Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Michael Wheeler didn’t know how he had ended up in this situation.

Like yes, he was someone who got himself in and out of horrifying, impossible situations but this seemed like it was a step too far. 

Billy Hargrove had been possessed by a monster. So many people had. It felt like everything that could’ve gone wrong, had gone wrong. El was hurt. Will was mad at him. There were fucking Russians hunting his friends for sport. And there was a giant flesh eating monster chasing down his sister while she was driving away from the mall at top speed, hauling Lucas, Will, Steve and Steve’s coworker, Robin with her. Why Steve’s coworker was there, Mike didn’t know.

Mike really wished he had been able to get into the car with them. But no, Billy Hargrove was chasing them through the back hallways of the mall. Mike slammed into the elevator door, the arm not thrown over El’s shoulder slamming into the button, urging the elevator to open. 

It wasn’t opening.

His breath hitched in his chest. Next to him, El was crying. She was scared and she was hurt, the pain in her leg making tears stream down her face. Mike wished that they could stop for a minute, just to breathe, but then they would die. So he kept hitting the elevator button. 

Max was behind them, leaning out into the hallway to see if she could see her brother. Mike almost started crying right alongside El when Max started talking to someone who wasn’t either of them. 

“Billy-“ there were heavy footsteps getting closer, “Billy, you don’t have to do this. Billy, your name is Billy Hargrove, you live at 4891 Cherry Lane. Billy please, it’s Max-!”

Billy backhanded Max across the face so hard that she fell to the ground in a tangle of freckled limbs. She wasn’t getting back up. 

Billy stepped over his sister's body like she wasn’t even there. The man looked monstrous as he strode towards him and El, the flickering lights reflecting off of sweat, blood and tar black veins. He looked like a story book monster from stories he used to read before monsters became real. 

Mike had always been impulsive; it was one of his main character traits. He had jumped off a cliff because Troy had threatened to cut out Dustin’s few teeth. He had made a half hazard plan to distract the Demodog’s in the tunnels. He had fought with Will and lied to El. He wasn’t a rational person. So, it made sense that he charged right at Billy without thinking. 

He felt El reach for him as he let go of her, a cry of his name on her lips as he launched himself at Billy with no real plan in mind except to stop him. He didn’t get far. He was barely within reach when Billy grabbed him, a hand on his shirt and another on his face as he slammed Mike into the wall.

Mike looked at Billy with unfocused eyes, everything ringing from how his head had bounced against the wall. Billy grinned down at him meanly, teeth slick with blood and tar, before he slammed Mike against the wall again. 

The edge of his temple slammed against a pole with a heavy sound and Mike didn’t remember much after that.

-

She woke up to pain.

Her face hurt as she pulled herself up slowly, hand prodding gently at her cheek before her eyes caught on the body that was laying just a few feet away from her. 

Oh god, Mike. she crawled over to him, hands scrambling across his body, trying to shake him awake. 

“Mike! Mike, wake up!” She begged, hands on his chest as she shook.

There was blood matting in his dark hair, dripping down his temple and the bridge of his nose. It puddled underneath him. There was so much blood.

But he was breathing. It was shaky and shallow, but he was alive.

“Mike,” she tried again, tapping sharply at his cheeks, fingers coming away wet, “we have to help El, get up!” 

The boy didn’t stir.

Max was at a crossroads. Mike needed help, needed a medical professional, but Billy had taken El and she could hear explosions in the distance. Mike needed her but El needed her more.

“I’ll be back.” She promised, stumbling to her feet, “Just… stay alive Mike.”

She turned her back, leaving Mike alone and bleeding, lights flickering above him, reflecting off of his pale, pale skin. 

It was the last time anyone in Hawkins saw Mike Wheeler alive for a very long time. 

-

No one was there when the man in the green uniform stumbled upon an unconscious boy laying in one of the back hallways of the mall. He slowed his pace from the steady run that he had been using to flee the slowly burning building. 

He studied the boy for a moment, eyes considering before a grin formed on his face. It wasn’t a nice expression. This was one of the Americans that had been involved with the Hellmouth incidents. Not the experiment or the boy who had survived the waste, finding one of them would have truly been a blessing, but this gangly teen would have to do.

He grabbed the boy, throwing the limp body over his shoulder with ease. The boys' arms swung back and forth against his back as he made his way towards the extraction point. 

“What is that?” Another soldier asked, tilting his head towards the boy in question when he made it to the unmarked vehicles hidden within the woods behind the facilities cover building. 

“One of the American children who knows of the Hellmouth. There is also a possibility that he has had contact with Subject: Eleven.” 

The soldier's eyes widened, teeth showing as he grinned, “Do you think?”

“Perhaps,” he responded, “even if not, I will still be praised for securing an asset.”

He dumped the boy into an empty seat, climbing into the truck after him. The boy's blood stained hair was staining the upholstery, wet ringlets framing a pale face. The boy would only get paler in Russia. There was not much sunshine there but even if there was, he didn’t believe that the boy would be seeing much of the outside world. 

Either he would die or he would wish that he had. Someone in the motherland would definitely have plans for the American boy.

-

Everything was on fire. 

Star court Mall had collapsed in on itself, shrieking and groaning as it fell into a pile of glass and concrete. The fire had consumed the rubble like it was starving.

Red and blue lights flashed as sirens wailed, paramedics and police officers littering the scene, firefighters hosing down what they could. Camo clad militiamen hurried back and forth. Taping off the perimeter.

Will sat in the back of an ambulance; a crinkly metallic shock blanket wrapped around his shoulders. His mom was hovering nearby, her eyes wet as she worried over El. El herself was covered in blood and random monster goo, leg shredded but the medics had said that it wouldn’t heal wrong if she took care of it right. Some stitches and bandages and she would be good to go. 

He scanned the crowd, eyes skipping over the people darting back and forth, making a head count of his friends. Max was being checked out, a bruise on her cheek and a hollow, echoing look on her face. Lucas was standing by her, eyes sad as he tried to distract her from herself, trying to get her to say something. 

Dustin was sitting with Steve, a toothy little grin on his face as he said something that made the older teen laugh weakly before wincing. Out of everyone, Steve was probably hurt the worst, excluding El, but he was still joking around with Dustin and Robin. 

Hopper was… Hopper was gone. Gone like Bob.

Mike was…? He stood up, eyes searching through the throng of people. Where was Mike? 

“Mom, where’s Mike?” He asked, voice shaking.

She looked up, expression harried as she joined him in looking through the crowd, El wiped the tears out of her eyes to do the same thing. 

“Mike? Has anyone seen Mike?” He called out.

“Mike’s missing?” Lucas asked, sounding worried.

That got Max’s attention. She looked horrified in a completely new way, blue eyes wide.

“Billy-” she licked her lips. Will felt his heart fall down to his feet, “-when Billy was coming for El, he got me and Mike, knocked us out. I woke up and- and El wasn’t there. He was breathing, I swear, but he wouldn’t wake up and El needed help!”

She was sobbing now, and Will knew something was terribly, terribly wrong. 

“What did you do?” He asked, voice barely above a whisper. Nothing else mattered right now aside from whatever Max was about to say. He didn’t care that Lucas and Dustin were crowding closer or that his mom had a look on her face that told him that she already knew what the girl was about to say. He could feel his eyes watering. 

“I left him there!” Max sobbed, “I just left him there!”

The tears were coming down now, trailing down his cheeks. Almost absent-mindedly his eyes turned to take in what was left of the mall, the hundreds of thousands of pounds of metal, rock and heat. 

His face crumpled, he crumpled. His mom barely caught him before his knees hit the ground.

“I-I need to go find him! We have to go back!” He begged, struggling against his moms hold. She just held on tighter; her own sobs being muffled into his hair.

“We can’t sweetheart, it’s not safe.”

“No, no, we can’t just leave him there! We have to get him out.”

“He’s… we can’t do anything Will, there’s nothing we can do."

And something inside of him broke, shattered beyond repair. He wished he was with Mike, even if it meant that they were both dead. Because Michael Wheeler was dead. Dead. Will wished he’d died with him.

Chapter Text

His head hurt. And he was cold, but the pain in his head took precedence. It throbbed behind his eye persistently, ebbing and flowing as it moved.

He grimaced without opening his eyes, nose scrunching up against the pain. 

There was a loud thudding sound from all around him, vibrating through his body with each thwip thwip thwip. He was lying on something, his arms at his sides and his legs straight. There must’ve been a blanket or something wrapped around him because everything felt snug. 

He probably made some sort of noise because someone started talking above him in rapid fire. He couldn’t tell what was being said; it felt like the words were slipping out of his ears as soon as he heard them. It was almost like it was a different language. 

Actually… His dark eyes snapped open, squinting closed as he winced against the light shining down on him before cracking them back open to scan around to try and figure out where he was. The last thing he remembered was charging towards Billy in a truly stupid move, and now he was on a… helicopter? 

There was a small window resting close enough to where his head was resting that he was able to peer out of it with blurry eyes. He was up high, really high. The only thing he could make out on the ground was the snow that covered everything. He just stared out at it for a few minutes, head drifting to distract himself from the headache. 

That changed when the voice from before piped up again. It definitely wasn’t English. He rolled his head in the other direction and felt his stomach drop when he saw who was talking.

Olive green uniform, matching hat, a red collar, and a brown leather belt. Russian.

The man looked at him when he realized that Mike was turned towards him, clipboard in hand. He said something that Mike couldn’t understand, gesturing about something. 

Mike didn’t care; he started screaming, “Let me go, let me the fuck go!” He yelled as he fought against what he’d thought was a tightly wrapped blanket. 

There was a thick strap securing his chest to the gurney he was lying on. Another one crossed over his hips, and even more were wrapped around his arms and legs to keep him from moving.

“Stop moving,” the man snapped. Mike still couldn’t understand him.

“Fuck you, fuck you, let me go!” He heaved against the straps, chest thudding as pain pulsed behind his eyes. 

The man said something else that Mike didn’t give a rat’s ass about, moving to grab something. Mike didn’t even bother with words when he saw the syringe; he just opened his mouth and screamed at the top of his lungs. The man looked uncomfortable but not enough that it stopped him from jabbing the needle into the crook of Mike’s arm.

He just kept screaming and writhing until whatever was in the needle started working, and it worked fast. It took barely a minute before he was wheezing for breath as his eyes fluttered, eyelashes brushing against his cheeks as he drooped against the gurney. He didn’t want this.

He fought to stay awake, wrenching his eyes open every time that they slid shut, but he couldn’t fight against the drugs in his system. His eyelids drooped for the last time, and he couldn’t stop himself from falling back into unconsciousness.

He looked small in the white sheets, dark hair spread around his head like a halo, bits of dried blood flaking off onto the pillowcase. Skin pale from blood loss, a blue button-up shirt stained with blood standing out against it. 

The man huffed when the boy finally stopped fighting, adjusting his body straight on the gurney. The helicopter kept flying towards its destination, moving Mike closer and closer to a place that he would come to loathe in the coming months. 

He was still lying on the gurney when he woke up, only this time he was being wheeled down a hall. Rectangular lights passed above him, flashing over and over as he was rolled to wherever. The gurney clacked every time that it rolled over a divot. Clack clack clack echoed through his hazy mind as he stared up at the never-ending ceiling. 

Floating, that's what he was doing; he was floating. He tried to think clearly, his brain scrambling for any little bit of coherence. It wasn’t working. Thoughts slipped through his head like smoke, drifting through his fingers before they faded completely into the void. 

He let his head loll to the side to look at the lab-coated woman that was trotting alongside him at a brisk pace. Dark hair pulled into a tight bun that stretched the skin at her temples. Sharp eyes and a little frown on her face. She looked like a normal doctor aside from the yellow and red hammer and sickle patched onto the front pocket of her coat.

And there was an armed guard that was walking just a few steps in front of the gurney. He was holding a gun; it was a really big gun. That was honestly all Mike could get himself to focus on. Everything was just slipping.

“What’s happening?” He slurred, clenching his hands weakly. The doctor woman looked at him briefly, dark eyes trained on his own before she dismissed him, looking ahead. She said something to the guard in Russian, the man replying in the same language. 

Mike pouted, “S’ not fair?” He whined, “Can’t tell wha’ you’re saying.” 

Damn, whatever they had given him was hitting hard. All he got in return was more Russian. He tilted his head back to eye the person who was pushing his bed. It was just another dude in a uniform. 

Mike smacked his lips together; his tongue was dry, and his whole mouth tasted like he had eaten something foul. Swallowing the saliva that was pooling around his tongue, he tried to scratch at the stinging around his temple. He’d forgotten that he was strapped down, but he remembered when he couldn’t move his arms more than an inch. 

Instead, he just turned his head so that he could scratch his forehead against the flat pillow under his head. He sighed at the feeling, even though it stung a bit. The pain made the itch better, but he only got to do it for a few seconds before the man behind his gurney was tilting his head back straight. 

Mike stared up at him in betrayal, his pupils dilated enough to black out his iris, his eyes wide, and his mouth slack. The man gave him a little smile and a shake of his head. Mike giggled. The guard in the front said something sharply, and the smile was wiped from the other guard's face. 

Mike frowned at that. “Don’t do that. Be nice.”

It didn’t seem like the man understood exactly what Mike had said, but he knew enough to pick up tone and context. He frowned at Mike before he brought his fist down hard on Mike’s calf. 

Mike yelped, his leg jerking reflexively against the strap holding it down. Pain spiked for a minute before it was dulled by the haze of drugs.

The doctor lady spat something at the guard that had hit him, gesturing with the clipboard. The guard just scowled, turning back to face the looming hallway. And seriously, why was the hall so long? 

Now that he was just slightly more aware, he was registering the closed metal doors that peppered the walls every fifteen feet or so. The doors were set into the white-painted concrete, with little glass windows in the center of them. Like prison cells. Dread was creeping in, sneaking past the haziness. Where was everyone else? What had happened to Max and El? He couldn’t remember.

His brow furrowed as he tried to grasp the fleeing thoughts. They had been running from Billy, or was it the flesh monster? He’d hit his head on something; he knew that for sure. His head hurt like a bitch. 

The gurney jerked and shook as it was turned to roll through an open door, which startled him out of his scattered thoughts. The room looked kind of like a bathroom, but everything seemed sort of flat. No walls or curtains to block off shower stalls, just an empty room with showerheads mounted on the walls and a few metal benches bolted to the walls underneath them. Everything was covered in shiny white tiles- the floor, the walls, everything except the ceiling. It was too bright in there.

The guard that had been pushing him moved to the side of the gurney and started unbuckling the straps that were holding him down. He tried to sit up when the one from across his chest was thrown off, but he could barely make his shoulders curl upwards before he was settling back into the sheets. 

“Help?” He asked, but the guy was already moving to lift his upper body into a sitting position before taking off the rest of the straps.

His head hung low, chin hitting his chest as he sat there. Ugh, the room was spinning, and he could see blood matted in his hair. 

When the rest of the straps came off, he was manhandled to his feet by the nice guard. His legs didn’t want to work, though, so the guard had to basically carry him over to one of the benches. The tiles were cold under his feet, and he vaguely wondered who had taken his shoes. He was still wearing his blue shirt and shorts, but he was kind of glad that it looked like they were going to let him take a shower. 

He was less glad when the nice guard started undoing the buttons of his shirt. 

“Wait, no-” He tried to push the man away with clumsy hands, but the man just shushed him and continued to undo the buttons. 

Goosebumps prickled over his skin as the cold air hit his shoulders. He hugged his arms around his skinny chest to try and chase away the chill. It didn’t work, and he had to stop hugging himself anyways when the man started tugging down his shorts. 

The guard looked apologetic as Mike tried to push him away. He even tried kicking him, but his legs only swayed forwards a bit instead of doing what he wanted them to. 

“Stop, it’s cold,” he whined, eyes going teary. 

The man smiled a sad smile as he finished undressing Mike, taking his clothes and folding them. The other guard came over, something in hand that he handed over to the nice guard without a word. Mike only realized what it was when the man came to stand beside him and clicked on the electric hair clippers. 

He shied away when they came towards him, but it was so easy for the guard to hold his head in place while he ran the clippers over Mike’s head. The tears were coming steadily now, dripping down his cheeks as his chest hitched. He clumsily drew his knees up to his chest, his heels resting on the very edge of the bench and clutched his hands together between them and his chest. 

Tufts of tangled black hair drifted downwards, tickling at his skin, standing out starkly against the bright white tiles. He cried harder when the clippers grazed the split skin at the edge of his temple. 

The nice guard just shushed him again. “I am sorry,” he muttered under his breath. 

“I don’t know what you're saying!” Mike sobbed in response, “What do you want!”

There was no answer, just the buzzing against his skull and blood-stained hair falling to the floor. Clumps of it were stuck together with dried blood. 

“Ow,” he hiccupped when the cut was grazed again. 

Mrs. Byers had never cut him when she had trimmed his hair. His mother had nicked his ears once in a while when she had done it and had burned him with her little straightening iron when she was flattening down his curls. But this was different. He was being shaved down to the root.

The clippers clicked off, and suddenly the woman in the lab coat was in his space, poking at the cut on his head and stretching out his arms and legs while noting things down on her clipboard. He tried to keep himself covered, but she didn’t seem to care that he was naked, just writing down whatever and prodding at him. 

He let himself drift as he was moved how the lady wanted, his mind stumbling over random nothings. Hot water hitting his back was what brought him back to the present. His shoulders tensed before relaxing under the warm pressure. Water ran over his head as he leaned into the wall behind him. It felt weird now that he had no hair. It was nice, though, pairing well with the drugs in his veins. 

His eyes fluttered closed as someone scrubbed him down with a cloth. He was too tired now to care about the fact that he was naked. It had to come to an end eventually, and he was sad to see the water go. 

He was dried off and bundled into a hospital gown that reminded him way too much of the one that Will had worn in the lab, except that this one was a washed-out teal instead of the patterned white and blue one that he had been wearing. They did give him socks, though, so that was a win. 

He had to be fully carried back to the gurney by the nice guard when it looked like they were done with him. He was strapped down again, and a blanket was draped over his lower body. He still shivered as he was wheeled out of the shower room back into the chilly hallway. He didn’t know how long he rolled, just when they stopped in a big room. 

Through bleary eyes he could make out beds against the walls and counters with cabinets built into the wall by the doors. There were lumps in some of the beds, a few faces peering out at him, but he didn’t pay them any mind. He was rolled towards an empty bed, unstrapped, and moved to the other bed by hands under his armpits and legs. 

This bed wasn’t much softer than the gurney, but he was too tired to care. Something cold and heavy was clasped around his left wrist, the one closest to the wall, and a heavier blanket was thrown over him. He curled up on his side since he wasn’t strapped down anymore and pressed his face into the pillow, tugging the blanket close. 

It almost felt like he was back home in his own bed, except that the sheets were too stiff and they didn’t smell anything like him or the detergent that his mom used. It didn’t matter; he sank into sleep without a problem. 

-

His head was clearer when he woke up. He bolted upright. The room was too white. White-painted brick walls, white shiny floors, white ceilings, and white lights. 

The only color he could see was the hospital gown he was wearing and the metal counters that were up against the walls by the wide, double swinging door.

Where the fuck was he? Fucking Russians. He cursed loudly, trying to pull himself out of the bed. He was stopped before he could even sit at the edge of the bed. With a clank of metal, he was yanked backwards by the arm. He turned, dark eyes widening as they trained on the thick metal shackle that was secured around his wrist.

He tugged on it, not quite believing what he was seeing. The metal was warm from where it had been resting against his skin; the copper-colored metal barely left any space between soft skin and itself, maybe a centimeter. The chain connecting it to the wall was barely two feet long; he wouldn't be able to even get out of the bed without having his arm straight out and his back stretched out.

He sat in front of where it connected to the wall, bracing one hand on the chain and his feet against the wall, and he pushed as hard as he could. With his legs pushing and his arms pulling, he strained, grunting as the metal around his wrist dug into his skin. He grunted as he leaned all his weight backwards in the hope that his body weight would do what pulling wouldn't. It wasn't doing anything; the bolts that were anchoring the chain didn't even wiggle, not even a little bit. 

“No work,” a voice interrupted his frantic pulling. 

He whipped around, and there was another boy sitting on the bed that was up against the connecting wall. Actually, there were kids on most of the beds. Kids with shaved heads in hospital gowns.

“What?” Mike asked, dumbstruck that he hadn't noticed anybody else in the room with him. 

“No work.” The boy said his words were almost swallowed by the thick Russian accent that he had. The boy raised an arm, showing off his own manacled wrist. “Tried. No work.” 

There was a purpling bruise peeking out from underneath the cuff. Mike could probably have a matching one soon. And his skin was paler than the boys', so the bruise would probably be worse. 

“Where am I?” He demanded, pressing back against the wall and curling his knees up.

“In Russia,” the boy answered.

“Obviously,” Mike snarked back, a scowl growing on his face. “Where in Russia?”

The boy just shrugged. Mike let his head thud back against the wall. It was only then that he really registered the lack of hair brushing his ears. His hands shot up to his head, soft palms running over short bristles of hair. He could vaguely remember it being cut. There was a guard who had smiled at him, been gentle with him even as he had been stripped, poked, and prodded by a cold woman in a white coat. 

Everything about the last however long was hazy. Soft around the edges. There had been a helicopter and a needle. Then a bed and a shower. If he had flown all the way to Russia, it would've taken at least a day. But there was no airport in Hawkins, so it would have had to have been longer. He didn't know how long he'd been asleep either. It could've been days for all he knew.

He patted around his ears, fingers trembling when all they met were stubbly little hairs and not the curls that usually settled around his ears. He looked over to see the boy watching him with sad eyes. The boy didn't look good, with thin legs and heavy bags under his brown eyes. A bandage taped in the crook of each elbow, bruises sticking out from under the sleeves of his gown. 

None of the other kids looked good either, and Mike bet he looked downright peachy compared to them, even with what was likely a giant bruise spreading over his forehead. 

He wasn't really surprised when he burst into tears.

None of the other kids looked surprised when he did. He tried to study them through the haze of tears, but they all looked the same to him. Skinny, bald, and sad. There were six of them, including him, two girls, and three boys. At least two of them were younger than him, a boy and a girl. While the other three were obviously older than him by at least a year or more. Including the one that was talking to him in broken English.

Bruised skin and bandaged elbows. They looked like how Eleven had looked when he, Dustin, and Lucas had found her in the woods. He looked the same, didn't he? He pulled his knees further up to his chest, the heels of his palms digging into his eyes, and he cried.

His hiccups were the only things he could hear over the rushing in his head. None of the other kids were talking. It could be that they were letting him cry. It could be that they just didn't have anything to say. 

He missed his hair; he wanted his friends. His palms were wet by the time his breathing returned to something vaguely normal.

“What’s your name?” He shakily asked the boy closest to him, wiping his eyes. 

“Name?” The boy asked. 

“I’m Mike.” He replied, tapping a finger against his chest. 

The boy lit up. “Alik!” he said, pointing to himself. 

Mike couldn't bring himself to smile back and just wiped his nose with the back of his hand. The other boy didn't seem to care anyways. All of the other kids were still looking at him, but there didn't seem to be much else to do in the room. Nothing interesting to look at. 

“How long have you been here?” He asked, voice scratchy. 

The boy rolled the question over in his mind for a second; he was squinting as he tried to figure out what Mike was trying to say. Eventually Alik lifted up his hands, one finger up on the first hand and all five fingers on the other. 

“Fifteen?” Mike asked, trying to confirm. The boy only smiled. What did that mean, fifteen what? Hours, days, weeks, months? He didn't know, and no one here spoke enough goddamn English to tell him. He let his head hit the wall again. 

Everyone jumped when the door was pushed open. Alik looked scared; they all looked scared, but he didn't have names to put to their faces.

He didn't recognize the guards that walked in, pistols holstered to their belts, or what looked like a team of nurses pushing a wheelchair in front of them. He scrambled as far back on the bed as possible when it became clear that the people in the Navy scrubs were heading towards him with the chair. 

“Hey!” He yelled, panic filling him as they got closer, “What do you want? What are you doing?”

Alik shot him a warning look, but Mike had always been good at ignoring warnings. When he mouthed off at his dad, he ignored the warnings about shutting his big mouth. When there was someone waiting to push him around after school, he was good at ignoring the snickers and looks that came his way. So, when Alik shot him a warning look, Mike ignored it. 

When one of the nurses reached over to unhook the metal band around his wrist, he didn't hesitate to kick out as hard as he could. His foot clipped the woman in the stomach, sending her stumbling back half a step. But before he could send a kick towards another of the other nurses, one of the guards was stepping forward to jam a taser into the junction between his collar and jaw.

The way all his muscles tensed up was involuntary. Everything felt sharp and pinching, electricity rushing through his flesh. He didn't know how long it went on for, his mind having whited out from the pain. When the taser was finally pulled away from his neck, he went limp against the bed, every inch of him trembling. 

Bones molten, hands clenching around nothing. He couldn't protest when he was hauled out of the bed and tossed into the wheelchair. His head lolled forward as he was pushed back against the backrest, bile dribbling down his chin from his slack mouth. His arms were strapped tight to the arms of the chair, his feet strapped to the footrests. He didn't struggle when they started wheeling him out of the room. 

Everything was hazy, but slowly the haze started to clear. His hands were still clenching around the chair's armrests involuntarily, but he could actually think now. He didn't recognize where he was when he levered his head up; they must've steered him into a different hallway when his head was down. 

The walls were cleaner looking than the other hallway had been, whiter somehow. They kept wheeling him for about two minutes before their little group came upon a double set of swinging doors. He was pushed through without pause, and his blood went cold when he saw what he had just been wheeled into.

He was reminded so sharply of the night he’d spent in Hawkins Lab with Will, watching as the doctors ran whatever tests that they wanted, needles and machines everywhere.

It was a lab; there was no other word for it. Sterile metal tables and a chair with a footrest covered in restraints resting at the middle of the room. There were so many machines that he didn't even know the names of.

He started struggling again, bucking against the hold on his arms and legs. He only stopped when he felt the prongs of the taser pressing up against the already sore skin of his throat. It didn't shock him, but it froze him all the same. There was another man in the room, clearly waiting for him if the way he was standing at attention indicated anything.

Mike went cold when the man made eye contact with him. He barely took in the man's gray goatee and wrinkled brow, too busy being frozen in the man's stare. The last time he had seen someone look at another human being like this was when he was being held at gunpoint, watching as Martin Brenner cradled El in his arms. 

This man stared at Mike like he was a possession, a thing for him to play with when he got bored. 

“Hello Mikhail-“

“That’s not my name!” Mike spat back at the man. The taser was shoved harder into his neck. 

“It is now, Mikhail." the man said, a placid smile that looked like a lie plastered across his face. “My name is Kazimir; you may call me Doctor Kazimir, because you and I shall be spending quite a bit of time together.” 

Mike didn’t reply, staying still, frozen with the threat of the taser at his throat. 

“Good, you will learn not to run your mouth.” Kazimir said when it became clear that Mike wasn't going to say anything back. 

Mike very seriously considered spitting in the man's face as soon as he got close enough. The doctor said something in Russian that had one of the nurses unstrapping him from the chair. And obviously, he did the stupid thing and tried to run. 

He wasn't strong enough to fight anyone and win, but he was fast. If he could just get out of the door-

He hit the floor in a tangle of spasming limbs, taser pressed firmly against the back of his neck. It stayed longer this time; he swore it did. He didn't know how long he lay curled up on the floor, bruising himself as he thrashed before the electricity stopped. 

His stomach heaved, and then he was gagging stomach acid out onto the floor. Throat burning and his eyes stinging. He was hauled upwards roughly, his feet dragging against the floor as he was carried towards the dentist-like chair in the middle of the room. They threw him into the chair, strapping him down with metal shackles this time. Silver and shiny like new.

Everything was hazy again, and his whole body hurt. Again. Where was he again? White and shiny. Right, lab with the doctor. He shuddered, and he wasn't sure if it was from fear or from the taser.Both, both was good. A strap went around his forehead, keeping his head snug against the headrest.

He flexed weekly against the restraints, more of a twitch than an actual protest.

“The taser is what will happen if you get out of line. You will learn to comply, or you will become used to it.” The doctor, sitting down heavily on a chair that rolled to rest near the side of the chair Mike was sitting in, told him, “I am going to be asking you a few questions, and you will answer, yes?” 

Mike nodded weakly, as much as he could with his head held back. 

“Good, good,” The man clapped. “You are Michael Wheeler, yes?” 

“Yes.” Mike croaked out. 

“Currently, you are fourteen years old; your date of birth is June 3rd, 1971?” 

Another affirmative from his raspy throat. He could barely believe that his birthday had been less than a month ago. It felt like so long ago that he'd been opening presents and eating cake.

“Good, good, now, my nurses are going to be checking your health so that a baseline can be determined before we move onto the procedures.” The man seemed too cheery for Mike's taste, partnered with the empty look in his eyes… He scared Mike.

“Procedures?” Mike asked before he could stop himself. He braced for the sting of the taser, but the doctor only laughed.

“I was wondering if you were going to ask! But you seem like a bright boy, so I am not surprised.” The doctor started, “If you have not already gathered, you are in Russia. During the events of July Fourth, a soldier found you and decided to keep you. And due to your extended time in the proximity of the Hellmouth and your connections with William Byers and Dr. Brenner's remaining pet, you have been selected to undergo treatment for Project Blackrock.” 

Mike went cold when the doctor let Will's name roll off of his tongue. He hadn’t mentioned Eleven by name, but even if he only knew about her existence, it meant that he could know more. He could know where she was, know where Hopper had been keeping her. And he knew about Will. 

“What do you want with Will?” Mike demanded shakily. 

The man ‘tsked.’ “Do not demand things, Mikhail. William Byers is an interesting specimen; as the only person alive who has spent more than a day surviving in the Waste, he's a very sought-after person for intellectuals such as myself.” 

Specimen. The man called Will a fucking specimen.

Before Mike could do something stupid like scream insults in the man's face, Kazimir continued. 

“Unfortunately, because of that, the US government has been keeping a tight watch over the boy. Fortunately for us, we found you.” 

“They’ll look for me. They’ll know I’m missing, and they will look for me.” Mike stated. 

“And why would they do that, Mikhail? By the time that anyone noticed that you were gone, the building had already collapsed. From what I have heard, they pulled a corpse out of the wreckage that looked enough like you. And with its face smashed in, who would be able to tell?” 

“They-they’ll be able to tell, my friends, they-” Mike hiccupped before he could finish his sentence. 

“How would they, Mikhail? And would they even try? It took almost 3 hours before anyone was alerted that you were missing. Why was it that no one noticed sooner?” He sounded cruel now, almost joyfully saying the things that were breaking Mike's heart. 

Because he was right, wasn't he? El had broken up with him because he was a liar; he had hurt Will so badly that he had destroyed Castle Byers. He destroyed the things that he touched and made them dirty. Why wouldn't they think that the body in the ground was anyone but him? 

He could imagine it. His funeral, casket closed because the body was mangled and broken. His friends would be there; of course they would be, because even if they couldn't stand him, they had still been his friends for years. Hopper would probably let El out of the cabin so that she could see him one last time. Mrs. Byers would be sad, and Nancy would be sad, even if she had never really liked him. But then the coffin would be lowered, and he would be forgotten. They would move on. El would go to school, make new friends, and find another boy that she liked. Will would… he would move on. Mike hadn't been nice to him and had ignored him for El. It would be easy for him to fade into childhood memories. 

Tears dripped down his already tacky cheeks. “Why are you saying this?” Mike asked, choked. 

“Because it is true. They will not notice, and you will stay here, where you belong.” 

“… And what are you doing here?” Mike asked. 

Kazimir smiled then, not that half-assed upturn of his lips; no, Mike could see his teeth and see the wrinkles around his eyes deepening as he smiled. “Project: Blackrock is the union's attempt to replicate the projects of Dr. Brenner. He had his numbers, and now we want our own.”

Oh yeah, this had taken a dive right off of what Mike was able to deal with and straight into fucking lunacy. He stared at the man like he had grown a second head through his tears. What the fuck was this asshole talking about? 

“What?” He asked, more on reflex than as an actual question. 

“We are going to make you into something great, Mikhail,” Kazimir hummed, “given that the trials do not kill you first. They will be trying these trials. You are not the first to undergo them, and it is unlikely that you will be the last. But I have a good feeling about you.”

He stopped talking then, gesturing for the nurses to come forward. Mike barely kept himself from squirming when they started hovering around him, checking his temperature, and unbuttoning the buttons on his gown to poke and prod at his shoulders and arms. He couldn't help but tense up when one of them moved to draw his blood, a squeak leaving his mouth when he watched the needle slide into the vein. They pulled his mouth open and looked at his teeth.

They exchanged words with each other in Russian, blabbering between themselves as they poked at him like a lab rat. The scratch of pens on paper filled the room as they jotted down whatever they were jotting down. It was who knows how long of this before it seemed like they were done with him.His gown was rebuttoned, and they stopped touching him, seemingly satisfied with what they had found. They had paid special attention to the cut on his hairline and the bruise on his face, but it apparently wasn't enough to concern them. 

“Everything here seems to be an order, Mikhail.” Doctor Kazimir said, noting something down on his own clipboard, “Today will be preparation only. And if that takes, in the next few weeks we will begin the trial.” 

One of the nurses came forward with a metal tray that held syringes and small glass vials in his hands, and Kazimir was quick to snap on a pair of gloves. As he filled a syringe from one of the vials, a nurse undid the strap from around his head. Whatever was in the syringe was a sickly yellow color that Mike could see way too clearly before the nurse put a hand on either side of his face and tilted his head until his chin was resting on his chest. 

“This will likely sting a bit, Mikhail, but as long as you do not fight it, you should have no problem withstanding it.” 

He couldn't see the man's face when he was bent. But he could see the way that the man walked to stand beside him, everything except his shoulders and head visible. Eyes blown wide, he tried to turn his head, to tilt himself away from the man. 

“Shhh, none of that, Mikhail; this will only take a moment, and then you can go to sleep. Isn’t that nice?” The man shushed. 

“Wait, wait! Stop, I don't want this! Stop!” Mike yelled, begging, when he felt a cold point of pressure against the back of his neck. 

The hands holding his head were unrelenting. He couldn't do anything besides writhe futilely against the bonds holding him. The pressure on his neck increased into a sharp point of pain. 

“I said stop! Stop it!” He sobbed. It hurt. Something smooth and cold was pushed into his neck. Mike could feel it seeping between his vertebrae, slipping and sliding around in the spine. Abruptly, the cold went warm, and then it went hot. 

“Ow, ow,” He panted, throwing his head back when the needle slid free and the hands on his head left, “Ow, it hurts.”

The heat grew, spreading and growing. Scalp prickling, his shoulders drew up tenser and tenser. It felt like he was about to snap like a guitar string as he hunched in on himself. His skin felt too tight. The heat was turning into a deep throbbing ache. No less painful but a different type of pain. Doctor Kazimir was talking to the nurses, and Mike didn't think he'd be able to understand it even if it had been in English. 

The straps were being undone, and he was reaching up to claw at his neck before he could stop himself. He whimpered when his wrist was grabbed and his hands were tugged away. His back left the seat when he was lifted out of it and sat back into the wheelchair. He kept trying to scratch at the burning itch, but he was being restrained again.

“Ow, ow, ow.” He moaned under his breath, head rolling against the backrest. 

Everything sort of fizzled out after that. He was saying something, whining around lazy vowels as he was wheeled back towards the room with the beds. Sight fizzled out on him after a while too, a yellow haze spreading until all he could see was yellow. Whatever was in that syringe was spreading. 

“I can't see!” He cried, thrashing, “Please, I can’t-” He coughed, choking on his own spit. The only reply he got was the squeak of the wheels. Nothing was all right. He sobbed louder, which must've been pitiful enough to the nurse that was pushing him for them to run a soft hand over his shaved head. He couldn't help but lean into the touch. Everything dissolved again, yellow everywhere.

He barely noticed when he was rolled back into the room with the beds; the bright white of the lights and the sound of children talking in Russian are what told him he was back. The voices went quiet when the door was opened and he was rolled back in. He just kept crying. The straps came loose, and his hands were shooting up to claw at the pain once again, and just like before, someone stopped him. 

“Please, it hurts.” He begged. 

He was lifted out of the chair and moved to the bed. The sheet still felt wrinkled beneath him from when he lay in it last, and the pillow was just as flat as before, but he could barely even pay attention to that. He was pressed flat against them, chest held down as new straps from who knows where were tied around his wrists and ankles. 

These ones were softer. It was probably better that they were tying him down because he didn't know if he could stop himself from banging his head into the wall until he stopped feeling anything at all. He's squirmed against the pillow, shorn hair feeling weirdly nice against the fabric. He kept doing it, turning his head back and forth because it was better than the pain in his veins. Back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. 

There were voices, but he didn't care to focus on anything other than the feeling of his head on the pillow. A very long while later, it started to calm down. The yellow moved until it was only some fuzzy sparks on the edge of his vision, the tiled wall coming into clearer view. They were shiny, the white reflecting off of more white. When the pain faded into an echo, throbbing but dull, his entire body went limp against the bed. He hadn't even known how tense he was until he was slack and trembling. 

He was panting; short puffs passed his dry lips. God, he was so thirsty. He was so fucking thirsty.

Chapter Text

The voices filtered in gradually, incomprehensible and foreign.

He smacked his lips; they stuck together with dried saliva and bile. It took effort that he didn’t think he had to turn his head towards the voices, and even then it was more like letting his head roll to the side.

The older boy from before was talking to another kid on one of the beds next to him, hand waving as he spoke rapid-fire Russian. Mike blinked hazily at… what was his name? Nick? Nik? Al- something? His head was too muddled to parse through whatever he was trying to think about. The boy looked the same as he had earlier: bruises, skinny limbs, and short buzzed hair. The metal loop was still in place around his wrist. 

