#project sunshine

Square mile by square mile, they searched and charted the Upside Down in hopes of finding Vecna or a clue as to where he was hiding, but over a year in, they had nothing to show for it. Yet, they were almost certain the monster wasn’t dead, but rather healing and waiting for his next attack. So, they continued to look, but the lack of a show for it was putting everyone on edge. 

“Besides, you think when we kill Vecna that everyone will magically forget the deaths of Chrissy, Fred, and Patrick? They won’t,” Dustin continued. “I so much as mention D&D in public and I get looks like I murdered them.” 

Eddie sighed and sank deeper into the old couch. “I don’t think reinstating Hellfire is going to change much, Henderson.” 

“If people see that it’s just a club, not a cult, of nerds playing make-believe, then maybe they’ll at least start to question why Hellfire was so bad in the first place. Maybe it won’t wipe your record clean, but it may get people to use their pea-sized brains to think a little bit harder about who the real bad guys are here!” 

Tamera, having sat and watched the conversation in silence along with Robin, cleared her throat and looked at Dustin with something between a grimace and sympathy. “There are still too many people who are convinced the ‘earthquake’ was some act of God, like a punishment for Hawkins letting a supposed evil, devil-worshipping cult go unchecked for so long. A dozen people died that night, when the Gates opened. And a lot of those people’s friends and family blame Hellfire. This goes way beyond Chrissy, Fred, and Patrick.” 

Dustin threw his hands up as he stopped his pacing, glaring at all of the older teens. “So what then? Eddie’s name is never cleared, and he has to live in this shitty basement for the rest of his life? Is that what you guys want?” 

Steve watched as Eddie’s jaw ticked from how hard he was clenching it. For a moment, he worried Eddie would lash out at Dustin, not undeserving, but it certainly wouldn’t make anything any better. However, the flicker of anger in Eddie’s eyes faded into a look of silent retreat as he took a deep breath. 

“The second this lockdown is over, I’m skipping town, and I’ll hunker down with Wayne in his cabin in Tennessee. It’s not like I planned on rotting in this hellhole of Hawkins anyway.” 

“So you’re just gonna run away?” Dustin didn’t seem like he meant for his words to have such a bite, but they landed harshly on the concert floor. 

“Hey,” Steve quickly said, raising his voice just enough to tell Dustin to cool it. Neither he nor Eddie had anything else to say, and the kid started to make his way toward the stairs. He started to climb before the door above opened, and a series of footsteps started to make their way down. 

Dustin deflated a little and retreated back into the basement, lingering at the bottom of the stairs with any trace of anger wiped clean from his expression. 

Joining the group was the Hopper clan, along with Joyce. 

El and Leia greeted Dustin with hugs, making him smile and the remaining tension in the air vanish just like that. Both of them had a way of pulling Dustin out of his moods with ease, even quicker than the other party members. They were like three peas in a pod, or weird triplets in another life. 

“Everyone wanted to join us today, so I figured we’d do it here,” El explained, looking to Steve. “I radioed the others to meet us here, too, if they wanted.” 

El had started visiting Sunshine in the void the day after she was taken. Between her search for Vecna and Max, she liked to ensure that her sister was okay, okay as could be considering her circumstances. More often than not, El invited Steve to sit with her when she checked up on Sunshine. Steve found himself in the Hopper’s cabin at least once a week, seated on the floor of the living room in a semi-circle of superpowered children while El relayed what she saw of Sunshine inside the Void. 

There were rare occasions when Sunshine would be speaking, and El would push her voice through the radio or walkie beside her. And while Steve tried to hide it, when he heard Sunshine's voice, tears always welled up in his eyes. None of the kids ever mentioned it, but Kali would grab the box of tissues and pretend to blow her nose before sliding the box in the middle of the circle. Leia would lean her head on his arm as her own storm of emotions took over, but also like a reminder that he wasn’t alone in that moment. 

At least once a month, El would have her visits at the radio station, this month’s earlier than it was supposed to be, proving how antsy everyone was getting. It often fueled them to continue their plotting and planning for ways to get her back and find Vecna. 

While El set up her radio and tied a blindfold over her eyes, the rest of the party arrived, along with Nancy and Jonathan. 

The basement was crowded, but in a way that was comforting to Steve. He sat on the armrest of the couch and tapped his fingers against a mug of coffee, how many of which he had consumed over the course of the day lost to him. 

No one ever knew what El would see when she visited her, and that prompted a gut-wrenching nervousness to gnaw away at his insides. It was like his body and mind wanted to prepare him for the worst-case scenario every time; it was exhausting and didn’t help his already lack of sleep issue. 

“Ready?” El asked the room, even though it was her doing all of the work. They replied with a series of ‘yes’ and ‘yeah.’ Then, the lights flickered. There were several seconds of heavy silence before she spoke again. “She’s talking to that lady again.” 

“Dr. Kay?” asked Hopper. No one knew exactly who the woman was, only that she was seen most often with or talking to Sunshine. 

“Yes.” There was a short pause before the doctor’s voice poured through the radio. 

“Helping us helps you.” 

“Helps me do what, exactly?” Sunshine’s voice filled the room. A series of sharp intakes of breath followed from the group, Steve being one of them. There was a liveliness to her voice that they hadn’t heard in a while, a snark that was almost enough to bring a smile to Steve’s lips. “Helps me continue to lie here while you bleed me dry?” 

Almost every time El visited, she explained that Sunshine was hooked up to an IV. Instead of something being administered to her, something was being taken from her: her blood. 

“You are a small piece in something much bigger than you can under-” 

Sunshine cut the doctor off. “Funny. I’ve heard that one before. And do you know what happened to the person who said it to me? He died what sounded like a pretty painful death. I’ve come to learn that history has a way of repeating itself; so, I’d be careful, Doctor.” 

“Doctor Brenner wasn’t as smart a man as he claimed to be.” 

“And you’re not as smart as you pretend to be.” 

“She’s getting braver talkin’ to them,” Hopper said, his expression unreadable and eyes trained on the wall behind El. 

Standing up from her spot on the couch, looking ready to start pacing, Nancy followed, “Or she’s stopped caring about the consequences of what she says.” 

Her words sank like a stone in Steve’s stomach. For over a year, Sunshine had been stuck in what probably resembled the Lab she had grown up in, reliving it all over again. And as much as Steve didn’t want to admit it, he knew that there was a chance Nancy was right. Sunshine had told him time and time again that she couldn’t do it again, and yet she was. She was right back in the hands of some doctor, being poked and prodded and researched. The sheer idea of anyone laying a hand on Sunshine, against her will, burned like kerosene inside of Steve. It smothered his sadness in anger; he didn’t know which one was worse. 

“Is that so?” replied Dr. Kay. 

Sunshine hummed. “What? You think you’re the first person, the first team, with the idea to take my blood and study it after Brenner and Miller?” 

Confusion then swept across the room in a series of furrowed brows and shared glances to see if anyone knew what she was talking it.

“Excuse me?” 

“It really is funny how you and the rest of your government and military friends act so smart, so superior to everyone else. Yet, who was it who figured out the Russians had infiltrated Hawkins, hm? Oh, right! A couple of bored teenagers did. Those Russians were right under your guy’s nose, and you had no idea. You had no idea they were poking around this place, the Upside Down or whatever you call it. That doesn’t seem superior to me, but what do I know?” 

“Wait,” Mike said suddenly. “She just called the Upside Down ‘this place.’ As in…as in she’s in the Upside Down, right now?” 

“What do the Russians have to do with your blood?” There was an edge to Dr. Kay’s voice, like a warning. 

“They knew about the Upside Down, somehow. But they didn’t know about me. I thought they did, but it wasn’t them who was stalking me in the mall; that was you and your men. Besides, the look on their faces when they saw me use my abilities wasn’t of people who expected it,” Sunshine began, sending Steve back to the summer of ‘85, of polaroids that Dustin stole from some man in a suit and a Russian code drawn on the white board in the backroom of Scoops Ahoy. 

She continued, “After the Russians captured us, they had the same idea you did, only years before. They drew my blood. I can’t say what or what they ended up doing with it because we escaped; They weren’t the smartest either. It just has to be a bit humiliating for you, doesn’t it? Not only the fact that some kids on a summer break outsmarted not just the Russians, but were miles ahead of our own government. And that your idea wasn’t even original.” 

There was a harsh sound that came through the radio, the unmistakable sharp contact of a palm hitting a cheek. El took an equally sharp breath. 

Robin, from across the room, found Steve’s gaze, her eyes wide. “That must’ve happened when they separated her,” she said before noticing the increasingly confused gazes being tossed around. “When we were captured, the Russians tried to interrogate us separately. Then they threw Steve and me together, but not Sunshine.” 

“Captured and interrogated?” Hopper repeated, his voice raising just slightly. “What the hell are you talking about?” 

“Be quiet!” El shouted, silencing everyone instantly. 

“If you really believe that you and your friends are so clever, so much smarter than us, then why are you still here?” Sunshine did reply to Dr. Kay, and Steve could practically hear the sick smile twisting up on the woman’s face. “I think you all just got lucky. You happened to be at the wrong place at the right time. But it looks to me like your luck has run out. You’re not escaping this place, and your friends aren’t coming to get you, not this time.” 

“She’s wrong!” El said, like she was trying to tell Sunshine, trying to yell it through the Void so somehow, someway it would reach her sister’s ears. 

And while Sunshine couldn’t hear or see El, somehow, she did know because in a much quieter, almost timid voice, she said, “You’re wrong.” 

“I don’t think I am.” 

El tore the bandana from her eyes and hastily wiped the trail of blood into the sleeve of her flannel. 

Mike was the first to jump up and move to the desk cluttered with papers of notes and plans and other information they collected over the past several months. “This changes everything!” he said. “If Sunshine is being held in the Upside Down, then we have the upper hand.” 

“We do?” questioned Jonathan. 

Mike nodded. “We know the terrain and some of the rules it plays by. Hopper’s been exploring it for months-” 

“Then how come he hasn’t found a whole military base?” asked Dustin. “I doubt they’re using an Upside Down infected house or something. They’ve had to build some sight of operation there.” 

Hopper stepped beside Mike, glancing down at the strewn papers too. “Probably because I haven’t set foot on the far side of town yet. There’s plenty of open space to construct some kind of base while still having the cover of the woods on three sides if they need it. If I had to guess, that’s where they are and where those trucks head during every Crawl. They’re not scooping the place out; they’ve already settled in.” 

“That’s where they’re keeping Sunshine. It’s got to be.” 

“Not to cast doubt on this, but it’s still a military base, yes?” Mike and Hopper both nodded at Tamera before she spoke again. “How exactly are we supposed to break in on that side if we couldn’t come up with a way to break in on this side?” 

“During the next Crawl, I’ll scope out the area, see if there’s any access points that are weaker,” said Hopper. 

“Once we know the layout, even just a little, we can leverage the element of surprise and our knowledge of the Upside Down, break in, and rescue Sunshine,” Mike said. 

Hopper shot him a look. “There is no we, Wheeler. You kids aren’t going anywhere near the Upside Down, let alone this base.” 

Dustin and Lucas mirrored the offended look on Mike’s face. 

“You’re gonna need all hands-on deck for this rescue operation, you know that!” argued Dustin. “This isn’t a hunt for Vecna; this is getting Sunshine back. We’re talking about the rescue of a party member, which means-” 

“This isn’t a game,” snapped Hopper. 

Lucas sighed. “We just want the best odds at getting her back.” 

“I know, kid. I know that. But we’ve discussed this a million times.” When there was a shot at getting Sunshine back, Steve and Nancy had already insisted on being the ones to help do so; there was no room for argument. Nancy was the best shot next to Hopper, and Steve had a kind of dangerous desperation. Anyone else, above the age of eighteen, who wanted to help was more than welcome, but the only help the kids would be doing would be from afar, where there was no chance of capture or injury. 

“There’s no use in getting ahead of ourselves until I have a chance to see this place for myself, alright?” Hopper looked around the room for a reply from everyone, which came with slumped shoulders and rolled eyes. 

The smallest sliver of hope started to tangle with the pit of worries and rocks in Steve’s stomach. He didn’t want to get too hopeful, but he couldn’t keep spiraling deeper. He was on a very thin line. 

If Hopper checked out the base and found a way in, there was a real chance they could get their Sunshine back sooner rather than later. Steve would be able to hear her voice again, not through a radio but from her lips. He would be able to hold her again and tell her how sorry he was for breaking his promise to keep her safe. 

“We can’t wait too long,” El said, her eyes glossy. “We can’t let her lose hope that we’re coming.” 

“This is Sunshine we’re talking about,” Joyce gently tried to remind them. 

Kali, however, shook her head solemnly at the woman who had volunteered alongside Hopper to look out for her. “Even people like Danielle can only hold onto hope for so long. She’s been here before, remember. Just because it’s not Dr. Brenner and Miller doesn’t mean it’s not like the Lab. Hope is a rare thing to keep inside a place like that.” 

“We’ll get her back before that happens,” said Mike as he stood tall instead of his usual hunched form. There was a look that glittered in his eyes that Steve remembered from that night Mike had insisted on their venturing into the tunnels under Hawkins to set them ablaze to buy more time for El to close the Gate. It was the look of a leader. 

It was odd, Steve thought, how just a kid could command enough presence that made you want to follow him, but Mike Wheeler had just that. 

Hopper nodded. Whether he nodded because he believed Mike or because he didn’t want to spread any more doubt amongst the group, Steve didn’t know. And he didn’t have the chance to try to figure it out by just the look on Hopper’s face before the man’s gaze shifted to look at Steve, of all people, before it flickered onto Robin. 

“Harrington, Buckley, are to explain this ‘Russian interrogation’ that you both decided not to mention to anyone?” 

