"Oh shit." Steve's entire body vibrates with the force of the metal box hurtling toward the center of the Earth. It shakes and wobbles and he grabs onto whatever his fingers find to stabilize himself. Filly's pale hand clenches his shirt in the center of his chest, the other bolstering herself against the table in front of them. When he looks back on it later, he feels almost proud that she leaned on him. Not Robin, not Dustin, but him, Steve Harrington. That's got to count for something.
"Shit! Shit!" A high-pitched yell leaves Dustin's mouth, higher than he thought was possible.
"We're going down! We're going down!" He realizes that he's stating the obvious, but the feeling of his fear plus the feeling of Filly's hand folding a little bit under the collar of his shirt to touch the hair on his chest is making him act a bit of a fool. The contact makes his blood spark in his veins and his skin tingles. What can he say? Even the back of her hand is soft as it brushes his skin accidentally. He can't count on both hands the number of times he'd curled up with the thought of her flashing through his mind, pretending it was her small hand curled around his thick member instead of his own, imagining the kinds of faces she would make when he made her come undone and ruined all other men for her. He wanted all of her.
But those thoughts are better left for private moments tucked away in his bedroom with just his own company. He needed to be in the present.
"Yeah, no shit, Harrington!" Robin assesses. She holds herself against a wall of boxes.
The younger male's grating squeal rings off the metal sheets all around them."Why don't these buttons work?!"
He has to be strong, for her, but it's hard. It drains. It wears. It's made a little easier by her being alongside him. Her presence almost makes him forget about the metal box they're in hurtling down into the dirt.
It comes to a sudden and complete stop, like a man being hanged. He and Filly fall together against the wall, Steve hitting it with his back and Filly tripping onto him. He slides down, his knees bending, and she's pulled along by her grip on him. She tries to step over the teen, but a heavy box slips off the table and lands on her back, making her fold in half, straddling his hips. She yelps in pain, stationary under the weight and squeezed between a rock and a hard place. He can't think of a reason for his sudden excitement besides the fact that Filly is sat in his lap, that and the adrenaline pumping through his veins. He should be more concerned with their current predicament. Teenage boy that he is, somethings about his hormones, he can't help.
He huffs and pretends not to be enamored by the sight of his crush in his lap, however inopportune. "Ow. It fell on us." Palms sweaty, he pushes at the box but it's stuck against the surface above and impossible for him to move. "Dustin! Get this off of us." He's keen to get Filly off of him before she realizes what's pressing against her inner thigh. He can smell her woodsy scent, like a bonfire on a chilly winter night. It doesn't do anything to calm him down.
With all the power he has in his limbs, the boy heaves it off of the pair of teens, setting it back on the surface from whence it came.
"My back," Filly whines, pressing her lower back with her hands as she rolls off of the brunette. "Oof..."
He turns and curls up on the floor for a moment, his torso sore from being tossed around.
"Is everyone okay?" Tremors warble in Robin's voice as she picks herself up off the floor. Brought out of his stupor by the sound, his eyes fly open and he stands furiously, rushing to the console and opening the small metal breaker box.
"Yeah I'm great now that I know Russians can't design elevators!" Steve, storming toward the panel that houses several buttons of both the blue and green variety, can't help his frustration coming out in waves.
"I think we've clearly established that those buttons don't work." Robin makes her way around the table to watch him mess around with the console.
"They're buttons, they have to do something." He's close to ripping out his hair if they don't.
She sighs, frustration coloring her exhale as she walks over to him. "Yeah, if we had a key card."
"A what?" Puzzlement written on his face, his eyebrows furrowing and his mouth slightly open in a disbelieving smile, Steve turns to the band member.
"It's an electronic lock. Same as the loading dock door. If we don't have a key card, it won't operate. Meaning-" Robin is interrupted by the usually polite shorter girl.
"We are truly locked in an enemy base of operations with no weapons or means of escape." Filly's eyes, normally large, become doubly so, her face paling with the realization. She gulps, her hand finding his. "This is a grim turn of events."
Erica's whiny, grating voice bursts from her mouth, shattering what quietude they had created. "Just so you nerds are aware, I'm supposed to be spending the night at Tina's, and Tina always covers for me." She takes her little finger and aims it at all of them in a circular motion. "But if I'm not home for Uncle Jack's party tomorrow, and my mom finds out you three are responsible, she's going to hunt you down, one by one, and slit your throats."
