Our Never Ending Story | Steve Harrington x Reader

[7] The Lab

We walk on the tracks to look for Dart.

"You're positive that was Dart?" Lucas asks.
"Yes. He had the same exact yellow pattern on his butt." Dustin says.
"He was tiny two days ago." Max says.
"Well, he's molted three times already." Dustin says.
"Malted?" Steve asks.
"Molted. She's his skin to make room for growth like hornworms." Dustin says.
"When's he gonna molt again?" I ask.
"It's gonna be soon. When he does, he'll be fully grown or close to it. And so will his friends." Dustin says.
"Yeah, he's gonna eat a lot more than just cats." Steve says.
"Wait, a cat? Dart ate a cat?" Lucas asks stopping.
"No, what? No." Dustin says.
"You said that he ate Mews?" I say confused.
"Mews? Who's Mews?" Max asks.
"It's Dustin's cat." I say.
"Lizzy!" Dustin exclaims.
"I knew it!" Lucas says lightly hitting him, "you kept him!"
"No! No, I... he missed me. He wanted to come home." Dustin stammers.
"Bullshit." Lucas says.
"I didn't know he was a demogorgon, okay?" Dustin says defending himself.
"Oh, so now you admit it?" Lucas asks.
"Guys, nobody cares. We need to go." I groan.
"I care!" Lucas yells, "you out the party in jeopardy! You broke the rule of law!"
"So did you!" Dustin yells.
"What?" Lucas asks.
"You told a strange the truth!" Dustin yells shining the light in Maxs face.
"A stranger?" Max scoffs.
"You wanted to tell her too!" Lucas shouts.
"But I didn't, Lucas, okay?" Dustin yells. I hear the familiar screeching over their bickering.
"Hey, guys?" I say.
"Guys!" Steve yells and we all walk towards the sound. We shine our flashlights looking for dart.
"I don't see him." I say.
Lucas looks through his binoculars.
"It's the Lab." He says and looks at all of us, "they were going back home."
We all run to the Lab and come out of the woods when we see Nancy and Jonathan.

"Steve? Lizzy?" Nancy and Jonathan say at the same time.
"Nancy?"
"Jonathan?"
"What are you doing here?!" Nancy asks.
"What are you doing here?" Steve asks.
"We're looking for Mike and Will." Nancy says.
"They're not in there, are they?" Dustin asks.
"We're not sure." Nancy says.
"Why?" Jonathan asks when we hear the screeching again.

We all start talking over each other when I notice the power is back on.
"Guys! The powers back." I say.
We run to the control centre to try and open the gate. Jonathan presses the buttons but it doesn't work.
"Let me try." Dustin says pushing Jonathan.
"Hang on-" Jonathan says.
"Let me try, Jonathan!" Dustin says with a tone.
He keeps pressing the button but it doesn't work.
"Son of a bitch." Dustin says.
The door opens and Dustin chuckles proud of himself.
I start to run to the lab when someone grabs my arm and pulls me back.
"Woah, woah, woah, where are you going?" Steve asks.
"I'm going to get them out of there!" I say and try to get free but he holds me tight.
"No, it's dangerous, alright?" He says and I nod. His eyes softened and he looked like he really cared. Jonathan and Nancy drove the car up and go get them.

Minutes later, my dad cat come and picks us all up.
"What are you doing here?!" I ask.
"I'll explain once we get to the Byers house, come on!" He yells and we all get in.

Once we get to the Byers house my dad starts shouting on the phone to get people to the Lab.

