AN:

Okay, guys, I'm sorry! I know it's been a few days, but here's Chapter Six. I'm not 100% happy with it to be honest, but I can't stare at it any longer willing a better way to write it to come to me! Please tell me what you think. I love you all, people who've reviewed. It really makes my day. Also, I felt really bad for how awful and depressing 'Demons' was, so even though this one isn't what I'd call 'light' either, there's a flashback to happier times in there for you. Don't worry, one day soon things will look promising again. Hope you like! -Inara x

Six The Game

Jane drifted from the Fause building like a ghost lost in time. Where was she headed? A part of her was dying to run back upstairs to Mike, but she knew more explaining at this point would just give him more things to doubt. It was the same as the night of the rally, when he'd yelled and cried and turned his room into a crash site in a jealous, heartbroken rage. She couldn't tell him then, and she couldn't tell him now. Granted, her reasons were different this time—this time, her consciousness didn't blindly flow around the problem like stream water around a rock—but the outcome was the same. You couldn't get blood out of a stone.

Holding her hood down tightly around her face, she started toward home when an uncomfortable chafing brought her up short.

Right. Underwear.

There wasn't a whole lot to downtown Hawkins. Besides the sandwich place and a couple of restaurants, everything was pretty much where she'd left it four years ago: RadioShack, Melvald's, Maggie's, The Hawk, Hunting & Camping. Mary Sue's was tucked into a side street behind Melvald's along with that pub Jane had never been into, the Hideaway.

This time of day, the store was quiet. Dead, actually. When Jane entered, she startled as the doorbell jingled above her, looking around wildly as if she'd set off an alarm. The sales clerk behind the counter glanced up. She had wild black cherry curls pinned up off her face and was wearing enamel cat eye frames. She smiled sympathetically.

"You need help there, honey?"

Jane realised she'd mistaken her wide-eyed, spooked expression for intimidation.

"Uh…" She fumbled with her jacket, pushing back her hood and unzipping the front. The other woman took in her bony frame through her glasses but said nothing.

Jane meant to say 'no, thank you.' She'd meant to just grab the first comfortable multi-pack off the rack and be done with it. But her eyes were drawn to a burst of vibrant colour behind the woman's head, where a mannequin was fitted with a royal blue garter set.

It was exactly the same colour…

"You think he'll like it?" Nancy asked uncertainly, her thumbs rubbing nervous circles against the blue lace in her hands. "You don't think he'd like the red one better?"

"I think you look stunning in blue," Jane answered confidently. "And he's going to love it regardless. He's going to lose his mind when he sees you."

Having finally landed his first big gallery partnership in Indianapolis, Jonathan was meeting Nancy back home for the weekend. What with her third year away at college and his ridiculous work schedule, she hadn't seen him in person in months, but they'd promised each other they wouldn't flake on this. Since breaking up in their first year out of school owing to too much time apart, they were both sticklers for the no-flake rule these days. Sometimes you had to lose the one you loved to realise what you were willing to do to get them back, she'd told Jane. For always.

Nancy smiled hesitantly, her insecurity plain on her face as she ran her fingers along the plunging neckline. "I just don't know…"

A loud groan sounded from the aisle beside them, and Mike appeared around the corner, looking as utterly appalled and impatient as any boy being dragged along on feminine errands for his sister would.

"Nancy," he said forcefully. "Just buy the one you're holding! You promised me five minutes and I've been standing around listening to my sister talk about sweetheart necklines and see-through panels for half an hour! It's a teddy. He'll love it for thirty seconds, then it'll be a scrap of discarded fabric on the floor. Just buy it!"

Nancy looked like she was about to argue then decided against it, disappearing in the direction of the register. With an amused smile, Jane watched her go, then rolled her attention back to her boyfriend, arching an eyebrow.

He shook his head stubbornly. "I'm not sorry. Thirty minutes, El. Thirty minutes! Do we really have to do makeup and perfume next?"

She suppressed a chuckle and caught sight of a skimpy high-waisted thong hanging in her purview. She turned, pretending to admire it, then ran her fingertip down the front, her nail scratching audibly against the silk.

