-

C H A P T E R  S I X  :

" THE INJECTIONS "

! !

NEEDLE warning - i've included a gif with a needle closeup right after this warning, so if that bothers you, feel free to just scroll past the gif & down to the beginning of the chapter

the gif is purely for dramatic build-up & aesthetics, & it isn't a necessity of this chapter, so if you skip over it, you won't miss anything

! !

･ ｡ﾟ ⋆✩⋆  ･ ｡ﾟ

･ ｡ﾟ  ･ ｡ﾟ

| D E C E M B E R  24th , 1986 |

H a w k i n s , I n d i a n a

"DUDE WHERE have you been? You've been gone all night."

  Mike had barely stepped a foot inside the door to his house that morning after Billy dropped him off before he was immediately bombarded by the party and their worries for him having not returned home last night.

Mike heard the sound of tires squealing and pulling out of his driveway and turned around to see Billy's blue camaro peeling out—having done his job of being a surrogate babysitter.

"Where were you?"
Lucas pressed on, his arms crossed with Max's arm linked with his while Dustin held his arms out expectantly—waiting for Mike's explanation.

"Nowhere."

He was shy and too heartbroken to even speak about Y/N, especially on a day like today.

The way Mike's eyes glossed over with a broken spirit hinted to the party of where he really was.
They knew Mike well enough.

"Okay.."
They dropped it, giving Mike a sense of stability as he made his way up the stairs and to his room to change to look at least
semi-decent for the Byers.

It wasn't long before he heard the sound of an engine sputtering up the driveway to a halt, followed with the sound of car doors opening and slamming shut.

"Mike ! They're here!"
He could hear his mother's shouts along with the party's as he was still slipping his shirt on over his head.

"One minute !"

He hurried down the stairs to see the party gathered by the door, ready to greet them after some time apart.

So when the doorbell rang, Mike's heart started beating rapidly, somewhere in the back of his mind he hoped that Y/N was still alive, just hiding like El did a year ago.

So somewhere, for some reason, in the back of his mind he hoped Y/N would be standing behind the Byers, saying , 'Been a while, huh?' or 'Miss me?'

He had that dream quite frequently, where
Y/N would return and say some lighthearted joke to cheer him up about her disappearance.

He dreamed so vividly that he would believe she was back home, only to wake up from his dream broken-hearted at his saddening reality.

So when the door opened to reveal no one else but the Byers and Murray standing there, he was aware of his foolishness.

"Hey !"

Of course Y/N wouldn't be there.

There was a buzzing tension in the room as everyone greeted everyone, hugs being shared with the party, as well as Joyce, Jonathan, Murray, and Karen who just joined in the 'hello's'.
Mike watched with a nervous smile as Will and El made eye contact with Mike before finally coming over to greet him.

"Well you guys look great. What the fuck happened to me?"
Mike was hoping to lighten the darkened mood that he had been engulfed in for the past couple months, a small smile finally breaking through his veil of anxiety.

"Good to see you."
Will chuckled as he went first, his hug put Mike at ease that his best friend for years was
finally back—providing at least some sense of familiarity and stability to his life at the moment.

But it was when El came to hug Mike that his anxiety worsened.

She immediately engulfed Mike in a hug, but he was too tense to hug back, and El noticed.
It was when they parted for El to look up at Mike's eyes—her own eyes practically radiating pure love and affection for him.

In a dazed motion, it was then that she stood on her tiptoes to reach up to try to kiss Mike's lips, that he gently pressed his hands to her chest and pushed her away slightly.

His smile had faded as he turned his head away so that her lips hit Mike's cheek—her eyes confused as to why he denied her affection.

"I can't."
Mike mumbled before looking at his shoes, more to himself than to his 'ex'-girlfriend, but El heard.

"W-why not?"
Her words had this underlying innocence that made Mike feel terribly guilty that he couldn't bring himself to return her affections.

Technically speaking, they weren't together anymore, but El was too naive and inexperienced to know that.
She was too blind to see the plain fact that Mike didn't feel the same way about El anymore.

Yes, he was in love. But it was never really El.

"I just..can't."
He spoke softly, finally realizing over the course of the solitude from the last few months, that it had been Y/N he loved the whole time.

It was always her, but he was just too late to act on it.

