The only reality she knew was pain.
It tore through her veins with electric charged precision, plunged cold knives into her chest, and wiped her brain to a blank black slate.
Far off, from the furthest reaches of her mind, she could hear a faint receding whisper. It screamed as it faded away. Begging her to push back. Begging her to fight.
For the first time in her life she could not give it what it asked…
… for she had nothing left.
Robbed of their power, her heavy limbs went slack within One's invisible restraints. Vision faded as her eyes lulled and crossed. She slipped and spiraled. Down. Down. Down. Toward a thickening darkness.
She hardly registered his shadow as it fell over her… as he leaned down…
"…not much longer, Eleven… need to rest… to take away the pain..."
Tap. Tap.
…no…
His hands were cold against her arm as he rolled up her sleeve and -
BANG!
Mike's body jolted as the bullet cut from his gun. He held his breath for what felt like both a split second and an eternity as it seared through the air…
…and sliced directly into the man's temple.
It was a perfect shot.
Yet, Mike breathed no sigh of relief.
For, the slain man still had the final say.
Eyes wide in horror, Mike watched as the man's lifeless body lifted spectacularly from the ground. His arms splayed and his chest expanded as a torrent of unfocused energy exploded from his body like a bomb. A final mighty release of telekinetic power crashed into the walls, broke through the ceiling and shook the ground with the intensity of an earthquake.
The force hit Mike from the side, shocking him senseless as he blew off his knees and flew down the hallway, his gun cascading from his hands before he landed hard on his side ten feet back.
He didn't even take a moment to breathe.
Up on his feet without delay, Mike scrambled for his gun. Its shining silver reflected beneath the violently pulsating lights, half buried in a small pile of fresh rubble.
He snatched it up, turned on his heel, and ran.
Through the erupted doorway.
Into the cavernous lab.
The lab had descended into shadow. Only a few lights remained, flickering like strobes, playing tricks on his eyes in the darkness. Dust and rubble rained from the ceiling in dangerous torrents. The support beams strained audibly from above, their scraping creaks resounding in an ominous echo all around him as he moved.
Mike whipped around the room, gun tight in his grip. Panicked desperation arrested his body, doubling by the second as she continued to remain hidden from view.
Finally, after almost a full lap around the lab, a light flickered off of a thick black combat boot.
She laid in shadow, fifteen feet from where she had been before the blast. Her body was curled lifelessly against the side of an exposed metal staircase that rose up at the edge of the room.
"EL!"
Without a thought, he ran to her. His long legs made quick work of the large gap between them as he leaped over the rubble and skidded across the dust to -
CRACK!
"SHIIIT!"
A support beam gave way. The ceiling opened up above him in a deafening snap. He dove, tripping over his feet as he did so. His gun careened from his hand as he hit the ground hard. Without a thought, he scrambled toward El on his hands and knees. He pulled her body roughly against his and rolled, sliding them along the tiles until they tumbled in a tangle of limbs beneath a recessed gap under the staircase.
Just in time.
The floor shook violently as an anvil sized chunk of concrete crashed into the spot where Mike had been standing just seconds before. Mike stiffened on impact, his body wrapped over El's limp form like a barrier as shrapnel rained down upon him.
He could feel sharp bites of pain as bits broke through his clothing and cut into his skin, but he paid it no mind.
Instead, he looked down, El finally in his arms.
A single light flickered over her red stained face.
"El…? EL!"
Mike's stomach plummeted at the sight of her. She looked so much worse up close. Blood was caked in a sheet across her skin, sourced from her nose, her ears, and a jagged open cut across her cheek. It was dreadfully smeared from actions that seemed beyond her control. Her blonde wig had been torn off, still attached only by a few strands stuck within with her drying blood. The veins throughout her entire face looked fit to burst. Her closed eyes looked battered. Black and blue and sunken in a way that triggered his worst fears.
"El?" Mike repeated insistently as he shook her.
She did not respond.
"EL!"
"Step away from the girl."
The words hit Mike like a cold knife in the back, their intrusion an insult he was not willing to endure.
Mike's face froze to a hard mask. Every muscle in his body tightened.