She glanced over at Mike and saw his frown shift slightly, although he still looked uncomfortable. Now, he was just…uncomfortable and confused, like he didn't know if she was trying something and, if she was, whether it was working or not.

She pulled the hanger off the rack and sashayed over to him, her expression all-innocence. Ordinarily she hated women who sashayed—she even hated the word itself—but the look on Mike's face was priceless.

"Do you know why women wear makeup and perfume, Mike?" she purred, pressing the panties against his shirtfront.

These ones were red. And unabashedly luxurious.

He stared down at them wordlessly, his eyes glued to the tiny sparkling black beads threaded along the string-thin strap at the back.

Jane reached up, her free hand sliding into his hair, fingers knotting at the roots. But she didn't pull. She drew him down to her with her eyes. They brimmed with the promise of something unfathomable, and he followed their spell like a man caught in a siren's thrall.

Their lips came close, but she anchored him just out of reach; gently, expertly. Keeping him at bay.

Her lips brushed his. Hers were soft and delicate; like feathers. She wanted him to feel all of her through just their kiss and the absence of her everywhere else.

Jane brought her lower lip into her mouth, wetting it with her tongue as he watched, hypnotised, and now she was satisfied because she knew all he could see was her.

"Do you?" she repeated, this time in a whisper.

Finally she released her hold on him and he sank into her, kissing her. His movements were soft; languid—like remembering every detail was imperative. He could taste her hot mouth and the green apple she'd eaten on the way here. He wanted to taste more of her.

He made a sound low in his throat that told her he didn't know. What was the question again?

Jane smirked and broke away slowly, letting his eyes refocus on her face. His lips were still parted; his fingers still cradled her face, curtained by her hair. He looked like he had no understanding of what had just happened, but he loved her.

And then the dreamlike haze shattered as she answered for him abruptly, "Because we're ugly and we smell bad."

Grinning and hanging up the panties, Jane headed away from him down the aisle in search of Nancy, and he stared after her like she'd just told him she'd crashed his car.

"Oh, come on!"

"Honey?"

Jane blinked. The sales clerk—looking at her nametag, Jane saw her name was Bee—was leaning further over the counter, trying to get her attention.

"Pardon? Oh, sorry."

"You spaced out for a minute there." Bee smiled. "Bit overwhelming for you?"

Jane glanced around the store and pushed her fists into her jacket pockets. "I just haven't been shopping in a while."

"Someone to impress?" the older woman teased. She wasn't old at all; just older than Jane by comparison. Maybe early thirties.

Jane considered the question. The likelihood that she'd be in a state of undress in the near future wasn't just low, it was non-existent. Mike had said it before—she really didn't know him anymore. The thought that some other girl could be out buying slinky lingerie with him in mind made her stomach heave, but that was one of the consequences of confessing to murder: your boyfriend finding someone who hadn't confessed to murder.

But the question stood. She wasn't getting her hopes up or anything, but his effort to be cold had quickly dissolved into vindictive anger. People didn't get that angry when they didn't care. Mike didn't.

She sighed and replied to Bee, "Probably a bit soon for that. But maybe next time." Like lingerie could make it all better.

Then again, if memory served, it could accomplish a lot of things.

"In that case…" Bee came out from behind the counter. "What can I do for you, love?"

Jane pulled out her wallet and handed her Dustin's gift card. "I just need a few essentials. I haven't exactly been living the high life since I've been away, so something that doesn't make me want to kill myself would be appreciated."

Bee nodded in feminine understanding and asked, "We've got comfort or comfort with an asterisk?"

Jane decided she liked this woman. "Have you got anything that says, 'now I'm back, I'm going to stop eating like a skeleton and scaring myself in the bathroom mirror'?"

Her eyes travelling over Jane's protruding sternum again, Bee nodded. "We'll grab you a couple of sizes, love. Don't you worry."

Bee proved to be extremely helpful, and thanks to Dustin's somewhat awkward but well-placed generosity, Jane left Mary Sue's with a bundle of mixed cotton briefs, an assortment of sporty thongs for getting her fitness back in check, and, just for the days when her ass was looking particularly sad, a violet pair of Brazilian-cut bottoms. And socks. Could never have enough socks.

