Darkness. Ash. Monsters.

Quinn's eyes fluttered open but everything was blurry and blinding. A faint beeping echoed around her, interrupted occasionally by muffled voices speaking words she couldn't make out.

Things came back slowly to her, first feelings then thoughts. She wiggled her toes, but that was the most movement she could manage. Her mind began to drown in panic, anxious thoughts swimming back and forth in clusters like schools of fish.

Where was she?

Why couldn't she move?

What had happened?

The last thing she remembered was turning Joey into a dog. And the look of fear on Dr. Brenner's face. And something else...some other place, with darkness, ash, and monsters...

"She's waking," a voice said, the words suddenly clear and close by.

"Quick, replace the IV," another voice replied.

Quinn felt a sharp prick in the soft part of her inner arm, followed by a warmth that rushed through her body. Within moments, she was back in the darkness.

Darkness. Ash. Monsters.

"My beautiful baby girl, I'm going to give you the world."

Quinn was still stuck in the darkness, but things were slowly getting lighter. She could hear voices, both inside her head and out.

"Heart rate is increasing."

"I love you with all my heart."

She didn't know the voice on the outside, but the voice on the inside had never left her, even when he had. It was the voice of her father, Malcolm Mason.

"Breathing is steady."

"You take my breath away."

But then she recognized another voice.

"Update me. Any progress?" Dr. Brenner.

"We've managed to identify the part of Subject Seven's brain that controls others, but extraction has been impossible without extermination," the lab technician answered nervously. "We've attempted bringing Subject Two to partial consciousness and utilizing hypnosis but she hasn't responded to it. Bringing her any closer to full consciousness is too dangerous."

"If we don't find a way to control Subject Two, we can't bring her out of sedation. She'll be useless!" Dr. Brenner exclaimed. Something metallic rattled and then dropped to the ground in a clatter after Dr. Brenner slammed his hand against it.

"Short of dispatching Subject Seven..."

"Which won't happen," Dr. Brenner barked.

"...I'm not sure there's any way to control Subject Two permanently."

Another loud bang echoed around the room as something else flew to the ground.

"You've created a serum that causes memory loss, yet you're telling me that you can't find a way to control some stupid child?" Dr. Brenner seethed.

The lab technician took a deep breath before answering. "That serum was only possible because Subject Five died from a stroke during testing."

"Keep. Searching."

While in reality, the time between lapses of consciousness had been months, it only felt like hours to Quinn. Under sedation, she was trapped in endless dreams of darkness, ash, and monsters, traversing a land that looked familiar but felt foreign; following her father's voice but never finding him. She had finally been getting close, her father's voice becoming louder and more clear, when consciousness came for her.

No! she screamed into the tunnel of light that was quickly absorbing her. She tried to fight it, to stay under, but the light won.

Quinn's toes wiggled and her eyelids fluttered open, like she anticipated, but another feeling accompanied her waking that she hadn't felt before: a tingling that crept up her spine.

Quinn turned her head and met the eyes of a boy roughly her age with curly brown hair and freckles. In his head, she could see so much fear and anger, so much confusion and loneliness. He was as broken as she was.

"Focus, Seven," Dr. Brenner said, his hand resting on Seven's shoulder. "I want you to have her get off the gurney."

Seven looked nervously between Dr. Brenner and Quinn. She could see the apprehension in his thoughts, but ultimately, Dr. Brenner's influence over him won out. Seven squeezed his eyes shut and Quinn felt one leg sway over the side of the gurney, followed by the other. Within moments she was on her feet with no recollection of having moved them herself.

"Good, Seven." Dr. Brenner smiled. "Now have her take three steps forward."

One.

Two.

Three.

Before Quinn could even register that she had moved, she was three strides in front of where she had started. Her limbs moved with surprising ease, despite having been stuck in the same position for months. Two lab assistants watched her from behind a table with a mix of fear and curiosity. It seems they hadn't forgotten what she'd done to their fellow coworker.

On the table, sat a metal cage with a white rabbit locked inside. The rabbit was backed into the corner of the cage, its long ears tucked tightly against its head, and its bright red eyes pleading with her not to hurt it.

"Now, and this is the most important part," Dr. Brenner instructed Seven. "I want you to have her use her abilities to turn this rabbit into a cardboard box. Do you understand?"

Seven nodded his head yes.

Up until this moment, it had felt like Quinn was in a trance, but Dr. Brenner's words brought her some clarity. She didn't want to harm that poor little rabbit, but this boy, under Dr. Brenner's instructions, was about to make her.

Quinn couldn't turn the rabbit into a cardboard box even if she wanted to. She hadn't used her ability to manipulate matter many times before she was brought to the Lab, but she knew with certainty that there were a few rules; one of which was that living matter could only turn into living matter, and non-living matter could only turn into non-living matter. If she attempted to turn the rabbit, which was living matter, into a cardboard box, which was non-living matter, the rabbit would surely die.

