Seven We Used to Be Friends

Tick.

Jane stared at the clock above the oven, fingers interlaced into a chinrest in front of her. Her elbows were cold against the countertop—all of her was cold—but she needed the window open. She needed to cool down, inside. She could feel her hands shuddering in anticipation like muzzled rabid dogs, snarling to be let loose on somebody's throat. Her heart pounded against her sternum, hard as a battering ram. She could almost feel the blood in her eyes.

Tick.

She'd been home for hours, but she could still feel herself practically vibrating with rage. Was it rage alone, though?

Tick.

Rage, confusion, mistrust… What did it matter? She was so scared that Mike was somehow an accessory to this barbarity, she couldn't see straight. And Dustin…

Tick.

Oh, Dustin.

She and Steve had arrived home in the wee hours to contented snores and had resolved to tell him everything in the morning. No point disrupting his first decent night's sleep in forty-eight hours when they couldn't do anything about their news until daylight anyway. As much as Jane had wanted to march over to Mike's house straightaway and interrogate him under the steely gleam of a knife's edge, Steve had convinced her that they might find it a little difficult explaining that to Mrs Wheeler in her pyjamas. Besides, Steve had added, neither of them knew off the top of their head whether Mike even lived at home anymore or not.

So, Jane waited. And waited and waited.

Steve had crashed out on the couch waiting with her, and maybe he'd had the right idea, for telling Dustin the truth and in general. Lack of sleep didn't exactly work wonders for the brain's functionality, and now, more than ever, Jane needed to be sharp.

There was something so mollifying and rhythmic about the boys' snoring. They would have been synchronised, if it weren't for Dustin's slight acceleration every five breaths or so. He'd slow down almost immediately, but by then the harmony was broken.

The noise made Jane long to sleep—not because she couldn't stand it but because it reminded her of nights growing up when Hopper's snores had wrapped around her like a bulletproof winter coat. Layers upon layers upon layers of protection. Well, not protection exactly, but presence—tender, loving presence. She'd never slept more soundly than those nights she could hear him through the walls. She remembered Joyce joking about it a number of times at the breakfast table—saying the house was so frail, he could shake down the walls—but she never complained. Maybe she was comforted by it, too.

But that was then.

Now, Jane couldn't sleep.

Tick.

If she slept, she'd dream. And she couldn't take any more dreams right now.

She was weak, she knew, for being afraid to remember more. She'd have to eventually, and the longer she left it, the more she'd undoubtedly regret taking her time. There was just something so tragic about it, so heartbreaking. She'd looked up to Ford. It wasn't as if she'd loved him—he was only her doctor after all—but he'd been a father figure. She'd trusted him. In a way, for anyone outside her immediate family, that was even more difficult to achieve.

Tick.

His office had been a sanctuary; her favourite armchair in the world, a calming view of the green, swaying tops of street trees outside the window. His belly laugh and his secretary, Tina, and the zebra paintings on the walls. He'd loved zebras.

The large square wall clock, ticking away the seconds—dependable background noise, there with her every moment, every step of the way.

Tick.

"You don't want to disappoint me, Jane. Do you?" His hand was warm on hers, anchoring her. He made her feel so safe; his certainty buoyed her certainty.

She stared fretfully back at him. "No. I would never!"

He smiled. "Good girl. So, what are you going to do?"

"Go to the school," she answered immediately, echoing his instructions exactly from before. "Find the assistant."

He nodded. "And then?"

"Introduce myself."

"Jane." He sat forward, pressing his hand down more firmly over hers. She was held captive by his forceful grey eyes. "This is very important. It cannot go wrong. I need you to promise you'll do whatever it takes to convince him."

"Whatever it takes," she whispered, nodding, bowing her head in apology. She needed to take this more seriously. Whatever it takes.

He squeezed her hand painfully and she looked up in surprise. He caught her gaze and locked onto it.

"Whatever. It. Takes," he enunciated, and she nodded again.

"Whatever it takes."

Tick.

