Chapter Text
Why was Six afraid of Seven? Because Seven, Eight, Nine.
It’s kind of a bad joke, but Seven still remembers being told it by Eight. Every time he thinks about that joke, it brings back the sound of Eight’s laugh, quick and bright in the quiet halls. The memory makes something ache in Seven’s chest—a mixture of guilt and longing. He wishes he had asked her more questions, wishes he had let himself be close when he still could. Sometimes, that old sadness sneaks up on him, and he wonders, quietly and with a sting of regret, what ever happened to her, and if she remembers him too.
Most days, Seven just stays in his room, away from his siblings. His brothers and sisters all share a special kind of energy—some shriek and squabble, while others stomp through the hallways, always in motion. Nine is always tapping his fingers on the wall, while Five and Ten chatter endlessly to anyone who will listen. Being around them makes Seven's head feel full and heavy, like every sound is too close and too sharp. Most of them are loud, and Seven just wants them to stop. Sometimes Papa lets Seven out of his room to take a test.
But today was different.
A noise in Seven's mind got loud; it was kind of like nails being driven into Seven's brain. He clapped his hands to his ears to try to get it to stop.
The buzzing didn’t stop. It kept vibrating right through Seven’s jawbone, a low mechanical hum that made his teeth ache. He squeezed his eyes shut, pressing the heels of his hands harder against his ears until all he could hear was the rushing roar of his own pulse.
Sometime later, Seven must have passed out, because when he woke up, Papa was standing over his bed.
“How are you feeling, Seven?” Brenner asked. He radiated certainty—at least, that is what Seven could hear in his mind.
“It was loud,” Seven said.
Brenner let out a bit of a sigh; he was disappointed. That thought made Seven shiver slightly. "Yes, there was a little bit of an incident with your sister, Eleven." For a brief moment, Seven caught a whiff of burnt metal—something acrid still lingering in the air around him. The memory flashed, just a glimpse: blinking red lights, distant shouts, and the taste of static in his mouth. He hugged his arms tighter, not sure if the fragments were real or just left over from the noise in his head.
Vaguely, Seven remembered meeting Eleven once; she was a small thing. She wasn’t as loud as their other siblings.
“Yes,” Brenner said, seeing what Seven was thinking. “How would you like to help find her... outside?”
Outside, Seven thought.
“Use your words, Seven,” Brenner said.
Unlike most of the other children, Seven's abilities set him apart. While most of Brenner's children demonstrated physical or outwardly visible powers—like telekinesis or pushing objects across the room—Seven's talents worked on a quieter, deeper level, entirely focused on the mind. He could sense the emotions of people around him with startling clarity, sometimes feeling their fear or excitement almost as if it were his own. He could catch glimpses of thoughts that flitted through other people's heads moments before they spoke them aloud. Instead of speaking out loud, he sometimes managed to send his own feelings or simple ideas right into someone else's mind like a gentle nudge. From what had been learned, Seven's ability was considered a rare blend: extrasensory emotional reception, telepathic cognition, and low-level neural projection. It made him unusually sensitive to everyone and everything around him, leaving him more vulnerable to the noise and upheaval of the others' presence.
Seven had shown a severe hypersensitivity to his surroundings, making him somewhat volatile towards the other children.
Hence, Seven was kept separate from the rest. Due to Seven’s ability, the boy had a habit of avoiding spoken words; rather than using them, he would just project them onto others.
“Sorry, Papa,” Seven said sheepishly.
“That’s alright, Seven,” Brenner said, gesturing towards two orderlies standing outside the room. They brought in two bags filled with clothes. “Get dressed, and I’ll explain more.”
Brenner and the orderlies left Seven alone in his room. He grabbed the bags; inside were a pair of brown pants, a button-up shirt, a tweed jacket, and a pair of boots. Seven began to change. A few years ago, he had been given a pair of grey sweats to wear over the usual hospital gown; he had worn those since he was about thirteen years old.
Once he was finished getting dressed, Seven knocked on the door. Brenner opened it and gestured for Seven to follow him.
“Now, Eleven has gotten a little lost,” Brenner said. It would be easier if Seven knew less about the experiment's truth, making him easier to control. Although the way Seven looked at him made it clear the boy was a little confused, he would never question anything. “I need you to go with Agent Frazier.”
Brenner pointed towards the cold lady; she looked annoyed at the thought of having to babysit. “You can help find your sister, can’t you, Seven?”
