꧁꧂

ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀ ᴛᴡᴇɴᴛʏ-ᴇɪɢʜᴛ: ᴀɴᴅ ɪ'ʟʟ ᴄᴀʟʟ ʏᴏᴜ ᴍɪɴᴇ, ꜱᴏ ɪ-

Dustin peered through the door, looking at all the people leaving the cinema after the screening. We watched over his shoulder, seeing if there were anyone who could... you know- kill us. "And..." A large group went through the cinema's exit. "Blend." The boy opened up the door fully, rushing out with both me and Erica following right beside him, Robin and Steve going only a second later.

Walking in the middle of a large group, Erica turned to us. "Well, shit, that worked." She says, smiling.

"'Course it worked." Dustin says to her. It was his plan, duh! "Now we just have to get on the bus with the rest of these plebes, and home sweet home, here we come."

I glanced over at Steve when home was then mentioned. "Uh... Dustin?" Steve had never looked so guilty in his life.

"What?" He only glanced over for a moment before looking straight ahead, trying to act natural.

"Yeah, we might not wanna go to your house..." Steve says to him.

"Why?" To think we were a whole twenty steps away from the cinema and we were already stressing Dustin out was not something to be proud of...

"Well, I might've told them your full name..."

Dustin looked at him, glanced away and then back when he'd let it sink in. And when he spoke, his voice was so high pitch it was as though he'd lost his voice. "What is wrong with you?!"

"Dude, I was drugged." Steve did his best to defend himself, but I was finding it hard to see how he couldn't have just talked and rambled on about something else like his hair routine than Dustin.

"So?!"

"So?" Steve repeated, not believing it.

"So, you resist. You tough it out." Dustin taught the boy. "You tough it out like a man." Like a man? What a feminist...

"Oh, yeah, it's easy for you to say." Steve argued back at him, still walking around. Robin grabbed my hand suddenly, looking straight ahead. HA! Straight! I can make those jokes now! 

"Guys?" Glancing in the same direction as Robin, I raised an eyebrow at what I saw. Men, dressed fully in black, looking and checking every bag that passed them by. Russians.

"Abort..." Dustin says, with one Russian glancing over in our direction. "Abort." He repeated. "Abort. Abort-" Robin and I were already off, only regretting it half-way through the running with stomach pains beginning to also kick in.

"Shit..." When ending up at the escalators, the group of us quickly learnt that we weren't exactly welcome downstairs. With the easy way down roped off, the five of us made our way down in the gap between the two escalators, sliding down.

Running after Robin, I followed her every step, in hope that we could find cover as soon as possible. Except, the best cover to be found, was behind one of the open food bars. Which basically meant we were dead the moment we moved or one of the Russians even came close to us. Yippee.

As we silently sat behind it, I leaned my head up against the counter, breathing just as heavily as the other four. The voice from a distant Russian could be heard, causing the beats in my ear to pick up. We were fucked. We were so fucked.

We crammed in together, I stared at the floor and mentally prayed to whatever God I at that moment found myself believing in. Steps could be heard from not that far away, getting closer by the moments passing by. Then, a car alarm.

The sound jolted me a little as I heard it go off and echo around the mall, then furrowing my eyebrows. What car was in the mall, anyways? Crashing could be heard from the other side of the bar, and I turned around quickly, glancing around to look at the now completely ruined display car.

As the five of us came out of hiding, we looked over at the four Russians on the floor, unconscious if not dead. Glancing back where the car was, I then looked up a level, seeing them. Eleven, Mike, Lucas, Will, Johnathan and Nancy. And her. Max.

"Holy shit..." I murmured, not taking my eyes off of her, the eye contact between the two of us not seeming to end.

"Is that..." When Robin looked over at me, I gave her an expression in return which said please hold the line, caller, we're having technically dificulties at our end. It was hard to tell which one she was talking about to be Max, but I appreciated the fact that she already knew one of them was the girl I've been crushing on since I'd first seen her.

⊹˚˖⁺

"YOU FLUNG THAT THING LIKE A HOT WHEEL." As Dustin laughed, the group ran ahead to the rest of them walking down the not-moving escalators. Meanwhile, I couldn't even bare to run that fast. If I did, I think that would be a one-way ticket to not leaving my bed the whole week. Not that I would complain, too much.

Dustin hugged both Eleven and Mike close while I caught my eyes staring at a Max running over to me. She looked pretty. I mean... she always looked pretty.

When she got closer, I tried to explain myself. "Hey..." I began softly, but I was cut off by being engulfed in a hug. "Oh..." Squirming at how tight it was, I let it happen anyways, not knowing what else to do. "Okay, we can do this..." I murmured, hearing a small giggle before she pulled away, getting a look at me.

