𝐒𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐧⊰᯽⊱┈──("𝐴𝑛𝑑 𝑠𝑜 𝑤𝑒'𝑟𝑒 𝑟𝑢𝑛𝑛𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑗𝑢𝑠𝑡 𝑎 𝑓𝑎𝑠𝑡 𝑎𝑠 𝑤𝑒 𝑐𝑎𝑛.")
⊰᯽⊱┈──╌❊ ¤ ❊╌──┈⊰᯽⊱
𝐄𝐋𝐈𝐀𝐒 𝐖𝐀𝐒 𝐒𝐎 𝐓𝐄𝐑𝐑𝐈𝐅𝐈𝐄𝐃 𝐀𝐍𝐃 𝐂𝐎𝐍𝐅𝐔𝐒𝐄𝐃.
He was mostly terrified, but confused was important too.
One minute, he was shivering and feeling ill from whatever the fuck just happened to him, and he was so sure they were all going to die the moment one of those things landed on the roof.
The next minute, they were gone. Not dead or a vanished kind of gone. Gone, as in they turned around and walked away from them like they weren't just seconds away from ripping them all to shreds.
Elias could still hear them, though. And they were so, so many of them. Hundreds of them, his mind supplied, although he had no idea of knowing exactly how, but he was sure that was the number.
The silence that followed was bewildered, and everyone was breathing hard. Elias looked Bridget, and her face conveyed the confusion he was feeling.
No one said anything, but Steve took the first step outisde. His bat was raised up as he walked out, and Elias wanted to tell him to stop acting like such a suicidal maniac, but he was too rattled to.
They all followed out after, and Elias was the last to get out of the bus.
"What happened?" There was Lucas, asking the million dollar question.
Most of them replied with different variations of 'I don't know' except for Elias, who was now watching his shaking hands.
"Elias and Steve scared 'em off? Mostly Elias because he just blew away the one his back without even touching it?"
Silence washed over them once more, and Elias glanced up to see everyone eying him with matching looks of wariness and worry.
"How the hell did you do that?" Yoshi asked, and Elias wished he knew what he was talking about.
"I-I don't know," he stammered. "I thought- I mean- I thought Steve was the one who got it off me. I don't know."
He looked at Steve, but said boy wasn't even looking at any of them. He was staring off in the direction where the monsters went in. "No. No way," he shook his head, then turned to give them a solemn look. "They're going somewhere."
Yoshi swore loudly, and Elias was sure it was because they all came to the realisation that it was something bigger than just a couple of monster slugs.
"We have to go," Bridget suggested, shuffling close to Elias in case he fell over again. "You fine walking on your own?"
The shock from the close encounter was fading, and with it went his tolerance for the searing pain on his shoulder. He winced and put his palm on top of the wound, and it came off with a smear of blood.
"Uh, yeah," he said to her, and that was the signal needed for the rest of the group to start walking.
Elias was starting to get tired when they got to the train tracks, and it was barely that long of a distance. He suspected he wouldn't hold out for long, but he stubbornly refused help whenever Steve or Bridget offered. He couldn't bear anyone touching him.
Dustin hung back with him, and the kid kept on looking at him with scrutiny on his face, like he was trying to figure something out.
"What?" Elias finally asked, tired of the staring. "Why are you looking at me like that?"
"Are you from the lab too?" He asked, and before Elias could fathom a reply reply the puzzling question, Lucas materialised beside his friend and nudged him hard.
"Dude! You can't just ask him that!" He berated him, although he, too, was clearly curious
Dustin looked at Lucas like he was the one at fault. "What? We were all thinking it! You know he could be! I mean, don't you remember the whole thing with Vee last year?"
Steve didn't spare them a glance, but he shook his head. "Well, I mean, sure. But that wouldn't make sense. I've known him, like, my entire life and I'd remember if he was from the lab."
Elias swept his gaze all over them. "What does that mean? What lab? You mean the one in Hawkins?" Dustin nodded quietly. "Why would I come from there?"
Bridget sighed and ran a hand through her hair. "Do you guys wanna tell him or should I?" She asked.
Lucas and Dustin glanced at each other, communicating telepathically or some shit, and they nodded at her.
"So, when I told you about what happened last year, I mentioned a girl with...superpowers."
Elias nodded hesitantly. "Yeah. You said her name was...Eleven, right?"
"Well, I didn't mention one thing, because I thought it would be weird 'cause your dad works there and all," Bridget continued. "But she came from the lab. We think Weaver might be from there too, but we try not to think about it too much."
