꧁Henry/Vecna/001꧂

꧁003꧂

The group was all in Eddie's room trying to find a song when Erica walks in.

"Steve says you need to hurry!" Erica yells.

"Yeah, no shit!" Dustin yells back.

"We're trying to we can't find anything!" Max yells. 003 ignores them and continues to look at cassettes.

"Seriously, what is all this shit?" Robin asks.

"What are you even looking for?" Eddie asks her.

"Madonna, Blondie, Bowie, Beatles? Music! We need music!" Eddie snatches a cassette out of her hand.

"This is music!" 003 drops the cassettes in her hands. 003 suddenly feels like this is a waste of time. They'll never find something fast enough.

"That's it. I've had enough of this shit." 003 says and starts walking towards the door.

"Where the hell are you going?!" Dustin asks as 003 walks out of the room.

"To help!" 003 yells back at him and walking towards the gate. I grab onto the rope and start climbing. "Steve! I'm coming up- down- whatever you know what I mean!" I enter the upside down and flip over dropping to my feet.

"Alright, what's the plan?" Steve asks as 003 moves to stand in front of Nancy.

"I'm gonna push him out of her mind."

"What? How?" 003 rolls her eyes and turns to look at him.

"I'm gonna enter Nancy's mind, find them, and push Vecna out." 003 explains.

"And you've done this before?"

"Where would I have done this before?" 003 retorts.

"Okay but you know what you're doing? Right?" 003 looks at him uneasily. "Three." He says sternly.

"I know how to do it but seeing as I've never done it before the percentage of failure is higher than-"

"Three." Steve says and 003 sighs.

"Just let me fix this. Please?" He nods and turn back towards Nancy. Just as 003 is about to enter her mind she "wakes up". Nancy begins to fall and Steve catches her. He sits her on the floor and 003 enters her mind. She checks every inch of Nancy's mind just to make sure Vecna's really gone. 003 exits her mind and nods at Steve. "He's gone."

꧁✯꧂

The group of teenagers had all moved to Max's house. 003 is standing across from the couch in the corner listening to Nancy tell everyone what happened.

"He showed me things that haven't happened yet. The most awful things. I saw a dark cloud spreading over Hawkins. Downtown on fire. Dead soldiers. And this giant creature. With a big gaping mouth. And this creature wasn't alone. There were so many monsters. An army. And they were coming into Hawkins. Into our neighborhoods. Our homes. And he showed me my mom. And Holly. Mike. And they... they were all..." 003 sighs, turning around and running a hand over her face.

"Okay, but he's just trying to scare you Nance. Right? I mean, it's not real." Steve says and 003 turns back around to see what she'll say.

"Not yet. But there was something else. He showed me gates. Four gates spreading across Hawkins. And these gates, they looked like the one outside Eddie's trailer, but they didn't stop growing. And this wasn't the upside down Hawkins. This was our Hawkins. Our home. He showed me you." Nancy says looking up at 003. "He knew you. Back in the lab."

"The lab?" Lucas asks. "The hell were you doing in Hawkins lab?"

"I thought you were Russian?" Dustin says.

"I am Russian. But before that, I was an experiment at Hawkins lab. Just like Eleven. Except I failed all of their tests as a baby. I made sure of it. And after two years of trying to get me to show my powers, they gave me back to my family."

"Why?" Steve asks.

"I was a special case. Most of the experiments were found by Brenner when they were older or in Eleven's case she was born into it. I started showing signs of powers three minutes after I was born. I was taken from my parents and they were told that I was sick. Really sick. So sick I couldn't live with them anymore."

"And they were okay with that?" Robin asks. 003 looks at her, wishing she could give them all the details but it hurt too much, even now, to talk about those dork days in her early life.

"They didn't have much of a choice. Brenner had already taken me away to the lab and they had my sister to think about too." They all look at me stunned. "Anyways, we need to focus on what Vecna showed Nancy."

"Four chimes. Vecna's clock. It always chimes four times. Four exactly." All attention goes to Max as she talks and 003 sends her a grateful smile. She returns the gesture.

"I heard it too." Nancy says.

"He's been telling us his plan the whole time."

"Four kills. Four gates. End of the world." Lucas says. 003 begins to pace again, keeping her head down as she tries to formulate a plan.

"If that's true he's only one kill away." Dustin says. Eddie starts panicking.

"Oh Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ."

"Try 'em again. Try 'em again!" Steve says and Max walks over to the wall telephone. She dials the number and waits for them to answer. After a few seconds she hangs up.

"Anything." Lucas asks.

"No. Rang a few times, then went to busy signal." Max says.

"Maybe you punched it in wrong." Steve says as 003 stops pacing. She feels the spark of power that she always feels when someone else with powers is using their around her. It feels different than Vecna's, this power is more gentle than what she's felt the last few days from Vecna. If it wasn't Vecna, then it had to be Eleven. 003 must have spaced out of the conversation going on around her because Robin is suddenly standing in front of her shaking her shoulders.

"Three? You okay?" She says and 003 meet her eyes.

"I'm fine." Nancy turns around to look at all of the group of teens from the window.

"We have to go back in there. Back to the upside down." 003 raises her eyebrows at her bold statement.

