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CHAPTER THIRTY ; THE INTERROGATION OF WILL BYERS
also known as;
( the mind flayer; part three )

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STELLA SOMETIMES WONDERED HOW DUSTIN HENDERSON'S MIND WORKED. He was one of the smartest kids she knew, that was a definite fact, but sometimes he said things she couldn't interpret, couldn't understand. 

Like Demodogs. 

Yes, it was a portmanteau of Demogorgon and Dog, but then again, couldn't they just refer to them as the name they were given the last time Hawkins went bat shit insane? Nonetheless, Stella didn't want to intervene, as he seemed pretty adamant in making everyone say the name, correcting them as they spoke. When Max chose to question it, he looked at her as if she had grown two heads, as if she were stupid for not being able to understand his new word. 

"There's an army now," Lucas muttered, slumping down in his chair and frowning deeply. They were speaking of the Demogorgo...Demodog club Dustin had accidentally created, and how to stop it. Stella stood next to Steve, remaining silent, as she had no idea how to help. Then again, who in the world had managed to stop a Demodog army and whatever was inside Will's head?

"Precisely," Dustin clicked his fingers in Lucas' direction, and Stella lifted her right hand, sipping from her water glass. Her eyes flickered between the party members, waiting for the next person to speak. They were somewhat familiar with this type of world, seeing as their experiences with Dungeons and Dragons happened to reflect the events they had faced. 

"His army," Mike mumbled under his breath. His words attracted the attention of everyone in the kitchen, all of them puzzled. 

"What do you mean?" Steve queried, also having kept silent, as he too had no clue how to stop the monsters. 

"His army," Mike repeated, now more confident in his words. Stella and Steve exchanged a confused look, but didn't interrupt the boy who was now building a plan in his head. "Maybe if we stop him, we can stop his army too."

The raven-haired boy spun around on his heel and rushed off in the direction of Will's room, causing the rest of the party to dart out of their chairs and follow him hastily. Stella nearly choked on her water as she finally caught on to what Mike meant, placing her glass down and rushing off in pursuit. 

By the time she entered the bedroom, her eyes fell on a drawing Mike was giving Dustin. "The shadow monster. It got Will that day on the field."

"Wait, this is what's inside him?" Stella asked, her eyes widening as she took in a gigantic, spider-like creature looming over what appeared to be houses and power-lines. 

Mike nodded, scratching the back of his head as he began to elaborate. "The doctor said it was like a virus, it infected him."

"And so this virus, it's connecting him to the tunnels?" Max asked, her ginger eyebrows knitting together as she tried to understand. 

"To the tunnels, monsters, the Upside Down, everything," Mike nodded, not bothering to be rude to her like he usually would. 

"Whoa, slow down, slow down," Steve held his hand up, clearly not fully sure what was going on. 

"Okay, so, the shadow monster's inside everything. And if the vines feel something like pain, the so does Will," Mike explained easily, and Stella's eyes trailed up to the ceiling to see more of the blue line drawings stuck to the plaster. Those must be the vines. 

"And so does Dart," Lucas piped up. Stella was aware that Dustin's slug was called D'artagnan, Dart for short; she couldn't bring herself to give the murderous beast a name. 

"Yeah, like Mr Clarke taught us," Mike continued, becoming fully immersed in his theory. "The hive mind."

"Hive mind?" Steve crossed his arms, his eyes a little wide at all the unfamiliar words being thrown his way. 

"A collective consciousness," Dustin clarified. "It's a super-organism."

"And this is the thing that controls everything," Mike took the drawing of the Shadow Monster again, pointing to the large, menacing figure. "It's the brain."

"Like the mind flayer," Dustin muttered, and Stella tilted her head in uncertainty.  Lucas clicked his fingers at the curly haired boy, immediately understanding what he was talking about, as did Mike. But Max, Steve and Stella had no idea. 

"The what?" They all chimed in sync, causing the other three boys to groan. 

After five minutes of rummaging through Will's belongings, Dustin grabbed a book Stella could only assume was Science-Fiction related. The entire group (excluding Will and Joyce) then gathered around the kitchen table, waiting for Dustin to explain.

He threw the book on the wooden surface once he found the right page, pointing to a drawing of some sort of alien in a robe. "The mind flayer."

