the warning that came too late

. ✧ ・゜. +・o ✧

Alina pressed an ice pack to her cheek, wincing as the bitter cold contacted her face. She was currently sitting on a couch beside Dustin in Mike's basement, while Mike and Eleven washed up in the bathroom. Chills swept over her arms, and she kept peering through the door leading outside, as if someone was about to come in. But nobody was. They were safe now. Right?

"Dustin?" Alina asked, finally breaking the silence, and without waiting for a response, threw her arms around her friend. After a second, Dustin hugged her back, and when they finally detached from another, Alina smiled. "I'm glad you're okay."

"Yeah," said Dustin quietly. "I'm glad you're alright too. That was really scary. I mean, everything about this week has been terrifying... but seeing Mike jump off the cliff might've taken the top spot. I can't believe he did that for us. I don't... I don't know if I would've been able to." He lowered his head, ashamed. "Does that make me a bad friend?"

"No, Dustin. It doesn't. Sometimes being afraid is good. It keeps you running, it keeps you alive. When you're staring down the edge of a cliff, your body trembles at the prospect of jumping. Because it wants you to be safe. It wants you to live another day. It wants to keep you living. So you're not a bad friend for being too scared to jump." Alina swallowed. "But, Dustin, Mike didn't jump for us. He jumped for you."

Dustin let out a sigh and shook his head. "You can't see it, can you? How much everyone cares about you? You're still thinking of yourself as the outcast, but you're as much one of us as me and Mike are. You've been through what really matters, and you haven't run away, even though you're the one who could've. You've helped us with everything with Will, and you've stuck by us no matter what, even when things got really crazy. You're a party member, Al. Trust me."

"I'm a party member," Alina repeated, awed. Yes, Mike had said it to her earlier, but to hear it again... A week ago, this wouldn't have meant anything to her. Now it meant the whole world. Now it was one of the things keeping her going.

"You put yourself in danger for me when Troy said he was going to cut my teeth out, and ended up being hit. You defended Will in the gym and at recess. You followed us into the woods to go to the gate to another dimension to rescue a boy you barely know. Powers or not, Al, you're one of the bravest people I've ever met."

Alina's face was red now. "Thank you. Thank you, Dustin."

Dustin nodded, and suddenly leaned forward in his seat, wiggling his eyebrows, a half of a smirk on his face. "Now that the mushy stuff is out of the way, do you have a crush on Lucas?"

"What?!" if Alina had been drinking anything, it would've spewed out of her mouth at her friend's suggestion. She shoved him away. "No! Why... why would you say that?!"

"Because you look at him the way Mike looks at Eleven," said Dustin matter-of-factly. "With puppy dog eyes."

"I don't have a crush on Lucas," Alina insisted, crossing her arms, and lowering the ice pack from her face so as to glare at him properly. "Seriously. I don't."

"Well, if it makes you feel better," said Dustin, "I think Lucas likes you too. I think he has for a while, even before you talked to us."

Alina's face reddened even more, but she didn't have time to reply to Dustin, as, just then, the walkie talkie on the table came to life, a muffled voice screaming through it. A voice that both of them recognized as the boy who'd stormed off without them, the boy who wasn't there on the clifftop, and the boy they had just been talking about.

Lucas Sinclair was speaking too fast to decipher any full sentences, but Alina caught fragments of words. "Al... out... coming!" Alina picked up the walkie talkie with shaking hands and listened. "Run... here... coming!"

"Get Mike," she instructed Dustin, and her friend ran off to find Mike and Eleven. Alina pressed the walkie talkie. "Lucas? It's Al. Do you copy? Lucas?"

"Alina... out... dad...lab... run!"

"Lucas, slow down! I can't hear anything you're saying!"

Fear for Lucas filled her as she listened to his screams. He'd gone off alone, without any of them, on a half-cocked perilous mission to find Will on his own. She should've been there for him. She should've gone out and found him as soon as they'd found Eleven. She had no idea where he was, or even if he was still in this dimension.

Just then, Dustin burst back into the room, followed by Mike and Eleven. "Do you remember how he said he was looking for the gate?" Dustin was asking as he led the way, taking the walkie talkie from Alina's hands. "What if he found it?"

Lucas's voice faded in again, and Mike took the walkie talkie from him, listening hard. "What's he saying?" he questioned, his face panicked.

"I don't know," said Dustin, "he's way out of range."

Lucas shouted louder, and Alina caught something that sounded like "son of a bitch" and "they snow!" But none of his words made any sense. Mike held the walkie talkie up to his face. "Lucas, if you can hear us, slow down. We can't understand you."

Lucas was still talking too quickly. "Yes... copy... Eleven... mad hen... Alina... dad..."

"I can't make heads or tails of what he's saying," Alina complained, throwing her arms into the air. "Did he say something about Eleven? And a hen?"

"Yeah, mad hen," said Dustin. "Does that mean anything to you? Like a code name or something?"

Lucas's voice was clearer this time, and what he said sent shivers down all of their spines. "The bad men are coming!"

Mike's eyes widened. "Bad men," he said. "Bad men!" He set down his walkie talkie. "Stay here," he instructed Eleven quickly, before running upstairs. Alina and Dustin quickly followed, Alina's mind whirling. If the bad men—which she took to mean the people from the Lab, for that was what Eleven called them—were here, it meant her dad was, too. Shit.

