Chapter Text
Monday, March 24th, 1986
Kali is woken up by an ear piercing robotic whine.
They don’t leave it on when she’s in her cell. She supposes she should be grateful for that, but she refuses to be grateful to these bastards for anything. Especially when the only reason they’ve granted her this mercy was because the policeman threw enough of a fit when he found out that it hospitalized three guards.
Technically the doctor needs both of them alive. The policeman tests that ‘fact’ far too much.
A guard from the day prior unlocks their cell shortly after she sits up. Kali recognizes him as the newbie–now sporting a particularly nasty bruise–and tries to force down the smug smile that wants to form at the thought of whatever lecture he got over his lost keycard.
“Up.” One of the guards barks out. She knows he’s asking her to raise her hands, so that she can be cuffed properly for the walk to the testing facility. Like hell she’s answering to that, though.
She hears the policeman huff behind her. When she glances back, he’s sat up as well, rubbing one of his temples as though he’s the one dealing with the head-splitting noise.
“That’s some shiner you got there. You mess up your first day on the job?” He clicks his tongue a few times. “That’s embarrassing.”
Kali can see the guard fighting every instinct not to beat him. It’s certainly a gamble on the policeman’s part. Still, he is new, and likely wouldn’t want to risk getting on the boss’ bad side so soon. Sure enough, the guard simply mutters a few curses to himself and decides not to retaliate.
“Put your hands up. I need to cuff them.” The man grits out.
The policeman looks even more smug, if that were even possible. Her lips quirk up a bit despite herself when they briefly meet eyes, and even as he drags her away she doesn’t feel as anxious as before.
He’s going to escape. The man has the foolish notion that they will do so together. She knows how his scientist feels about her. It isn’t any sense of profound hatred, but it also isn’t substantial enough to risk his life over. She lets herself have the childish hope that at least he will make it out, and then Jane can have something good in her life.
She hopes they blow this place sky high on their way out. Even if it takes her with it, she thinks it would be worth it in the end. Maybe she could convince them to tell Jane Kali was never here, that she’s still with her friends in Chicago. Hopefully she never looks further into it.
“I need your hands again.” The guard says once they make it to the lab. He chose to still use full sentences. She doubts it will last very long, but perhaps they can train this one to talk to them like human beings instead of dogs.
It doesn’t really matter either way, but it would be nice. She hasn’t hit a guard in days, she thinks she deserves some compensation for that level of restraint.
Kali sits patiently while a group of doctors cover her in various machines. She doesn’t go to bite the guard’s hand when he uncuffs her, and she doesn’t try to slam her head back against anyone’s arms when they get in range. She’s patient and accomodating.
There’s…a small hope. An even more delusional side of herself that she hasn’t crushed yet, that thinks she can find a way to make it possible for her to be brought along in the escape. If it isn’t at any additional risk…there could be a chance. She could play nice for a day, go back to her cell early, and the plan can go how the policeman thinks it will.
A needle pricks at her skin and she hisses on instinct. The doctor injecting her has the gall to look at her as though she’s done something wrong, something worthy of admonishment.
His hand is within reach. She bets she could tug him forward and make him slam his head on the table.
No. Just one day. She’ll be nice for a day.
“Fax her brainwaves to the commander’s office. Vitals are normal. She should be ready for the tank.” Another man says with an almost bored tone.
Kali remembers her time in the lab. Even with the large gaps in her memory, she took the time to remember all her brother’s and sister’s faces. She remembers how she was poked, prodded, and tested. Pushed to her limits then yelled at to go even further.
Here, they can’t risk her using any of her abilities. They’ve learned from last time. The second she has them she’ll use them to escape. Now, they mostly monitor her brain. If they turn off the god awful whine she can conjure up the concept of an illusion, which seems to be enough for their purposes. They refer to her as a blueprint. Or a battery.
“Hands.”
The guard’s pleasant attitude evidently doesn’t last longer than two sentences. It reverts back to its base levels, going further as to cuff her for the less than a minute walk up the steps to the entrance to the tank. The bastard.
