Even Stranger Things

Jim knew in his gut that something was going to happen that day. It started with Powell waking him up with the sun to tell him that Hawkins Lab had released their security tapes. Jim grunted that he would be there soon, then had to clean up the boxes and trash he left in the living room from the beds and dresser he built.

God forbid he left it, Harry would dust the entire house in retaliation.

Sirianna woke up before Jim left and they danced around each other in the kitchen. She wanted to make breakfast for Harry and El, Jim just wanted some fucking coffee.

"I think it'll be a late day for me," Jim told her. "You kids going to be okay making dinner for yourself?"

Jim meant to make dinner before, but he wasn't much of a cook and Sirianna kept doing it anyway. If it didn't bother her, it didn't bother him. Kids could have some chores, teenagers could cook.

"I've been cooking dinner since I was a girl, I'm sure we'll survive," Sirianna said. Jim couldn't see her face, but he thought he heard a sarcastic eye roll in the mix.

And, well, fuck.

"How about I order pizza and have it delivered?" Jim offered instead. It was one thing to have a hobby, it was another thing to have a job ingrained in a kid since they were a younger kid.

Sirianna looked over her shoulder at Jim and he stayed real invested in his newspaper, coffee, and cigarette.

"I just said I would cook?" she said. "I don't mind."

"Yeah, well, I do." Jim stubbed out the rest of his smoke, drained his coffee cup and put it in the sink. He pointed it at and made sure she saw him. "Nobody washes that cup except for me, got it? Be home by seven, I'll have pizza delivered then."

A perk of being the Chief was that if Jim told one of the guys at the station to pick up pizza and drop it off at his place, they would do it. It was convenient, easy, and Jim wouldn't have to feel guilty about a single thing.

It got Jim a sweet little "Thank you" on his way out the door anyway. It was baby steps, small and frustrating for a grown man to take, but it would get them where they were headed eventually.

Powell was the only one at station when Jim arrived. He was slumped over his own cup of coffee and gestured vaguely at a box when Jim walked in.

"Some dick in a suit dropped it off when I got back from rounds." Powell straightened up and yawned. "Callahan is out at the Byers place now, Joyce called in another report about her kid being in the walls. If we don't find this kid, Joyce is going to end up in a loonie bin."

"I'll go talk to her today," Jim said. He needed to anyway, touch base and find out more about what she thought she was seeing or hearing. Jim meant to ask one of the kids about it, ask if it was some magic thing or if Joyce had lost it, but none of them had been especially chatty with him the day before.

Fuck Jim for thinking fifteen year olds needed their own bed, huh? It got a reaction out of Harry though, if ‘pissed as fuck' counted. Which, in Jim's book, it did.

Powell nodded and wished Jim luck before he left the station, walking like he was already half asleep. Jim reset the coffee maker, set it up to brew a full pot, then took the box of tapes to the interrogation room.

Jim didn't expect to find anything on them and he wasn't exactly disappointed. Hawkins cleaned their tracks well, but Jim was able to nail a timeline anyway.

"Gotcha, fuckers," he breathed. Jim rewound the tape, checked the timestamp in the corner.

Tuesday night, twenty-eighteen, something happened on those grounds. An hour later, twenty-one-zero-eight, something else happened.

Jim paused the tape where he had it so he could make a call. It took him a minute to find the number for the Wheeler family, the last people to see Will Byers. Jim thrummed his fingers impatiently on his desk while the phone rang. It was early, but surely one of the parents were awake and getting their kids off to school.

"Wheeler residence, this is Karen."

"Morning, Mrs Wheeler, this is Chief Hopper." Jim went to school with Karen, never did care much for her. She was a nosy bitch, always churning gossip, trying to get in the spotlight for some new information to feed her friends.

"Oh, Jim! How are you?"

Tired.

"Fine," Jim said curtly, keeping the call professional only. "I'm calling to ask you a question about Will Byers. Do you remember exactly what time he left your house on Tuesday?"

"Will? Hm, let me ask Mike, hold on."

Jim pulled the phone away from his ear when Karen fucking shrieked for her son. Jesus, what was wrong with people? Jim idly lit a cigarette while he waited for Karen to get him a time. He had it down somewhere, but he needed an exact time. If Karen could confirm it was after eight-eighteen, then Jim would have the exact timeline down.

