WHISTLEBLOWER | ❝It only gets stranger...❞
Hawkins has never looked back on the events of November 1983. They know the surface-level story. 'The boy who came back to life.' Will Byers is alive and well, while the futile search for Tonya McCarth...
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( trigger warning: graphic gore/injury detail, violence... and sadness)
SUNDAY 4th NOVEMBER, 1984
"WE'RE TOO LATE! WE'RE TOO LATE!" Mike's screams are bouncing off the walls just as he does, completely charged up by the blaring alarms and lights. Cath watches the boy sprint back into the room, dishevelled and breathless with wild eyes. Her father and the other adults stand around shell-shocked — she can already feel Thomas edging protectively closer to her, his hand on her shoulder.
"What's going on?" asks a flustered Joyce.
"We're under attack," Mike gulps and gasps through heavy breaths.
"What about Jim, and– and that doctor?" Thomas stammers, completely flabbergasted by the whole situation.
Cath shares the same worry too; but with a maturity too far beyond her years, having seen so much already, she simply replies, "We can only hope they're okay."
Still, it doesn't stop her eyes from popping wide open when Mike grabs a syringe from the table. "We need to make Will sleep," he declares decisively, shaking it about like it's a wand.
"What?!" Joyce exclaims.
"Mike, just think for a second—" Cath begins saying, but is cut off.
"There's no time to think!" he fires back at her in frustration. "He's a spy. If he knows where we are, so does the Shadow Monster."
"He's lying!" Will suddenly snaps. It makes Cath jump — his voice more gnarled and sharp around the edges than usual. The stark reminder that it is not him, not at all.
"He killed those soldiers, and he'll kill us too!"
"HE'S LYING! HE'S LYING!"
He is possessed by some unexplainable fury, eyes wild with darkness as he writhes and shakes in his squeaking bed. Bob and Thomas have to hold him by his shoulders to stop him practically catapulting out. Frozen at his bedside, Cath only finds herself watching in horror; a sudden peppering of loud cracks from the hallway splits the air and startles them all. Thomas, eyes wide, looks up and says shakily, "What the hell was that?"
"Those... those were gunshots!" Bob exclaims, terrified.
A guttural scream echoes down the hallway. Cath knows that sound. Suddenly she is back in the empty school hallways, being hunted down by the Bad Men and the demogorgon — whichever got them first.