Once she’s there the guard steps aside and lets several other men rip off the handcuffs and force her into the necessary gear. ‘The Bath’ is what they called it when Jane was it’s main occupant. Brenner had many ways of simplifying what he put his ‘children’ through. He wasn’t programming weapons, he was playing a game. He didn’t torture them, he reprimanded, as any father would do if their child misbehaved.
Kali slowly gets lowered down into the water. The weightlessness overtakes her the second the platform leaves, and the everpresent whine shifts its pitch slightly. She feels her body go lax in response, her train of thought stalls, and all she’s left to focus on is the glowing cracks in the wall.
She watches with vacant eyes as the crack spreads further, with a rotten membrane lining the space between. She can’t hear anything outside of the tank, but she sees humanoid figures surround the crack. They’re frantic, panicked. Even through the thick metal, she can still faintly hear a gunshot firing.
As the men’s panic reaches its peak, a hand bursts through the crack.
–
Kay will allow herself the small satisfaction of a job well done. She can’t help but be pleased with the progress they’ve made.
If only she had subject Eleven. This could go much faster with her rather than subject Eight. Eight is a barely acceptable battery. With subject Eleven, they could tear the wall between their worlds wide open, and then…
Subject Eight’s illusions are impressive; Kay can envision a dozen operations where such a power would’ve proved useful. But they fail so easily. Subject Eleven’s powers are very, very real. Eleven punched a hole through reality by accident. Imagine what she could do if she meant it.
Eleven has spent too long in the world, and even before that she ran and killed. Brenner was too indulgent with her. Kay will have to engineer hundreds of numbers with the same powers, the same strength, and she will teach them only to be loyal to their masters. It will take years, and she’ll need to have Subject Eleven on hand, both as a point of comparison and as a way to get more enhanced soldiers. Hopefully the subject is fertile; some of the other numbers weren’t.
Others call her ruthless. Cruel. Hateful. Psychopathic. Kay is all of these things, of course. She owns what she is, and what she’ll continue to do. She can see the path from plan to execution as clearly as she can see the concrete walls around her. The generals will get their perfect soldiers, the creatures from the other world, and the gate. Kay will get the energy project.
When Subject Eleven opened the gate in Hawkins, she generated more energy than the bombs that were used to level Nagasaki and Hiroshima combined. That kind of power in the hands of a child – imagine what they could do if they could figure out how to harness it properly. There would be no need to fight petty squabbles over oil or spend millions drilling wells for natural gas – they could power entire cities for months with hardly a thought.
Yes, the top brass will get their soldiers, by hook or by crook. Kay, meanwhile, will create energy for the next hundred generations.
She is cruel. She is heartless. She is ruthless. But she is also right. Everyone else is focused on fighting the Soviets wherever they pop up; Kay alone can see the potential of the number project beyond simple warfare. Beyond an enemy that is doomed to run out of steam sooner or later.
Kay sips at her coffee and considers her readouts. The Creature entered this world through the portal just a few hours ago; the brass will be interested. Nobody’s managed a proper autopsy on any of the beings just yet. They have a habit of dissolving into dust when they’ve been dead for too long. It’ll have to be a vivisection.
As annoying as it is, she needs to see Owens about this.
She finishes her coffee first - speaking with Owens always requires fortification - and makes her way down to his office.
Owens is playing with wires and a toolbox - it takes a moment for Kay to identify it as a radio of sorts; it looks more similar to the ones the soldiers will use to contact trucks at a distance than the simple ones for music.
Her mind spins for a moment, opening and discarding possibilities as quickly as she thinks of them. Owens is a coward and a fool - he would never be bold enough to commit treason right in front of her, in full view of the cameras. Therefore, this must be something else.
“Why do you have that?” She asks, figuring she may as well get it out of the way.
“Ah! Dr. Kay! Didn’t see you there - come on in, please.”
