Chapter 13: Stories of a Madman

Disclaimer: I own nothing! **slight goriness and abuse in chapter**

To phieillydinyia: Don't worry! I would never make El full-blooded evil! She's waaaay too pure and innocent (mostly) for that! And as for everyone making it out alive…welll…you'll see…

Enjoy!

"Kali!" El screamed, her eyes wide in terror as she watched from the floor where Kali had pushed her as her sister hit the ground, blood pouring from the spot in her chest where the bullet hit her.

Everyone else watched, wide-eyed with shock at the horrifying scene before them.

Brenner stood back, watching with a smirk.

"Kali!" El said again as she stood up and ran over to her.

Cradling Kali in her arms, she cried.

"Kali, stay-stay with me!" She wept. "Kali, please!"

"El…" Kali said softly, her voice barely more than a whisper. "I'm sorry…"

"Kali!" Kali, no! Stay with me!" Tears blurred her eyes and dropped off her cheeks.

Kali raised a shaky hand and pushed El's sleeve up. She traced her fingers over her 011 tattoo weakly. El touched Kali's 008 tattoo, only seeing a black smear.

"Kali, don't go! I'll fix you! Like we fixed Mike!" El sobbed.

Kali met her eyes, the light leaving her own. They touched each others' tattoos again.

"…Sister…"

The word stumbled off her lips, whispering, winding, wishing…and then silence.

"No!" El screamed. "No! No, no, no, no, NO!"

"El," Hopper said softly from behind her. "She's gone."

El stood up, shaking with anger, and turned toward the man who had shot her sister. She jerked her head up and the gun in his hand zoomed into hers. Even Brenner looked scared now.

"011," he said calmly. "Put. The gun. Down. You do not know what you are doing. 008's death was a tragic accident."

El spun toward him. "You!" She yelled. "You did this!" She held the gun up and aimed it between his eyes.

No one protested as she cocked it.

Brenner slowly started to move out of the way, but with her free hand, El pinned him against the wall.

She heard guns cock behind her.

El relaxed her grip and turned around.

"I tire of threatening your friends," Brenner sighed almost comedically. "But we must do what has to be done for the sake of the world."

El looked around at her friends. No, not her friends-her family.

Each of them in turn was glaring at Brenner with uncontainable hatred.

"Let my friends go," El said softly. "And I will do what you want me to do."

Brenner smiled. "Finally, we agree on something. Boys!"

Guards grabbed El and forced her into a chair, snapping the bindings around her once more, but this time keeping all of her friends at gunpoint, locked and loaded, so that if she tried to escape, blood would pour.

"Unfortunately for you," Brenner smiled. "We cannot let your friends go. So you are stuck here."

El roared in rage. "You lie!"

"Yes, yes, now let's begin."

El locked eyes with Hopper, and a look of understanding passed between them. Neither was sure of what it was, but it made them both feel calmer, somehow, more relaxed.

If that was possible.

"After the monster left," Brenner began. "I ran. I left and tried to return to the lab, but it seems it was being searched by the police and I wasn't able to occupy the premises. I had taken my car with me, of course, so I went to try and track down my former comrades that had either retired or left. I believe you met Ray."

El resisted the urge to look at Kali, still lying on the floor, memories filling her mind.

"But no one wanted to help me-"

"I wonder why," Lucas muttered sarcastically.

"I wouldn't test my patience right now, boy!" Brenner snapped at him. Lucas glared up at him, but said nothing more after a warning glance from El. "As I was saying, I was alone. But I didn't want to stop my research-"

There was a scoff at the word 'research,' but El couldn't tell where it came from.

"-and my home wasn't mine anymore. But one day when I was out scavenging for food, as one often does in a situation like mine, I met a man named General Burko. Now Burko had heard of everything we did in Hawkins, and wanted to know how to do it. I quickly agreed, wanting to get back on track as fast as possible, but also needing shelter. I told them everything they needed to know, but he insisted I came with them to Kamchatka. When I obliged, I was subject to…less than perfect living conditions. They tried to open up gates multiple times in Russia, but they always failed. Then, I remembered our gate. I hadn't known you had closed it, 011, I just figured it sealed in its own time. They built a machine there, and when they told me it succeeded, they transferred me here."