Quinn tried to fight against the control Seven held over her but she couldn't break through. He was straining so hard that her spine felt like a lightning rod, vibrating with electricity. She attempted to get into his head, to find something to make him stop, but she still only saw fear and anger. And something about a girl named One...

Then a thought struck her.

The mind controls the body by sending electrical pulses through the nervous system.

Where exactly this information came from, Quinn couldn't say. To her, reading minds often came with the same ease as breathing, and since the only people she interacted with were lab personnel, she knew a great many things most kids her age wouldn't know.

Seven's ability allowed him to hijack the brain, creating electrical pulses with his own instructions that he sent through the nervous system. That explained why her spine tingled when he was controlling her; the nervous system was connected to the brain by the spinal cord. Another piece of information she knew without knowing.

A strong electric shock could be enough to disrupt Seven's electrical pulses and break free of his control, but she had never manipulated energy before. Energy wasn't matter, energy was something different...But if she didn't at least try, if Seven successfully controlled her abilities, it wouldn't be just the rabbit that would get hurt. There would be no end to what Dr. Brenner would make her do.

Quinn remained frozen in her spot, unable to move, but the rabbit was still a rabbit which meant that Seven was hesitating. This was the only chance she would get.

Quinn could still feel Seven's influence in her mind, but it was weaker than it had been moments before. She pushed against it until she could feel it start to crack, until her pinky twitched. Seven pushed back, but she had already gained the ground she needed.

Her nose dripped red as she drew in energy from the air around her, manipulating it into something new. The fluorescent lights crackled above her, momentarily dipping the room in darkness, until they exploded in a shatter as a blast of electricity shot across the room, striking Quinn and dropping her to the ground in a fit of convulsions. Seven stumbled backwards, his upper lip smeared with blood.

Quinn laid on the ground, curling every finger and toe. She was too sore to get back to her feet, but her mind was her own again. Seven was gone.

"What are you doing?" Dr. Brenner hissed, grabbing Seven by the shoulder and yanking him backwards. "Do it again, make her turn the rabbit into a cardboard box!"

Seven once more tried to force himself into Quinn's mind, but he couldn't get in. "I-I can't," Seven cried, looking up to Dr. Brenner with wide, watery eyes.

"Useless," Dr. Brenner snapped, pushing Seven aside. He grabbed the walkie-talkie at his side, pressed his thumb firmly on the button, and said, "I need security to Room 217."

Within minutes, the door flew open and two large security guards stormed in.

"Bring Subject Seven back to his room," Dr. Brenner instructed them. "I'll be there shortly with the memory loss serum."

Seven shouted as the security guards grabbed him and hauled him out of the room, but Dr. Brenner didn't notice. He pointed to the two lab assistants standing behind the rabbit cage, instructing, "Grab her and put her back on the gurney. Re-insert the IV."

Quinn couldn't fight them even if she wanted to. Her muscles were too stiff and sore and her ability was tapped out. But she didn't want to fight it. The IV meant she'd get to go back to the darkness, back to her father.

She smiled as they lifted her from the floor.

After years of running, she finally found him.

Her search had led her to a worn-down park. Rusted chains hung from the swing set but the seats were long gone, and the slide was dotted with gaping holes that small, unidentifiable creatures darted in and out of. Grime-coated wood chips crunched under her feet as she slowly approached a bench in the corner where a man was silently sitting with his back faced to her.

"Dad?" Quinn asked, her voice nearly a whisper.

The man turned and Quinn immediately shut her eyes. Her memories of her father were distorted, the only images of his face trapped behind glass frames. Seeing him scared her more than she cared to admit, even if it was only in her mind.

When she finally peeled her eyes open, the bench was empty, and suddenly Quinn couldn't breathe. She had travelled non-stop, searching until her body threatened to collapse from exhaustion, all to...

"Hello, Quinn," a deep, honey-sweet voice greeted her.

Quinn wheeled around to find Malcolm standing behind her. She didn't even look at his face before her arms were around his neck and her face was buried in the ragged flannel he was wearing. His arms gently closed around her, holding her tight, keeping her safe.

When she pulled back from the hug, her eyes immediately found his. They were the same eyes she saw every time she caught her reflection in the two-way mirrors that Dr. Brenner observed subjects behind; the color of rich coffee. His smile caught her gaze next, a shining crescent of pearly white teeth framed by a thick, scratchy beard. It was the first thing she always thought of whenever she envisioned her dad.

If she could look in a mirror, she'd see that they weren't so far apart in age.

"I miss you," Quinn said, the tears in her eyes threatening to spill over.

"I miss you too, my beautiful baby girl," Malcolm replied, his smile growing even larger.

"Why did it take so long to find you?" Quinn asked. "And why here?"

Malcolm sighed as he folded his hands in front of him and looked down at the ground. "It wasn't supposed to be like this," he answered solemnly. "This place was suppose to be a paradise where we could be a family together. But something went wrong."

"What happened?"

"I wasn't strong enough." Malcolm lifted his head to meet Quinn's eyes. "But you are, I know it."

"Strong enough for what?"

"For what needs to be done."

