Hopper: Joyce? You okay?

Joyce: Yeah, I'm fine.

Hopper: You want to wait in the car?

Joyce: I said I'm fine.

*

A reverberating clanking sound echoed through the empty halls, sounds that Nineteen couldn't hear. In deep sleep, it wasn't the noise that penetrated her dreams, it was the strange emotions. Nineteen woke with a jolt. Fear she recognized as her own, but the new sensations were foreign to her. Heart pounding, slipped off the blanket and crawled to the edge of the bed. The emotions emanating from somewhere in the building were intense. Mostly sadness and anger. Definitely fear like her own but a residue of it as if from some long ago memory and not from the building as it stood now. 

Voices murmured indistinctly through the vent in the room. A deeper voice spoke followed by a softer one answering. Frustrated by her inability to distinguish the words, she got out of bed and opened the door. She closed her eyes, trying to determine the source of the muffled sounds for that's all they were, muffled. They had to be coming from below. She took the stairs down to ground level.

The voices were louder now but the conversation between them was beyond her grasp. She'd known of her deafness since day one, yet held out hope that she would find a way to communicate with others. With a cautious step forward, she observed shadows creeping along the wall in the hallway before her. Friend or foe? She didn't yet know so she employed extra caution. Flashlights shone on the walls then swept back and forth as the two strange visitors approached Nineteen's location. She shrank back inside the stairway, peeking through the crack of the slightly opened door. There were two people as she had thought, a man and a woman. Neither of them looked like the man with the white hair she had seen in her dreams.

This man was tall, solidly built with a paunchy stomach. He had an unkempt beard and tousled brown hair. His eyes held pain in them and a fierce determination as well. The woman was about half his height with dark brown hair and brown eyes. She was on the thin side yet had a motherly look about her. Nineteen felt drawn to her, like she was a safe person to trust.

The two took a right and Nineteen followed but only for the sake of wanting to know why they were here. She kept a safe distance from them listening and watching. They went to a room she hadn't yet entered. One with more machines, broken glass and equipment on the other side of the glass. 

They walked past the machines and to the wall on the other side. Nineteen crouched down next to the machines and watched them. The man walked to the wall and rapped it with his knuckles. He spoke some words that continued to be muffled and far away even though the gap between her and them was closer.

She furrowed her eyebrows, straining to catch the words. It was as if she were underwater. Nothing that he said made sense. The words were not clear. He was talking about the wall by the looks of his body language. The woman also walked over and touched the blank wall.

Nineteen couldn't fathom why they were so fascinated by it. What was so important about a dirty wall? She thought back to the tapes. They hadn't shown this room at all. Only the rainbow and the testing rooms. She watched them intently, focused on their mouths but deciphered little of their speech. 

Frustrated, she continued observing them. Judging from their facial expression the conversation was a serious one. The woman was easier to read than the man. Her emotions exhibited pain and frustration. Great sadness welled inside the woman too. She had experienced a recent loss, one that was almost too painful to bear. Why had she come back to the source of her pain? If it were Nineteen's choice, she would never come back.

Her own painful memories, triggered by the woman's profound grief, flashed into her mind. She recalled the tape of herself more vividly now. Instead of observing from the outside, the memory encroached upon her bringing her to the point in the rainbow room when she had exhibited her powers with electricity for the first time. This time, it was she, who was in the room levitating the three balls into the air.

She concentrated hard on getting them to stay aloft simultaneously when a strange image filled her mind. She saw, her future self, one who was older, taller and thinner watching. She gazed at the video camera curiously, the levitating balls forgotten. Compelled to respond to the image in her mind, she lifted her finger and electricity shot out of it and into the camera. She felt, rather than saw, her future self, jolt backward in surprise.

The white haired man, angry at Nineteen for destroying valuable equipment, ordered her removed from his sight. She was confined to her room for the duration of three days without food or water. Nineteen knew that she had angered the man but how? What had she done that had caused him to be so angry? He hadn't said so, just banished Nineteen to her room.

A shift in movement between the man and the woman brought Nineteen back to now. Intense regret, fear, sadness, pain had increased during the course of their conversation. All of these were dominant in both visitors. By this, she could determine they spoke of past events, something so traumatic that they carried the scars into the present. The man spoke of someone from his past, someone close to him that was gone now.

The woman referred to her family. Her desire to leave was strong, overriding the other emotions she carried. She wanted to run, to escape this place of bad memories. Nineteen had to fight the urge to run herself, determined to see what they would do next.

