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𝒃𝒖𝒓𝒏 𝒒𝒖𝒊𝒆𝒕 [𝒊𝒙. 𝒕𝒘𝒐.]

⊹ ࣪ ˖ summary: “I know you can hear me, you fucking coward.”

⊹ ࣪ ˖ pairing: billy hargrove x f!reader

⊹ ࣪ ˖ wc: 16.2k+

⊹ ࣪ ˖ warnings: s2 plot things, injury, possession/horror elements, character death, angsty, mc is lowkey unhinged in this one ngl.

⊹ ࣪ ˖ notes: THIS CHAPTER IS PART II OF II BECAUSE TUMBLR IS A COWARD AND WON'T LET ME POST THE FULL 27K. BE SURE TO READ PART I FIRST OR YOU'LL BE CONFUSED. I literally lost years of my life writing this monster of a chapter. Dedicated to everyone kind enough to support this series, be it via messages, likes or reblogs. I'll be getting back to you all tomorrow! (●'◡'●)

read on ao3. ⊹ series masterlist.

The call comes at seven in the morning.

You’re already awake—have been since five, sitting at your kitchen table with coffee that’s gone cold and a calculus textbook you’re not reading, your Upside Down notebook open right beside it, fingers pressed into word possession. Sleep didn’t come easily after your fight with Billy, and so you’ve been thinking more about the situation with Will to keep yourself occupied.

The phone rings, a loud chirp in a too quiet trailer. You grab the receiver, conscious of your mom sleeping across the tiny hall, her door cracked open.

“Yeah?”

Static. Then Mike Wheeler’s voice, thin and frayed around the edges: “Hey, it’s me. Are you—are you at home?”

“Mike?” Your fingers grip the receiver hard enough for the old plastic to creak. “What’s wrong?”

“It’s Will,” he blurts out. “Joyce says he’s… he’s not okay. I’m going over there now. I tried Dustin and Lucas, but they’re, um—” He fumbles. “They’ve got this thing with Dart. I just—”

You don’t know who Dart is. You don’t ask.

“I need someone who… we need you,” he finishes in a rush.

You’re already grabbing your jacket, cord wrapping around your waist while you jam your feet into your boots one-handed, another reaching for your notebook. “I’ll meet you there. Fifteen minutes.”

. . .

There’s something heavy and rotten in the air.

Even from the street, you can feel it, a hum in the air that has nothing to do with electricity. You spot Joyce’s car and Mike’s bike abandoned in the dirt drive when you pull up and park. Grabbing your notebook, you can’t help but remember a few unfinished gadgets at Frank’s shop you’ve been working on: modified walkie-talkies with frequency ranges that shouldn’t be possible, a handheld EMF detector you calibrated yourself. Even if you picked them up on the way, it would be useless right now; life got in the way, and they’re only partially functional, if that.

You don’t bother knocking. The front door gives way under your hand, and you step into cold and noise.

And stop dead in your tracks when you register the sight in front of you.

There are papers everywhere. On the walls, taped in crooked rows; on the coffee table, the sofa, the floor. Dozens of them. Maybe hundreds. All in Will's careful hand, all in crayon, all depicting the same thing: dark, twisting shapes like vines or tentacles, spreading and connecting in patterns that make your head hurt if you look at them too long. The lights are all on, too bright, turning the mess into a collage of hard edges and shadows.

Will is on the sofa, small and pale in his pyjamas, a blanket around his shoulders. Joyce hovers at one end like a storm about to break. Mike is close enough to touch Will’s knee without pretending it’s an accident.

“Jesus,” you breathe.

Joyce looks up at the sound of your voice. Her face is drawn, exhausted, and there’s something desperate in her eyes. The same look you saw last year, except somehow even more brittle this time around.

“Thank you for coming, sweetheart,” she says shakily. “I… we didn’t know who else to call.”

“Yeah,” Will whispers, his eyes too big in his pallid face. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be an idiot,” you say softly. “If you’re in trouble, you call me. That’s the deal.”

Mike exhales like he’s been holding his breath since he picked up the phone.

Edging deeper into the house, your eyes still roaming over the lines, you ask, “What happened? Tell me everything, every detail, no matter how insignificant you think it might be.”

Joyce wrings her hands. “Will’s been having episodes. Visions. He sees things. I know boys told you this. And when he comes back… well, now he’s drawing.” She gestures at the walls. “He’s been drawing for hours. I can’t—I don’t know what it means. I thought maybe you could—”

She doesn’t finish, but you understand. She’s asking you to make sense of the impossible again.

“It might be random—” she goes on.

You shake your head once. “No. It’s not random. There’s a pattern.”

You move closer to the nearest wall, studying the drawings. They’re meticulous, almost obsessively so. Each line deliberate, each curve precise. There’s definitely a pattern here—you can feel it itching at the back of your brain, the same way unsolved equations and unruly engines do.

“Where’s Hopper?" you ask without looking away from the drawings.

“That’s the problem.” Joyce’s voice cracks. “He went to investigate something at one of the pumpkin patches. Hours ago. He was supposed to call, but he hasn’t, and Will—Will saw something. In one of his episodes. He saw Hopper, but he was—he was trapped somewhere dark, and I don’t know where and—”

“Okay.” You cut her off gently. “Okay. Let me look at these properly. We’ll figure it out.”

Shrugging off your jacket, you drop it over the empty chair in the living room and start moving around the room, examining each cluster of drawings. You move slowly, giving your eyes time to adjust from one sheet to the next. Each page has a thick central line, with thinner branches curling off. Some pages are just one big trunk; others are all offshoots. There’s a rhythm to the way Will has filled the space, an unconscious orientation.

“Did you draw these in order?” you ask over your shoulder. “Like… left to right, top to bottom, anything like that?”

Will shakes his head. “I just… grabbed paper,” he replies, his voice a weak rasp. “I had to get it out.”

“Good,” you say absently. “Less human bias.”

You hear Mike mumble something like show-off under his breath, but you can see the relief on his face.

You pace a slow circle in the living room. It looks like madness at first—an infestation of ink—but your brain starts doing what it always does: sorting, grouping, turning chaos into a semblance of order. The lines at this end of the wall mostly curve one way; over there, they lean the other way. Some segments repeat shapes. Some have little bulbs at the end of branches, thickened knots like hubs.

It reminds you of something.

You extend your arm, following the curves, your eyes fluttering closed, trying to pull the memory forward. Something from a book, or a class, or—

“Mycelium,” you say suddenly, your eyes flying open.

Joyce blinks. “What?”

“Fungal networks. Underground root systems.” You point at one of the larger drawings. “Look at the way these branch. The way they connect. It’s not random. It’s a network. Like—like a circulatory system, but for—”

You stop, mouth parted. Because if this is a map, if these drawings are showing something real—

“Do you have a map of Hawkins?” You spin on your heels, eating up the distance between you and others. “Like an actual map. Roads, landmarks, the works. I think it might be a tunnel network.”

The front door swings open suddenly, making everyone jump. A man walks in—middle-aged, kind-faced, cardigan, holding a toolbox and looking confused about why teenagers and drawings fill every inch of Joyce’s house.

“Joyce?” He takes in the scene, eyes going wide. “What’s going on? You called and said you needed help with—” He stops when he sees the drawings. “Oh. Wow.”

“Bob.” Joyce’s voice strains. “I need you to look at something.”

Bob—Bob Newby, you realise, the guy from Radio Shack who Joyce has been seeing—sets down his toolbox and approaches the drawings with the careful attention of someone who’s used to examining complex systems.

“What am I looking at?” he asks, sounding a little unsure.

“Will’s been drawing,” Joyce explains, gesturing broadly. She meets your gaze, adding, “We think it might be a map. Of—of tunnels. Underground. And we think Chief Hopper might be trapped in them somewhere.”

To his credit, Bob doesn’t ask why she thinks this. Doesn’t question the logic. Just nods and starts examining the drawings with the same intensity you were using earlier. You watch him work, see the way his eyes track patterns, the way his fingers trace connections. He pulls out a pen and a small notebook from his pocket and starts making notes, nodding occasionally as Joyce fills him in on your suggestion.

“These are remarkably detailed,” he muses, almost to himself. “The branching patterns are consistent with—” He looks up at you. “You said mycelium?”

You dip your head in a nod, silently braced for doubts and condescending are you sure?

“That’s good. That’s exactly right, I think,” Bob says, nodding to himself and making you blink. He turns to Joyce. “Do you have that survey map? The one from the library?”

“Bob the Brain,” Mike mutters to you. “High school legend.”

Bob overhears him. His ears go pink. “It’s not… I mean, it was a joke. Mostly.”

“Jokes usually start from somewhere,” you say knowingly, clearing your throat. “We could use a brain right now.”

He blinks, then smiles in a way that’s completely unguarded and a little self-conscious. “Let’s… uh. See what we’ve got.”

He doesn’t flail or panic despite how utterly insane this must all appear to him, a man who knows nothing about this. His eyes flick over the pages, taking in angles and density. You recognise that look all too well; you’ve seen it in the mirror every morning.

Joyce returns moments later with the map, and Bob spreads it out and starts comparing it to the drawings, just like you did.

“Here,” he begins, pointing at a spot. “This main trunk, see how it runs parallel to Old Sawmill Road? And these smaller branches, they correspond to the residential streets in the old part of town.”

“So it is a map.”

Bob looks at you properly for the first time. Really looks, the way people do when they recognise someone else who gets it.

“You’re the girl from Frank’s garage,” he proclaims suddenly, and you’re slightly startled by the delight on his face. “I’ve heard a lot about you. You’re the one who created that homemade sensor last year, right?”

“Yeah.”

“You figured out the frequency modulation problem.” He’s smiling now, genuine and warm. “That was brilliant, by the way. I’ve been meaning to tell you that.”

Despite everything going on, you feel heat creep up your neck. “It wasn’t that complicated.”

“It absolutely was.” He turns back to the map, still smiling. “Okay, so if these are tunnels—and I think they are—then we need to figure out where they're densest. Where the main hub is. Because that’s probably where—"

“Where Hopper would investigate,” you finish.

“Exactly.”

You fall into tandem quickly, working side by side and rearranging everything as you reference the map.

“Nice,” Bob says, scooting another pair into place. “Look, this one has that same little lump on the end. Like a cul-de-sac.”

You grin despite yourself. “Knew there was a reason I liked you.”

He laughs, startled, then beams, flustered and delighted in equal measure.

