I know it's been a while. I apologize, but this chapter should more than make up for it. Over 6000 words!
ALSO, IMPORTANT: LEO HAS BEEN DEAGED TO AGE 12. THAT IS BECAUSE I DIDN'T THINK A 16 YEAR OLD WOULD CLICK WITH TWELVE YEAR OLDS (THOSE TWELVE YEAR OLDS ARE INTRODUCED THIS CHAPTER) AS MUCH
Disclaimer: I own nothing
Eleven felt like an idiot going with the strange boys when he should have kept running until he was so far away from the Bad Place, they'd never find him… But he was cold and wet and would probably catch pneumonia if he stayed out in the rain. If he was sick, he wouldn't be running anywhere. Besides, maybe the boys would let him hide with them until Eleven found out how to get away from the Bad People. He made a judgment call and allowed the three boys to lead him to their house.
Eleven sat on the couch in Benny's soaked T-shirt with a jacket wrapped around his shoulders. Frigid drops of water dripped from his curly hair (Eleven had never really noticed his curly hair until it was so wet, the curls fell in his eyes). Raindrops trickled down his face and arms and water drenched his legs.
"Is there a number we can call?" one of the boys- a freckled kid with dark brown hair and green eyes- asked, frantically. "For your parents?"
"What happened to your face?" one of the others- a chubby male with curly brown hair pinned beneath a hat- asked with wide eyes.
Eleven vaguely wondered what he was talking about. What was wrong with his face?
"Where did you come from? Who are you?" a slim, dark skinned boy demanded.
"Is that blood?" the curly haired kid asked, reaching for Eleven's bloody nose, and the freckled kid smacked his hand away.
"Stop! You're freaking him out!" the freckled boy said.
Yes, Eleven thought. You certainly are.
"He's freaking me out!" the dark skinned boy countered.
I get that a lot, Eleven thought before wondering how he knew that. He never heard that in the lab (although he suspected that he freaked the scientists out quite a bit; they never said anything, though).
"I bet he's deaf!" the curly haired boy said, and he clapped his hand with a thunderous smack, causing Eleven to jump.
The other boys stared at him, and he shrugged.
"Not deaf," he said.
"Stop!" the freckled boy ordered. "He's just scared and cold."
The boy departed from the group and returned with some clothes; he handed them to Eleven, who stared at them in confusion and suspicion.
"These are clean," the boy said.
Eleven wiped some water from his face and stood before reaching for the bottom of the long shirt.
"Wait!" Lucas yelled before hissing to the freckled boy. "What if he has nothing under that?"
The freckled boy blinked. "Good point. I'll show you the bathroom."
Eleven followed the freckled boy across the room and stepped into the room he gestured to- The bathroom.
The boy went to close the door, and Eleven lashed out with the reflexes of a cheetah and grabbed hold of the door. He didn't want to be locked in a small room… he didn't want his mind to go back There.
"You don't want it closed?" the freckled boy asked.
"No," Eleven responded.
The boy's eyes widened. "Oh, so you can speak. All right, I'll just leave the door… like this," the boy suggested, cracking the door. "That okay?"
Eleven nodded. "Thank you."
The boy smiled and walked away.
Eleven turned around, and he froze when he found himself faced with his reflection. There were no mirrors in the lab; he had no idea what he looked like until now. Now, he knew what the curly haired kid had been talking about when he asked what happened to his face.
He was Latino with tan skin and a scrawny form. His curls were long and unruly, nearly reaching his shoulders, and his features were impish. His ears were pointed like an elf's. His eyes were a chocolate brown with what appeared to be an orange glint to them-like firewood. But the thing that really caught his attention was the scar.
It was long and jagged, running from just below his left temple to a mere millimeter from the bottom of his nose, racing diagonally across his cheek bone.
How had he gotten it? How long had it been there?
Eleven dressed himself in the clothes the boy had give him, and when he exited the bathroom, he saw the freckled boy constructing some sort of fort made out of blankets on the floor.
"You'll sleep here tonight," the freckled boy explained while his oddly quiet friends gathered their things and placed them in their backpacks.
Eleven nodded and crawled into the cave of blankets, watching as the dark skinned boy and the curly haired kid climbed the stairs. They conversed in whispers and gave Eleven glances of distrust.
"Here you go," the freckled boy said, handing Eleven a stack of blankets.