"We're in…Russia?" El asked.

"Oh, no, 011," Brenner said. "You are in New York. As a matter of fact, underneath a house. Or a few houses."

"What?! But-but what about the people living there?! They could get hurt!" El stared at him in shock.

"We are deep underground, 011. They cannot tell we are here. And the owners of the houses are rarely around this time of year. After extensive research, we found out that the residents of two houses here go away together for all of December and New Year's and don't return until January 6th. The others are old and simple. They do not suspect a thing,". Brenner said casually.

"But why this location?" El snapped.

He ignored her. "As I was saying, I was transferred here. But when the machine failed, rather than killing me as I thought, they promoted me. They knew I'd be able to find the ones who had done this. After all, I told them all about your little gang of friends. Now that you're here, you can help us with our next plan. Do you want to know what that is?"

"It's best for both of us if you tell me," El said in her best commanding voice.

"You cannot hurt me. For I would hurt your friends. But I would not let them live," He told her.

No one else had spoken until that moment, each one listening intently, but Hopper looked as though he wanted to talk then. But he knew El would want it to stay between her and the man who called himself Papa.

"Then I would hurt you. You would be gone," El growled at him.

"Very well, if that is how it is, I will be. But for now, let us continue. Have you ever heard of a multiverse?"

"Multiple dimensions existing in one-" Dustin started.

"Yes, yes, we know, child. Well we have a multiverse here."

"Yes, yes, we know, Brenner," El snarled, mimicking him. "It's called the Upside Down."

A few people couldn't keep their laughter in.

"Be careful, 011," he said smoothly, slowly walking toward her and cupping her chin. Hopper's anger flared again as he watched him touch her. "Or you may end up more stupid than you already are."

"El's not stupid!" Mike snarled. "You are!"

Hopper watched the boy curiously. He felt a strange feeling-was it fondness?-come upon him as Wheeler spoke.

"Kid's right," Hopper glared. "You are stupid. You're an idiotic bastard who thinks he can touch my daughter!"

El's stomach got a surge of pride at being called his daughter. She had heard him say it before, of course, but he loved him even more every time.

"I believe you are mistaken," Brenner said coolly. "011 is my daughter. She always has been. I raised her. She is loyal to me. Even if she does not know it yet."

"You're a monster," Joyce spat. "You're a monster and how you can wake up every day and live with yourself is completely alien to me. But what amazes me the most is how you think that El is yours. Anyone who treats a child like some experiment is not their parent. They are no better than the experiment itself."

Brenner looked at her. "You are quite the mouthy one. You should be careful, too. You have no idea the power I hold. No idea what we can do to you. Or your children."

"Don't hurt them!" El cried suddenly. "Please don't hurt them!"

"Why not, 011? I am your father. I am the only parent you need. Why those two?"

El glared defiantly. "Because they cared for me when no one else would. You treated me like a lab rat. Well I'm not meant to be caged, Brenner, so tell me what you want. Tell me what horrible thing you want me to do."

"There was another dimension, yes," Brenner continued, as though none of that had happened. "That got corrupted and turned into the Upside Down. For the people in that dimension were different. There, William Byers wasn't taken by any demogorgon. There was no Upside Down. No Starcourt mall caper, you were all normal. Even you, 011. Which is why, in that dimension, 15-year-old Jane Hopper was killed by a careless driver on her way to visit her boyfriend Michael after school."

Like my dream…thought Will.

Jane Hopper? El thought. Wouldn't she be Jane Ives?

