Work Text:
Neil:
They offered him money. Lots of it, as well as a chance to start over somewhere else.
It was exactly what he needed. After his wife left him, he was stuck in a small house he could barely pay for on his own, with an unruly son who wouldn’t listen to him. Who got in trouble at school, and cried for his mama like a pussy when Neil tried to straighten him out. The boy was too much like his mother. She’d made him soft, and then hadn’t stuck around to fix her mess. Neil had tried to toughen the boy up, he really had, but his lessons never seemed to stick.
And then he’d met Susan – a woman so unlike his argumentative and impossible ex-wife. Admittedly, she had a child already, a young girl, but girls were better. Girls were quiet and polite and listened to their parents.
What they offered was several of Neil’s problems solved, just like that. The only thing he had to do was accept a job offer and relocate his family to Hawkins, Indiana, in order to be close enough to provide blood samples for comparison, if needed, and agree not to raise too much of a fuss over his soon-to-be missing son.
It was a chance to start over. New job, new town, new family.
He took the deal.
Billy:
They took him from a gas station in Indiana.
They’d just crossed state lines when they stopped for a break. Billy, all of twelve years old, was tired of spending hours upon hours in the backseat with an eight year old red-headed girl that was supposed to be his new sister. He’d jumped at the chance to get out of the car, even if it was just for a bathroom break.
When he’d left restroom at the back of the gas station a few minutes later, someone had put a hand over his mouth and stuck a needle in his thigh. He was out before he could call for help.
He woke up in a room with white walls, strapped to a bed and unable to move.
His first time in the Facility was chaotic. He cried and yelled and pleaded with every white-clad person who would enter his room, but most of them just pretended they couldn’t hear him. He was drugged and injected with various liquids that would burn under his skin; he would get blood transfusions from transparent bags with printed numbers on them (012, 007, 003), and he would be shocked and put under, woken up, and put under – again and again.
When they finally let him up, he was weak enough that his first (and only) escape attempt ended before he even made it halfway across the room.
They put him in a chair at a table and asked him to do impossible things (crush a can with his mind?), and were disappointed when he couldn’t do them. They took him back to the white room with the bed, but didn’t strap him down. He slept. When he woke up, they came for him again.
More injections, more shocks, and more experiments with things strapped to his head and arms, and then drugs and notes and people who wouldn’t listen to him, wouldn’t let him go –
And then one day, he got a blood transfusion from a bag that was just marked with an X. The blood was so dark it was almost black, and it scared him. It scared him so much they had to sedate him. That day, he woke up and he wasn’t alone in his body. There was something else in there with him that was as scared as he was, as lonely and afraid as he was; that hated these people as much as he did. Cut off from the rest of its kind, it latched onto Billy with a desperation that could have been scary, if Billy hadn’t been just as desperate.
That day, they could have crushed the can together. But they didn’t.
A scientist:
The boy didn’t die.
They’d thought 023 was a dud, because none of their experiments had yielded satisfactory results. At the end of things, when they had exhausted their alternatives, there was only one thing left to try, and that was something that no other subject had survived so far; inject him with the blood of their single captured four-legged specimen that someone at some point had dubbed hellhound.
They didn’t have any expectations. After all, all the other subjects they had attempted this with had died. It had more or less become a way to get rid of useless numbers.
But curiously, 023 didn’t die.
Not only did he not die, but they started noticing some … irregularities. Like when the boy slept, he would curl up on the floor in the corner, just like the hellhound did in its own enclosure. The boy stopped talking entirely, but would sometimes growl at them instead. And when they shocked the hellhound, the boy reacted to it – and the other way around.
There were other things too, instances in which 023 exhibited signs of having developed powers like the other numbers – the lights would flicker on and off when they conducted their experiments, and sometimes an orderly would be momentarily frozen to the spot – but these incidents seemed to be involuntary, or instinctual. Nothing ever came from trying to force the boy to perform in a controlled setting.
So while they still kept up their experiments, they concentrated their efforts on learning more about the bond. Since they only had the one surviving hellhound and no way to get back into the other dimension, they had only had theories of a hive mind before – but now, with the boy seemingly connected to it too, they would be able to learn more about it.
It was all very exciting.