The other boys gave Eleven one last suspicious and maybe even frightened glance before disappearing up the stairs.
"What's your name?" the freckled boy asked, sitting across from Eleven.
Eleven rolled up his sleeve to display the tattoo, and the freckled boy lashed out towards him.
"Is that real?"
Eleven pulled back, expecting the boy to strike him, but the boy just froze and pulled away.
"Sorry. I've just never seen a kid with a tattoo before. Eleven. What does it mean?"
Eleven prodded himself in the chest. He didn't speak unless he had to; Papa told him children are to be seen and not heard. Eleven learned that lesson the hard way…
"That's your name?" the boy asked.
"That's what I've been called for as long as I can remember," Eleven said, which was probably the longest sentence he'd said since he woke up in the lab.
As long as I can remember.
The thing is… the people in the lab called him Eleven, but it never felt right. Did he have a name before he lost his memory? If so, what was it? And why couldn't he remember anything?
The boy nodded. "My name's Mike, short for Michael. Why don't we call you Evan? Short for Eleven?"
Eleven nodded, even though the name still didn't feel right.
Mike smiled. "Okay. Night, Evan."
"Night, Mike," Eleven replied as the blanket fell over the fort, concealing Eleven behind a type of curtain.
That night, Eleven found himself in the black plane. Sometimes, Eleven traveled there in his sleep by mistake. The images he saw were brief and frazzled, like a bad connection, because he wasn't in the bathtub or using any other method to travel there. It was only his powers, and his powers, while strong, were far from fully developed.
"I don't know," a voice sighed, and Eleven turned.
In the distance, he could see a collection of teenagers. He couldn't tell how many there were because some of them were slightly blurry; it was like when a disc messes up or becomes scratched, and some pictures are little more than a collection of pixels while others are completely clear. Eleven's best guess was seven or eight teens, but only four of them were clear enough for Eleven to see their features in great detail.
Eleven walked towards them, curious and wanting to get a better look.
The person who had spoken was around thirteen or fourteen years of age, and he was dressed in a black T-shirt with dancing skeletons and dark jeans with rips around the knees. His sneakers were scuffed and muddy, like he ran in them a lot and never bothered to clean them or simply get new ones. A pitch black sword hung from his belt, and his raven locks were wild, falling into his dark eyes, which were rimmed with dark circles. His skin was nearly transparent. This kid couldn't have looked more unhealthy if he had a deadly disease.
"Something's different about his death," the boy added.
"I know what you mean," a girl said.
Eleven could also see the girl in great detail. She was around the same age as the boy- thirteen or fourteen- and she had dark skin, although it was lighter than the skin of the strange boy Eleven met in the woods. Her hair was curly and tamed into a low pony tail. Her eyes were golden, and she looked so innocent, but the golden sword dangling from her belt still made Eleven nervous. She wore a purple T-shirt with the letters SPQR tattooed around the chest, and she wore shorts that came to a few inches above her knees.
"It's like he forged his own path to the Underworld," she explained. "He died, but something feels different about his death."
One of the other boys sighed.
The boy was older than either of the other kids. He was around sixteen with short cropped blond hair and blue eyes. He wore the same shirt as the girl and blue jeans. His eyes were an electric blue, reflected in the lenses of his square glasses. There was a small scar on his upper lip, and this boy felt so familiar. There was something familiar about the other two, but the feeling of familiarity was so intense with this blond kid, Eleven felt like the name was on the tip of his tongue, the memory barely brushing his fingertips as he reached for it.
"Give it up, guys," the boy sighed, sounding defeated. "Leo's dead. There's nothing else to it."
The boy stormed off, disappearing into the inky blackness of the plane.
"Jason!" one of the blurry teens called, and the blurry image vanished as the person- a girl by the sound of her voice- ran after the blond.
Jason.
Eleven was fiddling with some kind of walkie talkie/radio (it was awesome. If he only had some tools… somehow he knew he could make it twice as awesome with a few simple objects, like rubber bands or something) when the curtain blanket was lifted, and Mike appeared.
"You found my super com," he said with a smile. "I use it to talk to my friends. Mostly Lucas since he lives so close. The signal's pretty weak."
Eleven smiled and held up one finger in the universal sign for hang on a minute before turning a few knobs and pressing a few buttons.
"Stronger," Eleven said, simply, handing Mike the walkie talkie.
