Mike had finally fallen asleep on Will's couch with baby Allie also asleep on his chest. El knew he hadn't gotten more than a few hours of sleep each night since the fire, so she was careful not to wake either of them as she slipped quietly off the couch and padded into Will's kitchen where he sat at the table drawing. The house was dark and quiet. Lucas and Dustin had been gone for hours on their scouting trip to Hawkins, so the rest of them had settled down to wait. El was glad that sheer exhaustion had overcome Mike's nervous energy, because she knew he was wearing himself down to the bone, worrying about their little girl.
She wished she could say something to make him feel better, but she honestly wasn't a fan of saying words that sounded helpful but weren't true. El had lost track of the number of times she'd heard people say something like "I promise, it will be Ok," when, in fact, the person speaking had no possible way of knowing what would happen in the future, and no ability to ensure whatever happened would be good. El wondered why people enjoyed being lied to so much. If Dustin or Will had told her, "Don't worry, Allie will stop having nightmares tomorrow and you'll never need to worry about another fire," she wouldn't have been very reassured. Thankfully, they hadn't tried to put her mind at ease by telling her things they couldn't possibly know for certain. In the same way, she didn't want to tell Mike that everything would turn out alright. She very much hoped everything would turn out alright. She very much hoped the agents would stop searching for her baby and that Allie would learn to control her own abilities. But she had no way to know if or when those things would ever happen, so she wasn't going to tell Mike something that wasn't true. She did hate to see the worry eating him up inside, though.
El slid into a chair across from Will at the table and tucked her knees up to her chest. As long as she kept her senses open, she felt confident that she'd know if Allie was having a nightmare in time to do something about it.
"How is Allie?" Will asked, looking up from his drawings.
"Asleep," El told him.
"She's so big," Will said, almost as proud as if she were his own. "I haven't seen her since she was about..." he held up to hands to indicate how small she'd once been. "It feels like it's been forever. I kinda wondered why you guys didn't visit more often, but now I guess you were dealing with the whole... fire thing. That must have been scary, the first time you ever saw her create fire."
El nodded, her eyes going out of focus as she thought back to those early days, right after bringing Allie home from the hospital for the first time.
"I can't imagine," Will continued. "I'd have been scared out of my mind. I mean, I'm just thinking of how my mom would be if she knew something bad might happen to me in my sleep. Did you know? That Allie would have... powers? You know, before you saw them for the first time?"
El considered the question for a long moment before answering. "Sort of," she said.
She looked down at his drawing, which had an Elvish princess on one side holding a drawn bow and arrow. On the other side stood something that was truly monstrous. It had hooves and horns and tentacles and fangs and way more eyes than it should have. El admired the artwork, even if the subject matter was a bit disturbing. She's always liked Will's drawings, and they'd only gotten better since they were children. He'd even done a big painting of her and Mike when they'd gotten married. That one had been on their wall and had burned up along with everything else in their house.
"This one's going in the new Monster Manual," Will said proudly. "It took a few drafts to get it looking how I wanted, but I'm happy with it now."
She knew he earned a living as an artist for the company that published Dungeons and Dragons. Their friends had been overjoyed when he'd gotten the job. He had a small stack of drawings on the table next to him, and El started shifting through the stack. She saw at least a dozen dragons of every size and color. She saw a creature which she was proud of herself to be able to identify as a Balrog from the Lord of the Rings books. She stopped short when she reached the next drawing in the stack.
The creature that stared back at her had rubbery gray skin, long and slender arms with wicked claws on its hands, and a featureless face containing a mouth that split wide into tooth-covered petals. She felt an involuntary shiver run up her spine.
"Oh... sorry," Will said quietly, when he realized that she was staring. "If that one bothers you, I can-"
"It's alright," she told him, still gazing at the monster that had nearly killed all of them when they were just kids. Her eyes continued to be drawn back to that jagged mouth. Will had captured the details so expertly, it was a little frightening. She couldn't imagine spending hours with a pencil in her hand creating that image right down to the veins in its skin and the drops of saliva on its fangs.
The demogorgon had given her nightmares of her own, though they'd completely faded away after a few months. Being surrounded by loving friends for the first time in her life had helped with that. It seemed that Will still thought about the monster, though. She felt that she had no right to be bothered by his drawing, since he'd suffered through the most out of any of them. There had even been a brief moment where she'd been afraid that the monster had indeed killed him, like it had that poor girl named Barb.