"I don't care about Tina! Or Uncle Jack's party! Your mom isn't going to be able to find us, if we're dead in a Russian elevator!" He shouldn't raise his voice. Erica is just a child. She doesn't know any better, but he's in a tizzy. They're stuck down here for real and there's no one with magic powers to save them. Filly's won't be of much use in this particular situation. There's no Hopper on his way, no government agency coming to blow the roof off this place.
A hand tugs at his own and his eyes raise to meet hers. Filly stares at him, concerned, and pulls him closer. She rubs her hand up and down his tense bicep, her tone even and calm. "We will be alright. We are okay." They were trapped and alone, but at least they'd die together, he and Filly. It's a small comfort in a whirlwind of suffering. "I am here with you." Her soft-spoken words have a soothing effect on him, cooling his admittedly heated temper.
He doesn't respond verbally, but presses his forehead to hers, the tips of their noses rubbing (not so) accidentally. He savors her comfort while he can, encircling her waist in his arms and tugging the girl close. He pulls away, but his hand lingers longer than necessary.
"Hey." Her mouth had opened, but the curly-haired boy spoke first. Dustin points to the ceiling, eyebrows raised in pleasant disbelief. "What if we climbed out?"
Filly was the first one up, stacking boxes on the table and climbing atop them. Steve covers Dustin's eyes, not wanting him to witness a wardrobe malfunction at such a tender age. Or maybe it was another reason, one Steve doesn't want to admit.
There's no way he'd be jealous of a little kid. He follows her up the trapdoor, coming out on the other side, Dustin right behind him. Looking up, his hope deflates. The chute is probably miles long, as he can't see the end. That would make for a quick death, so that plan was swiftly knocked off the table. "What were you saying about climbing?"
Without a way to proceed for now, they resign themselves to a good rest. Steve and Filly find themselves a cozy spot on the roof of the elevator while the others rest below, taking up all the available floor space.
"Are you awake?" whispers the dark-haired girl. She faces him, her striped poncho now spread over them like a blanket. It wasn't her pink halter top and long, flowing pleated skirt that kept her warm, but rather their closeness. It's not out of the ordinary for them to get close and be under the same blanket as they slept, but there had been some revelations since the last time. Though both teens felt awkward anew, they still sought each other out before bedtime.
"Yeah." Curled up together between two of the beams on the roof of the elevator car, Steve's arm under her head, his deep breath expands his chest to the point that it touches hers.
"Do you think we will find a way out of here?" Her voice is like wind chimes twinkling through the despair of the night, so she doesn't sound like herself when her voice comes out raspy and small.
He doesn't like it, seeing her reduced by fright. If only he could give her what she was missing. "Of course we will. I'll make sure of it."
"How? I've looked and there's nothing for miles. There are only empty tunnels as far as I can see." There's wetness on his arm, the cold droplet like ice on his heated skin. The small teen sniffs, then huffs a half of a sob. "There are no weaknesses to exploit, I fear."
It's not the first time that she expressed to him that maybe this was a bad idea. She's usually the optimistic one, but even she can't calm her nerves with the situation they're in. Her brain likely runs rampant with scenarios of possible outcomes. Her breathing quickens, her head spinning from the circular thinking coupled with the horrendous images buzzing in her brain.
"Filly, look at me. Breathe with me." Lost in thought, it must feel as though Steve materializes in front of her, starting when his hands settle on her shoulders. He looks at her like a fragmented glass, spilling water from it's cracks and bound to shatter. His fingers trace delicate patterns on her neck and back, and she leans into the heat of his palms. He places her hand on his chest, hoping the movement of his it helps her match his pace. "Hey, everything's fine. You're okay."
"For how long?" Teary, blue eyes look up through lashes at him.
"I don't know. But don't lose hope now, Fil." But the look in her eyes tells him she may have already lost it, stroking the black velvet strands of her hair. She'd been acting strangely since the elevator fell down, and he can't fault her for that. This place must remind her of her past, the place that first placed her in captivity. After all, imprisonment is not so different no matter where you go. Unconsciously, his biceps tighten around her. "Don't worry. I'll do it for you, until you can hope again."
