Nineteen explored the house having been left alone when Joyce needed to go somewhere. She wasn't clear on the explanation Joyce gave her except for being told to not go anywhere. But Nineteen was lonely. She wished for Eleven and Max to come back.

Her fingers tingled, electricity shot out of them. It meant danger was near. Whatever was going on in this town, they were in the thick of it, of that Nineteen was sure. Hawkins Labs might provide the answers she sought but could she find her way back to it?

She had to know for sure. The tapes in the machine might tell her what she needed to know. There were other tapes besides her own. She never thought to check them but now she desired to. She couldn't be of any help to anyone if she didn't know what was going on.

She left a note telling Joyce she was sorry but she couldn't stay. "Tell Eleven, thank you," she wrote. Armed with some crackers, water in a canteen and a jar of peanut butter in a sack, she took off letting her instincts guide her back to Hawkins Lab.

It was a very long walk. She wished for a flashlight so when she came to Castle Byers, she rested inside until morning, feasting on the peanut butter and crackers. In the early morning light, she retraced her steps through the woods, on the railroad tracks and over the fence.

Trepidation filled her chest but she got no other warning signals so she proceeded in through the broken front doors. Light from the morning sun didn't reach very far inside. Everything else was hidden in a gray gloom. Was it possible that she had lived here at all?

Eleven showed that she had. She missed her company even now. Determined to learn as much as she could then go back, she went straight to the machine room, avoiding the rainbow room. Oblivious to anything but the machine room, she failed to note the blinking red light on the cameras in the hallway.

Inside the machine room, she set down her sack on another chair. On each tape was a number, the age and a date. Starting with Two-she couldn't find any tapes with the number One on them- she watched all of the tapes, all the way up to Eighteen. She learned the extent of their powers, what they had been capable of and what they were weak on. 

She and Eleven were the same age but not all of them were. Some were older, others were younger. Eight only had a few tapes and that was all. Nineteen was the same. Something had happened to Eight. She wondered if Eight had been kept in the basement of the building too.

She didn't think so. A quick search down in the basement would answer that question but she didn't feel comfortable going down there. It would be like going backwards. She watched Eleven's tapes carefully, noting that at first, she wasn't very strong in her telekinetic powers but eventually, she became stronger.

Nineteen watched all of the tapes first then went back to Eleven. There was something she noticed, some discrepancy in the dates that didn't make sense. While all the other tapes stopped on the same date, Eleven's continued further. Why, she didn't know. 

Her own tape stopped just before the age of nine. She could only conclude that something had happened to the others but not to Eleven. Just like she had been taken to the basement, the others might have been taken to the basement as well. She might be going down there after all.

She needed to know. Very little of the words said on the tapes were understood by her. She had to glean information by watching facial cues and body language. She watched them over and over to discern their personalities. Trouble was, all of them kept their faces expressionless for the most part. 

They obeyed the gray haired man, whom they called Papa quickly. On one tape, she watched herself being nudged by Eleven to join the others in line. The same thing happened when they were in the testing rooms. Nineteen couldn't hear a word Papa said and Eleven knew it. She tried her best to prevent Papa from finding out but eventually he did.

The last tape ended abruptly with her looking at the camera and sending the flash of electricity. Snowy static filled the screen. Nineteen had figured out how to rewind and fast forward the tapes but no amount of fast forwarding this tape cleared the static.

Nevertheless, she persisted and then toward the last two minutes of the tape, it cleared. Nineteen gasped. The room she had woken up in. Papa was there, wearing white scrubs and a mask. Two other adults were there too. She didn't recognize them for all the other tapes rarely showed anyone else except for Eleven's visits to the tank. 

Her younger self was lying on the bed, eyes closed. The camera zoomed in. They were operating on her! A drill cut into her skull. She fingered her own head feeling for the familiar scars. That explained where she had gotten them. Her body began to jerk wildly on the tape. Electricity flooded out of her zapping the doctors and nurses operating on her.

