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CHAPTER TWO
β€” her name is amelia β€”
























"where the hell are they?" joyce talks to herself as she searches the dining room and kitchen for her missing car keys.

nine peeks her head from the back door, trying to get jonathan's attention shield he watches his frantic mother looking.

"jonathan!" joyce calls. he walks past the back door and sees the noirette he took in last night. "i'm looking!" he lies. he openes the backdoor for her to come in and leads her to the restroom while his mom is distracted.

"jonathan!" joyce shouts again. he groans and grabs a towel to he give (throw*) at to nine. "check the couch!" he suggests.. joyce walks to the living room. nine catches her first glimpse of the lady, who begins searching for the keys in the couch.

jonathan gasps at how exposed she is to being caught, and literally shoves the girl into the bathroom. "hide in the shower!" he whisper-shouts at her.

"the what?"

he slams the door closed. "they're not in the restroom."

he turns to the right and sees her coat for work. he walks to it and checks the pockets. when he finds the car keys, he puts on a small, little grin. "mom."

"what, jonathan?" he shakes the keys she sees dangling between his fingers. joyce sighs with relief and can't help but smile back. she walks up to him, thanking him, and then resumed her work in the kitchen.

"where's will?" she asks. jonathan's body stammers for a second. to be honest, he didn't know. he spent all his time last night with nine, too occupied by that to check in on his little brother.

"oh, i didn't get him up. maybe he's sleeping." jonathan answers, trying to make his shrug look untroubled.

joyce makes her way to will's room as jonathan rushes back to the bathroom where nine is hiding. "take a shower when my mom leaves." he instructs her as she stands in the tub.

she shakes her head, confused by his words.

"take a what?"

jonathan groans due to frustration. "use this to wash your hair," jonathan grabs and gives her the shampoo. "then rinse. then use this for your hair again. rinse. and then rub that all over your body." jonathan explains quickly as he hands her the conditioner and body soap. she nods, registering all this new information while carrying all the items in her arms.

"don't forget to rinse," he reminds her while walking back out. when he steps back into the hallway, his mom had just walked out will's room and is making her way back to the kitchen.

"will came home last night, right?"

"h–he's not in his room?" jonathan busies himself with the eggs cooking on the stove.

"did he come home or not?" joyce asks with a more stern and stressed tone. jonathan looks down sheepishly at the eggs.

"i don't know."

"you don't know?"

jonathan hesitates, but he answers with shaking his head.

"no. i got home late. i was working," he mumbles.

"you were working?" joyce scoffs.

"eric asked if i could cover his shift. i said yeah. i thought we could use the extra cash," jonathan admitted. somewhat truthfully. he did also spend his night making the stranger he let in his house feel at home in the shed and tried to pry information out of her as to where she came from.

when jonathan said he'd grab more pillows from his room for the noirette to rest on, he returned to her already passed out on the hard ground.

"jonathan, we talked about this..." joyce groans. he softly rolled his eyes.

"i know.."

"you can't take shifts while i'm working," she reminds him.

"mom, it's not a big deal. look, he was at the wheelers' all day. maybe he just stayed over," jonathan suggests with a shrug as he continues cooking.

joyce glares at her son and clicks her tongue. "i can't believe you." joyce paces to the phone. "i can't believe you sometimes."

˚⁎⁺˳✧༚

the girl spent the rest of her morning toying with gadgets and objects she found in the shed. yes, there was this crawling fear in the back of her mind that tugged her memory of will byers disappearing without leaving. but there was this lingering feeling that he wasn't...gone. she felt his presence in the room she lays in.

it's daytime and no one is inside jonathan's home. perhaps she can go in the house and find something to eat, but the noirette feels that would be more of an intrusion she has already done enough of.

sighing, she shifts positions to lay on the other side of her body. her eyes land on a blue book perched on the top of a box. it was a children's book, and it was very old. as she sits up, grabs it, and opens it, some edges of the pages are found to be torn and worn out. still, nine was curious with the content inside.

the girl barely knew how to read and write. this was a children's book, however, and it did its purpose on nine. her first full day out of the labs, and she's already learning.

in this book, the main character was asking people to tell them their name.

nine didn't know her own name.

the main character asked every person they knew in. their mom. their dad. their brother. their neighbor. their friend... nine didn't have any of those to ask.

the story continues to drag. the noirette sighs while turning to the last pages. the main character still couldn't find a name... so what they decided was give themselves one. one that they choose for themselves and feels the best fitting.

