A/N: Welcome to my third fanfic.
ATTENTION: This is the third part in a series. The first part is called 'The Unknown' you could probably get away without reading that one, but you need to read the second part called 'A Not-So-Normal Life'. This story picks up where the story got left off in that story. It is pretty important to know what happened there to understand what is happening here. If you have read my previous stories, welcome back! Thanks for sticking with me and I hope you enjoy.
The alarms started going off.
"Shit." said an agent over the radio.
"Watch your language. Over." Agent Carter said over his radio from a van outside. He regretted speaking as soon as he did.
"What?!" asked another agent. "'Watch your language'? Are we afraid kids are going to be listing to this? Over."
"I'm a middle school teacher. I can't help it. Forget I said anything." Carter said, embarrassed. "What happened in there? Over." he asked, hoping to get everyone's minds on more important things. Carter and the van were parked outside the Leadstone National Laboratory in Minnesota. A team was currently inside the lab, secretly moving through it to find any incriminating evidence they could about a program to use children with special abilities as spies and weapons. Carter knew that if they searched long enough, they would find some evidence. He knew this because he had adopted a boy that had been held there and researched for his abilities. But they didn't have much time now.
"We tried to get into the restricted section but Francis messed up opening the electronic lock. Over." the second agent said over the radio.
Carter looked at the security feeds they were getting in the van from all the cameras in the lab. Since the alarms went off, a security team had been dispatched to find the intruders and Carter's team couldn't afford to be caught.
"Abort mission." he ordered over the radio. "There's some security guys heading your way but if you go out through the eastern exit you should be able to avoid them. Over."
"We copy. Coming your way. Over." the agent said.
"Head for the eastern door." Carter ordered the van driver. The driver stepped hard on the gas and started going to the other side of the lab while Carter tried to mess with the video feeds a little while longer. They were feeding a loop to the security office in the lab so their team wouldn't be spotted but it was hard to hold onto the signal with the van on the move. When the van stopped, Carter stopped messing with the knobs and switches on his control panel and went to the front of the van where he could see out the window. "Come on, come on." he whispered to himself "Get out of there".
Seven unbearably long seconds later, the big door burst open and the four secret agents ran out of the lab, over the fence and towards the van. Carter ran to the back of the van and flung open the door for his colleagues. They all made it into the van by the time the lab door opened again and a couple of security guys ran out. They tried to get to the black van but it was already driving away by the time they started.
"That was too close." Carter said.
"I feel obliged to agree." one of the other agents, Johnson, said, out of breath.
"Were you guys able to get anything useful out of that?" Carter asked.
"Not really." Johnson said. Carter sighed and settled in for the long drive they had back to Minneapolis.
The next twelve hours were long for Agent Carter. The drive from Leadstone to Minneapolis took four hours. He turned in a short report at the Coalition Base in the city before heading straight to the airport. He got there at 5 AM and was at the gate for his 7 AM flight at 5:30. He opened a book and got in some reading time before he had to board his airplane. The flight to Indianapolis took another two hours in which Carter was able to get the only sleep he had gotten in about two days. He was woken up when the 737 touched down in Indianapolis. After getting off the plane, he didn't have to wait at baggage claim since he only had a small duffel bag with some clothes and toiletries in it that he took as a carry-on.
He walked out to the far end of the parking lot and found his new car. Since he was being paid for both his job at The Coalition and his job as a chemistry teacher, he was able to trade in his BMW 325i for a new BMW M5. It was a great car, but he was too tired to appreciate it. He opened up the trunk, threw in his bag, then sleepily got behind the wheel. He turned the key and the BMW came to life. He put it into first and crept out of the parking spot, careful not to hit any other cars.
About forty five minutes later, Carter parked the car in front of the Byers' house in Hawkins. He knocked on the door and Joyce Byers answered in a blue vest, ready to go to work.
"Hi, Joyce." Carter said. "I just got back. I'm here to pick up Tim."
"Of course." Joyce said. "Come on in. He'll just be a minute." Carter walked inside and sat down in one of the chairs around the kitchen table.
