Chapter Twenty-Eight

Eleven lets out a painful yell, everyone around her was crowding her, no one was sure of what to do. 

I cringed as something moves between the skin of her swollen leg, I noticed that Stiles had backed up, looking away. I knew this made him uncomfortable, and honestly, it made me uncomfortable too. 

"What is that?" Erica asks, noticing it too, scrunching her face up in disgust. 

"There's something in there." Mike obviously pointed out. 

"No!" Eleven wailed out. 

"Jesus Christ," Dustin speaks beside me, his own eyes widening. 

 "Keep her talking. Keep her awake, okay?" I instruct them, thinking of what my mother would do in a situation like this. 

That's when I sprint away from them, Jonathan was close behind me, I hope over the counter of one of the stalls, I rummage through a draw and pulled out a plastic spoon and then grabbed out some plastic gloves. 

I open another door a select a large knife. "What are you doing?" Jonathan asks me from behind the store. 

"Trust me!" I yelled out, I don't know why I did yell, it just came out like that. I walked over to the stove and turn on the element and it lights up on fire, I put the knife under the element for a few minutes, making sure the knife was extremely hot. 

"You're gonna burn it out of her?" Jonathan asks, realising what I'm doing. 

I pull back the knife and turned off the element and grabbed the rest of the stuff. I jumped carefully over the counter, landing next to him. "That's exactly what I'm doing." I run back to them, Jonathan hot my tail and I slide down next to Eleven. "Okay. All right, El, this is gonna hurt like hell, okay?" 

Eleven lets out a sob as she looked at me. "Okay," she was leaning on Mike for support. 

I put the gloves on me. "I need you to stay real still." I hand out the spoon towards her. "Here, you might want to bite down on this, okay?" Mike takes it instead and put it in her mouth carefully. 

Eleven lets out a whimper. "Holy shit, holy shit." Dustin and Stiles mutter over. 

I hover the knife over her swollen leg. "Do it." Mike tells me. 

"Okay," I mumbled. I slowly sliced into her skin, Eleven lets out a scream, she leans back against Mike some more. The others watched as I sliced it open, blood coming out from her leg. I finished the cut and dropped the knife. 

 Eleven lets out another sob. I shut my eyes and I pushed gloved fingers into her sliced leg. "Stacey!" I heard Nancy yell over Eleven's screaming. 

"Stop talking!" I snapped, feeling something inside her. I route around inside her leg with my fingers. "Goddamn it!"

"No!" Eleven had spat out the spoon. "Stop it!" Jonathan placed a hand on my shoulder, I looked up and pulled back, sitting on my knees. Eleven grunts out weakly. "I can do it." Eleven sits up. "I can do it." 

Mike holds onto her shoulder and Eleven positions her hand over her dark wound. Eleven lets out a wail, which means she's using her own power to get it out of her. She draws the thing towards the surface of her wound, she let out another wail. 

She continued to scream loudly, I let out a squeal when the glass behind us smashes, I felt someone hover me and I looked up and saw it was Stiles, making sure no glass falls on me. 

My eyes widen when a flesh claw comes out from Eleven's skin, with her power she throws it away, letting out one last scream. 

I watched as the flesh claw tried to crawl away before a foot stomps on it, all our eyes widen when we noticed it was Joyce, Hopper, and another guy standing there. 

After reuniting with Joyce and Hopper, I learnt the other guys' name was called Murray, we had all gathered around, explaining what's going on. 

"The Mind Flayer," Mike begins. "It built this monster in Hawkins, to stop El, to kill her and pave a way into our world." 

"And it almost did." His sister, Nancy speaks up. "That was just one tiny piece of it."

"How big is this thing?" Hopper questions on the seat, Eleven was leaning on him, she looked exhausted. 

"It's big," Jonathan answered. "Thirty feet, at least." 

"Yeah," Lucas agreed. "It sorta destroyed your cabin," Lucas tells Hopper. "Sorry."

"Okay, so just to be clear," Steve jumps in who was standing beside Max. "This... This big fleshy spider thing hurt El, it's some kind of gigantic... Weapon?"

"Yes," his ex-girlfriend answered, who was standing next to Jonathan. 

"But, instead of, like, screws and metal, the Mind Flayer made its weapon... With melted people." Stiles states, frowning as I lean on him, his arms wrapped around me. 

"Yes, exactly," Nancy nods. 

"Yeah, okay," Stiles mumbled. "I- yeah, I'm just making sure." 

"Are we sure this thing is still out there, still alive?" Joyce asks, sitting next to Hopper and Eleven. 

"El beat the shit out of it, but, yeah, it's still alive," Max answers. 