You forget, for a few minutes, that Hopper might be suffocating under a field of rotten pumpkins. That Will’s head is a borrowed space for a monster. That Billy Hargrove has spectacularly wrecked your life. It’s just you and another brain moving through the same maze, calling out matches, adjusting angles.

Joyce hovers, first wringing her hands, then kneeling to hold a page steady while you adjust another, her breath hitching every time Will makes a small noise.

Bob pulls out a folded street map of Hawkins when you’re finished, the free gas station kind, worn soft from being handled from his toolbox. You spread the other map on the only remaining clear patch of carpet—roads and rivers web across the paper, familiar names labelled in tiny black print. Your town looks small from up here. Contained.

You drag the tunnel map closer. It sprawls like something alive, intricate and ugly and weirdly beautiful.

“Okay,” you say, mostly to yourself. “If this is under everything, it should correlate. The big branches, at least.”

“Rivers,” Bob says, nodding. “Old creek beds, sewer lines, natural fault lines… we planned some parts of town around those. You look at it long enough, you see patterns.”

You exchange another glance. It’s almost ridiculous how good this feels, even now—someone else seeing the same shapes you do, speaking the same language without needing translation.

“Here,” you say, dropping a finger to a long, slightly curved tunnel line on Will’s drawing. “That bend, that’s familiar.”

You scan the map. There. Route 7, curving past the Miller farm, is a road you’ve taken a hundred times to get out of Hawkins for ten minutes of quiet. You line up the maps so they roughly overlap. It’s not perfect, but close enough that the hairs on your arms stand up.

“If that’s the road, then…” Bob traces along the printed street with one hand, along the tunnel branch with the other. “The tunnel’s running alongside it. Parallel.”

“As above, so below,” you mutter under your breath.

He gives you a quick, startled grin. “You read too much.”

You keep lining things up with a small smile.

The thick central knot of tunnels corresponds roughly to downtown Hawkins. Smaller branches fan out under the residential streets. One faint, spider-thin thread reaches toward the woods past Mirkwood. Another hugs the curve of the quarry on the edge of the boundary.

You feel a spark of something fierce in your chest. You’ve been stabbing in the dark for months, trying to turn the Upside Down into something you can picture, no matter how rough. Now an aspect of it is sprawled on the floor in front of you, ugly and undeniable and—for the first time—legible.

“It’s really… everywhere,” Mike whispers, hovering over your shoulder. “We’ve been walking over this.”

“Sleeping over it,” you say instead. “Eating cereal over it. It’s not the monster under the bed. It’s the house.”

Joyce flinches. “Please don’t say that.”

“Sorry.”

“Here,” Bob says after fifteen minutes. “Merrill’s pumpkin patch. See how all these lines converge? It’s like a—a central nervous system. Everything connects here.”

You lean in to check his work, and he’s right. There’s a density to the drawings in this area that doesn’t exist anywhere else.

“This has to be the spot.” Bob stands and looks at Joyce intently. “We need to call for backup. Get a search party organised. If he’s trapped in some kind of underground tunnel system—”

“We can’t,” Joyce says firmly, shaking her head. You exchange a brief look with Mike, who also shakes his head. “We can’t bring in more people. Not with—” She glances at Will. “Not with what’s happening. It has to be us.”

“Joyce—”

“Bob, please. Just trust me. We need to keep this quiet.”

Bob looks at her for a long moment. You can see him doing the mental math, weighing the evidence—Will’s volatile condition, the drawings, Joyce’s desperation, the fact that she’s asking him to accept something impossible without any explanation.

“Okay,” he relents finally. “Okay. But we’re not going in blind. If there are tunnels, they’re dangerous. We need equipment. Rope, flashlights, first aid—"

You’re still staring at the map, at the drawings, at the pattern that’s emerging while they hash out a plan. There’s more here; something bigger than just tunnels and pumpkin patches. Will saw something, a monster, intelligent and malicious, connected to everything.

And whatever it is, it’s under all of Hawkins. Spreading and growing, and you still have no clue what it is or what it wants. Almost absently, your gaze flicks to Will, watching him for a private instance, shivering and staring blankly at his drawings.

“Okay.” Joyce’s shaky voice snaps you out of your thoughts. “Okay. We get Hopper out. We figure out what this thing wants. And then we stop it.”

She says it with the fierce certainty of a mother who’s already lost her son once and refuses to do it again. Bob nods at once, gathering supplies, making lists, organising with the efficiency of a man who’s been underestimated his whole life and learned to be twice as prepared as everyone else because of it.

“Thank you,” he says quietly when you pass him another pack of batteries for the flashlights. “For seeing it. The map. I might’ve missed it if you hadn’t—”

“You wouldn’t have,” you tell him honestly. “You saw it right away. I just said it out loud first.”

His smile is warm and genuine, and you understand in that moment why Joyce chose him. How much easier life would be if there were more men like Bob around, compassionate and open, not set on belittling women or seeing them as lesser than.

“Well. I’m glad you’re here anyway. It’s nice to have someone to—” He searches for the word. “To bounce off of. Someone who gets it. People like us need to stick together.”

You feel something warm unfold in your chest because you know what he means. The isolation of being smart in a town that doesn’t value it. The exhaustion of always having to explain yourself, dumb yourself down, make yourself smaller so other people feel comfortable and unthreatened.

Bob doesn’t make you feel like that. Bob looks at you like you’re a colleague, an equal, despite being old enough to be your father.

It’s nice. Strange, but nice.

While everyone prepares supplies, you reach for your notebook. You flip through it, skimming over theories about dimensional barriers, notes on El’s abilities, sketches of the electromagnetic fields you measured around the lab with your sensor last year.

You flip to a blank page and hurriedly jot down new notes:

NOV ‘84.

Will = connected to the organism. Sees tunnels, growth patterns. Organism shows him information = two-way connection?

System spreads from the central point (pumpkin patch). Hub? Hive mind? Spider monster - what is it?

Purpose: expansion? colonisation? feeding?

How to stop: understand biology. find weakness (Joyce said it doesn’t like heat. can fire kill it?). cut off the central nervous system?

You’re writing fast now, thoughts tumbling over themselves. Joyce calls your name, and your head snaps up. Hesitating, you close the notebook and leave it on the table.

Time to find out what the hell is living under your town.

. . .

They hit the dirt road hard enough that the back of Joyce’s car rattles like it’s going to shed bolts.

The pumpkin field looms ahead under floodlights. You’ve driven this way a hundred times in daylight, when the stalks were green, and the air smelled like earth and fertiliser. Tonight it smells like something’s gone sour beneath the skin of the world.

Rot. Chemicals. Under that, something metallic and wrong.

Joyce’s hands are welded white to the steering wheel. Will sits between you and Mike in the back, trembling so faintly you only notice because your shoulder presses into his. Bob’s wagon fishtails in behind you, Hopper’s empty truck abandoned by the junction.

The convoy of lab vans and police cruisers has already formed a jagged line at the edge of the patch. Men in hazmat suits move between the rows of sagging pumpkins, the plastic of their gear catching the light in hard flashes. Flamethrowers gleam on their backs like extra spines.

You hate those things on sight.

“Stay in the car,” a deputy tells Joyce before his brain catches up and registers who he’s talking to.

“Like hell,” she snaps, slamming her door so hard the whole frame shivers.

You’re out a half-second after her, boots slipping in the slick rot pumping up out of split pumpkin shells. The air is thick with the sweet-sour stink of decay. Mike almost goes down, catches himself on your jacket.

“Careful,” you whisper, steadying him.

He nods, face pale but expression stubbornly set. Will climbs out on your side, fingers bunched in your sleeve like a little kid heading into a haunted house he already knows isn’t pretend.

“Mrs Byers!” a voice calls. A man in a suit and a zipped-down hazmat hood jogs toward you, glasses fogged, clipboard tucked under one arm. “You can’t be here, this area is—”

“You said you couldn’t find him,” Joyce cuts in, loud and ragged. “You said you didn’t know where he was, and now you do, because of my son and—” She jerks her chin at you and Bob. “So I’m going.”

Suit opens his mouth, sees the murder in her eyes, and thinks better of arguing.

“We’ll stay behind your men,” Bob says quickly, catching up, hands up in a placating gesture. “Okay? Just… just let us be here. Please. For him.”

Suit Guy scrubs a hand over his mouth, then waves you along with a muttered, “Stay clear of the breach.”

The breach in question is more of a gash than a hole.

The earth peels back in a long wound between rows, soil clawed aside like a hand dug in too deep. At the centre of the wound, the ground dips away into a cavity big enough to swallow a car. An industrial ladder drops into the dark like an afterthought.

You stand at the lip and peer down.

The light from the floodlamps only makes it a little way. Beyond that, the hole is just black. A faint, icy draft brushes your face, smelling of mould and cold metal and that same electric wrongness you felt last year in Joyce’s living room, when the wall peeled open.

Vines pulse from the edges of the breach, thick as wrists, slick and glistening. They disappear beneath the soil, spiderwebbing outward. You know, in your bones and under your nails, that this is just the tip. That the map on the Byers’ living room floor is under your boots right now, alive and growing.

Hopper is down there somewhere. Wrapped up in this like bait caught in a net.

Your skin crawls.

“Hey,” you say softly. “Will.”

He edges closer, peering into the dark. His pupils blow wide. His spine goes rigid against your side.

“Can you… feel anything?”

You hate asking. You hate that you even think it, but nobody else has a compass for this place. His breath comes in short, shallow puffs.

“He’s… stuck,” he exhales finally, voice even thinner than earlier. “He’s not moving. Left.” He points into the hole, eyes still fixed on something that isn’t there. “The tunnel goes left.”

Hazmat Guy nearest the ladder stares. “How the hell would he—”

“I don’t care how,” Joyce says, brushing past him. “If my son says left, you go left.”

“I’ll show you,” Will says suddenly, and you grab his wrist.

“Hey, you don’t have to—”

Bob swallows hard, then clamps a hand on Will’s shoulder. “We go together, okay?” His smile is too big, too bright. “Like a field trip, but way grosser.”

Mike steps up on Will’s other side. “You’re not leaving me up here,” he says, daring anyone to try to argue.

You feel the fight rise in you—instinct to throw yourself between kids and monsters. But the truth is, you know what you saw on that living room floor. Will’s connection goes where the tunnels go. That makes him your best shot, no matter how shit it feels to put him anywhere near this place.

“We follow the map,” you say, more to yourself than anyone else. “We know the map.”

You turn to the nearest lab tech. “I’m going too.”