And then he was going to nail those fuckers to the wall.

"Jim? It was a little after eight, we had a late dinner, at eight-thirty that night. Does that help any? Do you have any new leads or clues? Poor Mike has just been—"

"Yup. Thanks, Karen. Bye now."

Jim hung the phone up and pulled his notepad out, started a new timeline…

Tuesday: 2018: E. escapes lab

Tuesday: 2108: W. taken in lab

Where those stupid pricks fucked up was in their editing. It looked real good, hard to notice. Except it started raining twice in that tape - once at a quarter after eight, again right about nine. The edits were good, real good, but it didn't rain a drop in the county on Tuesday night.

That static on the screen had to be hiding something and Jim was sure it was the escape of one kidnapped kid and the arrival of another. How it happened, Jim wasn't sure, but he planned on figuring it out real soon.

Jim moved the tapes and the TV to his office so that he could collect as much information on the property as he could. He started jotting down areas where surveillance seemed weakest, doors that were opened more frequently, and the time that guards changed shifts.

It very likely was a suicide mission, but Jim wouldn't sit idly by while Joyce Byers lost her son.

Around ten, Jim was interrupted with a phone call Flo insisted he take. Jim paused the tape, impatiently grabbed the phone.

"What?"

"Hello, Chief Hopper, this is Mindy Parish at Hawkins High School. I was calling to inform you that your foster daughter is sick."

Foster…?

For fuck's sake.

"Is that so?" Jim stretched back in his chair, checked his watch. What kind of bug only took three hours to kick in?

"Yes, Chief. Would you like to come pick her up?"

Jim sighed and said he would, seemed like a thing he should do. He needed to go see Joyce anyway, he could kill two birds with one stone before he returned to his planning.

With any luck, Sirianna was faking it and Jim could get a few questions answered on the drive.

It wasn't Sirianna who met Jim outside the school when he pulled up, it was Harry. Harry was standing stiffly on the steps, his hands jammed in his pockets and his shoulders set.

The kid looked ready for a fight, which Jim wasn't going to give him. Jim pulled up by the stairs, rolled his window down.

"The school called, said your sister is sick," Jim said, perfectly calm.

It took Harry a second of glaring at his shoes, some damn sneakers that looked like they actually fit, but he got the words out eventually.

"She walked home," Harry said. The kid still sounded pretty pissed, Jim didn't mind it. It was better for him to have some fire, kid couldn't be a victim his whole life.

"Yeah?" Jim tried to figure out the game. Sirianna was playing hooky and Harry was the distraction? "She couldn't wait five minutes for me to show up?"

Harry raised his head enough for Jim to see that the anger he thought he heard might have been plain old embarrassment. The kid's face was bright red, he could fry an egg on his cheeks.

"Menstruation."

It was a good thing Jim didn't have a cigarette lit because he would have fucking choked on it. That boy looked Jim dead in the eyes and said - said…

"Got it," Jim said quickly. There was a bag on Harry's back, Jim figured it was two-for-one on twins skipping school. He leaned across the cab of his cruiser and opened the door for him. "I'll give you a ride back then."

Harry nodded and some of the tension leaked out of his shoulders as he climbed up in the car. Jim cleared his throat when Harry clicked his seatbelt and shifted the car into drive.

"Next time, feel free to tell me she's got a cold," Jim told him.

"Chrissy said you wouldn't ask any questions if I said it."

God help him, Jim fucking laughed. It had crossed his mind that he was drastically outnumbered by kids with magic in his house. They were close enough that they'd cover each other, could cover up anything they wanted probably.

Thank God that Harry was a shitty liar.

Jim kept the car radio off and his window rolled down while he slowly made his way through town. He was taking the long route, an extra lap around town to see if he couldn't check on Sirianna while he drove. Harry was quiet, seemed to relax some the longer that Jim didn't speak.

They drove past the park, Jim saw a flash of black hair disappear down the trail that led to the quarry. Harry must have seen exactly what Jim did, because his head whipped to the side and they caught each other's eyes.

"She doing something stupid?" Jim asked him.

"No, sir."