"But if we close the gate again-"

"We cut the brain off from the body," Max cuts Will off. 

"And kill it." Lucas finished. "Theoretically."
 
"Yoo-hoo!" A loud yell cuts us off, Murray coming towards us, waving some papers around in his hands. We had all gathered around again, in a cafe at the court, Murray had placed down a map. "Okay, this is what Alexei called the hub. Now, the hub takes us to the vault room."

"Okay, where's the gate?" Hopper asks. 

"Right here." Murray points to a place on the map. "I don't know the scale on this, but I think its fairly close to the vault room, maybe 50 feet or so."

"More like 500," Erica steps forward. Murray looks at her. "What, you're just gonna waltz in there like it's commie Disneyland or something?" 

"I'm sorry, who are you?" Murray asks, clearly not happy with her. 

"Erica Sinclair," Erica answers back. "Who are you?" 

"Murray... Bauman," Murray unsurely states. 

Erica raises a hand. "Listen, Mr. Bauman, I'm not trying to tell you how to do things, but I've been down in that shithole for 24 hours. And with all due respect, you do what this man tells you, you're all gonna die."

"I'm sorry, why is this four-year-old speaking to me?" Murray questions. 

"Um, I'm ten, you bald bastard!" Erica fires back. 

"Erica!" Lucas and I exclaimed at the same time, looking down at the little girl. 

Erica looks at us, we just so happened to be standing next to each. "Just the facts!"

Dustin nods. "She's right. "You're all gonna die, but you don't have to." Dustin steps forward. "Excuse me, sorry, may I?" 

Murray smiled sarcastically. "Please," 

Dustin takes a seat and takes the pen, before circling it on the map. "Okay, see this room here? This is a storage facility. There's a hatch in here that feeds into their underground ventilation system. That will lead you to the base of the weapon. It's a bit of a maze down there, but between me, Stacey, and Erica, we can show you the way."

Hopper looked at us in disbelief. "You can show us the way?"

"Don't worry," Dustin continues. "You can do all the fighting and the dangerous hero shit, and we'll just be your... Navigators." 

"No," Hopper shakes his head. We gave him a look. Hopper shrugs. "Nope." 

The adults looked around, the rest of us waited by the fountain and Erica comes over to us. "Well, that settles it. He's gonna die. They're gonna die."

"Yep, most likely," Dustin agreed and I nod, standing beside him. Stiles, Robin, and Steve were over at a counter, talking. 

"You guys survived." Lucas pointed out. 

Dustin turned around. "Barely, we could've really used you guys down there."

"Could've used you up here, too." Mike admits. 

"Yeah, man. We missed you, dude." Lucas adds in. 

Will nods. "Yeah, big-time." They all pulled in for a group, it made me smile. 

"I missed you guys, too." Dustin tells them. "Big-time."

"Please don't cry, nerds." Erica sighed. 

"Erica." Lucas pulled away, glaring at her. 

"Keep saying my name, see what happens." Erica fires back to her older brother. I let out a small laugh, but I was cut off by Hopper. 

"Hey, heads up." Hopper throws Dustin a walkie. "You can navigate, just from someplace safe." 

"It's not that simple," Dustin tells him.

"The signal won't reach," Erica adds. 

"Not with this." Dustin continues. "Not with this. You need something with a high enough frequency band to relay with the Russians' radio tower. But for that to work, you need someone who has both seen their comms room and has access to a super-powered handcrafted radio tower, one preferably already situated at the highest point in Hawkins." Dustin smirks. "Oh, wait. That's me."

"If you want them to navigate, you got them," I tell him, Hopper looks at me. 

"Wait, them?" Dustin looked at me. "No, you're coming with us." 

I shake my head. "I- I can't," I watched Stiles, Steve, and Robin come towards us. "I have to fight. I have a gift, I need to use it." 

"But it won't be the same," Dustin mumbled. 

"Guys," I looked over at them. "I need to fight." 

"I refuse," Stiles suddenly said. "And Scott's not here to take me away from you this time." 

I shake my head. "You know what Scott would say," 

I had stepped closer to him and wrapped my arms around him, pulling him for a hug. "All right, on one condition. I better not come back and see you hurt, you understand me?" 

I let out a small giggle and pecked his lips. "I will be fine. I love you." 

"I love you more." 

I turned to Hopper. "They need a head start. And a car." 

A/N 

Hello everyone! 

Sorry for not posting in like months, I've been super busy and I hope this makes up for it. 

Thanks so much for almost 10K reads, this means a lot! And on my other series, thanks for 140K on The Other McCall, it means so much!

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