Wednesday, October 16, 1983 - Hawkins, Indiana
______________________________________________________________________
Ryan sat at his desk with the lamp angled low and a glass of water sweating onto the wood next to his elbow. The house was quiet. The golem worked somewhere below, its scraping muffled through two floors of earth and stone. Outside, wind pushed through the last of the October leaves.
He opened the status window.
Eight skill points sat unspent. They'd been accumulating for weeks, three from the Demogorgon Slayer achievement, two from Demodog Hunter II, plus regular level-up grants.
He pulled up his skill list and went through it thinking what does the threat profile look like? What gaps will get someone killed?
Stealth was at LV 3. That wouldn't cut it for anything involving the Lab. If Eleven escaped and Ryan needed to get near that building, or if things went wrong and he had to pull someone out, the difference between LV 3 and LV 5 was the difference between getting spotted on a security camera and moving through a corridor like a ghost. Two points for that is must.
TK sat at LV 10. His most versatile tool in and out of combat, especially after Focused Pressure had turned his hands into something that could reach across a field and end a fight before it started. At LV 12, the weight ceiling would push past two thousand kilograms. Bigger pin radius, finer compression. Two points.
Fireball was still at LV 1, which meant the blast radius was loose, the damage inconsistent, and the MP cost too high for repeated use. Fire killed Upside Down creatures faster than anything else he had. At LV 3, the radius would tighten, damage would climb, and the cost would drop from 35 to 30 MP. That mattered over the course of a long fight. Two points.
Mana Shield at LV 6 could absorb a Demodog lunge. At LV 7, with his INT scaling the shield's HP, it could take a full swipe from a Demogorgon and hold. One point.
Heal at LV 3 handled scrapes, bruises, shallow cuts. LV 4 meant he could close deep wounds, reduce fractures, stop internal bleeding. November might mean emergency field medicine on people he cared about. One point.
Eight points spend and zero left over.
He made the investments. The notifications scrolled through his vision one after another, each skill jumping with a clean pulse of warmth through his hands, his chest, his spine.
[Stealth LV 3 → LV 5] Sound reduction +40%. Movement detection range -50%.
[Telekinesis LV 10 → LV 12] Max weight: 2,800 kg. Multi-object limit: 8.
[Fireball LV 1 → LV 3] Damage: INT x 1.8. AoE: 2.5m (tighter). MP Cost: 30.
[Mana Shield LV 6 → LV 7] Shield HP scales with INT. Absorbs ~400 damage.
[Heal LV 3 → LV 4] Can treat deep lacerations, minor fractures. Range: touch.
TK at LV 12 meant he could throw a pickup truck, it is probably wise not to test it indoors.
* * *
The Commodore 64's cursor blinked green in the dark living room. Ryan had been staring at the screen for three hours, and the glass of water on the desk was empty.
The antenna had been logging onto the Lab's radio traffic since September. Encrypted transmissions, six to eight per hour, on frequencies the FCC allocation tables listed as federal government bands. The encryption wasn't military grade. It was the kind of cipher a government facility used when it relied on isolation and secrecy rather than cryptographic rigor. Nobody in Hawkins, Indiana was supposed to be listening.
Ryan was Ryan, so he was listening.
He wrote the decryption program in BASIC, that was the only thing the Commodore understood. Also the machine's 64 kilobytes of RAM didn't leave room for anything fancier. The previous life engineer in him itched for C, for proper data structures, but you worked with what you had.
The approach was frequency analysis. Government radio protocols followed some patterns. Shift changes happened at predictable intervals. Security codes were mostly repeated, and emergency escalation used specific high-frequency bursts that stood out from routine traffic.
He cross-referenced the transmission patterns against an FCC frequency allocation manual from the Hawkins library and a declassified military communications handbook. Mrs. Marissa had given him a look when she handed that one over.
The cipher itself took four days to map. Not full decryption. The Commodore didn't have the processing power for real-time cracking of even a simple substitution cipher across continuous radio traffic. But Ryan didn't need every word. He needed patterns.
Normal traffic was four to six transmissions per hour. Mostly things like routine security checks, shift changes or equipment status.
Elevated was more packed, with eight to twelve per hour. They use new frequencies with longer transmissions. That usually means something happening that requires coordination.
And critical was literally a nonstop transmission on multiple frequencies, with specific high-frequency bursts that matched the structure of containment breach protocols.
He mapped the escalation ladder and wrote the program to flag transitions between states. The Commodore would monitor in the background whenever the machine was on, logging traffic volume and alerting him to shifts.
[Skill "Programming" has leveled up! LV 8 → LV 9]
Debugging speed +12%. Code optimization improved.
Current Lab traffic when he finished the program on a Friday night was elevated. Nine transmissions per hour.
They were getting busier there.
* * *
The levels came in pairs now, XP stacking from daily Demodog sessions with the party and solo Demogorgon hunts that were getting faster every time.
Level 22 to 23 came fast, mid-session, while the guys were clearing a Demodog pack in the copied Byers house. Same allocation obviously. Three INT, two WIS. INT climbed from 80 to 83. WIS from 46 to 48.
Level 23 to 24 came five days later, Sunday morning, while Ryan was running the perimeter trail behind the school. Three INT, two WIS. INT 83 to 86. WIS 48 to 50.
WIS hit 50 and the world went white.
He wishes it was a metaphor, but it wasn't. His perception blanked for a full second, a hard reset that dropped him mid-stride. He stumbled, caught himself on a fence post, and stood there breathing while the notification burned across his vision.
[WIS has reached 50!]
[Threshold Bonus Unlocked: Deep Perception]
+40% MP regen (stacks with Inner Calm, Mana Regen passive).
Psychic sense: detect living beings within 30m through walls/terrain.
Gamer's Mind now blocks mid-tier psychic attacks fully.
When his vision cleared, the world was different.
He could feel the squirrel in the oak tree forty feet away. Two joggers on the far side of the trail, their presence registering as warmth against something he didn't have a name for yet. A cluster of birds in the undergrowth to his left. A groundhog in its burrow beneath the fence line, curled and sleeping.
Every living thing within thirty meters existed as a point of warmth in his awareness, distinct and positioned, through soil, through wood, through concrete. Combined with Detect Life and the minimap, his close-quarters awareness was complete. Nobody could surprise him indoors. Nobody could hide in an adjacent room.
The MP regen was the other half. WIS 50 base, boosted by Inner Calm's twenty percent, Deep Perception's forty percent, and the Mana Regen passive's fifteen percent. Out of combat, somewhere around thirty-seven MP per minute. In combat, closer to fifteen. Over a three-hour session, that was nearly three thousand MP regenerated on top of his pool. For anything short of a prolonged boss fight, his mana was functionally unlimited.
Gamer's Mind at this tier blocked psychic attacks from everything except the highest-tier threats. The Mind Flayer at full power could probably still get through. Vecna probably depended on the version. And anything below that level? Gone. Which basically only left Eleven or other numbers, and most of them were dead according to the show, but he couldn't be sure it was the same here.
Ryan stood by the fence post and let the new sense settle. A bird landed on the branch above him and he felt it arrive before it was visible, a small warm spark descending through the canopy.
He finished his run. The world hummed with life around him for every step.
* * *
The second Demogorgon fight lasted four minutes. The spear changed everything.
Ryan entered the ID at dusk, the copied Miller property graying out around him as the dimension snapped into place. He summoned the Golem, checked his MP, and activated the Demogorgon Hunt tier. The ground rumbled. The air went cold. He set his stance with the spear butt planted against the ground and the head angled forward, seven feet of ash and steel that he'd forged for himself.
The creature charged from behind a copied barn two hundred meters south, covering the ground in long loping strides that shook Ryan's teeth. He opened with Fireball at range, the sphere of compressed flame crossing forty meters in less than a second and detonating against the creature's chest. The Demogorgon screamed, a sound like metal tearing, and stumbled. The Golem stepped into its path, stone arms wide, and absorbed the charge.
Dimensional Anchor hit on the second try, locking the Demogorgon into physical space. Ryan circled right, firing Mana Bolts at six MP each, the blue projectiles tracking with the homing upgrade and slamming into the creature's flank.
