𝘾𝙝𝙖𝙥𝙩𝙚𝙧 𝟭𝟴. 𝙏𝙝𝙚 𝙇𝙖𝙗

𝙏𝙝𝙚 𝙇𝙖𝙗

The radio was off.

In the silence, the only sounds Erin could hear were the tires humming over the tarmac and the low, steady rumble of the sheriff's engine. Hopper hadn't spoken in minutes. His jaw was clenched, eyes fixed on the road as if he could force the world to make sense just by staring it down. Worry carved lines into his face that even the dim dashboard light couldn't soften.

Beside him, Eleven sat rigidly, her hands folded tight in her lap, her gaze glued forward. Determined. Unshakable. She looked like someone walking toward a destiny she'd already accepted, no matter the cost.

Erin wished she had even half of that resolve.

The truth was, she barely understood what she was stepping into. She had seen the monsters once and that had been enough to twist her nerves into knots. Eleven had handled them effortlessly. Erin wasn't sure she could've done the same. She wasn't sure she could do anything close to that.

The car slowed. Gravel crackled under the tires. Then the engine fell silent, leaving a ringing quiet in its wake.

Hopper exhaled. "Here we are."

Erin unclipped her seatbelt with a click that sounded too loud and pushed open the door. Cold air hit her face, sharp and metallic. She stepped out... and froze.

The building towered over them like a monument to every nightmare she'd ever had.

The Lab.

The place that had made her, unmade her, shaped her into something she still didn't fully understand. The place she had escaped from, run from, sworn never to see again. She had imagined what it would feel like to return, but she hadn't expected this,  a sensation like a fist closing slowly around her heart.

A knot formed under her ribs, tight and solid, anchoring her to the ground.

A growling sound echoed from inside, low, wet, inhuman. Erin's breath stilled. 

Through broken windows, she could see flickers of orange. Fires were burning in several sections of the building. The whole place felt like a bomb seconds from going off.

A car door slammed. Hopper opened the trunk and pulled out a shotgun. He loaded it with practiced motions, the metal clicks snapping Erin out of her trance.

She looked at him, then at Eleven. The girl met her gaze with a small, steady nod as if assuring Erin she wasn't facing this alone.

"All right," Hopper said, exhaling, addressing both girls but his hand brushing Eleven's shoulder. "You let me do the heavy lifting up front, okay? Save your strength 'til we're below."

Then he turned to Erin, noticing her stiff posture, her arms crossed as if bracing herself against the cold or the memories.

"So... you've got powers too?" he asked. "Telekinetic kind?"

Erin swallowed, shaking her head. 

"Not really. At least... not like her." She glanced toward Eleven. "But I can still help."

Hopper raised a brow, confused. Erin glance at the revolver at his hip.

His gaze dropped to the revolver. His eyebrow arched higher. 

"You know how to use it?"

She nodded once. "I do."

He hesitated only a moment. Time wasn't a luxury they had. Finally, he unhooked the weapon from his belt and held it out. Erin took it and reloaded with steady hands. With the weight of the gun in her grip, she felt something inside her anchor, if only slightly.

She drew in a breath and stared at the Lab again.

"Okay," Hopper said quietly to Eleven, touching her shoulder. "You're okay?"

Eleven gave no verbal answer she simply stepped forward, walking straight toward the entrance with unshakable determination.

Erin took that as a yes and followed, quickening her pace to keep up.

They moved in silence, save for the rhythmic click of Hopper's boots on the cracked tile. He had strapped a flashlight under the shotgun barrel, the beam cutting a thin path through the darkness. Erin and Eleven trailed close behind him. Erin kept both hands on her weapon, finger steady against the trigger guard, ready for anything.

They entered the main hall.

Erin stopped.

It hit her like a cold wave, a presence. A consciousness. Not a monster, not a memory.

A person.

"There's a survivor here," she whispered.

Hopper turned, brows furrowing. "You can tell where?"

She nodded. It wasn't a sense she could explain a thread she just felt, tugging her toward someone still clinging to life.

She stepped ahead of him, guiding them left, then right, through corridors smeared with blood. It was grotesque, but worse than that it was quiet. Too quiet.

The survivor's presence pulled her down a stairwell.

"He's here," she said.

"Stay here," Hopper ordered.

He moved ahead, gun raised. Erin held her breath, watching him descend. A few steps down, he froze.

"Oh, shit."

Blood streaked across the floor, trailing to a middle-aged man slumped against the wall, gripping a wound in his thigh. Hopper lowered the shotgun and approached cautiously.

The man groaned.

Erin and Eleven, sensing no threat, descended after Hopper.

Hopper knelt beside him. "Hey, Doc."

Erin studied the wound, bad, deep, barely clotted. The man's name tag read Owens. Recognition hit her like a spark. He worked here. Her muscles tensed instinctively.

Owens met her eyes. Then Eleven's.

Hopper grunted a sigh. 

"Yeah, I've been meanin' to tell you." He gestured between them. "This is Eleven. And this is her sister, Erin. Girls, Doc Owens. Doc Owens, the girls."

Understanding flickered in the doctor's gaze, especially when he looked at Eleven.

Hopper continued talking as he pulled off his belt. 

"Eleven's been stayin' with me for about a year now. And Erin here... well, she's been surviving on her own thanks to your little lab." He tightened the belt around the doctor's thigh, making him hiss in pain.

"And they're about to save our asses."

Owens stared at them with something almost like guilt. Erin wasn't sure how to interpret it.

"Maybe when this is all over," Hopper went on, his tone sharpening, "you could help them out. Help them get a normal life. One where they're not poked or prodded or treated like lab rats."

