"My name is Peter Carter, I have an appointment with Dr. Weston." Carter said. He was parked at the security station outside the Hawkins National Laboratory. The guard went back inside the little building just outside the fence and picked up a clipboard. He flipped through the pages on the clipboard, made a short call on his radio, then came back outside to Carter.
"You're good to go. Dr. Weston will meet you at the door." Carter nodded as acknowledgment. The guard pressed a couple of buttons on a control panel inside the building, then the big gate opened to allow Carter in. He drove up the long drive and parked right in front of the entrance.
A man in a nice suit came out the door just as Carter pulled up to park. Carter took his time and slowly got out of the car. The man smiled politely and quickly walked up to Carter's car to greet him.
"Hello, Dr. Carter. My name is Dr. Weston, I'm in charge of the lab now. We are so sorry we couldn't have you here sooner. We were bogged down by..."
"Save it." snapped Carter. "I don't really care about the excuse, but why are you letting me in now? Why not a couple weeks ago?" Dr. Weston signed.
"Something changed." he said.
"What?" asked Carter curiously.
"Better to show you." Weston turned around and walked into the building. Carter followed close behind.
Carter was already familiar with the secret part of the lab. The bottom levels had been used for years to house Eleven and run experiments on her, but they were sealed off when the gate to the Upside Down opened. The gate had closed and sealed itself when Carter rescued Eleven from the Upside Down almost two years prior, but that part of the lab was still under quarantine. Carter and Weston both put on white hazmat suits and made sure they were well sealed before proceeding to the elevator to bring them downstairs.
When the doors opened, Carter noticed that some things were different. Last time he was there, there were a bunch of white particles floating in the air and everything just felt a little… different. Carter noticed that the air was clear this time, but there was still something that felt different about this place. There was a small tug telling him that something was not right. The two men proceeded further down the hallway towards the main room.
"We send someone down here just about every month to check that nothing has changed." Dr. Weston explained. "About three months ago, someone noticed a crack in the wall." They entered the room that used to house the gate to the Upside Down. "About two months ago… this started." Carter saw the wall in question.
"Calling it a 'crack' in the wall might be a little bit of an understatement." said Carter. The concrete wasn't simply cracked, there was a ten foot high gash running down the middle of the wall. But that wasn't all. The gash and a fair sized area around it was covered in a strange slime.
"We took samples of the slime and tested it, but we have no idea what it is." Dr. Weston said.
"What's it made of?" asked Carter as he slowly went in to get a closer look.
"We don't know?" Carter quickly turned around.
"How can you not know?"
"Every time we stick it in the spectrometer to analyze it, it burns out the spectrometer."
"Are you sure you're not just doing it wrong?" Carter asked while he examined the slime and crack with his flashlight.
"Every piece of equipment we've used on it has broken. We put a sample of it next to an electron microscope while we were preparing another machine and the microscope exploded a couple of seconds later."
"Interesting." Carter said very passively as he continued to examine the slime for himself. He decided that he couldn't find out much just by looking at it. "I'm going to need a couple of samples to run my own tests."
"What? Are you crazy?" Dr. Weston asked, seeming genuinely scared for Carter's safety.
"Maybe."
"I mean… how are you even going to get it out of here?"
"I was thinking I would put a bunch in a box and drive home." Carter said, looking at Dr. Weston as if he was the crazy one. "What else would I do?"
"Well… I wouldn't put any of that stuff near an internal combustion engine unless I was suicidal."
"Fine then… give me a box and I'll walk home." Dr. Weston still didn't seem completely OK with the proposition, but he reluctantly agreed.
Carter waited upstairs while a bunch of men in hazmat suits collected all the samples he asked for. He was by himself in a big room in the middle of the building and he was kind of bored.
"Dr. Carter?" he heard a voice behind him. Carter turned over to see a tall man with black hair and a lab coat walking over to him. Carter knew he recognized him from somewhere, but wasn't sure exactly where. The man shook Carter's hand. "I'm Bob Leasy. Sarah Leasy's dad." Carter smiled as he remembered he had seen this man at parent teacher conferences at the school. He was Sarah's father.
"I didn't know you worked here." Carter said. He was a little surprised to find out this way.
"Yeah, I do. I'm a project manager."
"Of what exactly."
"I'm not allowed to say." Carter was about to invoke his authority as a Coalition agent, but then he remembered that Sarah's dad didn't know that he was an agent and it was probably best if nobody knew about his cover as a teacher and his job with the agency. "What are you doing here?" Bob asked. Carter thought quickly to come up with a good excuse.
