"Hey, you remember what I said last year, right? We're Zombie Boy and Ghost Boy. I'm not ever gonna leave you."
"Promise?"
"One hundred percent."
***
In which Alistair fights the monster that possessed his friend alongside his friends, while trying...
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Chapter Sixty: Into Hawkins Lab
(Dear Billy, Pt. 5)
***
Hawkins Lab loomed above them, an imposing sight despite being abandoned for two years.
Alistair's hands clenched on the handlebars of his bike, trying to crush the fear trembling through him. This was the place that haunted his nightmares, where Martin Bremer conducted his experiments and abuse, where he had permanently brain damaged El's biological mother because she refused to give up on getting her daughter back, that had been a living hell for El and where the gate had been unwittingly opened by her, where Bob Newby had died and Rowan and Joyce had watched, helpless to save them. Alistair could feel the death and pain radiating from it, and while he was glad he and Rowan had never endured the tortures El had gone through, that Dr. Owens had only asked them about their powers and never gone back on his word to take them away and experiment on them, Alistair still felt fear wrack through him, felt his breath going tight and his heartbeat race in his chest, not helped by the overwhelming death slamming into him.
But he couldn't feel that. He had to brave his fears if he wanted answers from the ghosts haunting these hellish halls.
Exchanging a look with Cami, they hopped off the bike and lead it through a hole Hopper, Joyce and Aunt Aco had left in the fence months ago, walking toward the front entrance of the lab.
When they arrived, Alistair saw the shattered glass doors, the dark, derelict lobby beyond it. He dropped the bike and stepped inside, careful of the glass as Cami followed. Inside, Alistair could see the once-sterile lobby fallen into disrepair, two years plus the Demodogs' massacre affecting it. No blood or bodies were here anymore, but Alistair could see their shadows left behind, feel the death, hear the screams.
Alistair swallowed as he took off his backpack and got out the flashlight, clicking it on as Cami did the same with hers. They turned to one of the entrances leading further into the lab, the shattered remains of the doors beneath it. They stepped toward it, stopping momentarily, flashlights piercing the yawning darkness beyond it. Alistair felt Hugin land on his shoulder, talons digging in, but Alistair could hardly feel it as a bolt of fear rooted him in place. This was it. If he went in and went further down, into the bowels of the lab, where the true horrors of it were, the source of his childhood fears... there was no going back. He'd find answers, but Alistair didn't feel like he could make that step, the death and fear and what El had gone through crashing into him, suffocating him, and it felt like he couldn't breathe—
"Al," Cami said, her hand on his arm and he jolted.
"Y-yeah?" he croaked.
Cami bit her lip, before she said, "If this is too much, we can leave, head back to the others—"
Alistair shook his head. "No. I'm okay. We... we need as many answers as we can get about Vecna."