Elias looked at Yoshi. "Are they talking about your brother?" Yoshi shrugged nonchalantly, but his face showed that he was less than pleased about the topic at hand. Elias turned to Bridget and blinked at her, like he was having a hard time processing her words. "She...they both came from the lab? What does that mean? What does any of that have to do with me?"
Dustin cut in before she could go on. "Basically, the lab was training a bunch of kids with superpowers to be like, weapons against the Russians or something." He gestured towards Elias's general appearance. "For example, that utterly mental thing you did with the monster back there? That's the kind of powers we're talking about."
Elias looked at him like he was crazy. "That's insane. I don't have powers. And I'm not from the lab. My dad doesn't even me get any where near the fucking place." At least, not when he's watching.
Steve stepped in to back him up. "He's right. We literally lived next door to each for a couple of years since we were born, I think? That wouldn't make any sense."
"Then how would you explain what happened back there?" Yoshi cut in. "Steve was already in the bus when that monster flew off of you. I mean, unless Eleven was somewhere in the vicinity with us..." He left statement hanging and shrugged his shoulders.
"Hmm," Dustin hummed. "Can we see the inside of your wrists then?"
Elias looked at him funny, because this night just kept on getting weirder by the minute. "Why?"
Bridget waved a hand lazily. "Just...humour us."
Elias touched his left wrist and drew it close to his chest. He couldn't show them his wrists to them, for obvious reaeons. He didn't know what they were looking for, but it's like some paranoid part of his mind switched on and he suddenly had the absurd thought that they knew about the scars.
Bur, it's nothing but an absurd thought because he'd always been careful, with his wristbands and long sleeved shirts and sweaters and hoodies. There was absolutely no way that anyone would know about the scars.
"Are you looking for something? Just say what it is and I'll tell you whether it's there or not," he shot back, his voice a tad defensive.
"If you're looking for a tattoo like Eleven's," Steve cut in, "he doesn't have one. Trust me, I would've seen it if he did."
Dustin whirled to face Steve, challenging him. "How would you know that?"
Steve looked at him like he was stupid. "Didn't you hear what I just said? We lived next to each other for years and we played together all the time. I would know if he had one."
Elias ignored the slight twinge in chest when Steve spoke about the childhood so casually, like it meant nothing. It probably did, but he had thought that they were more than just playmates, you know.
"It's you and me forever, yeah?" they once swore to each other. Turns out their forever lasted only until middle school
There was silence after that, a majority of which Elias spent trying to make sense of it all. So, there was monsters and superpowered children, and apparently he was supposed to be part of the latter category. Things weren't looking too good for him.
The silence was cut short when Lucas spoke next. "You're positive that was Dart?" He asked.
"Yes. He had the exact same yellow pattern on his butt," Dustin answered in an exasperated manner.
Max looked no better than Elias, because they were the newbies in this and all that. "He was tiny two days ago."
Without looking at her, Dustin answered. "Well, he's molted three times already."
"In just two days?" Elias questioned, but Dusitn didn't give him a verbal answer, settling for a slight shake of his head.
"Malted?" Came Steve's confused inquiry, and from beside him, Yoshi looked slightly amused.
"Molted, Steve," he corrected quietly. "He shed his skin to make room for more growth."
Steve looked at him, stared for a full five seconds before quickly looking away. "Yeah. Right. Okay." He cleared his throat, and Elias had a thought prod at his brain. No way.
"Well, when's he gonna molt again?" Max asked.
"It's gotta be soon. And when he does, he'll be full grown or close to it. And so will he his friends."
"Yeah, and he's gonna eat alot more than just cats," Steve added in.
That made Lucas pause, and he held out a hand to stop Dustin from moving. "Wait, cat?" He questioned, glaring accusingly. "Dart ate a cat?"
Yoshi looked at Dustin with something close to horror in his eyes. "What? He ate a cat? You mean your cat?"
Dustin's eyes darted between Lucas and Yoshi. "No, what? No."
"That's not a very convincing argument," Elias commented under his breath, although he didn't understand what the problem was.
"What are you talking about? He ate Mews."
"Mews? Who's Mews?"
Steve looked at the three children, most likely wondering what the hell they were talking about. "It's Dustin's cat."
"Steve!" Dustin exclaimed, seeming utterly betrayed.
Lucas pushed Dustin. "I knew it! You kept him!"
Elias tuned out the argument and leaned in to ask Bridget, "What's this all about?"
She looked just as confused as he was. "I have no idea, dude."
