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The defunct Hawkins Lab felt like a wound that never healed. Nancy and Robin crept through the chain-link gap, flashlights slicing the rain-dark as they chased a lead for the Hawkins Post.
“Are you sure this is worth it?” Robin muttered, ducking beneath a fallen sign.
“We need the photos,” Nancy whispered, snapping a shot of the rusted entrance. “In and out.”
Wind rattled broken glass. Their footsteps echoed past warped observation windows, scorched coats, gouged concrete. Robin’s hand brushed a door; it swung inward with a groan.
They paused. Shadows pooled beyond, and Nancy’s flashlight caught something strange; a flicker of scales, a flash of red.
Nancy edged closer. A hunched figure, trembling, red hair matted with squelchy green-patched skin. Long, webbed fingers curled against knees, body slick with gelatinous film. Robin gasped as the figure looked up. Eyes shone with a reptilian gleam; slit-pupiled, but also... Recognition hit them. Nancy staggered back, knocking over a chair. “No… That’s not possible.”
Barb flinched, her voice croaking, distorted. “Don’t… don’t look at me.”
Robin’s flashlight trembled. “Barb? Oh my God, Barb!” Words carrying hope and horror.
Guilt tore at Nancy; Barb’s last words, her concern. Robin covered her mouth as memories surfaced of a life they’d dreamed beyond Hawkins, of adventure and freedom. Every promise of escape had shattered for all three of them when Barb had been taken.
Robin shaking, advanced closer, voice breaking. “You, you were dead. We saw—”
Barb’s eyes flicked between them, desperate, ashamed. Guttural, wet sounds escaped her, “I was alive but… I could only show dead. They wanted to see what I’d become. I think… I belong to the lab now.”
Wind howled through broken windows. Barb’s skin rippled, flesh-scales shifting. Slug-like creatures slithered around, some emerging from her mouth, writhing in skin. “You shouldn’t have found me. The lab, it doesn’t let go—”
She was interrupted by Nancy pulling her into an embrace. A guttural cry erupted from deep inside Barb. “Nooooo!” she screamed, trying not to be touched. “It’s contagious, don’t—”
Suddenly, Barb’s body convulsed. Flesh tore with a wet, sickening sound. The gelatinous form pulsed as it clung, wrapping Nancy in hunger and longing. Her jaw elongated and limbs stretched, bones cracking beneath her skin as Nancy tried to recoil, horror flooding her.
But it was too late. Robin saw it, the fusion. Barb’s features twisted further as she absorbed Nancy.
“Oh my God…” Robin breathed, trapped, her back against the wall, terror paralysing her. The creature’s claws scraped the floor as she—they— convulsed, moving as one, squelching while rage and agony mingled.
Robin’s stomach lurched, eyes widened in horror at the abomination before her. The face—Nancy’s, Barb’s—fused into a monstrosity, a flesh nightmare glistening in the dim light.
In that moment, Robin understood that survival had meant losing humanness. Too late, she felt a pulsating latch onto her shoe. In the next lightning flash, three figures, caught between human and something older, were illuminated in the dark.