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Smooth Operator

No place for beginners or sensitive hearts

When sentiment is left to chance

No place to be ending but somewhere to start

- Sade

As armed guards with MP armbands surrounded them, Joyce and Hopper put their hands up. "It's all right," he said to her softly, with a reassurance he was far from feeling. "Let me do the talking."

There was an unnerving silence as they were herded toward the door. Hopper was still distracted by the MP armbands. If the lab was being backed up by the military, they weren't playing any longer. How could he protect Joyce, and protect the kids, and save Will, and get them all out of here without anyone ending up as a science experiment?

Inside, they were taken to the lab portion of the building, and one of the MPs grabbed Joyce by the arm, pulling her toward an interrogation room. "No," she said, trying to twist away. "No. Hop?"

"It's okay, Joyce. Just don't say anything."

He was grabbed and taken to a different room, craning his neck trying to watch her, to be sure she was going to be okay. He could still hear her shouting "No" and struggling when the door was slammed behind him.

Joyce eventually lost the fight and was handcuffed to a chair in the cold room with the tiled walls, as she had expected would happen. And then they left her there for what felt like an eternity, an eternity in which Will was still in that place, still lost and hiding and terrified and needing his mother. "Hurry," he had told Eleven. Joyce was trying, and she was increasingly enraged at these people who had tortured that little girl and left her son trapped on the other side of reality and were now keeping her from going after him.

"Let me out of here!" she screamed at them. "Somebody!" She tugged and twisted at the handcuffs and shifted the chair around, trying to find some way, any way, to get loose and find Hopper. "Please!" She pulled at the handcuffs hard, until it hurt. "Let me out!"

After longer than she would have liked, the door opened and a tall man with white hair came into the room. He closed the door carefully behind him, put his hands in the pockets of his immaculate suit, and began walking slowly toward her, as if he had all the time in the world.

Joyce just stared at him, waiting for him to speak.

"Your son," he said at last. "We know you've been in contact with him."

She was stunned. They knew? They knew, and they hadn't done anything? These were the people who had let her have a fake funeral, she reminded herself. So upset she could barely think straight, she stammered, "You have to let me … let me …"

"When?" he demanded. "And how did you make contact with him?"

"What?"

"Hm?" He waited, then whispered, "Six."

"What?"

"Six," he repeated. He moved to the chair opposite her, taking off his jacket and hanging it on the back. "Six people have been taken this week. This … thing that took your son? We don't really understand it. But its behavior is predictable. Like all animals, it eats." He pulled out the chair and took his seat, tucking his tie carefully behind the table and resting his clasped hands in front of him.

The precision of him, the cold disinterest in her son's well-being, the deliberate wasting of time, had Joyce boiling mad, but she tried to keep calm, to think clearly and figure out a way through this man and out the door to the gate so she could get to Will. That was what mattered now.

"It will take more sons," the white-haired man said to her. "More daughters. I want to save them. I want to save your son. But I can't do that. Not without your help."

She couldn't take it anymore, this pretense. "Stop. I know who you are. I know what you've done. You took my boy away from me. You left him in that place to die. You faked his death. We had a funeral; we buried him! And now you're asking for my help?"

The man's expression hadn't changed. Not even a little. Nothing she had said made any difference to him. The monstrosity of it was something he either didn't realize or didn't care about—or both.

"Go to hell."

He reacted to that, lifting his head as if in anger.

"You won't help?"

"You mean, like you didn't help my son? Exactly."

They looked at each other across the table.

Down the hall, Hopper hadn't had long to wait at all. The suit he had punched earlier was more than happy to get some payback. He was accompanied by a blonde woman and a dark-haired man, both also in suits—although theirs were more expensive. The security guard's suit was cheap, and Hopper wondered if he resented the difference in pay.

Or he wondered that until he was jabbed in the side with a taser.

When the pain stopped, he was left gasping for breath.

"What do you know?" the dark-haired man said.

"Everything."

Smart mouths got punished. Hopper had learned that a long time ago. But he could take it. He told himself that over and over as he and the security guard circled the room. A punch here, a tase there, anything to break him, to get the truth from him. He kept telling them the truth, that he knew everything, but they didn't want to hear it. They wanted him punished. They were pissed they had lost the girl, they were pissed the creature was loose, they were pissed that Hopper had found out even some of their little secrets, and they enjoyed watching him in pain.

He was tased again and he slid down the wall, his legs not wanting to hold him up any longer.

"Okay," said the dark-haired man. "Now, what do you know?"

"I'm sorry. Did I stutter?"

The two suits glanced at each other.

"I told you," Hopper repeated. "Everything."

He got the taser again for that one, right in the neck, spraying spit across the floor. At least he hadn't bitten his tongue yet. He was trying to avoid it.