He looks like he wants to tell you no. Then he catches the look on Hopper’s hat still clutched in Joyce’s hand and nods once, curtly. “Stay behind the men with guns.”

You fight the urge to roll your eyes, muttering a peeved, “You’re assuming they know how to use them.”

They start down.

Hazmat guys go first, flamethrowers and rifles, masks sealed up tight. Then Joyce, jaw clenched, knuckles white on the ladder. Bob follows, every rung taken with care, glancing back to make sure Will is okay. Will is shaking but determined, with Mike right behind him, a skinny, furious shadow.

You take up rear, descending with mechanical precision, keeping an eye on the boys. You drop into the tunnels, and the heat of the floodlights dies in a single exhale.

Down here, the cold presses in from all sides.

The walls aren’t walls, not really. Layers of fibrous matter surround you, like tree roots and scar tissue fused together with dirt. The floor is slick and uneven. Vines and cables wrap every surface, pulsing faintly with that too-slow heartbeat you remember from the other side.

Your breath ghosts white in the air, the air thick with floating spores, and you’re suddenly glad the suits gave you masks to cover your faces with.

Will shudders and clutches his arms around himself. “It’s loud,” he whispers, his words muffled.

The hazmat lead lifts his radio. “Owens, we’re in. Proceeding left as directed.”

Static crackles back. “Copy that,” Dr Owens’ voice says from somewhere up in the warm, human world. “You’ve got about fifteen minutes before we start the burn. Don’t be heroes.”

Too late.

You move.

Left, along the tunnel that runs under the field. The walls seem to flex with each breath the group takes. Your boots slip on something slick; when you look down, the ground has a sheen to it, like a layer of translucent slime.

Will’s hand creeps into yours. You take it without comment, squeezing once.

“Four intersections,” you murmur thoughtfully, remembering Bob’s finger on the paper map, tracing lines. “He’ll be past the fourth. That’s where the cluster was.”

“How do you know that?” Hazmat lead demands over his shoulder.

“Do you want the long version or the life-saving one?” you shoot back.

He shuts up.

You count crossings as you go. One. Two. Each one, a tunnel veers away into the dark. At the third, Will hesitates.

“This way,” he says softly, tugging you. “I can… feel him.”

The air changes as you move deeper. It gets wetter, for one. There’s a sweet, cloying smell overlaying the rot now, like fruit juice spilt and left to ferment. The walls are more heavily veined, thick cables of vine twisting along them, disappearing into nodules and swelling pods.

At the fourth intersection, you see it.

The tunnel narrows, then widens again, opening into a bulbous chamber. The ceiling is low and knotted, drips hanging like stalactites. The floor is a nest of vines and fibrous growths. And in the middle of it, nailed up like a crucifixion in a biology textbook, is Jim Hopper.

He’s wrapped in vine from chest to shin, arms pinned above his head, legs half-buried in the stuff that’s grown over him. His face is grey-blue, lips cracked, eyes half-open but unfocused. Something viscous slides from the walls into his mouth with each shallow breath, like the vines are feeding him their own air.

“Jim,” Joyce breathes, and the sound cracks down the centre.

She lunges forward. Hazmat hands snag her jacket.

“Careful!” one of them snaps. “We don’t know what that is.”

“I don’t care,” she spits, clawing at the vines. “Get him down.”

You move with her, adrenaline burning off the cold. The growth is tougher than it looks, springy and resistant under your fingers. It makes a faint, wet squeal every time you tear a strip away.

“I need a knife,” you say through your teeth.

Bob shoves one into your hand, and you don’t ask where he got it. You wedge the blade under a thick coil at Hopper’s throat and saw, fast and furious, checking for signs of consciousness. The vine leaks dark fluid onto your hands. It smells like old blood and metallic rot, too cold to the touch. Your stomach tries to turn over at the stench and sensation, but you force yourself to keep swallowing to keep the vomit at bay.

“Hey, chief. Can you hear us?” Sweat beads your forehead as you and Joyce continue untangling him, some of the suits finally choosing to join in. “This is getting real old, you know? You pick the weirdest places for naps, old man.”

Hopper’s eyes flutter briefly. Focus, for a second, on nothing, then on Joyce’s face. Then on you.

“Thought I… told you…” he rasps, voice shredded. “Not… to...”

You laugh shakily in relief, hearing the familiar exasperation in his slurred words.

It takes all of you—Joyce hacking at the growth around his chest, you working at his legs, hazmat guys bracing his weight as the vines finally snap and let him go. He slumps forward, heavy as wet concrete. You and Bob grab an arm each, hauling him away from the nest. As soon as his body clears the densest tangle of vine, the chamber seems to shudder. The walls flex, as if coming alive. The veins pulse faster, like a heartbeat skipping a beat.

Will gasps behind you.

“It doesn’t like that.” His voice is tiny, swallowed by the organic hum around you. “It’s mad.”

“Good.” You loop Hopper’s arm tighter over your shoulder. “It can add us to its hate mail list.”

You all half-drag, half-carry Hopper back into the tunnel, away from the worst of the fibrous mess. He leans hard, boots stumbling, breath rasping. He’s conscious, barely, but each step looks like it’s torture.

“Wrap it up down there,” Owens’ voice crackles through the hazmat lead’s radio. “We’re almost at go time.”

“Go time?” Mike spits out. “What is that supposed to—”

“We’re going to burn it,” the hazmat lead says, breath puffing against the inside of his mask. “We sterilise the tunnels, it stops spreading. That was the deal.”

“The deal with who?” you demand. “Because nobody asked Will if he—”

“Five minutes,” Owens reminds. “Get the chief topside.”

You want to argue. You want to grab the radio and scream at the too-calm voice on the other end. If they just stopped fucking with things they shouldn’t, none of this would be happening. But Hopper’s weight is dragging at your bad shoulder, and Will’s hand is cold in yours, and there is a living, hostile system wrapped around your ankles, so you grit your teeth and keep moving.

The climb up the ladder is a blur. Hands reaching down, grabbing at Hopper, hauling him toward the light. Joyce’s jacket back vanishes over the lip a minute later. Bob is behind you on the rungs, one hand steady on your boot when it slips.

You break the surface, and the cold night air hits you like a slap. Floodlights, shouts, the sharp sting of open air in your lungs after the thick, dead chill below. You rip the mask off your face, sucking in desperate gulps like you’ve come from underwater, your skin flushed from the exertion.

They stretch Hopper out on a gurney someone seems to have conjured while you were gone. Techs swarm him, checking vital signs, cutting away the vine that’s fused with his clothes.

You stagger back, wiping at your face with filthy hands, and almost bump into Bob.

“You okay?” he asks, breathless, eyes flicking over you. “You’re… you’re not… infected with… whatever that is?”

“I’m good,” you lie, and try to make it convincing. Your hands are shaking. Your heart is still down in that tunnel, beating along with whatever that thing is.

Across the field, men with flamethrowers are lining up at the breach.

“Wait,” you say, stomach dropping. “Wait, they haven’t—”

No one hears you. Or if they do, they don’t care. The first flamethrower roars to life. The tunnel mouth lights up in violent white-orange. Fire pours down, catching on damp organic matter, turning it to shrivelling black. The heat rushes up in a wave that makes the air shimmer.

And then Will screams.

It’s not just pain. His whole body bows at the force of whatever he’s feeling, his back a perfect arc, fingers clawing at his skull like he can scratch the agony out. His legs give out; he collapses on the field, hands spasming, body twitching and convulsing.

“Will!” Mike drops with him, grabbing his shoulders, trying to pin him, hold him, something. “Will, Will, hey—”

“It hurts,” Will sobs, voice breaking on the word. “It burns—it burns—make it stop—”

“Turn it off!” you bellow at the nearest flamethrower crew. “Turn it off, you idiots, you’re cooking him!”

They hesitate just long enough for your blood pressure to spike into the red, then the stream of fire cuts, dying with a hiss. The smell of burnt… whatever… hangs heavy over the breach, sour and thick in your nose.

Will crumples, limp as if someone cut his strings. Joyce is already there, dropping to her knees, gathering him into her arms. “Baby,” she whispers, voice ragged and wet. “Baby, talk to me, please—”

He’s shaking, teeth chattering so hard you’re afraid he’ll bite his tongue.

Owens’ voice, tighter now, comes over the nearest radio. “That’s enough for now. Get them in. All of them. We need to run tests.”

Tests. Right.

The hazmat guys close ranks around your small group. Before you can protest, you’re being hustled toward the vans, away from the breach, from the smell of charred vine and Will’s pained whimpers. You glance back once, as the tunnel mouth pulses, blackened edges already twitching like they’re trying to regrow.

. . .

The lab is colder than outside, in that special, clinical way that feels designed to keep emotions out.

They separate you at the doors.

Joyce and Will vanish through a pair of sliding panels toward the medical area. Hopper gets swept away in another direction, still swearing hoarsely, fighting the gurney like he can get up and walk himself to a cigarette. Mike tries to go with Will, but the guard blocks him. He ducks around the guy, slips through his arms, only to be caught by another pair. You lose sight of him in the scuffle.

A hand closes on your elbow, firm but not quite rough. “This way,” a new guy in a suit says. “Dr Owens asked me to debrief you.”

He’s bland; forgettable face, forgettable suit, the kind of government operative who’s been trained to fade into backgrounds and extract information without anyone noticing they’re being interrogated. You’ve seen many copies of him around town last year when El first got loose.

They put you in a small room painted the same off-white as the rest of the place, with a table, two chairs, and a reflective wall you’d bet all your savings is a one-way mirror. There’s a vending machine humming in the corner, stocked with crisps and candy bars. Some sick attempt at normalcy.

He sets a tape recorder on the table, presses a button, and the little red light blinks on.

“Miss, my name is Agent Miller. I’m here to ask you some questions. State your name for the record.”

You examine your hand in the bright light. “Mechanic.”

His brow furrows. “Your full legal—”

“You have my file,” you cut in, shooting him a look. “You know it. You know my address, my grades, my embarrassing childhood imaginary friend. You probably know what I had for breakfast, too. We both know this tape isn’t about my name.”

He studies you over steepled fingers. “What is it about, then?”

“Control,” you respond curtly. “Paper trail. Authority.” You tilt your head. “And fear.”

He looks mildly impressed despite himself. “You don’t scare easily, do you?”

You can’t help the raspy chuckle that escapes you. Adjusting in your seat, you look pointedly towards the reflective wall. “A year ago, I wouldn’t have dared to sneeze in your direction, because I know how easily men like you can make girls like me disappear when they become a nuisance.” You pin him with a flat stare, clasping your hands on the table. “But right now, I’m more scared for the kid you have in this building. So yeah, guess you could say my fear meter is kinda maxed out right now.”

