Lyn stares in horror at the laser shooting into the earth. "The gate," She mutters coincidentally at the same time as Steve and Dustin.
"We got to go." Steve pushes them to go back down the stairs.
"I don't understand. You've seen this before?" Robin asks as they went down.
"Not exactly," Steve shook his head.
"Then what, exactly," She turned around to look at him once they were off the stairs.
"All you need to know is that it's bad," Dustin felt anxiety rising in him. He thought this would be a simple mission. They would get the vial, get out, and show it to the right authority for them to shut the Russians down. He didn't think that he would have to fight the monsters again.
"It's really bad." Lyn shook as she paced back and forth.
"Like, end-of-the-human-race-as-we-know-it bad." Dustin clarified it.
"And you know this how?" She looks them over in confusion. What could be so bad about the Russians drilling a hole in the ground? At most, she thought it had to be them stealing gold or oil from America. But, by the way, they were acting like they saw the gates of hell.
"Um, Steve? Where's your Russian friend?" Erica looks at the empty spot on the ground where the Russian used to be.
Red lights flash over them as an alarm blares. "Shit." Steve opened the door to see a bunch of guards surrounding the one he fought.
"Halt! Halt!" A Russian guard yells at them in English while the rest were yelling in Russian.
Steve slams the door shut before turning around to yell at them. "Go, go, go, go, go!" They ran back up the stairs and into the lab. All the lab coats turned around to stare at them. None of them made a move towards them, so they ran down another set of stairs that lead them closer to the laser.
"Shit. Shit. Holy Shit!" Dustin screams when it looks like they trap themselves at the end of the platform by the laser. Lyn swallows the lump in her throat as she felt the heat from the laser against her skin. No wonder those guys were wearing astronaut suits.
"Guards are coming with way!" Lyn's eyes went wide when she saw the Russian military uniforms heading towards them.
"This way!" Steve leads them down the stairs. He clears the path for them by shoving the military men into each other.
"Oh Shit," Erica screams when she saw more men coming down the hall. But, Steve pushes a bunch of barrels in front of them to block their path and knock some of them over.
"Come on!" Robin yells as Steve leads them into another room. Steve held the door shut while the rest of them ran to the big trap door on the ground.
"Robin! Shit! Help me!" Steve yelled out to her when he felt the Russians opening the door. She ran over and shoves her body into the door. Lyn got up to help them when Steve shouts. "No, you go with the kids. You have to protect them." He told her.
"I'm not leaving you." She shook her head with tears in her eyes.
"Come on, let's go!" Erica opened the trap door and went down.
"Come on!" Dustin waves for Steve to follow.
"Go! Just get out of here!" He glares at the two most important people in his life standing there when they should be heading for safety.
"Go, come on, now!" Dustin nods his head.
"No! Just go get some help, okay?" Steve nodded to the trap door.
"I won't forget you!" He gave Steve one last glance before going down the trap door.
"Rosalyn, please go. I'll be fine. You need to keep the kids safe. Please go." He pleads with her. She wipes the tears that were running down her face and nods her head. "I love you." She whispered, knowing this could be the last time she gotta say it and went down the trap door shutting it behind her.
"I love you too," Steve shouted before the Russians threw the door open and sent them flying on the ground.
"So, when we set fire to the hub, we drew the Demodogs away so El could close the gate. But now, for some insane reason, the Russians appear to be trying to reopen it, which just destroys everything we risked our lives for." Dustin explains everything to Erica as he tried to stop the fan, so they could get past it, by using a screwdriver to mess with a control panel they found.
Lyn leaned her head against the cold metal walls that made up the large underground vents. She never felt so lost and hopeless in her life. If they do run into any trouble with the guards, she didn't think it would be possible for her to save them. Steve barely got them out of there and he was much stronger than her. She didn't even have her crowbar, not that it would do anything against machine guns.
"By we, you're including Lucas?" Erica asks.
"Yes, of course." Dustin nods his head while Lyn shook hers. She needs to snap out of these depressing thoughts. She needs to stay optimistic. Steve put his life on the line to save them. The least she could do is honor his maybe last request to her. She would protect Erica and Dustin while they went on their mission to save their friends. She hopes the Russians were keeping them alive for answers.
"I don't believe you." Erica shook her head.
"Wait, so you believe everything about El and the gate and the Demodogs and the Mind Flayer, but you question your brother's involvement?" Dustin looks at her in disbelief. He was expecting her to tell him that he was full of shit like Lucas said Max did when she first found out. Max saw a baby demo dog, while all Erica saw was a hole being drilled into the Earth by a laser.
