Chapter 22

April 1987

Tanya didn't trust his newfound willingness to cooperate. He didn't blame her. She couldn't know about the thing that seemed to have burrowed into his brain. It was the strangest thing he'd ever experienced, being a spectator in his own body. Sometimes he'd watch his hands, moving without his consent, and think that he must have gone mad. He had no other explanation.

But how could he be mad? Sometimes, whatever it was would set him at a task and recede into the background, because either it didn't understand physics or it wasn't interested. He could sense it, like an invisible watcher over his shoulder, but at least he could feel his hands as he moved, the aching in his head as he squinted at the page in the dim light. His mind was intact enough to do the work he needed to. He was making progress. It was so easy – he'd done it so many times before. The parts were starting to arrive, and he'd built a skeleton of the machine. He'd given them no trouble. But he still felt Tanya's eyes on him. She was smarter than his own brother, or perhaps just more attuned to those small changes in people that others could brush off. The thing had gotten into its mind to kill her, but he persuaded it to hold back. A dead agent would be worse than a suspicious one.

He nearly gave away the game, though, when the fuel arrived. He went to pick up a container, and the creature recoiled. It didn't just hold him back – it felt like it was clawing at his brain, an animal mad with fear. He stopped and looked at Mikhail, who fortunately noticed nothing. "Do you have any prisoners you could put to work bringing this to lab? I need to keep preparing the machine."

Mikahil grunted, but he found some prisoners, who the thing persuaded the agents to let stay as assistants. They looked terrified. Alexei pitied them, but the thing had made it clear that he was going nowhere near the radioactive materials. He filed that information away in his mind. It might prove useful at some point.

April 17, 1987

Buffalo, New York

Joyce had done a fair job keeping up appearances for the kids. She hadn't lied to them when Alexei had disappeared – it was possible that they were facing an entirely new danger, and they needed to know that. She'd thought about relocating them again, but Jonathan and Will had pushed back. No more running. She'd relented. Nothing more had happened, and things seemed almost normal, with Mike and Nancy visiting for their spring break.

Of course, she'd hurt more than the children. She hadn't been entirely sure of her feelings for Alexei – a close friend, certainly, though she wasn't yet prepared for anything more – but she knew he'd cared about her, deeply. Whether it was love or not, she didn't know, but one thing was inescapable: three men had gotten close to her since her marriage to Lonny had ended, and all had died violently. If it hadn't been for the kids, she might have joined a convent. But there was no risk of her putting any other boyfriends in danger. She had too many ghosts in her head. Bob was there every time she sat alone on the couch, trying to distract herself with TV; she thought of Hopper and what might have been whenever she saw couples walking together; when she picked up the paper, she imagined Alexei ruffling her hair and asking what the news said today, and the look of wonder in his eyes at just how many things Americans were allowed to read about.

She looked at her bed and sighed. She'd thought about trying to read, to distract herself until she fell asleep, but she knew it was pointless. Some nights, she needed to let her feelings out, and this was going to be one of them. She opened the bedroom window, laid down and turned out the lights. She'd gotten very good at crying quietly, and the kids would be too distracted with their own relationships to worry about her that night.

She must have fallen asleep, because she woke suddenly. Someone was in her room. "Will? El?" she whispered. Someone clapped a hand over her mouth.

"Listen carefully," a woman said. "We don't want to hurt you, or the kids. We have an agent at each bedroom door. If you cooperate, everything will be well. If not, I give the signal and they put a bullet through each little head on its little bed. Nod if you understand." Joyce nodded. "Good. We're going to take a little trip."

The woman pushed something cold into Joyce's neck. A gun. They walked downstairs and to a van waiting in the back alley. Other men and women, dressed all in black, led each child out and piled them into the van. Then they hopped in themselves, guns still trained on their hostages.

"What is going on here?" Joyce demanded. "You can't just kidnap people in the middle of the night-"

"Bitch," one of the men said, and hit her across the mouth.

An auburn-haired woman – maybe the one in her room – said something to the man, and he sat down. "Here's what's happening, Joyce Byers. We have a job for your little boyfriend, but we need an insurance policy to make sure he does it. That's you. If he obeys and finishes the job, you go home with a story no one will believe. If he doesn't – well, you better hope he does. Now sit back and keep quiet. We've got a long trip ahead."