CHAPTER ONE
— the vanishing of will byers —

call it fate. call it a coincidence. call it whatever you want. what mattered is that it happened. what mattered is that when the girl with a shaved head and the number 0-1-1 tattooed on her left wrist was running through the gray lab halls, she thought of that one girl.

the girl was always locked in her room. in the room at the corner of the very hall she is now standing, no longer running as she abruptly thought of her in the middle of her fleeing.

just a couple of seconds ago, the head-shaven girl was thinking of her own escape—her own life... and now, she stands here thinking of the other girl's life, too.

call it luck. or call it a mistake. it happens anyway. 0-1-1 opens the door and without a moment to finally look this other girl clearly, after several years of only catching fleeing glimpses, she grabs her hand, and together, they run.

they run through the halls of the mostly vacant laboratory. mostly. fluorescent lights flicker, urging the girl with dark, brittle hair, so long it reaches to her waist, to shield her eyes from the bright light and trust 0-1-1 on where they were headed.

once they make it out of the building, the two girls were lost on where to head next. they had never made it so far out...

knowing nothing past the walls of the building they've lived in all their lives, the two did know one sure thing. one thing that would promise both their freedom.

they have to split up.

they told each other, simply, with the nervy expressions worn on their faces. and the girl with long hair conceded, stretching her lips to what seemed to be a smile. 0-1-1 saw the girl's cheeks perk and ends of her eyes pinch together.

if 0-1-1 knew what words to think... she would think the girl she freed must be really happy.

they let go of their binder hands, and the long-haired girl flees first. she sprints. before she turns a corner, she looks back. she sees 0-1-1 run towards the direction of a dry sewer.

as for her own escape route, the teenager runs to the long, electrical fence. she props her hand up, points at the power box, and it implodes. the electric shocks die out, giving her the ability to crawls up and jump over the fest.

now, she walks her first steps of freedom with her own bare feet... millions and billions of more times, she has imagined this. the scene of her leaving this forsaken place.

she runs and runs, panting and breathing in and out the cool air of hawkins, indiana's outskirts.

she escaped. and that is fate. it always was. this is meant to be.

her strong strides gradually become slower. her robust legs that have undergone hours of training begin to ache. these hours of training... we're hours that have passed from several years ago...

her legs begin to ache, and so do her lungs. her panting is so hard, she feels her head feel light. she stops in the middle of an area full of dark trees surrounded by more of the same. she couldn't tell where she was at, as it all felt like a maze. for a second, she can't help but feel just as stuck as she did in that tiny, abandoned room.

her muddled, worn gaze suddenly tears away from the dim woods as she hears a feeble yet well-defined screech. her body shoots itself to stand straight and snap to the direction of where the noise came from.

the girl stretches her hand out, and a twig of medium length and medium bulk from the ground, rises. it hurtles to her hand. she twirls the branch between her fingers and focuses on the image, the feel, the grasp of what she was changing this twig to.

she, herself, does not at all understand the science of what she can do. all she knows is that what can do...is dangerous; that her ability was created so she can do vivacious, terrorizing acts upon others. specifically, on people.

so she isn't sure if what she does to the twig with her ability will be able to kill whatever thing that made that terrifying sound.

the useless stick becomes a .22 winchester magnum rimfire hand gun, filled with bullets, ready to aim and fire.

she stands alone with a handgun in what used to seem like a lonelier forest. her jerking arms give up on her some more when as she hears the low shrieking closer and closer to her.

she prepared the firearm, switching off the safety and placing her finger on the trigger.

but after that, everything grows quiet. not even the insects that were chirping nor the wind lightly howling were able to be made out by her fairly-trained ears. she knew this couldn't be a coincidence. there is no such thing as a quiet place.

and yet... well... should she believe in everything that papa says? there is only thing she will have her faith in.

everything is always meant to be.

a sudden loud screech yells from her left. she jumps to that side, steadily armed and so ready to show. the low growl then travels behind her. the end of her gun follows, she isn't sure where to sure. where to look at.

the origin of the sound becomes clearer as it creeps up to her sight of vision. she is able to make out the faceless figure.

the demogorgon.

she fires her gun at the creature, and it starts its agonizing screeching. she hates the sound, so she feels and thinks of the hate and irritation in her soul. she focuses more on the pain the screeching had done to her ears.

the bullets she shoots start to take momentous affect it. although she has been out of practice for months now, her ability resuscitates whenever she feels threatened or endangered. never had she felt this much of it before.

when she runs out of bullets, the only word and action she was able to think of was simple. run.

the girl didn't see if the tall, slimy predator chased after her. she didn't check not even once in what felt like another eternity of sprinting.

to take a good break for air, she realized she was standing just by a road. the road was quiet and didn't have a streetlight—they usually have those, but this one didn't. she clutches onto her handgun, thankful she hasn't dropped it in the heat of her running away.

she didn't know what to do now. she assumes she is like 0-1-1; neither have any plans for themselves and must stick only to what they knows they can do to survive.

suddenly and then gradually, she hears ticks coming up from the empty road. she slowly steps closer to the edge, and takes a good look of what was coming.

a boy.

another human.

a human that has hair like her and isn't older like papa or the other doctors and scientists that would visit her.

she knit her brows together and saw him continue to ride the device that was making thy ticking sound. he was about to rise past her, but he stops when his contraption's light flickers off.

the girl widens her eyes and makes an 'o' with mouth. she thinks she may have accidentally messed with the light.

