Chapter 3 - The Escape Plan
"So you say, Dr. Owens. That you let him take her just so she had a chance to live an… ordinary life?" he asked with a tensed but somewhat patient voice. He shuddered at the word "ordinary"; always didn't quite get the positive perception of the word.
"Yes," Owens breathed out. "She had a right to live an ordinary…" He gave a nod to a man standing beside Dr. Owens and he hit him in his stomach with his fist like it was something casual, Owens moaned in pain and cowered on his chair a little bit more. His hands were cuffed behind his back.
"You gave him her birth certificate with her real parents' names," he continued. "And you made the adoption possible…"
"You don't get me… correctly, I believe. He already knew…" Owens tried to breathe and talk, but it wasn't easy with such a pain in the stomach, also his back hurt like hell.
"I know he knew about Terry," Brenner shrugged, starting to feel bored. There was a moment of silence as Owens tried to catch his breath. Then he looked up into Brenner's eyes.
"He knew about Andrew too," Owens said clearly. "He knew all about him."
"He knew him from Vietnam…" Brenner grew solemn within an instant as everything started to make sense. "Does she know about the paternity?"
"How would I know?" Brenner looked at the men beside Owens so he would hurry with his thinking. "But if I could bet, I would say she knew just about the mother." Brenner nodded.
"Chief is gone. Where is she now?" he asked.
"In New Mexico with the Byers family... The address is somewhere in my diary. But…"
"Thank you, Dr. Owens. You were very helpful," Brenner stood up.
"Dr. Brenner. It is useless to track her. Just let her be, her powers…" Brenner nodded to the men now and another hit ended up in his stomach.
"Even if they were gone, we're just gonna bring them back won't we, Dr. Owens?" Brenner smiled. "From now on you will focus on the research. I put my faith in your capabilities." Dr. Owens bent his head down closing his eyes.
"Dr. Brenner? You have an important call," an assistant entered the room. Brenner nodded and left in a hurry to answer the call. "Who is it?" he asked the assistant on the way.
"You will see. Trust me you will be interested. It's about her."
Brenner frowned and took the receiver. "Hello?"
"Martin Brenner?" said a man's voice.
"Yes, who is speaking?"
"George Peterson, the principal of West High School."
"Yes?"
"It was hard to find you. I heard you're in search of Jane Hopper."
"Yes… Oh yes, I am."
"I have information, but I want to know why you are looking for her. There have been very strange things happening in my school you know. Very strange, indeed. I was thinking about informing the media about this..."
"Unfortunately that is a top secret file, so it´s not possible for me to tell you. Especially not on the phone. But I can of course - if your information is valuable enough - and if you keep it for yourself… provide you with a reward."
"Are we talking about... an abundant reward, here?"
"Like I said tell me what you´ve got and I will reward you. You can start with the strange things that happened."
"I've never seen electricity going down just on one floor of the building along with all the windows breaking… With no earthquake or anything like that detected. Also there has been suspicion of child abuse in the foster family. Jane seemed to me very… uneducated in… the social kind of things. The kids say she is a very weird timid girl and since the basement incident in the showers some of them had been scared of her."
"In the showers…" Brenner repeated slowly.
"Yes, she had… a breakdown. Unfortunately, the same situation happened in her home during Thanksgiving. She's been hospitalized. I have a friend in the hospital. So I know the details… She will probably be examined for a mental disorder and if it is so, she might be taken from Mrs. Byers' custody legally. That's why I am calling you, they said only you can take proper care of this so she would get proper therapy. All I want for my students is to feel safe in our school again, Dr. Brenner. I am sure you understand." He wasn't sarcastic, basically he just didn't want this psychopath to be around or… hurt by her own family, he believed that she would only have a chance to cure in an asylum for this kind of people. Also they said that he would get a fortune for this. He had connections good enough to be able to find Brenner. That was all he needed. After all this will end, everyone will be better. His niece, his school, his students, his family, he himself, Mrs. Byers, Will, the whole town maybe… and even Jane. Right?
Brenner almost burst into maniacal laughter. "I can assure you… that we will take care of it. And I will send you your abundant reward, Mr. Peterson. All you will need to do is to sign some papers, so we would make sure this stays between us. No media, Mr. Peterson and the country will reward you. I will let you speak about it with my assistant now. It was a pleasure," he put the receiver down and gave instructions to the assistant.
"It worked just perfectly. I think she heard us. Get the car ready, Martha please…" he said. He was going to New Mexico.
