forgotten faces

. ✧ ・゜. +・o ✧

   The tunnels that had been spreading through Hawkins for who-knew-how-long were like an old memory. Particles drifted along the air serenely, floating around like snow, and the tunnels themselves were carved just like the one Dart had made to escape Dustin's storm cellar. Just like in Alina's visions, everything here had a blue tint to it, a subtle implication that this was not of their world. As she looked around, her palms immediately beginning to itch, she found that instead of making her head swim more, like she expected it to, her head actually cleared, and there was a sense of belonging here, of home.

 It made it easier for her. Her leg was still aching, but it didn't matter now. Nothing mattered except for the bandanna covering her mouth and the sweat, as usual, pooling on her brow. With every passing second, it felt like the temperature increased, and she had to resist the urge to strip all of her clothes off. Her vision seemed permanently doubled now, so there was one Alina, the Alina who was slowly losing who she was, standing in the tunnels amongst her friends, and then there was the Alina lying on that bed, the world hotter than the pits of hell.

Not you, Alina. We.

That was right. It was we. Alina was no longer a singular entity, rather one that was spread out among thousands. It might have been hard to keep track of before, but like being in the tunnels, it was now a sense of belonging. Like she finally meant something, being among all of these others. And it was the Mind Flayer that had led her here. It was the Mind Flayer that was propelling her forward now.

"Uh," a boy's voice snapped her back into this reality, and Alina saw one of the many teenagers among her looking down at his map. "I'm pretty sure it's this way!"

What was his name again? With each second that passed, Alina felt herself slipping away. There was a piece of her that still fought, that remembered the nights with Lucas and the games of D&D played with Dustin, a part of her that put nice notes in lockers and invited lonely boys to be her friend. That was the part that wanted to be herself. But there was this new, overwhelming part, that urged her not to.

In the car, she'd known she'd have to keep up the singular act. So she had. Even though she was sick, the others seemed to believe she would be okay enough to make the venture into the tunnels. They'd trusted her, like they always had. It was almost pathetic.

"You're pretty sure, or you're certain?" that was Dustin. The one who'd taken care of Dart (what a strange name!) and treated them with kindness.

"I'm one-hundred percent sure, just follow me and you'll know!"

"He's right," Alina almost said, but instead just nodded, making her way to the front of their little chain. Before she could, however, their babysitter stopped her.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa. Hey, hey, hey. I don't think so." He glared at her through his goggles, and Alina took a moment to struggle to place his name. The babysitter was all she could come up with. It worried her a lot less than it should. "Any of you little shits die down here," he continued, "I'm getting the blame." He turned to the other boy. "Got it, dipshit?" Before waiting for a response, the babysitter turned to call back to the others. "From here on out, I'm leading the way. Come on, let's go. Come on."

Gabe Burton had never seen anything so terrifying yet awe-inspiring at the same time. The tunnels were massive, and as he picked his way through them, following after the others, he couldn't help but stare. Sometimes the walls pulsed like they were alive, and he kept reaching his hands (gloved, obviously. Who knew what kind of foreign diseases parallel dimension particles contained) to cup the flecks of ash.

He'd changed a lot, he realized now. He wasn't as afraid as he had been before. Of course, he still jumped at every small noise, which always turned out to be the others' footsteps squishing on the oddly moist ground, and flicked his flashlight around the tunnels into it nearly ran out of batteries, but still, he was willingly doing this. Defying what the adults had told him. Running into near-certain death.

"You okay?" he asked Max, who was walking beside him. Mike was up front, Alina and Lucas following just behind, and Dustin was the end of the line. Max seemed almost as tense as he did, but nevertheless, she nodded.

"I'll be okay," she said. "It's just... I don't like it here. There's something about this place that rubs me in the wrong way. Other than the fact that we're in tunnels made by creatures from an alternate dimension." She looked around as the musty walls, traced the path of the falling particles with her eyes, and lowered her voice. "I feel like something's going to happen down here. Something bad."

Gabe felt it too. A queasy feeling twisting and turning its way through his stomach like worms, telling him to leave, to get out, that it wasn't safe. But he forced himself to keep putting one foot in front of the other, and he forced himself to comfort Max. "We'll be okay. We're not defenceless. We have Alina and Steve."

"Steve's just one guy," said Max. "I don't think he'll be able to take on all of those Demodogs. And Alina's sick," she added. "And she's been acting really weird lately. Like, look at her now."

Gabe looked, and found Alina walking (well, limping. Who knew when that leg would be healed) further from Lucas than usual, her eyebrows knitted together as she studied his face. Her hair was plastered to her neck with sweat, and she kept fanning herself. "Something's wrong. She's keeping something from us."

"She's just nervous," said Gabe reasonably. "We all are." As he watched, Alina shot a beam of energy into the air, another tool in lighting the way. It seemed to place more of a strain on her than usual, and her arm was shaking as she raised her sleeve to wipe the blood away. "When we get back," he continued, "she'll get some rest and she'll be okay."

"Yeah, I guess," said Max, but she still didn't look fully convinced. She did turn to Gabe though, and tried to smile. She was pretty, Gabe realized now, but not the kind of pretty he'd be attracted to. Max Mayfield was all fireworks and flowers, the frosting on a freshly iced cake. She was the kind of pretty you would admire but would never want to kiss.

There was someone else he wanted to kiss, though.

"You're a good friend, Gabe," she said. "I'm glad I have you."

