Thursday February 21 1985

It started with a note.

As Mike rolled up to school on his bike, Will was already there, waiting for him by the racks. Before Dustin, Lucas or Max showed up, Will retrieved an envelope from his backpack and handed to Mike. The pre-printed return address label showed it as having come from Hawkins Police Department. Hand written in the middle of the front was his name, Mike.

"What's this?" asked Mike.

"Spy stuff," Will grinned.

Mike threw him a puzzled look as Will continued, "Just open it later. Alone!" he added quickly, as their friends began to arrive. Mike quickly slipped the letter into his own backpack.

It was late February and an unseasonable warm front had moved into the area, driving away the winter chill. It was hard to believe 3 months had already passed and the gate to the Upside-Down had been closed for good. Little by little, life had been returning to normal in the quite town of Hawkins; or as normal as life would ever be again. Will's visions had stopped entirely the moment the gate closed, though he was often prone to panic attacks when sights and sounds would trigger memories of his year as a slave to the creatures on the other side.

Mike did his best to concentrate through the first few classes of the day, but as the morning wore on, all his thoughts were focused on the note in his bag. By lunch, it was more than he could take. While everyone else headed off to the cafeteria to grab lunch, Mike excused himself to the bathroom for a few minutes of privacy to read the letter.

"It has to be from Chief Hopper, right?" Mike thought, "Who else from Hawkins PD would be writing to me?"

Hopper had been making a habit of checking in on the Byers every couple weeks. He claimed it was to make sure everything was still okay with Will, but Mike and Will were pretty sure it had more to do with having an excuse to see Joyce. On one of these visits, about a week after the Snow Ball, Mike was over and he and Hopper had a chance to talk alone, now that everything had settled down. It had taken a little convincing, but in the end Mike had to agree that things were still dangerous for El. That's not to say it made things any easier. Saying goodbye after the Snow Ball had been one of the hardest things he or El had done yet, not knowing when they would get to see each other again. It had been bad, not knowing if she was still out there, if she was safe. Somehow it felt even worse, knowing exactly where she was, and still not being able to be with her. Hopper had described exactly how to get to that cabin, hidden away in the woods, the night El closed the gate. Mike knew he could hike his way out there and walk right up to the front door. But there was always a chance that agents associated with the now shuttered lab might still be tracking him in hopes of finding her. He also knew that Hopper would be furious at such a stupid risk and ban him from ever seeing her again. Worse yet, he might move her to somewhere even more remote and secretive. And so, for her sake, Mike stayed away.

In the passing months, Mike and Eleven had worked out a system to keep in touch. It wasn't ideal, but it was all they had, and they clung to it desperately. Every night that he was able, at 7:30, Mike would tune his SuperComm to an off station and call out to her. He would just talk, about anything and nothing; his day, school, family, and always how much he missed her. Anything to give her a target to find him. On the nights when she could, at 7:30, Eleven would pull on her blindfold, tune out the world and reach out to him. There were nights the schedule wouldn't work out, and they couldn't connect, but more often than not, in the infinite plane of the In-Between, she would find him. Since her existence was no longer a secret, she was free to reach out to him; a touch on the cheek, holding his hand or wrapping him in a hug. Mike could never quite explain the sensation, but he would feel her touch and know she was there.

For her part, El had taught herself to communicate back. It couldn't be much, just a single word or simple thought, whispered into the void. Mike could sense these. It wasn't so much that he heard them, but rather he felt them. But in either case, he took them in and understood their meaning. And so it went, they would meet and talk and touch and hold, and they made the most of what they had. It wasn't ideal, but it was better than not connecting at all. It was their own little halfway-happy. They would connect and be together until one of them was pulled away for the night, either by Mike's parents or by Hopper.

As he locked himself away in a stall in the bathroom, Mike retrieved the envelope from his backpack. He tore open the seal and unfolded the letter inside.

Mike,

I need your help Friday night with a secret mission. Tell your folks you will be spending the night at Will's house. Joyce knows what's going on and will cover for you if they call. Meet me at the end of your street at 5:00. Come alone and tell no one.