"How was he?" Carter asked.
"He was great. Just like he always is." Joyce said while trying to save a very burnt omelet. "He loves spending time with El."
"Did I make you do that?" Carter asked.
"What?" asked Joyce.
"The omelet. Did it burn while you were getting the door for me? I could have waited a little longer."
"No. It was already burnt." Joyce said, now trying to scrape the burnt egg and cheese off the pan. Carter didn't understand a lot of Joyce's logic in the kitchen. He knew that she was great at so many things, but cooking was not one of them.
A door opened down the hall. Carter leaned back to see Eleven coming down the hall with his adopted son, Tim.
"How was your time with Aunt Joyce?" Carter asked. Joyce wasn't Tim's real aunt, but they were such good friends that it made sense to call her his son's aunt.
"Fun." Tim said. "We played games." Tim's vocabulary was very simple, but improving every day.
"I'm glad to hear that. Do you have all your things?" Carter asked.
"Yes."
"OK then. We have to head home." Carter turned to Joyce. "Thanks again for having him. That was my last trip of the year and I really needed to go..." Joyce cut him off.
"Peter." Joyce was one of the only people that called Carter by his first name. "It's OK. I'm always glad to have him. Carter smiled and walked out of the house. He put Tim's bag in the trunk with his and they drove off together.
Tim had gone through a rigorous education during that summer just like Eleven had the summer before. He learned just as fast as her, but since he was going into the fifth grade instead of the seventh, there was a little less that he needed to learn before being caught up with the rest of the school. Carter was able to get him registered at the local elementary school and he was all set to start classes in September.
Eleven's summer had gone even better than her first one in Hawkins. Mike finally taught her how to play Dungeons and Dragons and she joined in on a bunch of games, but she also had some friends who were girls. Sarah, Amy and Lucy were some of the only other people in the school who knew who she was, but that didn't make them see her any differently. The girls had even joined the boys a little bit and sometimes they were one big group.
After Carter left with Tim, Eleven went outside and got the mail. She sorted through all the letters that they got and she was happy when she saw a letter addressed to her from the Hawkins School System. She opened it to find her new school schedule inside. She didn't look at it for long before picking up the phone to call Mike. It rang for a little bit before someone picked up.
"Hello." came Mike's mom's voice.
"Hello, Mrs. Wheeler. Is Mike there?" Eleven said.
"I think he's up in his room. Just give me a moment." she said. She covered the microphone on the handset a little bit but Eleven could still hear her calling for Mike; "Mike! Telephone for you!" A couple of moments later, the phone was picked up again and Eleven heard a completely different voice.
"Hello?" Mike said.
"Hi, Mike. It's El." Eleven said. She knew she didn't have to introduce herself, but she still liked to.
"Hi, El. How are you?" he asked.
"I'm pretty good. You?"
"I'm good."
"Did you get your school schedule?"
"I'm not sure. Let me check." There was a small click as Mike set the handset down on the counter and ran outside to check the mailbox. About thirty seconds later, he picked the handset up again and said; "I just got it." He was out of breath. Eleven was certain that he had ran to the mailbox so she didn't have to wait for him so long. She thought it was kind of cute that he went far out of his way sometimes to make her life a little easier. "Do you want me to call the whole group? We could meet at my house and find out what classes we have together."
"Sounds good. I'll call the girls." Eleven said, excited.
Fifteen minutes later, Eleven and Will arrived at Mike's front door. Will pushed the little button to ring the doorbell and they started to wait.
"Hey, guys!" a voice from behind them called. It was Lucas. He lived the closest to Mike so Will was a little surprised that they got there before him.
"Hey, Lucas!" Will called back as Lucas approached them. "Did you get your schedule?" Lucas pulled a folded-up piece of paper out of his pocket and showed Will and Eleven. They too took their papers out of their pockets to show him. The door opened and Mike greeted everyone.
It took another twenty minutes for everyone else to arrive. Sarah and Lucy showed up together followed shortly by Amy and then by Dustin. There was a little bit of talk before everyone settled down and started comparing schedules.