"Hawkins lab didn't create the Upside Down until later, when a failed experiment led to an area of the lab becoming quarantined. One night, a few of the poisoned vines escaped and spread, killing everyone in the lab. They then opened up the quarantined area, and the other vines and toxins escaped the lab. As you can imagine, people panicked. It took two years, but the vines reached everywhere, growing into monsters, killing everyone, starting with the people closest to the lab, a family of four, formerly of five until their daughter, or in two cases, sister was killed. Starting to connect the dots?" Brenner asked. "But there was no stopping this toxic anomaly. It destroyed everyone, until eventually, it destroyed the world, thus creating the first Upside Down."

"The first?" Nancy spoke up for the first time.

"Ah yes, that conundrum. You see, there weren't two dimensions. There was that one, our dimension, and another," Brenner told them.

"Another?"

"Yes. And this is where you start to understand. In that dimension, everything that happened here happened there. But you failed in the end. All of you died. And it was real that time. But we in Russia were still alive. We wanted to use the Upside Down's power to our benefit. We attempted to control it. To…harness its power. But we failed as well. The Upside Down took over there, too."

Everyone waited, but it seemed Brenner was finished talking.

"You want to try and do what the other dimensions couldn't," Nancy breathed. "You want to control the Upside Down as a weapon! You're crazy!"

"While that may be true," Brenner said. "We have her. 011. Who has agreed to help us in exchange for your lives. The other dimensions didn't have her. Now, we can use her to our advantage just like we planned."

"You're sick!" Mike exclaimed. "Sick!"

"No, Michael, I am far from sick, I am-" he stopped. "011…what are you doing?"

El was staring at him, head tilted down. He tried to move and found himself unable. A tingling sensation started to go through him. Every other guard in the room was just as scared as he was, unmoving as well.

"011. Stop," he ordered. He heard the snap of her binds breaking as she put forward one hand and he felt his blood start to boil.

"011!" His voice strained, he cried out. "011, stop! I order you to stop!"

But El just raised another hand and said in a sharp tone, "No."

It felt like his insides were on fire. He felt his blood raise to the surface. It looked over his eyes, dribbling into his mouth. But then his mouth began to bleed, too. It came up through his throat and out his lips.

Choking, he cried out again.

"Stop!" His voice was garbling.

His ears and nose started to bleed, too, and with one crack! he felt himself falling.

El felt her powers leave her again, rushing out of her like power out of a walkie talkie. She crashed to the floor, leg binds shattering beneath her, her final use of powers.

She fought to stay conscious. She knew she didn't kill Brenner or the guards. Last time she had tried that trick, although she had used more blood this time, she had felt the life leave those horrible bad men and women. She just felt him lose strength. All of them. She was weaker, but she caused more blood damage.

"El! Are you okay?!" Mike cried. El wiped her nose and stood up, her white converse high tops crunching against the broken metal of her binds.

"I'm okay. Promise," she whispered. "No time. Don't have powers. Let's go."

El panted. Whenever she was weak, so was her vocabulary.

"El, what about the guards outside?" Will asked as she ran over to the machinery behind Brenner's fallen body and started pressing buttons to release the binds.

"We run," She panted. "Put on a uniform."

She finally found the right switch, bright red, and the locks clicked away. Mike looked uncertainly at his leg. He couldn't run with it like that. He was still in so much pain.

El embraced her father, forcing herself not to cry.

"Glad to be your daughter," she whispered so that only he could hear.

"Me too, kid," Hopper murmured and kissed the top of her head.

Everyone scrambled to get to a guard to take their jacket and gun except Nancy and Jonathan, who already had them on. Trying to ignore the blood on the black leather, they all slipped them on.

"Gotta say," Steve said to Robin. "I like this better than our old Scoops Ahoy stuff."

"You and me both!" She agreed, liking the feeling of the leather.

Hopper already had his own jacket on, so he did his best to fit the other one over his.

El looked around. She couldn't take a jacket from the men who had killed her sister. Crouching down next to Kali, she breathed out softly.

Her sister was wearing the same jacket El had been when she left.

Well, not the exact same, that one was hanging up in her closet back at the Byers' house. Touched, she wiped tears from her eyes and stood up. If Kali could wear her jacket after how she abandoned her, she could do this.

