In the evening, Dean called Hope into the yard and chatted,

"Do you know what a sensory deprivation tank is all about?"

Hope frowned, "This thing isn't Hawkins Labs equipment, why are you asking it?" ”

"I wanted to see if I could expand Jane's mind in the sink and ask her to help me find my missing parents."

In the afternoon, Dean had used the bathtub at home to create a water tank to amplify Jane's dark mind, but unfortunately adding cold, warm, and salt water to the bathtub failed.

Unlike Jane's impression of the water tank, it has no effect.

"The dark realm of the mind is some kind of superpower?"

"Well, but Jane has more than one superpower, Jane takes things out of the air, so the lab and the Sulian people want to get her." Dean was simply open and honest, "It's just that she just arrived, and she is more reluctant to show us her abilities." ”

Hope looked at the little girl on the couch in the glass window who was watching TV intently, and when he turned to Dean again, there was a dangerous glint in his eyes, "What's the difference between you and the perverted Martin Brenner when you're going to put her in the sensory deprivation tank?" ”

"I didn't force her, she offered to help."

"Will that hurt her?"

"She said no problem."

"Oh well. But I didn't even go to college, so I didn't understand this advanced scientific knowledge. I suggest you go to Hawkins Middle School and ask Scott Clark, a physics graduate at Princeton University, who knows the answer. ”

Dean remembered that Dustin had mentioned the teacher, and an idea occurred to him.

……

The next morning.

"Mr. Clark, I'm Dustin." The little fat man knocked on the teacher's door, and Dean stood in the shadows beside him,

"Just in time," said an emaciated man, smiling, "I have good news for you, the principal has agreed to give the Audiovisual Club a grant for new equipment, and next semester, you will see a brand new set of projectors..."

"Wow... Awesome, teacher, I can't wait to check it out! Dustin immediately jumped twice in excitement, and Dean couldn't help but laugh.

"Don't worry, young man, school will start in half a month, and you will be able to see enough every day by then. Now to get back to the point, you didn't come to say hello to me. ”

"That's right, I have a science question for you," Dustin glanced at Dean next to him out of the corner of his eye, and got an encouraging look, "Do you know how to build a sensory deprivation tank?" ”

"Sensory deprivation is no small thing, what are you going to use it for?" The man's expression was grim,

"It's hot and it's perfect for swimming, but a normal pool is boring and cramped," Dustin said smartly, "and Mike and I wanted to use the children's pool at home to create a sensory-depriving tank in the yard and experience what it's like to float in it." ”

"Uh... It's—" Clarke's thin face looked embarrassed.

"Fulfill us, teacher, didn't you say that curiosity is the ladder of progress."

"OK, the children's pool is just the minimum size for a full stretch, and then you'll need to prepare 1,500 pounds (680kg) of salt and mix it in the water... The water temperature and body temperature are similar... And then the eye patch and the earplugs, the thermometer, you have to create an environment similar to the mother's amniotic fluid, and when you enter it, you will have a feeling of returning to the mother's womb. ”

"Okay... I remember," Dustin waved goodbye, "goodbye to school, Mr. Clark." ”

……

"Well done, Dustin, you've done me a great favor!" Dean put his arm around the boy's shoulders and walked to the car,

"It's a small favor compared to what you've done for us." Dustin touched the back of his head and said with a smile,

"Well, but there is a major problem, everything else is easy to solve, where will I get this 1,500 pounds of salt?" Dean asked, "Is there so much stock in the little supermarket where Joyce works?" ”

Dustin stroked his slightly curly hair, "The small supermarket is only one or two hundred pounds at most, and even if you search all the stores in the town, you can't buy so much." But I remember that the Hawkins Middle School basketball gym had two tons of de-icing salt for the winter, but now the doors are closed for the summer vacation... There is no way the teacher will allow us to waste so much salt. ”

Dean nodded secretly.

"Then I'll think of another way."

"By the way, Dean, I swear to keep it a secret for you, but can you let me see Joshua again." Dustin looked up at him, his eyes full of longing,

"There's a chance."

……

After saying goodbye to Dustin, Dean crossed town to buy a rubber children's pool to take home, and when it was completely dark, he drove to Hawkins Middle School.

The place was bigger than he expected, with a playground, three school buildings, and a lavish basketball hall.

On summer vacation nights, the school is dark and quiet, like an abandoned cemetery, and not even a janitor can be seen.

Dean walked around the school's fence and guardrail, inspected the fifty-meter range from God's perspective, and turned off the surveillance equipment in the security booth.