"I was talking with Dr. Weston about some of the work you guys do here and how it could pertain to my chemistry class. At least… the work you're allowed to tell me about." Bob laughed. Another scientist came up.
"Bob, we're ready for you." he said. Bob turned back to Carter.
"Sorry I've got to go so soon. It was nice seeing you." he said as he started to leave.
"Nice seeing you too." Carter said.
"Didn't you come with a car?" the security guard at the front gate asked as Carter walked up to the big fence carrying a box about the size of a watermelon.
"Yes. I'll be back for it in a little while." Carter said.
"OK." the very confused security guard said.
"Could you please open the gate?" The guard stopped staring at the box for a moment so he could get over to his control panel and open up the gate for Carter. He pressed the button, but it didn't work.
"That's strange." the guard said.
"What's strange?" asked Carter.
"The gate won't open." Carter looked suspiciously at the box he was holding. Both him and the guard were startled a moment later. The big box that housed the motor to open the gate exploded in a shower of sparks. Carter looked back at the box and wondered if he should actually be bringing this stuff home. The guard got out of the little building and grabbed onto the gate.
"Could you help me with this?" he asked. "I bet we could get it open together."
"Sure." Carter said. He very gently set the box down on the ground next to him and grabbed onto the gate. Both him and the guard pushed and they were quickly able to push it far enough that both Carter and the box could get through.
The walk home took longer than Carter though it would. Every time a car would come down the road next to him, he would quickly run as far away from the road as he could so nobody's engine would explode. He knew he looked a little strange, but he was fine with that. When he eventually did get home, he left the box in the backyard as far away from the house as he could for a while. He went down to the secret basement and moved everything electronic to one side of the room, then put the box on the other side.
The walk back to the lab to get his car was a lot faster. When he got to the entrance, he found it had been opened a little farther and some technicians were looking inside the box that exploded. The security guard recognized him and let him through.
"We still have no idea what happened." the guard said. "They're looking into it. Sorry for the inconvenience."
"It's really no problem." Carter said as he walked up towards his car. He returned about five minutes later and everyone that was there helped push the gate open just enough so he could fit the car through and drive home.
"I'm home." Carter called through the house when he was finally done with his day at the lab. "Tim… are you there."
"Yeah." he heard from upstairs. He walked up and found Tim in his room playing with some LEGOs.
"How's it going?" Carter asked.
"Pretty good." Tim said.
"Are you done with all your homework?"
"Yep."
"Good." Carter stood in the doorway for a moment longer. "I'm going to head downstairs. I have some more work to do." He started to leave.
"Dad." Tim called. Carter immediately stopped and turned back.
"Yeah?" he asked.
"I have a little bit of a headache." Tim confessed.
"I'll grab you some Tylenol." Carter said with a smile, glad to help out.
Lucy paced quickly around Sarah's room, trying to think. Sarah was laying down on the bed reading a magazine while Eleven sat on the chair behind Sarah's desk, watching Lucy.
"Oh my God. Oh my God." Lucy repeated to herself as she kept pacing. After they had seen Amy with Dustin the previous day, the girls had gone home, but none of them stopped thinking about it. Sarah called Lucy and Eleven over to her house so they could talk about what they were going to do. So far though, the meeting mostly consisted of Lucy walking around the room talking to herself.
"Dustin… and Amy!" Lucy said. It was a nice break to her continuous chorus of 'of my God'.
"You've said that four thousand times already." Sarah said, not looking away from her magazine to engage Lucy.
"Well… I still can't believe it." Lucy said, trying to give a reason for what she was doing. Sarah was tired of Lucy just doing the same thing for a while, so she sat up and put down her magazine.
"OK. We're starting an actual discussion." she announced. Lucy eventually stopped roaming around the room and they got started. "We all know what Lucy thinks. But I think it's El's turn to talk."
"Me?" asked Eleven "Why me?"
"Because you've known Dustin the longest and you're Amy's friend. What do you make of this?" Eleven thought for a moment. She, like the other girls, had spent the previous night shocked by what they had seen and hadn't really thought about what Amy and Dustin being together actually meant.
"I think that Dustin's a great guy and would be good with Amy." she said. Eleven herself was a little surprised by what came out as her honest opinion.