She stays in the doorway and raises an eyebrow. She can feel a headache building behind her left eye; he’s so damned cheerful sometimes. “Why do you have a radio, doctor? Don’t tell me you’ve finally grown a spine.”
He smiles up at her weakly. “No, no, this is a - well, I don’t know if you saw the tapes for the Hawkins Lab, but long story short, a man named Bob Newby saved at least a few people, and he had a way with this sort of thing.” He gestures to the wire broadly. “If I’d had similar experience, well, maybe he would’ve lived through that night. Maybe we all would’ve.”
Pure sentiment. Practically cavity inducing. “Well. Ensure this new extracurricular doesn’t take up too much time, doctor; we have a Creature to vivisect.”
At that, he drops his tools and stands. “We’ve had an entrance? That’s huge news - beats our projected margins by weeks…” He grabs his notes and hurries down to the lab.
She stares at the radio on the table, nearly put together, and briefly considers destroying it. The balance doesn’t work; it would bring her a small amount of joy, true, but Owens would go crying to someone, and men like him can keep their friends in spite of their previous fuck-ups. It’s just not worth the time.
–
Mike shifts nervously in the backseat while Will messes around with his radio setup. They’re getting close enough to the base that there’s hope of tapping into some kind of frequency, so he’s hoping to get more intel that way.
There’s an awkward silence that fills the van almost the entire ride there. Joyce rhythmically taps at the steering wheel and looks at the rear view mirror at her kids just as often as she looks at the road. They’ve gotten to the point that it’s just about empty—save for a few cars passing by—so it isn’t a terrible concern but it makes Mike nervous nonetheless.
His eyes flick back over to Will, who’s full focus was on the radio. Mike can faintly hear music and broadcast chatter through his headphones, cutting in and out at random intervals as he twists the dials.
“Mind if I listen in?” Mike asks.
Will takes a moment to register the question, but once he realizes he’s even being spoken to, he quickly slides off the headphones, turns up the volume slightly, and holds the headphones between them so that they can both press their ears to either side.
There’s a low, almost unnoticeable whine from the radio once Will gets it to a specific frequency. It pops up, disappears again when the knob gets shifted, then reappears once it's turned back. Mike calls it out.
“Hey. Do you hear that?”
“Hm?” Will hums absentmindedly, only half paying attention. He turns another knob back and forth, then furrows his brows.
“See? That—that noise.”
“Could be some kind of interference.” Will mutters, but he seems similarly suspicious of it. “It’s kind of strange. It almost…hurts?”
“Hurts?”
Mike’s confused. He feels no such reaction from it. It’s a shift in the usual static he’d been hearing the past hour or so, but it didn’t cause any pain.
“I can’t really explain it? It just feels…off.” Will shifts one of the knobs a more, just slightly, and with that motion the two start to hear muffled voices.
“Repair vehicle requesting entry into rear sector. Vehicle contains 1 driver and 1 passenger, both with valid ID. Permission to grant request? Over.”
Mike hits Will’s shoulder a few times, shooting up from where he’d leaned down to hear through the headphones. “That’s it! That’s the signal!”
“Care to share with the class?” Murray pipes up, turning around from the front passenger seat.
The two startle at the sudden comment, having almost forgotten there was anyone else in the car with them. Will nods at the trio of now expectant people and quickly unplugs his headphones.
“Request granted. Send them to building 2-B, and request a shift in guard from the east sector. Our problem child is continuing to cause more damage.”
“That–that sounds like–” Murray’s expression continuously shifts widely between disgusted and impressed. “There’s no way they’re broadcasting private military channels on a frequency the average Joe within a hundred miles can reach.”
“Isn’t every frequency open?” Joyce asks with furrowed brows, now looking even more concerned–if that were even possible.
Murray clicks his tongue. “That’s what they want you to think. There’s ways to block a frequency, and as far as I was aware our government readily employed it.”
“We do have someone promising to break us in.” Jonathan says with a shrug.
