The shot plush doll was knocked back by the force of the shotgun blast. Eleven used her telekinesis to grab the thing's head and slammed it hard onto the ground.
The doll creature still tried to reach out and grab Eleven, but Richard drew his blade and sliced through its arm, revealing a boneless cross-section. Swollen flesh was exposed to everyone's eyes as blood gushed out.
Bang!
The doll creature's head was pinned to the ground and couldn't move. Hopper had no reason not to shoot. He fired another powerful shot, and the thing's head jerked. A gap was instantly blasted into its bowl-like head, revealing the writhing brain matter inside.
Eleven's face was full of disgust, her whole face wrinkling up, unable to look directly at it.
Hopper also held his breath as he reloaded his gun, preparing to fire a second shot to completely shatter the doll creature's active brain.
But Richard, unable to stand the sight, lunged forward and decapitated the doll creature with a single stroke of his blade.
The moment the head was severed, the doll's body rapidly shriveled and decayed. The head also began to wilt, its hollow black eyes revealing a lingering attachment to something unknown. Before the doll creature's head completely lost its life force, it whispered a name: "Martha..."
"Your mother's name is Martha too?" Richard looked down at the doll creature in surprise. Their eyes met, and the doll creature stared at him intently until its final moment, as if trying to carve his image into its soul to remember him in the next life.
Hopper pulled a cloth from a nearby table and covered the doll creature's corpse. On one hand, the body was too gruesome to look at; on the other, it was a final bit of dignity for this human who had supposedly turned into a monster—an act of humanitarian concern.
Eleven looked around. "Where are we now?"
Richard glanced at the dust-covered room. Cardboard boxes and worn-out dolls were scattered haphazardly, and the air was stale. He hadn't noticed the room's smell before because he was too focused on the fight, but now he was certain—this foul-smelling room was filled with the scent of old, rotting corpses, not the fresh smell of the recently deceased doll creature.
Hopper opened one of the cardboard boxes and was immediately swarmed by a cloud of small black flying insects. He cried out in disgust and spat repeatedly on the ground, seemingly having accidentally swallowed a few.
Eleven and Richard also frowned, their stomachs churning. Richard covered his nose and mouth, took a quick look inside the box, and immediately turned away.
"It's like the blue doll creature from before, a similar creature, but this one seems incomplete. I saw a child's arm." Richard recalled the white bones he had just seen. Based on the length of the arm and ruling out the possibility that the deceased was a dwarf, it could only have been a child around twelve or thirteen years old—the same age as Eleven.
Richard took masks out of his backpack and gave them to Hopper and Eleven. Then, the three of them stepped forward to take another look at the gruesome corpse inside the cardboard box.
The severely decomposed corpse of a half-doll, half-human child, with maggots burrowing in and out of the rotting flesh, left no doubt in their minds. This horrific sight confirmed their suspicion that the anomalous life forms in the Toy Factory were almost all transformed from humans.
After the initial wave of disgust, Hopper felt a surge of intense rage. "The people who opened this factory are a bunch of bastards who deserve to go to hell. They're actually experimenting on children."
Eleven also felt immense indignation, as it reminded her of her own experiences in The Lab.
As the three of them opened more boxes and discovered more corpses of children who had failed the transformation, Eleven and Hopper's anger reached its peak. Eleven was shaking with rage.
"I see. It seems this Toy Factory might be just like the old Hawkins Lab—an anti-human research institution specializing in the supernatural, supported by some conglomerate or even the Federal Government." Richard was suffering from his superhuman sense of smell. The overwhelming stench of death made his head spin, but he managed to maintain a shred of reason to analyze the situation. "No wonder Carly couldn't help but come here. Even if it wasn't for the possibility of finding fellow psychics, she would definitely want to destroy this hellhole."
"Are you okay, Chade?" Eleven supported the swaying Richard and asked with concern.
Richard shook his head and continued, "This must be the Waste Warehouse. Doll creatures that failed the transformation would be locked in here to be left to their own devices. That note in the library said, 'If you want to kill someone, take them to the Waste Warehouse.' The meaning is now self-evident. If the test subjects here were still alive, anyone thrown in here would likely face nothing but death."
"Stop talking for now. Let's get out first," Hopper said, pointing to a large door in the warehouse.