"What the hell is that?" Chief Hopper asked, voicing exactly what Stella was thinking. He clearly wasn't in the mood for any bullshit, the last twenty-four hours not serving him much relaxation. He was on edge, always expecting something to pop out at him -- not that Stella blamed him. She was still recovering from everything she had gone through only hours earlier. It was now creeping past midnight and she felt like she could fall over on her tired legs, but she was far too terrified to shut her eyes. 

"It's a monster from an unknown dimension," Dustin replied, speaking as if everything was common knowledge. "It's so ancient that it doesn't even know its true home. Okay, it enslaves races of other dimensions by taking over their brains using its highly developed psionic powers."

"Oh my god, none of this is real. This is a kids game," Hopper groaned, not in the mood for whatever Dustin was talking about. 

"No, it's a manual," the boy corrected, not having any regard for Hopper's hesitance. "And it's not for kids. And unless you know something that we don't, this is the best metaphor-"

"Analogy," Lucas muttered.

"Analogy? That's what you're worried about?" Dustin raised his voice, his eyes nearly popping out of his skull. "Fine. An analogy for understanding whatever the hell this is."

"Okay, so the mind-flamer thing," Nancy began, though she was cut off by Dustin. 

"Flayer. Mind-flayer."

Nancy sighed. "What does it want?"

"To...conquer us, basically," Dustin responded. "It believes it's the master race."

"Like the Germans," Steve piped up, and Stella ran a hand down her face, wanting to smack him. He tried. 

"Uh, the Nazis?" Dustin quipped, staring at him in disbelief. 

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, the Nazis," Steve stumbled over his words, though he nodded quickly to get himself back on his feet. 

"Uh, if the Nazis were from another dimension, totally," Dustin reluctantly admitted. "It views other races, like us, as inferior to itself."

"It wants to spread, take over other dimensions," Mike added. 

"We're talking about the destruction of our world as we know it," Lucas agreed, smacking his hand on the table dramatically. 

"That's great, that's great. That's really great, Jesus!" Steve huffed, turning away from the table and running his hands through his hair exasperatedly. 

"Okay," Nancy began speaking again, leaning forward to read the words printed next to the drawing. "So, if this thing is like a brain that's controlling everything, then if we kill it..."

"We kill everything it controls," Mike finished for his sister, who glanced up at him, nodding her head in understanding. 

"We win," Dustin said.

"Theoretically," Lucas stated further.

"Great, so how do you kill this thing?" Hopper asked, stepping forward and taking the book out of Nancy's hands, finally paying attention. "Shoot it with fireballs or something?"

Dustin chuckled, shaking his head. "No. No, no, fireballs. Uh, you summon an undead army, uh, because...because zombies, you know, t-they don't have brains, and the mind flayer, it...it likes brains."

The room fell silent. 

"It's just a game," Dustin admitted, causing Hopper to throw the book on the table angrily. "It's a game."

"What the hell are we doing here?" Hopper snapped, storming to the other side of the room. 

"I thought we were waiting on your military backup?" Dustin called after him, clearly not caring about overstepping boundaries with the adult. 

"We are!" Hopper shot back, his thick eyebrows narrowed. 

"What if they come? How are they gonna stop this? You can't just shoot this with guns," Mike argued angrily.

"You don't know that!" Hopper said, like a true American police officer would. "We don't know anything!"

"We know its already killed everybody in that lab," Mike insisted.

"And we know the monsters are gonna moult again," Lucas continued.

"And we know that it's only a matter of time before those tunnels reach this town," Dustin finished, matter-of-factly. 

"They're right," the raspy, tired voice of Joyce Byers interrupted before anyone else could voice their opinion. Everybody turned around to look at the broken woman, the one that had lost the most out of them all. She was still wearing her turquoise scrubs and her hair was a mess, but there was a glint of determination in her eyes that made Stella stand a little taller. "We have to kill it. I want to kill it."

"Me too," Hopper assured her, knowing that she was still suffering from the loss of Bob, the man that had always been so kind to her and the Byers family, the man who Stella had the upmost respect for after seeing him interacting with Will. He was the father he always deserved, but never had. "Me too, Joyce, okay? But how do we do that? We don't exactly know what we're dealing with here."