The electrical currents that flowed out of her body attacked the machines, halting the operation. All the lights went out, there was a building wide power outage. The tape flickered off then turned back as power was restored. Papa was wrapping her head in a bandage. Tubes were placed in her body and a sheath of plastic covered it.

When she had awakened, the plastic was gone. They secured her to the bed, left the machines running and locked the door. Papa was the last one to leave. Her observed Nineteen for a time, hand on the plastic as if saying goodbye. Then he walked over to the camera, took off his mask, and said something before turning it off.

Nineteen rewound the portion of the tape several tape, gleaning what he said from his lips. "Montauk."

She sat back, stunned. What had he meant by that? Montauk? Mon talk? Mon tawk? What kind of word was that? She rifled through all the drawers finding a flash light in the bottom drawer. She flicked it on, it worked. With determination woven in her features, she went down the stairs going directly to the basement. She found her old room, the room she had woken up in and explored the space carefully. The sheet of plastic was tucked in a corner having been torn off in haste.

She checked the machines, flicking the switches but they held no power. They had turned off when the building had been abandoned. She explored the other rooms in the basement, searching for the other children but found none. 

She went back upstairs, going into the room where Hopper had gotten hurt. There were several offices along that hallway. She found some with filing cabinets and searched through them looking for clues as to the reason why they left.

Everything had been hastily torn out of the filing cabinets. She found bits of paper and file folders ripped apart. Whatever caused them to leave, they did it in a hurry. So why were the tapes left behind? Wouldn't they have been cleared out as well?

An idea formed in her mind and she directed some energy into the computer sitting on the desk. It came to life. It asked for a password then sat waiting patiently for her to give it. Seven letters. It could be any combination of numbers and letters. Perhaps even symbols. Nineteen thought back to all the tapes she had watched.

She entered the word rainbow. It didn't work. The word experiment was too long. Hawkins was too obvious. Eleven had only six letters. She tried Twelve but that didn't work either. Nineteen tapped her finger on the desk, lost in thought. Then it came to her. Of course. She typed the word, Montalk but it denied her entry. She tried another variation of it, Montawk. Access denied. Then added the u in place of the w and the computer opened up to her.

Along with it, the power. The entire building hummed with electricity. All the lights came on, all the machines all at once. Montauk had been the word to turn it all off and back on again. On inspiration, she went back to the room with the tapes and watched the last two minutes again. 

There on the upper right corner was the date, October 31, 1984. She rewound to the moment when she first saw herself on the bed. February 2, 1978. Two different dates. Papa had stopped to check on her before he left. The revelation terrified her. Nearly three years had gone by. She'd been stuck in that basement for six years!

She rushed back to the computer and clicked on the file labeled Montauk. Flashes of images, maps, buildings, a large forest and an underground cave came onto the screen. Was that where the other children were now? But what about Eleven? She'd been here longer than the others. 

She checked the other files. No, they had died. All of them except her, Eleven and Eight. Then she learned about One. She learned his true name and how Eleven had sent him into the Upside Down. How Papa knew about the Upside Down from his experiments at Montauk. Everything was revealed to her. She sat for hours sifting through the data. 

Papa had originally started in Montauk with experiments on soldiers. Suspicions and rumors had shut down the lab. He then moved to Hawkins to open another lab under the guise of a power company. Where he was now Nineteen didn't learn. That information was unavailable.

Anger burned through her. She wanted to find him, demand of him why he had left her behind rather than take her with him. How she had survived all this time alone in that damp, musty basement she might never find out. She supposed she ought to go back to Joyce's house now that she got caught up.

She turned off the computer and stood up. A rubber gloved hand closed around her mouth, the scent of a chemical wafting into her nose. She slumped back down in the chair. A needle was driven in her neck and she knew nothing else.

***
I might have taken liberties as to where Papa had come from. If there is history on him, I don't recall. If you know more, please comment below.

Was it brave or foolish for Nineteen to have gone back to the Lab? Write your answers in the comments. And always vote if you like the story and the journey Nineteen is taking. There will be more on the gang in Hawkins in couple of chapters.