Chapter 010: The One Where We Commit Burglary

The first thing I felt when I woke up was a calloused hand grazing my chin. I immediately jolted awake and saw Hopper just a few inches from my face, in the driver's seat with a bloody tissue in his hand. I jumped back but calmed down once I realized what was going on, holding a hand to my chest to slow my heartbeat. "Jesus, you almost gave me a heart attack," I said.

"You've been out for hours."

"I have?"

He looked down at the bloody tissue. "Yeah, you've been bleeding all over the place."

I raised my hand to touch my face, feeling the crustiness of dried blood under my nose. I took a deep breath. "Something happened when I fainted."

"You saw Will," he asked, though it came out more as a statement than a question.

"How'd you know that?"

"You said his name."

I looked down at my hands, my palms still tingling from what had happened. "I think I killed one of the monsters that were after him." Hopper's face remained unchanged as I continued on. "I found him in the little hideaway that we made with Jonathan, and it was like it sniffed me out. It hesitated when it tried to kill me, and I just—I don't know—zapped it kind of."

"You 'zapped' it?"

"Yes—no—I don't know. It was the same thing that happened yesterday, only it was a lot stronger and I—I could control it this time. I ripped it apart, and I killed it, and then I just fainted." I stopped talking so I could analyze his reaction. His expression seemed worried, but not skeptical. "You believe me, don't you?"

He looked at me for a good couple seconds, searching my face, before nodding his head and turning towards the steering wheel. "I wish I could say I didn't," he replied. "Your uncle called the station. He's worried about you." I stayed quiet as guilt started to pulsate through my body. "Does he know?" I shook my head, scared that Hopper had said something and doomed him even more. "Well I told him I brought you in for questioning. I think you should keep all of this under wraps for now. It's obvious that whoever's behind this knows who you are."

My mind drifted back to the man outside the bar. He had said my last name as soon as he saw me. There's no way that was just a coincidence. I had never seen him before in my life. "Did you find out who that guy was working for?"

He shook his head. "No, he was gone as soon as I turned around."

I gulped as fear started creeping its way onto my face. "Do you think someone's after me?"

"I don't know," he replied, not meeting my gaze. It was quiet for a moment as I pondered my fate. I felt like if somebody was coming after me, they would've gotten me by now. I mean, somebody had made Will disappear and faked his death so well that an entire town believed it. I kept thinking about it and making myself panic more and more until Hopper finally snapped me out of it with the creak of his car door opening. My head snapped over to see him climbing out before pausing to lean back in and look at me. "You coming," he asked.

I cocked an eyebrow at him but jumped at the opportunity anyway. This was the first time all day that he had let me leave the car. "What are we doing?"

"We're gonna find the body," he replied simply.

We were back at the coroner's office. Nighttime had fallen by now, so the only light was coming from two bulbs on either side of the entrance. I looked over at Hopper to see he was paying little attention to me as I trailed behind him. Just as we were about to get to the door, I focused in on one of the lights, determined to reassure myself that I wasn't a danger to society. With one more glance, I closed one eye and pointed a single finger at it. That familiar tickle ran through me, though this time it wasn't nearly as powerful, as I watched the light flicker a few times before burning out with a 'pop' sound right next to Hopper's shoulder. I could see him side eyeing me and thought that I had been caught, but all he did was shake his head and mutter something about the wiring in the building.

Coming inside, Hopper had told me not to say anything while he tried to talk our way to the freezers. Upon getting to the front desk, we were greeted by the receptionist, a pretty woman that seemed too wrapped up in her phone conversation to pay us much mind. "Hey, Patty," Hopper greeted, stepping in front of me so I couldn't pipe in.

"Hey, Chief. Need something?"

He shrugged dramatically, and I nearly rolled my eyes. "You know, I forgot my hat here earlier. Been babysitting all day," he said, gesturing towards me. "I'll just be a minute." And with that, we were heading down an unfamiliar hallway only to be greeted by a man in some officer uniform that I hadn't seen before. Hopper pointed towards the book in the man's hand as he started to speak. "Hey, I love that book. It's a nasty mutt."

It's a what?

The officer was immediately alarmed, pushing the book to the side as he scrambled up to block the freezer door. "You can't be back here," he said, glancing over at me for a split second.

I opened my mouth to say something back but was cut off by Hopper's arm hitting me in the shoulder. "Yeah, I just got off the line with O'Bannon," he interrupted. "He said he wanted to see you at the station. Some kind of emergency…"

"I don't work with O'Bannon," the officer replied.

"Did I say O'Bannon? I meant…" he started to trail off. I could see the panic hitting him when he squinted at the man and started nervously smacking his lips together to stall him. "Okay," he finally said as he raised a fist and knocked the man out with one square punch to the temple.

I gasped and jumped back out of sheer surprise. "You know, I'm starting to think violence might always be the answer here."