Mike looked down to his wrist, taking in the heavy metal shackle that was resting above the white fabric cuffs that were keeping him pinned. It was warm around his wrist. 

“Are you better?” Came the heavily accented question.

Mike blinked slowly as he turned his head back towards the other boy. He was staring at Mike with pity in his eyes. Understanding. He had been there for fifteen days; he had said so. Mike had only been there for… fuck, he didn't know how long he’d been there, but it couldn't have been more than a few days. 

Alik must've been through the same thing as he had been. More, given the bandages in the crook of both of his elbows. Mike only had one bandaid in the crook of one of his arms. There wasn’t one on the back of his neck; he kind of wished that the doctor had put one on, though; it would’ve made him feel better.

“I wouldn’t say ‘better.’” Mike mumbled just loud enough to be heard.

He got a tired smile in return. How could someone still smile in a place like this? Mike wasn't sure his face would even do it if he tried right now. He tried just to try, but all he got was a weak twitch of his lips, cheeks tensing the tiniest bit. The older boy's smile got sadder somehow.

Mike just felt empty. When was the last time he had been awake while he wasn't in pain? When was the last time he had eaten? 

“I’m hungry.” He said plaintively. 

Alik made a questioning sound. 

“Food,” Mike reiterated, “to eat.”

“Ah, food, yes. Later. Man bring food later.” The older boy tapped his wrist to mime a watch.

Mike turned and settled more firmly against the pillow, letting his eyes fall closed against the lingering yellow haze, and fell into a half-doze. Nothing felt real while he drifted in the half sleep. He heard things that weren't there and felt phantom touches against his cheeks. There was something that he couldn't quite grasp. A dream or a nightmare that was slipping through his fingers. 

Eventually he woke from his doze to a guard wheeling in a cart laden with plastic trays. The guard went to the other kids first, setting a tray on each of their beds. They all nodded at the man, even an angry-looking kid across the room. He guessed that you couldn't exactly be mad at the one who was bringing you food. The guard came to his bed last; Mike blinked up at the man with sleepy eyes.

Almost absentmindedly, Mike noticed that this was the man who would cut his hair the first day. He stared up at the man as he detached the Velcro that held the white cuffs in place. 

“Nice guard.” He said, his now free hand moving up to ruffle the fuzz on his head. 

The man helped him sit up with a hand behind his back. Mike struggled to stay sitting, his head rocking forward until the man moved Mike, like he weighed nothing, to lean him up against the wall. The way his neck was tilting forward made it sting, the injection site throbbing. The man straightened out his legs for him so that his feet hung off of the side of the bed, warm hands moving his legs so that they weren't bent awkwardly. 

Mike felt a bit like a doll: poseable and pliant. The hospital gown pooled on his lap, the excess fabric bouncing up at his waist. 

The guard set the tray on his lap. Plain beige plastic tray, plain beige bowl, plain soft rounded silverware. Clearly someone out there didn't want Mike to stab himself in the throat with a fork.

“You have to eat something. Get your strength up.”

Mike couldn’t bring himself to move his hands from where they lay on his lap between his stomach and the tray. 

“You are skinny; you need to eat.”

“I don't know what you're saying.” Mike muttered in reply to the Russian. 

A large hand moved to clasp at his wrist, moving his hand to rest on the rubbery spoon. Mike's stomach grumbled. He let his fingers curl shakily around the silverware. The guard made a pleased sound when he tried to dip the spoon into his bowl and chuckled a bit when he almost dropped it. 

Mike sneered at the man, the look his friends called his ‘bitchface’ on full display. The man only snorted. Mike took a bite of the soup, making another face at the taste. It was sour with a weirdly sweet aftertaste. But it was food, so Mike kept eating, taking a break once in a while to chew on some of the bread that had come with it and sip from his plastic cup of water. The water was soothing against his lips, washing away the bad taste in his mouth. 

The guard made sure that he was eating before he wandered away to talk with the other kids. By the time that he was scraping the bottom of the bowl, Mike was feeling relatively good. The soup was warm enough that it was chasing away the chill that he had been feeling just a little bit. Not enough to get rid of the goosebumps on his skin, but enough to warm him pleasantly. 

He drank the last of his water and was suddenly aware of the uncomfortable pressure in his bladder. 

“Hey,” he croaked out, catching the guard's attention, “bathroom, I have to use the bathroom.” 

The guard made a confused face, not understanding what Mike was trying to tell him. 

“I need to piss goddamnit!” Mike yelled, so fucking done with everything.

He had always been like this, going from zero to a hundred in minutes. The boy on the other bed snorted, clearly having recognized at least one of the words. He turned towards the guard, saying something in Russian that had the man moving to unlock the cuff from around Mike’s wrist and taking the empty tray from his lap.

Mike stood on shaky legs, clutching the edge of the bed for support. The man led him towards the door, pushing it open and leading him right across the hall to another door. Toilets lined the walls, with no stalls for privacy and nothing else in the room. The guard didn't leave to give Mike some privacy, but he was carefully looking off to the side so that he wasn’t looking at Mike, so that was better than nothing, he guessed. He hiked up the front of his hospital gown so that he could use the toilet.

It was weird. He had to hold a bunch of fabric in one hand and do his business with the other. And he didn't have any fucking underwear on! Why the fuck hadn’t they given him underwear? He was suddenly glad for the extra fabric of his gown. The fabric fell when he was done, lying flat below his knees and hanging loose around him. There was a mirror over the sink. It was almost like he was in a trance as he drifted towards the reflective surface. The first thought he had when he looked in the mirror was that he looked like shit; the second was more of a mind-melting swirl of terror and grief than anything actually coherent.

He looked small without his hair, a purple bruise spreading down from his temple to the corner of his eye. In the place where Billy had hit him against the wall, his skin was split, with almost a one-inch-long gash leading down towards his eyebrow, the other end peeking into his hairline. He had bags under his eyes and a grey tint to the skin on his face. He looked sickly. There were tears dripping out of his dark eyes again. Bare knees hit the tiles with a crack. He wasn't supposed to be there; he was supposed to be in Hawkins, supposed to be at home. 

The guard was helping him to his feet through his tears, hands soft as they nudged him upwards and towards the door. He was led back to his bed, the guard redoing the shackle even when Mike tried to pull away. 

He curled up on his side, tugging the thin blanket over himself and huddling into a ball. Shoulders shaking, he pressed his eyes closed tight, his tears dripping down to stain the pillow. He was tired. If he fell asleep right now, would he wake up back in his bed in Hawkins? Was this entire thing just some fucked-up dream that his equally fucked-up mind had come up with? 

God, he wished it was, hoped against hope that his posters and action figures were waiting for him when he opened his eyes. All he got was white tile and muttered Russian.

-

One of the other kids died that night, one of the girls. 

Mike hadn’t even realized what had happened until the guards had opened the door, startling him out of sleep. He watched with bleary eyes as a gurney was wheeled in and a small body was lifted from her bed. Stiff limb and grey. She wasn't moving. The kid on the bed nearest to her was crying, blubbering something in Russian. 

Mike stared with wide eyes as the girl was zipped into a body bag, the sound of the zipper too loud in the room. She disappeared, ceasing to be anything else besides a lump in a bag. He hadn't even known her name and had barely even looked at her. What had her name been? She looked younger, younger than him maybe. Black buzzed hair, small face, smaller hands. 

Mike had seen dead bodies before. Much more gruesome ones than this. When he had been taken to the lab with Will, he had watched as Demodogs had torn through men's chests, seen arms ripped off, and faced mauled faces. The lab's glass doors hadn't blocked out anything when Bob had been killed. He had watched as Bob had hit the floor, claws digging into his chest. Mrs. Byers had screamed in a way that Mike had never heard from her before; he’d never heard her sound so broken. Full of rage and grief.

He’d seen so many terrible things before he had even turned fourteen. But he had never seen a body so young. Maybe once, Mike would've thought about the fake body that had been pulled out of the quarry. It had been fake, but Mike hadn't known that at first. The girl should've reminded him of how the body had flopped when it had been laid in the lifeboat, but all he could think about was how he was so glad that it was him here and not Will. Will had been through so much already—too much. Mike wouldn't have been able to breathe or to bear it if he thought Will was there instead of him. 

He could imagine it; the image wasn't that different from the time Will had been swaddled in his hospital gown at the lab, except that his brown hair was buzzed and there were needle marks on his skin. 

He tracked the gurney with blank eyes as it was rolled out of the room, taking the nameless girl with it. The boy was still crying, face blotchy and eyes wet. Mike felt sorry for him. The boy must've known her, probably knew her name and how old she was, where she was from, and what she had wanted to be when she grew up. Mike turned his face into his pillow so that he didn't have to see the boy's heartbroken expression anymore. 

His breath warmed the fabric under his face, making it heated and damp. Breathe, just breathe. He covered his ears. He… he just couldn’t. The door slammed closed, and the boy just cried harder. Alik was saying something in his thick Russian. It sounded soothing and repetitive. Mike hadn't noticed before, but the boy had a very deep voice. His own voice hadn't dropped yet even though all the other boys in the party had had theirs start to drop. Even Will, who had had a high-pitched voice for his whole life, was slowly starting to talk in deeper tones. Mike didn't feel like he was following them in that respect, but he was the youngest by a few months, so it made sense. 

He uncovered an ear just so that he could hear the other boy more clearly, letting his voice drift past him as sleep came back for him.

-

He woke up when food was delivered. It was by a different guard this time, one that didn't feel the need to be gentle with him. The man basically threw the tray down next to him, plastic clattering against plastic. 

It wasn't that weird red soup from the day before, which she was glad for. It was strangely thin pancakes, oatmeal, and a little bowl of what looked like clumpy yogurt. He sniffed it, wrinkling his nose. Cottage cheese. His mom loved the stuff, but Mike could never stand it. There was also some kind of jelly. He stuck his finger in it for a taste and almost smiled at the sweetness. Maybe if he put it in the cottage cheese, he would be able to eat it without gagging. 

He took a sip from his plastic cup, sighing as it wet his tongue. He sat cross-legged as he shoveled food into his mouth, eyes scanning over everyone else in the room. The crying boy from last night was still asleep, tears dried on his face as he clutched his pillow to his chest. Even with what had to be at least fifteen feet of space between them, he could still see how wrecked the boy looked. 

“Why’d she die?” Mike asked, catching Alik’s attention.

The older boy looked tired. “What?” he asked.

Mike just pointed to the empty bed. “Why?” 

“Needles,” Alik replied, tapping at the bandage on his arm, “Poison in needle hurts.” 

That tracked. Mike made a face as he spooned some of the cottage cheese into his mouth. Ugh, even with the strawberry jelly mixed into it, it was still gross. 

“So, I’m going to die?” Mike said, mostly to himself. Alik’s smile was more of a grimace. So he understood that at least. “Why do you know English?” Mike asked, changing the subject to something less gruesome.

“Little bit English.” Alik replied, pressing his thumb and forefinger close together, “Mama knows; taught me.”

That made sense. He took another bite. “The yellow stuff,” Mike said, tapping the back of his neck with a flinch; it still ached. “What is it?” 

“Poison,” the older boy spat in the harshest tone that Mike had heard from him yet. “Kazimir calls it preparation.” He stumbled over the longer word. 

“Preparation for what?” Mike asked. 

“Don’t know. Weapons, he says.”

Mike knew what that meant, but he wanted to know what everyone else knew. "Weapon" seemed like an apt description. El was a weapon, honed for years by Brenner, not that he would ever say that to her face. He had some tact. But that's what she had been made to be. 

Mike didn't think some random Russian doctor was going to be able to do what the lab had done, especially because El had been born with her powers. There was no way that some Russian was going to be able to do it when Mike was already fourteen. Which meant that unless Mike managed to escape, then he was going to die. Just like the girl from last night. 

Mike had weird thoughts about death. He'd seen so much of it, seen what happened to the people that it left behind. But… everyone already thought that he was dead, so… No, he couldn't think like that. He shook his head to brush away the spider webbing of bad thoughts. No, he could get back to them. He could see Will again, and El, and his friends, Nancy and Holly. He could get out of this awful place and get home to them.

He let the conversation taper off after that, content to pick up the rest of his food. He wasn't going to waste any of it, so he choked down the rest of the cottage cheese even if it made him want to hurl. He didn't know what time it was, so he wasn't sure if the meals were going to be a once-a-day thing or if it was more than once a day. So he made sure to figuratively lick his plate clean. The trays were cleaned away, and all Mike could do was sit on his bed, fiddling with his hands. 

His nails were getting long, so he stuck his thumb in his mouth to gnaw at the nail. What else was he supposed to do? There was a chain around his wrist, and the only other person in the room that spoke English barely understood him. He wasn't used to this; he was used to noise and clutter. There hadn't really been a day in years where he hadn’t seen at least one member of the Party. Lucas only lived two blocks away, so it was easy for either of them to slip over to each other's houses whenever they wanted. Dustin didn't know what personal space was, so Mike saw him regularly. He went over to Will's house as much as humanly possible for years, and in recent months, he'd been spending time around El and Max as well. 

The quiet was scaring him. When it was broken by the nurses and guards, Mike almost missed it; he did miss it by the end of the day.

He scooted backwards on his bed, ready to fight against the nurses and the taser, but they weren't coming for him. They went for the last girl, loading her into the wheelchair and pushing her out of the room. She was back an hour later, crying and writhing in the chair, with new bruises on her skin. They strapped her to her bed, and then they were moving onto the next. Next, the crying boy, one who fought and screamed and took the taser to the neck. 

Another hour passed, and he came back crying and screaming. They strapped him into his bed and moved onto the next. They went counterclockwise around the room, getting closer and closer as the hours passed. The next was the unnamed blond boy that had the bed next to the crying boy’s. They took him, and he came back in the same shape as the others, and then they were loading Alik onto the chair. 

He went calmly, with no fight in him. The guards let him stand up and sit in the chair on his own, the guard not even bothering to reach for his taser. It was like they knew that Alik wasn't going to do anything. He’d done something to earn that privilege. Good behavior, maybe. But just like the others, he came back crying and heaving. Sweat broke out all over his body when he watched them strap Alik to his bed and roll the empty wheelchair towards his. 

“No-” he said, pressing himself up against the wall. He didn't know why he was doing it; he knew it wouldn't work. 

But all he could hear were cries of pain. Over the last five hours he had watched all the other kids come back in the same pain that he had felt yesterday. He didn't want to feel it again. But the guard brought out the taser, and Mike froze. He didn't want that pain either. He was still long enough that they could lift him into the wheelchair without an issue. 

None of them said anything, not the nurses, not the guards, not the unconscious and crying kids on the beds. They took him to the lab again; Doctor Kazimir was waiting there, his eyes just as empty as they had been before. They drew his blood again, more of it this time, and then they stuck him in a big metal tube for almost half an hour. It was loud in there, booms that matched with the rise and fall of his chest. 

Kazimir said something about pictures, but Mike didn't know how a tube was going to take pictures. But then they put him back in the chair, and the metal tray with the syringes was brought back out. He struggled then, but once again it was no use. Hands held his head, and a needle was shoved into his spine. His blood went molten and painful. Everything went yellow again. Thud thump thud thump thud thump. The whole world narrowed in on the sound of the heartbeat pounding in his chest. No thoughts, no feelings, just that persistent pain and the sound of his heart. 

He was back in his bed by the time that the smallest bit of coherency came back to him. He was shaking again, bandages stuck in the crook of his arms, drool drying on his face. Thoughts were fleeting when he was like this. Someone was crying really close to him, hiccupping wails that sounded painful. Oh, he was crying; it was him. 

The voice from before was back, but it was shaky and timid. Still deep, still as incomprehensible as before, but pained. He zeroed in on the sound the best he could, trying to draw himself out of the painful haze that he had fallen into. 

It didn't work. 

The next few days passed the same way. Wake up, eat, go to the lab, pain, eat, sleep, wake up, eat, lab, pain, eat, sleep, wakeupeatlabpaineatsleep. Over and over and over. It was driving him crazy. He couldn't even think half of the time. One of the other boys had died two days after the girl; his heart had given out when he had been brought back from the lab. It was just him, two other boys, and the girl now. From six to four, what a mindfuck. 

And there were more beds in the room than people to fill them, so Mike could assume that the boy and the girl hadn't been the first ones to die. 

His head was spiraling into a not great place; the idea of slamming his head into the wall as hard as he could was growing after each session with the doctor. No one would mourn him; they already thought he was dead. Killing himself wouldn't change anything; he already had a tombstone in the Hawkins Cemetery somewhere. 

He remembered watching Will's funeral, watching as an empty casket was lowered into the ground. There was no fake body stuffed with cotton for Mike, just a mangled corpse that his parents wouldn't look at closely enough to see that it wasn't their son. So what would it matter if he offed himself? He'd be free of this place, and he would be taking away a hypothetical weapon from the Russians. 

It would probably be hard; he didn't know if he could bring himself to slam his head into the tiled wall over and over again, but he didn't really have any other options. The silverware he was given was basically rubber, and he hadn't even been given underwear, so it's not like he had a lot of options. Well… he eyed the chain connected to his wrist. It was just barely long enough, but he could twist it around his neck in just the right way and hang his lower body off of the side of the bed. It would probably work; it would still be difficult but harder to get out of if he chickened out. He wasn't sure if that last part was a pro or a con. 

He really wanted to go home; he really, really wanted to go home. He missed Hawkins and missed the people. He wanted his blue-painted walls, his science club trophies, and his slept-in Sears sheets. Alik tried to help; Mike could see that. The older boy always tried to smile, to use his very small bits of English to talk to him, but he was just going through the same thing as Mike and had been doing it for longer. The older boy always looked haggard. Mike knew that he couldn't keep it up, his eyes dimming by the day. 

Mike knew his were doing the same; he could see it in the mirror every time that he saw his reflection in the bathroom mirror. 

The older boy could answer Mike's basic questions, but they couldn't hold an actual conversation. It pissed him off, but even that emotion was dulled under the blanket of apathy that was covering him. Death was looking better by the day, except he didn't get a chance to try and off himself. There was a break in the scheduled torture. It looked like the preparation was done. Mike wasn't sure if he was glad to have survived it or not.

-

The suit was too big.

That was the first thing that Will thought when he looked in the mirror. Not by much, just a little loose around the shoulders and the sleeves were a little long. The second thing he thought was that he was about to go to his best friend's funeral. 

His mom was standing behind him, tie in hand and tears in her waterline. She wasn’t crying, not fully, but it was close enough to tears that Will felt his eyes welling up in sympathy. She wrapped the tie around his neck, threading it over and under itself. 

“There you go, sweetie, that looks good.” She said, her voice soft and shaky, “Are you ready to go?” 

“You know I’m not,” he replied. “I don’t want to do this.” 

“None of us want to do this.” She muttered, voice breaking.

But that was the thing, wasn't it? They had to do it anyway. There was no world where he wouldn't show up to Mike Wheeler's funeral. He could rage and scream and cry, but he couldn’t not go to his best friend's funeral. 

So they went; he loaded himself into the car behind Jonathan in the passenger seat, with El sitting next to him and his mom behind the wheel as they drove to the funeral home. It wasn't a big service; Mike didn't really have any friends outside of the Party, and all the extended family that was there made up only a few of the guests. The entire party was there, dressed in suits and dresses, swathed in black, mourning colors. They’ve all been crying, with bags under their reddened eyes. 

Max is off to the side, hands clutched together in front of herself, with an empty look in her eyes. She's drowning, drowning in the guilt from Billy and the guilt from Mike.And something terribly mean in Will wants to scream at her, wants to dig his fingers in and tear, because how dare she have left Mike alone, bleeding on the floor. But he could tell just by looking at her that she was tearing herself apart enough for the both of them. 

She and El had clung to each other in the last couple days, El loud and grieving while Max stayed silent. Lucas… wasn’t doing well. Will thinks that if it had been anyone but Mike who had died, then Lucas would've had a better time coping. Lucas and Mike were- no, had been better friends than all of them. They bickered and fought, but they had been best friends in a different way than Will and Mike had been best friends. They had been friends since they were toddlers. Going on playdates while their moms gossiped about whatever had caught their fancy. He sat in a pew between his parents, head down. 

Erica was there too, silent for once, not saying anything. Dustin was there with his mom, Mrs. Henderson, sitting further back from the front of the room, hair done up in that ridiculous style that he had worn to the Snowball last December. His cheeks were wet. He was wearing the same blue suit he had worn before, cuffs tucked snugly against his wrists. 

Nancy was there, sitting in the front row next to her mother, Holly, on the seat next to her. Something ached in his chest when he saw Holly. Mike loved Holly, loved her more than he’d loved his parents or Nancy. She loved when he read her stories and loved the voices that he did for each character. When she had first been born, Mike had been enamored by her. By her pink cheeks and tiny hands. Mike had loved her since the day she had been born. He wouldn't get to see her grow up. 

Ted Wheeler hadn't even bothered to show up. 

Will was going to key his fucking car.

And then there was the casket. It sat at the front of the room, shiny and black, surrounded by flowers. It was open; he hadn't expected it to be open. They told him that the body had been crushed. He drifted towards the front of the room without thinking. 

Will couldn't bring himself to call the body in the box, Mike. It was wearing a suit, black and white, the creases pressed straight. There was a silky smooth cloth draped over his face, covering his hair, covering his freckled skin, his nose, his mouth, and his eyes. Covering Mike like he wasn't even a person, like a piece of furniture in an abandoned house. The fabric draped over his face, shaping to the contours of his face. It looked wrong; something about this was so, so wrong. 

He tore his eyes away from where Mike's face should be, only slightly aware of how his mom was standing at his shoulder, a hand gripping it in silent support. Mike's hands were folded over his chest, fingers interlaced. He was cold when Will reached out to lay a hand across Mike’s own. In comparison to the cold, clammy skin, Will's hands felt scalding. 

Absent-mindedly, Will stroked his thumb over Mike's knuckle, where he knew a smattering of freckles was painted across the pale skin, except… except there were no freckles, not a single one. Not even a mole that could've been mistaken for a freckle at a distance. His heart stopped. Why weren’t there any freckles on Mike's hands? He looked closer. The hands- those weren't Mike's hands. The nails were too rounded, too square. The cuticles were neatly trimmed where Mike had the habit of chewing on his fingers at any given opportunity.

That wasn't Mike.

“Mom,” Will began urgently, “Mom, there are no freckles on his hands.” 

“What?” She asked, confused. 

“Mom, there are no freckles on its hands. Mike’s hands are covered in freckles, you know they are. Look at them.”

She looked, brown eyes widening as she leaned closer. He watched the realization bloom across her face, feeling shellshocked by his own discovery.

“There are no freckles.” She breathed. 

“It’s not Mike, Mom. It's not Mike.”

Chapter Text

They took him to a different lab this time. 

He swiveled his head back and forth to take it all in. It was bigger than the other one, with one of its walls made of glass, separating a little viewing room from the rest of the lab. The glass looked thick. Mike wondered what it was supposed to be keeping out.

And there wasn't a chair in here like there was in the other lab. It had been replaced by a long metal table with a hole cut out on one side and metal cuffs built into the tabletop. Mike really didn't like the look of it. He liked the big hulking machine that hung from the ceiling above the table even less. It was covered in wires and tubes, with a huge mechanical arm descending from the middle of it, hovering only a few feet above the table.

“Congratulations, Mikhail!” Doctor Kazimir exclaimed as he was rolled deeper into the room, "You have survived against all odds, and the preparation is complete!" The man sounded giddy, his bald head and gray-white goatee glinting in the bright fluorescents. “Which means that we can move onto the next stage of Project Blackrock.” 

Dread crawled up his spine. If the preparation had hurt as much as it had and it was just to get him ready for the real thing, then how much was this going to hurt? 

Mike had only tried running once more after the first time and had only gotten another session with the taser for his troubles, but he was really considering trying again. He pressed himself further into the chair, like bracing himself would do anything when the nurses pulled him from it. He could run, or he could try and fight. There were trays filled with tools scattered around the room, tongs and scalpels and other shiny things that he didn't know the names of. 

If he could just grab one of the scalpels, he could go for the guards or for the doctor. Scalpels were sharp; it would be so fucking easy to stick one in one of their throats. 

The straps around his arms and legs came loose, and he was lunging for a scalpel before he knew it. He ducked under the arms of one of the guards, feet slapping against the floor. The guard shouted, or maybe it was one of the nurses, but Mike didn't care. His skinny fingers wrapped around the cold metal handle of a scalpel, and he was whirling around, brandishing it at the other people in the room. One of the guards had drawn a handgun and was pointing towards him, but the doctor shouted something at him in Russian, and the man was hesitantly stowing it away. 

So, the doctor didn't want him shot; he probably put too much effort into him to have him do something stupid like bleed out. 

“Stay away!” Mike yelled when one of the nurses tried to reach for him, “I’ll fucking stab you!” 

The nurse backed away, palms raised.

“None of that, Mikhail. What do you think this little tantrum is going to accomplish?” Doctor Kazimir asked, tone cajoling, “The guards are right here; even if you managed to stab one of them, the other would be right there to stop you. And even if you managed to kill both of them with that flimsy little blade, there are more guards outside.”

“Then—then—,” Mike floundered, mouth working over stumbling words, “I'll fucking kill myself!” He declared, shoving the sharp end of the scalpel into the fleshy bit of his throat. 

That drew Kazimir up short. The nurse tried to step closer again, ignoring the barked order from the doctor, but Mike just shoved the blade harder into his neck, hissing through his teeth when the edge cut through his skin. But he didn't move it away. 

“If you move that thing even an inch more, I will choose one of the other children and have them shot in front of you.” Doctor Kazimir spat out, sounding angry in a way that Mike hadn’t heard from the man before. He was glaring at Mike with hateful eyes, hands clenched at his sides. 

Mike didn't doubt that the man was telling the truth. Mike... he didn't want any of the other kids to die, not Alik, not the crying boy, not the girl that he didn’t know. So, he lowered the scalpel, let it clatter to the floor, even as blood streamed down his neck in a thin trail. The guards wasted no time wrestling him to his knees, not caring about how he shouted in pain when they wrenched his arms behind his back. 

They manhandled him over to the table, shoving him face down onto it and strapping the metal cuffs around his wrists and ankles. His face was pressed against the hole that had been cut into the table, giving him a decent view of the floor. He was shaking, the cold of the table seeping in through the thin hospital gown. 

“Usually, the preparation for this procedure takes much more time, but for you, it was only a matter of days! Isn't that extraordinary?” Doctor Kazimir said, his voice back to being chipper over the sound of snapping gloves. “For subjects who have not had contact with the Hellmouth, we give them smaller doses over longer periods of time, but your body adjusted extremely well to the injections.” 

There were bustling sounds as people circled the table, buttons being pressed, and things rattling. He couldn't see what they were doing, and that scared him. He stayed quiet, nearly vibrating out of his skin. He should've just stabbed himself. The buttons along his shoulders and upper arms were undone, so were the ties that held the back of his gown together, and the fabric was pulled aside, leaving his backside bare to the room. 

He shivered at the cold air, glad that they were at least allowed a new pair of socks every day or so. Showers were random, but they came with hot water and a new gown and socks. They weren't long showers, just a few minutes under the water with the guard standing in the corners while he washed himself. Mike had gotten over his embarrassment of being naked in front of other people surprisingly quickly. He remembered how he had been so shocked the first time El had tried to strip in front of him, Dustin, and Lucas, but he understood it now. She hadn't been given privacy in the lab, so she hadn't known what it was. There was no privacy in the lab. Everyone here had seen his ass at least once.

He hadn’t been trying to learn the faces of his nurses, but it wasn't like he could just make himself forget their faces. A woman and two men, all blank-faced, but he had caught glimpses of sympathy crossing their faces. They could stuff their sympathy up their asses for all he cared. If they really felt sorry for him, then they would get him the hell out of this place. 

Something soft and wet was smoothed over the notches of his spine, all the way down to his tailbone. It smelled like antiseptic, sharp against his nose. He shuddered as what he was guessing was a wet cotton pad was run up and down his spine. Given Doctor Kazimir's penchant for stabbing him in the neck with a needle, Mike was going to make the educated guess that his spine was about to become a pincushion. 

The machine whirled to life above him; mechanical sounds of movement being heard as it shuddered into movement. It was almost as loud as the picture machine had been. 

“This is going to be quite painful. Mikhail, I will not lie to you. It is going to be excruciating. You will feel pain like you have never felt pain before, and it could very well kill you.”

The machine was getting louder, air was rushing past his back, and something was getting closer to his bare skin. 

“But I believe in you, Mikhail. I believe that you will survive this, you will live, and you will be valuable to us. Russia needs a weapon; you will be that weapon.” 

One by one, rubber circles were pressed between the notches of his spine, from the base of his neck to his tailbone. 

“So, you will survive this, Mikhail; Russia demands it.”

With a hiss of air, the needles descended. They scraped against bone as they broke through his skin, and he screamed. He screamed because there wasn't anything else he could do when liquid pain was being pushed into his body. He stared unseeing at the floor, eyes blown and drool slipping from his open mouth. He was frozen, every muscle locked in place, trapped. This was where he was going to die, wasn't it? 

Whatever had been in those needles was still pumping steadily into him, squishing past his vertebrae, sinking into muscle and flesh. Something was inside of him, wrapping itself around everything that made him, teasing its way around tendons and veins. 

Static was filling his head, louder and louder until it covered the sound of his screams. It was worse than the screams, drilling into his head like it was trying to tear him open. There were voices. He… he couldn’t hear what they were saying, he couldn't hear. A whine started in his ears, melting with the static, growing higher and higher until Mike felt like his chest was about to burst. Higher and higher and higher. 

The others in the room watched as Subject Nineteen underwent the last major procedure that was needed for Project: Blackrock. No others had survived up to this point until now. Their hearts had all given out under the stress. 

The boy screamed as the injections began, loud and long, more of a wail than a scream. Some of them flinched away at the sound, all too aware of the child on the table. The boy wasn't even breathing; his lungs were only focused on exhaling a scream. The lights flickered, and Doctor Kazimir leaned forward, staring at the boy with hawklike eyes. 

Mike barely felt it when the needles withdrew from his spine, too focused on the sound and the pain. His back arched when the machine wasn't there to keep him anymore, throwing himself against the shackles, trying to get himself away from the all-consuming agony.

The lights were flickering, which only made things worse. Lights flickering had never been a good thing. Something warm and wet dripped down his cheeks, blood bubbling up from around his eyes and out of his nose. The vibrant red splattered against the white tiles on the floor, standing out strikingly.

Mike's voice gave out, but he still couldn't draw any air into his lungs. The edges of his vision were greying out, growing dark as his lungs burned for the air that he could not give them from around his silent screen. Darker, darker, dark. He went slack against the table. 

One of the nurses hurried over to the still boy on the table, taking a pale, skinny wrist into his hand and feeling for it for-

“He still has a heartbeat.”

Kazimir smiled.

-

Drip drip drip drip drip drip

It was dark, so, so dark. The type of darkness that sunk in behind your eyes, seeping into your pores, sliding around under your skin. 

He was lying in something wet; half his face pressed into an inch of water. He blinked hazily into the darkness, one eye underwater. He pushed himself up on shaky arms, his elbows almost folding underneath him, but he got himself sitting, knees to the side. 

The hospital gown clung to his skin where it was wet, water dripping back into the black silently. He watched as pinkish water dripped from his face to stain the front of the gown, the color mixing with the teal fabric. 

Everything felt muddled as he turned his head, narrowing his eyes to try and cut through the black. There was something in his chest, burbling at him, groaning as the seconds passed. When his vision cleared a bit, he felt like he could see further into the darkness. He was sitting in an endless puddle, ripples spreading away from him every time he shifted. It was… empty, a nothingness. It looked… This was what El described the place she went to when she looked for someone. 

How the fuck was he here? And she managed to draw him in somehow? Or—had the doctor actually managed to do the impossible? 

“Hello?” He called out, voice echoing back at him, “Can anyone hear me? Is anyone here?” 

The darkness was ringing. He could've sworn that there was a voice in the distance. He strained his ears, trying to catch a coherent word, but the sounds kept slipping through his fingers like smoke. 

“Anybody! Help, someone fucking help me!” He stumbled to his feet, trying to head towards where he thought the voice was coming from. His socked feet splashed through the water, droplets splattering against his calves and knees. He sped up, sprawling onto his front once before he scrambled back to his feet, soaked. But no matter how fast he ran, the voice didn't get any closer. 

With his breath whistling through his throat and his chest heaving, the voice still wasn't getting closer. He sobbed through his heaving breath, a yelp escaping him when he fell again. He didn't stand up. 

“Please.” He cried through the tears that were choking him, “Anyone, please, I need help! El, can you hear me?”

If anyone out there could hear him, it would be El. She had powers; she was a superhero. She could save him. He wanted her there to save him. What he wouldn't do to watch her blow the lab's door off of its hinges, snap the cuffs off of his wrists, and lead him out of this horrible fucking place. But at the same time, he hated the idea of her being anywhere near this place. He couldn't imagine letting the doctor get his grimy hands on her. He'd kill the man himself before he let that happen. The image of her, sitting on the bed across from him in the room, a chain connecting her to the wall, hair buzzed short again, and teal hospital gown donned, sounded like a nightmare. 

So, he buried his face in his hands and didn't call for her again. He couldn't drag her into this. The thing inside of him was growing. He could feel it pushing against his bones. It was like nothing he'd ever felt before—a whirlwind in his lungs and an ache in his hands. It just kept growing and growing and growing. His sobs turned into wails as he writhed in the water, clawing at his skin in the hope that he could claw the thing out of him. 

He clutched his shaved head in both hands, squeezing tighter and tighter, as if he could choke the thing out of him. All it did was make his nails cut into his scalp, drawing blood. He curled up into a ball, clutching and clawing, and then he was on the floor, on an actual floor, not in the black water. 

His head was pounding, blood streaming from his eyes, and he screamed long and loud, and the ceiling lights exploded. Glass rained down from above him as the room went dark, sparks spitting violently from the broken lights. 

His eyes rolled into the back of his head, and a different sort of darkness rose up to catch him.

-

When he woke up, he was in a room he'd never seen before. It was small, with the same white walls and white floors, but the only thing in it was a door and a single slowly blinking ceiling light. 

He pushed himself up, and glass tinkled against the floor as it slid off of him. One of his hands pressed against the ground before he pulled it to his chest with a hiss. Blood welled up from a cut on his palm; he pressed a thumb to it to try and stop the bleeding. There were cuts on his legs too, a few with little glass shards sticking out of them, surrounded by a crust of dried blood. It had dried in streams down his legs. 

He hissed again when he sat up fully, brushing glass away from the floor where he sat. The tips of his fingers got bloody when he picked the glass out of his legs, but there were only a few pieces, so it didn't hurt that much. Or at all, really, in comparison to the injections they had been giving him. Running his fingers over his head to make sure that there wasn't any glass in his stubbly hair, he took a few stuttering breaths. 

There was something inside of him, like a lump in his throat that he couldn't quite swallow. His throat hurt. It burned in a way that was deeply uncomfortable. The room was dim, barely lit from the blinking light on the ceiling. Had he done that? He thought as he took in the broken lights and glass. He remembered the machine and the pain, and then the empty place. He shouldn't have been there; there was no reason for him to be there. Nobody but El had been able to even see into that place until the Mind flayer. His being there shouldn't have been possible.

He let his head thud back against the wall. Nobody else should’ve been able to get in there. Unless… Doctor Kazimir had actually been able to do what he said he was going to do. If he had, then Mike was about to throw a fit of epic proportions. Which might not end well because now there was the distinct possibility that he could fucking destroy the room with his mind!? 

He let out a hysterical laugh and found that he couldn't stop. He just sat there laughing, his hands tangled in the hem of his gown. Breathy giggles escaping his chapped lips, he couldn't stop them if he tried. Even with his head fuzzy and aching, he couldn't bring himself to stop laughing as his head lolled back against the wall. None of this was fucking funny, but at the same time, it was the funniest shit in the world. Straight up hilarious. And it would probably make a killer campaign if he ever managed to get back to Hawkins. A boy is abducted by a cult to be given powers and turned into a weapon; the boy's friends form an adventure party to rescue their friend. He'd have to modify it to be more fantasy than the sci-fi genre that he had found himself in, but he could definitely make it work. 

He snorted. Here he was, in fucking Soviet Russia, being experimented on by fucking scientists, and all he could think about was D&D. He sobbed; it really would make a good campaign. 

He didn't know how long he sat there for, but eventually the door was pushed open, guns aimed in his direction. He tensed, not having expected that. The guards only ever used the taser or nothing at all, aside from the one that had pulled a gun on him when he had threatened to slit his own throat. 

He raised his hands slowly, fingers trembling as he stared down the barrel of a rifle. One of the men barked an order at him in Russian, which Mike was going to assume meant that he should stand up. He did so, keeping his arms raised as he got shakily to his feet. He followed the man's gestures to walk out of the room, gingerly picking his way past the shards of glass on the floor. 

When he reached the door, the wheelchair was waiting for him. Well, a more souped-up version of it. They were big metal sleeves on the armrest, big and round with a cover where his hands would rest. He sat down and slipped his hands into the sleeves. There was no surprise when the metal was clasped to tighten around his forearms, rendering his hands useless. Like this, he couldn't even move his fingers. 

“Feelin’ really special here, guys.” He muttered, giggling a little. 

There was a strap that went around his throat this time too, and one around his waist. Wow, they really didn't want him to move. What, were they worried he was going to kill them with his mind? Oh wait! He laughed louder at that. The guard on his right shot him a dirty look. He laughed louder. 

This was downright fucking hysterical. Maybe he was in shock. Was this what shock felt like? Honestly, it was better than the fucking crying and shit. He was so fucking done with crying. But he could feel the monster climbing in his chest, and the tears slid out around his laughter. But he couldn't stop laughing! Even when he was strapped down, in pain, and mentally in the worst place of his life, he couldn't stop laughing. He’d jumped off a fucking cliff before, for God’s sake! Because Will had been dead, and Dustin was about to get his few teeth carved out. 