Miller dips his head in consideration, examining you thoughtfully as the silence stretches. You count ceiling tiles, noting the vent, while he tries his psychological games.

“You were with Chief Hopper’s party when he was recovered. Can you describe what you encountered underground?”

“Dirt,” you answer flatly. “Roots. Tunnels. It was very tunnel-y.”

Agent Miller’s smile doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “I understand you’ve been assisting with the analysis of the drawings produced by Will Byers. Can you tell me what conclusions you reached?”

“That Will can draw really well for a thirteen-year-old.”

“Miss—”

“Are we done?” You aim that question towards the reflective wall. “Because unless you’re charging me with something, I’m pretty sure I can leave.”

“We’re just trying to understand what happened—”

“Then talk to Hopper. He’s the one who was trapped. I just looked at some crayon drawings and said they looked like a map. That’s it. That’s my whole contribution. Real riveting stuff.”

Without waiting for permission, you stand. Agent Miller stands with you, blocking your path. Not threatening, but present. “Miss, this is a matter of national security. We need to understand—”

“National security.” You let the words hang there, loaded and bland in a way that’s almost mocking, except you’re not dumb enough to try and provoke these people. “Right. Because a small-town police chief getting stuck in a tunnel is definitely a matter of national security. Unless—” You tip your head, watching his faceknowingly, smiling faintly. “Unless, of course, there’s something else going on here. Something you’re not telling me.”

His expression doesn’t change. Professional and controlled. “I’m not at liberty to discuss—”

“Then, respectfully, I’m not at liberty to answer questions.” You step around him. “If you want to know what I saw, get a warrant. Otherwise, you’re talking to me without a parent or lawyer present, which I’m pretty sure violates at least three laws I could name if I felt like it. Unless you ignore those, too. But you’re the good guys, right?”

Miller exhales through his nose. “You’re smart. Too smart to pretend you don’t realise how dangerous this is.”

“The thing under the town? Believe me, mister, I know.”

“I mean you,” he says. “You and kids like you. You see things the average person doesn’t. In a situation like this, that makes you valuable.” He steps back and gestures towards the seat again. “It also makes you a liability if you decide to share those insights… unwisely.”

You stare at him for a beat. “You’re worried I’m gonna run to the local paper?” You can’t help but snort. “And tell them what, exactly? A story about the tentacle vines and parallel dimensions? Government coverups? I’m sure a nice, cosy asylum cell awaits me if I did.”

“People panic,” he says calmly, too calmly. “They make bad decisions. We can’t afford that right now.”

“You think I wanted to know any of this? I would kill to go back to only caring about grades and rent.”

His gaze flicks to your hands, oil still ground into the lines of your palms under the black smears of Upside Down sludge.

“So,” you say, forcing yourself to exhale the tension in your body. “Are we done? Or do you want to ask me what my favourite colour is too, just to round out the file?”

His mouth does that almost-smile again, there and gone. “We’re done,” he replies. “For now.”

“For now.”

He stands, straightening his suit. For a second, you think that’s it, he’s going to leave you here with the humming vending machine and the mirror, but he pauses near the door.

“Do you trust us?” he asks, turning back.

You blink. “Is that a trick question?”

“No,” he says. “I’m genuinely asking.”

You think of the wall in Joyce’s house peeled back like skin. Of men with guns last year, hunting for a little girl they kept like a lab rat. Of Bob laughing with you over tangled papers and the way boys still mourn El, a girl who had to sacrifice herself, because some puissant men decided to meddle with things they have no business ever touching.

So you go for honesty. “Not particularly.”

He nods, like he was expecting that. “For what it’s worth, we really are trying to fix this.”

“Then try harder,” you say.

He leaves.

You give it ten seconds, listening to his footsteps recede, to the door click, to the sudden, heavier quiet. Then you stand. The camera in the corner blinks its tiny red light at you.

“Sorry, boys,” you say under your breath, and drag the chair under it.

Last year taught you a lot of things. Namely that you weren’t comfortable with placing your life, and the lives of those you care about, in the hands of suits who saw all of you as expendable loose ends. You smear a thick, greasy handprint over the lens, heart banging against your ribs. It’s petty, but it feels good to do it. If they want Upside Down so bad, they can have some here and now. Then you drag the chair under the vent in the ceiling.

The grate is held in with four screws. You still have your multi-tool, wedged inside your bra at an uncomfortable angle, and you slide it out, flipping it until you find a fitting attachment.

The building chooses that moment to make a noise you’ve learned to dread. A resounding, structural thump, like something big just hit something bigger.

The lights flicker. Once. Twice. Then the sirens rip through the too-silent building. Your muscles remember before your head does; you’re already unscrewing the first bolt faster, breath going short.

“Come on, come on.”

Metal creaks under your fingers as you work. A bang thuds at the door, sending the tool sailing from your hand, but you catch it against your collarbone, wincing.

“Stay inside!” a guard’s voice shouts. “Do you hear me? Do not open—”

The sound cuts off like someone snipped the tape. No shout, no gunshot—just silence. You freeze for half a heartbeat, the multi-tool biting into your palm.

Then the sound that’s been living in your nightmares since last year: that wet, chittering growl that makes your brain scream predator, run, hide, you’re going to die.

Your heart jumps up to your throat. You redouble your efforts, working even quicker, careful to make as little sound as possible. The last screw drops into your pocket after another minute. You yank the grate away, shove your bag up, then haul yourself into the crawlspace, ribs scraping. Your arms protest; your lungs burn. You ignore everything but the need not be in that room when whatever took the guard gets bored.

You slap the grate roughly back into place behind you and start crawling. The vents are narrow and dusty, full of lint and the tang of old metal. The siren bleeds through the structure, a constant pulse in your ears. Under it, you start to hear other things. Distant gunfire. Shouting. The grind and squeal of metal buckling.

And, faintly, a sound you know too well: a guttural, wet screech.

You swear under your breath and keep moving, following the subtle rise and fall of warm air that says public corridors, not dead-end storage.

You peek through grates when you can. You see corridors lit by strobes, shadows of people running, jaws clenched, eyes blown wide with terror. Once you watch a lab tech skid in a puddle of dark fluid on the floor, scrambling up and leaving a streak behind him. Another grate looks down into a stairwell. The door at the top is bent inward, metal bowed, deep claw marks scoring its surface.

You drag yourself forward, forearms and knees on fire, that siren boring into the base of your skull.

Then, finally, you spot them.

A room full of monitors. A cluster of familiar shapes.

Hopper, bulk hunched, gun in hand. Joyce, hair wild, face pinched. Mike, small and bristling. Will, slumped in a chair, wires trailing from his chest to a bank of machines. And an older man wearing a labcoat in the middle of it all, eyes flicking between screens that show different slices of the lab, the tunnels, the town. Bob is there too, sleeves rolled, looking like he wandered into a nightmare on the way to a staff meeting.

Relief hits you so hard you have to close your eyes for a second. Then you brace yourself, unscrew the grate, and drop down, panting and sweating, your body aching. The cover clatters with a metallic shriek, and guns swing your way. You throw your hands up.

“Don’t shoot,” you grunt, dangling half-in, half-out. “I’ve had a weird day already.”

“Jesus Christ, kid,” Hopper snaps, lowering his weapon as he realises it’s you. “You allergic to doors now?”

“All locked,” you respond, dropping the last few feet and hitting the floor in a crouch, the soles of your feet absorbing the force. Your knees complain. “Hi. Glad to see you're looking better, chief.”

Joyce grabs you, hands flying over your shoulders, your face, checking for wounds. “Where were you?” she demands desperately. “They said they were taking you to some… some waiting area—”

“They did,” you say. “I waited. Then everything decided to go to hell, so.”

The man in the lab coat stares at you. “How did you get in the vents?” he asks, bewildered.

“Chair, multi-tool, childhood spent in junkyard wrecks.” You nod back towards the grates. “You might want to invest in some grates that don’t come off if you sneeze at them. Also, Doctor Owens, I assume?”

“You’re insane,” Hopper mutters, but there’s relief under it. “Where’s your escort?”

“Probably dead,” you reply bluntly. “Something hit the door right before the alarm kicked in. Sounded big.”

Owens goes slightly green. He turns back towards the monitors. On one, a group of soldiers in heavy gear runs through a tunnel, flamethrowers spraying. The vines curl away, blackening. On the edge of the frame, something moves.

Not vines.

Shadows. Multiple shadows.

You watch in horrified fascination as the first creature drops from the ceiling, landing on a soldier’s back, teeth finding the gap between helmet and collar. Like Demogorgon from last year, but smaller, more animal-like, moving on all fours. The man goes down upon impact. Then the tunnel behind them blossoms with teeth and limbs and wet, horrible shrieks.

The feed fuzzes, jerks, and cuts.

“Those were our guys,” Owens says to no one in particular. “We sent them down there to cauterise. To—to find—”

The lights go out. Total, suffocating black folds around the room, cutting him off.

For a second, the only sound in the room is breathing. Then the emergency strips flicker on at floor level, bathing everyone in red. The siren dies mid-wail.

“The generators,” Owens breathes. “They’ve taken out the main. We’re on backup only.”

“What does that mean?” Joyce asks, voice thin, holding onto unconscious Will like he might float away.

“We’re trapped,” Owens answers without preamble. “Those things are between us and the exit. We need to get the power back online so we can unlock the exterior doors, but the breakers are in the basement and—”

“I can do it.” Bob steps in front. “If someone can guide me over comms, I can get to the basement and flip the breakers and reset the system. I assume there’s a terminal I can use?”

“Bob, no—” Joyce starts, surging towards him.

“It’s the only way.” Bob’s voice is gentle but firm. “We can’t stay here. Will needs a hospital. We need to get out.”

“Then I’m coming with you,” you say, still staring at the flickering screens.

Everyone turns to stare.

“What?” Hopper’s voice rings out flat and unamused. “Absolutely not.”

“You need someone to watch his back, chief. Someone who can move fast and think faster.” You meet his eyes. “And you need to stay here to protect Joyce and the boys, so you can get them out the moment those doors open. So that leaves me."

“She’s right,” Bob says quietly. “Two people have better odds than one.”

Hopper looks like he wants to argue, but he sees the situation the same way you do. They need Bob to reset the power. They need Hopper to protect others. They need someone with Bob who isn’t a kid or injured.

That leaves you.

