Chapter 1: Cold Awakening
POV: Adam
Thunder cracks like the world splitting open, and Adam's eyes snap wide in a body that isn't his, gasping in frigid November rain.
Not again. Please, not again.
But the memory hits him like a freight train—the screech of brakes, the crunch of metal, the way his daughter's laughter cut off mid-giggle. Then nothing. Then this.
His hands are too small. Wrong. A child's hands, pale and trembling, pressed against mud that tastes of copper and decay. The hospital gown clings to skin that doesn't belong to him, translucent fabric doing nothing against the November bite.
Where am I?
The seizure still rocks through him—muscles that aren't his spasming, synapses firing in patterns he doesn't recognize. Adult consciousness crammed into a twelve-year-old skull, memories bleeding together like watercolors in rain.
Michael Thompson, 34, accountant, father. The name feels foreign now, a costume that no longer fits. Subject 017, whispers something deeper, older. Property of Hawkins National Laboratory.
[HIVE MIND SYSTEM ACTIVATED]
[EMERGENCY TUTORIAL: SURVIVE]
[Host Status: Critical]
[HP: 15/100]
[MP: 25/50]
[Initiating Emergency Protocols...]
The interface materializes in his vision like broken glass catching moonlight—translucent, pulsing with an otherworldly rhythm that makes his teeth ache. Numbers and bars float at the edge of his sight, foreign yet somehow familiar, as if this dying body remembers what his adult mind cannot.
A game system. Like something out of— He cuts the thought short. This isn't a game. The mud beneath his fingers is real. The searchlights sweeping the treeline in the distance are real. The way his lungs burn with each shallow breath is agonizingly real.
Adam forces himself to move, every muscle protesting. The laboratory squats behind him like a concrete tumor, all harsh angles and no windows. Men with flashlights move between the trees, their voices carrying on the wind.
"Subject 017 can't have gone far."
"Kid's been out for three hours. Hypothermia will finish what the procedure started."
"Brenner wants him back alive. The neural mapping was almost complete."
Neural mapping. The words trigger a cascade of half-remembered agony—needles in his skull, electricity dancing through his brain, a man in a white coat calling him "Seventeen" with the warmth one might reserve for a lab rat.
Adam crawls forward, using roots and fallen logs to pull himself through the underbrush. His body knows this terrain in ways his mind doesn't—muscle memory from a childhood spent fleeing through these same woods. Every step takes him further from the lights, deeper into the darkness between worlds.
That's when he sees the rift.
It's small, barely large enough for a man to crawl through, nestled between the gnarled roots of an ancient oak. The air around it shimmers like heat haze, but cold—so cold it makes his bones ache. Through the gap, he glimpses another version of the same forest, but wrong. Decayed. The trees droop with wet, black vines, and the sky flickers with lightning that never quite arrives.
The Upside Down.
I know this place. Not from his own memories, but from somewhere else. Another life, another world, where this was fiction. Where boys named Will Byers disappeared into dimensions that shouldn't exist, and girls with shaved heads moved things with their minds.
"But that was a TV show. This is—"
A sound cuts through his confusion—low, pained, predatory. Something large drags itself through the rift, leaving a trail of dark ichor in the mud.
The Demodog.
It's smaller than the full-grown specimens from the show, maybe three feet long, with flower-petals for a face that unfurl to reveal rows of needle teeth. One of its back legs hangs useless, and thick black blood seeps from a gash along its flank. When it sees Adam, those petals snap shut, and it makes a sound like a wounded animal.
It's just a baby. Hurt. Like me.
The thought comes from nowhere, carrying with it an alien hunger that doesn't belong to Michael Thompson or Subject 017. Something else stirs in the back of his skull—ancient, vast, connected to things that swim in deeper darkness.
[WOUNDED CREATURE DETECTED]
[SPECIES: DEMOGORGON (JUVENILE)]
[STATUS: HOSTILE/INJURED]
[TAME ABILITY AVAILABLE]
[SUCCESS RATE: 45%]
[WARNING: FAILURE MAY RESULT IN DEATH]
The system's offer hangs in his vision like a devil's bargain. Around him, the searchlights grow closer, sweeping methodically through the trees. Behind him, the laboratory waits with its needles and white coats and the man who calls children by numbers.
I should run. Get as far from here as possible.
But the Demodog isn't moving toward him anymore. It's huddled against the base of the oak, trembling. Its breathing comes in short, sharp gasps that fog the air. One of its eyes—not the flower-face, but a real eye, dark and intelligent—watches him with something that might be recognition.
We're the same, Adam realizes. Both lost. Both broken. Both running from things that want to cage us.
He extends one small hand toward the creature, ignoring the way his arm shakes. "Easy. I'm not going to hurt you."
The Demodog's petals flicker open, revealing those terrible teeth, but it doesn't lunge. Instead, it tilts its head with an almost dog-like curiosity. When Adam's fingers brush its hide—rough and warm, like leather left in the sun—power arcs between them.
[TAMING ATTEMPT INITIATED]
[ROLLING... SUCCESS!]
[JUVENILE DEMODOG TAMED]
[LOYALTY: 35%]
[NAMING AVAILABLE]
The connection hits him like a live wire—not thoughts, exactly, but emotions. Fear. Pain. Loneliness. And underneath it all, a desperate, animal need for pack, for belonging, for something to follow that won't abandon it to die alone in the dark.
Scout, he thinks, and the name feels right. Your name is Scout.
The creature—Scout—presses against him with a sound like purring. Its body heat seeps through the hospital gown, and Adam finds himself relaxing for the first time since awakening. They sit together in the mud and rain, two refugees from different hells, while the searchlights continue their methodical sweep.
[LEVEL UP!]
[YOU ARE NOW LEVEL 1]
[NEW ABILITIES UNLOCKED]
[TELEPATHIC BOND ESTABLISHED]
[HP RESTORED: 25/100]
The warmth of the level-up floods through him, pushing back the hypothermia's creeping numbness. But exhaustion still claws at his consciousness, and his eyelids grow heavy despite the danger.
Need shelter. Need to think. Need to figure out what the hell is happening to me.
Scout seems to understand. The creature noses at his shoulder, then begins moving deeper into the woods, away from the lab and its hunting men. Adam follows, one hand buried in the creature's rough fur, letting it guide him through darkness toward whatever comes next.
Behind them, voices shout in frustration as the search teams find nothing but empty forest. Ahead, the first pale light of dawn creeps through the trees, and Adam's system interface chimes softly with his first quest.
[QUEST AVAILABLE: FIND SHELTER]
[REWARD: +200 XP, SAFE HOUSE LOCATION]
[ACCEPT? Y/N]
Yes, he thinks, and settles against Scout's warmth as consciousness finally slips away. Whatever I am now, wherever this leads—yes.
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