Mike Wheeler sat in the back of the classroom, slumped against the cabinets. The weight of an invisible hand held him pinned in place, doing everything in its power to keep him out of harms way. He could practically feel the anguished determination flowing through her as she faced off against the creature once and for all. At the front of the classroom, Eleven stared hard at the demogorgon, hatred and guilt fighting for control in her mind. Tears burned in Mike's eyes as he knew what would come next. The look of determination on her face told it all; she would do anything to protect her friends. With tears of her own, she turned for one last look at the boy who had come to mean everything to her in just a few short days.

"Goodbye, Mike," she whispered sadly, before turning again to face her foe, snarling in rage against her forceful grip.

Bending her head low, she glared with eyes burning red. "No more," she declared with all the resolve she had left in her.

In agony, Mike's tears began to fall freely as he watched her reach forth with every ounce of her strength and began to tear at the very fabric of the creature. The low growl in Eleven's throat grew into a fevered scream of primal rage as the she ripped the molecules of the creature apart in a growing cloud of black that surrounded them.

In a sudden final burst, the lights in the room blazed, went dead, and flickered back to life and his worst fears were confirmed; they were gone, the demogorgon and Eleven both. Refusing to believe what his eyes were telling him, Mike raced numbly to the front of the room, to the spot where she had stood only seconds before.

"El?" he shouted, hoping beyond hope she was still there, somehow. "El, where are you?" The tears poured down his face unchecked as his eyes frantically searched every corner of the classroom.

"Eleven!?"

Mike Wheeler's eyes snapped open in the darkness, the last of a scream still caught in his throat. The nightmare wasn't a new one; he had been dreaming the same dream nearly every night for years now. It was his constant companion and he knew every detail inside out and front to back. It was also the only thing he had left of her. The night she tore the demogorgon out of this world, she had somehow pulled the gateway closed behind her; Hopper and Joyce had barely brought Will back through the rift in the lab when it sealed up solid behind them.

He lay there in the silence of the night, slowing his breathing and letting his pulse return to normal. Finally, knowing sleep wouldn't be back to offer him any further escape, he rolled over and looked at the clock on his bedside, squinting his eyes against the glow of the bright-green numbers. 4:36 AM. The dream had come later than usual. With a resigned sigh, he brought both hands to his face and wiped the rest of sleep from his eyes and sat up, swinging his legs over the side of the bed. As he sat there, he tried to push the dream into the back of his mind, safely tucked away so he could go about his day. For some reason, today, the dream stubbornly refused to go back on its shelf.

He looked over at his desk in the corner of the room and knew what he needed to do. Sliding his feet in the slippers waiting right where he had left them the night before, Mike walked over and sat down, switching on the desk lamp and squinting against the harsh light, allowing his eyes to adjust. Looking down at the desk calendar, he read today's date and the number hand-written below and his stomach gave an involuntary twist of guilt. Reaching across the desk, he switched on the radio base-station and double checked it was set to channel 11. He knew, of course, that it would be; he hadn't switched it off that channel since he bought it surplus years ago when the local quarry went out of business. The unit was old, but had a much stronger signal than his old SuperComm. He took a deep breath, and started in.

"Good Morning El. It's me. Today is day 7397. I had the dream again and now I can't get back to sleep."

He paused, gathering his thoughts. Somewhere in his mind, a dark, hopeless voice always told him the calls were pointless. On the astronomically low chance she was even still out there, the odds were even lower that she was reaching out to listen to him at this very moment. He had spent years trying to shut the voice up, usually drinking it into silent submission, though he and the booze had come to something of an understanding in more recent years. Still, he did his best to force the voice to be quiet, especially when he was reaching out to her.

"I...I miss you El. I really miss you. And I'm sorry I haven't been able to get to you. Wi...Our friend...keeps telling me I can't keep blaming myself for every setback, but I can't help it. I know I'm failing you, leaving you stranded there. Wherever you are, I hope you're safe. Please hold on. I know I'm getting close, I have to be. Please, just hold on."

He released the switch on the microphone, before pressing it down again and adding, "I love you El. Please hold on."

Mike hung the microphone back on its hook, turned the volume all the way up, the squelch all the way down, and let his bedroom fill with the garbled hum of static. It was a routine - like everything else in his life - listening closely to the static, desperate to pick out the slightest sign that she might be there trying to contact him. A few times over the years, he had been certain he heard his own name drift in through the static, but Will had dissuaded him of that; the human brain loves to build patterns out of randomness, especially when it is desperate to find something.

When he couldn't stand the crackling silence, he switched off the radio and made his way down to the kitchen to start a pot of coffee. Despite feeling like crawling right back in bed and shutting the world off, it was Friday and that meant he had a class to teach at 9:00. In a pinch, he could have his TA lead the class; after all, he thought, today's plans are just a review for the midterm exam on Monday. Still, Mike knew he had enough mysterious absences that the department was keeping a closer eye on him. Keeping the university happy was vital to continuing his search.

Pouring a tall mug of coffee and stirring in a generous heap of powdered creamer, Mike walked out his back door and across the lawn to his garden-shed-turned-workshop. As he flipped on the light and closed the door behind him, he was greeted by the usual clicks and hums of his rigs testing out their appointed addresses. Spread out across his workbench were the innards of a pressurized test-rig that had met an untimely end yesterday when a massive influx of heat fried the primary sensors in seconds. Thankfully, the fail-safes had kicked in and severed the connection before anything catastrophic occurred.