"I agree." Sarah said. "Lucy, do you want to say a little more?" Lucy took a deep breath in and actually thought about the situation for a moment.
"I guess..." she started before pausing to think some more. "...that I agree." She then took a breath out before quickly adding; "But it's going to take me some time to get used to it. I've known Amy for a while and this is just… so different."
"OK. We're all a little better now." Sarah said. Eleven was impressed with how she was able to lead the conversation and how mature she was while doing it. A little of Sarah's image of maturity went away with her next sentence though. "Now we need to figure out the most fun way to tell her that we know." Sarah got really excited.
"What?" asked Eleven, a little confused as to what she meant.
"Just imagine the look on her face when she realizes that we know that she's together with Dustin." Eleven took a moment to imagine Amy's reaction, she smiled when she got a good image in her mind.
It seemed like a long time before school started on Monday. The meeting with Carter after chemistry class went quickly. They asked him how his time at the lab went and he simply said that he 'still wasn't sure'. The group was a little confused as they went into lunch, but they didn't really want to think about it too much. During lunch, the one thing that Sarah, Lucy and Eleven noticed was how far Amy sat away from Dustin, but also how often they glanced at each other while eating.
Eleven had Geography class right after lunch, but then it was straight on to English class with the rest of the girls. Eleven got there right after Lucy, then Sarah showed up right after her. They took their seats and closely watched the door for Amy. It was only about a minute and a half until Amy came into the room.
"Hi, Amy." all three of the other girls said at the same time while failing to keep their faces free of huge smiles.
"Hi, guys." Amy said. She was creeped out. "What's up."
"Not much." Sarah said. "What did you do this weekend?" Amy very quickly said;
"Homework."
"The whole weekend?" asked Lucy. Amy thought for a moment.
"Yes." she eventually said, realizing that she was caught in a lie she couldn't defend for too much longer. She quickly leaned over to get some things out of her backpack as Sarah started to talk again;
"So… last Friday… you weren't… like… sitting on your bed kissing Dustin? Were you?" Amy fell out of her chair and on top of her backpack. The girls helped her back up and once the rest of class made sure she was OK, Amy leaned in close to the other girls and whispered;
"How do you guys know that?"
"With everything happening around here, we were a little worried about you." explained Eleven. "We followed you home after school on Friday to make sure you were OK." Amy was stunned for a moment.
"So..." Amy started after getting over the first wave of shock. "...what do you guys think?"
"We're happy for you." Lucy said. "All of us."
"Really?" Amy asked, a little bit surprised.
"Yes." said Sarah. "Dustin's great. You should be happy with him." Amy opened her mouth to talk, but the bell rang and Miss Maple started talking immediately, so she couldn't say anything. Instead, she just sat up in her chair and smiled.
Eleven went home right after school ended. She opened the door to see Joyce on the phone.
"That's great. I'll talk to you soon." Joyce said to the person on the other end of the line. She went to hang up the phone, but when she saw Eleven, she quickly raised it to her face again and yelled; "Wait! El's here and..." She sighed and hung up the phone. "He had already hung up." she told Eleven.
"Who did?" Eleven asked as she set her backpack down and went into the kitchen to get a snack. Joyce followed her and sat down at the kitchen table.
"Jonathan." she said with a smile.
"Really?" Eleven was glad that Jonathan called as much as he did, despite how expensive it was. "What did he have to say?"
"He said that classes are going good, he's having a great time, and that his roommate is great."
"Glad to hear it. Anything else?" Eleven asked as she looked through the cabinet to find the peanut butter.
"He said that his roommate's family is going to be out of the country over Thanksgiving and asked if he could invite him over here." Eleven found the peanut butter and took it over to the table.
"What did you say?"
"I told him yes, of course."
"So we get to meet..." Eleven struggled to remember Jonathan's roommate's name. He had told her a couple of times, but she had always forgotten. "...Nathan?" she said, hoping she was right.
"Nicholas." Joyce said. "But apparently he goes by Nick."
Thanksgiving was on a Thursday, like every year, so the students got Wednesday, Thursday and Friday off of school. Jonathan called another time about a week later and said that Nick was really happy that they invited him and he was certainly coming. He and Jonathan made plans to drive to Hawkins on Wednesday since their classes ended on Tuesday as well. Eleven had experienced Thanksgiving once the previous year, but she wanted to have guests over to see what that was like. There were two beds in Will's room, so they decided that Jonathan and Nick would sleep there a
There was a thunder storm Tuesday night and into Wednesday morning. Eleven was woken up in the middle of the night.