Steve winced, and Robin chewed down hard on her lower lip before she laughed uncomfortably. “Geez, that was ages ago…” 

“And it sounds a lot worse than it was,” Steve added. All things considered, what others in the room had gone through was much worse than their stint with the Russians. 

Hopper pinched the bridge of his nose. “That night at the mall, you said you fought one Russian.” Steve was surprised he even remembered that after everything. 

Dustin joined the conversation. “Technically, that’s true. Steve did fight one Russian, and he won!” 

“Right,” Robin nodded. “He couldn’t exactly fight the others because our hands were tied…literally. That didn’t stop them from beating the shit out of him, though.” 

Steve squirmed under everyone’s sudden gaze falling onto him. He cleared his throat. “Yeah, but that’s kind of my thing at this point, you know? Like, oh, Steve got beat up, again.” No one laughed at his lame attempt to bring humor to the situation. 

“There’s a difference between a playground fight and the Russian military,” said Hopper. “You said they interrogated both of you?” 

“Yeah,” Steve said with a sigh. “They thought we were working for somebody, like our military, I guess. They refused to believe that a couple of kids working at the mall cracked their stupid code.” 

“In a day, mind you,” added Robin. “They just kept asking and asking who we worked for. I don’t know if they thought we were just immune to interrogation or what. But then they brought out the drugs and-” 

Joyce then stepped in, her eyes widening at Robin’s words. “Wait, drugs? They drugged you?” 

Steve nodded. “Just Robs and me, not Sunshine. I think it was like some kind of truth serum, which I didn’t know was a real thing. But we were telling the truth, so that didn’t work either.” He scratched the back of his head. “I don’t really remember much between the creepy Russian doctor with the drugs and puking it all out of our system in the mall bathroom, honestly.” 

“Sunshine got out of the room they stuck her in,” Dustin said, filling in some of the gaps. “Erica and I couldn’t find a way out, so we were gonna come back and try to rescue them. Luckily, we ran into Sunshine before we ran into any Russians, then we escaped the base but were stuck in the mall until you guys came.” 

“Jesus,” Hopper muttered. “And no one thought to mention this when we regrouped?” 

“There were more important things going on,” Steve said. “It didn’t seem like a big deal. Besides, we were fine. We are fine.” 

Robin nodded. “That doctor guy, Owens, had his people check us out a couple of days later, and they said the drugs didn’t do anything weird to our bodies besides make us confess our secrets to each other.” Her words seemed to do little to reassure the group. 

The truth was, if they hadn’t faced a giant monster constructed of melted Hawkins residents shortly after their encounter with the Russians, maybe it would have left more of a mark on Steve and Robin. Sure, they had a couple of physical scars from it, a fear of getting shots at the doctors, and nightmares now and then. But the whole ordeal had been quickly overshadowed by the Mindflayer, which is why Steve never bothered to bring it up to anyone besides Robin and occasionally Sunshine after the fact. 

“I don’t see what this has to do with anything,” Steve said. 

Hopper looked like he had more to say, but refrained with a sigh. “We wait until the next Crawl to do anything more about Danielle, understood?” 

Later that evening, Steve snuck away to the roof of the radio station. The party had stuck around to soak up some more time together with Hopper’s kids, since they couldn’t run freely around Hawkins with each other anymore. Usually, when they would get together, there wasn’t much time for them to act like kids, but they fit in the time where they could. 

Steve needed some fresh air, and the roof was usually a nice and quiet place to think. 

As the sky started to turn from blue to purple, he searched for the first sign of stars. He would say they reminded him of Sunshine, but there were very few things that didn’t remind Steve of Sunshine. From the stars in the sky to the smell of coffee, it was like she was everywhere but nowhere at the same time. 

“Harrington,” Hopper’s voice broke through Steve’s thoughts, causing him to hang his head at the interruption. 

“If you’re here to lecture me some more, I’m really not in the mood,” he said, not turning around to look at the man. Hopper stayed quiet as he moved across the roof to stand beside Steve at the rooftop’s edge. “I’m sorry for not saying anything, but it was and still is the least of our problems, okay?” 

Hopper sighed before the smell of smoke filled Steve’s nose. He glanced at the cigarette as Hopper took a long drag and exhaled, letting the smoke be carried off by the summer breeze. 

“I thought you quit?” 

“I cut back,” Hopper corrected. “This is just a little bit better of a vice than drinking. And as much as the kids hate it, I’ve gotta do something to keep my head on right.” 

Steve just hummed in response and returned his gaze to the sky. He’d thought about starting smoking again, something to take a little bit of the edge off. But he knew Dustin would hound him with health facts, and if…when he saw Sunshine again, she’d probably smell it on him and make that face she often had when he used to smoke. So, he stopped himself from buying a pack whenever he was at the gas station. 

“I’m not here to lecture you. That wasn’t what that conversation downstairs was for. I just wanted you and Buckley to understand that there are things you can’t joke your way through.” 

That feeling returned to Steve, that heaviness that made him want to sink to the floor. If Hopper wasn’t there, he would have. 

“I know it’s not a joke.” His voice came out quiet, tired. “But it’s over. It’s been over, and a lot worse things have happened since. The only thing I care about is getting Sunshine back and killing this stupid monster. That’s what I’m worried about, not the scary shit we’ve already been through.” 

“So you admit it was scary?” 

Steve rolled his eyes, but the phantom pain of his swollen eye from Russian knuckles flared up in his right eye. He blinked a couple of times until it went away. 

“Not as scary as the Mindflayer, or when I thought Sunshine was dead after fighting the thing. It wasn’t as scary as Vecna or when Max was dead for a minute.” Steve could’ve added more, like Barb vanishing from his backyard or being ambushed by Demo-Dogs with a trio of middle schoolers he was supposed to protect, but he figured Hopper got the point he was trying to make. Steve had faced down a lot of scary things in his life, and he had a feeling more were to come. 

“Fair,” said Hopper. “But those Russians sure do pack a hell of a punch, huh?” 

If anyone had any reason to be fearful or have nightmares of Russians, it was the man who spent months trapped in a Russian prison. 

“You would know better than me,” Steve shrugged. 

That got a chuckle out of Hopper. “I’m not trying to make this a competition, Steve.” The use of his first name caught him off guard. To Hopper, he was ‘Harrington.’ “I’m trying to say that I understand what you went through. And as much as you want to play it off, I know those men don’t pull their punches.” 

Steve pressed the palms of his hands against the stone ledge that circled the roof and squeezed his eyes shut before he said, “That wasn’t the scary part.” Steve could take a punch; he had taken several, and they weren’t what kept him up at night. “It was knowing that I was responsible for Erica and Dustin and still letting them go down in that base in the first place. I let Robin get dragged into this mess. And I couldn’t stop them from taking Sunshine and hurting her.” Really, Steve could have a hundred hits, but he couldn’t handle failing the people he cared about. Yet, he kept doing so. 

“I didn’t care what happened to me,” he admitted. “I cared about what happened to them.” 

Hopper snuffed out his cigarette. “If you keep blaming yourself for things beyond your control, you’ll drive yourself crazy.” 

“That’s the thing, though, those weren’t things way beyond my control. I didn’t shut Dustin down when he started pursuing the Russians. I didn’t stop Max from being Vecna-bait. And I didn’t stay with Sunshine even though the day before, she and Kali told me that someone had followed them. Those are all things I could have controlled, somehow and someway. Maybe not entirely, but I could have…I should have done something!” 

Hopper turned to face him, grasping Steve’s shoulder. “I need you to listen to me.” Steve didn’t want to. He didn’t need anything person telling him he shouldn’t blame himself, because he did, and nothing was going to change that. “Just because you could have done something differently doesn’t mean the outcome would’ve changed any. Trust me. For years, I was in this…this hole because I blamed myself for what happened to my daughter, Sarah. And I still do, sometimes. But I know that if I kept digging myself deeper into that hole of blame and guilt and what-ifs, I never would have gotten out. What good would that have done anyone? I know I wouldn’t be standing here right now. I know those kids downstairs wouldn’t be mine. 

So, you know what I did? What I’m still doing? I’m crawling out of the hole, no matter how hard and awful that crawl may be. And if you want Sunshine back, which I know you do, you gotta start crawling out of that hole too, son.” 

Unwilling tears welled up in Steve's eyes as he cast his gaze down at his beat-up sneakers. More often than not, he felt more guilt than hope. And he knew that was a dangerous thing. 

He closed his eyes and took a breath before he met Hopper’s gaze. Steve’s throat was tight, and he was scared he’d actually start crying if he spoke. Instead, he nodded, conveying what he needed to. Hopper smiled sadly at him and gave his shoulder an affectionate squeeze before he dropped his hand. 

“Get home and get some sleep, okay? El and the twins look forward to yours and Buckley’s radio show too much in the morning for you to oversleep.” 

Steve let out a wet laugh and nodded again before Hopper turned to leave the roof. 

Sunshine had attempted to escape a handful of times, enough to get on almost everyone’s nerves, but she wasn’t close to giving up. Slowly, she cut down their number of soldiers and doctors, whether they revived a medical tool to a body part or if Sunshine gathered enough strength to use her abilities on them. It didn't even matter how little progress she made through the building and toward an exit; progress was progress. Each attempt offered her more insight into the new Lab. 

In her latest escape, she opted to take a left, as she had learned previously that the right was a dead end. 

Using the stolen keycard, she swiped it on the panel beside the door at the end of the hall and waited for the green light. It flickered, and the door unlocked, just as someone finally sounded the alarms, a whole minute later than usual. That meant she had a little bit more time. 

She hurried through the door and quickly but quietly shut it behind her. Sunshine expected to see another hallway, but she was in an empty room. A strong, sterile smell pricked her nose, similar to the smell of the alcohol pads they used on her skin before they stuck her with a needle. 

There was a doorway across from her, but with no door. Instead, it held a plastic curtain. She pressed her back against the wall beside the doorway and peered through the plastic, which distorted the image on the other side slightly. There was a gurney against the far wall of the other room, with a white sheet covering the expanse of it, hiding something underneath. Beside the gurney was an unplugged monitor, screen blank, and wires dangling at its side. 

Sunshine’s stomach dropped as she thought about what or who was underneath the white sheet. The coast was clear of doctors and soldiers, so she used her trembling, sweaty hands to move the plastic aside and step into the next room. Her heart raced in time with the blaring alarms overhead, which drowned out nearly everything. 

The sterile smell was even stronger inside the room, like she had stuck one of the alcohol pads to her nose. 

She crept silently across the room in her tin-soled slippers toward the gurney. Holding her breath, she lifted up the corner of the sheet to reveal dark brown hair that framed a pale face. 

It was a woman, her eyes shut softly and cheeks sunken in. Sunshine rested the sheet back over her face before she squeezed her eyes shut and let out a shaky breath. She wondered who the poor woman was and what they had done to her. Into her mind crept the image of Sunshine in a similar position, dead, forgotten. 

Sunshine knew she was wasting time she could have spent looking for an exit, but her body felt too heavy to move out of the room. They would find her soon, stick a taser in her side until she passed out, then she’d wake up back in that awful room, in an uncomfortable bed, with the IV stuck back in her arm until it felt like she had no more blood to give them. 

Then, between the short lulls in the alarms, and above the sound of her pulse in her ears, she heard a different sound coming from the very room she was in. It landed on her ears in a different kind of discomfort. Sunshine managed to turn around, only to be hit with a nearly overwhelming sickness and confusion. 

There, tucked in the corner of the room, underneath the harsh lighting, was a baby. 

A baby, all red-faced and crying. Sunshine swallowed the rising bile in her throat and moved to stand in front of the bassinet, one that resembled the bassinets back inside Brenner’s Lab, where stolen babies slept unsoundly. 

The baby had a tuft of dark brown hair, the same color as the dead woman’s across the room. A pink band was loosely on its wrist; Sunshine assumed that it was meant to label the baby as a girl. The baby had her eyes squeezed shut, and her mouth parted as little, high-pitched cries fell out of it. 

Sunshine just stared at the little girl as her mind worked overtime to put the pieces together. It had to be the woman’s baby; why else would they be in the same room together? But why? 

As if something was pulling her toward the answer, she glanced up at the metal pole beside the bassinet. Hooked on the pole was a clear pouch full of deep red liquid. Written across the pouch in black marker was 007. 

Sunshine snapped her gaze back onto the baby, her hands shaking even harder as she reached out to gently brush her thumb against the baby’s cheek. For a split second, the baby opened her eyes, her screams turning into brief hiccups in her throat. Little, so softly illuminated, Sunshine’s almost missed it, golden colored eyes peered back at her. 

As if someone had struck her, Sunshine stumbled back from the bassinet and doubled over. The baby squeezed her eyes closed once more and began to cry again. A pain suddenly exploded in Sunshine's head, not too unfamiliar to the feeling of when she overused her abilities. Only, she had barely used them during that escape attempt. With the amount of blood Dr. Kay had been taking from her, Sunshine was already in a much weaker state, and she quickly learned that using her abilities drained her energy significantly. 

Yet, her head suddenly felt like it was imploding, like someone had reached their hands inside her skull and was squeezing her brain mercilessly. She grabbed her head with a pained scream as she fell to her knees, the energy sucked right out of her body in an instant. But she wasn’t down long. Two sets of rough hands hauled her up from the floor by her upper arms. Her chin was grabbed, forcing her head up before she peeled her eyes open. 

The cold eyes of Dr. Kay stared back at her. Sunshine didn’t have to ask the question she was thinking; the doctor already knew. 

“Is this not what you expected?” Dr. Kay asked, the smallest hint of a smirk on her thin lips. 

Tears fell from Sunshine’s eyes, and her chin involuntarily trembled in the different mix of pain that swirled through her. Dr. Kay let out a breath before she removed what looked like a TV remote from her lab coat pocket and pressed a button. The pain in Sunshine’s head subsided, leaving her breathing heavily and halfway limp between two soldiers. 

