Daisies || Max Mayfield

46: The Plan

I stood back up, wiping my mouth. Everyone was staring at me.

"You good?" Steve asked.

I shrugged.

"Okay." He nodded. "Do you want water?"

"Yeah."

"The Mind Flayer, it built this monster in Hawkins, to stop El, to kill her, and pave a way into our world," Mike explained.

"And it almost did, that was just a tiny piece of it." Nancy continued. 

"How big is this thing?" Hopper asked.

"It's big," Jonathan said. "Thirty feet at least."

"Yeah, it sorta destroyed your cabin," Lucas added. "Sorry."

"Okay, so, just to be clear, this big fleshy, spider thing that hurt El it's like, some kind of gigantic... weapon?" Steve asked.

"Yes,"

"But instead of like screws, and metal, the Mind Flayer made its weapon, with melted people?" 

"Yes, exactly." 

"Yeah, okay, yeah, I-I'm just makin' sure." He nodded.

"Why do you talk so slow?" I asked.

"What?" He glanced at me.

"You talk super slow."

"You grew up in New York City."

"Yeah, but you pause every five milliseconds you talk and you take forever to say one thing!" I whispered.

"Sorry, are we sure this thing, is still out there, still alive?" Joyce asked confused.

"El beat the shit out of it, but yeah, it's still alive," Max replied. 

"But if we close the gate again-"

"We cut the brain off from the body!" Max interrupted Will. 

"And kill it. Theoretically." Lucas finished.

"Yoo-hoo!" The strange man from before walked in, waving papers around. "Yoo-hoo."

Hopped groaned as the man slapped the papers onto the table in front of us, circling a box on a drawn map in pencil.

"Okay, this is what Alexei called the hub." He began. "Now, the hub takes us to the vault room."

"Okay, where's the gate?" Hopper asked.

"Right here." The man pointed to a different room. "Now, I don't know the scale on this, but I think it's fairly close to the vault room, maybe fifty feet or so."

"More like five hundred." Erica stepped forward. "What, you're just gonna waltz in there like it's commie Disneyland or something?'

"I'm sorry, who are you?" He asked.

"Erica Sinclaire. Who are you?"

"Murray... Bauman." He hesitated to say his last name. 

"Listen Mister Bunman, I'm not trying to tell you how to do things, but I've been down in that shit hole for twenty-four hours, and with all due respect, you do what this man tells you, you're all gonna die."

"I'm sorry, why is this four-year-old speaking to me?" He muttered.

"Uh, I'm ten you bald bastar-"

"Erica!" Lucas cut her off.

"Just the facts!"

"She's right," Dustin added. "You're all gonna die, but you don't have to. Sorry, may I?" He reached for the map.