I do not own Stranger Things or any of the characters.
Plan
Thirteen stared at Billy in silence. Things were complicated. The Hawkins Lab had been deserted, but Hopper, Joyce, and Bob were trying to find out about the man who had attacked Hopper, since, after speaking with Dustin about what he'd been up to, they were operating under the assumption that he was Russian, and was part of some operation at the Starcourt Mall, where there was apparently a delivery door armed by Russians armed with rifles. Hopper had decided to avoid kicking the hornets' nest until he knew what he was dealing with, at least directly, so he was starting with a single Russian before switching to the entire operation. Dustin, Steve, and Steve's coworker, Robin, who'd apparently translated and then cracked the Russian code Dustin had accidentally intercepted on Cerebro the day he set it up, were at the mall monitoring the operation, and they hadn't been able to get ahold of Jonathan or Nancy. That left Thirteen and the rest of the children to deal with Billy, who they'd all agreed was the first host, though not the only one, anymore.
"I have a plan," Mike said. "Come on."
"Where are you going?" Max asked.
"Boys only!" Mike called back. "Trust me!"
He, Lucas, Will, and Thirteen all ran into the boys' bathroom, Thirteen immediately heading to the sauna as soon as he saw there was one.
"This is going to be close," Thirteen said.
"It's the best plan we've got," Mike said. "We'll wait until the pool closes, until everyone leaves, and somehow get him to come in here to here." He tugged the sauna door open, only for the several fat, sweaty men inside to yell at him, all of them wearing only a towel.
"Didn't need to see that," Thirteen said.
"I think I just threw up in my mouth a bit," Lucas said.
"I can act as the bait," Thirteen said, leading the others back out to Max, Eleven, and Kali. "The sauna."
"The sauna?" Max asked.
"We'll use it to cook the Mind Flayer out of Billy," Thirteen said. "Once the pool's closed and everyone leaves."
"How hot does it get?" Will asked.
"Two hundred twenty degrees," Thirteen said. "I checked. The controls are outside the sauna, next to the door."
"So, we lock him in," Lucas said.
"Heat him up," Will continued.
"And kick him the fuck out of Max's asshole brother," Thirteen said. "And if we're somehow wrong about all of this, at least it's just Billy we're terrorizing."
"I'm really not sure which would be the preferable outcome, at this point," Max said, glancing at her brother, as did Thirteen.
He was on the lifeguard stand, but had on a hat, sunglasses, a long-sleeved, light-colored shirt, and a white blanket over his legs.
"Hopefully it's just Billy," Thirteen said. "What do we do while we wait?"
The others all glanced around at each other.
"Let's wait in the car," Kali said.
"There are too many for that," Thirteen said, looking around. "Ellie, check on the others while we have a bit of time before having to do anything about Billy."
Eleven nodded and sat down, Lucas grabbing his radio out of the car, Mike grabbing his as well so that Lucas could turn his to a channel of static.
Eleven jabbed her chin at Billy, hurling him into the wall of the sauna opposite the door, shattering the tile. Billy shouted in pain, but as he fell to the floor, Thirteen and the others swept into the room, Thirteen swiping a hand and slamming the sauna's door closed, then swung his arm toward the temperature controls, cranking the heat setting all the way up. A second later, Lucas had chained the door shut and padlocked it. Thirteen stepped up beside Eleven as Billy shouted in rage and pounded on the door.
"Max," Billy said, staring at her somewhere between confused, stunned, and pleading.
"If we're wrong, I'll explain everything," Max promised. "If we're right, this is for your own good."
For the next few minutes, they waited, Billy shouting over and over for them to let him out before finally dropping to the ground, beginning to sob out over and over that it wasn't his fault.
"What's not your fault, Billy?" Max asked, watching him through the window.
"I've done things, Max, really...really bad things!" Billy sobbed. "But it's not my fault, okay? He made me do it!"
"Who made you, Billy?" Max asked.
"I don't know," Billy sobbed. "It's like a shadow! It's like a really giant shadow! Please believe me, Max, it's not my fault! I tried to stop him, okay!? I did! Please believe me, Max!"