“Y-You can’t do t…this,” Sunshine managed to croak out, her head fuzzy. 

“It’s already been done,” Dr. Kay said, moving away from Sunshine and standing in front of the crying baby. “I will be honest with you, though. Not all of our trials have yielded the results we wanted, but I’m confident that, within time, they will.” She paused, looking back at Sunshine. “And that’s all thanks to you.” 

Sunshine felt like she was going to be sick. Her stomach churned as she watched the baby cry out for the dead woman to hold her, who never would again, if she was even given the chance to before she passed. 

She had feared Dr. Kay would eventually try to finish what Dr. Brenner and Miller had started, but she hadn’t expected that fear to already have come true. 

The first child of the new lab had already been born. 

[...]

The only hair salon in Hawkins was booked and busy due to the town lockdown. The more affluent people of Hawkins couldn’t venture to their fancy hairdressers out of town, and there was no place better to get all of the town gossip. Tamera had scored a job washing towels and hair, all while hopefully gaining enough experience for a future in cosmetology. 

Since the library was split in town and in the part of town taken over by the military, she needed a new gig. She also knew that the church was only the second-best place in town to get the latest inside scoop on what residents felt and thought about the whole lockdown. The hair salon was where women tended to speak their minds more freely, undisturbed by their hovering or bored husbands. They passed information like it was their God-given purpose to gossip, which was perfect for Tamera. Sure, not all of the information was useful, but what she usually left was something to report back to the group. 

“You’ll never guess what I overheard,” Mrs. Finch said, her head full of rollers and her hairdresser listening intently. “One of those soldiers, supposedly, hit that little spitfire Wheeler girl, the oldest one.” 

Tamera tried not to react as she swept up the growing pile of hair that littered the floor. She swept slowly, taking her sweet time as she listened to the conversation. 

“No,” gasped Mrs. Finch’s hairdresser, Maybell. “Karen’s daughter? Why in the world would they do such a thing?” 

Mrs. Finch shrugged. “This is all according to my neighbor. She said that the girl is known for being pushy. Nancy, I think her name is? She interned at the Hawkins Post a few summers ago and asked Daisy if she could interview her about some recalled fertilizer. I guess the girl wanted answers that Daisy wasn’t giving. Like Daisy knew the first thing about fertilizer,” Mrs. Finch scoffed lightly. “The only thing Daisy knows about yard work is how to prune her roses.” 

Tamera resisted the urge to smile. Nancy was pushy, but in the way a journalist needed to be. She admired that about Nancy, even if she was sometimes a little too intense. Nancy was just passionate, which was something more people in Hawkins needed to be. 

“Well, pushy or not, there’s no need to hit a young girl! Did anyone say something to that soldier, or report him to a superior? That’s completely unacceptable!” Maybe said, her fingers working quickly to roll by the last strand of Mrs. Finch’s hair into a roller. 

Mrs. Finch opened her mouth to respond, but was cut off by the woman in the seat to her right, who was getting her grays touched up. “These are trained men. I doubt a mouthy teen is enough to upset them. Maybe it just looked like she was hit. Remember, ladies, these men are here to protect us, not harm us.” 

Tamera clutched the broom handle too tightly; her hands started to hurt. She could have snapped the thing in two if she put her mind to it. Biting down on her tongue, she resisted the urge to say something, but anger coursed through her. 

Of course they thought the military was there to ‘keep them safe.’ And to do that, they had to kidnap a girl from her home and poke around a dangerous world, putting the entire town at risk. 

Maybell finished rolling up Mrs. Finch’s hair and placed her hands on her hips, brows furrowed as she looked between the two clients in the mirrors that faced them. “Protect us from what, thought? I get them providing relief after the earthquake. It was such an awful and unexpected thing. But why are they still here, over a year later? And why can’t we still not leave, after all this time?” 

“Because we’re a natural disaster phenomenon,” said the client beside Mrs. Finch, Mrs. White. “My husband says they're working hard to monitor things before they give us the all clear.” 

Mrs. Finch pursed her lips. “It does seem a bit odd that they can’t monitor things without having the town stay in lockdown. They won’t even let anyone visit. My daughter’s been just sick about not being able to visit home. And I’m missing my grandkid's birthday for a second year in a row!” 

Mrs. While looked sympathetic, but her nose was upturned, and she always had an air about her that she believed she was better than everyone else in the room. “Oh, my dears, it may be difficult. But our government would never do anything that wasn’t in our best interest, remember.” 

A polite smile crossed Mrs. Finch’s face as she nodded. Tamera tried not to pop a blood vessel. She finished sweeping and told the women working that she was taking her break. 

She stepped outside into the summer heat and leaned against the side of the building, trying to breathe through the tightly coiled tension building inside her body. 

Tamera had no idea how they were supposed to turn the people of Hawkins against the military and government if people like Mrs. White existed, building okay with following orders and encouraging others to do the same. Hell, even if she did think the soldier hit Nancy, she’d probably think Nancy did something to deserve it. 

It was such bullshit. Tamera felt stuck and sick. 

“Tamera?” a voice called out. She glanced down the alleyway between the hair salon and the post office to see a figure standing on the sidewalk. 

“Hey, Mrs. Torres.” 

Sunshine’s mother smiled softly, but the long, lingering sadness hadn’t left the woman’s light brown eyes since Sunshine was taken. It made Tamera’s stomach sink every time she saw the woman or her husband. 

They knew the truth, just about everything. It had come straight from the mouth of Steve that day Sunshine was taken. At first, they had been stunned. It was disbelief exactly, but profound confusion as to how so much could have happened to their daughter, and they did not know. The worst part was that there wasn’t much they could do. The town believed that Sunshine had vanished during the earthquake and likely died with the others, even though people had seen her after the earthquake. Yet, they either don’t recall seeing her or didn’t trust their own memory above some fabricated story that spread through town like a wildfire, probably started by someone from the military. 

At first, her parents tried to tell people the story was a lie, and that Sunshine hadn’t died in the earthquake, but rather she was taken by the military. But the second Dr. Kay’s team heard that, soldiers showed up at the couple’s house and threatened them. Mrs. Torres had called Steve in utter distraught, and said that if they continued to spread “lies,” they could face prison time. 

Mrs. Torres almost got himself tossed in a holding cell, but after a lengthy conversation with Hopper- after the man explained that he was, in fact, not dead- the couple agreed to play along with the lie that their daughter had died in the earthquake. They were back to being the poor, childless parents grieving all over again. Everyone looked at them with pity, and they played along while the group worked on a way to get Sunshine back. 

It was clearly killing them, as it would any parent, but they tried to go about life as normally as they could. 

“How are you, honey?” Mrs. Torres asked as she made her way down the alley toward Tamera. 

“Do you want me to be honest?” The woman smiled sadly and nodded. “I knew people here were ignorant, but I guess I severely overestimated their ability to see through the government’s bullshit. They’re all acting like this is normal and totally cool! It’s making me want to scream and pull my hair out.” Tamera spoke low, not wanting anything to overhear her ranting. 

Mrs. Torres let out a small sigh. “No one wants to believe they're in a bad situation, even when they’re looking right at it,” she said. “I’ve lived here my whole life. There’s something about this town that makes people want to pretend like things are perfect, and that nothing worse than what’s already happened can harm them.” 

Tamera snorted. “That’s ironic, considering we nearly fell into a hell dimension. Honestly, it’s hard to tell the difference between here and the Upside Down.” 

“I want to say that things will get better…” Mrs. Torres started but trailed off. She glanced down at her wrist, where she wore a colorful scrunchie that had belonged to Sunshine. The girl liked to wear scrunchies that matched her outfits. Tamera assumed she had quite a collection of them, one in every color. “But I don’t know how, or when.” 

“I just wish people would open their goddamn eyes.” 

Mrs. Torres said, “They only will if someone makes them.” 

Tamera rested her head back against the brick building and sighed heavily. “We’re trying to figure that out.” 

The woman perked up a little before she started rummaging around her bag. She pulled out an envelope and handed it to Tamera. “I may be able to help with that.” 

Confused, she opened the envelope. Inside were three developed photographs. One was a group of vans that were circled up in the supermarket's parking lot, illuminated in the darkness by the lamp post light, unsettlingly so. The second was from a distance, but it could be made out that it was a teenager being tackled by someone in a military uniform, as he was right next to the metal plates that were used to cover the split between the two worlds that the earthquake caused. And the last one was taken from a distance too, but it was clear enough of a shot of the exact moment the soldier struck Nancy. 

“How did you get these?” 

“My husband doesn’t like to sit back and do nothing. He knows it's risky and not exactly what we’re supposed to be doing, but he has this whole cover story of discovering his passion for bird watching. Which means he’s been around town with a camera, innocently snapping photos of ‘birds.’ These…well, he just happened to be at the right place at the right time. He’s keeping his distance and being careful, as Jim told us to be. But he’ll go crazy if he has to sit at home and just wait.” 

Tamera threw her arms around Mrs. Torres as she said, “You’re amazing!” 

The woman chuckled lightly. “I’m just the messenger.” Tamera stepped back, and Mrs. Torres’s expression grew more serious. “If these can help, in any way, find our Danielle, then they’re yours.’ 

Tamera matched her serious expression, determination replacing the anger heating her veins. “We will find her. You have our word.” 

[...]

The basement of the Wheeler’s still smelled like an armpit, as Max had so nicely described what felt like a lifetime ago. It had become less of a hangout and more of a makeshift bedroom for Jonathan and Will, since the Byers were crashing with the Wheelers. Though from what Nancy had said, the basement was more of Jonathan’s domain, as Will spent most of his time with Mike in the kids’ room. 

An idea was presented by Tamera, who called the group together. She had received photos from Mrs. Torres, one of which was Nancy being attacked by one of the soldiers. She wanted to publish the photo along with a hit-piece directed at the military in the paper, with hopes that it would get people talking more and turn against their infiltration in Hawkins. 

“There’s no way they’ll let us in the Hawkins Post building,” said Jonathan, who sat on the couch/his bed. 

“Because we killed the previous guys in charge?” Nancy deadpanned. 

Kali made a face as she snapped her attention onto Nancy. “You did what?” 

“Technically, they were already possessed by the Mind Flayer when we, uh, ended their journey a bit prematurely. But to be fair, they did attack us first,” Jonathan explained. 

“Why is it a never ending questions with you freaks?” asked Kali. Her accent always grew a bit more pronounced when she spoke more than one word anwers. Steve had asked her why, after all of the time she had spent away from England, her accent stayed. He had heard that people usually lose their accent after enough time spent not surrounded by it, but Kali’s seemed to cling to her, even though she had been taken from her home country over a decade ago. Not that Steve thought it was a bad thing; in fact, he liked her accent, but he was simply curious. Kali had replied that it was the only piece of home that she had left; she held onto it, stubbornly so. 

“The horrors never cease,” said Robin, her tone leaning into dramatics as she looked to Kali, who almost smiled. 

Steve, however, rolled his eyes and elbowed Robin in the ribs. “Can we focus?” 

“It doesn’t matter if they let us into the Post or not, I still have my keys,” said Nancy. “I never returned them. All we have to do is print our story and replace our paper with the one they printed for the following day. Then it’s on the front stoop of every house in Hawkins, and in everyone’s faces. We won’t make it the cover story, obviously, so they won’t catch that it's a re-print until it’s already been distributed. The least it can do is get people talking; sometimes that’s enough.” 

Jonathan nodded slowly at his girlfriend’s words. “It’s a good plan. But, you don’t think they’ll track it back to us? We don’t know what kind of consequences that could bring on for us and our families.” 

“We'll do everything in the middle of the night. Even if they have a hunch it's us, we’ll make sure they can’t prove it,” said Tamera. 

It was a solid plan. Steve had, begrudgingly, learned that some things had to be done in baby steps. They were playing the long game. He just hoped it would take too much longer.

The plan was decided, with the group working out a few of the kinks. Nancy would draft an article with the help of Tamera, and the rest of them would iron out an airtight plan that would get them in and out without incident. And, hopefully, the people of Hawkins would start putting pressure on the men in uniforms. 

Later that day, Steve found himself walking down the halls of the hospital with two bags of greasy food from the diner in his hands as he searched for a familiar room number. 

Inside Max’s hospital room, there were little things that told him Max’s mom had been there recently. Max’s hair was re-braided, and the flowers on the large vase on the bedside table had been replaced with a mix of sunflowers and daisies. 

Since the earthquake, Ms. Mayfield, along with a handful of Hawkins residents, had been displaced. She had moved in with a nice old woman whom she had befriended while staying at the High School immediately following the earthquake. The old woman needed help keeping up her house and getting around. So, Max’s mom lent a hand, cooked meals, and kept the woman company in exchange for a place to stay. When she wasn’t helping the old woman, she worked at the famed diner in Hawkins that opened shortly after Benny’s shut down. It wasn’t as good, but it was good for a hot meal. And, as it turned out, Ms. Mayfield was a wizard at making milkshakes. With so little in Hawkins to be happy about, she had quickly become a friendly face for anyone who visited the diner. 

The job wasn’t nearly enough to cover the piling hospital bills from Max’s stay. Steve didn’t even want to think about the possibility of Max’s mom having to make the hardest decision of her life because she couldn’t afford the hospital bills. Before it ever came to that, Steve had made a deal with Ms. Mayfield to help cover the cost. 

At first, Ms. Mayfield didn’t want to accept, but after many conversations and Steve trying to get the woman to understand that Max had become like a little sister to him, she became more open to the idea. She paid them back in small sums, which was her request. Steve, with his renewed relationship with his mom, had access to his family accounts again, which meant they could pay for the hospital stay without much issue. 

