Nothing made any sense anymore. There was pain, there was humiliation, there was degradation, and all Steve could do was endure. He was a thing to be studied. A lab specimen to be dissected. It didn't matter how he begged, how he pleaded, nothing seemed to matter to his captors. They took their samples: a fang, a claw, skin, blood. They did their tests: drugs, reflexes, pain tolerance.

They seemed determined to figure out how he worked, taking him to the very limit without actually killing him.

Time was measured in agony, and it felt like a lifetime.

"No more, please," he begged over and over again, voice cracked and almost gone from all the screaming.

It never did any good.

When he heard gunfire and sirens, it barely registered. Not until he felt a presence. Eddie, it was Eddie, and it was the only thing that his tangled thoughts could grasp onto.

"Get the fuck away from him," he heard someone growl.

As hands touched him this time he whimpered. Eddie's presence solidified in his head, dragging him back from the abyss.

"Steve, oh god, Steve, can you hear me?" Eddie's desperate words made it into his brain.

All he could manage was a small moan.

"Dustin, we have to get him down," Eddie said.

"I'm trying," came back Dustin's familiar voice, "I don't speak Russian. If I hit the wrong button, I might hurt him."

A distant explosion shook the room. Steve whined as Eddie's touch left him and someone gasped.

"Show him," Eddie's voice was full of menace, "or I promise, I'll skin you alive before eating your heart."

He tried to see, to understand what was happening, but his eyes refused to focus. Everything was a mess of confusion. Then he was falling, and he couldn't stop, but strong arms caught him.

"Steve, Stevie," Eddie sounded desperate. "Fuck, what did they do to you."

"Eddie, we have to get out of here," Dustin's worried voice made it through the fog. "There are more soldiers coming."

"Fuck, we'll be sitting ducks. I can't carry Steve and deal with Russians," Eddie said. "Dustin, if you're squeamish, turn away now."

"What? Why?" Dustin asked.

"Steve, I'm so sorry, this is going to hurt," Eddie told him, cradling him gently.

The smell of blood hit him first, before warm wetness dripped into his mouth. The taste exploded on his tongue, and he swallowed automatically as every fibre of his being screamed Eddie at him. He arched away from Eddie as his system lit up like the fourth of July and every sense he had turned on at one hundred. The fog lifted from his brain, burned away by a firestorm, and he came down with a thump, gasping for breath.

Every hurt in his body telegraphed like it was new. He clung to Eddie as he shook, and Eddie clung back.

"Holy fuck, that hurts," he gasped out as it finally began to fade.

"God I'm sorry," Eddie said.

"Fine," he promised, patting his boyfriend's arm as the overload began to ease.

"Not fine," Eddie told him, stroking the side of his face, "but you're with me?"

Steve nodded.

"We have to move," Eddie said.

Steve nodded again.

Eddie helped him to stand. He swayed, but he stayed on his feet. For the first time he got a real look at the lab and the mess it was in. The woman who had tortured him was cowering in the corner, two guards and the thug with the cattle prod were unconscious on the floor and everyone else was gone. One of the men definitely had claw marks.

"God, you look like shit," Dustin said, looking at him from across the room next to the computers.

"Probably look better than I feel," he said, blinking back dizziness and nausea.

How Eddie and Dustin were here was a question he really wanted an answer to, but they didn't have time. More gun fire came from somewhere outside the room. Eddie's blood was coursing through him like a wildfire, but he knew it wouldn't last for long.

"Let's get out of here," he said, pushing the otherness to the surface.

"I'll clear the way," Eddie said, "you stay with Dustin, keep him safe until we get back to the others."

It went against every instinct Steve had to let someone else go into danger in front of him, but he also knew Eddie was right. He wasn't strong or fast enough to take the lead. He had so many questions, but right now was about survival.

As soon as they slipped into the corridor, Eddie was off. The two soldiers coming towards them had no chance as Eddie moved faster than they could react. Both went flying as Steve kept himself between Dustin and the melee, following his boyfriend down the corridor.

Now that he was properly aware, the sirens were loud, and it was clear the base was in pandemonium. It looked hauntingly like the one under Starcourt had, although not as grand.

"Where the hell are we?" Steve asked as they ran down the corridor.

"Russian base under a farm about twenty miles out of town," Dustin told him. "Best guess, they built it at the same time as Starcourt as a backup. How the fuck the government missed it I will never know."

"Language," Steve said automatically, which made him want to laugh hysterically, because it was so not the time.