“Fine,” Hopper agrees reluctantly, approaching until he’s looking you right in the eye, looming with his height and brawn, his expression dead serious. “But you do exactly what Owens tells you over the radio. No improvising. No being a goddamn hero. You get to the basement, you flip the breakers, and you get the hell out of there. That’s it.”

You nod. “Yes, sir.”

His stern expression relaxes a touch, and he drops his hand heavily on your shoulder for a brief moment before pulling away. Mike stares at you like he wants to puke, but there’s too much going on for him to process it all, so you try to reassure him with a wink and a tired smile.

Joyce kisses Bob’s cheek, eyes shining with tears. “Be careful.”

“Always am.” He kisses her forehead, brief but gentle, and a pang slices through you at the sight.

Owens grabs a thick binder from the console and slams it open, jabbing at a blueprint. “Here. Manual reset. You get there, pull the main lever down, hold for three seconds, push it back up. It should reboot the grid. Doors unlock. We get maybe five minutes to get to the surface before it locks us back in.”

“Should,” you repeat.

“Best I can give you,” he says with an apologetic sigh.

You take the walkie he thrusts into your hand, clip it to your belt beside the flashlight someone shoves at you. No more time. Owens hits a manual override, and the door to the security room releases with a hissing thunk, and the corridor beyond is lit in red and shadow.

“Go,” he says over the walkie. “Fast.”

You and Bob slip out into the siren-echoing dark.

The hallway smells like blood. Sweat and gunpowder and the sharp tang of burnt wiring under the ever-present chemical-clean base note. The red emergency strips along the floor make the world look like it’s underwater.

“Left,” Owens says over the walkie. “Four doors down, stairwell C. Take it to level three.”

You move, keeping your footsteps light despite the urge to sprint flat out. You know better. Panic makes you sloppy; sloppy gets you killed. The stairwell door is ajar when you reach it. There are claw gouges in the metal, deep and ragged. A streak of something dark and viscous leads inside.

Bob swallows audibly. “Think… think they went up?” he whispers.

“If we’re lucky,” you answer him, ignoring the trembling of your heart.

You ease the door open with the toe of your boot and peer down. Red light spirals along the shaft, fading into shadow. You don’t see anything moving, but that doesn’t mean anything. Those dog-like creatures are like big, horrible cats; you’ve seen how still they can be until they suddenly aren’t.

You gesture forward, three fingers up. Bob dips his head once in acknowledgement. On three, you slip inside and start down, keeping to the outer edge of the steps where the metal doesn’t creak as much.

“Doing okay?” you murmur.

“Fantastic,” he says through gritted teeth. “Love what they’ve done with the place.”

Bob moves quietly for a middle-aged guy in a cardigan. You stay close, eyes scanning every shadow, every corner.

You reach level three in five minutes.

“Door on your right,” Owens’ voice crackles. “Systems corridor. Follow the yellow line.”

The door resists, sticking halfway. You and Bob have to shove together to get it open, metal groaning in protest. The hallway beyond is worse than the one upstairs. Lights strobe, half on, half off. The walls are damp in places, a faint sheen of organic goo clinging to the bottom edges. Something heavier drips from the ceiling in one spot, a slow, thick pat that leaves tar-dark splats on the tiles.

There’s a body, partway down the hall. Lab coat, face turned away. One arm bent at the wrong angle. You deliberately avoid looking at the missing middle.

“Straight,” Owens says tightly. “Control room is the double doors at the end. You can do this.”

You reach the System Control door. One of its hinges bends inward; the metal around the handle is warped, as if something huge had slammed into it. You exchange a wary look with Bob.

“On three,” you whisper.

He nods. “One… two…”

You hit the door together. It bangs open, swinging wildly to crash into a cabinet inside. The room is a maze of panels and consoles, most of them dark or blinking red. Labels run along the tops: MAIN, AUXILIARY, LOCKDOWN, GENERATORS.

“There,” Owens says, voice vibrating with tension in your ears. “Right-hand side, big grey panel with a manual lever.”

You see it immediately. It’s the hulking grandfather of all breakers you’ve ever flipped, dust grimed into the ridges of its metal handle.

“Okay.” He sounds like he might throw up. He steps forward anyway. “Okay. Down then up. Got it.”

He wraps both hands around the handle.

“Wait,” you say instinctively, listening.

The corridor outside is too quiet. “Just… be ready to run,” you add, a touch calmer.

“You’re really good at pep talks, you know that?” he says, and yanks down.

The lever doesn’t budge. Years of disuse have frozen it in place. For a horrible second, you think it’s stuck, that everything hinges on a piece of metal that refuses to shift the one time it needs to. Then something gives with a screech. The lever slams down, nearly pulling Bob with it. The lights in the room die altogether. For one heartbeat, there’s nothing but horrible, hollow silence in your bones.

Then the building exhales.

A deep thrum shudders up through your boots. The panel in front of Bob sparks, then hums as new power rushes through old lines. Lights blink back on in sequenced rows. Somewhere distant, a door unlocks with a loud, echoing clack.

“Hold,” Owens orders urgently. “Three seconds.”

“One Mississip—” Bob starts.

You hear it before he reaches the second syllable. A scrape, long and wet, down the hallway outside. Claws on tile followed by a huffing breath.

“Two,” Bob forces out, hands shaking on the lever.

A shadow skitters across the doorway. A muscled shoulder, slick with something dark. A head too large, too low to the ground.

“Owens,” you whisper into the radio. “We’ve got company.”

“How many?”

“Can’t see. At least one. Maybe more.”

Bob shoves the lever back up. It resists again, then slams into place with a crack of electricity. The hum under your feet steadies, overhead lights flaring to full power. Somewhere above, sirens blare back to life.

The demodog in the doorway screeches; a loud, ear-splitting howl. It’s worse in full light—all muscle and exposed sinew, its head a fleshy flower of teeth and drool. Black, beady eyes shift under the petals, locking onto you.

For a fraction of a second, nobody moves. Then it lunges.

Someone else moves, too. Bob.

He shoves you sideways, hard enough that your shoulder slams into the console. The demodog’s bulk crashes into the space where you just were, its flank ploughing into your ribs as it redirects. Pain blossoms down your left side, hot and abrupt, like someone set off a firework under your skin. Your breath leaves your body in a useless woosh.

The demodog hits the panel, rebounds, dazed.

“Move!” you wheeze, grabbing Bob’s sleeve, vision already going spotty.

He hauls you toward the second door—the one on the far side of the room that leads deeper into the complex—half-dragging you when your legs don’t keep up. Behind you, claws skitter on metal. The demodog shakes itself, the fleshy petals of its mouth flaring as it steadies itself again.

You slam the door behind you, hear it hit the other side a heartbeat later, furious and snarling.

“Owens!” Bob shouts into the walkie as he drags you down the hall, your feet barely keeping up. “Reset done! We’ve got a friend! Where do we go?”

“Main stairwell, then up up up,” Owens calls out, words a rushing torrent. “I’ve opened every door I can. The others are heading for the lobby. Move!”

You run.

Every step sends a shockwave through the bruise blooming along your ribs, a nauseating, all-encompassing throb. You taste copper; you don’t know if it’s from biting your tongue or something inside you complaining.

“Hey,” Bob pants, eyeing you sidelong as you stumble, “you with me?”

You bark a pained laugh, then nearly throw up from how much it hurts, but nod your head jerkily.

The main stairwell yawns ahead, door half-open. You can hear gunfire from above, muffled shouting, and a deeper groan that might be the building or something tearing through it. You and Bob hit the stairs two at a time, the metal shuddering under your feet. Behind you, the door you came through crunches. Something heavy hits it, once, twice. Upon the third hit, the metal shrieks in protest but gives. Claws squeeze through the gap, shredding everything in its path.

“Faster would be great!” you yelp.

“Working on it!” Bob gasps, pulling you when you falter, practically shoving you up the last flight.

Owens’ voice is a constant now, a thread through the chaos. “Almost there,” he calls out. “Lobby door’s open. I see Hopper and the others. Quickly now!”

You slam body first into the lobby door. They burst open, and you stagger into a scene from a war movie.

The lobby is full of corpses: guards, scientists, random staff in varying degrees of gory dismemberment. Hopper is near the front doors, gun raised, Joyce a few feet behind him with Will clutched to her, Mike hovering like a miniature shield.

Glass doors stand open to the night behind them, the air outside a dark, wet smear. For a split second, the group registers you and Bob. Heads spin toward you.

“You did it!” Owens shouts from the security room, his voice thin over the loudspeakers. “Doors are unlocked! Go, go, go!”

Something in you unclenches.

Then the demodog tears out of the stairwell behind you.

You hear the door explode before you see it. The sound is wrong, like metal in a blender, shredding itself with a deafening sound. Then the demodog is there, midair already, a streak of muscle and teeth aimed directly at you.

You don’t have time to move. Bob does.

He rams into you from the side with all the force his not-particularly-impressive frame can muster. The two of you go flying, your feet leaving the ground, world tilting. The demodog slams into where your chest was a heartbeat ago. Its shoulder clips you instead, right across the ribs already screaming from the last hit.

It’s like being sideswiped by a car.

The world narrows to bright white and a roaring in your ears. You hit the floor hard, skid, and roll into a row of plastic chairs. They scatter like bowling pins. You can’t breathe for a second. Your body just… forgets how to. When the air wheezes back in, you taste blood.

“—get!—”

Someone is shouting your name. You can’t turn your head to see who. You force your eyes to track back to the middle of the lobby.

Bob is on the ground. The demodog has landed half on him, claws sunk into his shoulders, teeth snapping inches from his face.

“Go!” he yells, voice breaking. “Get out of here!”

Another demodog slams through the shattered glass doors, showering the lobby in shards. It looks like it’ll lunge towards the group behind you, then spots the prone figure under the first demodog and veers.

“No—” Your voice scrapes out, more breath than sound.

Hopper’s gun fires, so close you feel the sound go clean through you, reverberating. One of the demodogs jerks, snarls, turns, then the rest of the pack crashes in and it all becomes too much movement, too much noise. The first demodog finally gets past Bob’s desperate attempt to keep those teeth away. Its mouth blossoms open and comes down with brutal swiftness.

You hear the sound it makes when it hits flesh. You hear the sound Bob makes.

Joyce screams. It’s the kind of sound that tears your insides. You didn’t know a throat could make a sound of such anguish.