Ms. Mayfield was at the hospital as often as she could, but when she couldn’t be, the room was almost never empty of visitors. Usually, it was Lucas who was there, sometimes with Erica accompanying him. 

“Dinner, nerds,” Steve said as his greeting, waving the bags as he entered the room. 

Erica shot out of her seat and snatched the food from him, ready to dig in. Lucas stayed put and offered Steve a weak smile. He was holding Max’s hand. 

“Hey, mini-Sinclair, can you run down to the cafeteria and grab us some napkins, please?” Steve asked Erica. She looked ready to object, but she flickered her gaze between him and her brother before sighing. She handed the bags of food back to him and left the room. 

Steve took the empty seat before he asked, “How’re you doing?” He knew it was a useless question, one that Steve had been asked himself a hundred times, and he always internally rolled his eyes at it. Of course, none of them were okay. But there wasn’t much else to ask. 

Lucas shrugged. “The same.” 

They had been through it too many times, the conversations of “she’ll wake up soon,” and “things will work out.” The words had started to sound empty, a promise for the sake of filling the silence. It wasn’t that they didn’t have hope, but it was getting harder and harder to hold on to it. 

For nearly a year and a half, Max had been in a coma that no doctor could figure out. El couldn’t find Max’s mind in the void. They had no way of knowing if she was even still in there, somewhere just out of reach. 

Lucas tore his eyes off of Max and looked at Steve. There was a faint redness in his eyes that told Steve he’d been crying recently. 

“How about you?” the kid asked. 

Steve smiled sadly. “The same.” 

Slumping down in his chair, Lucas said, “This whole, ‘not giving up’ thing is exhausting, huh?” 

Steve dug into one of the bags and pulled out a burger wrapped in foil. He handed it to Lucas, who hesitated in taking it. “You have to eat, Sinclair,” Steve said, his voice not harsh but stern. He knew what it felt like to not want to do anything, eating and sleeping at the top of that list. But he’d be damned if he let his own habits rub off on any of the kids. 

Lucas relented and took the burger, eating it slowly as Steve continued, “It’s not easy. But, you know, it keeps us going. That’s something, right?” 

“I guess.” 

Erica returned, and the three ate in silence. 

Steve’s gut twisted each time he looked at Max, pale and still under the harsh lighting. Somehow, looking at her bedside was even worse. It was full of little gifts from everyone, all surrounding Lucas’s stereo in the center that only ever played Kate Bush on repeat. Erica had made Max a friendship bracelet with beads that spelled out ‘Zoomer.’ El and Leia had asked Lucas to bring a Coke bottle to put on the table. It was full of wildflowers that grew around the Hoppers’ cabin in the woods. Will had drawn the whole party, and each kid signed the frame, like they were always all watching over Max. Even Nancy had purchased a new Walkman for Max, for when she woke up, since hers was broken. She had taped a note to it that promised a trip out of town when she woke up, and the lockdown was dropped, to buy some new tapes, a gift from Jonathan. 

Steve wrote her a letter, a stupid, sappy one that ended with a promise of a new skateboard that they’d all help her relearn how to ride. 

Lucas, like all of them, always kept his walkie-talkie on the corner of the table when he was at the hospital. Steve figured it was so it would be in easy reach if he needed to tell everyone Max was awake. 

“Lucas! Do you copy! Is Steve with you? Over,” said Dustin. 

Lucas snatched the walkie. “We’re both here.” Erica cleared her throat loudly. “Erica’s here too. Over.” 

“Get your asses to the Squawk, stat! Over.” 

Lucas furrowed his brows. “Why? Is something wrong? Did something happen? Is this a code red? Over.” 

“Um…I wouldn’t say something ‘wrong,’ but something certainly weird. Someone called into the radio station. They didn’t say a word, but they left a message. A message in Morse code. Over.” 

“Morse code?” Lucas repeated to Steve and Erica before he spoke to Dustin. “Did they say who they were? Over.” 

There was a long beat of silence. Steve felt his chest tighten, worry starting to sink in. Erica anxiously leaned over the arm of her chair and looked ready to snatch the walkie from Lucas’s hand to tell Dustin to spit it out. 

She looked up from her book resting open on the counter, looking equally as surprised to see him up. “Hi, honey,” she greeted. “What’re you doing up so early?” 

Steve cleared his throat, half expecting it to hurt from screaming, but that had only happened in his dream. “The usual,” he replied. 

If someone had told him two years ago that he’d be back to telling his mom about his nightmares, as he had done when he was a little boy, Steve would have laughed. He wouldn’t have believed it for a second. 

However, following Hawkins being split into fourths by what most people believed was a freak natural disaster, the military placed Hawkins on lockdown. Only authorized individuals were allowed in and out, trapping all of the residents inside. His mom had returned to town just before the ‘earthquake,’ sealing her fate to remain in Hawkins for the time being. His dad did not make it back before that. At first, he tried to bribe his way back in, but Steve assumed the man realized that would make him stuck in the Harrington’s abode with his wife who resented him and his son who hated him. So, he decided against it. 

With it just being Steve and his mom in the house, their relationship had changed dramatically from the past spring. She went from hardly knowing anything about his life to knowing the exact reason why he had changed so much in a few short years. It wasn’t because he was lazy or didn’t give a shit about his future, like his dad, and by proxy his mom, had assumed. No, Steve’s whole world changed, and his priorities shifted. 

Steve didn’t necessarily want his mom to know about the Upside Down and all of the danger that came with it; that was never his plan. Even after growing closer with her, he probably wouldn’t have shared that much with her, for the sake of her sanity and safety. But when Mr. and Mrs. Torres came to his house that day Sunshine was taken, the two desperate for answers that Sunshine told him Steve had, his mom had been there. In his distraught state, he didn’t ask his mom to leave when he spilled the truth to Sunshine’s parents. She heard all he had to say and somewhat digested it much later on. 

That newfound and complicated knowledge reconnected her to Mr. and Mrs. Torres, like how they once had been when Steve and Sunshine were younger. It also allowed Steve to divulge some of his fears and worries to his mom, instead of keeping them bottled up tightly inside because he knew they’d eventually burn a hole right through his chest. 

Of course, there were things she and Sunshine’s parents didn’t know, details that he didn’t give because they would only lead to more questions that no one had answers to. Steve’s mom did know about his nightmares, though, and had even woken him up from some. 

Nightmares weren’t new for Steve. For years, like the rest of the party and company, he had faced down Demogorgons in his dreams and had seen horrible things happen to his friends. It became a kind of fucked up routine for Steve, but instead of fading when he woke up, since last spring, the pain his nightmares caused lingered well past when he opened his eyes. The images and feelings haunted him like relentless ghosts. 

“Do you want to talk about it?” she asked him, her voice soft like the hum from the radio on the kitchen counter. She poured him a mug of coffee. Steve used to hate black coffee. He hated the bitter taste, but even without coffee, bitterness was stuck in his mouth, his mind, and everywhere else. So, he figured there was no point in trying to sweeten it. 

He shrugged. “There’s not much to talk about.” The fresh coffee turned the mug hot. He pressed his palms and fingers against the outside, feeling the sting. “It was her, again.” It was always her. 

Yes, nightmares weren’t new, but his mind had to have been playing a cruel joke on him at that point. It felt like every time he closed his goddamn eyes, he saw Sunshine. The worst nights weren’t when the nightmare occurred while he slept, but rather when he woke up. He’d have good dreams, ones where Sunshine was there, smiling at him like everything in the world was the way it should be. Then, he’d wake up alone in bed, no Sunshine, no warmth, or that love-sick flutter in his chest. He was alone. 

As much as his body let him, he’d avoid sleeping and cure the exhaustion with bitter black coffee. But he had to sleep from time to time, and it was never restful. 

His mom frowned deeply. “But you all are still looking for her, right?” 

“It’s not just about finding her; it’s about getting her out and keeping her off the military’s radar.” 

Every moment since last spring, they’ve been trying to come up with a plan to get her back. But they had yet to figure one out that didn’t put Sunshine’s siblings at risk, as they were being actively hunted by the government for what they could only assume was the same reason they took Sunshine. Hopper wasn’t willing to risk any of them. Everyone else who wasn’t in threat of being kidnapped was willing to storm the military base with nothing but their bare hands just to get their Sunshine back, but they lacked the right knowledge of the base, and realistically, couldn’t do anything with firepower that at least matched whatever the military had. It wasn’t like they could sneak off to War Zone. The only way they gathered supplies was from Murray, who snuck in and out of Hawkins under the guise of being an authorized delivery driver for Bradley’s Big Buy. Slowly, they were building an arsenal, but it was a slow process. 

Nearly every scenario they came up with had too many holes, too many unknowns, and too many risks of them making things even worse for Sunshine. That, and they weren’t soldiers. Most of them were still teenagers or close enough to it. Once again, they were at a crossroads of another unfair fight, and it was driving Steve crazy. 

There had been more than one instant in which Steve was beyond aggravated, not at anyone in particular, but at everyone and everything. He was ready to just storm the military base himself, uncaring if something happened to him; he just had to try. He just had to do something because Sunshine was alone and probably hurting while he was…what? Waiting? Doing nothing? 

He had been close, way too close to doing something that would have gotten him killed almost immediately, but Hopper had found him before that happened. Hopper, a man who had come back from the dead like the rest of his kids, returned more gruff and soft at the same time. He stopped Steve, earning a pretty shiner on the temple from Steve’s right hook. But Steve hadn’t really been looking for a fight, and Hopper knew that. The man didn’t throw a single punch; he just grabbed the collar of Steve’s jacket and told him to let it out, all of that shit he’d bottled up for months. Steve broke down like some kid who lost his best friend all over again. 

“You’ll get her back,” Steve’s mom said. “You did once already.” 

Steve hummed in response, but his hope had started to wane somewhere around month six. He was scraping the bottom of the barrel for any optimism. 

The radio station that Robin had the brilliant idea of hijacking after its owner and showrunner fled Hawkins when there was a rumored serial killer loose in Hawkins had become the group’s home base. It was just far enough from the center of town that there were no prying eyes seeing who entered and exited. It also turned out to be the perfect cover to communicate with the group without raising any red flags, since their phones were all tapped, and walkie-talkies weren’t always the most convenient. 

And, as it turned out, Robin was a really good radio host. She was known around Hawkins as Rockin’ Robin, and used her beautiful brain to weave codes through her radio rambling that let the group know when the military was making their move into the Upside Down. 

Steve was fine leaving the radio show to Robin and expected her to appoint her girlfriend, Tamera, or even Jonathan to help her. But Robin insisted that Steve was her co-host of sorts. He wasn’t on the mic, but he ran the sound effects. 

The job kept him busy, and his mind temporarily occupied, which he suspected was the reason Robin was so pushy about him doing it. Instead of saying that, though, she called them ‘coworker soulmates,’ and claimed she simply couldn’t work a job in Hawkins without him. Steve seriously doubted that, but he couldn’t say no to her. 

That, and he needed a distraction, or God only knew what he’d do with that time. 

The radio station also functioned as Eddie Munson’s new ‘home’ of sorts. The earthquake put a lid on the angry mob and halted the police investigation. Since no one had seen Eddie in the aftermath, and no one else had been murdered, it was assumed that he died along with too many others during the earthquake. 

His uncle fled from Hawkins when the first rumors of a lockdown hit. The plan was to reunite the two after things settled and Vecna was dead, but as the months stretched on with no end in sight, it was hard for anyone to see the finish line. 

“Hey Harrington,” Tamera greeted as Steve descended into the secret basement of the radio station. 

Tamera spent most of her time there, bouncing between flirting with Robin and trying to keep Eddie from going mad while on house arrest. 

“You look awful,” added Eddie, earning an eye roll from Steve. 

In the time that Steve had shared a bedroom with the metalhead, before they acquired the radio station, he learned that was Eddie’s way of showing that he cared. Instead of more careful concern, like Robin or Nancy, or that certain look Hopper often threw his way, Eddie’s way of showing he cared was crass and easy to mix up with him just being an asshole. 

“No beauty sleep for me last night,” Steve said, faking the lightness in his tone as he sat down on the couch with a freshly made mug of coffee in his grasp. 

Tamera picked at a loose thread on the sleeve of her sweater. “More nightmares?” 

It was hard to explain to the newest members of their fucked up little group how to get through the aftermath and cope with the nightmares that often accompanied it. They didn’t go away; they just became a part you dealt with. Before last spring, Steve would have said they got easier to handle, but he had lost his grip on them and felt back at the beginning. 

“Yep,” he said with a sigh. 

Tamera winced. “Sorry.” 

Steve shook his head, a simple dismissal of any need to be sorry. “Any updates from church?” he asked, changing the subject. 

To keep their finger on the pulse of what was happening with the people of Hawkins, they discovered the best place to overhear their thoughts, fears, and loud opinions was at Wednesday and Sunday church services. Tamera, much to the joy of her mom, volunteered to attend the services to act as their spy of sorts. 

“Nothing besides people getting more antsy,” she said. “Old Man Marty is still set on the rapture being near, but the pastor always shuts down his tangents and urges everyone to ‘exercise patience.’ He’s stopped telling people to give thanks for the military’s help and, instead, pray for their swift finish of whatever the hell they're doing, so Hawkins can return to ‘normal.’” 

“I guess that’s a move in the right direction,” Steve said. 

Eddie snorted. “If anything, it sounds like Old Man Marty knows the most about what’s going on. Maybe we’re all about to get raptured. Wouldn’t be the craziest thing to happen.” 

“I doubt that’s in the cards for us,” Tamera retorted. 

“If even the pastor is getting fed up with the military, others who haven’t yet will get there. They’ve gotta run out of patience sooner rather than later,” said Steve. 

