Time After Time (a Stranger Things fanfiction)

Sympathy for the Devil

"Sympathy for the Devil"

Ah, what's puzzling you

Is the nature of my game

- Rolling Stones

From outside the control room, they all heard the steady spat of gunfire outside. Hopper and Joyce got to their feet, exchanging looks, remembering Hawkins Lab. The guns weren't going to do anything. On the monitor, they could see the creature advancing in the face of five submachine guns spitting fire constantly into its face.

Then they heard screams from behind the metal door on the other side of the room, and something banged against it.

"What the hell is that?"

"Please tell me they don't have another one of those things!" Murray demanded.

Hopper wished he could. But if they had one ... a second one wasn't outside the realm of possibility.

On the monitor, Joyce saw all the guns run out of ammo at the same time, the men lowering them to reload. And as soon as the hail of bullets ceased, the creature attacked.

Murray advanced on the metal door with his little pistol. Hopper plucked it out of his hand.

The man in the white coat shouted in Russian, "You can't go in there! It's dangerous!"

Which was all the more reason for them to go in, as far as Hopper was concerned. Whatever other experiments were going on here needed to be ended, now. He cocked the pistol, knowing how little it was going to help if there was another demogorgon on the other side of that door, but at least it was something.

"It's dangerous!" the man in the white coat insisted again.

Hopper ignored him, slowly climbing the stairs toward the metal door. Whatever was on the other side of it was agitated, still screaming and banging. He reached the top of the stairs and yanked the door open, a bit startled when nothing tried to attack him as soon as he had done so.

He proceeded into the room. The screaming was coming from a metal table in the middle of the room, where a demodog lay strapped in. He remembered Will, in the hospital, shrieking in agony when the piece of vine was burned, and the demogorgon outside in that rain of bullets. This one was in pain because its ... what, its brother, its cousin, whatever, was in pain.

Hopper almost felt sorry for it.

Joyce didn't want to look. She, too, remembered Will, and what he had gone through when he had that ... thing inside him, and she didn't want to feel any kind of pity for these monsters who represented all the trauma and hurt her son had gone through. But it was hard to see a creature in as much agony as this one was experiencing without feeling some amount of distress on its behalf.

Hopper moved closer, noting that the chest had been cut open. They had been experimenting on this one. Its face kept opening and closing as it writhed and twisted. He was, frankly, pretty impressed that the restraints were actually holding it down. He waited until the flower-like petals opened and then he shot the thing in the face, putting it out of its misery, the gunshot as loud in the room as the silence that followed.

He lifted his sleeve, wiping the blood off his face. Not like his coat could get any dirtier.

The part of the room where the demodog had been held was surrounded by plastic curtains slit into long ribbons. He pushed through them into the rest of the room, and was chilled by what he saw.

They had more. Half a dozen more, suspended in some kind of liquid inside glass display cases. Like trophies. Like ... like they were growing them.

Behind him, the others had caught up. Joyce looked at the fresh horror in front of her and whispered "Oh, my God." How could they? Did they not know what these things could do?

Remembering the demogorgon outside, she thought maybe they knew now. Not that the knowledge was going to do them any good, having come as it did far too late. She and Murray moved through the glass cases, staring at the eerily silent and motionless things inside.

"What the hell are they doing?" Murray muttered.

Hearing an oddly familiar sound behind him, Hopper turned sharply, listening for it, and then followed it to another glass case, set by itself. Dust, swirling around and around inside.

Joyce recognized it. That was what had come out of Will. That was the Mindflayer. Or part of it. "Oh, my God," she said again, under her breath. As they watched, the thing swirled more wildly, as though it could see them. As though it knew them. As though it hated them. Will had said it did. Well, she hated it, too.

Behind them came an abrupt sound of the plastic curtains being parted, and Antonov's voice. "Hey."

They all jumped and turned around.

He seemed remarkably calm for someone seeing all this for the first time. "Found something," he said.

They followed him, and he showed them the grate underneath the metal table the demodog had been strapped into. A way out.

Hopper liked the practicality. While the rest of them had been distracted by the evidence of evil all around them, Antonov had kept his mind on the important part—escaping with their lives.

He hadn't always been glad that this man at his side had sought him out and offered to help him, but he sure as hell was right now. If they managed to get out of this, he was going to buy Antonov a beer and a steak, first chance he got. And reunite him with Mikhail, too. It was the least he could do.