The assistant.

Jane blinked.

Scott Keegan.

She lifted her head, eyes screwing up against the early morning glare.

The mayor's assistant.

Obviously, Hawkins' former mayor, Arthur Culkin—not the lying eel who held office now.

Jane rubbed her eyes, checking the clock.

Seven twenty. She'd only fallen asleep for an hour or so.

Steve was still passed out beside her, breathing through his gaping mouth now as he lay so close to the end of the couch that he was very nearly falling off it. Jane was tempted to throw marshmallows at him—that mouth was like a black hole—but she had questions far more pressing than possible Heimlich practice.

She scrambled over to him, shaking him awake. He mumbled nonsensically, trying to roll over.

"Steve?" She slapped him a little. "Steve!"

"Wha-" His head jerked up, his hair closely resembling a cockatoo's crest feathers. "What?"

"Arthur Culkin," Jane said forcefully. "Where is he? What happened to him?"

He frowned. "Died of a heart attack. Why?"

"When?" she demanded.

He shook his head, still groggy. "I don't know… Before your arrest. Not long before, though." He sat up, groaning and stretching his back. "Again, why?"

"How did I not know about this?" Forgetting for a moment everything else, Jane found herself banging on Dustin's bedroom door, pacing back and forth between the couch and the kitchen until he stumbled out, bleary-eyed and swaddled up in his incredibly cosy-looking pyjamas. They looked like a set his mother would've bought for him.

His mother.

Jane's pacing wavered.

She glanced at Steve. Although he'd spent the last two minutes looking at her like she'd lost the plot, he seemed to read what she was thinking off her face. Almost imperceptibly, he shook his head.

Not like this.

"Guys, would you please tell me what's going on?" Dustin yawned, padding over to the stove to boil some water.

"Jane's asking about the mayor," Steve answered honestly.

"What about him? He's Mr Perfect Asshole," Dustin replied, rifling through tins to find his coffee. "Everyone's favourite man on the street! If only everyone knew he was a lying son of a bitch, he probably wouldn't get re-elected… Wouldn't put it past him to try though, the slippery—"

"Not Fake Hopper. Arthur Culkin!" Jane groaned, trying to explain. "I think I remember why Ford sent me after Scott Keegan—or, not exactly why, but why some dirt on him might have been of use."

The boys just looked at her expectantly.

She threw up her hands. "You know, when we fucked at the rally—Ford told me to do that! He said to do 'whatever it takes'." Mimicking his deep, high-handed voice, Jane shuddered.

"Whatever it takes to do what?" Steve asked.

She shrugged, racking her brain. Even though she now remembered that pleasant little exchange, it had still been a dream—and dreams, for her, always started to fade fairly quickly. "I don't know. It's hazy. Maybe Ford didn't even say anything else in the first place, whether I remember it or not. All I know is he just said that it was important and that I needed to convince the assistant."

"Convince him to…?" Steve trailed off, unable to say it out loud in regard to her. But then his brow furrowed. "But wasn't that the 'whatever it takes' part? You had to do that to convince him of something else? Jesus, that's like…"

"Prostitution?" Dustin offered up. When they both glared at him, he held his hands up. "Sorry! Brainwashed prostitution."

Jane rolled her eyes. "Okay, so, Scott was all about reliving his glory days where he was the high school star who girls threw themselves at and I gave him that…in exchange for something only his grown-up, daily grind self could give me? Is that what we're saying?"

"I mean, it's still all conjecture." Dustin sunk down next to Steve, sipping his coffee. "But it sounds more likely than the alternative of you, you know, actually wanting to bone Scott Keegan." At his tactless wording, Steve blanched and Jane narrowed her eyes.

Desperate to redirect the conversation, Steve queried, "Only question is, what did Ford want with the mayor's office?"

"Well, obviously for his pal to take over it," Jane mumbled, stealing Dustin's coffee for a sip. He pushed her away to get her own. Stove-bound, she mused over her shoulder, "I think the better question is, was he pushing for an all-out takeover or did he just need information?"

