*26*

🔥CHAPTER 26🔥

*-*Merliah's POV*-*

Eleven locked herself in her room as soon as we arrived at her cabin hidden away in the woods, and started looking for those that had been flayed.

"It can't be good for her to be in there for this long." Mike spoke up, after pacing a hole into the floor.

"Mike, you need to relax." Max tells him.

"What if she gets brain damage or something?" Mike asks, very worried for the girl's well being.

"Oh, shit. Is that, like, a real thing?" Lucas asks in concern.

"It's not a real thing, the brain can get sick, but not damaged." I explain to him. "Mike doesn't know what he's talking about." Max adds.

"Oh, and you do?" Mike fires back at her.

"No, I..." And that's how they started arguing so much I couldn't even understand what they were yelling about.

Nancy was in the kitchen calling place to find out if anymore chemicals has been disappearing from the farms, byt she wasn't able to find out anything, and they ran out of farms to call.

"It doesn't make sense." Nancy says, she was clearly frustrated by the lack of resources we had regarding all of this.

"What part of any of this makes sense?" Jonathan questions her, he had a point afterall, from start to finish, none of this made sense.

"There's a pattern, okay? A consistency to their behaviour. They've been feeding on these chemicals since this started, and... And, what, they just stop, out of the blue?" Nancy asks, with her rambling.

"Have you ever considered that they might have gathered enough chemicals for whatever that thing is trying to make?" I ask her.

"But what about the source?" Nancy asks.

"I mean, did the mind flayer just suddenly stop infecting people? And even if the flayed are monsters now, why can't El find them?" Nancy asks, in my eyes she was obsessing over this way to much, of course, i wanted to find Billy, but it doesn't help i obsess over it.

"Okay, can you guys settle an argument for us?" Max asks, coming to the kitchen. "Who do you think should decide El's limits? Mike or Eleven?" Max asks.

"The way that you frame that is such bullshit." Mike says, raising his voice.

"It's not bullshit, Mike. This is your whole problem, and presicely the reason why she dumped your ass." Max states.

"El dumped you?" Nancy ask, surprised.

"Yeah, because she is conspiring against me. She's corrupting her." Mike says, blaming Max for everything.

"No, enlightening her. The fact is, she's not yours, she's her own person, fully capable of making her own decisions." Max tells him.

"She's risking her life for no reason." Mike says.

"For no reason? Mike, the flayed are out there doing god knows what." Nancy tells him, he was only staring at his sister weirdly.

"Killing, flaying..." I say from the corner.

"Transforming into monsters." Will says, in a tone that would remind his friend why the girl was doing it in the first place.

"And El's not stupid. She knows her abilities better than any of us." Nancy tells her brother.

"Exactly. Thank you." Max says.

"And she's her own person." Nancy adds.

"Exactly." I state.

"With her own free will."

"Exactly. El has saved the world twice, and Mike still doesn't trust her." Max says.

"You wanna talk about trust, really? After you made Eleven spy on us?" Mike asks her loudly.

"Wait, what?" Lucas asks confused.

"Oh, she didn't tell you this?" Mike asks.

"No."

"Your girlfriend used El's powers to spy on us." Mike points out.

"No, no, no, I did not make her. It was her idea, and why are we even talking about this, seriously?" Max asks.

"Yeah, who cares?" Will asks, taking Max's side on this.

"I care." Lucas says, looking at Max in disbelief.

"Yeah. I guess girlfriend's don't lie, they spy." Mike says, looking towards Max.

"We were just joking around." Max says.

"Wouldn't it've been so funny if i was today a massive shit or something?" Mike asks.

"You weren't."

"But what if i was?" Mike asks, leaving the rest of us to look at him in disgust. "Uhm gross, and can you two get to the point." I spoke up between their bickering.

"I'm just trying to demostrate how careless Max is with Eleven's powers. In fact, how careless all of you are. You're treating her like some kind of machine when she's not a machine, and I don't want her to die looking for the flayed, when they've obviously vanished off the face of the Earth. So can we please just come up with a new plan, because I love her, and I can't loose her again." Mike says, making all of our eyes grow wide in shock, even Mike himself seemed shocked by the words that just came out of his mouth.

Eleven came out of her room right after that asking, "What's going on?"

"Nothing. Nothing." Mike says quickly.

"Just a family discussion." Lucas tells her

"Oh. I found him." Eleven says. I was the first on my feet, when those words left her mouth. "Found who?" I ask nervously.

*🔥Unedited🔥*