Here's the next chapter! Enjoy!
Outside near the power lines, Michael paced back and forth, looking down at the watch and muttering, "Three-one-five." He repeated that to himself, seeing that it was close to it. Just a little longer...
He stopped when he heard a cat meow. He looked down and saw a stray behind the fence. His eyes widened at the mere sight of it, the animal meowing and hissing. His blood ran cold as his skin got on edge. Seeing and hearing that thing made him remember something again...
In the isolated room again, Mike wore the headgear and saw a different cat in a cage, hissing at him. He strained himself and looked worried, since it was living and using his powers on it? He couldn't even think of what would happen to it.
As the small, frequent scribbles were recorded on the paper, Dr. Brenner and Dr. Wheeler watched him from another room. The boy began to shake a little, looking and feeling sad. He didn't want to use his powers on it. He didn't want to kill it like that. It was a living animal. The scribbles became more smaller, the doctors looking at each other with concern.
He glanced at them a little with worry and sadness as they looked back. They kept stern faces to him, wanting him to kill it. He looked back at the cat and tried to do it. He kept shaking more, the cat hissing at him more. Every second he looked at it, the less he tried to use his power to kill it. He never wanted to...
He won't.
"No," he muttered under his breath as he took off the headgear, the scribbles disappearing and a thin line being drawn on the paper. He stood up from his table and shouted to the two doctors, "No!" He looked really angry.
Dr. Wheeler sighed and talked to his comrade. Dr. Brenner replied something to him, making him nod back. The two looked at him, being disappointed. He felt like his heart trembled at those expressions. He knew what they meant...
...
"NO!" he yelled as two men carried him up from his feet as he struggled to break free from them. "DOCTOR! DAD! PLEASE!" The two men exited the room and kept their disappointed looks directed towards him. He began crying and looked at his father. "DAD! HELP ME!" He shook his head at him, making him feel more terrible. "DAD!"
He continued shrieking and struggling until he was thrown into the room again. At this moment, he didn't want to be trapped in there. He wanted to get out. He wanted to make those men pay. He quickly scrambled to his feet and tilted his head down as one of the men was nearly closing the door. It suddenly shot back open, one of the men being shot back from it and crashing against a wall with a lot of force. He landed on the ground, dead, as the other man pointed a gun at him. His nose was already bleeding, but he stared at him and tilted his head to the right. It snapped his neck, killing him and having him fall to the ground.
The freckled boy felt pain and a lot of exhaustion in his head afterwards, panting and leaning against a wall, sinking onto the ground. Not only was nose bleeding more, but his ears also dripped blood. Veins could be seen on his face. That was the most he had used his power.
Both doctors approached the scene and looked around. They saw that the boy killed both men in only a few seconds. They both stared at each other in awe before approaching M11. The boy looked up at them and crawled to a corner. They still approached him, creepy grins on their faces. He felt so terrified of what might happen.
They both crouched down to him, Dr. Wheeler placing a hand on his head gently, making his eyes widen more. "You've got an incredible boy, Ted," Dr. Brenner stated.
"I do, indeed," he replied as he placed a hand on Michael's cheek. His son began to cry and sob.
"If only my daughters were born or even capable of the same talent..."
Ted turned to him. "Martin, they were wasted potential. I'm glad you and Teresa broke it off all those years ago."
He nodded. "You're right." He then placed a hand on Michael's head as well. "I don't need any of them. I got Michael Eleven, M11."
"We both do." The boy continued crying before he began to pass out, feeling a pair of arms carry him out of the room and into his actual room, the room that wasn't that dark...or cold.
Tears began welling up from the flashback. He tried to hold them back, wiping his eyes with his hands.
"Mike!" called out Jane, startling him and making him turn to see her, Lucas, and Dustin with their bikes. She saw the look on his face and felt a bit concerned. "Are you okay?" He nodded, though he didn't feel okay. She patted the extra seat she had on her bike. "Hop on. We only have a few hours." He nodded once again as he walked and sat on the extra seat, holding onto Jane's shoulders as she and the boys took off, ready to find Will, once and for all.
Back in the high school, Kali, Steve, Carol, and Tommy were hanging out together near some lockers. Tommy sat on a seat with Carol's head on top of his lap. "So you know what I told Mr. Mundy?" she asked them all. "'The solution of ten plus y equals blow me.'"
Tommy chuckled. "Horseshit, you did that, you'd be in detention by now," he said to her.
"Saturday."
He chuckled again and stated, "Maybe Mr. Mundy's still a virgin."
"Maybe he is still a virgin."