Mike blinked before taking the walkie talkie.
"Dustin," he said. "Do you read?"
A moment of silence.
"I read," a voice said, and the voice was so clear, Dustin could've been in the same room with them.
Mike blinked. "Sorry. Never mind," he said before putting the antenna back down. "How did you do that?"
Eleven shrugged. "I don't know."
"Anyway, I brought you breakfast," Mike said, handing Eleven a waffle.
Eleven took a bite and smiled. This was a nice change from the awful lab food. Benny's was good, but Eleven decided he liked these waffles better.
"This is going to sound weird," Mike said, "but I need you to go outside and ring the doorbell. When my mom answers, tell her that you're lost and that you need help. It won't be a big deal. We'll just pretend to meet each other again. Understand?"
Eleven tapped his fingers against his leg.
Outside. Where the Bad Men could find him.
"No," Eleven said, firmly.
Mike frowned. "You don't want my mom to get help."
Eleven shook his head.
"You're in trouble, aren't you?" Mike realized.
Eleven nodded.
"Who are you in trouble with?"
"Bad," Eleven stated.
"Bad?" Mike asked. "Bad people? Do they want to hurt you?"
Eleven raised an eyebrow before holding out a fist.
"Rock, paper, scissors," he said.
Mike frowned, but held out his own fist. They bounced their fists against their palms while Mike chanted before Mike pulled out a rock and Eleven…
Eleven's hand formed a gun.
Eleven jerked his finger gun, like he was firing it.
"Bad," he explained before pointing it at himself. "Bad."
Mike blinked. "Oh, gosh," he muttered as he realized what Eleven was trying to say.
"Mike, we're going to be late!" A woman called from upstairs.
"I'll be right back," Mike said. "Stay here," he added as he hid Eleven from view with the blanket/curtain.
Mike returned after a few minutes, and Eleven stood, hearing his knees pop, having not stood up the entire night or morning.
Mike lead him up the stairs and through the doorway into a long hallway.
"You want something to drink? We have OJ, skim milk… what else?" Mike said as they walked into the living room. "This is my living room. It's mostly just for watching TV."
Eleven stared at the TV before picking up the remote sitting on top of it and smiling.
"What?" Mike asked.
"Make it better," Eleven replied, holding up the remote.
"How?" Mike questioned.
Eleven smiled and snapped off the back of the remote before disconnecting a few wires and pressing a few buttons.
Eleven wasn't even sure how he was doing it. He understood what he was doing, but he didn't know how he knew how to do it. After all, Papa had never taught him how to completely rewire a TV remote.
Eleven pressed the button labeled with a number 1.
The kitchen sick turned on, making Mike jump.
Eleven pressed 2.
The radio began to fizzle before the static became voices.
Eleven pressed 3.
The coffee maker whirled to life.
Eleven pressed 4.
Ice cubes tumbled out of the ice maker on the refrigerator.
Eleven pressed 5.
The doorbell rang, but when Mike glanced out the window, no one was there.
He stared at Eleven.
"How did you… the sink… the bell… the-the… how?" Mike stammered.
Eleven shrugged. "Don't know. Don't remember learning."
"You did that and you never learned how?" Mike said in disbelief. "My science teacher couldn't do that, and he used to teach engineering."
"I didn't say never learned," Eleven said (the bad grammar is intentional. Leo's memories getting taken kind of frazzled his brain, resulting in confusion with speech and jumbled up words. That's one of the reasons why he doesn't talk much, even though he knows how). "I said don't remember learning."
"You don't remember?" Mike asked with a frown.
Eleven shook his head. "Don't remember anything before a few months ago. All blank."
Mike blinked. "So… is Eleven your real name?"
"Don't think so," Eleven said. "Doesn't feel right."
Mike nodded. "Do you know what happened to your memory?"
Eleven shook his head. "I woke up one day, and it was gone."
Mike sighed. "Wow. I can't imagine losing my memory."
Eleven hit the All Power button, and all the appliances shut off. He rested the remote on top of the TV and crossed the room to stare at the photographs on the fireplace mantle.
Eleven frowned as his fingers rested on a picture of a small girl.
"That's my baby sister, Holly. The older girl is my sister, Nancy, and those are my parents," Mike said, pointing out two adults in a family photo.
Eleven continued to stare at the baby girl. Holly?