"Code red, I repeat, code red. Does anyone copy? This is a code red, I repeat, a code red. Does anyone copy? We are innocent children and we are trapped under Starcourt Mall. The Red Army has infiltrated Hawkins, and if we are found, they will torture and kill us." The boy's voice bounces off the cement walls and his pacing footsteps pound in Steve's head. It's not that he's wrong, just annoying.
"Hey." Steve grunts in effort, heaving himself aloft of the square opening in the ceiling. He and Filly had been woken up by the loud repeated phrases going out over the radio in Dustin's hand., and he was about done listening to it. Filly needed fuel to continue using her powers. Since she isn't getting food, he considered it his responsibility to make sure she got rest. "You gotta take it easy on that thing, you're going to drain the battery."
"The mall just opened," the boy says, as if that's enough of an answer.
"So?" The teen's hair oscillates with the force of his movement.
"So, someone could be in range."
"What do you think, Petey the mall cop is going to rappel down here and save the day?" He wrestles himself through the door, pulling himself up with a grip on the horizontal I-beam.
"All right, why are you such a cranky pants after getting to spend the night with Filly?" His rebuttal drops into a hushed whisper halfway through, but it's too loud for Steve. Filly's a smart girl, one that picks up on things too quick sometimes. It's a miracle he'd been able to keep his crush a secret this long. The last thing he needs is for Dustin to blow it.
"Shh! Jesus Christ. Will you leave it alone already?" He huffs, standing up straight. "I'm working on it, okay? You can't rush things like this." His endeavors haven't borne fruit yet, but he's sure they will. He just needs to ease her into it, build some more romantic tension just like the last time, and it'll be smooth sailing. He'll make sure she falls in love with him long before she falls for some random guy.
"I heard you guys talking all night. Probably staring at each other like the love-struck idiots you are." Dustin shifts his weight from one foot to the other. "That, and you guys looked real close before you woke up..."
"We were trying to figure out a way to open the door, while you children were sleeping. She even used her powers. After eight hours, we're still exactly nowhere, which is, you know, probably just a little bit of the reason why I'm feeling just a tad cranky." His wandering pace leads him to the edge of the roof where he stands facing the wall. With a short jerk, he tugs down the fly of his pants and takes his member in hand.
"What are you doing?" Dustin asks too loudly, his voice echoing in the chamber.
"What does it look like I'm doing? I'm taking a leak. Look away." Dustin's body turns, but not his head, and Steve waves his arm at him again. "Look away!"
Dustin raises his hands placatingly, turning fully around. Pointing it at the wall, Steve finally lets it out, no longer feeling eyes on his back. Thankfully he doesn't have performance anxiety. The pressurized urine that had been filling his bladder audibly leaves him.
"Can you redirect your stream, please?" Robin's voice wafts up from the room down yonder, and he obliges, pointing it elsewhere. While his hands are occupied, his mind drifts to the conversation below, audible though hushed.
"What does that mean, take a leak?" Filly's voice floats up through the cracks, even-tempered and melodic even when confounded such as now.
There's a soft chuckle and Robin says "Gosh, you really are sheltered... He's peeing."
"Really?" He can hear in her voice that she's chewing over the information, putting some real thought into what she heard. It's part of the reason Filly is so easy to talk to, she doesn't just listen, she analyzes. She's probably wrinkling her adorable button nose right now, looking thoughtful over even the most trivial sentences. *placeholder*
Bless her heart. She's too curious for her own good, sometimes. He's just glad that Robin is the one that has to explain it to her.
She does get her answer, but she isn't quite sure what to make of it.. The moment passes, both girls' attention caught by the clanging noise made by the third and youngest female among them.
Erica is quite sure that she'll need to drink the green plasma and says as much, but dutifully stops trying to open it at Robin's insistence. The teen girl seems suddenly distracted, holding her ear to the wall. "Someone's coming. We should head up." Robin turns around, getting onto the table in order to climb.
Looking straight through the nine-inch thick cement and stainless steel door, she found the taller girl to be right. Two men ride a small vehicle down the previously empty tunnel. They aren't far off, and she has to stop looking before she zones out. Filly follows the younger woman, stopping to help Erica get a leg up on the table. Once above, they settled in and stayed as quiet as they could.
Shoulder to shoulder, Filly and Steve stare down through the rectangular grate on top of the car. The scrawny teen saves her strength, reserving her power for later when they truly need it.