"It actually helps," Will told her. "To draw it. Then it's not in my head anymore."
She put the drawing down and looked at him. "Do you think about it a lot?"
"Sure," he told her. "But it's not so bad anymore. It's just a part of who I am now. Like if I'd survived cancer when I was little, or something."
El nodded thoughtfully.
"It helped me get over a lot of things I was afraid of, too," Will said. "Like now, I can ask my boss for a raise whenever I want. What's the worst that can happen? He tells me no? Whatever happens, I've been thoughth worse."
El laughed. It wasn't exactly funny, but it was a good way to look at things.
"I'm glad you guys came here to hide from the agents," he said. "I get a chance you help you, after all the times you've helped me." He gave a little playful grin. "It's about time. I thought you two would never get into trouble and need help." His gaze drifted away into empty space as he thought. "I'm sorry for how this sounds, but this whole thing kind of brought all of us back together again."
El nodded, following his line of thought.
"I mean, we haven't all five been together very often since we started moving away for college," he continued. "I miss everybody. I don't mind saying it. And then Mike... I think he's started relying on himself too much."
El raised an eyebrow in question.
"Well, you know El, we weren't the cool kids in school," Will told her, with a self conscious smile. "I mean, I know YOU thought Mike was cool, but the rest of the school sure didn't."
She did know that, in an abstract way. She'd understood the concept of bullying when she first met her friends. The idea of being abused by someone stronger was pretty familiar to her. But it had taken her a lot longer to understand the concept of popular kids in school, since she hadn't grown up in that kind of world. Since she loved her friends, she hadn't at first understood why most of the other kids at school didn't love them, too. She really hadn't understood why almost NO ONE at school loved them.
"And since we were on the outside," Will told her, "we had to depend on each other, cause we couldn't make it on our own. It really helped us, especially me. But, when Mike moved away to college on his own, he didn't have friends around him anymore."
El remembered those years. They'd been long and dark.
"And he just got used to solving problems by himself," Will went on. "And then he got a job and he got married and then he had a baby, all these normal issues that a normal person can solve in normal ways. But now he has a problem that's anything but normal, something that nobody can solve on their own, and he's not used to needing help from other people anymore, and it's really hitting him hard."
El craned her neck to look back at Mike and the baby, still asleep on the couch. "Yes," she said quietly.
"But we're all here for you," Will said. "Look at how quickly Lucas jumped into gear. He hasn't talked to Mike in a few years, but he'll do anything for you, I know he will. We all love Mike. And we all love you."
El blinked her eyes quickly to keep them from misting up.
Will reached across the table and picked up his drawing of the demogorgon and studied it thoughtfully. "You know, I don't even wish that this had never happened," he said. "If the demogorgon hadn't gotten loose, we never would have met you. You're our friend for the rest of your life, and I only had to run and hide from the demogorgon for a week. That sounds like a good trade to me."
El laughed again, but her voice caught in the middle.
"When this is all over, we need to spend more time together, all five of us. Promise?" He asked.
"Promise," El said. She cocked her head to the side as something caught her attention.
She looked back into the living room.
"They're back," she told Will, as she felt Lucas and Dustin approaching the door. She flicked her head to unlock it for them.
Mike sat up, rubbing his eyes, as they trooped in through the door.
"What did you find?" Will asked.
"Nothing good," Lucas answered.
"Hawkins is crawling with agents," Dustin said, dropping onto the couch next to Mike.
"I wouldn't say crawling," Lucas amended, "But it's definitely not safe for you guys to go back. You'd be spotted for sure. They're watching Dustin's house, Mike's parents' house, the school..."
"Who are they?" Mike asked, his voice rough from being asleep.
"I couldn't say," Lucas told him, moving over to perch on the couch's arm rest. "They have federal issue license plates, so they look legitimate, but they could be anyone. FBI, CIA, NSA... But they're definitely planning something big. There wouldn't be that many of them in one place, otherwise."
"Something big, like kidnapping baby Allie," Dustin said.
"You don't KNOW that," Lucas argued.
"Come on," Dustin said, throwing up his arms in frustration.
"What else would they want, Lucas?" Will asked in a much calmer voice than Dustin.
Lucas grimaced. "If I had to guess, if I really had to guess, I'd say someone a few steps up the ladder got scared when Allie..." he glanced at Mike apologetically, "burned down the house."
"Scared?" Mike asked.