Quinn opened her mouth to ask but was interrupted by a loud rumbling, followed by an intense shaking of the earth beneath her feet. Her father seemed unfazed but Quinn had to fight to stay upright.

"Wh-what was that?" she stammered, still struggling to keep her balance as the ground settled. The sky filled with the howls of faraway monsters, crying out in pain. "What's happening?"

"This world I created is being destroyed," Malcolm answered calmly.

"What?" Quinn exclaimed. "By who? Can we stop it?"

Malcolm slowly shook his head no. "You can't stop it, but you can fix it."

"Fix it?" Quinn repeated. "What do you mean 'fix it'?"

Just then, a large crack split the earth between them, separating them from each other and splitting the playground in two. The rift between them slowly opened larger, pushing her father farther and farther away from her. The slide lost its grip and was swallowed by the darkness, the swing set only barely holding on. Quinn raced up and down the length of the rift, trying to get to the other side, but the fissure between them carved a canyon that went on for miles.

"I'm afraid this is good-bye," Malcolm called from the other side, his voice just barely audible over the shifting ground beneath them.

"No!" Quinn shouted back between sobs. Her shattered heart was holding on by threads. "It can't be good-bye, I just found you!"

"I love you," he called back, the last words she heard before a blinding, white light absorbed everything.

She awoke to a room full of bodies and a letter.

The only reason she knew it was real was the light. She had been trapped in darkness for so long. Only darkness. No ash, no monsters. Those had disappeared a long, long time ago. Gone away with her father in the blinding, white light.

This light was blinding, but not in the same sense. Quinn's eyelids fluttered open and shut as she tried to adjust to the brightness, to make out the strange shapes around her. A box with blinking lights and a green zig-zag line, a plastic pouch attached to a tall metal stick, and one, two, three, four...four bodies. Alive? Dead? She couldn't tell. All she could tell was that they weren't moving. And neither was she.

Quinn willed her toes to wiggle, her fingers to flex, anything to prove that her body still worked. She had been under sedation for so long...or so short...time didn't move in the darkness. Finally, she got a response from her left foot and a breath of relief spilled out of her.

Quinn gave her body a couple more minutes to catch up with her brain until she slowly pushed herself into a sitting position. She instinctively reached for the IV but found that it was already removed, a small red dot on her inner arm the only proof that it had ever been there. She could feel everything and nothing at the same time. Numbness and pain, peacefulness and fear, certainty and confusion.

She knew where she wasn't but not where she was. The bodies on the ground weren't giving her any answers, their minds either asleep or most likely, gone, but she knew that she was no longer at Hawkins Laboratory. She could feel it. They had moved her somewhere new, somewhere different. The "why" was yet to be determined.

Quinn's head moved to the right when she caught something in her peripheral vision; a piece of paper sitting on a metal stool, covered from corner to corner in a flowing script. While she only had four years of formal reading education between the foster homes and the Lab, reading had always come naturally to her. When she read thoughts they came in two forms: audio and visual. It was like watching a movie with subtitles on. The inky symbols on the page were no challenge for her.

Dear Quinn,

The letter was for her.

Please do not be scared, I'm here to help you. You've been asleep for a long time but now it's time for you to wake up. On the date you are reading this, it is April 16, 1993.

Quinn jumped from the gurney she had been laying on, nearly collapsing on top of the bodies beneath her when her weakened legs struggled to support her weight. She stumbled forward as she searched for a reflective surface. In her head, she had been picturing herself as a little girl, but the reflection staring back at her from the black computer screen was a woman.

Quinn smoothed her hands over her brown skin, grown paler from her perpetual time indoors. Her hands moved to her neck and then down her body, feeling the curves that had developed where there had previously been straight lines. She was 28 now, meaning that she was older than her father had been when he'd died.

Quinn rushed back to the letter, nearly tripping on one of the bodies in her haste. She needed more answers.

As you can see, the lab personnel have been taken care of. The front door is wide open, ready for you to leave. You should not have any trouble on your way out.

Quinn looked around at the bodies once again, studying each one individually for any sign of life, but finding none. Whoever had left her this letter had been thorough.

You are currently in a top-secret facility in Florence, Oregon. You were moved here after an incident at Hawkins Laboratory, causing it to close down permanently in 1984.

Here was her "why", or at least part of it.

This is where it gets important. I want to preface this by saying that I'm a friend of your father's, and that there is something very important that he needs you to do. That we need you to do.

Quinn found herself holding her breath.

To fix things, to make things right, you need to return to Hawkins and find a man named Steve Harrington. More instructions will follow once you've arrived.

Quinn couldn't stop staring at this part of the letter. What did Hawkins and Steve Harrington have to do with fixing things, to making things right? She didn't know, but she'd do anything for her father. Even if it meant returning to the place where she had been born and abandoned, where she had lost her father, where she had been imprisoned and experimented on for years. Quinn pressed her eyes back to the page, hoping to find more answers, but the letter only had one answer left to reveal: the author.

Your friend,

Diane

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