Billy:
Years passed. Time ceased to matter. He lived in these white rooms, these long hallways. The white-clad people kept up their tests and experiments, and even though Billy knew that he would be able to do what they told him to do and more – knew that he and the thing inside him would be able to do it, together – he never did. Maybe out of spite, or anger, or because it was the one thing he could still control. Maybe he just didn’t want to give them the satisfaction.
They called him by his number – the one tattooed on his wrist – and after this long, weeks would pass between the times he thought of his own name.
But at least he wasn’t alone. The thing inside him didn’t talk with words, but with flashes of feelings, or instincts, or – something. Whatever it was, Billy understood. He stopped talking with words, too – because he didn’t have anything to say to these people. Not even the few times when he was brought to other children, other numbers.
Only once did they allow him to meet with the other. The dog, the creature, whatever it was that also had the thing inside it. They took Billy to a room, a cage, where a monster resided. There were four men with weapons right outside the bars, ready for … an attack? But the creature didn’t hurt him.
Like recognizes like. And Billy and this creature, they were alike in the sense that they both had the thing inside them. A small part of something big, that they couldn’t access. Alone in this world, where it didn’t belong; surviving through the dog, and through Billy. Alone-but-not-really. Because it had them.
They were the same, Billy and the dog. And then the dog died, after attacking a scientist and being shocked again and again and again. Billy felt it, lived it, almost as if it was happening to him. He knew before the scientists showed up in his room with their instruments – he knew before they even got to his door.
They wanted to see how the death of the dog affected him. But the thing was, that after he’d stopped feeling it, it didn’t really affect him at all. The thing that had been inside it was still inside Billy. What had made them same was still there. No more of it, no less.
They were still alone, together. Imprisoned, together.
But not for much longer. They would get out of here.
Soon.
Hopper:
The whole thing had been a shitshow.
An incident was called in at Hawkins National Laboratory just south of town – no one knew exactly what had happened. Even later on when Jim tried to do his job and find out the order of events, he was shoved to the sidelines by people from like four different government agencies. The only thing he managed to find out was that there’d been a series of explosions, and a part of the building had collapsed entirely, and that there were many casualties. Soon after the explosions, and just as Jim and the other first responders showed up, a number of children of ages ranging between ten and twenty had milled out of the building and stood huddled in the parking lot; too many of them to fit in the two ambulances that had arrived, but thankfully none of them seemed hurt.
Jim had called in a favor, and a school bus drove all the kids downtown to the station, where the story started unfolding.
Turned out that the lab hadn’t been run by the U.S. Department of Energy at all, but instead had been a secret and possibly-government sanctioned facility that experimented on kids. Right under his nose.
Jim sighed and prepared for working through the night. He looked out over the assembled kids and teenagers sitting in the police station’s break room, eating pizza that Powell had thankfully had the foresight to order, and swallowed hard. One of them – a teenaged boy with sandy blond hair, the only one of them that didn’t have his hair shorn off – sat a little off to the side from the others, in a corner from where he could watch the rest of them. Jim decided to start with him.
“Hey kid,” he said when he’d made his way over to him and crouched down in front of him. “I thought we could have a chat, if that’s okay with you?”
The kid looked at him warily, and then gave a little nod.
“Good,” Jim said. “What’s your name?”
The boy opened his mouth, then closed it again. Glanced to his wrist, where a number was tattooed, just like on the other kids (and Jim was going to kill the people in charge if they’d survived the explosions at that godawful place). Then opened his mouth again, and –
“Billy.” His voice was hoarse, as if unused to speaking. “Billy Hargrove.”
Jim froze.
“Did you say Hargrove?”
Susan:
It couldn’t be. This boy – or young man, really – who was standing next to the Chief of Police outside their door couldn’t be Billy. Billy was gone, dead. Neil had said –
Neil said, and what he said happened. Wasn’t that how it always went? She blinked, and opened her mouth to say something, only to find that she couldn’t. Because this was impossible.
She hadn’t known Billy for long, back then; just two months. Two months from when she first met him to when he was taken. She hadn’t really gotten to know him. Hadn’t bonded with him. But she’d lost sleep when he disappeared, had cried and mourned for him along with her husband when he was declared probably dead. She’d been reluctant to let Max out by herself ever since.
And yet, despite the impossibility of it all, here he was. A miracle in human form. A young man with Billy’s blue eyes, Billy’s upturned nose, Billy’s unruly curls. His features were older, yes, but that only meant that she could see Neil in them more clearly.