"Wouldn't you be?" Lucas asked. "Remember, we know things that a lot of people don't. For most people, psychics don't exist. I brought up the subject a few times when I was in the Army, just to see what other people knew. I usually got laughed at. It's science fiction to them." He looked over at El. "I remember being scared the first time I saw you close a door, and this is way scarier." She nodded gently in response. "And Will, you know what Hopper's like. Tell me what you think he would have done ten years ago if he'd thought there was someone magically burning down buildings in Hawkins."
"He would have tracked them down and punched them in the face," Will offered.
"Exactly," Lucas said.
"Oooor," Dustin said,"they want to kidnap our little girl because they want to know how she uses her powers and they're going to lock her in a tiny room in a basement with no windows and-"
"You don't KNOW that," Lucas said again.
"It's a pretty good guess," Dustin argued.
"How can we know?" Mike interrupted.
"We could ask them," Will offered.
"Who's gonna walk up to the agents and ask to negotiate a truce?" Dustin asked.
"I'll do it," Lucas said.
"Vetoed," Dustin told him. "You're too valuable to the group. We can't afford to have you captured."
"Our party's a democracy, you don't get a veto," Lucas said to Dustin.
"In times of emergency, I do," Dustin said. "For the good of the party."
"What if they stay hidden?" Will asked. "How long do you think before the agents stop looking for them?"
"Too long," Dustin said. "If they ever do stop, that is. Mike and El have a life in Hawkins. We don't want them to hide for a year or something. No, we need to push back. I'm starting to like your blackmail idea, Will. We threaten to tell everything we know if the agents don't leave them alone."
"I don't think that's going to get you very far," Lucas said. "What we really need is more information. I can try to talk to some of my old Army friends-"
"Wait, I've got it!" Dustin shouted. "We kidnap one of the agents and ask him what they're plans are."
"That might be the worst idea you've ever had," Lucas said.
"Fine then," Dustin said. "I'm just brainstorming here. There are no bad ideas. How about this. We can spy on the agents. All El needs is a picture, right? So we go back to Hawkins, snap a few photos of the agents, make up a salty bath for El, and she'll be able to spy on them from here."
"It's risky," Lucas said. "You really want to get close enough to the agents to take their picture, and just hope they don't notice?"
"I'm sure you can handle it," Dustin told him, waving a hand dismissively. "What do you say, El? Would it work?"
"Maybe there's a safer way," Mike said. The other guys turned and looked at him. "They like to bug the phones. We build a bug of our own. Then we could listen to what they're saying at any time, and El wouldn't even have to go into the Void."
"We'd still need to get close enough to plant the bug," Lucas said. "It's still risky."
"Maybe not," Dustin said. He jumped up and started pacing. "We could park our car a few blocks away from the agents, and El could just levitate the little device all the way over. I could give it a magnetic base so it would stick to their car. I could make a bunch, and we could bug all their cars."
"Really?" Lucas asked skeptically.
"I build Heath Kits in an afternoon," Dustin said proudly. "This won't be a problem."
"I like it," Will said. "What about you, El?" She nodded her head quickly.
"What about you?" Dustin asked Lucas. "Want to make it a unanimous vote?"
"I wasn't against it," Lucas replied. "I only said it was risky. But it's a lot better than kidnapping a federal law enforcement officer and getting us all put in jail."
"You seriously don't understand the concept of a brain storm," Dustin protested. "There ARE no bad ideas. You throw spaghetti on the wall and see what sticks."
"How quickly can you make the bugs?" Mike asked.
"A few hours, but I'll need your help. So, how early does Radio Shack open?"
Smith had always been a light sleeper, so he was awakened by the scuffling of feet outside his hotel room door even before someone started knocking. Out of instinct, his had slid toward his gun.
"Wake up!" a man's voice called, as he began pounding, not knocking, on the door.
Recognizing the voice as Walter's, Smith groaned in annoyance.
"Smith! Wake up. Open the door!" Walter yelled, pounding even harder on the door.
The urgency in Walter's voice was like a bucket of ice water, bringing Smith fully awake. He crossed to the door in a few quick strides and pulled it open. Walter rushed inside like a cat let out of its cage.
"She'sinChicago!" he blurted out. Smith didn't even have time to speak before Walter went on, the words spilling out faster than his mouth could keep up.
"Ihadadream," He said. "She'sinChicago. Andtherwasafire."
"Slow down," Smith said, shutting the door so their conversation would remain private. "The Wheeler child? She's in Chicago?"