When the anchor dropped and the creature lunged toward him, the spear did its job. He pivoted on his back foot, drove the head into the gap between the upper ribs and the shoulder joint, and let the Demogorgon's own momentum push it down the shaft. The reinforced spine held. The creature bellowed, twisted, and Ryan let go of the spear and stepped sideways and put a Fireball into the wound at three feet of range.
The Demogorgon dropped.
The third fight took two and a half minutes. He opened with Dimensional Anchor before the creature cleared the tree line, then Focused Pressure on its left knee while it was still pinned. The leg folded under it like wet cardboard. The creature went down screaming. He walked over and put the spear through its skull.
The fourth fight was over in under two minutes. He reached out, picked the soft tissue between the creature's plates, and squeezed. Three Demogorgons down on Focused Pressure alone if his MP held. The technique was expensive against Demogorgon-grade armor, but it worked when he could time the gaps in the plating. He took less than a hundred HP in damage across the entire run, a glancing claw swipe that his shield absorbed most of and Gamer's Body reduced to a red line across his forearm that faded in seconds.
The creature that would terrorize Hawkins was a farming target now.
[Achievement Unlocked: "Demogorgon Slayer II" - Kill 5 Demogorgons]
Reward: +3 Skill Points, +1 to all physical stats (permanent)
Title upgrade: "Apex Hunter" (+25% damage vs. Elite-type)
STR 34 to 35. VIT 33 to 34. DEX 33 to 34. Three stats from one achievement.
He spent the three new skill points immediately. One into Stealth, pushing it to LV 6. One into Enchanting, raising it to LV 3, unlocking a +Damage enchantment option. One into Dimensional Anchor, extending the duration to fifteen seconds and dropping the cooldown to twenty-five.
The Demogorgon drops were consistent enough to work with. Hides, claws, dimensional residue, cash, and occasionally stat crystals. He used the hides and claws at the forge, Mana Crafting active through every step.
The armor took two days. Demogorgon hide cut and stitched over a leather backing, the material so dense it turned a knife edge without being rigid. He enchanted it with Durability and Minor Temperature Regulation, then pulled it on over his clothes and checked the fit. Fifty points of physical damage reduction. Resistant to dimensional effects. Self-adjusting from Mana Crafting. It would hold.
The gauntlets came next. Demogorgon claws mounted on reinforced leather gloves, the claws extending from the knuckles in curved points that could punch through a car door. Enchanted with Sharpness. Thirty percent bonus damage against Upside Down entities. Did he become wolverine?
Both pieces went into Inventory.
* * *
Lucas and Dustin showed up on a Saturday morning with a backpack frame, a small propane camping tank, four feet of brass tubing, and a folder of sketches that looked like they'd been drawn during multiple boring classes.
Ryan opened the door. Looked at the gear on the porch. They were nervous and excited at the same time. They'd probably been planning this for weeks and had just now worked up the guts to bring it to him.
"No," Ryan said.
"You haven't even-"
"I see a propane tank in the same backpack as brass tubing. I don't have to hear the rest."
"Just look at the sketches," Lucas said.
"If I look at the sketches I'm going to want to help you. And then you're going to build it. And then one of you is going to lose an eyebrow."
"That's basically a yes," Dustin said.
"That was not a yes."
"I saw what you did there, you said the eyebrow part out loud tone. That's reluctant participation, which is the same as participation."
They argue back and forth for few minutes and eventually Ryan let them in anyway.
He poured them coffee they were too young for and sat at the kitchen table while Dustin spread the sketches out under the lamp. Three pages, drafting paper, careful pencil work. Dustin's handwriting on the labels. Lucas had clearly done the structural drawings, clean lines and load notes in the margins where the welds and pressure points lived.
The design was a real flamethrower. Not a hairspray can in front of a lighter. A backpack tank feeding through a regulated valve, pressurized propane mixed with a secondary fuel for sustained burn, wand-style nozzle with a pilot light at the tip. They'd labeled the regulator. They'd labeled the safety cutoff. They'd even sketched a separate ignition circuit built around a piezo sparker scavenged from a barbecue grill.
Ryan looked at the pages for a full minute and didn't say anything.
The thing they'd designed, the backpack with the tank and the wand connected by a hose, was structurally a proton pack. Without the cyclotron and with worse aesthetics, but undeniably a proton pack. It looked like they were trying to pull off the infamous Ghostbusters customs for Halloween, just like in the show. Which was pretty brutal of the Duffer brothers, sending that already outcast group through the experience of being the only kids in costumes in the whole damn school....
"Talk me through it," Ryan said. "Why."
Dustin tapped the wand on page two. "Because the can-and-lighter thing has a ceiling. I get maybe two seconds of flame before the can starts spitting. The range is four feet. I have to hold the lighter perfectly in front of the spray or I get nothing. Both hands. And when a Demodog is closing on me at twenty miles an hour I do not have time to be holding a Bic in one hand and aiming a hairspray can with the other."
"You're alive."
"I'm alive because Lucas is in front of me with a spear. The fire is what slows them down for him. If the fire fails I have nothing. And the cans run out fast. I went through three of them last session."
Lucas leaned over the sketches. "He needs range and he needs sustained fire. The bigger Demodogs are coming through the hide before he gets a clean burn. If he had a real flame he could push them back without me having to put my body in the way every time."
"Bats and spears do not hold space," Dustin said. "Fire holds space. We have one fire-source and it's a hardware store aerosol can. That's not a good plan, that's a recipe for disaster."
Ryan didn't argue with any of it. He'd been thinking the same thing for a month. He hadn't pushed it because giving them better weapons meant giving them more reason to think they could handle worse things, and he was already steering them into worse things every Wednesday. But here they were, ahead of him, having figured it out themselves. A true protagonist group…
"You realize this can backfire and burn your face off."
"That's why we're showing it to you," Lucas said. "Before we build it. Not after."
Ryan looked at him. Lucas had been thinking about this in the right order. Show the builder of the group with the workshop before you light the propane. That was the difference between Lucas and most of the others.
"Where did you get the regulator math?"
"Dustin's dad has a propane grill manual," Lucas said. "And the library has a book about industrial torches."
"And I called the propane place in Roane," Dustin said. "Pretended I was helping my uncle build a custom forge. Guy on the phone walked me through pressure ratings for half an hour."
Ryan almost smiled. The audacity. He pulled the sketches closer.
"Three problems," he said. "First, your regulator's rated for residential propane. Tops out at low pressure. You're going to want to bump up the flow, which means a regulator with a higher PSI ceiling. The propane place sells industrial regs for forty bucks. Get one of those. I will pay for this"
Lucas was already writing on the back of one of the sketches.
"Second. Your nozzle design is going to flash back. The pilot light is too close to the gas exit and you don't have a flame arrestor in the line. You need a wire mesh in the tube about six inches back from the tip. Steel wool packed tight works for the prototype. Real stainless mesh later if we keep it."
"Define flash back," Dustin said.
"Flame travels backward up the gas line into the tank. Tank goes boom. You go boom."
"Got it. Mesh. We don't want to go boom"
"Third. Your fuel mix. Pure propane burns clean but it doesn't stick. You want gel. Dish soap thickener mixed into a gasoline-diesel blend, fed in at the nozzle, ignited by the propane pilot. That's a real flame stream that'll cling to surfaces."
"That sounds horrifying," Lucas said.
"That's because it is horrifying. It's a flamethrower."
"Well… you are right."
"Also," Ryan said, "we're not testing this on the porch. We test in the back field. Cleared circle around the target, garden hose run out from the spigot, shovel and dirt pile next to me. Indiana grass in October catches like paper."
"You're going to help us," Dustin said.
"I'm going to help you build it correctly, so you don't kill yourselves. There is a difference."
"There really isn't, Ryan."
***
They worked on it through the afternoon and the next two evenings.
Ryan's lathe turned the brass tubing into a proper nozzle with the flame arrestor mesh seated six inches back from the tip. Lucas fitted the new regulator with surprising care and ran the gas line, which caught Ryan off guard. He double-checks every threaded fitting with soapy water for leaks. Dustin handled the secondary fuel reservoir, a small steel cylinder mounted under the propane tank, and built the gel by trial and error in a coffee can on the back porch until he had something that looked like sticky orange syrup and burned for thirty seconds without dripping off a stick.