"harriet?" nine mutters the name. her brows wrinkle and lips frown. in her opinion, she thought the name didn't suit the main character at all.

sighing, and feeling a discontent, nine throws the book to her side... a few minutes pass and now, similarly to the main character nine just read about, she wants to know her name.

how can she though?...

as her mind begins to cultivate an idea, her eyes drag to the chair and desk across her. and then they drag to the radio in the corner of the room.

prepped and seated on a chair, nine has her hand gripping on a pencil, her wrist resting on a paper. she was ready to write.

she reaches over to the broken radioβ€”it was broken because the knob stayed on a channel that only got shutter.

nine's eyes stay shut as she hears the shutter. she focuses on it. this is all about passage now. all about losing yourself to the space that is sounds.

nine remembers her first time doing this. she was scared back then. she recalls how she couldn't feel her body, and how the moment she loses herself is the moment she succeeds.

now, she was back in the black abyss. it's been months since she's been here... maybe a full year...

the next thing nine has to do, is think. think of someone who could tell her her name. her mother and father, perhaps? she thinks of them, focuses on faces she has no idea look like... so, of course, a person doesn't come up.

but two names do. not in the dark nowhere she stands in, but in her subconscious. nine jots the series of letters down on paper.

nine think of where next. of where her mother and father could be? maybe that's the place she needs to go to find her name... but she finds nothing.

in the pitch blackness she finds herself, she feels hopeless.

advice...she was given to from papa.. was that "the straightforward and practical approach...is the most efficient."

so, directly, nine thinks of her own beginning. her own origin. wouldn't it be considered a memory? do memories come up in this void?

suddenly, she hears a baby crying. she snaps her head to turn around to the whining.

"shhh, there, there my sweet angel," a woman coos. a young woman who sits up on a bed, cradling a baby swaddled in a baby pink blanket.

nine watches the woman instinctively pat the baby's side, the gentle thumps creating a comforting beat. she leans in close to the baby's head, and kisses is sweetly.

nine doesn't notice herself walking closer to the woman and her baby. she just stares... she studies the features she can't make out on neither the woman's or babies face, but feels so intimately the love and tenderness in their aura.

with a gentle hush, the woman whispers, "you're safe, my precious one. mommy's right here."

"i'm right here, amelia."

˚⁎⁺˳✧༚

all day, jonathan had been thinking of the girl he let stay in his shed. he had been hoping that at the end of it, he'd come up with something rational that could make him feel...better? he feels as though his actions lack practical reason, so that if his mom were to find out, he'd have nothing logical fo say...

when he drove up his home, he hopper nine had stayed hidden. he steps out of his car, and heads straight to his backyard, directly to the shed.

he opens the shed's door and finds nine was laying on her belly, reading the dictionary with a pickle in hand, and the jar next to her.

nine stands up, donning a grin. "jonathan!" she leaps to jonathan and expressed her gratitude, the word she's newly learned when skimming the pages, with a hug. he catches a wife of her pickle breath.

jonathan pats the girl's back. "hey?"

"you will never guess how my day went!" she sits on the chair speaks with animatedly, a manner that jonathan noticed last night when they were barely getting to know each other.

"what happened?"

without saying anything, nine hands him a paper. the paper she wrote the information she got from.

amelia cruz

jonathan looks up from the writing with furrowed brows, while 'amelia' was smiling and nodding. "what's... what about it?"