Then "Shadow" opened the door of the basketball arena from the inside, and Dean sneaked into the utility room like a gust of wind, leaving a thousand dollars to compensate, and then carried bags of de-icing salt into the car and transported back to the ancestral home.

……

When he got home, Hope was taking a shower in the bathroom.

Dean came to the yard with a huge reel on his back, which contained a rubberized children's pool, eye masks, earplugs, thermometers, rubber hoses to connect to the faucets, and other tools.

"Jane, come and help me spread out the pool..."

"Okay."

Lights from the veranda outside illuminated the small courtyard in front of the door, and a circular pool spread out in the middle of the courtyard, just big enough for Jane to stretch her limbs.

Dean used his telekinesis to send one end of the two rubber water pipes into the cabin, connecting the cold water and hot water respectively, and the other end flew into the pool out of thin air.

Mind turned the valve, and in the gurgling sound, the liquid poured into the pool, mixing hot and cold, rippling with a soft sheen in the moonlight.

Jane, who was watching from the sidelines, had big black eyes, and her small mouth was open enough to swallow an egg.

"Dean, you—You also have 'abilities'?"

"How else am I going to get you out of the lab?" Dean smiled at her, looked into her eyes and said sincerely, "We all have superpowers and are looking for parents, so we are the same kind of people, or companions. ”

After half a month of foreshadowing, the heat is almost over.

"We are companions."

This sentence magically echoed in the little girl's mind, making her face stunned.

After losing memory.

She has the impression that there are hundreds of people in the Hawkins Lab, researchers, security guards, but only she has the ability, so she is different from everyone, including her father, she is a lonely individual, and she will never have real friends.

She thought the whole world was like that.

But today—

"Dean and I are companions."

The huge surprise made her nose sour inexplicably, and her eyes that looked at Dean for a moment were full of trust, and in the dark, it seemed that there was some kind of connection and bond between her and the other party.

"Crying for what?" Dean watched the progress of the system skyrocketing to eighty-two percent, and couldn't help but slightly curve the corners of his mouth,

"I, I'm so happy, but why are you more skilled in superpowers than I am?"

Jane ran over and grabbed Dean's hand, tilting her head at the same time, a trace of blood slid down her nose, and the invisible telekinesis rolled up the thermometer on the ground and fell into the pool, and began to measure the temperature of the water,

"Because I'm professionally trained, more effective than your training in the lab, you're too rudimentary in your use of telekinesis right now." Dean looked at the back door of the car next to him.

The shadow of the past turned into a gust of wind and rushed in, and at the same time, he used his telekinesis to fly above the half-filled pool with two white woven bags in the air.

The woven bag was torn open with a large hole, and the de-icing salt of the white flower fell into the bath.

Splashes of water float in the light and glow in crystal colors.

"Stir it up, Jane."

"Okay."

The little girl manipulated a crowbar on the ground to stir up a splash of water in the pool, allowing the water to merge with the salt.

That's how the two work with each other.

Jane stirred the solution in the mixing pool, measured the temperature with a thermometer, and occasionally tried to carry bags of salt from the car.

Her telekinesis is stronger than that of "Shadow", and she is faster when she holds a 50kg woven bag, but her strength is unstable, and sometimes the bag falls open halfway, and the splashed salt spreads half of the yard.

Finally, wait until the pile of woven bags is empty.

Jane steered an egg into the pool, floating steadily on the water, the thermometer reaching the level, and the faucet turned off.

The children's version of the sensory deprivation tank is freshly baked.

Jane was about to take off her skirt.

"Wait a minute, Jane, have you forgotten, privacy, don't change your clothes in front of outsiders..."Dean immediately stopped her, "Go to the utility room." ”

"Hmm."

Jane changed into a black wetsuit-like one-piece swimsuit and revisited the photos of Lena and Bright, then with Dean's encouragement, put on an eye patch and earplugs, jumped into the pool, lay backwards, and floated effortlessly on her back in the sensory deprivation tank, motionless as a floating corpse.

Zizi –

An invisible energy field swirls in the air.

The picture of the TV in the room turned into a large snowflake of signal, and the wiring of the hanging light in the corridor flashed a blue current, and the light began to change again until it was completely extinguished.

Jane, who floated on the water, was swallowed up in darkness.

Time stands still.

I don't know how long it took.

"Black, black—" Jane murmured slightly, and the lights came back on.

She swam to the edge of the pool and took off her blindfold to look at Dean.

"I see your mother."

