MARLEY // Max Mayfield

Frequency

The chatter of the boys filled the clearing, their hands gesticulating wildly, plans formulating over a map of Hawkins. Mike led the meeting, eyes alight at the prospect of their latest crawl, whilst the other boys listened with their full attentions. Leaves crunched and twigs snapped as Marley approached, her eye lazily trained on the figurines sprawled across the map. She paused beside Will, standing close and glanced at the back of his neck.

"You're gonna travel up Cornwallis for about six miles. And as the convoy reaches this Shell station here..." Mike was saying, relaying his orders to Dustin, who usually rode in the van with Steve, "We'll tell the old man to get out, which will leave him at the border of G1. From what Robin says, he'll have two whole hours to explore."

"Which is more than enough time," Marley said, startling the boys who looked up at her with wide-eyed expressions. Will flinched and backed away, evidently startled, "You'd think with all we've gone through, you boys would have more spatial awareness."

"You didn't show up for classes this morning," Will frowned, looking her over with concern.

"Did you stay at the hospital again?" Lucas asked, a knowing, almost soft look on his face. It was a strange expression for him to wear, especially concerning Marley, but things change, and their situation...it was different. They weren't kids anymore with petty hold-ups.

"Didn't want to sit through Geometry," Marley said, lying of course. She had been stuck in that goddamn memory again. She felt as if her skin crawled, and looked away from the group, stepping forward instead to look at the map. "There's a crawl tonight?"

"At 9 on the dot, Hop is gonna have 2 hours to search G1," Mike told, hands on the table again, reviewing the plan. A crawl, there were in their late thirties now, if Marley remembered correctly, thirty-plus explorations of the Upside Down that would yield only soldiers, soldiers and more Goddamn soldiers. "And, like you said, it's going to be more than enough time..."

"Doesn't seem very exciting," Lucas said, crossing his arms.

"Yeah, I mean, what does it have? A Circuit City, a couple of houses, and a Big Buy? What are the chances Vecna's shopping for Lucky Charms?" Dustin added on, looking incredulously at the map. Marley glanced between the two and then found her eye drawn back to the piece they used to identify Vecna.

"It doesn't matter. We stick to the plan. We break into the Upside Down the only way we can," Mike insisted, and Will nodded along, Lucas and Marley making eye contact over the map. Marley looked away first, "through the Mac-Z gate, under the cover of a burn. Once inside, we search one zone at a time, methodically, until we figure out wherever the hell he's been hiding."

"If he's still there," Marley said, and everyone turned to her, their eyes trained on her emotionless expression as she stared at the Vecna piece, her jaw clenched. "El can't find him in the bath, Will hasn't had his goosies in months, and Vecna hasn't tried to control me since."

"Regardless," Mike said, his expression hard as he and Marley stared at one another. "We don't stop looking. Even if it takes 100 more crawls, 1,000. We don't stop until we're goddamn sure that wrinkled, noseless, rotting bastard is dead and gone and never coming back." He stuck his hand out, and Marley stared at the back of it. "Everyone in?"

Lucas agreed first and then Will, and then Dustin, "I want him dead," Dustin had said, brows twitching as he placed his hand atop Will's, "I just wish I could do it myself."

"Marley?" Lucas prompted, and Marley stared at the pile of hands, at the boys she had known for years, and she hesitated, imagining a time before this, where their next dungeon crawl was scheduled for the weekend, in front of meat-loaded pizzas and crushed cans of Dr Pepper, before overlapping Dustin's hand with her own, her fingers twitched.