The test was on Tuesday evening. Back field, two hundred yards from the house. Target made of stacked hay bales. Ryan had cleared a six-foot dirt circle around the bales with a shovel that morning. The garden hose was already running, looped back on itself with the spigot half open so water would come fast if anyone yelled for it. The wind was low. The light was going gold.
Lucas had the tank straps tightened across his chest. Dustin had the wand. Ryan stood fifteen feet behind them with the fire extinguisher in his right hand and a hand free for TK if anything went badly.
"On three," Lucas said. "One. Two."
The pilot caught with a soft pop.
Dustin opened the wand valve.
A line of fire erupted from the nozzle, fifteen feet long, orange and yellow and roaring. It caught the hay bales and they went up like they'd been dipped in oil. The flame held steady for the four full seconds Dustin kept the valve open. When he released it, the fire snapped off cleanly at the nozzle tip. With no flashback or secondary explosion. Luckily for them the mesh did its job.
The hay bales were a wall of fire.
"Oh my god," Dustin said. He was grinning so hard it looked painful. "Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god."
"Lucas, gauge."
Lucas checked. "Steady. Didn't even drop a quarter."
"That means you've got at least four more shots like that one in the tank. Listen to me right now."
Both heads turned.
"Don't get cocky. Don't use it indoors without a backup exit. Don't aim it at anything you don't want gone. If it ever flares back at the wand, drop the whole rig and run. The straps are quick-release for a reason. Practice the release until you can do it without thinking."
"Got it."
"Got it," Lucas echoed.
"And it stays here. In the cellar. Locked. We don't bring it home. We don't show anyone. We don't take it out without all of us being there."
"Agreed," Lucas said immediately.
"Agreed," Dustin said. "Can we name it?"
"No."
"I'm naming it."
"Don't."
"Saint Anger."
Ryan looked at him. "Where did you get that from?"
"My head. Just now. It just arrived. It's perfect."
"It's a terrible name."
"You don't get a vote, you didn't help name it."
Lucas, watching the bales burn down to a black circle, said, "It's a pretty bad name, Dustin."
"Saint Anger or I quit."
"You can't quit, you're the one who built the fuel mix."
"Saint Anger or I become emotionally unavailable."
"Saint Anger," Ryan agreed.
He set the fire extinguisher down and walked over to look at what was left of the target. The ground around the bale circle was scorched in a perfect cone, ash drifting in a slow ring outward where the wind had pushed it. He could see exactly where the flame had hit, how far it had spread, and how it would behave in a confined space versus an open one. Very sueful data.
Dustin came up next to him still wearing the tank, the wand resting against his shoulder like a rifle, his face lit up like a Christmas tree. He stood in the gold light over the burned hay with his curls and the propane backpack and the nozzle.
Saint Anger went into the cellar that night, behind a locked steel cabinet. Ryan kept the keys. Dustin made Lucas shake on the rules. Lucas, who would have followed the rules without the handshake, shook on it anyway because Dustin needed the ceremony.
* * *
The night before the race Ryan slept four hours and felt fine. Gamer's Body cycled him through whatever rest he needed. By six in the morning he was on the back porch with coffee and a granola bar, watching the sun come up over the field.
The plan had been to come in second. Fast enough to qualify for state, slow enough to keep the article at the back of the sports section instead of on the front page. He had too many secrets to want this kind of attention.
But in the last three days he'd been talking himself out of it.
Pete had called him on Wednesday night. The phone in Ryan's kitchen rang at quarter past nine, which was around when Pete called, after the news and before the late game. Ryan picked up and said hello and Pete didn't bother with greetings.
"Saturday's race. Where is it."
"Hawkins High, actually. They moved it. Original course in Madison flooded last week, so the school picked it up. Coach has us running a loop that starts at the football field, goes out behind the science wing into the tree line, comes back through the south parking lot, finishes on the track. Whole thing is a school event."
"What time."
"Race goes off at ten."
"I'll be there at nine-thirty."
Ryan held the phone and didn't say anything for a beat. Pete hadn't been to a school event of any kind in Ryan's life. Not parent-teacher nights, not the science fair when Ryan was eleven, not the eighth-grade graduation. The man worked Saturday mornings out of habit.
"You don't have to come, Pete."
"Not asking for permission. Just asked where and when."
"Okay."
"You are winning?"
"I'm trying to qualify."
"That's not what I asked."
The line was quiet. Ryan twisted the phone cord around his finger and looked at the kitchen ceiling.
"Sunday's still on either way," Pete said. "Bring food. Your own cooking good food. But not the chicken again."
"You said you liked the chicken."
"I did like it, but I also want to try something different. Goodnight, kid."
Click.
The guys had been in on it since Wednesday. Dustin announced it at lunch like he was reading off a press release. "We're all going. We're bringing signs. Do not try to stop us." Mike said he'd help with the signs. Ryan didn't know what was on them yet. He suspected he'd regret it.
Eddie had heard about it during Hellfire on Monday and said, "Wait. The race is at school? Saturday morning? I don't do mornings, Reed, but I'll make an exception for the Galaga King." Then he'd announced to the rest of the table that Hellfire was officially attending a sports event for the first and possibly last time in club history, and Gareth had cheered like a lunatic, and Jeff had asked what cross-country actually was.
Nancy had caught up with him by the lockers that afternoon. Books pressed to her chest, scarf already on for the wind outside. "I heard the race is at school on Saturday. I might come by."
"You might come by."
"It's a school thing. Half the school's going. I might come."
"Around ten?"
"Around ten."
She'd looked at her books for a beat, then back up at him, then walked off down the hallway. Ryan had watched her go for a beat too long.
Chrissy had told him on Friday near the Hellfire room door. She'd been waiting, holding her books, standing like she'd been there a while. "The squad's coming. All of us. It's at school, so it's basically required. Don't make me look stupid for showing up to cheer for you."
"You're bringing the squad to cheer for me."
"I'm bringing the squad because the school is hosting and that's what we do. The fact that you're the one running is a coincidence."
"A coincidence."
"A small one." She'd lifted her chin. "Don't disappoint me, Smart Boy."
Steve had heard about it from Tommy of all people, who had heard about it from Carol. Steve had walked up to Ryan in the parking lot, hands in his letterman jacket. "It's at school. I'll be there also to cheer you on." Which from Steve Harrington was a written commitment.
Ryan sat on the porch and counted the people. The plan to come in second felt suddenly like a stupid plan. He was too focus on anonymity and not on the fact that people are coming to cheer for him.
Sixteen-year-old Indiana kids ran fast in races sometimes. It happened. The Hawkins Herald would write a paragraph and the next paragraph would be about football. Coach Dalton would tell college scouts about him in two years at the worst case. He could live with it.
He finished his coffee and decided to win.
* * *
Hawkins High at nine-thirty on Saturday morning.
The PTA had set up a folding table by the front entrance with coffee and donuts under a hand-painted banner that said HAWKINS HIGH HOSTS YOU. The art club had hung green and white streamers from the gym overhang. The Hawkins Herald had sent a guy with a camera who was already photographing the registration tent like it was opening night.
The course started on the football field, looped out behind the science wing into the tree line for a long stretch through the back woods, came back through the south parking lot, and finished on the track in front of the home bleachers. Coach Dalton had laid it out in chalk and orange cones. The home stretch ran the length of the bleachers, which were already starting to fill up forty-five minutes before the gun.
Ryan pulled the truck into the student lot and saw half the people he saw every day already there. Mr. Wheeler's station wagon. The Hendersons' Plymouth. Joyce Byers's Pinto. Two Hawkins High teachers Ryan had never spoken to outside of class were standing by the donut table. The JV soccer team in their team jackets, here because they were friends with someone in cross-country probably. A handful of girls Ryan recognized from the hallway. A few kids from Hellfire who weren't in the inner circle but had heard Eddie talking about it all week.
The guys were already at the start line with three pieces of poster board held up between them. Ryan took one look and almost turned the truck around.
The first sign said RUN, REED, RUN in big block letters. Mike's handwriting.
The second said GALAGA KING in glitter glue with a small spaceship next to the lettering. Dustin's, signed in the corner.
The third said SOPHOMORE TYRANNY in red marker. No further explanation.
Will was holding a thermos. Lucas had a stopwatch he didn't need.
"Tell me there's only three signs," Ryan said.