It was amazing, how long the two women talked. Jane knew it wasn't the smartest idea but Bee—full name Beatriz, as Jane had found out—was so warm and forthcoming that her conversation was difficult to resist.

She'd grown up in upstate New York but had moved to the city for college. She'd hated it, saying it was just bursting at the seams with people and no matter where you went, you couldn't have a quiet day. So, she'd dropped out of college—hating pharmacy anyway—and just waitressed from town to town, state to state. She honestly loved meeting people, Jane realised. Just not in the cities themselves. And when she finally reached Hawkins, it felt like as good a town as any to stay for a while. Good people, she said. It was just a town of truly good people.

So that's why she had no idea who Jane was. She'd only moved here after the fact, and knowing Hawkins folk, no one had told her anything because no one liked to talk about the bad apples once they were flushed out.

Jane kept her sharing fairly minimal. When the conversation swayed away from frills and lace and cheeky ribbon ties, she explained how she spent her teenage years here when she moved in with her dad, but she'd been away the last few years. Bee guessed college, considering how exhausted and starved she looked—like she was living off packet noodles or something. Jane had let her believe it.

Bee's last question reminded Jane she really did have to go:

"What are you going to do, now that you're back?"

Jane pondered how to frame her response to that for a moment, then simply smiled.

"I should go." She looked out the shop window. "Can you believe it's getting dark already?"

Bee followed her gaze and murmured, "I kind of like it, though. Dark or light, you know nothing's gonna hurt you in Hawkins. I could walk around the streets all night and nobody would lay a finger on me."

Ignoring the personal irony in that, Jane pushed herself to her feet. They'd been sitting on the step outside the changing rooms, a dark silver velvet curtain brushing against Jane's back. She helped Bee up, too.

"We owe all that to Hawkins' finest, keeping our streets safe for us," she drivelled, although she meant it when Steve popped into her mind. Truly Hawkins' finest.

Zipping her jacket back up and taking her bag, she waved her way out of the store, stopping only for a moment on the stoop to survey the sidewalks outside. Pretty empty. Got to love small towns.

Jane got back to the apartment a little before seven to find Dustin waiting at the door.

"Do you know how long I've been standing here?" he demanded. "An hour, Jane! What would have happened if you hadn't come home? The hospital knows you're missing, by the way. It's only a matter of time before word reaches Hawkins."

Jane shrugged off her jacket and hung it on one of the hooks in the entryway.

"I'm sorry," she said honestly. "I lost track of time. It's kind of been a hell of a day."

"You're telling me." He led the way into the kitchen and cracked himself a beer. "I spent my whole shift waiting for them to come take me away. It was like everyone was watching everyone today. Stressed me the hell out."

Jane watched him as he sat himself down on one of the barstools and rubbed his face tiredly. He did look exhausted. She realised how selfish she'd been today, getting caught up in social chat with a stranger because it felt good to pretend to be normal again when her friend had literally committed a crime for her not twenty-four hours before. A crime he could go to prison for, no less. And on barely any sleep, he'd had to re-enter that snake pit this morning and pretend everything was fine while hoping to God no one saw through him.

"I'm sorry," she said again finally, more weight to it this time. "I wasn't thinking. I'll do better."

"I just want you to be safe, Janie." He pulled out the other stool from under the bench for her. "We just got you back."

She obliged him, sitting down. She couldn't look straight at him when she admitted, "I really missed you, you know." She set her jaw stubbornly as tears welled up. "That place was awful. It would make sense that it was you out of everybody who would get me out. You always see the best in people."

Dustin smiled impishly and Jane could tell she wasn't going to like what he was about to say.

"I guess it helped you didn't cheat on me with Scott Keegan, hey?"

If it were possible, Jane's tears of gratitude would have instantaneously dried up. Bastard. That was twice in one day he'd said something that no one else would say.

She looked away. "He told you about that."

"Come on, you know you were hoping he would." He took another swig of his beer. "You wanted all of us to hate you. Didn't mean I believed you."

