𝗗𝗔𝗥𝗞 𝗥𝗘𝗗 | stranger things 1

0. caged bird

Two stood with her feet frozen to the immaculate, white tiles of Hawkins Research Facility, the cool air prickled the hairs at the back of her neck and any other bare skin where the oversized hospital gown wasn't draped over her shoulders. Her short, dark hair hung just over her her collar bones. It was fine, ebony and fairly messy - hardly brushed at all. Even under the thin material, she was still quivering with the cold and even bleaker fear. Dr Brenner looked over her with his invasive gaze and narrowed his eyes,"Two ," His voice swam through her ears and sent a quake of shivers down her spine.

Two held out her arm in front of her,
her hand shook at the end of it. With a small wince, her chest caved in and a jet black, grotesque, ash-like substance seeped up from the floor and climbed up the legs of a table pushed up against the wall. It seemed to eat into the wood, rotting it away until the plank at the top being supported by the moaning posts below it gave in and sank to the floor, the parasites from The Upside Down shriveling the once unaffected piece of furniture.

She let out a deep breath and her hand hung back down by her side again, dark red rolled down from her nose. Brenner stared at her for a moment, her heavy breaths and dark eyes, and furrowed his brow slightly as a number of questions flashed through his mind - no matter how harsh the conclusions of them would be on the test subject.

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Two stared with her eyes narrowed at a man in a straight jacket sat in the corner of the next room through the one-way mirror. After weeks of experiment, Dr Brenner had tested her relentlessly and couldn't get his hands on a material she couldn't perish with the poisonous parasites from the alternate universe - including human flesh and bone. She looked around at Papa with hesitation and nervously swallowed. Martin raised an inquisitive eyebrow while the other workers and physicists grouped around him menacingly forcing their eyes upon her behind another pane of glass.

She looked back at the window and clenched her jaw as the destructive ash trapped him in the corner - but Two couldn't make it go any further. She couldn't kill someone... not another. She looked at Papa again and shook her head, her entire body still tensed up.

"No ! Papa ! No !" Two screamed down the hall as a pair of workers in lab coats that swept when they carried her around the corner by her arms, dragging her away as she kicked squirmed in their grasp. She was then thrown into a narrow box room and the heavy door was shut before she got the chance to get up.

"Papa !" She sniffled and banged her hand against the door, her voice eventually grew weaker with each singular word. Surely, the poison could perish the walls of her cage. She backed up against the wall and stretched out her hands in front of her. Eventually, she'd created a hole big enough for her small stature to crawl through and she fell back into the lab. The guards stood in front of the main doors seemed to clutch their guns in nervousness before striding over to her, ready to lift her off her feet.

Two pulled herself to her feet and flung her arms out towards them from her side and the black parasites shot up in massive spears from the floor, shooting through one of them across the chest and into the jaw - the other right in the gut. She fell to the floor, sitting between her folded legs as a chilly, bone-rattling breeze blew through the facility. And she cried, sobbing into her hands as Dr Brenner opened the door and looked over the two bodies she'd left in her wake along with black swarming the floor .

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Two woke with a horrible feeling, tubes going down her throat through her nose and her hands and feet tied to her bed. "Pa-papa ?" She looked around and recognised her bedroom, like any other room in the lab with the exception of it being slightly darker and smaller. She coughed as the tubes itched the back of her neck."Papa !" It disturbed her that she couldn't move, and she jolted slightly beneath the belts binding her to the mattress. Before she knew, two of the facility employees were forcing a long strip of material across her mouth and securing it to the bed boards. Two grunted and squirmed, tears formed in her eyes as the door slammed behind them - Brenner wasn't taking any chances. She continued grunting as her chest heaved and she craned her neck to examine what it was that was restraining her.

She tried to stretch out her fingers, anything to get her free. But just as the ash started to form, an alarm sounded and she felt something sharp jab into her neck. Two, all of a sudden, felt exhausted - her eyes flickered and she fought to keep them open, her limbs relaxed and her jaw unclenched, eventually finding herself immersed in a deep sleep.

Brenner narrowed his eyes slightly as he looked over a twelve year old test subject who's body went limp beneath her restraints. He would have to keep her in an easily contained state - rubber between her teeth and her temples between electricity.

And so the story began.