He slowly looked over his shoulder.
Dr. Martin Brenner stepped forward from the shadows on a limp, into a pulsating beam of light about ten feet away. Blood seeped down his face from a head wound. It matted his silver hair and dripped into a pooling stain upon the shoulder of his white lab coat.
Yet, despite his injuries from the blast, he stood firm...
…as he pointed Mike's discarded gun squarely in Mike's direction.
"Michael," Dr. Brenner said with a procedural coldness. He took a step closer as the gun tightened in his hand. "Step away from the girl."
Mike's arms clutched around El's body in a primal surge of protection. His breath became shallow and harsh. His eyes burned with compounding red hot rage.
He did not see the barrel of the gun.
He only saw the man who had ruined her life.
Mike jaw clenched as pain coursed through him.
Not his pain.
Hers.
As though he had leeched it from her body, a lifetime of her screaming anguish bloomed full and bright and vibrant through his veins as he laid under the gaze of the man who had caused it. It overwhelmed him, so deep, so terrifyingly real, that it felt as though he had lived it himself.
Every year. Every day. Every single cursed breath.
Without blinking, Mike looked into the eyes of the man who had stolen her from her mother's womb, who had raised her like an animal, who had cursed her to a life in the shadows, and who had rendered her almost lifeless, at this very moment, within his arms.
Righteous in its purity, stunning in depth, fury broke through Mike like a wildfire.
"You want her?!" Mike yelled, guttural and unbound as he held her even tighter, his voice a cold black threat. "You'll have to kill me first."
"Michael," Brenner sighed, his tone containing a mundane frustration as though he had simply had a bad day. "Listen to me. It - "
"FUCK YOU! You listen to ME!"
Mike jumped to his feet. He rose to his full height and stood sentry over her as a shield.
"What do you think you're going to get out of this, huh?" Mike sneered, his words coming faster than his lips could move. "Nothing! That's what. NOTHING! She will never come back to you. I don't care how many lobotomies you try or whatever other fucked up plan you have, she will never give you another second of her life. She's not your fucking science experiment! Do you understand me?!"
With no weapons other than his hands and a decade of pent up rage, Mike advanced forward toward the man holding the gun.
"You stole her life you piece of shit!"
Brenner took a step back. His eyes widened ever so slightly. "Michael, trust me. You do not want to do this."
"Oh! You have no idea HOW MUCH I want to do this!" Mike howled, his voice so loud it cracked against the handprint of bruises on his neck. He threw his hands in the air as he advanced another step. "Do you think you can actually get me to walk away from her?! I would never leave her here! NEVER! I have been strangled - I've been shot at - I just killed your fucking telekinetic monster over there just so I could get into this fucking room! I am NOT leaving her! Do you understand? Do you understand that I LOVE HER!?" he screamed, his throat ripping with passion as he manically pointed back to her in the shadows. "I LOVE HER! Do you have any idea what that means?!"
"Michael… be – "
"No! You don't! Of course you don't know what that means!" Mike continued without interruption. "You're too much of a fucking sociopath to understand. It means I would do anything for her." Mike took another resolute step forward, adrenalin leading his every move. "ANYTHING!"
Brenner seemed to waver on his feet. The blood rushing from his head trickled with more thickness than before. He held the gun with renewed intensity directly at Mike's chest. "Michael, walk away. This is my final warning."
"Like you could pull the trigger, you coward!" Mike cried, his eyes bulging in a dare, sense long gone as he raved, now only six feet from the gun in the air. He took another step forward. "What are you going to do?! All your little science experiments are gone! No one's here to kill me for you! Do you even know how to use a gun, YOU PIECE OF SHIT?!"
A click sounded through the room as the Martin Brenner's finger cocked the hammer of Mike's gun.
"Michael…"
Staring down the barrel, the bullet prepped and ready, just feet away, Mike swallowed hard.
Every pain in his body suddenly screamed in a vibrant and dizzying sensation of life.
Mike sneered. He steeled his nerves one final time. His voice turned to ice.
"Take her over my dead fucking body."
He raised onto the balls of his feet and dove forward, arms out toward the -
BANG!