"Only three….. " Mike said. He held it for a beat. "With us Eddie's making more."
"What."
"Look behind you, man."
The entire Hellfire Club was on the curb hunched over poster board with markers. Eddie was working on something that involved a dragon. Jeff was drawing the Galaga ship with significantly more anatomical detail than Galaga ships actually had. Eddie looked up, saw Ryan, stood up holding a marker over his head.
"GALAGA KING," he yelled across the parking lot. "STAY OVER THERE. WE'RE BUILDING THE ART."
A few parents looked over. One coach turned all the way around.
Pete arrived a few minutes later. Work jacket, Cardinal's cap, hands in his pockets. He nodded once to Ryan from across the lot, gave a small lift of two fingers when Mike waved at him, and went and stood by the chain-link fence near the finish line. He didn't talk to the other parents.
Nancy showed up next in a wool coat and scarf, paper cup of coffee in her hand. She walked over to Ryan first, said hi to the guys, and slotted in next to Mike and Lucas. Mike gave her a long sideways look which Nancy ignored.
"Don't embarrass me, Ryan."
"I'll try."
The cheerleading squad came in formation, six girls in red and white, two of them carrying a banner that said HAWKINS HIGH with a little animal's head in the corner. Tina was on Chrissy's right, already openly staring at Ryan in his racing gear. Carol was on her left, looking like she'd rather be in bed.
Chrissy was wearing a navy peacoat instead of her squad jacket. Hair down. When she saw Ryan, she lifted her chin half an inch.
Tina did not lift her chin half an inch, but she did make an audible sound.
"Tina."
"What. The race is at our school. I'm allowed to be enthusiastic."
"Cheer for Hawkins. Not for him. Hawkins."
"Got it. Also, for him a little. A normal amount."
Carol, sleepy: "Can we just get in position, my feet are cold."
The squad spread along the track in front of the home bleachers. Within thirty seconds two of them had started a chant about Hawkins that had nothing to do with cross-country and everything to do with school spirit. Other Hawkins students drifted toward them because the cheers gave them a reason to be standing there. Within five minutes the home stretch was a wall of red and white and noise.
Steve came in last with Tommy in tow. He raised his coffee at Ryan, gave a thumbs-up that managed to convey both encouragement and the request that Ryan not embarrass him for showing up, and stationed himself at the edge of the bleachers.
Coach Dalton was at the start line with his clipboard. He glanced at Ryan, then past him at the bleachers.
"Reed. That's a lot of people."
"It's at school, Coach."
"Mhm. You looked loose at sectionals too. And you came in second."
"It was a good day."
"Try to have another one."
"Yes, sir."
Ryan stepped onto the starting line with thirty-five other runners. The Ridgemont senior was three lanes over, six inches taller and built like a greyhound. He was warming up his neck, focused on the course.
Run hard for the first mile. Sit on the Ridgemont kid's shoulder for the second. Then, on the home stretch, push.
The starter raised the pistol.
* * *
The first mile was clean. Ryan ran fourth out of the football field and into the tree line and let the leaders set the pace. Two seniors from out of county, the Ridgemont kid, and a wiry junior from Brooksville. The Ridgemont kid had a long stride that ate ground, but he was running it slightly heavy on his heels. He'd be tired at the end of mile three.
The course wound through the back woods behind the science wing. Mile two tightened the pack. Ryan felt the Ridgemont kid push the pace for two hundred meters and matched it without effort. DEX 35 and VIT 35 made the work easy. His lungs were doing maybe ten percent of what they were capable of.
The other senior fell back at the two-mile marker. The Ridgemont kid surged. Ryan went with him. They came out of the woods together, side by side, into the south parking lot stretch, and made the turn back toward the school with the home stretch in sight, the bleachers eight hundred meters away.
This was where Ryan originally planned to slow down. Stay second. Cross the line three seconds back. He must decide what he wants to do.
He saw the home stretch first.
A wall of people. The Hawkins High bleachers are full enough that you couldn't see the metal. Mike and Lucas at the rope at four hundred meters with RUN, REED, RUN. Will and Dustin at three hundred, GALAGA KING in glitter, jumping up and down. Eddie's crowd at two hundred and fifty with a hand-painted dragon banner that said KING OF THE FIELD with significantly more flames than necessary. The cheer squad in formation at two hundred, doing an actual cheer with Ryan's name and a clap pattern. Chrissy at the front, not cheering, just watching. Nancy fifty meters past, between Mike and Lucas now, both hands cupped around her mouth.
Pete at the finish line. Hands in his pockets. Looking at him.
Ryan let go. F***ck anonymity… let me show of for once.
He shifted his weight forward, dropped his shoulders, and stretched his stride out the way he'd been holding back for long time. The Ridgemont kid had a fraction of a second to respond and didn't. Ryan passed him on the inside.
Five meters. Ten. Twenty.
The bleachers went insane. Dustin's voice cracked twice. Will was yelling his name. Mike abandoned the sign and was just shouting, pure volume, the kind of sound only Mike Wheeler could make. Eddie was howling. The Hellfire crew turned it into a war cry. The cheer formation broke down because half the squad started cheering for him by name. Nancy had both hands on her mouth so hard he could see her shoulders move.
At a hundred meters out Ryan checked over his shoulder. The Ridgemont kid was dozen meters back, his form breaking.
Ryan crossed the finish line with eight meters of clear daylight behind him.
The watch in Coach Dalton's hand had stopped at fifteen forty-eight. A new course record by twenty-two seconds.
He slowed to a jog. Then a walk. Then to a stop, hands on his knees, breathing the way someone who'd just won a race was supposed to breathe, a little harder than he actually needed to.
* * *
The guys got to him first. All four at once. Dustin first, then Lucas, Mike, and Will piling on, hand-slapping and Dustin trying to put the GALAGA KING sign on Ryan's head like a crown.
"YOU LIED TO US."
"Dustin! get the sign off my head…"
"YOU SAID YOU MIGHT QUALIFY. YOU BROKE THE COURSE RECORD."
"I wasn't going to lose with all of you out here."
"That's the most ridicules thing you've ever said," Lucas said, but he was grinning so hard the insult barely had spine.
Mike was just shaking his head, repeating "Holy shit" under his breath. "Holy shit, dude."
Will was shouting "I KNEW, I JUST KNEW you'd win. I bet Dustin a Coke."
"He bet me FIVE Cokes," Dustin said. "I'm furious."
Eddie reached him next, dragon banner held up between Gareth and Jeff like a flag in a medieval campaign. He clapped Ryan on both shoulders and shook him.
"Galaga King. You came from second to first in approximately the time it takes me to roll a d20, Reed. I was unprepared."
"It was a good day."
"Don't "good day" me." He turned to Gareth. "Roll initiative."
Gareth, who'd clearly been waiting for that line, mimed rolling a die.
Nancy reached the finish a beat later, walking briskly, cheeks pink from the cold and from running over. She moved through the Hellfire crew without ceremony. Eddie made an actual courtly gesture with the dragon banner and called her "Wheeler the Elder," which made her mouth twitch which she didn't quite manage to suppress.
"Okay, what was that."
"What was what."
"Don't. You held back at the qualifier. Why did you push it today?"
Ryan looked at her. The guys were close enough to hear and not pretending otherwise. "Better company."
Nancy's cheeks went a different shade of pink. "Okay. Okay. That's. Yeah."
Mike, two feet away: "What is happening right now."
"Nothing's happening, Mike."
"Something's happening."
Nancy stepped backward into the friend-group cluster, recovered her composure in the time it took her to take a sip of her coffee, and pretended none of that had happened. Mike did not stop looking at her.
Chrissy reached him through the parted sea of cheerleaders, with Tina and Carol trailing. She stopped two feet away, hands in her coat pockets, cheeks pink and her eyes a little too bright.
"You won."
"I won."
"By twenty-two seconds. They announced it over the speakers."
"I heard."
She nodded. He could see her trying to do the chin-up Chrissy thing and not quite getting all the way there.
"I told you not to disappoint me."
"You did."
"You didn't disappoint me."
"That's nice to hear."
"It's a… it's a high bar."
"I'll keep that in mind."
She took one of her hands out of her pocket and put it on his forearm. Brief. A squeeze, more than a touch. Three seconds, maybe four. Her fingers were cold through the fabric of his racing shirt. Then she pulled her hand back and lifted her chin like the squeeze hadn't happened.