"Eleven? Eleven…"
Mike's voice sounded like it was coming through a wall.
"Who is this?" Eleven (that name still didn't seem right, and his voice sounded deeper than it should've been) said, and he found himself staring at a photograph of a young girl. She was a baby with short blonde hair and wide gray eyes. She looked like Holly, except Holly's eyes were blue; that must've been what triggered the strange vision Eleven was having.
"That's me," a girl's voice grumbled.
Eleven looked up and found himself staring at a blonde, tan girl with steely gray eyes. He could tell her mind was running a thousand miles an hour, and she wore an orange shirt. It had some words on it, but they were blurry, as though someone were blotting them out of the vision.
What was causing the vision, and why didn't they/it want Eleven to see what was on the girl's shirt? Why was it important?
"My dad made me get my picture taken," she said. "Made me do it every year. I always hated it."
"But you were such a cute baby, Annabeth. You're still cute," a raven haired boy came into the picture wearing the same shirt, and he wrapped an arm around the girl, kissing her on the cheek. He glanced at Eleven, and Eleven stared into his sea green eyes.
The girl laughed. "You know it, Seaweed Brain."
Gray eyes. Green eyes. Annabeth. Seaweed Brain.
Four pieces of the same puzzle and they didn't quite fit together.
He was missing several crucial parts, but how was he going to gather all the missing pieces?
"Eleven?"
Eleven was snapped out of the vision by Mike, who was gazing at him in worry.
"What's wrong?" Mike asked.
Eleven stared at the picture of Holly.
"Memories," he replied.
Mike smiled. "Your memory's coming back?"
Eleven shrugged. "Someone of them. Little at a time."
Mike nodded. "That's good."
"Good," Eleven repeated. "Good."
Half an hour later, Mike was playing with some board game pieces in his bedroom, introducing each of the pieces to Eleven and making strange sounds with his mouth, though. Eleven didn't mind; most people would think it was irritating, but Eleven would take annoying sounds over the silence that usually rang through the lab.
Eleven wandered over to the table against the wall beside the door and stared at the series of trophies.
"These are all my science fair trophies," Mike explained, joining him beside the table.
"Science," Eleven reiterated. Something told him he really liked science.
"Yeah. We got first every year, except last year when we got third. Mr. Clark said it was totally political."
Eleven had stopped listening. His eyes were focused on the picture leaning against the trophies.
Will Byers.
Eleven had had a dream about him the night before he escaped the lab. Not only that, but Eleven knew most of what was in the Upside Down. He was connected to it, and while he didn't know everything, he knew more than he wanted to. That's how he knew that Will Byers was in the Upside Down, and judging by how strong The Sense (what Eleven called the power to sense the things in the Upside Down), he was alive.
Eleven lifted a shaking fingers and prodded the photograph, his fingers lightly tapping against the part of the photo that contained Will.
"You know Will?" Mike murmured.
Eleven gave a small nod.
"Did you see him that night? On the road?"
Before Eleven could respond, he heard a car rumble into the driveway, and Mike's eyes widened.
"We have to go!" he exclaimed, grabbing Eleven's wrist and leading him downstairs.
Eleven and Mike skidded to a halt where the stair way curved into a platform, and Eleven saw a curly haired woman and a baby (he recognized them as Mike's mother and sister from the photos on the fireplace mantle).
Mike bounded back up the stairs, dragging Eleven with him.
"Ted?" his mother called. "Is that you?"
"Just me, Mom!" Mike called back.
"Mike? What are you doing home?"
"One second!"
Mike slammed the door to his bedroom and opened another door, displaying a small, claustrophobic closet.
Eleven stared at it in fear.
"Please," Mike begged. "You have to get in, or my mom- she'll find you. I won't tell her about you. I promise."
"Promise?" Eleven muttered. He recognized the word, and it felt like it meant something to him, but he couldn't figure out what.
"It means something that you can't break," Mike explained. "Please get in."
Eleven took two shaky steps forward, and his eyes widened when Mike shut the door.
Eleven felt the flashback crash over him, and he leaned against the wall, sinking to the floor.
Eleven expected a flashback of the awful Room in the lab, but he got something entirely different.
He found himself standing in a small room. There were two doors, both of which were shut and by the looks of them, locked, and no windows. This room was bigger than the dreaded room in the lab, but Eleven was still trapped.