"Mike !"
Mike and El's confrontal moment was interrupted by Joyce's excited yet rushed attempt at a greeting, stepping in El's spot to hug Mike as she stepped back in a hurt daze.

Mike returned Joyce's hug, mumbling a 'how are you' before she parted to take a look at the entire party.

"Wait, what's Murray doing here?"
Dustin spoke up, pointing judgmentally towards Murray who stood in an anxious stance, obviously thinking about what him and Joyce were speaking about.

The kids turned their heads at Joyce, expecting an answer, only to see her make a crease of her eyebrows—clenching the scribbled note of the words from the message that Murray received from what they assumed to be Hopper.

"We need to talk."

⋆

| D E C E M B E R  24th , 1986 |

K a m c h a t k a , R u s s i a

A BRIGHT LIGHT shined on Y/N's face, her pupils dilating at the brightness.
She was in a poorly lit room with only the lamp's light on the silver table to provide any luminance.

"Please look into the direction of the camera."
Dr.Brenner seemed to enjoy ordering Y/N around, a clipboard held in his arms while he jot down notes.

Today was the day.

Today was the day he would begin his experiments on Y/N L/N.

It was a big day for Dr.Brenner.

Reluctantly, Y/N complied as she stared into the camera propped up on the tripod on the silver table—her wrists rubbing raw against the binds that tied her to her chair.

Y/N's eyes widened as looked at herself in the viewfinder, seeing what she looked like for the first time in weeks.
  Her hair was tangly and greasy, her face had splotches of dirt and her neck and chest had created a layer of dried sweat and grime.

She looked so dirty and rigid—she looked so vulnerable.

"Please state your full name, date of birth, weight, height, and blood type."

It was as if Y/N were taking a mugshots with the lightening and the way Brenner spoke to her—like she was nothing more than a prisoner.

  She resisted, of course. Out of pure spite, she just scoffed at the experimental doctor.

It was then that Brenner reminded Y/N the hard way, of what would happen if she didn't comply with his demands.
"Don't. Don't aggravate me."

He wasn't patient. He was quite the opposite.

He was impatient to begin his experiments that he had failed years ago.

Y/N could see the irritation in his eyes—the anger as he leaned in to stare straight into her nervous eyes.

She bit her tongue, silently cursing herself for giving in. She figured, that with cooperation, perhaps she could stall long enough to figure it a way to escape from here.

With a breathy sigh, Y/N shifted in her seat before looking at the camera with its blinking red recording light.

"Y/N L/N. Born Y/B/D on the year 1971. Weight is [your weight] and height is [your height]. My blood type.." Y/N's eyes flickered questioningly to Brenner, confused as to why he needed her blood type.

"My b-blood type is [blood type.]"

Brenner smiled at her cooperation, almost similar to the way a person smiles when their dog begins to understand how to do a trick.

"Perfect. Please escort her to the laboratory."
Brenner ordered his security guards as they nodded and mumbled something in Russian before untying Y/N's binds to jerk her to stand up and walk with them. 

Y/N could feel her heart beginning to rapidly beat as the guards dragged her to the lab through the hallway of numerous doors and entrances.
She twisted and turned and kicked and tried everything she could to resist the guards, but all they did was continue their painful grip on her wrists.

  They approached two grand silver doors at the end of the long hallway, larger than the others.

They burst through the swinging doors to reveal a room of what looked like torture devices in Y/N's eyes.
Behind them, Brenner flicked the lights on to illuminate the absolute chilling experimental room with multiple chairs from previous experiments.

Now, Y/N would be apart of them.

The Russian guards holding her by her shoulders practically threw her in the nearest chair, her back landing roughly on the gray leather.
She looked to the side of her to see a silver tray with items like syringes, small scalpels, and vials of dark grayish-black ooze.

Everything was already prepped for her, and the thought sent chills down her spine.

One guard walked across the room to close the door shut and locked, while the other stood guard right next to Y/N's chair, in case she thought it wise to try and escape.

Brenner walked closer to Y/N, his lab coat flowing behind him between his legs as he approached the silver tray next to her seat before picking up rubber gloves to slide into his hands with a snap.

Before she knew it, her wrists were tied with leather straps to the chair, as well as her ankles to prevent any and all escape attempts.
  Brenner adjusted the overhead light above her head, and turned it on to shine bright in her eyes to illuminate his workspace.