“That’s what we’re counting on.” Robin’s voice sounded from the top of the stairs. “Anyone got an icepack?” 

Descending the stairs behind Robin were Jonathan and Nancy. The latter had a scowl on her face and a blooming bruise on her cheek. 

Tamera jumped up from her seat and volunteered to find an icepack. 

“What happened?” Steve asked as Nancy reached the bottom step. She didn’t look in pain but rather pissed off. 

“She tried to fight one of the soldiers stationed downtown,” answered Jonathan, his voice somewhere between annoyance and concern. 

Nancy scoffed. “I didn’t try to fight him. I wanted him to answer my question, and he made the mistake of not listening to me,” she explained. “All I did was grab his shoulder, and he acted like I was armed and dangerous. Which I wasn’t, but maybe I should have been.” 

“So, now the military is hitting civilians?” Eddie asked with a raise of his brows. 

“To be fair, and I’m not justifying the hitting because that is super messed up, but we have to think that not all those men are clueless as to what’s going on and has gone on here, right?” Robin said. Nancy shrugged just as Tamera returned with an icepack and pressed it against her cheek. “Right, so could that maybe be why he reacted that way? Maybe he knows who you are, your involvement. Maybe you made him nervous?” 

“I highly doubt I made a trained U.S. soldier nervous, Robin.” 

“I don’t know about you, but even if I were a big, strong patriot,” Robin continued, her tone drenched in mockery. “And knew that you, standing at five-foot-four and can’t even drink legally, had faced down otherworldly monsters with nothing but a shotgun, I’d be nervous.” 

On Nancy’s uncovered cheek, a light flush appeared at Robin’s words, but she quickly shook her head. “I appreciate that sentiment, but I think he just hit me because I wasn’t exactly being subtle in the questions I was asking. They obviously don’t want any press, and if he didn’t know who I was, I tipped him off that I knew more than I should, or more than what he knows. That could’ve just pissed him off.” She let out a heavy sigh. “I knew I shouldn’t have…have prodded and asked who they were keeping inside of there, but I did. I poked the bear, and now there is no way they’re going to let me anywhere near their base. I’ll be lucky if they don’t ransack my house looking for this.” 

Nancy pulled out a voice recorder from her purse. She stared at it in her hands and frowned. 

“You know, a cagy response isn’t bad,” Tamera said. “It could be enough to get people suspicious enough not to trust them.” 

“That’s the only kind of response they give. If we want people to really question why the military’s here, why we’re really under lockdown, and what the hell they’re hiding from people, we need more than just some cady response from a low-ranking soldier,” said Nancy. 

Along with their desire to kill Vecna and get Sunshine back, Nancy, Robin, and Tamera had started to play with the idea of exposing the doings of the government in Hawkins. They wanted to use the mob-like anger the people had for Eddie and Hellfire and turn it against the military stationed in town. If they could do that, or at least get people talking, they believed they could force the government’s hand. It had the potential to free Sunshine and clear Eddie’s name, if they could actually do it. 

But that was yet another plan with a long list of risks, too. It didn’t seem entirely impossible, though. Nancy had succeeded, with the help of Jonathan and Murray, in exposing a watered-down version of how Barb’s death was tied to the government. What they wanted to do was on a much larger scale than what Nancy had already done, but the people of Hawkins had been lied to for so long. So many deaths, unnecessary deaths, could be pinned on them, directly and indirectly. They deserved justice, too. Whether that came in a watered-down version of the truth or the real deal was still undecided. 

Nancy clearly wanted to get the ball really rolling with that plan. She, like Steve, was growing more restless and reckless. She wanted to tell people the truth, but she wanted a real shot at getting Sunshine back more. She lost Barb, and the weight of Sunshine’s absence seemed to be weighing on her all too similarly. 

No one realized how much so until a couple of weeks ago, though. 

Nancy didn’t drink, but there had been one night. Mike had called the radio station while Steve, Robin, Tamera, and Eddie were trying to brainstorm. The kid was frantic and said that they couldn’t find Nancy or reach her via walkie. Jonathan had already left to look for her, but Mike wanted to check to see if she was with them. 

They, minus Eddie, set out to look too, fearing something bad had happened. They found her seated on the curb outside the unbought Holland house with a bottle of something hidden in a brown paper bag, crying on Jonathan’s shoulder. 

Mascara was smeared down her face, and she kept saying that she was sorry. When they asked her what for, she didn’t answer, just cried harder. They brought her back to the radio station and told Mike they found her, that she was safe. She ended up falling asleep sandwiched between Robin and Tamera. 

The next morning, she nursed a hangover with coffee and embarrassment that they tried to tell her wasn’t necessary. Later that day, she snapped back into herself, but they all could see the cracks in her exterior a lot clearer. 

It felt like they all were on the verge of falling apart. They had so many ideas, so many ways they needed to turn their luck around, but it was like, no matter what they tried, they found themselves at another dead end.

[...]

Leia Hopper stood in front of the bathroom mirror of the cabin, narrowly observing her reflection. Her blonde hair had finally grown long enough for her to copy the style of the woman she shared her name with, Princess Leia. Twin buns sat on the sides of her head, which reminded her of the cinnamon rolls that Joyce had made for the day Luke and Leia claimed as their birthday. 

Maybe it was a little silly of a hairstyle, but it made her feel more confident, and she needed that for another day of training. She wore a dark purple windbreaker and matching shorts, along with a pair of tightly laced tennis shoes, an outfit she deemed her training uniform. It made it feel more serious to her. 

Both El and Kali were dressed in their own training uniforms. El’s was meant to allow her to move, run, and even fly through an obstacle course that they constructed in the old junk yard. Kali’s was dark-colored and comfortable, allowing her to focus on her mind and creating illusions that were more convincing and ones she could hold for longer. Leia fell somewhere in the middle of the two. She was trying to grow stronger, be able to knock out any technology within a certain radius without being so drained. But she also wanted to be able to dodge attacks and move quickly. 

Stealing Sunshine right out from under their noses wasn’t enough for the military. They wanted all of them, the ‘lab’ kids. But as they continued to train, there was less and less of a chance of that happening and more of a chance that they would find Vecna, kill him, and get their sister back. 

When they learned, so soon after their return from California, that Sunshine had been taken, Leia caused a townwide power outage. Between her missing sister and seeing one of her best friends broken in a hospital bed, Leia was pushed into such a fit of grief that it had nowhere else to go but through her abilities. 

She wasn’t a little kid anymore, but Hopper had held her like she was. 

It wasn’t fair. She had cried that over and over. It was Kali who, while quietly seething with rage, reminded the twins and El that the only thing they could do for Sunshine, and to get revenge for Max, was to get strong enough to beat both kinds of monsters: real ones and the people who were so hellbent on hurting them. 

Never would Leia have believed Kali would have switched up her way of thinking so drastically. The Kali that Leia knew while on the run was colder and wanted nothing but pain and revenge on everyone who had hurt them. She didn’t care about anything else. But the Kali that was back in Hawkins had been changed for the better because of Sunshine and because of their friends, who showed her that she didn’t need to live life so scared. There was a life for them, the children of Hawkins Lab, that had a happy ending. But it was up to them to make it happen, to grab it before it could be taken from them too. 

There were still cracks in Kali; there were cracks in all of them, and that couldn’t be filled until the missing pieces that made them whole returned. When Sunshine was back and Max was awake, those cracks would go away. 

Someone knocked on the bathroom door. Leia opened it to reveal Joyce, who smiled at her. “Ready?” 

Leia took a deep breath and nodded. “Let me say goodbye to Luke first.” 

The loft in the cabin had been restored and was back to being Luke’s bedroom/art studio. The walls were once again filled with drawings that he spent day after day trying to understand. 

“We’re about to leave,” Leia said as she reached the top of the ladder. 

Luke paused his painting to look at her. His eyes always seemed to carry dark circles under them, and he wouldn’t let anyone cut his hair, making it look shaggy but kind of cool, even though she wouldn’t tell him that. 

“Be careful.” 

“I will.” She shifted her gaze from him and onto the newest drawing on his easel. It was a landscape which weren’t always super helpful. Especially when they looked like nowhere near Hawkins or the Upside Down. That drawing looked to be of a desert, with lots of light browns and oranges.

“Is that a new scene?” she asked. 

Luke nodded before his shoulders slumped. “They’re getting harder to understand. I know this is from Max.” He pointed to the middle of the page where a small figure stood with red hair. “But there are two other people here, but it won’t show me who.” 

Hope sparked in Leia’s chest, shining through her eyes. “But if it’s from Max’s future, that means she still has one, right? That’s a good thing!” 

“I’d like to think so.” 

As long as Luke was being fed visions of Max’s future, no matter how odd the scenes were, there was a reason to hope that she wouldn’t forever remain stuck in a hospital bed. She would wake up, and they’d be right back to eating ice cream until their stomachs ached, and reading Wonder Woman comics until they fell asleep. Leia had to hold onto hope. 

“Anything else for Sunshine?” she asked. 

Since she was taken, Luke had only one vision of her future. It was front and center on his wall, but it was just a drawing of her hand reaching upwards, illuminated with light. That was it, which was nothing helpful. 

All they really knew about Sunshine was that she was alive, which was much better than the utter agony of not knowing. El made frequent trips into the void to check on her. As long as she was still alive, they had hope they could eventually break her out. 

“Nothing yet,” Luke said. “But I’m still looking. There has to be something, and I will find it.” 

Leia held back a sigh and fixed a small smile on her face, knowing that her brother was working hard. He was spending more time than he liked in his head in the hope of finding something that could be an answer or at least a sign for certain that there was a happy ending on the other side of everything. 

She retreated down the ladder and stepped into the kitchen, where El was packing Gatorade bottles in a lunchbox, and Kali was tying her hair up. 

Hopper was by the front door, a stopwatch around his neck, beside Joyce, who was slipping on her shoes. 

To any outsider, they probably looked like a normal family getting ready for a summer day outside. If Jonathan and Will had been here, it really would have felt like they were a normal family. Leia wanted to reach that. She wanted that to be what waited at the finish line. When the monsters were gone, and everyone was awake, alive, and safe, the Hopper-Byers clan could finally live like a real family, together. 

“Everyone ready?” Hopper asked.

After his possession, they believed Will’s ties to the Mind Flayer had been severed. That, however, proved to be untrue the following summer when Will felt its presence regain strength as the Gate was reopened. Then, after their battle against the solid form of the Mind Flayer at Starcourt, they hoped the monster was done and gone for good. But nothing could ever be that simple, not for them, at least. A piece of the Mind Flayer had infected Henry Creel long before it got its hands on Will. That piece of the Mind Flayer was very much alive inside of the man-turned monster, and a piece of it still lingered inside of Will too. It was those two pieces that connected Will to Vecna, both of them having been infected by it. 

Mike called what happened to Will inside the Void ‘hijacking.’ Will’s mind had been momentarily hijacked by Vecna, allowing the monster to control him. Why Vecna used Will to go after Luke specifically, no one was sure of. El had more history with both the Mind Flayer and Henry, but Luke had posited that it was because El was the harder target. If Vecna had been recovering after their fight over a year ago, that would make sense. 

Will was clearly terrified of getting hijacked outside of the Void and hurting someone else. He was so gentle, too kind for all that he’d been through. The weight of hurting Luke was heavy on his shoulders. Yet, his friends kept him from crumbling. They showed through their actions that they weren’t scared of Will. They wanted to help him. They needed to. Finding Vecna before he found them again was the only way they knew how to do that. 

But the monster, even after finally showing his face after over a year, was still elusive. They hoped that Crawl would bring them closer, but it was so uncertain; everything was so uncertain. 

“The Old Man is en route!” said Robin over the radio. She and Tamera were on lookout duty that night, a task usually done by Lucas and Mike, but the two wanted to stay close to Will that night, so the girls volunteered for the job. They watched from the top of the church's bell tower, which gave the perfect view into the military base, for Hopper to sneak into one of the cargo trucks for a ride into the Upside Down. 

Over Sunshine’s shoulder, Nancy tapped her foot against the concrete floor repeatedly as her eyes were glued to her watch. She knew, down to the second, the amount of time it took for one of the cargo trucks to pass through the Gate hidden behind the walls of the base, and to travel the route to what they recently figured out was to the Upside Down base. Hopper would jump out of the truck not long after passing through the Gate and trek to the section he was set to search during that Crawl. 

According to the information that Murray was able to, somehow, get his hands on, the delivery of supplies would take an hour. That gave Hopper just enough time to search the next square on their map for any sign of Vecna. 

A couple of minutes passed before Dustin’s voice sounded from the radio. 

“We got him. Headed west now. Over.” 

Everyone let out a collective breath of relief. Sunshine glanced down at Anne, whose gaze flickered around the room in curiosity. 

“Now we wait,” Nancy said more to herself than anyone. She pulled up a chair on the other side of Sunshine and sat, drawing Anne’s attention. Nancy greeted her with a small smile and wave. “Someone’s up late.” 

Sunshine sighed. “Someone doesn’t like to be left out of all the excitement.” Anne refused to sleep when the basement was full of people. It was like she knew something was going on and she didn’t want to miss out. Even when Sunshine or anyone tried to get her to go to sleep upstairs, in the dark and quiet, Anne fussed until she was back in the action. Sunshine supposed it was a good thing she liked being around people, but she could see the little girl fighting off sleep with each passing minute. 

“Holly used to be like that,” Nancy said. “She still can be, sometimes.” A small frown formed on her lips, and she shook her head. “I thought all of this would be over before she was old enough to ask questions about what is wrong with this place.” 

Sunshine shifted in her seat, facing Nancy. “She’s asking questions?” 

