"I swear, if I'm dying tonight because of you, I'm gonna haunt your ass so hard, Harrington!"
"Oh yeah?"
"Yeah! I'm gonna go full Poltergeist and shit!"
"Then bring it, Graveswood."
"Challenge accepted."
***
In which after years of suppressing their...
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Chapter One-Hundred-And-Eight: The Russians' Plan
(The Flayed, Pt. 4)
***
Everything hurt.
That was the only coherent thought in Rowan's head as she and Steve walked up the stairs to where the rest of the group waited. Never was she so thankful for Steve keeping a firm grip on her than right now, because with every step she felt herself destabilise more and more, like all the crackling lightning in her was being distorted and torn asunder to its very charge, down to the atoms, and it hurt.
Rowan breathed in and out shallowly, raising a shaky hand to wipe the blood from her nose as her head hammered with secondhand pain as, finally, she and Steve arrived at where the others were. Robin immediately noticed, her eyebrows skyrocketing as she hurried over to them, a question on her mouth but Steve shook his head. Robin frowned, but Valerie tugged her back, making the taller girl look back to what she saw—what she noticed and had alerted the rest of them, had them join her to see.
And as Rowan and Steve came to stand behind Dustin, Rowan didn't need the source of the discordant frequency to send her to her knees.
Behind the narrow plane of glass she, Steve and Dustin were seeing out from, there was something that resembled an observation deck with white-coated scientists manning it, buttons blinking in a flurry of colours. Beyond, in red HAZMAT suits, more Russians shoved the canisters of green acid into a whirring machine as Rowan watched with wide eyes as a beam of crackling electricity fired out of it, its power strengthening with the addition of the canisters. And when it did, the pain Rowan was feeling stabbed into her and she hissed, knees nearly buckling out from underneath her as new blood fell from her nose as she now realised this machine, this electricity being used and twisted by the acid or whatever the Russians were doing was what she had been feeling, what she felt almost a week ago.
And when she saw past the machine, everything in Rowan froze as she forgot the pain.
Because on the wall past them, where the beam of electricity was being driven into, was a glowing red crack, steadily growing larger and larger. And Rowan didn't need to see the one at Hawkins Lab to know what it was—the now-familiar wrong frequency told her enough.
That was a gate. The Russians were opening a gate into the Upside Down, which they knew about, was why they were here in Hawkins—where a gate to that hellish place had been accidentally opened before thanks to El, where they were now undoing what she had done, had made the lives they lost and everything Rowan and everyone else risked their lives for be in vain.
Her dread, her instincts, had been right all along.
"Holy shit," Dustin breathed, and Rowan agreed with him as she, Steve and Dustin stared at the slowly opening gate with dread and horrified realisation.
Fuck.
***
Short, I know, but necessary.
Not much to say except we're nearing the end now. And I'm so excited for it. Are you? >:)