(The italicized section is mostly taken from The Lost Hero with a few added things. I gave credit to Rick Riordan for the majority of the passage)
"Mom?" Eleven called, his voice smaller and younger-sounding. His heart was pounding. Something heavy crashed inside the room on the other side of a huge metal door. Unable to control or comprehend his actions entirely, he ran to the door and tried to get it open, but no matter how hard he pulled or kicked, it wouldn't open. "Mom!" Frantically, he tapped a message on the wall. Eleven remembered the scientists using it in the lights in the lab. What did they call it? Morse code? But Eleven didn't know he knew it himself. Still, he understood the message he tapped:
You okay?
"She can't hear you," a voice said.
Eleven turned and found himself facing a strange woman. She was wrapped in black robes, with a veil covering her face.
"Tía?" he said.
Eleven didn't know he knew Spanish either, but he understood that word as well. Aunt.
The woman chuckled, a slow gentle sound, as if she were half asleep. "I am not your guardian. Merely a family resemblance."
"What—what do you want? Where's my mom?"
"Ah … loyal to your mother. How nice. But you see, I have children too … and I understand you will fight them someday. When they try to wake me, you will prevent them. I cannot allow that."
"I don't know you. I don't want to fight anybody."
Eleven still didn't want to fight anybody. He'd been fighting since he entered the lab, but judging from the sound of his voice, he'd become a fighter long before he entered Hawkins lab. He didn't sound older than seven or eight.
She muttered like a sleepwalker in a trance, "A wise choice."
With a chill, Eleven realized the woman was, in fact, asleep. Behind the veil, her eyes were closed. But even stranger: her clothes were not made of cloth. They were made of earth—dry black dirt, churning and shifting around her. Her pale, sleeping face was barely visible behind a curtain of dust, and he had the horrible sense that she'd had just risen from the grave. If the woman was asleep, Eleven wanted her to stay that way. He knew that fully awake, she would be even more terrible.
"I cannot destroy you yet," the woman murmured. "The Fates will not allow it. But they not do protect your mother, and they cannot stop me from breaking your spirit. Remember this night, little hero, when they ask you to oppose me."
"Leave my mother alone!" Fear rose in his throat as the woman shuffled forward. She moved more like an avalanche than a person, a dark wall of earth shifting toward him.
"How will you stop me?" she whispered.
She walked straight through a table, the particles of her body reassembling on the other side.
She loomed over Eleven, and he knew she would pass right through him, too. He was the only thing between her and his mother. He didn't remember his mother and he barely even recognized the word, but that didn't mean he didn't know he loved her and would want to protect her.
His hands caught fire.
Eleven was shocked. He'd melted cans and people with his mind before, but his hands had never actually lit on fire. It astounded him.
A sleepy smile spread across the woman's face, as if she'd already won. Eleven screamed with desperation. His vision turned red. Flames washed over the earthen woman, the walls, the locked doors.
The world went black.
Eleven opened his eyes to find a concerned Mike staring back from the open door.
"Mike," he murmured, relieved for the light that fell over him. It also allowed his tears to glimmer upon his face, and Eleven wanted to reach up and wipe them away, but coming out of a flashback always left him disoriented.
"You okay?" Mike asked, even though he knew Eleven wasn't.
Eleven wasn't sure. He'd had a very frightening flashback, and he was confused by it, but he'd retrieved one of his memories. One day, and two of his lost memories had returned. That had to mean he was getting better.
Eleven nodded. "Promise."
Mike's friends stared at Eleven like he was going to explode.
"Are you out of your mind?" the dark skinned boy (Lucas, right? Eleven thought) said.
"Hear me out," Mike began.
"You're out of your mind!" Lucas exclaimed.
"He knows about Will!" Mike interrupted.
"What about Will?" the curly haired kid, Dustin, demanded.
"He pointed at him," Mike said, showing them the photograph. "I think he knows what happened to him."
Dustin seemed convinced and interested, and Lucas still appeared suspicious of Eleven, but Mike had both of their attentions.
"Do you think it's a coincidence that we found him on Merkwood?" Mike asked. "The same place Will disappeared. And he said bad people are after him. I think these bad people are the same people that took Will."
"Then why doesn't he just tell us?" Lucas demanded, storming over to stand in front of Eleven. "Do you know where he is? Do you know where he is?" Lucas repeated, shaking Eleven's arms.