The argument was a little entertaining to watch though, with all the talk about breaking rules and laws, especially when Max ended up getting roped into it for some reason. Elias was kind of impressed by how dedicated the kids were to their friend group or whatever. Yoshi found his way to Bridget, and he leaned against her tiredly.
"But I didn't, Lucas, okay?! I didn't tell her-!"
Elias looked away from them when heard the screeching. He saw Steve drifting away from the group, presumably to find out where it was coming from.
Elias turned to Bridget and Yoshi, and he found them both standing upright in alert. "Did you hear that?" He whispered.
"Hey, guys?" Steve called out. Elias and Bridget followed behind him, but the kids didn't pay attention to him.
Yoshi put two fingers in his mouth and whistled loudly. It caught their attention, and he gestured at Steve wildly. "Listen, you little shits!"
The screeching came again, and this time, they all heard it. Elias gulped harshly and he felt the wound on his shoulder throb as if in warning.
And like the absolute idiots they were, they all followed the sound. Only Max and Elias stayed behind.
"No, no, no. Hey, guys, why are you headed towards the sound?" She asked, but the morons just kept going. "Hello?"
"What the hell?" Elias swore, running a hand down his face. "They're all insane." He'd been saying that so much in the past hour that he was starting to feel like 'insane' wasn't an actual word anymore.
He nudged his head in the direction they went to. "Come on. Let's go."
They came to a stop on a hill, over looking the general area in which the lab was. Elias could recognise the place with a glance. It was dark and cloudy and the inceesant, horrible screeching was not helping matters.
"I don't see 'em," said Dustin.
Lucas looked through his binoculars, but Elias spoke up before he could find the place. "It's the lab," he said, completely sure of his answer as if by instinct. "They're headed to the lab."
Lucas glanced at him grimly, as if to confirm his answer. "They're going back home."
《☆》
They tried to go back to get his car, but it was too small for seven of then, so they decided to walk the distance. Steve took the lead of course, despite Yoshi's protest because of the ridiculous stunt he pulled back at junkyard.
"This is so fucked up," Elias whispered to Bridget after a while. They and both opted to hang back, Elias because he wasn't that eager to be the first to see whatever awaited them at the end of their walk, and Bridget for reasons unfathomable. "Are you sure that we're all not having some kind of...shared hallucination or something? None of this feels real."
If someone popped out of nowhere and told Elias that they were experiencing the same psychotic breakdown, he would believe that in an instant.
Bridget smiled at him wryly, still spooked from the night's events, but managing to wear it well all the same. Elias still felt like there were a million bugs crawling all over his skin and he tried so hard not to shudder with each second. "God, I wish it was," she replied, chuckling humourlessly at the end.
Their footsteps crunched the dry leaves and twigs beneath their feet, and Elias felt like the noise was too...uncanny for whatever reason.
The kids were huddled together, muttering amongst themselves. Likely the boys were trying to convince Max— who was still as skeptical as he was—of the legitimacy of this whole thing. Elias understood her, though. He didnt think there was any universe in which shit like this was easy to wrap your head around.
The walk didn't go on for much longer, because the next thing Elias knew, was that someone was shouting at them from a distance. The entire group paused momentarily, and they glanced around each other cautiously.
Steve increased his the girth of his steps after that.
"...there?! Who's there?!"
The voice sounded familiar enough, and so when they all came to a stop at a clearing, Elias was not at all surprised who it was.
Jonathan Byers and Nancy Wheeler both gave Steve matching looks of incredulity. "Steve?" The said, and even the intonation of their voices were eerily similar.
"Nancy?"
"Jonathan."
"Yoshi," muttered the man himself, rolling his eyes discreetly as Nancy and Jonathan approached their group quickly.
"What are you doing here?" Nancy questioned.
"What are you doing here?" Steve retorted.
"We're looking for Mike and Will," said Nancy.
And that's when Yoshi stepped in. "They were with Weaver when I last saw them. Did you look for them in my house?"
Jonathan shook his head, visibly distressed. "Yeah, we did. They weren't there. All three of them. Your mom told us that they were all at my house, but they're not there either."
"Well, they're not in there, are they?" Dustin asked, his voice way too grave for a thirteen year old boy.
Nancy gave them an unsure look. "We're not sure."
"Why?"
As if in cue, the horrible screeching commenced again. Straight from the lab, which wasn't even that far from them. Elias suddenly thought of his dad, and he realised that he hadn't thought about where he would be if those things really were in the lab. He'd been in there for two days now, and if he really was still in there-
Oh, god, he thought to himself when they all turned in unison to state at the darkened building.