His body falling to the ground was the last thing she saw as her eyes glazed over and she tumbled back, once again, into the darkness…
She had been gone, so far gone. Swimming in the black, past the point of pain. But he had called to her, his voice repeating her first real name like a beacon through the spinning haze. It had started with tickles of warmth, prickling across her as she cascaded through emptiness, reminding her of the vague sensations that awaited her back in the reality she had left.
His voice echoed again and again, each utterance beaming a dim light through the tunnel that had taken hold of her.
The screaming came next, cold and harsh, warbling through her mind, assaulting her senses, the shouts so real and so fierce that she could not rest.
One by one, words gained meaning. Out of context. A mash and ramble of fire and ice.
But it was him.
…mike…
She clung to his voice, to the passion it contained, and followed its path, up through the nothing… up through the black… up through the grey…
…until her eyes eased opened and she arrived, dazed and confused, under a flashing beam of light, her body splayed upon the ground.
Powerless on the floor, still surely stuck in One's trap, she did not try to move.
She could hear him clearly now.
Mike.
His wrath, his reverie, and his rage caused something nameless to burn within her chest. His black Converse bounced upon the floor as his words ripped from him, unbidden, toward a source she could not trace.
Finally, across the way, her eye caught the silver. It was suspended in the air, gleaming bright in the flickering lights.
It connected to hands…
to arms…
to Papa…
Her stomach flipped with a frail jolt as the gears inside of her mind began to turn for the first time. She struggled to connect the dots, to understand, to move…
…she felt her arm move…
Click.
The dots connected.
"take her over my head fucking body!"
NO.
BANG!
She could feel it as the silver hammer struck.
She could feel it as it left the barrel. Fast and hot and deadly as it entered the air.
She could feel the bullet cut the route directly toward Mike's chest.
NO.
So weak she could hardly breath, El tried to grasp onto the ruined and decimated threads of her power.
With more struggle than she had ever felt in her life, she tried to push.
She tried to push.
She tried to push.
She… latched.
In a single feeble spark of power, El ensnared the bullet as it cut through the air and blasted it backwards from whence it came.
Away from the man she loved…
…And straight into the forehead of the man she had once called Papa.
Depleted, ravaged, with truly nothing left, her vision faded to black… as Papa's body hit the floor…
Dr. Martin Brenner fell without ceremony. It was an instant loss of life, as though existence had simply disappeared from his body. The gun slipped first. It clacked against the floor as the man's legs wavered, buckled, and dropped, his eyelids still open as the light behind them extinguished forever. Red leaked from a clean cut hole at the center of the man's forehead, pooled down his eyebrow, and dripped to the floor.
Alone in the center of the decimated lab, Mike watched in stunned silence.
His body began to shake. Slowly, his fingers crawled to his chest, inching toward to the location where he swore he would find an open wound. Instead, he found the rise and fall of his lungs and the uninterrupted beat of his heart.
Racing. Heavy.
Alive...
Mike turned around slowly in reeling understanding.
"El?"
She did not reply.
She laid limp, her eyes still closed…
…her arm reached out toward him.
He moved to her in a daze, stumbling over his feet, his brain stunned too far for comprehension. He almost fell down beside her.
Her face was slack and vacant. Fresh blood ran in a torrent from her nose.
"El?" he called again, shaking her hard.
She did not stir.
The ceiling above creaked again in dire warning.
At a loss for what to do, his chest still screaming in phantom pain, Mike scooped El's body from the floor. A stamp of shock arrested his entire mind as he cradled her close and ran, away from the decimated and crumbling lab, through the halls, and back to where her father laid injured within the rubble of the second hall.
Hopper's eyes burned with worry as Mike rounded the corner, but he did not speak. Mike skidded to a quick stop as he reached him and Sev. He lowered her into the dust upon the floor with as much care as his shaking arms could muster. Frantically, he moved to check for her pulse. His fingers grew sticky with her blood loss as they pressed into her neck.
Her heartbeat was faint and slow…
…yet present against his touch.
"She's alive," he announced as he exhaled hard. His eyes dropped shut as relief washed over him.
"Some bad shit just had to happen for you not to know if Jane was alive…" a nervous female voice stated from behind him.