"Don't get used to me showing up at your races."
"I won't."
A pause. She didn't move. "But also, do it again so I can come."
"Okay."
She turned around. Tina had her hands over her mouth. Chrissy gave a small, sharp laugh that was different from her normal laugh, and walked back into the squad. Within ten seconds Chrissy looked the same as she always looked, except for the pink in her cheeks that wasn't quite going away.
Steve clapped him on the shoulder hard enough to be felt. "Hell of a kick, Reed. Don't try out for varsity basketball, you're going to make me look bad." Tommy was a half-step behind, didn't say anything. Steve gave a nod that said, "we're good, ignore him," and walked off back toward the parking lot.
Pete was the last to come over.
He waited. Didn't push through the crowd of teenagers. He stood by the fence and let it clear, and finally Ryan went to him. The morning light catching the gray in his stubble.
"Kid."
"Hi."
Pete looked at him. The look was long. "Course record. By twenty-two seconds."
"Yeah."
"That'll be in the paper. Front of the sports section."
"Probably."
Pete looked out across the football field. He was quiet for a long time. Behind them Eddie was leading a chant for the Hellfire crew that had nothing to do with anything.
"Your dad was a runner. You are so much like him… first the fixing thing and now this…"
Ryan didn't answer. He couldn't.
"He was on the track team. Mile and the four-forty. Tom was fast. Not state-fast. Hawkins-fast." Pete's voice was quieter than usual, not soft, just quieter. "He used to make me race him from the mailbox to the back fence when we were kids and he never let me win. Not once. Not even on birthday, not when I was nine and he was eleven and crying about it."
Pete pulled his cap down a little. His eyes were looking past Ryan's shoulder.
"He liked watching you run when you were small. Even when it was just up the driveway. He'd time you with that watch of his and then lie about your time so you'd run it again. You don't remember that."
"No."
"You were three. You wouldn't."
"Your mom would have been here too. She was a screamer at games. Embarrassed me at every basketball game I ever played. She'd have stood right next to your friends with a sign of her own." Almost a laugh. Almost. "She'd have liked the cheerleader thing. The redhead especially. She liked when girls had nerve, your mom."
"Pete."
"Tom would have stood right where I'm standing. And he wouldn't have said a word. He'd have just looked at you. Like he was trying to figure out if he was allowed to be that proud of someone. He was bad at saying it. We got that from our father."
Pete cleared his throat.
"I figured someone should be here for them. Both of them. It was supposed to be them, kid, and it isn't, and I know I'm not the same thing. I know that."
Ryan looked at the ground. Then at Pete. Pete's eyes were a little wet at the corners. The man wasn't a crier. The man hadn't cried in front of Ryan in fifteen years of being his uncle. The wetness sat there at the corners, didn't fall, but it was there.
Gamer's Mind barely held.
"You're the same thing, Pete."
"Don't do that, kid."
"I mean it. You showed up."
"I should have showed up before today."
"You're showing up now."
Pete looked at him for a long moment. His jaw worked once. He turned his face toward the football field, gave himself a beat, then turned back, and the wetness had been forced back down.
"I miss him, Ryan. I miss her too. I didn't know her as long. But I miss her."
"I know."
Pete put a hand on Ryan's shoulder. He squeezed once, firmer than usual. Then he let go and put his hand back in his pocket and the moment closed up.
"Sunday's still on. Not chicken again."
"Not chicken again."
Pete nodded. He started to turn toward the parking lot, then stopped.
"Kid. They'd be proud."
Then he walked off toward his truck without waiting for an answer. Ryan stood there long enough that Will came back over and asked, quiet, "You okay?" and Ryan said yes, and Will put a hand on his back the way Joyce sometimes did, brief and grounding, and didn't push it. Ryan got his stuff and drove home with the heater on and the windows cracked. The wind moving through the truck cab fast enough to dry his eyes before he got there.
* * *
The article on tomorrow morning. Front of the sports section. REED SETS HAWKINS COURSE RECORD. There was a picture of him crossing the finish line he hadn't even noticed someone taking. He clipped it carefully along the edges with kitchen scissors and stuck it on the fridge with a magnet.
* * *
Sunday dinner at Pete's.
It had started as the deal Ryan made when he moved out, "Sundays. Your spaghetti is terrible. Come anyway," and it had stayed because it turned out that neither of them wanted to eat alone on Sunday nights and neither of them was going to say that out loud.
Tonight it was pot roast, slow-cooked since noon at Ryan's place. Carrots, potatoes, the gravy thickened with flour just like his grandma used to do when she was alive.
Pete ate two helpings. He didn't say anything about the food, which from Pete was the highest possible compliment.
The radio was on the kitchen counter, turned low. The Cardinals had wrapped up their season weeks ago but Pete still kept the dial on the sports station out of habit. A college football game was running in the background, the announcer's voice a steady murmur under the sound of forks on plates.
"I read the article in this morning's paper," Pete said.
"I saw."
"They even printed the picture."
"I saw that too."
Pete cut a potato in half. "Ridgemont kid was supposed to take state this year."
"He's still fast."
"You broke his coach." A bite, chewed, swallowed. "I heard them in the parking lot. Man was furious."
"It was a good day."
Pete looked at him over the rim of his coffee mug. He didn't say anything for a beat. Then he set the mug down.
"You eating okay over there."
Ryan looked up.
"At your place," Pete said. "I'm asking. You eating actual food or are you eating cereal for dinner."
"I'm eating."
"That's not an answer."
"I cook. I made this pot roast. You're eating it."
"You made this for Sunday. I'm asking about Tuesday."
"I'm eating fine, Pete."
Pete gave him a look. Then he speared another piece of meat. "Truck running okay?"
"Truck's running fine."
"Heard it pull in. Sounded like the belt's slipping."
"It's not slipping. The fan's a little loud since I changed the housing but the belt is fine."
"When did you changed the housing?"
"Last month."
"Hm." Pete chewed. "I would have helped you with that."
"I know."
"You could have called."
"I know."
Pete moved to another subject. He didn't push it. He just ate another bite and reached for his coffee.
"Foreman's quitting," Pete said. "End of the month."
"Mason?"
"Mason. His wife's sick. They're moving down to Indianapolis to be near her sister."
"That's rough."
"It's rough. He's been there twenty-six years." Pete cut another potato. "They're going to make me interim until they find somebody."
"You don't want it."
"I don't want it. I want to do my eight hours and go home."
"You'd be a good foreman."
"I'd be a fine foreman. Mason's a good foreman."
"You're underselling yourself."
"I'm being accurate." Pete took a sip of his coffee. "Pay's better. I told them I'd think about it."
"How long do you have to decide."
"End of next week."
Ryan didn't say anything for a beat. Pete went back to his plate.
The thing was, in nineteen days, Will Byers was going to disappear on his way home from a D&D night at Mike's. The Hawkins Lab was going to seal off three blocks. The Demogorgon was going to come through the wall at the Byers house and pull Barb out of a pool and turn this town into something it had never been. Joyce was going to put up Christmas lights and talk to her kid through the wallpaper. Hopper was going to start drinking again. Some of the people who'd stood at the rope barrier yesterday cheering Ryan's name across the home stretch were going to be standing in funeral suits before Thanksgiving, in the show, in the version of this where Ryan didn't do anything.
He was doing things. He was doing a lot of things. Will was going to be safe because Ryan was going to make sure of it. Barb too. He'd been planning this for months in his head.
And his uncle was sitting across the table worrying about whether to take a foreman job.
Pete was going to feel the rest of it. The town curfew that was coming. The blackouts at the Lab that nobody would explain. The mothers who were going to come into shifts with their eyes red because their kids hadn't come home from school. The whole shape of Hawkins, Indiana, was going to change in nineteen days.
Pete was going to take the foreman job. Ryan could see the answer on his face two days before Pete saw it himself. And whatever Pete chose, the man's life was going to be harder this winter than he could possibly know.
It made Ryan want to do something stupid. Get up. Hug the man. Tell him to be careful. Tell him that whatever he heard at the factory in the next three weeks, he should listen and stay out of it. That if anyone from Hawkins Lab came around asking questions, he should call Ryan first, before he answered anything. That when the sirens went off the night of November sixth, he should just stay home.