"Danger," Eleven replied.
"He's in danger?" Lucas interoperated.
"You are, too, if you go to find him," Eleven added (this is where his speech begins to improve, and he starts speaking in complete sentences) .
"He can speak," Dustin muttered in the background, but Lucas was only focused on the topic at hand.
"I don't care! Tell me where he is!" Lucas demanded.
"Man, I nearly get myself killed on a daily basis. That's why I'm hiding here, and I don't want to drag you three into my mess by telling you where Will is," Eleven said.
"Last night, he barely talks. Now, he can speak like a normal person," Dustin muttered, and Mike elbowed him with a pointed stare.
"He's probably just pulling our leg!" Lucas snapped. "Back to plan A. We need to tell your mom."
Eleven felt panic fuel him. He wasn't sure if he could trust Mike or Dustin yet, but he knew that he couldn't trust adults. They see a lost child, they call it in, even if the child ran away and ran away for a good reason. Eleven couldn't take that chance. Not only would Papa and the Bad Men possibly kill him, but they'd kill anyone that knew about him. Mike, Mike's mom, Dustin, Lucas... they'd all die.
Eleven wasn't going to let that happen.
Lucas stomped towards the door, but when his hand touched the doorknob, he snapped back with a yelp. A shiny burn marred his finger tip where he'd came in contact with the metal, and the doorknob was steaming.
"It's got to be a hundred degrees or more," Lucas muttered with a glance at a bewildered and frightened Mike. His eyes moved onto a stunned Dustin before traveling over Dustin's shoulder to land on Eleven. Mike and Dustin followed his gaze.
Blood dripping from his nose and steam rising from his hair, Eleven sent them a stern glance.
"Unless you want to get killed by the Bad People, you step away from the door, sit down, and listen to me," Eleven said.
Too afraid to argue, the three boys seated themselves in various parts of the room. Lucas sat in Mike's desk chair, the farthest away from Eleven, and Dustin reclined in another chair. Mike was the only one not afraid to sit beside Eleven.
With a deep breath, Eleven began his tale.
"A few months ago, I woke up in a lab," Eleven began. "I was told my name was Eleven and that I had… extraordinary powers. I had no memory of my life before the lab, not my real name, not my age, not where I came from or how I came to the lab. I'd never even looked at myself in the mirror until last night.
"The people were… bad. I won't go into detail, but they're bad. They want me back in their lab, and they will kill anyone who knows about me. All three of you; Mike's family is a possibly, too. You have no reason to trust me, and I have no reason to trust you, but you can't tell anyone. You'll die if you do and then you'll never find Will."
"Should we take the chance?" Dustin muttered to Lucas.
Lucas shrugged. "No," he said, shortly. "These powers… what are they?"
Eleven blinked. "I don't know what all of them are, but I know a few. Telekinesis, melting things with my mind, heating things up with my mind, inability to be burned or feel heat, and other abilities I haven't discovered yet. The person who discovered my powers said that there were some unlocked powers and others that would develop over time. I figured this one out earlier."
Eleven held out his hand and allowed flames to flicker between his fingers, dancing over his palm.
"Woah," Lucas murmured. "If you have these powers, why can't you just fight the Bad People?"
"Too many of them," Eleven said, "and my powers drain me. Using my powers can range from feeling like… a simple gym class to feeling like I ran three consecutive marathons."
Dustin raised an eyebrow. "Wow. No wonder you don't use them often."
Eleven nodded. "Tell no one, and I will find a way to help you find your friend. In a way that doesn't get us all killed. I don't know about you, but I don't like being dead."
"I'm down with that plan," Mike stated.
"I like not being killed," Dustin offered.
Lucas nodded, but he said nothing.
Eleven nodded, "Okay, then."
Curiosity killed the cat.
A few hours later, after the boys had vanished from the room and gone downstairs, Eleven tip toed down the steps and toward the basement.
Milk splattered across the table as Mike performed an award winning spit take, and Dustin banged his fists on the table.
"Sorry," Dustin said, sheepishly. "Spasm."
As soon as Eleven sat in his little blanket fort downstairs, he burst out laughing.
The spit take… spasm… hilarious.
In the lab, Eleven had never laughed or told a joke or even thought of something funny. He was on his toes everyday, and nothing seemed funny when you were that traumatized. Why was this sense of humor showing up now?
