Broken & Pretty..Steve Harrington

043.

THE RUSSIAN ELEVATOR

⇾my girl by the temptations

when it's cold outside, i've got the month of may

⸺THAT night they commenced Operation Child Endangerment. Robin, Cory, Steve, Dustin and Tiffany were on top of Starcourt mall, looking out at the room they wanted to get into while Erica was at the back of Scoops with a backpack and a helmet with two flashlights taped onto it while she had a radio headset on too. Robin had the radio and she was trying to reach Erica. "Erica, do you copy?"

"Mhm, I copy. You nerds in position or what?"

"Yeah, we're in position. It's all quiet here, so you've got the green light."

"Green light, roger that. Commence Operation Child Endangerment."

"Can we maybe not call it that?" Erica started climbing the ladder and started crawling through the air duct. "See you on the other side, nerds."

Erica was crawling through the air ducts and the teenagers and Dustin were just waiting for the all clear. None of them were a huge fan of Erica right now, but Cory was seriously about to smack the child. "Hey, if she gets trapped in there, can we just leave her and let her starve?"

They all turned and looked at Cory with a disgusted look on their face. Tiffany hit Cory upside the head. "No, we can't let her starve!"

"It wouldn't be the worst thing in the world-"

"Yes! It would be!" Cory rolled his eyes and Erica got to the room. "Alright nerds, I'm there."

"Do you see anything?"

"Yeah, I see those boring boxes you're so excited about."

"Any guards?"

"Negative."

"Booby traps?" Tiffany then spoke up, basically reading Erica's mind. "Well, if she could see them, they'd be pretty shit traps."

Steve held Tiffany's hand in a comforting way and said, "Babe, not the time for sarcasm."

Erica kicked open the panel and hopped down into the room. "I'm in."

"Oh god." Steve rubbed his face in worry, clearly hoping she wouldn't get hurt. At the same time, he wanted her to get hurt. They'd never want a child to get hurt, Erica's just really annoying. Erica opened the door control panel and hit the button to open the door. The teenagers and Dustin watched the doors open as Erica walked out of the room. "Free ice cream. For. Life."

Cory rolled his eyes and hopped over the side. He lowered himself down and landed on top of a dumpster. Tiffany did the same and Cory helped her down. Cory helped the other three down as Tiffany went over to Erica. "If you tell your mom about this, I won't scare those girls you don't like anymore."

Erica and Tiffany got along most of the time. There were these girls that Erica hated that were way older than her and frankly, Tiffany hated them too. They always picked on Erica and if Tiffany put her mind to it, she's pretty scary. She would purposefully scare them and that was one of the few things that her and Erica would bond over. That and making fun of people. "Fine."

They all walked back into the room and Steve cut open a box from Imperial Panda. Inside, they saw a metal box. Steve grabbed the handle and turned it. A hissing sound and smoke emerged from the box as Steve put the lid off to the side. The six of them looked inside the box and there was a metal box with four cylinders.