"hm..." but the light on the bike turns back on after a few unconcerned seconds he looks back up ahead of the road, and sees very clearly, a shadow.

he is so spooked by what he saw, he loses control his device and rides down the side of the slanted road. the boy had landed only a few feet away from the girl, leading her to stumble as she retreats.

she looks back to see if the figure had returned, but she doesn't see anything.

the boy slowly stands up, hearing its growling. with a pant, he decided to leave his bike and run away. the girl followed him.

he was running with the same haste she was all this time. with crying pants of fear. she made sure to keep some distance between him and herself. she watches him makes turns that she then follows. as he goes up to the front porch of his own home, she barely pictures it.

she felt relief knowing there was a roof and walls in these dark woods, finally, but she couldn't entirely relax, knowing she and the boy are close to danger.

she watches him enter his home, not being able to see him anymore. she looks down to her hands and notices they lack the weapon she was once holding.

she left the gun with the boy's riding device.

she began to hear barking and random calls for two names. "mom? jonathan?" the girl felt uneasy for all sorts of reason now.

instead of going inside the house, the girl decides to just walk around it. she runs into a full line of clothes that are hanging, and chooses to stay around there.

she looks into the woods, trying to find and make out if any of the shadows are the faceless figure terrorizing her. she hears an abrupt hit made by the swinging of a door. she turns and catches a glimpse of the boy again, inside his home.

the girl snaps forward and grabs a hanger from the clothes line. she races to the porch, new firearm pointed at the front door of the house.

pain, agony, suffering. the girl made sure to feel and think of all these things in order of securing a good shot.

she stands, and waits... and waits... and waits... the door never opens... the house doesn't creak nor does it shake.

"what..." she breaths out the first word to pass through her lips in several months.

the girl takes cautious steps towards the door. her shaky hand reaches for the handle, and quickly, she flings it open, her weapon pointed and prepared to shoot.

but the thing... and the boy... are nowhere to be seen inside the house.

where could they have gone? where could of that creature done to the boy? what should she do?...

she steps into the house, firearm secure in her hold. she scans the living room to her right and the dining area/kitchen to her left. she paces through the hallway and peeks in all the rooms... when she finds for there to really be no boy and no creature, she finally lowers her gun. hums of insects and the whirls of wind hitting the home are able to be distinctively heard by her again.

the thing is gone... for now. . . but where is that boy?

it's a question the girl can't shake, but also has no clue on what she should do to answer it. should he go look for this thing?? on her own?? she has her own issue to worry about, which is her own survival from the laboratory...

the girl just hopes that he is okay. that he is hiding...

she changes the gun back to its hanger, and walks back to the kitchen. the lights eventually come back. she thought the home's lights were just off, so she was frightened by the return of electricity. the electronics buzz, as well as the fridge, catching her attention. she furrows her bushy brows together and walks up to the box, having not much of a clue as to what it is. when she touches it, it feels cold. she grabs the long knob and pulls it open.

her eyes fixated to a jar of pickles. it was the only food she could recognize. everything else was in cartons and tupperware. she brings out the jar and walks to the table. without much effort, she pop it opens and chooses a pickle to nibble on.

she's with herself for a few seconds. her eyes look around the inside of the home and she tries to guess what kind of people live here.

the boy...

the girl's grasp on her pickle falters the more she thinks about him.

suddenly, she hears someone drive up the house. lights glow on the walls through the living area's windows. her eyes widen when she hears the car's brake hault. she quickly walks to the end of the house and goes outside, to the backyard.

when jonathan drove up to his house, he noticed how his mother's car wasn't parked at the front. he immediately assumed she stayed to work later at the store, even though she promised that she wouldn't do that anymore. but he broke a similar promise himself; he wasn't supposed to work late either.

he slowly opens his front door, it making small creaks. when the door closes, he tiptoes across his the home to his room. he walks by the kitchen and the dining room, unbothered, until he catches a glimpse of the open pickle jar on the table.

his brows wrinkle in a furrow as stares at the jar while walking up to it. he assumes his mother or will grabbed one, but neither of them like pickles. and he knows that will despises them the most. hell, the poor kid can't even open the jar on his own if it was the only thing here he could eat.