He looked over at the printer and was pleased to see three pages waiting for him. It was always a miracle to find just one after a night of searching, so three managed to pull him out of the dismal mood of the morning. Settling into his chair, he took a sip of coffee and looked over the first page. It was pretty easy to dismiss, the whole image was underwater and a fish was even swimming passed the camera. He jotted a note to himself; that should have never made it past the atmospheric sensors. Number two was at least on dry land, but there was bright sunshine and no signs of human presence. He added the printout to the first to be cataloged later; it was still a significant find, just not what he was looking for.

Grabbing the third page, he raised the coffee to his lips for another sip. Scanning down the readouts and photos, he froze and almost dropped the mug. A match! He had found a match. It wasn't the first time, not even close, and he did his best to hold his excitement in check, but it was a match all the same. Looking down the printout, it was a very promising lead: breathable atmosphere, survivable temperature, very dark, just a hint of purple in the sky. What intrigued him most was the appearance of his neighbor's house in the photo. He knew the Upside-Down was supposed to look just like the real world, only decayed. Buildings, roads, cars; they were all present, just with an abandoned feel.

Mike swung the chair around to his computer and switched one of the camera rigs to manual mode and looked back at the printout, typing in the address printed in bold at the top: 62M-291K-042.0H. Behind him, the rig whirred to life and established a connection, before sending through the camera, ready to transmit live images back the monitor where Mike stared intently with anticipation. Seconds later, the first images began to appear and his excitement grew. There was his neighbors house, covered in thick black vines. He panned the camera around, taking in the full scene on the other end of the connection. He recognized his own house, equally decayed and abandoned. Then an image of the workshop itself, one wall collapsed in on itself. It was all Mike could do to stay in his seat. He had found a solid match. It was easily the most complete match he had found in the last two years and he knew he had to follow it immediately.

As he left the workshop, he put the rigs back in automatic mode, to continue identifying further candidates on the off-chance this one didn't pan out. Stopping in the kitchen, he grabbed the phone off the wall and called the TA for his class.

"Chris? It's Professor Wheeler. Can you handle leading the class this morning? It's just a review for the exam Monday. ... You can? ... Excellent, thanks. You are a life saver. The outline is sitting on my desk, I'll make sure Marge has it waiting for you at the front desk when you get to campus."

That done, he held down the switch on the phone for second, before releasing it and dialing Marge Collins, the department secretary. As expected, she wasn't in yet, so he left a quick voice-mail for her.

"Marge, it's Mike. I'm going to need to take a sick day today. I've already talked to Chris and he is going to cover my 9:00. On my desk is the outline for today's review, could you grab that and have it for him when he stops by? Thanks a million, I owe you."

Settling the phone back into its cradle, Mike raced upstairs to throw on some clothes. He came back down a few minutes later in khaki canvas pants, a gray t-shirt and hiking boots. He grabbed a well-worn brown leather jacket from the closet and pulled a set of keys from the hook next to the door into the garage. On a normal day, he would be driving his modest Honda Civic to campus, but today was a special day - a journey day - and he wasn't headed to campus. After hitting the button mounted on the wall to open the garage door, he slid behind the wheel of his black 1962 Willys CJ-5 Jeep.

As he drove through town, Mike fought to keep his foot from slamming too hard on the gas. The last thing he needed on a morning like this was a speeding ticket. Twenty minutes later, he pulled the Jeep into his university-funded lab in the Indianapolis Sunrise Industrial Park. It was unorthodox for a professor to keep an off-campus workspace, but he had provided the university just enough research results to get a special exemption, citing a need for a stronger electrical supply than the university could provide. Closing the large loading door behind him, Mike quickly gathered the supplies into the Jeep that he always kept at the ready. Walking over to the computer terminal, Mike dialed in the address where he was hopeful he was finally going to find Eleven. He watched in silence as the computer took control and called up the gateway he had requested. A shimmering red disk appeared just above the lab floor, surrounded by the lattice of wires and framing that had called it forth. Seconds later, the disk was struck with a burst of radio waves, finely tuned to his desired frequency, and the surface went translucent.

Trying his best to hold his excitement in check, Mike sent a mandatory email to Will. Of the original Party, Will was the only one still around and supporting Mike's search, and was helping in any way he could.

Will,

Checking out a lead.

62M-291K-042.0H. Out 2/13/04 08:30. Expect return by 2/15/04 18:00.

Wish me luck.

Mike

That sent, Mike grabbed his hat from a peg on the wall and started back to the Jeep, catching his own reflection in the windshield as he walked. Will was right, he did look like he was trying to be Indiana Jones. Still, university professor / adventurer was a pretty accurate description of Mike Wheeler, so maybe the look was justified.

Mike climbed behind the wheel and turned the ignition, the Jeep roaring to life. "Hang on, El. I'm coming to bring you home." he whispered to himself as he drove toward the portal. As the Jeep passed through the glowing red disk, it disappeared from the lab, materializing again in what Mike hoped was the Upside-Down where Eleven, the girl he loved, had been waiting for him for more than twenty years.


AN: This story has been a labor of love and an arch-nemesis of mine for almost a year now. I had a good idea of how it should all play out when I started releasing related one-shots in The Long Search, but starting to write Mike's story became something of a struggle in places. It has caused a lot of inner reflection, and been through more reworkings than I care to recall. On top of life, work and family, I have tried to push forward, while going back and tweaking what never quite felt right.

I've come to the point that I have enough written to be confident in the direction and outcome, and I either need to bite the bullet and send my words out into the world, or I need to put the story to rest. And so Dear Readers, I present Mike Wheeler's long search.