Mike spun around just as Kali and Steve appeared in a pop into view, guns at the ready in both of their hands. Steve's coat was draped over Kali's shoulders, covering her paper thin hospital gown.
"Fuck..." Kali breathed as looked down on El. She absentmindedly wiped blood from her nose onto Steve's coat sleeve. "She looks like hell…"
"Holy shit, Hop – " Steve called as he passed Kali and Mike and rushed to the older man beside the rubble. "What happened to you?! - "
" - What happened to her?" Kali asked as dropped to the floor beside him.
"Uh…"
"Just tell me who's dead," Kali cut in, relieving him of the need for details as she began to wipe the blood from El's nose with the hem of her hospital gown.
"All – All of them." Mike stuttered, mentally counting the bodies for the first time. "I saw… all of them."
Kali's face whipped to him in surprise. Her eyes narrowed. "What do you mean… all of them?"
"Three projects," Mike spoke through trembling lips. "And - and Brenner."
Kali's jaw fell open in spectacular awe. "Holy shit."
"Yeah…"
"Holy shit…" she repeated to herself. Her breaths became short as a dumbstruck smile spread across her face. "How did – "
"Can we talk about that later?" Mike asked desperately as he leaned back down toward El.
"Yeah," Kali agreed quickly as she tugged El's wig from her head, prying it strand by strand from where it was stuck with blood, and pocketed it within Steve's coat. "We've gotta move. Steve said you still had computer stuff to do, is that true?"
"Oh shit!"
Comprehension cut through Mike at Kali's words. The mere existence of computers had been lost to him throughout the whole ordeal.
He nodded. "Yeah. Yes. We need to do that."
Kali nodded in reply. She tightened Steve's handgun into her grip and turned over her shoulder without delay. "Steve," she commanded clearly. Her voice took on an air of command that made Mike feel instantly relieved of duty. "Take Sev and Jane's father to the car. Sev, dear? I need you to keep them hidden and safe, okay? Mike and I have to handle this 'computer stuff'. We'll meet you out there."
"On it," Steve nodded in reply, his eyes wide and worried as he continued to help a groaning and immobile Hopper from the floor.
Mike leaned down to lift El, but stopped as he caught Sev's eye in the commotion. She looked over to the men and back at Mike with trepidation.
Understanding instantly, he waved her over.
Mike unzipped his black puffy coat as she neared him. "Here," he said. He wrapped it around her and helped feed her arms through the sleeves. "Just in case you get outside and have to wait. It's cold out."
"I – " she stuttered, looking over her shoulder once again with worry.
Mike steadied his voice as best he could as he zipped the coat onto her. "You've got to trust me, okay? You'll be safe with them. And you can keep them safe, too. Just – just stay hidden, okay? Just like before. I'll be right behind you. I promise."
Sev stared at Mike for a moment, her blue eyes nervous as she fidgeted within the oversized coat. Finally, she nodded.
"We'll be right behind you," Mike repeated in reassurance.
"- Mike, we've gotta go" Kali interrupted, back on her feet as she pointed down the hall toward the server room.
Mike looked back at Sev quickly. She nodded to Mike understanding, her expression hesitant but committed, as she turned to join the men.
"We've gotta go - "
" - I know " Mike barked as he lifted El yet again into his arms. He pushed his cheek down against her mouth, checking for her breath as he followed Kali the first few steps down the hall. The warm air from her mouth tickled light and shallow across his face.
And like that, the hallway cleared… as six people vanished into thin air.
Kali moved swiftly through the halls without fear, leading them along the route that they both seemed to remember from the floor plans they had shared so many days before. Mike felt supremely relieved by her presence. She was cool, collected, and in control. Armed and ready and clearly able to fight.
"Has she responded at all? Anything?" Kali asked in a whisper as they moved through a deserted hallway.
"Nothing," Mike replied nervously, holding El tighter in a subconscious response.
"Not even a groan? Or a… a twitch?"
"Nothing," Mike repeated curtly.
"She's going to be okay," Kali whispered, seeming to read his mind as they neared a turn.
Mike merely nodded, unassured, as he looked down with anxiety on El's slack and vacant features.