Jane's eyebrows pulled together, wondering if he'd misunderstood. "D, I did cheat on Mike."

"Oh, I know," he said. "I meant, I didn't believe you wanted to." At her stupefied expression, he shook his head fondly, as if saying 'Classic Jane.' "Come on, Janie, you loved that guy like he was the only guy on Earth. You still do. You expect me to believe you just stopped and treated him like the shit under your shoe because he just didn't do it for you anymore? I'm not an idiot."

"You're calling Mike an idiot?"

He shook his head. "He was too close to the whole thing. But it was the same with Hopper. You think Steve brought home those transcripts and I just suddenly decided to start looking for you? It took a while, I know, but why do you think I majored in Psychology, girl? I've been a man on a mission since they arrested you."

"D…" Jane really didn't know what to say to that. She leaned her head on his shoulder, closing her eyes.

"I know, I know." He moved her for a second to wrap his arm around her shoulders. "I'm one of a kind."

"A gentleman and a scholar," she murmured, relishing in the strength and surety of his arm around her. She really had missed him.

"Okay!" Steve burst through the front door, yelling down the hallway, "I have prime rib, I have butter, I have artichokes. Three guesses what we're having for—oh, now! What kind of adorable scene do I see before me?"

Jane felt Dustin swivel his head around and he taunted his roommate, "Nothing you can get in on, Steve."

"Please, I think Brown Eyes'll be the judge of that."

Jane didn't know what was happening; one second, she was happily cocooned under Dustin's wing and the next, she was being spun around like a ragdoll in Steve's arms.

"Stop!" she cried out, faltering when he put her down, too dizzy to stand. He caught her but she shoved him off, grabbing at the kitchen bench instead for support. "What is this, a lame nineties rip-off of Happy Days?"

The boys shrugged, and Steve turned to Dustin. "Well, if it was, I'd be Fonzie."

"Oh, you think you'd be Fonzie?" Dustin was on his feet. "Of course, you think you'd be Fonzie!"

"Guys!" Four years in a mental asylum and Jane had seen inmates acting less crazy than this. "Can we please act like grown-ups?" It was almost impossible to believe they were respectable members of society in their day-to-day lives.

The puffed chests reluctantly deflated and they started about helping her in the kitchen, pausing only to clink bottles when Steve fetched himself a beer out of the fridge.

By the time dinner and clean-up were over, it was about eight thirty, and, as wonderfully delightful as the dinner conversation had been, Jane had been watching the clock above the oven the whole time. As soon as it hit nine, they were leaving.

She knew it was stupid—her personal vendetta speaking, no more—but a part of her really wanted Ford to see her coming. She wanted him to know she wasn't going to stop until she burned him and his sick little experiment—whatever it was—to the ground. She wanted him to be afraid.

That was what she'd wanted to tell Bee earlier, when she'd asked what she was going to do:

Crucify the sinners. Make them bleed.

Jane knew she wasn't even close to being in a position yet where she could do that. At the moment, it just sounded laughable. But she would get there. She wouldn't stop until she got there.

They'd killed her father. They were going to pay.

And, if they hadn't, they had a lot of explaining to do.

"Okay," she addressed Steve. "Time to rob some town secrets."

"Wait, what?" Dustin's hands were full of dessert ingredients, but he swung around. "What do you think you're doing?"

"Oh." Jane tried to look innocent. "Did I not tell you—"

He cut her off. "No, you didn't tell me and you're not going!"

She grimaced, eyes moving to Steve for back-up. "Steve?"

He looked like he wished she'd won the argument on her own, but sighed. "D, we need information out of Ford's office."

"So, we'll go!" Dustin insisted, gesturing madly between himself and Steve. "She can't get caught doing something illegal! Could you imagine—"

"I understand," Steve said. "But we don't really even know what we're looking for." As Dustin swayed on his feet, he added, "Besides, look at you. You're run off your feet. Take the night and recharge. We'll fill you in on what we find in the morning."

Dustin looked between him and Jane and back again. "Do you at least have a plan? What about cameras?"