"Yes," Walter said, impatiently. He began to pace around the small hotel room. "And there was a fire."
"You had a dream?" Smith asked.
"Why do you think I'm here in the middle of the night?" Walter snapped.
Smith picked up his radio from the night stand and spoke into it. "Johnson, Stoneman, bring the cars around. I want to be ready to leave in ten." A moment later the two agents acknowledged in professional, robotic tones.
"Are you listening to me?" Walter demanded. "I dreamed about a fire."
"And contact the Chicago fire department for me," Smith added into the radio. "Find out if they responded to anything big during the night."
"Put that down and listen to me for a minute," Walter said, breathing as if he'd just run a mile.
Narrowing his eyes, and choosing to ignore the older man's tone of voice, Smith put the radio down.
"It hasn't happened yet," Walter said, still pacing. "The fire in my dream, it's huge. I'm talking city blocks. Thousands of people."
Smith was good at keeping shock and surprise from his face. In a very level and measured voice, he asked, "Are you sure about this?"
"I don't dream about the future," Walter hissed. "It almost never happens. The last time I did was when they had me working in Wako Texas."
Smith's face turned white as his blood drained away, and he found himself unable to hide his reaction.
"And I was dealing with a Firestarter there, too," Walter told him.
Raising the radio to his mouth again, Smith struggled to speak through a suddenly dry mouth. "Johnson, wake everyone up," he said into the radio. "Start packing the gear. I want the whole team mobile in half an hour." He glanced back to Walter, his mind racing. "You're sure it was the Wheeler child?"
"The people I usually work with know better than to question my insights," Walter growled.
The jab barely registered to Smith, who grabbed his shoes from under the bed, and his suit jacket from the back of the chair where he'd draped it before going to sleep.
"Call Director Carver," Walter said.
"I will," Smith told him, still too shaken to take offense. "As soon as we're in position to make our approach."
"No, call him now," Walter said. "You need more than just your team. There's no time to play games."
"When does this fire happen?" Smith asked.
"I don't know that," Walter snapped. "But it doesn't matter. You can't afford to waste time trying to keep this clean and quiet. Call Director Carver. He needs to bring the police, the FBI, the Army, everything. This isn't a small operation anymore."
"Sorry, that's not up to you," Smith said, only mildly annoyed as his brain continued to run through all the implications of what he'd just learned. He scooped up the file folders from his desk, tucked his gun back into its holster, and did a quick scan of the room to make sure he hadn't left anything behind. He was just opening the door to leave when Walter grabbed his wrist to stop him.
"Stop playing your little spy games, Agent," Walter said. "The situation is too big for that now. You need to call Carver and have him bring in more assets. The subject needs to be found and eliminated before she burns down a whole city."
Smith slapped away the older man's hand and pressed him backward, up against a wall. "You don't give me orders," He said through clenched teeth. "This is a baby we're talking about." Smith realized that the radio was still in his hand and was now digging into Walter's shoulder. He decided not to relax his grip even an inch.
With his back pinned against the wall, Walter didn't even try to struggle, but his eyes blazed defiantly at the younger and stronger man. "You're in over your head," Walter told him. "A Firestarter is the most dangerous kind of psychic. You can't afford to handle her with kid gloves. She needs to be eliminated."
"Stop talking," Smith said, leaning his face in closer to Walter's. "I didn't want you on this case in the first place."
"You need me to find her," Walter said, not intimidated.
"Then do your job, and don't tell me how to do mine," Smith said. "We do this quietly, and no one gets hurt. Especially not a little girl."
"That's where you go wrong," Walter said. "You think of her like a little girl, you'll get thousands of people killed. She might as well be a Libyan with a suitcase full of plutonium."
"I'm done talking about this," Smith said, roughly pushing away from Walter and heading again for the door. "No kids are getting hurt as long as I'm in charge of this mission. Thank God no one will ever put you in charge."
"I'm trying to save people," Walter said from across the room.
"They aren't even your people," Smith said over his shoulder. "Don't act like you care."
Smith already had the hotel door open, and his radio was beginning to squawk with questions from the rest of his team. He couldn't get away from the old man with the freakish psychic dreams fast enough.
Will's kitchen table was littered with electrical components of every shape and size. Dustin had his first working prototype lying off to one side, while he and Mike worked busily to assemble more. Lucas came into the kitchen, stretching and twisting his back from a long time sitting on the couch.
