Escape ~ S.Harrington

79} Family Fighting and Kidnapping Plans

The van fell silent for a while until Steve opened his mouth and started pestering Dustin.
"Jenna got her weird vision and ran out of the van, which she'd also fried on accident," Steve tried to get him caught up, "And then came running back, like, thirty minutes later covered in blood because the demo attacked the Wheelers and she saved them, except for Holly who it took. Then you show up looking like Rocky Balboa. So, basically, of all the crawls, this was, like, the one to miss. So, well done, Henderson. Really, really, like, well done," Dustin scoffed and shook his head, "Speechless. That's new."
"I'm still processing, Steve. It's a lot. Holly? Why Holly?" He dabbed his bloody nose with a piece of cotton before sticking it up there to stop the bleeding.
"Well, maybe Eleven could tell us, but it's a bit difficult to contact her now that we've lost our connection to the Upside Down."

"Okay, for the future, when the lights go from really bright to really dim, it means the generator is surging so you have to turn everything off."
"Wow. Great."
"Immediately."
"Thank you for that, Henderson. Yeah, I'll remember that the next time that happens. Or, maybe, and this is just a suggestion here, you could actually be where you're supposed to be."
"I was en route to the Squawk."
"When you fell off your bike. That's right. Remind me. What did you fall into again? A knuckle sandwich?"
"Hey, can you keep it down up there?" Jon groaned, "I'm listening for a signal back here, in case you forgot."
Steve shot him a sarcastic thumbs up, "Who was it? That guy Andy that Jenna mentioned? It was him and his goons, wasn't it?"

"Steve, leave it be," Jenna rolled her eyes, "He doesn't wanna talk about-"
"You just poked the bear one too many times."
"Your concern for me is overwhelming, Steve," Dustin shook his head.
"My concern? I've shown nothing but concern for you since forever, and I have been repeatedly ignored, and now look what's happened. We are totally and royally screwed."
"Correction, we are screwed because you don't know how to do the most basic thing like prevent a power surge."
"See, this right here is your problem."
"It's the easiest thing in the world."
"You can't admit you were wrong."
"My mother could prevent a surge."
"You can't admit it."
"Shockingly, I think your mother-"
"Jesus Christ! Just do it for once! Just admit it, Henderson! You're wrong! You screwed up!"

"GUYS!" Jenna screamed, covering her ears, "Stop arguing! Jon can't hear the signal and I can't stand hearing you two fight. You are the two most important people in the world to me and I was so happy when you started getting along. Now it's like we're right back to square one after the Halloween mask incident. Grow the fuck up and shut the fuck up before I explode this van again!" The van fell silent again, "Music to my ears. Keep looking for that signal, Jon."
"Yup," He gulped.
Would you look at that? And all it took was a meltdown from me. I should consider that an option more often.

~

The group had driven around G1 what felt like a hundred times and found nothing.
"Hey, man, I'm gonna turn down Irwin," Steve told Jonathan, "One more loop around the zone?"
"Yeah. Go ahead," Jon nodded until a weird noise started to come through, "No, wait. Scratch that. I think I got something."
"Seriously?" Steve raised an eyebrow.
"Is it Hop?" Dustin asked.
"Yeah, I... I don't know. I'm not getting a hit on the decoder, but I can hear something. Yeah, I can definitely hear something."
Dustin took the headphones right as Joyce asked through the walkie, "Is that him?"
"Yeah, uh, we're not sure," Jon replied.
"No, it's not Hop," Dustin pulled the headphones off.
"What? Then what the hell is it?"
"I don't know. It could be a million different things. Military broadcast, TV channel, any EMI within our frequency zone. I do know it's not Hop's telemetry tag, because if it was, it would show up on the decoder."

"I can agree," Jenna pried her eyes open, "I've been looking for him as we've driven around and he's not here."
"Search continues," Dustin smirked before getting back in the passenger's seat.
"Hey, mom, um, disregard," Jon sighed, "It's a false alarm."
"Jonathan, is your receiver in any way connected to the flux capacitor?"
Jenna and Steve immediately locked eyes as they both mouthed 'Back to the Future?'
"Uh, sorry, mom," Jon cringed, "Can, uh... can you repeat that?"
"The flux capacitor. Robin said it was down, but she and Will are working on it and I just wanted to make sure it wasn't messing with your connection. Hello?"