Hospital, New Mexico
They did save her life. Her heart was beating steadily now. And she was breathing. They told them that she would have to wake up soon, but she didn't. The doctors didn't know how this could be possible. There was no reason for her to be in a coma, her body was working as it would be active in normal life, like she would be awake. But she was not. Definitely strange. Strange as it could get. The family's descriptions of how she got in such a state were very vague and they were not helping at all. Something wasn't right, so the doctor just checked to which school she was going and since the principal was a good friend of his, he just called him in secret. They put three and three together and searched for someone who would know her and Byers back in Hawkins. It actually took just a few days. And they found Brenner. This girl would bring them fortune.
Mike was anxious. Just like everyone else. He was glad it was Friday and he didn't have to go back to Hawkins right now. He couldn't imagine leaving her on Sunday while she would be in the state. In a freaking hospital. He had to be there when she would wake up.
"We must do something. Anything…" He sat next to El´s bed and just felt hopeless. All he could do was hold her hand.
"He is right, they see this is not normal," Will whispered to Joyce.
"Maybe we should just take her out of here," Nancy said nervously. "I don't like the way they are acting. What if they will call someone?"
Joyce was pacing around the hospital room. "What are we going to do? Steal her from the hospital and face child abuse allegations? They could use this against me and take you all away from me. The principal thinks I am neglecting the upbringing."
"What?" Mike blurted out.
"Because…" she started but looked down.
"Because of the period." Nancy whispered desperately. "The showers…?"
"Yes," Joyce nodded.
"Dear god," Nancy sat down trying to think.
"They can't take her!" Mike said anxiously, imagining they would just give her to the bad people again. "They can't take her!"
"I know!" Joyce almost yelled. "Trust me, I know! She should have never gone to the school!" she wept. "I failed. Hopper would kill me…"
"Mum…" Jonathan whispered soothingly but they really were in trouble.
"Maybe we should just take her and run far away from here as fast as we can…" Mike said.
"Mike she is a minor, they will sue me… they will say that she was in a coma and I endangered her life by taking her away. We have to wait for her to at least wake up so I could take her from the hospital and then? Then maybe you are right and we should hide her, keep her safe..."
"What if… what if what she said was right?" Mike said after a moment of silence. He looked down at her hand he was holding, the one with the 011 tattooed on the wrist. Only someone really sick could do that. Tattoo kids and experiment on them, take them away from their parents. If they were sick enough to do this, they were also sick enough to abuse her. In any kind of way. To break her down and have her under control. His stomach churned at the thought. She was only a child. And now the past could repeat itself. He remembered the first time they met, and the following days. "Sick bastards! We can't let them take her," he looked at Nancy and Joyce and then at Will and Jonathan. Joyce caressed El's cheek. "Honey, they won't take you, I promise."
Nancy went to Jonathan and whispered to him that they needed a gun so they could just leave the hospital. And then they could run and take El to Murray. Hide her there. Jonathan was thinking about her plan. It wasn't so bad, he guessed. He went to Joyce and whispered to her: "Mum, we could take her to Murray, c'mon." Joyce looked at him and then at Nancy knowing she was the author of this plan.
"Are you crazy? We are going to become outlaws now?" she whispered back.
"Better than seeing them taking her away," Jonathan said. Joyce gave a sigh.
"It's a day-long trip to go to Illinois by car," Joyce said. "They will find us before we even get there. They will call it a kidnapping. Are you two serious?"
"Guys, maybe you could tell us the plan," Will said. Jonathan said Will and Mike in a low voice.
"Let's do it," Mike said. "I am not letting them take her."
"But this won't stop. We will be on a run forever," Joyce said. "Maybe we should wait and take her home in calm. She has no powers, maybe they wouldn't want to take her." They all tried to keep calm, but they couldn't. They were ready to fight for her if anything bad happened. For now, the situation seemed to be calm. Too calm in fact. For once in a while a doctor or a nurse came to check up on El, but no one spoke to them in a weird tone.
Meanwhile, Nancy was trying to find a way in this hospital and how could they take El out to the car. She managed to find a nurse's clothes and she stole it on the way out of the toilet. The plan was to take El's bed and transport her to the ground floor as a nurse. And then they would just take her to the back door for an ambulance and then to the car. Nancy, Jonathan and Will went back home to pack some things. They hoped Joyce would be on the board with them once she saw this was their only chance and that they were ready to do this. Will called Max, Lucas and Dustin as for a red code. They agreed they should immediately take El away from the hospital. Dustin even looked up the hospital's plan and helped them to find a way which would be better to take.