"El beat me and Will at poker again. I think she cheated," Lucas said, picking up Dustin's prototype listening device and turning it over in his hands.
"It's because you always touch your chin when you're bluffing," Mike said, without looking up from his work.
"Wait... really?" Lucas asked.
"Don't drop that one," Dustin said, reaching over and tapping the prototype with his screwdriver. "I haven't wrapped it in its protective casing yet."
"You already tested it?" Lucas asked.
"Yep," Dustin said. "It should be able to transmit over a range of about five miles, which should cover most of Hawkins."
Lucas placed the bottom of the little bundle against Will's refrigerator, and the magnet held it in place. He tugged at it gently to see how strong the magnet was.
"Can I help with anything?" Lucas offered. "I don't have any more money for poker. El took it all."
"Maybe do some push ups?" Dustin suggested. "If we get caught trying to plant these bugs, I'm gonna need you to fight all the agents while we escape."
Lucas laughed. "That isn't part of the plan."
"Plan's go wrong sometimes," Dustin said. "That reminds me." He turned his head toward the living room and yelled. "Will, do you still have that book I got you?"
Will came into the kitchen a moment later, followed by El along with Allie.
"Which book?" Will asked.
"The one I sent you for Christmas," Dustin said.
"Sure," Will said, and disappeared back into his living. El wandered over to the refrigerator and plucked the prototype off of it. She studied it for a second, and then floated it a few inches above her palm.
"Yeah, just like that," Dustin said, glancing back up from his work. "Can you control it from a few blocks away?" She nodded.
Will came back from the living room and offered Dustin the book he was holding. "This one?" He asked.
"That's the one," Dustin said, taking the book, which was titled "1001 tips and tricks for spies." He leafed through it quickly. "This might be useful during our mission."
"Seriously?" Lucas asked him.
The entire grouped jumped at the sound of Will's phone ringing. The house had been pretty quiet since they'd arrived, and they were all feeling a little twitchy. Will hurried over to answer the phone. The others leaned in closer. Dustin held his breath.
"Hello?" Will said, sounding nervous. "Oh... hi Mom."
Dustin, along with everyone else, breathed a quiet sigh of relief. It wasn't scary government agents on the phone. It was just Mrs. Byers. Smart, inquisitive, intuitive Joyce Byers... Dustin's stomach jumped again. What if Joyce figured out they were there, and asked Will about it over an unsecure line? What if the agents were listening? He waved his hand to get Will's attention, then made a sharp slashing motion across his neck. Will stared at him in mixed confusion and alarm. Dustin repeated the slashing gesture and tried to mouth "Don't mention us," without making a sound.
Little Allie started to gurgle, and El moved away from the phone with her.
"Uhh.. No Mom, it's just me," Will said. "I'm fine. How are you?"
Joyce hung up the phone and continued to stare off into empty space, her eyes narrowed in suspicion. She hadn't thought there was anything out of the ordinary going on with her youngest when she'd called for a random chat. In fact, she'd simply been bored, because Hopper had been gone for several days, and she had today off of work at Donald's General Store. She'd only intended to catch up with Will and pass a little time.
But, for some reason, Will was lying to her.
She didn't know what he might have gotten caught up in, but she could tell something was wrong, and he wasn't willing to talk about it. She continued to stare at the wall for another full minute before deciding that she needed to help Will with whatever trouble he was in, whether he felt safe talking about it or not. She snatched up her keys and jacket, and was out the door.
Smith bounced up and down gently, seated in the back of their mobile communications van, as the driver failed to miss one of Chicago's potholes. He barely noticed the bumpy ride as he tried to prioritize and multitask, drawing points on a paper map as he called over his radio to dispatch his agents to specific street corners. He was constructing a grid, and slowly tightening it around the Wheelers. As long as he was left alone to implement his careful and methodical approach, he'd have them in the bag, and no one from outside the operation would even know they'd been there.
He swore when his phone rang, certain that it could be only one person. Smith silenced his radio and answered the phone, clenching his jaw in anticipation of what he was going to hear.
"When were you going to tell me?!" Director Carver demanded over the phone. Smith glared at the empty wall in front of him.
"Walter went around me and called you?" Smith asked.
"Of course he did! What did you expect?" Carver yelled.
"Sir, you don't know if what he saw in his dreams is really going to happen. He's not 100%," Smith said through gritted teeth. He found himself wishing he'd put Walter on a plane back to where he'd come from.
"A known Pyrokete in a major city? It's too big a risk," Carver growled. "I want it over now."