Even if it hadn’t been for the Chief, who was standing in her sunroom with a steady hand on the boy’s shoulder, she would have known. This was Billy. Billy had come back to them.
“Oh, Billy,” she said, voice wavering, as she opened the door wider and then opened her arms, too. “Welcome home.”
Max:
Suddenly, Max had a brother.
She barely remembered him from back then, just that he’d seemed cool with his necklace and his bracelets and his skateboard. She remembered that she’d been excited to have an older brother, someone she could talk to and play with.
But then he’d been gone. He hadn’t been there when they moved into their new house in Hawkins and he hadn’t been there when she’d started school here and he hadn’t been there when she found his old skateboard and started learning.
He hadn’t been there when she’d created her memories of Hawkins, so for him to suddenly show up felt … weird. Like he didn’t belong here.
He looked weird, too, and acted weird. The Chief said that that was because he’d spent years locked up in a lab where they did bad things to children. Max only overheard a bit of it, before her mom saw her in the doorway and shooed her back to her own room.
That evening, dinner was a tense affair. The Chief had left, but Billy – Neil’s son, her step-brother apparently – was still there. It had been a while since there were four people around the dinner table; Neil didn’t like Max’s friends, so she never brought them home with her after school. Now, the seldom used fourth chair was taken up by a young man in a T-shirt and sweatpants. There were four plates on the table. Four glasses.
Max’s mom was nervous. Maybe she was happy, too – she was smiling a whole lot more than usual, at least, although it was the kind of smile she brought out for guests – but she was definitely nervous too. Neil was … silent. He didn’t look particularly happy to have his son back. Sure, he’d thanked the Chief profusely and shaken the man’s hand and guided Billy into the house, but as soon as the door closed and they were alone, his face closed off as well. It was weird.
And as for Max’s new brother … he was quiet. Didn’t say much. Just sat there at the table and ate (with only his fork, which Neil always yelled at Max for doing), and barely looked up at them.
After dinner, when Max’s mom was busy clearing the table, the phone rang. Neil went out into the hall to answer it, leaving Max alone with Billy at the table. She glanced at him, surreptitiously, idly wondering where he was going to sleep. She wasn’t about to give up her room.
Suddenly, “Madmax?”
Her head shot up at the old nickname that stirred up memories from California – she hadn’t heard it for years! – and she found him looking at her. He raised his eyebrows like he was saying ‘watch this’, lifted a finger, and the salt shaker slid across the table and into his hand.
She stared, open mouthed, as he gave her a conspiratorial smile and put his finger to his lips in a silent request for secrecy. She nodded, wide eyed.
Her new brother was a superhero. This was so cool.
Billy:
The thing in Billy knew. It was in him, it was him, so it knew what Billy knew.
And they knew.
They had heard the scientists and lab people talk; a comment here, a comment there. And they figured it out eventually; Neil sold him. Neil brought him to them, and then abandoned him there to be tortured and experimented on. Didn’t come for him. Didn’t help. Just … started over, in a new place, with a new family that didn’t have Billy in it.
They hated him for that. They wanted to hate his new family too – were prepared to hate them when the Chief of Police brought them to their house – but then Susan opened the door and gave them the first hug they’d experienced in years. And the girl, Max, had been carrying a skateboard – Billy’s old skateboard (which was the only thing of Billy’s still in the house). And she grinned at them behind her mother’s back at dinner, when he showed her his little trick. The first real smile anyone had given him for as long as he could remember.
So they liked Susan, and they liked Max.
But they hated Neil. And they saw the way Neil looked at them, and knew that he hated them right back. He looked at his son like he used to look at him after his mom left; right before a slap, or a push, or a slew of hateful words.
It didn’t matter. Billy wasn’t scared of him anymore, because he wasn’t a child anymore, and he certainly wasn’t weak.
And he wasn’t alone. He was them now, and together they were strong; strong enough to take down the lab and all the people who had hurt them, and make it look like an accident.
The thing in Billy was a part of him now, and while there was a big empty space where he knew there should be something else – something they couldn’t access, something they couldn’t reach – they had both made it out of there because they worked together; because they were one.
They knew the same things. They wanted the same things. And they would make those things happen. Soon.
Neil Hargrove would pay for what he did.