Chapter 35: The Lab Revelation
POV: Adam
November 6th, and Hawkins Lab squats under lockdown like a concrete fortress protecting secrets that should have stayed buried. Dr. Owens calls them to the conference room with the weary resignation of someone who's realized that partial truth might be the only path to survival, fluorescent lights casting harsh shadows across classified documents spread on tables like evidence of crimes against nature.
Here it comes. The revelations that change everything.
"What you're about to see is classified at the highest levels," Dr. Owens begins, his voice carrying the weight of someone who's spent years cleaning up other people's scientific disasters. "But given the current situation, I believe you need to understand what we're really dealing with."
What we're dealing with is dimensional warfare orchestrated by entities that view humans as insects to be collected or eliminated.
The footage begins—grainy black and white security camera recordings that document the moment everything went wrong. Eleven screaming in the sensory deprivation tank, reality tearing open like infected flesh, the original gate birthing itself into existence through a twelve-year-old girl's psychic trauma.
Joyce's fury fills the conference room like toxic gas. "You created this! You used children to tear holes in the universe!"
Children. Plural. More than just Eleven.
"We're trying to fix it," Dr. Owens insists with the desperate sincerity of someone drowning in inherited guilt. "The burn operation tomorrow will destroy the tunnel network, weaken the Mind Flayer's connection to our dimension."
The burn operation that will fail spectacularly and trigger a massacre. But I can't say that without revealing how I know.
Adam listens to the debate with forced attention while his mind races through tactical implications. Through the bond, Scout sends updates from patrol routes around the facility—dimensional energy building toward crescendo, reality preparing to hemorrhage creatures that exist to kill anything human.
Twenty-four hours. Maybe less, before everything accelerates toward catastrophe.
While the adults argue about ethics and containment protocols, Adam excuses himself with muttered words about needing the bathroom. Instead, he slips down a corridor marked AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY, guided by memories of facility layouts from another life.
Scout, disable the electronic lock on Conference Room B.
The creature responds from his position in the ventilation system, his electromagnetic manipulation shorting out the door's security with surgical precision. Adam slips inside what should have been an empty office and finds exactly what he was looking for—filing cabinets that contain the kind of truth that reshapes everything you thought you knew about yourself.
Subject 017 - Counterbalance Protocol.
The file is thick, filled with medical assessments and psychological evaluations and strategic projections that make Adam's borrowed blood run cold. He reads with growing horror as Brenner's vision unfolds in clinical detail.
Designed. I was designed for this.
Subject 017 represents the theoretical counterbalance to Subject 011's psychokinetic abilities. Where 011 demonstrates extraordinary object manipulation through mental force projection, 017 shows unprecedented affinity for Upside Down entity control and communication. Recommended pairing for enhanced effectiveness.
The subjects were engineered as complementary assets—011's "push" capabilities balanced by 017's "pull" influence over hostile entities. Full potential requires cooperative testing protocols.
Note: Subject 011's escape prevented completion of the twin experiment program. Subject 017 remains in stasis pending retrieval of primary asset.
I'm not a person. I'm half of a weapon system. Brenner built my body to control monsters, and my transmigration just... activated the programming.
The revelation hits Adam like physical force, making him grip the desk while his borrowed identity crumbles around the edges. Everything he's accomplished, every creature he's tamed, every life he's saved—it's all just following programming laid down by a monster in a laboratory.
I'm not real. I'm an experiment that gained consciousness.
That's when Bob finds him, drawn by the sound of someone having what appears to be a comprehensive breakdown in a government facility.
"Kid, you okay?" Bob asks with gentle concern, settling into the chair beside Adam with the easy care of someone who's made himself responsible for damaged children.
Bob. Beautiful, brilliant Bob who's going to die because he's too good for this world.
"I'm not real," Adam chokes out, the words tasting like copper and existential terror. "I'm an experiment. Everything I am was designed by a monster."
Everything I thought I chose, everything I believed about myself—it's all just following Brenner's blueprints.
Bob reads over the files with growing understanding, his expression shifting from confusion to anger to the kind of protective fury that transforms gentle men into forces of nature.
"Bull," Bob says with quiet certainty that cuts through Adam's spiral like a blade made of conviction. "DNA might be engineered, but who you choose to be? That's all you."
Choice. He's talking about choice.
"I've watched you protect your family," Bob continues, his voice carrying the weight of months of observation and growing love. "I've seen you comfort Will through nightmares, help Joyce with grocery shopping, make Jonathan laugh when he's had a bad day. That's not programming, Adam. That's love."
Love. Not programming, not design specifications, but genuine human emotion.
"Brenner might have built your body," Bob says, reaching over to squeeze Adam's shoulder with paternal warmth. "But he didn't build your heart. He didn't build your choice to be kind instead of cruel, protective instead of destructive. That's all you."
All me. My choices, my love, my family.
The simple wisdom breaks through the existential crisis like sunlight through storm clouds. Adam looks at this man—RadioShack employee, terrible joke enthusiast, Joyce's boyfriend, the closest thing to a father he's ever had—and realizes Bob is absolutely right.
I'm not Subject 017. I'm not even really the transmigrator who woke up in this body. I'm Adam Byers. Son of Joyce, brother to Will and Jonathan, friend to the Party. I chose that identity. I chose this family.
And Brenner can go to hell.
[MAJOR LORE REVELATION: ENGINEERED ORIGIN CONFIRMED]
[IDENTITY CRISIS RESOLVED: SELF-DETERMINATION ACHIEVED]
[BOB NEWBY RELATIONSHIP: UNCONDITIONAL FATHER FIGURE (95%)]
[EXPERIENCE GAINED: +3000 XP]
[CHARACTER GROWTH MILESTONE: PASSED]
[PHILOSOPHICAL SHIFT: ORIGIN DOES NOT DEFINE PURPOSE]
That night, Adam burns the files in the parking lot behind the lab, watching Brenner's blueprints for his body turn to ash while Bob stands beside him like a guardian against existential darkness.
"Feel better?" Bob asks as the last pages curl into smoke.
Better. Not fixed, not healed completely, but better.
"Yeah," Adam says, meaning it more than Bob could possibly understand. "I'm not his creation. I'm yours. Yours and Mom's and Will's and Jonathan's. Family made me, not some laboratory."
Family. The force that transforms biological material into human beings.
Bob grins with parental pride that has nothing to do with genetics and everything to do with choice.
"Damn right. You're our kid. Our choice. Our family."
Our family. The only truth that matters.
As they drive back to the Byers house through November darkness, Adam makes peace with what he is and what he's chosen to become.
I'm Adam Byers. Monster tamer by design, family protector by choice. And tomorrow, when the burn operation triggers catastrophe, I'll use every advantage Brenner accidentally gave me to keep the people I love alive.
Not because I'm programmed to. Because I choose to.
Because that's what family means.
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