Her face was only centimetres away from my own as she looked over each and every cut, bruise, and injury that she could see. "I'm fine." I tell her, grabbing and squeezing her hand tightly.

She wasn't so sure. "You look like shit." She tells me, smiling weakly. Rule number thirty-six: stop looking like shit once you've stopped fighting creatures from different dimensions, we need to get the girl! 

"No offence, but you look like you've seen better days, too." I say, mainly referring to the bags under her eyes.

"LUCAS?!" The two of us glanced over to Erica, of who was not too pleased of her older brother's presence.

"What are you doing here?" The boy returned, throwing his arms in the air a little.

"ASK THEM." She said, gesturing vaguely over at me, Dustin, Steve, and Robin. "It's their fault."

"You're the only one who could fit in the vent..." I remarked over at the ten-year-old, moving towards my twin of the group to give him a tight hug, also. "How are you?" I asked, noticing the worried look on his face. The boy nervously shook off everything before Lucas interjected again, with me nearly falling over due to a slight pain in my stomach area, still. Me and Will were going to have to talk later, then...

"VENT?" Lucas asked, looking over at me as Max helped me to walk. 

"I've just accepted it's our fault at this point..." I called out for all to hear.

"Yeah, it's absolutely our fault..." Steve added on to the conversation, hands on his hips.

"I don't understand... what happened to that car?" Robin asked, looking back and pointing at the now, completely and utterly ruined, car.

"El has superpowers." Dustin says casually, pointing to the girl next to him.

"I'm sorry?" Robin says, looking over at me and then back at Dustin.

"Superpowers." Steve repeated. "She threw it with her mind. C'mon, catch up." Robin stared at him for a moment, probably debating slapping the boy in front of us all or not. Rule number thirty-seven: catch Robin up with the idea of El having superpowers.

"That's El?" Erica asked, confused as she looked up at the girl in yellow and black.

"Who's El?" Robin added on, glancing down at Erica.

"I'm sorry," Nancy butted in, "who are you?" She asked Robin.

"I'm Robin." She answered because the name tag didn't seem to do it justice. "I work with Steve."

"She cracked that code." I tell the girl.

"Yeah- which was how we found out about the Russians." Steve added on, nodding along with me.

"Russians?" Johnathan asked, looking between me and the boy. "Wait, what Russians?"

"THE RUSSIANS!" Steve emphasised over at the four bodies across the mall.

"Those were Russians?" Max asked, looking back at me.

"Yeah..." I murmured quietly, biting my lip. She didn't seem too happy at the idea that we were now working with Russians, I won't lie. She'd been happier with other news we'd told in the past. 

"Some of them." Erica says, pulling a face when she looked back at the four bodies.

"What are you talking about?" Lucas asked over to his sister.

"Didn't you hear our code red?" Dustin furrowed his eyebrows over at the boy.

"Yeah, and I couldn't understand half of what you were saying." Mike tells Dustin beside him.

"Goddamn low battery..." The curly-haired boy cursed, raising his voice before Steve spoke over to him, slapping his own hands a little to emphasise his annoyance.

"How many times do I have to tell you about the low battery!?" He asked, referring back to the arguing the two had had back at the elevator.

"Yeah, well, everything worked out, didn't it, Steve?" Dustin asked in the most passive aggressive voice humanly possible.

"Worked out?" Erica asked the boy. "We almost died."

"She's got a point. I was drugged." I added on.

"Yeah- but- we survived, didn't we?" Dustin says, looking between us both.

"You were drugged?" Max glanced back over to me, causing a sigh to leave me. Rule number thirty-eight: don't mention being drugged or getting high to Max

"I'm not high anymore, don't worry..." I murmured as we returned to Lucas' words.

"As in- they're working for the Russian government?" He questioned. No, they work for the English. Who invites him sometimes?

"What are you not comprehending?!"

I felt a tight squeeze from Max, and I glanced down at my hand, then back up at her to see a cautious and worried face, looking beyond me. Eleven's nose was bleeding at an extreme amount, and she looked as though she hadn't met sleep in days. Whatever had happened with these guys could've been just as bad.

The girl glanced around, hands going to her ears as I went to step over to her, then something happened. The girl collapsed to the floor rather suddenly, whimpering in pure pain. Max followed right by my side as I rushed over, kneeling next to her.

"El? El?" Shaking her shoulder as I rolled her over onto her back, I called for her attention as the others joined us. "Tell me what's wrong." I say to the girl, of who had seemingly never been in so much pain in her life. This wasn't good. We didn't need any of this right now.