He definitely wasn't completely with it. As he was worrying about not being able to protect Dustin if it came to it, a door they were running past opened. A man with a gun pointed it at them and Steve reacted without thinking. With one hand he grabbed the gun, with the other the front of the soldier's uniform and threw him hard across the corridor. There was a satisfying crunch before the man slumped senseless to the floor.

"Any idea how to use this?" Steve asked about the gun in his hand.

"Nope," Dustin replied.

"Don't think I could hit anything even if I did," he said and bent the barrel slightly before tossing the weapon away.

Eddie was waiting for them at a door at the end of the corridor.

"This way," Eddie said, leaning through the door before leading them into another corridor.

Steve was pretty sure he had never seen anything as impressive as the way Eddie took out another soldier.

"How did you find me?" he asked as Eddie went on ahead, dealing with anyone stupid enough to get in his way as Steve and Dustin followed.

"Eddie," Dustin explained. "When they grabbed you, they tried to grab him too, but he got your warning. We contacted Owens, but they were taking too long, so we came anyway. Eddie led us right here. This base isn't deep, it's just under the surface and we broke in through some vents. Took us a while to figure out how, sorry. The others are causing a diversion so Eddie and me could get to you before anyone did anything drastic."

"Appreciate that," he said, but he stumbled into the wall.

"Need help?" Dustin asked, by his side immediately.

He shook his head, refusing to give in, in the slightest.

"Let's go," was all he said.

After a couple more turns, they made it into a bigger room, one that had a large door at the far end. Steve had to assume it was the way out because there were four heavily armed guards on it. However, they didn't have to worry about it for long, because the three men and one woman flew backwards and thudded against what they were guarding. Eddie zeroed in on them to make sure they stayed down as El appeared from the other corridor off the room, flanked by Hopper, Robin, Nancy, Mike, Lucas, Gareth, Jeff, and Frank.

Robin crossed to him immediately as the others flooded into the room.

"Get that door open," Hopper barked.

Dustin and Nancy headed to the front as Robin pulled Steve into a hug.

"I'm okay," he told her.

"Yeah, not buying that," Robin replied. "You're paler than my Great Aunt Rose and she's ninety and hasn't seen the sun in decades."

"Be fine once we get out," he did his best to reassure her.

Rather than reply she reached out and pulled off one of the sticky pads he hadn't even noticed was still attached to his chest. Most of the monitoring devices must have come off when Eddie and Dustin freed him, but apparently one hadn't.

"We need a key card like at Starcourt," Dustin called out.

"Check the guards," Hopper told him while keeping an eye on the corridors.

Steve couldn't help noticing that both Jeff and Gareth were holding guns and seemed to know what they were doing. Not what he had expected.

"Got one," Nancy declared.

She was at the panel and using it before anyone could say anything. The large door began to lift immediately, rising a few inches before more sirens went off and a loud recorded Russian voice began speaking.

"They're overriding," Robin yelled even as the door began to close again.

Apparently, El was not having that. She stepped into the middle of the room and threw out her hand with an incredibly determined scowl on her face. The huge metal door shrieked as El forced it upwards, hydraulics hissing and spitting as they failed against her power. Steve could feel her energy in his veins as if he was part of it. They were almost there, almost out, but the tiniest click made it to his ears over the maelstrom.

There was no gap between thought and action as he stepped between El and the sound. Semi-automatic gun fire joined the cacophony and three impacts tried to throw him forward, but he held his ground. Hop turned and fired once, and the gun fire was silenced.

"Run," El screamed and they all did.

They poured into what Steve realised was a barn, only to be faced with yet more soldiers. It took him a second to realise these ones were in American uniforms.

"That way," Owen's said, waving his arm to the left as the soldiers converged on the door.

No one was arguing. Steve kept moving, not even thinking about what had just happened. Only once they were all out of the way and he had reassured himself they were all there, did his higher thoughts start moving again. As the relief they were safe hit, so did the pain. He curled in on himself, sliding down the wall as the damage done to his body finally made it into his head.

"Harrington, don't you dare," Eddie was right there instantly.

Strong hands held him in a sitting position as he tried to slump sideways.

"Steve, look at me," Eddie demanded.

He tried, he really did, but Eddie's worried face swam in and out of his vision.

"Stupid damn hero complex," Eddie complained at him. "Stevie, stay with me, you're not allowed to check out after all the trouble we went to rescue you."

"Sorry," he whispered, and he couldn't keep his eyes open anymore.

"Steve, Steve, fucking wake up," were the last things he heard as the world faded away.