Kali sighed in annoyance and looked around in worry, thinking about Barbara and what just happened with Jonathan. Steve squeezed her leg gently to comfort her, but it was to no avail. "Maybe you should blow him and raise your grades up a bit, Carol." She punched him at the chest, him chuckling once more.
Kali decided she had enough and began leaving, concerning her boyfriend. "Whoa, wait, Kal," he called out to her. "Where are you going?"
She stopped and turned to him, plastering on a fake smile. "You know what? I actually have to help out my mum with something. I told her." She then turned and walked away.
He looked completely puzzled, standing up and saying, "But the game's about to start!"
"Sorry, Steve!" She finally left and got out of the school, feeling a plethora of things: stressed, frustrated, worried, angry - all in one day.
In the woods, the kids stopped biking and began walking with them at their sides, following Mike. Jane was walking right next to him. He looked at her and saw the scrape she had, asking, "Why did you get hurt?"
She was confused at the question. "What?" He pointed at her chin, making her come to realization. "Oh! I...I, uh...tripped during phys-ed."
He gave her a skeptical look. "Jane."
"Yeah?"
"Friends tell the truth." He was right, making her sigh.
"I got tripped by this mouth-breather, Troy," she answered truthfully.
He looked at her, perplexed at the term. "Mouth-breather?"
She nodded. "An idiot, a dumb person." She huffed. "I don't why I haven't told you about him. Everyone else at school knows. I just..." She trailed off, feeling upset by just thinking of him.
"Jane?"
She turned to him. "Yes?"
He nodded at her. "I understand."
She nodded back at him with a bit of surprise and replied, "Oh, uh, okay. Cool."
"Cool." The two then smiled at each other. They both liked each other's smiles and company...then looked away from each other and looked on the path ahead.
Behind them, Dustin and Lucas witnessed the whole thing, the curly-haired boy smiling a little. "Look at those two, man," he whispered to his friend.
"Yeah, I know," he replied.
"Do you really think they might like each other?"
He shrugged. "I dunno. I have a bad feeling about Mike, so we need to keep an eye out for Jane."
He nodded. "Right, right."
Kali walked all the way to Barbara's car. She was utterly surprised that it was still there, meaning that she didn't take it. Why not? She then looked in there to see if, for some reason, she was there. Or anything that showed that she was there at one point. She had no luck, making her feel even more terrible.
She backed away from the car and shouted, "Barb?! Barbara!" There was no answer.
...
She then arrived at Steve's home, opening the gate and closing it to get to the pool. She looked around, seeing no signs of her friend. "Barbara?!" Still no answer.
All of a sudden, she heard some bushes rustling in the woods, startling her. Maybe it was Barb? She walked into the woods and continued shouting, "Barbara?" She suddenly stopped when she heard more rustling, whipping around to the direction it came from. She saw nothing. What the hell was making that noise? It'd better not be an ani-
When she turned back to the front direction she was going, she saw a figure dash away right before her eyes. She shot back and fell down, instantly getting up and grabbing her bag. Terrified of what it could be, she ran away from the woods and the home, not wanting to deal with whatever it was.
Back in her home, Terry called Joyce on her phone and began talking to her about what she saw earlier. "Cl-clawed hands?" she asked her.
"Yeah," the dirty-blonde-haired woman answered. "It was like...it was trying to break away from the wallpaper. Then...I saw a body try to break away from the wallpaper as well."
She could hear Joyce gasp. "A...a body?"
"Mmm-hmm, but it didn't look human. It was like...I don't know, but it didn't look human...more like a monster." She could then hear Joyce's worried sigh.
"Okay, now li-" She heard her stop as her dog barked in the background, making her feel concerned about her.
"Joyce?"
"I'll talk to you later, Terry." Before she could answer, she heard the dial tone again. She sighed and put the phone down. She began worrying about Joyce. She hoped she was alright.
Now she wanted to know two things: what was that thing coming out of the wallpaper in Joyce's house and who was the intruder in her home? For the latter, it could be Will, but there was a chance that it wasn't him. She sighed again, laying on her La-Z-Boy and thinking.
A boy goes missing for a few days and some monster appears behind some wallpaper. God, what was going on in this town now? It hasn't been this crazy since...damn, how long? She knew it was a LONG time. Just what the hell was happening? What was that thing? Why was Will missing? Who was the intruder inside of her home? Why was she thinking of "him" all the time?!
Suddenly, her eyes widened, thinking of something. Her former work with her ex...Hawkins Lab. They performed numerous dangerous and unethical experiments there. Perhaps...perhaps he and his friend Ted...now it began to piece together for her, making her breathe unevenly.