The door finally opens, sliding up and vanishing. One of the two strolls inside, picking up a box nonchalantly. Wearing identical high-collared, blue coveralls, the second man steps in and sniffs multiple times.
"You smell?" He asks. The English-to-Russian dictionary was heavy in her skirt pocket, but she didn't need it now as she had already read those entries. Now, the sentence structure for Russian, it could be any system and she'd be none the wiser, but she assumes he's asking if the other smells something.
The other looks at him dubiously. "What?"
He responds, but Filly doesn't understand what he says. She was still a novice, not much could be expected. Quick as a whip, Steve's arm shoots out, snatching away Erica's tube of green goo.
When the two men walk out, he swings down from the ceiling and slides, somehow fitting the cylinder under the door before it closes. It holds under the pressure of the door, the small gap just big enough for them all to sidle under. They follow as soon as possible, and Filly makes sure everyone gets out before her, checking them off her mental list one by one.
"Go, go, go!"
Then someone is pushing her down and she instinctively lowers herself, scooting through the narrow opening. The dark-haired teen is the last one out, sliding along his stomach as cracks appear in the glass tube.
Just in the nick of time, he slips past the metal sheet. Once he clears it, the descending door crushes the tubule and it's contents sizzle against the concrete. An acidic smell burns the black-haired girl's nostrils and it hammers in the thought that they could have died just now. Thank God they didn't.
"Jesus Christ," He says, scrambling off the floor in the wake of the noxious green puddle. Her arms encircle him, not wanting to let go.
Robin leans down, placing a hand on Erica's back. "Still want to drink that?"
Filly tunes them out, catching a glimpse of what lies behind them. This was the tunnel she'd seen, and it's what must be miles in length. But that isn't the only thing on her mind. She feels something at the nape of her neck, like an itch or a tickle, but there's nothing there. It was just her mind playing tricks on her, she hopes. It doesn't bode well for her sanity, but she wasn't about to make everyone else's night even worse by sounding the alarm based off of simply a feeling.
Silently, she follows her friends along the well-lit pathway, deeper and deeper into the belly of the beast.
"I mean, you have to admit as a feat of engineering alone, this is impressive."
"I do not have to admit that." Filly's feet are sore from being on the hard, unforgiving flooring for so many long hours, not soft like the dirt and grass she's used to. The bright lights hurt her eyes, making her feel uneasy, never able to get used to the harsh sensation. And there's a constant tingly feeling on the back of her neck that leaves goose pimples lining her flesh.
Suffice it to say, she can't find it in herself to be impressed by something so unnerving the same way Dustin is. She agrees more with Steve's response to the boy.
"What are you talking about?" Steve deadpans, skeptically eyeing the younger male. "It's a total fire hazard. There's no stairs, no exit, there's just an elevator that drops you halfway to hell."
"They're commies," The little girl in overalls offers with a raised brow. "You don't pay people, they cut corners." It sparks a lost memory in Filly's brain that lights up like a Christmas tree.
"This week's all about economic systems, my darling. Do you remember what kind we have in America?"
"Capitalism, Mama."
"Very good. Today I'll teach you about the others."
Before she can fall into the memory, Robin's voice summons her out of it. "To be fair to our Russian comrades, I don't think this tunnel was designed for walking." Robin eyes the long pipes running beside them and the smooth floor. "Think about it, they developed the perfect system for transporting that cargo."
Filly scratches the back of her neck, feeling a sense of unease again as they go further into the mall's underground depths. It doesn't bring her much relief. It feels like someone is touching her back, lightly running their fingers along her spine, but there's no one there when she turns around. She tries to brush it off, locking step with the others. She refuses to think about how cold the breeze is getting.
Dustin lifts his arms in a wide, swinging shrug. "It all comes into the mall like any other delivery."
The taller girl nods, fingering one of the chains around her neck momentarily. "And then they load it up onto those trucks and nobody's the wiser."
Steve opens his mouth, looking over Filly's head to eye Dustin and Robin. "You think they built this whole mall just so they could transport that green poison?"
Filly speaks up then, the frigid tickle on the back of her neck going away for now. Or maybe she had just gotten used to it? "It cannot be a simple poison. That would be too trivial to go through all this trouble for. It has to be a resource of great importance to be this secretive."