“Yes, Papa,” Seven whispered, as he started to follow the agent.
The outside world was loud in a way that Seven had never been subjected to in the lab. He went to push a button on the side of the car, and the window started to lower.
“Don’t,” Connie Frazier said, pushing the button back up. “The window stays closed.”
The fewer people who could see the teenage boy riding around in the car, the better. “Now tell us where Subject Eleven is.”
The boy shuddered a bit. Agent Frazier was not a nice person to be around for extended periods. Still, Seven closed his eyes. In his mind, the world became full of colours. Seven focused his attention until he found the familiar one.
“Left,” Seven said, pointing in that direction.
The car made a sharp turn and drove down a road until it reached a building with a sign that read "Benny’s Burgers." The car pulled to a stop. “Go on,” Agent Frazier said, telling the boy to go towards the front door.
When the front door opened, Benny Hammond half-expected a customer to walk in, or perhaps a social worker coming about his call. He had been so focused on looking after the girl that everything else had simply slipped away from him.
Instead, it was a boy. A teenager who looked to be about sixteen years old. He had the same shaven head as the girl from before. Although this one was fully dressed, strangely, he looked more like a teen from the 1970s than one from today.
“Excuse me,” the boy asked. “I’m looking for my sister.”
Benny blinked, lowering the rag he’d been using to wipe down the counter. He looked the kid up and down, wondering if their home might have some kind of lice infestation, which might explain the shaved heads.
“Your sister?” Benny asked, his voice softening. He glanced towards the kitchen door, where the girl was sitting in an oversized yellow shirt, practically devouring the basket of fries she had been given.
Seven nodded.
Inside Seven’s head, the restaurant was a chaotic symphony of unfamiliar sensory data. The sizzling of grease on the flat-top grill sounded like a roaring fire.
Benny’s mind wasn’t sharp or cruel like Agent Frazier's, nor was it as calculated as Papa’s mind could sometimes be. It was heavy, warm, and deeply worried. Seven could feel the man’s genuine concern, but underneath that warmth was a sudden spike of suspicion.
“Yes,” Seven said out loud. “She got lost.”
Benny’s eyebrows shot up. “Lost?”
Seven nodded. “Papa said so.”
“If you and your sister are in trouble,” Benny said, his voice softening further, “you can tell me. I’ll get you help.”
He’s lying, Seven thought. He started to wince slightly as a new sensation hit him. Before he could reply, a sudden, violent wave of intent slammed into his consciousness. Connie Frazier was getting out of the car.
She didn’t care about the boy or the girl; she only cared about cold pragmatism.
“Kid,” Benny said, stepping closer to the boy. “Are you alright? You look a bit sick.”
When Connie Frazier entered the diner with the other agents, Seven did nothing but cover his ears as Benny was shot in the head. The sad part was that it was all for nothing.
For a split second, everything inside Seven seemed to shatter. A heavy, numb shock washed through him, freezing him in place while the sound of the gunshot echoed again and again in his mind. His heart slammed against his ribs. He tried to make himself smaller, tried to block out the screams and the sickening surge of fear and guilt that flooded through him. Somewhere deep inside, he felt hollow—like a space had opened up that he could never fill. Even though he had known, had felt the weight of Agent Frazier's intent, Seven still couldn't stop it. Shame tightened his throat. He pressed his hands harder over his ears, not just to block out the sounds, but in some desperate hope of shutting out the memories that were already taking root.
“You let her get away,” Agent Frazier hissed, grabbing Seven by the arm to drag him away.
In the Wheeler house, Eleven—or El, as she had been dubbed—looked around. According to Mike, the rest of the family was out for the time being, leaving the house alone for the two of them.
She ended up coming face-to-face with a photograph. It was of Mike and two other girls.
“That's Nancy,” Mike said, pointing towards the older girl, “and that’s Holly,” he added, pointing towards the younger girl. “They're my sisters.”
“Sisters?” El asked.
“Yeah, my sisters. Siblings,” Mike explained.
“Brother,” Eleven replied, causing Mike to nod.
“Yeah, I’m their brother.”
To this, Eleven just shook her head. “I have a brother.”
Mike blinked, looking between El and the photograph. “A brother?” Mike asked. Though saying it out loud, it made sense—no one starts at eleven. “You have a brother?”
Eleven nodded. She had met Seven only a handful of times. Papa used to bring him whenever she got too scared of what was being expected of her.
“What happened to your brother?” Mike asked.