"Nope. Nope." Eddie says as Steve says, "whoa. No, no, no, no."

"Yeah if you think I'm gonna be able to protect all of you," 003 says, pointing to everyone in the room. "Then you're crazy. I'd never have enough energy for that, especially after our last encounter in that hell hole, that happened? Oh yeah! Like twenty minutes ago!"

"Yeah, let's think this through." Steve says standing up.

"What is there to think through?" Nancy asks and 003 looks at her like she's crazy.

"We barely made it out of there in one piece."

"Yeah, need I remind you I still need to stitch Steve up from those bats." 003 says motioning to Steve's beat up body.

"Demobats." Dustin says. 003 turns to him with a deadly look on her face.

"You wanna correct me again?"

"No... ma'am." 003 nods and turns back to Nancy and Steve.

"We weren't prepared the first time." Nancy says. "But this time we will be. We'll get weapons and protection. We'll go through the gate. We'll find his lair, and we'll kill him." Now that Nancy had filled in some of the details of her plan, it sounded like a better idea to 003. Were they still missing a few minor details? Yes, but they would be able to hash those out as they all agreed on the plan.

"Or he'll kill us. The reason you survived is because he wanted you to. He's not scared of us." Steve says worriedly.

"And for good reason. We were wrong about Vecna. Henry... one... sorry, what are we calling him now?" Robin asks.

"One." Dustin says.

"Vecna." Erica says.

"One." Lucas and 003 says at the same time.

"Henry." 003 looks at Nancy confused by her answer. She had been taught that monsters like herself and One were to be called by their number. It's what separates them from normal people.

"Right. We've learned something new about Vecna/Henry/001. He's a number like Eleven and Three, only a sick, evil, male, child murdering version of them with really bad skin."

"How is that last part relevant?" 003 asks Robin.

"It's not, but my point is, he's super powerful. Could turn us inside out with the snap of his fingers. It's not a fair fight." She explains.

"I'd say I'm pretty powerful too." 003 responds.

"Right but you can't kill someone through their mind." Robin says and 003 raises her eyebrows at her.

"I've split entire armies in half all at once."

"Split them in half?" Dustin asks.

"Yeah, like right down the middle." 003 says, pretending to use her hand to split him down the middle, from his head to his feet. "It kills them almost instantly. My father and I called it кусочек."

"English." Steve reminds 003.

"Right. The slice. We called it the slice." 003 says, remembering she's the only one that speaks Russian here and that she can't speak both languages freely and expect everyone to understand her.

"Why should we fight fair regardless of what Three can do? You're right. He's like Eleven. But that gives us an upper hand. We know Eleven's strengths. And weaknesses." Dustin says and 003 nods.

"Weaknesses?" Erica asks.

"When El remote-travels, she goes into this sort of trance like state." Dustin explains. "I bet the same thing is true for Vecna."

"That would explain what he was doing in that attic."

"Or that's where he killed his first victim and he's more comfortable there." Everyone turns to look at 003 shocked and she looks at them confused. "What? My first three months as убийца-"

"English, Three." Steve reminds again.

"The assassin, my father would bring prisoners for me to kill to the same room I made my first kill in. It allowed me to remember how I did it the first time so I didn't get anything wrong."

"Jesus Christ." Eddie mutters.

"You guys are acting like you've never killed before." 003 scoffs.

"Because we haven't!" Dustin exclaims and she shrugs.

"That explains why I'm here still." 003 retorts. "Point is, 001 should be back there to kill his next victim."

"And his physical body will be defenseless." Dustin adds.

"Defenseless? What about the army of bats?" Steve asks as he motions to the mark on his neck from the bat that choked him and 003 has to avert her eyes from the proof that she failed at protecting him.

"Right, true, yeah. True. We'll have to find a way past them." Dustin says.

"And, uh, how do we do that exactly?" Eddie asks starting to stand but when Dustin starts talking he sits back down.

"No idea. But once they're gone, he doesn't stand a chance. It'll be like slaying sleeping Dracula in his coffin." Dustin responds.

"That all sounds good in theory, but there is no pattern to Vecna's killings. Not one that I can decipher. We don't know when he's going to attack next. Don't even know who he's going to attack." Robin points out.

"Yeah, we do." Everyone looks at Max. "I can still feel him. I'm still marked. Cursed. I ditch Kate Bush... I draw his focus back to me."

"Max. You can't. He'll kill you." Lucas says. 003 suddenly feels an overwhelming sound of guilt. They didn't ask for this. Any of them. And it almost feels like she should have killed him before they started looking for him.

"I survived before. I can survive again. I just need to keep him busy long enough so you guys can get into the attic. Then you can chop his head off. Stab him in the heart. Split him in half. Blow him up with some explosive Dustin cooks up. I honestly don't care how you put this asshole in his grave. Just, whatever it is, try not to miss." Max says the last part to 003 and she nods. She has a responsibility to her now, to all of them to do this. She promises to herself that she won't stop until 001's dead. She'd rather die than leave this up to them.

꧁✯꧂

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That's end of today's chapter! I added a little foreshadowing for when season 5 comes out there at the end👀👀 let's just say things might get a little interesting for the general plan I have in my head.

♥︎Bayler♥︎