Goddamnit, he was going to have to strangle himself when he got back to the room with all the beds, wasn't he? He's fucking laughing while planning his own fucking death. He didn't know when the laughing turned back to sobs, but it did, and he was choking out great, heaving sobs. 

This wasn't how he wanted to die. He was fourteen; he’d never thought much about the how's and why's of death aside from extradimensional disasters and impulse jumps from the top of cliffs. It had drifted through his mind like a ghost over the years, but never solid. When you're a kid, you never think about how you’ll die. And when you finally do, you think about freak accidents, sicknesses, and not strangling yourself with the chain that’s been keeping you hostage. 

Mike had always been a little scared. Scared of love, of the world, of himself. He's a fucking coward. But he'd never been as sure about this as he had about anything. He couldn't live here; he'd be a weapon for the people who had opened a gate to the upside down just because they wanted to. He wasn't going to let himself be a weapon for the people who had kidnapped and tortured him. He would rather die. So, he would. 

He was rolled back to the room with the beds, Alik and the two other kids still there, looking as miserable as ever. Mike nearly laughed again, because Christ, he was about to make these kids watch him kill himself. They unstrapped him from the wheelchair, but the weird arm cuff sleeve things came off with him, un-attaching from the armrest and coming with him when he left the chair.

It didn't matter though; he could still wrap the chain around his neck without using his hands. They let him stand up by himself, which was pretty great. The gloves? What the fuck was he supposed to call them? Hand prisons- they were hand prisons now, whatever; they weighed down his hands, heavier than they looked, really. His arms hung down by his hips, just kind of dangling. It took a bit of effort to lift them up onto the bed, but he did, laying himself down and waiting for the guard to put the shackle around his arm. 

It was clasped around his elbow more than his wrist now; it wouldn't fit over the metal already on his arms. Not great, but he could still loop it around his neck. He lay there, feeling as the cold metal became warm against the crook of his arm. The guards left after they had him strapped in, content with the knowledge that if he couldn't use his arms, then he wasn't going to be able to do anything.

Fuck them; his ghost was going to laugh so fucking hard when they found his body. 

“Mike, are you okay?” Alik asked from his bed. 

Mike turned on his pillow so that he could see the other boy. Alik looked worried, and Mike realized that he was covered in blood. Also, he had no idea how long he's been gone for. When they were taken out of the room, it was usually only for an hour or so. There was no way he had only been gone for an hour. He'd come back with his arms in metal oven mitts, covered in blood, and half laughing and half sobbing his heart out. 

“No, but it’s going to be.” He choked out, giving the boy a half smile. 

Alik just looked even more worried, his frown growing. 

Mike understood that. None of them smiled when they came back from the lab. There was only pain and misery after lab time. 

“What?” It sounded more like ‘wot’ than what, but Mike got the gist. 

“It’ll be okay.” The smile was sad this time. 

He sat himself up, turning sideways on his knees to face the wall. The wall was to his left when he was lying down, and the shackle was on his left wrist, so it was easy for him to press his head close to the wall and loop his arm around his head in a way that dragged the chain up and around his neck to reconnect right above his chest. 

“What! Wait!” Alik called out, catching onto what Mike was about to do. 

Mike didn't even look back at him. He scooted back towards the edge of the bed, his legs hanging off, and then the crook of his hips was lying right on the corner of the mattress. 

He exhaled as much air as possible, and then he let himself drop. It was less of a drop and more of a pulling himself backwards while pulling the chain tight with his arm, but enough of his body was off of the bed that gravity did its job. He choked when the chain went tight around his neck, the metal links biting into his skin. He would've laughed again if he had any air left, but he was too focused on keeping himself from flailing around and untangling himself. 

Someone was yelling, probably Alik, and Mike could've sworn he heard the crying boy crying again. He stayed as still as he could until he couldn't. When the ache in his lungs became too much, he jerked against the chain, tugging hard against the metal, legs flailing and covered hands coming up to try and clutch at the chains even when he couldn't grab them. 

The yelling changed to screaming, and the doors to the room banged against the walls when the guards came rushing in. Mike's vision was going out, getting spotty around the edges. He pulled himself back onto the bed as best he could, tightening the chain around his neck as much as possible, before locking himself into a curled-up position. If they couldn't get him untangled, then they couldn't save his life. This choice was the only thing he had here, and he wasn't about to let them take it away. 

There were hands on him, roughly trying to pull him out of his ball. Everything was going dark, but this time Mike welcomed it. He embraced it like he needed it. He just wished…  The darkness got to him before he could finish his thought.

-

He woke up. He fucking woke up.

He screamed as loud as his hoarse throat would let him. It felt like gargling glass, but he kept screaming. He thrashed against the bonds holding him.

He was still in that fucking bed, but now he was bound in those stupid soft fabric cuffs. His hands, his feet, and now his waist. Throwing himself against them didn't do anything, didn't really even feel that great, so he let himself fall limp. It gave his throat a break at least. The pillow sucked. It was a really shitty pillow, barely even counted as a pillow. Why the fuck was he thinking about the pillow? 

“Fuck you!” He spat out at the ceiling, “Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you! Shitty-ass fucking place, I’ll fucking kill you!” He didn’t even know who he was talking to, just that anger and grief were thundering through his veins.

“Are okay?” And there was fucking Alik again. 

“Fuck you!” Mike spat out with much more feeling this time, “You know what this place is, you know how much everything hurts, and you still called for them! It's just going to get worse, Alik! It's just going to get worse. More poison, more pain! They're going to kill us all anyways, so why couldn't you just let me fucking die?!” He was yelling again by the end of his tirade, silent tears streaming down his pale, freckled cheeks. 

Alik reached out a hand like he wanted to hold Mike, to reach out and give him a hug. Mike had never wanted anything more. He tried to reach out in return, but even if his arms had been free, there would still have been at least five feet of blank, white tile between them. 

When was the last time someone had touched him without hurting him? When was the last time someone had held his hand, clapped him on the back, or given him an honest-to-God hug? He craved the touch of another human being like he hasn't craved anything else in his life. All he knew now was pain and the bed underneath him. The sheets underneath him felt like sandpaper.

He hiccupped, and Alik was crying too. That was understandable; he was in this place too, and he had just had to watch Mike try and kill himself. No fucking wonder he was sad. He could feel himself breaking in this place, feeling every little piece of what made him was flaking away from him. 

Every day that he had been here had been painful. How long had it been? A week? Longer or shorter? How many days has he spent riding out the pain on this shitty hospital bed? He wanted a hug.

He whimpered, “Please,” he begged, straining against his bonds to angle his body towards the older boy. He just wanted a fucking hug. “Please.” 

But nothing good ever came from a ‘please.’

Chapter Text

None of the guards or the nurses acknowledged that he had tried to off himself. But they didn't untie him from the four-limbed restraints anymore, not even to eat.

They kept his arms tied behind his back for showers and bathroom breaks, and whatever guard that came in with the food cart always fed him last because he had to spoon-feed him. It was mortifying.

The nice guard had only been there for a couple of his meals, which sucked slightly less. Still mortifying though, so Mike had taken to not eating much when it wasn't the nice guard feeding him. Which meant he was pretty hungry most of the time, but he didn’t feel like eating much anyways.

The nice guard had only been by with the meal cart three times in almost four days, so Mike had only eaten a full meal three times. The idle thought that if he managed to starve himself enough that it could kill him where the chain hadn’t floated through his head. It would be a slow death, but at least it would be a death. 

He'd been in this for almost two weeks if his count was correct, maybe more, maybe less. Honestly, the next time he threatened to kill himself, he was going to ask for a calendar as an incentive to not or for someone to tell him what day it was. He needed to get out of this place; the white-ass walls and the never-turned-off lights, the crying, and the rattling chains were all going to drive him fucking insane. 

What he wouldn't do to sit outside for an hour, just lying in the sun, lounging like a cat. Fuck it, when he got the fuck out of here, he was going to go find a car and just lie on top of it in the sun. When he closed his eyes, he could imagine it. The sun warmed metal beneath him, warmth soaking through his clothes, hair splayed out behind him, framing his face like a halo. He remembered the way that the whole world was tinted blue when he opened his eyes in the sun. The lack of actual sunlight in this place was already melting away the tan he had managed to get during the summer. Really, it wasn't even an actual tan, more of a slightly dark sunburn that could pass as a tan. 

He'd never tanned easily, not once in his life. He was the kid whose mom was constantly slathering him in sunscreen when he was a toddler. He always complained about it. Sunscreen smelled bad, and it made him itch. But she always insisted that he needed it, which was not true; Mike would rather risk the burn over the sunscreen. Right now, he would do anything to have his mom grab him by the shoulders and rub sunscreen into his cheeks. 

She and him hadn't gotten along in recent years. She didn't notice things, and when she did, she turned smothering. It was a back and forth between thoughtfulness and thoughtlessness. There were no casual “I love you’s” and no kisses on the forehead. Those had stopped before he reached the double digits. And he wasn't even going to talk about his dad. Ted Wheeler didn't deserve that title. Probably hadn't even shown up to his funeral. The lazy bastard probably didn't even get off the recliner. 

He shifted in bed, back aching from being stuck in one position for so long. Alik had tried to talk to him again, but everything sounded like it was underwater. He was floating somewhere outside of his body; thoughts were being thought, but he wasn't really there. He could move, he could see, but nothing felt real. Unreality—that's what it was called. The feeling of nothing being real. Nothing about this felt real. The days dragged on; he hadn't been taken to the lab since the day with the machine, but a nurse would come every once in a while to take his blood and temperature and prod at the bruises on his throat. At some point he wasn't going to have any blood left. 

His thoughts were bouncing, moving from one topic to another without a break. He felt scattered. There was nothing here to ground him back into reality. Alik was still talking, and Mike tried to make an effort to tune into the words. Russian still sounded like gibberish to him, but he thinks that he might be picking up a few words. Or maybe just the inflections behind some of them. But Alik liked trying to talk to him in English, even though he sucked at it and couldn't string together a sentence that was more than three words long. He was trying now, blurting out random strings of words in an attempt to catch Mike's attention. 

“—You like froot? No, fruit. Bring fruit jam later.” He was basically muttering to himself.

Mike huffed out a breathy laugh and let his face tilt towards the older boy. Alik beamed at him, the bags under his eyes somehow lessening with the expression. 

“Hi Mike!” 

“Hi,” Mike breathed out in return, his voice a rasp. The bruise on his throat had deepened into a gross yellow-purple color when he had last seen it in the mirror, and his throat felt like it. All the screaming hadn't helped either. 

“How are you?” the older boy asked. His hair was getting longer, Mike noticed idly. It was more like a big puffball than the close crop cut it had been before. 

“I'm… not good.” Mike replied. 

“But you’re alive!” 

“Yeah, thanks for that.” He muttered snootily. He was still fucking mad about that, but he couldn’t exactly be mad at Alik for not wanting to watch someone die. Goddamn empathy. Mike couldn’t blame him. 

“Not sorry.” Alik replied, his tone lowering into something more serious. 

“I know you aren’t, you fucking asshole.” But the insult sounded more affectionate than hateful. Alik was growing on him like some sort of fungus. 

“Asshole!” Alik parroted back at him. The older boy knew it was an insult and was all too happy to learn any of them that he could for Mike. Mike couldn't ask him to teach him Russian swear words without the boy getting confused about what he was asking, so that sucked. Mike was going to have to find a Russian dictionary or something. Ugh, he was going to have to ask Doctor Kazimir for things, wasn't he? He’d have to give him his cooperation with his fucked-up experiments in return for some books or something. He mentally prepared to debase himself in front of the man he hated most in the world. 

“Yeah, asshole.” Mike said, trying to reach for the boy before he remembered the restraints and the metal tubes wrapped around his hands. He groaned, biting at the inside of his cheek to keep himself from drifting away again. The chains always managed to make him feel floaty and always reminded him that he had nothing better to do than drift away. The pain kept him grounded, but a hug would probably be better. 

Maybe... maybe he could break the restraints; he'd broken those lights before, so maybe he could rip the straps. But he didn't know the first thing about using science experiments to give superpowers. All he knew about how El used them was that she held up her hands and yelled at whatever she wanted to blast into a wall. She could also do little things without her hands- well, if you counted snapping necks as a little thing. But he couldn't even move a finger right now, not to mention his whole arm. 

He was actually pretty excited when the guards came in, followed by a nurse with a wheelchair, and headed straight towards his bed. He didn't struggle as they undid the binds, just swung his feet over the edge of the bed and stood on shaky legs. It honestly surprised him that the guards let him move on his own after the fiasco with the guns, but he toddled over to the chair on legs filled with pins and needles. They went through the whole routine. Got him sitting and strapped in; his new handy-dandy hand prison is clasped to the armrest. And then he was being rolled out of the room. The hallway looked the same, the floors looked the same, and the fucking ceiling was the goddamn same. He was so tired of these hallways. 

Ooh looky, he was being rolled right past the lab. He had never been past the lab. The machine room had been down a different hallway. He had the trip to and from the lab basically memorized at this point, but this was uncharted territory. If anything, he was a little too eager to look at things that he hadn't seen before. But it was just more of the same. They only wheeled him a few doors down from the lab before he was turned into one of them. It was just a big empty room with a table in the middle of it and a mirror on one wall that was definitely a two-way mirror. 

The wheelchair was parked on one side of the table. The metal hand prisons were unattached from the chair, and then they were being slipped off of his arms altogether. He just clenched and unclenched his hands for a few seconds, watching as the tendons in them flexed and how his knuckles moved under his skin. They felt sore from being held in one place for so long. 

“Hello, Mikhail.” 

Mike startled; he hadn’t even noticed the man entering the room. 

“Are you having a good day?” Doctor Kazimir asked as he rounded the table to sit in the chair across from Mike. 

“Not really.” Mike replied before seizing on the fact that he had the doctor in front of him and changed the subject, “What day is it?” 

“It is July 19th, a Saturday.” 

Fifteen days- he had been kidnapped by Russians for fifteen fucking days. He drooped against his chair. More than two weeks. If he couldn’t figure out a way to get out of this place, he swore to God that he would do something drastic. Well, more drastic than killing himself. 

“Can I have a calendar?” He asked, knowing that an affirmative wasn’t likely. 

“We’ll see.” The doctor replied. “I heard that there was an incident in the common room. Would you like to tell me what happened?” 

“Are you talking about when I tried to choke myself to death?” Mike asked in return, his tone much too nonchalant. The man raised an unimpressed eyebrow at him. Mike made his bitch face right back at the man. 

“Yes, I am talking about how you tried to kill yourself, Mikhail. That was a very irresponsible thing for you to do. Now, why would you think that that was a necessary course of action?” The man asked, his wrinkled hands folded in front of him on the table. 

“I mean, why would I? All you’ve done since I got here is hurt me. And this place just fucking sucks.” Mike shrugged before tacking on an, “and you're ugly.” 

The man chuckled, but there was an underlying seriousness when he spoke, “Are you planning on doing it again?” 

“Depends on if I get my calendar or not, and I want books too.” Mike demanded, sounding every bit the petulant fourteen-year-old that he didn’t feel like. 

“Will you cooperate with the program if you get these things? Because that is the only reason that I can justify giving you things that you certainly haven’t earned.” Doctor Kazimir asked as he pulled a notepad out of the breast pocket of his coat, flipping it open and pulling out a pen. 

“If you want my full cooperation, I want more than just a couple books.” 

“Name your price, and I’ll see what I can do. But if I do this, I hope you know that I can and will take away your privileges if I deem it necessary.” 

Mike snorted but nodded all the same. Only this fucker would call a couple books a privilege. 

“I want a longer chain for my arm; you can leave the other things on my hands, but I want to be able to walk around the room.” That was a pretty easy request, wasn’t it? 

“And how can I trust that you won’t use it to do something stupid?” 

“Because then I wouldn’t be able to walk around.” Mike replied in his most ‘duh’ voice possible. 

Kazimir studied him for a moment, grey eyes scrutinizing him before he apparently found what he wanted to see. “I can do that.” 

“And I want pencils and paper.” Mike said, rapid fire, sure that if he lost momentum that the doctor would take back every word that he had said in the last few minutes. “—and I want a dictionary for Russian.”

Doctor Kazimir only nodded. Mike felt his jaw go a little slack. Really? He was just going to give in to his demands just like that? Mike couldn't believe it, wouldn't. This place wasn't going to be nice to him; it hadn't been nice to him. 

“Wait, really?” He asked, disbelief coloring his tone. 

“Mikhail—” ugh, he cringed at the name. “ - Why wouldn't we want our soldiers happy and healthy? How could we expect you to fight for us when we cannot even provide you with basic necessities?” 

That… made a decent amount of sense, but he still didn’t trust it. “You promise this isn't some sort of sick joke?” He asked, disbelieving. 

“No, it is no joke. If you do what you're told, we will have no problem giving you exactly what you want, and eventually, you won’t even have to stay in the common room.” 

This was too good of an opportunity to pass up. “Okay, what do you want me to do first?”

Doctor Kazimir bent at the waist to drag a box out from underneath the table. The white box had blended into the rest of the room, making sure that Mike hadn’t noticed it until then. The man set it on the table, pulling out a few things: an empty plastic bottle, a glass bottle, and a plain piece of white paper. 

He set them on the table in front of Mike: paper, plastic, and glass, in that order. 

“See the piece of paper?” The doctor asked, tapping his index finger against the center of it, “I want you to crumple it.” 

Crumple it? That was easy enough. He reached for the paper before he was stopped with an outstretched palm. 

“No, Mikhail, I want you to do it without touching it.”

Mike blinked stupidly at the man. 

“Without touching it, what do you mean?” Mike asked.

“You know what I mean, Mikhail. I told you before what Project Blackrock is attempting to do, and you saw what you had done to that room when you woke up. I want you to do that on a smaller scale.” Doctor Kazimir explained. 

Mike wrinkled his brow at that. He couldn’t bring himself to actually believe that whatever shit they had pumped into him had given him powers. 

The doctor must’ve seen his skepticism because he chuckled, “Just try, Mikhail.” 

Mike turned to the paper, studying it intensely. It looked like any other plain sheet of paper that he had seen. He’d seen a lot of paper. He liked watching Will draw and writing down his DnD campaigns with a pencil. He liked the sound of lead against paper, liked writing neat lines of text for his next science report, and liked watching Will leaf through his sketchbooks. 

“Go on.” The doctor encouraged.

Mike held out one of his hands, resting it just a few inches above the paper, and focused on the image of the paper crumbling under an unseen force. Narrowing his eyes, he focused. A few seconds passed and then a few more, and nothing happened. He glared at the paper, his hand trembling above it. 

“Just- just give me a minute.” He said when the doctor made a move to say something. He dug deep, prodding at the monster in his chest with a tentative mental finger. The thing in his chest rolled weirdly fluidly against his rib cage, but it didn't fight him when he tried to pull it to the surface. 

He was panting, little gasps escaping from his lips without permission, and his hand was trembling even harder. He poked at the thing inside him one more time, and the paper crumbled into a tight little ball. Something warm dripped down to his lip. He wiped it out with the back of his hand, and it came away red and wet. 

“Congratulations!” Doctor Kazimir congratulated, looking genuinely delighted. It made Mike feel kind of sick. “Do the plastic bottle next.”

It was easier this time to crumple the plastic bottle with his mind. It was crushed flat under invisible pressure. His nose was bleeding more, and a headache was blooming behind his eyes, but it wasn't that bad. Honestly, the glass bent to his will much easier than the paper. It barely took any effort before the glass was scattering all over the table, shattered.

He felt drained but compared to the times he had been injected with random shit, this was a walk in the park. Though the blood was annoying, though. It was drying on the back of his hand and flaking off when it rubbed against anything; it was gross. He rubbed the drying blood with a trembling finger from his other hand as he stared down at the crumpled and broken things on the table. Everything was going hazy again, unreality setting in. The lights were too bright. 

“Such incredible things that you can do, and you are only going to get better. That will be all for today, Mikhail; you can return to the common room, and I will see you tomorrow.”

The guards came back into the room, reattaching the metal tubes on his arms to the chair and putting his arms back into them. 

“You did an incredible job today, Mikhail.” It was the last thing he heard before he was wheeled out of the room. Wheeled back down the endless hallways and back towards the room with the beds, or the "common room," as the doctor had called it. He was rolled into the room, and there, sitting on his bed, was a long coil of chain attached to the wall on one end. He was rolled up to the bed, but they didn't force him into it; they just clicked the shackle around his elbow and left him standing next to his bed. 

He stared down at the chain in disbelief. There had to be at least fifteen feet of chain lying on his bed. It seemed like an unspeakable amount to him. With this he could almost reach the middle of the room; he could pace; he could- his eyes shot up to where the other three people in the room were looking at him, with wide eyes. Alik’s bed was the closest to his, just a few feet away. The chain- the chain would probably reach that far.

Mike stepped towards the old boy's bed, his tentative steps almost silent on his socked feet. Alik was just looking at him with this indestructible look in his eyes, but he wasn't saying no, wasn't shaking his head. So, Mike took the last few steps towards the boys' bed before he stopped next to it, waiting. Alik held out his unchained arm slowly, like he was afraid that Mike would flinch away at the slightest touch. And he did flinch when the boy's fingers skimmed the bare skin that showed between the sleeve of his hospital gown and the tubes around his arm before he pushed into the sensation. 

He hadn't been touched by someone without the intent to harm or apathy behind their eyes in two fucking weeks. He really needed a hug. So, he threw any potential embarrassment out of the window and climbed into the bed. Alik scooted against the wall to make more room, and Mike didn't hesitate to curl himself into the contours of the older boy's body. 

He wrapped his arms around Alik’s torso as best as he could with the giant metal oven mitts on them and tucked his head underneath the other boy's chin. Alik was tense beside him for a long moment before he wrapped his own lanky arms around Mike. He was saying something in Russian again, but Mike could actually feel what the boy was saying. The boy's voice rumbled through his chest, vibrating against Mike's cheek. He clung on tighter, scared that if he let go for even a second, it would all vanish, fade away under his touch like smoke. 

Alik was taller than him and less skinny than he was, and his skin was warm against Mike's own clammy flesh. Mike clutched at him harder, trembling, their legs tangling together, and Mike was crying again, silent tears streaking down his cheeks to soak into the collar of the older boy's own hospital gown. Alik might have been crying too. He had been there twice as long as Mike had been. Alik had been in this fucking room for a month; he deserved to cry, probably deserved it more than Mike did. They all went through the same fucking trials, day after day. 

They deserved to cry, even if it felt like that was all he had been doing lately. Mike had never been a crier, even when he was younger. He'd only cried the times he had skinned his knees or fallen off the slide at the playground. When everyone had thought Will was dead, he had cried; when he had thought El was dead, he had cried. When Will was in the lab, and “He’s lying, he’s lying, he’s lying” was ringing through his ears, he had cried. 

Huh, maybe he had always been a crier.

-

“And how is Subject Nineteen progressing?"

“Better than we could’ve hoped. The psionic abilities have made their appearance. It appears that his continued exposure to the Waste has increased his compatibility with the serum. Honestly, the speed at which he has adjusted to the trials is incredible. We have started testing him on his ability to move and break objects, and there hasn't been a failure yet. Though I do expect that there will be some setbacks before his body fully adjusts to the serum.” Fedor Kazimir explained to the man that sat behind the desk, his hands folded behind his back. 

“And what about the subject's recent fit? Have you figured out how to keep it from reacting that way in the future?” 

“I should hope so. The subject seems receptive to bribery. He has asked for a calendar, books, a dictionary, paper, and writing instruments, as well as a longer restraint in the common room. I made the decision to approve of the longer restraint just to let him know that I was not lying, but I am waiting for your approval for the rest of the subjects' requests.” He answered, standing firm in front of his superior. 

The severe-looking man hummed to himself, shuffling the papers on his desk as he skimmed the graphs and notes that had been written about Subject Nineteen. 

“Those items should not be hard to collect, but I want a camera set up to monitor the situation.”

That was a better reaction than he had expected he was going to receive. It had been impulsive to offer the boy things without explicit permission, but he had needed to get on the subject's good side and keep him from attempting to take his own life again. They couldn't have their most successful test subject taking his own life before they could indoctrinate him into the ranks. 

“My greatest thanks, Lieutenant General.” 

“You are dismissed, Doctor Kazimir; please make sure that everything continues to run smoothly, and I believe that this program will be extremely successful.” Fedor nodded sharply, saluting respectfully before he turned to leave the room. He left with a grin lifting the corners of his mouth. The experiments were going well, and the lieutenant general was still on board with the idea. 

It had been a struggle to convince his superiors that Project Blackrock was a viable idea, but they had come around, and now he had something other than a pile of corpses to show for it. Mikhail was the first success, but Fedor was confident that there would be more of them. Maybe he could campaign for a trip back to America to collect more subjects from the town with the Hellmouth. He shook his head, telling himself that it would have to wait for another time. 

He had too much to do with Mikhail and the remaining subjects. The last three children had some potential, the oldest one especially. He had managed to stay alive for a month, which meant that he was promising. The other two... he wasn't sure how much longer they would live, but it didn't matter. It may take years, but he would fine-tune Mikhail into a fine weapon for Mother Russia.

Chapter Text

He hadn't left Alik’s bed until the guard had come in with the food cart, and even then, he had only done it because the guard had pulled out the taser when he had refused to move.

He'd gone back to his bed, chain clattering against the floor, glaring at the guard the whole time. The food was more of that weird red soup that he had gotten a few times over the last few weeks. It wasn't his favorite, but at least they gave him some boiled eggs with it this time.

When was the last time he’d had an egg? Didn't matter, eggs were eggs, and he really liked eggs. 

He planned to go right back to Alik’s bed the minute that he was done being fed, because the hand prisons didn't give him much in the way of grip strength. It was still as humiliating as before, but eggs. Why couldn't it have been the nice guard? 

He didn't know exactly what shifts the guard had; he'd have to figure it out. Probably should figure out what the dude's name was too. Actually, how was he supposed to use the stuff that he'd asked for if he was wearing the metal gauntlets all the time? The doctor better have an answer to that, or Mike was going to throw a bitch fit. A really loud bitch fit. 

Once the guard was gone, he darted right back over to Alik’s bed, sitting himself at the end of it this time instead of tucking himself up against the older boy like he wanted to. 

“Why?” Alik asked, gesturing at the long chain that was attached to Mike's wrist and the metal tubes on his arms. 

“It’s a bribe so that I don’t try and kill myself again.” Mike said, even though he knew that Alik wouldn't be able to understand him. 

At the expected questioning noise, Mike mimed choking himself and then crossed his arms over his chest in an X. He tilted his head to the side and stuck out his tongue just to really get the point across. “No dying, and they’ll give me presents.” 

Alik looked a little green at the reminder of how Mike tried to kill himself. Mike really didn't blame him.

“Yeah, yeah, sorry about that.” He was mostly sorry that it hadn't worked. 

“Touch?” Alik asked, reaching out to brush his fingers over the ring of bruises that stained Mike's throat. 

Mike lifted his chin so that the boy could get a closer look. The bruises were in their final stage of healing at this point, black and yellow. It still hurt a bit to swallow but nowhere near as much as it had the first few days. Alik's fingers ghosted over skin with feather-light touches. Mike swallowed. There was no place for embarrassment when you've all seen the worst of each other. Still... The touch didn't hurt, and Mike was going to soak that in as much as possible. He leaned forward when the fingers left, chasing the touch. Alik just laughed. 

Mike hit him in the arm with the end of his gauntlet. Not hard, just enough to convey his annoyance. Alik laughed again. 

He didn't know what time it was, but he knew it was nighttime; it could be early, it could be late, but his eyes were starting to droop. Doing what Doctor Kazimir wanted and all the crying he had done had really tired him out. 

“Can I sleep here?” Mike asked, patting the bed. 

“Sleep?” Alik asked before nodding, "Yes, sleep." 

Mike took that as permission to get as comfortable as possible. Which wasn't that comfortable given how much these beds sucked. He did grab his own blanket and pillow from his bed, though; he didn't want to steal Alik’s in the middle of the night, but he also didn't want to be without a blanket.

It was hard to grab them when he couldn't use those handy dandy opposable thumbs of his. But he managed to get them over to the other boy's bed. Alik was a big help when it came to straightening the blanket out over him and settling the pillow in the right place. 

Honestly, Mike was jealous that the other boy got to use his hands. That was another thing he would have to ask Doctor Kazimir about. He wouldn't be able to read whatever books he was going to be given if he couldn't use his hands. Mike hoped that they would give him some fantasy ones. Also, would they give him pencils, or did they think that he would try and stab himself with them? 

He kept thinking about it as he laid down next to Alik. He didn't curl around the boy like he had done a few hours ago, content to only lie near the other boy. There wasn't really enough room on the bed for the both of them, but they made do. It reminded him of sleepovers, hazy memories of lying in bed while Will, Lucas, or Dustin breathed nearby. He missed that. He really missed that. 

The lights were humming on the ceiling. They hadn't bothered him before but now it was like they were all he could hear. Just a constant low thrum that would fade in and out whenever he zoned out or got distracted. Now though, when his breathing was slowing down and his eyes were fluttering closed, it was all that he could hear.

Drip, drip, drip, drip.

His vision was fuzzing out, going black around the edges. 

Drip drip drip drip. 

The humming from the lights was getting louder, vibrating against his eye sockets. 

Drip, drip, drip, drip.

His lashes tickle the tops of his cheeks, his eyes fluttering open and closed, before they finally fall closed for the last time. 

He opened his eyes, and he was back in the darkness. He was standing this time, not sprawled out in the water like he had been before. The water was lapping around his ankles, soaking his socks. 

He blinked rapidly against the blackness, shaking his head to try and clear his vision. It was uncanny. It was like he couldn't see anything, but he could also see everything. He could see everything, but then there was nothing to see, if that made sense. It really didn't. But he could see this time, there was something... 

He couldn't tell. There was a spark of color in the distance. His feet started taking him towards it without any input from his brain. The colors were beckoning him. As he got closer, he was starting to be able to make out what he was seeing. 

It was a man, sitting tied to a chair with a burlap sack thrown over his head. He was a big man, wearing a torn and bloodstained Russian uniform. Mike couldn't tell who it was; it was probably someone he had never seen before anyways. 

He watched as another man materialized out of wisps of smoke. Dressed in a coat and hat, hands folded behind his back. He was saying something to someone off to the side that Mike couldn't see. It was in Russian, so of course Mike couldn't understand a thing that was being said, but the man didn't sound particularly happy.

Why was he seeing this? He didn't want to watch a man get tortured, because that was what it looked like was happening. Even if it was a Russian soldier, Mike didn't want to see any of this. The man in the coat stepped forward, hand reaching for the bag that covered the man's face, grabbing at the top of it and pulling-

The entire scene drifted away into a haze of smoke.

“Wait-!” He shouted, reaching for the slowly fading mirage. Smoke slipped through his fingers, and then he was alone in the darkness again.

“No, come back.” Anything was better than the darkness, even if it was a Russian goon about to get the shit beat out of him. 

The darkness echoed around him, the water calm around his feet. Why had he seen these men? He didn't know either of them, and how has he seen them? He didn't have a picture of them or a blindfold like El needed when she looked for people. He had just gone to sleep.

He was still in Alik's bed, wasn't he? It was just his head that had come to the darkness, his mind. He sat himself down in the water, uncaring of how the water soaked into the bottom half of his gown. He let his hands drift through the liquid, swirling it around, just... playing with it. 

Everything felt hazy in this place. The darkness fogged his thoughts like soup. Actually, could this place be categorized as a soup? Probably. The Soup sounded slightly better than The Darkness. Well, not really, but it was funnier and given the distinct lack of humor in this place, Mike would take it.

He swished his hands around in the newly dubbed soup; it was relaxing in a way. Just a back-and-forth swish through the water, over and over. He winced when something dripped from his nose, his wet hand flying up to wipe at the blood pooling in the dip above his lips. That probably wasn't good, but Mike was getting pretty used to the blood. That wasn't the greatest; he should probably try to wake up now, shouldn't he?

How the fuck was he supposed to do that? There wasn't exactly a guide on how to get out of a parallel mind dimension. He closed his eyes, trying to focus on what he had been feeling before he had ended up in this palace. The scratchy white sheets against his legs, the warm metal wrapped around his arms, and Alik’s breath fanning across the top of his head. 

And then he was there, blood leaking from his nose and staining his pillow under his cheek. Scratchy sheets tangled around his legs and Alik’s sleeping face sat slightly above him on the pillows. His head hurt too much for someone who had just woken up. He turned to wipe his nose on the pillow, trying to get as much of the blood off of his face as possible. The sheets would be replaced at some point during the day, so it didn't really matter. 

He didn't know what time it was, but it felt like barely any time had passed since he had fallen asleep. Like when he would accidentally fall asleep too early and wake up only a few hours later. 

In that hazy place between energetic and tired, his thoughts were clear but his body heavy. Alik didn't stir, and it didn't seem like the other kids were awake either. Carefully, he sat up, making sure that the chain around his wrist didn't rattle much. He let his legs dangle off of the bed, swinging them back and forth as he just… sat. 

He couldn't hear the lights right now, which was nice. It was just him and the silence. No crying, no rattling metal. Just the quiet. It was peaceful. 

He hummed a disjointed little tune to himself as he eased himself off of the bed, gathering his chain haphazardly into his arms as he made his way back to his own bed. He didn't want it dragging on the floor and waking up anybody else. He didn't want to lie back down, so he just held most of his chain and paced around the perimeter of his bed.

It was the longest he had been on his feet in weeks. It was always bed, wheelchair, other chair, back to the wheelchair, and then finally the bed. He liked being able to move without something holding him down. 

If he had still been in Hawkins, he would've been spending his time at the arcade, or at one of his friends' houses, or tramping through the woods for no real reason in particular. The white walls around him seemed to flash with tree trunks and green leaves for a split second. Just long enough for the homesickness to set in like a punch to the gut. 

He missed Holly; he liked telling her stories and liked how happy she got when he did the different voices for each different character. Out of everyone in his family, he liked Holly the most. She was just so easy to be around. There were no obligations for him to act a certain way with her. He could be silly and stupid with her. No matter what he said to her or how he acted, she always seemed to love him anyway.

Mike liked the way he could carry her around and liked the way she would tug at his hair and laugh when he made a face at her. It was the middle of July. So that meant that Holly would be turning six in five and a half months, just a few weeks before Christmas. December third. He’d never missed one of her birthdays before; he had been at every single one. 

Was he going to have to miss this one, or would he be home in time to watch his baby sister turn six? He didn't think he would be able to forgive whoever was keeping him here if he had to miss her birthday. 

His socked feet slapped silently against the floor as he paced, the cold seeping in from the floor. Back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. It took him fifteen steps in either direction to reach the wall on either end of his bed. He counted each one, over and over. How long he did it for, he didn't know. 

His legs were shaking by the time he finally decided to sit down on the edge of his bed. Wow, who would've thought that not using your legs for two weeks would make them weaker? Mike did; Mike knew, and anyone with a basic understanding of the human body knew it. If you don't use your muscles, then they lose their strength. 

It might've been morning now; it was starting to feel like morning. The internal clock that lived in his head was telling him that somewhere nearby the sun was rising. Or maybe it was just the schedule that his mind had made up in the absence of a clock. 

The other boy was stirring, the one whose name he didn't know. Mike stared at him as he drifted awake. Was this one younger or older than him? He was shorter than Mike, but his features said that he was older, with a little scruff of hair growing in on the side of his cheeks and his chin. The beginnings of a beard. So, older. The boy shuffled under his blanket as he woke up, blinking at the ceiling with sleep-filled brown eyes. 

Out of all three of the Russians in the room, he was the quietest. Alik and the girl talked to each other often enough, but the other boy barely ever joined in. Just a few sentences here and there. 

Mike watched him wake up because there was nothing else in the room to watch. Alik was still facing the wall in his sleep, and the girl was completely covered by her blanket. Everyone in this room watched each other. What else were they supposed to do? Watch the wall, count the threads in their sheets? Been there, done that. Nope, people watching was where it’s at.

The boy blinked when he noticed that Mike was looking at him, but other than that, he didn't really do anything. It wasn't that weird for any of them to wake up to the gaze of someone else on them. Mike himself had woken up multiple times being stared at by more than one person. Their bodies were the only colors in the room, the only living things, so it made sense that they would latch onto each other as points of interest.

Mike did a little wave at the boy with one of his metal-wrapped hands. More of a swinging of the metal than an actual wave. The other boy raised an eyebrow at Mike; Mike just shrugged. 

“Good morning-ish.” He said it just to break the silence. Predictably, the boy didn't know what he was saying. 

“Name?” Mike asked, “Mike?” He said, patting his chest before pointing at the boy.

The eyebrow was back up. So, the boy had exactly no English skills whatsoever. He could just ask Alik later. Why hadn't he done that already? The constant pain and stress was probably scrambling his brain. That sucked; he couldn't afford to be any stupider. He’d have trouble learning Russian if he lost all his brain cells. And he really needed to learn Russian if he was going to figure out where he was and how to get out.

The new thing in his chest could probably help him get out too. He just had to figure out how to use it without blowing up the room. And he could only do that if he listened to Doctor Kazimir couldn't he. He bet that if he started making shit fly around anywhere but with the doctor, there would be guards swarming the room within seconds, tasers at the ready. 

By the time the other two were awake, the nurses had come to get the boy whose name he didn't know for the daily needle party. The boy didn't protest when he was strapped into the wheelchair; none of them did anymore. What use was more pain when you already knew what was coming was unavoidable? The boy came back an hour later, crying and wailing in pain. 

They took the girl next.

“What are their names?” He asked Alik, pointing towards the two used beds, “Names?”

“Anton,” Alik pointed at the boy's bed, “Ilia.” He pointed at the girls. 

Those were nice names. Ilia and Anton.

They brought the girl back in the same condition that the boy had been brought back in and were quick to usher Alik into the wheelchair. Alik didn't fight. And like always, they let him climb into the chair by himself.

