MARLEY // Max Mayfield

Act 5 Prologue

"You're an infection...you're a parasite."

A sharp gasp wracked the room. Marley sat up ramrod straight, her tank top slick with sweat, her body wracked with chills, and her empty eye socket ached. She winced, letting out a hiss of pain as she cupped the empty socket and reached for her bag by her feet blindly. Her hand landed on a pill bottle, and she pulled it out, unscrewing the cap to toss back a healthy three codeine tablets. She swallowed, dry - she'd eaten worse things - and looked to the figure lying in the hospital bed she had fallen asleep against.

Sun shone through the blinds, rays of light caressing Max's pale skin. Marley's brows twitched, her breath hitching as she rewound the tape nestled in the stereo. The alarm on the nightstand read 11:07. She'd slept in, missed her first classes at school, she didn't care; her entire body ached, her head was throbbing, and Kate Bush was really letting her down - she had bigger goddamn fish to fry. Hopper said, lay low, act natural, be cool. But Marley felt she was a constant reminder of what lay beneath their feet. A constant reminder of the Upside Down. How was she supposed to act natural when nothing about her was?

She looked at her hand, fingers trembling as she tried to close the aching limb. Her fingertips touched ten whole seconds later, and she cursed. "Fuck."

There was a knock, and a candy striper walked in, holding a fresh vase of flowers. The familiar red hair caught Marley's eye, and Vickie startled as she turned and saw Marley standing ominously at Max's bedside, one eye dull, the other empty. "Jesus Christ, Marley."

"You knocked, yet you didn't wait for an answer."

"I didn't think anyone was in here," Vickie sighed as she carefully changed out the dead flowers at Max's bedside and replaced them with new ones.

"Then why did you knock?"

"Because it's polite," Vickie said, huffing with a smile. She glanced at a book peaking out of Marley's bag and smiled, "Oh, are you reading Plutarch's Parallel Lives? I'm a bit of a nerd about that, as it so happens. What part are you on?"

"...Life of Theseus."

"Ah, the mythical king who rescued the children of Athens from King Minos after slaying the Minotaur," Vickie made an awkward slashing movement, whilst Marley continued to stare at her blankly. Vickie flushed and straightened, clutching the vase of dead flowers to her chest. "It's an interesting chapter. Are you interested in Plutarch?"

"No, not particularly," Marley said, glancing down at the book, "he poses a question in it that...I think about."

"Oh, is it the Ship of Theseus? The Athenians kept his ship in honour of him, right? And over time, it began to decay. They replaced every plank," Vickie mused, "Is it still the Ship of Theseus?"

"What do you think?"

"...no," Vickie said, and Marley's gaze snapped up to hers, her breath catching, "and yes. Both answers have further questions, further reasoning. I like to compare it to ourselves, as humans, our cells constantly replace themselves; the parts that I used yesterday are not the same today. Does that make me any less of a human, an individual?"

"It's not the same."

"Well, I'd argue we're still talking about a vessel."

"..." Marley fell silent, staring down at her damaged hand and then over to Max, the soothing sounds of Kate Bush began, "...if you're here all day, make sure her tape is rewound every half hour."

"I have other vases --" Vickie paused, words catching at the sunken, endless look in Marley's eye, "I'll stop by when I can..."

"Can I have the shower key?" Marley asked and grabbed a spare change of clothes from her bag. She didn't wait, just held out her hand as she walked past, and Vickie fumbled with one of her apron pockets, handing it over.

"You're going to get me in trouble." Vickie sighed.

"Don't care," Marley muttered under her breath, the skin beneath her eye twitching as she unlocked the shower room directly across from Max's long-stay hospital room and slipped inside. It smelled like death, chemicals sprinkled over top like glitter on shit. Marley's jaw twitched, and she stepped behind a curtain, pulling up the hem of her shirt to stare at the smooth flesh beneath. Her mind flashed to the Creel house, to the gunshot and the blood, to the scars she should have. But had been taken by something, something that had spared her the physical memory.

Nobody could explain what happened back then. The way her wounds fluctuated, regenerating only to rot, her body's decay had been imminent, and then, though her physical body remained here, her mind had slipped into the other world, and her body had been healed. Mike suggested a link - that her return allowed the Upside Down to properly convene with her. She didn't like that idea; it suggested a dependency, a...connection. But, though she loathed to admit it, her body hadn't been able to keep up; the experiments, the bullet wounds, it had all disappeared as soon as she set foot in that world. In its place, Vecna's control. Or...something else.

Water sluiced down her body, her expression blank as she stared ahead at the aged white grout between each tile.

There had been something else. It was Vecna, she knew that, but she remembered the feeling, the intrusion, when she had almost killed Lucas, killed Eleven, Vecna was there, but...there was something...something --

Marley blinked and found her hand bloodied. She raised her right hand, the one she had never been able to use quite so easily and stared at the cuts in her knuckles. She glanced back at the tile. It had cracked, plaster and ceramic falling to the floor. She frowned.

The shower creaked as she turned it off, and the blood washed away as her skin stitched itself back together again.

She was towelling off her hair, fresh clothes on, when she walked back into Max's room. "There's a broken tile in the shower."

"Oh, thanks for telling me, don't want one of the seniors hurting themselves," Vickie said from where she had been rewinding Max's tape. Kate Bush began to play, and Marley walked over to Max, leaning over to kiss her forehead softly.

"I'll be back later."

"If you're going up to The Squawk, can you --"

"I'm not," Marley grabbed her eyepatch up off the table, tying it around her face. This one, courtesy of Holly Wheeler, had been bedazzled with gems, not unlike the one Erika had given her; it was at odds with the empty look on Marley's face. She grabbed her bag next, "See you." And left.

Her bike was where she had left it, her old GT Pro, rusted in some places from lack of use. Steve drove her places most of the time, or any of the other WSQK gang, apart from Robin, who hadn't been able to afford lessons. The government should've been funding that shit, but considering anyone who technically knew of their involvement in the Upside Down was dead or missing, it wasn't something they could demand. Marley figured Dr Owens was dead; he hadn't contacted her, and Eleven had told her he'd been stuck in the lab that was massacred. She didn't care. Made things easier, with him gone and nobody alive that knew of her powers, she could spend as much time as she liked with Max.

Max.

She skidded to a halt, leaves kicking up around her bike wheel. The party stood by a picnic table, crowding around their map of Hawkins, and Marley was quietly wondering how she had gotten here when she realised just what she had stumbled upon. The map. The secrecy of the meeting. It could only mean one thing. Tonight, there would be a crawl.