Hopper ignored me and started fiddling with the officer's keys. Eventually, he was able to unlock the door behind him. When he opened up the door to the freezer, I was immediately hit in the face with an eerie feeling. The atmosphere felt off. I should've felt scared, but I didn't. I wanted answers, and I was going to get them. Neither Hopper or I breathed a word to each other as he pulled open drawer after drawer before finally finding Will's body. Without a second thought, I tugged the blanket down far enough to see his face, and at first glance, it looked almost identical to Will. Hopper's breath hitched as he pulled himself away, but I stayed put. I analyzed every inch of his face, connecting every similarity that I could to the boy that I loved so much. For a moment, I started to doubt myself, even if I didn't fully believe it. Whatever this thing was, it was almost identical to Will.

My hand tremored as I pulled the blanket down to reveal the top of his torso. I could hear Hopper shuffling back and forth behind me, imagining him running a hand over his face each time he exhaled so heavily. I had never seen a dead body before, so I wasn't quite sure what it should look like, but I was sure its skin wasn't supposed to look like a smooth leather seat. I turned to cock an eyebrow at Hopper, who braced himself with a deep breath before rejoining me. When I ran my warm fingers over the ribs, my skin crawled. It didn't feel like anything human, but more like a plastic baby doll. Hopper followed my lead, having a similar reaction. I wasn't sure what the next move was, but it somehow didn't surprise me when I saw him pull out a silver pocketknife. Of course, I thought. I took a step sideways so I was on the opposite side of the body, giving Hopper a good amount of space as he brought the knife down into its chest. I held my breath when the blade started ripping through, only to gasp when I saw what was inside of it. A clump of polyester stuffing spilled out onto the table. I was right. The body was fake.

Hawkins Lab might have been the scariest place to be at night. I had heard horrific rumors about that place, like the one where they were hiding half mutant-half human babies in the basements. Hopper had made sure to tell me those were all just crazy stories that some lunatic made up years ago, but that didn't mean anything to me. "Are you sure we're not going to get freeze rayed or something?"

Hopper sighed as I watched him clip away at the barbed wire fence surrounding the lab. "Kid, you gotta stop talking, or I'm gonna change my mind about this whole thing."

"Oh, I'm sorry. Are you the one that's possibly being hunted by these people, or is that just me? I feel like I'm obligated to freak out just a little bit."

"Yeah, well if you get us caught, you're going to be freaking out a lot more."

I rolled my eyes and let out a huff, obliging to him, but not happily. The two of us stayed pretty quiet as we continued on. Hopper had cut the fence up just enough to slip through it without causing a commotion. My eerie feeling kept growing the closer we got to the building. I wasn't sure how we were going to get inside, and I'm not totally sure Hopper knew either, so when he caught sight of two workers swinging the door open behind them, he seized the opportunity, pulling me along with him.

We managed to make it into the first hallway without being seen. Neither of us had found anything yet, but something still seemed so off about the place. What were they hiding and why was it such a secret? I looked over to Hopper, wondering if he was thinking the same thing, but just as I had, two workers in white lab coats came zooming out of the hallway. Hopper grabbed the back of my sweater and pulled me into an adjacent room, pushing me over to the other side of the door. I held my breath as the workers passed by the room, trying to listen in on what they were saying. None of it turned out to be very helpful, just the two going over some paper that had done.

Hopper was making his way out of the room the second the workers were out of earshot. I hurried along behind him, my nerves even more out of whack than they were at the start of this whole thing. We were already almost caught, and it hadn't been more than ten minutes yet. I could tell that Hopper wasn't ready to pack up and leave just yet though, and I'm a little bit grateful for it. Sure, I had these weird powers that were probably a pretty big advantage now, but I was also a sixteen-year-old girl with no clue what I was doing with them and would have definitely ran away by now if I was on my own, especially when I saw a hallway draped in plastic with a biohazard symbol on it. I drifted over to Hopper, who simply just shrugged at me and stepped inside. I took a deep breath before following behind him.

The hallway was cold with dim, fluorescent lights above the ceiling. If it were in any other building in the world, it would've been fine, but something was telling me that this place wasn't as quiet and innocent as Hopper had told me it was. If he didn't suspect something was going on, we wouldn't be here sleuthing around in the middle of the night. I kept wondering as we turned a corner, Hopper fiddling with the knob on one of the doors. It was in that moment that I heard something sneaking up behind us. It wasn't loud enough for him to hear it over the sound of the doorknob jingling, but I was able to just barely hear the heels of a leather boot scraping against the floor. My eyes darted over to Hopper, who was still trying to get through the door, before I made my decision.

If someone caught us, we were done for. I knew this even before stepping out into view. If these people were already after me, then it was better to protect Hopper. I was immediately greeted by two men, one in a blue suit and another in an officer uniform, and a gun to the face. "Hey, hey, hey, hands up, hands up," the man in the suit hollered. Hopper immediately poked his head out behind me as I raised my arms up in surrender. "You forget about all the cameras?"

"Dr. Brenner asked for us specifically, okay," Hopper chimed in. "How else do you think we got in here?"

"And what's your name," the man asked, looking over at me.