The shock that had frozen his mind began to crack as they weaved through the halls. He did not pay attention to the moments that they stopped, when they pressed against the walls while security guards ran this way and that, showing no knowledge of their existence. Instead, the visions spilled in, playing over and over against his will, flushing him with fresh fear as he held her tighter and watched her chest rise and fall like a lifeline to his sanity.
She had taken too much.
He had put her through too much.
Rage quaked in fresh waves within him. He knew it would not stop until she woke.
…if she woke…
He never thought it possible, but in that moment it was clear to him that watching Brenner die had not been enough.
Mike needed more.
…and that was when it hit him…
In Mike's first clear thought for as long as he could remember, he added one final item to his list of plans in the server room.
They finally arrived at the door of the server room only two halted stops and one close call later. Mike shifted El's body awkwardly and pulled his sleeve over his bloody fingers to code himself in on the keypad. Kali pulled the door open and held it for Mike as he shuffled inside. Kali slipped in behind them and latched the door, careful to ensure that no one had seen the door move.
"Put Jane down," Kali said quickly.
Mike followed her orders and eased El to the floor. Kali kneeled beside her and began to tend to her needs as Mike darted to the small bank of computers on his left.
The sights and sounds of the server room made Mike feel like a complete idiot. Everything the planter had created earlier had been warped, disfigured, ever so slightly out of place. The hum of the servers and the slight heat from their work called to his senses, so real in a way that had been resolutely vacant before.
He forced a series of deep breaths as he tried to gather his scrambled thoughts.
Sense memory did most to the work, for which he was extremely grateful. It didn't take long, the small list of things that needed to be done. It was only two absolutely necessary items, though each required a different pathway out into the classified server portals.
He was aided greatly by Brenner's proprietary codes still written in Sharpee along his arm.
The first task was easy. Years of scouring confidential documents had given him a natural ability to compose the necessary words. It was clean in its detail and held no emotion. It was merely a simple statement of facts.
The message was sent out across the wires. A quick confidential directive, to be disseminated with coding to all policing bodies.
It gave Mike the vaguest thread of hope.
The second task was more challenging. That wasn't a surprise. The idea was only minutes old, after all. There had been no time to prepare.
It came to him quickly enough, though. It fell cleanly from Mike's fingers as he typed with electric intensity. The words, the tone, and the blames pointed in the exact direction that the man deserved.
Dr. Martin Brenner's suicide note highlighted what a coward he was. It showcased his disdain for humanity as it spun an alternate tale of the last fateful moments. It felt like the sweetest retribution, to steal the man's narrative and twist it back upon him, just as Brenner himself had done to so many ruined lives. It was all so easily explained away. The dead bodies across the lab, ended by his bidding. The bullet in the skull of the final telekinetic experiment. And finally, the second bullet lodged, by Brenner's own finger on the trigger, within his own skull.
Eyes moving fast as time ticked away, he proofread the missive. Satisfied, he sent it through the confidential wires with a few simple clicks.
He pulled up the hem of his hoodie and wiped the keyboard clean of his fingerprints.
A vindictive smile crossed Mike's lips as he began to turn back to the girl.
"Kali, I'm done. I - "
He stopped as he spotted Kali and El on the floor.
Three vibrant blue butterflies glowed in the dark. They spun softly over El's head as she laid unconscious in Kali's lap.
"They're Jane's favorite," Kali said quietly as she looked up and caught Mike's eye, a tear on her cheek as she licked the hem of the coat sleeve and continued to wipe dried blood from El's chin. "They always make her feel better when she's not okay. I just thought – I don't know..."
"They're beautiful…"
The butterflies illuminated El's features in a dazzlingly soft blue as they hovered over her. Even in her most ruined moment, bruised and unconscious with injuries Mike could not discern, she was utterly perfect.
"Has she… Anything?" he asked.
Kali shook her head. "Not yet."
Mike's heart plummeted as Kali sniffed and directed her attention to the server racks. "What are these? I've never seen machines like this before."
"It's the files. Basically, they're in the metal casings. I've been in this room a hundred times," Mike said with a dark huff, "but only through the wires."
