CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
RISE OF THE NERDS
Abby, Dustin, and Steve all exchange a glace as the pulsing continues. Abby cannot hear the words that the boys across from her utter, but the meaning behind their glances speaks more than words can. She can feel the horror that grows in the pit of her chest the longer she stares at the rip in the gate. It's a great big blackness that threatens to consume her from the inside, that threatens to tear her down in a fit of asphyxiated breath and tears, but she knows that they cannot afford for the inevitable fit of panic that she will find herself in. They cannot afford to get caught. Not now. Not when they've discovered what's really going on beneath the layers of Hawkins.
She keeps her head up high and her breaths controlled as they scramble down the blue stairs. Robin is bursting at the seams with questions that spill out of her mouth faster than Abby can keep with. Her eyes are still wide, her face has paled considerably. Her hands shake slightly as her thoughts travel to the monsters that had roamed Hawkins before the gate had closed. Steve and Dustin answer the questions the best that they can without revealing too much about the threat that they face.
"Um, Steve, where's your Russian friend?" Erica asks.
She stares pointedly at the empty spot on the ground that they have all converged around. At first, Abby doesn't understand what Erica has asked, and then suddenly, it clicks. The absence of the body that they had hastily left behind them, the red lights that begin to flash around them, the alarm that suddenly blares to life.
"Shit," Steve whispers.
He runs for the heavy metal door and yanks it open. Through the crack, Abby glimpses the man that they had carelessly left on the ground behind them hunched over, being supported by a group of his colleagues as he scrambles to describe what had happened to him. It's then that they catch sight of Steve who widens his eyes in a surge of panic and slams the door behind behind him.
They don't need to be told twice to run. With her heart beating wildly and vision blurring, curses spilling out of her mouth as her voice wavers, Abby stumbles up the blue steps, away from the shouting of the Russian guards and back toward the gate. Suddenly, the thought of facing the rip between realities seems much more appealing than being caught in the claws of the cat who has finally given up playing the game of cat and mouse.
They crash through the double doors and push through another set only to find themselves facing another group of scientists. They pause for a brief moment as the scientists that occupy the observation room turn to stare at the six trespassers who have appeared before them, bedraggled and clearly panicked. Before anybody can say anything, the six are off again, bounding down the nearby stairs, harshly pushing aside Russians dressed in red and blue hazmat suits. There is no room for mercy, anybody who dares to step in their wat faces the consequences of the battlefield.
The air grows hot, dangerously hot as they approach the bright beam of light. Abby feels the sweat start to bead above her brow, her skin feels dangerously warm, any second now and she feels that she'll melt. The light that it emits is almost blinding and Abby has to hold up an arm to shield her eyes from the beam of electricity.
"Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit, holy shit, holy shit!" Dustin pants before he takes a deep breath and squeals. "HOLY SHIT!"
"Guards! Go!" Erica screams.
They turn to see the guards charging at them with malicious grins spread across their faces that sends chills down Abby's spine. Steve shouts for them to follow and leads the way down the nearest staircase, shoving more guards out of their way and pushing over a stack of large barrels. Abby watches them topple like bowling pins. Any other time, she would feel more than just a small twinge of guilt as the guards get buried under the cylinders of metal, but today she's too clouded by the adrenaline that rushes through her veins and the desperation to get out of there to spare a second glance toward the Russians.
They burst through a nearby door. Steve slams the door shut behind him and holds it closed the best he can with his arms. Banging sounds from the other side as the Russians pound their fists against the metal. The door bucks from beneath Steve as he continues to hold it shut, but Abby knows that it won't last long. Robin scrambles into action and joins Steve at the door, leaning her shoulder against it and putting all of her weight into keeping the door shut. Dustin and Erica have scrambled up the stairs and kneel before one of the grates as they pry it open. Abby stands perfectly in the center of it all, stuck at an impossible crossroads.
Her father had told her once of the paradox, Buridan's ass, in which a donkey that is equally as starved as it is hungry is placed precisely between a bale of hay and a bucket of water. It continues on to say that the donkey will die of both hunger and thirst because it cannot make its mind up about which way to go. Abby supposes that she's the donkey in this situation. She can help Steve and Robin hold the door shut long enough for Dustin and Erica to escape with the small hope that they don't get caught, or she can scramble up the stairs and join Erica and Dustin to make sure that they stay safe.
Luckily, Steve makes the decision for her. "Abby, just go! Go get some help and keep those two safe!"
Abby doesn't have to be told twice. With shaking limbs and a heart-sinking in guilt she steals one last glance back at Robin and Steve before stumbles up the stairs. Erica has already disappeared under the flooring, but Dustin stays standing, watching in horror as the door buckles underneath the weight of Robin and Steve once again.
"Dustin!" She screeches. "Go!"
"I won't forget you!" Dustin calls toward Steve before Abby shoves his head under the flooring.
"We'll come back for you, I promise!" Abby screams before she too ducks under the grate.
With a final, reverberating slam, the grate closes above her, sealing them off from the rest of the world. But they're far from safe. The Russians are bursting into the room above them, shouting and clamoring as she, Dustin, and Erica crawl as quickly and quietly as they can away from the room.
