╭                                                                 ╮

━━━━ " ⏳ "

𝙄 𝘾 𝙀 𝘾 𝙍 𝙀 𝘼 𝙈 𝙎 𝙐 𝙉 𝘿 𝘼 𝙀
! STRANGER THINGS ─── ʚĭɞ
⊹ , ˗'ˏ - the prologue ⊹

╰                                                               ╯

❛ I DIDN'T LIKE IT, PAPA. SHE
MADE ME DO IT. ❜

DOCTOR BRENNER DIDN'T LIKE TO PLAY FAVOURITES when it came to his test subjects, but he couldn't help but find bias in the experiment that was Number Seven. He couldn't help it really; she was his ultimate project, developed over many years and the culmination of one sick obsession to be more involved with the test subjects. And for Brenner, Seven was his proof of this. His proof of his work taking a new level, proof of his mania, proof of everything. She was the pinnacle of his work.

It had begun in the midst of MKUltra when Brenner was living in Hawkins as the Director of the National Laboratory there, when he mingled with the people of the town, when he lived amongst the citizens and engaged with a secret government mind-control project during work hours. It was then that the idea sparked. That he, Martin Brenner, could complete something so mind-numbingly inhumane yet so interesting at the same time, and the people of Hawkins would be none-the-wiser, completely ignorant of his efforts and work. It was perfect. She was going to be perfect.

Prior to his arrival in Hawkins, Martin Brenner had grown up in Indianapolis and began his work in government there too, trained as a doctor and no more interested in anything else until he heard of something. A friend in Hawkins recommended him to a higher-up, and soon enough he had relocated to the midwestern town, to administer trials in MKUltra, something that he had only heard rumours of, something he had only hoped to be involved in. And then, a year or two following his arrival, a man by the name of Victor Creel had murdered his family. His wife and young daughter had been killed, eyes pushed into their sockets, limbs pulled out of place, bones broken in two. Only his son had survived, and yet he was in a coma. But Brenner wasn't some sick admirer of almost-serial-killers. No... he was interested in the supernatural. People who were rare to the world. People who had powers. And when his obsession grew a little deeper, because he knew. He knew that Henry Creel wasn't innocent and that Victor Creel was.

Which was why he had himself assigned as his doctor, waiting for him to wake from his coma he had placed himself in, blood dry under his nose. Nobody really seemed to realise that one was missing from the family buried at Roane County Cemetery. Nobody really seemed to care that the only survivor of Victor Creel's attack had died a week after falling into his coma, and would later awake in the Hawkin's National Laboratory, ready to become 001, the first of his projects.

He began using those apart of MKUltra, those who had become pregnant whilst taking part to procure more projects, making his way up through numbers, raising them in a lab environment so they wouldn't know much else other than him and the orderlies. And now, his mind always teetering on the edge between humanity and insanity, Brenner became more involved.

It wasn't hard to find MKUltra test subjects in Hawkins. It might present itself as a perfect little community, but like most small-town America that kept its citizens alive on a diet of gossip and judgement, there would be the outcasts. The kids that took after their parents way too much, the mothers who had a flask in their purse at all times, and those who had barely made it out of high school and struggled to keep a living, house and job. And it was then that Dr Brenner targeted, those who spent their money on drugs instead of food, who wouldn't care about mind experiments if they were offered free LSD.

And Sandy Munson was no different. She was living with her dying mother and distant brother, holding a baby with one hand and using a strip of old cardboard to split white powder into lines and one of her singles to snort it. She was vulnerable and didn't quite mind the attention of another man - not when her kid's father had already run off to God-knows-where. And Martin Brenner would be that man, he would learn of her schedule, bump into her at the Big Buy in town whilst she tried to shop and look after her kid - Eddie, the kid's name was Eddie - simultaneously. He would offer to pay for her shopping when she came up ten dollars short, smile at her and offer his help if she ever needed it.

Sandy couldn't afford to say no, not when it was getting harder to clean for the girls she once went to school with to make a couple dollars to support her addiction. She was perfect for him - well, not for him but rather for his plans - and it just so happened that Sandy Munson's mother was a cousin of Victor Creel, and whatever sick, twisted secrets they held in their family blood she shared. And so, Martin Brenner joined Sandy Munson, and before long they were in a relationship and she was participating in MKUltra to balance her need to be on something and save some of her money at the same time. She had a committed boyfriend as well, or so she thought.

Martin Brenner was 36 when his daughter was born, 36 when he watched a woman who had willingly partaken in MKUltra whilst she was unknowingly pregnant with his child. It was amongst the worst things he could do, but he didn't quite have it in him to care: Number Seven was to join his projects, but she was truly his to experiment upon.