The woman spoke this time, sharp and angry. "What do you know?"

"I know you do experiments on kidnapped little kids whose parents' brains you turn to mush." The woman shifted, her face tensing. Clear admittance of guilt there. He went on, "And I know you went a little too far this time and you messed up in a big way. I mean, you really messed up, didn't you? Big time. That's why you're trying to cover your tracks."

They were unhappy now, but they were convinced that he knew more than they wanted him to.

"You killed Benny Hammond, you faked Will Byers' death, you made it look like a little girl just ran away. See, I told you. I know everything."

"Who are you working with?" the dark-haired guy demanded.

"Nobody. But I did give all this over to my friend at the Times; he's gonna blow this thing wide open." Hopper started to laugh, hoping they wouldn't see that for the obvious bluff it was. He got the taser again, so hopefully that was a good sign. The two men hauled him to his feet and dragged him over to the chair while he was still too weak from the jolts to struggle. They slammed him down into the chair and the security guard leaned down in front of him.

"You're just a junkie. Small town cop who had a really bad week. Took one too many pills this time."

Behind the security guard, the dark-haired guy was preparing a syringe. Hopper had to make sure he didn't get what was in that. He probably had a tolerance to whatever it was, but he had to be at full capacity if he was going to help Joyce find her son and protect the other kids in the process. Or they were making it extra strong to take care of him once and for all, which meant that Joyce and all the others were as good as dead. That wasn't happening either. Not on his watch. Not in his town.

The woman stopped in front of him, crossing her arms over her chest. "You made a mistake coming back here."

Hopper kept his body still and his face calm, not letting any of his growing concern about getting out of here safely and taking care of everyone who was looking to him show. "No, I didn't. Here's what's going to happen: You let me and Joyce Byers go. You're gonna give us anything we need and we're gonna find her son. And then we're going to forget that any of this ever happened."

"Is that right?"

"Yeah. That's right."

"Why would we bother?"

"Because it's a lot harder to make a chief of police disappear than it is a couple of little kids. Because it's too much of a coincidence if something happens to me and to Joyce at the same time. Because she's smarter than you think she is. Because all those kids going missing and their families getting terrorized is bad for business. Because more people know about this than you're aware of." He looked up at the woman, holding her gaze with his. "And because I know where she is."

That got her. Her eyes darted to the dark-haired man and back before she had time to steel her reaction. Quietly, all three of them left the room, left him there … waiting.

Hopper could almost have timed Brenner's arrival in the room to the minute. A carefully calculated amount of time to keep him from realizing how desperate they were to get Eleven back.

He was older than Hopper had imagined, more … polished. Not a lab rat, this one. A true believer. His movements were careful, deliberate. The movements of a man who had spent a lifetime studying human behavior.

Brenner locked the door and turned to Hopper, reaching into his pocket for a pack of cigarettes. The right brand, too. Looked like they had come from his truck. Yep, that was his lighter tucked inside the pack. Hopper took it out and lit a cigarette, waiting for Brenner to engage.

"Where's the girl?"

Hopper took a deep drag. Damn, that felt good. "You gotta give me your word. Nobody's ever gonna find out about this. And those other three kids, those boys, you're gonna leave them alone. Then I'll tell you. Tell you where your little science experiment is." He took another drag off the cigarette, as much to hide his own guilt as because he needed it. Thinking of that poor kid, her big dark eyes so scared, how brave she had been going into that pool, how she had clung to Joyce and cried … He wanted to protect her, not to betray her. But he had no choice. Will was going to die—might be dead already—if Hopper couldn't get to him, and Joyce would go out of her mind, off her nut like her Aunt Darlene, if they couldn't find her son. Once this was over, he'd find a way to get back in here for Eleven, he promised himself. But for now—Will was the priority mission, and Eleven was the price of getting to him.

Brenner moved slightly, his heels clicking on the floor. "What assurance do I have that you're telling me the truth?"

"What assurance I have that you're not just going to lock me in here and leave me? Trust goes both ways, Doc."

"You realize the boy is almost certainly dead, don't you?"

"I heard his voice not two hours ago. There's still a chance for that woman in there to find her son. You owe her that, after what you put her through."

Silence. Brenner didn't disagree.

Hopper waited. He was in the strong position, for the moment, but the wrong word could blow the whole thing up.

"Assistance getting through to where the boy is, and we leave him and his friends and their families alone—and you tell me where the girl is and you cover all this up with the town and any press?"

"That's right."

Brenner moved in front of him, holding out a thin, pale hand. "Agreed."

Hopper took it, highly amused that after all this, a simple handshake was still sealing the deal. Nice to know some things never changed.