Back in a hospital a doctor came back to talk with Joyce. "Mrs. Byers. I see that some of you already went home to take some rest. Maybe you should do the same. We would call you if the situation would change."
"No, I will sleep here. I want to be here when she wakes up. Thank you," Joyce said. The doctor smiled and left.
"Mike? We should at least try to reach her again… Before we do this," Joyce whispered. "If we will just run… I don't see how we could go on living normally… as Hopper would want us. We need to try…I need your help. If there is someone to reach her it must be you." He nodded and thought it through.
"What if we put her into water?" She nodded quickly and went to check the hall. It seemed calm so she closed the door. Joyce went to the private bathroom and got the bathtub ready, they were lucky the room had one. Then she helped Mike to detach El from all the tubes. They would take her to the bathroom and they locked the door. They would put El in the tub full of water.
"Honey, El can you hear me?" Joyce whispered, taking her hand.
"El, El, El please… Please follow my voice when I am here, please come back. You need to wake up, please!
Eleven
All this darkness. This is all my fault; they would hate me if they knew. I would lose them, I am already losing them since I feel like I need to push them away from me because it is too late; the bomb will explode and the casualties will be too bad if they are around. I got to a weird place. Not the dark place I knew where I would be looking for people and going wherever I wanted. Or wherever they asked me to go. This was a windy place. Close to the sea. But not like the California Billy's beach I explored before. This was a cliff and there was a lighthouse. A storm was coming. And only one man that would be speaking to me in this place was Papa.
"Did you think it was over Eleven? Did you think we won't come back for you?"
I sat curled up on the cliff trying to ignore his voice. And I tried to come back but I did not know how, I had no idea where I was.
"You have no powers now, and you are useless to them. To anyone really. What would anyone want from you now?"
"Mike loves me."
"He liked you when you were so… cool with your superpowers… Bitchin´? Did you use that word? Now? You´re just worthless, aren't you? And we will come for you anyway. And this time, you will have no powers to save anyone. They will all die… and maybe you will be spared, just to see how weak you are." This wasn't papa really, it seemed to me The Mindflyer or my own demons were fighting inside of me. I cried. How do you fight something you don't see? I screamed Mike's name and it echoed only to be hushed by the waves crashing on the cliff.
It seemed like a hundred years and I met no one. Until Papa actually appeared on the cliff. "Eleven…"
"Don't come near me!" Then I felt a drop of rain falling on my face. I looked up for a moment as the storm seemed to be starting finally. And with the drop I suddenly could hear Mike's voice. And Joyce's too.
"Oh… come to me and everything will be alright again. No one will be hurt!"
"You… lie, somebody always gets hurt," I said to him but he continued to approach and reached out his hand for me. "I said go away from me."
"Or what? Really Eleven? What could you do? Don't be silly and take your papa´s hand." The rain was falling down hard now. As he approached I was taking steps back until I reached the edge of the cliff. "We're going home."
"No…"
"Soon you will be safe home, I promise you, Eleven."
"No!"
"We could bring your powers back."
"Liar!"
"El! Please come back to me… Please wake up. Follow my voice…I am here!" This voice was coming from the sea so I just looked up to papa and I said: "Friends don't lie" Then I jumped off the clip. It was the only way. A jump. As I fell to the sea water it was like I just emerged from it and I was in my dark space and then I fell again to the water on the ground there and then I woke up.
She inhaled deeply and sat up as she woke up in a bathtub with a scream.
"El?" Mike hugged her. "El. El, it's okay. You're back!"
Joyce was crying with happiness. "Honey, you woke up!" El was breathing heavily as she was so confused. She was in a shock. She looked up to them and hugged them back. Then they heard a knock on the door.
"Mrs. Byers! Where is your daughter?" It was a nurse and a doctor. They were in the room.
"Shit," Joyce whispered and stood up.
"She woke up and she is taking a bath," she answered.
"Open the door immediately, Mrs. Byers!"
"Just a moment!"
"El, c'mon stand up." They helped her quickly to stand up and got her out from the tub wrapping her into a towel. Then Joyce helped her to take off the hospital gown because they couldn't see her so soaked in it and they got her into a bathrobe which Joyce found hanging on the door. El just looked at them in total confusion but she was close to Mike, that was all she needed. He kissed her forehead to soothe her. "It's okay, El. It's okay," he held her close. "We had to take you to a hospital. But it's going to be okay now."
