Chapter 11: The Fourth Extraction
February cold seeped through the basement walls despite the space heater running full blast.
The Dimensional Backpack hummed at full capacity, pressure building behind my eyes like a storm about to break. One hundred days since the last extraction. Time to see what random gift the universe decided was necessary for fighting interdimensional monsters.
I reached into the space beside my hip, fingers pushing through that membrane between realities, and pulled.
Weight materialized—heavier than expected. Military-grade plastic and rubberized metal, twin lenses that caught the dim basement light. I set the device on my workbench and examined it carefully.
Night vision goggles. Proper tactical gear, not civilian hunting equipment.
The knowledge downloaded: 500-meter effective range, military-grade optics, six-hour battery life with twelve-hour recharge cycle. Fragile electronics—water damage would destroy functionality, hard impacts could crack the optics.
Perfect for the Upside Down, I thought, testing the head strap. Assuming the toxic atmosphere doesn't fry the circuits.
The backpack had reset to zero. That familiar emptiness where the pressure had been, already beginning to fill again. Another hundred days until extraction number five.
May. Late spring. Just months before summer ended and senior year began and the final countdown started in earnest.
I waited until full darkness, then tested the goggles.
The basement disappeared into green-tinged clarity. Every shadow became navigable. The heavy bag hung like a ghost in the corner. Training equipment materialized in perfect detail despite zero ambient light.
I climbed the stairs, moved through my empty house room by room. The world through night vision looked alien—familiar spaces rendered strange by monochrome enhancement. I grabbed my jacket and headed outside.
Hawkins at night was a different town.
I walked the empty streets, mapping routes I'd only ever seen in daylight. The quarry loomed dark and forbidding. The woods near the lab stretched like a wound in the landscape. Main Street's storefronts became hollow shells.
This is what the Upside Down will look like, I realized. Dark. Hostile. Everything familiar turned threatening.
The goggles gave me advantage in that environment. One more tool in an arsenal I hoped would be enough.
Robin's wrist was swollen and purple when she showed up at my house Tuesday afternoon.
"Band practice," she said, cradling the injury. "Dropped the French horn. Tried to catch it. Failed spectacularly."
"Let me see." I gestured her toward the couch.
"It's fine. Just sprained. I'll ice it and—"
"Robin." I sat beside her. "I can help. But I need you to trust me."
Her eyes narrowed. "Help how?"
"Remember how Patrick's ankle healed faster than expected? How I looked like death afterward?"
Understanding dawned. "You did something to him. Took his pain somehow."
"Yeah." I held out my hand. "Let me show you. It won't hurt you—opposite, actually. But it's going to hurt me for a bit."
Robin hesitated for a long moment, studying my face. Then she extended her injured wrist.
I wrapped my fingers around it carefully, feeling the heat of inflammation, the swelling beneath skin. Then I pulled.
Pain exploded up my arm like someone had driven nails through the bones. Sharp, bright agony that made my teeth clench and breath hiss between them. The phantom sprain manifested in my own wrist—tissue damage, joint inflammation, that sick grinding sensation of bones moving wrong.
Robin gasped. "Steve—"
"Don't let go." I gritted the words out. "Need five minutes."
I watched her face as the pain transferred. Her expression shifted from agony to confusion to relief. The swelling visibly reduced. The purple bruising faded toward yellow. Her fingers, which had been curled protectively, slowly straightened and flexed.
"It doesn't hurt anymore," she whispered. "How is that possible?"
"Don't know. Just know it works." My own phantom wrist screamed. Three minutes. Had to maintain contact for three more minutes to get maximum healing.
Robin touched my face with her good hand. "You're crying."
"Hurts." Simple truth. "Worth it, though."
She didn't argue, just held still and let me finish the transfer. When five minutes elapsed, I released her wrist and slumped back against the couch, breathing hard. My phantom injury pulsed with each heartbeat—not as bad as Patrick's broken ankle, but still overwhelming.
Robin flexed her wrist experimentally. Full range of motion. No pain. The bruising had faded to barely noticeable.