"Oh my God..." she muttered as she un-reclined her chair, her hand on her chin. That was a huge possibility...yeah, yeah, Hawkins Lab might have something to do with all of this! They had to!
Suddenly, she, Becky, and Carl heard the door open, Kali walking inside very upset. Terry saw that and stood up. "Kali? What's the matter, sweetie?" Becky asked her.
"Aunt Becky..." she murmured, being near tears as she looked at Terry. "Mum...I think...something happened to Barbara. Something terrible." The women gasped as they both began to hug her. Carl decided to join in and hug her too.
"Oh, hun, I'm so sorry..." the short-haired woman stated solemnly.
"Kali..." Terry murmured to her older daughter. "I'm sorry too." She began to sob into her chest.
"Just take deep breaths..." Carl suggested for the teenager.
Instantly, the mother came to a conclusion. Barbara may be like Will, her disappearance connecting to Hawkins Lab somehow.
"I don't get it, Chief," Officer Powell said to Hopper, both still in the library.
"What don't you get?" he asked him.
"This woman, Karen Bertuzzi, sounds like a nutty one to me. I mean, her newborn son AND young daughter were taken in for LSD mind control experiments? I mean, she's been discredited. Claims were thrown out-"
The chief groaned and slid that article away from him. "Then forget about that." He then gave him the article of "MKUltra" being exposed, tapping the two doctors. "Take a look at this." Powell looked down at it. "Dr. Martin Brenner and Dr. Theodore Wheeler, co-operators of Hawkins Lab."
The other officer shrugged. "Okay."
Hopper scoffed and leaned back into his seat. "You don't find that interesting?"
He shook his head at him. "No, not really. So what if those two were involved in some hippie crap back in the day?"
"This isn't hippie crap, this is CIA-sanctioned research."
His officer shook his head again. "I don't know, man. Probably has nothing to do with our kid."
He then pointed at the adults in gowns. "Look at that, all of them, wearing hospital gowns. There was the piece of fabric the teacher saw at the pipe. That sure looked like a piece of a hospital gown to me, is it not?" The other man shrugged again, making deeply sigh again before pointing at the woman in the picture. "Then there's Teresa, being wrapped up in all of this."
Powell squinted his eyes to get a better look at her. "Teresa Ives? The other single mother in town?" He tried to decipher her look in the picture, then gave up and shrugged. "I don't know. Could be some other woman."
Hopper let out one more deep sigh and leaned back on his seat again. "Listen, I'm not saying that there's some grand conspiracy. All I'm saying is that something happened. Maybe Will was at the wrong place, at the wrong time, and he saw something that he shouldn't have."
Powell looked skeptical at him, deeply inhaling. "I mean, it's a reach-"
He leaned towards him. "It's a start. Now, we're going to question Teresa Ives and see if she has anything to do with this." The other officer sighed deeply, skeptical of his superior's conclusions. On the contrary, Hopper felt like he was up to something, finally getting to the answer to this problem.
"Hey, Powell, is the chief there?" asked one police officer through Powell's speaker.
The police chief himself took it before he did and answered into it, "I'm here. What do you got?" What he heard afterwards shocked him to no end.
It was now nighttime and the kids were reaching to their destination. Mike finally stopped, making Jane do so...in front of Will's house. She looked extremely confused at him. "Why are we here?" the tomboy asked.
"He's here," Mike answered. "Hiding."
She shook her head. "No, this is where he lives. He's missing from here, understand?" He was puzzled. He knew Will was there...
The other boys stopped and looked the same as Jane did. "What the hell are we doing here?" Lucas asked.
"Mike says he's hiding here," the curly-haired girl answered.
"Uh, NO, he's not!"
Dustin sighed in irritation. "I swear if we came all the way out here for nothing..." he complained.
"And that's exactly what we did!" The black-haired boy pointed at a now worried Mike. "We trusted him and look where we are now! I told you he had no idea what the hell he was talking about!"
Jane shot him an angry glare before facing Michael, crossing her arms. "Why did you bring us here, Mike?" she asked him.
He tried to answer, but couldn't think of the words for it. "Jane, don't waste your time with him!" Lucas said in an annoyed voice.
She glared at him again, irritated. "Then what do you wanna do?"
"Call the cops, like we should have when we found him!"
"We're not calling the cops, Lucas!" The two then got into an argument, Mike beginning to feel bad. He knew Will was there, but how could he explain it? He didn't know.
"Guys..." Dustin said as he spotted some blue and red lights from far. "Guys..." The two kids continued arguing until he yelled, "GUYS!" They stopped arguing as all of the kids saw police cars and even an ambulance. All of them became shocked.