He couldn't say any of it. But he needs to think about what he could tell to make Pete more careful. He cut the last piece of his potato instead and ate it.
"Pete."
"Yeah."
"Take the job."
Pete looked up. "I haven't decided yet."
"You've decided. You're just being annoyed about it for another six days. Take the job."
Pete chewed for a long second. "I'll think about it."
"Take the job, Pete."
A small huff that might have been a laugh. "Smart kid."
After dinner Ryan washed the dishes in Pete's sink, which was smaller and shallower than his own. Pete sat at the table with the newspaper folded to the crossword and a stub of a pencil in his hand. The football game ended. The post-game show started.
He stayed an extra hour past when he'd planned to leave. They didn't talk much during it. Pete worked the crossword. Ryan sat across from him with a coffee and the sports section and enjoyed the quiet of Pete's kitchen.
When Ryan finally got up to go, Pete walked him to the door, which he hadn't done since Ryan moved out. He just walked the eight feet from the table to the front door, opened it, and stood there with one hand on the frame.
"Drive safe."
"I will."
"Bring the same thing next week. Or something close to it. That was really good, I have no idea where you learned to cook like this."
"I will."
"And get the belt looked at."
"It's not the belt, Pete."
"Get it looked at anyway."
Ryan walked to his truck. Drove home in the dark with the heater on and the radio playing something old.
* * *
The LUK question had been sitting in the back of his head since the CHA jump. If CHA responded to behavior, what about LUK?
His memory from the manhwa was pretty clear on this, sort of. LUK couldn't be trained. Level-up points or items only. That was the rule.
But Ryan likes to see where it breaks.
So, he started buying scratch tickets.
Not a lot. Enough to draw a curve. Two tickets at every gas station he stopped at on his repair route through the Hawkins area, which meant he was buying about ten tickets a week without it looking like a habit. He kept a notebook in the truck. Date. Location. Ticket type. Outcome. Net win or loss.
After three weeks, the data was statistically uninteresting. He was hitting somewhere around the published win rates for Indiana Lottery scratch-offs. A few small wins, no big ones. Net loss of about eleven dollars across forty-two tickets. Within normal variance for a player with LUK 15.
Then he tried something different.
He'd noticed during the Demogorgon hunts that the system seemed to reward intent more than action. Skill creation worked when he was trying to do a specific thing with focus. The flame ring, the homing on Mana Bolt, Marksmanship from TK stone-throwing, Focused Pressure on the Demodog skull. Each one had been a problem he'd been actively trying to solve, not just a random repetition.
So, he stopped buying scratch tickets and started playing with dice.
There was a backroom dice game in Brooksville, two doors down from Pete's Place, at a bar Eddie had mentioned once in passing and that Ryan remembered it. Friday nights, ten-dollar minimum buy-in, the kind of game that wouldn't care about a sixteen-year-old who walked in like he belonged there. So….Ryan walked in like he belonged there.
He played for two hours. Won small. Lost small. Net positive eighteen dollars. The system gave him nothing.
The next Friday he came back with a different approach. Instead of just rolling, he started watching. Reading the dice, the dealer's hands, the way the bone made contact with the felt. He used Observe on the dice themselves, which gave him nothing useful. But he used Observe on the players, and what he saw was that two of the three regulars had patterns. They bet larger when they were nervous, which they did before bad rolls. They bet smaller when they felt good, which they did before runs. The information was free.
He won eighty-seven dollars by midnight. The dealer and the regulars noticed. But he got a notification, so he cashed out and walked out and drove home.
[Skill "Probability Sense" (Passive) - LV 1 CREATED]
Subconscious awareness of statistical patterns and odds shifts.
+0.5% accuracy on probabilistic decisions per level.
Stacks with Observe for reading opponents in games of chance.
Ryan laughed out loud all the way back. A gambling skill. The system created a gambling skill.
He went back on the third Friday. Same approach but he doubled the play time, three and a half hours. He won two hundred and forty dollars.
On the drive home the wanted notification arrived.
[Achievement Unlocked: "Beat the House" - Win 5x your buy-in across 3 sessions]
Reward: +1 LUK (permanent), +1 Skill Point
LUK: 15 → 16
The thing that had been impossible was now possible. He stared at the notification for a long time and thought about it. The system hadn't lied. LUK couldn't be trained. But it could be earned through achievements, and the system rewarded specific patterns of behavior that demonstrated luck even when it was actually skill.
Or maybe it really was luck. He'd been throwing dice. Dice didn't care how smart you were.
Either way. LUK 16. He spent the new skill point on Probability Sense, pushing it to LV 2.
He stopped going to the dice game after that. Drawing more attention wasn't worth more LUK.
LUK was responsive to demonstrate probabilistic outcomes. Achievement-gated, not training-gated. He also need to find similar levers for CHA and other rare stats.
* * *
She'd called ahead on Monday evening and said "Saturday?" and Ryan had said "Sure, what do you want to eat?" and there was a pause on the line long enough for him to hear her breathing.
"Pasta," she said. "With a lot of cheese."
Saturday afternoon. Chrissy came with a backpack over one of her shoulders. Ryan heard the tires on gravel before he saw her. The psychic sense picked her up at the edge of the thirty-meter range, a bright warm presence moving toward the house, and Observe filled in the details when she climbed the porch steps.
Genuine excitement, attempting to suppress anticipation.
She walked through the kitchen and stopped. Her eyes moved across the stove, the spice rack, the cast iron pans on hooks above the counter, the refrigerator in the corner, the stand mixer, the knife block.
"What are we making?"
"Whatever you want. You said pasta."
"With a lot of cheese."
"I heard you."
He made fettuccine alfredo from scratch. Heavy cream from Donaldson's, real parmesan from a block he grated himself, butter, garlic, black pepper. Chrissy sat on the counter with her legs swinging and watched him work. She asked questions that surprised him.
"How do you know the cream won't break?"
"Low heat. Constant stirring. Add the cheese off the burner."
"That's chemistry."
"Everything's chemistry."
"That's a very Ryan answer."
The kitchen filled with the smell of garlic and butter and warming cream. Chrissy's legs stopped swinging. She was leaning forward, watching his hands, and the performance was completely gone. No cheerleader posture or calculated smile. She looked like a sixteen-year-old girl in a kitchen watching someone cook for her, and that was all she looked like, and it was enough.
She ate a full plate. A second helping. A piece of leftover cake that Ryan produced from the fridge, chocolate and still good.
"If you tell anyone…"
"Again, with this? TELL anyone what? That you ate dinner?"
"That I ate THIS MUCH dinner." But she was smiling. The smile reached her eyes and stayed.
"Chrissy. Eating dinner is not a crime."
"At my house it is."
She said it quietly. Holding her fork. Looking at the empty plate. Ryan didn't want to push her because it would make her close up.
He washed the dishes in superspeed. She sat at the table with her juice and looked around the house.
"This is a good house, I didn't really see it last time I was here" she said.
"It's getting there."
"No. It's already good." Her thumb ran along the edge of her glass. "It feels safe."
Ryan understood what safe meant for her. A place where nobody weighed her, measured her, counted what she ate, or turned love into surveillance.
"You can come here whenever you want," he said. "Door's always open."
She nodded. Didn't say anything for a while. Then she picked up her backpack and stopped at the porch door.
"I used to throw up after meals," she said. Not looking at him. Looking through the screen door at the yard where the afternoon light was going gold. "Not anymore. But I used to."
Ryan didn't move.
"I just wanted someone to know that." She pushed open the screen door. "Goodnight, Smart Boy."
She went home before dark. Ryan stood on the porch and watched the road until she was out of sight, then went inside and sat at the kitchen table and pressed his palms flat against the wood and let the weight of what she'd told him push against the Gamer's Mind until the skill found its floor and his breathing evened out.
* * *
Eddie had been talking about the show for a week. Some band called Rust Bucket was playing at Ethan's Place in Brooksville, twenty minutes south of Hawkins. Three-piece. Southern rock meets early punk, which Eddie described as "if Skynyrd got kicked out of CBGB for being too loud."
"You're coming," Eddie told them at Hellfire on Wednesday. "All of you."
"We're sixteen," Mike said.
"The bouncer owes me a favor."