Dustin agrees instantly."Yeah, it's gotta be something much more valuable, like promethium or something."
"What the hell is promethium?" Steve asks, Filly nodding when he speaks. She'd also like to know about this mystery substance.
"It's what Victor Stone's dad used to make Cyborg's bionic and cybernetic components." The way Robin rolls her eyes while she's speaking, every word drenched in sass, makes Filly think maybe it was common knowledge.
Erica, gripping her stomach, bends forward slightly. "You're all so nerdy it makes me physically ill."
Steve's head goes back and forth subtly while he denies the accusation. "No, no, no. No, don't lump me in with them. I'm not a nerd, alright?"
Filly wonders whether she's included or not. What even is a nerd, she wonders, because the only place she's seen that word was on the candy they got for Halloween.
"Why so sensitive, Harrington?" A smile grows on Robin's lips, pleased at the sight of Steve's squirming. She rests her elbow atop the scrawny teen's black hair, meeting Steve's eye's. "Afraid of losing cool points to a ten-year-old child?"
"No, I'm just saying I don't know jack shit about Prometheus."
"Promethium," Dustin corrects, turning his head momentarily to face the three teens.. "Prometheus is a Greek mythological figure but whatever."
Filly supplies them with extraneous wisdom. "One of the Titans and a god of fire. He took the gift of fire from the Olympian Gods and gave it to humanity, so they say."
Dustin shakes his head, responding, "Right. All I'm saying is it's probably being used to make something."
"Or power something," Robin adds.
"Like a nuclear weapon?"
Facing forward as she walks, she smiles apathetically. "Totally."
"Walking towards a nuclear weapon. That's great. That'd be great." Filly wonders why Steve says that, as he clearly is not pleased. It must be the thing they call sarcasm again, always cropping up to make it harder on her.
"It could be any number of things." She doesn't want to say that they could be creating another gate. She's not sure of anything and doesn't want to scare the others unnecessarily.
"But if they're building something, why here?" Robin sticks her palms out, face-up, as she and Erica continue trekking down the hall. "I mean, Hawkins. Seriously. Of all places."
It's true that to a regular civilian like her, there would be no obvious reason for the Russians to be in Hawkins. For the three of them that knew, they didn't even have to think about it. Filly grabs the wrists of her two best friends, holding them back. Steve and Dustin slow their pace to match hers, lagging behind the others and speaking in hushed tones. She offers them each a terrified glance.
"You think the Russians know?" Dustin blurts quietly, turning to the two older teens.
"About the...?" Steve doesn't finish but they know what he means.
Filly's stare becomes intense, her surety making her voice sound low. "They most certainly know. There is no doubt they are connected." Meeting her best friend's warm, deep brown eyes, she hopes he picks up on how certain she is.
He hesitates, his mouth opening and closing before he settles on a question. "How?"
"I don't know, but it's possible." Dustin hides his eyes under the shade of his cap, thoughtful. Robin and Erica had walked a considerable distance now, and Filly wasn't the only one to notice.
Robin turns on her heel, staring at the three of them suspiciously. "I'm sorry, is there something you three would like to share with the class?"
There is no class, so Filly assumes she means just them. She glances at the dark-haired male, then the younger, sharing a look with them both. Maybe it's time to share the whole truth about Hawkins with their Ice-cream-slinging buddy. She nods to her companions, and her mouth opens, but she doesn't get a chance to speak.
"-deystvovat' ostorozhno." The radio buzzes, Russian pouring out of it's crude speaker from inside the bag, but it's hard to make sense of. Filly kneels and places her hobo bag on the ground. She then roots around in the canvas sling, fishing the communicator from its confines swiftly. As the others crouch around her, she pulls out the long antenna to get a clearer signal. The man's voice is discernible now, unobscured by static.
Filly's gaze locks with her fellow translator's. "Poyezdka v Kitay zvuchit neplokho, yesli deystvovat' ostorozhno," she repeats along with the transmission.
Robin nods her head, smiling. "It's the code."
"Wherever that broadcast is coming from-" Dustin stops, allowing Robin to continue his sentence.
"It's close. And if there's one thing we know about that signal..." She does the same thing back, looking to Filly and awaiting her assessment.
"It strong enough to reach the surface," she finishes. Her eyes drift up, only half of her irises still visible. "Let us proceed onward."