Chapter 7: The Third Extraction
June heat made the basement unbearable even at midnight.
I stood alone in the training area, sweat dripping down my spine, and felt the Dimensional Backpack hum with completion. Two hundred days since the medkit extraction. One hundred percent charged.
The pressure built behind my eyes—not painful, just present. Like static electricity gathering before a storm. I'd learned to recognize the sensation over the past months, tracking the slow accumulation of dimensional energy that fed my power.
Time to see what random gift the universe decided to throw at me.
I reached into the space beside my hip, fingers pushing through reality's membrane into something that shouldn't exist. Cool air. Emptiness that wasn't quite empty. Then metal, solid and purposeful.
The extraction happened instantly. Weight materialized in my grip—a compact device the size of a large pistol, matte black with a pneumatic cylinder and coiled cable mechanism visible along the barrel.
Grappling hook gun.
I set it on my workbench, examining the construction. Military-grade materials. A pressurized gas cartridge housed in the grip. Fifty feet of aircraft cable wound tight in a drum mechanism. The hook itself was three-pronged, designed to catch and hold on virtually any surface.
Ten uses before the gas cartridge needs replacement, the knowledge whispered. Cartridges not included.
Of course. The Dimensional Backpack gave me useful items, but always with limitations. The medkit's salves would eventually run out. The compass couldn't specify distance or threat type. And this grappling gun had exactly ten shots before becoming an expensive paperweight.
Still. Ten shots could save lives.
The battery had reset to zero. I felt the emptiness where that pressure had been, already beginning to fill again at one percent per day. Another hundred days until the next extraction.
December. Right before my seventeenth birthday.
I tested the grappling hook's weight, sighted along the barrel, then aimed at one of the exposed basement beams twenty feet overhead. Squeezed the trigger.
The pneumatic system fired with a sharp thunk. The hook sailed upward trailing cable, caught the beam with a solid clang, and locked into place. I tugged experimentally. Solid. Could probably support twice my weight.
I holstered the device—it came with a tactical belt clip—and started climbing.
Hand over hand, legs wrapped around the cable for stability. The Fight Master ability made the motion natural, efficient, like I'd been doing this for years. I reached the beam in under ten seconds, pulled myself onto the narrow surface, and stood balanced sixteen feet above the concrete floor.
The world looked different from up here. New angles. New perspectives.
New escape routes.
Eddie's graduation happened on a humid Saturday that threatened rain.
I sat in the bleachers with Robin and Chrissy, watching Hawkins High's class of 1982 receive diplomas they'd mostly earned through sheer persistence rather than academic excellence. Eddie was near the end of the alphabet—Munson, Edward—and when his name was called, the three of us stood and cheered loud enough to make people turn and stare.
Eddie grinned from the stage, diploma held high like a trophy, leather jacket visible under his graduation gown. He'd barely made it—summer school for chemistry, extra credit in English—but he'd made it.
"I can't believe he's actually graduating," Robin said as we filed out after the ceremony. "He's been a super senior longer than I've been in high school."
"He's taking a victory lap," I corrected. "Repeating senior year so he can keep running Hellfire Club. The juniors need guidance."
"Or he just likes high school more than the real world."
"That too."
We found Eddie outside surrounded by his Hellfire seniors—Jeff, Gareth, and a few others whose names I'd learned over the past year. They were already planning their farewell campaign, a months-long epic that would conclude when they left for college or factory jobs in the fall.
"Harrington!" Eddie bounded over, still wearing his graduation gown like a cape. "Please tell me you're throwing me a party. I deserve a party."
"You deserve something," I agreed. "Party's at my place. Tonight. Bring whoever you want."
"Your place is fancy. I don't do fancy."
"My place is empty and has a basement full of beer my parents don't know I bought. Very unfancy."
Eddie's eyes lit up. "Now we're talking."
Eddie
Steve Harrington's basement party was the weirdest collection of people Eddie had ever seen in one place.
The Hellfire seniors dominated one corner, debating whether to multiclass Jeff's character before the farewell campaign. Robin Buckley held court near the stereo, arguing with Gareth about whether punk was dead or evolving. Chrissy Cunningham—Chrissy Cunningham—sat on the couch talking to Jeff's girlfriend about something that made them both laugh.
And Steve moved between groups effortlessly, refilling drinks, starting conversations, making everyone feel included despite the social chaos.
"This shouldn't work," Eddie muttered to Robin during a lull in the music debate. "Jocks and freaks and band geeks and cheerleaders. We should be fighting, not bonding over cheap beer."
Robin looked at Steve, who was currently teaching Chrissy how to properly hold a pool cue despite her protests that she already knew. "He has a gift. Making impossible things look easy."
