Chapter 12: Lab Infiltration - Part 2
POV: Adam
The following night, Jonathan invites Adam back with the casual assumption of shared purpose that makes something tight in Adam's chest finally loosen. There's trust here, built in the space between one breath and the next, forged by mutual recognition of outsiders who refuse to accept the world's casual cruelties.
"You know about cameras?" Jonathan asks as they settle into the garage's red-lit sanctuary, surrounded by hanging photographs that capture Hawkins in moments of unguarded beauty.
"A little," Adam lies, though Michael Thompson's memories include enough amateur photography to provide basic competence. "My... before, there was someone who taught me about light and composition."
Before I died in a car crash and woke up in someone else's body. Before everything became impossible.
Jonathan nods with the kind of understanding that doesn't require elaboration. He knows about loss, about the holes that important people leave behind when they disappear from your life.
They work in comfortable silence for a while, developing the photos from their reconnaissance mission while Scout maintains perimeter watch outside. The creature's presence pulses steadily through the bond, offering the kind of unconditional loyalty that Adam's never experienced from another human being.
Not human, he corrects himself. But maybe that's what makes it pure.
"Mike said you're like Eleven," Jonathan says eventually, his voice carefully neutral in the way that suggests he's been thinking about this question for a while. "Can you really...?"
The question hangs in the air like a loaded weapon. Adam weighs the risks of revelation against the growing certainty that Jonathan Byers is someone who can be trusted with dangerous truths.
He's Will's brother. If anyone deserves to know what we're really facing, it's him.
"Yeah," Adam says quietly. "I can."
He sends a gentle command through the bond, and Scout responds by lifting a wrench from the workbench across the garage. The tool floats through the air with impossible grace, rotating slowly before settling into Jonathan's outstretched palm.
Jonathan stares at the wrench for a long moment, then looks at Adam with an expression that contains no fear, no revulsion—just genuine curiosity.
"That's actually cool," he says finally. "Does it hurt?"
The question catches Adam off guard. Most people who learn about psychic abilities focus on the power, the potential for violence or advantage. Jonathan's first concern is for the cost, for the person behind the ability.
He asked about the price, not the prize. When was the last time anyone did that?
"Sometimes," Adam admits. "Using too much power too fast causes nosebleeds, headaches. And the... connection... it changes you. Makes you different from other people in ways that are hard to explain."
Jonathan nods thoughtfully. "Will's always been different too. Not like you, but... sensitive. He feels things more than other kids. Maybe that's why..." He trails off, unable or unwilling to finish the thought.
Maybe that's why the Demogorgon chose him. Maybe that's why he's still alive when he should be dead.
They return to their work, but the atmosphere has changed. No longer two strangers united by circumstance, but something approaching family. Jonathan treats Adam's revelation like any other interesting fact about a friend—worth knowing, not worth making a big deal about.
That's when Adam's system erupts in warnings that make his teeth ache.
[CRITICAL ALERT: DIMENSIONAL BREACH EXPANDING]
[MAJOR ENTITY MANIFESTATION IMMINENT]
[THREAT LEVEL: EXTREME]
[ESTIMATED TIME TO FULL EMERGENCE: 48 HOURS]
Through Scout's consciousness, Adam perceives what's happening at the lab. The largest rift—the one in the basement levels where they've been conducting their most dangerous experiments—is destabilizing. Something massive pushes against the barrier from the other side, testing the boundaries of reality with the patient malevolence of a predator that knows its prey can't escape forever.
The Demogorgon. Not one of the juveniles that Scout might handle, but the apex predator that took Will Byers and dragged him into hell.
Scout sends panicked images through the bond—the creature's own primal terror at sensing something that exists purely to hunt and kill, something that makes even an Upside Down native flee in instinctive fear.
It's coming. The final confrontation. And everyone I care about is going to be right in the middle of it.
"Something bad is coming," Adam says suddenly, the words spilling out before he can stop them. "Soon. Maybe a day or two. Tell your mom to fortify your house. Stock up on weapons, nail boards over the windows, anything that might slow down something that wants to get inside."
Jonathan's hands still in the developer solution. "What kind of something?"
The kind that eats people alive and decorates its lair with their bones.
"The kind that took Will," Adam says instead. "It's going to try to finish what it started. And it's going to be angry."
The weight of foreknowledge settles on Adam's shoulders like lead. He knows what's coming—the night assault on the Byers' house, Joyce and Hopper's desperate rescue mission, the final confrontation at the middle school where children will face nightmare creatures with nothing but determination and improvised weapons.
He knows, and he can't change any of it without revealing secrets that would destroy everything he's built here.
Jonathan studies his face with the intensity of someone reading a map to navigate treacherous territory. "You know more than you're saying."
"I know enough to be terrified for all of you."
I know that some of you aren't going to survive what's coming. I know that innocence dies tomorrow night, and there's nothing I can do to prevent it without exposing myself as something other than human.
As they finish developing the photos, carefully cataloging evidence that won't be enough to save anyone, Jonathan makes an offer that hits Adam like a physical blow.
"Hey. When this is all over, when Will's back... you should come over more. Mom likes you, and you're weird but in a good way."
Adam's throat closes around words that refuse to form. The casual assumption that there will be an "after," that families will remain intact and children will continue to be children—it's both heartbreaking and beautiful in its innocence.
"Yeah," he manages. "I'd like that."
Jonathan grins, and for a moment he looks exactly like what he is—a teenager making plans with a friend, believing in futures that might never come to pass.
"Cool. Little brother."
The words are meant as a joke, but they hit Adam like a blessing. Someone claimed him. Someone looked at all his strangeness and damage and decided he was worth keeping.
Little brother.
[RELATIONSHIP EVOLUTION: JONATHAN BYERS - ADOPTED BROTHER (60%)]
[EMOTIONAL MILESTONE: FAMILY ACCEPTANCE]
[EXPERIENCE GAINED: +400 XP]
[SCOUT LOYALTY: 70% → 75%]
[TWO VINE CRAWLERS TAMED - LOYALTY: 45%]
Walking back to St. Mary's through streets that seem too quiet for a town on the edge of disaster, Adam's mind races through the timeline he knows by heart. Forty-eight hours until the Demogorgon breaks through completely. Forty-eight hours until Joyce and Hopper mount their rescue mission. Forty-eight hours until everything changes forever.
He's more entangled with these people than he ever planned—Mike's suspicion, Dustin's loyalty, Lucas's wariness, Eleven's understanding, and now Jonathan's casual brotherhood. Their fates are woven together in ways that make his borrowed heart ache with the weight of caring too much.
Their deaths would hurt so much worse now.
Through the bond, Scout sends images of the lab's growing instability, dimensional energy bleeding through cracks in reality like radioactive light. The creature's fear is palpable—even Upside Down natives recognize when something apex-level is preparing to hunt.
But underneath Scout's terror, Adam senses something else. Determination. The kind of loyalty that doesn't break under pressure, that chooses to stand and fight even when flight would be smarter.
We're pack now. All of us. And pack protects pack, no matter the cost.
As Adam reaches the orphanage steps, where Sister Catherine waits with worried questions and warm soup, he makes a silent promise to the November night and the horrors it holds.
I'll save them. All of them. Whatever it costs, whatever I have to reveal about myself, I'll save my family.
Because that's what they are now—family, chosen and claimed in the spaces between one crisis and the next. And families protect each other, even when protection means facing monsters that exist to devour hope.
The storm is coming. But this time, Adam won't face it alone.
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