𝘊𝘏𝘈𝘗𝘛𝘌𝘙 𝘛𝘞𝘖

                                    

                                          
Hawkins, Indiana    -    Now.
It had been years since you'd been back here, not since your escape in fact. Something always felt like it was keeping you away. But you were nineteen now, had been travelling America long enough and you wanted to face your fear of this place once and for all. Maybe even see if anyone survived the attack. 
Since you'd escaped, you'd developed your powers and now you could do more than simply moving toy cars. Telekinesis was only one of your tricks - now you'd also learned how to find people simply by seeing a photo of them. It was their eyes, you'd thought. It was like a window into them, showing you where they were. You weren't sure if there was anything else you could do yet, you'd mostly been focusing on the powers you had and making yourself better at using them. Over the years you'd been gone though, you'd remained hidden, taking a new identity - your name now (Y/N) (Y/L/N) instead of the number you'd had before - educating yourself so you could fit in to society, and you'd worked as well, discreetly using your powers to become something like a private detective; finding people for money. It saved you from living on the streets and kept your belly full, so it was worth it even if most of your clientele were shady as hell. But shady was good sometimes. They didn't ask questions about you or just how you were able to do what you did, and you didn't ask anything back other than your payment. It worked, for a time.
You'd driven a long way to get here and fatigue was starting to kick in as the sun set. You headed to a local motel and paid enough money for the week, simply happy to have a bed to sleep in instead of your car as your head hit the pillow. The place was not clean by any means and was clearly just a stop for getting high or having ... relations ... but it was quiet, and the kind of place where nobody cared who you were or what you were doing. So you slept, deep and uninterrupted, for the first time in a while.
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You woke late, long after the sun had breached the horizon, but as you turned on the small television a news story came blaring through about a Hawkins student who had been found dead at some trailer park nearby. Your brows furrowed as you watched, the familiar sensation of curiosity bubbling in your chest.
Don't do it, (Y/N) ... That's not why we came here. Remember-?
Your brain was rational. It made sense. It was none of your business, and you were sure the small town police could handle it. 
But ... you couldn't deny it was now in your nature to look into these things. You'd spent a lot of the years away combing through news stories in various states in your free time, looking for any evidence of misdemeanours matching those that could only be done by someone like you. It wasn't an obsession as such, but you wanted to feel like maybe you weren't alone. Like maybe at least someone survived the horrible events of that day. Except ... maybe you would be okay if it wasn't the raging homicidal maniac who did it all in the first place. 
So you grabbed your keys and headed into town, searching for the hospital where they likely would have taken the body. 
Security was tight, but not impossible to get past with some help from your powers and a little stealth. The morgue was empty and cold as you entered, a mangled corpse covered by a white sheet in the centre of the room. There was a stale smell in the air and a sense of dread filled you up as you moved towards the table. Part of you didn't want to see it, didn't want to even be here but that larger, curious part of you won and you peeled the sheet back, mouth agape in shock at the cheerleader before you. 
Bones bent and snapped in an impossible way, expression frozen in horror, eyes pulled into the hollow skull. Her skin was a deep grey and tight against her bones. She looked as if all life had been sucked out of her, drained of everything she was. The glisten of a necklace reading '86 caught your eye and a deep sadness filled you. She must have been barely younger than yourself.
A hand reaches out to her, as if to comfort her in her death, and rests on the girls own. It was too slim in your hands and felt cold and broken. You covered her up once more with the sheet, unable to look anymore and went to the chart at the end of the table which hopefully could tell you more about what happened. 
You scanned over the notes, looking for anything useful. Apparently a man had found her in a trailer he shared with his nephew in the early hours of the morning. The address was there, so you read over it a few times to commit it to memory, not wasting any more time after in sneaking back out of the hospital and back to your car. You were in too deep now. You needed to know what happened to that poor girl. 
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It luckily wasn't too far to the trailer park, though it was guarded by police who refused to let anyone past. You figure it'll be easier to sneak just yourself in instead of you in a whole car, so you park just down the street and enter the woods that circle around the trailer park, dipping low as you walk in hopes of not being seen. Voices sound nearby and you see two cops covering the entrance between the woods and the trailers. Focusing your mind, you use your powers to make twigs snap on the opposite side of them to yourself and it distracts them long enough for you to slip past. Once you're in, you keep low and stick to the back of the trailers to avoid being seen.
It's easy to guess which trailer is the correct one from the fact it has police tape all over and men stood outside. You slip around back and breathe a sigh of relief to see nobody back here. There was a small window, just big enough for you to fit through so you use your powers to crack it open and move inside. You land with a soft thud onto a mattress, the room smelling of stale cigarettes and something else you couldn't put your finger on. It was clearly a teenage boys room - music tapes and trash littering the sides, mattress stained with Lord knows what, clothes on the floor and --- was that handcuffs on the wall-?! 
Your surprised expression is brief as you remind yourself you don't have much time. You were here looking for a photo of whoever he was so you could track him down. The report at the hospital mentioned he was likely the last person to see the cheerleader alive, which meant he might know what happened. There was no way someone normal could have done that to her, and if this boy had powers like you then you needed to find him. There was nothing in the bedroom so you quietly opened the door, taking a moment to listen out for any cops in the place. It was silent.
It didn't take long then to find a framed photograph of a boy and an older man. The boy had a mane of dark curls covering most of his face and looked less than impressed to be in the photograph. Still, it would do. You take it and leave the same way you came, carefully dipping back into the forest and back to your car. 
You drove for another half an hour, eager to get somewhere quiet and away from it all so you could focus your mind enough to use your power. You pull over and switch the radio to static noise, then you move into the back, laying down flat across the seats with your legs bent up at the knees as you hold the picture up in front of you.
The boy stares back at you, and after a moment you close your eyes, focusing your mind. It's a lot of nothing at first, the soft hum of the radio filling your ears as you search. Your nose starts to run, though you barely notice it as a man comes into view. It was the boy from the picture, though he looks older now despite still rocking the same mane of dark curls. He was rooting through kitchen cupboards for food, an anxious look upon his features as he did so. You take a long look at him, feeling out for where he is. He stops a moment, frozen, as if he senses you, but then slowly returns to what he was doing. Sometimes people get that shiver, that sensation of being watched when you're there but nobody ever knew the truth. They'd always just assumed it was nothing.
You come back to reality after a long moment just watching him curiously. Sitting up, you rub crimson from your nose and heave a deep breath into your lungs to ground you back to where you were. In a flash, you're back in the front seat, key turning and engine humming to life. 
You had found him. Now you just had to get to him before the police did.