Reaching the entrance and seeing the iron door over five meters high, it wasn't hard to imagine it was designed to trap those test subjects. Thus, an oversized door paired with an oversized key was quite logical... Richard took the giant pink key from his backpack and inserted it into the keyhole of the iron door. Hopper tried to open it but found it difficult to turn on his own. Eleven used her telekinesis to assist him, finally allowing him to open the massive iron door.
Pushing open the heavy door, Richard finally stepped out of the Waste Warehouse and breathed in relatively fresh air. The nauseating stench of corpses lessened significantly.
His spirits refreshed, Richard immediately led Eleven and Hopper away from the Waste Warehouse, running down the corridor once again. This hallway had lights, so they could see clearly without needing flashlights.
"More bloodstains!" As they ran, the three of them soon noticed a large amount of blood on the walls and floor of one side of a cross-junction corridor. It looked like it had been left within the last few days.
Richard didn't hesitate. He walked over to take a look and then stopped again.
Not far from the pool of blood on the ground was a T-junction. A short distance down that passage lay two corpses—people Richard had seen before.
"It's Axel and Mick, Carly's teammates." Richard sighed. He had imagined the worst fate for Carly's team would be dying at the hands of the military, police, or Federal Government agents. He hadn't expected something even worse—dying in this godforsaken place.
He examined their fatal wounds; they were all from claws and bites, likely caused by the blue doll creature Richard and the others had killed.
"They came to save them, yet they were killed by the 'people' they wanted to save." Hopper looked at the corpses of the two young men, having guessed what happened, and couldn't help but sigh in regret.
"Those children who turned into dolls are no longer human; they're monsters. If those children were still human, they would never do such things." Eleven refused to acknowledge the harmful dolls as "human," her heart aching. She saw bloody footprints leading further down the path. "If Carly's teammates died here, then Carly must be nearby."
The three continued forward and soon saw the corpse of a large man kneeling before a room's door. His back was almost completely hollowed out, and his deformed hands were threaded through the hollows of the door's two handles. His palms were tightly intertwined, his unyielding grip forming a makeshift lock.
Richard fell silent for a moment and walked up to the corpse.
With a little effort, he carefully pried open Lekong's deformed fingers and laid his body down on the side of the corridor. Remembering Carly and her companions' description of this rugged-looking Black man in the original story—praising him as a gentle and loving person like a teddy bear—Richard couldn't help but sigh at the big man's death.
Standing before the closed door, Richard listened to the silent breathing inside. He hesitated before knocking and said, "Carly, are you in there? It's Richard."
The person inside stirred slightly upon hearing him but didn't respond for a long time.
Richard wanted to push the door open, but his action seemed anticipated by the person inside. Carly's voice came from within: "Don't open the door."
Richard's hand rested on the door without applying pressure. "Why?"
"I don't deserve to walk out..." Carly's voice was filled with regret and self-reproach, followed by a trembling breath on the verge of collapse. "You don't know what I've been through... Maybe I should have listened to you, and they wouldn't have..."
"Carly." Another woman's voice came from the room, seemingly another of Carly's teammates. Her breathing was very weak. "Go out."
Carly said, "Dottie, after everything, how could I leave you now?"
"Is the girl inside your teammate? Do you need help?" Richard asked.
Dottie: "No... I'm beyond saving."
Carly sobbed quietly.
Eleven and Hopper looked at each other. Eleven walked to the door and knocked again. "Carly, hello Carly. You might not remember me, but it's been a long time. I'm actually your sister. I'm Number 11, the one who was in the same room with you at Hawkins Lab."
"Eleven? I know you." In her grief, Carly was startled to hear Eleven's self-introduction. "You... how did you get here?"
"I saw you. While investigating a photo of a little girl, I saw you," Eleven said. "I saw that you were in danger, so I came to save you. It's just... we seem to have arrived too late."
An ordinary person might not have understood Eleven's words, but Carly could more or less guess it was Eleven's ability.
Carly didn't sound angry at all; she just gave a self-deprecating laugh. "No, it's not your fault. If I hadn't been so obsessed with revenge and had a clearer understanding of my own abilities, none of this would have happened."
"Can we come in?" Eleven asked. "Besides Chade and me, there's also... my current dad."
Hopper couldn't help but smile when he heard what Eleven called him.
Carly didn't refuse this time, so Richard and Eleven pushed open the door. In the small room, the two girls were huddled against the wall. The girl named Dottie had a pool of blood on her abdomen and beneath her. Her face was pale, her eyes vacant; she had just passed away.