Mike clearly missed the coffee meeting. After running full speed to 34th Street station, hopping the turnstile, not finding her, running back to 42nd Street station, hopping the turnstile again, not finding her, and almost getting arrested, he was over an hour late. His pager had gone off three times with what he could only imagine was the coffee shop's telephone number.
It didn't matter at all.
Tears and panic stung his body as he stood aimlessly on the corner at 42nd Street and 9th Ave. She had been so close. Literally feet from him. Yet, just like that, she was gone again without a trace.
Why hadn't he dashed onto the train car? Why hadn't he yelled her name right away? Why had he just stood there like a complete idiot and let El Hopper slide right back out of his life?
Mike growled in frustration. "If you can hear me, I'm here!" he cried desperately into the air.
A woman and her small child gave him a large berth as they walked past and eyed him cautiously.
It began to rain.
"Perfect," he muttered to himself.
Mike walked in dejected shock the enire fifteen blocks back to his home. The rain, at first a sprinkle, became a frigid winter storm as the blocks progressed. By the time he returned to his loft he was drenched and shivering from head to toe. He could hardly tell, though, through his daze. He peeled off each layer of his soaked clothing as he tried in vain to rationalize what had just happened. His adrenalin began to dissipate and, in its place, an unbearably heavy sadness overtook his body.
Mike's eyes fell numbly on his black backpack in the corner of this room as he dried off with a dirty towel from the floor. It called to him, but he simply couldn't yet. It would have to wait.
At a complete loss for what to do, Mike wrapped himself in the towel and crawled into his bed. He simply laid there, numb and overwhelmed. Her face drifted through his mind with relentless consistency for hours on end. The fresh snapshot of her face, the first he had seen in almost seven years, with soft blonde hair and wide almond eyes, melded with this memory in a dizzying hue.
…the dreams…
Had he sensed her? Had she been sending him messages? She hadn't been able to communicate via dreams in the past, but who knew how much stronger her powers had become in the intervening years. His brain began to spin as he thought it over.
Had he known?
The sensation hit him like a truck, and it made the entire experience vividly real. He had to have known, somehow, somewhere in the depths of his mind, that she was near.
And slowly, for the first time since he had seen her face staring wide eyed from the train car mouthing his name, a smile crept to his lips. The rushing beat of his heart took on a different cadence. One he hadn't felt in so very long. He breathed into it deeply like fresh air.
El Hopper was alive. And she was here.
And he was going to find her.
Mike bolted up from his bed in the now pitch dark room. The daylight hours had long passed, sacrificed to his fitful rest. Despite the late hour, he put on fresh clothes and combed his hair with a real comb for the first time in days. He returned to his bedroom and shook his head in disbelief as he walked straight to the old Supercomm, propped up on his makeshift bedside table.
He chuckled darkly as he fidgeted with the knobs of the outdated machine.
He took a ragged deep breath and steadied himself. His fingers trembled as he touched the button.
Click
"El? If you can hear me… It's Mike. Mike…Wheeler? I can't - I can't believe I'm on this thing but if there's any chance you can hear me, please find me. I'm close. I'm… really really close. I don't know if its safe to say more but please find me. Please. This is -This is Day 1."
Mike clicked his finger off of the button and sat on his bed, waiting. For what, he wasn't sure. It wasn't like she was going to simply respond.
The moments ticked away as he blankly stared at the wall and helplessness clouded over him once again. Bile rose into this throat as it robbed him of his momentary hope. The warehouse was suddenly a doppelganger his parent's basement. He could almost smell the shag carpet and his mom cooking upstairs. His hands suddenly felt smaller, weaker, and more like a boy's. His fingers dug painfully into the well worn blanket on his bed. He squinted his eyes to stop a tear.
BEEP BEEP
Mike jumped in surprise, pulled out of his reverie. He rummaged through the pocket of his jeans to pull out his beeper.
"Shiiiiiit," he groaned as Marissa's number tugged across the dull green screen.
Information on Christmas…
El Hopper was wandering the streets of New York like a needle in a haystack and he was supposed to leave town?
He didn't have time to think about that now.
Mike haphazardly tossed the beeper onto his bed and stalked over to his computer. He resolutely sat down, stretched his arms, and stared with determination at the black screen.
He had to try something. Anything. And this was all that he had.
He booted up his computer and got to work.
It had been hard at first, gaining backend access to the servers of the Department of Energy. But, then again, he had started trying when he was 18, without any formal training. MIT had given him an incredible education on doing just what he needed to do, and thus it had become easier over time. And this place, this incredible space he was so lucky to live in, had opened the gates wide open. He could safely traverse the government servers with little to no worry of retaliation.
It allowed him all of the space and time he needed to find her. Well, not her, exactly. Every file they had on her. Every mention of the program. Every single bit of information he could pull out of any server he could crack. Anything he could quarantine and wipe free.
Slowly, line by line, Mike had erased 011 from the government's memory.
It was the only thing he could do to keep her safe.