Thirteen sensed the shift in Billy's thoughts and pulled Max away from the window as Billy reached under the bench he was leaning on for a jagged piece of tile. And yet, he could sense the conflict. He could sense Billy fighting against the Mind Flayer's control somewhere deep inside his mind, but it was a losing battle.
"Billy, fight it!" Thirteen shouted. "The heat will force it out, but you have to fight it! You have to hold on!"
Then, the window shattered, Billy's right arm and head reaching out through it, pounding on the door as he demanded to be let out. He grabbed a pipe Mike had shoved through the handle and hurled it aside, but just as he did, Thirteen snarled, shoving a hand forward. Billy shot backward, slamming into the opposite wall again and being pinned there. Above them, the lights began to flicker rapidly. Then, Billy shouted in pain, black lines spreading through his skin like veins, starting at his back and traveling forward. Then, as they reached his face, he roared. He slammed his arms into the wall, bouncing off of it, only for Thirteen to shove him harder, pinning him to the wall.
"Hold him!" Max shouted.
Billy tried again, and Eleven added her telekinesis to the hold. Then, all at once, he exploded forward, slamming into the door with the force of a pickup truck and shattering the frame where the chain was attached. He landed in a roll, regaining his feet, only for Eleven to immediately hurl a barbell at him, pinning him to the wall. For a moment, it held, before Billy roared and sent it flying at Eleven. Thirteen waved his right hand, deflecting the barbell toward the sauna, then shoved his left, slamming Billy into the wall. His right swung back around and a spherical barrier exploded into Billy's head from the side, hurling him aside as the barrier shattered into oblivion.
"We need to knock him out, Eleven!" Thirteen snapped urgently. "Like we did Will when he was possessed!"
Eleven nodded just as Billy hurled himself to his feet. He exploded first into Thirteen, sending him flying across the room into the wall, then caught Eleven by the hair, then gripped her throat, lifting her over his head as he squeezed. Then, Mike slammed the bar from the door into the back of his head, knocking him to the ground. As he swung again, Billy rolled, catching the bar. Thirteen narrowed his eyes and swiped a hand, the chain exploding free of the sauna door and coiling itself around Billy's throat, constricting. Billy hurled Mike aside, writhing and pulling at the chain. Thirteen held it tight enough to knock him out without crushing his throat. He had to be careful. Except, he didn't have the chance to worry. Before he could, Billy roared and the chain exploded free of his neck as his strength exceeded the chain's tensile strength, shattering links and hurling the rest of the chain aside. Then, he bolted, exploding through a brick wall and out of the building before fleeing on foot. Thirteen groaned, collapsing to the ground, and Kali ran to help him up, Max helping Eleven up, both of their faces dripping blood.
"We were so close," Thirteen growled, shaking his head. "We'll save him next time, Max."
"How can we try again?" Max asked. "He's got superhuman strength!"
"And we have the ability to get our hands on horse tranquilizer," Thirteen said. "Even the Mind Flayer can't overpower physiology."
Max stared at him for a moment before sighing, nodding. "Okay. Next time."
"What do we do for right now?" Lucas asked.
"We get the fuck out of here," Thirteen said. "We need to regroup, and Ellie and I need to recharge."
They all nodded and left the pool's bathroom quickly.
"We've been trying to get ahold of you for days!" Mike snapped. "We tried to warn you! The Mind Flayer's possessed Billy!"
"He's not the only one," Nancy said. "Mrs. Driscoll, a woman we talked to a few days ago, went nuts and started eating fertilizer, so they took her to the hospital. My boss said she was a paranoid schizophrenic, but that didn't sound right. There was something wrong with the rat she caught, long story, so I went to see her last night. Then, all of a sudden, she started screaming and these black lines started to appear under her skin, just like Will right before the Mind Flayer was forced out. She's been possessed, too, and I think maybe the rat she caught was. Which means a lot of rats probably were."
"Shit," Thirteen sighed. "That'll complicate things. But that explains why it didn't feel as powerful this time. Its small fragment that was in Will has been dispersing itself even more to possess more people. Each time it splits to infect someone, it gets a little weaker."