"Great." Jim started accelerating again, not too worked up over a kid skipping school. He didn't think either of the twins were real gung-ho on academics and who could blame ‘em? Jim could call the school later, find out which kids missed - for a private case, of course, real classified - and go from there.

"Why don't you and I grab lunch, you can answer a few questions I have, and then I'll take you home, sir?" Jim suggested, emphasizing the sir as hard as he could. Jim could see Harry blinking at him behind his glasses, he could see the second he put it together too.

Jim would be damned if he was the monster that needed tiptoed around by any of the kids. There was respect, then there was fear. Jim didn't see any purpose in giving any of the kids in his house anything else to fear in life.

"Okay," Harry said, his go-to retort. It was better than nothing and Jim hoped the kid could give him some more information on what he would be walking into once he was good and ready to search Hawkins Lab for Will Byers.

"Okay then." Jim turned to head downtown, figured he could grab a couple of burgers from the shitty soda place off the square. It wasn't good, Jim never ate there when he had choices.

Benny's was closed down, another fucking headache for him to deal with eventually. Benny didn't have any sort of an official will, but what he did have were two copies of guardianship records that Jim had forged. The gal from the county commissioner's office heard Benny adopted some kids, called the high school. The school confirmed it, suddenly Hawkins County sent a letter to the police station that Benny Hammond's estate was to go to his next of kin.

Which would be the two kids who spent a total of eighteen days in Benny's care. Jim didn't have an issue with it, Benny wasn't a wealthy man, what he had in his bank had covered cremation costs. It was the property and business he owned that gave Jim a fucking headache.

Benny had a nice chunk of land, his trailer and the diner sat on it. It was worth some money, which was why Jim wasn't surprised when Benny's ex-wife filed a claim for it. They'd have a court hearing, Jim figured, and the guardianship forms he made were going to be under real close scrutiny.

The whole thing was a fucking headache and it meant that there was only one burger place in town and the food wasn't worth a damn. It made Jim's chest twinge to even go there, something he wouldn't bother with if he didn't have Harry with him.

Jim brought the burgers outside to the cruiser with a couple of malts. The soda shop always had music and crap going on, Jim figured he wouldn't get two words from the kid if he tried to ask questions inside.

"You like chocolate?" Jim passed a malt to Harry, followed it with a burger.

Harry shrugged; Jim didn't know if it meant he didn't know or just didn't want to answer.

"Right." Jim settled in to eat and waited for Harry to get a few bites in until he started his questions. It wasn't an interrogation, but Jim wasn't new to a reluctant witness either.

"I think that you're right and Will Byers is in the place where El escaped from," Jim started. "I'm going to try and get him, but I don't know what I'll be walking into."

Harry stopped eating, but he didn't bolt from the car. It was a sort of progress. Jim didn't look at him, didn't put any extra weight on the kid. Jim knew he was asking for a lot, nobody wanted a trip down Trauma Lane, but there was a life at stake.

"El said she was part of Project Dimension, I wondered what you knew about that," Jim said, trailing off and giving Harry a chance to answer him. He could take his time, Jim could be patient.

As long as he said something, gave Jim something. Jim had what was looking like a suicide mission coming up, he had a good woman crying about her kid being stuck in the walls. Jim needed something.

And what Harry gave him was nothing. Not one fucking word. The kid shut down, locked up, didn't do jack except breathe.

Jim ate his burger, had a smoke. Finished off his malt, had another smoke. In all that time, Harry didn't so much as move.

"Fine." Jim shifted the cruiser in reverse, decided to try one more thing before he called the kid a lost cause and waited to ask Sirianna his questions. It was playing dirty, but Will Byers could already be dead and if he wasn't, it was Harry himself who said he would be.

So if Jim had to play dirty, so be it.

Harry stayed silent during the drive through Hawkins. His eyes were glassy behind his glasses and Jim could feel like a dick for what he was about to do later. Later, when he had as much information as he needed. Later, when he might have a snowball's chance in saving Will.

Jim pulled up to the Byers house, shook his head again at the tarp covered hole in the wall. He climbed out of the car, walked around the cab, opened Harry's door.