Picking up a jacket and gun, El walked over to her father.

"I know you don't like Mike," she whispered. "But please, carry him out. He can't walk. Please."

"Listen kid," Hopper knelt down and put his hand on her shoulder. "Don't tell him, but…Wheeler…he's okay. He really cares about you. I can tell. So we're at a truce, alright?"

"Truce?"

"We're not gonna be at each other's throats anymore, okay, for now. When everything goes back to our definition of normal, we'll see what happens."

El nodded and grinned. They hugged again and stood up.

"Mike!" El called to him as everyone else gathered themselves, looking around worriedly. Anyone could come in that room at any time.

"El, what is it?" Mike looked like he wanted to stand, but he looked down at his leg in dismay. "Everything okay?"

"Listen, my dad's gonna carry you out, we're getting out of here."

"Hopper, really? You sure he won't leave me behind?" Mike asked.

"Yes, don't worry," El smiled knowingly and tossed him a jacket.

Aware that everyone was watching them, El kissed Mike on the forehead. Hopper made a noise of displeasure and El turned and grinned at him.

He heard Joyce snicker beside him.

"What're you laughing at?" He grumbled.

"Nothing," She said innocently.

Rolling his eyes, Hopper walked over to Mike and carefully lifted him up into a position that allowed his leg to be in a comfortable state.

"El," he turned. "What's the plan?"

El blinked in surprise. She had never been asked that before, at least not by an adult. Now everyone was relying on her to get them out safely, and she wasn't going to let them down.

"It's still a frenzy out there," El said after putting her ear to the door. "We can make our way to an exit. I saw one when I was helping Mike. After we reach the surface, we can find some way to call our military. They can come here and get rid of all these bad men."

Though not a completely fail-safe plan, it was the best they could do.

"Everyone ready?" El asked as she put her hand on the door.

"Umm, I don't think so," Hopper said. "You don't have powers right now. You're 15. There's no way you're going first."

Her moment of leadership over, El stepped away from the door.

"But dad, you have Mike!" El exclaimed, wide eyed.

"I'll go first," Joyce offered.

"Fat chance," Hopper scoffed. "We're all going first. In a line. I've got Wheeler, older shits, find a little shit. They're yours to protect until we get out of here."

"You're really good at communicating, you know that?" Joyce, who had grabbed El since Jonathan and Will paired together, said sarcastically.

Hopper turned to her, the slightest hint of a smile playing on his lips. "Oh yeah? Well not everyone can speak Light Language, sweetheart."

The nickname slipped past his lips before he could stop himself. It was meant to sound sarcastic, but it came out softer than the other words.

Joyce noticed it, too, and forced herself not to blush for the sake of her sanity.

"That's okay, I can teach you. I've got a master's degree," She teased.

"Well I'd love to see proof of that once we get the hell outta here," Hopper said.

Hand on the door, he checked to make sure that everyone had a partner.

"Ready?" He turned back to the group.

Everyone gave him a determined nod.

"Let's go."

El had been correct. It was still a crazy madhouse out there. The alarms had stopped, but every guard was still looking for them as they hadn't been told El had been found.

All the older kids pushed the younger ones to the inside of their somewhat circular formation. This disguised their height and features so that no one would see them.

People barely glanced their way, anyways, but some people shot them strange glances at the sight of Hopper carrying Mike.

Everyone was glancing around nervously, and El was clutching Joyce's hand tightly as they walked, glancing uncertainly around.

They kept to the sides of the hallways, turning the directions El whispered, occasionally having to repeat them. They all had to jog fast, as if they were looking for someone, but what was worrying them was Erica.

She was the smallest of all of them, the jacket she wore reaching past her knees. True, she wasn't seen over the heads of all the taller people around her, but she couldn't run as fast as them, and had been forbidden to carry a gun. And whilst being feisty, she could only go so far before getting tired.

"How much farther?" She asked El.

"Don't know," El panted. "It's hard to see…with all the guards around. That way!" El pointed right, seeing the familiar mark of a bloody footprint she left a couple corners before she found the closet.

