Chapter 16: RECONNAISSANCE
The Camaro's engine idled at the intersection of Main and Cherry while I studied the mental map forming in my head.
Day two in Hawkins. The family was still unpacking—Susan organizing the kitchen, Max arranging her room, Neil doing whatever Neil did when he was avoiding me. I'd volunteered to "explore the town," which was technically true.
I just hadn't mentioned what I was exploring for.
Main Street first. The downtown strip was typical small-town America: hardware store, pharmacy, a few restaurants, the kind of shops that survived on local loyalty rather than competitive pricing. I noted the police station—brick building, American flag, a few patrol cars in the lot. Chief Hopper's territory.
The Wheeler house came next. White siding, well-maintained lawn, the picture of suburban normalcy. Mike Wheeler lived there—the kid who'd been hiding Eleven in his basement last year, though I wasn't supposed to know that. Karen Wheeler too, who'd have a complicated future with the original Billy.
Not happening this time. I had bigger concerns than bored housewives.
I drove past Melvald's General Store, past the library, past a dozen other landmarks that meant nothing to most people and everything to me. Each location got catalogued, filed away. The geography of a battlefield.
The wrongness guided me.
It had been a constant presence since crossing the Indiana state line—that cold pressure beneath the surface of everything. But it wasn't uniform. Some places felt normal, or close to it. Others made my fire thrash against my control like a caged animal.
I followed the intensity.
The roads got narrower. The buildings thinned out. Farmland gave way to woods, and the woods gave way to fences topped with barbed wire and signs that said HAWKINS NATIONAL LABORATORY - AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.
I pulled the Camaro to the side of the road and killed the engine.
The pressure here was crushing. Every cell in my body screamed that something was wrong, that I needed to leave, that I was standing too close to something that wanted to devour everything warm and living.
The Gate. It had to be underground, probably deep, probably heavily guarded. The lab's official purpose was something innocuous—energy research, maybe, or agricultural science. The kind of cover story that satisfied anyone who didn't look too closely.
The real purpose was dimensional experiments. Opening doors that should have stayed closed. Creating problems they couldn't solve.
My hands warmed against the steering wheel. The fire wanted out, wanted to respond to the cold thing it sensed beyond those fences. I forced it down. Not here. Not now.
A glint from the watchtower caught my eye. Someone with binoculars, scanning the perimeter. I'd been sitting here too long already—California plates on a car that didn't belong, driver staring at a government facility.
Time to go.
I started the engine and pulled away at a reasonable speed. Nothing suspicious. Just a teenager who took a wrong turn, realized his mistake, and left.
The wrongness faded as I drove, but it didn't disappear. It was everywhere in Hawkins, a background hum that I was already learning to filter. Only near the lab did it become unbearable.
I needed a training spot. Somewhere isolated, somewhere I could push my limits without being seen. The warehouse district in California had been perfect—abandoned, forgotten, invisible. Hawkins didn't have anything like that.
But it had the quarry.
I'd seen it on maps during the drive east, marked as an old mining operation that had been shut down decades ago. The roads leading to it were overgrown, the paths unmarked. Perfect.
Finding it took thirty minutes of wrong turns and dead ends. The Camaro wasn't built for dirt roads, and twice I had to back out of trails that threatened to bottom out the suspension. But eventually the trees opened up and the quarry spread out before me.
Massive. A wound in the earth, carved by machinery and abandoned to nature. Rock walls rose in jagged cliffs around a central pool of green water, too still to be natural. No one around. No signs of recent use.
Perfect.
I parked and got out, stretching legs that had been cramped behind the wheel for hours. The air here was cleaner than downtown—less of the wrongness, more of something that felt almost healthy. Maybe the rock walls blocked whatever was leaking from the Gate. Maybe I was imagining things.
Either way, this would work.
I walked to the edge of the water and held up my palm. Concentrated. Fire bloomed in my hand, orange and steady, responding to my will with the ease of six weeks' practice.
Two-meter projection test. I extended my intent outward, let the flame flow from my palm toward the far wall. The fire reached, stretched, covered the distance. Clean hit. Scorch mark on the rock.
Three meters. Harder. The flame wavered at the end of its arc, threatening to collapse. I pushed harder, held the connection through pure stubbornness. Contact. Another scorch mark.
Good. The move hadn't cost me progress. If anything, the wrongness in the air seemed to be sharpening my focus, giving me something to push against.
I ran through a dozen more projection tests, varying the angle, the distance, the intensity. By the time my stomach started protesting, I had a solid baseline: three meters reliable, three-and-a-half possible with effort, four still out of reach.
Work to do. But I knew that already.
The drive back to town took me past farmland—acres of corn and soybeans and other crops I couldn't identify. Normal Indiana agriculture, the backbone of the heartland economy.
Except for the pumpkins.
I slowed as I passed a field of them, orange spheres scattered across dark soil. Most looked healthy enough. But here and there, patches of wrong. Discoloration. Wilting vines. Rot spreading in circles from invisible centers.
The tunnels. I remembered from the show—the Mind Flayer's influence spreading through Hawkins via underground passages, killing vegetation wherever they spread. It was already happening. Earlier than I'd expected, maybe, or right on schedule with a timeline I'd misremembered.
Either way, the clock was ticking.
I stopped for lunch at a diner downtown—not Benny's, that one was closed, had been since the owner died under mysterious circumstances a year ago. Different place, same vibe. Burgers, fries, milkshakes served by waitresses who'd been doing this since before I was born in either of my lives.
I ate alone at the counter, watching Hawkins pass by through the window. Families. Teenagers. Old folks walking dogs. Normal people living normal lives, completely unaware of what was festering beneath their feet.
They'd find out eventually. When the Demodogs started hunting. When Will Byers started having episodes. When the whole mess exploded into public view and got covered up by men in suits who were very good at making problems disappear.
My job was to be ready when that happened.
The waitress refilled my coffee without being asked. "You're new," she observed. "The Hargrove boy. Moved into the Miller place on Maple."
Small town. Everyone knew everything. "Word travels fast."
"Not much else to do." She smiled, friendly enough. "Welcome to Hawkins. Hope you survive."
She probably meant high school. She had no idea how accurate the sentiment was.
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