Dean suppressed her excitement and carried her out of the tank, wiped the blood and wet hair between her nose and mouth with a blanket, and summoned "Shadow" at the same time, "Where is she?" Take your time and don't rush. ”

"A hall with colorful lights," Jane stared at the void in front of her, "and there was a stage in the center of the hall, on which an unclothed woman wriggled around a steel pipe, while Lena sat at a corner table with another beautiful woman chatting. ”

"Woman with no clothes on, you're not kidding?"

"Sorry, I wasn't accurate, but I actually wore a little." Jane innocently pointed to her chest, "That woman is wearing two black hoods here. ”

and pointing downwards,

"There's a rag here."

"You mean a bikini?" Dean stroked his forehead, his face becoming a little ugly, "So, Lena is currently drinking in a strip club?" ”

Shadow's black body became as unstable as an abyss.

Bloodline progress jumped to eleven percent.

"What is a strip club?" Jane is curious,

"For a child, it's a scarier place than the Hawkins lab."

Jane shrunk his neck, not daring to ask again,

"What did Lena talk to the woman about?"

"I'm sorry, I can't hear clearly, there seems to be something in that place that is holding me back from prying eyes."

"Supernatural powers?" Dean's expression moved, this shouldn't be an ordinary strip club, "So what does the woman sitting with Lena look like?" ”

Jane sat by the pool, tilted her head and thought, "Probably in her twenties, snow-white skin, reddish-brown hair, painted red lips, and well-developed breasts, I can't help but want to look twice." ”

In her twenties, Dean thought about it, it shouldn't be the No. 8 Carly who escaped from the lab together," he said. ”

"The outline of that woman's features gives me a bit of a resemblance to your mother."

"A bit like Lena?" Dean looked at the outline of the mother's facial features in the photo, and suddenly realized, "That is, the woman she is chatting with is also Asian?" Oh no, it's more likely to be Indians! ”

Bloodline progress jumped to 13 percent.

"Can you draw her?"

"I'm sorry, I can't."

"What does that woman on the stage look like?"

"Very characteristic, the skin is yellow and light brown, the hair is black and smooth, the cheekbones are prominent..."

"It's kind of like Lao Mo, or maybe it's an Indian." Dean rolled his gaze and reached out to take out a map of the United States of America from his bosom and placed it on the lawn, marking the approximate location of Hawkins, Indiana, where they were.

"Where is this hall located?"

Jane took her pen and drew a long diagonal line southwest of the town of Hawkins, which ran through Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Texas. "It's probably in a straight line, but I can't see the sign outside, there's something terrible in that place staring at me in the dark, and it makes me panic."

"It's okay, you've done a great job," Dean handed Jane a candy, and the information gathered flashed through his mind—strip clubs in southwest Indiana with Indian, Asian, or old ink dancers suspected of supernatural powers.

Bloodline jumped to fifteen percent.

Dean couldn't figure out why Lena was in such a place, but once the "Caged Bird" event was done, he would have to follow this route to find someone.

……

"So do you see the light?" Dean pointed to the man in the photo, "Is he with Lena?" ”

"I'm sorry, I didn't see your dad." Jane recalls her experience under Martin Brenner, "He was either far, far away from us, in another place where he couldn't go. Either he has been dead for a long time. ”

Whew-

A gust of wind swept through, and the shadow flew wildly around the courtyard, and the electric lights were driven to shake.

"No, the light shouldn't be dead?"

Dian rebuffed Jane's guess, and the system wouldn't let him find someone who had been dead for a long time.

Now, since he can't find the light in the dark realm of his mind, Dean immediately changes his way of thinking - first find the No. 8 test subject Carly, who escaped with the two couples!

……

"That's it for today," Dean smiled gratefully at Jane, wiping her little face clean,

"Sorry I couldn't help you find Dad." Jane's face was full of tiredness in guilt, and tonight's perception and telepathy had consumed too much of her physical and mental strength.

"Don't say that, you're doing a great job." Dean rubbed her little head, "To thank you for your help." I'm going to teach you how to use superpowers, would you? ”

"Uh-huh!"

"Go into the house, dry your hair, and change back into your clothes," Dean reached out and rolled up a woven bag and floated towards the trash can, "I'll clean up the yard." ”

"Okay."

"Ahem..."The sheriff in a nightgown walked out of the door with his hands crossed on his hips, and his jealous old father-like eyes swept over one big and one small. What secrets are you two hiding? Can't you explain it to me first? ”

(End of chapter)