"My first class is math with Mrs. Hartson." Amy announced.
"Me too!" said Will.
"Me too." said Lucy. This continued on for a little while. Someone would announce one of their classes and they would figure out who else had it. It was pretty normal until Mike said;
"I have chemistry with Dr. Carter right before lunch again." Everyone else in the room said that they had the same class. The whole group made sure they got another year of chemistry so they could have another year with Dr. Carter. He was their favorite teacher. That was partly because he was simply a fun and engaging chemistry teacher, but also because he was a secret agent.
"Strange how we all have that class together." said Sarah.
"Not really." said Dustin. "I assume Carter pulled some strings to get all of us together."
"That makes sense." said Amy.
The group soon got bored discussing school and they turned to other things. The group ended up spending the entire day at Mike's house. Talking led to some petty arguments and everyone decided it would be best to just settle down and watch a movie. The TV upstairs was free. Everyone scrambled up to the living room to pick the best spots. Once Mike had finished setting up the movie, he sat down on the couch with Eleven (eliciting some teasing from Dustin and Lucas who were mainly upset because they had to sit on the floor). It was already the end of August, so as everyone watched the movie, they savored the last days of summer before they had to go back to school.
As much as nobody wanted the summer to end, it had to happen at some point. Eleven woke up at about 6:00 and excitedly started making breakfast for herself. Joyce came into the kitchen about half an hour later.
"What are you doing up so early?" she asked.
"it's the first day of school." Eleven responded. "I'm excited." Eleven was already hard at work mixing up waffle batter. She loved Eggos but she figured that such a special day deserved some more special waffles.
"If only the boys could be more like you." Joyce joked. "Do you want some help?"
"No thanks. I think I've got it." Eleven said. She loved Joyce but she didn't really want burnt waffles. Joyce understood and instead put some bread in the toaster. Toast was one of the things she could make that tasted good. The golden-brown toast popped up a couple of minutes later and was ready for some butter as Eleven put the first batch of waffles in the iron. Jonathan was the next one to wake up despite the fact that he didn't have to go with to school.
"How's my college boy?" Joyce said, running over to pull Jonathan into a big hug. Jonathan's face turned a little red with embarrassment.
"Mom!" Jonathan smiled while pleading with Joyce for her to let him go. "College doesn't start for another week." Eleven looked up from the waffle iron for a moment to see how awkward Jonathan looked. She smiled a little bit.
"I know. But it's the first first day of school that you aren't going to school." Joyce said in a voice as if Jonathan was still a little kid. The waffle iron buzzed and Eleven opened it. Jonathan took it as an opportunity to change the subject.
"Making waffles?" he asked.
"Yes." Eleven answered without stopping smiling. "Do you want one, college boy?" she said, teasing him.
"Oh, God. Not you too." Jonathan turned to Joyce. "Did you rope her into this?"
"No. She's just proud of her big brother." Joyce said while sitting back down at the kitchen table. She resumed buttering her toast.
"Where's Will?" she asked.
"Probably still asleep like always." Jonathan said. He knew that his mother still got a little scared when Will didn't show up to breakfast on time. Jonathan walked down the hall and opened the door to Will's room. "Come on, Will. It's your last first day of middle school. You don't want to be late." Will groaned from under the covers.
"Five more minutes." he pleaded.
"No." Jonathan said while laughing. "El's making waffles. I bet if you ask nicely she'll give one to you." Will perked up a little bit at the mention of waffles. He didn't like them nearly as much as Eleven, but they were still a great motivator to get him out of bed.
Five minutes later, Will was all dressed and sat down to find a waffle already on a plate at his spot at the table. The rest of breakfast consisted of laughing, nostalgia about school years past, and teasing 'college boy' Jonathan. Eleven eventually noticed the clock and saw it was 7:30.
"We have to go!" she remarked.
"You're right." Will said. He grabbed one more slice of toast from the table and grabbed his backpack.