Eleven wondered if he had a sense of humor before the lab tried to take it away…
Eleven was fiddling with the walkie talkie when Mike and his friends appeared in the basement with a plate.
"My mom didn't really feel like cooking tonight, so she just heated up some frozen tacos," Mike said.
Tacos? Eleven took a bite, and he decided, once and for all, that tacos were the best food ever.
"I guess he likes them," Dustin said with a laugh.
Mike smiled before it dropped. "So… Will?"
Eleven contemplated how he was going to voice this.
"I know where he is, but it's going to be hard to get there and get out safely," Eleven said. "I think I can find a way to contact Will, but it may take some time."
As he said this, Eleven twisted a few more knobs on the walkie talkie.
"How can you contact him?" Lucas asked.
"With this," Eleven answered, displaying the Super Com. "But I need to find the right station."
"There's only twenty. It can't be that hard," Lucas said, his eyes suspicious and angry.
Mike elbowed his knee from where he was sitting across from Eleven, and Lucas glared as he rubbed at the offended spot on his leg.
"There's more than twenty stations. You just don't know they're there. You need someone with powers like mine to tap into the unseen stations," Eleven explained. "There's dozens of stations between eleven and twelve for example, and the same goes with the gap between every other set of numbers. It takes a lot of time and energy to sift through every station."
"So… are you trying to contact the lab?" Lucas asked.
Eleven thought about that.
"Somewhat," he settled on. "Will is in a complicated place, and… I don't know how to explain it right now. All I know is that we need to work fast, and we need to contact Will before anything else. Once we get where Will is, the better pin point we have on his location, the safer the mission or whatever it is will be."
Lucas nodded. "Just… please hurry. He's our friend. I don't know what we'd do if something happened to him."
Eleven frowned. "What is friend?"
The word sounded so familiar and yet so… unfamiliar. Like everything else, a distant memory just out of reach,
"Is he serious?" Lucas muttered.
"A friend is someone you do anything for," Mike offered.
"They lend you their cool stuff, like comic books," Dustin added.
"And they never break a promise," Mike said.
"Especially when they're spit," Lucas said.
"Spit?" Eleven reiterated.
Lucas nodded before spitting in his hand and clasping Dustin's.
"It's a vow," Lucas added while Dustin wiped his hand on his shirt with a disgusted expression.
"Will's our friend," Mike concluded.
Eleven smiled. Eleven wasn't one to make promises willy nilly, but he could keep this one.
"We'll bring Will home. I promise."
About half an hour later, Eleven figured out how to explain the Upside Down.
While the boys conversed in quite tones (probably about him), Eleven walked across the room and sat at a card table with a board game on top. He recognized it, although he never remembered playing or seeing it, as Dungeons and Dragons (I'm pretty sure that's what the game was. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong).
"What's the freak doing?" Lucas hissed.
"Don't call him a freak," Mike snapped.
"It's true."
Eleven sat at the table and closed his eyes.
"Mom… Mom… Mom…"
A small boy with brown hair shivering in his closet at home, crying quietly.
"Mom… Mom…Mom…"
"Will," Eleven said as he opened his eyes and picked up a small wizard figurine.
"Superpowers," Dustin murmured, and Lucas rolled his eyes.
"Where is he?" Mike asked.
Eleven rested the figurine on the table itself and swept all the other figurines off of the board game. He flipped it over and stared at the empty blackness on the bottom.
He slammed Will's figurine on the black surface.
"I don't understand," Mike said.
"Hiding," Eleven offered, although he didn't elaborate. He didn't want to remember the expression on Will's face as he trembled alone in a dark closet while a monster lurked on the other side of the door.
"He's hiding? From the Bad Men?" Mike inferred.
Eleven shook his head.
"Then from who?"
Eleven reached into the box of figurines, and his hand immediately closed on the two headed serpent beast of the game. The Demigorgan.
He slammed it down on the board right beside Will.
Lucas stared in confusion and mourning fear. Mike gazed in horror, and Dustin's face turned pale with absolute horror as Eleven's intended explanation became more clear. Will was hiding from…
"The ultimate monster," Eleven whispered.
Now the story's really kicking off...
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By the way, I'm hoping that I'll end up updating more often because I already have this story planned out in stranger things season 2 style but I have to write the story through season 1 first.
Thanks for reading!