nadine mckinnon had a prosthetic right foot, a bandage she never took off her left wrist, and a permanent residence in pennhurst mental hospital
[ stranger things season four ]
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ZERO! the massacre of 1979
THE FLORESCENT LIGHTS in the ceiling buzzed to fill the silence of the small room Nadine was sat in. She had a series of wires stuck onto her skull, her thin hospital gown falling to just below her knees, and grey slippers barely keeping her toes warm.
Sat opposite her was Dr Khan (Nadine's favourite), a petite woman with shiny dark hair slicked back into a bun and warm eyes that crinkled at the corners when she smiled.
Nadine was sat perfectly still, eyes shut as her eyelids flickered slightly, hands resting on her lap, an unassuming bar of chocolate lying on the table in front of her.
All of a sudden, the bar seemed to glitch from where it was sat, to a few inches to the left, then a bit forwards, then right to the corner of the table.
"Good," Dr Khan praised lowly, the scrawling of her pen against paper telling Nadine she was making notes on the girls progress.
All of a sudden, the chocolate bar disappeared from the table altogether, suddenly laying on an empty chair nearby, right in the middle of a black cross drawn on in marker.
"Perfect," Dr Khan encouraged, "You're getting more precise."
Nadine opened her eyes to see how she had done, and parted her lips with a smile to reply to Dr Khan, when she froze. Dread grappled at her heart, its icy tendrils wrapping down her spine as she frowned deeply, mildly aware of Dr Khan calling her name, but unable to respond.
Something was wrong.
Almost on cue, a blood curdling scream cut through her thoughts of increasing stress, and she looked at Dr Khan with wide, panicked, eyes.
Slowly, the doctor rose from her seat, a small crease forming between her brows, laying her clipboard and pen on the table.
A startling bang seemed to make the small room they were in shake, and Nadine flinched harshly. The sound was closer this time, at the end of their hall.
"Stay here," Dr Khan said quietly, "Don't move until I come back."
She used her keycard to open the metal door, closing it gently behind her, and Nadine was left with nothing but her racing pulse thrumming in her ears to fill the eerie silence.
Another scream, this time one Nadine recognised as a females- Dr Khan.
The metal legs of the chair scraped against the pristine tiles as she abruptly stood, ripping the wires off her shaved head, and staring at the door with laboured breaths. Seconds stretched into hours stretched into months stretched into years, as Nadine could do nothing but stare at the metal door.
Mildly, she registered the chocolate bar was sporadically teleporting all over the room, its erratic movements mimicking her increasing heart rate.
Bang!
The metal door flew completely off its hinges, smashing into Nadine and crushing her against the wall where she blacked out completely.
When she came to, it with with a shuddering gasp that stuttered in her chest, and an indescribable pain shooting up her leg. Nadine pushed off the rubble and smashed tiles that had crumbled off the wall, and looked down. The metal door had completely crushed her right leg from the shin down, and a dark red blood was slowly oozing across the white tiles, reflecting the fiercely flickering lights above.
There was a gaping hole in the wall from where the door was exploded off its hinges, and in the hallway, Nadine could see Dr Khan collapsed on the floor. Her limbs were twisted in unnatural directions, her eyes glassy and unseeing, a large gash on her forehead dripping blood.
Nadine needed to leave now.
Bile was crawling up her throat from a mix of the severe pain and seeing the murdered corpse of her favourite person in the facility. With her left leg out of use, Nadine knew she couldn't try and escape by foot, which meant there was only one option left.
Nadine was one of the older ones in the facility, and had started to grow weary of Papa's ways of teaching and the constant experiments. The lab's walls and floors were growing boring and she had developed a curiosity for what lay beyond the woods surrounding the facility.
It seemed that this was her chance. Her abilities of teleportation were barely developed- the most she had done was teleport a white fluffy cat from one side of the lab to the other.
Teleporting herself wasn't something Nadine had even considered before, and it was beyond risky, but she had two options: either bleed out and die in the lab, or at least die trying to leave.
Nadine screwed up her face in concentration, feeling a familiar energy thrum through every fibre of her being. The very particles in her body appeared to be crackling with electricity, seeming to vibrate in place as her head started to pound with pressure.
All of a sudden the tiles underneath her had switched to tarmac, and with a jolt Nadine realised she was no longer lying on the lab floor, but on gravelly paving. She didn't know where she was- it was a narrow alley, with tall buildings either side of her, the sky blue and cloudless overhead.
She looked down at her leg, the shin and foot a mess of mangled blood and blone, before the world lurched around her and Nadine felt her head hit the paving behind her as she passed out.
- A/N!
this is a little prologue to explain how nadine escaped the facility during the massacre 😝😝 the next chapters will be a lot longer ily mwah