Will nods enthusiastically. “They said something about their rear sector having a lot of personnel. That gives a pretty good opening, yea?”
“Could be Owens letting out some kind of distraction.” Jonathan’s eyes flick between them and Joyce. Mike knows they’re still not on good terms about their decision to follow–specifically Jonathan’s choice to facilitate it. The insinuation that Owens is making this job as easy as possible for them… it does help her relax a little.
Joyce lets out a small huff. “If you’re getting a transmission that means we’re relatively close to the base. I’ll find somewhere safe for us to pull over and we can come up with a plan.”
–
They’ve been sneaking through the facility pretty successfully between the two of them, if Joyce says so herself. Not that it’s hard; most of the guards seem… distracted, but nobody’s panicking. Whatever Owens cooked up must be good.
They’ve only had to deal with one guard so far - Murray took him out with his karate moves, which he apparently wasn’t lying about. The sad part is Joyce isn’t sure anyone will ever believe her.
Overall, things have been going pretty well so far.
She peers around a corner - just two guards in sight - before Murray yanks her back.
“Hey,” he hisses at her, “What’s wrong with you? We should be a little more careful, y’know.”
“What the hell is wrong with you?” She hisses back.
“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but this isn’t an action movie - they can actually see you.”
“Which is why I was peeking.”
“Joyce… the top of your head is, in fact, visible. I don’t want us to go down in a blaze of gunfire, so stop trying to get us all killed. Just… Wait a minute, if you can.”
One of the guards - a blonde-haired man - yawns and rubs the back of his head. “I hate being stuck in this hallway,” he complains. “The discovery of the century is happening in this building and we’re stuck here doin’ nothing.”
The other one, who has brown hair and is a few inches taller, shakes his head. “Kay says we need to keep an eye on things. You wanna get on her bad side?”
“We won’t get on her bad side because nothing’s gonna happen, Jake. But, fine, whatever; I’ll go do a sweep of the East corridor, since somebody thinks we should just sit around watching paint dry. Lemme know if anything happens - like with Ivanov and that raccoon. Remember that?”
Luke, apparently, groans. “Please don’t bring up the raccoon again. Go, do your sweep.” He leans against the wall as the other guard disappears out of view. “Grab a smoke break too, why don’t you? Lazy asshole...” He mutters, bitterness lacing his tone.
“See?” Murray whispers to her. “Just like that, we only have to deal with one. Because we waited. You would’ve gotten us caught.”
Heat rises in her face as she clenches her jaw. “Me, get us caught? That’s rich; you’re the one with lead feet.”
She hears a thump from behind the wall. She startles slightly, nearly jarred out of her anger, before Murray tightens his hand on her wrist and keeps her on their side of the corner.
“See? There you go again, almost screwing the whole mission. I got through the Russian lab last summer just fine, didn’t I? You’re the one that blew our cover,” he points out, a smug grin on his face.
“You little -” She breathes out through her nose forcefully. “We are going to go through that door. We are going to find Hopper. Nobody is going to die. If you could please stop being so pessimistic for one single second -”
“This is not Hollywood. We are in an actual US Military base trying to break out a valuable prisoner! Maybe a little pessimism is necessary, since you seem to think we’re all going to come out of this smelling like roses.”
“I wouldn’t mind smelling like roses,” another voice says.
They both turn.
Joyce’s heart leaps into her mouth. “Hopper?” She asks, her voice cracking.
It is Hopper. He’s lost a lot of weight. Too much weight; he looks gaunt, his eyes too-wide compared to his hollow cheeks. His eyes themselves are dark in a way she’s never seen. His skin is pale. He almost looks like a ghost; he’s a faded version of himself, lacking all the presence of the man she… knew.
But it’s him. It’s him, alive and right there.
“Hey, Joyce. Murray. Glad to see you both - any idea how we get out of this mess? I used this,” he pulls out a keycard, “to get here, and I knocked out that guard over there.” He gestures vaguely towards Luke, who was so afraid of Kay - whoever that is. The brown haired guard is collapsed on the ground, bruising visible around his throat even from this distance. “He was… Let’s just say you two arguing gave me the window I needed to put him down.”