"My leg... my leg." Glancing down at Johnathan, he nodded.

"Her leg, her leg. Okay-" The boy rolled up her trouser leg to reveal the patch work that had been done. The girl cried a little as both Nancy and Johnathan did their best to take it all off.

Glancing at Max beside me, I mentally noted to thank her for patching up the wound the best she could. There was no way any of the others that had been with El could do that. She was the skateboarder of the group.

A few groans and exclaims of disgust came when the wound was brought out into the open. It was gross, but I think there was a bigger worry to me of Eleven surviving that just this. The sudden movement of something inside got to me, though, causing a moment of wonder if everything I had inside of me was already thrown up from earlier on in the evening.

The girl let out another cry of pain as Mike kneeled beside her, trying his best to comfort her. "There's something inside of her leg." I say, looking up at them to state the obvious. "We need to get it out before it takes a detour elsewhere."

"Jesus Christ-"

"Keep her talking." Johnathan stood up quicky to my words. "Keep her awake, okay?" The boy sprinted across the food court and back over to the bar we'd been hiding under. Meanwhile, El was still fighting the pain like it was killing her. I mean. It probably was killing her. Whatever it was, it wasn't from around here, that was for sure.

"Hey- hey, hey- stay awake, stay awake-" Mike repeated his words over and over to the girl, shaking her before then turning to us. "Let's get her on this side- on this side-"

We began to move her around and she let out some cries of pain as we did so, unfortunately, we didn't have that much of a choice. "It's uh- you know, it's not actually that bad- there was a..." I glanced up at a panicked looking Robin as she rambled on. "the goalie on my soccer team, Beth Wildfire, this other girl slid into her leg and the bone came out of her knee, six inches or something- it was insane."

"Robin?" I asked, eyebrows raised.

The girl's head quickly turned in my direction. "Yeah?"

"No offence, I don't think you're helping..."

"I'm sorry..."

Johnathan came hurdling back no more than a second later, holding a knife and a wooden spoon, which probably meant nothing good for us. "Okay... alright... El? This is gonna hurt like hell, okay?" The girl sobbed a response as he put on plastic gloves, being the hygienic boy that he was. "Need you to stay real still. Here, you're gonna want to bite down on this, okay?"

Holding out the wooden spoon, Mike took it and placed it in the girl's mouth while Dustin muttered another curse. Johnathan placed the knife closer to El's leg and I glanced away, finding out right there and then how much better I would be without having to see a knife going through Eleven's leg.

Max gave my hand a squeeze, causing me to look back over at her. "Do it." She nodded over to me to check up on me while Mike gave the go ahead to Johnathan. How had I ended up here? In Starcourt mall, desperately head-over-heels for my best friend while one of my other best friends had her leg partially cut open by my older brother to get a moving cell from an alternate dimension out of her? Squeezing the girl's hand, I didn't dare myself to look anywhere other than at her.

Yelling came from behind me as I closed my eyes, not thinking to look even close to Johnathan and El's leg, whatever was occurring, it was hurting like a bitch for her. I wasn't usually squirmish, but I guess I just really didn't wanna see El have a knife in her leg.

The sound of the knife dropping, however, made me presume that it was all over. When glancing back around for a moment, though, I was wrong. The girl continued to scream, cry and sob over her current pain, but there wasn't much else we could do. At least, that was before I saw Johnathan reach into the wound. That right there? That moment? That was when I realised there was more in me that I could puke up. And I was kind of surprised that I didn't.

Nancy would shout over to Johnathan, but he argued back claiming his need for concentration, screaming from El continuing before she spat out the spoon, shouting for it to stop. For it all to stop. Nancy leaned over as El shouted for it to end, holding Johnathan away from the girl's leg. Everyone was silent.

"I can do it." I'd never seen Eleven in so much pain, but the girl was still carrying on, trying her best to sit up straight. "I can do it." Glancing between the few of us, I watched over as El held her hand out to her leg, causing all of us to see whatever was inside carry on moving around.

She cried out in more pain as she tried her best to take it out. Just when I was about to comment on taking a different approach, the windows behind us suddenly smashed. With a few yells from the group, I covered both me and the red head beside me, not paying that much attention to it, though, as what was occurring with El was far more important.

When she pulled it out, a grimace came onto my face, watching her yell at it before she threw it across the mall floor. The group of us stared over at it, before then seeing it get squashed by a shoe. When glancing up at the trio, my eyebrows raised almost automatically. This obviously wasn't going to be an easy explanation, was it?