“How could she now?” Nancy replied, a humorless laugh punctuating her sentence. “She rides her bike to school every morning with Will and Mike, past a military base where the library used to be. She asked to go to our aunt’s house on Lake Michigan for her birthday this year, but our mom had to explain why we aren’t allowed to leave town yet.” She paused and lowered her voice so only Sunshine could hear her. “Her room is between Mike’s and mine. How do you explain to your little sister why you and your brother wake up screaming sometimes?” 

Sunshine’s heart ached as she took in the sadness in her friend’s face. Using her free hand, not holding Anne, and grasped Nancy’s and squeezed it in what little reassurance she could offer. “You can’t,” she said. “But you’re doing everything you can to protect her so she doesn’t do the same. That’s something, Nancy.” 

With a tired sigh, Nancy leaned sideways into Sunshine, resting her head on the girl’s shoulder. “I wish I could have protected Mike from it.” 

“You’re trying to keep him safe now. You’ve been trying since this whole thing started.” 

“It wasn’t enough.” 

Sunshine rested her head against Nancy’s. “It has to be,” she said. “It’s hard protecting the people we love, especially when they want to protect you and their friends just as badly.” 

Nancy just hummed in response. There wasn’t much else to say. They all were in an impossible space, trying so hard to save the people they loved, with no real guarantee it’ll work. 

“Shit!” A loud hiss startled Sunshine upright. From across the room, Leia nearly tripped over her shoes as she moved toward the desk. A box of tissues sat on the corner, and Leia hastily grabbed a handful. A small drop of blood stained the front of her white shirt. 

“Are you okay?” Sunshine asked her sister. Leia nodded as she pressed the tissue against her nose. 

“Did you just use your powers?” asked Nancy. 

Leia hesitated before she nodded again. “Mike, uh, startled me. I slipped for a second.” 

‘Slipped’, as in lost brief control of her abilities. But Sunshine hadn’t noticed the lights flicker or the radio crackle with static, which was often a result of Leia using her abilities, accidentally or intentionally. Maybe Sunshine just missed it. 

Wiping the last bit of blood from her nose, Leia tossed the tissue into the waste basket and hurried back to the kids without another word. 

Sunshine’s attention was pulled onto Anne as she let out a whinny cry. “Well, if you didn’t fight sleep so hard, we wouldn’t be crying, now, would we?” she said as she stood up from her seat and headed upstairs with the hope of finally getting Anne to sleep for the night. 

The Crawl had been a success in terms of a smooth entrance and exit for Hopper, but he cleared another square of their map without finding anything. 

About halfway through the Crawl, Sunshine got Anne to fall asleep and eventually returned her to her crib after the basement cleared out. 

Steve stayed behind after returning, and he and Sunshine enjoyed a rare moment alone on the rooftop. 

The night had long settled in, and the chill of fall was making itself at home. Sunshine had changed into a set of pajamas that Steve had brought from her house. Her mom had packed her a bag, complete with a container of cookies and another letter. They’d been exchanging letters since Sunshine’s return, which mostly consisted of her reassuring her parents that she was alright. 

The soft t-shirt she wore didn’t exactly protect her from the dropping temperatures, but she was too comfortable with her head resting in Steve’s lap to get up. An involuntary shiver ran through her, which he noticed immediately; Steve had been keeping a close eye on her since she returned. He shrugged off his zip-up and placed it over her like a blanket. 

She gazed up at him, his hair gently getting messy by the breeze and his features more relaxed than usual. “Now you’re going to be cold,” she said. 

He shook his head, lifting his chin to the starry sky like he was taking in the cool weather happily. “Nah. I’m not the one shivering.” 

The scene felt normal. So normal that Sunshine almost felt like she hadn’t been gone. It was in moments like that one where she could almost forget. But then she became very aware that she couldn’t feel the tickle of hair on the back of her neck, and phantom pain crept through her bones. The memories were like greedy hands, eager to take hold of her and drag her right back under water. 

A soft sigh fell from her lips before she could stop it. 

“What’s on your mind, my Sunshine?” asked Steve, his voice impossibly soft. She wanted to melt into him. 

“I just wish I felt more like myself. I think I could do more if I did.” 

Steve brought his hand to the side of her face, holding her with a gentle touch. “You don’t need to do any more than you already are,” he said. “No one expects more from you.” 

“I know. But I do.” 

He was quiet for a moment; his face pinched in deep thought. He moved his hand from her face and patted her shoulder, prompting her to sit up. Sunshine watched him with a curious gaze as he grabbed a bag of candy they had brought to the roof to snack on. He pulled off the zip tie that kept the bag closed, and with a look of intense concentration, he twisted it into a loop before he held it up. 

“What’s that?” 

“A promise,” he said simply. “After this is all over, and there’s no more evil governments after us or mind-screwing monsters, you, Sunshine, will never feel like the whole world is on your shoulders. That’s my promise to you.” 

Tears welled up in her golden eyes. She wasn’t sure that was really something he could promise, but the sincerity on his face and in his voice gave her no choice but to believe him. She chuckled wetly as she gazed at him with all the love in her heart. 

“That’s a big promise.” 

“Yeah, well, if there’s anyone who deserves a big promise, it’s you.” He shrugged, like what he was saying was so casual, so easy. “You have me, Sunshine. Forever. If you want me.” 

Sunshine was quick to throw her arms around him, and he wasted no time embracing her back. He held her with both a gentleness and a fierceness, like he wasn’t going to let someone take her again. Sunshine felt safe with him; she always had, even in the most dire of situations. And he saw her, really saw her, not as some marvel of science, but a marvel of a girl who loved him. 

“I want you forever, Steve,” she whispered into his shoulder. 

“Whew,” he breathed out before he laughed, almost nervously. 

He leaned back with a smile that was contagious. With the zip tie still pinched between his fingers, he held it out to her. “What do you say? If the world doesn’t end here soon, want to marry me?” 

Sunshine couldn’t help the laugh that bubbled past her lips, something so young and sweet. They really were just two kids, nearing the end of the teenage years with far too much baggage. And while Sunshine had spent most of her childhood not feeling like a kid, with Steve, it came back to her. Around him, she was that little girl running wild and free, not scared of what lurked in the woods or hid in the treetops. No, with him, she was the little girl who climbed the branches toward the sky and picked wildflowers. She wanted to feel like that forever, and with him, she would. 

“Of course I do.” 

He beamed brighter than the moon overhead and slipped the zip tie ring onto her left hand’s ring finger. It was an odd shape and silly; it was perfect. 

“If my mom knew I just proposed to you with a zip tie, she’d kill me,” he joked. “I promise, I’ll find you a real ring, something almost as pretty as you.” He leaned forward, still holding her hand, and pressed a kiss to her nose. 

With a shake of her head, Sunshine grasped the sides of his face and kissed his lips under the twinkle of stars that seemed to push their way out from behind the cloud cover just for them. 

Sunshine could have fallen asleep on the roof, lying with her head on Steve’s chest and his hand tracing patterns on her back. The rhythmic thump of his heart lulled her eyes to a close, but as the early hours of the morning neared, they knew they needed to get some actual sleep somewhere a little more comfortable. 

They stood to their feet and readied to head back inside. The night had grown even colder. Sunshine had slipped her arms into Steve’s zip-up and went to keep her hands warm in the pockets, but she touched something inside the right pocket. 

She pulled out what she thought was just a piece of trash, a crumpled-up napkin. But before she could shove it back into the pocket, she noticed smudges of red that stained the napkin. 

Steve paused at the door to the roof and made a face when he saw what she was looking at. “Oh, gross. Sorry,” he said. “Dustin’s nose started bleeding on our Crawl tonight, and I knew if I left the trash behind, I’d get an earful from Robin. I meant to throw that away.” 

“Dustin got a bloody nose?” Sunshine said, unable to hide the rush of panic from flooding her face. 

“He said it’s from when those assholes roughed him, Lucas, and Mike up,” Steve said, attempting to ease her growing worry. 

She glanced back down at the napkin dotted with blood. “He’s sure?” 

Steve nodded. “He sounded pretty sure, yeah.” He held out his hand, and she passed off the napkin. “Don’t worry, I’m keepin’ an eye on him. I promise." 

With a nod, she followed him back inside the radio station. 

[...]

Mike tried not to roll his eyes as he lifted a full bag of garbage from the trashcan, but it was a reflex he couldn’t help. His dad made some dry comment about him finally helping out around the house. The chores around the house had doubled since the Byers started crashing with them, but Mike didn’t mind that part. What he hated was how his dad liked to act like he did nothing to help because he forgot to take the trash out a couple times. God forbid it slipped his mind between school and trying to stop some fucking monster from ending their world. 

If the Byers weren’t there, Mike probably would have shot back with some shitty comment that got him sent to his room, or one of those looks from his mom that made his stomach hurt with guilt. But Joyce was helping Karen wash dishes, and both women were actually smiling as they chatted. Jonathan was teasing Nancy about her choice of movie that she had picked out from their subpar collection, and they both looked a little less tense than they had in a while. And Will was pretty enthusiastically helping Holly draw her very own D&D character. 

Mike had coined the name for her character one night when he and Will were doing homework downstairs, and Holly came down to annoy them. Instead of telling her to get out, Will started asking her about school, which led to Holly excitedly talking about some made-up game her and her friends played at recess. Will said she and her friends would probably like D&D once it stopped being basically outlawed and deemed ‘satanic.’ 

Holly insisted on coming up with her own character, and Mike gave in to join the conversation. After some back and forth, they settled on Mike’s name suggestion of Holly the Heroic. He promised to paint her a figurine after she drew out what she wanted. 

It was weird, but the extra three people brought a sense of peace to the Wheelers’ household; chaotic peace, if that was even a thing. It was enough to make Mike not bitch back to his dad. Instead, he started to haul the garbage toward the garage. 

Outside, it was as if summer had stepped over the edge of a cliff, sending the temperatures plummeting. The concrete floor of the garage was cool against Mike’s bare feet as he stepped through the side door of the garage to where the bins sat beside the house. 

The wind had picked up too, causing the lid of the bin to smack against the siding of the garage after he lifted it. Mike cringed at the noise before he tossed the bag inside and closed the lid. 

Before he stepped back into the garage, he heard his name being called around the side of the home and toward the driveway. 

Despite his lack of shoes and jacket, he followed the noise. 

“Will?” he called out, spotting his friend in the middle of the driveway with his back to Mike. “What’re you doing?” When Will didn’t respond, a shiver ran down his spine, and not because of the cool air. 

Since the trip to the Void with El, Luke, and Will, Mike had been on edge, along with everyone else. He’d been watching Will closely, worried that something would happen to him. 

What if Vecna got a hold of Will again and made him do something Will would never even think about? What if the monster cursed Will like he had Max? What if…?

There were too many ‘what ifs’ that swirled around Mike’s head that he didn’t want to think about. 

He called Will’s name again as he started to walk down the driveway toward him. He only managed to take a couple of steps before Will broke out running. Confusion halted Mike’s movements for a second before he took off after him. 

The asphalt stung the bottoms of the bare feet as he followed Will down the road, but he didn’t slow. It wasn’t until Will reached the end of the road, a couple of houses down from the Wheeler’s, did Will finally stopped, allowing Mike to catch up. 

“Will?” Mike called out again, but when Will didn’t respond, he closed the short distance between them and grasped Will’s shoulder. 

However, the second Mike’s fingers grazed the fabric of Will’s shirt, he finally turned around. 

Mike’s eyes went wide as he stumbled backwards. The person in front of him wasn’t the Will he knew then, but rather the Will he had once known. The Will in front of him was shorter and skinnier. His eyes and cheeks were sunken in, almost like he was hollow inside. Blood and dirt were smeared against his pale skin, and he had his hands clenched in tight fists at his sides. 

Will’s cracked and bloodied lips parted before he spoke in a higher-pitched and sadder voice. “It got me.” 

Inside his chest, Mike’s heart thundered, and nausea rose in his throat. “T-This isn’t real,” he whispered. He had left his backpack discarded on his bedroom floor, where he kept his Walkman in case something exactly like what was happening happened. They all kept them close, but Mike hadn’t expected it. He hadn’t gotten a bloody nose or nightmares any more intense than the ones he’d had since he was twelve. His head only hurt when he listened to the kids in his classes ask stupid questions or when his dad tried to talk to him about golf. Had he missed something? 

The younger version of Will frowned and tilted his head to the side as he peered upward at Mike. “It was real for me,” he said, his voice growing bitter with each word he said. “Did you even care, Mike?” 

“What?” he sputtered, feeling hot and cold at the same time. He knew he was being screwed with, but it felt so real. So, so real. “Of course I cared.” 

Will was silent for an excruciating moment before he took a step toward Mike. “Do you still?” 

Before Mike could respond, Will’s appearance shifted before his eyes. Instead of the younger version of Will, Mike was staring at the current version of Will, taller and not as ghostly. Still, there was something unsettling about that Will, the way his gaze was sharp, like all of the softness that made up Will had been taken out. 

“Of course I do,” Mike said after a beat, finding his voice, even if it was shaky. He tried to reach out to Will again, to see if he was real, but Will jerked backward as Mike had slapped him. His face was suddenly painted with hurt, a look that made Mike feel sick.

Then, Will shook his head, eyes glassy. “You’re scared.” 

Of monsters. Of the world ending. Of himself. 

Mike’s eyes gathered with tears too, mirroring Will’s expression. He wanted to shake his head, tell Will he was wrong, but Mike felt stuck. He was scared. 

Taking another step back, Will sighed. He turned back around, and Mike suddenly snapped out of his frozen state. He lurched forward toward Will, trying to grab him before he walked away again. But instead of grabbing Will’s shoulder, Mike’s hand went right through him. He was thrown off balance and fell forward, catching himself with his hands as he fell against the road. A sharp sting spread across his palms as the skin was peeled back. That feeling, however, came second to the sting that spread through his chest. A cry broke through his lips so sudden and sharp it startled even him. 