His hands worked fast as he opened a vial of what looked like dark ooze into a syringe, flicking it with his gloved fingers.
  Of course he was moving fast. He had done this so many times before as Y/N previously saw in the pictures he showed her.

Brenner set the syringe down gently before working on the other two, then after finishing with those, he picked up his clipboard to record his work ,
"Y/N L/N, Experiment # 16, session 1, phase 1. First dose of otherworldly creature's DNA."

Brenner read aloud as he wrote, making Y/N sweat with anxiousness and was it..fear?

He set his clipboard down before turning to look at her while he slipped a white doctor's mask over his mouth, yet she could see his sickening smile behind the fabric.

He then reached for a strip of leather, flattening it out before hovering it over her mouth—waiting for her to open her mouth.

"My previous subjects needed this."
He explained as he saw Y/N hesitate before reluctantly opening her mouth to bite down on the tough strip.

He smiled with satisfaction before reaching for his syringe, flicking it a few times to get the substance moving in the slightest before forcefully jerking Y/N's neck to look to the opposite direction of him—exposing her neck.

It was nothing more than a second before she felt the pinch of his fingers, and the cold, sharp metal pierce through her skin, and the thick substance inject itself with a fiery sting.

There was no warning.

There was no countdown.

There was only white, hot, searing, pain.

Y/N bit down on the leather strip in her mouth hard, her neck sizzling a burning sensation from where the substance was injected.
She yelled in pain, her heavy breathing starting to slow down to her regular pace.

"Injection 1 out of 3 is complete. Injection 2.."
Brenner wasn't finished.

Without a second notice, she felt the searing hot pain in her exposed neck once again, feeling the substance diffuse into her bloodstream.

She screamed through the leather strip, her wrists resisting the leather that was tying her down.
She felt her body grow hot with random flashes.
The white light above her started to blur with every blink of her eyes, her vision grew hazy and disoriented.

"And..injection 3."

Y/N screamed scratchily once again as various drops of sweat steamed down her sickened face, her entire body writhing in pain in the chair against her binds.

Her eyes began to grow hazy and out of focus, her body got hot and cold flashes with every excruciating second that passed with the sizzling pain in her neck.

Her entire body grew limp, almost like sleep paralysis while her body randomly spasmed before she felt her eyes get the urge to flutter shut, but she knew that if she did that, she may never wake up again.

So she fought the urge to drift unconscious, with every minute that passed, she could feel the stone cold gaze of Brenner—awaiting her reaction.
Waiting to see if he failed again.

But all of a sudden, her body's spasms stopped.

Her vision cleared, her hot and cold flashes grew milder.

It was then that she blinked her eyes and opened them again to see that she was standing in the dark alternate universe that she called The Upside Down, with its dark interior and floating toxins.
She looked around frantically with wide eyes, seeing exactly where she was—by Mike's house covered in a thick tangle of black vines.

Her heart fluttered with hope and happiness as the sight of Mike's house, her mind seeming to forget where she was.

She blinked once more by accident,
and easily—without much effort—she felt as if she fell back into the hospital chair with hazy eyes and an accelerated heart beat.

She looked around frantically to see that she was back, and then saw Brenner observe her with a pleased smile.
He was..happy.

He took a few steps to the clipboard on his silver tray to write down aloud his results with a content smile,

"Experiment #16 : Y/N L/N's body accepted and embraced the transfusion of otherworldly creature's blood. Status : success."

Y/N's heart dropped what seemed like a thousand leagues at the way he already named her as an experiment, meaning that she had to undergo many more trials of transfusions.

She now had demogorgon blood successfully coursing through her veins and body at the moment.

She was now to be called and referred to only as Experiment 016.

⋆

┌────── ⋆⋅⋅⋆ ──────┐

wow. so, y/n now has fucking DEMOGORGON blood inside her blood steam..

this chapter was mainly to express how y/n is going to be changing in the future chapters with every experiment..

ALSO..the party is back together againnnn !
[ did you catch my IT references?? ]

NEXT CHAPTER : will be an eventful one, so stay TUNED

.

what do you think so far ??

any theories so far? any predictions?

thanks for reading.. stay tuned !!

└────── ⋆⋅⋅⋆ ──────┘

.
2581 words
.