"Me too," said Gabe, and he meant it. He was also glad he wasn't the only one who'd been thrown into this mess blindly, glad that he wasn't the only one to have been ignored and excluded (even though he knew now why the party had had to do it, it still had hurt). Glad he wasn't the only one late to this whole thing.

The group walked for what seemed like hours. Gabe's calves started to burn, but he did get used to the constant sounds of the tunnels. Their flashlights permeated the darkness, the only light in this horrible place, and Gabe's breathing got heavy under the bandanna. He walked faster, trying to speed up this expedition, and turned a corner. And that was when he halted in his tracks, his eyes wide as dinner plates.

They had entered a large area that branched off into more tunnels, which Gabe expected to find a lot of in here, so that wasn't what was making him nervous. What was making his insides turn was the strange, pulsating mass above them, moving up and down like it was breathing. Black veins ran through the jelly-like skin, and Gabe could hear it making strange, soft noises from up above. Like breaths. In and out, in and out.

Breathe, Alina.

"God," Lucas breathed, his eyes bulging as he took this in.

"No kidding," Gabe murmured, his pulse pounding in his ears. There was something so very wrong with whatever pulsed above him, the thing that breathed. He expected that any minute now it would open and swallow him up. Swallow them all up.

"What is this place?" Max asked.

Steve didn't seem like he had time for questions. He was probably still angry with them for practically kidnapping him and forcing him to wander down mysterious tunnels, and Gabe honestly couldn't blame him. He felt awful for bringing Steve with them, but they couldn't exactly leave him behind, either. It was something that had to be done.

"Guys, come on," Steve said, his jaw clenched. "Keep moving."

So they did. Their feet crunched on the ground, and they craned their necks to stare at the pulsating mass as they passed by it. They had almost reached another tunnel when Gabe heard the worst thing that could've ever been heard in a place like this, deep within the bowels of the earth.

A scream.

Gabe immediately whipped around, his heart hammering in his chest, expecting to find someone either dead or dying or actually being swallowed up by that thing, but all he saw was Dustin on the ground, rolling around as he screamed his head off. He managed to get to his feet, screaming for help, and then ran towards them, his voice choked with sobs. As he reached the entrance to the tunnel the others were standing in, his foot slipped, and Dustin let out another scream as he fell to the ground.

Everyone knelt before him, watching the boy yell, but Steve pushed through them. "What happened?" he asked, his voice laced with worry. "What happened?"

"It's in my mouth!" Dustin's voice was high, and it was panicked. "It's in my mouth! Some got on my mouth! Shit!" He began to cough frantically, sounding like he was dying, his mouth uncovered (that made Gabe worried. Who knew how many toxins had entered Dustin's body), and then spit something onto the ground. Then he turned back to face the others sheepishly, his breath ragged. "I'm okay."

Simultaneously, everyone sighed. "You serious?" Max asked, rolling her eyes.

"Very funny, man," said Steve, his voice back to normal. "Nice, very nice." He turned around, not even offering to help Dustin to his feet, and the others followed.

"Jesus, what an idiot," Gabe could hear Max mutter. He frowned and stayed at the entrance, offering a hand to the boy still on the ground. Dustin took it gladly, and got to his feet, brushing dirt off of his knees.

"You okay?" Gabe asked. "What happened?"

Dustin seemed relieved someone had taken him seriously. "That thing—" he pointed to the mass above—"it opened up, and all of these things shot out. Like, all over me. And in my mouth. Shit."

That made Gabe a little worried, and he pulled Dustin forward. "Come on, then," he said, "let's get away from it."

The group continued walking, a little on edge from Dustin's outburst. Max stayed up at the front with Lucas and Mike, while Alina lagged a little behind on her own. Gabe walked with Dustin, constantly shining his flashlight around. He didn't know when they would reach the hub, but this mission was now beginning to not seem as easy as Mike thought it would.

It definitely wasn't. For Alina, who was lagging a little behind, could feel her individuality splitting with each and every second, and got hotter, and hotter, tempted to splash the gasoline over her face for a brief coolness. It was getting harder to use her abilities, too, and with each passing moment used less and less, the energy refusing to enter. She was getting slower and slower, too, still trying to resist, at least a little bit, but it was getting harder. She knew that if she just let I become we, she wouldn't have to worry about slowness. She wouldn't have to worry about her leg. She would be an unstoppable machine, and she could finally complete the mission she'd been assigned.

Don't let them drench the hub.

She was getting tired of resisting. She'd break soon.

Her eyes found a boy, who was looking back to check on her. Somewhere inside of her, her heart fluttered, and she knew the old her had feelings for this boy. The one with the bandanna constantly around his head and the black paint streaked on his cheeks. She remembered kissing him and felt nothing.

What was his name again?

. ✧ ・゜. +・o ✧

a/n: y'all are gonna HATE me for the next chapter and i'm already ready for it lmfao. also i'd like to thank ThatPumkins (it wouldn't let me tag, sorry) for helping me with this chapter and like half of the next one all the way back in february lmfao. it was really helpful in letting me know if things made sense and for me to just generally improve. so thank you!

i'm just realizing now how short(ish-- i mean some cap at 1000 words) my chapters are, so sorry if that's annoying. it just works better for me because i try and write one chapter a day so i feel more accomplished lmao. 

get ready, because tomorrow is the last day of mad'ouk... month? but yeah, after tomorrow, i'm going to stop with the daily updates and i might change them to every two-three days? idk it depends. just expect random updates lol.

'till next time!