"Weak enough for you to use your powers to force it out?" Nancy asked.
"No," Thirteen said. "It's still a hundred times stronger than me. And even if it wasn't, I don't know how to do that. I know how to read thoughts, not access someone's mind directly or control them, much less force out something that is controlling them."
"So, what do we do?" Jonathan asked.
Thirteen shook his head, glancing around at the others.
"What time last night was it?" Mike asked.
"Around nine," Nancy said.
"You waited all night to call?" Jonathan asked.
"You weren't there?" Will asked.
"Well, I'm here now, aren't I?" Jonathan asked.
"Hallelujah," Nancy said sarcastically.
"Oo," Lucas said sympathetically.
"Um, so, what time was your...sauna test?" Nancy asked.
"Around nine," Thirteen said. "They're all linked."
"Yeah, she's flayed, just like Billy," Mike said.
"Flayed?" Jonathan asked.
"Controlled by the Mind Flayer," Thirteen said.
"If there are two, plus the rats," Will began.
"We have to assume there are more," Lucas finished.
"Heather," Eleven said.
"Definitely," Thirteen nodded.
"Billy was doing something to her," Eleven said. "She was scared. She was screaming."
"And if the Mind Flayer has Heather, and wants to expand his army, we should assume Heather got to her parents," Thirteen said.
"Tom," Nancy said.
"Who?" Mike asked.
"My boss," Nancy said, then caught herself. "My former boss, Tom Holloway, looked sick when he fired us, and he had a bandage on his head like he'd cut it somehow."
"Sick how?" Thirteen asked.
"Dark circles under his eyes, sweating a lot," Nancy said.
"Flayed," the children all said.
"We need to go," Nancy said. "Now."
She and Jonathan all but ran out of the house, everyone else following and splitting between Nancy's car and Kali's, Kali following Nancy away from the house. A few minutes later, Thirteen used his telekinesis to get them into Tom's house, only for them to find almost a dozen different cleaning products' containers abandoned on the kitchen's island counter and the sink, all empty.
"Jesus, do you think they're guzzling this shit?" Jonathan asked.
"Either that or they went on a hell of a cleaning spree," Nancy said.
"They're mixing chemicals," Thirteen said, picking up a tube that had some kind of white powder before. "Using their own bodies as test tubes."
"Why?" Nancy asked.
"They're making something," Mike said. "The Mind Flayer forcing them to create something by mixing these chemicals. That's why they all look so sick. They're consuming poison."
"But what are they making?" Max asked. "And last year, Will didn't eat chemicals, did you?"
"No," Will said. "This is something new."
They continued into the house, finding the dining room where there was a dinner about a day or two old sitting abandoned on the table and an empty wine bottle on the ground with blood on it.
"This is how he cut his head," Nancy said.
Thirteen walked over to where a rug had been slid up against a doorway by something dragging over it, then to a door left ajar, a trail of blood leading out of it. The trail eventually led to the garage, where there was some rope on the ground, but that was where the trail ended.
"They must have tied them," Jonathan said, inspecting the rope. "They must have taken them somewhere."
"Mrs. Driscoll," Nancy said. "She kept saying, 'I have to go back.' What if the flaying...it's taking place somewhere else. There must be a place where all of this started, right?"
"Not at the lab," Thirteen said. "Someone would have noticed, plus if the piece of Mind Flayer was at the lab, it would have been sent back through the Gate."
"Unless it got there after the Gate closed and everyone left," Mike said.
"I think it probably went inactive after the Gate closed," Thirteen said. "That's why this all didn't happen sooner."
"If we can find the source, we can stop it," Nancy said. "Or at least stop it from spreading and doing whatever the hell he's doing with those chemicals."
"Mrs. Driscoll," Will spoke up. "If she wants to go back so badly, why don't we let her?"
Thirteen stared at him, then nodded, grinning. "That could work."
"Alright," Nancy said. "Let's go."
They all nodded and headed back outside to the cars, heading for the hospital.
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