Steve was unbothered. "Doesn't have any. I cased the place earlier today; made an appointment for next week to have a yarn about the stress of the job. Not too surprising—this is Hawkins, and the guy's acting like he's got nothing to hide. Janie'll just take care of the locks and we'll be in and out."

"And if someone catches you?" Dustin demanded.

Jane felt herself getting impatient. "I'll take care of it."

He turned his attention on her. "Oh, yeah? And how are you gonna do that? Keeping in mind that people thinking you killed somebody is what got us into this mess in the first place!"

She rolled her eyes. "I meant, I'd knock them out and make them think they dreamed the whole thing."

"Is that something you can do now?" Steve asked, clearly misunderstanding her meaning. "Hypnotise people?"

She frowned at him. "No, genius. I like to leave that to the experts. I just meant I'd put them somewhere they'd think they fell asleep."

"Oh." He processed that for a moment. "So, not a perfect plan, then."

"No," she agreed. "But we don't really have a better one." She turned back to Dustin, wanting to reassure him. "D, I know this is hard, but we'll be careful. We need to do this."

"Will you at least wait a couple hours?" he begged. "The last movie is on at nine. It'll finish around eleven. Streets should clear out after that."

Jane glanced at Steve, considering it, but ultimately shook her head. "Actually, we were hoping to use the hordes of rowdy teenagers as a cover. With them heading into the movie, nobody's going to notice us walk straight through a doorway down the side street. It's not like we're going to be standing outside with a lock pick or anything."

Dustin wasn't happy, but in the end, he conceded. Steve got changed into dark civilian garb and hid his tell-tale hair under a knit cap. Jane grabbed a few essentials, and then they were climbing down the fire escape and out onto the street.

The Hawk was a point of activity as people arrived to buy their tickets. It was a Saturday night, so that came as no surprise. Jane remembered many a Saturday night spent curled up against Mike in the dark movie theatre. Skirting around the crowd and down the side street, however, there was no one to be found.

Ford's office was entirely dark on both levels, and as they approached, without faltering in her stride, Jane focused on the locked door and then closer, finding the latch and deadbolt with her mind. Both retracted in unison as she reached for the knob, and she and Steve slipped into the waiting room as easily as they would their own home. More easily, in fact.

Jane knew this building like the back of her hand, so she made a beeline for the stairs and ran up to Ford's actual office as if they weren't plunged in impenetrable darkness. She could hear Steve feeling his way up, so she made sure the blinds on the three windows on this level were shut, then switched on her flashlight. It was small—even with the blinds drawn, she didn't want to create too much light—but it was enough to sculpt a hazard-free path for Steve into the room.

"Okay, so…" He fumbled for the right words. "You wanna…?"

In answer to his question, a unified chorus of clicks rang out around the room, every drawer and filing cabinet unlocking at once.

Jane turned to Steve and, to polish off the display, switched on his flashlight for him as he pulled it out of his belt.

"Let's do this," she said, and they took to opposite sides of the room, each starting on a cabinet.

Steve groaned and buried his face in his hands, sitting on the floor with piles of papers stacked separately in front of him, the bottom drawer of his second cabinet empty beside him.

"Three hours!" he grumbled. "Three hours, and nothing!"

"What, did you expect this to be easy?" Jane teased. "Aren't you a cop?"

In truth, she was feeling a bit disheartened herself. She was ahead of him, on the fifth and final cabinet. She'd already checked Ford's desk and bookshelves as well, and knowing she had only two drawers left to find even a trace of shady activity had her wondering about their next move. If they found nothing, where did they go from here? Would it really come down to her kidnapping Ford and torturing him for information in somebody's garage, way off the beaten track? As tempting as it was, that did sound crazy.

Steve sighed and dropped his hands into his lap, smacking the papers in front of him. "Maybe we missed something."

"We haven't missed anything," she assured him. "We've combed this place, top to bottom. If nothing's in that cabinet, pack it away and come help me with these last two drawers. I'm learning a lot about townsfolk I never wanted to know."

"Should we feel bad about this?" he queried, beginning to put documents away in the order he'd found them. "Some of this is really private stuff."

