𝑩𝑳𝑼𝑬 - Billy Hargrove [1]

THIRTY TWO

THIRTY TWO|ONE BIG DYSFUNCTIONAL FAMILY

Nancy drove the group to StarCourt Mall, the place completely empty as they wandered around, trying to find Dustin. They looked down over the balcony, noticing four men dressed in all black with guns.

Eleven raised her hand, moving a car to knock the men off their feet. The car crashed against the far wall, the men unconscious as four heads peeked over a counter.

"Oh my God! Steve!" Bernadette gasped, running down the escalator and into his open arms, hearing him groan in pain as he caught his balance, stopping them from both falling to the floor. "Are you okay? Are you definitely alive?"

"I'm alive, Birdie." Steve held her close, leaning his chin on her head as he sighed with relief. She was alive. "I'm okay."

"Uh, yeah, if you think being drugged and beaten by Russians is okay." Robin scoffed, rolling her eyes at the older boy.

"You got beaten up by Russians?" Birdie repeated slowly, stepping back slightly to look at his swollen, bruised face. "That looks painful."

"I'm a big boy, I can handle it." He shrugged it off, wincing as she gently prodded his black eye with her finger. "What the hell happened to your leg?"

"Lovers quarrel." She mirrored his shrug, stepping back as the others joined her in the reunion.

"Lucas?"

"What are you doing here?" Lucas questioned the small girl.

"Ask them." The girl gestured to Steve and Robin. "It's their fault."

"True, yeah." Steve agreed, taking the full blame. "Totally true. It's absolutely our fault."

"I don't understand what happened to that car." Robin began to freak out, unable to stop looking at the car that was magically flung across the mall.

"El has superpowers." Dustin explained quickly, pointing towards the exhausted girl.

"I'm sorry?"

"Superpowers." Steve repeated, realising Robin was new to everything. "She threw it with her mind. Come on, catch up."

"That's El?"

"Who's El?"

"I'm sorry, who are you?" Nancy looked at Robin, confused as to how she was dragged into the current mess.

"I'm Robin." Robin introduced herself to the group. "I work with Steve."

"She cracked the top secret code." Dustin said proudly.

"Yeah, which is how we found out about the Russians." Steve added casually, his words surprising everyone.

"Russians? Wait, what Russians?" Jonathan asked the question everyone was wondering.

"The Russians." The older boy gestured back to the four dead men on the floor.

"Those were Russians?" Birdie glanced back at the men, suddenly even more confused than before. She ignored the constant conversations, eyes losing focus as she tried to calm her agitated heart beat.

Her blank stare moved to Eleven, noticing the girl holding her ears as she crouched down in pain. She slipped away from the others, moving closer to the girl.

"El? What's wrong?" She caught the girl before she fell, slowly lowering her down gently on the hard floor. "Guys, we have a problem."

"My leg." Eleven whimpered with pain, barely conscious as she spoke.

"Her leg, her leg, okay." Jonathan quickly removed the bandages, recoiling with disgust as something moved under her skin.

"We have to remove it!" Birdie ordered, holding Eleven's hand as she screamed in pain.

"Keep her talking, keep her awake, okay?" Jonathan jumped to his feet and ran away to find something to help the girl.

"Hey, hey, stay awake." Mike spoke to the girl, growing even more worried about her. "Let's get her on this side."

"You know, it's actually not that bad." Robin began to nervously ramble. "The goalie on my soccer team, Beth Wildfire, this other girl slid into her leg, and the bone came out of her knee, six inches or something, it was insane."

"Robin." Steve said slowly, knowing this was how Robin would become when she was nervous. "You're not helping."

"Okay." Jonathan crouched back down by Eleven's injured, a knife now in his hand. "All right, El? This is gonna hurt like hell, okay? I need you to stay real still. Here, you're gonna want to bite down on this, okay?" He passed her a wooden spoon, placing it in her mouth.

Bernadette recoiled with disgust, turning away as the sight became too much to watch. The screams of pain broke her heart, the hand in hers squeezing tightly.

"Stop it!" Eleven screamed causing Nancy to stop Jonathan, allowing the girl to breathe. "I can do it."

Mike and Birdie helped Eleven sit up, both glancing at each other with concern as the weak girl raised her hand. Eleven panted heavily, using her powers to remove the small piece of the Mind Flayer from her leg. The glass wall beside them shattered, the strange slug being flung across the floor in front of them.

A boot stepped down on the slug, squashing it as the group all looked up at the new incomer.