“Hey, Jim. You have any trouble getting through, besides him?” Murray asks, his smile broader and more sincere than before.
Hopper shrugs. “Not much. I only had to deal with a few.”
“Disappointed you didn’t get to knock more heads around?”
“A little. I’ve got seven months of scores to settle.”
“You’re really alive,” Joyce says, finally recovering from the shock of seeing him. “I - even with the message - oh, Hop. I’m so sorry. I should’ve -”
“Hey. None of that, alright? You couldn’t have known.” He shuffles in place for a moment before striding forward to wrap her in a hug. “I’m… I’m really glad you’re here,” he says.
“Group hug!” Murray attaches himself to both of them and she finds she doesn’t even especially mind. She smiles to herself, allowing just this moment of pure relief and elation. He’s alive, alive, alive!
Hopper claps Murray on the shoulder as he pulls away. “So, what’s next?”
“We go back the way we came. Jonathan’s waiting in the car.” She sees him start to frown at her and sighs. “You know how the kids are - one whiff something’s off and they’re on it like green on grass.”
“Can’t keep their noses out of anything, can they?” He glances around the corridor, as if looking for something, and then asks, “How do we meet up with Kali?”
“Who?” Joyce asks.
“Kali. Owens… maybe he didn’t call her by her name? She’s El’s sister; one of the kids from Hawkins Lab.”
Murray shakes his head slowly. “Owens never mentioned anyone else needing a rescue,” he says.
The expression on Hopper’s face is one she recognizes. It’s the face he makes when he’s putting pieces together and doesn’t particularly like the picture they’re making. “He didn’t tell you about her.” His voice is flat.
“No,” she says.
Hatred fills his eyes. “That snake. God, I can’t believe I trusted him!”
“Care to share with the rest of the class, Jim?” Murray raises an expectant eyebrow. “If we can’t trust the good doctor, then we need to get the hell out before the entire facility descends on our heads.”
“He’s keeping her,” Hopper says through gritted teeth. “He was never going to let her go - shit, she knew it, too, didn’t she? I’m an idiot. I walk out of here and Kali…” He trails off.
“They’re hurting her, aren’t they? Experimenting on her.” Joyce feels her own fury starting to bubble up. She might not know Kali, but she knows Jane. Jane had had such awful nightmares in the short time Joyce took care of her. What these people do to children is unconscionable.
“They are,” he confirms grimly. “I’m sorry, but I have to try and get her out. You should take the kids and get somewhere safe while you still can.”
“Like hell.”
Joyce looks at Murray in shock. In all the time they’ve known each other, never once has he volunteered to take the more dangerous path.
He crosses his arms. “We can’t trust Owens anymore. The whole plan might be shit; for all we know, we’ll be leading these assholes directly to your kid. And they won’t stop with her. They’ll lock up anyone who had anything to do with keeping her under wraps, yours truly very much included. Leaving isn’t enough. Getting your new friend out isn’t, either. We need to burn this place to the ground.”
“I’m not about to leave a child here to be tortured,” Joyce adds.
Hopper gives a wicked smile. “I don’t hate the idea of blowing this place sky-high. You’re both sure, though?”
They nod. He drags a hand over his face before sighing. “Alright. But we should at least send the kids away.”
She takes out her walkie-talkie, already tuned to Will’s frequency. “Hi, sweetie. We’ve run into some issues with the rescue,” she says.
“Issues?” Will asks, his voice slightly broken by static. “What issues?”
How does she tell them that Owens fucked them without terrifying them? How does she tell them she made a mistake? Murray yanks the walkie out of her hand while she’s busy hesitating.
“The doc is a liar. We’ve got another rescue to make and it’s going to get messy. You need to get far away from here.”
Static crackles over the line. “Mom… I think we might have bigger problems than just another rescue.”