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.
FRIDAY 23rd NOVEMBER, 1984
THE repercussions of the last two years, and probably many more before now, came thick and fast for the Hawkins Laboratory. Within a few days of El closing the gate, another one was opened — the media frenzy over the scathing truths published, which showed that the Hawkins Laboratory were directly responsible for the deaths (yes, they weren't 'missing') of Barbara Holland and Tonya McCarthy. It was all that was in the news for weeks, and the entire town was dumbfounded that this had been right under their noses. Daphne, Nancy and Jonathan had simply stayed quiet during the whole thing.
Several lab agents confessed to covering up the girls' deaths, and before the end of the month, entire lab was shut down. Everything. Daphne honestly hadn't expected such a drastic reaction, after all the hush-hush that had followed in 1983. But surely enough, military police were locking the place up from any entry — an abrupt end to the affairs.
She did get one more chat with Dr. Owens before his ties to the lab were cut. It was her effort of putting a bookend at the pages of guilt and secrecy that the last year had entailed:
"Well... back again," Dr. Owens hums, his voice a little weaker than before. He's still recovering from wounds that the demodogs left in the siege on Hawkins Lab — the one that came before the media tore them apart. Not that she isn't injured herself, her arm still pinned against her chest in a sling.
Daphne nods from across the desk they're sat at. She isn't as nervous as last time though. For one thing, she knows that the Hawkins Lab has been shut down, and Owens is a jobless man. Most of all, if this experience has suggested anything, it's that he was perhaps one of the good guys. Simply caught up on the wrong side with good intentions.
And of course, the main difference this time is she called them to meet, not him.
"I don't know how much I can help you," says Owens, "but you can always try me, and I'll see what I can do."
"I just have one main request..." Daphne replies, staring at him across the desk. "My friends, Amy and Felix. I want them to know everything. No more lies, no more secrets. They deserve to be clued in after I've left them in the dark for this long..." Owens opens his mouth to speak, but she cuts him off with more to say: "But... when I say I want them clued in, I don't want them to be in any danger. No twisted ways of having them wrapped around the lab's little finger."
"Right, see, that's where it gets tricky. I completely understand your worries, but this still stands — no one else can know about the Upside Down. It would go against our very efforts to contain this threat from civilians and from falling into the hands of the Soviets. Although... we could make a compromise."