"Information Scott could give?" Dustin sounded doubtful. "I mean, he's an all right guy, but everyone knows he only got that position because of Daddy Moneybags. That's why he was fired as soon as Fake Hopper took office."

"That was why, was it?" Now it was Jane's turn to sound doubtful. "Are we sure about that?"

"I mean…" Dustin trailed off, like he'd never really given it that much thought before. It made sense; Scott Keegan was a hardworking crowd-pleaser but there was nothing saving him from getting cut from the payroll when the new mayor and his dad didn't golf together. Or fish. Or whatever it was the well-off did in Hawkins—besides, obviously, move out of Hawkins.

Jane shook her head, surer by the second. "Scott would've been a pawn, just like me, then a loose end that needed tying up in case he wised up after they won."

"Okay, so you and he had…" Steve stared pointedly at the floor as he forced himself through the rest of his question, "relations…so that you could convince him to do something for you…for Ford…that they needed to cover up by firing him after he'd served his purpose?"

"Except—and all respect for your form there, Janie," Dustin interrupted, "but sex is just sex at the end of the day—you weren't gonna sex him into doing anything he really didn't want to do. And it's not like you were underage or anything and Scott wasn't running for office, so a scandal wouldn't have been at the forefront of his concerns if this was a simple case of blackmail. So, what did the sex achieve?"

It was amazing, how he made Jane's cheating incident sound so casual. She knew it wasn't because he didn't care about Mike's feelings or the fact that this was technically some highly fucked up form of sex without consent—without even sound mind. It was just cold, hard fact: it happened. And now, the fact that it happened served a purpose; it was another avenue for answers.

"I guess we better ask him that," Jane answered.

"So, is that…" Steve glanced in the direction of the bathroom, clearing his throat. "I mean, will that be before or after we go rip into Mike…or do I have time for a shower?"

"Rip into Mike?" Straight to his feet, Dustin whirled on Jane. "What happened last night?!"

Jane felt her throat close up. She glanced at Steve. He glanced back, resigned.

"You go shower," she told him quietly. "I'll talk to Dusty."

"I don't understand."

Dustin was crying. Jane was crying, too. And Steve had spent so long in the bathroom that she was convinced he just didn't want to come out now in a towel to all the crying. Then he'd be the half-naked asshole sitting there either crying or just looking like a half-naked asshole.

She had her arm wrapped around Dustin and they were curled up on the couch.

"I think they're using subliminal messaging or something," she murmured gently, like there was a gentle way of doing this. She'd been up most of the night—it would've been pathetic if she hadn't thought of something. "Audio-visual cues to provoke specific mental responses. If her unconscious cognition was particularly susceptible to the cues, it could have presented as addiction-like symptoms." Jane chewed her lip for a second. "On steroids."

She didn't know. She was no expert. And still, she hated to remind herself, had very little confirmation of any of these swirling theories to go on. But they all fed into each other. They all, in some crazy, messed up way, made sense under the parameters of her reality. And until she was proven wrong, she'd kind of put all her eggs in one basket now, as it were.

"But why would my mom be playing a computer game?" he demanded. "She barely knows how to turn one on and off!"

"It was a focus group, Dusty." Jane pulled him closer as fresh tears ran in rivulets down his face. "The game is still as yet unreleased. Maybe they advertised it as a special offer—partake and we give you a free or discounted copy when it comes out? I don't know. Maybe she was bored; maybe she just wanted to see what all the fuss was about. Maybe she wanted to buy it for you."

His face screwed up and he started sobbing again, so Jane squeezed him harder.

The bathroom door creaked open and Steve poked his head out. Over Dustin's shoulder, he threw Jane a pointed look.

She sighed. "Dusty, you said other people moved away. Can you name them? There was a slew of patient files labelled 'candidate' in the safe. We need to figure out what connects them all."

Dustin wiped his blotchy face and sucked in a long, unsteady breath. "I don't know… There was old man Davies. And… Carly McCoy."

