The Long Game, Lucas Sinclair

030. why would you push a sweet girl (me) so far

CHAPTER THIRTY.
3x06: E Plurbius Unum

The group managed themselves back to Hopper's cabin after they made sure Sam was alive and well. She didn't know about the well part, but she had only fainted because of how mortifyingly horrendous the Mind Flayer 2.0 was. You had to give it to her—she had gotten much better with blood and gore and such.

But a massive spider-shaped monster made out of flesh, bones, and dead people?

Sam was going to draw a line there.

They weren't only at Hopper's cabin for safety and recuperation and changing their outfits. Sam was wearing a light indigo tank top and long jean shorts. The sneakers she wore were flat and white, with indigo tube socks. Her hair was sort-of in a half-up-half-down hairstyle, but there were two high pigtails instead of one, lower one.

They needed to find the flayed—where they came from, where they went, just something they could use to form a new plan off of. Right now, El was trying hard to find them, but she wasn't having much luck. She'd been in her room, in the void, for about a couple hours now, without any helpful news.

Sam was getting sort of worried about how long El was in there for, but she trusted the girl, so she wasn't commenting on it. They had bigger things to worry about right now.

In Hopper's kitchen was Sam, Will, Nancy, and Jonathan. They were trying locate a possible source while Lucas, Max, Corey, and Mike sat in the living room, impatiently waiting. Sam was pretty sure Max and Mike were fighting, because she heard indistinct arguing in the background while Nancy pushed through her nth phone call.

Sam and Will were sitting on the kitchen stools, the former holding an ice pack to her head from the pain of fainting onto concrete. Will sent her an inquisitorial look, wordlessly asking if she was okay, to which Sam gave him a smile that looked more like a grimace. Jonathan was across of them, separated by the kitchen counter. He was peering down at the ad section of Hopper's phonebook. The three of them watched Nancy as she held a notepad and pen in one hand, and Hopper's yellow home phone to her ear with the other.

"Uh, yes, from The Hawkins Post!" Nancy said to Blackburn's Farm Supply on the line. "I-I called a couple days ago about the—yes, yes, um... I was just... following up to see if anything else had gone missing, or if—okay. Um, sorry to bother—"

Nancy stared at the phone, a little offended. With a heavy sigh, she put the phone back up. Another dead end.

Jonathan was scratching off their business's ad when Nancy walked back over to the trio. She exhaled, then asked, "Who's next?"

"There is no 'next,'" Jonathan answered, setting the pen down and staring at all the blue Xs he'd drawn. "Unless you want to start calling random people's homes."

Nancy threw her notepad onto the counter, shaking her head. "It doesn't make sense."

"What part of any of this makes sense?" Jonathan returned.