Hopper

Mike read the note twice more and puzzled over its meaning.

"A secret mission?" he wondered. "What kind of mission would Hopper need my help for?"

Later that afternoon, he managed to corner Will alone between classes.

"Do you know what this is all about?" he asked, holding up the envelope.

"No idea," he replied, "mom just said to make sure you got it today. Why, what does it say?"

"It's from Hopper," Mike responded and then, hesitating, "but he said not tell. Sorry."

"That's okay, I figured he might." he returned. "I can tell that mom knows what it's all about, but she won't tell me either."

The rest of the day dragged along, refusing to come to an end. Eventually the final bell rang and the gang all headed their separate ways. Jonathan was waiting out front with his car to drive Will home. Though Will had been begging for weeks, Joyce just wasn't ready to let him ride his bike to and from school alone again. Lucas, Dustin and Max all headed toward town, planning on an afternoon in the arcade.

"Want to come along?" Dustin asked Mike. "I have a good feeling about today. I think I am going to finally take the Dig Dug crown back from Max."

"That's alright, I want to get a jump on homework so I'm not up to late finishing it." Mike replied.

"You're so full of crap," Dustin grinned. "You just want to get it out of the way so you can ghost-cuddle with your girlfriend."

Mike blushed, but had to admit to himself that Dustin knew him too well to try and deny it.

"Have fun lover boy," Dustin teased as he mounted his bike and headed off after Lucas and Max.

Mike turned his bike toward home and peddled hard, all the while thinking over the note and what this secret mission might be. The whole way he wondered why Hopper would be asking him along. He couldn't wait until 7:30 when he could try to ask El if she had any idea what this was all about. When he got home he started right in on his homework, though there didn't turn out to be very much. After that, he was desperate to occupy his mind until they could meet up. He tried working on the new D&D campaign he was putting together, but just couldn't get into the flow. He tried picking up a book, but after finding himself rereading the same sentence for the third time, he decided he just couldn't concentrate enough on that either. Eventually, he finally willed the clock around to dinner time, but even that didn't hold his attention for long. After pushing his meatloaf around the plate for a while, he decided he just wasn't hungry and asked to be excused.

Finally, after an agonizingly unending day, the alarm on Mike's watch let a relief-bringing chirp, announcing that it was 7:25. He headed down to the basement and turned on some music to mask his conversation. After all this time, his parents were still convinced that El had been a secret Russian spy, so he had to be constantly on guard to make sure they didn't realize it was her he was talking to each night. As far as they knew, he was just down there chatting with Dustin, Lucas or Will. He settled down in the blanket fort where El had slept for those fateful few days; it was hard to believe that was already a year and a half ago. He switched on his radio and called out to her.

"El, its Mike. Are you There?" he began. "Please be there. I really need to talk to you. Are you there?"

He paused a moment, and then repeated his call. He had to fight back the panic that came over him as he called to her each night.

"What if tonight is one of the nights she can't get to me?" he wondered.

He knew it was too soon to worry. Sometimes it took a few minutes for her to get to him. Some nights she would be delayed finishing up dishes after dinner with Hopper, or get lost in a book and loose track of time.

He repeated the call a third time and suddenly, there she was. He felt a hand encircle his and a warmth spread through his chilled fingers.

"Mike," she whispered into the void. He felt the word hit his mind and a further warmth spread through the rest of his body.

"I missed you," he says into the radio. "I hope you had a good day."

"Missed too," she whispered.

"I got a weird letter from Hopper today," he continued, "do you know what this is about?"

"Secret," she said.

"A secret from me? Or do you not know either?" he asked.

"Secret," she repeated, and then continued, "tomorrow."

Suddenly her hand was gone from his.

"Wait, where are you going?" he asked. "Are you leaving already?"

Just then he felt a pair of warm hands on the back of his neck, and the soft press of her lips on his. The feeling lingered for a moment, and then she was gone. He stared in disbelief at his radio as he felt her presence fade. He got the feeling she knew more about whatever this mission was than she wanted to let on. Maybe she would be there too. Mike knew that was too much to hope for. There was no way Hopper would let her out to go on some kind of adventure while trying to keep the bad men from finding her.

