Chapter Twenty-Four 

We are still in the tunnels under Starcourt. We had finally found somewhat of civilisation down here, two people were walking past. Steve emerges from behind peace of machinery, I was right behind him and the others were all behind us, too. 

"Okay, clear." He hisses to us and begins to move out from the hiding spot. "Clear, come on, let's go." I pulled Stiles out with me. 

"Okay, that was close." Robin reminds us. 

"Too close," Dustin adds strongly. 

"Relax," Steve looked back at us for a split second. "All right? Relax. Nobody saw..." We rounded the corner, we stopped and saw a two-story hub, we stare at many workers. We quickly duck out of sight. "Shit. Jesus!"

"Red Dawn," Dustin whispers. 

"I saw it," Erica whispered. "First floor, northwest."

Stile looked down at the little girl. "Saw what?"

"The comms room," Erica hisses. 

Stiles looked at her with wide eyes. "You saw the comms room?"

"Correct," Erica nods her head. 

"Are you sure?" Dustin asks from behind her. 

"Positive," Erica answers in a whisper. "The door was opened for a second, and I saw a brunch of lights and machines and shit in there." 

"That could be a hundred different things," I tell her and Dustin nods, agreeing with me. 

Robin looked at Steve. "I'll take those odds." 

I nod my head. "Me too." Robin looked back at me and gave me a smile and Steve sighed, shaking his head. 

We all peer out from our hiding spot and looked at the door to the comms room that was closed. We moved back to the wall for cover. 

"All right," Steve whispered. "We're gonna move fast, we're gonna stay low. Okay?" 

Steve goes first and then we all followed, keeping our heads down low as we moved to the next hiding spot which was large containers. 

We wait for people to past, before we go low and quick past, going to another spot across from the comms room. 

I watched as one of the science men opened the door, Steve motions for us to go and we all quickly rushed towards the closing door, and before it could close, he catches the door before it closes and we all pile into the room. 

He shuts the door softly, and we turned around to see a Russian technician sitting there and turns to us. The Russian technician takes off his headphones and stands up. 

He eyes us with a wildered expression, before reaching for his gun. Robin then steps forward and quickly speaks the code that we had cracked. 

 The Russian technician shakes his head, speaking. He continued to grab his gun but that's when Steve lets out a huge yell and charges towards the man. 

But, the Russian technician shoves him and takes aa swing at him. Steve dodges, but the Russian technician grabs him by the shoulders and throws him into a desk. 

Steve elbowed the Russian technician who stumbles back, allowing Steve to have time to grab a phone from the panel and whack the Russian technician with it across the face. As the man falls, the man's head hits a desk, knocking him unconscious. 

 "Dude!" I exclaimed with a big proud smile and Steve looked over at me. "You did it! You won a fight!" 

"Yeah!" Dustin celebrates and we both applaud him together, Steve shoots us a small glare and I only laughed. 

Steve puts his gaze down to the technician, he then breaks into a smile. I walked towards the technician and take the keycard from his pocket. 

"What are you doing?" Erica asks me. 

I looked over at her. "Getting our ticket out of here." 

Erica points at the door. "You want to walk all the way back?"

I stepped towards the little girl who stepped towards me. "Well, we can hang out for a little bit, relax, have a picnic maybe." 

"Have a picnic?" Erica exclaims. "We came here for the radio." 

"Well, this plan is way better. If I knew Steve could knock out a Russian, that would've been our plan in the first place-" 

"Guys," Robin comes back down from the staircase and we all looked towards her. "There's something up there." 

We all walked up the staircase and there was a door which we opened. We looked through near a window, blue light shining towards us. 

"Holy shit," I breathe when I realised what we were staring at. 

We continue to stare into the observation room, there were a platform and a huge machine that was trying to break the gate that El had closed last year. 

Electricity sparks along with the spinning turbines of the massive machine with blasts a stream of energy into the gate. 

Steve, Dustin, and my mouth hung open as we were the only ones who realised what this could mean. The Russians are trying to open up the gate. 

Steve, Dustin, and I all looked at each other. "The Gate." We say in time. 

We all piled down the stairs hurriedly. "I don't understand. You've seen it before?" Robin asks us as we now make out way to the comms room.

"Not exactly," I answer. 

"Then what, exactly?" Stiles asks. 

"All you need to know is it's bad," Dustin informs them. 

"It's really bad," Steve continued. 

"Like, end-of-human-race-as-we-know-it kind of bad," I exclaimed as we entered the comms room. 

"And you know about this how?" Robin exclaimed back at me. 

"Um, Steve?" Erica calls. "Where's your Russian friend?" We looked down on the floor and the technician was gone. 

I inhaled sharply when I heard the sound of the alarms go off. 

They know we're here. 