"Jim H—"

Before he could finish, I managed to shoot a small, white sliver out the palm of my hands and towards the two men, flinging them against the wall opposite of us with a loud 'thud' as Hopper reached for the gun in his pocket. The men both crumbled to the ground, still breathing but very much unconscious. I grabbed their guns with one hand and an ID badge with the other, tossing the badge to Hopper before pulling back on the guns to empty the magazines into my pocket and tossing them back on the ground.

When I turned around, I was met with a grin from Hopper. "What," I asked, confused as to why he was just standing there.

"That was good," he replied, beaming at me like a proud father.

I felt my cheeks getting hotter by the second. "Well," I said, trying to hide my embarrassment, "it's better than shooting at them."

He chuckled, beaming at me one more time before swiping the ID badge outside the locked door. It swung open with a loud buzz. I watched the unconscious bodies of each men disappear behind it and about had a heart attack when Hopper shot at the ID box inside of the room. The spark from the gunshot was really the only thing I was able to see in the room until Hopper pulled a flashlight from his pocket. The two of us exchanged a look, both full of hope that we were going to find the real Will here and bring him back home. Hopper turned towards the dark space in front of us before calling out, "'Will? Will?"

We stayed close together as we kept searching through the room, managing to make it into a dark hallway adjacent to it. So far, the search was proving to be pretty pointless. I noticed a few cameras around the place and, thinking back to a couple minutes ago, flicked a finger towards each one so that they shorted out. It wasn't until we turned the corner that things started to get confusing. Hopper was the first to see it, stopping in his tracks so quickly that I nearly ran into him. I followed the light of his flashlight, and that's when I saw the strangest thing. There was a small bed in the corner, no bigger than a child's, with a stuffed lion sitting on top of a neatly made sheet. I held back a gasp, now totally convinced that this place served as some kind of prison. I stepped into the room as Hopper shined his light around it, stopping on a drawing hung on the wall.

I starting moving closer to get a better look at it. Even being just a few inches from it, I couldn't tell what the picture was. All I could see were two stick figures, one with the number eleven written over it, and the other with the word 'papa'. The two were standing in front of what I only assumed could be a table with a small creature sitting on top of it and a teardrop shaped light hanging from the ceiling. Whoever had drawn the picture couldn't have been more than thirteen. Hopper creeped up behind me to get a closer look. I don't know why, but I felt some kind of connection to the drawing, pulling me towards it and forcing me to reach out.

When my fingers grazed the rough surface of the paper, I was taken from reality, only this time I knew I was still conscious. This vision was more like watching a movie rather than being emersed in a whole different reality. I saw a small child sitting in the middle of the room, her head shaved and a hospital gown wrapped around her small frame. I couldn't make out what she was saying, but I could see her lips moving together in a mumble as she stared at the drawing in front of her. Her eyes closed as I felt the presence of another person getting closer and closer before the door swung open, a man with fluffy, white hair on the other side. He was wearing a dress shirt and vest with a bowtie, looking much more well off than the girl. I saw her eyes open with a smile as she eagerly shoved the picture towards him. I could see the faintest smile coming from the man as the vision started to blur and turn back into reality.

"You okay," Hopper asked, his flashlight now pointing towards me.

I nodded, opening my mouth to say something, but a loud alarm started blaring throughout the building. Hopper wasted no time in grabbing me, taking off in a run and pulling me with him through the halls all while continuing to call out for Will. He tried a few doors before making it to a set of double doors with a safety light hanging over it. We could hear a group of voices coming towards us as Hopper pressed a few buttons on the panel next to the doors. They started sliding as the two of us waited anxiously for a couple seconds, Hopper pulling me in as soon as they opened up and jamming the close button just as the voices caught up to us. I was able to catch the last glimpse of a group of guards, all dressed in the officer uniforms that the first man had been in, and then the doors closed tightly in front of me.

At that point, I had no clue how we were going to get out of there, but I knew that whatever we were looking for had to be behind these doors. Hopper and I rounded the corner as I noticed something familiar in the air. There were pieces of black debris floating around, just like it did in the other world. I felt the hair on the back of my neck stand up. I didn't say anything, reaching out for comfort from Hopper and grabbing one wrist with both of my hands. The atmosphere got denser and denser with each step we took until we finally found it. My breath hitched in my chest as soon as my eyes found it, Hopper muttering a shaky, "what the hell," from beside me.

What stood in front of me was something just like the other world, only much more terrifying. There were no monsters, but there were the same thick, slimy tentacle vines branching out from what I could only describe as a big hole in the wall. The hole was covered in the same kind of substance, only it was spread across it like spider webs. The reason this felt so different from the other world was because I swore I could feel the vines pulsating under my feet. I watched Hopper inch closer to it before outstretching his hand. I gasped, pulling him away in fear of what would happen. My head then started with the familiar spinning sensation as I realized my hand had brushed against the slimy webs. I started to black out as I looked to Hopper for help, hearing a loud bang before I was out completely.