The first thing he noticed was the cold.
Not winter cold—Indiana cold. The kind that crept through clothes and settled in your bones like it planned to stay. His breath fogged in front of him as he stared up at a ceiling that wasn't his.
Wooden beams. Hairline cracks. A slow-spinning fan that squeaked every time it completed a circle.
He didn't panic.
That surprised him.
He lay still, listening. Somewhere outside, a car engine coughed and died. A dog barked once, then went quiet. The air smelled like dust and old paper and something faintly metallic.
*This isn't 2025.*
The thought arrived fully formed, calm and undeniable.
He sat up.
The room was small. Too small. A narrow bed. A cheap desk shoved against the wall. A corkboard with yellowed newspaper clippings pinned crookedly—local headlines, nothing dramatic. **Hawkins High Basketball Wins Regionals. **Star court Mall Proposal Delayed Again.**
Star court.
His throat went dry.
He swung his legs off the bed. They felt lighter than they should've. Stronger, too. His hands—he held them up, flexed his fingers—weren't his hands.
Younger. No calluses from typing all day. No faint burn scar from a stupid college accident. No smartwatch tan line.
He crossed the room and stopped in front of the mirror.
The boy staring back at him was maybe sixteen. Dark hair that refused to lie flat. Sharp eyes. Too alert for his age. The kind of face teachers labelled *gifted* and classmates labelled *weird*.
Someone else's life.
Someone else's body.
"Okay," he said softly.
His voice cracked—not with fear, but with disbelief.
The mirror didn't argue.
A sudden pressure bloomed behind his eyes, and memories flooded in—not his, but close enough to feel invasive.
**Name:** Alex Harper.
**Born:** 1966.
**Location:** Hawkins, Indiana.
**Parents:** Gone. Car accident, 1979.
**Current Situation:** Living alone above an old storefront his parents used to own. Small inheritance. Quiet kid. Too smart. Keeps to himself.
1982.
Three years before Will Byers vanished. Four before everything went to hell.
Alex leaned back against the desk and exhaled slowly.
He knew this universe. He *knew* how bad it would get. The monsters. The government lies. The children who would be forced to grow up too fast.
And Hawkins—sleepy, stubborn Hawkins—had no idea what was coming.
A faint sound chimed.
Not from the room.
From *inside* his head.
> **SYSTEM INITIALIZING…**
He froze.
The words weren't glowing or dramatic. They didn't block his vision. They simply *existed*, like a thought he hadn't consciously formed.
> **SKILL PANEL ONLINE**
> **USER: ALEX HARPER**
> **STATUS: STABLE**
A headache pulsed, sharp but brief.
Alex swallowed. "Of course," he muttered. "There's a system."
Figures.
A translucent interface slid into his awareness—not floating in front of his eyes, but layered over reality like an instinct.
He 'knew' how to access it the same way he knew how to move his fingers.
> CORE ATTRIBUTES
> Intelligence: S
> Perception: A
> Reflex: B
> Endurance: C
> Strength: C
He blinked.
High IQ. That tracked. The memories he'd inherited were filled with late nights reading old engineering textbooks and dismantling radios just to see how they worked.
Below the attributes sat something more interesting.
> **SKILLS**
> • Adaptive Learning (Passive)
> • Basic Firearms Handling
> • Driving (Civilian)
> • Cooking (Home-Level)
> • Electronics Fundamentals
> • Business Insight (Locked)
> • Combat Instinct (Locked)
Locked.
That was… good. Maybe.
This wasn't some overpowered cheat. It felt like a framework. Something that rewarded *work*.
"What's the catch?" he asked quietly.
The system didn't answer.
He paced the room, grounding himself. If this were a hallucination, panicking wouldn't help. If it wasn't—then he needed a plan.
First priority: Survival.
The Upside Down wasn't something you punched your way through. It was poison and claws and things that learned. Raw power wouldn't save anyone.
Preparation might.
Alex opened the desk drawer. Inside: a folded stack of bills, a notebook filled with careful handwriting, and a small revolver wrapped in oilcloth.
He stiffened.
Firearms Handling - Basic.
His hand didn't shake when he picked it up. That scared him more than it should've.
> SKILL UPDATED
> Firearms Handling → Familiar
He set the gun down slowly.
"Not today," he murmured.
Outside, the sky was turning orange. Late afternoon. 1982 Hawkins moved slow, like it had all the time in the world.
Alex stepped to the window and looked down at the street.
A kid rode past on a bike, no helmet, shouting to someone out of frame. A woman locked up a diner, wiping her hands on her apron. Everything looked *normal*.
That was the problem.
He knew what would crawl out of the shadows here. He knew how many people would die because they didn't understand the rules.
And he knew something else, too.
The system wasn't just for fighting.
> DAILY TASK AVAILABLE
> • Prepare a meal (Reward: Skill EXP)
> • Organize finances (Reward: Insight)
> • Physical training (Optional)
Alex laughed under his breath.
"So you want me functional," he said. "Not heroic."
That, he could do.
He glanced once more at the street, committing the image to memory. Hawkins before the rot. Before the cracks.
"I have three years," he said quietly.
Three years to learn.
Three years to build something.
Three years to make sure Hawkins wasn't completely helpless when the lights started flickering.
Alex turned away from the window and rolled up his sleeves.
"Let's get to work."