"That's correct." She nods her head.
"Makes total sense," He said sarcastically and went back to trying to stop the fan.
"Um, you need help with that?" She points to the control panel.
"No." He didn't take his eyes off of what he was doing.
"Well, I mean, it's taking a while, so..." Erica stares at, trying to figure it out.
"Yeah, no shit, Sherlock." He snaps at Erica. Lyn gave him a kick to the back that sent him face-first into the metal wall. "What was that for?" He whips around to glare at her.
"Because you're been a know-it-all prick lately. I know you got new testosterone pumping through your body, so it makes you act like an ass, but cut it out. Your way isn't the only way, hell it might not even be the right way. So, how about taking the time to listen to others, so we can come up with a good game plan and get Steve and Robin back." Lyn hisses at him through her teeth.
Dustin let out a sigh of defeat before looking over at Erica. "Alright, so if we don't find a more efficient method to stop these fans, we're never going to find help and your ice cream buddies are screwed." She told him.
"How am I supposed to work with that attitude?" He points at Erica as he looks at his sister.
"I'm just being realistic. I mean, we've made it about point-three miles in nine hours. Then we had to walk three hours down that tunnel, so I'd estimate ten miles back to the elevator, which should take us approximately twelve-and-a-half days." She looks down at her watch as she added up the hours in her head.
"Did you just do all of that in your head?" He turns to her shock.
"I'm good with numbers." She shrugs.
"Holy shit, you're a nerd." He gasps.
"Come again?" She cocks her head to the side. She couldn't have possibly heard him correctly the first time.
"You. Are. A. Nerd." He told her slowly. Lyn rubs her temples this isn't what she wanted when she told him to hear other people out.
"Okay, you better take that back, nerd." She waves her pointer finger around in the air.
"Can't put the truth back in the box," Dustin smiles, highly amused.
"But it's not the truth." Erica shook her head refusing to believe it.
"Let's examine the facts, shall we? Fact one: you're a math whiz, apparently." Dustin said, still in shock by that revelation.
"That was a pretty straightforward equation." She defends herself.
"The fact that you think that's simple math isn't proving your point." Lyn snickers, lean more into the metal wall. It was getting hot in this vent with the fan letting all the wind out, but not any in. Erica glares at the older girl.
"Fact number two: you're a political junkie." Dustin put up two fingers.
"Just because I don't agree with Communism as an ideology" Erica scoffs. Even though they were wasting time they couldn't afford to be wasting, Lyn chuckled at that one. Only a nerd would use the word ideology.
"Fact number three: you love My Little Pony." He grabs her backpack to shake it in her face.
"And what does My Little Pony have to do with this?" She took her backpack from him.
"Ah, let's recall the ponies' latest adventure, shall we? The evil centaur team and Tirek turn Applejack into a dragon at Midnight Castle, and then Megan and the other ponies have to use Moochick's magic to defeat his rainbow of darkness, saving them from a lifetime of enslavement. All the pink in the world can't disguise the irrefutable fact that centaurs and castles and dragons and magic are all standard nerd tropes. Ergo, My Little Pony is nerdy. Ergo, you, Erica, are a nerd." He explains a plot that made up most sci-fi movies.
"And how do you know so much about My Little Pony?" Erica smirks, thinking she got could get him to back off by embarrassing him for watching a girl's show.
Unlike Lucas, Dustin could care less about being considered girly, "Because I'm a nerd." He reaches into the control panel and pulls a plug to stop the fans.
"Alright, let's go nerds." Lyn pushes herself off the wall to crawl through the fan still blades.
Lyn pushes up a metal floor panel and pops her head out to see rolls of containers holding the green vials. Dustin and Erica pop up next to her. "Jackpot," Dustin laughs as he climbs out of the hole in the ground. Lyn and Erica also got out. "Oh-ho-ho!" He let out more laughs as he ran to get in the driver's seat of a red golf cart.
"Do you even know how to drive? Are you going to let him drive?" She directed her first question to Dustin then the next to Lyn.
"How hard can it be? Max did it." Dustin reaches to turn the key but sighs when he didn't find any. "Aw, come on."
"You seriously thought they'd just leave keys in there?" Erica rolls her eyes.
"Especially when they know they have American kids running around." Lyn nod in agreement with Erica.
