Chapter Ninety-Eight: The Music Clue

(The Mall Rats, Pt. 4)

***

Rowan stared at the translated words of the Russian message—or the words they managed to translate—on the board, still as confused by them as when they had all been translated into three sentences.

It had taken them hours to just get those sentences—hours that had afternoon slip into night, where it was only them left in the entire mall. Rowan had to use Scoop's phone to call her aunt and let her know she was still with her friends and not have Aunt Aco go into a panic. It had Rowan immensely thankful that Eddie had already offered to cover her shift tonight to make up for last night, because then she'd have to lie to Jonah Kingston about why she missed her shift—she didn't think "translating a secret Russian message my brother's friend picked up on his possibly illegal radio tower" could cover for a good excuse even it was the truth. But aside from that call, her time had been taken up with translating the message—or more accurately, helping Robin and Valerie as they took point in translation, spearheading it and making actual ground in it. Rowan honestly didn't think that if they hadn't got involved, she, Steve and Dustin would still be stuck.

Which lead to their efforts being realised on this board, in three, very confusing sentences.

"The week is long," Rowan read out alongside Steve, Robin, Valerie and Dustin. "The silver cat feeds. When blue meets yellow in the west."

Rowan frowned. Even when it was read out, nothing about the words made sense to her head. If it was accurate—and Rowan knew it was because Robin and Valerie translated it—then the Russians must have made this a joke message because no way in fucking hell could it be anything serious or important.

Unless... that was want they wanted anyone who picked it up to think, to confuse them and hide the true meaning under layers of deception and trick-words. Keep anyone from digging too deeply and keep continuing whatever the fuck they were doing undetected. 

Then again, it could also be a joke, a red herring to amp up American paranoia and do a wild goose chase in thinking it was something serious. Rowan honestly thought it could go either way.

Whatever. She guessed they didn't really know unless they translated the rest of it—which had to be tomorrow, because no way in hell was Rowan having a sleepover in fucking Starcourt.

Apparently, Steve also thought it was a joke, as he said while rolling down the cover for Scoops Ahoy, "I mean it just... it just can't be right."

"It's right," Robin said immediately as Steve caught up to them, the five of them walking toward where Steve and Valerie parked their cars. In the silence of the usually-empty mall, their footsteps echoed, bouncing off the glass ceiling and reverberating back to them. Neon lights and signs still lit up the mall, but it gave a sense of fluorescent-hued ominousness that gave Rowan the creeps, a sense of abandonment accented by saturated, brightly coloured light, helped by the semi-darkness of the stores behind their covers, making the products and mannequins inside look distorted and more sinister than they would be in the light of day and with far more populace than just five teenagers.

It gave her the same creeps as the lab, the woods, but in another, neon-coloured flavour.

All it needs is a gate to a hell-dimension under the clock and monsters shopping in the Gap and eating at Burger King, Rowan thought jokingly.

"Honestly, I think it's great news," Dustin piped in, looking way too cheerful for their hours of effort in translating be wasted in a few nonsense sentences.

"How is this great news?" Steve shot back, frustration evident in his tone. "I mean, so much for being American heroes. It's total nonsense."

"Yeah, it could just be a joke. The Russians fucking with a few paranoid American government stooges," Rowan pitched in, hands in her shorts pockets.

"It's not nonsense, and it's not a joke. It's too specific. It's obviously a code," Dustin said, firm in his belief of that.

That gave Rowan pause. A code... that lined up with her thought of the confusing sentences being a trick to hide the true meaning. And it made sense. A lot of sense.

Steve, however, was less convinced.

"What do you mean, a code?" Steve questioned, frowning at the cap-wearing boy who replied with, "Like a super secret spy code."

Steve scoffed, rolling his eyes. "That's a total stretch."

"And evil Russians isn't?" Rowan returned right back.

Steve shot her a look. "Yeah, but..."

"But what, Harrington?"

"We have whatever Henderson picked up. But it doesn't mean it's a code. It's still a stretch."

"I don't know, is it?" Robin piped up.

Steve gave Robin a disbelieving look. "You're buying into this? What about you Graveswood? Val?"

He looked at each of them in turn. Valerie's mouth twisted, a flicker of skepticism in her eyes, but Rowan shrugged and said, "I don't know. I wouldn't, normally, but it makes a sort of sense. Trick anyone who picked it up and keep doing whatever they were doing without anyone the wiser."

"Yeah, exactly. Listen, just for kicks, let's entertain the possibility that it is a secret Russian transmission. What'd you think they were gonna say, 'Fire the warhead at noon'?" Robin said with her trademark sarcasm as Steve gave Rowan a look like he couldn't believe she was thinking this as Dustin nodded and said, "Exactly."

Rowan smirked as she turned back to Robin, who went on, "And if my and Val's translation is correct, and I know that for sure, so... 'the silver cat feeds'. Why would anyone talk like that, unless they're trying to mask the true meaning of their message?"

"Exactly," Dustin agreed.

"And why would anyone mask the true meaning of their message unless the message was somehow sensitive?" Robin continued.

"And if the message was dangerous to enemy ears if it wasn't hidden in some sort of code, or was meant to fool anyone listening in thinking it's a joke like Rowan said?" Valerie added on.

"Exactly," Dustin said, nodding empathetically.

"So I guess that confirms your suspicions," Robin said, looking at Dustin and Rowan.

"Evil Russians," Dustin muttered as Rowan's face grew pale.

"I can't believe I'm about to agree with this strange child, but yeah, totally, evil Russians," Robin concurred, chuckling.