"What kind of favor?"
"The kind you don't ask about, Baby Wheeler."
They went on a Friday night. Ryan drove. Dustin called shotgun and spent the drive explaining speaker impedance matching to Will, who was sitting in the back between Mike and Lucas with his chin propped on his fist.
"So the amplifier's output impedance has to match the speaker's input impedance," Dustin said. "Otherwise you get either no power transfer or you blow the speaker."
"What happens if they're mismatched by a little?" Will asked.
"Distortion. Which, for punk rock, might actually be the goal."
"So bad engineering is an artistic choice."
Lucas leaned across. "Are we going to talk about speakers for the entire drive?"
"Would you prefer we discuss the geopolitical implications of the Grenada invasion?" Dustin asked.
"I'd prefer silence."
"Silence is just a speaker at zero impedance," Will said.
Dustin turned fully around in his seat. "That's not how impedance works at all, but I respect the energy."
Ethan's Place was a cinder-block building with a gravel parking lot and a neon sign that buzzed so loudly you could hear it over the music leaking through the walls. Eddie was waiting by the side door, denim vest open over a Metallica shirt, grinning.
"Ladies and gentlemen and nerds," he said, sweeping the door open. "Welcome to culture."
The bouncer, a thick guy with a shaved head and an anchor tattoo, looked at them, looked at Eddie, and waved them through.
Inside, the bar was dark and loud and smelled like spilled beer and cigarette. Rust Bucket was on a stage the size of a ping-pong table, two guitars and a drum kit crammed so tight the bass player's headstock nearly touched the drummer's cymbal on every downstroke. They were loud. The kind of volume that made your ribs vibrate.
They stood near the back by a pool table nobody was using. Eddie bought Mountain Dews for everyone and a beer for himself that nobody mentioned.
The guitarist broke a string during the fourth song and played the rest of it with five. The bassist sang backup through a microphone that was probably older than everyone in the room. And the drummer hit his kit like it owed him money.
"This is the best night of my life," Dustin yelled over the music.
"They're aggressively mediocre," Mike yelled back.
"You have no taste!" Lucas said.
Will was standing close to the speakers, foot tapping on the sticky floor. He just liked it. The noise, the crowd, the heat of fifty people in a room built for thirty. He leaned toward Lucas between songs. "The bass player's doing something weird with his left hand during the chorus. A muting thing. It's making the rhythm heavier."
"You can hear that over this?" Lucas said.
"Yeah."
"Your ears are insane."
"Yours would be too if you stopped yelling."
Between sets, Eddie found Ryan at the pool table. Ryan had been leaning against the wall, watching his friends, drinking a warm Mountain Dew.
"You're the quiet one, Galaga King. But you're not quiet because you're empty. You're running fourteen things in your head at once."
"Twelve, usually."
"See. That." Eddie pointed at him with the bottle. "You're funny but you bury it. Why?"
"Force of habit."
"Habit's a cage, Reed. Trust me on that one."
Ryan looked at Eddie. Denim vest, wild hair, beer, more alive in a dive bar in Brooksville than most people would be anywhere.
"I'll work on it," Ryan said.
The band came back for a second set. They played something faster and Dustin grabbed Mike's arm and pulled him toward the front. Mike went protesting, then stopped protesting. Lucas followed. Will was already there.
Ryan joined them. His body flowed with DEX 35 and the coordination of a system that tracked every physical action, and the rhythm was easy to find, the bass drum a heartbeat you could ride without thinking.
[Dancing (Passive) - LV 1 CREATED]
+5% coordination during rhythmic movement.
Balance and timing improvement during all physical activities.
A dancing skill. In a dive bar in Brooksville. The system tracked everything. He almost laughed.
He kept dancing. The notification faded but the music didn't.
* * *
* * *
October 25th. Twelve days out.
Ryan drove past the Lab on a Thursday evening, the truck's headlights catching the chain-link fence and the NO TRESPASSING signs spaced every fifty feet along the perimeter. The road ran within half a mile of the main building.
[Hawkins National Laboratory - Perimeter]
WARNING: DIMENSIONAL RESONANCE: 4.3
(Was 2.7 in August. 4.1 two weeks ago.)
CRITICAL membrane degradation. Active experimental interference
accelerating. Estimated containment failure: 2-4 weeks.
Two to four weeks. November 6th sat right in the center.
His Mana Sense at WIS 52 could feel the Lab's energy from where he sat in the truck. It wasn't a sound or a color. It was the dimensional equivalent of standing next to a bass speaker at full volume. The barrier between Hawkins and the Upside Down was being stretched from both sides, and the Lab was doing most of the stretching.
The decryption program confirmed it. Lab traffic had been elevated for three weeks. Frequency up forty percent from September, and more and more new channels appearing.
The plan was simple. On November 6th, Ryan would invite the group for a sleepover. Will would never be on Mirkwood Road. The Demogorgon would hunt, but it wouldn't find Will Byers.
Simple plans were good because they had fewer parts that could break. Simple plans were terrifying because when they broke, there was nothing behind them.
* * *
The water was cold.
It was always cold, the sensory deprivation tank filled to hip-depth with water that nobody bothered to warm because comfort was not the point. Electrodes taped to her temples. Darkness complete, the tank sealed, the world reduced to water and the sound of her own breathing.
"Reach into the dark place," Brenner's voice said through the speaker. "Find the target."
She reached.
Past the warm voices. The children she'd found before, laughing and arguing somewhere far away, like hearing a radio through a wall. Past them. Deeper. Where the warmth stopped and the cold started.
Something lived there. She didn't know its shape. She didn't look for its shape, because even the edges of it, even the outermost parts she brushed against when she went deep enough, made her stomach go tight and her lungs forget how to work. It wasn't a thing she could see. It was more like weather. A pressure front. The feeling of standing outside before a storm.
Cold. That was what it was. Cold and enormous.
She didn't touch it directly. She skirted the edge of it, the way Brenner had trained her, finding the target on the other side. A man in an office. She found him, held the image, let Brenner's voice guide her.
"Good. Hold."
She held. The cold pressed in from the side. Every nerve in her body pulled toward the surface.
She held.
"Good. Release."
She released. Blood ran from her left nostril, warm against her upper lip. She wiped it on the back of her hand.
Through the speaker, the scratch of pen on paper. "Good work today." Brenner's voice. Measured, even. The tone of a man confirming a hypothesis. "Same target tomorrow."
The tank opened. Hands helped her out. A towel around her shoulders. Her feet on the cold tile. The hallway, long and white, the numbered doors. Her room at the end.
Later. The room. Concrete walls. Thin blanket. The crack in the ceiling that she traced every night from the corner to the light fixture, the one detail in her world that nobody had put there on purpose.
Something had changed.
The membrane, the thing she pushed against when Brenner told her to reach, used to be thick. Dense. Like pressing your hand into a wall. Now it felt like sand. Thin and shifting. She had made it thinner. Brenner had made her make it thinner.
She closed her eyes.
She reached. Not because Brenner told her to. Because she wanted to find the warm voices again. The laughing children. She reached past the dark, past the cold, past the pressure of the thing she didn't look at directly.
And then she felt something else.
Not the children. Not the cold.
A presence. Steady, like a pulse. Warm. Warmth that built up slowly from just being there. It was far away and close at the same time, the distance impossible to measure in the dark place where distance didn't work the way it worked in rooms and hallways.
She reached for it without thinking.
It wrapped around her like blanket. It didn't move toward her. It didn't speak. It just was, and being near it felt like standing in sunlight after a long time underground. She stayed there longer than she meant to, pressing herself against the edge of it like she pressed her back against the wall of her room when she needed to feel something solid.
Then it was gone. Or she was gone. She wasn't sure which.
She opened her eyes. The crack in the ceiling. The thin blanket. The concrete walls.
She didn't know what she'd touched. She had no name for it and no category to put it in. But it had felt like the opposite of the cold place. Where the cold place was vast and empty, this had been contained and present and somehow, without doing anything at all, had felt like it would not let something bad happen.
She pulled the blanket to her chin and stared at the ceiling for a long time before she slept.
* * *
Two miles northwest.
Ryan was in the sub-cellar after a Demogorgon Hunt, still running hot with MP, his pool nearly full from regen that made combat recovery trivial.
Something touched the edge of his awareness.