He had successfully hacked and purged 156 files on her over the last five years, 85 of them classified. 95 came from the Department of Energy and focused on her existence prior to her escape. 61 were housed in the NSA, CIA and FBI servers. Most of those files chronicled attempts to discern out her whereabouts post-escape. Within those were a series of four classified reports from November 1991. They detailed a botched attempt to capture her and 008 in Philadelphia. From what Mike was able to tell, it had been a glorious disaster in El's favor. And it had been proof, concrete undeniable proof, that she was alive and still on the run.
He had also found 3 reports on himself and his family. 2 each on Lucas, Dustin and Steve. 15 on Will and the Byers family. 22 on Hopper. Step by step, he had painstakingly purged each of them from the databases. Between the purge and his regular surveillance to ensure that there were no taps on anyone's phones, he effectively ensured a modicum of safety for everyone who had been involved.
It wasn't fool proof, he knew that. But, it was something.
However, there wasn't much time left. The government bureaus were starting to catch up on the hilariously outdated security protocols of their server systems. As a result, it was becoming harder and more dangerous to crack into their databases. However, he felt more and more confident that he was almost done. He had not found a new document on her in nine months.
Mike booted up his program and pointed it at the Department of Energy as he had so many times. It had always been the easiest to hack, and he could really use a quick win right now. He went through the old channels, traveling through them with a familiarity akin to the halls of his childhood home.
He had cleaned this server out at least ten times over in the last six years, but every once in awhile a new file appeared with information and documentation on 011. It was clear that someone on the inside was trying to replicate the files that he continually purged. It left him resolutely happy to find that each time the documentation was thinner and less detailed. They were losing their knowledge of her piece by piece through his digital sieve.
Mike's eyes narrowed in surprise as a new document arose.
12/18/93 8:54AM
"Today?" Mike breathed as he worked to crack into the file. The screen filled with rigid type:
***CLASSIFIED***
011 and 008 confirmed perpetrators of 017 kidnapping on 12/12/93 from NYC Alternative Study Lab. 281 11th Avenue. Alert CIA, FBI, NSA, NYPD, NYFD of female, 23, Caucasian; female, 27, Indian; female 10, Caucasian. Corresponding tattoos to listed numbers. Extremely armed and dangerous. Lethal action permitted. Report to non-classifieds as domestic kidnapping.
"Holy shit." Mike gasped. "Holy shit."
Dread laced through every inch of Mike's body as fresh panic rose in his chest. Hands shaking violently, he scraped the document onto his personal hard drive and embarked on the task of purging it from the government server as quickly as he could.
CIA, FBI, NSA, NYPD, NYFD.
Each one would have similar documentation…
Mike had a long night ahead of him.
"Don't do it. Don't do it. Don't find him. Don't track him. It's not safe. Oh My God he might be 100 feet away. Don't track him. Don't do it. Remember last time. Don't. "
El sat freezing on the ledge of the rooftop in the first traces of dawn. Music blared in her ears so loudly that it hurt. Yet it wasn't working to distract her in the way she desperately needed. Her fingers twitched dangerously against the FM dial, ready to search for an empty channel against every single one of her instincts.
She hadn't slept a wink.
Her fingers twitched again, and the channel grew with static before she abruptly stopped herself, turning it back to the channel as Smashing Pumpkins 'Today' began to play. She tried to zone into the song, one of her current favorites.
…The lyrics were… not helping.
It couldn't have been him, she told herself resolutely for the hundredth time. It was merely a trick of the light through the foggy window of a moving train. That, or something much more sinister and much more necessary to avoid.
However, the stirring in her gut screamed to her that she was lying to herself.
Memories had assaulted her all through the night as she'd laid on her dilapidated mattress and tried to chase a sleep that never came. With the intensity of a tidal wave, everything she had worked so hard to push down over the last many years rushed back through every corner of her mind and body. The way his hands felt in her hair. The way his eyes lit up when she said his name. The splay of freckles across his cheeks that she never tired of tracing. The time they had escaped the hall monitors in 9th grade, laughing the entire way, after they'd been caught playing hooky in the broom closet. His kindness. His relentless caring. Her first friend. Her only love. The way every part of her screamed when she had walked away from him, for everyone's safety. Her very presence toxic to their lives. The Void and the deception and everything she had lost because she fell for it like a stupid love sick idiot.
Jane rocked back and forth as it washed over her yet again. She pulled her coat more tightly around her as she stared out over the city. She stuffed her fingers deeper into her pockets in search of warmth that was not there.
"What are you doing up here? It's five in the morning," Kali called in a hushed whisper as her face appeared, from behind the door to the rooftop.
"No, just… enjoying the view. Can't sleep." Jane replied as casually as she could.
Kali eyed her suspiciously. "Jane, you're turning blue…"
"Never bothered me before. Go back to sleep, Kali. I'll be fine." Jane brushed her off.
Kali tossed her hands up in the air with a minor frustration and huffed, "Okay, but I need you to be in full form if we're going to get to work today."
"I understand," Jane said firmly.
Jane watched Kali return through the roof door. Kali was a good sister and partner in crime. Intelligent. Motivated. Caring. Someone she trusted inexplicably with her safety.