"Out," he said, an order as much as anything. Jim didn't want to throw any weight around, didn't want to go backward, but he wanted Joyce to lose her son even less. If Harry spoke up, said one damn word to him, Jim might have tried a different tactic.

Harry left the car, he was real careful to stay out of Jim's reach. Jim wasn't interested in smacking the kid, he wasn't going to touch a hair on his head. Jim tilted his head for Harry to follow him and then led the way up the porch so he could knock on Joyce's door.

"Joyce? It's Hop," Jim called. He could hear her inside, crying it sounded like. "Open the door."

Harry stood stiffly behind Jim, his hands behind his back and his eyes a thousand miles away. He didn't react when Joyce opened the door, nothing except for a blink when she said his name.

"Hop!" Joyce was a wreck. Jim had never seen her as pale and unshowered as she was. She looked like hell, she looked like Diana when Sarah was admitted to the hospital.

Joyce looked like a woman preparing to lose a part of herself.

"And… Harry, right?" Joyce nodded to herself when she looked past Jim to Harry. She smiled tightly at him. "You're friends with my son, Jonathan."

Harry nodded while Jim was distracted by what he saw past Joyce, inside her house.

"Are those Christmas lights?" Jim let himself inside, walked right past Joyce, to get a better look. He thought it was Christmas lights, maybe Jonathan's idea to decorate or something to distract Joyce, but it was something else altogether.

There were twenty-six bulbs hung on the wall, each one had a letter of the alphabet painted beneath it. The lights were plugged in, Jim could see the extension cords ran through the house, all of them shined at him, highlighting the fucking creepy set up.

"What the fuck…?" Jim breathed to himself, wondering for the first time if he had it all wrong. Joyce lost it, that was fucking clear. Did she lose it because her kid was gone or did she lose it before then?

"This is going to sound crazy…" Joyce said, popping up at Jim's side. "But Will is here, Hop. I know he is. He's - he's talking to me."

She was right, it did sound insane. But for Harry's benefit…

"Alright, Joyce." Jim moved to the middle of the room, pulled a chair over by the hole in the wall, and pulled a fresh cigarette from his pack. "Tell me everything that's been going on."

"Why?" Joyce was defensive then, she crossed her arms and couldn't hide from the chill filling the house. "So you can call me crazy? Have me locked up?"

Jim would have told her he didn't think she was crazy - even if it all sounded batshit. Harry did it for him though —

Harry had been staring at the photographs on the bookshelf, the family pictures of two boys and their mom. Jim didn't think nothing of it, thought maybe his plan was working out just fine, until Harry turned to Joyce and waved his hand at the hole in the wall.

Quicker than Jim could swear, too quick to have stopped him if he wanted to, the hole started repairing itself. Piece by piece, every chopped bit flew from around the room and put itself back in place. It took two seconds, if that, before the tarp dropped harmlessly to the floor, no longer needed.

"I don't think you're crazy," Harry said, his soft voice seeming loud in the absolute silence.

Joyce's chin was on her chest as she gaped at the wall that was a little chipped, but fine, and Jim had to stifle a grin.

He had to hand it to the kid, Harry knew how to make his point.

It took Joyce a drink and two cigarettes before she was able to tell them what she had been dealing with.

Jim couldn't make heads or tails of it, honestly. Joyce swore she saw Will in the walls, pressing against the plaster and trying to escape. Will called her three times, it caught her phone on fire each time. When Joyce decided to put up the lights, Will spelled out a message to her —

Upside down.

It made about as much sense to Jim as magic itself did, but Harry listened intently. Jim saw him filling away each bit of information - the kid was sharp, Jim would bet on it. Harry stayed present through the whole conversation, he leaned against the bookcase and his hand kept floating back to one of the framed photos, the one of Joyce and the boys together.

Joyce talked herself into a slump, looked pathetic and broken by the time she was done. Her eyes shined when she looked at Harry though and Jim could see what she wanted clear as day —

"Does that - does it make sense?" she asked him. "Can you get him? Will?"

"When's the last time he sent you a message?" Harry asked, looking at the Christmas lights with a furrowed brow.

"Last night."

That had to be a good sign, it meant that Will wasn't dead like Harry assumed he would be. If Will was anything like his mom, then he was fighting hard.