He gave the belt a final, ruthless yank. Owens grunted.

"I don't know, it's just a thought." Hopper smiled, not kindly. "But, uh... think about it."

He patted Owens's shoulder, stood, and placed a revolver from his car in the doctor's trembling hand.

"Don't go anywhere," Hopper muttered.

Owens let out a weak chuckle despite everything. Hopper motioned for the girls to follow him.

Erin looked back just once at the wounded man. She wasn't sure if she felt pity or anger. Maybe both. Maybe neither.

She didn't get time to decide.

She hurried after Hopper and Eleven, deeper into the Lab, deeper into the fire, deeper into the fear she had been running from all her life.

The alarm was still going, a dull, mechanical heartbeat thudding through the concrete walls as they descended deeper into the bowels of the Lab. It echoed down every corridor, bouncing, warping, becoming something almost organic the lower they went.

Erin felt each pulse in her ribs.

Hopper's boots struck the metal steps hard, his breathing already growing rough from stress and exertion. Eleven moved silently beside Erin, but even she kept glancing around with sharp, wary eyes.

The corridors below were worse than the ones above.

Longer.

Darker.

And wrong.

White motes floated through the air, thick, drifting particles that caught in the flashlight beam like ash falling upward instead of down. Erin brushed some off her sleeve, but more settled instantly. The air felt heavy, as if they were walking through a cloud.

The lights overhead flickered in tortured, buzzing bursts, making every shadow shift like something alive.

Erin's fingers tightened on her gun.

She couldn't feel anyone down here. No survivors. No human minds. But she had learned something crucial within the first minute:

She couldn't "feel" the monsters.

Her ability simply... slid off them. Like trying to grasp smoke.

Which made every inch of darkness a threat.

They reached a wide intersection. Hopper halted abruptly, sucking in a breath.

Erin didn't know what she heard first.

The low, throaty chuff. Or the rasping scrape of claws on tile. Or the echoing, bone-deep growl rolling down the corridor to their left.

She froze, gun up before she consciously moved. Hopper mirrored her instantly, shotgun trained on the shadowed hall.

Eleven stepped forward a fraction before Hopper threw an arm out across her chest.

"Stay here," he said, voice low, ragged.

Eleven's jaw squared. Erin swallowed, nodding stiffly even though her pulse hammered against her throat.

Hopper moved down the hall, every step slow, every breath louder than the alarm.

Then he vanished around the corner.

Eleven and Erin waited three seconds. Four. Five.

The growl didn't return. But silence didn't mean safety.

Erin shifted her weight, glanced at Eleven.

"We shouldn't split up," she whispered.

Eleven nodded sharply, agreement, not hesitation.

Erin moved first.

She followed the direction Hopper had gone, staying low, keeping near the wall. Eleven trailed behind her, steps soundless. They passed a broken light sparking weakly, illuminating a doorway ahead.

Hopper's silhouette was visible, pressed flat against the wall, shotgun braced, trying to peek inside the room without being spotted.

Erin's heart dropped when she leaned just enough to see what he was looking at.

Demo-dogs. Dozens of them.

Crowded into what looked like a research office, scattered chairs overturned, papers torn, blood smeared on glass. The creatures prowled restlessly, muscles coiled, heads twitching with inhuman sharpness.

Too many. Far too many.

If even one of them turned its head at the wrong moment...

Erin and Eleven pressed their backs to the opposite wall, mirroring Hopper's tension. Erin met Hopper's eyes across the hall.

They were screwed. All three of them knew it.

Hopper didn't breathe. Erin barely dared to. Not with that many monsters between them and the gate.

Then—

A sound tore through the air.

All the demo-dogs reacted at once, bodies snapping to attention, ears flattening, muscles bunching.

The room erupted into motion.

One by one, the demo-dogs bolted, claws skittering, slamming into each other as they raced toward the center of the chamber.

Toward the pit.

A vast, gaping tear in the floor, glowing faintly, pulsing with faint reddish light. The creatures didn't hesitate. They dove into it, disappearing down the tunnel with frantic urgency.

Chasing something. Answering a call. Hunting.

Erin didn't know.

She only knew that whatever had summoned them had just saved their lives.

She exhaled shakily, lowering her gun a fraction. Hopper did the same, leaning back against the wall in relief so raw it made him blink hard.

Eleven stepped closer to Erin, whispering, "They're leaving."

Erin nodded. "Yeah but they're not gone. Just... distracted."

Hopper swallowed, glanced at them both, then jerked his head forward.

"Come on," he whispered hoarsely. "While we still have a damn chance."

They slipped inside the office the moment the last demo-dog vanished down the pit, Hopper moving first with the shotgun raised. Erin and Eleven followed close behind, stepping over overturned chairs and scattered papers soaked with dirty water and blood.

The room smelled like metal and rot.

Erin's eyes adjusted slowly to the dim, pulsing glow coming from the far wall, an unnatural light that didn't belong in any building, let alone a laboratory.

And then she saw it.

A rupture. A wound in reality.

The wall wasn't a wall anymore but a torn, gaping breach, its concrete edges warped and stretched outward as if pulled apart by giant hands. Veins of black-and-red material pulsed across the surface, branching out like grotesque roots, glowing with a sickly luminescence.

They writhed gently with each pulse of the otherworldly light.

The air near it vibrated, low, humming, alive.

The Gate.

Thank you so much for reading this far! 🎡

Sorry for the wait... I ran into a few problems, but the new chapter is ready at last ! 

Also, I'm ridiculously excited for the new season !!!