Chapter 42: The Tunnel Mapping
Hopper
The tunnel entrance at Merrill's pumpkin patch gaped like an infected wound.
Hazmat suit felt like wearing a plastic bag in a sauna. Oxygen tank hissed with each breath. Dr. Owens descended ahead of me, lab team trailing behind with equipment that looked too fragile for this place.
"Atmosphere's reading seventy percent Earth-normal," Owens reported. "High spore concentration. Don't remove your masks."
The tunnel walls pulsed. Actually pulsed, like we were climbing down a throat.
I'd seen the Upside Down. Fought a Demogorgon. But this felt worse. More deliberate.
"Chief," one of the lab techs called. "Temperature's rising."
Twenty feet down, the organic matter coating the walls grew thicker. Slime dripped from protrusions that looked disturbingly like veins. The tunnel branched ahead, splitting into three directions.
Owens collected samples, hands steady despite the wrongness. "This biological structure suggests coordinated growth. It's not random.It's engineered."
"By what?"
"By the intelligence controlling it." He sealed a sample vial. "The Mind Flayer isn't just invading. It's terraforming."
We mapped half a mile before encountering the chamber.
Slug-like creatures filled it, dozens of them, squirming in membranous sacs attached to the walls. Proto demo-dogs, growing, maturing.
"Jesus Christ," I breathed.
The tunnels constricted around us. Vines whipped from walls, trying to trap us.
"Move! Now!"
We ran. The tunnel fought back—walls closing, floor rippling, air thickening with spores. Made it to the surface with seconds to spare, emergence covered in slime and gasping.
Called Steve immediately. "Confirmed breeding chambers. It's not just spreading. It's multiplying."
His voice came back steady despite what I knew he was dealing with. "Mark the location. We need to know every chamber."
Nancy
Jonathan's camera clicked steadily, documenting the junkyard tunnel from a safe distance.
"Getting this?" I held the electromagnetic detector steady.
"Yeah. Radiation levels off the charts." He zoomed in on the entrance. "Nancy, look."
Movement in the depths. Shapes emerged—demo-dogs, smaller than the one Steve killed last year, but dozens of them. A pack.
I grabbed the radio. "Steve, we've got visual on demo-dogs at the junkyard. Counting... thirty, maybe more."
Static, then his voice: "How large are they?"
"Juvenile size. But growing."
"It's breeding them," Steve confirmed. "Whatever's down there, it's preparing an army."
Jonathan captured everything on film—the creatures moving with coordinated intelligence, the tunnel entrance that breathed like a lung, the way the earth around it had decayed into Upside Down corruption.
"This isn't just an invasion," Jonathan said quietly. "It's a takeover."
I called Steve back. "Whatever's down there, it's breeding. Fast."
His pause spoke volumes. "Get back to the bunker. We need to show Owens this."
Robin
Eddie poked the quarry tunnel entrance with a stick.
Bad idea.
Vines erupted from the opening, whipping toward us with violent intent. We scrambled backward, Eddie cursing creatively.
"It's alive!" I shouted into the radio. "The tunnel just attacked us!"
"Attacked how?" Steve's voice crackled back.
"Tried to grab us. With vines. The stick touched the entrance and it went berserk."
Eddie stared at the thrashing vegetation. "That's not normal vegetation."
"You think?" I snapped.
But he was right. Normal plants didn't move with purpose, didn't coordinate attacks, didn't seem pissed off at being poked.
The tunnel wasn't just a structure. It was an organism.
I radioed Steve. "The tunnels are alive. Properly alive. They're not just structures—they're part of the Mind Flayer itself."
Silence. Then: "Confirms what I'm seeing through Will's connection. The entire network is one organism. We're dealing with a hive mind."
Eddie and I exchanged looks. His conspiracy-theorist brain was probably exploding with this confirmation.
"So how do we kill a three-mile-wide living thing?" he asked.
Good question.
Steve
They returned by evening, exhausted and covered in tunnel residue.
Bob had transformed the bunker into mission control—maps on every wall, radio equipment chirping with transmissions, his RadioShack computer displaying the 3D wireframe model he'd built from their data.
Three miles diameter. Spreading at measurable rates. Dozens of breeding chambers. Coordinated intelligence.
"It's beautiful," Bob said, then caught himself. "I mean, horrible. But the engineering is beautiful."
I stared at the model, corruption whispering calculations in my head. The Mind Flayer showed me its plans through our connection—when the tunnels finished growing, they'd break surface simultaneously across town. Demo-dogs would pour out like ants from a kicked hill.
"It's building an invasion staging ground," I said. "When it's ready, it'll flood the surface with demo-dogs."
"How long?" Hopper asked.
"Two days. Maybe three."
The room went silent.
Dustin broke it. "So we blow up the hub. Sever the network before it activates."
"That's the theory." I zoomed in on the downtown convergence point on Bob's model. "But accessing it means going through miles of hostile tunnel. Past demo-dog nests, through living tissue that'll fight back."
"Suicide mission," Hopper summarized.
"Yeah."
Joyce stood beside Will's cot, hand on his chest, feeling him breathe. "There has to be another way."
I wanted to agree. Couldn't find one.
The corruption spread further up my jaw, black lines like circuit traces beneath pale skin. Every time I absorbed Will's possession, it contaminated me more. The Mind Flayer's presence grew stronger in my mind, its voice a constant pressure.
You can't stop what's coming, traveler. You can only choose who dies first.
Chrissy appeared beside me, pressed a water bottle into my hands. "Drink."
I obeyed automatically.
She studied my face, the corruption visible even in the bunker's dim light. "You're scaring me."
"Scaring myself too."
"Then stop. Let someone else handle it."
"Can't. Will needs regular treatments or the possession returns full force." I gestured at the map. "And I'm the only one who can see the Mind Flayer's plans through the link."
"At what cost?"
Everything, I didn't say. Myself, probably. But them? They'll survive.
Bob approached with printouts—growth projections, tunnel density calculations, estimated demo-dog populations. His analytical mind cutting through impossibility to find solutions.
"If we can disrupt the central hub, the entire network should collapse. Like cutting off the brain." He indicated the downtown convergence. "But timing matters. Too early and it regenerates. Too late and we're overrun."
"How do we time it?" Nancy asked.
"We need to know when it's about to activate." Bob looked at me. "Can you tell through the connection?"
I could. The Mind Flayer's anticipation bled through our link—counting down, preparing, savoring its approaching victory.
"Thirty-six hours," I said. "That's when it goes active."
Thirty-six hours to plan an impossible assault on an underground fortress guarded by monsters.
Plenty of time, I thought sarcastically.
Will stirred, moaning. The possession clawed back, trying to reclaim territory.
I moved to his side, prepared to absorb another round of corruption.
Joyce caught my wrist. "You can't keep doing this."
"Someone has to."
"Not at this cost."
But there was no other way. Will couldn't fight it alone. The Mind Flayer was too strong, too patient, too vast.
So I pressed my palm against his forehead and dove back into the ice.
The bunker faded. The war inside Will's mind consumed everything.
And in the darkness, the Mind Flayer laughed.
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