There’s so much red. Your fingers curl into the slick tile. Nails scrape uselessly. You want to get up. Every part of you wants to throw yourself into that mess of teeth and claws and drag him out by sheer will alone. But your body is an uncooperative machine, every signal misfiring. Your left side is one giant, throbbing bruise, each heartbeat punching it from the inside.

A hand clamps onto your good arm, yanking you upright.

“Don’t look,” Hopper barks at you, hauling you toward the doors. “Don’t you fucking look.”

Too late. It’s burned in already.

Bob’s eyes are wide with shock and pain and something almost like an apology. The way he looked at you over the map, delighted you understood. The way his mouth formed your name now, maybe, you’re not sure, drowned under the shrieks.

You wrench against Hopper’s grip with a broken, useless sound. “We can’t just—”

“We can’t do anything,” he snaps, pulling you harder. “He knew that. That’s why he shoved you.”

Another demodog leaps in your direction.

You don’t see it; you feel the rush of air, the shadow of its movement. Hopper spins, putting himself between you and it, firing three times in quick succession. It crashes into a reception desk instead, falling in a heap of limbs.

“Out!” he roars. “Go!”

Joyce is being dragged too, by Johnathan of all people, heels digging furrows in the floor, her face turned back, mouth open in a silent scream now that her voice has broken. You’re not even sure when he came or how he knew where to go.

Mike meets your gaze for a second as Hopper shoves you through the doors.

The cold outside slaps your face. Others are there, and it feels like a dream, some crazy fever dream, because how come Dustin and Lucas are here, with Max and Steve of all people, and Nancy, too.

The demodogs hit the inside of the glass doors behind you, cracking spiderweb patterns across the panes. They’re held for the moment by the reinforced frames. You know they won’t be for long. Hopper stuffs you into the back seat of Joyce’s car, then runs around and half-throws Joyce into the passenger side. Steve and Johnathan haul unconscious Will beside you. Everyone else falls in where they can in a rush of limbs.

The tyres slip in the mud, then catch, the van surging forward under Hopper’s handling.

You twist in your seat, ignoring the hot lance of pain down your side, and look back.

Demodogs are swarming the lobby. Glass gives, shattering outward. They spill onto the lawn at once, some peeling away toward other exits, others turning their flower-heads toward the receding taillights.

For a second, one stands still at the top of the steps, chest heaving, slick and awful in the floodlights. It tilts its head, almost like it’s listening. The image flickers at the edges, overlaying itself with another you’ve been trying not to think about: the shadow thing in the sky over the field in Will’s drawings, all limbs and dread.

The Mind Flayer. The thing you still don’t have words for.

You turn away.

Inside the car, the only sounds are the engine and Joyce’s ragged, broken breaths.

Your side is a living bruise, radiating heat, each bump in the road jarring it. You press your palm against it, hissing through your teeth. You know, clinically, that if your ribs were broken, you’d be in even worse shape. That doesn’t make this feel any less like a building has stamped on you. The wet, copper taste in your mouth won’t leave.

In your head, over the roar of the engine and the sirens and the screaming that’s stopped outside, something else plays on a loop.

Bob’s hand on the map in the Byers’ living room. His grin when you finished his thought. The way he said people like us. The way that made something in your chest, something that never got seen or named, sit up and look around.

He saved you.

A middle-aged RadioShack manager in a cardigan saved your life.

And died for it.

And you, the mechanic, the inventor, did nothing. When it came to it, you were too slow, too weak, unarmed, useless.

You dig your fingernails into your bruised side, chasing the sharp spike of pain. You need something to anchor you here, in this car, on this road, not back in that lobby. Not on the devastating, horrible guilt and shame you feel already pooling into the cracks inside you.

“Hey,” Mike says quietly, like he’s afraid of jostling the air. “He… he saved us. All of us.”

You swallow. It hurts too much to speak for a moment.

“Yeah,” you choke out, your voice more like rough sandpaper. “He did.”

You press your palms against the ache in your side and the bigger one in your chest and make yourself a promise, silently, teeth clenched.

You’re going to learn this thing.

You’re going to understand its architecture, its paths, its choke points. You’re going to take the way your brain itches at patterns and maps and systems and you’re going to aim it right back at the monster that thinks it can turn your town into a playground and kill your people.

Bob Newby, Superhero, died turning the lights back on.

He saved your life and you hate that. You hate owing people anything because you can’t pay him back now. But you can pay it forward.

You lean your aching head back against the seat, eyes stinging, the Byers’ house drawing closer with each rattling, painful second.

“I’ll make it count,” you vow darkly, breath fogging the cold glass, and let your mind loose.

. . .

The Byers’ house is fuller than you’ve ever seen it.

When Hopper swings into the gravel drive the yard’s already crowded—cars jammed in at bad angles, Steve’s stupid BMW glinting under the streetlight, Jonathan’s junker tucked close to the porch, Max’s skateboard half-buried in wet leaves. Dustin and Lucas are on the porch step already, talking too loud and too fast; they both lurch to their feet when the van finally screeches in.

You’re barely out of the back seat before Max barrels across the yard and wraps herself around your middle. It’s not gentle; it’s a hard, desperate collision that knocks a breath out of you and sends a shock of agony through your bruised ribs.

“Easy,” you grunt, but your arms go around her automatically.

Her face buries in your shirt. “They said you were at the lab,” she mumbles, words hot through the fabric. “And then there were sirens, and those things came and—”

“I’m here,” you say, carding a hand through her frizzed hair. “I’m in one piece. Mostly.”

She leans back enough to see your face, eyes wide, skittering over the smear along your jaw and the slight limp in your step. “You’re hurt.”

“I’ll live, Red.”

Her jaw trembles, her eyes blazing, when she snaps, “You knew.”

Ah shit.

“Max, listen—”

She’s shaking her head. “No, you knew about this, and you didn’t tell me—”

“Max.” You hand locks on her shoulder, squeezing once to anchor her attention. “Later. I promise we’ll have this conversation, and I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner, but right now… we need to focus, okay?

She glares at you, her mouth wobbling, but a moment later her skinny shoulders slump, and she nods jerkily. “Later.”

Behind Max’s shoulder, you catch Steve Harrington staring at you from the porch, hair a little flatter than usual, a bat with nails in his hand, like it’s just become a permanent extension of his arm. When your eyes meet, he tips his chin up, something like you good? flickering across his face, and you want to laugh.

Mr Popular is here asking you if you’re okay. Maybe you really did die in that lab. Despite the sardonic thought, you still give him a tiny, sharp nod.

Right now, everything’s about Will.

Joyce is already at the front door. “Inside,” she says, voice raw, ushering you all in like a shepherd pushing a flock ahead of a storm. Her eyes jump from face to face—Jonathan, Mike, Dustin, Lucas, Max, Nancy, Steve, Hopper, you—counting, checking, never quite landing more than a second.

The living room smells like sweat and cold air and the faint, metallic tang of the heaters they’ve dragged out of the garage and cranked to full. Every window is covered—blankets, cardboard, mismatched sheets nailed up in a patchwork that turns the room into a closed box.

Will is in the middle of it, in the chair—Mind Flayer’s little spy.

They’ve tied him there. Rope around his wrists and ankles, a belt across his chest. The sight stops you in the doorway for half a second, a flash of bile creeping up your throat.

He looks… wrong.

Not like the wrong you mutter about yourself on bad days. Not like the wrong the boys joke about at school. This is wrong like the curve of a bone after a bad break. His skin is slick with sweat, his hair plastered to his forehead.

Nancy and Jonathan are on the floor near Will, close but not too close. Nancy’s got a notepad balanced on her knee; Jonathan’s fingers are white around the handle of a space heater pointed at his little brother’s legs. Mike is planted directly in front of Will, the stubborn set of his shoulders like he’s physically holding a line in the sand.

Everyone looks tired. Not regular tired. Down-to-the-bone, frayed-edges tired. The kind you feel in your teeth. You ease your bag off your shoulder and set it carefully near the wall. Your notebook is still on the table where you left it. Heavy. Waiting.

“So,” Hopper says into the thick quiet, looking up at you, at the kids, at the mess of schematics and drawings still on the walls. “We need a plan.”

“We have one,” Mike says, too fast. His voice shakes, but the words don’t. “We—we figure out how to kill it.”

“The shadow thing?” Steve says, edging closer, bat still in hand. “The giant spider-cloud thing you all keep talking about like that’s a normal thing to happen?”

“Look at the pattern,” you speak, forcing your voice into the steady, analytical register that makes grown men underestimate you. “Will, the dogs, the vines, that… thing in the sky. It’s not a bunch of separate monsters. It’s one system. One brain. Using… terminals.”

“Terminals?” Max repeats.

“Like outlets,” you continue, gesturing. “Extensions. It uses them to feel. To move. To act. Will’s one of those outlets. The demodogs are more. The vines, too. If we hit the main source, everything plugged into it shorts out.”

“Cut the head off the snake,” Steve summarises. “Body dies.”

“Exactly,” Dustin says, snapping his fingers. “Hive mind. Like bees. Or… or the Borg.”

Hopper squints at him like that’s a made-up word. “The what?”

“Never mind,” Dustin sighs.

Mike steps closer to Will, eyes never leaving his face. “It’s been seeing through him,” he says quietly. “Like… like it’s watching. Using him. He knew where Hopper was. He could see when they lit the tunnels. And when they did, it—it hurt him. It’s all connected.”

“So if we talk about anything in front of him,” Nancy says slowly, “it hears it. Through him.”

“Which is why we’re not having the gate conversation in the same room as the kid possessed by the gate’s security system,” you say.

Hopper’s gaze sharpens. “You got something else in mind?”

“Shed,” Mike says abruptly.

You look at him. He looks at you. Others glance between you both. That itch in your brain sparks fresh.

“The tool shed,” Mike goes on, speaking faster now that the idea’s unspooling. “If he doesn’t know where he is, then… then it doesn’t either. If we move him while he’s out, and make the shed not look like a shed. Different walls, different… stuff, hide the windows, cover the door—”

“Take away his senses,” you add. “Limit the data. It can’t spy if it doesn’t know what it’s looking at, and those things can’t find us if it doesn’t know where Will is.”

Jonathan nods slowly. “We could strip everything out,” he suggests. “Bring in different furniture, different smells make it as blank as possible.”

“Like a sensory deprivation tank,” Dustin says, eyebrows up. “But, you know, poor people edition.”

Joyce’s raw, bloodshot gaze flickers between all of you, between Will’s slack face and the door. “You’re saying if we trick it, it… it won’t know where Will is?”

“That’s the idea.” You lean your weight against the doorway. “We give it bad input. It’s used to riding around in a body that lives here, that knows this house, this town. So we scramble it.”