"Same here. Who would have thought?" Valerie said, chuckling lightly. Rowan didn't miss the look Robin sent to Valerie, like her laugh was the best sound Robin had heard, but the adoration on her friend's face did nothing to erase the dread twisting inside Rowan, that the transmission she'd been hoping was just a joke was indeed legit, and indeed a transmission from evil Russians about... whatever the fuck they were doing to keep it hidden. And considering where she lived, who her family was and the secrets they had, it couldn't be anything good.

Granted, the code could be about a nuclear weapon, nothing supernatural or related to the dark secrets underneath Hawkins, but if her last two encounters with the Upside Down, with her childhood of hiding her abilities from Brenner, was anything to go by, then Rowan knew she should expect that as a possibility, as unlikely as it would be.

"So how do we crack it?" Dustin questioned, bringing Rowan back to the conversation.

"Well, I guess we translate the rest, and hopefully a pattern emerges," Robin hypothesised.

Valerie nodded. "I think that's possibility. On a couple rewinds, I could hear some words repeating."

"Okay, so we've already got a start on that front. Nice, Val," Robin said, and Valerie smiled, the lights doing nothing to conceal the blush. Rowan smirked.

"A pattern. Right, like maybe 'silver cat' is a meeting place?" Dustin theorised.

"Or a person," Robin suggested.

"Or a plan," Rowan put in.

"Or an ally?" Valerie interjected.

"Or a weapon," Dustin pitched forward.

"It's probably gonna take a super genius to crack it, but—" Robin started, but Rowan already had her hand on Robin's shoulder and saying, "Maybe, but look at us. You and Dustin are like two of the smartest people I know, Valerie can already notice a pattern forming, and Steve and I can figure something out while being moral support."

Robin smiled. "Thanks, Rowan. Appreciate it."

"Just doing my job as moral support," Rowan said, returning the smile. She looked around, expecting Steve to say something, but he was nowhere in sight. She frowned, ignoring the spike in her heartbeat at Steve apparently disappearing while they were walking and hypothesising over what the code meant. 

Robin noticed too, as she asked, "Where's Steve?"

"I don't know," Rowan muttered. She looked back and finally saw Steve, next to the horse ride and frantically rummaging through his pockets.

"What the fuck is he doing?" she whispered as they walked back to him, Robin saying louder, "Hey Steve. What are you doing?"

"Uh, it's a quarter, I need a—do you have a quarter?" Steve asked, and Rowan's confusion grew.

"Why do you need a quarter?" Valerie questioned as Robin deadpanned, "Sure you're tall enough for that ride?"

"Yeah, I don't think you can fit on it, Harrington. Sorry," Rowan said, sarcasm clear in his voice, but Steve apparently didn't register it as he only yelled, "Quarter!"

"For God's sake, here," Rowan said, rolling her eyes but taking pity on Steve as she handed him a quarter the same time Dustin did. Steve accepted hers, both not noticing the way Dustin looked between them with arched brows as Steve said, "Thanks, Graveswood," and put it into the ride and starting it up.

The horse jerked forward, moving back and forth as Steve stared at it intensely, Rowan's confusion greater than it was.

"Steve, what the fuck is up with you and this ride?" she asked at the same time Robin snarked, "You need help getting up, little Stevie?"

That had Dustin and Valerie chuckle, but Steve wasn't having it.

"Shh!" Steve exclaimed. "Would all of you just shut up and listen?"

They did so, and Rowan's eyes widened as, finally, she got what Steve was getting at.

It wasn't the ride that had grabbed Steve's attention—it was the music that accompanied it, a jolly, fairground-like song.

It was the exact same music that played at the tail-end of the message. The music that Steve had recognised as familiar hours earlier, that Rowan had realised sounded familiar after he mentioned it.

Dustin came to the exact same realisation a split-second later. "Holy shit!"

Throwing his bag down, he pulled out the recorder as he exclaimed, "The music. The music!"

He played the recording, which was at the end of the message, where under the Russian, the same music now playing from the ride crackled over the recorder's speakers.

Valerie's eyes widened, coming to the exact same realisation as Robin frowned, saying, "I don't understand."

"It's the exact same song on the recording," Dustin said, Rowan and Steve nodding.

"It's exactly the same," Rowan agreed.

"Maybe they have horses like this in Russia," Robin rationalised, but Steve shot that down with a shake of his head and a quick look at the label on the ride startup.

"Indiana Flyer? No, I don't think so," Steve said, looking at them as he finished, "This code, it didn't come from Russia. It came from here."

And just like that, the dread increased, twisting everything inside Rowan into a knot, as the idea of it just being a completely harmless message was blown up, the pieces of her hope falling into indescribable ash around her.

Fuck.

***

Heheheh >:)

Poor Rowan—this Russian transmission is really ruining her plans in thinking her summer's gonna be normal. And yeah, while she doesn't totally want to believe it could have anything involved with the Upside Down, Rowan knows that it could be what the transmission is about. Also, I want to convey that while Rowan doesn't have Robin or Valerie's language skills, she has her own smarts—like entertaining the thought of it being a code, or noticing the music as well as Steve. The first part is mostly from her love of psychology and being raised by a con woman in noticing the smokes and mirrors of a code and the behaviours behind obscuring information

And speaking of smarts... I truly believe that if Steve didn't notice how familiar the music was, none of them would have begun to realise the code was being transmission from Hawkins. Robin would still totally crack it, but I think the realisation of the music being the exact same as that horse ride's music was a big clue in cracking it, so I wanted to showcase it

Also, THANK YIU GUYS SO MUCH FOR 3K ON THUNDERSTRUCK!!! You guys are truly the best, and thank you so much for getting Thunderstruck that far!! 🫶

Next chapter will be soon! And definitely a bit longer than this...

Please read, comment and vote!

GhostWriterGirl out!