"And it will be," Smith said. "But if we go in with our guns out again, it will be just like Waco."
"At this point, I'll take it," Carver told him. "If she goes off like a bomb in Chicago, it would be the worst disaster in this country's history. You find her before that happens, and you eliminate the threat."
The man Hopper now called "Franc," the man he had once called "our Arsonist," for lack of a better name, sat in the back of a squad car. He was handcuffed, of course, for which Hopper felt a little bad, but there was no way he'd have been able to convince the Sacramento PD to treat Franc as anything other than the prime suspect in a string of murders across the city, which he unquestionably was. Hopper had been able, though, to convince the others cops to give him and France a little space. The cop who'd applied the handcuffs turned out to be a reasonable guy named Rick. After a short conversation, Hopper had been able to convince him that their prime suspect wasn't going to run off as long as he was there, so Rick had been generous enough to give them a little space. About ten feet of space, at least. Hopper counted himself lucky.
Sitting next to the handcuffed Franc, Hopper gazed sadly at the picture of a little girl that Franc had handed him. It was a different picture, but clearly the same girl that he'd seen in that police file the day before: Franc's little girl, whose face he'd never see again, except in that picture.
Hopper had shown the other man his own pictures. He still kept one of Sara in his wallet, even after all the years. In his mind, and in that picture, she'd been five years old for fifteen years now. He felt a tiny, distant sliver of pain when he remembered that she would have been twenty years old by now. But that pain wasn't as bad as it had been, partly because he had a couple other pictures to show Franc. He kept one of Will, and even Johnathan (even though that one was very independent and didn't seem to need a new father figure in his life) in his wallet, too.
The two men shared more than a few words, but those were less important than the understanding that passed unspoken between them. Hopper knew that it would have been the easiest thing in the world for the other to let him die in the fire only a few hours ago, but he hadn't, and that was all Hopper really needed to know. There hadn't been any time at all to THINK about whether to save Hopper as he fell through the floor and into the waiting flames. There was no way to fake an instinctive reaction like that.
He'd been through a lot of stress over the last few hours, and Hopper felt he deserved a cigarette. He fished the pack out of his pocket, and took one. After a minute of searching, he realized that he must not have gotten his lighter back from Sam after giving it to him.
"You don't have a lighter on you, do you?" Hopper asked Franc. The other man shook his head.
"I don't smoke, actually," he said.
"Really?" Hopper asked. "That's good. Keep those lungs in shape. I uhh... I don't suppose you could... you know...?"
Franc stared at him with a blank expression for a long minute, then shrugged his shoulder. He shifted around in his seat to bring his hands, still cuffed together, in between the two of them. He held out an index finger, and an inch-tall flame popped into life and waited there, steadily flickering like a candle.
"Thanks," Hopper said, and leaned in to light his cigarette.
There was a quiet thump as officer Rick slapped his hand gently on the open door of the squad car to announce his return and interrupt their quiet moment.
"Sorry, friend," he said to Hopper, "but time's up. The chief wants me to bring him in now."
With a slow sigh, Hopper leaned back in his seat and let out a lungful of smoke. He tried to think of anything else to delay the inevitable and give Franc a little more time before being carted away, but nothing came to mind.
"Alright, I'm going," Hopper said to Rick. he turned to face Franc. It felt a little to awkward to try to shake his hand while they were cuffed, so he instead put a hand on the man's shoulder. "We'll talk more once they've set court dates and everything," Hopper told him. "I promise, I'll do whatever I can. That might not be much, but..."
Franc nodded, his expression stoic and un-revealing. Hopper thought he was taking it well, considering.
Hopper stepped out of the car and stood back to watch as officer Rick closed the doors and drove off into the night. He let out another lungful of smoke as he watched the squad car's tail lights fade into the distance. Franc might never see anything but the inside of a prison cell as long as he lived. Still, as Hopper imagined a tragic police standoff with whole city blocks going up in flames, he decided the outcome could have been much worse.
A lone black sedan pulled into the lane right behind the squad car, and followed it silently off into the darkness. A little flicker of curiosity rose in Hopper, almost piercing through the visions of fire and mayhem, but not quite succeeding.
Sam came silently up to his shoulder. "I don't know what to say after all that," Sam said.
Hopper lingered in his frightening visions of what might have been for one last second before pulling himself back to the present. He turned to look at Sam and gave a sly half-grin.
