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"Folsom Prison Blues"

Far from Folsom prison, that's where I want to stay

- Johnny Cash

One of the advantages to having been tortured was that the torments of daily life, even in a Siberian prison, didn't bother Hopper as much as they might have otherwise. One of the disadvantages was that his nightmares were incredibly realistic, since most of them had actually occurred.

He had held out as long as possible when the KGB questioned him about what had happened in Hawkins Lab. He had refused to admit that he recognized the picture of Joyce, despite the icy spike of fear that went through him whenever he saw her picture and imagined her here in this chair, being beaten and deprived of air. Making sure that didn't happen, that the Russians never got a chance at Joyce, or Eleven, or any of the others, was far more important to him than his own pain. It had taken all the control he'd learned over the course of a lifetime, but he had managed it. They came close a time or two. He cracked, but he never broke.

And so they'd sent him here to Kamchatka, where every day was tedious and miserable and filled with hard labor and not enough food and constant pain from the lack of warm clothes and decent sleep. Fortunately the torture hadn't left him with any permanent injuries—they apparently hadn't wanted Joyce badly enough to start cutting off body parts. Overall, given the option, he preferred prison. So he'd kept his head down all this time, done his work, spoken to no one other than Antonov. Occasionally he'd exchange a word or two with his fellow prisoners, as his command of Russian improved, but mostly he thought silence was the best thing.

Hopper jerked awake in the middle of the night, his heart pounding from a particularly vivid midnight memory. Of everything they had done to him, the worst had been the hood with the hose attached—the hose they had used to deprive him of oxygen almost but not quite until he passed out.

He lay on his cot, blessedly alone, gulping the cold musty air of the prison cell with gratitude, remembering. They had asked him if he wanted to die for Joyce, not realizing that he already had. He'd nodded at her, told her to turn the keys, knowing that he was almost certainly a dead man if she did. He'd been willing to die for her, for El, for all those smart-mouthed kids and that hick town he'd been so reluctant to come back to. He still was.

It had been worth all the pain to see the growing frustration in the lead interrogator's face, to know that he was actively thwarting their attempts to find out what happened to their big operation, the one they'd had the balls to put right under his nose.

And when he had awakened on the helicopter, it had been worth being sent to some far-off and no doubt terrible place to know that he had won. His only regret had been that in all the time focusing on enduring the pain, he had never managed to come up with a way to escape.

But Joyce was free. Joyce and El and the others were free to go on and live their lives. That was what he had done it for, and he would have endured far more than he had for them.

On arrival in Kamchatka, they had shaved his head. They had washed him down with icy water from a fire hose. They had given him scratchy, ill-made clothes, and they had lined him up with a half-dozen other new arrivals to drone on and on at them in Russian. Hopper could imagine everything they were being told: give up hope, give up humanity. Give up. The commandant had made it very clear to Hopper in English. "Run, you die."

Being led through the prison was just what Hopper would have imagined—hostility from guards and fellow inmates alike. He didn't care. His job here was to endure, to take everything dished out at him. Not to think. Not to plan. Not to hope. They wanted a cog in a machine? He would be one.

It was Antonov who had broken through, woken him up again. He had spoken to Hopper in English, showed a sense of humor and an intelligence, given him something to think about.

And now Antonov had given Hopper back his hope. Today could be the day that they heard from Joyce. Today could be the day that Hopper was reconnected to his world, given the chance to fly out of here, to go home to his girls.

Hopper lay back on the cot, content to be awake. No more nightmares, no more hopelessness. He had a chance, now, a plan, and that—was everything.

The next day was the usual miserable cold, hours of hammering in railroad spikes with a sledge. Tedious, repetitive, exhausting. As always, Hopper hoped it would exhaust him enough that when he got back to his cell tonight, he could collapse on the cot and be asleep before his head hit the pillow. It probably wouldn't; it rarely did. But he could always hope.

The familiar voice caught him as he was taking a moment's breather. In Russian, Dmitri asked, "What is this, American? What is taking this long? Are you tired today?"

Also in Russian, Hopper called him a pig.

"What do you say?"

"Asshole!" Still in Russian. His command of the language—at least, of the vocabulary needed in prison—was coming along quite well. He spat at Dmitri's feet for good measure.

Then Dmitri grabbed him and hauled him away from the line, slamming him against a pile of railroad ties. "Your Russian is getting better," he said in English. "So is your acting."

"All right, come on. What is it?" Hopper wanted to be left alone, to not think. To wear himself out.

Dmitri looked around, making sure there was no one near. "I bring news from America."

Hopper's heart thudded in his chest so loudly that he thought it could have been heard in Hawkins.

"I heard from your friends. They're bringing your money to Alaska."

"When?"

"Today, I hope. If my pilot gets the money, he will bring it to me in his plane tomorrow. Then you can hitch a ride with him back to your country. I get rich, and you're a free man."

Hopper could barely breathe. In all their planning, in all his dreaming, he had never dared to let himself believe this could actually work. And now here was Dmitri telling him he could be free—tomorrow.

Dmitri grinned. "Sound too good to be true, yes?"

"It does." Hopper pulled himself together. So many things could still go wrong, this was no time to get starry-eyed and lose sight of the big picture. "This pilot that you found, you sure you can trust him?"

Dmitri looked around again in a way that failed to inspire confidence. "His name is Yuri Ismaylov. He's a smuggler. Supplies American goods to some of us guards here, including me on lucky occasions. Cigarettes, peanut butter, Playboys, the best America has to offer."

"Great. So he's a criminal."

"Of course. Who else do you want to do this job? Gandhi?" Antonov laughed. "You're worried about your woman, is that it? I can see why you like her, American. When I talked to her, I can tell by voice that she's very pretty. Feisty, too. I like that." He sighed. "Shame we won't meet."

Hopper stood up, approaching Antonov. To think that this smug son-of-a-bitch had actually talked to Joyce and was standing here taunting Hopper about it. And having Joyce be part of this scared Hopper more than he would like to admit.

"You promised me that she would be safe."

"And she will be. Let me handle Yuri. You have more important things to worry about. Remember, you miss that plane tomorrow, I am still rich, and you are still stuck in Kamchatka. So whatever it is you're planning, American, best get to it. Yes?"

Just at that moment, the squirrelly little guard came around the edge of the piles of lumber, calling Antonov's name. Hopper was needed back on the line. He took the punch in the face today, because the hell with all of them.

Now, with every blow of the sledgehammer, Hopper was thinking of the next steps, what needed to be done. He was committed now—Joyce was involved, and the only way to make sure she stayed safe was for him to get free.