A/N: This story focuses on an original character and the entire thing serves as a setup for a sequel that I want to write. It was originally imagined as a Doctor Who crossover, so it is fun to imagine Peter Carter (OC) with the personality of the tenth Doctor. Actual characters from the show really only start to show up in the later chapters, but they will be center stage in the sequel (the story I actually wanted to write).
I don't own Stranger Things or any of the characters from the show. I don't know why I have to say that, but everyone else on the site does.
Please review and criticize, just please don't be mean. Enjoy.
There was a report from the Hawkins lab that something bad had happened, then nothing. Because of the nature of some of the work they were carrying out there, they were supposed to report regularly to the American government and a couple of other involved organizations. They had received a report that something had gone wrong, they stopped receiving reports all together. People tried to get in to figure out what happened, but the lab had shut its doors completely. A couple of the involved organizations were worried about them and began to observe the lab from afar using various equipment ranging all the way from cameras to Geiger counters. The readings they got were so strange that at first they thought their equipment was broken, but once a couple of teams compared results, they decided that either their equipment was all broken in exactly the same way, or that the unbelievable results they got from spying on the lab were actually correct. The results made their way through analysts of every agency that was interested in the experiments happening in the unremarkable Indiana town and they all eventually agreed that they had absolutely no idea what was going on. They readings and what little analysis they could agree on was collected and passed on to more and more secret agencies until they got to the most secret of all
The Coalition was a top secret project started by NATO in the mid 1950's. Its job was to facilitate sharing of information across the various secret agencies of the world. The idea was that if they all knew what everyone else knew that they could better protect themselves against the possibility of Soviet attack. It was supposed to be just a data center and a bunch of analysts that passed intel from one intelligence agency on to whichever one had jurisdiction on an issue so they could best deal with it. After a little while though, they realized that there were some things that absolutely nobody had jurisdiction over under the system they had. There were some problems that were either too far reaching or too unfamiliar for any one of the existing organizations to take control of it. It was then decided that The Coalition should take command in these situations with the full resources of all the agencies around them and a surprising amount of other resources at their disposal. All the issues that stretched too far for any one organization and any problems that nobody could understand were sent to this most secret of secret agencies. They weren't like any of their secret counterparts though. They did not employ the emotionless men in sunglasses that the CIA was known for. The Coalition decided from the beginning that they were going to take a completely different approach to solving their cases. They hired the creative types, the people that could see a different perspective than everyone else. They believed that the world's engineers and scientists made the best secret agents, not the strong, fast types that were hired by other agencies.
The data from the Hawkins National Laboratory made it to The Coalition and they, like everyone before them, couldn't make much out of just the numbers on the pages. They knew they needed the human element of the story, so they sent an agent out to see what actually happened in Hawkins.
It was almost 11:00 PM on January 1, 1984 when Peter Carter finally made it to the only hotel in the small town. He had been paged at about one AM when he was just about to leave the New Year's party he was at. He received a briefing at the Coalition headquarters in New York on all the (minimal) information that they had. He was given a briefcase with all the data they got from the other organizations and then started on the 12 hour drive to Hawkins. He checked into the inn with the very polite lady at the front desk and then headed up to his room with the briefcase and his duffel bag with his clothes and toiletries. Most people in his situation would have collapsed onto the queen bed and passed out immediately, but Peter Carter was not "most people". He was a scientist by education and loved figuring out what was happening in a strange situation that nobody could figure out, and this was the strangest he had ever seen. He hadn't slept since a short nap before his New Year's party the previous day, but he was much too excited to sleep and instead sat on the bed pouring over all the papers he had in the briefcase until he finally dozed off a little after 2 AM./p