"Bye, mom." both Will and Eleven said in unison as they ran out the door to get to their bikes.
Will and Eleven had left a little later than they wanted to do, but they were still not late. The bike racks were not very full because a lot of parents wanted to drive their kids to the first day of school. They went in and Will's math class was right by the front door. Eleven went in with him for a moment to see if Amy and Lucy were already there. Amy was nowhere to be found, but Lucy had already picked out a seat near the front. Eleven quickly said hi to Lucy then left to go to history class.
Eleven enjoyed school and wanted to get a seat in the front of class. She got called a nerd sometimes by passing people that didn't matter to her, but she didn't care. She saw it more as a good descriptor for what she was rather than an insult. When she got to the history classroom, only a few other seats were taken. She took a seat right at the front, but off to the left hand side. She opened her backpack and pulled out a book. There were still about fifteen minutes left until the bell was supposed to ring and there was nobody in the room that Eleven knew so she felt like reading was a good use of her time. About ten minutes later, Lucas wandered into the room too. Eleven knew he had the same first period class as her and she had been waiting for him to show up. Lucas looked around for a moment. He didn't want to sit right at the front, but he also didn't want to sit around complete strangers. He sighed and took the seat right behind Eleven.
"How's your first day going?" Lucas asked, somewhat awkwardly. He knew not much had happened yet that day that she could talk about, but he couldn't think of anything else to say to start some conversation.
"It's going pretty good." Eleven answered. She put a small piece of paper in her book to mark her page and then closed the book entirely. "I made some waffles this morning."
"Were they good?" Lucas asked, simply trying to keep the conversation going.
"Yes." Eleven answered. The small talk kept going for another couple of minutes until the bell rang.
The teacher walked in the room and closed the door. He introduced himself as Mr. Bolden and then went straight into a lecture about the causes of the French Revolution. All of the students had expected the first day to be laid back and easy so everyone scrambled to their backpacks when they realized they had to actually start taking notes. Everyone except Eleven of course. She already had a designated yellow notebook open and was making detailed notes of the lecture.
The bell rang after what seemed like an impossibly long time. Eleven carefully packed everything in her bag and stood up. She waited a little bit for Lucas to finish getting everything in his bag too. He was very organized so it took him a little while to put everything back in it's proper place. Eventually, he was done and they walked out of the room.
"So..." said Lucas once they were a little bit away from the room. "That teacher was super boring." Eleven didn't usually notice how interesting or boring a teacher was until someone mentioned it to her. She thought about it for a moment then came to the same conclusion.
"Now that I think about it… I agree." she said. They got to the end of the hall and had to separate to go to their different classes. Eleven turned the corner and eventually came to the honors math classroom. She walked in and scanned the faces in the room. She was surprised to see Mike was sitting right at the front of the room. She knew that she and Mike had that class together, but Mike hated sitting at the front of the room. Eleven walked over to him and sat down.
"Why are you sitting all the way in the front?" she asked.
"I thought you would like it." Mike said.
"But you hate sitting in the front."
"But you like sitting in the front and I like you more than I like sitting in the back." Eleven didn't exactly know how to respond to this. She chose to just smile and get out her math supplies. Mike smiled too and laughed a little bit when she turned away.
The class started and everyone got quiet pretty quickly. This teacher was much more interesting than the history teacher. She introduced herself as Mrs. Burns and she turned out to be a lot of fun. She didn't actually take any of the class time to teach math, choosing instead to talk to the students and get to know them a little bit. Eleven decided she liked Mrs. Burns. Before they knew it, the bell was ringing and everyone was packing up in the midst of the most recent joke Mrs. Burns had told. Eleven and Mike made their way out of the classroom and rushed to the class they were most excited about: chemistry.
The room was pretty empty by the time they got there. Dr. Carter was the only teacher in the town that taught classes at both the middle school and the high school, so they assumed he was on his way over from the high school which was right next to the middle school. Mike rushed to the seat in the front corner and Eleven followed soon after and sat down next to him. Dustin and Amy came together from their Geography class that they had together and sat right behind Mike and Eleven. The rest of the group trickled in and sat together. The bell rang just as Will took his seat right behind Dustin.