A tendril of awareness, fragile and small, that brushed against his psychic sense for less than a second and withdrew. Like someone reaching through a window and pulling their hand back.
[Anomalous psychic contact detected - source: unknown]
[No threat identified. Contact duration: 0.8 seconds.]
[Distance estimate: 2-3 km. Direction: southeast.]
Southeast. The Lab was southeast.
He read the notification twice. Something at the Lab had reached out and touched the edge of his mind. Or he had touched something at the Lab. The distinction probably mattered, but he couldn't tell which direction the contact had traveled.
The kitchen was cold. He turned on the burner and heated water for tea and stood there with his hands around the mug, thinking about a girl in a numbered gown.
He couldn't know it was her. The system said unknown. But the direction was right, and the warmth of the contact felt like something human.
Eleven.
He sipped his tea.
The Commodore blinked green in the dark living room, logging transmissions from a lab where a girl with a shaved head was being used to pry open a door that should stay shut.
* * *
Level 24 to 25 came on the last week of October. Three INT, two WIS. INT 86 to 89. WIS 50 to 52.
Physical stats from the achievements: STR pushed to 36. VIT to 35.
The party hit LV 10. Three sessions a week, Demodogs handled with a competence that would have been unthinkable in August. Lucas's spear work was smooth, his transitions between weapons happening without thought. Dustin had turned fire into a surgical tool, placing walls of flame exactly where they needed to go, Saint Anger was doing a great job. Mike fought and called plays in the same breath. Will had added a new trick of throwing his spear at a charging Demodog's legs to trip it.
Ryan went to the window and looked southeast. He couldn't see the Lab from here. He couldn't see anything except the black line of trees against the sky and the distant glow of Hawkins, the streetlights and porch lights of a town that didn't know what was coming.
Somewhere in that direction, a girl was reaching through the dark for something that felt safe. And somewhere in that direction, the barrier between worlds was getting thinner by the hour.
He turned off the light and went to bed.
[A.N:
12,800+ words. Twelve thousand. I don't even have an excuse anymore, this is just who I am now. To my own reader knowledge, that's roughly 6-7 standard WebNovel chapters in a single release.
I pushed hard on slice of life this chapter because I saw how many of you responded to it in the comments last time. You guys wanted more character moments, more connections, more Hawkins feeling like a real place, and I tried to deliver. The race scene, Pete, Chrissy, the bar with Eddie, the flamethrower build with Lucas and Dustin. This chapter was about Ryan being a person, not just a Gamer.
The Chrissy cooking scene was actually inspired by the movie "Chef", specifically the scene where Jon Favreau's character cooks for Scarlett Johansson in his kitchen. If you haven't seen that movie, seriously go watch it. That quiet intimacy of someone cooking for someone else, no performance, just food and honesty. That's what I wanted to capture.
I'm genuinely proud of this chapter even though it's lighter on combat. Not every chapter needs a fight to earn its place. This one was about connections, growth, and setting the emotional stakes before everything goes sideways. The relationships Ryan is building here are the reason Season 1 is going to hit hard. If you don't care about these people, the danger doesn't matter. I think this chapter earns that.
Speaking of Pete, he doesn't get a lot of screen time in this story, but I wanted to make something clear: Ryan didn't abandon his old life when he moved out. He inherited the original Ryan's emotions and attachments, and Pete is family. That dinner scene and the race moment were important to me. I hope they hit the way I intended.
The LUK improvement, some of you have been asking about this for a while. Shoutout to bob685014 and D1vineMonarch who kept pushing the idea that LUK should have a path forward. Achievement-gated, not training-gated. That felt right for the system.
I hope you enjoyed the race scene. I wanted to give Ryan a moment to just show off for once, no secrets, no holding back, just a kid winning a race in front of people who came to cheer for him.
You have NO idea how excited I am for Season 1. I've rewritten those chapters dozens of times trying to fit all my ideas together and see how everything connects. Next chapter, Chapter 14, is the last one before the plot kicks off. I'm still going to pack it full.
For new readers catching up and commenting on early chapters: welcome! But a lot of your questions have already been answered in previous A.N.s and comment replies. The most common one: yes, Ryan is 16 (just had his birthday) and yes, I aged up the entire group to 10th grade for the start of the story.
On the schedule: I've also moved up to the 30-90 day Power Stone ranking list now, so it would be really nice if you guys keep the stones coming to help me hold my spot. As usual, I'm behind on university assignments and work is piling up, so we'll see what happens this week. I also have my birthday this weekend, so I'm going to try to get Chapter 14 out before Saturday. No promises, but I'll do my best.
Top 10 Power Stone legends, carrying this story on their backs:
Psycho_Paradox, Yunos_Noor, Getryx, GODKINGASH, aXionPingu, XenonBlaster65, SleepWalkingMan, Xander1910, Gustavo_Dias_4181, and this_your_bush. You guys are unreal.
And to all 172 contributors this week:
Piggy, Dear_Lord, Dillmet_Singh_4812, Mirksas, Bam729, Arthur25, Daoist3tTlco, ChristiaanZA, mitch_mitch40, Aaronzaid, LouCaz, GzeroX, AlexPendragon, heavenlydemon_, DontDon, Isabel_Cristina_0876, Alternatif_OfMe, Leylindd, iamaguynamedtre, Chikary, Lolggloll_XD, Gavin_Esteb, Shev, SageOfSins, DaoistuhLIL5, Yuri_Marinho, DRE_MCREED, Bean_Man_7767, Corey_Hall_0942, solo_leveling_god, corey_miller_0016, DaoistoYcxBR, Broccolitop, Maicros, SCP_41, daviangarcia85, DaoistStar, Werph, UchihaGod, Sad_Box, xNeke, guardian252, jjtcaster, KBG_Obsidian, LightHollow, GreatNovelLover, Lalo, igniziouz, AkGreyback, Akira890, Charly_26r, TomTheReader, Wither_Kingzz, Makuraty, Max202_Solana, Dark_Prince01, siddhu, Tomik, Gabriel_andrino, SteelWolves_1, Celestialicz, Williams1996, blu3Jay, sdunn0404, Paigna, Knowndevil, Kaustav_Medda_007, Black_Incindiere, k_l_4014, The_lazy, Kadiox, Mik_024, vis_g_s_4628, HingCard, Raymond33, SnowMan, DaoistbpwiMZ, ChillPixel369, mandsmasonry, barry_afolabi, ModfeR217, Arctic961, Billy_Theboyz, marius_bute, Alex_Vizio, Nathanielornsby, JunJunJunn, ReaderAffermative, Tony26788, Yuusui, FOX_FIRE, KingSavage20, iansf, cdeh2, D1vineMonarch, Xplizit, String11ni, origin_of_power, Kilaske, Yoxiria, Gunkman, StormKing1, cruizgame34, RSMoran, Xdd_0162, averagenarutofan, Daoistqlt3h7, Carl_0, Consort_of_Ranni, Vrls, Nicola_Lacey, A_Verdade, hyperlevin, Kauak, Oladimeji_Daniel, bob685014, Josh_Balbarona, Bakr24, ENELSON_RODRI, f3rnand0, Dany_Baca, Demonilusion, Viccoe_2001, LautaV, GrimDaddy, boris_mirovic, ExoTic_, balistic757, Gorinjou, lone_sun, Venkata_Narendra, Random_Websites, Death_St0rm, Tony_Gonzales_0084, alessio_gentile, William_Von_Blum, Bonni_Clyde, pingpongddads, Mattia_Lisco, krishnanaunni_j, Himjim, DaoistJTE1Za, Kono_Dilda, Anime_Taku_294, MMBarqawi, noname4545, Caleb_Hancock, Ahmed_Riaz, Zerty9, 3z7, lerkew, Ghalib_Ali_5133, Destroyer900, Kranox, Greenmatsui, Luiz_Felipe_5654, Daoist861533, Dainger, AlMutairy, Matteo_De_Santis, and Diosazura599.
172 people. From 26 in Chapter 7 to 172 now. I don't have words for how much that means.
Please don't forget to keep commenting, reviewing, and if you can, send some Power Stones to help push the fic up the rankings. It really makes a difference! And as always, if you spot any inconsistencies, plot holes, or typos, let me know so I can fix them before they snowball into something bigger.