Mike curled up in Alik’s bed once he was gone, burying his head in their pillows to block out the sounds of pain. It was really hard to listen to. Hiccups and sobs and Russian words of pain. It never got any easier to listen to, even after sixteen? days of it. He really wanted his calendar. 

And then it was his turn. They strapped down the older boy when they brought him back, ignoring the flailing limbs and sounds of pain. They rolled the now empty chair over to him. He went without protest when they brought it up to him, sitting down before the nurse could even undo the shackle on his arm. It was better to just get it over with. Honestly, he didn't know what to expect from today. Either Doctor Kazimir would have him use the powers on something else, or they would go back to the classic needle-acid torture. 

They wheeled him down the hall, and he was pleasantly surprised to be taken back to the room with the table. 

“Good morning, Mikhail.” The doctor greeted from his place at the table.

“Still not my name.” Mike muttered under his breath, quiet enough that the man couldn't hear it. 

Once again, he was rolled over to the table, and the hand prisons were taken off. He stretched out his hands, watching as the tendons of his wrist flexed under his skin. The box from before was there again, but Mike couldn't tell what was inside it this time. 

“We will be doing more of the same today. Breaking, but we will also try lifting. Do you feel up to that today?” The doctor asked. 

Mike snorted; it didn't matter if he was up to it or not.

“Do you have my books for me yet?” he asked.

“Not quite yet, Mikhail. The items you requested are still being delivered but I assure you that they will arrive. Does that answer your question?” Doctor Kazimir raised an eyebrow.

“Sure.” Mike replied flippantly, “Question: how am I supposed to rea) the books if I have these things on my hands all the time?” Mike pointed to the discarded metal tubes that were lying on the table. 

“You will have designated time without them under guard, of course, but I wouldn't give you books that you couldn't read. Do you really think so little of me?”

Yes. Mike did think that little of him, but he stayed quiet. 

“Anyways, can we continue now, or do you have more questions?” 

Mike was really tempted to ask the absolute, stupidest question that he could think of but used a considerable amount of self-control to keep himself from doing so.

“Good,” Doctor Kazimir said, sounding impatient. 

The man reached for the box, pulling out several small but thick panes of glass. Each piece of glass was about five inches by five inches. Flat, but they got thicker and thicker as they went on. The first one was only a few centimeters thick, while the last one was almost three inches thick. 

“I want you to break these, starting with the thinnest and lastly the biggest. Just shatter them for now, we’ll save the more specific breaking for another time.” Doctor Kazimir explained, gesturing to the glass that was lined up in front of Mike. 

Mike did what he was told, eager to get this over with. Admittedly, he was also kind of eager to mess around with his new weird-ass mind powers, psionic abilities. It felt wrong to want anything to do with the powers that had been forced upon him. Like, a violation of everything that he stood for. It was like someone had cut off his hand, replaced it with a knife, and expected him to stab someone with it. It was a weapon crudely sewn into his very being, the lining of his soul ripped to make space for it. 

But he wanted to get out of there, and he couldn't exactly do that with just his skinny cricket arms. So, if this was the price he had to pay, he would pay it. 

He lifted a hand to rest above the first pane of glass and let that heavy feeling crawl out of his chest, opening up into a gaping maw. The lights above him flickered, just once, as power feathered past his fingertips.

The glass shattered, cracks spider-webbing out from the center before it fell to pieces with a crunch of breaking glass.

“Next.”

By the fourth piece of glass, his hand was trembling, and he could feel blood starting to leak from his nose. This one was harder, two inches of glass that didn't want to break. He grunted, breathing through his teeth. He pushed at the thing in his chest, prodding at it until it leaked out into the glass. It shattered, more contained than the other ones.

He slumped back into the wheelchair, panting and wiping at the blood on his face. 

"That was disappointing." Doctor Kazimir stated his face set in the same emotion.

Mike went stiff.

“...What?” He wheezed.

“Disappointing, Mikhail. I expected more from you.” The man was frowning, his eyes empty.

“I'm trying…?” Mike argued weakly.

A sigh.

“I know you are Mikhail. This just means that we haven't drawn out the full capacity of the serum. We will have to continue with the injection therapy.”

“No! No, I can do it, you don't need to use the serum again!” Mike pleaded, clutching at the armrests with white-knuckled hands. 

“Break the glass,” Doctor Kazimir demanded, “and then we will see whether or not you need the serum.”

Mike wheezed, holding his trembling hand over the last piece of glass, the thickest one.

He tried, he tried so hard, gritting his teeth and groaning low in his throat. The lights were blinking erratically above him, reminding him of the mall and the lab and every other time that the Upside Down had shown its ugly mug. 

Reality was fuzzing along the edges as he strained. A singular crack ran down the center of the glass. Just one. 

“No, no, I can do it. Please don’t-!” Mike wheezed out a sob.

Doctor Kazimir shook his head in disappointment, “You couldn't even break the last piece of glass, Mikhail. Clearly, we have to continue with the serum.

“No, no, I don't want it!” Mike wailed, hiccupping at the man's words. 

“What have we talked about? It doesn't matter what you want; it only matters what me and mine want.”

Mike hated the man. He lunged forwards against the straps holding him down, jerking the chair forward a few inches. The lights were still flickering, faster now. He could feel them buzzing, a low thrum that burrowed its way into his head. The thing in his chest was growing like a swollen flash-flooded river. 

“No!” He shrieked, his voice going high and hysterical in a way he had never heard from himself before. 

The glass was cracking, slow white lines spreading through it, and the thing in his chest was howling, building and building and building until Mike felt like he was going to explode and-

Someone's hand grabbed at his hair, yanking his head back so that a taser could be jammed into the soft underside of his throat. He thrashed against the chair involuntarily, static filling his skin.

“None of that.”

It sounded like it was underwater when the doctor started talking. He couldn't see it with the way his head was thrown back against the back of the wheelchair, but he could vaguely feel the metal tubes being wrapped back around his hands. The taser was pulled away, and he went slack.

“Stupid… bitch…” Mike spat out, panting when he finally regained some control over his mouth. 

Tears were streaming down his face still, but he didn't feel like puking his guts up, so that was a win. Panic was still shooting through his veins, a fluttery, frantic feeling that made him sick to his stomach. 

“Watch your mouth.” Doctor Kazimir said, a severe-looking frown on his face.

“Fuck you!” Mike spat out with as much vitriol as he could while wheezing for breath.

“I was going to be generous and allow you to rest for the night before we commenced the next run of the serum, but clearly-” he drawled, “-you have enough energy for us to begin today.”

Mike screamed, long and loud. The lights flickered again, and Kazimir shot a wary look at the metal tubes wrapped around his arms. But nothing more than the lights flickering happened. Just breaking these few pieces of glass had drained him. He remembered how El referred to it; her battery would be drained, and she’d need to recharge before she could throw any more cars around.

Mike couldn't even break a piece of glass, how the fuck was he supposed to get out of this place? El could throw fucking vans with her mind. That would be a useful skill to have instead of pansy-ass window breakers. He couldn't do anything, couldn't throw shit with his mind or snap necks with a tilt of his head, but he could throw a fucking fit.

He screamed, bucking against the restraints. His screams bounced around the hallways, echoing off of the concrete walls. 

One of the guards whacked him across the side of his head with a heavy hand and Mike replied to that by lunging after the guards' fingers with his teeth.

There was nothing but air when his teeth snapped together with a clack. The guard recoiled from him, hand jerking away. Mike snarled, teeth bared and his black eyes gleaming wildly. He kept screaming until his throat felt like it was going to tear, and then he kept screaming anyways. 

He didn't shut up until the sane guard who had smacked him shoved the barrel of his pistol into his mouth. The sound cut off abruptly as Mike gagged around the metal. It tasted like metal and smoke. He shook his head back and forth like a wild dog, the barrel slamming against his teeth when he spat it out.

“Fuck you! I hate you; I hate all of you!” He shrieked, voice hoarse. 

He only stopped because his voice gave out on him mid-scream, leaving him choking on his dry tongue. He coughed as he was wheeled into the room with the machine, breath not reaching his lungs when he tried to suck in as much air as possible.

He fought back when they strapped him onto the table, but the two guards were twice as big as he was and had actual muscles. Mike couldn't stop them from clamping the metal restraints around him; he just cried then, tears dripping down the tip of his nose to splat onto the tiled floor. The machine hummed to life above him, and he moaned in fear, teeth chattering. He didn't want to do this again, didn't want the pain, and didn't want the beast in his chest to grow. 

The gown was unbuttoned and shoved aside, the rubber nubs of the machine aligning with the notches of his spine. He tried to brace for it, but there was no way to brace for unimaginable pain. The needles scraped bone, pumping him full of pain, and Mike screamed. He screamed because there was nothing else for him to do. He screamed and screamed and screamed even when blood joined the tears and saliva puddling on the floor. He screamed because he wanted someone to hear him and wanted someone to know how much pain he was in.

He wanted someone to rescue him. Wants wants wants.

(5,553 miles away, a walkie-talkie cracked to life without anyone touching it. Static sounded prickly and unkind. Buried deep underneath it, so far underneath it, a scream sounded, pained and desperate.

“That’s weird.” A boy will say, hands reaching over to fiddle with the little rectangle of electronics, “El, are you messing with my walkie-talkie?”

The girl on the other side of the room will frown.

“You know I can't." she will reply.

“...I know, the batteries are probably dying.”)

The lights are flickering with his pain. Things are crashing around him, trays clattering on the counters, and the tongs and scalpels rattling as something unseen shoves them back and forth. 

But the thing in his chest isn't strong enough to save him.

Chapter Text

They didn't leave him loose like they had before this time.

When he woke up in an empty room on the floor, his wrists were stuck to the ground by loops of thick metal that were bolted directly to the ground; no chain was needed. That was a good move on their part.

Somehow, he felt worse than he had the last time. There was a nonstop tremble working its way throughout his body, his teeth chattering no matter how hard he tried to hold his jaw still. His back was screaming at him almost as loud as he had been screaming earlier.

The way that he was lying curled up on the cold floor didn't help, but every time that he tried to straighten himself out, he just couldn't. Pain flared up with every involuntary twitch of his legs.

He had woken up in the Soup again before he had woken up on the floor. He hadn't even been able to move this time. All he could do was lie there in the water as pain pulsed up and down his body, the beast in his chest roaring in sync with the agony. 

At least he hadn't managed to shatter all the ceiling lights this time, but that was mostly attributed to the fact that there weren't any lights built into the ceiling of this room. The only light in the room came from the grate-covered window that sat in the middle of the heavy door. The beam of light shining through it fell right across his face in a square of light. It was too bright when he blinked into it.

He groaned when he tried to uncurl for the umpteenth time. It didn't do him any good; a sharp stab of pain had him curling right back up. He didn't know how much longer he was going to be in this room, but for once he was really looking forward to seeing his bed.

-

They rolled him out of the room eventually. He didn't laugh this time or cry; he was too numb. Even if he had made any noise, he didn't think he would be able to hear it over the thing in his chest. There was nothing left when he tried to focus on his surroundings; they blurred past him in a haze of white on white. But he could hear the thing inside of him. It was all he could hear. Like an iceberg shifting, deafening cracks that felt like they were sounding through his bones. The crackle of wet branches being tossed on a roaring bonfire, hissing and spitting in anger. 

The whine of a radio while it was stuck on an empty channel. It was so loud, and it just kept getting louder.

The sound was surrounding him, swirling around his head to encase it in a bubble of hypersensitivity. The human mind was not made to comprehend things of this magnitude. The neurons that made up the human brain only had the capacity to understand and withstand a certain amount of information and stimulation. 

The human brain has an estimated 86 billion nerve cells in it, most of which were already there when they were born. They come into the world with everything that they’ll need to function. Over the course of a human's life, about 85,000 of these brain cells will die each day, and while it is possible for new brain cells to be formed, it is at a much slower rate than the one needed to completely replace the ones lost. 

That wasn't what was happening now, though. 

As Mike sat there, silent on his chair, the neurons in his brain were dying at an exceedingly rapid rate, while new ones were being created at almost twice the speed of the dying ones. The new brain cells were different from the ones that were dying, different in a way that shouldn't have been possible for the human body. 

They should not have been doing what they were doing. Pathways to different parts of the brain were dilating; the biological chemicals that controlled almost everything within the different parts of the brain were flooding through at an accelerated rate. Things grew where they shouldn't be; glands and lobes that didn't exist came into existence for the sole reason that they now had a reason for it. New senses to sift through, new limbs to control.

Every part of the brain had its purpose. There were parts for memory, sounds, languages, movement, everything. And now Mike’s brain needed new parts to control the thing in his chest and the frequencies of sound and sight that came with it.

His head hurt; it felt like his brain was shifting in his skull, the squishy bits pressing up against the inside of it. 

There was a detour to the shower room when his nose started leaking blood down his front, dripping over his Cupid's bow and chin to run down his neck to soak into the neckline of teal fabric that was on his gown. 

He didn't move when they unstrapped him from the wheelchair, just shook his head side to side slowly, trying to shake off the feeling of unreality that had draped itself over him and the pain that was thudding behind his eyes. 

Oh, the nice guard was there again, tilting Mike’s head back and pressing something soft to the skin underneath his nose. Mike stared up at the man with hazy, half-lidded eyes. 

The pad of gauze was soaked through with red when the man pulled his hand back, and still, his nose kept dripping. It was leaking down the back of his throat, iron sliding thickly against his tongue. He gagged a bit at the feeling, a choking noise leaving his mouth.

“Sorry, sorry.” The nice guard said under his breath, and Mike blinked slowly. 

That had been Russian, hadn't it? He didn't think the nice guard spoke anything but Russian. But Mike had understood it. He couldn't bring himself to care all that much right now. So what if he had learned a Russian word? He had probably picked up the word from the people around him. ‘Sorry’ was probably a pretty common word in a place like this. Alik said it enough in English, so that probably meant that he said it even more in Russian.

“It’s… okay.” Mike rasped out in return, his voice congested by the blood in his throat. It wasn't okay.

He hummed under his breath when he was pulled to his feet, back twinging; the only thing that was keeping him standing were the hands wrapped around his biceps. He was slipped out of his socks and gown and steered to stand underneath one of the shower heads, a stream of hot water beating down on his head and shoulders. 

He was surprised when the metal around his arms was unclasped from his hands; he hadn't expected it so soon after his time under the machine. He ran his palms over his hair, idly noting how it had grown a little bit, but he didn't bother to try and wipe away the blood that was still dripping to his chest. 

The amount of blood he was losing was actually getting a bit concerning. It just kept coming.

He was handed a washcloth and mechanically went through the motions of wiping himself down. Arms, legs, shoulders, and chest, even if the last one just got stained with blood as soon as he wiped it away. He did a clumsy job, missing patches of skin and not even bothering to make sure he got everything. He couldn't think enough to even want to be clean. The combination of hot water, blood loss, and fatigue was making him woozy. He stumbled a bit on the wet tile before a pair of big hands pried the washcloth from his white-knuckled hands and lowered him to sit on one of the benches bolted to the walls.

The man handed him another patch of gauze, using his hand to guide Mike’s own to press against his nose, before he took over the wipe-down. Mike sat there, eyes staring vacantly at the floor as he was cleaned, the nice guard going over all the places that Mike had missed or hadn't even bothered to try cleaning. 

The nice guard handed him a new piece of gauze halfway through, muttering to himself about how much blood Mike was losing. And- how did Mike know that?

“What?” Mike asked, blinking and barely noticing how his voice had dropped to copy the consonants that the Russian speakers used.

The guard startled, his eyes darting up from where he was crouched to wipe down Mike’s legs. “Russian?” The man asked, sounding just as confused as Mike felt.

“Why do I understand you?” Mike questioned, his alarm growing.

“You speak Russian?” The guard asked again, not replying to Mike’s question as the scrubbing motions he was doing with the washcloth slowed “I didn't think you knew any Russian.”

The water dripping out of his hairline and through his brows and eyelashes was making everything seem blurred and distant. 

“I’m not speaking Russian; I don't know how to.” Mike replied, pushing every bit of ‘how stupid are you?’ as he could into the words. Given his current state of mind, it wasn't much, but it was better than nothing.

“You are speaking in Russian; I did not know that you had learned the language.”

“‘Cause I didn't; I'm speaking English.” Mike said, wrinkling his brow in confusion. “It doesn't sound like Russian?” He murmured mostly to himself.

“It does to me.” The man replied.

Mike just shrugged shakily. Of fucking course the serum, they had given him would fuck with his head; nothing was sacred in this place. Maybe he was hallucinating this whole thing, and he was still in the cold room from before, just lying on the floor. That would make more sense than magically learning how to speak and understand Russian overnight. 

But things in this place didn't exactly make sense anyways. 

“What’s your name?” Mike asked, shamelessly changing the subject towards something that would make his brain feel less like it was melting. He didn't have the bandwidth to even try and understand what the hell was going on. Names were easier.

"I am Isaak.” the man-Isaak-said, handing Mike yet another piece of gauze before continuing to scrub Mike down with the washcloth. 

“Isaak.” Mike repeated, rolling the name around in his mouth, committing it to memory. 

It was a nice name, he guessed, even if it felt weird to call the man anything but ‘the nice guard.’ The man smiled at him. That was nice; Mike liked when people smiled. He liked being able to see the emotion written clearly on their faces; it made it easier for him to tell what was going on and how everyone was feeling. 

He didn't like it when the doctor smiled, though. The way the man did it was anything but nice. There was nothing behind his eyes, nothing but a detached, clinical interest that made Mike feel like less of a person and more like a lab rat. 

Mike smiled back at the man with blood-stained teeth and nothing behind his eyes. He wished he could feel happy that he was talking to someone, but it just took too much effort. And what was the point anyways? It's not like the man could do anything to help him. Despite being the only guard in this place that showed him a little decency, Isaak was still a guard. He still carried a taser and strapped Mike to the wheelchair when he was there. 

He was still someone who was sitting by and letting Mike and Alik and Anton and Ilia and however many other kids who had been there be tortured and killed. Mike wasn't stupid; he knew this was only a job for the man. At the end of the day, Isaak got to leave this place; he got to walk out the doors without anyone stopping him. 

And Mike hated him just a bit for that, hated how this man could look at him with so much pity while not doing anything to help. 

But Mike also craved it. He wanted the soft looks, and the soft touches, and the unspoken care. He wanted someone to be gentle with him, and Isaak was the one that got the closest. Well, aside from Alik, but Mike didn't think anyone could beat Alik in that department. 

Oh, if this Russian thing was actually real, then that meant that he could have an actual conversation with Alik. That would be really nice, really, really nice. Mike couldn't stop the zing of excitement that shot through him at the idea of being able to talk to someone and understand them completely. 

Eventually, Isaak finished wiping him down and helped him dry off with a fluffy white towel that he had pulled from somewhere. There was a fresh gown and pair of socks sitting on one of the counters by the sinks. Mike was stumbly and off balance when he tried to pull on his socks, taking the opportunity to use his hands while he had the chance. Isaak still had to help him keep his balance, keeping a piece of gauze pressed to his nose even while Mike stubbornly kept trying to pull on his socks.

He got them on eventually, even if it took way too much time and his head was swimming by the time he was done. He didn't even bother fighting to do it himself when Isaak buttoned his gown around his shoulders. 

He settled heavily into the wheelchair, the metal oven mitts going back onto his arms and straps being wrapped around his legs and chest. 

“I don't like the straps.” Mike told the guard absentmindedly, “They’re too tight, and they hurt, and they’re stupid.”

“I know, I don't like them either, and they are not even used on me. I don't know why the doctor has them used.” The man replied, moving behind the wheelchair to grip the handles and start pushing. It reminded Mike of his first day here when the man had been pushing Mike’s gurney.

“It’s so we don't try to run or fight; they can't have us getting any ideas about freedom.” Mike snorted, rolling his eyes. “Do you even know what's going on here? You should know why they're using the straps; you've seen how we are when the doctor is done with us. If we weren't strapped down, we would try and get away. I tried, and when that didn't work… well, you probably know what happened.”

The guard stayed silent behind him after Mike finished his quiet trade. Mike had said more than he was planning to; something about finally being able to ramble had unlocked the gates, and Mike just couldn't get his mouth to shut. He kept going.

“It didn't work, so now I'm stuck here until they decide I'm useful enough to move or I finally die. I’m probably going to die here, Isaak. I'm going to die thousands of miles away from my family because a man decided that I was an interesting enough lab rat.” Mike was gaining momentum now, emotions clouding his vision and the lights above him flickering softly. “How does that make you feel, Isaak? You're going to watch us all die, and you're not going to do anything about it. How many of us have you watched die already! How many more of us are going to die!”

One of the lights above him flickered and died; Mike didn't notice.

He was heaving for breath by the time he was done, fresh blood leaking from his nose. He licked it away, hating how it tasted like iron on his tongue. His heart was pounding in his chest, beating against the inside of his skinny ribcage. 

Still, Isaak was silent behind him.

“Why do I have to die?” He asked, tears building in his eyes. 

“I’m sorry.” The man whispered from behind him.

Neither of them said anything else. 

Mike fought against the hiccups that were building in his chest, a lump forming in his throat that he couldn't swallow down. 

They made it to the common room after a minute or two; the only sound that Mike could hear was the squeak of the wheels and Isaak’s footsteps. He was wheeled back to his bed, unstrapped from the chair, and made to lie down. He knew it was coming when the soft white straps were pulled out from under the bed and wrapped around his arms and legs. He knew that Doctor Kazimir wouldn't risk Mike trying to kill himself again with his longer chain.

Isaak wouldn't meet his eyes as the man strapped him in before wheeling the wheelchair out of the room. It left Mike feeling equal parts hurt and vindicated, vindicated because he was making the man hurt just the tiniest bit as much as he was and hurt because he wanted the man to look at him and wanted acknowledgement for the things that he had said. 

There was still blood leaking from his nose, more slowly now, but it was still annoying as hell. And he couldn't even wipe it away. The best he could do was turn to wipe his face against his pillow. He did that, which was when he noticed that Alik wasn't in the room. 

Ilia and Anton were still in the room, and they weren't crying, so Mike had to guess that they had either already had their time with the doctor hours ago or that it was much earlier in the day than he thought it was. But then, where was Alik? 

What if he was… Mike’s heart started pounding in his chest again. What if he were dead! What if Alik’s heart had finally given up under the stress, or he pissed off Kazimir enough to get shot, or…

There were so many terrifying scenarios flashing behind his eyes.

“Where is he?” Mike asked the only other boy in the room. 

The blond looked startled by Mike’s use of Russian, but Mike didn't care. 

“Where is he!” He asked again, hysteria leaking into his voice, “Is he dead?”

“I don’t think so,” Anton told him, sounding unsure. “They came to take him for more tests. They didn't take either of us for our tests today, just him.”

So, he wasn't dead; at least Mike didn't think so. The doctor would have taken the other two out for their needle time even if Alik had died. But Mike couldn't be sure until he saw the other boy himself. And what other tests could they be doing that would keep Kazimir from sticking needles in the other two? 

Anton was still looking at him weirdly, but Ilia was asleep in her bed, looking more peaceful than Mike could ever remember seeing her. The break from the daily torture was probably doing her body some good. 

“How are you speaking Russian?” The boy asked, his tone flat but with a note of apprehension underneath it. 

“I don’t know.” Mike replied tiredly, trying to keep his heart from beating out of his chest. “They gave me something, and when I woke up, I could understand what the guard was saying. It’s weird; my brain felt like it was melting, and my nose still won’t stop bleeding.”

“What did he give you?” The blond boy asked, curious and unbelieving at the same time.

“Have they taken you to the room with the machine yet?”

He got a shake of his head in return.

“Lucky.” Mike grimaced. “There’s a room with a machine on the ceiling that the doctor uses to put a bunch of needles in my spine, and they pump something into me through them. I don't know what it is, but it hurts more than anything else in here, which I didn't think was possible after the first time with the needle. But now I can break things with my mind, so I guess spontaneously learning Russian isn't that weird.”

“You can break things with your mind? I don't believe you.”

"I don’t believe me either, but true, I wish it wasn’t, but what do you think these handy dandy metal gloves are for?" Mike asked, shaking one of his arms to bring attention to the tube of metal wrapped around it. 

“I don’t know, but I don't think it is because you can break things with your mind; that's stupid. Things like that are only from comic books.”

“You like comic books?” Mike asked, perking up a bit at the mention of something that had nothing to do with the lab. And he liked comic books. 

“Yeah, do you?” Anton asked. The boy seemed to be settling down now, less cautious and more relaxed. 

“Yes.” Mike nodded. 

And the two of them settled into a debate about comics. It was nice to talk to someone about comics; comic books were simple. It was nice, even if it reminded him of lying on his bed and reading them with Will or trading them between the party when one of them got one of the new releases. 

He had been in the middle of a new X-Men comic before everything that went down on the fourth of July. Now he wouldn't be able to finish it until he managed to get out of this place and go home. Which he would be doing. He wasn't going to stay there forever. He was going to get out, and he was going to take Alik, Anton, and Ilia with him. He could take them to Hawkins with him and have Doctor Owens find somewhere for them to stay.

Maybe he could keep Alik with him; he wouldn't mind sharing his room. He still had a bunk bed even if he hadn't used the top bunk in years. It was mostly filled with random clutter: toys and books. He could clean it off and find some new blankets. 

Mike knew that it probably wouldn't happen. Alik probably had parents or family out there that were looking for him. And Alik probably wouldn't even want to come to the U.S. Mike certainly wouldn't want to stay in Russia when this was all over. But he wanted to dream about it, wanted to imagine a world where he got everything he wanted.

He didn't know when the conversation petered out; he was barely aware of Anton realizing that Mike was drooping and quieting down. Mike peered blearily around the room, eyes blinking slowly as he listened to the lights hum on the ceiling. He was tired; there was dried blood under his nose, and his whole body felt numb. He didn't know how he had managed to stay awake long enough to take a shower and talk to Anton. 

He was being dragged down again. Back into the blackness, but he didn't go into the soup this time. No, he sank softly into a sun-warmed dream; he heard voices, soft and familiar and so, so warm. 

He thought Will might have been there, with brown hair and eyes crinkled with laughter. The sun was shining across the other boys' features, giving everything a golden glow. The rest of his friends were there too; Lucas lay by his side, tossing a baseball up and down from where he was lying on his back. Up and down, up and down. Dustin was saying something, babbling in that way he did that was unique only to him, assertive and annoying. El and Max were dressed in the colorful clothes that they had picked out at the mall. 

He didn't like their outfits. No, that sounded bad. He liked them, but he didn't want to see the clothes that they had worn while the three of them had been being chased down the flickering halls of Star court by a deranged Billy Hargrove. 

He shook the thought away, turning to nuzzle into the warm sheets under his cheek. It was so nice, like lying in the sun by the side of the pool or leaning against the inside of a car window with the sun beating down against his skin. Warm like syrup on pancakes. 

He sighed heavily, letting all the air leave his lungs as he listened to the incoherent chatter of his friends around him, laughter breaking through the haze randomly. Happy and sharp. He loved it, melted into the sounds, letting them soothe the aching in his bones and the pounding in his head. The sound of his friends pacified the beast in his chest, patting down the harsh spikes that stood out from his skin and taming it into submission. 

Mike wished he could stay in this dream forever when a warm hand started carding through his curls.

“You can’t stay here, Mike.” Will said, his voice seeping into the cracks of Mike’s mind.

“Why not?” Mike whined, pressing himself harder into Will’s touch. 

“Because, Mike, we’re not here, and you won’t be able to get back to us if you stay here.” Lucas said, turning away from where he was throwing his ball to look at Mike.

“But it's nice here; it's not nice out there. I hate it out there.”

“We know, Mike, but if you don’t leave now, you’ll never be able to actually see us. This isn't real, Mike, but if you stay, it's the only version of us you’ll ever see.” That was Dustin, spitting out facts like he did every other day of his life.

“That wouldn't be so bad.” Mike murmured. And it wouldn't; it would be nice to lie in this syrupy softness forever.

Something dark was lurking just below the surface, calling to him in the sweetest voice, calling him home to rest. He really wanted to rest.

A hand slapped his cheek gently a second after he let his eyes flutter closed, a head of fiery red hair leaning over him, clear blue eyes meeting hazy black. 

“None of that bullshit, Wheeler. You have to wake up. If you don’t wake up, I'm going to have to beat your ass, and neither of us wants that.” Max was there, staring down at him with a judgmental look on her freckled face. 

Mike tried to grin up at her, but his face was feeling numb, his skin tingling like he had been to the dentist. 

“But I'm tired; I don’t want to do it anymore.”

“We know, Mike, we know. I didn't want to do it anymore either; that's why I escaped. You have to wake up so that you can escape too.” And finally, there was El, looking down at him with the softest expression. 

“So, c’mon Mike, wake up so you can see us again; wake up so we can see you again.” Will said, using a hand to tilt Mike’s face towards him. 

“It’s going to hurt, though.” He told Will, voice small and scared.

“But it won’t hurt forever.”

And Mike let himself fight against the warmth, ignoring the way that the darkness was calling him. 

He let himself wake up.

-

He woke up to the bleary sight of people hovering above him, hands moving rapidly as something was pressed against his chest. There was a high-pitched whine, and then electricity was being pushed into his chest.

He arched against the bed, half-lidded eyes blowing open as he cried out into the plastic mask that had been shoved onto his face. He sobbed into the plastic when the electricity left, and he crashed back onto the mattress. There were voices all around him, but he couldn't understand what they were saying. 

He had almost died, hadn't he? That dream had been calling him to stay, and he almost had; he had almost died. He had almost died, and he was kind of mad that he hadn't. He knew that he should be happy that he had been jerked back to life, but all he could think as he lay there and sobbed was that he wished that he could have stayed.

Stayed there in that honey warmth surrounded by his friends, tucked into his bed with a hand carding through his hair. 

But they were right; he would never be able to see them again if he died. He would’ve been stuck with empty imitations. 

He needed to go home; he needed it.

Chapter Text

Turns out he’d had a seizure in his sleep, and his heart had given out halfway through.

Anton had told him that the nurses had rushed in less than a minute after the seizure had started, so Mike was pretty sure that there was a camera hidden in the walls or some shit. 

He had been hooked up to an IV and a heart monitor, but other than that the nurses seemed content to just leave him be, which he was grateful for. Because if he had to be around doctors right now, Mike would have another seizure just to be annoying.

His entire body was aching, fine trembles running up and down his limbs. He didn't know how much time had passed since he had fallen asleep the first time, but Alik still wasn't back in his bed. So, all Mike could do was lay there with a needle in his arm, drowning in grief from the brief glimpse he had gotten of his friends. 

Grief weighed him down, silent tears dripping slowly down his cheeks. It had felt so real, the way that the sun had warmed his skin, shining through Will’s hair. It had felt so real, he had really thought that they were there with him. He had been in his bed, his friends surrounding him, laughing and talking like nothing was wrong. Honey warm and hazy.

He laid there and just breathed, breathed against the weight on his chest and the pain in his body, nose still leaking blood. They have him hooked up to a bag of fluids so hopefully this dragged out blood loss wouldn't cause him too many problems. Though his head was swimming and he felt like throwing up. Mike hadn't said anything yet, even when Anton had tried to talk to him, his throat was hoarse enough that it hurt to swallow. He must have been screaming, or all the talking he had been doing was taking its toll. 

The feeling from before was creeping up on him, the one that had led to a chain wrapped around his neck. He had been so close, both times now. If the nurses had been just a minute later then he could have stayed in his room with all of his friends. He wouldn't be in pain; he wouldn't be feeling all the things he was feeling. It would have been so peaceful. 

But they had asked him to wake up, and he could never say no to his friends. He would see them again, they had said so. He just needed to get out of this place. And for that he needed to start planning. He couldn't just lay in his bed all day doing nothing. 

He needed to figure out schedules and guard rotations, he needed to figure out how to get out of his restraints whenever he needed, it was just like a D&D campaign, and that's how he should go about it. He had to figure out what spells he had equipped and who his allies were. Even if he had never played as a wizard before he was one now and he would have to play the game as such. 

The wizard role had been Will’s ever since the Party’s first campaign and Mike had never felt the need to step into the role. He was happy as a Paladin. But he had watched Will play enough to know the basics. Spells and enchantments. He could do that, he could become the wizard to get back to the real wizard. And the Ranger, Artificer, Mage and Zoomer. Even if he still didn't think Zoomer was an actual role. 

But yes, he could do this, he could figure out how to escape. But it would take time, the waiting and watching and learning would take time. Mike wasn't a patient person by nature, but if this place had taught him anything it was that there were benefits to staying still. 

He could be patient.

He would be patient.

-

At some point, Alik was wheeled back into the room and Mike cried tears he didn't know he had left to cry. 

Because the older boy was strapped down to the wheelchair, familiar rolled metal clamped around his forearms and a dead look on his face. He looked terrible, blood crusted under his nose and normally tan skin five shades to pale. Like death warmed over.

Mike should have been able to guess that this was going to happen, Alik had been there the longest after all. It made sense that Doctor Kazimir would send Alik to the room with the machine. He wouldn't have been keeping Alik around if he hadn’t planned on it. It had only been a matter of time.

So, why then, did Mike feel so surprised? Alik had always seemed sort of untouchable to Mike, even if he was going through the same things as the rest of them. There was something about him that just felt grounded and patient. 

The nurses didn’t leave Alik unbound either, having seemingly learned from Mike that it just wasn't a good idea. Alik was hauled into his bed by the nurses, not even seeming to try and stand up on his own two feet. He was strapped in with the same type of restaurants that were being used on Mike, those stupid padded white ones that chafed against his skin.

Silent tears dripped down his face as he watched Alik lay still on his bed, the boys breathing even and his eyes a glossy, blank. He didn't like this, he really didn't like this. His own body ached from the aftermath of his own session with the machine and the seizure that followed, but it faded as he let himself embrace the drifting he had been doing earlier. 

He didn't have to think while he was drifting, all he had to do was listen to the humming lights and let himself leave. It wasn't like Alik was going to be saying anything for a while, so Mike had no reason to stay. 

He let himself become untethered, silent tears crawling to a stop and his chest rising and falling rhythmically as his breaths evened out. He didn't go back into the Soup, even with the humming of the lights, and he was okay with that. He didn't like it there anyways. It was cold and dark. 

He knew that the other two were awake, maybe they were talking to each other, but the sounds were blurred together into an amalgamation of word vomit, the words scattered.

It was Alik’s hoarse, shaky voice that drew him out of the haze. Mike tuned into the sentence halfway through, his foggy brain struggling to push and pull the words to where they needed to be.

“-and I know now, it hurts so much. You would have been better off, I should have just let you do it, if they had taken me before you, I probably would have. I would have let you take your life because a life with this sort of pain is not a life.” Alik was babbling away in Russian, words not meant for Mike’s ears, but he heard them anyway. 

And what was Mike supposed to say to that, huh? What was he supposed to say when the boy who was keeping him alive admitted he was better off dead, what was he supposed to do when he agreed with him? Because Mike knew how much the machine hurt, intimately. He had gone through twice and it had only hurt more the second time. 

And now Alik had been through the same, he’d had the needles scrape against his spine as the serum was pumped in without mercy.

“It is not a life, and I am sorry that I took your choice, I am sorry, but I still don’t regret it.”

Oh, that was nice. Stupid, but nice. And Mike wanted to see his friends again so being alive wasn't so bad right now. He wouldn't be able to be back in Hawkins if he was dead. His body would probably be dissected and that tossed in a fire somewhere to erase evidence. He wouldn't get a funeral, his friends and family would never know that the body they had buried wasn't actually Mike, and Mike couldn't have that.

So, he shook the fog away, letting his eyes clear to focus on the other boy.

“I’m okay with that, it's okay that you made me live.” He murmured, voice cracking against the words. 

Alik turned startled, red rimmed eyes on him. 

“What?” He asked, staring at Mike like he hadn't seen him before.

“He took me to the room with the machine again and now I can speak Russian, don’t ask, I don’t know how it happened, it just did.” Mike muttered, coughing at the rasp in his throat.

“He took you back there? With the thing on the ceiling?” Alik asked, bypassing everything Mike had said about speaking Russian, looking heartbroken.

“I couldn't do everything that he wanted me to, so he took me back to the machine, said I needed more of the serum.” Mike shuddered at the reminder. 

“You had to do it again; will I have to do it again?” Alik was as pale as the sheets under him when he asked the question.

Mike understood it, he had thrown a fit fueled by terror and rage when he was wheeled back to the room. He had been ready to let the gun that had been shoved in his mouth go off. 

“I don’t know,” Mike settled on saying, “It depends on if you can do what the doctor asks you to do.”

“What will I have to do?”  Alik asked, a desperation that Mike hadn't heard from the older boy threading through his words.

“He had me crumple paper and bottles without touching them and then he had me break thick pieces of glass. I couldn't break the glass, so he sent me back to the machine.”

“That's it? You couldn't break something, so he sent you to be tortured?” Alik sounded so scared. So scared at the idea of being sent back to the machine.

“Yeah.”

Alik cried and Mike couldn't even muster up the tears to cry with him.

-

Mike broke all the glass the next time that Doctor Kazimir had him wheeled back to the room with the table. He shattered them all simultaneously. It was easy.

He barely had to work to draw up the thing in his chest and send it flooding into the glass. Shards skittered over the tabletop and landed with a clink on the hard floor, he saw one of them slice a thin scratch on Doctor Kazimir’s hand and felt a sick sense of satisfaction at the sight. It felt good to make the man bleed, even if it was only a little bit.

The man didn't even seem to notice, too busy staring at Mike with a morbid sense of satisfaction to realize that the glass had hit him.

“Much better, Mikhail! So much better, we can begin the process of moving you to a more standard training area soon.” The doctor said, clapping his hands together. 

Only then did he seem to realize that he had been cut, but all he did was click his tongue. 