"Well, have you tried getting in there?!" Yoshi cut in, sounding even more distressed than he was before. Elias supposed it made sense he was frantic. There was a possibility his little brother was in there.
"Of course we did. We tried opening the gate, but it couldn't because the power's out," Jonathan answered him.
They were all huddled around each other now. "Are we sure they're in there?" Lucas supplied. "Guys, when was the last time you saw any of them?"
Dustin answered first. "I haven't seen them since that day Will had an episode in the field."
Then Max was next. "Yeah, me too. Weaver told me he was going to see Will after school, so I'm assuming that's where he went."
Elias couldn't say anything. He knew there was a high chance his father was in there, but he didn't know how to bring it up to them because he was sure none of them would be of help.
Yoshi suddenly turned to him, as if he had read his thoughts. "Hey, your dad works there, right? Is there anyway we can in without having to use the gate." And then, as if realising what he just said, Yoshi gasped lightly. "Fuck, your dad works in the lab. Is he in there right now?"
Elias was taken aback by the sudden shift in conversation. "I-" He stammered when everyone turned to look at him expectantly."I don't know."
Because none of them seemed to know anything anymore. Not where their friends were, nor their siblings and parents.
Then the babble started all over again, and everyone was talking over each other trying to figure out how to solve this problem. They failed to notice Nancy walking away from them in this state.
That is, until she said, "The power's back."
And indeed it was. They shifted to look at the building, and it was suddenly enveloped in nearly blinding lights. That was all it took for them to break out into a run towards the gate.
There was a car parked next to the booth Jonathan ran around the vehicle and jumped into the booth, and he pressed the buttons to open the gate. It didn't do shit, unfortunately.
Dustin tried, and it was useless. "Son of a bitch! You know what.."
"It won't work, Dustin. It has to be opened by someone on the inside because access to every entrance automatically gets cut off when the building is on lock down. So, the computer system has to be comoletely rebooted to unlock each and everyone of them." Everyone turned to look at him. "I'm assuming that the building locked down when the...monsters attacked the lab."
"So, what do we do now?" Nancy asked.
Elias shrugged nonchalantly, although he was panicking internally. "Pray there's someone alive in that building who knows how to use computers, I guess."
Dustin cursed again and continued pressing the button like it was going to change anything. Elias rolled his eyes in exasperation.
"How do you know that?" Max asked, squinting up at the gate like she was waiting for a miracle to happen. "About the computer and lockdown and whatever."
Elias shuffled in mild discomfort. "It was nothing," he tried saying. "Just something stupid I did back when I was thirteen."
He'd thought it was cool back then. That year, Elias developed the habit of hiding in the school's A.V club room after lunch because no one really ever went there. Mr. Clarke caught him once, and instead of telling him the really reason why he was in there, he lied that he was interested in joining the club, and so he did. It helped that there was only like two other people in said club, both a little bit younger than him and completely disinterested in him, Fred Benson and Hannah Daniels. (That's where he and Hannah first met, in any case.)
They never talked to each other outside the club, and it was fine by them. Somewhere along the way, Elias became genuinely interested in the club. It wasn't as active as the more popular ones, but they all liked what they had. Mr. Clarke shared with them all the knowledge he had regarding modern technology, for instance, how a sophisticated security system works. Like the lab's.
He didn't tell Max this, though. And when she realised he had no interest in saying more, she let the subject drop.
The gate opened suddenly, and Dustin cheered from the booth. "Hey! I got it!"
And so they all stepped closer, and watched with the trepidation as the metal gate slid open.
"Should...should we go in?" Lucas asked hesitantly.
"No. Not all of us," Nancy spoke up as she walked around the car to get in. Jonathan followed her, and so did Yoshi.
"Yoshi, no," Jonathan protested when said boy tried to follow after them.
Yoshi gave him a glare so foul that he immediately stopped speaking. "Don't tell me no. My brother is in there. I-"
"No, listen, Yoshi. He's right," Bridget intervened, gripping his shoulder to hold him back. "Let them go. There isn't enough space left and we don't know how many people there are in there."
"Please. We'll get your brother back. I promise you, okay?" Nancy said to him with all seriousness.
Yoshi clearly didn't like it, but he stepped back with a stiff nod and looked at the building with dread.
Nancy and Jonathan took off, and the rest of them waited.
⊰᯽⊱┈──╌❊ ¤ ❊╌──┈⊰᯽⊱
Helloooo!!
How are yall feeling today?? Here's a gift because I'm apparently in a charitable mood this week *insert eyeroll*
Elias is such a fucking nerd though, I love him
Anyways, hope yall enjoyed!
Bye~
-🙈💜