"El… get up." Will said. She looked over at her clock. The face was illuminated so she could see it in the dark. 2:12 AM. Eleven moved closer to her nightstand so she was able to turn on her light. When she did turn it on, she was able to see Will's very scared face. His breathing was ragged, there was a big rip down the side of his shirt and he looked terrified.
"Will, what's wrong?" she asked. She was now completely awake and ready to help Will.
"It happened again. It's worse than last time." Will said.
"What happened?" asked Eleven.
"My room." Will started walking to his room. Eleven got out of bed. As soon as her feet hit the ground, there was a big loud thunderclap. Eleven was startled a little bit, but mostly because she was on edge because of whatever Will was talking about. When she got into Will's room, Eleven's eyes widened.
"Oh." she said. That was the only thing she could say because of the shock. Every drawer of Will's dresser was on the other end of the room and the dresser itself was toppled over on the floor. The curtains were halfway down and there were clothes everywhere. There was a big rip in the middle of Jonathan's mattress as well as a hole in the wall. "We can get this cleaned up by morning." Eleven said, trying to encourage Will a little.
"I guess so." Will said. He was obviously still rattled by everything.
They started by putting all the drawers back in the dresser and situating it in front of the hole in the wall. They were about halfway through cleaning when Eleven had a thought.
"The equipment that Carter gave us! Is it still plugged in and recording?" she asked.
"Let me check." Will said. He had hidden the machines in a corner of the closet by an outlet. "They're all good as far as I can tell." he announced after examining them for a moment.
"Good. We should call Carter and let him know that… something… happened."
"Yeah. I guess so." Will seemed a little scared to tell someone other than his sister about the incident.
"What did happen?" Eleven asked.
"What do you mean?"
"Like… do you remember how all this happened?" she asked, indicating all around the room. Will just sat silent for a moment.
"Sort of." he said. "Like… I remember doing this… but I don't really think it was me doing it. Kind of like last time. I was able to control it a little bit, like… I was able to stop it from getting worse than it was, but I felt like I was… less in charge than I was the last time." He looked uncomfortably around the room for a moment. "What are we going to do with the mattress?" he asked. Jonathan's bed was still in the room with Will's, but it hadn't been used since Jonathan left for college. They needed to think of something because Jonathan would be back the next day and he would ask questions if he discovered a giant rip in his mattress.
"We can just flip it over and replace the sheets." Eleven said. "It's not perfect, but hopefully it'll be OK until Jonathan leaves."
"Yeah, I guess so." Will said again.
The next morning was a little tense at the Byers' home. Joyce woke up early and joyfully started making breakfast for everyone. She had been practicing a lot and by this point she was able to make edible omelets almost every time and she was working on making good, un-burnt pancakes. Will and Eleven slept in later than usual, having had a rough night. Eleven was the first to get up.
"What's that smell?" asked Eleven when she got out of her room and went into the kitchen.
"Pancakes." Joyce announced while pouring some batter into the pan.
"They smell… interesting." said Eleven after taking some time to decide on the right adjective for the smell.
"Is that good?" Joyce asked.
"It's better than the smell from the ones you made a week ago." Joyce's attempt at pancakes the previous week almost ended up in a call to the fire department. "When are Jonathan and Nick getting in?" she asked, trying to change the subject so she wouldn't actually have to lie about Joyce's cooking to spare her feelings.
"Jonathan told me about a week ago that they were planning on leaving early in the morning, they're probably already on the way. But it's a long drive so they won't be here until this afternoon."
"I'm excited to see Jonathan again." Jonathan called pretty regularly, but none of the family had actually seen him since they had dropped him off at NYU.
"Where's Will?" Joyce asked. "He should get some breakfast while it's still hot."
"He's probably still asleep." Eleven said quickly. "The storm woke him up last night so he didn't sleep too well."
"Oh. OK." Joyce continued to cook. "How do you know that?"
"What?"
"How do you know that the storm woke him up? We haven't seen him this morning."
"Uh… The storm woke me up too. I went to the bathroom when it did and I saw Will coming out of the bathroom just as I got there." Eleven lied.
A/N: School is back in session and taking up a lot of my time (as it should). From now on there will probably be at least a one day gap in between chapters (unless I feel especially inclined to write on the weekends). Please review as always, I cannot stress how much I appreciate it when you do. Thanks for reading!