"Both candidates," Steve confirmed, coming forward in his towel. "And Peter Hendrickson and Sally Albright."

"Yeah, I know Sally," Dustin said. "Used to be a clerk at RadioShack right after she was widowed." The wistful look in his eyes dimmed. "I knew Sally."

"So, she moved away, too?" Jane clarified.

"Yeah. Yeah…" Dustin stared far away. "Chicago." He blinked. "Or, that's what I heard."

Suddenly, his eyes were ablaze, urgent, and Jane remembered how she'd been feeling all last night.

"We have to know where they're putting the bodies!" he insisted. "I need to find my mom!"

"We will, Dusty." Jane threaded her fingers through his and squeezed. "That's why we need to find Mike. He needs to tell us why his name's on that file."

"He better have a fucking good reason or be the idiot who knows nothing," he seethed.

"May I remind everyone of the fact that there is a police officer standing in this room?" Steve tried to sound authoritative, hands on his hips.

Jane and Dustin scanned him from the towel up and let it do the talking for them.

He rolled his eyes. "Fine. I'll go and get changed, then I'll say that again."

There was a knock at the front door. Steve turned. Jane leaned around his cotton-covered posterior to see.

Another knock.

Steve freaked out. "Oh, fuck! Janie, hide! No one can know you're here!"

"I'm not hiding!" she argued in a hiss. "We don't even know who it is yet! If it's someone bad, I'm pretty sure you'll want me nearby—"

"This is non-negotiable!" he whisper-shouted.

"Janie, he's right." Dustin was on his feet and the boys advanced down the hallway together toward the entryway.

Jane rushed to the bookcase just behind them, pressing herself against the wall.

"Okay." Dustin picked something up.

Jane couldn't believe it.

Steve's bat.

Although he had been reaching for the doorknob, Steve pulled back, scowling. "What are you doing with that? Give me that!" He swapped positions with Dustin so he could wield it with both hands, muttering, "You could poke someone's eye out with—"

The knock came again.

Dustin nodded, mentally preparing himself, reaching for the knob.

Jane flattened herself out of view, holding her breath. She heard the door creak open and then nothing.

For a full ten seconds, absolutely nothing. She didn't think she'd ever experienced a longer ten seconds in her life. And then she heard his voice.

"Is she here?" There was a short, scared pause. Jane didn't know if it was scared because he wanted the answer to be yes or because he wanted it to be no, but then he asked again, "Is she really here?"

Unconsciously, like she really was at the mercy of someone else's control, she stepped out of hiding, turning toward the door.

She met his eyes and his mouth opened like he couldn't believe it—like he needed to say something but couldn't find the words.

So she spoke first for him.

"Will." She was breathless; her eyes were tearing up. She couldn't stop herself from smiling.

Will stared past the boys in the entryway as if he'd completely forgotten them. He didn't move. Jane supposed it was one thing to hear something and another thing to see it.

Her breath hitched and from all the way outside the door, it seemed to break him from his daze.

His porcelain face cracked into a massive grin and he ran at her, covering the distance between them in six easy strides and swinging her up into his arms. His embrace almost crushed her as he squeezed her against him. Jane thought she heard a rib crack, but she couldn't stop beaming and burying her face in his neck.

"I had to see for myself," he said into her hair. "I couldn't believe it."

When he eventually set her back on her feet, he pinched her arms, almost able to encircle them with his hands. "You're so skinny!"

"I was on a cleanse," she murmured, and he snorted and hugged her again.

It was through an unbelievably concentrated haze of relief that Jane heard Steve say, "Oh, hey man."

Still encircled by her brother's arm, she turned them both around, and felt her eyes go wide.

Mike stood in the doorway, glancing between her and Will, then Steve and Dustin… And briefly back at Steve again.

Seeming to get the idea, Steve hitched his towel higher around his hips and put his bat down. "Right, pants. I'll be back, then." And he passed Jane and Will and disappeared into his room.