And Sandy Munson would take care of herself. He would steal Seven away whilst she was giving birth, having insisted on being there given his title, watch as she mourned for a stillborn baby whilst he kept her away at Hawkin's Lab. And then she would waste away, her addictions keeping her alive and killing her at the same time. Wayne could look after Eddie, make sure he stayed alive because his mother died not long after and Sandy was too fixated on the drugs she was taking to cure her upset over her lost child to care for the one actually alive. Sandy Munson wouldn't know any different, and when she overdosed on... something one evening and passed on, Martin Brenner had one less problem to deal with.

Nobody knew Seven existed, nobody knew that she was his daughter, all they knew was another project had come into Brenner's hands, and she was certainly the perfect candidate. Her powers began to show early when she toddled through the ward wearing the printed hospital gown and opened a door with her mind when she lifted one of the wooden blocks up the air and dropped it on the tower another subject had made. Brenner had achieved something so incredible with Seven, and he was proud of himself.

It wasn't long before lights were flickering all around him and he was watching her crush another can, or identify his drawings from several doors down, humming the tune of a song played by a staff member in their car as they left work. And although Brenner didn't want to play favourites, he couldn't help it. It was obvious - Seven was the epitome of his efforts; she was the ultimate product of his work.

Seven first killed when her name aligned with her age, grumpy and tired from a night of poor sleep and forced to be taken away from the Rainbow Room by the orderly for her training session at promptly ten that day. She didn't want to go, didn't want to sit in a room with a machine attached to her head but the orderly just didn't listen. She had dragged her and pulled her down the corridor although she was shouting and yelling no, refusing to move her feet. Suddenly, so suddenly, Brenner had heard a lapse in the protests, then a solitary shriek and a thump, and had left the room to find his daughter bleeding from the nose, smearing her hospital gown as tears bled from her eyes.

"I didn't want to Papa." She had called, when she saw him and ran to him, arms outstretched. "I didn't want to, and she made me."

Dr Brenner was proud; he had never felt so close to the woman orderly either, and he had brought Seven into his arms and held her up high, wiping the blood from her nose with his own handkerchief. He had called for someone to clean up the remains and he had taken Seven into her room and sat with her there instead, watching as she painted with the new colours he had gotten for the children. He had gifted her a teddy bear, a new pair of hair clips, and gave her candy after each session he did with her.

And he always made sure she wanted to, always made sure it was him to take her there, made sure that she got candy bars and presents and new covers for her bed. Seven was treated well, and unlike others, she wouldn't suffer for it.

But Brenner was quick to realise something. As much as he was proud of his daughter, there was a much harsher reality for her. She was powerful. Maybe too powerful, and although Martin Brenner enjoyed watching her become even more so, there was a worry that lay deep in his soul. His favouritism was becoming too much, and although the other subjects knew they would suffer should they hurt her, he couldn't quite ensure that would remain the same as she got older.

And a year after Seven killed the orderly, and along the way completed several other milestones including their very first exploration into sensory deprivation, Brenner decided she would have to be removed from the experiment. After all, they had achieved everything they needed to with her.

He had taken her to his home, taken everything from her room in the lab and set it up right there. Martin hated to admit it but he truly had gained a soft spot for his sickest creation yet. He couldn't deny it, Seven's origins were thinly veiled in a shroud of inhumanity, but she was his daughter nonetheless.

For a few months, he had kept her with him, setting her up for life in the outside world. He brought her dresses, cooked her actual food, taught her basic math and English and everything she could possibly need to know. And when she had learnt social cues and how to speak and her hair had grown out of the buzzcut it had been shaved to for the experiment, Brenner had driven to the trailer park on the edge of the town in the middle of the night and fed her a couple of lines, handed her a short letter and left.

In the morning, Eddie Munson - now nine and sporting a tragic haircut - opened the door and found a little girl sitting there, smiling up at him and proclaiming herself as his sister - and she was called Laura, but he could call her Laurie.

And since then, Wayne Munson was not only looking after his nephew but his niece as well, not having really contemplated her arrival nor where she came from but simply taking one look at her when Eddie brought her through the door and offering her either the plain off-brand cereal or the chocolate flavour - but they also had Pop-Tarts if she wanted.

Laurie didn't know, and so Wayne had given her all three, spending his free time turning the master bedroom into two for the two kids and he took up sleeping in the living room. He did have a remarkably comfortable couch after all.

It wasn't long after that when Laura was enrolled in school, her hair clipped back by those pretty butterfly clips Wayne had found in the suitcase Brenner had left with her and dressed her in her neatest clothes, sending her off with Eddie on the bus.

And although sometimes Laura talked of rooms made of white tiles, with rainbows painted on them and everyone wearing the same outfit, it was only assumed she had spent a little time in hospital, and her memories of a woman lying dead on the floor was simply a product of over imagination and being fed too many scary movies at a young age.

In surprisingly little time, Laurie Munson had become strikingly normal. She was the odd little girl in the trailer park, who was weirdly smart and made strange things happen all around her. But that was just Laura being Laura, and neither Eddie nor Wayne questioned it. They just kept her safe, that was all.