Then, the sudden feeling of a hand on his back caused him to scream. The hand didn’t move, though. Shook his shoulder. He blinked, and the empty road in front of him was replaced by the concerned expression of Nancy. He grabbed her forearms, ensuring that she was solid and real. Once he was only somewhat sure of that, he fell forward into her, burying his head in her chest as he continued to cry. 

“Oh, Mike,” she said softly, holding onto him tightly. 

He flinched as something was slipped over his ears, but his body relaxed slightly when he realized it was a pair of headphones. Music flooded through his head. 

I would say I’m sorry

If I thought that it would 

No one thought such a tragedy would ripple across town; no one thought they’d lose. 

Mark was still grieving his friend, just like the rest of the basketball team. He was grieving like Fred’s parents, like Chrissy’s cheerleading squad, like Patrick’s lonely little sister, like the whole goddamn town. 

But Mark shouldn’t have brought Max into his ranting.

Dustin tried to push past the blooming headache behind his eyes and the stares of his classmates who had heard about their confrontation with Mark and were on the jock’s side. He reached his locker and yanked it open with a small sigh, wishing the school day would come to an end already. 

Organized chaos stared back at him. He rifled through his belongings, looking for his chemistry notes, but pulled his hand back quickly when his fingers touched something wet and cold. 

“What the hell?” he muttered to himself. 

Sure, his locker could be defined as ‘messy,’ but it wasn’t gross. It was simply a storm of papers, notebooks, and an unstable stack of textbooks that wobbled each time he opened his locker. He never left old food in there - not after the Milk Incident of 1984. His lunch was always secured in his Star Wars lunch box that Leia had gifted him for his birthday - she had bought a matching one in the hope of her starting high school at Hawkins High before she moved to California. And the lid on his water bottle was always closed tightly and rested in the upright position. 

Dustin pushed aside a couple of ace tests and note cards until he opened up the spot where he had touched something odd. When he spotted the source, the blood quickly drained from his face, and the hairs on the back of his neck stood on end. 

A faceless, slug-like creature looked back at him. 

“Dart?” he whispered, leaning his head almost completely inside his locker to get a better look. It looked nearly identical to Dart, back when Dustin had first found him rattling around in the outside trash can by his garage. He should have been scared, knowing that the little creature would quickly develop a taste for household pets before it could only be satisfied by human-sized treats. But Dustin found himself more confused than anything. 

He supposed it was more than probable that a baby Demogorgon snuck into Hawkins during the initial earthquake, when the Gate had split open all across town. It would’ve been impossible for anyone to keep track of that until it was too late; that whole night had been one big blur. 

However, if it had escaped the Upside Down over a year ago, it wouldn’t have reached full-size a couple of short days after it arrived. They grew fast, as Dustin had learned. Considering the monster was no larger than a chunky slug, it couldn’t have been in their world longer than a couple of hours. 

Maybe the government's band-aid over a gaping wound wasn’t as effective as they originally believed. The monsters were small, too, in their freshly hatched form. But if it was so easy for them to get into the Right Side Up, why weren’t there more of them? Sure, there was a chance the military was doing one thing right and eliminating the monsters before they hurt anyone or were even spotted. Dustin didn’t have that much faith in them, though. 

Maybe the little guy in his locker was a fluke. Of course, it had to be a fluke that found Dustin again. 

He cupped his hands and attempted to scoop the creature up, but just as Dart had been, the little monster was quick and slippery like a frog. It leapt from the locker, and Dustin jumped back with a gasp. A couple of students nearby shot him a confused or dirty look as they passed, but Dustin kept his focus on the baby Demogorgon. He took off after it, barreling past his peers and ignoring shouts from teachers and staff that told him to slow down. 

Dustin trailed Dart Two down the hall and cursed under his breath as the creature slipped right under the doors to the gym. Luckily, it was still the passing period, so the gym would be empty. 

His old sneakers squeaked as they hurried across the newly polished gym floor, gaining on the little monster fast. When he thought he was close enough, Dustin threw himself forward with the hope of tackling Dart Two, but it jumped before Dustin could close his two hands around it. 

With a hard thud, he crashed against the floor, smacking his chin. He groaned in pain but wasted no time staggering back to his feet to continue his chase. His chin stung, but he pushed it aside and zeroed in on Dart Two just as it slipped under the opposite set of doors and disappeared into the next hall. 

“Son of a bitch!” Dustin shouted as he slammed against the doors to open them, only to smack right into a body. He managed to stay upright, blinking up at the physical education teacher, Mr. Rudy. The man’s round face was pinched in annoyance and disappointment. 

His signature whistle was already between his lips, making it easy for him to blow on it loudly. hurting Dustin’s years. “I don’t want to hear that kind of language in these halls, Henderson!” Mr. Rudy’s only volume was loud, like he was a radio stuck on full blast. 

As much as Dustin wanted to roll his eyes, he couldn’t afford to stick around and wait for the man to write him a detention slip. “I lost a…a frog!” he quickly lied, but the urgency in his tone wasn’t faked. “From the science lab. He escaped, and I’m trying to find him before someone steps on him!” 

Mr. Rudy’s face scrunched up in disgust, and he stepped aside to let Dustin go, thankfully. 

He continued his sprint, catching sight of Dart Two just as he rounded the nearest corner. It passed by a couple of strangling students, but they didn’t seem to notice it, which was good. Dustin pushed his legs to move faster and managed to gain on the little monster. 

Despite his last failed attempt, he launched himself at the creature again. That time, however, his hands closed around Dart Two, trapping it between his palms as he landed on his belly in the middle of the hall. With a huge sigh of relief, Dustin sat up and held his hands close to his chest, hoping he could keep the little monster there until he caught his breath and found a more suitable place for it to be kept until school was out. He was grateful that he found the baby Demogorgon before its taste for humans developed, along with its rows of teeth. 

“Uh, Dustin?” a voice said from beside him. He flinched, pressing his back against the wall of lockers, all red-faced and heavy breaths. Frankie Kline, the niece of the disgraced former mayor of Hawkins, was peering at him with curious eyes. She was tall and blonde with an arm for softball and a brain fit for a future Shakespearean actor. “Whatcha doing?” 

Dustin cleared his throat and attempted to act as casual as he could. “Oh, you know, just…hanging out.” 

Her eyes fell onto his hands. “Did you catch a spider or something?” 

See, Dustin was smart, smarter than most kids his age. That wasn’t bragging, it was statistics. But he had gaps in his intellect. He knew full and well what the creature in his hands was, and what it would eventually do if they didn’t eliminate him or toss him back into the Upside Down. 

However, there was still that sense of wonder that had been there back when he first discovered Dart. 

It was stupid; the monster he was holding would eventually become ruthless and more dangerous than the simple human mind could fully comprehend, but at the end of the day, it was a cool creature from another world! 

“It’s a slug…I think,” Dustin answered. “A new species, maybe.” 

Frannie’s eyes lit up before she bent down in front of Dustin. “No way! And you’re rescuing him?” 

Dustin nodded slowly. It was probably best that she didn’t know the second not-so-dead Jim Hopper laid his eyes on the creature, it was as good as dead. 

“Can I see it?” she asked. Under any normal circumstance, if he’d been holding a real slug and a pretty girl asked to see it, Dustin would’ve believed he really had died and gone to Heaven. Suzie hadn’t been very fond of bugs, but she did love animals. 

Oh, Suzie, Dustin’s Mormon ex-girlfriend. He should’ve known the second that Hawkins went on lockdown and the no-contact rules were set in place that they’d struggle even more in the long-distance relationship. Sure, he broke the rules and had Murray send her letters from the post office a couple of towns over, where he explained, somewhat, of what was going on. 

For a couple of months, they talked via letters thanks to Murray. But one day, a letter had arrived that told Dustin his sweet Suzie had met a Mormon boy at church who lived in the next subdivision over. Long distance was too hard, especially when something much closer came about. That, and she knew Dustin was hiding something big from her, which wasn’t helped by the Byer-Hopper clan and Mike, who ambushed her house on their hunt for El across the west. 

So, Dustin fell back to being single and ended up holding a monster in his hands, still trying to save the world. He had a lot on his plate, okay? And a girl before him, interested in a slug, made him pause his better judgment. 

“Um, sure.” He carefully opened his hands and presented her with…nothing. 

There was no slug, no baby Demogorgon in his hands. 

Confused, he looked left and right to see if maybe he hadn’t felt the creature slip out, even though it would have been impossible for it to do so. It was like it had vanished into thin air. Could they do that? 

“Uh, oh,” Dustin muttered. “I, um, I thought I caught him. I must’ve…missed?” 

Frannie frowned for a moment, standing back up and clutching her textbooks closer to her chest. “Oh well.” She shrugged and fixed a small, friendly smile on her lips. “I’ll see ya around.” Then she started to walk away, headed for her next class. 

“Yeah,” Dustin muttered, but she was already too far to hear him. “See ya.” 

[...]

The radio station was a chamber of noise and smelled like summer, a mix of sunscreen and sweat. Luke sat on the rug in the middle of the basement floor, adding to make the space a little more cozy, with his hands tucked into the pockets of his hoodie that Steve had given him a couple of months ago. It was worn in, not too hot, and the perfect amount of oversized for the sleeves to easily cover his hands. 

There was an argument raging, not an intense one or even a mean one, just one questioning the “right” thing to do next. 

After Luke and El’s trip to the Void, and their pull toward Will’s confusing past and future, they wondered what else there was to be discovered together. It seemed like Luke wasn’t pulled into El’s future when she was in the Void at his side. Together, they were drawn elsewhere. Luke thought maybe that was the key to finding Vecna and/or Max. It was the only thing they had yet to try. 

Kali brought up the idea of adding Will into the mix. He didn’t have abilities and couldn’t enter the Void on his own, but he wasn’t without his oddities. When Luke ventured into what should have been Will’s future during the summer of ‘85, he found himself in the past, reliving the moment Will was taken to the Upside Down. 

That suggestion, of connecting Will to the two like some odd chain, was met with concerns. Hopper didn’t like the idea of Luke and El experimenting with their abilities, and Joyce really didn’t want to throw her son into the Void on a whim. 

“We don’t know what will happen,” said Hopper. “This isn’t something we should be screwing with.” 

“Not knowing what will happen isn’t a bad thing,” argued Kali. “Nothing at all could happen. Or this could be the very thing that leads us to where Vecna’s mind is hiding. At the very least, it could help us understand why Will was taken in the first place and used by the Mind Flayer.” 

Joyce, with a near constant furrow in her brows, anxiously tapped her fingers against her mid-afternoon cup of coffee. “How would learning about why Will was taken help us now?” 

Standing beside his mother, Jonathan seemed to be more on Kali’s side. “Maybe it wasn’t a coincidence.” 

Joyce sighed. “This could hurt him,” she said. “It could hurt all three of them.” 

“It didn’t hurt them last time. And they’re all smart. El knows when to pull the plug, and when she says so or finds her way out of the Void, if we break the connection between them all, they’ll all come right back to us,” Kali said, slight frustration starting to prick her tone. “This could answer our questions, at least some of them! This could get us somewhere, somewhere a hell of a lot further than Hopper’s roaming around the Upside Down, hoping he stumbles onto Vecna or his lair. As I said, if his mind and body were in there, El would have already found him. Maybe, between the three of them, they can find him or get us closer to.” 

Joyce moved her hand from her coffee mug to her forehead, rubbing her temples. “I just don’t see what adding Will will do. He’s…he’s not like Luke or El.” 

“Mom, they saw Will when they went into the Void together. That has to mean something,” said Jonathan. 

“You want to put your brother in possible danger for a maybe?” Joyce argued, causing a pinched look to appear on Jonathan’s face; however, before he could say anything back, El piped up. 

“Hey!” she shouted, her voice almost instantly quieting the room. She had stood up opposite Luke on the floor. He noticed how she squeezed Max’s scrunchie in her hand, like it was giving her the fiery will of Max herself. Everyone’s attention turned onto El, and her face flushed slightly at everyone’s eyes on her, but she didn’t waver. “Stop talking about us like we aren’t here! This is our choice to do this.” 

She looked between Luke and Will. “We know our limits.” 

On the other side of the room, Hopper’s expression softened, as did his tone. Maybe not everyone would’ve picked up on it, but Luke had known the man long enough to spot it. His soft spot for all of them, even Kali, was slowly taking over. “We just want you kids to be safe. We don’t know-” 

“But we do,” Luke cut him off, standing to join his sister. “El and I know how to use our abilities. Even though we’ve only traveled into the Void once together, it was similar to how we both always travel. And with Will, we’ll keep him safe and leave if something starts to go wrong. Besides, he wouldn’t have agreed to this if he didn’t trust us.” 

Will was quick to nod. “We don’t even know if I can travel with them, but it’s worth a try. We haven’t gotten anywhere new in our search for Vecna. But we know he’s not gone. I can still feel him, but it’s faint. He’s…he’s somewhere we haven’t gone. Maybe wherever that is, is where he’s holding Max hostage. We have to try. I have to try.” 

Their words seemed to have extinguished some of the concern. Hopper and Joyce looked a bit defeated, if anything, but there was a hint of pride that glimmered in their eyes, too.

“With the three of them together, they all should be able to help each other out,” Mike said after a beat. He was usually the one to question their safety, especially El’s, when it came to pushing their abilities. It surprised Luke that he seemed happily on board, but he appreciated it. 

With a nod, Sunshine added another thing in the three’s defense. “We have to trust them,” she said. “It’s their choice to do this.” Because they weren’t in the Lab anymore. Because their abilities were their own and they wanted to use them for good instead of what they’d been built for. That, and Will had so many unanswered questions. If he had the chance for even one of them to answer, he had to take it. 

