce, okay?" my father told her, following her back. His tone wasn't as abrasive with her. "Okay, but how do we do that? We don't exactly know what we're dealing with here."
"No, but he does," Mike said, and he took a few tentative steps toward Will. "If anyone knows how to destroy this thing, it's Will." We followed him to the boy on the couch. "He's connected to it. He'll know its weakness."
"I thought we couldn't trust him anymore," Max said in confusion. "That he's a spy for the Mind Flayer now."
"Yeah," Mike agreed. "But... he can't spy if he doesn't know where he is."
♢♦︎————————♦︎♢
The house was moving with no intent of slowing down. My father was tossing everything out of the Byers' shed, preparing the hiding spot for when Will would wake up. Nancy and Steve were inside stapling soundproof tarps to the walls, and I only hoped it wasn't as awkward as I was imagining in my head. Dustin and Lucas had gone outside, and I could only assume the rumbling of trash cans was them. Joyce and Jonathan were monitoring the unconscious boy in the living room while Charity and I ruffled through the Dungeons and Dragons books at the table. Plural now, as Dustin pulled every one from Will's bedroom so we could "look for battle tactics."
"This feels like a fever dream," Charity said to me as she flipped a page. "And I don't mean a good one."
"Well, I wish I could say you get used to it," I told her absentmindedly, my eyes raking over monster stats. "It never gets easier."
"I get why El was your mage now," Max spoke to Mike, and I glanced up to see the two crouched by the kitchen sink. The boy was rummaging through the cabinet underneath it while she ripped pieces of duct tape off a roll. He looked over his shoulder at her in what looked to be annoyance.
"What?"
"Lucas," she explained. "He told me all about her."
"Well, he shouldn't have," Mike grumbled, and he returned to the cabinet. Max tensed a little at his hostility. "And just because you know the truth... it doesn't mean you're in our party. You do know that, right?"
"Yeah, I- I know," she stammered, glancing down at her hands and the tape roll held in them. I felt pity for the girl. It was one thing for her to have Billy at home, but having no one to turn to outside of it must have been terrible. "I mean, why would you want a stupid boomer in your party anyway?" Mike began to turn to look at her again, but he decided against it. Charity scoffed to herself, a sound audible only for me to barely hear as she watched their conversation.
"Boys," she muttered.
"I'm just saying, El?" Max continued, softer this time as she knew this was a sore subject. "She sounds like she was really awesome."
"Yeah, she was," Mike agreed. He slammed the cabinet shut. "Until that thing took her." I felt a chill go up my spine. For the past year, I had never mentioned Eleven's whereabouts to anyone. It was a secret only me and my father shared. I forgot that to everyone else... she was dead. As Mike turned to facc Max, his eyes focused on me as if he knew I was keeping the truth from him. "Just like it took Bob."
The boy stormed out the room, and Max looked at Charity and I hopelessly. I stared back blankly, still caught off guard at my realization. "No one ever explained to me who this Eleven is," Charity told the younger girl, her head turning to me for an answer. I quickly changed my facial expression, but the narrowing of her eyes told me that she could already sense there was more to the situation.
"I met her the first time a year ago in the woods," I told the two of them. God, that seemed like a lifetime ago. That was when Anya was still here, when I visited my father's work daily... when Steve and I weren't even friends. The way he acted that day when he invited me to his party, perhaps he had always wanted to become something closer. Max crossed her legs as she sat on the floor, curious about my side of the story. "It was brief, but I didn't see her again until that night with god-awful rain after Will went missing. Mike kept her hidden in his basement. The moment I met her... even then I could tell we were connected in a way somehow."
"Lucas said you got your powers from her," Max told me. "Is that true?" This was a question Charity seemed particularly curious about, leaning closer across the table.
"Well," I sighed, rubbing both of my cheeks with my hands. "The answer to that is something I've only started to scratch the surface on."
"What does that mean?" the blonde interrogated me. "You either did or you didn't."
"It's a really long story," I said. My left hand reached down for the pendant of my necklace, but my fingers touched nothing but air and my skin. I forgot that Steve still had it. "I never knew who my parents were- I'm adopted," I cut myself off to give clarification to Max, who nodded intently. "Recently, I saw this woman in a dream- well, not necessarily a dream, but we'll call it that. I just... I just knew she was my mom. Then, when I was taken to the lab, it was basically confirmed for me."
"That doesn't make sense; Hawkins Lab shouldn't have birth records," Max shook her head.
"Not birth records," I corrected her. "Files on every test subject that ever walked those halls. Eleven came from there; they did something to give her the powers she has- I mean had. I have a file there."
"So you're a lab rat," Charity said simply.
"No, I- just let me finish!" I exclaimed in exasperation. My thigh injury gave a throb at that. "Project MKUltra, the papers I showed you yesterday? My mother was a test subject. The man I met wouldn't tell me how I ended up with a file on my own, but something happened for my mother to pull us out out. Whatever reason that is... that's how I got my powers. At first I thought they were just dormant until I met her, but I was just cut off from energy like that. It's like a rechargeable battery; I get this... this surge."
"How did you keep these powers if Eleven is gone?" Charity questioned. My heart stopped at that, and Max too looked as if she had been thinking the question. "If being away from the lab made you lose them as a child, which I'm only assuming, wouldn't her powers have gone away by now."
"I... I don't know how I still have them," I stammered, kicking myself mentally for not starting the lie stronger. "The surges last different amounts of time. It's not like the longer I'm with someone, the longer I keep them. I learned that with Anya and when I felt remnants of her presence on that hill- it's how I sensed everyone in the lab. El's powers have just stuck to me longer." Max took the answer with a nod, standing up on her feet and leaving the room to find wherever Mike had gone off to. Charity watched her go, and the moment we were alone, her eyes darted back to me.
"I've been around you long enough to know when you're lying," she muttered quietly. "You might have kept secrets, but you found hidden truths to wrap around to keep them from coming out."
"After everything we've been through, do you still not trust me?" I asked her in irritation. "You spoke of your history, I shared mine. What else do you want to know?"
"The full truth, Rachel Hopper," the blonde shot back before gritting her teeth. "Diana is dead. Whatever you're hiding about this girl... if it could've helped keep her alive, at least tell me. I didn't even get to say goodbye."
"Well, it wouldn't have!" I snapped, and I pounded my fist on the table harshly. The lights above us flickered as my anger manifested my powers, and Charity's eyes widened for a second. "Eleven's not here! I get that you're grieving, and I get that you want someone to blame, but I thought maybe you wouldn't be such a bitch to me for once!" The words came flying out of my mouth faster than I could think to hold them back, and my hand slammed against my lips in surprise. The girl bit her lip to keep it from shaking as she nodded curtly, giving a quick sigh. Her nose scrunched as she held back a sniffle, and her eyes started to water immediately.
"Right to the point, Rachel," she told me, a slight waver in her voice. She stood to her feet, slamming the book by her hands shut. "I asked for honesty, not a therapist."
"Charity-"
"Don't," she glared at me through blurry eyes, and I was left alone in the kitchen as she stormed off.