"Please be home before five!", his mother yelled at Luke, as he walked outside with his white football. The sun sometimes peeked through the thick clouds and leaves ranging in different green and red colors fell massively off the trees as a chilled wind blew through the small town of Hawkins. "Sure mom!", the small boy replied, and continued to go outside. He looked happy - he loved playing outside. He went to his neighbor and rang the doorbell. A suit-wearing man, who'd just gotten home, opened to door. "Hello mister Dean, is Tommy home?"
"I'm sorry Luke", the man answered, "He and his mother are visiting his grandmother. I'm sure he'd love to play with you another time." Tommy's father shut the door after Luke's "okay!". Luke couldn't be really bothered by it, as he didn't mind playing by himself. He loved going near Hawkins National Lab - the high fences spooked him out a little, but there was just so much grass and space to play! Luke secretly dreamt of becoming a famous soccer player, so he pushed himself to train in Keepie Uppie.

As he'd reached the grassy fields and took off his jacket, he inspected the ground carefully. 'No dog poop, sweet!', he thought, and he started kicking the ball. One big road was located next to the field, but there usually wasn't much traffic. He noticed a girl riding her bike, but didn't pay any more attention to her and continued training. "Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen..."

Mikaela peddled her pink bike towards the clearing that hid the view of Hawkins Lab. Days before, she had seen the amount of missing people and obituaries rise in such a short amount of time. She had tried to ask her father during breakfast what that had meant and why so many people's lives were being lost or missing. All he had to say about it was, "That's just the way life goes. One thing you're here and then suddenly, you're not. It was their time to go, sweetie, just like it will be ours one day." While she agreed to his statement, she wanted to know of what they were dying of or missing from.

When Mikaela had hung out with a friend of hers, there was a lot of commotion to the neighboring house on the left. A woman who went by the name of Laney Donahue had died there. Most say it was a heart attack because she was alone and old but others say someone wanted her dead but who would want to hurt someone who always kept to themselves? Instead of an ambulance coming to collect her body, it was a white van. One of the men who watched over all of the other people's activity in charge of clearing the house and handling the curious crowd outside her home, appeared to be the one of the top dogs; he was tall, menacing with a smile, and had remarkably white hair. One of the low level workers who were answering interview questions claimed to be from a mortuary outside of Hawkins county where they had planned to do her funeral services. She was able to find out after the news people left that they had actually been from Hawkins Lab.

From that day on, Mikky's intuition was ringing all sorts of alarms. She had nothing to do but see things for herself out of sheer curiosity. Her parents worked a lot and her brothers never cared for her other than to use her as a punching bag or their toy. She felt that if she could find something about these weird events, she could finally have their full attention for once.

Her bike skidded to a halt when she saw a boy playing by himself in the distance. What had he been doing there? Weren't there better places to play? She peddled back and decided to leave her bike to the closest tree so she could join him and see what was up. She wanted to warn him to go home but she didn't want to do in a way that would make him stay either.

"Thirtytwo, thirtythree", Luke continued counting in his head as he tried keeping the ball balanced, "Thirtyfour -". He noticed someone coming to him and looked up; it was that girl he just saw passing by on her bike. He put the ball in the grass and rested his right foot on it.
"Hello", the girl confidently said, "Are you here all alone?"
"Uuuh, yeah", Luke replied confused. What was her deal? And she was a girl, gross. What could be so important to interrupt him? Did she not see he was having a killer Keepie Uppie streak?
"Do you think that's wise with everything going on?" the smart-ass asked, again with a lot of confidence, near the edge of arrogance. Luke was even more confused. Wise? Why wouldn't it be wise? He'd played in these fields for yeaaars and nothing much had happened, at least if he didn't count the times he stepped in dog poop. Dog owners always let their canines do their business here, but now he thought about it, he hadn't seen one dog over the past weeks. His curiosity grew, making him ask: "What do you mean? What is going on?"