"Will..." Jane murmured in horror, thinking that he was probably found. They all ran to their bikes and began following the direction they were all going to as fast as they could. All of them, even Mike, were horrified of what they might see.
They finally arrived at the quarry, many police cars and the ambulance there. The kids parked their bikes, got off of them, and ran to the scene. They hid behind one of the vehicles and saw what was going on. They saw two men carrying a limp body from the water to a raft. The kids saw who it was...
Will.
All of them were in utter disbelief, especially Jane and Mike. "N-no..." the tomboy muttered, her voice shaky as her heart tightened. "Th-that can't be...Will..."
They saw the men carry his body to shore, getting a better look at him. Lucas frowned with bleary eyes and shook his head. "It is Will...it's really him..." He, along with his friends, were near to tears.
Mike never was so shocked in his life, not since he encountered...that. He could have sworn he saw him back at his home, hiding from that "Demogorgon", the others called it. He knew it, he could have sworn he knew it...
Jane turned away from the scene and leaned the car, beginning to cry and covering her face with her hands. She just couldn't believe it. Will was dead, her best friend, the first friend she ever made...dead. Mike looked sorry for her and touched her shoulder. "Jane-" he said before she swatted it away.
"'Jane'?! 'Jane' what?!" she yelled at him, making him jolt. "You said he was alive, that you can help us find him alive! Why did you lie to us?! Why?!" Mike began to shake at her angry and demanding voice.
"I-I-" he stuttered. He pointed far out. "I saw him-"
"Oh, you saw him?! Well, do you see him now?!" She pointed at the body being taken into an ambulance. "He's dead! He's dead and we were supposed to find him before he dies and what do you do?! LIE TO US!" Mike felt his eyes well up, about to cry as well. "What is wrong with you? What the HELL is wrong with you?!" He didn't answer. She then bumped past him and grabbed her bike.
"W-wait, Jane, where are you going?" asked a crying Lucas. "Jane..."
"Jane, don't do this," Dustin said in a shaky voice before she took off. "Jane!"
"Jane!" The two boys kept yelling her name, but Jane rode on, still crying and sobbing. Never was she this distraught. She trusted some boy to find her friend and she ends up seeing him dead. This was the worst day she ever had to live through.
Mike placed his hands on his temples, muttering in repeat, "No..." He then got a shove from Lucas.
"You pissed off our best friend!" he shouted at him. "You pissed off the both of us too! I knew you were a goddamn liar!"
Dustin shook his head at the freckled boy. "Seriously, dude, why?" he asked him, being distraught. "Why did you lie to her, to us?"
He tried to answer, but couldn't muster up a word because of the lump that was growing in his throat. Lucas shook his head and got his bike. "Let's not waste our time with him any longer, Dustin. Let's go." He nodded as he got his bike and they both rode away without Mike.
"W-wait!" he shouted to the both of them. "No! Please!" They didn't stop and got out of his sight. He almost sobbed, his breathing heavy and uneven. He knew Will was back at his home...hiding...he just...he didn't how to explain it correctly. And that made him lose Jane...the boys.
He shook his head, running up to catch up to them. They were the only people he felt comfortable being with, he wasn't going to lose them. He didn't want to.
Back in the Ives home, everyone was in the living room with Kali, listening to what she was saying about Barbara. Suddenly, they all heard a door slam open. They all saw Jane come inside, not even bothering to close the door and sobbing into her hands. That made them all rise up from their seats and look at her. She stopped and looked back at all of them, tears streaming down her cheeks and her voice shaky. "Mama..." she whimpered, her lip quivering.
"Jane...?" Terry asked in surprise as she approached her daughter and gave her a hug. She cried and sobbed into her clothing. She began shushing her. "Just keep calm, take deep breaths..."
"He's gone..." Her eyes widened as well as all the others'. "Will is gone..." Now they all felt terrible for her, even Kali.
"Oh, sweetheart..." Becky murmured, now hugging her. They all took turns to hug her and try to comfort her. They all felt terrible to hear that Jane saw that Will was dead. Kali, her friend was missing, but she wasn't dead. Not to her knowledge...
Terry was distraught and began thinking, was Will really connected to Hawkins Labs or was he just lost and...found dead? She thought that maybe she was just reckless speculating things earlier...absolutely reckless.
Done. What do you guys think? Any mistakes or typos?
This was a hard scene for me to watch, even though I know Will's body was a fake, so of course it would be hard for me to write. I know that Jane would be absolutely heartbroken by the sight of "Will's" body in this AU.
Anyways, I'm getting sick. I hope to get better soon so that I can go to school and my trade school and update this more. Just keep supporting this fanfic and I'll see you guys in the next chapter!