The trio pressed their faces against a window upstairs, noticing the same van they'd seen earlier still parked outside. Hawkins Power and Light. Alina didn't recognize it, but it could've easily been connected to Hawkins Lab. As she watched, breathing hard, she noticed a man inside the vehicle, peering back at them. She didn't recognize him either, but...

"What's that guy doing?" Mike's voice was higher than normal in his panic.

Dustin turned to them. "You don't think... Al, do you recognize him at all?"

"No," said Alina. "But that doesn't mean he's not with them. I didn't meet everyone who worked there."

Mike sucked in a gasp, before running to the kitchen, where the sounds of Mike's mother talking on the phone could be heard. Dustin and Alina remained at the window, watching the man, and Alina couldn't help but flip him off. The man's eyes darkened with recognition when he saw her, and he spoke into a walkie talkie of his own, just as several more Hawkins Power and Light vehicles came tearing down the road towards them, men peering out of the windows right at them.

"SHUT THE CURTAINS!" Alina screamed, and Dustin fumbled to do so. When they were in darkness, the two of them ran into the kitchen, where Mike was asking his mom if any repairs were scheduled for the house.

"Mike!" Dustin panted, nearly slipping in his haste to get to his friend. Alina wasn't far behind him.

"One second." Mike waved them off, not even turning to look. If he had, maybe he'd seen the panic on their faces.

"MIKE!" Both Alina and Dustin yelled his name, finally forcing him to spin around to face them.

"We need to leave..." panted Dustin. "Right now."

"A bunch more of the vans just came!" Alina added.

Mrs. Wheeler seemed to notice her for the first time. "Oh, Alina," she said. "How nice to see you. Your father called, he left a message about—"

But Alina and Dustin were already tearing away from her, heading into the basement. Mike quickly followed, shouting something to his mother, and all of them grabbed their bags before heading outside, Eleven following behind at their urging. Dustin pulled on his headset in order to hear if Lucas spoke any more.

"My dad," Alina gasped, as they began to wheel their bikes to the road. "Oh my God, my dad's going to be with them."

"Well, if you wanna go back to him, then go ahead, but I wouldn't recommend it!" Mike said as they reached the road, hopping onto their bikes. That was when they saw the men walking towards them slowly, as if they knew that they had them beat. But Alina's heart dropped when she noticed Brandon Fairgrieves among them, his face almost as panicked as hers.

He made eye contact with her, and that was when she noticed the notebook he was holding. With its leather cover, and the initials A.E.F inscribed onto it, the ribbon bookmark fluttering out of it in the wind. It was her notebook, the one she'd used to tell her story about Eleven. And he, an employee at Hawkins Lab, was clutching it tightly in his hands.

Brandon Fairgrieves shook his head at his daughter frantically, any hope he may have had dropping out of him the instant he noticed her dark curls. The message. It hadn't worked. She hadn't gotten it. And now she was going to be caught.

Brenner locked eyes with Alina next, his lip curling. Alina tried to imagine what he was thinking. About how his employee's daughter had gone rogue. About what he was going to do to them when he got his hands on them. Alina didn't even want to imagine what, and she realized that the frantic, panicked breaths she was taking might be her last.

Again.

First, she'd been afraid of being burned, and now she was afraid of being shot. But just like at the Quarry, she wasn't going to give up, and so she shot off after the others, pedaling harder than she ever had in her life. But even she knew it wasn't enough as she walked the men get back into their vans and begin to chase them. Bikes against vans. Grown men against children.

But she kept pedalling. To protect Eleven. To help Will. To save Dustin and Mike. And she'd be damned if she let them get her so easy.

She realized that if she turned herself in, they might let her go with a warning, and possibly another grounding. But she knew that Dustin, Mike, and Eleven wouldn't get the same treatment. So she'd fight, and be dragged away from her friends kicking and screaming, and get way more than a slap on the wrist and her comics taken away for a month. But she'd fight regardless.

Their bikes streaked down the street like bullets, their calves burning as they pedaled. "Oh, my God, oh my God, oh, my God, oh, my God, oh, my God!" Dustin was swearing as they pedaled, just as Alina heard Lucas's voice crackle through his headset.

"Dustin! Dustin, do you copy?"

"Yeah, Lucas, they're on us!" Dustin cried.

"Where are you?"

"Cornwallis," Dustin responded quickly.

"Meet me at Elm and Cherry!"

Lucas. Lucas was alive. Lucas was okay. And Lucas was going to help them.

Alina wasn't mad at him anymore. She could be angry at him when there weren't an indeterminate number of Hawkins Power and Light vans chasing them. She could be mad when they weren't being dragged away from each other to face the consequences for daring to find out the truth.

"Copy!" shouted Dustin. "Elm and Cherry!"

"Okay!" Mike yelled back, nodding at Dustin's instruction as Eleven clutched at his waist, panicked, looking behind in case the vans stopped chasing them.

They all were doomed, but they wouldn't stop trying. And if there was one thing about Alina Fairgrieves that couldn't be broken, it was her spirit.

. ✧ ・゜. +・o ✧

a/n: dustin and alina are such a brotp i love them so much

anyway, i hope you enjoyed this chapter! i can't believe we're almost at 2k reads! i never expected to ever get this far, so thank you to everyone who's supported this book, i love you all. <3

'till next time!