"Shit," I opened the door to see the tech man talking to the other Russian shoulders about us. They spot me and my eyes widen and I slammed the door shut. "Shit." I looked up the stairs. "Go, go, go, go, go!"

With that, we run up the stairs, pushing the door open then we move into the observation room, where scientist turns to stare at us. 

"Go!" Steve yells out. 

We all run down the stairs as the soldiers arrive, Dustin, shoves a man out of the way as we pushed by as we run along the catwalk. We reached the edge of the machine, my eyes widening as we were met by The Gate. 

"Guards!" I yelled when I noticed the guards approaching us. 

We descend to the bottom floor and Steve pushes barrels to incoming soldiers to create some distance between us we all rush towards the door I had spotted, 

"Come on, quick!" Robin had opened up the door and we all piled in, Robin shuts the door. Steve and Stiles hold the door shut as soldiers pushed up against it. 

Robin helped the two boys as it was getting hard to hold the door close. I found us a floor panel. "Come on!" I yelled at them, trying to get them to come through the door with us to the air vents. 

"Go! Just get out of here!" Stiles urges me but I shake my head. 

"No, just come on!" I plead. "I lost you twice! I'm not losing you again!" 

"You're not losing me!" Stiles grunts. "Just go and get some help, okay?!" Tears begin to blur my vision and I pressed my lips together, not knowing what to do. 

"He's right!" Steve continues for him. "Take care of the kids and go get help! Make sure those little shits don't get into any more trouble!"

I jumped down into the floor panel and I hesitate to into the air vents. "Go!" Robin, Steve, and Stiles all yell and I felt someone pull me down, Dustin moved me out the way and shuts the door. 

"I shouldn't have left," I cried pathetically. 

"It's gonna be okay, Stacey," Dustin tried to reassure me. "We're gonna get them, and we're gonna get help." He looked down the long air vent. "Let's crawl this way."

We had finally found a fan in the insolation shaft. "So, when we set fire to the hub, we drew the Demodogs away so El could close the gate. But now, for some insane reason, the Russians appear to be trying to reopen it, which just destroys everything we risked our lives for."

Dustin had finished explaining to Erica what has happened in the past two years and now she was caught up with everything. 

"By we, you're including Lucas?" Erica asks with wide eyes. 

"Yes, of course," I replied. 

"So, all that shit you just told me, Lucas was there?" Erica cocks her head at us. 

"Yeah," Dustin answers. 

"My brother, Lucas Charles Sinclair?" I smirked at Erica. 

"Yes!" Dustin exclaimed. 

"I don't believe you," Erica tells us. 

"Wait, so you believe everything about El and the gate, Stacey being a Banshee, and the Demodogs, and the Mind Flayer, but you question your brother's involvement?" Dustin looked over at her who nods. 

"That's correct," she continues to nod her head. 

"Make total sense," I say sarcastically. Dustin uses the screwdriver to try to turn off the fan. 

"Um, you need help with that?" Erica asks Dustin. 

"No," Dustin answers. 

And with that, I blocked them out, worrying about Steve, Stiles, and Robin. 

They're gonna be okay, they're gonna be okay, they're gonna be okay is what I've been telling myself repetitively. 

Stiles can handle this. He's been in situations like this before. More dangerous. More vicious. 

Like the time we had all forgotten about him. Or, when we were paralyzed... I mentally shudder, I never want that feeling again. Or, when a Void took over his body. 

He's gonna be okay, Steve will look out for him. Thinking about Stiles made me think about my family at home, making me want to cry. 

I don't know what I want anymore. At the very beginning, all I wanted to do was go home. Now I'm hesitant to go home. Do I go home and leave this world behind? Or do I go to a crueller world than this, that includes my family? But... these guys are my family, too. 

"Stacey," I looked over and saw Dustin and Erica staring at me. 

"What?" I ask, blinking back the unshredded tears. 

"I said... are you okay?" Dustin looks at me. I nodded. "Really? It looks like you're about to cry." 

"I'm fine," I quickly said, not wanting to damper the mood. 

"Are you sure?" Dustin's voice turned soft. "They're gonna be all right, you know."

"I know that," my voice cracked unexpectedly and I cleared my throat. "I know that I just... I've lost Stiles so many times, I don't want to lose him again."

"We're gonna get him back," Dustin assured me. "Besides, they'll be fine now that we know Steve can kick some ass." 

I let out a laugh and noticed the fan stopped moving. "Hey, you got it!"

Dustin showed me a proud grin. Erica narrows her eyes at us. "Right let's go and save your damn friends."

A/N

Hello friends!

Wow, I genuinely love this story so much oml. 

Sorry for not posting yesterday, I really need to just sit down and work on this book, but I don't seem to have the time but I really want to finish it!