"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...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
Chapter Sixty-Four: Puzzle Picture
(The Nina Project)
***
As he and Max had predicted, Alistair didn't really get much sleep.
Part of that was because of the constant music blasting in his ears, but he was more relieved than annoyed—he'd rather have music in his ears twenty-four seven than let Vecna get his claws into him. And part of that was that when Alistair closed his eyes, nightmares met him, nightmares he didn't know were because of his trauma, of the ghosts, of the curse or a combination of all three, and he didn't really want to know.
So yeah, safe to say Alistair had a pretty shitty sleep and was eager to have some coffee the next morning.
When it was close to morning or maybe it was morning, Alistair felt his shoulder being shaken and he woke up after hearing ghosts scream in his ears and the Demogorgon and Mind Flayer haunting his nightmares to see Max there. To his relief, the headphones were still on her ears.
"Uh, hey," he groggily murmured as he sat up, blinking away sleep and the general tiredness of him catching an hour or three of sleep..
"Hey," Max replied.
Alistair frowned, seeing something in Max's face. "What's going on? Did Vecna try to go after you?"
Max shook her head. "No. I... I just need to do something, upstairs."
Alistair looked at her, before he whispered, "Oh, okay. Give me a few seconds and I'll come up as well."
Max nodded, knowing what Alistair meant—he didn't want her to be alone, not with Vecna after them both, and he knew if their positions were swapped, Max would do the same.
So the redhead turned and walked up the stairs and left the basement as Alistair sat up, making sure he didn't wake up either Cami or Dustin, who were right beside him, adjusting his headphones so they sat firmly on his head. He quickly glanced around, but Allie and Ricky were gone, that they must have left sometime before he woke up. While he still hated that ghosts still haunted his dreams, Alistair appreciated that they had stuck around to make sure he and Max were safe from Vecna. Telling himself to thank them again if he managed to see them, he creeped over to the stairs and walked up them, hearing just behind the door noise that might be the rest of the Wheeler family awake and making breakfast like it was any regular day—which it would probably be to them.
He was halfway up when he heard his sister hiss, "Al?"
Alistair froze as Rowan asked, "Where are you going?"
Turning to see his sister looking at him, confusion in her face, he whispered, "Upstairs. I, uh, I thought you'd stayed asleep."
"Too bad. I'm wide awake now," Rowan retorted. She looked around the basement, at the rest of the Party still asleep, the look on her face telling Alistair she was sensing their electric impulses—and freezing when she couldn't sense Max's.
