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🅴︎🅿︎🅸︎🆂︎🅾︎🅳︎🅴︎ 🅵︎🅸︎🆅︎🅴︎ Ⓟ︎Ⓐ︎Ⓡ︎Ⓣ︎ Ⓞ︎Ⓝ︎Ⓔ︎
THINGS AT HOME WERE QUIET the next day. Cole and Eleven were busy doing work that was set for them by Hopper, and Kali was sitting at the kitchen table, smoking a cigarette. She didn't pay much attention to the kids, thinking that they were happily playing rather than plotting their fatherʼs end, so for Eleven, it was an improvement.
The breezy chill from the outsideʼs Autumn air felt good on her skin, and the only thing warming her up was the lit cigarette in her mouth. She wore long pyjama trousers with a tank top, and wasn't planning on changing throughout the day. If she wasn't going anywhere, then what was the point in getting dressed? The warm mug of coffee that sat beside her at the table was starting to get cold as she left it for even longer.
Due to the silence in the small home, Kali could hear everything that was going on outside. The morning birds chirped and played, the lively squirrels ran up trees, leaving scratching sounds as their nails met with the bark. Kali sometimes found nature beautiful. Only sometimes, though — she felt that humans often ruined the world they were brought into.
The silence also meant that she could hear the snaps of the twigs when people went by, the crinkle in the leaves as they stepped over them. But people never walked around here. In one year of being trapped in the house, not a single soul had ever floated by the hidden cabin. That was why Hopper brought them here; it was safe, and nobody knew where it was located.
Until today.
There was a rustling surrounding the cabin, and the murmured, small voices made Kaliʼs guard rise. She put out her cigarette on the windowsill and ran to where the kids were working. Eleven was leaned over a scruffy, old cardboard box and Cole was looking at a polaroid picture of a random woman.
"Stay in here," Kali warned them both, paying no attention to the work they had pushed to the side in order to play with something irrelevant they'd found.
Not seeing what the problem was, the two kids nodded. They weren't planning on leaving until they had some more information, anyways.
Up at the front of the cabin, Kali pushed a few things around that would make murdering people easier. The government, or the lab — whoever it was that wanted to kill them today — would obviously bring guns, and so it would be dumb of Klai to leave the couch in the middle of the room, because to hurt people, she needed to get so close to them that she could touch them; if she had to walk all the way around the couch whilst she was getting shot at, she'd obviously lose the fight.
She didn't take her gloves off right away, incase they were prepared for that stuff and took a pair of those shackles she used to wear when she was younger, so she grabbed a knife from the kitchen, too. Kali checked one last time that the kids were safe, then she waited.
The footsteps were getting closer, the whispers a little more clear. And then there was a knock on the door. A soft, kind knock that confused Kali.
Why would an armed group of people knock before taking her?
Then, she heard the voice. Loud and clear. It was simply unmistakable.
"She's here," the voice said. "I know she's here."
Nancy Wheeler.
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A/N: another short chapter and i definitely could've written the actual reunion in this, but i like the anticipation a lot more.
NALIIII!!
my loves are finally going to have an interaction next chapter, i promise. and jonathan is there too, as always.
but what are el and cole up to? these kids are going to be the death of our boy hopper.
