Broken & Pretty..Steve Harrington

051.

THE OVERCOMING

⇾lonely by justin biever & benny blanco

and everything is not the same now. it feels like all our lives have changed

⸺THE group was huddled near the fountain and El was still pretty tired from having a parasite ripped out of her. Everyone was standing, but El was resting against Hopper who were both sitting on the fountain with Joyce next to them. Cory and Tiffany were sitting on the opposite side of the fountain and they were washing the blood off their hands and forehead from when they were being tortured by Russians. Nancy, Jonathan and the other kids were letting everyone know about the new Mind Flayer and what it looked like and discussing whether it's alive or what they could do to make it not. Cory and Tiffany were not paying attention.

Tiffany had something floating in the back of her head and since Cory knew her so well, he could tell something was bothering her so he lowered his voice. "What's wrong?"

Tiffany sighed. "I know we have to close the gate. Cut the brain off from the body. But the Mind Flayer is taking over me now. We're switching rolls, so if we cut the brain off from the body, won't I die? I'm technically apart of the body."

"We've been through this before. You came back to life last time, you're fine."

"That's only because the Mind Flayer kept me alive, but it can't do that if it's cut off." Cory sighed and wiped his wet hands on his shorts and Tiffany did the same with her shorts. Cory saw Tiffany's hands shaking. They only shook when she was insanely nervous. Cory put his hand over hers and squeezed it. "You're gonna be okay. I promise. I'm going to make sure you don't die, even if I have to sacrifice my own life."

Cory gave her a sweet smile and she smiled back, but her hands were still shaking. Cory looked up at Tiffany and she suddenly had this look of anger and nervousness. "You good?"

"I don't want Steve to get hurt."

"Then why do you look like you wanna kill someone?"

"'Cause that fucking monster is going to cause him pain and that ticks me off." Cory and Tiffany stood up and joined the group as Murray was running back with paper in his hand. They all gathered around a table where Murray had a drawing of the Russian base that was accurate, but his information was not. He started pointing to different parts of the map as he explained, "Okay, this is what Alexei called the hub. Now, the hub takes us to the vault room."

"Okay, where's the gate?"

"Right here. I don't know the scale on this, but I think it's fairly close to the vault room, maybe fifty feet or so." Tiffany corrected him. "Actually it's more like five hundred."

Erica backed her up. Murray now had the sassiest person on the planet and Tiffany who is in a bad mood arguing him. He isn't going to win this fight. "What, you're just gonna waltz in there like it's commie Disneyland or something?"

"I'm sorry, who are you two?"

"Erica Sinclair and she's Tiffany Henderson. Who are you?"

"Murray...Bauman." Tiffany then took the rope with her and Erica bouncing off each other. "Listen, Mr. I Look Like I Live With My Mother, we're not trying to tell you how to do things, but we've been down in that shithole for twenty four hours."

"With all due respect, you do what this man tells you, you're all gonna die." Murray was done with their shit, but Tiffany was not in the mood to be insulted. "I'm sorry, why is this whore and four year old speaking to me?"