LONELY TOGETHER - max mayfield

17. "Gag him, Erica!"

"THE MIND flayer, it built this monster in Hawkins, to stop El. To kill her and pave a way into our world." Mike explained to the three adults.

"And it almost did. That was just one tiny piece of it." Nancy added.

"How big is this thing?" Hopper asked.

"Pretty big." Johnathan nodded. "Thirty feet at least.

"Yeah. It sorta destroyed your cabin. Sorry." Lucas unfortunately was the one to tell the Chief. Jax looked sadly at the floor. The first place that has actually felt like to him was now destroyed. Max noticed this and began to rub his back.

"Okay, so just to be clear, this big fleshly spider thing that hurt El," Steve pointed over to her, who was laying in Hoppers arms. "It's some kind of gigantic.. weapon?"

"Yes." Nancy confirmed.

"But instead of like screws, and metal, the mind flayer made its weapon with melted people."

"Yes. Exactly."

"Yeah, okay. I- yeah. Just making sure." He nodded.

"Are we sure this thing is still out there? Still alive?" Joyce asked, hoping for the answer to be no.

"El beat the shit out of it, but yeah. Its still alive." Max informed.

"But if we close the gate again--"

"We cut the brain from the body." Max finished Jax's sentence. She had a bad habit of it.

"And we kill it. Theoretically." Lucas nodded.

"Yoo-hoo! Yoo-hoo!" Murray waved his arms around, holding some papers. Jax started to laugh. "I love this guy!"

Murray had brought everyone to a table where he started to show everyone his papers. "This is where Alexei called the hub."

Jax looked over at Mike, thinking of the hub from last year.

"Now the hub takes us to the vault room."

"Okay, where's the gate?" Jim asked plainly.

"I don't know the scale on this, but I think its fairly close to the vault room, maybe 50 feet or so."

"More like 500." Erica interrupted. "What, you're just gonna waltz in there like it's commie Disneyland or something?"

Jim's eyes widened in surprise at her sass.

"I'm sorry, who are you?" Murray asked, clearly offended.

"Erica Sinclair. Who are you?"

"Murray.. Bauman."

"Listen, Mr. Bunman, I'm not trynna tell you how to do things but I've been down in that shithole for 24 hours. And with all due respect, you do what this man tells you, you're all gonna die."

"Im sorry, why is this four-year-old speaking to me?"

"I'm ten you bald bastard!" Erica corrected.

"Gag him, Erica!" Jax was laughing through the entirety of the conversation. Jim couldn't help but chuckle as well.

"Erica!" Lucas scolded.

"Just the facts!"

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"Well, that settles it. He's gonna die. They're gonna die." Erica walked over to Dustin.

"Yep, most likely." He agreed.

"You guys survived." Lucas spoke from behind him, standing next to Mike, Will and Jax.

"Barely. We could've really used you guys down there."