Mike glared at the man, eyes full of hatred but he didn't say anything. It wasn't like talking to the man would change anything. And he also didn't want to accidentally slip into Russian. If Doctor Kazimir found out that the Serum had given him the ability to speak perfect Russian, then Mike didn't know what the man would try to do with that.

Turns out that he didn't need to worry about not speaking Russian in front of the man because he already knew all about it. 

Doctor Kazimir had him repeat different phrases in English and in Russian for what felt like hours, over and over again, seemingly endlessly fascinated by the implications that his Serum could affect the brain like it had. And Mike just went along with it. He could bitch and shout as much as he wanted to on the inside, but he couldn't do it out loud anymore. 

It would just end up with him back under the machine or with a taser at his neck and he couldn't deal with that anymore. He let the doctor do what he wanted without protest. 

When the man was seemingly satisfied with what Mike could do, he sat back and just stared at him with this pleased and smug look on his face. 

Mike twitched under the scrutiny, uncomfortable with the way that the man's eyes seemed to dissect him. 

“This is much better than before. Mikhail, so much better. Which means that you will be being moved out of the Common Room, isn't that great?” Doctor Kazimir asked, clapping his hands together in a way that made Mike flinch.

No, no it was not great. The Common Room had Alik and Anton, even Ilia. He didn't know what any of the other places he could be put would hold. He wanted to panic, wanted to scream and send the doctor crashing into the wall. But he didn't. He just stared at the man’s chin, keeping his breaths even. 

There was no point in resisting until he could make sure that he could get out of this place when he did. 

“Perfect, you will be moved to your own room and given free reign of it. If you keep up the good behavior, you will be given free reign of the entire floor that you will be habituating, within reason.” Doctor Kazimir explained as the guards entered the room to re-restrain him to the wheelchair, “You will be given a schedule containing mealtimes, training slots, and gym availability. I have sourced a trainer for you for hand-to-hand combat, but that will only commence once you have built up a decent amount of muscle mass.”

Mike’s head was spinning with the amount of information that was being dumped into it. A trainer? For hand-to-hand combat? Mike was basically a stick; any hand-to-hand combat was going to end with him as a broken pile of mush on the floor. 

And an actual schedule? Not just a random assortment of times when things happened? Mike was kind of looking forward to that part under the complete and utter dread that came with everything else. He liked his schedules, always had. The Upside-down had always thrown a wrench in his schedules, but nowhere near as much as being kidnapped by Russians had.

He didn't say anything as he was rolled out of the room, and the doctor didn't either, just turned back to his clipboard and noted something down.

The first thing that changed was that instead of turning right down the hallway to get back to the Common Room, the guard pushing his chair steered him to the left. He didn't know how long he was pushed through zig zagging hallways, too focused on categorizing every single new thing, even if they looked the same as every other thing in this godforsaken place.

Eventually, he was wheeled through a door that led to a smaller room with a gleaming elevator door embedded in the opposite wall. He was thrown back to the last time he had seen an elevator, when he was slamming on the buttons with El bracing herself on his shoulder and Billy slowly gaining on them. He shuddered, shaking off the memory. He couldn't afford to be scared of things that had already happened when there were much worse things that could happen to him now. 

He was wheeled into the elevator after the guard slid a keycard into a slot by the button. He took note of that; he would need that card if he was ever going to use the elevator.

His stomach lurched in time with the elevator when it started moving, he jolted against his restraints. Ugh, he didn't like that, he didn't like that at all. 

It was like entering a different world when he was wheeled out of the elevator. For one, the walls weren't that sterile white or concrete that all the walls were downstairs. The elevator opened up into a giant room, the walls in red brick and stone floors. There were people bustling around, some in uniform, some in plain looking clothes. Though all of them seemed to be armed, rifles slung over shoulders and pistols strapped to belts and thighs. 

It was loud in the room, sound echoing off of the walls and reverberating in his skull. Voices, thuds as heavy things were moved, the sound of an engine running somewhere that Mike couldn't see. It was overwhelming.

There were eyes on him as he was wheeled through the school gym sized room, some curious, some apprehensive, some downright hostile. 

Mike broke his apathetic staring to bare his teeth at one of the more hostile men when he got too close. The man flinched back, the glare on his face deepening. Mike glared back even harder, black eyes boring into the man's scruffy face until he was wheeled out of sight. 

He was wheeled all the way across the room to a metal door; the guard used the key card again and the door slid open. It was quieter on the other side, an emptier hallway that seemed to go on and on. There were doors lining the hall, noises coming from behind them. He could hear voices, people shouting words in Russian that he couldn't quite make out even with his new found mastery of the language. 

The amount of different sensory input that he was getting after who knows how many weeks of white on white on white was giving him a headache. He scrunched up his eyes against the light reflecting off of the red brick walls. 

The guard just kept on pushing him down the hallway, taking a turn every once in a while, until he turned into a hall that had a dead end. There were two doors on either side of the hall, reinforced metal with heavy looking locks on them and a slot with a little door in the middle of it. All in all, it looked a lot like the door that the rooms he woke up in after machine time did. It made uneasiness churn in his gut.

He was rolled to a stop in front of the farthest door on the right side of the hallway, the guard stepping out in front of him to slot a heavy looking key into the lock, the door was pulled open, and he was pushed inside.

The room looked like… well, it looked like a normal bedroom. The walls were painted a soft blue, a bed with matching sheets shoved into one corner and a desk in the other. There was a door off to one side that he was assuming led to a bathroom. It looked surprisingly normal. 

The guard didn't say anything as he unstrapped Mike from the chair, even though he had a hard look in his eyes and one hand kept hovering over the gun on his belt. The metal tubes on his arms stayed where they were but the guard didn't chain him to the wall. As soon as Mike was standing the guard was backing out of the room, wheelchair in hand. 

Mike just stood there for a minute, stunned as he took in every single detail of the room. It was so normal looking, he kept getting hung up on that. There was a pile of books on the desk, and a calendar stuck to the wall above that. The pillows on the bed looked like they would actually do what a pillow should do and support his head while the comforter looked thick and fluffy. 

This was a bribe, he knew it was a bribe, but he couldn't stop himself from drifting towards the bed. He let himself drop onto it, gasping quietly when he sunk into the soft pillowtop. After medical cots and the floor, this bed was like laying on a little slice of heaven. 

He sighed, breathing in deeply and he let himself sink deeper into the covers. He could fall asleep like this, drifting off into the soft, soft covers. 

Actually, wait, he heaved himself up. He wanted to check the date before he knocked out. There were X’s crossed over some of the boxes for the month of August, and even just that had Mike cringing. It was already August; it felt like yesterday that Doctor Kazimir had been telling him that it was July 19th. Had he been missing time? Or was he in the room after the machine longer than he thought he had been. 

It wouldn't surprise him if he was missing time, the drifty way that his thoughts had been getting recently made it easy to pretend that nothing existed. The calendar said that it was August 2nd, almost an entire month since the Fourth of July. He couldn't even bring himself to have an explosive reaction, he was too tired to cry.

Mike just sighed as he turned himself back to his new bed, throwing himself down onto the covers in a way that made the hand prisons dig into his ribs painfully. He still didn't move, he deserved this bit of pain, and it was something that he could control in this hellish place. 

He had been in Russia for a month. It felt like it had been so much longer. The days stretched in this place; the lack of sunlight or clocks made it impossible to tell the time. He had a calendar now and hopefully that would help, but Mike wasn't going to hold out hope. 

The fact that he wouldn't be going back to the Common Room was finally sinking in, and his breath hitched. It figures that as soon as he was able to hold an actual conversation with Alik that he would be moved away. 

His chest hurt when he thought about it so he pushed the thought as far back in his head as he could, focusing on the distant sounds he could hear coming from far away. Muddled voices and dull thuds, the buzzing of electricity in the walls. Mike let himself drift off, the sounds blending together into an amalgamation of sound that didn't make him want to tear his head off. 

He wanted to go home, but sleep would have to do for now.

Chapter Text

He was lonely in this new room, there was no one there to talk with and he had gotten so used to being able to hear the other kid’s breathing that it felt weird to lay in the silence. He managed it but it was unnerving. The sheets were soft though, and his new mattress actually felt like a mattress instead of a slightly too firm block wood. May those shitty little hospital mattresses burn in the Upside Down.

So, he spent a couple of hours just lounging on his new bed, burrowing under the blanket and dozing off into a half sleep. With the new thick comforter, he was the warmest he had been in what felt like months, even when he really knew he had only been in Russia for about a month. It was August now, which was a mindfuck. He hadn't thought he would have been in this place for this long. 

There was a different sort of buzzing in the walls coming from the lights, sounding different from the lights in the Common Room. They sounded sharper than the fluorescents from before, not to mention that there was a lower toned, rumbling buzz underlying the main buzzing. Mike couldn't quite place it. He would have to get closer to the sound to figure out what it was but right now he didn't even want to get out of bed. 

Eventually though, he dragged himself out of the warm cocoon of blankets and sheets, ignoring the siren call of the pillow with much more willpower than he thought he had. He really wanted to do nothing more than crawl back into the bed but he also wanted to run his hands over the books that were sitting on the desk. 

There were only a few of them but Mike didn't care. It was only when he was standing in front of the desk that he remembered that he couldn't actually use his hands. He sighed heavily, groaning dramatically. Why would they even give him books if he wouldn't be able to read them? And how the hell was he supposed to cross out days on his calendar? Damn, the Russians were stupid. 

He sighed again, moving to flop down on top of the bed, facedown so that he could groan into the pillow. He hated it here, his head hurt, his bones hurt, basically everything hurt, and he wanted to be back in Hawkins. 

Everything here sucked.

-

Mike didn't really have a chance to adjust to the abrupt change in scenery before he was being dragged out of the room and led somewhere else. 

He‘d had maybe a day of solitude laying half asleep on blue sheets before anything interesting happened. Not that Mike would really call it interesting, more like slightly terrifying and majorly annoying. 

A guard came to get him, one without a wheelchair but with a change of clothes that wasn't a hospital gown. 

The amount of excitement he felt when seeing a pair of pants was frankly pathetic, but pants! He hadn't worn a pair of pants in months.

Still, he stared guardedly at the man from the bed when he entered the room. It wasn't one of the guards he had seen before, a heavyset man with a thick mustache. The man looked at home in the olive green uniform, it melded with the color of his hair and skin. Mike didn't know why that was something that he noticed, but it was probably the complete lack of outside stimulation that came from being in this place. 

He could count the fibers of the cloth, see the individual pores of the man. He blinked at that, he really shouldn't be able to see all that when the guard was still standing across the room. Stupid serum, stupid Russians, stupid brain. He hated it here.

He stood from the bed when the guard asked him to, all too aware of the taser clipped to the man's belt. He held out his arms when the man asked him to, his mouth dropping open a bit in surprise when the hand prisons were unclasped from around them. He hadn't expected that. 

He didn't have time to stretch his fingers before the change of clothes was being dropped into his skinny arms and he was being ordered towards the small connecting bathroom to change. Mike stood there for a moment, honestly gob smacked that he was being told to go into the bathroom by himself. Wasn't the guard going to follow him in? He hadn't been in a bathroom by himself since before he had gotten to Russia.

He must have looked stupid just standing there.

“I can go in alone?” He asked, sounding unsure. 

“Go change.” Was the barked reply he got. 

Mike wasn't about to waste this opportunity. He scurried over to the bathroom, pushing the door open with his newly freed hands and letting it swing shut behind him. There was no lock on the door, but Mike hadn't expected there to be. Why would his capture give him the opportunity to put another door between him and them?

The bathroom was tiny; a sink with a mirror, a small toilet mounted to the wall, and the smallest shower that Mike had ever seen crammed into the corner. He didn't think he had time to take a shower right now, not with the guard waiting for him outside of the door. He dropped the bundle of black clothing onto the sink before making a beeline for the toilet. He did his business, stunned by the fact that there wasn't anyone watching him.

Wow, what had his life come to that he thought being able to use the bathroom without someone watching was practically the height of life. Oh god, how many of the guards here had seen him naked. He shuddered. He hated this, hated it so much. 

It felt like a metamorphosis when he shed the teal hospital gown that he was wearing, letting the light fabric drop to the floor without a care. Then he took a look at himself in the mirror. 

There were bruises under his eyes and in the crooks of his arms, a pallid tint to his already pale skin. The buzzcut from before was steadily growing out, laying flatter now that there was some length to it. That was nice, he really wanted to have hair again.

His ribs were showing through his skin in a way they hadn't before. Sure, his ribs had always shown through his skin a bit, but never like this. He could count them individually if he really wanted too. He ignored that for the time being, not willing to linger on something that he couldn't control. It wasn't his fault that unethical human experimentation burnt so many calories. 

He looked down at his guard-provided outfit, happy to find out that a pair of underwear and a simple pair of slippers had been included with the pair of pants and a long-sleeved shirt. The shirt was made out of thick fabric, the sleeves hanging a little loose when he shrugged it on. There seemed to be a white outlined picture of a dog embroidered on the back and a smaller version over the left breast, but Mike had no idea what it meant. Maybe that was just something that the shirt came with but Mike got the feeling that it meant something deeper.

The dog had a long nose and thin curls of fur stitched around the ears. It was pretty cute actually, in a babyish way. He stroked a thin finger over the smaller dog on his chest, liking how the rows of stitches felt under his fingertip. 

He pulled on the underwear and the pants, the feeling of fabric against his legs feeling weird after so long without pants. He slipped on the slippers, taking another look in the mirror and feeling surprised about how normal he looked. Without the hospital gown and his hair grown out slightly, he looked like a normal, if not slightly sick looking teenager. 

He left the bathroom reluctantly, coming to stand in front of the guard, arms crossed over his chest. The guard was holding something now, a hoop of metal and plastic that Mike had vaguely registered hanging from the man’s belt before he had gone to the bathroom. 

“Turn around.” The guard ordered and Mike did as he was told, even as goosebumps crawled up his neck.

Something heavy was draped around his neck, pressing close against his skin as it clicked closed. It was heavy around his neck, what felt like little metal buttons pressing into his skin under the band. He felt at the thing around his neck with trembling fingers. 

It was a collar, probably a shock collar if his experience meant anything. Huh, the dog on his shirt made a bit more sense if they were going to collar him. He swallowed heavily, feeling the way his throat bobbed against the slowly warming metal wrapped around his neck. 

He took a breath. This wasn't something he could care about right now, he had other things to do, and honestly, he would rather wear a shock collar than the hand prisons. At least then he would be able to use his hands, he liked being able to use his hands. 

“Good, follow me.” The guard said and Mike did. 

It felt odd to be walking the halls and not being wheeled along, strapped down. He could feel the coldness from the stone floor seeping through his slippers, goosebumps working up his arms when the cold air breezed underneath the too big sleeves of his shirt. He hugged himself, trying to warm himself up as he shuddered against the cold. 

He followed the guard through the twisting hallways until he was led to what he was going to assume was the gym that Doctor Kazimir had been talking about before. It was a big room, a thick rubber matting covering most of the floor and machines covered in weights taking up one half of the room. 

On the other side of the room from the machines there was a rectangle of vivid green astroturf that stood out drastically from the dull colors that made up everything else. A shelf filled with smaller weights and rolled up mats was resting against one wall by the turf, a floor to ceiling mirror making up the opposite wall. It was the most interesting looking room that Mike had seen in a while. 

It's a foreign sight for him. Hawkins didn't have an actual gym; they had the school gymnasiums and the studios where the local moms went and did their Pilates classes. Well, the public pool did have a few workout machines when the Party had been there to trap Billy in the sauna. But there was nothing like this in Hawkins. 

The guard led him to where a tall, stern looking woman was standing, looking down at a pad of paper in her hands as she stood beside the turf.

“You are here, good.” She said as the guard led him right up to her and Mike was surprised to hear her voice come out in English. Heavily accented English but still English. 

The only other person who spoke English here had been Alik and the doctor, but Alik’s English was broken and Mike would rather try and kill himself again than listen to the doctor talk ever again. The lady’s voice was thick with that classic Russian accent but she was much more understandable than Alik was, no offense to Alik. 

“My name is Elisey Kostya, I will be your trainer for the time being. I will be assessing your physical conditioning and beginning you on a basic regime to up your muscle mass and flexibility.” The newly introduced woman began, talking briskly, “You will call me ma’am or you will call me nothing at all, and I expect you to listen when I tell you to do something or there will be consequences.”

Mike watched absently as the guard handed the woman a small remote and he took an educated guess about what his punishment would be if he disobeyed. The Russians really were so predictable. Like seriously, did they really not know any other methods of being little bitches?

“Yeah, yeah, you’ll set the collar off, I’m so scared, it's not like I've never been tased before.” He told her, rolling his eyes. 

Kostya clicked her teeth at him, narrowing her eyes but she didn't do anything, just waved the guard away to stand by the door to do his job. 

What followed next was definitely not the worst day of his life, probably didn't even make the top ten really, but it still sucked. Ma’am, as Kostya demanded to be called, was a slave driver. She had him running back and forth, doing jumping jacks and pushups and all manner of hellish exercises until his arms and legs trembled uncontrollably. She made him lift small weights that felt light when he picked them up but by the time he put them down it felt like nothing could weigh more. 

By the end of it, Mike didn’t even feel embarrassed about the way he flopped down on the turf in a sprawl of tangled, sweaty limbs. He was panting, his skin red from exertion. This was a different sort of torment that the needle torture was. It was a gasping exhaustion that made it impossible to stand without wobbling like a newborn deer. 

Mike hadn't been built for this before he had been kidnapped and held captive in a bed that let his muscles atrophy. He was a stick with skinnier sticks attached, he didn't have any muscles, and it was stupid for the doctor to assume that that was going to change. 

“That was disappointing,” The woman said from where she stood above him.

Mike flinched at the phrasing, remembering all too well what had happened the last time that someone said they were disappointed in him. There had been a lot of pain, a lot.

“Tell that to the people who kept me in bed, why don't you.” Mike sneered under his breath between panting gasps for breath.

“If I could have words with them I would, your physical conditioning is atrocious, but that means you can only get better. I will be giving you a schedule for the days that you will be here, and you will be here. The guards will not always escort you but if you avoid the time that has been set aside for these sessions, there will be consequences.” Ma’am brandished the little remote control for emphasis. 

Mike just kept sneering up at her. Being angry was better than being empty. He didn't want the floatiness to come back, even if he would rather drift away sometimes. He needed to focus on memorizing the hallways and figuring out where the exit was. He figured that there was a better chance of there being an exit on this floor than there had been on the one below. With the amount of people he had seen, there had to be a way to get them in and out without a bustle. 

And his memory was always shit when he went all drifty, so there would be no drifting in the near future, not if he could help it, (which) he wasn't sure he could. It kinda just happened sometimes. But he would do his best not to let it happen. 

“I would like a verbal affirmation please, to let me know that you understand.” The woman said, not looking up from her notepad. 

“I understand.” Mike ground out, unwilling to get on the lady’s bad side so soon if this was what she was going to be doing to him whenever he was at the gym. Making her angry would just make these torture sessions disguised as workouts harder and more painful. 

“Good.” She told him as she dropped a piece of paper to rest on his still heaving chest, “Here is your schedule, you will follow it or there will be consequences.”

“Yeah, yeah, again with the consequences.” Mike grumbled as he hauled himself up into a sitting position to look down at the paper as it fell into his lap. 

It reminded him a little bit of the schedule that he always got at the beginning of a new school year with slots blocked off for individual classes and break periods interspaced between classes. There was a two hour slot set aside on Monday, Thursday and Saturday, with a four hour block on Sunday and Wednesday. And those were just the gym segments. 

There were times set aside, some labeled some not, before and after his gym times. One of the labels read ‘Weapons Training’ that (definitely) didn't fill him with any sort of trepidation, definitely not. What kind of weapon would he even be able to use? Because once again, he has noodle arms. 

Tellingly, there wasn't a slot put aside for martial arts, but Mike understood that. The doctor had said that there wouldn't be any fighting until he had an appropriate amount of muscles. Mike laughed internally at that, him with muscles, puh-lease. 

His favorite though, were the three daily slots set aside for meals. Three meals a day at the same time every day? That was basically a dream come true. It would help him start the process of hiding his ribs under a healthy layer of skin again. And gaining some weight would help him feel less cold all the time. 

He clutched the piece of paper to his chest as the guard hauled him to his feet and took the remote back from the woman. Kostya didn't even bother saying goodbye as Mike trailed after the man out of the room. He and the guard headed back in the direction of Mike’s new room, but the man changed direction before they got to the hallway with the rooms, turning down a louder hallway. 

There were people in this hallway, going in and out of doors and talking to each other as they walked. Mike stared at them as he passed, taking in the novelty of watching people have a basic conversation that didn't seem like it was riddled with power plays and thinly veiled threats. He got some looks as they walked, probably because he was wearing something different than all the rest and he was very clearly the youngest resident in this place. Not to mention that he didn't exactly look like everyone else there. His skin was like four shades too light, and his facial features were a bit too angular to fit in. Well, his nose wasn't that out of place, but he didn't feel like mentioning that. 

Eventually the guard led him through a thick pair of double swinging doors that led to a big open room filled with long metal tables. People were sitting down at them, trays of food in front of them as they ate. Mike got looks sent his way as the guard led him across the room to stand in front of the serving station. 

He looked at the guard unsure, but the man only grunted and handed him a tray. Mike hesitated where he stood, unsure if he was actually allowed to grab food for himself or if that would be something that would get him shocked by the collar. 

He had to bite the bullet, he decided, reaching for the serving spoon for the closest tray, a version of scrambled eggs. The guard didn't say anything or try and stop him, so Mike took that as approval and started ladling food onto his tray.   

There was bacon and sausages, some of those thin pancakes that he had been given before. He made sure to grab some of those. He avoided the cottage cheese with an avid hatred, honestly almost gagging at the mere sight of it. Oh god, why did people even eat that shit. 

When his tray was filled, he followed the guard over to one of the mostly empty tables, steering Mike over to the empty side of it, away from the other two people that were sitting there. Mike ignored how they stared at him and his guard, curiosity flickering in their gazes. He just focused on shoveling as much food into his mouth as possible, keeping his back to the wall and his eyes scanning for anyone who might decide to try something.

He didn't think it would happen given the guard he had but he wasn't about to tempt fate. This was new territory and it wouldn't do to be taken off guard because he was being lazy. He had been taken off guard by Billy and had ended up in Russia for that mistake. He had been taken off guard those times he had tried to escape, the taser and the guards doing their jobs. 

He didn't want that to happen again.

No one tried to come up to him, but he saw at least two people being talked down from doing so by someone else sitting with them. Good, Mike didn't want to deal with people right now, especially not what looked like Russian soldiers. 

Mike finished his food like a good little boy, feeling slightly sick with the amount of it that he had eaten, but satisfied by the way that he had been able to pick his own food and eat as much of it as he wanted. He knew that this was probably just a way to make him complacent but he didn't care. He liked being able to walk around and move, even if all his muscles felt like they had been hit by a hammer and there was a fine tremble in every step as he was led back to his room.

The hospital gown was gone from the bathroom when he got back, but there were a few identical sets of clothes as the one he was wearing sitting on the foot of his bed. Along with them there were a few pairs of socks and two pairs of shoes; a heavy set of combat boots and a pair of black running shoes. It looked like they were taking the black theme and running with it.

His bed had also been made, the pillow fluffed and the wrinkles smoothed out of the comforter. He didn't like the fact that someone had been in the room but he knew better than to expect actual privacy in a place like this. 

The shower he took was amazing, he stayed under the water for as long as he wanted, letting it scald his pale skin until it was red and tender. And then he got to get out and put on pants, actual pants! It was amazing that there wasn't a breeze down under for once.

And then he got to lay down in an actual bed. He was gonna take a quick nap before he got up to explore the items that had been left on his desk. His eyes caught on a red lighted clock on the desk that he hadn't noticed before as he threw himself down onto the bed. Burrowing under the blankets was nice, it would only be better if his friend had been there with him, like they had been in his dream.

He closed his eyes, hoping that whatever dreams he had would be as nice as the vision of all his friends in that sun soaked room from before. Laughing and smiling. Hell, maybe they wouldn't tell him to wake up this time. 

-

It's just his luck that he ended up in the Soup again. 

Here he was, thinking he could catch a break in his dreams. But noooo, he just had to end up in the darkness, his ankles soaked with water, the hem of his pants clinging to his legs. 

At least he hadn't come too laying down again, it was like he had blinked and then he was standing in the dark, water rippling around his feet. There are voices off in the distance again and Mike didn't hesitate to follow them, splashing along in soggy socks until he could see something getting closer in the distance. 

It’s familiar, so familiar that it made him pick up his pace from a walk to a jog. The white hospital bed was coming into view, a copper chain glinting against the white sheets and a boy clad in a teal gown laying on top of it. It's Alik, looking whole and alive and completely miserable. 

“Where is he! Where did you take him?” Alik was screaming in a way that Mike had never heard from him, swearing and bucking up against the four-legged restraints holding him to the bed. 

Mike can’t see or hear who Alik is yelling at but clearly Alik didn't get the response that he wanted if the way he screamed said anything. The lights were flickering, and Mike knew deep in his chest that it had nothing to do with any electrical issues. 

Mike moved to stand next to Alik’s bed, looking down at the older boy and he yelled and thrashed. He knew the guards wouldn't do anything unless Alik tried something first, they were all too accustomed to hearing screams and cries coming from this particular room.

But Mike couldn't stand it, couldn't stand watching as Alik broke down. He moved closer, hands hovering awkwardly above Alik before he settled one of them gently on Alik’s shoulder. 

The boy settled immediately, going stiff before he fell back onto his bed. 

“Mike.” Alik breathed under his breath and Mike found himself smiling, “You’re okay.”

“I’m okay.” Mike soothed gently in Russian, reminded of all the times he did the same thing for Holly, “Go to sleep, Alik, it’s okay.”

And Alik did, his eyes fluttering closed as he sunk fully into his bed. 

Mike watched with weary eyes as the shoulder under his hand broke apart into wispy smoke. He wished he had been able to stay there with Alik, to talk to him instead of standing above him in what, for all intents and purposes, is a mirror dimension. But that didn't matter, the image of Alik was gone and he was once again alone in the darkness.

… Except, he can still hear voices off in the opposite direction. He turned towards them, intent on following them. He came upon a slightly familiar sight, a big man sitting tied to a chair with a bag over his head. He thinks that it's the same Russian soldier from before, but he looked significantly worse off that the last time Mike had seen him. 

There were bruises and blood everywhere that skin showed from underneath a dirty white shirt and pair of shorts. It was a very different look than the bloodied uniform that the man had been wearing before. 

Mike squinted at the man, there was something familiar about him, something that Mike couldn't quite put his finger on. Something in the slope of his shoulders maybe? He didn't know. Why was he being shown this man a second time? Usually, he only saw people that he knew when he was in the soup, well, actually, he had only seen Alik and this mystery man. Did he know this man somehow? Maybe he had been there during the night at Starcourt, but that seemed like a stretch. 

It was there, he swears, it's right there on the tip of his tongue. He squinted harder at the man, moving closer, trying to get a better look. But before he could get a good look, the man and his chair disintegrated into nothing. 

He groaned out loud, not bothering to be quiet when he was the only person in this god forsaken place. Actually, maybe he could try and find El, if he did, she might be able to tell it was him in the same way that Alik had. 

He closed his eyes, focusing on what he remembered of El. Her hair, her face, the way that she smelled when he kissed her. His stomach rolled at the memory, something about picturing kissing her making him feel sick. He must have missed enough that the thought of her was making him sick to his stomach. But when he switched tracks and brought images of Will to the front of his mind, he didn't feel the same thing.

He furrowed his brows, confusion clouding his features, he didn't understand. Was it because they both had powers? That could be it but when he thought of Alik he didn't get the same rolling feeling from before. He didn't understand.

He huffed, giving up on trying to locate El and spun around, keeping his eyes and ears peeled for any other sounds that were out of place in the Soup. there were none, just the sound of water lapping at his feet and splashing when he moved. 

He groaned again when blood started dripping from his nose. He just knew that there was going to be blood on his pillow when he woke up, which was something he really wasn't looking forward to. Which meant that he should wake up before there was too much blood to comfortably use his pillow. 

He sighed, closing his eyes and let himself drift awake.

Chapter Text

On August 7th, the fall of 1985, Dustin Henderson, Lucas Sinclair and Maxine Mayfield started their freshmen year at Hawkins Public Highschool.

Mike Wheeler did not. 

Neither did William Byers or Jane Hopper, but it was more… permanent when it came to Mike. Will and El were just planning moving away, they were going to go to California, live with the sun and the palm trees and whatever other things that were stereotypical for California. Surfer boys and Hollywood actors. Everything that was supposed to make California California. 

It was different for Mike. The Byers had just moved away, while Mike was just gone without a trace. He wasn't dead, none of them could bring themselves to believe that he was, especially not after they had seen what Will had seen first. 

Mike had always been covered in freckles, they dotted up his arms and onto his cheeks, smatterings of them dotted over his knuckles. The body in the casket hadn't had those freckles, not a single one, just a set of pale, unblemished hands and too neat fingernails. 

Dustin Henderson hadn't been able to contain the spark of hope that had burst to life in his chest when he had first been tugged over to view the body by Will. He hadn't wanted to, not at first when he still thought he would be staring down at the broken and covered body of one of his best friends. But there was something in Will’s eyes that had made not doing it seem impossible. 

So, he had walked up to the casket with a lump in his thought and seen. He had seen all the things that Will was pointing out in that hushed, panicked voice of him. And a tiny spark of hope had lit inside of him, blooming as it grew like a stoked fire. Because he knew at that moment that this had to be another fake body situation, like when Will’s ‘body’ had been pulled out of the quarry in 1983. 

So, there had been hope.

It dwindled into basically nothing when over the next few weeks nothing could be uncovered. Contact with Owens went nowhere, the man had no way to dig up leads on wherever Mike might be and he seemed pitying when he offered to look into it the best he could, like he believed that their belief was the hysteria of grieving children! They were grieving, yes, but Dustin was telling him that there didn't need to be a reason for that grief if the man would just get off his lazy ass to look for their friend!

But noooo, the best they got was a halfhearted placation and an offer for a government sanctioned grief counselor. Dustin had seriously considered spitting in the man's face before he stormed out, but he had settled for ‘accidentally’ knocking the man’s still half full plate of diner food onto the floor and he stomped out of the restaurant where the doctor had agreed to meet them after a relentless amount of badgering from the Party and Nancy. 

It didn't make him feel better, it just had that bubbling ache of helplessness and grief bubbling in his throat as a lump he couldn't swallow, swiping futilely at his damp eyes as tears of frustration bubbled up. He politely ignored how the rest of the Party were doing the same and they politely did the same.

That had been two weeks ago, and there hadn't been any sign from the government that there was any sign of Mike. 

“It is likely that he still died in the fire, even if the body that was buried wasn't his.” Owens had explained gently when Dustin had demanded anything that the man could give him regarding information. 

Dustin was seriously considering asking Will to add the man's car to the list for when they keyed Ted Wheeler’s car. Two birds with one stone and all that.

This curiosity voyage fucking sucked was what he was saying. When Dustin needed to learn something before there had always been something to turn to. Mr. Clark, the library, at least some sort of resource that he could take advantage of. But there was no Mr. Clark for this, and the library didn't have any books about what to do when your friend went missing after fighting a possessed teenager and a giant flesh monster in a mall, and the government was being useless, like always. 

This was why they always ended up dealing with everything when shit went down, the government only ever showed up in the aftermath when all the actual fighting had been done. 

But there was no monster to fight this time, so life went on even if it really felt like it should have stopped that night in the mall. 

So, they went to school and pretended that the looks they got didn't affect them, like they couldn't hear people whispering about ‘that Wheeler boy’ like he hadn't actually been a person. He was just a piece of gossip for the teenage population now, something to be chewed up and forgotten in a few months. 

-

On August 26th, he and Dustin joined the Hellfire D&D club, and it felt like a betrayal. 

Will has told both over and over that it was okay, that he was fine with it even when he wouldn't be able to play with them because his mom didn't want to enroll him in school in Hawkins if they were going to be leaving in a month and a half anyway. She knew her son was smart enough not to suffer because of a missed semester so she was just waiting until after they moved. 

And El was being tutored as best as she could by a revolving group of the Party, Nancy, Jonathan and Mrs. Byers. Nancy had been a bit of a surprise, but she had pulled herself out of her grief with a stone-cold determination because in her words, “He was happy when he was with you.”

El had cried then, and Lucas had felt like he was intruding when he had watched a few tears leak from Nancy’s eyes as she tugged El into a rarely given hug. 

So, it was just him and Dustin in the D&D club, but it felt like a betrayal to Mike too. Like, how could they play something that they had always played together when his best friend was as good as dead. Mike had DM’ed for them so many times over the years, planning out campaigns and loudly complaining when one of them would try and take a peek at his notes. But he had always laughed when he had pushed them away, mock swearing at them in a way that made it seem more like playing when he did. 

Even when he had been angry, he had still cared for all of them, his grumpy moods not getting in the way when he felt like one of them needed him. Mike seemed to always feel the need to be helpful, maybe it came from the way that Lucas watched as he was a ghost in his own house. His dad, well, let him borrow a word from Dustin really quickly, was a bitch and his mom was more interested in ogling teenage boys at the public pool than being a mom. Lucas’ mom liked to gossip with Dustin’s mom and either of them were too happy when his mom had told her what she had seen when she had taken Erica to the pool.

Lucas had been thinking about that a lot lately, well, just thinking about Mike a lot lately. 

He knew that the others didn't believe that Mike was gone, he didn't want to believe it either, but… but Lucas was a realist. He knew what happened to skinny fourteen-year-olds when they were trapped in massive burning buildings that were collapsing around them. He knew that Billy Hargrove had slammed Mike’s head into a wall hard enough that he didn't wake up when Max had shaken him and that it was likely that he hadn't woken up at all.

So, even if the body in the casket wasn't his, the chance that Mike had just been completely buried and unrecognizable was high.

It was something he laid awake at night thinking about, staring at his ceiling and praying that at least Mike was granted that mercy. He hoped that it had felt like falling asleep without ever waking up. He prayed that it was painless, that he didn't feel it when Billy slammed him into the wall, that he had been knocked out before he had even realized what was going to happen. 

If there could be one mercy out of that night, Lucas hoped that that was it.

But despite what he thought about the whole D&D thing, Will and Dustin had convinced him to give it a try even when he was already planning on trying out for the basketball team and didn't want to spit on Mike’s memory. Will had told him that it would be more like honoring Mike’s memory, but Lucas didn't quite believe that.

So, here he sat at a table with Eddie Munson, the leader of Hellfire, the rest of his clubmates and Dustin, wishing he could feel anything other than what he was feeling as Eddie began the story for the club's first campaign of the year. And he was good at it too, so much so that Lucas kept getting sucked into the story and then visibly starting when his thoughts inevitably drifted towards Mike and the guilt would set in. 

It was about the third time that this happened when Eddie finally got fed up. 

“And pray tell Sinclair, what could be so distracting as to steal your attention away from this frankly phenomenal campaign?” Eddie asked, his voice straying out of the voice of the character he was narrating. 

Lucas startled at the sudden attention, meeting eyes with Dustin for a second before he looked to the head of the table. “It’s nothing against the story, I swear.” He hurried to explain.

“Then what is it? Because I know it can’t be me?”

“It’s just…” Lucas started before he trailed off, looking at Dustin for assistance. 

How did you explain to someone that was basically a stranger that their Parties Wizard and Mage were moving across the country and that their Paladin was fucking dead a month after his fourteenth birthday. 

Luckily, Dustin seemed to get the message and picked up where Lucas had faltered.

“It’s just that this is our first campaign after we split our original adventure party.” Dustin explained matter-of-factly, but Lucas could hear the subtle strain in his voice that always came when the other boy wanted to curse someone out. 

Recently, that strain had been coming out whenever the topic of things lost came up. 

“If they go to school here Hellfire always welcomes new disciples of the game, I can be very persuasive if I do say so myself If they need convincing.” Eddie declared grandly and Lucas just found himself staring up at the older man. 

Did he not know? It seemed like nowadays everybody knew that the party was being whittled down. 

“Our Wizard and Mage are moving to California and our Paladin died a month and a half ago.” Dustin said bluntly, not bothering to soften the delivery.

Lucas winced at his words. ‘our Paladin died a month and a half ago.’ It felt like they were haunting him. 

Eddie went silent, and the other members of Hellfire continued to watch on from the sidelines. 

“Y’know, he was the youngest out of all of us, he was so smug when he finally turned fourteen because he was glad not to be the only one not fourteen.” Lucas didn't know why he was saying any of this, but it felt like something that he just had to say.

“He was such a bitch about it too, like he thought he was actually going to beat any of us out for age.” Dustin snorted, the insult sounding so unbearably fond that it made Lucas’ eyes hot. 

Lucas chuckled, ignoring the other people in the room to turn more fully towards Dustin. 

“I know right, like he thought having a birthday would magically make him older than all of us.” Lucas continued. 

And he could picture it clear as day, Mike’s smug little, pleased grin as he was wished a happy birthday, the way his face lit up when he was given a new comic of a mini figure that Will had picked out. It was a nice memory and Lucas wanted to keep it safe forever. He didn't want to sully it with the fact that Mike had died barely over a month later. June 3rd to July 4th, barely any time at all.

“He’d be so mad if we could tell him that he was gonna be fourteen forever.” Lucas didn't know why he had continued; he shouldn't have said that. 

It made everything sound too real, because it was real, wasn't it. As much as he didn't want it to be.

He choked out an apology before pushing himself away from the table and walked as calmly as he could towards the door. He ignored Dustin calling after him as he walked and then just kept walking because what else was he supposed to do?

His best friend was dead, and he wasn't coming back. He was going to be fourteen forever and Lucas would never get to lord the fact that he was older than Mike over him again. 