Things had gotten much better between them once Jane had convinced her to set her sites directly on destroying Papa and The Project, instead of picking off the errant henchmen one by one. But in the two years since the deception, in the years since they had lost their crew in such a horrifying way, Kali had become harder, gruffer, and increasingly resentful. Jane didn't blame her. She had made a stupid mistake, bait she regretted taking every day for the past two years.
But what was she to do when she believed they had him?
She cursed under her breath as the familiar knife turned yet again in her chest once again.
It only made her present decision more painstaking.
Tears stung her eyes as a fresh wave of longing crashed over her. Yet again, like a movie playing in her mind, she saw his beautiful gobsmacked face as the train away from him, his deep brown eyes wide. 'El' shaped on his lips.
She hadn't had to fight back the urge to track him for years. It had been an hourly compulsion in the beginning, and each time she'd stopped herself for fear they could infiltrate her whenever she was in the Void. She had shut down her access to the Void like a steel wall inside of her mind in an attempt to keep herself safe when she left. Yet, in all of that, she had had to make one excruciating sacrifice. She could not see Mike.
It had taken about three years for Jane and Kali to deduce that her own tracking did not put them in harm's way… but by then it was too scary. She couldn't bring herself to find him. For fear of how he might have changed. …for fear that he might have moved on.
So, in seven years, she had only tracked him once.
Three days after their escape from the Philadelphia lab. Three days after the biggest mistake of her life. She just had to make sure he was truly safe.
And he had been.
The three minutes of seeing him in the winter of 1991 were so painful that she couldn't fully breathe for days afterward. He had been simply sitting at a desk staring at a huge computer, his eyes strained yet drawn to the screen. He had looked both like a different person and the very same boy she had left behind. Time had both changed him and left him exactly the same. She had missed every step that had changed him so.
He has still been so beautiful...
A heady gust of wind blew Jane's hood off and brought her back to the first light of dawn. Her fingers had twitched against the dial, without her awareness.
Static played in her ears.
She felt so nervous she could puke.
She was going to regret this…
…So she had to do it fast before she could think better and stop herself.
El took a deep breath, and closed her eyes.
He appeared in an instant.
Mike Wheeler sat huddled up on the wooden slats of a dock, draped in a black puffy coat. He cradled a paper cup of coffee in his hands. Anxiety and exhaustion were written into the lines of his brow. Jane crossed to him on shaky legs and studied him in detail. Her lip trembled as her heartbeat broke through her with a raging intensity that she could not control. He was broader. Some of his freckles had faded. A shadow of black stubble played across his jawline. His eyes looked tired, worn. Yet, they still carried the same lively spark.
He was a man now, she thought, with a sad smile.
But he was… Mike.
Jane choked on tears.
"Where are you?" Mike whispered to nothing.
Jane's eyes popped open to the dark grey of the New York City dawn. Every part of her body shaking, but no longer from the cold. Tears rushed down her face and clouded her vision as her eyes fell to a specific dock toward the south below her. She wiped them away as she squinted in disbelief. A lone figure sat, just barely visible, in the first light of dawn.
"How?" she breathed in shock.
She was on her feet before she could think.
It was a terrible idea, given the circumstances. A reckless, insane, absolutely suicidal idea. The timing was absolute shit.
She couldn't go.
She had to go.
Mike sat at the edge of the water on the cold wooden slats of a random dock. He blew on an overly hot and watered down corner store cup of coffee as he watched the sky wake up from a dark night. Waves of exhaustion played over his anxiety riddled mind. His eyes, his hands, his brain and his body felt utterly depleted.
"Where are you?" he whispered to nothing.
He had purged twenty-five documents from six servers in one night. He had had to crack into two servers he had never cracked before in the process. NYPD had been surprisingly difficult. He would have been impressed with his skill but for the fact that he knew it wasn't enough. Given the amount of documentation he had traced from a single day he was certain the information had already spread too deeply. It was surely now in the hands of every government security force with jurisdiction to operate within New York City. He might have slowed down their tracking, but there was no way he had stopped it entirely.
There was more to do, and someone who needed to know, but it was too early to call and he was too exhausted and fried to have any conversations.
So instead, he had come to watch the boats in a vain attempt to clear his mind. Maybe, he thought, if he got out of the loft he would wind down enough to sleep. Though, he regarded wryly, the coffee had probably been a bad ingredient if that had been his goal.
He focused on his breath and closed his eyes as exhaustion slowly won out over every other feeling. It was time to go back. His exhale was heavy as he rolled his shoulders in order to wake up his cold body enough to walk. He heaved forward clumsily to rise and stumbled on locked legs. "Shit!" he cursed as his hand lost his grip on his coffee cup. He scrambled back quickly to avoid the burning liquid.
Yet, the burning liquid did not leave the cup, and the cup did not leave the air. Rather, it suspended inches from his leg, perfectly frozen in a stunning mid spill.
Mike blinked in disbelief.
His stomach flipped as he slowly turned toward the dock entrance.
"El."