"Sometimes I surprise even myself," Hopper said. "No thanks necessary. I'll just take all the money you have and you'll owe me for the rest of your life."
"Maybe I can get the chief to give you a pension as an honorary member of the SPD," Sam joked. "They could even have a ceremony where the mayor gives you a key to the city."
"You and the chief are back on good terms?" Hopper asked, joking himself.
"Actually we are," Sam said brightly.
"Yeah?" Hopper asked, offering him a cigarette.
"Yep. He called a little while ago, while you were in the squad car talking to... our guy," Sam said. "When the boys called the chief to tell him they'd caught their man, or that their man had turned himself in, I suppose, the chief guessed I'd be mixed up in it somehow and asked to talk to me. He's not big on apologies, but told me he... regretted some of the things he said before. He wants me back on the force tomorrow."
"Imagine that," Hopper said, finishing his cigarette and tossing the butt onto the pavement.
"I told him I wanted a week off first," Sam said. "It's been a busy few days."
"You've earned a little sleep," Hopper said. "I don't know about a week, though. You'll be able to sit still for that long?"
"Actually, I was wondering if you wanted some company on the plane ride home," Sam said. "If you aren't sick of me by now."
"You, in Hawkins?" Hopper asked with a laugh.
"Well, you've made it sound so nice," Sam said. "I almost believe you. I really want to see the... trees. And the... small houses. And the... whatever else is there."
Hopper laughed again. "I had to sleep on your couch for a couple nights. I guess I could punish you by making you sleep on mine. And there's more than just trees and small houses in Hawkins. We have cornfields, too."
"And I can meet the famous Joyce," Sam added. "Does she let you bring friends over?"
"Not usually on school nights, but I think I can sweet-talk her," Hopper said. "Maybe I'll take you fishing, and you can fry some of them for her." He turned and walked back toward Sam's truck.
"Listen, Hop," Sam said in a more serious tone. "If I thought you'd take it... What are you driving these days?"
"A 1980 Chevy Blazer," Hopper said, shaking his head. "Don't worry. I keep her running like a Cadillac."
"I wish I could do something for you," Sam said. "You were the only one who believed me. The only one. I would have lost my mind."
"All I want is for you to help with him," Hopper said, nodding in the direction that Franc had been driven away. "Once they set up court dates and everything, I want you to help him as much as you can. Speak at his trial, yell at the prosecutor, whatever you can do."
Sam looked thoughtful for a moment, his hand resting on his truck's door as he considered.
"He's a good guy," Hopper insisted. "He's done some pretty messed up things, but he's a good guy, deep down. He could have let me die, but he didn't."
Sam nodded. "Ok, you've got it. Whatever I can do."
"Are we going straight to the airport, or back to your house first?" Hopper asked. "I should try to call Joyce again and let her know I'm coming back."
Joyce's mind wandered as she took the ramp off the highway. It had been wandering for a good part of the more than four hour drive from Hawkins. She wondered what Hopper had gotten dragged into when his old cop buddy had called from California. Because of the time difference and her work schedule, she'd only gotten messages from Hopper on the answering machine. In those messages, though, he'd sounded as serious as she'd ever heard him. He'd promised to tell her the whole story as soon as he got back home, which was supposed to be very soon, but kept getting pushed back.
She really wondered, though, what was troubling Will. She'd always been protective of her youngest, even after he'd grown up and moved off to college. Some people thought she was over protective. When he was a kid, some of the other parents from school used to talk behind her back. They'd said it was sad how she obsessed over her little boy, that she wouldn't let him grow up. Since Will had once been literally dragged into another dimension by a flesh eating monster, clearly she hadn't been protective enough. A car hurried up to slide in front of Joyce, only to be get stuck at the next traffic light. Chicago drivers annoyed her. She hit the brakes to leave room for the reckless car, but it wasn't enough to pull her mind back to the here and now.
Will had been different after his brush with death at the hands of that freakish thing-in-the-wall. She'd watched painfully, unable to do much to help him in the months and years after that traumatic experience. Of course, he'd always been a loner. Aside from his three friends from school, Will had never socialized much. He was sensitive, and most kids were mean. He'd never been able to take it as well as Johnathan had. Then, after she and Hopper had brought Will back from That Place, there had been a whole new dimension to his feelings of isolation and vulnerability. Joyce had done her best to help her baby through the nightmares and flashbacks that came after his time in That Place, but really, it had been his friends who helped the most. A small smile grew on her face as she pictured Will at his 13th birthday party, surrounded by his friends, looking as happy and content as she'd ever seen him. It had been hard for her to accept at first, that there was very little she herself could do to help him through the struggles of growing up. She would much rather have followed him to school each day as his bodyguard, ready to flatten any bullies who strayed too close.