"We already knew Mrs Wheeler thinks Ted is a couch potato," Jane brushed him off casually. "At least, this way, we know no one else is a candidate and that I'm the only one who's been prescribed the Periphax. And remember, if you hadn't read my transcripts, I wouldn't be here right now."

"About that," he said hesitantly. "Janie, the Periphax, the anti-depressants… I just don't know why you didn't tell me."

"I didn't tell anybody," she admitted after a moment, still looking through documents and not looking at him. "I didn't even tell Mike."

"But I was—" He cut himself off. What had he been going to say? Your big brother? Your family?

She sighed and rested the papers on top of the drawer, meeting his eyes. "You think I wanted you to know there was something wrong with me?" Her voice was small, and it cracked.

"Janie..." Steve looked like his heart was breaking for her, like the last thing he wanted was for her to feel like she couldn't tell him about herself. "There's something wrong with everybody. But if you think not being okay after that horror show you went through made you wrong in some sort of way… You got no idea what really wrong people are like. And they sure as hell are nothing like you."

Jane opened her mouth to reply but was unsure of what she was going to say, when the floor creaked and she and Steve threw themselves behind the desk in an effort to scramble out of view, clicking off their flashlights and holding their breaths.

But nobody came. Maybe it was just the wind. They lay there for five minutes, waiting for somebody to come in and catch them. But there was nothing. Not even footsteps.

Peeking out from behind the solid mahogany, her eyes adjusting to the dark, Jane could confirm that it must have just been the building shifting on its foundations. It was an old building, after all. She clicked her flashlight back on and climbed over Steve to get back to her filing cabinet, but he didn't follow.

"Janie…" he murmured.

"What?" she replied carelessly, not really listening. "Get back here and help me, you lazy lummox."

"No, Janie…"

She looked up. He was lying on his side, staring across the room with his flashlight beam pointing directly at the bare coffee table on the far side of the couches.

"What?" she demanded, not understanding the relevance of it.

"Does that carpet look level to you?" he asked in response, and Jane immediately forgot what she'd been reading about.

She lay down beside him, seeing what he was talking about. It was very slight, the difference, but she could see how he'd noticed it; there was a definite edge running along the carpet between the two closest table legs, too disconnected to be a seam. She crawled over and shoved the coffee table aside, sticking her fingernails into the tiny gap and pulling. The carpet square came away, revealing a wooden board underneath. She lifted that, too.

A floor safe.

"Oh, Steve, you're a genius," she whispered.

"I thought I was a lummox," he retorted in good humour, coming to kneel beside her. "It's a spin combination lock. You think you can handle one of these?"

"I guess we'll find out."

She leaned her head into the hole, pressing her ear against the cold metal and closing her eyes. Listening. Blocking everything else out and listening.

It wasn't a matter of listening for clicks with her ear. She was no expert on regular safe-cracking, but she knew they listened for clicks or something. She couldn't really explain it, her way. It was like listening to the physical space between everything. As she started to turn the combination dial to the left with her mind, she could feel the spindle turning the wheel cam, and the space between the drive pin and the first wheel fly diminishing. She waited until she'd picked up all the wheels to listen for the absence of metal in the first wheel—the notch that would determine the first number in the combination. She found it.

"Steve, write down the number," she ordered, not opening her eyes. Light flashed against her eyelids as she felt him lean over her, studying the dial.

Then he stumbled away in search of a pen.

"You got it?" she verified, not wanting to lose her concentration on the space between the wheels and the fence.

He crawled back to her, his words slightly distorted as he spoke around a pen lid. "Got it. Sixty-four."

Jane returned her full attention to the safe. Spinning the dial to the right, she waited. It made three revolutions before she felt the notch of the second wheel closing in on the overhead fence. She stopped the dial.

"Number," she told Steve, and he leaned over again and recorded it.

"Thirty-five."

The final number came up after two revolutions to the left, and, after getting Steve to take this one down as well, Jane turned the dial back to the right until she felt resistance. All the notches were lined up with the fence above. She jolted the dial just a little further and felt the bolt retract. So that's how it worked; the fence fell into the aligned notches under the force of its own weight and freed the bolt to slide open unhindered.