Jane felt Will's grip on her shoulder tighten in reassurance as she watched Mike nervously, her line of sight unbroken even when Steve nudged past her to get down the hallway.

Mike met her eyes for a moment, his revealing nothing. Then he focused on Dustin.

Dustin cleared his throat, still holding the door open. "So, Mike. Turns out we have a lot to talk about."

A very reasonable tone for someone who had just received the confirmed loss of his mother—even more reasonable when one considered that Mike was certainly in a position where a lot of that talking required a lot of explaining on his part.

But Dustin didn't get very much further. Mike was frowning—mistakenly, Jane thought maybe that was just his new thinking face with a sprinkling of sullen considering her presence in the room—but the frown became a scowl as Dustin started to invite him into their home and—

Mike punched him in the face.

Jane and Will both jolted in surprise as Dustin went reeling—it had come out of nowhere.

Scowl still distinctly present, Mike stepped over the threshold and unbuttoned his blazer. He'd clearly missed the memo that work attire wasn't required on a Sunday.

"Son of a bitch!" Dustin straightened up, palm to his jaw. "Seriously?"

"You deserved it," Mike muttered, his scowl fading to cold dispassion.

Dustin scowled. "Fine! Then can I take a swing at you for your evil corporation killing off my mom?"

After a half-second of vacancy, the cold dispassion contorted into utter confusion.

Jane flinched hard, hand darting to cover her ear when both Mike and Will demanded in unison, "What?!"

"You think the game I'm working on is killing people?" Mike summed up, staring at all of them like they'd absolutely lost their minds.

"We think the game you're working on is running people into dehydration and starvation by overriding their basic survival instincts—ultimately causing death," Dustin clarified, and Steve jumped in after him.

"It sounds crazy, we know. But the paperwork in Ford's floor safe—"

"You were breaking into a doctor's office and I'm the criminal here?"

They were all squeezed around the coffee table, documents strewn across the flat.

Mike nodded, clearly not at all convinced. "Okay. Where is this report, then? Show me."

"We couldn't risk making a copy," Jane said. "Ford's copier is ancient and every time you switch it on, it lights up and screams bloody murder—"

Speaking over her like she wasn't there, Mike followed his initial question up with an automatic defence. "War Engines isn't even a finalised product yet. It's still undergoing alpha testing. The idea that it could be ready for even a preliminary beta test—"

"Well, it's out there, Mike," Dustin snapped. "And it killed my mom and a shitload of other people, so rather than playing Denial Guy, could you stop being such a know-nothing jackass and find out who at the company is running the focus groups?"

Mike turned to him with a scowl. "Okay, what is your problem? I'm sorry that I'm trying to be the voice of reason here but what you're proposing is crazy!"

"What's my problem?" Dustin nearly yelled at him. "Were you not listening? My mom is dead!"

"Yesterday you thought your mom was in Florida!" Mike fired back.

Dustin looked like he might actually punch him back. "Yesterday, Janie and Steve hadn't found the smoking gun in a floor safe!"

"It's hardly a smoking gun," Mike dismissed. "And do you seriously expect me to believe that the project—that I run—is actually a front for some kind of brainwashing technology? Do you?"

"God, you've become such an asshole," Dustin snapped.

Will piped up. "I work at the company. Maybe I could dig around for some answers—"

"And end up in a body bag?" Dustin shook his head. "You work in Level Design, Will. You spent last month drawing them a radioactive ogre. No. We don't want you getting hurt."

"But it's fine to throw me under the bus!" Mike bit out.

Dustin sighed, trying to control his anger. He failed. "You're in a prime position! You have literally two people above you in the chain of command! Ask around. Somebody, somewhere would surely be able to tell you something!"

"Unless he's the fall guy," Steve reasoned suddenly. "He's young, he's inexperienced." He shrugged. "Why not put his signature on everything and let him take the fall if the shit hits the fan?"

"Okay, I read everything I sign," Mike dismissed, his tone intimating that he was done being ridiculous about this.