In the end, though, she'd realized that it was his friends who had helped him through it. It had been hard to let go. Fighting to the death would have been easier for her. But, eventually, she'd seen the kind of love that Will inspired from his friends. He was like a bright light that attracted only the very best kind of people. Even when most of the kids in school didn't see any value in Will, he seemed to naturally draw together those few people who did see him for what he really was. When he'd gone missing all those years ago, his three friends had put themselves in danger to try to find him, and without them, she and Hopper wouldn't have been able to find Will and bring him back. He didn't need to be a fighter like she was. He had an army around him. It might not have been a very big army, but Will's friends were worth more than a thousand regular kids. Especially once the girl Eleven had come back into Will's life, started living with the Wheeler family, and started hanging out with the boys, Joyce had been able to breathe easier. Though she would gladly have gone claw-to-claw with another demogorgon for her son, she could feel safe knowing that no bully or extra dimensional monster was going to get to Will as long as Eleven was at his side. Another van cut Joyce off, nearly running a red light as it slid into her lane. She absentmindedly hit the brakes again, her body swaying forward with the halted momentum.
Watching Will move out of the house and go off to college, though, had been harder for her. Of course, she'd been sad to see Johnathan move off to NYU years earlier. She'd cried, like any mother would. But it had been different with Will. For the first time since kindergarten, he'd been going off into a world without any of his friends. In fact, not SINCE Will's first day at kindergarten had Joyce been so nervous to see him go as when he'd moved away to college. Probably the only thing that made it easier was when she'd looked over and noticed Hopper trying to pretend he wasn't wiping his own eyes. She sometimes still teased him about that. Another white van rolled by her.
A black sedan. A white van. Another white van.
Joyce straightened up in her seat, suddenly pulled out of her reverie. That white van up ahead had caught her attention. It had no name or logo or anything painted on the side, but the shape was eerily familiar to her. Perhaps a block further ahead was another identical white van. She squinted at the unfamiliar colored license plate, which was neither from Indiana nor Illinois.
Her eyes flicked to her rear view mirror. There was a black sedan a few cars back. It was hard to see from this distance, but it looked like the driver and passengers were wearing dark suits. Joyce took a deep breath. There was nothing strictly unusual about white vans, black cars, or men in suits. Each of those things, alone, were innocent and commonplace. Sometimes, especially since little Will had gone missing all those years ago, people told her she could be paranoid.
The intersection with 151st street, which was the street Will lived on, was just a few blocks ahead. Joyce would turn left onto 151st, and then she was only five minutes away from her son's house where, she hoped, she'd find out that nothing in the world was wrong, and she'd imagined the shifty tone in his voice when she'd talked to him on the phone earlier. One of the white vans was just reaching the traffic light. Joyce watched it's brake lights glow red as it slowed and then turned left.
The stop light changed, and the the cross traffic began to move. Two more white vans cruised through the intersection and fell in line behind the first one. An army-green painted Humvee followed close on their tail.
Joyce jerked the steering wheel and leaped over into the next lane, acting on instinct. Her conscious mind didn't need to keep up. She turned into the first gas station, almost taking the turn on two wheels, and skidded to a stop next to the pay phone. She jumped out of the car, not bothering to turn it off. Her hands shook as she jammed coins into the payphone and dialed Will's number. She held her breath as she waited for the first ring. It seemed to take years. She pressed the black plastic hand set painfully hard against her ear and stared with hawk-like eyes at the intersection up ahead. That black sedan that had once been behind her in traffic, also slowed and turned left.
The phone rang a second time. Joyce shook with barely contained energy as she waited.
"Comeoncomeoncomeoncomeoncomeon, pick up Will," she said to herself.
Two more army Humvees passed through the intersection up ahead.
The phone rang a third time.
Joyce considered abandoning the phone and getting back in her car. Maybe she could take a side road and get to Will's house first...
"Hello?"
Her heart leaped at the sound of Will's voice.
"Will, honey, get out of the house, right now," she yelled, drawing stares from a few people pumping gas nearby.
"Mom?! What-"
"No time," she yelled. "Just go. There are vans and trucks and I don't know who else. They're coming. Will, they're coming! Run!"