"So…" Kali started, eyeing the server racks as thoughts began to move fast behind her eyes. "All that stuff you showed us. You stole it from – from here? From inside these things?"
"Most of it, yeah."
Kali nodded, smacked her lips, and turned her eyes to Mike with an instant and fiery conviction.
The butterflies vanished.
"I want it gone."
Mike blinked.
The thought was so destructive… so devastating… so intensely permanent.
"Alright…" Mike smirked. "Let's burn it to the ground."
It took some quick thinking, but Mike finally found two live wires. With a simple spark, he held them against the exposed opening on the back of the first server. They spit and cracked until smoke finally started to rise.
Mike stepped back, a morbid satisfaction dawning over him as the first flames began to rise.
"Why didn't I think of this?"
"I'd say you're too vanilla to think of something so destructive," Kali replied with a deadpan tone, "but I'm pretty sure you killed a man tonight, so I don't know what to think anymore."
Mike eyed her from the side.
"Yeah. I did," he replied simply, without a single shred of regret. "Let's go."
The caustic smell of melting plastic began to clog the air as Mike hoisted El's body into his aching arms one final time. It burned against his throat, reminding him of the choking pain he still felt. He pushed it aside and quickly motioned for Kali to lead the way from the room.
Kali closed the door fast once they were out, trapping the smoke in order to delay the alarms. Then, nothing else standing in their way, they broke out into a full run, Mike whispering the directions to the exit door.
They were two hallways away when the fire alarms screeched to life.
Undeterred and sparked with a new burst of adrenalin, Mike's arms shifted to get a better grip on El as he began to run faster. Kali followed suit. She struck out in front of him, leading the way under the covers of both her invisibility and her gun.
Security guards began appearing more and more as they tore through the final hallways, running this way and that, flying past Kali, Mike and El as though they were nothing more than air.
Kali wiped her nose on Steve's coat once again, her feet faltering for the first time, as they rounded in a frenzy into the final hallway.
The original doors of their entrance came into view.
Halfway down the long hall, they appeared like a vision.
A simple flicker in and a simple flicker out.
Sev, leaning against the wall near Steve and a leaning Hopper.
Kali had seemed to see it too, because they both began to move faster at the same time, the final door becoming closer and closer…
…until that very door slammed open in a sudden burst.
"To the back at the left!" A fireman yelled as he led the charge through the door.
Mike's hacked security controls had finally been overridden just as they were about to leave.
Kali jumped in surprise only fifteen feet away from the door. She held her hand out for Mike to stop. They eased their way as slowly as they could toward the wall.
Seven men followed behind the first, each dressed in full fire gear. They rushed by, their attention clearly upon the fire deeper inside the building. The six unseen perpetrators watched them go as their boot steps echoed away around the corner.
Cold crisp air cut across Mike's cheek. His eye shot to the doors... to where the fire unit had pinned the exit open for the ease of their emergency work.
Kali and Mike shared a look before she nodded and led the way, silently beckoning for Steve to follow as she grabbed Sev's hand.
"We're almost out," Mike whispered reassuringly against El's ear as he fell in step behind Kali and Sev, Steve behind him as he whispered reassurances to an increasingly weak Hopper.
Calmly, slowly, and with the sharpest attention, they walked out of the building and into the night.
Chaos was paramount in the alleyway. Sirens erupted around them from two fire trucks. Men ran this way and that as they worked to ready their offense.
Steve grabbed Kali's sleeve and pointed her toward the direction of the SUV. Kali nodded and let him lead, her body slowing dangerously as the heavy work she had put in began to truly wear her out. Still, they moved undetected, undeterred, as though they had never been there at all.
The going was slow with Hopper's injury in the lead as he flagged against Steve. Mike's muscles began to shake violently from the stress of El's dead weight. He breathed heavily, in and out, as each step began to feel like an eternity.
Finally, they crossed the siren filled street to the parking lot beyond.
Kali and Hopper were each about to pass out upon arrival.
Kali leaned against the vehicle. Her face was ashen and ravaged, so similar to how she had looked on the fateful night they had arrived on his doorstep. It felt like a lifetime ago.