They all stopped dead.

Around the corner stood the general conversing with two guards…who didn't have jackets, guns, or keycards.

The ones Nancy and Jonathan knocked out. The general must've found them and let them out.

"We have to turn back!" Jonathan hissed.

"But-but I can't find the exit if we do!" El stammered.

"We'll get shot to bits if we don't!"

"Let's split up," Dustin suggested. "We're highly suspicious, we'll have El and the older kids go this way, Mrs. Byers and the, as Hopper so gently put it, 'little shits,' go the other way until the coast is clear. Once they find the exit, they can send someone back up to get the others."

"What did I say about splitting up?" Steve protested. "It never goes well! Ever! When was the last time it went well?!"

Silence.

"We only have about thirty seconds before their rapid-fire conversation is over. Let's leave it up to the adults," Dustin looked to Hopper and Joyce.

"I'm an adult, too!" Steve huffed.

"He means real adults, Harrington," Hopper said gruffly. "And I agree with him. It's our best option. Go back to the other room. Hide there."

"But-"

"We'll only be a few minutes," he turned to Joyce. "How do you feel about this?"

She bit her lip uncertainly. "I-I don't know…what if you get hurt or shot or something and we won't know? And then we'll be stuck, too?"

"If we wait we're even more likely to get blasted into bits," Hopper argued, not unkindly.

She looked from the older kids, who seemed to like Hopper's idea, to the younger, who…also seemed to agree with it.

"Okay," she resented. "But if anything happens to you down there, don't blame me."

They divided themselves quietly. Joyce told Jonathan and El to be extremely careful and tried to reason with Hopper one last time.

"You sure you want to go through with this?"

"Yes, it's the only option. So no one gets hurt, we all make it out safe."

"How do you know we will?" She argued. "We might not."

"It's the best chance we got."

"Be safe," was all she told him.

"Don't die on me, Byers," he muttered to her as he checked on Mike to make sure he was comfortable before they split.

"You either, Hop," she sighed as she walked away.

El looked at Hopper and gave him the okay to start walking. He kept his back to the general, trying to hide Mike from view.

El flinched as they walked by the general and guards, afraid they would spot her and force her into another tank.

Jonathan and Nancy, sensing her nerves, grabbed both of her hands in their own free ones. El whispered for them to turn left and follow the blood trail back to the beginning, which was a couple halls down from their cells.

"Where now?" Hopper asked, the hallways now clear since a the guards had searched that area.

El looked around quickly.

"There," she pointed to another corridor.

They walked through it and saw an exit sign next to a heavy-looking door.

"Should we stop here or get outside and then get the others?" Robin asked.

"Stop here," Hopper suggested. "We have no idea what's out there."

"I'll go get them," El offered.

"Oh hell, no," Hopper said. "I'm going. I remember the directions-somewhat-and don't worry, I'll leave Wheeler."

Mike's face relaxed at that. The last time he was alone with Hopper, it hadn't gone well.

"Besides, I'm much more believable than some teenager," Hopper said reasonably.

"I don't want you getting hurt!" El grasped his hand.

"El, I've done stuff like this over and over again. Don't worry about me. I'll be safe, I promise," he kissed the top of her head and cautiously crept around the corner, laying Mike gently on the ground.

El watched him go, wide-eyed. She wished she didn't keep losing her powers so that she could watch him in The Void.

Agonizing minutes went by, Nancy fiddling with her keycard, ready to unlock the door and get the hell out of that shithole.

Jonathan would peer around the corner, most likely to look for his mom and brother, every two minutes.

Robin and Steve conversed in undertones.

But El had Mike's head in her lap, stroking his hair absentmindedly as she stared off into space, worrying, but mostly thinking about Kali.

"El?" Mike spoke up when he heard her sniffle.

"Yeah?" El said quietly.

"I'm sorry about you're sister, Kali, wasn't it?"

"Yeah," El breathed, blinking away tears.