meanwhile, the girl had started to become familiar with the things inside the shed she decided to hide in. when she saw clothes inside boxes, her first instinct was to get out of the gown she had on.

the girl rummages through the clothes and grabs a long t–shirt and really baggy sweats. they were joyce's from when she was pregnant with her sons.

quickly, the girl starts to think of a plan in her head. she leaves the shed, it giving her a cold impression. when she was opening the door to the shed earlier, she was hoping he had been hiding in there.

the noirette walks around the house, past the hanging clothes. she walks up the porch and clears her throat before she knocks. this was something she'd try for the first time.

talking to someone first. initiating it.

the door creaks open, jonathan byers standing behind it. "hello?" he says tiredly.

although it was dark out, jonathan saw some of the girl's features from the dim porch light. she had tan skin and freckles. a button nose. girls with these bearings aren't usual in hawkins.

"i'm lost," she speaks. she's nervous and does her best to mask it. "can i come in?"

jonathan reads her jittery body and red, tired eyes. the clothing she's wearing are old and raggedy, but not beat up. he'd feel bad if he let her be, but his mother raised him to be cautious.

as his mind thought 'no', a searing pain started in the center of his head. he doesn't know why that happened, but he replies with, "sure." he feels a force push him back to step out of the way, and the door opens wider the girl to come in.

she walks in, already semi–familiar with the place as she was here moments before. with her back given to him, she wrinkles her nose and sniffles in any blood that could possibly be trickling down to her upper lip. forcing someone to say and do things exerts more than half of her power. she doesn't like doing it, but tonight, she is desperate.

"do you need a phone?" jonathan asks now that he has let her inside. the noirette immediately shakes her head at the offer, "no!" she says hastily. "no, thank you."

jonathan curls his brows at the decline. he doesn't know what the girl needs from him, then, if she was lost. "um.. are you new in town?"

the girl has been asked many questions in her life and never before have they sounded as gentle and attentive in her life. this helps to draw the conclusion that this boy who resembles her age is not not kind.

maybe... just maybe, he could help her out. she is already thinking optimistically about the boy who has disappeared. she continues...

she nods at his question. her eyes glance at the open picked jar. she was so quick to run out the house earlier that had she completely forgotten that she left the open jar there—just like what she did with the gun next to will's bike.

"sure. i am," she stammers. her tone is light as she walks to the table. "can i ask?.. is this...hawkins?"

she doesn't know where she is? jonathan stills nods in reply. he closes the front door and stares at the stranger who is drawing herself closer to the pickles. his train of thought utters as he watched her. he notes that she doesn't look close to her age. and that something about her means no harm. not at all did she look threatening. yet, he doesn't understand what made him let her come inside his house...

"uh, what's your name?"

the girl's eyes widen slightly when she meets his gaze from when she was looking at the jar. she doesn't know what to answer. instead, as if she suddenly became invisible, she just reaches and grabs a pickle.

the off–feeling he felt about abruptly letting her in grows stronger. even if she is just a girl who looks pale and has dirty feet from walking outside, he began to feel a certain sense of danger.

again, the teenage boy asks for her name, and again, she just stands, staring at him with a pickle she's biting into.

"look, if you need help with directions or something, i–"

"nine." the girl meets his eyes after she whispers her number. "that's what they call me."

jonathan fixes his brows in a tight knit. his lips couldn't move as his mind is unable to wrap around her name being a number.. a number that doesn't at all fit for a name, even. he understands that there's hippies out there that would make their child after a a number...

"i ran away," she continues to confess. the girl has no idea how to break this down to explain, so she just spits out everything. "i need help."

"you ran away?.. from where?" jonathan can't ignore the genuine urgency in her voice. wherever she ran away from was a place she needed to get away from.

"somewhere bad." nine wraps her hand around her wrist. "i just need a place to hide."

jonathan had watched what she did with her wrist, catching a glimpse of the small ink on her skin. "can i look at that?" he asks, pointing at her arm.

she licks and bites her lips before hesitantly raising her wrist to show. jonathan takes a careful step forward, and sees the number tattooed on her skin.

the first thing that came in his mind was the laboratory less than a mile from his home. hawkins labs. doing essays and reports on hawkins history for english class, he remembers reading an article or two about human experiments from years ago. but it was too far-fetched for him to think it was this serious and this recent. he didn't want to jump to conclusions and think the worst of people and what they can do to other people...

"are you.. are you okay?"

she gulps before answering. "i just need a place to stay. for now." his eyes scan her again to study her expressions. something in his mind was telling him that it was possible. she could stay. she should.

"i have a shed?"

author's note,
on god, this is the 49th time i'm re–publishing the first chapter bc i'm never satisfied with the middle/end of it, but fuck it! i'm over it and this is it! thanks for reading and i hope you stick around for the rest of the series! <3