"it's my name!" she beams.

jonathan tilts his head slightly while looking down at the paper. "how did you–

"its a thing i..just know." her expression dims. "they..taught me how to find out about stuff like this in the laboratory... one of the first things, actually," she explains. her eyes fall back on her paper and that reminds of the good feeling she felt when first writing her own name down. she takes it from him and softly smiles.

"how can do you do that?" jonathan's eyes shift around the shed. "how did you do it?"

"i just..close my eyes, hear the shutter from the radio," she nods her chin at the radio. "and then i think."

jonathan can't imagine the kind of experimentation that a person has to go through to be able to achieve these sort of skills. mind projection??, being one of them.

he notices track marks on her wrists and remembers the few bruises on her body from the night before. whenever she'd push her hair behind ear, he'd notice specific scratches across her neck.

"nine–"

"i wanna go by amelia now," she smiles up at him. she's been doing that so much more today.

jonathan sees how must she treasures her own feelings, acting on them more than she acts on logic. he did already think about how amelia took a chance on him and just..admitted to what she was to a complete stranger. not once has she seemed to regret it, and that's because jonathan has acted delicate with the whole situation... he'll continue to do so.

"okay," he puts on a curt smile himself. "amelia?" the girl nods after he uses her proper name. "how did you..." his voice trails off as he thinks of how to say what he wants to say.

amelia blinks at him and waits for him to say it... but the pause lasts a little too long, leading her to figure he might just not want to ask... amelia can figure out now what kind of question jonathan wants to ask.

the noirette looks down at her fingers. she starts to toy with them. "there's three different subdivisions." she starts.

"the first one is focused more on mental power. gaining a greater percentage of power from the mind by a study of force."

011.


"the second is more of a social, i guess. mental, too, though.. gaining a greater percentage of power from someone else's mind and thoughts by a study of force."

008.


"and the last is... about physical power. gaining a greater percentage of power from the body and mind by a study and work of force." she explained.

jonathan nods. "so, you were in the last one." he infers as he uncrossed his arm.

amelia nods slowly, undoing her frown. "i had to do physical training. i learned an extensive amount of fighting techniques, which is easy for anyone to learn, i guess. but i had to learn how to use my mind to help."

jonathan chuckles, "something the meathead jocks at my school should learn."

amelia furrows her brows and tilts her head. "what are jocks?"

jonathan blinks and just sighs. "it's a..term we use to call the school athletes. but never mind that," he shakes his head. "all this..work done on you..and the other people in those subdivisions you mentioned, are all for the government?"

amelia nods as jonathan just scoffs in disbelief.

"i.. can't believe i knew it.. i mean...i knew it!"

"knew..this?"

"i mean, yeah! i knew that all those people did in there wasn't just 'messing around with electricity'." he mocks what he read in more recent papers that covered up the laboratories "past" actions. "they did so much more."

"at first, i was in the first subdivision. i learned how to move things with my mind, change things to what they really aren't.. it was basics in the lab to be able to do those things, but eventually... i guess they saw something in me..that made them put me in the third group."

her eyes wander down to her arms, covered with fresh shot markings, track marks. "i always had to take shots that made me stronger and..quick... it also made me less human, i feel... but that is something i always wanted to be... human."

"of course," jonathan automatically sympathizes. "it's your right, you know?"

"my...right?"

jonathan's eyes fidget as he looks at amelia. seriously, he has no idea how heartless a person can be to take away someone humanity the way they took away hers...

he wonders..how heartless a person can act when looking for her. he assumes, because she doesn't leave the shed to wander around hawkins, amelia wants to avoid someone.

"you're..hiding from them, right?"

amelia confirms with a nod. her eyes travel around the shed. "i know i can't hide here forever, though.. like, i'd lose my mind in here, probably."

jonathan agrees. his eyes falter low and they fix themselves to his backpack... an idea sparks.

"have you ever heard of the phrase "hiding in plain sight?"


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