Speaking of unhindered.

Jane sat up and used the handle to pull the safe open.

Steve shone his flashlight over her shoulder. "Documents?"

"And then some," she whispered, pulling out a stack of patient files all stamped with 'candidate' at the top. She gave half to Steve and told him to check their prescription logs. As she flipped through her stack, uncertainty dawned. "No Periphax."

"Doesn't look like it," he confirmed. "No mention of a ROOM trigger either."

"Maybe I was wrong." Jane felt her heart sink. What if she had been wrong, about everything? What if, sleazy as he was, Ford wasn't her own personal demon who'd single-handedly ruined her life in an attempt to use her for sinister purposes?

It really did sound ridiculous when she thought about it. Maybe Mike was right.

"Whoa, hold up." Steve leaned in closer to her, showing her one booklet in particular. It wasn't a patient file. It was a psych report…for a computer game.

Jane muttered as she skimmed the first page, "Obsessive mindset toward continuing in eighty-seven percent of Focus Group Seven… Difficulty finishing or taking breaks… Markedly reduced: appetite and thirst while playing… Rapid adjustment to game's violence even among inexperienced players, see Subject Ninety-One-B…?"

They stared at each other and Jane's expression screwed into one of utter confusion and incomprehension.

"Could this conspiracy get any weirder?"

"Wait, look at the top," Steve insisted, and Jane looked to where he was pointing.

Entertainment Division Head: Bradley Spieler, it read.

Major Projects Supervisor: Katrina Vice

Project Manager: Michael Wheeler

Jane stared at the paper, unsure about anything and everything right now.

Mike was only first year out of college. How could he be a project manager for a major gaming titan already? And what the hell was his name doing on a report that basically confirmed Fause's newest project was a creepy brainwashing game that glued people to their monitors? This was all starting to sound like something out of some crappy spy thriller, where the hero had to race against time to stop the whole population from being brought under some evil megalomaniac's control.

"He couldn't know about this," Jane breathed. "Right?"

Steve looked back at her like he wished he had something more reassuring to say. "At this point, Brown Eyes, nothing would surprise me."

Jane shook her head wildly, knowing there was no way it could be true… Desperate for evidence to prove it.

She knelt back over the safe.

There wasn't much else in there. A bit of cash, a few certificates of accreditation to practice. Her eyes stopped on a folder she'd recognise anywhere, tucked neatly away into the side of the safe. Worn-in brown leather and hand-stitched Cornell emblem in the top right-hand corner.

It was Welling's.

Well, not actually Welling's, she realised as she opened the folder to reveal years-old documents inside. But identical to Welling's.

The documents, it turned out, made up the originals of her own patient file. No wonder she hadn't found it in the cabinets. It reassured her fractionally that, while her whole situation and her sanity were in doubt, Ford still clearly had something to hide.

The originals of her transcripts were here, and all copies of her prescriptions for anti-depressants and the Periphax. She studied the transcript that was stamped with 'candidate' again.

"I don't understand," she murmured. "If there were a bunch of us labelled 'candidate', why am I the only one he prescribed the Periphax to?"

"I wouldn't see that as a step backward, Janie," Steve replied, and at her querying expression he explained, "A doctor prescribing a particular drug to only one patient with pretty regular symptoms… That's weird. Even in a small town like Hawkins."

"Maybe I'm just the only crazy within city limits," she mumbled despondently.

He snatched the booklet from her, tapping the paper. "And the only one on—what was it?—Phluctine?"

Jane shrugged. "It's nothing—that's just Prozac in Austria."

"Um, no," he rejected. "Ignoring for a second the fact that you never questioned why you were getting Austrian drugs in the American Midwest—"

Jane tried to interrupt, "Because they were cheaper over the counter as the generic brand—"

He shut her down. "Jane, when have you ever heard of German imports being cheaper or generic? This isn't Aldi."

"We don't…have an Aldi," she finished dumbly, realising that he was right. She had been outsmarted by Steve. In about two seconds. But wait. "I said Austrian, not German."

