Tʜᴇ Sᴇᴄʀᴇᴛ Sʜᴇ's Kᴇᴘᴛ | Mɪʟᴇᴠᴇɴ (Sᴛʀᴀɴɢᴇʀ Tʜɪɴɢs)

◇Chapter 004◇

"Yeah its me, don't cream your pants." Steve rolled his eyes. "So you kids ready to kill some demo-shit and kick an old man's ass for stealing Mike's girlfriend?"

Mike nodded eagerly and reajusted his backpack. "Well, can we go already?"

Steve revved the engine. "Lets go shitheads." He drove down the road with music blasting from his stereo.

"You son of a bitch!" Dustin shouted as the kids started riding there bikes and following the skid marks on the road to Hawkins Lab.

The once deserted lab still looked unused from the outside, but lights faintly flickered in the dusty, cracked windows of the building. Yellow police tape came into view as the party stopped in the parking lot and looked up at the old building.

Mike's blood boiled as he thought of the pain and suffering El had to go through in this building. The thought of her being treated as a science experiment instead of a human made him want to pull a Joyce Byers and break through the building with an axe.

The kids threw their bikes on the ground near the slightly rusted metal fence and walked over to Steve and his car, out of breathe. Steve had his back against the red car door and his arms crossed as he calmly looked into the sky. "Took you guys long enough."

"Stop being an asshole Harrington and lets kick some ass." Dustin groaned.

Steve popped the lid on the trunk and pulled out his nail studded baseball bat and put his sunglasses on. After swinging the bat a few times, he began to walk towards the door calmly.

"Hey what are you doing here?" a rough voice called from the side of the building.

Steve gestured for the kids to wait and handed his bat to Dustin and walked over to the security guard. "Nothing really, just hanging out." He punched the guard in the face and watched as he fell to the ground, nearly unconscious. Steve grabbed a key card from the guard's jacket and slipped it into his pocket before walking back to the group and grabbing him bat, ignoring the awestruck looks on the kid's faces.

The group started walking towards the building and the kids could faintly hear Steve muttering, "Hopper's gonna kill me... I'm gonna be killed by an Indiana cop with a gun and a shitty attitude... I should have told Nancy to plan my funeral..."

The group stopped in front of the slightly rusted metal doors and stared at the padlock and chains that held the door shut. "Stand back," Steve instructed and hit the lock this his bat, making the lock open and fall onto the ground with a clatter.

"Nancy taught you that, didn't she?" Mike spoke up, remembering when Nancy had broken a padlock with a rock when they were making the sensory deprivation tank for El at the school. He assumed his sister had taught Steve that trick as well.

".... Is it that obvious?" Steve muttered, earning a few laughs from the party as they walked inside. The old lights flickered on and off and the soft humming of machinery filled the supposedly abandoned lab. Dust and dirt covered the once white tiled floor as they walked silently, looking around every corner for any signs of people, specifically El or Brenner.

They walked around from room to room, but the lab seemed empty. Dusty footprints were scattered across the floor, but the owners of the footprints seemed to be gone. But that couldn't be. If no one was here, who had turned on the lights and machinery?

"Well no ones here," Lucas said, his wrist rocket loaded. "Can we please go?"

"No," Mike said, a determined look set on his face. "We aren't leaving until we find El."

"Look kid," Steve said as he turned to Mike. "I hate to break it to you, but I don't think she's here. I don't think anyone's here. Maybe you just had a random dream or-"

"No!" Mike shouted as he glared at Steve with cold eyes. "El is here! There's a gate in this lab somewhere and I'm going to find it. She talked to me in my dreams and said she needed my help and her eyes were..." Mike stopped and sighed as he started walking down the hall. "Look, you guys can leave if you want, but I am not leaving her without my girlfriend. Understood?"

Mike ran down the hallway, looking for any other doors that he hadn't seen yet. Meanwhile, Steve and the kids stood together.

"We have to help him." Max spoke up as her eyes darted around the room.

"And if we die?" Lucas asked. "I'm not in the mood to die today."

"He's our friend, we have to," Will replied. "El is a member of the party and our friend, members of the party always help each other."

"Plus, Mike will kill us if we don't save El," Dustin said, looking at Steve.

"Okay, fine." Steve sighed and began walking down the hallway, the party following. "Mike! Kid, where are you?"

"I'm over here," Mike shouted down the hallway as he stood in front of a metal door with a key card slot. "I found another door! This must be it!"

The group jogged down the hallway, following the sound of Mike's voice to a metal door and the end of the hall. Steve fished the key card out of his pocket ran it through the lock and heard it beep as the metal door swung open. "Piece of cake." Steve shrugged and walked inside, his bat raised.

The kids dead stopped in their tracks and looked at the wall behind the glass. Vines grew up and along the walls and a small tear in the wall was visible. The tear moved slightly and a muffled growl rang out from inside the remains of the gate that El had once closed.

"S-she's in there," Mike voice broke as he looked at the small tear in the wall. "We have to..."

"We'll figure out a way, Mike," Dustin said, before looking at Will who's eyes were wide with shock as he stared at the gate that led to a place that he had almost died in.

"Ah, you've found the gate, quite remarkable, isn't it?" Brenner's, bittersweet voice flooded the room as he stepped through the open doorway. "Eleven originally created that gate herself, and now she's there, testing my new experiment."

"What'd you do to her, dickhead?" Steve asked coldly as his fingers tightened around his baseball bat.

"A simple experiment," Brenner said as a few other people walked into the room, all loaded with guns. "To expand her mind and make her see what that dimension really is." He sighed. "But alas, shes dead."

"Bullshit!" Mike shouted. "I know she's alive."

"You may look for her as you wish but the most you'll find is her dead body, unless it's already been eaten by the creatures that live there," Brenner replied. "Oh, and hello, Will Byers. Long time no see. Glad to see that you're well."

Will's face went pale as he stepped closer to Steve as his body shook slightly, a look of terror and fear on his face.  Mike could only imagine the trauma Will had faced in this lab and the world beyond the gate.

"Now, you may look behind the gate for Eleven, but I can ensure you that you wont find h-"

Suddenly 2 voices yelled down the hallway.

"Ay, what the hell?"

Bang

"Who the fuck a-"

Bang

Brenner turned and stuck his head out of the door, only to be hit by a bullet. More bullets rang out and hit the other people in the room while  Steve and the party stood together,  nearly frozen in fear.

Hopper turned the corner and walked into the room, a gun in hand and an annoyed expression on his face. He looked down at the 4 dead bodies on the floor and at the half dead Brenner who sat against a wall, before looking  back up at the group. "If I can remember correctly, I thought I told you to wait."