"Yeah." Eddie grabbed another beer. "It's unsettling."
"Get used to it. You're part of his weird collection now."
"The Breakfast Club but actually cool," Eddie said, surprising himself with the accuracy.
Robin laughed. "Oh my god, that's perfect. We should make jackets."
"Absolutely not. I have a reputation to maintain."
"As what, the metalhead who graduated by the skin of his teeth?"
"The metalhead who graduated through sheer determination and caffeine-fueled cramming, thank you very much."
Steve appeared beside them, pool cue in hand. "Gareth says you're repeating senior year to run Hellfire. That true?"
Eddie shrugged, suddenly self-conscious. "Somebody's gotta train the next generation of nerds. Plus, real world's overrated. High school might suck, but at least it's familiar suck."
"Fair." Steve handed him the pool cue. "But you know you're good at more than just D&D, right? The storytelling. The worldbuilding. That's actual skill."
"Skill that doesn't translate to employment."
"Yet." Steve headed back toward Chrissy, who was lining up a shot with intense concentration. "Give it time. The world catches up eventually."
Eddie stared after him, bottle halfway to his lips.
"Told you," Robin said. "Unsettling."
Steve
The party wound down around two AM, people filtering out in twos and threes until only the core remained: Robin, Eddie, Chrissy, and me.
We sprawled across the basement furniture in various states of exhaustion, too wired to sleep but too tired to do much else. The stereo played low—something mellow that Robin had picked.
"This was good," Chrissy said, breaking the comfortable silence. "Different from normal parties. People actually talking instead of just drinking."
"That's because Steve invited people with functional brain cells," Robin replied. "Novel concept."
"Hey, I have friends with brain cells." Chrissy threw a pillow at her. "They're just usually too busy being perfect to use them."
"Speaking of perfect—" Eddie sat up, suddenly energized. "Can we acknowledge how weird this group is? Like, genuinely bizarre. We shouldn't work as a unit."
"But we do." I grabbed the pillow Chrissy had thrown, tossed it back. "Because we're not performing. No King Steve, no perfect cheerleader, no band geek stereotype, no freak label. Just people."
Robin raised her beer bottle. "To being people."
"To being weird people," Eddie corrected.
"To being weird people who tolerate each other," Chrissy added.
We clinked bottles, and something settled in my chest. This was real. These friendships weren't strategic positioning or long-term planning. They'd become genuine somewhere along the way, and I hadn't even noticed the shift.
These were my people. The ones I'd fight for when everything went wrong.
The ones worth protecting.
July brought brutal heat and vertical training.
The grappling hook transformed my preparation routine entirely. I mapped Hawkins from rooftops and elevated positions, learning the town's geography from angles most people never saw. The quarry. The woods. Downtown buildings. Even the water tower, though that climb nearly gave me a heart attack.
Fight Master absorbed the new skills rapidly. Rope climbing became effortless. Balance on narrow surfaces, instinctive. The parkour movements from library videos translated into real-world application—vaults, wall runs, precision jumps between rooftops.
My body continued adapting. Stronger grip. Better core stability. Reaction times that let me catch myself during falls that should have ended badly.
I charted potential Demogorgon approach vectors from memory, marking buildings with good vantage points, planning escape routes through vertical space. If—when—things went wrong, I'd have options beyond running at ground level.
The compass came with me on these expeditions, tucked into my pocket. It pointed vaguely toward the woods near the lab on calm days. On other days, the needle spun uselessly, detecting no immediate threats.
426 days until Will vanishes, I thought, standing on the roof of Hawkins Middle School at dawn. 500 days total since I woke up here.
Not enough time. Never enough time.
But I was getting stronger. Faster. More prepared than anyone had a right to be.
It would have to be enough.
August passed in a blur of final preparations and social maintenance.
My investment portfolio hit eight thousand dollars—Apple continued climbing, Microsoft went public with spectacular results, IBM's personal computer division exceeded projections. My father called from Geneva, actually impressed by my "instincts."
If he only knew.
Robin spent most of August at band camp, returning with stories about terrible conductors and worse cafeteria food. Eddie worked part-time at the record store, saving money for the uncertain future ahead. Chrissy dealt with cheerleading camps and mother's criticisms, showing up at my house afterward looking exhausted and fragile.
We developed rhythms. Movie nights with Robin. D&D with Eddie. Quiet conversations with Chrissy where we didn't have to perform for anyone.
Senior year approached like an oncoming train. My last year of high school before everything changed forever. The year I'd recruit The Party. The year I'd position all my pieces for November 1983.
The year everything started counting down in earnest.
I stood in my basement on the last day of August, surrounded by training equipment and hidden caches and three items from an impossible power, and felt the weight of knowledge pressing down.
426 days.
Better get moving.
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