Then Joyce opened the door. The doctor and the nurses were alarmed, they even called the security. "Mrs. Byers. What on earth were you doing in the bathroom along with the boy and a girl in a coma, I would really like to hear your explanation. Maybe we should call the police."
"She is okay. She woke up and just asked us to take her to the bathroom, I don't see anything bad with that. The boy is her boyfriend." Mike held El closer to him; she looked so scared. No one was taking her. Or touching her. "May I ask you for a new gown. We managed to soak the old one on the bathroom´s floor…" she smiled at the nurse. The nurse looked at her first awkwardly and then in shock.
In the meantime, Nancy, Will and Jonathan were arriving in two cars to the hospital´s parking lot. They were all nervous. They entered the hospital all determined and Nancy with Jonathan wanted to go straight to toilets to change themselves into the nurses' clothing. But something stopped them, the security was running in the El's ward direction.
"Oh my god," Nancy whispered and they ran through the hall straight to El's room. When they arrived they found a lot of people there. And they saw that El was awake.
"El! Mike!" Will would call as he wanted to run to them.
"What the hell happened?" Jonathan asked the doctor who was fighting with Joyce.
"These are her sons!" one of the nurses called. There was such a panic and chaos in this room but it seemed like an imitation to Nancy; like they would be hysterical on purpose. The tension escalated.
"Call the police right now," a doctor asked a nurse.
"What?" Jonathan raged. "Why?"
"Because… your mother, and this boy…" he pointed to Mike. El looked at them confused and just wrapped her hands around Mike so no one would separate them. "They just attempted to kill this poor girl. They wanted to drown her in the bathtub!"
"That is a fucking bullshit!" Jonathan protested. And all of them screamed it is not true.
"That's a lie!" Mike yelled. "We woke her up…"
"By pulling her head under the water?" the doctor laughed. "Just don't let anyone leave!" He looked at security. "And take the girl away from them. Look how scared she is!" El started to breathe heavily as she tried to hold onto Mike. He pulled her away from them and held her as tightly as he could.
"No! No... don't do that!" Joyce tried to stop them with tears in her eyes. But the security would just grab her. And they also grabbed Jonathan and Nancy so they wouldn't be able to help Mike.
"Get your hands off me!" Nancy yelled but no one seemed to care. They approached Mike and El who still stood in the bathroom. Mike would see everything in the slow motion now as the adrenaline would take all over him.
"No…" El managed to whisper but as she felt they were taking her away from him she started to scream. "No! Mike!" The cries were heart-breaking to all of them.
"El!" Mike would try to fight them and Will too, but they were much stronger and there were many of them. It was so easy for them to take El even though she was also trying to break free. She tried to use her powers even, but they didn't seem to be back. Mike managed to punch one of them into the face but the man would do the same and Mike fell to the floor with blood on his face.
"Are you crazy?" Will yelled at them.
"He is her boyfriend, for fucks sake!" Jonathan screamed. "Can't you see she wants to stay?" No one would answer them, they just took El away. To a different room, different part of the building. They would all hear her screams echoing in the hall until she was just too far from them.
"Did you all go nuts?" Joyce cried. "No one here would ever try to hurt the girl… apart from you as I noticed," she addressed the men who stayed with them in the room, but no one would talk to them anymore. The doctor just said:
"We're calling the police. Nurse, help the boy with the nose!" And then he left.
Will helped Mike to stand up, but he wouldn't let the nurse touch her. He tried to go to the door, tears actually streaming down his face. All he could hear was her voice still screaming, his heart sank, her face… he could still see her, so scared… in shock… she woke up to a nightmare and he didn't even manage to protect her. "Shit!"
The police were there in almost five minutes. They needed Hopper, but he was gone. There was no way how they could explain this. The local chief ordered his men to search all of them. They found Jonathan's gun, they found the staff uniforms Nancy was holding under her jacket, they found the supercon, they found a sketch of the hospital with the way out, they found the two car's keys. And in the parking lot close to the back entrance for the ambulance cars they found two cars fully packed for a long trip, they found the state's highway maps. They knew what to look for. With the testimony of the nurses, the doctor and Mr. Peterson, the principal of the girl's high school and also with the testimony of some of the students Mr. Peterson showed them, the conclusion was quite clear. They were all taken into custody, accused of attempted murder or kidnaping... among other things.