AN
Sorry for the week of not posting, but I just wanted to write as much of the rest of the story as i could before posting again because I really want to have a chapter a day plus i want to start writing my take on season 4 starting as soon as this little story is over which in this chapter and the next are heavy foreshadowing things I plan to follow up on. As always thanks for reading, it means a lot to me. If you want to review and give me your thoughts and or any criticism on what I could do better please feel free, it always helps. I hope your all doing well as you can be right now. Stay safe everyone :D See you all tomorrow.
19
Ghosts
El
El felt her heart pick up as panic set in, light snow started to fall around them, though she didn't seem to feel the cold that she should have. She turned to Billy where he simply stood there, watching her. "Where are we?! What is this place? Who is him that you want to stop?!"
He only gave her a small crooked smile, "It's not going to be that easy."
El felt anger start to rise in her now, replacing the ever-growing fear….but if Hopper was here then she would do what it wanted….for now.
"Fine, what but at least tell me what that building is down there."
"That is what you're here to find out."
El bit her lip and looked towards the building again, it was the color of a stormy gray sky, and was far bigger than Hawkins' lab in length, maybe the size of four or five of them all put together, gates lining all sides.
"This is crazy," El breathed.
"Oh, it's going to get crazier."
Suddenly El felt a freezing hand touch her upper arm making her jump and look back at him but in that blink of an eye they weren't on the snowy hill 30 miles away from the buildings, but feet away from one. She let out a gasp of surprise and looked around herself disoriented, they were in the gates now, one of the tall buildings casting its long shadow over them.
"How-how did you do that?" El asked turning to him, but he was already walking away from her.
She started to follow after but stopped as she spotted what looked to be tents in the distance, wood, and metal sitting in a truck and people walking in a line towards it, what looked like chains on their legs keeping them all together.
"Who are those people?" El asked, watching them.
"Their nobodies, simply prisoners."
"Prisoners of what?"
"They're not who we're here for," Billy said, walking past her and towards a building….as if he knew where he was going.
She hurried to catch up to him, the thin layer of snow not making a sound as they walked when she knew it should have been crunching under them. But she didn't have the time to follow that train of thought as they reached a door that had a padlock.
El watched him wondering how he would unlock it but he turned back to look at her instead.
"Give me your hand," he said, reaching out his own for her to take.
She hesitated a moment, she didn't know what he wanted to show her, didn't even know who this was. Sure it wore the face of Billy but it wasn't. This was something else and it was smart.
But she took it all the same because honestly, she wanted to know what he wanted from her.
He turned back to the door and they walked through it. Literary walked through the door ….like ghosts. It was like going through a tunnel. Everything going dark and then suddenly they were in a building lit with dim yellow lights.
Billy started walking down a gray concrete hall and she followed after him again but as she did she looked around trying to figure out where she was. People walked all around them, everyone was in a greenish uniform, with hats that reminded her of a puffball on their heads, and that almost made her smile at how silly it looked. But it fell as she saw everyone seemed to be carrying a gun, from some people who had smaller ones in their packets to ones almost as tall as herself.
They spoke a language she couldn't understand, but it reminded her of something, a time two years ago when she had been asked to translate something.….but that had been so long ago now she had no hope of remembering what it had been called.
"Why can't they see us? " El asked, and to her surprise, he answered this one question as they turned into another hall though it looked just like the other one with its gray concrete walls, and it's matching floor.
"Because we're not really here, only our shadows are."
"Shadows?" El asked, more to herself than him but he didn't answer so she was left to wonder what that meant. Was it like when she was trying to find someone in her mind using her own powers? But this wasn't anything like hers, that she could tell somehow, this felt ...off. She couldn't say how but it was like it wasn't happening now, everything feeling faraway.
Suddenly she was snapped out of her thoughts as they came to a stop at a metal door, a padlock next to it.
"An elevator?" El asked, wondering why they had stopped here if he could just walk through walls.
"We're going down," he said simply.
The doors opened a moment later to what looked like a red basket stained with spots of brown that could have been rust…..or dried blood.
El bit at her lip nervously as Billy stepped into it and she knew she had to follow. She stepped next to him and not a moment later two men got in making it sway side to side before they pressed a green button. Not a second later they started to go down and El gripped for the side to have something to hang on too.
El looked around herself as they went, there were so many levels that she lost count after the 29th. Floor after floor there were closed metal doors, how many actually had people behind them she didn't know. But every now and then she would hear someone scream out from below them.
She felt a shiver go down her back as goose bump started to rise on her arms. She wouldn't lie, she was scared of this place, but if Hopper was alive she would do anything, even if it meant following a monster into hell.
The elevator stopped suddenly and the two men stepped out onto one of the numberless floors.
El looked over to Billy wondering if this was their stop.
"Come on," he said and followed after the men leaving her to jog after him. They walked down what seemed to be an endless hall passing door after door. El looked over the railings and felt her eyes go wide in shock. They were still stories from the ground floor, she couldn't even see the bottom from here.
She stopped suddenly as the two men stopped in front of a row of doors. One of the men went to unlock a door but the other one stopped him, saying something that she couldn't understand.
Instead, he went over to the door next to it and opened it to reveal a man with dirty long hair, too skinny, and started to beg.
She watched in horror as the two guards pulled the man from his room and started to drag towards a staircase, the man screaming.
El covered her mouth as they started going down the stairs and she moved to follow after them, she didn't know what they were going to do to that other man but she knew that it was bad. But she was stopped by a painful grip on her upper arm.
She turned back to see Billy looking blankly at her, there was no emotion in his face at all. El jerked her arm away and took a few steps from him. "Don't touch me!" She hissed.
"If you think you can save that man, you're wrong. He's already a dead man walking, and anyway, he's not who you're here for…..right?" He asked.
She bit her lip so hard she tasted blood because she hated that he was right, she was here for one person and that was Hopper. "Yes."
"That's what I thought," he said and without another word, he turned on his heel and started walking down the hall again.
El looked towards the staircase they had gone down once more, the man's screams still ringing out faintly, but a moment later she turned away before she followed after Billy.
They walked until they reached the end of the hall and found another elevator deeper in the building than the last one, this one looking much the same as the last one. Billy opened the gate and they both got in, a second later he pressed a yellow button and they started to go down in an instant.
They both stood in silence for what felt like forever but could only have been minutes until the elevator came to a stop and they both stepped out into a very different hallway than the ones she had seen before.
This one was far cleaner, the hall white, with titled flooring, all lit by blight humming lights and there weren't any people with guns walking around and no screaming that she could hear and only a few normal-looking doors.
El wondered which one they would be going through but not a second later Billy answered her question by walking straight for the last door at the very end of the hall.
To her surprise when they reached it he stopped and simply looked at it for a long moment before he took a step back.
"Open it."
She looked up at him shocked, "Why me?"
"You're the one who needs to see it."
El didn't know what that meant but with one last breath, she turned the handle and pushed open the door.