“Bad men,” Eleven replied. She knew he was probably going right back to being alone in his room after they failed to catch her at the diner.
“The bad men have your brother?” Mike asked, and El nodded in reply. “After we find Will, maybe we can look for your brother,” Mike suggested.
They used to say that every cop had that one case they just couldn’t seem to shake. For Jim Hopper, that case was the Harrington one
The Harringtons had been one of the richest families in Hawkins, although their wealth didn’t seem to matter when their son was stolen.
In 1969, the Harrington house caught fire one night. Mrs. Harrington ended up dying of smoke inhalation right in her son's nursery. The strangest part, however, was that there was no sign of a baby.
Steven Daniel Harrington was nowhere to be found. Every trace of him seemed to vanish, as if he had slipped out of the world altogether. Some said the child might have perished in the fire, while others whispered stories about secret experiments and missing children. Even years later, no one in Hawkins could quite explain how a boy could disappear so completely. Sometimes, in dimly lit rooms or late-night conversations, people wondered if Steven Harrington might still be out there, living under a different name, never guessing who he really was.
That case had haunted Hopper for years, though this new one involving Will Byers had quickly risen to the top of his list of priorities. It should have been simple—most missing kids end up with their other parent.
Nothing was simple about this case.
It seemed the more Hopper and Joyce Byers looked for Will, the more questions came up. The Department of Energy and Hawkins Lab were hiding something, right down to the fake body they had made of Will Byers.
There was something in that lab that someone didn’t want Hopper to find.
Soon, Hopper came across old newspapers about a woman named Terry Ives, who claimed that Dr. Brenner of Hawkins Lab had kidnapped her daughter, Jane.
“I think I’ve been following the wrong kid,” Hopper said, a sudden realization hitting him that he wasn’t just tracking Will Byers.
Seven much preferred the night to the day; it was quieter then. There were fewer people around as the car pulled up towards the high school.
Seven, Connie Frazier, and most of the agents had spent hours driving around Hawkins. Seven tried to help them find Eleven, but everything was just too loud.
Finally, they drove back to Hawkins Lab, except Seven wasn’t sent back to his room. Instead, Papa got into the car.
They drove to a large building with a painted sign labelled Hawkins Middle School.
“I need you to stay here, Seven,” Brenner said, getting out of the car.
The leather seat groaned beneath Seven as Brenner stepped out into the cold, damp night air. The heavy click of the car door locking rang out in Seven's ears.
Through the tinted glass, Seven watched as Brenner smoothed the lapels of his pristine grey suit coat. To the world, he looked like a distinguished man of science, but Seven could feel the anger brewing underneath.
For a long time, nothing really happened. The driver didn’t speak to him, just sat looking straight ahead.
Suddenly, Seven's brain was overloaded by a new noise. It was loud, raw, and animalistic. He tried to cover his ears to get it to stop.
It was the same noise he had heard back in the lab right before everything went wrong again. Once again, Seven must have passed out, though without noticing, he must have hit the power window button.
When Seven woke up, he was alone in his room again. This time, he couldn’t hear any noise.
Nancy Wheeler was many things: she was smart, she was ambitious, and to some, she was a priss, although she tried not to let it bother her. Nancy was a good friend, which was why, when Barb went missing, she was determined to do everything in her power to find her.
The only person who could have understood Nancy's plight was Jonathan Byers. He was in a similar boat with his own brother having gone missing.
Nancy believed in facts, and despite everything she had known before, the facts were all pointing towards one conclusion and one conclusion alone.
That monster had taken Will and Barb.
However, it wasn’t until Nancy met up with Mike and his group of friends that everything started to click into place.
The monster—or the Demogorgon, as Mike, Dustin, and Lucas called it—was from another dimension called the Upside Down.
That was where Will and Barb were. Although according to Eleven, the psychic girl from the lab, Barb,b was dead.
Mrs. Byers and Chief Hopper left to get Will back, leaving the teens and kids at the school.
“I want to kill it,” Nancy said to Jonathan.
The two of them left, planning to head back to the Byers' house to set a trap for the Demogorgon.
Nancy Wheeler was a lot of things, but she wasn’t crazy. She could swear that in one of the cars—the black SUV...
She saw a boy.
For a split second, their eyes met through the tinted glass. Something about the way he looked at her made Nancy's pulse quicken—a silent message, or maybe a warning. Before she could move or call out to him, the car rolled away, swallowed by the shadows of the parking lot.