A muscle jumps in Hopper’s jaw. “And then what?” he asks. “We… talk it to death?”

“We talk to Will,” Mike says, fierce and stubborn. “We remind him who he is, what’s real. We fight for him. And maybe it works. Maybe he can fight it from the inside.”

Hopper drags a hand over his face again. “Alright. First step, shed. Jonathan, Nancy, you know what’s in there. Clear it. Dustin, Lucas, and Redhead, wheel the heaters out, grab any blankets that aren’t nailed to the damn walls. Harrington, you and the bat are on perimeter with me.”

“What about me?” Mike demands.

“You’re with Joyce,” Hopper answers. “You three start thinking about what you’re gonna say when he wakes up.”

“And me?” you ask.

He looks at you, eyes flicking to the way you’re hugging an arm around your side, the stiffness in your posture. “You go last,” he says. “Which means you stay here and breathe for five minutes before you fall over.”

You almost argue. Then the room tilts faintly, a delayed echo of the demodog hit in the lobby. Your ribs remind you you’re not bulletproof.

“Fine,” you mutter. “But we need to talk before I go in.”

“Yeah,” he agrees quietly. “We do.”

. . .

By the time they bring Will out, the shed is transformed.

Jonathan and Nancy stripped it bare—tools off hooks, boxes shoved against the far wall, lawnmower heaved outside and covered with a tarp. The windows get boarded a second time from the inside; no light leaks in. The centre of the floor holds a single chair: no table, no shelves, no familiar landmarks. Space heaters crouch in the corners like metal bulldogs, their orange guts already glowing, pushing the temperature up by slow, unbearable degrees.

You watch from the porch as Hopper carries Will across the yard. Will’s out cold, sedated just enough to keep the thing from grabbing the wheel during transit. His head knocks lightly against Hopper’s chest with each step.

Joyce moves alongside, one hand on her son’s dangling wrist like if she lets go for a second, he’ll slip away.

You could watch Hopper from a distance and believe he’s just a big man carrying a sleeping kid. Up close, you see the way his jaw clenches with every foot of ground that passes; how carefully he positions his hands, avoiding the bruises from the lab, the marks from the restraints.

Dustin and Lucas hold the shed door open. The heat hits you even from here, damp and heavy, carrying the smell of warped wood and old spiderwebs.

Hopper lowers Will into the chair. Mike stands beside it, white-faced. Jonathan buckles the strap across his chest, fingers shaking and gentle, then steps back like he’s just handcuffed himself.

You feel all of it like static under your skin. The closeness. The heat. The weight of what you’re about to try.

“Alright,” Hopper says. “You all know your order?”

Joyce nods. “Me first,” she says. “Then Jonathan. Then Mike.”

“Then me,” you add.

You catch Hopper’s eye, nodding outside while the other three wait anxiously for Will to wake up.

“Two minutes.”

He hesitates, then jerks his chin at Steve. “Keep them from doing anything stupider than usual,” he tells him. “I’ll be right back.”

Steve salutes with the bat.

You step off the porch into the cold, sucking in air that isn’t heavy with the shed’s heat. The sky above is low and clouded, the woods at the edge of the property black shapes against the dark sky. Hopper lights a cigarette with hands that are steadier than you feel. He leans against Joyce’s car, exhales a long ribbon of smoke, and you almost envy his composure—only a man whose seen war could be this steady after today’s events.

“Well?” he hedges. “Say your piece.”

You cross your arms, careful of your ribs. “You know this thing’s more than just a mindless parasite,” you begin. “You’ve seen it. In the tunnels. In Will. It’s aware. It’s making choices.”

Hopper’s expression darkens. “Yeah.”

“We keep reacting,” you recount, scoffing. “We run after rotten pumpkins, after missing people, after whatever fresh nightmare it throws at us. We’re always behind. It’s building something, and we don’t know what. Or when it’s finished. Or what finished even looks like.”

He watches you through the smoke.

“I want to know,” you go on, and the words come out colder than you’ve ever heard your voice. “Not just so we can stop it now. So we can stop it next time. And the time after that, if there is one.”

“And so what are you suggesting?”

“Everything else we’re doing might work. The love, the memories, the… heat. But that’s all reacting. Defence. Somebody has to go on the offensive, even just for five minutes. See what it says when it’s cornered.”

He flicks ash into the dirt, his hand scraping over his face, his moustache rasping in the quiet. “You do realise you’re talking about baiting something that’s been using a little kid as a meat suit.”

“Yeah,” you breathe. “Kind of hard to miss.”

His gaze drifts briefly toward the shed, where Joyce’s voice echoes, muffled but fierce. “You got any idea what you’re gonna say?”

You turn towards the sound, too. An ache digging into your heart. “Kinda. I know I have to give it something it wants. Information. Attention. The chance to feel clever.” You look up at him. “I also know I have to hit it where it lives.”

“In your professional opinion,” he says dryly, “where does an interdimensional smoke monster live?”

“In weakness,” you reply simply. “It doesn’t come here itself. It steals kids. It sends its pets. It uses people who are already hurting and twists that. Cowards do that. Bullies. Abusers. Things that get off on control.”

He flinches, just a little. You don’t comment.

“I’m… good with cowards,” you say in a rush. “Got a whole thesis’ worth of experience.”

He studies you. “What if it turns that back on you?” he asks carefully. “It gets inside your head, pokes all the old bruises. You ready for that?”

“No,” you reply honestly, your throat closing up. “I don’t think anyone’s ready for that. But I am… done letting this thing be the only one making people bleed.”

Silence hangs between you, thick and humming.

“And if you’re wrong?” he asks.

“I probably am. About a lot of it. But…” You swallow. You see Bob’s face again, bright and earnest in the Byers’ living room, lit up with the joy of solving, before it’s gone under teeth. “He died for a chance,” you say, voice low and pained. “He died so we could get out and keep trying. If all I do is sit and hold Will’s hand and say nice things, I’m going to see Bob every time I close my eyes and know I didn’t use everything I had to hit back.”

Hopper looks like he wants to say something, maybe shut you in the car and tell you to stay there, the way people have been trying to shut you away from dangerous things your whole life.

He doesn’t.

“You got what it takes?” he wonders, not unkindly, just ruthlessly efficient. “To look that thing in the eye and not blink?”

You watch the faint outline of Joyce’s shadow moving behind the boards.

“Let's find out.”

Hopper exhales heavily. “Goddamn kid.” Then, more quietly: “Don’t lose yourself in there.”

You huff a humourless little laugh, but nod, meeting his hard stare. Hopper flicks the cigarette away, stubs it out under his boot. His hand lands briefly, heavily, on your shoulder again.

“You come out,” he says. It’s not a request; it’s a command issued, and your back straightens with it. “Do whatever the hell you think you have to, but you come out.”

“Yes, sir,” you say, just like earlier at the lab.

You both turn back towards the shed.

. . .

By the time it’s your turn, the heat in the small space is suffocating.

Joyce went first, eyes wild and red, sweat plastering hair to her forehead, voice gone from sharing memories with the thing wearing her son’s face. Jonathan followed, quieter but no less intense, talking about baby brothers, mixtapes, and Castle Byers until his voice cracked. Mike went in last before you, shoulders squared, that strange mix of boy and soldier in his expression as he shared memories of their adventures together.

You stood back the entire time, unmoving beside Hopper, who kept passing Will’s silent Morse code messages through the walkie-talkie to the rest of the team back at the house, listening to the muffled rise and fall of their voices. You caught snippets—first day of kindergarten, broken crayons, D&D campaigns and sleepovers, and the word best friend said like it meant something sacred.

More than once, something growled back in reply.

Now it’s your turn.

Will sits in the centre, strapped to the chair. His head lolls slightly, breath shallow. His skin is an unhealthy mottled red and white from the heat, hair plastered to his forehead.

You drop into the creaky chair with a wince, elbows digging into your thighs. “Hey,” you call out softly. “It’s me.”

Will’s eyes drag open. There’s a second—a sliver of time—where they look like his. Brown, soft, scared and stubborn all at once. A little boy’s eyes.

“Mechanic?” he whispers. His voice rings faint, sandpapered raw by screaming.

Relief punches through you so hard your knees nearly go. You lean forward, trying to pull a smile forward.

He gulps down a breath, sweat beading on his upper lip. “It doesn’t… like you.”

“Join the club,” you say with a huffing laugh. “Listen, kiddo, I need to tell you something before it wakes up and starts being an asshole again, okay?”

His gaze flickers, unfocused.

“You’re not wrong.”

He blinks owlishly. “What?”

“The way you feel,” you tell him, and you see the realisation dawn. Your conversation at the garage feels like a lifetime ago now. “About the world. About being ‘out of phase’ with it. Like you’re a centimetre to the left of everybody else.” You shrug, hands resting on your knees. “You’re not broken. It’s just… you. And you’re better than okay.”

A bead slips down his temple, cuts a clean track through the grime. “I’m… not like other… kids,” he says, voice small.

“Thank God,” you say. “Other kids kinda suck.”

He lets out a breath that might once have been a laugh. Someone behind you huffs, probably Mike.

“You know what we are?” you pose. “People like us? We’re warning systems. We feel things other people train themselves not to look at. We notice. And yeah, it sucks, because half the time the things we notice are awful. No one believes us. They tell us we’re crazy, wrong, making it up.” You breathe in, heavy air scraping your throat. “But when the world starts… rotting from the inside, you’re the one who feels it first.”

He shuts his eyes briefly. “It showed me that,” he whispers. “It… it showed me how wrong I am. How… much easier everything would be if I was just—”

“Hey,” you cut in, a little sharper. “Don’t you dare think that. Ever.”

He cracks one eye open.

“You are the bravest kid I know,” you insist, every word a fact you lay between you like a plank on thin ice. “You still went trick-or-treating after everything last year. You still go to school. You still make dumb drawings and listen to tapes and argue about whether elves or dwarves are better, even with… all of this.” You wave vaguely at the air. “You keep showing up. That’s courage, Will. Not pretending you’re not scared. It’s walking into the scary thing anyway and doing what needs to be done.”

His throat works.

“They… they called me Zombie Boy,” he chokes out, a tear slipping down his cheek now, eyes glassy. “At school. Like I’m… like I’m… already gone.”

“Yeah, well, school kids are morons,” you say. “They don’t know jack about coming back from the dead.”

His gaze snags on yours. Something is shifting there. Something is pushing back, unhappy. You can feel it, like pressure building in the room.