"Oh, forgive me," he said sarcastically. "Because, in these circumstances, it makes such a huge difference." When she didn't argue back, he continued, "Anyway, back to my original point. Ignoring the whole import situation, Phluctine is not Prozac in Austria."

"Yes, it is," she disagreed immediately. "Ford told me."

"Oh, well, if Ford told you!" He let the mockery hang in the air as he got to the main point of this whole conversation. "Fluctine is Austria's Prozac. Not Phluctine."

Not hearing a difference, Jane just looked grumpy.

Steve sighed. "It's a homophone, Jane. Sounds the same but spelt different, with a whole different meaning."

"How do you know all this?" Jane demanded, feeling like she was being given an English lesson at the most inopportune time.

He shrugged. "It's like knock-off designers. They sell a fake Chanel bag as Chanel, a customer goes around happy as a pig in shit until the stitching starts to come apart."

"Don't talk bags to me," Jane snapped, having experienced enough of the ridiculous for one night.

"I'm just saying, the Doc prescribed Phluctine to you as if it were Fluctine," he said. "But since the misspelling makes it a different name altogether, there's no way of knowing if he was even prescribing an anti-depressant to you in the first place."

Jane thought about this. "But it made me happier."

Again, he shrugged. "Okay, maybe it did. I'm just saying, there's no 'Phluctine' on the internet. I checked."

"When did you check that?" she demanded.

"The minute I read it off your transcripts," he replied evenly. "I wanted to know what my little sister was taking."

She sighed, scrubbing a hand over her eyes. "Steve…"

"I'm not mad at you for not telling me," he averred quietly. "I just wish you had."

Jane peeked out at him through splayed fingers as he returned to probing through the psych report on Fause's mystery game.

He was right, as he was disturbingly proving to be about almost everything at this point. Jane being the only patient to be prescribed foreign drugs that clearly weren't even marketed in their own country was weird. Like America wasn't a land brimming with legitimate drug giants.

It could have something to do with her whole theory about isolation and indoctrination. It could. It had to.

"Janie…" Steve trailed off after just her name, staring up at her in horror.

"What is it?" she demanded, but garnering no response, she ripped the document out of his hands and brought it up close to her face with her flashlight.

Focus Group Seven, it read. Subject Ninety-One-B.

Displayed unchecked aggression against on-screen entities. Was not receptive to eating or sleeping breaks, and refused water whenever offered. Appeared to have no appreciation or respect for time passing. Ignored any suggestion to pause the game.

At Level Twenty-Seven, subject succumbed to the War Machine.

"This is ridiculous." Jane shook her head. "How could they make a game so addictive that people don't even notice days passing?"

Steve's face remained sober. "Jane, past tense. Look at the bottom."

Jane did.

Subject terminus: 10/14/1993

Jane looked up. "Oh, you don't think—"

"Look at the name," Steve directed, and she found it near the top of the page, just above 'candidate.'

She felt the world slow around her, and her stomach dropped.

Claudia Henderson

"Dustin," she whispered, covering her mouth in disbelief. And suddenly she was too angry to even think about her personal vendetta against Ford. This was bigger than she'd ever thought to imagine.

People were dying. Lovely, kind, regular people.

She was going to kill Ford. She decided that, then and there. Not yet, of course. She still needed him to figure out what the hell was going on here. But she was going to, in the end. In the end, even if it meant she had to spend the rest of her days in a maximum security prison, she was going to kill him. She was going to kill everybody involved in this vile, abhorrent experiment. Maybe it wasn't the government, maybe it was; she didn't care.

They were all going to die.

"We have to talk to Mike," she said, and for the first time in her life, she could see herself properly hurting him.

She could see herself truly becoming a stranger.

AN:

Haha Thoughts? Feelings? I know, it's a bit cheesy and trashy in parts, but I promise it'll all come together and make sense in the end. Get yourselves ready for a big confrontation with Mike. El's out for blood, even if it's his. I'll update again probably Thursday arvie (so, for all my friends up there in the Northern Hemisphere, it'll probably be a little earlier). Talk to me, guys. I'm excited to hear it all. :P -Inara x