Chapter 72: The Final Assault - Part 4 (Escape)
Bob
The countdown was digital nightmare. Sixty seconds collapsing to thirty, twenty, ten.
"Straight 300 meters!" I guided through SuperComm. "Right at junction! Ladder shaft, climb fast! You have thirty-five seconds!"
On my monitors, four dots racing through tunnels. Behind them, hundreds of red signatures—demo-dogs in pursuit.
"Tunnel collapsing section three!" Dr. Owens reported. "Chain reaction starting early!"
"TEAM, COLLAPSE ACCELERATING! MOVE FASTER!"
Steve
Phase 3 pushed my body past human limits. Carrying El, running full speed, fighting rear guard simultaneously.
Demo-dogs swarmed. I killed without slowing, bat and knife extensions of my will.
The tunnel groaned. Structural failure spreading faster than predicted. The explosives' chain reaction had begun early.
"Thirty seconds!" Bob's voice.
Ceiling chunks rained down. Hopper ducked, Billy unconscious on his shoulder. We hit the junction, turned right.
Ladder shaft ahead. Vertical climb, narrow space.
"Twenty seconds!"
Hopper went first, Billy slung over his back. El grabbed the ladder, started climbing despite exhaustion.
I brought rear. Demo-dogs right behind us, clicking fury.
Dustin
We felt the explosion from the bunker. Not the final detonation—preliminary collapses. Tremors shaking ground.
"They're coming," I said to The Party. "Get ready."
Will stood beside me, clearer-eyed than he'd been in weeks. "Steve's severing the connection. I can feel it breaking."
"Is that good?"
"For me? Yes. For him?" Will's face twisted with worry. "It might kill him."
Dart clicked nervously, sensing the impending detonation.
Max grabbed my arm. "Billy's with them. He better survive."
"He will. Steve won't let him die."
Please let that be true.
Murray
I'd been following the Hawkins story for weeks. Tonight, all the pieces had converged—military-style operation, underground infiltration, massive energy signatures.
I parked on a ridge overlooking the industrial complex, camera ready.
The ground rumbled. Surface cracks appeared, spreading.
Through my telephoto lens, I caught the tunnel entrance. Four figures emerging—two adults, two teenagers, one carried.
"What the hell are you people doing down there?" I muttered, photographing everything.
Then the world exploded.
Steve
We burst from the tunnel exit into cold November daylight. Ten seconds remaining.
"GET CLEAR!" Bob's voice screamed through comms.
We ran. Hopper carrying Billy, El stumbling, me supporting her.
Five seconds.
The ground beneath us cracked. Tunnel network collapsing, entire underground structure caving in.
Three seconds.
Two.
One.
The source gate detonated.
El
The shockwave threw us like toys. I tumbled through air, hit ground hard, rolled.
Beside me, Steve convulsed. The corruption across his body writhed—black veins retracting, spreading, fighting themselves. The Mind Flayer's connection was severing violently.
He screamed. Not pain scream. Dimensional scream. Like reality itself was tearing him apart.
I crawled to him, placed hands on his chest. "Holding on. Stay!"
The corruption pulsed, trying to kill him, trying to reclaim him, trying to drag him through dimensions.
"STEVE!" Hopper's voice. "Stay with us!"
Hopper
The explosion crater was three miles wide. Entire downtown industrial complex collapsed into massive sinkhole. Dust cloud rising like mushroom.
And Steve Harrington lay convulsing on the ground, corruption receding in agonizing waves.
I grabbed the radio. "Bob! We're clear! Steve's down! Get medical here NOW!"
"Ambulance dispatched. Five minutes out."
"He might not have five minutes!"
El held Steve, trying to use her powers to stabilize him. But the corruption fought back, dimensional energy resisting.
Billy woke up, saw Steve dying. "No. After saving me, you don't get to die. That's bullshit."
The corruption spread one final time, then contracted violently. Steve arched back, screaming.
Then went still.
Will
At the bunker, I felt it. The connection breaking. The Mind Flayer's presence in my mind severing completely.
Freedom. For the first time in months, my thoughts were entirely mine.
"It worked," I breathed. "Steve did it."
But the joy felt hollow. Because through the remnants of the link, I'd felt Steve's agony. The cost of severing the connection.
"We have to help him," I told The Party. "Now."
We ran. All of us. Toward the explosion site, toward Steve, toward saving the person who'd saved us all.
Murray
Through my camera, I documented everything. The explosion, the collapse, the four survivors on the ground.
And the impossible readings on my equipment. Dimensional energy off the scale, then collapsing to zero.
"Whatever you people were doing," I said to my recordings, "you just closed something. Something big."
I'd get my story eventually. But today, I just documented.
Because this was history. And someone needed to remember.
Steve
Darkness. Cold. The Mind Flayer's presence receding like tide, pulling at my consciousness, trying to drag me with it.
No. I'm not yours. Never was.
The corruption fought. Part of me wanted to follow it, to become fully dimensional, to transcend humanity.
But Chrissy's face appeared in my mind. The Party. Everyone I'd fought to save.
I promised to come back. I promised to try.
I grabbed onto reality. Onto humanity. Onto life.
The corruption released me with scream that echoed across dimensions.
My eyes opened. El's face above me, crying.
"Stayed," she whispered. "You stayed."
"Promised I'd try," I managed. Voice raw, body broken, but alive.
Hopper laughed with relief. "You magnificent stupid son of a bitch. You actually did it."
"We did it. Team effort."
Billy sat up nearby, healed but exhausted. "Never doing that again."
"Agreed."
Ambulances arrived. EMTs swarmed, treating wounds, stabilizing injuries. But the real damage was invisible—corruption scars, dimensional trauma, the cost of bridging worlds.
I'd survived. We'd all survived.
Season 2 was over.
And somehow, impossibly, Bob Newby was still alive.
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