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STEVE
IF STEVE HARRINGTON HAD TO DESCRIBE HIMSELF IN ONE WORD, HE'D PROBABLY GIVE UP AND ASK KATHRYN WHEELER TO DO IT FOR HIM. And she'd probably think about it for at least a day before replying something cliche like 'an asshole'.
Although that wouldn't be too bad. Steve could take anything in his current situation.
Dustin was yawning as he laid down. It seemed his healthy sleep schedule was the only thing that could tell time. Katie said whenever she checked her Tom and Jerry watch, it always went haywire and the needles wouldn't stop spinning. Robin had given it a slap and told her to never trust a cartoon show. Speaking of Katie, she currently was offering Erica one of her granola bars, and Steve felt foolish for making fun of her for bringing food to what he thought was just gonna be a mission.
They were all getting ready to hopefully get some sleep, all huddled around together to avoid the iciness of the air conditioning otherwise. Some of the cases inside the boxes had been lifted out, and the boxes themselves were squashed and broken into slabs of insulating paper, which were used as both mattresses and blankets, like they were all a part of some modern primitive science project.
A resentful puddle of guilt had curdled in his chest, eating away at his mind. They'd been stuck in the elevator for almost two hours now, and things were getting thinner. In all the sucessful missions him and anybody else had been in, they'd all somehow worked. Except now, as he watched Katie curl up in a fetal position to prevent herself from getting too cold in her thin bodysuit, Steve wondered if this time they'd be as lucky.
With a twitch of guilt, he realized that for days, Katie had been doubtful about the plan. He'd seen it on her face, but he'd always been focusing on something else. The plan. He felt stupid for doing so, but he knew there was no point in remorse. What mattered was that they were stuck in a Russian elevator, and what they'd do about it.
"I'm gonna sleep now," Robin murmured, and used the flap part of her Scoops uniform as a one-layer fabric pillow.
"Night," Katie said, as Erica crumbled up the granola bar wrapper and kicked it into a corner.
"Can you get the light switch?" Robin asked, to which Katie got up and pressed the square button once to make the lights in the elevator dim. Now, the only lighting were the open slits at the corners, to the elevator shaft.
Steve's eyes flickered, adjusting to the blackness of the room. He could make out vague square silhouettes of the boxes, and Katie's blurry figure siting up.
"Are you gonna sleep?" Steve asked Katie faintly, feeling the lone wolf in a deserted forest.
"I dunno. Are you?"
"I dunno,"
"Can you nerds go up the hatch?" Erica asked, her face muffled as she slept face-down into her My Little Pony backpack.
