She supposed that’s what had cemented her resolve in following Jim Hopper through the gate that night. That despair, the devastation. She knew the moment she’d lost Billy Hargrove that she’d refuse to lose Hopper, too. It was visceral, it was instinctual. They didn’t know what was on the other side, but at the very least she knew that whatever it was, she could protect him from it. That’s all she knew, and she clung to it like a lifeline, like a safety blanket. This was what she was builtfor.
She couldn’t have been more wrong. They were met with guns, with violence, with ice. They were met with what they were sure was death.
But as long as she co-operated with them, Hopper would be safe. At least, that was what they promised as they strapped her down and reduced her to a lab rat once more. The poking, the prodding, the continuous cycle of torture and sedation, hoping to provoke the power within; power that had been dampened and stolen by grief. She’d escaped that life once, only to find herself back in it. Only these doctors cared little for much else about her other than what they could steal, replicate; what they could weaponise. Martin Brenner’s embrace had been far from warm, but it scorched in comparison to that of these new beasts, these men clad in white coats, these men who were doctor only in name, and monster in nature.
All the while, she felt it. The stirrings of a malicious force returned, just beyond her reach, tugging at her flimsy tethering to the Upside Down. A warning chord, struck deep within her bones. He’d come back. One had come back. And El… Zara could feel her, too. The pain. The suffering. The rage.
Zara Mathers had spent her entire life trying to escape Hawkins. But now, at the furthest geographical point from it, she’d give everything she had and everything she was to get back.