Hopper was shivering, his body going into shock as the pain of his un-splinted broken leg became too much for the strongest man Mike had ever known to handle.
One by one, Steve helped them into the car, showing a physical strength Mike wasn't aware that the man had. He hoisted Hopper the final inches into the front seat and simply lifted Kali into the back.
Sev, stronger than the rest, but still bloodied to a large degree, moved on her own, slipping into the middle of the back seat before Mike, with El tucked tight in his arms, squeezed into the too small space beside her.
Sev laid her hand on Kali's knee. "It's okay. I'm – I can hide now."
Kali simply nodded, her body going instantly slack at Sev's words as she let her head fall against the window.
Mike watched Sev in grateful awe as her eyes dropped shut. She simply sat there, calm and casual, as she obscured them from view with an illusion he could only imagine.
Steve crawled into the driver's seat and glanced with worry over to Hopper.
"Hop, we need to get you to the – "
"Just… drive… " Hopper spit through chattering teeth. "Get us out of New… York..."
"Can we - ?" Steve stuttered, looking back.
"No one can see," Sev said simply. "Go."
The engine roared to life.
Tires crunched against ice as Steve pulled out of the parking lot, away from the lab, and through the snowy streets. He steered the vehicle toward the Holland Tunnel, just a few blocks away, and drove them off of the island of Manhattan.
The lights of the tunnel bounced off of El's face as Mike held her in the tight and cramped seat. Her cheek was almost pressed against his. Her faint breath grazed his nose.
It felt like the most important feeling in the world.
He gathered the courage to try.
"El?" he whispered finally. He brushed a few stray frizzes from her forehead where they had escaped their pins. "Can you hear me?"
She did not reply.
Mike's chest clenched as he closed his eyes.
The lights disappeared as they exited the tunnel and entered into the dark night air of New Jersey.
"Steve, turn on the police scanner," Mike asked quickly as the vehicle rose from the tunnel. Steve complied.
The harsh crackle CB radio transmissions filled the vehicle. It barked boring police calls and traffic stops as the night flew past outside the window.
Mike fought off the shake that overtook his body as the minutes passed. His heartbeat had not returned to normal. He could find a breath of relief. Every mile that passed created a new paranoid vision from the corner of his eye.
He reminded himself on repeat that the security cameras had picked up nothing. That no one alive had seen them there. Not one person had seen them leave. He reminded himself that two pieces of hard evidence pointed resolutely in a different direction, typed and sent before the fire raged.
If only he could hear the proof...
Halfway across the state of New Jersey, while his legs were asleep and his mind spun in a terrified mess, he finally heard the words he needed to hear.
A woman's clear voice came across the scanner.
Attention all units. Please be advised that active manhunt for perpetrators in case number one-one-zero-eight-one-seven has been called off. Child has been located safely. Perpetrators were misidentified. I repeat. Active manhunt for perpetrators in case number one-one-zero-eight-one-seven has been called off. Child has been located safely. Perpetrators were misidentified. Calling off all units.
The breath Mike had been holding for hours released from his lungs in a rush.
"Guys that was it!" he yelped to the vehicle. "I wrote that. The manhunt is off."
"YES!" Steve whooped as he slammed his hand on the steering wheel. Hopper groaned in reply, his leg needing attention right away. Kali was asleep, her head lulling against the window. Sev leaned against Mike nervously, unsure of what it all meant.
Sev would have to wait for just a second, though.
Mike pulled El closer.
"El? It's done," he whispered into her ear, the scent of her hair shaking his chest. His lips trembled with the tiniest hopeful smile. He pumped her hand hard within his."We did it, El. It's done. You're - You're free."
…Her hand pumped his back.
"-Oh!"
Mike's heart leapt with an intensity that almost knocked him unconscious as tears, long held back, crashed unbidden from his eyes in her hair. His hand tightened around hers as he cradled her body against him.
The purest relief washed over his mind.
The SUV continued to drive, through the night, straight in the direction of home.
OoO
Thank you so so so much for reading! We're in the final stretch now, just one final chapter and an epilogue to go. I'd absolutely adore hearing from you :D
- L -