Chapter 27: BREAKTHROUGH
The quarry was cold tonight.
Not cold in the way Indiana got cold—this was September, still mild by Midwest standards. But something about the air felt heavy, charged, like the atmosphere before a thunderstorm. The wrongness pulsed beneath my feet, stronger than it had been even a week ago.
Will Byers was running out of time. Everyone was running out of time.
I stood at the center of the quarry and let that urgency fuel me.
Four meters. That was my limit—the distance I could reliably project fire before the stream destabilized and scattered. It wasn't enough. Against a single Demo-dog, maybe. Against the swarm that was coming, against the Mind Flayer itself, against whatever else the Upside Down could throw at this town?
Not even close.
I ignited and pushed.
Five meters. The fire stretched, strained, hit an invisible wall. I pushed harder, felt something in my chest resist, pushed through it anyway. The stream extended—wavering, unstable—and touched the distant rock face for maybe two seconds before collapsing.
Not enough.
I reset. Breathed. Tried again.
Five meters, three seconds. Five and a half meters, one second. The numbers inched upward, each gain costing more than the last. My reserves were depleting faster than I could replenish them—the granola bars I'd eaten before coming out here were already burning through my system.
The fire wanted more. I could feel it straining against my control, hungry for release, demanding that I give it room to grow.
Stop projecting outward, something whispered. Go inward.
The thought came from nowhere and everywhere—from the fire itself, maybe, or from some instinct I didn't fully understand. I'd been treating my power as a weapon, something to be aimed and launched at targets. But what if that was wrong? What if the fire wasn't meant to be projected?
What if it was meant to be embraced?
I stopped focusing on distance. Stopped thinking about beams and streams and ranged attacks. Instead, I turned my attention inward, to the heat that lived in my chest, that had been my constant companion since the moment of transmigration.
The fire responded immediately.
It was different from anything I'd felt before—not an outward push, but an inward expansion. Heat spread from my core into my limbs, my muscles, my skin. The air around me began to shimmer with thermal distortion.
I visualized my entire body as fuel. Every cell, every fiber, every molecule—all of it feeding the fire, all of it becoming the fire.
Phase 3 ignited.
The world went white-yellow, heat so intense it should have killed me but didn't. I wasn't projecting fire anymore—I was fire. Ten seconds of full-body ignition, flames dancing across my skin, temperature spiking into ranges I couldn't name.
Then nothing.
I collapsed face-first into the gravel, and the stars above me spun like a broken carousel.
For five minutes—maybe longer—I couldn't move. Couldn't think. Could barely breathe. The fire had consumed everything I had, burned through reserves I didn't know I possessed, left me hollow and empty and more exhausted than I'd ever been in either of my lives.
Eventually, I managed to crawl.
The Camaro was twenty feet away. Might as well have been twenty miles. I dragged myself across the quarry floor, gravel biting into my palms, muscles screaming with every movement. Reached the car. Pulled myself up using the door handle. Fell into the driver's seat.
The drive home was a blur. I kept to fifteen miles per hour, hands shaking on the wheel, vision swimming at the edges. Somewhere between the quarry and Cherry Lane, I passed other cars—their headlights blinding, their horns distant and meaningless.
I made it to the driveway. Made it inside. Made it to the kitchen.
The refrigerator contained leftover lasagna, half a chicken, a container of Susan's potato salad, three apples, and most of a chocolate cake she'd been saving for something. I ate all of it. Standing in the kitchen at two in the morning, shoveling food into my mouth like a wild animal, desperate to fill the void the fire had left behind.
It wasn't enough. Not nearly enough.
But the edge came off. The shaking stopped. I could think again, could process what had happened.
Phase 3. Full-body ignition. Ten seconds of power that made everything I'd done before look like a candle compared to a bonfire.
The cost was brutal. I'd nearly killed myself reaching for it, and I wasn't sure I could do it again without proper preparation. But the capability existed. The breakthrough was real.
I stumbled to my room and collapsed onto the bed, still fully clothed. The hunger was still there, gnawing at my insides, but my body was too exhausted to do anything about it.
Just before consciousness slipped away, I noticed something.
The fire inside me was warmer now. Not just a weapon waiting to be used—something else. Something that felt almost like home.
I dreamed of fire. Dreamed of cold. Dreamed of things with too many legs, skittering through tunnels beneath a town that didn't know it was already under siege.
When I woke, the clock said 1 PM, and Max was standing at the foot of my bed asking about the empty refrigerator.
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