"That's impossible," she said.
"So's the Dimensional Backpack." I closed my eyes, riding out the waves of phantom agony. "World's full of impossible things, apparently."
"How long does the pain last for you?"
"Hour, usually. Depends on severity."
"And you just... take people's suffering into yourself. Accelerate their healing by hurting instead."
"Yeah."
Robin was quiet for a long moment. Then: "That's the most Steve Harrington thing I've ever heard. Of course your superpower is martyrdom."
I laughed despite the pain. "It's not martyrdom. It's practical."
"It's both." She grabbed the blanket from the couch back, draped it over me. "You're building yourself into a weapon, and part of that weapon is suffering so others don't have to. That's textbook martyr behavior."
"You sound like a therapist."
"I sound like your best friend who's worried you're going to destroy yourself trying to save everyone." She settled beside me. "How many powers do you have now?"
"Three that I know of. Backpack, healing, and..." I gestured vaguely. "Fighting. I learn combat techniques impossibly fast. Body adapts to support new skills. It's why I'm in the basement training constantly."
"You're supernatural."
"Something like that." I opened my eyes, met her gaze. "But I'm still me. Still Steve. Still your weird friend who has questionable taste in movies."
"Excellent taste in movies," Robin corrected. "Your taste in self-preservation is what's questionable."
"Fair."
She didn't push for more information. Didn't demand explanations about where the powers came from or why I had them. Just accepted it the way she'd accepted the Dimensional Backpack—one more impossible thing in a world that kept proving larger and stranger than anyone suspected.
"Thank you," Robin said quietly. "For the wrist. And for trusting me."
"Always." The phantom pain was fading now, manageable enough to function through. "You're the person I trust most."
"More than Chrissy?"
"Different trust. Chrissy sees the version of me that's trying to be normal. You see everything—the training, the preparation, the weird impossible powers. And you're still here."
Robin leaned against my shoulder. "Of course I'm still here. Where else would I go? You're my person, Harrington. Weird powers and martyrdom complex included."
We sat in comfortable silence while my phantom injury faded to dull ache and Robin's healed wrist proved I could control the power, could use it strategically instead of just instinctively.
Another tool in the arsenal. Another way to save people when everything went wrong.
274 days until Will Byers vanished.
I had to be ready.
Robin
Robin Buckley had always known Steve was different, but learning the full extent of it was both terrifying and oddly comforting.
Three impossible powers. Dimensional storage, accelerated healing through pain absorption, and supernatural combat learning. He was becoming something beyond human—not a monster, but not entirely normal either.
And he was still fundamentally Steve. Still the guy who brought pizza to D&D sessions and defended band geeks from bullies and worried about whether his hair looked okay.
"Can I tell you something?" Robin asked while Steve recovered from healing her wrist.
"Anything."
"I'm glad it's you. With the powers, I mean. If someone in Hawkins had to become supernatural, I'm glad it was someone who actually gives a damn about people instead of, like, Tommy H. or some other asshole who'd use it to dominate everyone."
Steve huffed a laugh. "Low bar."
"But true. You're using these abilities to prepare for something you think is going to hurt people. You're training middle schoolers and stockpiling supplies and learning to fight. That's heroic, Steve. Even if you're also kind of a disaster about it."
"Gee, thanks."
"I'm serious." Robin sat up, made him look at her. "Whatever's coming in—what, nine months now?—you're not facing it alone. You have me, Eddie, Chrissy, The Party, all your weird collected strays. We're a team. So stop acting like you have to carry everything yourself."
"I know." But his tone suggested he didn't really believe it.
Robin let it go. Pushing now would just make him defensive. Better to show him through actions that he had backup, that the people he'd gathered actually cared about him beyond what he could provide.
She flexed her healed wrist again, marveling at the lack of pain. "This is really incredible. And really concerning. You're going to hurt yourself using this."
"Probably."
"Steve."
"What? It's true. But worth it if it saves lives."
Martyr complex, Robin thought again. Definitely a martyr complex.
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