"I'm sure she didn't want to betray us, Brenner probably did something to her-"

"No," El interrupted. "She betrayed us before she even found us. She told us some of Brenner's plan to get us to come with her. She made the monster appear on the plane."

As El said all of this, she realized it herself. "She rigged it. One way or another, we'd end up in New York, and we'd get captured. They'd get what they wanted by infiltrating us with someone we trusted."

"El," Mike held her hand. "They must've done something to her. The same thing they did to you, but she just couldn't resist it as much."

El smiled at her boyfriend. He always knew how to make her feel even a little bit better.

Rapid footsteps approached and they tensed. Stepping forward with their guns, all the older kids stood in front of Mike and El.

Their friends came running to the door.

"Go, a guard saw us!" Hopper picked up Mike and yanked the keycard from Nancy and shoved it over the sensor, which beeped and the door unlocked.

Forcing everyone through first, Hopper held the door as more footsteps approached.

"Dad, come on!" El exclaimed.

Closing the door behind him, Hopper stepped through.

The first thing they all saw was stairs. Metal stairs in dim lighting climbing up as far as they could see.

As they climbed, El could feel her powers recharging. Coming to realise that the reason they came and went was because they needed to be fully charged for them to last long, El told herself to conserve her energy as they climbed.

They hadn't heard anyone coming after them, which had them relieved.

The staircase was dark and they could barely see the outlines of the steps, and none of them had flashlights, so they walked carefully.

Nancy panted as she took another step. She had been to New York City once. She climbed to the crown of the Statue of Liberty, and she was pretty sure there were less stairs there than there were now.

Suddenly, everyone paused. They had come to the top.

But instead of a door, or even a trapdoor, there was a hole. But something was plugging that hole. It looked almost like a giant boulder. Boulders could be lifted and moved to the side, but from underneath? With only one actually strong person there who really wasn't that strong anymore from being stuck in another dimension?

"What do we do?" Max asked, panting a little.

"Maybe El could lift it?" Mike suggested.

"No, she doesn't have powers, remember?" Max said.

"I do," El spoke up. "But not much. I'm…recharging. I could lift it, but I don't know if I'd be able to use my powers again for a few days."

"Would it hurt you?" Hopper asked her.

"No, it would make me exhausted, but it wouldn't hurt me unless I started to strain myself," El answered, somewhat truthfully.

"Alright. I'll let you do this if you promise not to strain yourself in any way, and that you'll stop if it gets too hard," Hopper told her.

"But if I stop, you guys can't get out!" El realised.

"We'll find another way to get out somehow, I promise," Hopper said.

"Okay, I'll do it."

She wasn't sure how much power she had, or if she could use it at all with all the ways she had pushed herself over the limit in the last day and a half with the plane, the Void, the experiments, and hurting Brenner.

El stretched out a hand. "Everyone get behind me. Just in case," she instructed.

They obliged and El began to try and move the rock. They heard a low-frequency vibration, possibly from the rock itself, and a rumbling like it was moving.

"You can do it, El!" Dustin offered encouragement.

The rumbling sound got louder, and a few pieces of pebble that fell off the rock or were underneath it dropped to the stairs.

El's frown deepened as she held out another hand. A scraping sound met their ears and the stone began to move, pouring dirt and grass onto the staircase.

"El, be careful," Hopper warned.

El's stare grew hard and focused. It was taking all she could not to scream so as not to worry her family.

A crack! sounded and thy saw the rock split down the middle and fall to either side of the hole up top.

Daylight met their eyes and they cheered and embraced El.

The only one tall enough to reach the hole was Hopper, so after setting Mike down on the edge that wasn't obscured by rock, he helped everyone else out.

Mike had to slowly scoot back, but after people got up, they helped him as more and more emerged.

Hopper himself was able to pull himself up and out, but they had no way to close the hole up.

Looking around, they saw they were in a forest, but through the trees, they saw the faint outline of a house.

A/N: So I want to incorporate Murray into the fic somehow, but he most likely won't come until the sequel because the way it's going, there will definitely be a sequel.