-

It was the beginning of September and Max didn't think he had ever felt this bad in her life.

It was eating away at her, the guilt. Festering in the back of her head because she should have done something. She should have done anything at all to help at all. She could have dragged Mike with her if she had really tried, but she hadn't, because she had thought that El had needed her more and she had been wrong.

El hadn't needed her, all she did was get in the way when Billy grabbed her, that whole fight and she had barely done anything. 

It would have been smarter to keep trying to help Mike, if she had stayed with him she would have been able to get help when the fighting had finally died down. But she hadn't been with him, and like they say, ‘Out of sight, out of mind.’ 

She had taken her eyes off of him and she had forgotten because everything was chaos, El was hurt, her brother was dead-

-Standing arms spread in front of her, screaming as a monster tore him apart, spearing him over and over and over until he was more hole than person-

-everything was so loud. The fireworks, the sirens, the crashing of the building as it came down on itself.

The silence when everyone realized that they were missing one of their own was even louder.

She had killed Mike Wheeler, even if she hadn't been the one to slam his head into the wall, she still good as killed him. Mike was skinny, he was light, she could have moved him, could have brought him somewhere where other people could see him so that he would never be forgotten. 

El didn't blame her for Mike, even when Max knew that she should. El should blame her, she should scream and rage and hit but all she did was cry into Max’s shoulder, hugging her tight like if she let go that Max would drift away. 

And when the crying was done, she did yell. But not at her, never at her, even when Max knew that she deserved it. And it wasn't fair, why was nobody blaming her for something that was obviously her fault. The only one who seemed to be putting the blame where it belonged was Will but even then, it was nothing like what she deserved. At first it was glances swimming with grief and blame, but he would look at her for a second and then look away and Max would pretend that she didn't see the hasty way he wiped away a stray tear. 

At least someone was on the right track though. 

It was like she was a curse. It was something she dwelled on as she drifted through the first semester of what was supposed to be a fun high school experience. She hadn't been able to help Billy when he had been possessed, hadn't even noticed until El had realized what was wrong and she had killed Mike. She was supposed to be better than this, she was supposed to be strong and fierce and-

She didn't think she would ever feel like any of those things ever again.

-

It was the end of September when Joyce told her and Will that they had to start packing.

It was strange to pack up her things when she had barely even finished unpacking from when she had to be moved from Hopper’s cabin to the house with Joyce, Will and Jonathan. It felt like it had only been yesterday but she had watched as the leaves on the trees had begun to change in the way that Joyce told her meant that winter was coming and she knew that time was passing. 

It was strange to know that time was passing with Mike not there. She wouldn't say dead because he was not dead, the freckles had not been there so the body had not been Mike’s. But she still could not find him, no matter how hard she strained to do so with powers that were not there anymore. 

The Mindflayer had taken her powers and taken the only way that she could find Mike with them. It was not fair. But life would not be put on pause because she couldn't do what she wanted to do. There were meetings between the Party as they tried to come up with something, anything that could point towards where Mike might be if he was still alive. 

Dustin thought that the Upsidedown might have taken him in a last attempt to gain the upper hand and that Mike had gotten trapped on the other side when the Mindflayer had been killed. Will had gone green in the face when he had heard that one, but he had not asked Dustin to stop talking. He had steeled himself and stared Dustin in the eye when he kept talking. Will was brave. 

Lucas was less enthusiastic, which El did not understand. Why was he so quiet when they were trying to figure out what to do? She did not understand why he seemed so hesitant to say that Mike was alive, he always clutched his hands around his chest when the topic came up.

Max was there too, but it was like she was not there at the same time? It did not make sense, her body was in the room, but she only really spoke to Lucas. Max still let her hug her though, which she was glad for.

Will thought that maybe Mike’s disappearance had more to do with the Russians than the Upsidedown and after it had been completely explained to her what they had been doing under the mall by Dustin, Steve and their new friend Robin, El thought that she agreed. People mean enough to try and open another gate to something that had hurt her, and her friends over and over again would do something as horrible as taking Mike away from them. 

But no matter how many theories that they had, there was no proof and El’s frustration was growing. It was not fair. 

And now they were moving, which meant that they wouldn't even be near the rest of their friends to try and figure out what to do. There were phones and Dustin had promised that he would use his radio tower to talk to them every day, so El was happy about that. Not as happy as she could have been, she thinks.

Hawkins was all that she had ever known, first the lab and then the outside world. She had been welcomed out into it by three boys standing in the rain, boys who had taken her somewhere warm, giving her food and clothes, and then proceeding to do whatever they could to keep her safe. 

One of those boys was gone now and she had gained another boy at the same time. Will was her friend, her brother? She did not know, she did not know what it felt like to have a brother but long ago she did not know what it felt like to have friends either. So, she would learn.

She missed Hop, missed the man that she had wanted to call dad. It was an ache in her chest nestled right besides another ache that felt distinctly like Mike. It was funny, she thought, that Hop and Mike would be right next to each other in her chest even when they could not stand each other.

‘Like cats and dogs.’ Max had snorted as they watched a near silent exchange of glares between the two of them. 

She would get Mike back, if only so Max would snort and smile when he did something stupid again. She would bring him home even when she could not bring home the other ache in her chest. She just had to figure out how.

-

On October 11th, 1985, Will Byers huddled in front of the Wheeler residence with Dustin and Lucas by his side, a box cutter in hand and an unlocked door courtesy of Nancy within reach.

“Okay,” He breathed, “you know the plan, you two will go for that stupid chair and I’ll get the car. Bring it around the back, Jonathan will pull up the car, and we’ll load it up before anyone gets back.” 

He got two nods in return and they were off, the other two circling around the side of the house and Will pulling his hood up tighter as he made his way towards the shiny looking station wagon sitting in the driveway and tried to look casual. 

He extended the box cutter with a press of his thumb, a quiet snick snick snick as the razor blade popped out of the top. He was glad that packing up the entire house involved box cutters because he didn't want to be seen buying one right before Ted Wheeler’s car got keyed. Some coincidences couldn't be written off.

He smiled as the point of the razor screeched against the paint of the car, cutting through it to scratch at the metal underneath. The words ‘Ted Wheeler is a piece of shit.’ bloomed to life under his heavy hand. Every screech of metal against metal made his smile grow until it felt like his cheeks might split. It wasn't a nice smile.

What kind of man doesn't show up to his own son's funeral? Will knew his own dad would be hard pressed to make an appearance on his own if he wasn't in it for the insurance money, but he knew what type of man Lonnie was too. Lonnie was mean, and if he was the type of dad that wouldn't show up to his son's funeral without ulterior motives, then what type of dad was Ted Wheeler?

He finished up the last letter, taking care to add more random slashes all over the rest of the car just because he could. It was nowhere near his usual style of art, but it felt right. The crude motions with the box cutter soothed something in him that had been raging since he had seen the empty pew where Mike’s father was supposed to be. 

He only stopped when he heard the short honk of a horn from behind the house, pausing for just a second to stab the razor blade into the nearest tire before making his way briskly towards the back of the house. He rounded the corner to see Dustin and Lucas hefting the Lazy Boy recliner that Ted Wheeler favored into the trunk. 

Will didn't think he had ever seen Ted Wheeler not in that stupid chair, complaining about nothing or making comments about what was playing on the television. Privately, Will thinks that maybe Ted loved that chair more than he loved his own son.

He helped push the recliner into the trunk fully and then all three of them were jumping into the car. 

“Drive Jonathan, drive!” Was shouted by Dustin but his brother did the boring thing and pealed carefully into the street while obeying all traffic laws. 

They ended up at the quarry, hauling the ugly chair out of the trunk and rolling it over the dust and rock covered floor, not caring about the stains and tears that are wearing on it. Ted Wheeler deserved to have his favorite chair thrown off the edge of the quarry, to have his cay keyed in a way that everyone knows was intentionally against him.

It's the only thing that Will can do with the anger in his chest. There were no clues to follow, no mysterious phone calls in the dead of night to give him hope. He can't find Mike and bring him home, so this is the next best thing. 

The Lazy Boy goes over the edge and Will pretends that his eyes aren’t wet and that there wasn’t a gaping hole where the heart of the Party should be.

Chapter Text

The first time that one of his instructors had handed him a knife, Mike had stared at the man like he had lost his mind. Who in their right mind would give him a knife with his track record? Even if he was wearing a shock collar and there was a guard posted in the corner of the room, it would take barely a second for Mike to plunge the sharp looking blade into his wrist or neck. 

He didn't do it though; he had been feeling the urge to kill himself a little less lately what with all the exercise and moving he had been doing. He tried to keep track of how many days were passing on his calendar, even if it was a little hard when some days, he couldn't move because of how much he ached some days. 

The gym sessions were brutal, often leaving him with bruises and aching arms and legs that hurt to stretch. The first few sessions had left him a shaking, sweaty mess that could barely bring himself to get out of bed in time for mealtimes. He was a little ashamed of the number of times he had thrown up during the sessions during the first week or so. His body just wasn't used to the amount of exercise he was being forced to do.

Especially after all the time he had spent just lying in bed. Kostya started him on what she called a ‘light routine’ but it still felt like pushing a boulder up a hill every time that he did it. She seemed to think that Mike was much more physically capable than he actually was. Once again, he had rulers for legs and silly string for arms. 

But it wasn't the most terrible thing in the world. There was something about the exercise that made him feel accomplished in a way that nothing else in this place could. There was satisfaction in completing a task and Mike was all for whatever positive feelings he could get in this place. So, while he didn't particularly like the way that the workouts made him feel later, he liked how he felt when he completed whatever task Kostya set for him, be it running or lifting something heavy.

He called her Kostya in his head even when she made sure that he called her ma’am out loud. Ma’am was a term that belonged to old ladies and his friends' moms, not Russian trainers that made him run suicides until he dropped. But he didn't want to get tased again, so he called her ma’am through gritted teeth. 

The first few weeks in this new portion of the building were spent in his room, in the gym and in the cafeteria. He was followed by the guard whenever he went anywhere and whatever one was assigned to him at the time would make sure to steer him away from hallways that he was apparently not allowed in yet. 

Which sucked because he wanted to explore and he wouldn't be able to find a way out if he wasn't allowed to go anywhere except three places. He liked having three places though, it was much better than just going back and forth from the lab to the Common room.

Though, he had been back to the lab three times in the month after he had been moved. Two times for testing with his powers and once more for Kazimir to put him under the machine to inject him with the serum. He had screamed and fought against that last session under the machine, but just like the other two times it didn't matter what he did, and it happened anyways. 

And he didn't even get to go back to the common room afterwards, which sucked even more. At least before he got to see Alik and the other two kids afterwards. But now he just woke up in the empty room from before and was taken straight back to his room on the floor above immediately after. They didn't tie him up like they did before, but two guards had been posted to stand guard right inside his doorway until it could be determined that he wasn't going to try and kill himself again. 

But back to the point, about a month after he had been moved to his new room, the guard led him into a different door besides the door to the gym. It was pretty close in size to the gym but there weren't any exercise machines in this one. Instead, there was a wall of sharp looking weapons and a row of human shaped stuffed dummies lined up in front of the far wall. 

He made sure to keep his face blank as he walked in, a skill he had needed to polish now that he was seeing people daily, because it was like the soldiers here could sense weakness. If he was having a particularly bad day it seemed like everybody knew about it. Maybe it was the tint to his skin or the bags under his eyes, but something would give him away. He couldn't have that. So, his poker face needed to be on all the time

Eyes downcast, he moved to stand in front of the man, keeping his eyes on the man's chin. He had also learned over the past month that the people here seemed to take eye contact as some sort of challenge. He would accidentally lock eyes with a man in the cafeteria and it was like a switch had been flipped. 

Chests were puffed out and scowls were plastered across their faces before Mike could blink. So, while his guard deterred anyone from coming up to him, Mike still liked it better when he didn't have to deal with a one-sided dick measuring contest. 

So, he kept his eyes low even as the man studied him.

“You do not deserve to be here.” The man began, not even bothering to introduce himself, “There are soldiers more qualified than you that would kill to be in your place, hard workers who are not built like a spindly tree. I do not want to be here; I do not think that I should be here teaching you when there are so many better students to teach.”

Mike didn't say anything, he clenched his jaw and absentmindedly traced a small scar on the man's jaw with his eyes. 

“But orders are orders no matter how much I despise them.” The man huffed, moving towards the weapon lined wall and plucking a knife from it, “I have high standards for my students, requirements that have to be met. If you fail to meet these standards, I will not hesitate to dole out punishments.”

Well, it seemed that the man and Kostya had something in common, Mike thought as he watched the man flick a wicked looking curved knife around in his hand. His heart rate spiked as the man walked closer with the knife in hand but the man did nothing but hold the knife out with the hilt pointed towards Mike. 

Mike stared at it for a few seconds before the man shifted impatiently, then he hesitantly grabbed for the handle of the knife. It was heavy in his hand, the dark grey of the blade standing out harshly against his pale skin. The grip felt clunky in his hand, too big. But he didn't dare put it down, not when a superior had given it to him with clear intent. 

“We will start with basic grips and stances, and should you prove to be competent then we will proceed to more standard forms.” The man said, grabbing another knife off of the wall, “Come over here, we will begin.”

Mike followed the man over to a cushioned looking mat, knife in hand.

The man adjusted Mike’s grip on the knife, adjusted how he was standing, adjusted how he was holding his arms, adjusted everything really. And then he had Mike run through slashes and jabs until his arms were shaking and there was sweat running down his face.

“Subpar work but you don’t seem entirely useless.”  The man said, looking much to put together in the face of Mike’s tangled hair and red face. 

Mike bared his teeth at the man, half expecting to get a smack to the face for it but the man didn't move to hit him. He just bared his teeth in return, which was probably a lot scarier looking on a grown man's face than Mike’s pubescent one.

He had to hand the knife back at the end of the lesson, and he hadn't even noticed how his hand had adjusted to the feel of it in his hand until his hand was empty. He clenched his fingers, missing the warmth of the handle against his skin. It would've been useful to have a knife, it would have made him feel better at least. 

He ignored the tiny slices that littered his skin, little streaks of red that cut through his knuckles and the pads of his fingers. He could barely feel them.

“You will be back for your next lesson, and I expect there to be improvement over the next week…” The man trailed off threateningly as he set the two knives back on the rack. 

Mike nodded, not saying anything as he sucked in quick breathes through his mouth. His arms were trembling at his sides, but he did his best to stay still. No one here liked it when he moved too much. The guards got twitchy when it looked like he was going to move too fast and twitchy guards meant that the likeliness of the collar around his neck going off was much higher. 

The guard walked up to him again, gesturing for Mike to follow him and he did. He didn't exactly know where he was going right now because it was too early for lunch and he had done his gym session yesterday, so he didn't have another one until tomorrow. He would probably be sent back to his room and he wouldn't mind that. He had been given some Russian fairytale books and a couple sketch books along with some colored pencils, which meant that he wouldn't exactly be bored. Not to mention that he really wanted to take a shower. The smell of sweat wasn't a good one, and he wanted to be clean before he climbed into bed.

Except, all those thoughts flew from his mind when he saw a guard standing watch outside of the door opposite from his. He had thought that all the rooms were empty and that he was the only one who was staying in this hall. He probably had been until whoever was in the room across from him moved in. 

The door was closed so he couldn't see inside and he couldn't hear anything either. That sucked, he would have to figure out how to get the door open at some point and take a look. He kept peering curiously at the door as he was led past it, only looking away when he was led right up to his door and pushed inside. 

He shot a glare at the guard that had shoved him, but his glare only met the door as it was closed behind him. He huffed out a breath, turning to grab a clean set of clothes  from where he had dumped it on his desk and then he was making a beeline for the shower. 

Turning the faucet, he let steam fill the small room as he stripped out of his sweaty clothes, dumping them on the floor. Someone would be by to take them away when he wasn't in the room, so it didn't really matter what he did with them. And it wasn't as if there was a washer and dryer in his room for him to use anyways. 

He ran his hands through his slowly growing curls, liking how his hair was long enough now that he could actually run his fingers through it. It definitely wasn't as long as it had been before but it tickled the tops of his ears, little curls starting to form even while it was still laid mostly flat. He was never going to cut it again, he swore. He liked having hair way too much to let someone take a pair of clippers to it again. 

He stepped into the shower, wincing a bit when the scalding water hit his skin, but he didn't turn it down. The heat was nice after a minute, he just had to wait it out until he got used to it. He closed his eyes, letting the water stream over his hair and down his face. It soothed at his bruises and warmed the perpetual chill that had settled into his bones. 

He was still wearing the shock collar, he never really took it off actually. Apparently he was still too much of a flight and fight risk to leave him without it. Mike didn't care, really he didn't. It wasn't like it was much different than the taser and he would rather have the collar and be able to use his hands then have the hand prisons and not be shocked. 

He was curious about who was in the other room, the thought was bugging him to no end. It would be a pain in the ass to get out of his room and into the one across from him to figure it out. He still wasn't allowed to leave his room by himself, even though Kazimir had mentioned it at some point. If Mike continued to behave then he would be allowed free roam of the floor he was on. It was only a matter of time, because Mike had been on his absolute best fucking behavior since he had gotten here. He wasn't about to do anything that could get anything taken away now that he had things. Even if he missed Alik, it was so much nicer to sleep on an actual bed and shower without a guard in the room. 

He lathered a handful of soap into his hair, working it through the strands until his head was mostly bubbles before rinsing it off, watching as the suds disappeared down the drain. The water was beating down against the tiles in a constant rhythm, like rain against a roof and Mike found his eyes drifting closed as he swayed back and forth under the water. 

He was so warm, the water washing away the ache of bruises and sore muscles. The sound was pattering against his ears in a way that should have been overwhelming but all Mike could feel was soothed by the noise. It was something to do with his powers, he thought, because before the thing had come to life in his chest he had never given much thought to the sounds around him. They had always just been background music but now, it felt like he could hear every sound and he loved them. 

Even if they weren't really nice sounds, he liked them. A throat being cleared and plate clattering against the ground after it had been dropped. All sounds that should have been unpleasant but weren't. It was weird, he didn't think his powers had anything to do with sound and he didn't think El’s did either, but maybe it was because the Russians were doing it and not Brenner. 

He startled when a thought came to him suddenly, blinking water out of his eyes. Powers, he had powers, he didn't have to get into the room across from him to see who was in it, he could just go into the Soup. He blinked again, he had never actually tried to go into the Soup on purpose, it had always just kinda happened. 

“Well, first time for everything.” He muttered to himself as he lowered himself to sit against the tiled wall under the hot spray of water. 

The water beat down against his skin as he sat there on the shower floor, closing his eyes and letting his head tilt back against the tiles. He breathed, in and out, rhythmically, slowing down his heartrate until he felt like he was on the edge of sleep. But he didn't let himself fall asleep, if he fell asleep then he would be able to figure out who was in the room and it would keep bugging him. 

He could hear the electricity in the walls under the sound of water, it was buzzing in a steady thrum, like a fridge running in the background. 

He could hear dripping, a different dripping than the shower and he just kept breathing, even when he could taste blood in the back of his throat. 

And then the warmth of the shower faded away, the sound of electricity and water fading away and being replaced by an eerie silence. 

He blinked open his eyes and he was back in the darkness, sitting cross legged in the few inches of old water that blanketed the floor as far as he could see. He shivered, bracing himself on his hands as he stood. It was so much colder than the shower had been in this place, he missed the warm spray already, but he was on a mission. 

He stood there for a minute, looking for any sign of the room, but there was only black as far as he could see. Shrugging, he picked a direction and started walking, barely noticing that he wasn't wearing any clothes. It made sense, he hadn't been wearing clothes when he had tried to get into the Soup so why would he be wearing any now? And anyway, shame was overrated. 

He walked for a bit, scanning the invisible skyline and practically skipped forwards when he caught sight of something that wasn't black. He jogged towards the splotch of color, watching as it got closer and closer, unfolding into an actual scene and not a splotch of color.

It wasn't what he had been expecting though, or maybe hoping for. He had been expecting to see a room that looked pretty much just like his own. He didn't know why, probably because they were in the same tucked away hallway and he had guessed that all four rooms on the block would be bedrooms, but he didn't think this was the room he was looking for anyways. 

This room looked nothing like his. It looked like a hotel room, a very lived-in hotel room. The walls looked like they had seen years of cigarette smoke, the white paint stained a gross looking yellow-brown. The sheets were rumpled at the foot of the two full sized beds that were resting against the wall, pillows scattered on the multi-colored carpet where they had fallen, and nobody had cared enough to pick them up.

The room was overall, just kinda grimy. Mike grimaced as he looked around it, watching where he stepped even when he knew he wasn't actually going to be able to step on anything. 

And that wasn't even starting with the people in the room. They looked even more ragged than the room itself. There were five of them littered around the room, wearing black, leather and far too many bracelets. There was a blond with a mohawk peering over the shoulder of a bigger man where he sat shuffling something in his hands, there were two women in one of the beds, their hair wild, one with a pile of tangled hair tied up with a wonky looking bow and the other with the same hair that Lucas and his little sister Erica had. They were cuddled up together under one of the wrinkled sheets, legs tangled together as they chatted lowly to each other.

And then there was the last person in the room, a woman sitting by the window, her eyes closed. Her hair was dark, shaved at the sides and piled on top of her head in a much looser mohawk than the man had, dyed purple at the ends. She had a severe looking face, heavy hooded eyes and a frown on her face. She was wearing a black jacket, necklaces draped around her neck and leather bands wrapped around her wrists. 

She was wearing boots kinda like the ones that Mike had been given, just spikier and scarier looking, with shiny metal spikes and little chains dangling from them. She was interesting to look at after so many weeks with just hospital gowns and Russian uniforms to look at. She was pretty, he guessed, if she was your type. Mike just thought she looked cool, she looked exactly like the type of person his dad would tell him to stay away from and talk way too loudly about how they were ‘ruining society’ at the dinner table.

But none of what he was seeing explained why he was here. He didn't know any of these people, didn't think he had ever seen them around Hawkins and there was no way that he had seen them here in Russia. Why was he always seeing random people? First it was that random soldier being tortured and now it was this group of people in a shitty hotel room. 

He swiveled around, black eyes scanning the room for anything that he was supposed to see. There had to be a reason that he was here. He spun in place a few more times, double checking, but he still didn't see anything that stood out, just a half full astray sitting lopsided on the dresser and a few empty snack bags laying on the floor.

He turned back to where the woman was sitting by the window and startled when he met her now open eyes, eyes that were looking directly at him, that was not supposed to happen. 

He stared into brown eyes and brown eyes stared back. But they didn't seem to actually be looking at him, just looking at where he was standing, a furrow growing between her brows as the women kept looking at him.

“...Jane?” The woman asked tentatively, her voice raspy and it clicked for Mike then.

Purple hair, knew El’s birth name, ran with a gang. This was Kali, El’s sister, Eight.

The other four people in the room perked up when Kali spoke, looking back and forth between the empty space that she was looking at and her but Mike didn't pay them any mind. This was his chance, this was someone who could see him, someone who could get a message to where he needed it to go.

“No.” He almost breathed out, flinching when the little radio tucked away on one of the nightstands crackled to life, his own voice coming out of the speaker. 

The woman with the bow in her hair shrieked, falling out of the bed but Mike just kept looking at Kali.

“I need help, tell El that I need help.” There was blood dripping into his mouth as he spoke, flooding the back of his throat but he couldn't wake up yet, he had to keep going, this was his chance, “I’m alive, the body wasn't me, they took me, the Russians, on the fourth of July. Tell her it’s Mike, I’m alive, tell Will and Lucas and Dustin, tell my sister, tell her I’m alive!”

He was babbling, the blood coming fast enough to choke him now, and the static of the radio making his voice sound even more desperate than it was. Or did he really just sound that desperate. 

“Who are you, are you one of my siblings?” Kali demanded, though there was a worry in her eyes now.

“El told me about you, you’re Kali, her sister. I need help, it hurts here, everything hurts all the time. I’m in Russia but I don't know where. Tell her it’s called Project Blackrock, they gave me powers, tell her-!” He coughed up blood, spluttering as he choked on it. 

He was out of time, he could tell. The amount of blood he was losing was dripping down his front like a faucet and plopping into the water below him. 

“No, wait, please!” He begged as the edges of the room started to fade away. 

Kali looked alarmed, standing up from her place by the window and stomping closer to where Mike was standing, reaching out as if to touch him but her hand just went through where he was standing. 

“I just want to go home!” He cried out, blood staining his teeth as the tears he had been trying to hold back started dripping down his cheeks. He coughed again, choking on blood and he knew that he had to wake up now. 

The last thing he saw as he made a mad dash towards consciousness was Kali’s wide eyes and her outstretched hand. 

He woke up choking on blood, heaving himself onto his elbows from where he had fallen on his side and hacking out globs of red. The hot water was still beating down on him, turning his skin red and sensitive. Everything was too sensitive. He could hear everything, his ears ringing with the sound of electricity and water, and he could have worn he could hear the guards talking to each other from where they stood out in the hall. 

The water felt like needles against his skin and the tiles were too hard, digging into his bony elbows and hips. Everything was too much, he needed, he needed-

The faucet handle creaked as it turned on its own, shutting off the water. Mike would have sighed in relief if he wasn't still busy dripping blood onto the floor. He had overdone it, he shouldn't have stayed in the darkness that long and he should have talked faster when he was trying to tell Kali what was happening. He should've been faster, so now he was paying the price.

His head was pounding behind his eyes, eyesight going blurry from the pain and his entire body was trembling when he heaved himself off of the tiled floor. He stepped out of the shower on shaky legs, grabbing for his dirty shirt and pressing a corner off it up under his nose to catch the blood. He tugged on the clean pair of pants, doing more hopping then he would've if wasn't only using one hand.

He practically collapsed into his bed, hair still wet and not wearing a shirt as he burrowed into the thick blankets. He pulled the comforter over his head, blocking out the light, his warm breath hitting his face. There was less noise under the blanket and less things for him to look at, and it was warm. His skin still felt hot from the shower but he knew that he would be cooling down soon, and he would rather be warm under the blanket when that happened rather than not. 

Mike may have been staining his shirt with blood, his head may have been pounding, and it may have felt like there were thousands of tiny needles digging into his skin, but he still found the energy to grin. He grinned because he had gotten a message out to someone even if it wasn't someone that he had even thought about contacting. He had gotten a message out to someone who knew El, someone who had a history with experimentation and had a hatred for the government. 

Mike could only hope that Kali would find a way to contact El so that she could get him out of here. He could see his friends again, he could see Will again. This was the first time it felt like he had actually done something to further his escape and he felt a smug sort of satisfaction that he was able to do it under the nose of his guard. 

He may have been pretty useless during this, but he had done something. Even if he hadn't meant to do it. He still didn't know what was going on in the room across from his but that was something for future Mike to figure out when it didn't feel like his brain was going to melt out of his head through his nose. 

-

Thousands of miles away. Kali Prasad stood in her filthy hotel room that she had gotten with some predictably stolen money, her hand outstretched to where the presence had been standing just moments before. 

She had thought it was Jane at first, the girl had told her about how she was able to find people, to see what they were doing without ever having to be near them. 

But it was worse than that, there was another one, another child with the same ability as her sister who had reached out to try and find some semblance of help. And who was Kali if not helpful in the face of child experimentation? She had taken down her own demons so maybe now it was time to take down someone else's. 

“We are going to see my sister.”

Chapter Text

Mike stood in the front of the hall, fidgeting in the cold. He didn’t exactly know why he was there but the Doctor hadn’t told him that they would be doing, just that it would be a new kind of training exercise.

There was a guard at his back and the Doctor was standing in front of him with a clip board.

“Within the next five minutes, you will enter the door to my right and make your way through the halls until you find the target at the end. When you find the target, you will be retrieved and then you will repeat the exercise. These first few tries are to gauge your ability to navigate without a set path or map. The faster you get through, the better.” The Doctor told him, peering at him with those beady grey eyes of his. 

“So… it’s a maze?” Mike asked unsurely, keeping his eyes lowered and voice low.

He wasn’t going to risk a punishment when it had already been a few days without one. Sure, there were knife knicks all over his hands and a guard had definitely kicked him in the ribs a couple days ago, but the shock collar hadn't been activated and he hadn't been taken back to the room with the machine. It was basically paradise. 

He still hadn't been able to figure out who was in the room across from him yet, even when it had literally been days since it had been occupied, but every time that he tried to get a look through the door or through going into the soup, nothing came of it. 

He thought that the guards may have been staggering the times that Mike and the mystery person were being taken out of their rooms so that they never saw each other. It was weird that he hadn't been able to see the mystery person in the cafeteria or the gym either, he would have thought that if there was a time to see them it would be then. 

But he didn't want to worry about that right now, he had to worry about the maze that Kazimir was about to send him into. 

“Yes, in simple terms, it is a maze. There will be a decoy at the end, I want you to destroy it, with your new abilities. Do not touch it with your hands or there will be consequences. This is a test of navigation and your psionic ability. Do not disappoint me, Mikhail.” Kazimir gave him a stern look, before he was strolling away, his own personal guard standing at his heel.

Mike stared after him, waiting for some indication of when he was supposed to enter the door. He stood there, rocking back and forth on his heels until he jumped when the Doctor's voice crackled over the intercom system that he could hear buzzing in the walls. 

“In sixty seconds you will enter the door and through the maze. You will not attempt to break the walls, you will not attempt to escape through any of the locked doors that are placed along the walls of a few of the halls. Attempts to do so will be met with retaliation and you will be punished.” The voice was grating as it crackled over the speakers, even with Mike’s new infinity for sound.

He nodded along absently, more so that if Kazimir was watching him through a camera that it looked like he was agreeing even though he knew for sure that he would take any chance to escape that he could. He could probably get the collar off if he tried hard enough, and they wouldn't be expecting it either because of how docile he had been regarding it. Because once again, the collar was so much better than not being able to use his hands.

He liked being able to write with the shitty pencils that he had been given more than he hated the firm hold of the metal wrapped around his neck. Sure, some nights he laid away fighting a gag because of the weight against his throat and he could probably never wear a high collared shirt or a scarf again, but he was handling it.

He counted down the seconds in his head and at the sixty second mark, an alarm sounded through the intercom and the door swung open on its hinges with a hydraulic puff of air. He walked forwards hesitantly, peeking through the door with just his head before deciding that it looked safe enough and walking in.

It was darker in there than it had been in the hall he had just been in, the lights dimmer and the walls darker. The walls were humming with enough electricity that it kind of felt like they were alive. He ran a hand over one as he passed, the pads of his fingers running over seams in the metal, hinges making bumps in the otherwise smooth surface. He would bet his walkie talkie that the maze could move, that the walls could change to make a different maze all together. 

That was pretty cool actually, it would be a cool thing to do with friends, kind of like an escape room but ever changing. He could imagine him and the rest of the Party running through a maze, their faces red as they laughed, shoving at each other. He felt a pang of heartache deep in his chest, spiking behind his sternum.

He pushed it away and started jogging a bit, Kazimir had said that the faster that he got through the maze the better and Mike would definitely like to be on the better side of this whole deal. 

He focused on noises, listening for anything that might give away wherever the center of the maze was. He couldn't hear much besides the heavy hum of electricity. He huffed out an irritated breath, blowing up the slowly growly fringe of his hair as he did. 

What did he know about mazes? Was he supposed to go right or left? Ugh, this was annoying. He would rather be back in his room than be doing this, his warm blanket was calling his name. But he kept going because it wasn't like he had a choice but to do it, no matter what he did or did not want to do. He had a collar around his neck and no idea where the hell in Russia that he was. Maybe it would be easier if he knew where this facility was but no one was jumping to tell him.

Ten minutes later and Mike was getting frustrated, he had basically been running around in circles, walking into so many dead ends that it made him want to scream. And aside from the electricity, the whole place was an oppressive kind of quiet. He didn't like it, at least in his room he could always hear the guard standing outside of his door and more recently, he had been able to hear the two guards muttering to each other as the guarded opposite rooms. 

It was eerie in this place, the walls too tall and the lights too dim. He shuddered, even though he was wearing long sleeves, he wasn't even that cold, the jogging had warmed him up enough that for once he was only a little cold. 

He let out a frustrated yell when he ran into yet another dead end, slamming his fist into the offending wall. It just made his knuckles hurt, doing nothing for the growing frustration that was filling him. 

It was because of that, that he closed his eyes and slowly evened out his breathing, listening to his heartbeat as it slowed in his chest. He focused on what he imagined the end of the maze would look like, the same walls and the same lights, but it was a little room with just one entrance instead of a hall like the rest of this place. 

He wondered what the decoy would look like, placing a basic human shaped dummy into the slot in his mind that was imagining it. It looked exactly like the dummies from his weapons class because that was basically all he had to go off when it came to his imagination. 

He could feel in his mind's eye, something was tugging at him, a tether tied to his sternum and stringing him along. He opened his eyes, letting out a slow breath through his mouth. He followed the tug, his booted feet thudding against the floor, the soles scuffing against the concrete on every other step.

He didn't know exactly where he was going but it was also like he knew exactly where he was going. It was weird. He followed, turning right, turning right, turning left, over and over until he didn't think he would be able to get back to the start even if he tried. But he had a destination selected in his mind and by God was he gonna get there. 

Time sort of lost its meaning as he walked, thoughts phasing out as he focused completely on where he was going. There was blood dripping slowly from his nose, was less than there usually was when he used his powers, barely even a few drops. But he could still taste it in the back of his throat. 

It surprised him when he stumbled around a corner and he wasn't met with another hall, instead he was now in a small room, the wall the same as the rest of the maze and the lights just as dim, those bits were almost exactly like he imagined them to be but pretty much everything else was different. 

There was a small table in the middle of the space, with wobbly wooden legs and scratches on the surface. And sitting on top of it was what Mike assumed was his target. It was a big glass doll, with a creepy porcelain face with rosy painted cheeks. It was creepy, glass eyes seeming to stare into his soul. He shuddered dramatically, curling his lip at the thing.

It was dressed in a tiny little policeman’s outfit, a little hat on its head and a tiny plastic pair of handcuffs wrapped around its belt. That was a little odd but it was just a doll, and all he had to do was break it. That would be very easy, it was made of glass and he was basically a professional when it came to breaking glass at this point.

He held out his hand, prodding at the thing in his chest until it fluttered past his fingertips to wrap around the doll and lift it into the air. It drifted there like something possessed until Mike clenched his hand into a fist, the sound of breaking glass and tearing fabric filling the small room. 

It was stupidly easy, so stupidly easy.

He wiped the blood from his nose off on his sleeve, letting the shattered remains of the doll fall back to the table with a clatter. Some of the glass shards skittered off of the edge of the table to clatter against the floor. 

“Was that it?” He asked thin air, angling his head to where he could hear a camera whirring away. 

There was no reaction for a moment before one by one, the left wall parted and so did the one behind it. Over and over until Mike was staring down a straight path that led directly to an already open door that had a much brighter light shining through it. 

He made his way towards it, silently marveling at the way that the walls had moved. It had been a smooth movement, the sound of gears silenced by the metal surrounding them. He let his fingers trail over the cold metal as he walked past, trying to reach in and prod at the mechanics. Nothing really happened but he could feel something when he did. 

“Good job, Mikhail.” Kazimir said from where he stood as Mike made his way through the door, finding himself standing where he had been waiting before, the doctor having come back out at some point while he was in the maze. 

Mike just lowered his gaze, fiddling with the slowly drying patch of blood on his sleeve. 

“The time that it took you to make it to the center could have been better but that is something that can be worked on, just as the amount a force used to destroy your target can be worked on. I want to see more effort put into the destruction of the targets in the future, can you do that for me, Mikhail?” Kazimir asked, not even looking up from where he was jotting something down on his clipboard.

Mike nodded mutely, ignoring how the guard had moved to stand behind him once again.

More effort? He had destroyed it, hadn't he? He thought that that was all that he was supposed to do. Turn it into fucking dust? He didn't know if he could do that but he could try.

“Good, in a few minutes, the maze will have been rest and you will re-enter it. Your goal will be the same but I hope to see some improvements in the time it takes you to make your way through.”

And with that, Kazimir turned away once again to go post up wherever he was posting up. Which left Mike to wait in awkward silence until the intercom crackled to life again and he was once more in the maze. 

He didn't waste time wandering around blindly this time, he immediately stopped in the doorway, closing his eyes and breathing deep until he could feel that same tug in his chest. He followed it, a bounce in his step and he hurried towards the center of the maze. 

Turn, turn, turn, turn again until he was once again in the room. The table was still there but there was a different doll sitting on it now. With the same creepy face but this one didn't have a policeman’s uniform on this time, now it was wearing a tiny little hospital gown in a teal color that made something in Mike’s chest catch. He stared down at the doll for a bat too long before he was throwing out his hand with a snarl, letting his power fly past his fingertips, pulverizing the doll.

He didn't want to see a mockery of the suffering that he had gone through plastered onto a doll. He didn't like how it made him feel, didn’t like how sometimes he felt like the doll, posed and controlled by someone else's hands. Because that was what he was now, some doll to be used for someone else's amusement and gain. 

The doll absolutely exploded, imploding in on itself with a screech of glass against glass. He tore it apart, pouring every bit of hatred for it into the thing in his chest. He was panting as he let the pulverized remains fall to the table, blood dripping slowly from his nose, flowing over the bit of it that had already dried under his nose. His nose was going to go raw at this point.

Was that better?” he huffed at the camera, unable to keep the sarcasm out of his voice. 

And once again, the walls folded open until Mike could walk straight out of the maze. 

Over and over again, he ran through the maze, until his blood was thrumming through his veins and his face felt hot. He was sweating and panting and all over completely done with the maze when Kazimir finally decided that Mike had done enough for the day.

Mike wanted to glare at the man but he couldn't find the energy or the will. He didn't know how many hours he spent moving through the dim halls, but it felt like it had been forever. His head was pounding and he was hungry as hell, so he was all too happy to follow the guard towards the cafeteria. 