Glancing between them all, Jane sighed. "Guys, could you give me and Mike a minute?"

Four pairs of sceptical eyes focused on her.

"Really?" Steve asked nervously.

"Yeah, really?" Dustin echoed.

She shot them both a glare. "Why don't you show Will the balcony?"

Dustin sounded doubtful. "Okay, but it's really gonna have to be a minute. Daytime or not, it's bloody cold out there."

"This won't take long."

Both she and Mike sat facing each other in tense silence as the others filed out. She was waiting for the last foot to hit tile and for the door to snap closed but Mike was apparently a little less concerned about the matter of privacy.

"I don't know what you think you're going to say to convince me but—"

"I'm going to see Scott Keegan in a minute," she interrupted him, and he fell silent like she'd just told him he had six weeks to live. Ignoring this—and the briefest flash of residual anguish that crossed his face undisguised—she continued, "I need to know what I asked him for on the night of the rally, because the more I remember and the more I figure out, the more convinced I am that the drugs Ford gave me were for a specific purpose that went beyond teeing me up as a good candidate for this stupid game. I think the candidacy just depends on whether you're mentally fragile and whether you'd have someone raising red flags if you just up and moved to Florida." She glanced through the glass door at Dustin. "I think Claudia was a lonely woman with a distant husband and her reason for living had lived apart from her for four years. On top of that, since Dustin got a job immediately upon graduation, he wasn't technically a dependent anymore."

"What does this have to do with my game?" Mike hissed, like if he raised his voice any louder he might completely lose it and bellow at her.

"I don't know," she answered honestly. "But I would bet my life that it's all connected, Mike. And it all starts with figuring out if Arthur Culkin's heart attack was actually a heart attack."

"What else could it have been?" Mike demanded, and Jane realised he was really going to force her to say it.

"I need to know Ford didn't ask me to kill him," she said shortly.

When he just looked at her, betraying nothing, she admitted, "There's a lot I don't remember. I'm probably going to be joining the dots for a long time, but I know enough to know I fucked Scott Keegan for a reason, and it wasn't my reason because for all the reasons in the world, I would never have even been tempted by any guy who wasn't you."

When he still said nothing, she set her jaw. "But just because it wasn't my reason doesn't mean I don't have a right to know, whether it relates to this or not. And I get the feeling you want answers, too, since you didn't have to show up here today after you told Will. And you can keep up being an asshole to the real friends you do have who don't deserve it, or…" She stood up. "You can pull your head out of your ass and help me figure out what the fuck is going on."

She raised her eyebrows expectantly, extending her hand. It wasn't a peace offering, but it was a promise—a promise that she'd have his back all the way to the bottom of this.

She wanted him to say yes. She wanted to prove enough of her theories to him that he stopped thinking of her as a she-devil. But she'd given him an ultimatum, and she couldn't wait around all day. Either he was coming or he wasn't. No amount of waiting was going to change that.

"Well?" she demanded. "Asshole or with me?"

AN:

A lot of thoughts, theories and emotions kind of flying around in this chapter. Sorry if it seems messy, guys, but I feel like it really would, being in the characters' situation. So much new evidence keeps coming up and they have no idea what to make of it-I feel like it's kind of going to keep being messy until it's not, you know? Hopefully it doesn't make it less readable.

I'm sorry it's a slightly shorter chapter and that I cut a few chunks out of it. Honestly, I just don't want to keep saying the same thing over and over in every chapter, so when it's time for characters to explain new information they've gathered to other characters, I might skip over the actual relaying from time to time. You guys already know what they found in the safe, after all!

Also, shout out to John Horvath - there is an Operation Paperclip connection. Good eye! No more clues, though, as to the extent or significance of that connection. You're all just going to have to read on! And AliKattt - Yep, I'm Australian, love! And none of the stereotypes are true! Well, maybe a couple of them. :P

Anyway, thanks so much for reading, guys, and please tell me what you think. I love hearing back from all of you.

Until Chapter 8, then. :) -Inara x