"There's got to be a spare." Dustin began searching the cart for it.
Erica sighs and walks away. Lyn follows after her to make sure she didn't get hurt.
"How big did you say that Demogorgon was?" Erica looks up at her as she stares at the metal cage in front of them.
"Nine feet or so, but, if they think that things are going to hold it then we are going to have a lot of dead Russians down here." Lyn looks at the cage that resembles a shark cage that people dive in. It seems like the American government, the Russians government was also overconfident in their ability to control the otherworldly beast. Next to the cage were two long wired zappers. The girls look at each other before each grabbing one. Lyn put the tip away from them and pushed the button. Blue electrical light ran around it.
"Damn, let's take these." Erica sneaks around Dustin who was opening a locker. Lyn once again follows her.
"Found 'em." Dustin shook the keys in the air to find they weren't in front of him anymore. He turns around to see the sight of Erica using her zapper right in front of him making him jump back. "What the hell is that?!" Dustin took a step back.
"A deadly weapon, it could be useful." She looks down at it in admiration.
"For what," He really didn't want a deadly weapon in her hands.
"What do you think?" Lyn shook her head at her brother's cluelessness.
"Taking down Commies, saving your friends," Erica waves the stick around making him more uneasiness.
"I thought you were more realistic than that, nerd. We don't even know where they are, and even if we did, there are a million guards up there with weapons way deadlier than that. The best thing we can do for them is to get out of here and find help." Dustin reasoned with them. He went to sit in the driver seat and Lyn took the passenger seat. Erica squeezed between the two of them. "Easy with that," He said when Erica put it a little too close to his face. "Our chance of surviving, and theirs, rises substantially. Just trust me on this." He pleads with them as he turns on the golf cart.
"Dustin right, we can't go in there guns a blazing we have to think of a plan. A distraction," Lyn leans back as she thought.
"We could make a hole in the ground." Erica points to the green vials.
"Thank god, we have such an amazing nerd with us." Dustin got out of the golf cart.
"I'm not a nerd." She jumps out and hits him. Lyn follows after them laughing. The three of them load up the golf cart with vials. Lyn got in the driver's seat.
"I thought you were going to let me drive." He whines.
"Maybe when we don't have cargo that could burn a hole through the floor," She shook her head.
"Yeah, now get in the back, nerd. You have to make sure none of them break." Erica took the passenger seat.
"Will do, nerd," He shot back at her as he climbs into the back.
"You might want to think of another insult," Lyn told her.
It took them some time, but they were able to figure out what room Steve and Robin were in. It was a stroke of luck that they were able to follow an old man leading a group of Russian soldiers and a man in a lab coat into a room. What tips them off was the old man shouting about dumb Americans.
They opened up the vials in a hallway that was a good distance away from the room then hid in the back of their cart as the Russians ran out of the room. The three of them ran into the room. Lyn charges in and shocks the guy in the lab coat with the metal stick as Dustin untied Steve. "Hey Henderson, I was just talking about you." Steve giggles.
"Oh my god," Robin gasps.
"Get ready to rock," Dustin told him. Lyn grabs the scissor on the table and cuts the ropes. Untying them would take too long.
"Oh baby, you're so beautiful." He leans over to give her a wet kiss on the cheek.
"Damn Steve, they beat your face in." Her jaw drops taking him in for the first time. His eyes, nose, and lips were swollen. He had blood all over his face.
"I tell you, you're beautiful and you tell me my face is beaten in." He slurs with tears in his eyes.
"Are you drunk?" She looks into his dialect eyes.
"Oh yeah, after you left they opened up a bottle of Smirnoff and we had a party." He scoffs in her face.
"We have to go." Erica reminds her.
She went to grab Steve's arm when he pulled it from her. "I'm not going anywhere with you until you apologize." He pouts.
"I'm sorry, Steve, you're very handsome. Now come on." She pulls a smiling Steve up and out of the room. Dustin and Erica guide Robin out. They shove them into the back of the cart.
"Lyn, come back here with me," Steve screams.
"Shut up, I have to drive the cart." She hisses at him.
"No, I don't want to be separated again." He whines loudly.
"I'll drive, you to ride in the back with him." Dustin held his hands out.
"What, no? You can't even drive." She shook her head.
"It's either I drive or Steve let all the Russians know where we are with his screams." To prove his point Steve yells out her name again.
"Fine," She sighs and puts the keys into his hand and gets into the back with the two high teenagers.