Secrets // Steve Harrington

Chapter Twenty-Three - Gone

Word Count: 2,703 words.

Warnings: None. 

Hawkin's Lab...

She was quiet. The new girl. We were in the lab since birth but only put amongst the other numbers once we turned four. I had watched many other children come in, screaming in joy to be away from the labs, smiling as they were greeted by people like them, but Eleven was unlike the others.

She wasn't smiling when she entered the recreation room for the first time. She walked across to the nearest empty table, ignoring the others that were full with children her age. Eleven didn't even touch the colours set out for her, just sitting there, picking at her nails nervously.

"Hi," I greeted, the sound of a voice foreign to her.

Eleven looked up at me, fear written across her expression. She had been through more than most, I could see that. She was like me. Young but aware of the horrors of this place.

I sat down in the chair beside her, taking her hands into mine. I knew that she would have little words and so I placed a hand against my chest. "Two," I told her.

She titled her head in confusion, copying my movement and placing a hand over mine. "Two?"

Nodding, I gave her a small smile. "I'm Two. You are Eleven."

I moved my hand, placing it against her chest. Her confusion fell away. "Eleven," she repeated.

There was the sudden slam of a door and a staff member entered the room, taking Four by the arm and dragging him towards the door. Eleven's hand tightened on mine and I gave it a comforting squeeze.

"I will protect you," I promised her without much thought to the words I was saying. One used those words, and so I thought that they would comfort her.

"Protect?" she asked.

I nodded. "Protect."

I didn't know the weight of the words I had said as a simply comfort nor how attached I would become to her. How devasting it would be to leave her before being forced to forget her all together. I would protect her. Always.

I barely waited for Steve to stop his car, jumping out of the front seat and rushing towards Hawkin's Middle School. Ambulances and police cars gathered around the front entrance, and I could only think the worst when I saw bodies before pulled out on gurneys.

"Eleven!" I screamed, breaking out into a run.

I remembered now. I remembered the moment that I promised to protect her. The way that I hadn't know what those words meant and yet knew their depth all the same. I could feel the fear I had for the girl and the thought of losing her.

"Lia!" a scream came, but it wasn't belonged to the girl I was looking for.

"Dustin?" I asked, rushing towards the back of an open ambulance. Him and Lucas sat side by side. "What happened?"

"The Bad Men came for her," he explained, shaking his head.

My stomach hurled as I felt someone approach me from behind. "Did they get her?"

Lucas shook his head. "No, but the thing did."

She was dead. That's what he was telling me. That she was dead. "No," I muttered.

"Munson," Steve tried from my side. "You need to get that arm looked at."

"Shut up," I told him.

"Thalia – "