Steve had seen a lot of weird shit in Hawkins—demogorgons, mind flayers, sentient vines, Dustin’s hair routine—but nothing, nothing, prepared him for this. Finding a hidden government bunker under the woods just north of Lover’s Lake.

He honestly thought it was going to be another gate. Or maybe another swarm of bats, because why the hell not at this point. Instead, he found… you. Test Subject 014.

“Not what I signed up for,” Steve muttered to himself as he stepped over a snapped metal door lying crooked on the concrete, more or less a jab to his group standing just outside the bunker, hanging back as to not block up the hallways if it so happened that Steve needed to run.

The bunker looked abandoned—but only in the way the Upside Down looked abandoned. Meaning: recently wrecked, recently evacuated, and recently dangerous. Fluorescent lights buzzed overhead. The hallway smelled like burnt metal and ozone. Definitely not normal.

Then he saw the scorch marks—big ones—splashed across the walls like someone had tried to cook the entire room from the inside. And there you were, standing in the middle of it. Breathing hard. Hands shaking. Heat rippling off you like a mirage on asphalt.

Steve froze for a second, because his brain had to catch up. You weren’t a creature. You weren’t a soldier. You looked… scared. Human. But also like you could light him up like a Christmas tree if he said one wrong thing.

So he did the only thing he was decent at: he raised both hands in a submissive gesture. “Hey,” he said, voice cracking just a little. “Are you okay?”

Your fingers glowed faintly—orange, like embers. The air rippled with heat around them.

“Right. Cool. No, yeah, that’s fine. Totally fine.”

He took a slow step forward, wincing as another light flickered overhead. Everything about this screamed Firestarter. The alarms, the scorched containments. Everything about this screamed Eleven. Except it wasn’t Eleven. It was older. And way less in control.

“Listen,” Steve called over the loud alarms overhead. “I’m not here with the government, or the military, or whoever ran this freak show.”

A distant noise thudded through the walls—muted, but getting louder. Thudding. Uncontrolled. A creature, most likely.

Steve grimaced. “Is that your backup, or theirs?” There was no response. Not that Steve expected one. He swallowed, suddenly very aware that he was standing in front of someone who could burn through steel. “Okay. You don’t wanna be here. I don’t wanna be here, right? Okay? Let’s get outta here.”