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They take solace in the wide air vents by a humming, circulating fan. The walls around them are cold and smooth, easily big enough to fit a grown adult within them, but despite their size, Abby can't help but feel as though the walls are constricting around her. She thinks about the friends she has left behind at the mercy of the Russians, about the promise she had made to them before she had disappeared beneath the flooring. She only hopes that they all survive long enough for her to keep her word.
She sits with her back against the smooth walls and her knees drawn up to her chest as Dustin tells Erica the full story of Hawkins, staring all the way back when Will Byers had seemingly disappeared off of the face of the Earth as he starts to unscrew the panel covering the wires that power the fan. The flashlights that are taped to Erica's helmet glow, providing them with the much-needed source of light to cancel out the darkness that had already managed to consume them.
"So, when we set fire to the hub, we drew the Demodogs away so El could close the gate," Dustin explains. "But now, for some insane reason, the Russians appear to be trying to reopen it, which just destroys everything we risked our lives for."
Abby lets out a dejected sigh. "Well, you know what they say: no rest for the wicked."
"By 'we', you're including Lucas?" Erica questions, ignoring Abby's comment.
"Yes, of course," Dustin answers. There's a layer of sweat that had built up on his face that accompanies the look of hopelessness that rests in his eyes. He does a better job than Abby at hiding this, but she knows that he feels the same amount of guilt for leaving their companions behind.
"So, all that shit you told me, Lucas was there?" Erica inquires with a disbelieving expression on her face.
"Yeah."
"My brother, Lucas Charles Sinclair?"
"Yes!" Dustin snaps.
"I don't believe you," Erica responds.
"Wait, so you believe everything about El and the gate, and the demodogs, and the Mind Flayer ... but you question your brother's involvement?"
Erica nods. "That's correct."
"Makes total sense," Dustin remarks sarcastically as he rolls his eyes. He raises the small screwdriver that he had conveniently brought along as he proceeds to remove the screws from the panel that powers the fan.
"You need help with that?" Erica questions.
"No," Dustin replies.
"Well, I mean it's taking a while, so—"
"Yeah, no shit, Sherlock."
"All right, so if we don't find a more efficient method to stop these fans, we're never gonna find help and your ice cream buddies are screwed," Erica snaps.
"Yeah, with that attitude they are," Dustin retorts. "Jee-zus!"
Abby blows out a puff of air and speaks up with an aggravatingly calm voice, even for her. "Look, Erica, we're doing the best we can with what we have in hand—which isn't exactly a lot."
"I'm just trying to be realistic," Erica replies defensively. She raises a wrist to check the neon-pink watch that is strapped securely around her wrist. "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."
Abby stares at the girl with wide eyes and parted lips. "I'm sorry, did you just do that on the spot? Like, in your head?"
"I'm good with numbers," Erica replies.
"Holy shit," Dustin utters. "You're a nerd!"
Erica makes a sort of strangled gasping nose as she leans forward toward Dustin. "Come again?"
"You ... are ... a ... nerd," Dustin repeats with a grin.
"Okay," Erica snaps, waving a finger in the air and pointing at Dustin. "You better take that back, nerd."
Dustin only shrugs. "You can't put the truth back in the box."
Abby nods and pats Erica on the shoulder, hoping to move the conversation along quicker. "Great, yeah, yeah, I hope you enjoy your stay in Nerddom, whatever." She then turns her attention to Dustin, "And Henderson, focus on your mission, please."
"But it's not the truth!" Erica exclaims.
Dustin only grins wider, even the smile manages to reach his eyes. "Let's examine the facts, shall we?"
"Listen, as compelling as this conversation is, we don't have the time—" Abby starts.
"Fact one: you're a math whiz, apparently," Dustin continues, raising his eyebrows.
"That was a pretty straightforward equation," Erica defends.
Dustin ignores this and continues. "Fact number two: you're a political junkie."
"Just because I don't agree with communism as an ideology—"
"Just give me the damn screwdriver," Abby hisses. Dustin doesn't fight as Abby wrestles the screwdriver out of his grasp and starts to unscrew the panel herself.
"Fact number three: you like My Little Pony," Dustin finishes, holding up Erica's backpack to see.
"He's got you there," Abby voices after a moment.
"And what does My Little Pony have to do with this?" Erica questions indignantly as she wrestles the backpack out of Dustin's grip and makes sure that the straps are securely around her shoulders.
The grin on Dustin's face has returned as he lets out a sigh. "Ah, let's recall the ponies' latest adventure, shall we? The evil centaur team and Tierk 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 magic are all standard nerd tropes. Ergo, My Little Pony is nerdy. Ergo, you, Erica, are a nerd."
There's a smug expression on Erica's face as she asks, "And how do you know so much about My Little Pony?"
Instead of becoming a flustered babbling mess, spitting out excuses as quickly as possibly Dustin only grins. "Because I'm ..." Abby removes the panel from the electrical box and Dustin grins before he looks back at Erica. "A nerd."
Abby surrenders the electrical box to Dustin who grabs the cables that run through the box and yanks them out of their sockets. There's a flash and a small crackle of electricity before the fan before them starts to slow to a stop.
"Thank god for Camp Know Where," Abby sighs.
Dustin grins and turns back to Erica. "Let's go ... nerd."
author's note: i completely forgot to update this, i apologize profusely. but yeah, i couldn't have abby go with robin and steve because i'm pretty sure that then i'd have to include confessions and that would mess up the ending that i had already planned out and that i like a lot more.