He expected the guard to follow him in, but he was surprised when the guard just shot him a glance and didn’t follow him into the room. Mike stared at the doorway unsurely for a minute before he squared his shoulders and went in.

This must've been one of the privileges that the doctor had been talking about months ago. Mike had been behaving so now he could go into the cafeteria without a guard shadowing his every move.

Few eyes caught on him as he entered the room, but even more landed on him when they realized that he was alone. Mike did his best to ignore them, setting his shoulders as he joined the line for food.  He made sure to keep space between him and the man in line in front of him, but he couldn't say the same for the other people in the room.

It was like they were circling like sharks, hovering on the outskirts of his vision and staring him down like he was fresh meat. He guessed he was that to them. He didn't look like he belonged here and they knew that, and he was the only person there who was followed around by a guard everywhere that he went.

Not to mention the different clothes and his age. He was much too young to be in this place but he was here anyways. 

So far, no one seemed brave enough to approach him but he didn't think it would last after he got his food and sat down. It was always easier to walk up to someone when they were sitting still, he saw it in the way other Russians would walk up to people sitting without a care in the world and starting up conversations.

He wished there was someone here he could sit down with and start a conversation with. When he had been in school he had always had a place at the lunch table with the rest of the Party, but now, he would rather get kicked in the face then try and talk to any of the hostile looking soldiers that were eyeing him.

He loaded up his tray slowly, lingering by the lunch line, delaying the inevitable before he squared his shoulders and picked his way towards one of the emptier tables. He sat down at the edge, as far away from the other three people there as possible. 

He ignored the eyes on him as he tore through his food, keeping his eyes bouncing back and forth between the men that were looking his way. It was because of that that he immediately clocked it when a group of three broke off from the general hubbub and started towards him.

Mike didn't like the looks in their eyes, all too familiar with the similar one that appeared in Troy and James’ eyes when they decided that Mike had had enough peace for one school day and started some shit to counteract it. It was a mean little glint that Mike was used to seeing everywhere he looked nowadays. In the doctor's eyes, in the guard’s eyes, in his trainer’s eyes, he saw it every day in this godforsaken place.

He narrowed his eyes as the three men approached, cataloging them with his dark iris’. The ringleader looking one was a tall, scrawny looking dude, with a square jaw and a stubbly beard. Mike didn't like how he was looking at him. The two others that were trailing behind the guy seemed a bit more hesitant than Scraggly, but they were following behind him all the same. 

One of them was a shorter, stockier dude, with close cropped hair and a small nose while the other one was taller, but not by much, with a poof of blond hair and weirdly blue eyes. All three of them were wearing the standard olive green uniform.

Mike hunched forward, protectively curling around his tray and his middle. He wasn't about to let some asshole get a lucky kick to his stomach, he preferred not to have bruised organs, thank you very much. 

“So, what's your deal?” Scraggly sneered, moving to stand on the opposite side of the table from Mike, his lackeys flanking him on either side. “Why is some pale, skinny American being followed around by a guard like a servant?”

Mike glared up at him, wanting to bare his teeth up at the threat. He could see others watching out of the corner of his eyes, he could hear whispers that he shouldn't have been able to wonder what was going on. 

“I asked you a question, American, and I expect you to answer me.” The man said, his eyes crinkling in distaste.

“None of you fucking business!” Mike spat back in Russian, the hair on the back of his neck prickling. 

There were three of them, and they were all bigger than him. If this came down to a fight, Mike didn't think that he could get away with winning if he didn't use his powers. But that was kind of a no-go, he had no idea how his guards or the doctor would react if he used them to win a fight. He would probably be punished for it, pretty harshly too, so he resolved to not use the thing in his chest unless he thought he was gonna die or something. 

“I think it is my fucking business, because why is a snot nosed brat like you walking around here getting special treatment?” Scraggly said, earning a huff of agreement from the two behind him. 

Mike stared at him, taken aback, in what world was everything that he was going through considered special treatment? He spent most of his days in pain and afraid, listening to the lurching howl of the monster in his chest. None of this was special treatment, it was a bribe to keep him from going off of the rails and trying to kill himself again.

“You think I’m getting special treatment?” Mike scoffed, shoving a piece of his sausage in his mouth, chewing and swallowing before he snarked back, “I don’t even wanna be here, it’s called kidnapping and you Russians seem to be pretty good at it, ten out of ten on the kidnapping scale.”

The Russian he was speaking flowed out of him like it was his native language and Mike could tell that quite a few people were surprised by that. He didn't care though, it wasn’t like he cared what some randos thought about him, especially Russian randos. 

There were some reactions around the room when he mentioned the kidnapping bit, but it was mostly quiet mutters and shuffling feet. 

“You get your own quarters and personal training, that seems like special treatment to me.” Scraggly said back, seeming a little more unsure than before but still spitting fire. 

Mike had to concede that point, tilting his head. Having his own room was pretty nice, but it's not like it made up for the unimaginable pain and suffering he had been through. And the personal training didn't seem like special treatment to Mike, sure he was getting better at knowing where to stab someone to do the most damage and he was starting to see wiry muscles corded through his arms, but it was more of a pain in the ass than a plus. 

Honestly, no matter how luxurious the Russians tried to make this place, Mike would still hate it just on principle. It could be a goddamn five star resort and he would still want to go home. 

“So? They still kidnapped me from my home. I would rather be dead than be here but they made sure that I can’t fucking kill myself. They’re bribes, keep me happy and they keep their weapon happy, isn't that such a nice sentiment?” He drawled, sounding much more confident than he felt, tensing his legs under the table when he noticed the man tensing in return.

“Weapon, in what world are you a weapon?” The man sneered, leaning forward to slam his hands into the metal table top.

Mike couldn't help the way he flinched away from the man, he had been conditioned to it at this point. But the light of smug victory in the man’s eyes made him feel sick and angry. He just wanted to eat his food and then go back to his room for a shower, but he couldn't even have that, could he. 

“Back up.” Mike said quietly, curling his shoulders forward, staring up at the man through the slowly growing fringe of his hair. 

“Why? Are you scared, Weapon? That doesn't seem very weapon like to me."  The man taunted, leaning even farther over the table to get up in Mike's space. 

The man just wanted to start a fight, Mike realized, his stomach sinking as the thing in his chest rose to the challenge. He was angry and tired and still on edge from having to be around the doctor. 

“Back up.” Mike said through gritted teeth, the muscles in his shoulders going tense. 

He didn't want to hurt this man, no matter how much the man seemed to want to hurt him. He could see it in the mean glint in the man’s eyes. Like Troy, like James, like Billy, like how Mike remembered Lonnie Byers eyes looking. Mean for the sake of being mean. 

“Why don’t you make me, Weapon? Make me leave you alone, make me-”

Mike made him. 

The thing in his chest swelled to tangle with his hopelessness and anger, swirling with it until it was beating against his ribs like a drum. It swelled and swelled and swelled until it burst out of him in a targeted wave. 

All he had to do was nod his head upwards sharply and the man was being blown backwards into his two friends and was sent sprawling onto the ground with a thud. The table screeched against the linoleum floor as it skidded away from Mike from the force of the power he had just sent out. 

The room went dead silent in the wake of it, the only sounds Mike could hear were the ragged breaths that he was drawing in and the blood rushing through his ears. He was being stared at by everyone in the room, looks of astonishment, disbelief and fear plastered on all kinds of faces. 

Mike stared down at where Scraggly was struggling to get to his feet, looking up at Mike in a sort of stunned disbelieving fear. Mike hated the part of him that felt good looking down at someone on the ground, someone who had been trying to do the same thing that Mike had put up with for years. Bullies would be bullies everywhere they were. 

He wiped blood from under his nose, never once looking away from the man he had just shoved to the floor. He didn't know what he looked like, but he was glaring and there was blood leaking from his nose so it must've been quite a sight. 

Mike didn't say anything, just reached for his fork and took another bite of his food, not even tasting it as he put it in his mouth. He just wanted everyone who was looking at him to go back to what they had been doing, he didn't want to be the center of attention anymore.

“Monster.” Someone whispered, and Mike flinched a bit before straightening. 

If he was a monster just for defending himself, then what did that make the men and women in this place who kidnapped and killed children. If he was a monster, then they were even more despicable than a monster could ever be. Mike would be proud of being a monster if that meant that he was never anything like the Doctor, he would be proud of being a monster, because if he was a monster, then so was El. 

El was one of the kindest people that Mike had ever met. She killed people because she was threatened, and Mike had never held that against her. She killed to survive. Mike shoved a man because he was being threatened, and he would do it again because he was so tired of being helpless. 

So, Mike just sat there, refusing to be cowed by the stares and glares he was getting. He watched as Scraggly skittered away with a scared look on his face, murmuring denials to his shell-shocked looking friends. He let the murmurs around the room wash off of him, not deigning to give anyone a reaction, a weakness that they could exploit.

His head was pounding, and he realized that throwing the man away had been the first time that he had ever used his powers against something that big. He wiped away another streak of blood, with his sleeve as he took a drink from his cup. 

He pretended not to notice how his previously absent guard had made his way into the room and was now standing post behind where Mike was sitting, a little black remote clutched tightly in a white knuckled hand. 

He didn't care, bullies had to be dealt with and if he was going to get a neck full of electricity for his troubles then it would be worth it. He had to let them know that just because he was young and skinny and American, that it didn't mean he was an easy target. 

Sure, his hands were trembling from where they were wrapped around his fork and cup, and his heart was pounding away a mile a minute, but that was fine. His food tasted like ashes in his mouth, and he wanted to throw everything up, but this wasn't the place. He couldn't show weakness, not here. He had to wait until he got back to his room.

And he did. He finished his food and walked out of the cafeteria with his shoulders squared, not bothering to hunch in on himself because he had already been seen, all eyes were on him. The guard followed close behind him, remote never leaving his hand, but he didn't use it. Even when Mike could practically feel the revulsion and fear that was radiating off of the man.

He must’ve had orders not to use that collar if he wasn't actually using it. Mike didn't know how to feel about that, why wouldn't the doctor want him to be shocked after he had done something so stupid? Mike swallowed hard, he didn't even want to think about what punishment he might get for using his powers without permission.

It was only when he was back in his room and the door was slamming shut behind him that he lost his composure. 

He bolted towards the bathroom, barely having time to fall to his knees before he was retching into the toilet. Tears were forced into his eyes by the force of each heave, his stomach folding in on itself as he lost everything that he had just eaten into the porcelain. 

Eventually, he ran out of things to throw up and rested his head against the rim of the toilet seat, not even caring that it was probably disgusting. It wasn't like anybody else besides him actually sat on it and he made a point not to get piss on the seat. It wasn't that bad.

It wasn't that bad. 

He could deal with it, none of this was that bad. 

He could deal with it.

-

Soldiers were a nosey bunch. 

It was just a truth that carried over to every branch. When something exciting, or sad, or anything really happened, everyone heard about it, it was only a matter of time. So, when word of a skinny little white boy that had slammed a man onto the ground without touching him started making the rounds, it spread. 

It spread and spread and spread. 

And sure, no one who hadn't been there really believed that it was true, and even some who (had) been there didn't quite believe it. And why would they, what they had seen was supposed to be impossible. 

But there were some who knew the truth, some who had seen impossible things happen. Seen a girl open doors with her mind, seen her throw monsters through windows, seen her destroy his cabin in a fit of anger. 

So, word got around, weaving its way through the ranks and outposts like a viper, and eventually, it reached the men who guarded the highest security prison in Russia. And there, a man with a shorn head and a slowly growing grasp on the Russian language would hear snippets of hushed conversation between guards.

He would hear about a boy with dark eyes and a glare who had thrown a man across the room with nothing but his mind, and he would think of his daughter, who looked like a boy when her head had been shaved and could throw a man across the room with her mind. He would hear about the boy and he would think of the girl.

He would not think about the boy with dark hair and dark eyes, he would think that his daughter had been taken the same way that he had. 

He would close his eyes against the tears that wanted to fall, the icy wind freezing them against his waterline. He kept his face stoic, not letting anything show while on the inside he raged. 

He needed to get out of this place, needed to save his little girl before Russia could take anything else from her the way that the lab had. 

He needed to get the hell out of here.

Chapter Text

It was Holly’s birthday and Nancy’s little sister wouldn't stop crying.

It didn't matter how many people held her in their arms and rocked her, or how many times her mom had tried to distract her with sweets or shiny new toys. Holly just wouldn't stop crying. 

And Nancy knew why, it was the same reason that she had woken up that morning with a lump in her throat and teary eyes. It was the same reason why her mom looked haggard and worn down, her hair un-styled and bags under her eyes. 

Because today was December 3rd, Holly was turning six years old and Mike wasn’t there. 

Her little brother had been there for every single one of his little sisters' birthdays, from one through five, but he wouldn't be there for number six. 

“I want Mikey!” Holly wailed from her place in their moms’ arms and Nancy flinched. 

Holly was only little, she didn’t understand why her older brother couldn't come to her birthday party. She didn't understand why her brother's room had been empty for months, everything in it sitting untouched and collecting dust. She didn't understand why Mike hadn’t been around since the fourth of July either. 

“Well, Mikey’s not here right now, Holly.” Karen sighed, running a soothing hand through her daughter's hair as Nancy watched on.

That didn't do anything to make Holly feel any better. She just kept crying, louder and louder until Nancy felt like her head was going to explode.

“When- when’s he gonna come back!?” Holly hiccupped, wiping at her face and Nancy couldn’t be there anymore. 

She stood up, her chair screeching as he pushed away from the table. Her mom looked ready to scold her but she must’ve seen the look in Nancy’s eyes, one that was mirrored on her own face. Her mom only sighed tiredly, closing her eyes as she tucked Holly’s face into the crook of her neck. 

She swept past the two of them, making her way upstairs where the sound of crying would be muffled through the floor. She lingered outside of a closed door, her eyes sweeping over the aging blue paint and the hand drawn ‘Keep Out’ sign that was taped sloppily to the door. Her throat bobbed as she swallowed roughly.

It felt like it took way too much effort to get her feet moving towards her own room, but she did it, her feet dragging all the way. 

Her room looked the same as it always had, posters on the wall and soft colored blankets spread out over the bed. It was sickeningly normal looking, the room of a normal teenage girl. She didn’t feel anything like a normal teenage girl anymore, she hadn't in years at this point. 

Nothing had been normal since she was fifteen. Bard had died and Jonathan’s brother had been taken; a monster had crawled out of the wall of the Byers home and there had been a psychic girl hiding out in her basement because her brother had been hiding her. 

And then Will had been possessed, her and Jonathan had plotted to reveal the lab and the two of them had skipped town to find a crazy conspiracy theorist who might have been able to help them. And while they had been gone, her brother and his friends had witnessed horrors from another dimension tear people apart. Mike had been in the lab when the slaughter had happened, him and Will.

Her brother had been so brave, he had been brave and smart and he had come up with a plan that helped Eleven close the gate for what they had thought was for good.

But then everything else happened and suddenly the gate wasn’t closed anymore and her brother was gone. Her baby brother with his big dark eyes and wild curls that their mother had fought to tame. He had been a pain in her ass for as long as she could remember but when he was gone… she missed every time that she had to chase him through the house after he had stolen change from her piggy bank. How he had shot snarky remarks at her as easy as breathing.

She missed how protective he had been over his friends, how kindly he had looked at Will, how he talked about El like she was the strongest person alive, how he laughed with Lucas and argued playfully with Dustin. 

She let herself fall onto her bed, bringing her hands up to cover her eyes and tune out the muffled sound of Holly crying from downstairs. She wished that Mike was still here. 

The walkie talkie that was sitting on the nightstand next to her bed crackled to life.

“Nancy, come in, it’s Dustin, we have a possible code red, over!” Dustin’s voice sounded over the walkie and Nancy didn’t hesitate to reach for it.

It was Mike’s walkie, she had picked it up from her room on one of the only times that she could bring herself to go into it. She had gone in because the walkie had been going off and it had broken her heart when she had heard the voice crackling over it.

It had been will, his voice ragged and broken as he begged for mike to answer. 

(“Come in Mike,” A pause, “Come in Mike! Please, please Mike, please…”) 

Nancy hadn't been able to keep listening much after that, but later, when the sound of her boyfriend’s little brother begging for his best friend to come back had faded from the airwaves, she had talked into it, letting the other people with walkie’s know that she had Mike’s and that she was available if any of them ever needed to contact her. 

She lurched for the walkie, her heart pounding. Code red meant that something bad was happening, and Nancy’s only solace was that Dustin seemed unsure that it was actually a code red. 

“What, what’s going on!” She demanded, throwing herself out of her bed and grabbing her shoes. 

She shoved them onto her feet, darting towards the closet and reaching for the shoebox shoved in the top of it. She pulled it down, flipping it open to grab her two guns from inside. 

“Someone is following me and Lucas, We’re on our bikes but we have no idea who it is, over!” Dustin panted into the walkie and now Nancy could tell he was on his bike from the way she could hear the spokes of the wheels ticking in the background. 

“Lead them somewhere that I can meet you!” Nancy barked into the receiver, making sure the safety was on both of her guns before she shoved them into her bag along with a box of ammo, “One of you radio Steve to meet up with us, he’ll bring Robin.”

“We’ll go to the junkyard! It’s easy to hide there and you can probably get there before us, set a trap. Lucas is trying to radio Max too, so maybe she can meet us there too!” Dustin belted out, and Nancy knew he was scared because he didn't even bother to say over at the end of his sentence before the walkie clicked off. 

She swore to herself as she ran down the stairs, ignoring the way that her mom called after her. That was fine, she could find a way to explain away her absence later, when she was sure that another kid wasn't about to die.

She put the car in reverse and hauled ass out of the drive way, making her way towards the abandoned junkyard way faster than the speed limit demanded. 

She screeched into the junkyard twenty minutes later, a maroon Beemer having started on her tail when she was halfway there. She could see Steve and his friend Robin’s severe looking faces through her rearview mirror and she knew that the same expression was mirrored on her face. 

She threw herself out of the car, Steve and Robin doing the same thing, a nail studded bat in one’s hand and an axe in the others. They were good weapons, even if they couldn't hold a candle to her Smith & Wesson model 10 and Makarov PM, but they would do. 

“Did Dustin tell you what’s happening?” She demanded as she scanned the junkyard, looking for any sign of the two on bikes. 

“He said someone was following them.” Steve confirmed, looking concerned as Robin paced somewhat frantically behind him, “Red is on her way too, said she had to find a weapon first, I kind of don’t want to know what she considers to be a weapon.”

“Yeah, she’s scary.” Robin piped in.

Robin let them talk to each other as she looked around for a place to hunker down in, and like her brother had once done, she chose the bus. It was the easiest to hide in and it had enough windows that she could aim and shoot in any direction.

She made her way inside, pulling out her guns and making sure that they were both loaded.

“Dustin, come in, we’re at the junkyard in the same bus as last time, me, Robin and Nancy. Tell us when you’ll be here, over.” Steve spoke into the walkie, keeping his voice low in case someone had managed to get a hold of Dustin or Lucas’ walkie. 

“Me and Lucas will be there in five minutes!” Came over the walkie, Dustin panting as he probably peddled like his life depended on it.

They had probably been coming home from school when they had noticed someone following them, which meant that Max should be here soon too. She lived closer to the junkyard than the rest of them, she would just have to cut through the woods behind the trailer park for a mile or two and she would be there. 

Which is exactly what happened, exactly three minutes later, Nancy watched as a shock of red hair moved carefully out of the tree line, head on a swivel as the girl made a dash towards the bus. 

She clambered inside, sending a distasteful look towards the bus’s interior before she settled down closer to Steve. 

There were tense greetings exchanged between the four of them, all of them too strung out and stressed out by the potential new disaster to exchange small talk.

A few seconds after the five-minute mark, Nancy caught sight of two teens on bikes peddling madly down the dirt road that led into the junkyard. They jumped off of their bikes, throwing them to the ground as they made a mad dash towards the bus. 

“Jesus-,” Lucas panted, hands on his knees as Dustin sprawled onto one of the decrepit seats, “I-I don’t think I've ever peddled that fast.”

“Do you know who’s following you?” Nancy demanded.

“No, it’s a van, it doesn't look like one from the lab though, it’s kind of beat up and we couldn't tell who was driving it, but we took four right turns, and they just kept following us!” Dustin explained between gasps for air, his hair windswept and his hat was crooked on his head.

“So, not the lab?” Steve clarified and Dustin nodded.

“Not unless they’ve seriously downgraded from the creepy white vans.” Lucas said, seemingly having caught his breath.

There wasn't any more time for talking because they could hear another vehicle coming down the road. They went silent, ducking down under the windows to hide and peering out carefully. 

The van that pulled to a stop was a light brown with a darker brown stripe down the side, the windows were blacked out and the van as a whole looked like it had been through some shit. But Nancy breathed a sigh of relief when she realized that the people from the lab would never be caught dead driving something like it. 

They held their breath as the van idled for a minute before the engine was shut off, the junkyard was quiet in the aftermath, the only noise was the distant sound of birds crying out into the sky. 

It was broken when the driver's door of the van opened, swinging outwards and a booted foot stepped out, crunching against gravel and dirt.

Nancy didn't know what she was expecting when it came to whoever was in the van but he hadn't expected a goth looking woman who could only be a few years older than she was. 

The woman had a purple mohawk and eyeliner smudged around her eyes without a care. Dark clothes and darker boots. She didn't look anything like who Nancy had been expecting to be chasing down Dustin and Lucas. 

The woman moved to stand in front of her van, sharp eyes scanning the junkyard until they paused on the bus. 

Nancy didn't hesitate, she stood up, gun up and the safety off, and walked sideways towards the entrance of the bus. Steve followed after her, Robin on his heels while the younger three stayed hidden. Good, that was good, with their personalities Nancy was sure that they would want a piece of all the action.

She stepped out of the bus, glaring at the women as she aimed her gun. 

“Who are you and what do you want?” Nancy demanded, locking eyes with the purpled haired woman.

She didn't say anything for a minute, just staring Nancy down, but she did reply.

“I am looking for Dustin, Lucas, Will and a sister, he told me to find you. I found Dustin and Lucas but I have not found Will or his sister. I have a message for them, we followed them here, I assume that you know them?” The woman asked, her voice smooth and deep. 

“What do you want with them?” Was all Nancy said in reply.

She ignored the way that her heart skipped a beat at the mention of someone looking for his sister and Dustin, Lucas and Will in particular, because that couldn't be it. It couldn't be what she was thinking it was.

“My name is Kali, Jane may have told you about me, but I believe you call her El.” The newly identified Kali said, walking closer, seemingly not caring about the three people in front of her that were each holding a weapon, “She is my sister in everything but blood.”

Kali lifted her loosely clenched fist, baring the tattooed skin there for all of them to see. 

008

Nancy could hear the sound of the younger three tumbling out of the bus, but she didn't care. This was the girl that Mike had told her that Eleven had told him about. Kali, number eight, the sister that Eleven had run away to see during that year that nobody but Hopper knew she was alive. 

“Who has a message for them?” Nancy asked shakily, her eyes never leaving the woman even when she could tell that the people behind her were catching on to what she was thinking.

Because who else would ask for these specific people, who else would be looking for them. It was a long shot, it was basically inconceivable but… but Nancy wanted to hope.

“He told me that his name is Mike, he told me to find his sister and to find his friends. He told me that Jane told him about me, and I could not sense deceit. So, while I may wish that this entire town would burn in the pits of hell, I am not in the business of leaving little boys in places where they are not safe.” Kali said promptly, like the floor hadn't just vanished from underneath Nancy’s feet.

“He’s alive?” Was a hope filled mutter from behind her, a voice breaking and then someone was crying.

Nancy didn't know who, she couldn't even bring herself to turn around.

“How do we know you're not lying?” Nancy asked, her lips trembling even after she pressed them into a tight line. 

“Because he said, “I’m alive, the body wasn't me, they took me, the Russians, on the fourth of July. Tell her it’s Mike, I’m alive, tell Will and Lucas and Dustin, tell my sister, tell her I’m alive!”.” 

Nancy listened to a woman that she didn't know, say things that she wouldn't be able to know about unless someone who had been there had told her. She didn't know how to feel, there was a sort of numbness surrounding her. 

“You're sure that's what he said?” Steve asked, stepping forwards and completely unable to keep the hopeful look off of his face.

“Yes, word for word, but there is more to tell you, and I would rather not do it in this pile of junk.” She sent a skeptical look towards the admittedly disgusting piles of rusted metal. 

“I know a place.” Steve said. 

-

Nancy wasn't quite sure how she had gotten into Steve's house and was sitting on his couch but she knew she had driven, the kids piled into the back and Steve’s Beemer and the brown van following close behind. She drove in a haze, barely noticing the way that all three of the kids huddled together in her backseat were crying. Hell, she was pretty sure that her cheeks were wet. 

They were sobbing, relieved and thankful but still grieving.

The three of them ended up crammed together on the two seated love seat, basically sitting on each other as they dried their faces, keeping their eyes on the group of newcomers who had apparently also been in the van with Kali. They didn't look like the type of people that were typically found wandering around Hawkins, what with the dark clothes and the wild looks in some of their eyes.

They had claimed the couch opposite of the one Nancy, Steve and Robin had claimed, looking slightly uncomfortable at the level of opulence that was the Harrington house, but didn't hesitate to sprawl out on the white couch. 

Nancy held her gun in her lap, and Steve and Robin both still had their weapons within arm's length.

“Where is my brother?” Nancy asked forcefully after a minute of both groups just staring at each other. 

“Russia.” Kali said and Nancy felt her stomach drop for like the third time that day. 

“Why the hell is he in Russia?!” Dustin demanded, jostling Lucas from where the other boy was pressed against him. 

“I do not know, he wasn’t able to tell me much before the connection was cut out. In his words, he told me he is in Russia, but he doesn’t know where, he mentioned that it was called Project Blackrock,” Kali slowed her explanation, looking pained for a brief second before her expression was schooled, “He said that it hurts there, that everything hurt all the time.” She paused again, “He said that they made him like me and Jane.”

Nancy wasn't sure when she covered her mouth to keep herself from gagging, but she was pretty sure it was sometime after the woman in front of her mentioned that her brother was being hurt. 

“What do you mean, ‘made him like me and Jane?’’’ Max asked, her voice choked.

“He did not call me on a telephone, he did not send me a letter, so how do you think he managed to get a message to me, someone who he has never met before and who has no permanent address? How do you think he managed that?” Kali asked, leading them to a conclusion that none of them wanted to make.

“How?” Nancy whispered.

Kali looked sad when she met her eyes, sad and angry.

“He found me.” She said with a wry tilt of her lips and a shrug of her shoulders, “He found me the way that Jane finds me, I could sense him, but I could not see him, but the radio came to life when he spoke, and he talked through it.”

It was at this point that she stood, stomping over to where an empty, discarded cup was sitting on the table. She picked it up in trembling hands and didn't even hesitate to hurl it against the wall with a scream. It shattered against the wall with a satisfying crash and then Nancy was sinking to her knees and sobbing into her hands. 

There were arms around her shoulders, clutching her tight but all she could think about was her little brother trapped in some Russian torture basement and being experimented on like Eleven had been. He was being hurt and there was nothing Nancy could do about it, but- but he was alive!

He was alive, he wasn’t dead. She could save him if he was alive, she could find him, tuck him into her arms and keep him safe if he was alive. 

“We need to call Murray, and the Byers, oh God, we have to tell Will that he’s alive! I need- I need to call someone, who am I supposed to call? I don’t-” Nancy tried to wrangle her wild thoughts into something coherent, but she couldn't, not right now.

So, she cried into the shirt of whoever was holding her, and she was pretty sure she wasn't the only one crying. 

Because Mike was alive, her little brother was alive and she would do anything, anything to get him back.

-

Three hours later, a walkie talkie crackled to life on Will Byers desk.

“He’s alive.” It said and Will cried then too, because what else was he supposed to do?

He believed his friends, he would always believe them, and when they told him that they would be making the trip to California over winter break so that they could talk about it without worrying that someone was listening over a bug, he believed them. They said they would be bringing guests, to let El know that she would know one of them, and he did.

He clung to his mom and he cried, because what else was he supposed to do?

But eventually, he squared his shoulders and wiped his eyes, because wherever Mike was, Will wouldn't be any help to him if he just kept crying.

-

Thousands of miles away, a boy cried under the hot stream of water that was falling down on him from the showerhead when he realized that he had actually missed his little sister's birthday for the first time in his life.

Chapter Text

Mike killed his first man two weeks later.

He hadn't been expecting it, he didn't think there even was a way to expect it. 

But as he stared down at the blood caking on his hands he couldn't help but feel like this had been inevitable.

-

Things in the base had been weird since Mike’s little show in the cafeteria. Where before he had just gotten mostly curiosity and some hostility, now he was getting angry looks wherever he went. Not to mention the terrified glints in some of the soldiers' eyes. It didn't matter whether or not he was walking through one of the halls or loading up his tray with food, there was always someone there waiting with a glare and a sneer.

No one else had approached him like the three from before had, and whenever Mike caught a glimpse of the scraggly man that had slammed his hands on the table and made demands, the man turned away, hurrying past Mike or out the door of whatever room he had been in. Mike was glad that the man wasn't trying anything else, but he still had a sinking feeling in his gut whenever he saw the man.

It shouldn't have surprised him at all when the man decided that being humiliated by Mike in front of so many people wasn’t something that he could let slide. 

So, he really wasn’t surprised when he woke up in the middle of the night to a commotion outside of his door. 

He rubbed his face blearily into his skin warmed pillow, barely registering the muffled sound of a struggle in the hall. He could hear skin hitting against skin, a grunt of pain, and a sharp crack before everything went silent, aside from muffled heavy breathing. 

Mike sat up in his bed, letting the blanket slide off of his shoulders and shivering when the chilled air flitted underneath the loose hem of his shirt. He stared at the door, rubbing at his eyes as his tired mind tried to comprehend what was going on. He was tired, he had spent the day running drills and playing with knives, and now his body ached. 

He shot a glance at the red numbered clock on his desk, noting that he had barely been asleep for a few hours. Ugh, he didn't want to be awake right now. 

He tensed when he heard more movement from outside, straining his ears as he listened to rustling fabric and the click of keys. The guard must’ve knocked someone out for some reason, that was what made the most sense. It's not like they would let him be guarded by someone who could be taken out so easily.

Except… except Mike could hear the keys being slotted into the lock, his shoulders tensing as he watched the lock be turned from the outside. Why would the guard need to unlock the door if the threat was outside? This was pretty much exactly when Mike realized that something might actually be wrong.

The haze of sleep that was covering his mind was making his thoughts slow, but he still hauled himself up to stand next to his bed, eyes darting around for something that he could use as a weapon. There wasn't anything, none of his books had hard covers and his pencils were made out of a weird soft material that didn't feel like it would be good for stabbing. 

There was nothing in here that he could use to defend himself except for himself. 

The door swung open, and Mike didn't even have a chance to see who was there before electricity crackled to life around his neck and he was howling on the floor. He could feel the electricity moving through his bones, feel it catching on his nerve endings in a way that made him screech in pain. 

He flailed against the floor, entire body seizing as the electricity ran through his body for God knows how long. It hurt, it hurt so badly. It always hurt. 

When it finally stopped, Mike's entire body felt like it was buzzing, his arms and legs twitching from residual aftershocks. The skin around his throat felt tender and hot underneath the collar. He tried to move, rolling onto his front to try and get his arms under him, but all he managed to do was get a look at the shaded figure in the doorway before electricity sparked to life again.

He screamed, because that was all he could do when his entire body felt like it was on fire. Someone should have been able to hear him, someone should be watching the camera that Mike knew was hidden in the wall, but he couldn't hear anyone coming to help.

He went limp against the floor when the electricity stopped, slamming his nose into the floor in a way he could barely feel through the numbness. He could barely hear anything over the static rushing past his ears, but he was able to make out the sound of heavy footsteps getting closer and closer. 

There was a hand in his hair, fingers tangling in the short strands before wrenching his head up painfully. Mike stared up at the man who was crouched in front of him, a hand holding his head up and the other wrapped around an inconspicuous black remote. 

Mike recognized the man that he had thrown away from him a few weeks ago, he had the same mean smile on his face and the same scraggly beard on his chin. A finger was playing idly with the buttons on the remote, tracing them with far more care than Mike would have expected.

Mike could taste blood in his mouth from where he had bitten his tongue while the electricity had coursed through his veins. He hated the taste of blood on his tongue. 

“Not much of a weapon now, are you?” The man asked cruelly. 

Mike glared up at him as best he could when it felt like his entire body was vibrating apart at the seams. He didn't think anyone had ever used the collar on him for that long before. He understood why if this was what it felt like. The skin around his neck was screaming in pain, no doubt having been burned because of how long the collar had been on for. Mike bet that if he could touch it, it could come away wet with pus and blood. 

He tried to spit into Scraggly’s face, but it just dribbled down his chin in a mess of blood and saliva. 

The man laughed, the sound grating as his hearing slowly came back to normal levels. He could hear something from out in the hallway now, someone was banging on a door and yelling things that Mike couldn't make out. It was Russian, muffled by a barrier of metal that Mike wasn’t feeling up to hearing through at the moment.

“You are a stupid little boy who should have known better, Weapon.” The man muttered hatefully, “You do not belong here, it does not matter what the superiors say, I will not stand for it.”

Mike could only heave for breath, the thing in his chest baying and groaning under the strain of electricity. 

“Fuck off,” Mike managed to slur out, spitting out more blood as he spoke, “you’re just pissed because I shoved you on your ass.”

And suddenly, there was a gun under his chin and Mike froze, his heart Jack rabbiting in his chest. He could smell the gunpowder, feel the bite of cold metal where it was pressed close to the hollow of his chin. 

“You are an abomination; there is no place for the likes of you here.” Scraggly spat hatefully and this was when Mike fully understood the gravity of his situation.

There was a man in front of him, a man that was holding a gun to his chin who wanted him dead. This man, whose name Mike didn't even know, was planning on killing him.

And maybe a few months ago, Mike would have let him, would have let the gun go off and his head explode in a shower of gore.

But the Mike of this month? The Mike of this month didn't want to die, not when he had gotten a message out, not when he craved the sound of his friend’s laughter like a drug. Mike did not want to die, not like this, pinned like prey by some insignificant man with a grudge against a child. Because that was what this was, a grown man about to kill a kid. 

The air buzzed imperceptibly around him, the low tone only audible to his ears. The noise grew and grew until it sounded like the very air was growling. 

Scraggly looked around in confusion, muttering about the noise even when he still had the barrel of the gun pressed snug against Mike’s chin. Mike ignored the metal where it warmed against his numb skin, gritting his teeth as he stared up at the man. His brain felt scrambled in his head, body still twitching but he slowly, painfully slowly, drew his knees up, bracing his feet against the floor. 

The man noticed, because of course he noticed but Mike didn't give him time to retaliate. He pushed off the floor with clumsy legs, launching himself recklessly at the man and taking him to the ground. The man grunted in surprise, the air rushing from his mouth as his back collided with the hard floor.

The remote had been knocked to the floor, and the gun had been knocked away from Mike’s chin, but it was still gripped in Scraggly’s hand. Mike yelled as the man flailed, the nails on the hand not holding the gun catching and snagging against the skin on his face. Mike pinned the hand holding the gun, ignoring the pain in his body and the pain as the man clawed at his face as he wrenched the gun from his hand.

The air around them was practically screaming now, muting the sound of whoever was yelling in the hall over, muffling every spat curse that the man under him was spewing. Mike pressed all of his unsubstantial weight down on the man, keeping him down against the floor as best he could as they struggled.

His chest was rolling, the monster pushing up against the inside of his rib cage like a balloon, ready to pop at any moment.

With the gun out of the man’s hand, Mike didn't waste any time before slamming his fist down against the man's face, over and over again, watching through blurry eyes as blood spread from the nose that he was smashing under his fist. The man was still clawing at his face, ragged nails leaving jagged streaks wherever they dragged against his skin. Mike made sure to keep his chin up as far as possible, he didn't want the man to be able to dig his fingers into his eyes. If the man got his fingers in his eyes, Mike didn't think he would be making it out of this alive.

It was like trying to keep his head above water as he drowned, ragged gasps ripping through his aching lungs as he fought to hold down the body underneath him. He had to keep his head up, he couldn't let the waves drag him under.

But even when it seemed like he was coming out on top, it didn't last. The man under him was bigger than him, better trained than him, and an adult where Mike was a hundred and fifteen pounds of skinny teenager. 

Mike watched in a muted sort of horror as the man wrenched his hand out from under where Mike had been pinning it against the floor with the one that he wasn't using to rearrange his face. Mike reeled backwards, choking when the man punched him in the chest; once, twice, three times. 

He watched as a hand reached for where the remote to his collar had skittered against the floor when it had been dropped and something in him snapped. The monster in his chest swelled and swelled until it felt like it was pouring up his throat, the air around them screeching in a horrific cacophony of abominable sound. 

The man's head exploded with a wet crunch and a bang.

Something wet and warm splattered against his face, a new sting appearing when something jagged snagged on his cheek as it blew by this face. He could hear a wet splattering sound, like an orange being squished under someone's shoe, like mud being grabbed in someone’s hand, like roadkill being peeled off of the tarmac. 

Mike fell forwards, stunned, his hands catching him when they landed in a pile of wet red and shards of a broken skull. He stared down at the mess in front of him blankly, watching as blood poured out of what used to be a neck and was now just a ragged fleshy stump of gore. 

His hands slipped out from under him, dragging him into the warm pool of blood and flesh as he fell, his chest landing squarely in the pile of viscera.

He didn’t- what? What was going on, he didn't understand? Where had the man's head gone? He didn't- His ears were ringing, everything muffled. The only thing he could make out was the sound of his ragged breaths as the broke through the silence of the room like and axe broke through wood. 

He sat up hesitantly, blinking dumbly as he brought his hands palm up in front of him, staring down at the wet crimson that was staining his skin, seeping into his knuckles, into the lifeline written into his palm. 

