Home Strangerthingau

Chapter 16

Papers

"Did you find anything?" Nancy asked from her place on the bed.

"Just like five minutes ago, I don't see anything." Jonathan said from the floor.

The couple sat in Nancy's room with files scattered over all surfaces. They had been looking through the files for about four hours now and they found nothing.

Nancy sighed and looked back at the last paper in the folder she was looking through. After determining that there was no information of use on that one she grabbed another file from a random box.

Subject 011 the tag read. With her heart beat speeding up, she opened the folder to a picture of a younger looking El. She looked very different from what Nancy was used to. The El she knew was skinny with shoulder length hair and at least a little shy smile on her face. The picture El, she had her hair buzzed down to her scalp, she was sickly skinny and her face looked like there was a killer behind the camera. In a way there was.

"Jonathan," she said grabbing the photo and handing it to him to take a look. "Look at this."

Jonathan took the photo and stared at it in silence for a few moments before muttering, "El."

Nancy looked back at the file and read the first page which contained El's information. After not finding anything she flipped to the next page of the file. It had details of an experiment they had done just before Hopper got her out of there.

The experiment consisted of El being place in a sensory deprivation tank and try to listen to Russians.

Experiment: Successful

Notes: Subject fell unconscious

"Oh my god." Nancy whispered looking through more and more of the experiments they made El do.

"What?" Jonathan tore his gaze away from the photo to look up at Nancy.

"Come here." She patted a spot next to her that was clean of papers, never letting her eyes look away from the papers.

Jonathan moved next to her and took a piece of paper Nancy held out for him to take. Jonathan read over the paper then looked at another one, and another one. He felt his heart hurt for his little sister. He knew she went through a lot, but he didn't know what exactly happened.

"How could they just do this to her?" He sighed sadly. "Didn't they have kids or something? Didn't they think about if that would have been their kid?"

"I don't know." Nancy placed her head on his shoulder. "I don't think they looked at her like a human being, let alone a kid."

Jonathan continued to look through the experiments while Nancy turned away from them. She couldn't look at what they did to her. If only she knew that wasn't the worst of it, because the experiment files they had were the ones with successful experiments. They didn't know what happened to her if she refused or failed an experiment.

Nancy decided to grab another file from the box and started to look through it while listening to Jonathan mutter things under his breath.

She started flipping through the files. She notice how they were all letters sent from Brenner during the time they knew they were in Hawkins. She had come across other letters before this too and she really didn't see anything worth knowing. The letters were mostly were mostly about the experiments they had been doing. Only a few of them had been about El and still, they keep it vague. Nancy barely knew what they were talking about in the letters. She expected this one to be no different. Still she started to read through them.

Jonathan also started to flip through another file because he didn't want to see the experiments anymore. It wasn't long until he came across a drawing. A drawing that had two stick figures, one named papa, the other 011.

El drew this. He thought as he looked over the paper. He soon realized the reason why she drew Brenner and her together. Back then, Brenner was all she had. She didn't have Hopper or the party or the Byers. She had only known Brenner and he had her trust because of it. That trust would have constantly been broken from what he could tell from the files. He had the sickening feeling the came along with this realization. Twelve years of having this. He hated thinking about it.

The letters were different than the others. These letters were more about El than anything else. They still kept it vague enough for you to question what they were talking about, but Nancy kept on reading them over and over wanting to understand what they meant. In one letter, she stopped and read the same group of sentences again.

When we get her, we will bring her home. To her new home. And if she refuses, I have another plan for that if it comes to it.

New home? Nancy thought. She had heard something about home somewhere else too. New home. She tried to remember. Then it made sense. New home!

She got from her bed and started looking for another file she had already gone through. She didn't remember what box it was in so she had to rummage around a few boxes to find it.

"What are you looking for?" Jonathan watched from his spot on the bed.

"A file." Nancy moved to the next box.

"Well, there a ton of files righ-" Jonathan said getting cut off by Nancy shushing them.

"Found it!" She said after a few seconds of silence. She grabbed the file and sat back down on her bed. Jonathan looked over her shoulder curiously as she started searching for a letter.

"Home." She muttered to herself.

Once our plan is in action, we will have employees pack up the remains of the building. When we get her, we can no longer be seen in Hawkins, this isn't her home.

"Read this part." She handed the paper over to Jonathan, who read what she pointed at.

She watched him as his eyebrows came together in confusion and he looked back at her like he was completely lost. Which he was.

"I don't get it." He shrugged.

"Neither did I at first. But then I read this part." She handed him the second letter and pointed to where he needed to read.

As he read, the confusion in his face turned slowly to realization. He looked back at her with wide eyes. "A new home."

"A new lab." She responded with a nod.

"But where?" Jonathan questioned.

"Look at this." She said grabbing the two letters again. "'A new home' 'this isn't her home', they keep talking about home. Where were they before they came to Hawkins?" She looked at him like he should know it.

With one look it clicked in Jonathan's mind.

"Chicago."

Authors note
I'm so happy with this chapter. It turned out longer than I expected too! It's a good day!