Dr. Carter quickly walked into the classroom with a big leather briefcase. He set the briefcase down on the table at the front of the room and looked up at his new class with a smile. He looked just like he did on the first day of school the previous year. He had on a white dress shirt with a green plaid sweater-vest and some big fake glasses on his face. He didn't actually need the glasses, but he thought it helped with his disguise the previous year so he kept them.
"Hello, everyone." He started enthusiastically. "My name is Dr. Carter and welcome to advanced chemistry." He looked a little more closely at all the faces around the room. "I think I remember most of you from intro to chemistry last year and most of you should remember me. We're really going to do much today because it's the first day of school and we're going to ease slowly into the year rather than immediately rip all of you away from summer." There was a general murmur around the room that indicated of Carter's teaching methods. "We're not actually going to learn anything new today, but we are going to review from last year by blowing some stuff up." The feeling of approval in the room turned to praise as everyone got excited for the lesson.
The remainder of the class was quite exciting. Carter took about two minutes to review how to use a fire extinguisher, then he set the big extinguisher on Dustin's desk and named him the 'fire marshal'. Carter demonstrated a lot of reactions and pretty much everyone in the room rushed to get their hand in the air whenever he asked for a volunteer. By the end of the class, everyone had got to blow something up except for Dustin (but he did get to extinguish Amy's desk).
The bell rang to end class sooner than Carter thought it would. The bell rang right after he lit a strip of magnesium on fire. Everyone stood up to go to lunch and the room was pretty much empty by the time the metal was done burning. Carter set his tools down on the table, took off his safety goggles, and went over and locked the door. He turned around to see the eight kids that always stayed after class to meet with him.
"So… how was everyone's summer?" he asked.
"Nobody was attacked telepathically if that's what you're asking." Amy said.
"You told us at the end of last school year that you were working on a mission all summer. What happened?" asked Mike. Carter settled into a stool behind the table and began a long explanation.
"I spent most of the summer in Hawkins. I was able to get most of my work done from home while helping Tim get ready for the school year." Everyone knew Carter's adopted son Tim was actually Twelve, a kid that managed to escape from the same horrific research program that Eleven did. "But I went on two trips to lead field missions. We went to the two labs that were of interest last year. In July we went to Westcliffe in Colorado and last week we went to Leadstone in Minnesota." He took a quick look around the room to see what everyone was thinking. Nobody was daring to look away and miss part of the story. "We didn't get much on those missions. A bunch of alarms went off in Minnesota, but in Colorado, we were able to determine that that lab is where Ten came from." Eleven seemed to get uncomfortable and Mike's fists clenched at the mention of Ten. He really hated her for what she tried to do to Eleven and his sister. Carter noticed the slightly elevated stress level in the room. "Other than that, there is nothing else I have to report. I'm back here just like I was last year and will make sure that nothing can happen to any of you."
Nobody in the room wanted to say anything else so they just left the room and went to lunch. The tense mood that was present in the chemistry room hung around for a little longer, but it went away immediately once Dustin tripped and face-planted in a bowl of Jello he was carrying and everyone started laughing. The lighter mood that started there stayed with the group for the rest of the day.
Deep in the bowels of the Hawkins National Laboratory, something was happening. The bottom levels were, for the most part, completely sealed off. However, one day during their routine inspection of the bottom levels, someone noticed a crack in the wall. Over the following months, they noticed the crack get slowly bigger and bigger. They called in some geologists and civil engineers to try to figure out what was happening, but nobody could explain it.
A/N: Thank you so much for reading. This story will be updated regularly, but not as often as my previous story (I won't be posting multiple chapters in one day). If you are intrigued, please follow the story and review this chapter and the ones that will follow. My previous story (and this story for that matter) benefited greatly from reader-input and the comments you guys leave will directly help shape the story and the characters. Thanks so much for reading and come back when I have written more (unless I already have, in that case just go to the next chapter)!