There was a dead body under him? 

There was a dead body under him.

He was sitting on a weakly twitching chest as it caved in under his weight, a spurt of air pushing out of the hole in the neck-stump, burbling wetly.

Mike screamed then, long and loud as he scrambled off of the body underneath him, his hands and feet slipping in the quickly growing pool of blood under the body. The blood was soaking into his socks, was what he noticed in a hysteric sort of horror. He could feel the blood seeping between his toes.

He screamed and screamed and kept screaming as he fell to the floor, scrabbling with numb fingers to haul himself as far away from the corpse as possible. He heaved, the smell of blood gagging him as he spit bile onto the floor. His scream broke as he threw up, a broken wail interspaced with gags. 

He couldn't take his eyes off of it, couldn't look away from the head that he had reduced into a pile of- a pile, just a pile. A human head should not be pile shaped, why was it pile shaped?! Hysteria was rising like a wave in his chest, tearing away every breath that he tried to suck in. 

He didn't know how long he was on the floor for, it could have been minutes, it could have been hours, he had no idea. He lay crumpled on the floor, blood soaked into his clothes and the smell of bile in the air. 

Sobbing, he clutched at his face, sobbing harder when the blood on his hands smeared against his cheeks to mix with his own. He was wet with somebody else's blood, someone who he had just killed. He had just snuffed out a life like it was a candle. And it had been so easy once the dam had burst, barely a second and the thing in his chest had taken care of the threat.

He had seen people die before, he had seen so many people die before. He had watched Eleven kill a dozen armed men when he was twelve, he had seen Demodog's rip men and women apart like they were nothing before feasting on their insides when he was thirteen, he had watched a girl be wheeled out of the room in a body bag never to be seen again when he was fourteen. He had seen death; he was familiar with death.

But it was different when he was the one to deliver it. He knew on some level that it was inevitable, the Russians wouldn't have put so much time and effort into having a weapon if they didn't expect him to be able to take a life, but… but he didn't want it, not like this, not even when the man had been holding a gun to his head and threatening to pull the trigger.

He really was an abomination, wasn’t he? He did what he had seen monsters do before, reducing a human being into something unrecognizable. 

The world blurred around him, fracturing into a million different versions of the same thing as his vision went wobbly. He didn't want to be here anymore, even if he had already promised himself that he would be a monster if it meant that he would get out of this place.

Vaguely, he could still hear a banging coming from the hall and it was that noise that finally gave him the strength to heave himself to his feet. His body felt too heavy, his arms and legs barely responding as he swayed side to side, the cold air chilling his skin where it brushed against the now cold blood that was covering him.

He was soaked in it, the fabric at the front of his shirt weighed down with the amount of red that was staining it. There were streaks of it on his arms, nail marks etched into his wrists where he hadn't noticed that the man had been clawing at him. He stopped again for a moment, just swaying side to side as he stared down at his blood-soaked socks, they had been white before. They weren't white anymore.

He turned woozily towards the hallway when the banging came back into focus, chin dipping against his chest before he lifted his head once again. 

The banging was insistent, rattling through his ears and he padded silently and shakily towards the still open door of his room, leaving a trail of red footsteps in his wake. He stepped out into the hall, barely paying any attention to the guard that was laying on the floor, unmoving. Mike could barely bring himself to spare the man a thought as he focused on the door across from him. 

He could see it moving as someone pounded on it from the other side, feeling the vibrations where they traveled through the air and the floor. There was someone talking behind it, the voice vaguely familiar in a way that Mike couldn't place in his haze. 

He stumbled over to it, his hand tugging uselessly at the handle before he realized that it was locked. The voice on the other side had gone quiet when Mike had rattled the door knob, but Mike didn't care. 

He gazed round listlessly, only stopping when his eyes landed on the key ring still stuck in his door where Scraggly had used it to get into his room. He pulled the key from his lock, the cold metal biting into his bloody hand as he grasped it tight enough to hurt. 

It took him far too long to find the right key for the locked door, the only sounds in the hall being the jingle of the keys and Mike's heavy breathing. He ignored the occasional sound of something dripping to the flood, staining the floor where it landed.

When he eventually did find the right key, he still took far too long to open the door, his fingers trembling as they tried to turn it in the lock. Mike didn't know what he expected to find when he opened the door, he didn't really even know why he was opening the door. It was like he was on autopilot.

But he couldn't find it in himself to regret it when the door swung open to a guarded face that almost immediately dropped into something horrified and worried.

Mike felt like the little breath that he had managed to drag in was being punched out of his lungs as his blurry eyes stared into the eyes of a boy he hadn't seen in months. Alik was there, standing in front of him while wearing an identical set of clothes to Mike. Aside from the fact that there was no blood soaking into Alik’s set.

There was a collar around Alik’s neck and the sight of it made something in Mike sit up and remember that his neck was definitely burnt to shit right now. 

But Alik was there, standing in front of him like Mike had never left. 

The world blurred around him as his legs gave out from under him, but Alik was there with his arms wrapped around his shoulder to keep him from hitting the ground.

“Mike?! Mike, what happened?” Alik asked frantically but Mike couldn't answer.

All he could do was clutch at the back of Alik’s shirt, fingers tangling in the fabric as he sobbed harder than he had ever sobbed in his life. His lungs felt like he was throwing them up, his stomach tensing and un-tensing in time with each convulsion, and his throat raw. He felt like he was dying, like everything that he had been denying in order to hold himself together was coming crashing down on his head.

There was blood on his face, drying under his eyes, chunks of something that he didn't want to think about tangled in his hair. But Alik was there, Alik could make it better. The older boy had always managed to make it better when Mike had still lived in the common room, even if it was only by a little bit.

Just listening to the boy talk had been able to soothe something fraying and raw inside of him, something that called out for some sort of guidance that he never got from his parents. He had latched onto the next best thing in this place at the first change he got.

There were fingers running through his hair as he was dragged towards a bed by strong arms, being shoved into it without a care for the still wet blood that he was covered in. He landed on the soft bed with a pathetic little groan, the movement making his entire body ache in a way that he hated. 

He tried to blink away the tears in his eyes so that he could look up at Alik but no matter how many times he blinked, the blurriness wouldn't go away. 

“I didn't mean to.” He burbled brokenly, his vocal cords wanting to do anything but obey him.

“What happened Mike?” Alik asked, his voice steady but Mike could hear the vibrations that made up worry and confusion and horror easily enough with his freakishly good ears. 

“I didn't mean to.” Was all he could force out and then he was saying it over and over.

His hands were back to his face, the heels of his palms digging into his eyes as the words burst free from his lips in a torrent of ‘I didn't mean to’ that was broken by his cries. 

He cried harder when he heard hesitant footsteps walking away, because Alik was leaving him and he would see what Mike had done, he would see the pile of gore and the headless corpse, and he would never want anything to do with Mike ever again.

It wasn't fair, he didn't ask for the man to break into his room, he hadn't asked for any of this! He wanted to go home, and he wanted to be clean, and he never wanted to see Russia ever again. He didn't like it here, he wanted his mom, he wanted Nancy, he wanted Holly, he wanted Will.

But he couldn't have any of them because he was stuck here getting blood all over someone else's bed as he cried himself into a puddle. He couldn't even drift away like he wanted to, the horror of everything that just happened was too fresh on his mind for his mind to detach from his body.

He heard a muffled swear from across the room and gagged again, curling tighter into his pill bug position, his knees touching the bloodied front of his shirt.

He knew what Alik was seeing, knew that it would change everything about what the older boy thought of him.

He was shivering violently on top of the sheets, his teeth chattering but then Alik was back, face hard as he tucked a blanket tightly around his shoulders. Mike didn't think he had any body heat left in him to warm up that blanket, he was so cold, it was an aching pit of ice in his chest.

“It is okay, Mike, everything will be okay.” Alik was murmuring to him, grabbing a flat sheet from where it had been kicked in between the bed and the wall and layering that on top of him too. 

“Nothing's okay.” Mike whined, his breath hitching, "I killed him!”

“You did,” Alik said seriously, “But he tried to kill you first. I heard him and the guard fighting outside my door, but they were talking before, the man said he was going to kill you before he attacked the guard.”

Mike didn't remember that, he must've still been asleep and only woken up when he heard the scuffle. But none of that made any of this okay. He had still killed someone; he had watched a man's head explode and splatter all over the room. 

“I was sleeping! I was just sleeping, and he came in and he used the collar, and I swear I didn't want to hurt him, but he had a gun…” Mike hiccupped and then Alik was in the bed with him, crawling under the blanket and wrapping himself around him. 

Mike curled into the boy’s hold, shoving his bloodied face into the crook of Alik’s neck and inhaling the smell of skin. It should have been weird, but Mike would rather smell skin than blood, so he didn't move. 

He wasn't crying as harshly anymore, his sobs having trickled down to a calmer sort of tears, heavy drips of water making trails down the blood on his cheeks and dripping over the bridge of his nose. 

His head hurt, but he was being held now, steady arms wrapped around his shoulders and holding him tight. He felt like he could breathe easier now, his breath blowing back against his face where it hit the blood smeared skin of Alik’s shoulder.

Suddenly, there were footsteps pounding down the hall, shouts echoing off of the walls as they got closer and closer. Alik went tense beside him but Mike couldn't bring himself to do the same. He stayed limp, even when there were suddenly soldiers in the room and he could hear the click of gun safeties being turned off.

He didn't even look up, just closed his eyes and tried to breathe in and out as best as he could. If he was going to be punished then so be it. There was nothing he could do about it and he would rather savor however little time left he had in Alik’s bed than do something stupid like resist.

Turns out he didn't need to look up anyways, because once the guards realized that they were just lying in bed, they seemed to relax some, their heart rates slowing just enough that Mike could tell they weren't about to pull the trigger. 

There was a familiar sound of hard soled shoes clacking against the floor that Mike had come to associate with the doctor entering the room at a much more sedate pace than the soldiers had but still, Mike didn't move. Alik on the other hand, got even tenser if that was possible, his breathes coming in sharp pants.

Mike tried to focus on the sound of the heartbeat pounding in the older boy’s chest instead of anything else, but it didn't work. 

“It seems like you had a bit of trouble tonight, Mikhail?” The doctor said, his voice sending a shudder down Mike’s spine. 

He didn't reply, just clutched tighter to the back of Alik's shirt with sore and bloodied fingers.

“I am truly sorry that this happened to you Mikhail, it was a gross oversight to believe that a single guard would be able to keep traitors out. But you seem to have done a fine job defending yourself.” 

The man's voice grated against his ears, the tone dead yet oddly cheery at the same time. 

There was silence for a stretched moment, neither Mike or Kazimir saying anything. Mike just stayed still, his cheeks wet as tears kept leaking from his eyes. He blinked hazily, lashed fluttering against the skin that he was pressing his face into, but he still did not move, he felt like he would shake apart into nothing if he did.

“That’s alright, I know that tonight has been quite the ordeal, it is reasonable that you are upset. However, there is the issue with the… mess that you left behind. It is not sanitary for you to return to your quarters at this time and since you already seem so comfortable here, you will be staying with Alik until the mess can be cleaned.”

At least there was some good news, Mike thought bitterly. He shuffled closer to Alik, tapping out a shaky rhythm against the boy’s back with his fingers. 

He was getting warmer now, slowly but surely the cold was leaching out of his skin, leaving a warmth that felt almost burning against his chilled flesh. 

“Well, that will be all for tonight, Mikhail, and just let me say that I am truly sorry about this incident and will go to great lengths to see that it never happens again.” There was real anger in the doctor's voice, but the apology portion of the man’s sentence rang false.

Mike listened as the footsteps retreated from the room, the guards following behind like the dogs that they were, and the sound of the door being shut and locked. He still didn't move, even when Alik breathed a sigh of relief, he was too busy sinking into the feeling of weightlessness that came with drifting.

The hand was back in his hair, separating strands that had been clumped together with blood with deft fingers. It reminded Mike suddenly of the first night he had been in Russian, when the guard had shaved his head and Mike had watched blood-covered clumps of black fall to the floor. 

But no one was shaving his head this time, it was just Alik running fingers through his hair, nails gently catching on his scalp in a way that felt so nice.

He heaved out a breath, muscles he didn't even know were still tensed going lax as he let himself go limp against the bed and boy that he was resting on. His eyes fluttered closed and Mike didn't even try to open them.

He just… he just needed to go to sleep. It would be better if he slept, everything would feel better after he slept.

-

He woke up screaming twice in the next few hours, his heart pounding in his chest as he fought against an invisible opponent, tears streaking down his face and dried blood flaking off on the sheets. 

Both times, there was someone there with him. A steady presence at his side that shushed him and muttered nonsense stories that Mike couldn't make heads or tails of in his haze of fear. But the voice helped, the fingers threaded through his hair helped. 

His dreams were haunted by the image of a headless body and sometimes, when the dream dug too deep, Mike thought that he saw the body flicker into something smaller, waterlogged, and just as headless.

He did not sleep well that night.

Chapter Text

Mike woke up first, though he wasn't sure if he had actually been asleep for the last hour or so. 

He had been dozing in a sort of half sleep for who knows how long, his mind numb as it floated between sleep and wakefulness. He kept getting glimpses of dreams, pictures that made no sense, a random assortment of images that made no story when they were put together as a whole.

He blinked open heavy, blood crusted eyelids, squinting into the light that sat on the ceiling above the bed. He was warm, there was still someone wrapped around him, an arm thrown over his chest and warm breaths tickling the crown of his head. 

He shifted a bit, hissing through his teeth when pain flared throughout his body. There was a burning collar of pain around his neck and his chest ached whenever he breathed in just a bit too deeply. It was like his entire body was one big bruise, everything from his face to the tips of his fingers aching. He guessed that was what prolonged exposure to a military grade shock collar did to someone.

He moved to rub at his eyes, trying to wipe off whatever was crusting them closed but he paused when he untangled his hands from the blanket. They were covered in dried blood, it was thicker where it had been able to sink into the crevices around his knuckles, the skin around his nails stained a deep reddish-brown from the dried blood. 

It was disgusting and Mike found himself fighting to keep down another gag. 

The body next to him in the bed was stirring and Mike tilted his head on the pillow so that he could watch as Alik slowly woke up. The older boy blinked slowly, a hand moving to rub against his stubbly face. 

Alik’s hair was longer now, the last time Mike had seen it, it had been like a puff around the boy’s head but now that it had some length, it was falling around Alik’s ears. Mike was a little jealous about that, he thought absently, his hair had only been growing out for four months while Alik’s had been doing the same for five. 

It was a stupid thing to be jealous of, but Mike would rather think about that than the fact that he had-

Never mind, he didn't want to think about it. 

Alik blinked at him, and Mike got a front row seat too when the older boy realized that Mike was awake and staring right at him. Alik startled, a muttered curse slipping through his lips as he sat up in his bed.

Mike tracked him with his eyes, not bothering to move. He didn't want to move, he wanted to stay in the warm bed for as long as it took for him to feel normal again. He didn't know when that would be, but he was willing to stay there forever if he had to.

“Mike, are you are awake?” Alik asked, hands hovering in front of him, looking for something to do. 

Mike nodded, his mouth feeling like it was glued shut from all the blood on his face. His tongue felt swollen in his mouth, sticking to the back of his teeth. 

“You need to shower, Mike, there is too much… you are very dirty.” Alik told him and that was the kindest way Mike had ever heard someone tell someone else that they had to get the fuck in the shower because they were covered in blood. 

Not that he had heard many, if any, people being told that, but it was the thought that counts. 

The corner of his lips twitched up, more like a muscle spasm than an actual smile but Alik seemed to take it as a positive. 

The older boy stood from the bed and Mike let out a wordless noise, he didn't want Alik to leave. He would leave and he would take the warmth with him. 

But Alik didn't go far, he just stood by the edge of the bed and started carefully untangling the blankets and sheets from around Mike’s body. Mike didn't do anything to help, didn't think he would be able to even if he tried. His arms flopped against his chest when Alik pried the blanket from around him, the cold air flowing in like it had a personal vendetta against him. 

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Alik muttered, but he didn't stop until Mike was completely out of the blankets and shivering because if it, “the shower will warm you up.”

Mike knew that; he knew the hot water would feel like heaven against his sore body, that it would soothe away the ache and wash away the blood. But there were so many steps he had to take before he would even be in the shower. He had to stand up, walk to the bathroom, open the door, take off his clothes, turn on the shower. All of that sounded exhausting. 

But Alik didn't let him stay in bed. The older boy shoved an arm under his back and then Mike’s head was being lifted from the pillow as Alik sat him up. Mike swayed in place, his head wanting to do nothing but flop backwards to land back against the pillow. Alik didn't let him though, once Mike was sitting, the older boy wasted no time before he was helping him stand on trembling legs.

He yelped when Alik wrapped an arm around his chest to support him, the bruises from where the man from before had slammed his fist into Mike’s chest flaring in pain at the pressure. 

Alik muttered an apology, shifting his arm lower so that it wasn't putting pressure on the bruised and kept hauling Mike towards the bathroom. 

It was weird to see how easily Alik was moving him, but Mike guessed that it made sense. Alik was generally bigger than him, not to mention older by… how old was Alik, Mike would have to ask, he guessed that he was two or three years older. And if he was doing the same training that Mike was doing then it made sense that Alik could basically carry him.

Basically, because Mike was barely doing any of the work, just moving his feet in little shuffling steps. It still felt like an enormous task though, twitching the muscles in his legs enough that they cooperated the smallest bit felt like an impossible quest from a fairy tale. 

Alik pushed the door to the bathroom open and Mike was dragged into the small room along with him. The bathroom looked identical to the one that Mike had in his room, the same tiny shower stall, the same sink, and the same toilet. 

There were some differences though; a pile of dirty clothes pushed up against the outside of the shower where Mike usually took his back into his room and dropped them near his door, the bottles of soap in the shower were sitting upright on the tiled floor of the shower instead of the little shelf that had been built into the shower, the toothbrush sitting in the sink was a darker shade of blue than his.

Little differences that seemed to change the entire room.

Alik set him down on the closed toilet, stepping away. Mike watched as the boy shuffled a few steps over to turn on the shower, the sound of falling water filling the bathroom. It took a minute but soon enough there was steam filling the room, clogging Mike’s lungs.

He still shivered, even as the room was slowly warming. He didn't think it was because of the temperature. 

“Can you take your clothes off by yourself?” Alik asked, earnest as one could be when asking that question.

Mike shrugged, moving his hands to fumble with the hem of his shirt. He tried tugging it off but it was like his arms just wouldn't cooperate, barely moving a few inches before they dropped back into his lap. 

He stared down the front of his shirt, chin on his chest as he took in the dried blood crusted to the front. There were still a few damp spots where the blood hadn't fully dried. Out of the corner of his eye he noticed that the little white sewn on patch of a dog that sat over his heart was flecked with blood. 

That sucked, it had been a cute dog.

He tilted his head back up, looking at Alik with empty eyes. There was a dog stitched onto the breast of Alik's shirt too. It was different from the one Mike had, with flopped over triangle ears and a square face. Mike’s was basically the opposite, with a long snout and a fluffy ruff where the neck should be. He didn't know why they would have different dogs, maybe it was a way to label them like the experiments they were.

Alik sighed and Mike didn't protest when the older boy reached forwards to pull his shirt over his head. It hurt when he had to lift his arms and when the fabric of the shirt caught on his collar as it was tugged off but it wasn't as bad as it could be.

His chest was stained red from where blood had leaked through his shirt and there were purpling bruises layered underneath the mess. There were some older fading bruises from his training, yellows and browns standing out harshly on his arms and legs. 

His socks were peeled off, and Mike was honestly impressed by the way that they crunched as they were. His feet were stained as well. Pants went next and they were the least bloodied piece of clothes that he was wearing. There was blood on his knees and where he had tried unsuccessfully to wipe his hand off on them, but other than that, they were cleanish.

Alik helped him stand once his clothes were off, stepping towards the shower with Mike’s arm thrown around his neck. 

It wasn't conscious, the way that he stopped in his tracks when they passed in front of the mirror. The edges were slowly but surely fogging up and it was making the image of him staring back distorted around the edges, but even if it hadn't been foggy, Mike still thinks that he would have barely been able to recognize himself.

The boy who stared back at him from inside of the mirror looked like a corpse. And maybe Mike had said that before when he had been looking in mirrors, but he didn't think it had ever been as true as it was now. 

There was so much blood. Streaks of it on his cheeks where it had splattered against his cheeks and where he left stripes of it over his cheeks when he had held his face. There was a cut across his cheekbone, a jagged slash that was crusted with dried blood. 

The collar around his neck was hiding a brutal looking burn that wrapped all the way around his neck, blisters lined around the edges, weeping blood tinted pus that was drying crusted on the collar. It was going to scar, he knew it was going to scar. Even if the doctor himself came in and wrapped in for him, Mike knew that he was going to have a shiny pink scar there in the coming months. 

His eyes looked dead where they sat sunken in his face, a haunted look glazing his pupils as he stared back at his reflection. He tried to smile, just to see what it would look like on his face. It looked wrong, like when he tried to draw with Will and the face came out all wonky while Will’s came out perfect. The blood dried on his cheeks cracked when the skin of his cheeks stretched unnaturally. He watched as flakes of red fall from his face.

The smile dropped just as quickly as it had come, leaving him looking just as bad as he had before. 

Alik tugged on his arm to get his attention and Mike unfroze from where he was standing rooted to the floor. He let Alik tug him towards the shower, pushing him into the tiny square that made it up. The tiles were wet and warm under his feet and the hot water was like an electric shock to his system. A much more pleasant version of an electric shock. 

He hissed when the water hit his back, shoulders jumping as Alik shoved him further under the water until it was pattering down over his head. Hair plastered itself to his forehead as he looked down at the floor, watching as the water started to run red as it collected on the white tile before going down the drain like it had never been there in the first place.

“Here is the soap, Mike.” Alik offered, reaching down to the floor to grab one of the bottles, getting his sleeve wet before he held the bottle out to Mike. 

He stared at the bottle, his brain stalling as he tried to remember what the fuck he was supposed to use the soap for. He knew what it was for, he swears, it was on the tip of his tongue. It took him a minute before the answer came back to him and he reached out with a shaky hand to take the bottle.

It was for the blood, he had to use the soap to scrub off the blood. 

It took more effort than he wanted to admit to pop open the cap on the bottle but once he got it open it was like he came to life. Where before he had been existing in some sort of fugue state, now it was like his brain was finally waking up from his shock.

It was frantic, the way that he poured the soap into his hands and started lathering it over his skin. Over and over he scrubbed his hands over his chest, over his face, wringing his hands together until the lather of soap had turned an ugly shade of pink. 

He didn't know when he started crying, but the tears were streaming down his cheeks to mix with the hot water that was dripping from his hair. He made a choked off sound in his throat as his nails raked over a particularly stubborn patch of blood that was stuck on his wrist. 

Alik grabbed his wrist before he could do any actual damage to his skin and Mike looked up to where the older boy was standing, silently begging with his eyes for something that he didn't know. Maybe he was begging for the entire night to have been some sort of twisted dream, maybe he was begging to not be in Russia at all.

Alik’s face was sad when he reached down to grab the bottle from where Mike had dropped it, and he used a hand on his shoulder to turn Mike until Alik could reach his hair from the back.

Mike heard the cap on the bottle click open again before he felt some of the soap being squeezed into his hair. Alik massaged the soap in, his fingers easing some of the tension that Mike had been feeling. He stood there for a while, letting his head tilt backwards as he swayed gently in place, water hitting his chest and washing away the bloody suds. 

Alik was humming something under his breath, a haunting little melody that he repeated over and over. Halfway through, Mike found himself shakily humming along once he had heard it enough times that he could remember it. He liked the way that it made his throat vibrate, distracting himself from the sting of soap in the open burn wound under the collar. 

It wasn't much but he felt better once he watched the last of the blood go down the drain, Alik having gently shoved his head under the spray to wash the soap from his hair. 

He stood there by himself for a minute when Alik left the bathroom, but it was barely any time before the older boy was coming back into the room with a towel and a change of clothes in his arms. It looked exactly like the outfits that Mike had, except bigger and with a different dog on the breast and back. 

He stepped out of the shower, the un-wet tiles cold against his feet and Alik turned off the faucet behind him, handing him the towel at the same time. 

Mike wrapped it around himself, pulling up one corner to pat his hair dry. His body felt looser now, like the hot water had oiled a tight gear in his bones. It was easy to dry himself off and only slightly harder to pull on the clothes that he had been given. 

The pants were too long and the sleeves of the shirt hung down past his fingers, but they were still way better than a hospital gown, so he wouldn't complain. Not to mention that there wasn't a speck of blood to be seen. 

He looked human again when he looked in the mirror, his cheeks flushed pink from the heat of the shower and a little spark of life in his eyes where before there had been nothing. The cut on his cheek had been washed out, looking better without the crust of dried blood covering it

This was alright, he was alright. He was alive and that was all that mattered. He had promised himself that he would get the hell out of here and if that meant that he had to kill… He would do it. 

He didn't have to like it, he could rage, and scream, and cry, God knows that he would cry, but he would do it because that was what it was going to take to get out.

He inhaled a shuddering breath, taking in enough air that he felt like his ribs were creaking before he let it out in a sigh. He could do this, he could. 

He stepped over the pile of bloody clothes on the floor, keeping his eyes averted as he walked out of the bathroom. He just stood there for a minute, not sure what he was supposed to do and his fingers tangling together in front of his chest.

Alik was standing by the bed, stripping off the sheets and folding them in a way that hid most of the blood stains. 

He took a moment to just look around Alik’s room, taking in the differences from his room. The layout was the same, the bed in the corner and a desk against the wall but where Mike’s desk had books and pencils, it looked like Alik’s had puzzles. Those jigsaw ones that his mom had sometimes pulled out on family night, and he and Nancy had fought over who could put the most pieces together. 

He wandered closer to the desk, running a finger over a completed puzzle of a snarling wolf that was sitting on one side of the desk. There were a few puzzle boxes stacked against the desk on the floor, a stray piece that had been knocked from the desk sitting next to them.

Mike bent down to grab the puzzle piece, turning it over in his fingers to see the blur of blue on the side with the picture. He set the piece on the desk with a muted clack and turned back to where Alik was seemingly done stripping the bed. Mike didn't think that there was an extra set of bedding anywhere in the room, so he didn't hesitate to amble over to the bare bed and throw himself onto it face first. 

It wasn't as comfortable as it had been with the comforter on it but the mattress was still soft.

His nose hurt a bit where he pressed it flat and falling onto the bed had definitely made his chest hurt but it was worth it. He let the air in his lungs out in a sigh, sinking further into the mattress. He felt the bed dipping when Alik sat down on the edge and Mike turned his head so that he could look at the older boy.

“I missed you,” He murmured, “and I’m sorry I got blood on your sheets.”

Something in Alik’s face relaxed when he spoke and Mike realized that he literally hadn't said anything since he had burst into Alik’s room last night.

“I missed you too, it was less noisy without you there, less swearing.” Alik said, and Mike snorted.

“You know that you missed my beautiful voice, I can do a really good scream of terror,” Mike joked, “I could probably be an actor if I wanted too.”

“No,” Alik shook his head, adopting a faux look of sadness, “your voice it too pitchy, like a whistle, not good for T.V.”

Mike gaped at the audacity, surprised. He had known that Alik was kinda funny, but he hadn't known how much because of the fact that before now, they had never been able to have a conversation where both of them could understand each other.

“Take it back!” Mike demanded, lifting himself up onto his elbows, “I would be a wonderful whistle!”

He felt like he was normal again like this, like he was back in Hawkins, he and Max insulting each other back and forth as the rest of their friends looked on in amusement. He wondered how she was, the last time he had seen her…

His mind flashed back to how she had fallen to the floor with a thud, her limbs tangled together in a freckled heap. She could be dead, he knew that she could be, any of them could be dead.

But Mike didn't let himself think about it, even when the thought lingered in the back of his mind like it had been since he had been taken. It wasn't like things had been going well for them when he and Max had been knocked out. There had been a giant flesh monster chasing half of them and a possessed Billy Hargrove chasing the rest.  

But the first time that Mike had met the doctor, Kazimir had said that no one had noticed that he wasn't with them until three hours after he had been knocked out, that meant that there was at least someone left to notice, even if it was too late.

Someone had been alive to notice that he wasn't there and Kazimir had used a plural when referencing it. That meant that more than one person was alive, that meant that all of them could be alive. And Mike knew his friends, he knew how fucking stubborn they could be. Little assholes, the lot of them. They wouldn't let themselves be killed by something as stupid as a giant flesh monster.

Mike let himself drop back to the bed, his mood shifting from playfulness to something more pensive.

“What’s wrong?” Alik asked, noticing how Mike’s face had changed, lowering himself down on the bed so that he could turn and face him.

It should have been awkward, it really should have. The way that they were laying on the bed side by side, facing each other. It was the type of thing Mike saw couples doing in movies, with cheesy music playing in the background and goofy smiles on their faces. But it didn't feel like the movies with Alik, it felt more like the times he had snuck into Nancy’s room when he was smaller, crawling into her bed as she slept.

Sometimes Nancy would wake up and kick him out with a scowl on her face, but others she would just lift the edge of her blanket with a grumble, not even bothering to open her eyes as Mike tucked himself up against her. 

He missed when she would still let him do that, by the time he was hitting the double digits, he was no longer welcome in Castle Nancy anymore. 

But right now, he kinda felt like he was back there in his sister's room.

“I miss my friends.” He told Alik, chewing on his lip. 

“Tell me about them.” Alik uttered softly, his deep voice lulling Mike the same way that it had always done whenever he came back from a session in the lab.

And Mike did. 

He told him about the time that he and Dustin had accidentally brought an arcade machine down on top of themselves and ended up with bruises that lasted for weeks and almost a lifetime ban from the arcade. They had laughed so hard that day, even with aching bruises and their ears ringing from the screeching of the arcade employee.

They had pretty much snuck into the arcade the next few times that they had gone, sneaking around the edges like scared dogs to avoid potentially having to face the angry employee again.

He told him about how he and Lucas had once gotten in a fight with another boy from school, and even though it was two against one, the other boy had won anyways. They had walked home with new bruises, walking besides their bikes. It hadn't been great, and Mike had maybe cried more than he had ever wanted to in front of Lucas but they had been together. Lucas had given him a friendly punch on the shoulder and the two of them had begged to have a sleepover at Lucas’ house. 

They had stayed up late that night, swapping comics and throwing action figures at each other. It had been one of the happiest times of his life, because even when everything else sucked, he knew Lucas’ would always be there to torment him with his shitty taste in soda. 

He told him about Max, about how he hadn't really liked her when she had first moved into town, but she had grown on him like some sort of infectious bacteria. They weren't friends the way that he, Lucas and Dustin were friends, they were friends because they both liked pissing each other off. One time they had been tromping through the woods by Lover’s Lake and it had escalated until they were both digging their fingers into the ground and hurling clumps of mud at each other, red in the face.

That had ended when Dustin and Lucas had shared a look, nodding, before picking the two of them up. Lucas had grabbed Max by the waist to drag her backwards and Dustin had just straight up grabbed him and thrown him over his shoulder. Curse Dustin and his disproportionally strong muscles. 

Both he and Max had been shocked into silence, smearing mud on their captures as they stared at each other with gaping mouths. El and Will had been standing off to the side, giggling and they had only laughed harder when Dustin and Lucas had dragged them kicking and screaming to the edge of the lake before throwing them into the icy water.

 It was there, with Max screeching about how she was “Totally dumping your ass, Lucas!” and Mike was spitting out water as he glared at Dustin’s grinning face, that the two of them had formed their first alliance. What followed was an hour of them brutally chasing Dustin and Lucas into submission and then dumping them in the lake. 

He and Max were on the lighter side, so it had taken both of them working together to drag just one of them into the water, so they got even wetter as the minutes had passed but it was worth it when they were looking down at the two mud covered boys as they begged for mercy. He could remember the moment so well, how Lucas and Dustin had been squawking and protesting while Will and El had stood on the sidelines laughing their asses off.

He remembered looking at them, eyes narrowing in on where the sunlight was dappling across Will’s grinning face and thinking that he would in that moment forever if he could.

He told him about El, though he took care not to mention the parts of the story that he knew whoever was watching the camera that he could sense in the wall would be interested in. He talked about how he had kissed her, how they had giggled as she snuck him into Hopper’s cabin. He liked how he could act out the voices of whatever character that they were reading about and she would laugh at his horrible accents. How he could sing along to the radio in the shittiest voice and she would snort. 

He told him about the time that he had accidentally knocked over the table in the cabin when he and El had been chasing each other around the cabin because Mike had stolen a waffle from right off of El’s plate because he thought it would be funny. And it was, the look on her face had been hilarious, halfway between confusion and rage. 

“In the movies, it's always like kissing is the most magical thing in the world,” Mike said haltingly, eyes roving the room as he tried to find a way to explain what he was thinking, “but it’s just lips. I like being with her, I do, but I wasn't that sad when she dumped my ass. But I was at the same time, does that make sense?”

“Are you asking me for relationship advice?” Alik asked, raising a brow. 

“Not really, like I said, she broke up with me, it’s not like there’s a relationship for you to give advice on.” He wrinkled his nose, “I just thought kissing was supposed to be better.”

And then he told him about Will, the smile on his face softening into something that Mike usually reserved just for Will. He told him about how they met when they were really little, how Mike had gone up to him and asked him to be his friend and they had been inseparable ever since. 

They’d played together in the woods behind the Byers house, running through the woods with sheets wrapped around their shoulders like capes and using sticks as swords as they battled imaginary monsters. They would run through the woods until their lungs ached and they needed to sit, and then they would huddle together inside of Castle Byers, looking over whatever comic or drawing that Will had stashed there most recently.

Jonathan would be sent out to fetch them at some point, calling them inside when the sun started to dip under the trees and a chill started nipping at their fingers. He and Will would tumble into the house with grins on their faces and dirt smeared all over their clothes. Mrs. Byers would tell them to wash off with a fond grin on her face and they would rush to do it, because the faster they got cleaned the faster they could eat whatever was for dinner.

They would shove each other out of the way when they both reached the sink at the same time, both of them wanting to be the first. 

Mike missed that, he missed Will.

He had been an asshole to Will the last few times that he had seen him, arguing about things that didn’t really even matter. Why couldn't Mike have just sucked it up and played DnD with him? It wouldn't have been hard. Right now Mike would give anything to be playing a campaign with his friends. He understood a bit how Will had felt now, except instead of being ignored, Mike was stuck in Russia, where he was pretty sure no one had even heard of DnD. Stupid Russians.

Alik was looking at him with a sort of understanding that Mike didn't know what to do with. Like the older boy knew something that he didn't.

“You like this Will?” He asked and Mike scoffed.

“Of course I do, he’s my best friend.” Mike rolled his eyes, shoving a hand against Alik’s chest.

It barely even moved him, but it made Mike feel a little better, so he did it again.

“Ouch, so violent!” Alik whined, pretending to be pushed backwards, a hand thrown dramatically over his heart.

Mike quirked a smile. He knew what Alik was doing, the older boy was trying to distract Mike from the fact that if he looked close enough, there was still some blood around his nailbeds. He was doing a good job, having Mike talk about his friends had been the right move. He couldn't be sad when he was talking about his friends, wouldn't let the recent violence taint his memories of them.

He heaved a sigh, letting the nostalgia was over him. It was like before when he had almost died and he had seen all his friends, the memories warmed him like how he had been warm in his death vision. 

“After the second time that the doctor took me to the room with the machine, I almost died.” Mike began, letting his eyes fall half closed, “They brought me back to the common room, I guess they thought that since nothing bad had happened to me the first time that nothing bad would happen that time, but they were wrong.”

Alik was staring at him, giving him his full attention as the words fell from his mouth without any sort of conscious input.

“I fell asleep, I was talking to Anton and then I fell asleep. They told me I had a seizure in my sleep and that my heart stopped. But it didn't feel like I was dying until after, one minute I was falling asleep and the next I was laying on a bed with all my friends in the room with me.” He took a deep breath, “I wanted to stay there with them, I almost did, because it was so nice there, Alik. It was so much better than here.”

“You would have died.” Alik said softly, eyes solemn.

“Have I ever made it seem like I didn't want to do that?” Mike asked, the corner of his lips twitching in a grin that didn't meet his eyes.

“No, you haven't.”  Alik didn’t grin in return.

“They told me that I had to wake up. I knew that they weren’t real, but for a second, I didn't mind because even fake them would be better than nothing at all. But they said that I wouldn't be able to see them again if I stayed with them. So, I woke up, even though it hurt, because I am going to see them again one day.” He said the last bit with a sort of conviction that he didn't feel most days, opening his eyes again so he could stare back at Alik.

“You are stubborn, Mike, I believe you.” And it does sound like he believes him, even if there was a sort of underlying grief, fear and horror in the words. Alik sounded steady.

“Can… Can I bring you with me when I get out of here?” Mike asked, voice hesitant as he basically whispered the question.

“If we both get out of here alive, I’ll go anywhere you want me too, I want to go on vacation, somewhere warm with lots of trees.” Alik said, reaching over to tug Mike into his chest.

Mike went willingly, tucking his head under Alik’s chin, curling his hands into the front of the older boy’s shirt.

“Hawkins has a lot of trees, and it’s warm most of the year.” Mike offered up in a low voice, his eyes fluttering closed as he inhaled against Alik’s chest. 

“Then I’ll go with you to Hawkins, you can introduce me to your friends and to your Will.”

“He’s not my Will.” Mike grumbled.

“Not with that attitude, he isn’t.”

Mike just hummed.

“I got a message out.” He said, practically exhaling it with how quietly he said it.

Alik went rigid next to him for a brief second before he forcefully relaxed himself.

“Good.” He breathed in return, a hint of pride coloring his tone.

“We’re going to get out of here; it’s only a matter of time.”