A New Girl // Stranger Things (after season 2)

Chapter 42

I took a water bottle from the front and then walked over to Dr Brenner's table. I pulled out a chair and sat down across him. He looked up from his papers and saw me.

"Denise?", he said with a little surprise in his voice.

"What?", I answered.

"Aren't you supposed to remain in the barracks?"

"Yeah, but the numbers are still asleep and there's nothing to do. I figured that maybe I could ask you some things," I told him.

"Like what?"

"I want to know more about the MKUltra project, our powers and the Upside Down. I've never been able to understand or unlock all of Hawkins Lab's secrets. Plus, I think I'm entitled to know since I am tied up with this stuff."

He sighed.

"You are right. You are entitled to these secrets. But they are called secrets for a reason. I don't want anyone else to know about what happened and why any of it happened, other than maybe you kids. But if the numbers or their parents do have questions, they should come to me. Don't go spilling the beans on your own," he said.

"I understand. But can we get to the questions. Like why did you start the project? And why kidnap children? Why open the Upside Down? And where do our powers come from? How does it work?," I asked.

"All good questions. I'll start with how the MKUltra project came to be. It was started in 1953 by the CIA, but was stopped in 1973 for legal reasons. The project was started to develop and test drugs and procedures to be used in interrogations in the cold war through  mind control. The CIA coordinated with Biological warfare laboratories for the project, and one of those labs was Hawkins National Laboratory. Before we started to kidnap children, we had a previous project where we tested drugs and procedures on teenagers and adults, however the results weren't revolutionary and we were asked to terminate the experiments after a while.

"A few years before the MKUltra project was supposedly terminated, the CIA and government officials had approached me again to collaborate with them. They had given me the aims for the project as well as some samples of the drugs they were testing. CIA had planned that we did experiments on children. They hypothesized that the drug would have better effect on younger minds, that have yet to fully develop, and that if the results were revolutionary, these procedures could be used in schools for brainwashing and advancement of the next generation. 

"For the first year of the new project, I had difficulty finding subjects, because no one would offer to put their kid through a science project for few years, not even for a few days. I went back to the CIA with the bad news and they told me that if I still had difficulty in finding subjects, I could kidnap kids and they would help me to cover my trails. They had given me a deadline for the project and that if I didn't start it within the next year, they would kick Hawkins Lab out of the project and most likely shut it down for secrecy reasons. I didn't want to kidnap anyone at first, but the deadline got closer and closer and I didn't want the Lab to shut down, so I started to kidnap children.

"I kidnapped the first six children, who were Tyler, Jose, Sabrina, Louise, you and Harry. We shaved all of your heads and gave you all hospital gowns, so that you won't remember who you were before we kidnapped you. We numbered and tattooed you guys so we could recognise you, and because thats what we did with the adults. After a year of keeping an eye on the first batch, I felt that girls were easier to handle than boys, even after zapping your brains and terminating your memory. So I kidnapped the next batch of children, Clarissa, Kali, Delaney and Mildred. My intention was to kidnap 10 children and do different tests on them and see how they would turn out a few years later. But then came along Terry.