"Jim?" Joyce looked at Jim when Harry didn't say anything else. The kid was there, he was thinking hard - Jim could see the wheels turning behind his eyes.

"Joyce, he's a kid too," Jim reminded Joyce quietly. If Harry could help Jim get Will back, Jim would gladly take his help. Hell, Jim might not be able to do it without his help. But Jim wouldn't put the weight of Will's life on Harry's shoulders, he was just a kid.

Joyce's eyes went soft and she bit her lip when she nodded, she was always a maternal one - trying to patch up injured birds and showing up to school with soup anytime one of her friends was sick. Jim didn't need to hammer it in her head that Harry was a kid, she saw it.

"Jonathan talked about you, and your sister," Joyce told Harry. "I'm glad - glad he has some good friends."

"Yeah, can you… sh…" Harry was still staring hard at the lights, focused on something enough that he all but told Joyce to shut up. Jim shrugged when Joyce turned back to him, if the kid needed quiet to think then she should be quiet.

Hell, Jim was tickled over the kid saying what he needed. Next time maybe they'd tack on a please.

Joyce watched Harry, Harry stared at the wall. After a minute or two of silence, Harry's fingers began tapping in front of him like he was playing an invisible keyboard. As he moved, lights flashed.

H-E-L-L-O W-I-L-L

"Do you think he can —"

H-I H-A-R-R-Y

"Brilliant," Harry breathed, his eyes lighting up brighter than the lights did. His fingers kept tapping, Jim and Joyce didn't make a sound.

C-A-N U C M-E

"Shorthand, handy," Jim muttered, watching Harry as much as he was the lights.

Y-E-S

"Can you hear me?" Harry asked.

Y-E-S

"Hm." Harry hummed and stared at the wall a while longer, just thinking. "Are you with people? Wizards in white coats?"

N-O-T N-O-W

"Who is that?" Joyce asked, looking from Harry to the lights to Jim. "Who are wizards in white coats?"

Harry answered the same time Will did —

T-H-E-M

"Them."

Jim and Harry left pretty quickly after that. The kid didn't look so hot and Jim didn't have any answers for Joyce yet. He couldn't tell her about Hawkins Lab, couldn't trust that she wouldn't go busting in there and give away the element of surprise that Jim had.

Joyce had hugged Harry, hugged him tight enough that Jim winced. Harry didn't move from her, didn't squirm or cringe away. Joyce tried to hug Jim, but he was faster than Harry had been at avoiding it.

"You did good," Jim told Harry when they left. Jim had hoped that a terrified mother might knock some guilt into Harry, pressure him into helping Jim save Will. Jim didn't expect Harry to single-handedly reassure Joyce of her sanity and to crack some code only he probably understood.

Harry nodded when he entered the cab of the cruiser, Jim got the sense he wasn't being brushed off but that Harry was still thinking hard about the whole thing. Jim hoped he could make sense of it, because Jim sure as fuck couldn't.

"Project Dimension…" Harry frowned and his fingers were fluttering on his knee. "Project Echo. Dimension. Echo. Echo. Dimension."

Jim wasn't a wizard, wasn't some government paid figure in a white coat, but he wasn't a dumbass. If El said she had been part of Project Dimension right there in Hawkins, Indiana - then he'd wager that Harry and Sirianna were part of Project Echo in wherever the fuck they had been kept.

Kids. With magic powers. In government fucking sanctioned cells.

It made Jim clench the steering wheel and see red.

"Harry." Jim interrupted the loop that Harry seemed stuck on, the repetition of ‘echo' and ‘dimension'. "What does it all mean?" he asked. He hoped Harry had an answer for him, because Jim needed to make a plan.

Harry sighed and sounded ten years older, twenty maybe, when he replied. "It means… I don't know. It means that Will's alive, but only because they want him to be."

Jim had been willing to accept that as an answer for the time being. He had been willing to accept that Harry was doing his best, any idiot with fucking eyes could see that, and that Jim could try and get some information from the girls.

If Will Byers was still alive, Jim could take what Harry gave him and continue trying to make a plan.

That was until Jim himself returned home with pizza that afternoon to sit down, make some house rules, talk with the girls, and he got the call.

Will Byers' body had been pulled from a sewage pipe in the woods.