"No," Mike stepped up beside the Chief, glancing over at Will, who was still lying on the couch, unconscious. "But he does. If anyone knows how to destroy this thing, it's Will. He's connected to it, he'll know its weakness."

"I thought we couldn't trust him anymore," Max wondered aloud. The rest of the group had moved so that they were behind Mike, all of them staring down at Will suspiciously. "That he's a spy for the mind flayer now.

"Yeah, but he can't spy if he doesn't know where he is," Mike's voice trailed off, and a light seemed to flicker on in Stella's mind, and she gasped. Everyone turned to face her, and she had a hopeful expression on her face.

Turning to Joyce, she felt her mind spinning. "The shed. Do you think we can take stuff out, maybe make it unfamiliar to him? Then he's separated from us, and you can get the information you need out of him in an environment he doesn't know."

"Yes, that's good," Hopper muttered, moving to the side and marching towards the backdoor. He swung it open and disappeared outside, Stella and Mike in pursuit. They followed him to the wooden shack several feet from the house, faint memories from the argument before in their minds. Hopper grabbed the door of the shed and opened it, peering inside and humming in approval. "This'll work."

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Stella's sneaker tapped impatiently against the ground, her eyes focused on an empty space in the wall. Her face was blank but her heart was racing, as was her mind. The house had returned to silence, everyone but Mike, Hopper, Joyce and Jonathan scattered across the main rooms. They had spent the last forty five minutes putting up newspapers across the shed, making it unrecognisable for Will. Then, he would be woken up and interrogated by those closest to him.

Every few seconds, Stella would hear Steve's bat swing, but she'd pay no mind to it. She was full of worry and uncertainty for what could happen next. What if Will figured out where he was? Would the Mind Flayer send all its Demodogs to the house? 

For some reason, Stella ended up thinking about her parents. They had no idea where she was, and she had been gone for two days. She had called them when she was at Dustin's, but now they were completely oblivious to her current location. There was nothing she could do but wait the night out, hoping that they wouldn't be too angry when she showed up with her broken hand and an unexplainable story to hide. 

An overwhelming amount of guilt began to cloud her being once she realised that she had left them on a sour note. What if she didn't survive this? What if she died never having come to peace with those that had raised her? She still planned to leave home, but after the argument that had ensued in their household (besides her brief settle with her mother in the emergency room), she would leave without saying goodbye, or I love you. 

That hurt to think.

But Stella didn't have much time to dwell on her problems, as the lights above her began flickering like mad. She was brought back to the lights in the Byers home the previous, year, and her stomach flipped inside out. 

Shooting up and grabbing her croquet mallet on the way, she joined the group of teenagers who stared out into the backyard, the gaps between the wood shining briefly. Muted yells crept across the grass and made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up, but from the lack of action following, she knew it was nothing extreme. 

Ten minutes later, she found herself at the kitchen table, circling her finger around the rim of her water glass, her lips pursed as she anticipated what was coming next. There was nothing she could predict after what had happened to her that week, and so many things bombarded her mind she felt she was going crazy. 

All of a sudden, Hopper burst into the house, followed by everyone who was in the shed. He grabbed a scrap envelope and pulled up a chair, scribbling something down quickly. The entire group gathered around him curious as to what he was doing. "What's going on?"

Hopper sighed, drawing a series of lines and dots. "I think he's talking, just not with words."

"Wait, what is that?" Steve asked, gesturing to the obvious morse code Hopper was writing in. Stella knew what it was, as the party had attempted to learn it together a few years ago, but gave up. Will was the only one who remembered it all, funnily enough. 

"Morse code," everybody in the room chimed bluntly, to which Steve pursed his lips and nodded once, feeling a little awkward. 

"H-E-R-E," Hopper spelled out aloud, having decoded the message. "Here. Will's still in there. He's talking to us."

"I have an idea," Jonathan spoke up, his eyes widening slightly. Without another word, he rushed into the hall and returned moments later with a boombox and a cassette tape, The Clash written on the side in green ink. Stella's eyebrows furrowed, but Hopper seemed to latch on quick enough. 

"Get one of your walkie talkie things, and I'll take another. I'll send you everything I see, and I want you to decode it all. He's onto something, and it's our job to help him the best we can."

