Time After Time (a Stranger Things fanfiction)

She's Not There

"She's Not There"

Please don't bother trying to find her

She's not there

- Zombies

They took off in Joyce's car first thing in the morning, after the first restful night's sleep Hopper had gotten in who knew how long. Joyce's couch wasn't much more comfortable than his ... but for the first time in years, he'd had something to think about other than Sara when he closed his eyes.

Joyce had tossed and turned, too excited to be on the way to finding Will and too worried about where he might be and if he had found somewhere safe to hide to rest ... but she was used to fitful sleep, and morning found her up and dressed with the dawn.

Hopper drove. He always had, fast and confident, like he loved it. Joyce didn't love driving so much, so she was happy to let him. They stopped first at a pay phone. Joyce had replaced her second fried phone, but Hopper didn't trust the lines at her place not to be bugged, so he called his old friend Frank from a phone on the other side of town from Joyce's house, just to be safe, in order to get Terry Ives' address.

They drove mostly in silence, lost in thought. Hopper reached for the radio once, but the first song was too cheerful and the second was a sappy love song and he decided silence was golden, at least for now.

The house, when they found it, was deep in the woods, off by itself, and hadn't had a good handyman work on it in quite some time. Everything was neat as a pin, but older, shabby. Terry Ives must have spent all her money on lawsuits, Hopper speculated.

The woman who answered the door turned out to be Terry Ives' sister. Hopper's badge got her to stop looking like she was going to get a shotgun and run them off the property, but there was hostility in every line of her body.

At last she said, "Well, you can come in, but if you want Terry to tell you anything, you're about five years too late."

With that cryptic comment, she led them into a room where a woman who looked a lot like her sat watching The Price Is Right.

Joyce approached her, introducing herself and explaining the situation ... but there was no response, unless you counted the way Terry Ives' eyes closed when Joyce said her daughter's name. It was the only change in her expression, her breathing, or anything about her.

Moving closer, Joyce unfolded the poster of Will, holding it up in front of Terry Ives' face. The eyes focused briefly on Will's picture, then blinked slowly as the head turned again toward the TV.

"What's wrong with her?" Hopper asked the sister.

"I told you, you're wasting your time." And then, in the neat but cluttered kitchen, she explained. "She was a part of some study in college."

"MK Ultra," Hopper supplied, remembering his reading.

"Yeah, that's the one. It was started in the '50s. By the time Terry got involved, it was supposed to be ramping down, but the drugs just got crazier. Messed her up good."

"This was the CIA that ran this?"

The sister looked at him with cynical amusement. "You and Terry would've gotten along. The Man, with a big capital M. They'd pay a couple hundred bucks to people like my sister, give 'em drugs, psychedelics, LSD, mostly, and then they'd strip her naked and put her in these isolation tanks."