WHISTLEBLOWER | ❝It only gets stranger...❞
Hawkins has never looked back on the events of November 1983. They know the surface-level story. 'The boy who came back to life.' Will Byers is alive and well, while the futile search for Tonya McCarth...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
MONDAY 5th NOVEMBER, 1984
IF there is a Heaven, and she's lucky enough to go to it, Daphne is sure she'd be a laughing stock when she arrived at the pearly gates, because a thirteen year-old crashed the car. That's the worst-case scenario her brain jumps to — but she has to admit, apart from the slightly wobbly driving, Max is doing pretty well.
It still doesn't make the scene any less chaotic though. Daphne riding shotgun, trying her best to instruct the girl, although Max seems surprisingly certain about her abilities in driving. The boys in the back, squashed together and bickering underneath the lump of an unconscious Steve Harrington. All on their way to burn up the tunnels, like it's the Nostromo from 'Alien' rife with vicious extraterrestrials...
Oh yeah, thinks Daphne sheepishly. I'm definitely going to hell.
"Just keep going straight for half a mile, then make a left—"
A muffled grunt amidst the boys' bickering catches her attention. Turning in her seat, although it sends searing pain through her arm cradled in the scarf sling, Daphne throws her gaze to the back seat. Surely enough, Steve's eyes are blinking themselves into consciousness through his swollen face. He looks around like a newborn baby at stares quizzically at Mike, who does a double take at noticing the sudden attention.
"... Nancy?" Steve murmurs.
Mike squints at him, as if to say, You think I'm who?! while furrowing his eyebrows. Steve grunts, reaching to touch the bridge if his nose, but his hand is pulled away by the boy on his other side.
"No, don't touch it," Dustin says softly, holding an ice pack to his head. "Hey buddy... shhh, shhh, it's okay... you put up a good fight... he kicked your ass, but you put up a good fight..."
"Steve? Steve, how you doing? You alright?" Daphne asks hopefully.
Blinking back into awareness, Steve refocuses his gaze on Daphne's face staring at him expectantly from the front. Her heart instantly does a little dance of relief to see him awake — in truth, every passing minute where he'd been unconscious had driven her mad up the walls. What if he hadn't woken up? What the hell would they have done then? But she can cast her dramatic conclusions to the side. Steve is alive, and so are the rest of them... for now.
The Harrington boy's eyes suddenly grow wide.
"Hold on... wh– why are you on that side?" asks Steve. When his eyes creep to the driver's seat, holding a laser-focused Max at the wheel, he lets out a horrified whimper.