"They didn't believe you, did they?" Dustin asks.
"We'll see." My dad says.
"We'll see? We can't just sit here while those things are loose!" Mike shouts.
"We stay here, and we wait for help." My dad says.
I go in the living room and put more bullets in my gun when I feel someone tap me on the shoulder.
"You okay?" Steve asks.
"Almost dying feels great." I say sarcastically.
"Did you guys know that Bob was the original founder of Hawkins AV?" Mike asks.
"Really?" Lucas asks.
"he petitioned the school to start it and everything. Then he had a fundraiser for equipment. Mr. Clarke learned everything from him. Pretty awesome, right?"
"Yeah." Lucas and Dustin both say.
"We can't let him die in vain." Mike says.
"What do you want us to do, Mike? The Chief is right on this. We can't stop those demo-dogs on our own." Dustin says.
"Demo-dogs?" Max asks confused.
"Demogorgon, dogs." Dustin sighs, "demo-dogs? It's like a compound, it's like a play on words-"
"Yeah, okay." Max says.
"I mean, when it was just Dart, maybe." Dustin says.
"But there's an army now." I say.
"Precisely." Dustin says.
"His army..." Mike mutters.
"What'd you mean?" I ask.
"His army." Mike repeats, "maybe if we stop him, we can stop his army too."
He runs out of the room and comes back in showing us a piece of paper. It had this familiar spider shadow creature.
"The shadow monster." Dustin says.
"It got Will that day on the field, the doctor said it was like a virus, it infected him." Mike explains.
"And so this virus, it's connecting him to the tunnels?" Max asks.
"To the tunnels, monsters, the Upside Down, everything." Mike says.
"Woah, slow down. Slow down." Steve says.
"Okay, so, the shadow monsters inside everything and if the vines feel something like pain, then so does Will." Mike says.
"And so does Dart." Lucas says.
"Yeah. Like what Mr. Clarke taught us. The Hive Mind." Mike says.
"Hive mind?" I ask furrowing my eyebrows.
"A collective consciousness. It's a super-organism." Dustin explains.
"Yep, that explains it." I say sarcastically.
"And this is the thing that controls everything. It's the brain." Mike says.
"Like the Mind Flayer." Dustin says.
Lucas snaps his fingers.
"The what?" Max and Steve ask.
Dustin slams a book on the table and gets everyone's attention.
"The mind Flayer." Dustin says.
"The hell is that?" My dad asks.
"It's a monster from an unknown dimension. It's so ancient that it doesn't even know it's true home. It enslaves races of other dimensions by taking over their brains using its highly developed psionic powers." Dustin explains.
"Oh my god, none of this is real. This is a kids game." My dad says.
"No, it's a manual. And it's not for kids. And unless you know something that we don't, this is the best metaphor-"
"Analogy." Lucas corrects.
"Analogy? That's what you're worried about? Fine, an analogy for understanding whatever the hell this is!" Dustin yells.
"Okay, so this mind flamer thing-" Nancy begins.
"Flayer. Mind Flayer." Dustin corrects.
"What does it want?" Nancy asks.
"To conquer us, basically. It believes it's the master race." Dustin says.
"Like the Germans?" Steve asks.
"Germans?" I ask.
"Uh, the Nazis?" Dustin asks.
"Yeah, yeah, yeah, the Nazis." Steve says.
"If the Nazis we're from another dimension, totally. It views other races, like us, as inferior to itself." Dustin explains.
"It wants to spread, take over other dimensions." Mike says.
"We are talking about the destruction of our world as we know it." Lucas says dramatically.
"That's great. That's really great. Jesus!" Steve yells.
"Okay, so if this thing is like a brain that's controlling everything, then if we kill it..." Nancy says.
"We kill everything it destroys." Mike says.
"We win." Dustin says.
"Theoretically." Lucas adds.
My dad snatches the book out of Nancys hands and studies it.
"So how do you kill this thing? Shoot it with fireballs or something?" My dad asks sarcastically.
"No, no fireballs." Dustin laughs, "Uh, you summon an undead army because.... It's just a game."
"What the hell are we doing here?" My dad yells irritated and slams the book on the table.
"I thought we were waiting for your military backup!" I yell.
"We are!" My dad yells.
"Even if they come, how are they going to stop this?" I ask annoyed with my dad.
"You can't just shoot this with guns!" Mike yells.
"You don't know that! We don't know anything!" My dad yells.
"We know it's already killed everyone in that lab." Mike says.
"We know the monsters are gonna molt again." I say.
"And we know that it's only a matter of time before those tunnels reach this town." Dustin says.
"They're right." Joyce says as her voice breaks, "We have to kill it. I want to kill it."
"Me too. Me too, Joyce, Okay? But how do we do that? We don't exactly know what we're dealing with here." My dad explains.
"No. But he does." Mike says walking towards Will, "if anyone knows how to kill this thing it's Will. He's connected to it, he will know it's weakness."
"I thought we couldn't trust him anymore. You said that he's a spy for the mind Flayer." I point out.
"Yeah, but he can't spy if he doesn't know where he is." Mike says.

We all start clearing everything out of the shed and putting black sheets all over the walls. I help Steve put up a black tarp.

"Hey, uh, there's this snowball dance in Dustin's school.." I say.
"Gross." He says.
"What?" I ask.
"Dances are stupid. They're so cringy." Steve says.
"Yeah.." I say feeling stupid.
"Anyway, what were you going to ask?" He asks me.
"Oh, nothing. I was just saying that it's dumb." I say and give him a fake smile. I shouldn't of asked him after he had just broken up with Nancy anyway.
After we finish boarding it up, Jonathan, Mike, Joyce and my dad stay there with Will and try and see how to stop it. I sit down next to Steve on the couch and he smiles at me.

"What if the mind Flayer finds out where we are?" I ask.
"He won't." Steve says.
"Yeah, but if he does?" I ask.
"Judgement day." He says and gets up and practises swinging his bat. The lights start to flicker and me, Nancy, Steve and Jonathan look out the window.

A few minutes later my dad and the others come in with a pen and paper.

"What happened?" I ask.
"I think he's talking, just not with words." My dad sighs.
He starts writing morse code on a piece of paper.
"Hey, what is that?" Steve asks.
"Morse code." Everyone says.
"H-E-R-E." My dad spells out.
"Here." We all say in unison.
"Will's still in there. He's talking to us." My dad says and gives me a pen to write down.

after

"Close gate." We all read out when the phone starts ringing making us all alarmed. Me and Nancy run over to the phone. Nancy answers in the hangs up. It starts ringing again so I grab Steve's nailed bat and smash it.

"Do you think he heard that?" Max asks.
"It's just a phone. It could be anywhere. Right?" Steve asks.

We hear the demogorgons screeching in the distance. They know where we are.
"That's not good." Dustin says.
The others come in carrying Will.
"Hey, get away from the windows!" My dad shouts at the kids.
"Do you know how to use this?" My dad asks Jonathan holding a shotgun infront of him.
"What?" He asks.
"Do you know how to use this?!" He asks again.
"I do." Nancy says and grabs the shotgun. I run and get the guns in the bag and load them.
It goes silent when we start to hear loud thudding. We think that they disappeared when one bursts through the window. Everyone screams as it just lies on the ground. I poke it with my foot.
"It's dead." I announce.
"Holy shit." Dustin comments.
We all lower our weapons when the door starts to creek. We all aim our weapons towards the door when the lock opens automatically. The door opens and El walks in. Wearing all black and her hair slicked back. We all lower our weapons again. As Mike steps forward.

"Is that..?" Steve asks.
"Yeah." I say.

Authors note

I actually hate this but because it takes way to long for the explaining and it's boring to write so I got a bit lazy on this chapter