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Kali swore to herself that she would never return to Hawkins, Indiana. It didn't matter if The Lab had been abandoned or not.
They weren't gone.
The men who hurt Jane's mother also hurt hers. Kali's mother — born and raised in Chicago, Illinois — also joined the MKUltra experiments. She left early, either due to her chronic illness or her hawkish, argumentative nature with Dr. Martin Brenner, and eventually moved out of America. Kali's father — born and raised in London — met her, and they lived together, raising Kali.
They died together, slaughtered by agents hired within the CIA, and took Kali back to America. That's all she remembers. Her mother's smiling, brown face. Her father's cigar between his pale lips. And then Jane, tiny and mute, in the Rainbow Room.
Whatever Kali's mother absorbed, created in her own blood and molecules, it ended up in Kali. It gifted her with abilities.
Jane's papa couldn't let that opportunity go free.
He tried to be 'Papa' to Kali, long before Jane, and within the first year of capture. And just like her mother — Kali rejected him, shrieking and throwing tantrums, not capable of unleashing the full potential of her mental hallucinations and illusions.
She will never go back.
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