Across town, alone in her room, Eleven lifted the blindfold off her eyes, a wide grin across her face. She grabbed a tissue and wiped away the trickle of blood from under her nose. She had gotten much better lately controlling that aspect of her powers and could often travel to the In-Between for extended periods without a nose-bleed. But somehow, with Mike, her emotions were more open and she almost always had a bleed still.

Hopper tapped on her half-closed door and let himself in to check on her and tell her goodnight. The grin was impossible to hide.

"I take it you've been to see Mike tonight?" he asked, well knowing the answer before asking.

"Happy," she grinned back, picking up the book she had been reading earlier.

"Don't forget you have class in the morning," Hopper continued. "So no staying up all night reading again."

He sat on the edge of her bed and pulled her into a goodnight hug.

"Goodnight Jane," he said, kissing her forehead.

"Goodnight Daddy," she replied.

Smiling, he got back up and walked out of the room, pulling the door halfway closed behind him as he left.

"Jane," she repeated quietly, "Jane. Jane."

The name was still taking some getting used to, and felt funny to her ears. She had spent so many years being known only by her experiment number, Eleven. It had been easy enough to identify with being called El; that was the special name her new friends had given her. When she had left home, trying to find where she fit in the world, it had once again felt natural enough to call herself by her birth name, Jane. That had been her identity with mama who always believed her to be out there still, with aunt Becky, and with Kali. Jane, the lost sister, the lost daughter. But now she was home again, her real, true home. She was back among friends. She was El.

But a time was approaching when she would have to put on a new identity once again, in the form of her birth name of Jane. Even thought it sounded funny to her ears, she knew it was important to be ready to respond to it. If the plans that Hopper had been crafting all worked out, then next September, she would be able to leave the confines of their cabin and join the real world. Assuming she passed all the readiness tests, she would get to start 9th grade with her friends as Jane Ellen Hopper, daughter of police chief Jim Hopper, who had come to live with her father when her mother fell ill and could no longer care for her. It was a simple lie with enough truth backing it up that people wouldn't ask too many questions. As Jane, she had a real identity, tied back to mama and a birth certificate simply "lost in the system" for years, as Hopper liked to say. Ellen had been his idea, so she could still be El among her friends without raising any suspicions.

It was the thought of getting to join her friends in school and out in public that drove her every day to study just as hard as she could. She had years of schooling to catch up on, since in the lab she had only been taught the most basic of reading and writing. As a secret weapon, they never saw the need to educate her any further than that. Fortunately, Hopper had gotten ahold of a number of homeschool workbooks and study programs to help catch her up. Math she had picked up and excelled at almost immediately and had already gotten her skills up to early middle school level. It would be no difficultly finishing up to high school entrance levels by fall. Surprisingly, she also had developed a knack for art, filling page after page in her sketch book with the scenes outside the cabin and sketches from memory of her friends. She could recall every line and curve of Mike's face and commit those to paper with little effort. She had come a long way from the simple crayon drawings she was proud to hang in her little room back in the lab.

More difficult for her was English. She had learned to read well enough and could easily follow the novels Hopper picked up for her at the library in town. But she still had difficultly when it came to the subtleties of conversation and that would be key to her being able to blend in with her fellow students in the fall. Mike and the rest of her friends would be there to help her along, but she still wanted to be ready. It had been right after Christmas that Hopper hit upon a clever idea over dinner. The next day, when he came home from work, he was carrying a copy of the Hawkins Middle School yearbook, a school floor plan and a copy of the complete class schedule, all thanks to a few well placed favors he called in. After picking out a couple classes that he thought would help, they set about looking up the classrooms on the diagram and the teachers and a handful of the students in the classes in the yearbook. Armed with these, Eleven was able to find the teachers and their classes in the In-Between and attend their classes as a silent observer, perched on a spare desk in the back of the class. And that is exactly where she would be the next morning, promptly at 8:00.