The visitors had been sitting, talking quietly when they both stood abruptly responding to a noise that Nineteen couldn't hear. The man left the room, swinging his flashlight but the woman stayed. Nineteen had the feeling she wouldn't stay long so she waited with the woman. Minutes passed by, Nineteen focused on the thudding of her own heart and that of the woman's. 

She thought of her ability to emit electricity out of her fingers. The girl on the tape had done the same. She longed to turn on the lights for the visitors, make it brighter. With one hand on the machine next to her, she tried turning it on. Nothing. Not a single zap of electricity. Why had she been able to do it yesterday but not today?

The woman was pacing back and forth, tense and impatient. Suddenly, she stopped mid-stride, whirled around and left the room. Nineteen trailed behind the woman who went down the hall, turned and entered a room. Nineteen gasped sofly, the man was on the floor, injured. His face was battered and bruised.

Through the windows of this room, lightning flashed and thunder boomed, the vibrations of which she felt through her feet. The visitors took no notice of Nineteen. She tried to speak, to let them know she was there, but she couldn't. She was paralyzed with fear.

Someone else had been here too. A very strong someone who had beaten up the man lying on the floor. Through the windows, Nineteen saw the third intruder ride away on a motorcycle and she knew she was no longer safe.

She ran rather than reveal her presence. If the tall man attracted such dangerous intruders then who knows what kind of man he really was? She couldn't take the chance. With her own emotions blocking theirs, adrenaline kicked in, and she ran, not stopping until she burst through the unlocked doors and into a downpour. Thunder boomed, the sound erupting in her chest. Lightning flashed and she screamed.

A feeling of anger and hatred overwhelmed her. Death was all around her and she struggled to be free of it. Compelled to run toward the woods, she came to a chain linked fence and climbed it. On the other side, the trees sheltered her from the worst of the rain and she took off in an unplanned direction with no idea of where she would end up.

She walked for miles seeing nothing but dirt and trees. No animals were out in this storm, they had the sense to find shelter. Nineteen needed to do the same but where?

Then she saw it. A shelter of sorts. It was smashed in, wood toppled to the ground, but there was an opening she could crawl through. She huddled under the blankets, shivering, teeth clattering until she slowly grew warm and fell asleep.

*

Bright sunlight peeked through the broken boards. The light landed squarely in her eyes bringing her to full consciousness. She blinked away sleepiness and sat up. The rain had stopped. She was soaked through to the skin. Nineteen crawled out of her temporary shelter noting the sign, Camp Byers. 

Who had meticulously built such a place then destroyed all their hard work? No matter the temporary shelter had offered a perfect hideout for Nineteen. She scrounged through the shelter looking for clues as to who had used it before her. She found bits of paper scattered about, torn, with jagged edges. 

She pulled all the pieces of paper together and studied them. They were photographs she realized, of people she didn't know. Four young boys about the same height with goofy grins on their faces. She sensed a bond between the four. This must have been their place. Something they had taken great care to build but now it was torn apart much like the photographs.

Who would destroy it and why? The storm offered a partial answer but Nineteen knew of no storm that could tear apart paper like this. Mostly likely someone had been inside and destroyed the shelter then left when the storm came.

Her heart hurt at the thought, without knowing why. Her stomach hurt as well, twisting with painful hurt. She licked her lips, needing water and food to nourish her. The shelter had provided a reprieve from the storm but now she must leave it in order to find food.

Onward she trekked as the morning shifted into the afternoon with no end of the woods in sight. Dizzy from hunger and thirst, she stumbled over her own feet and crashed into a tree. Stunned, she slid down to the ground. When she looked up, the tree tops swayed and blurred alternating between light and darkness. No. She refused to pass out.

She struggled to her feet and continued on, not knowing if she was wandering around in circles. Her bare foot caught on something thin and stiff and she tripped over it. Knives shot out from the tree on her right and plunged into the one on her left. Confused, she lifted her head and saw multiple cabins in her vision. She blinked to clear them and they meshed into one cabin. Food and water. Eagerly, she got up only to fall back down as another wave of dizziness hit.

She crawled to the steps, up them and inside. The door had been left unlocked for which she was grateful. Inside the kitchen she drank water until she feared her stomach would burst. She ate the food that had been left in the refrigerator then lay down on the bed that stood in the corner. 

* 

Anyone guess where Nineteen is?

Let me know in the comments below.

Another quote above. You know the drill.