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CHAPTER NINETEEN RUSSIAN ELEVATOR
Their screams continue to fill the air as the elevator continues to plunge down below Hawkins. Abby has managed to encapsulate both Erica and Dustin in a protective hug as the two gather around the buttons, battling over dominance. They shout back and forth as Dustin continues to pound on the button as if he's hoping that something will change now. Abby knows this part of a dream, where you're falling and falling and then suddenly there's a kick and you rise from your sleep state. She waits for this, she waits for every muscle in her body to sieze, for her legs to kick out and for her eyes to snap open in her dark bedroom. But the isn't a dream that she can wake up from. She is trapped in a plunging elevator.
Abby lets out a yelp as the elevator pulls to a sudden, jarring stop. She stumbles back into the boxes, leaving Dustin and Erica seemingly unscathed by the sudden landing. Robin lets out a pained groan as she puts a hand to her head in the spot that had collided painfully against the nearby shelf. Steve lets out a shout from the ground where a box had toppled on top of him. Abby pushes herself up shakily as she takes a few deep breaths and looks around at her fallen companions. Her skin stings where the edges of the cardboard boxes have scratched into it, but it's nothing that she can't handle.
"My groin," Steve groans from where he lays pinned to the ground. "It fell on my groin."
Steve's cry lands on deaf ears as the remainder of the group push themselves up from the ground to stare around in horror at the room that they're trapped in. Abby glances around apprehensively, waiting for the floor to rumble again, or for the door to slide open and reveal the Russians standing outside of it.
"Dustin!" Steve yells. "Get this off of me!"
Dustin scrambles over to Steve and easily hefts the box off of the older teen and drops it down atop another stack of boxes with a groan. Abby is quick to offer Steve a hand and heft him up. Steve is quick to grasp it and uses his other hand to stabilize himself as he stands shakily. They don't release their hands right away, they only stand there for a few moments, reminding themselves that they at least had the company of the other.
"Is everyone okay?" Robin asks from where she still sits on the ground. Abby scrambles over to her next and offers a hand to Robin who grasps it gratefully.
"I think my brain's still rattling a little," Abby answers.
Steve throws his hands in the air. The distress is clear on his face, there's a vein popping in his forehead, his eyes are widened in some sort of craze as he flails arms. "Yeah, I'm great, now that I know that Russians can't design elevators!"