And just like that, Will's group were gone, leaving the teenagers to figure the rest out for themselves. Dustin and Nancy got ahold of Will's crayons and set up a station to write down everything that came through, while Max and Lucas held the morse code sheet found in the Byers boy's bedroom. 

Barely a minute had passed before their first message came through. Dustin hastily wrote it down, repeating what he heard. "Dash, dot, dash, dot."

"Okay, got it! C!" Lucas chimed, which Nancy wrote down. Stella nervously swayed left and write from her seat, her hand clutching Steve's under the table. It was nothing romantic to either of them, they just both desperately needed the comfort in that moment. 

"L."

"O."

"S."

"E."

"G."

"A."

"T."

"E."

Stella leaned in to see the words that had been written, her eyebrows furrowing. "Close gate?"

Before anyone could say anything, the phone rang. Stella nearly jumped out of her skin, leaping out of her chair and running over to the phone, picking it up and slamming it back on the receiver to hang up. Her heart was now beating faster than ever as she made eye contact with Dustin, who had also rushed over. His eyes were wide to reflect hers. 

The phone began to ring and second time, and the boy quickly grabbed it, and tried slamming it back down, but it continued to chime angrily. Stella didn't know what else to do, so she ripped it off the wall and threw it on the ground, causing it to break into a few pieces. Effectively, the ringing stopped. 

"Do you think he heard that?" Max asked over the Stella's terrified panting. 

"It's just the phone," Steve tried to reassure, but didn't sound certain of himself. "It could be anywhere, right?"

The sudden sound of monsters screeching in the distance contradicted his words. Stella felt herself freeze up, not wanting to move to the window, where she knew the Demodogs would be approaching. "Shit."

"That's not good," Dustin muttered, his eyes wide. Him, Max and Lucas rushed to the windows, peering out to see if they could catch a glimpse of their impending doom, and Stella stepped back to the table, picking up her mallet. 

"So much for taking up a new sport," she mumbled across to Steve, who managed to chuckle in the time of distress. 

"We'll be fine, Star," he said softly, though his unsure tone wasn't too comforting. Stella gripped the handle tightly with her right hand, her shaky left clutching as tight as it could, the pain shooting up her body being excruciating. 

"Hey, hey, get away from the windows!" Hopper yelled as he returned, two guns in his hands. The group assembled in the living room, everyone trying to find something to defend themselves with. The Chief held out one of the guns to Jonathan. "Can you use this?"

"Wha-" Jonathan began, but was interrupted by Nancy, who stepped forward. 

"I can," she said confidently, so Hopper didn't hesitate in giving it do her. 

The ravenous shrieking began to grow closer, and Stella stepped in front of the Lucas, Max and Dustin, holding the mallet above her head.  She wasn't in the best state to be fighting, but she would do anything to make sure they didn't get hurt. 

"Where are they?" Nancy snapped, anxious for the appearance of the Demodogs. A loud growl, followed by a thudding ensued, causing Joyce to yelp in fright. "What're they doing?"

The bushes shivered as something moved inside them, and Stella attempted to swallow the lump in her throat. Everyone in the room turned at each sound being made outside, even when one of the monsters screeched in what appeared to be pain. The noise suddenly stopped abruptly after a sickening crunch, before something smashed through the window. 

Everybody screamed and Stella leapt in front of the kids with her mallet held high, realising it was a Demodog. But, it wasn't moving, it's slimy body laying motionless on the ground. Hopper stepped forward first, his gun raised. 

"Is it dead?" Max asked, inching forward curiously. Stella felt sick staring down at it, it's flower-shaped mouth wide open, revealing the hundreds of teeth inside. Hopper kicked it gently, and when there was no response, he lowered his weapon and sighed. 

And if things couldn't get any worse, the front door creaked loudly. Stella's poor heart once again leapt out of her chest as she spun around with her weapon held high, flinching as the lock clicked open, followed by the chain sliding and swinging uselessly. 

Then, the door opened.

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THIS CHAPTER IS SO LONG AND BORING I'M SORRY!!!!

anyway tell me what you thought fellas, there's only a few chapters left so woOoOOoo!!!!

tell me if you'd like a dedication!!