“That thing?” you say, lower now, leaning in close, the chair creaking and ribs twinging painfully. “In the back of your head? It doesn’t pick the wrong ones. It picks the strong ones. The ones that can carry it. You are the toughest little bastard I’ve ever met. And I say that with love.”

His lips part, breath catching.

“Which,” you continue, and let your voice dip into something low and harsh, “brings me to the other… guest… in this conversation.”

The air goes still. Small hairs lift along your arms.

You don’t break eye contact with Will, but you shift your focus, just slightly, to the space behind the brown in his gaze, to the shadow coiled there.

“I know you can hear me, you fucking coward.”

There are a few sharp intakes of breath behind you. Jonathan surges forward in your peripheral, but Hopper snags his arm, shaking his head once. Something moves under Will’s skin. His pupils, already blown, seem to spread even wider, swallowing the white. Will’s breath hitches. His fingers twitch against the rope.

Then his face… changes. It’s small. The shift is tiny. The set of his mouth, the angle of his head, the way his eyes focus.

But you’ve known this kid for years now, watched him draw in the shop, listened to him argue about armour class and radio songs and whether or not ghosts realise they’re dead. You know what he looks like when he’s there.

This is something else.

A second voice layers under his. When he speaks, it’s still Will’s mouth, Will’s cracked lips, but the cadence is wrong. The vowels stretch in strange places, the consonants clipped.

“You are… noisy,” it says.

Every instinct you have screams at you to back up. To run for the hills. To drown this thing in fire and never look back. You stay where you are.

“Hi,” you say. “Nice to meet you, too.”

The… thing uses Will’s head to cock his neck, studying you.

“Why are you here?” you demand. “What do you want?”

“You already know,” it says. “You have… the map. Clever, clever.”

The words drop like stones in your stomach. So it saw that, through Will. Through his hands on paper, through your brain, laying it out, piece by piece.

“Expansion,” you state slowly, watching it closely. “You’re building. Growing.”

A faint twitch crosses his face. “This world is weak. Full of holes. Cracks. We… fill them.”

Your attention snags on the word. “We?” you echo. “There’s more of you, or is that royal we?”

A pause, long and tense. “We,” it says again. This time, you hear something else under it. Distance. Multiplicity. The sense of something huge looking at you through a keyhole, making a shiver crawl up your spine.

You think of the mind-flayer drawing—the spider-shape over Hawkins, limbs in everything, stretching for miles.

“And yet you wear people.” You don’t mean for it to sound quite so goading. “You don’t come here yourself.”

“This form,” it says through Will’s mouth, and you feel a pulse, like it’s indicating the tiny chair, the sweaty child, the ropes, “is… efficient. As is yours. You… build doors.”

You keep your expression schooled. “Or maybe you’re just a parasite. Too weak to stand on your own, so you hide in kids and send them to do your dirty work.”

Something darkens in his gaze. There it is.

“What are you… doing,” it says slowly, like it’s not used to being interrupted.

“I’m calling you what you are,” you answer brightly. “Weak. Pathetic.”

A tiny flicker runs across Will’s jaw. His fingers flex in the rope, jerking once. It takes everything in you not to flinch away.

“Careful,” it speaks slower now, each vowel chipped with ice. “You are still small.”

“You’re hiding in a thirteen-year-old,” you fire back, aiming for bored and landing closer to furious. “And somehow I’m the small one?”

The thing is quiet for a beat, shifting again. When it speaks next, a new layer emerges in its voice. Not anger, or anything equally as useful you could press on, but something else. Darker around the edges.

“You are… similar.”

Your stomach tightens. “To what?”

“To us,” it says. “You see systems. You reach. You would… build… if you could.”

It tilts Will’s head, the strange, almost-approximated curiosity making bile rise in your throat. “So much… anger,” it muses, almost teasingly. “So many cracks. You hate this place. These people. You would burn it if it meant… escape.”

You grit your teeth. “Difference is I don’t kill kids to do it.”

“You hurt,” it mocks. “You will hurt more. It is necessary. You will understand. You all cling. To each other. To your pain. Your… love. It blinds you.”

“It keeps us alive,” you argue back.

“It makes you… weak,” it urges. “You came for him from the fire. You will come again. You will… walk into the dark. We will be waiting.”

You think of Bob again. His hand on that breaker. The way he looked at you before he shoved you out of the way. An odd twinge passes over your arm, otherwise uninjured, and you roll your shoulder to dispel the distant, cold ache.

“Maybe,” you concede quietly. “Or maybe we’ll keep coming until you choke on us.”

The thing tilts Will’s head, studying you. “You cannot win. This town, this world. It will be remade. You should be grateful. Your hurt will… end.”

Something in you flares hot.

“I don’t want your mercy,” you snarl, baring your teeth. “I want you gone.”

Its gaze flicks to your chest, like it can see the bruise blooming under your shirt, the place where its dog hit you, the place where Bob’s shove saved your life. The thing leans forward as far as the ropes allow, bringing Will’s face inches from yours.

“We will take… everything,” it says softly, eagerly. “We will take your mother. Your friends. The boy who bleeds for you. The one who left you.”

It shouldn’t know that. It shouldn’t be able to reach that far into you.

You feel your face go cold. “Yeah?” you breathe. “Come try.”

Then, from somewhere outside this hot little box, the phone rings. The house phone, shrill and old. Impossible to ignore. The sound slices through the shed.

Will’s head jerks toward the door like a dog hearing a whistle. The thing inside him pauses. You see it, the way it tracks the noise. The way it takes in the slight slant of light under the door, the smell of wood and oil and rust, the way it extrapolates.

A slow, horrible smile bends Will’s mouth.

“Found you,” it croons happily.

Your blood runs cold. For a second you can’t move. It’s like someone poured concrete into your veins. Then a large hand is on your shoulder, whisking you towards the door, letting a rush of colder, equally panicked air in.

“It knows! It knows where we are—”

Hopper is halfway across the yard already, radio in hand, shouting something about code red into it. Steve is behind him, Dustin and Lucas and Max clustering like a flock of terrified birds in the doorway of the house, Nancy gripping Jonathan’s arm when he rushes to her side.

“I told them not to call here,” Joyce says, frantic. “I told them—it must have been someone else.”

“It doesn’t matter,” you say, chest tight. “It heard.”

You don’t say: and it saw me.

You can still feel that gaze on you, even out here. Like a hook sunk into the soft part behind your breastbone. For a moment, everything is motion. Hopper issues orders, Steve herds kids inside, everyone half-running, half-tripping over each other to get Will out of the chair, out of the shed, back into the house.

The plan shifts under your feet.

“We can’t stay out here,” Nancy concludes, breathless, as she helps Jonathan wrestle the belt off Will’s chest. “If those things come—”

“We hole up inside,” Hopper insists. “Board the windows. Use the damn nails for something other than hanging Christmas lights this time.”

“What about the gate?” Lucas gasps. “The lab?”

“They’re on their own for the moment,” Hopper says grimly. “I passed the code on. Owens knows what to do. Our job is not to get eaten in the meantime.”

They haul Will back toward the house. His head lolls again, sweat dripping onto the dirt. The thing inside him is quiet now, holding its breath.

Like you.

The Byers’ living room becomes a bunker in minutes.

Furniture shoved against the doors. Boards nailed heavier over the already-covered windows. Space heaters dragged in to keep the temperature high—heat the thing hates, Will hates, everyone hates. Hopper passes Nancy a gun, who wields it as if it were an extension of her arm, reloading it. Your movements are automatic. Drag. Hammer. Tape. Your ribs burn; your hands shake, but you keep moving. In between tasks, your mind replays the shed, that voice, that sense of something ancient and cold considering you.

You’ve wanted to see it for months. Now, you feel like you’re standing under a magnifying glass.

“They’re coming,” Dustin announces shakily, staring out through a crack in the boarded window. “Oh shit, they’re actually—”

His words cut off. Everyone goes still.

You hear it.

Distant, at first. A chorus of shrieks. The crash of underbrush, the ripping of something heavy moving fast through the woods. Joyce grips Will’s hand tighter. Mike steps closer to him, lips pressed thin. Jonathan’s knuckles are white around his weapon. Steve takes up a position near the front door, shoulders squared, bat raised.

You brace yourself, clenching a shovel in your hands.

You’ve seen what those things do. You can still feel its body slamming into yours, the way the bruise along your side woke you up every time the car hit a bump on the way here. The shrieks get louder, closing in fast.

Then—

They stop. Not fade. Not recede. They cut out. One second, the world outside is all teeth clanking and fury, impeding death right outside—the next utter, disconcerting silence.

You don’t trust it.

“Why’d they stop?” Max whispers. “Why did they—”

The front porch creaks. Everyone whirls toward the door. Steve notches the bat higher. Hopper raises his gun, levelling it at the door. Dustin clutches his makeshift shield. Lucas grips the wrist-rocket. Max’s hand finds your sleeve, her breath shaky.

The door rattles.

Once. Twice. Then, slowly, it swings inward.

A small figure stands framed in the doorway. Curly hair, torn flannel, nose dripping blood.

“Holy shit,” you breathe, the shovel in your hands sagging towards the floor.

Eleven looks different from the last time you saw her a year ago, blinking at the wall of lights like she could see through them. She’s taller now. Harder around the edges. The air around her hums with power you haven’t felt in months.

“Hi,” she says, voice quiet and steady. Her eyes flick over the room, taking in the barricades, the fear, Will on the couch, you clutching your sore ribs. “I’m back.”

The breath you didn’t realise you were holding leaves your lungs all at once.

Hope is a strange thing. It hurts almost as much as fear. You feel the hook of the monster’s attention still lodged in you, heavy and cold. But for the first time since the lab, since the tunnels, since the shed, something else sits beside it in your chest.

She’s back.

And just like that, the board shifts again.

AN: And now I shall go and sleep until Thursday and then stress about getting the chapter out!

Real talk tho…. I seriously appreciate your feedback, and any feedback/thoughts on this chapter especially would be greatly appreciated. Biggest single chapter I've ever done was 36k overall for my JW fic so lets see if we can top that one day lol. This chapter covered the bulk of s2 as you can tell, and I usually hate doing these chapters because I don't want to just repeat the script, so hope you liked the take I went for, adjusting small things there and now to keep things at least marginally interesting/fresh. Thankfully from next chapter we more or less return to my favourite territory of free reign. As annoying as this was to write, it was crucial for setting up Mechanic's future arc ((¬‿¬)), and to also give you a small glimpse into her relationships with other characters.

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