005 (A Stranger Things Story)

Chapter 22: The Code

When I got home that night Hopper was on the couch with a wine in his hand. He had on a nice shirt for once.

"What's with you?" I asked as I stepped through the door.

"What do you mean what's with me?"

"This... nice shirt, yet still disheveled look you have going on."

"If you must know, I was supposed to meet Joyce for dinner, but she stood me up."

"Ooh, that's gotta hurt." I walked into the kitchen and poured myself some sprite.

"Where have you been?"

"Just with Steve." Hopper turned to look at me with questioning eyes.

"Relax, I hung out with him at his work. Along with Dustin and his co-worker Robin." Hopper furrowed his eyebrows at me. "Weird combo I know... don't ask." He turned back to the TV as he took a big gulp of his wine.

"Is Mike here?" I asked seeing El's door closed.

"No, he's not. Max is."

"Huh, that's weird."

"I think it's great."

"Of course you do." I rolled my eyes. "I'm going to bed, good night."

"Night."

The next day I met up with Robin, Steve, and Dustin again. Steve and Dustin set off to look for anyone that might be working for the Russians while Robin and I stayed back to try and work out more of the recording. We now had "The week is long, the silver cat feeds, when blue meets yellow in the west, A trip to China sounds nice if you tread lightly"

"Tread lightly"? None of this makes sense," I said reading through the words. Suddenly there was a knock at the back door. Robin quickly jumped up and opened it.

"Delivery for you," a man said, passing her a box. 

"Thank you."
"Have a nice day."

"Yeah, you too." She turned back to me; her eyes wide. "Ari come now." I quickly jumped up and ran over to her. We both looked out at the delivery man walking away. Plastered on his back was the symbol of a...

"Silver cat," Robin said.

"Holy shit," I exclaimed. Robin grabbed my hand, and we ran back out the front just as Steve and Dustin walked in. 

"You're not gonna believe who Dustin thought was a Russian," Steve said.

"You did too."

"No, I did not." We ignored them and ran straight past and out into the middle of the shopping mall. 

"A trip to China sounds nice," I repeated the words from the tape as we looked around.

"There!" I pointed as I saw a Chinese restaurant. 

"If you tread lightly," Robin said and then pointed out a shoe store. "When... When blue and yellow meet in the west."

"Robin." I quickly pointed out the clock above us. There was both a blue and yellow hand on the clock.

"Holy shit!" she said. 

"What are you guys doing?" Steve asked as he and Dustin walked over. 

"We cracked it," I said. 

"Cracked what?"

"We cracked the code," Robin said. Both the boys stared at us for a second and their eyes widened.

"So, the silver cat is a delivery service and when blue meets yellow in the west is when the two hands of the clock meet on the nine?" Steve asked after Robin, and I had filled him and Dustin in on our findings.

"Yes. A trip to China is the Chinese restaurant and the tread lightly is the shoe shop," I explained.

"Okay, so what does that mean?" Dustin asked.

"It means at 8.45 tonight something is going to happen."

We all met back at the mall at 8.30 that night. It was bucketing down with rain and I was glad I brought a coat. We sat out on top of a building that looked over the delivery part of the mall.

"Look for Imperial Panda and Kaufman Shoes," Robin said. 

"They're with that whistling guy, ten o'clock," Dustin called out, holding onto the binoculars. 

"What do you think's in there?" Steve asked. 

"Guns, bombs?" Dustin said. 

"Chemical weapons?" Robin said. 

"Whatever it is, they're pretty heavily armed," I said looking at all the guards. 

"Great. That's great," Steve wined. 

"Hey, what's in there?" Robin asked as two doors were opened and the whistling guy walked in.

"It's just more boxes," Dustin said. 

"Let me check it out," Steve said grabbing the binoculars off of Dustin. 

"No, I'm still looking." They fought for the binoculars and then suddenly they were knocked off the roof. 

"Duck!" I said as the guards looked up toward us. We lay down our hearts racing praying that we hadn't been seen. Steve and my hands interlocked as our breaths quickened.

"We need to get out of here," I said. We army crawled our way to the door and headed back down into the mall. 

"Well, I think we found your Russians," Robin said as we quickly walked through the empty halls. Steve and I looked at each other, a nervous look on our faces.