The parents fully relented, and it was go-time. 

Since they were at the radio station, El wouldn’t be using the bath to enter the Void. She wouldn’t be as powerful, but Luke thought that if they all were on the same playing field, it might work better. They needed a starting point; if it didn’t work, they’d try something else. 

With a blind fold over her eyes and a radio positioned in the middle of the circle of three, El entered the Void. The overhead lights flickered, and her lips parted with a short breath before she said, “I’m in.” 

Luke swallowed a nervous lump in his throat before shooting a glance at Will. “Ready?” With a nod, Will held out his hand, his other already grasped in El’s. El also had her unoccupied hand outstretched, ready for Luke. He counted down from three before taking both of their hands at the same time. 

In an instant, it felt like his brain was in the middle of a game of tug-of-war. Like was pulled in two directions between El and Will, but he was in control, he reminded himself. Though he wasn’t sure how true that was exactly, he could at least pretend. He squeezed both of their hands and envisioned something he had come to know quite well before he was back in Hawkins and on lockdown. 

During their stint in California, Jonathan took the liberty of trying to cheer the kids up between their grief over Hopper, who they thought was dead, and missing their friends. He brought them to a nearby arcade nearly every weekend and on weekdays that were particularly rough. They used the money Jonathan had pocketed from his part-time job after school at the local movie theatre. Since the government had given them plenty of hush money for their California stay, Jonathan saved half of what he earned for himself and split the rest between his old and new siblings. 

Standing in front of the arcade machines, with joysticks in their grasp, it did make all the bad melt away for a little bit. Luke learned he really enjoyed video games, the harmless thrill of it all, and the quick thinking with no real consequences of failing. 

So, while trying to navigate between his brother's and sisters' minds, he pictured a joystick. With an invisible hand, he moved it back and forth, working the two sides of his pulled brain until he could feel Will and El’s minds come closer together. He imagined pressing a button on one of the arcade machines that caused his hands to grasp both minds at once.

When he peeled open his eyes, he saw nothing but the inky blackness of the Void and the figures of Will and El standing before him. 

“It worked,” Luke breathed out, a little bit in disbelief. 

El smiled at him before she glanced at Will. “Do you feel okay?” 

Slowly, Will nodded. He looked down at his hands. It was a strange feeling being inside your mind. It felt like your body, but there was something off about it. 

“I can’t believe that worked,” said Will. 

Neither could Luke. Usually when he slipped into someone’s mind or fell into a dream, he was all alone and there was a piece of him that was always scared. No matter how many time he’d done it, it was never that easy. But not being alone loosened some of that fear. 

“Now, we look for a storm, right?” El asked Luke, her face set in determination as she rolled her shoulders back. 

“Usually there’s already one waiting for me,” he said. But the Void was just that, empty and dark. He normally could feel the tug of future visions pull him in like a magnet. Even when he traveled with El, he felt it when he entered, even though it wasn’t her storm that called to him then. 

Then, he heard it, the sound of glass fragmenting or ice starting to crack over a frozen lake. He glanced down at his feet, submerged in a thin layer of water that covered the Void’s ground. He blinked and really focused his vision before he saw little splinters crack under his feet. 

“Grab hands!” he rushed out. El and Will, despite their confusion, did so, locking all three of them in each other’s tight grasp. 

“What’s happening?” asked Will. 

Luke didn’t get the chance to answer before the Void’s ground gave way underneath them. Unlike a frozen lake, they were plunged into the cold waters waiting below the cracked ice. Instead, they free-fell into darkness. There was nothing to be seen, not even each other. The only sensation was falling, and all of their hands interlocked. 

They fell for what felt like minutes, but was probably only seconds, before they landed on solid ground with a thud. Pain shot through Luke’s body. He blinked several times before the scene around them melted into view, like ice refreezing in the bitter cold. 

“That wasn’t a storm,” El grumbled, sitting up and cradling her elbow to her chest. She looked around for a moment before she stilled. “Oh no.” 

“We’re in the Upside Down,” Will breathed out, his voice just above a whisper. 

Luke shook his head. “Not really,” he reminded them. “It looks real, but we’re in our heads, remember.” 

No one had any fond memories of the Upside Down; it wasn’t the place for that. But Will probably had the worst ones there. Sharing a room with Will in California made Luke realize how much the place still haunted him. He had woken Will up from plenty of nightmares, gently reminding him that he was safe now. But Luke should’ve known better than to lie. They wouldn’t be until that place was unreachable, if that was even possible. 

They stood to their feet and tried to pinpoint exactly where they landed in their mind’s version of the Upside Down. There weren’t any notable landmarks, just trees that stretched toward the dark skies like extended monster claws. 

“Guys…” Will started to say, but his voice caught in his throat as his eyes locked onto something. His hands started to shake at his sides, and his face had gone even more pale in the low light. Luke followed Will’s line of sight and found what he was staring at. Hooked to a fairly high branch of a tree several feet away was a backpack, a backpack that looked a bit too normal compared to the nightmare around them. 

“I don’t think we’re in the future,” Will said. 

With a frown, Luke moved toward the tree. Vines slithered lazily around the trunk and along the ground, not seeming to pay much mind to Luke. Yet, he was careful to avoid them when he stepped. Once he was underneath the branch with the backpack, he peered up at it. He knew objects from their world existed in the Upside Down, but it felt odd to see them. 

“You think we’re in the past?” Luke asked Will. “Your past, right?” 

Will whispered, “Yes.” 

Luke still couldn’t figure it out. With Will, he kept finding himself falling into the boy’s past. He’d never been able to do that before, nor had he since with anyone else. It made no sense. What was it about Will that kept turning the clock backwards instead of forwards? It had to mean something, Luke knew that much. He just couldn’t pinpoint what. 

It was no secret that Will had a connection to the Upside Down in a way none of them did. He had been possessed by the Mind Flayer and bested it. He was taken to the other world, not killed by the Demogorgon like Barbara Holland had been. Will had been a vessel for the Mind Flayer, a puppet for Vecna. That was, until he proved not to be so easy to corrupt, like Billy Harrgrove or even Henry Creel himself. Will was smarter, not as twisted in the head or rotted by the world because he had people who cared for him so deeply that they’d fight a monster before letting him fall victim to it; Billy and Henry had lacked that. 

Maybe Luke kept getting dropped into Will’s past because it was desperate to show him something they were missing. Luke never got visions for no reason. He saw Max’s fate at the hands of Vecna, even if he didn’t understand the dire meaning of it until it was too late. He saw Sunshine battling the Mind Flayer at the mall, in a burst of brilliant light, combating the creep of darkness. Every vision meant something; it was a piece of a larger puzzle. Luke just didn’t always have the right piece in time to see the full picture; that was no one’s fault but his own. 

If Will’s past was begging to be understood, Luke needed to understand it before something else horrible happened. He had to stop being too late. 

“Luke!” El screamed, startling Luke from his thought. He snapped his head in her direction and saw that she had her hand outstretched in front of her in the way she often did when she used her abilities. Something squeezed his leg. He dropped his gaze to see one of the vines curling around his calf like a snake looking to strangle something. He tried to shake the vine, but couldn’t even lift his foot. The vine squeezed even tighter, shooting pain up through his leg. 

“Hold on!” El yelled again. She focused her energy on the vine, and it started to vibrate, but before she could uncoil it from his leg, two more vines sprang up from the ground and circled her wrist. She yelped in surprise and tried to shake her hands free. 

Will tried to help her, grabbing at the vines, but they didn’t move. 

Over Luke’s head, in the tree, a vine curled around the trunk, looped around the backpack, and carried it down. It dropped the bag right in front of Will’s feet. His hands froze over the vines trapping El’s hands, his eyes bugging wide. 

For a moment, it looked like Will was going to pick up the backpack, but instead, he kicked it. The bag went flying before he turned back to El and grabbed at the vines with a fit of fury. He managed to tear them off, as if they were nothing but flimsy vines. 

Will then hurried across the space between them and Luke and dropped to his knees. He freed Luke’s leg and held out his hands. Luke grabbed it without hesitation, and El followed a moment later. When they were all three once again connected, Will led the way, running. 

They sprinted across the uneven terrain of the Upside Down that Will remembered. Even though their physical bodies weren’t running, Luke could still feel the burn in his legs. They weaved between the trees in the woods. It looked like Will was following a path, but there wasn’t one that Luke could see. 

“Where are we going?” El asked. 

“I don’t know!” Will didn’t stop, though. The three of them kept moving until they broke through the edge of the woods and were spit out at the cliff that overlooked the quarry. In their world, Luke had visited there once with Lucas and Will during his one summer of freedom; they rode their bikes there and played cards until the sun started to set, and they had to be home. 

Luke sucked in a couple of deep breaths before he said, “This doesn’t feel right.” Usually, his visions felt cold, like when you took a sip of ice water and could feel it travel down into your stomach. His visions were hardly ever stable; they swirled around him like a painting, which was why he was able to replicate them so well on a sheet of paper. Simple scenes were always hazy around the edges or appeared to him in dreams like a flickering image. But in what he assumed was Will’s fast, the vision felt too whole, too real.

“Should we let go?” asked El, feeling the off-ness too. 

That was the safest call, to re-enter reality and maybe try something else. But going back empty-handed felt like defeat. He didn’t want their trip to be pointless. There was a reason they landed where they had; there was a reason why Will’s future was hard to find, buried somewhere through his past. 

“You said there is supposed to be a storm, right?” Will asked. He had moved to stand at the edge of the cliff, peering over the side. 

Luke and El joined him at the edge. Luke expected to see an empty lakebed looking back at them. Instead, a couple of feet below the cliff’s edge was a familiar-looking storm of futures. Luke felt it beckon him. His feet inched closer to the edge. 

“I think we have to jump,” he said. 

El pursed her lips, her gaze fully focused on the storm. “Are you sure?” 

“It wants to show me something.” Once again, they held hands, but he could feel El and Will’s unease through their grip. Luke took a breath and stepped off the edge first, toppling forward.

The three free fell once more, the wind kissing their face before a coldness enveloped them as they crashed into the storm cloud. 

Their landing was cushioned that time around. The future cradled them, placing them in the eye of the storm with gentle hands; it was much gentler than Luke had ever experienced before. He wondered if it had something to do with El and Will being with him. Maybe the future was kinder to them than to him. 

“Okay,” Luke breathed out. He looked around until he spotted the vision that called out to him the loudest. He led his siblings toward it and allowed it to reel them in. 

When they entered what Luke believed was a vision, the Void was the only thing to greet them. There was nothing, just the inky darkness that seemed to stretch on forever in all directions. 

“No,” he whispered. “This isn’t…this isn’t right.” 

“Isn’t it?” a low, gravelly voice said. Luke spun around, his hands still clutched tightly in El and Will’s. A wooden door was opened, peering into somewhere with a bright blue sky and tall green grass. The view through the door contrasted harshly with the figure who stood in the doorframe. 

“Henry,” El said lowly, her jaw clenching and gaze hardening. 

Venca’s monstrous form stood just feet away. The sight caused a tremble to spread through Luke’s body. 

“William,” Vecna said slowly, drawing out Will’s full name. 

Without taking their gaze off the monster, Luke and El shifted so they stood in front of Will, shoulder to shoulder. 

“Where is she?” El’s voice was sharp. 

Vecna lazily dragged his attention to her for a moment. “Maxine, you mean?” El said nothing, but Luke could feel the rage radiating off of her. Vecna shrugged. “Somewhere. Nowhere. Who’s to say, really?” 

A wave of bravery broke through Luke’s terror for just a moment. “We will find her,” he said, hiding his shaking hands in fists at his sides. “And we’ll find you. We’ll stop this.” 

Something like a smirk crossed Venca’s face; it was horrible to look at. “It’s hard to stop something you don’t understand. Isn’t it, William?” 

“Go away,” said Will. Luke could hear in his voice the fight to keep a brave face, to pretend like he wasn’t scared. 

“I can go anywhere, but it won’t stop it.” 

“Stop what?” asked El. 

Vecna tilted his head. He didn’t cross the doorway and enter the Void, but his presence filled the space regardless. Luke didn’t know if it was because he couldn’t enter the Void, or if he wouldn’t. 

“We never left you, William,” said Vecna. “Can’t you feel it? Can’t you feel us?” Luke heard the sharp intake of breath Will took and his footsteps as he backed up. 

If looks alone could kill, Vecna would have been dust by the glare on El’s face. “You leave him and my friends alone!” 

“Show them, William,” Vecna continued, ignoring El. “Show them what you really are.” The monster raised his hand, and Luke half expected to be flung back by his powers. El mirrored him, ready to fight. But nothing happened for a moment. Luke dared to look away from the Vecna and back at Will. 

His body shook, and his hands twitched at his sides until one of them started to rise. Will looked like he was trying to fight his arm, keep it down. Will looked like he was fighting something no one could see. 

Then, blood started to leak from Will’s nose, just as it did when any of the kids from the Lab used their abilities. The whites of Will’s eyes were all Luke could see. Then, the shaking stopped, and an eerie stillness took hold of his body. As if his limbs were being pulled by a string, Will’s arm outstretched in front of him, and his fingers flexed in a way that mirrored Vecna’s claws. 

Before Luke could get a grasp on what was happening, there was a strange pressure around his throat. He sucked in a breath, but it became hard for air to enter. It was as if someone’s hands had wrapped around his throat. He reached up and started to claw at his skin, growing more desperate for air by the second. 

“Luke?” El called out, but she sounded far away. The air in the Void was suddenly hot, and his throat burned like it was on fire. He fell to his knees as the voice of El grew more frantic. Luke’s vision swarmed, but he forced his chin up to look at Will. All he was met with were the whites of his brother’s eyes and his flinching figure. 

A horrible realization crashed into Luke as little black dots started to cloud his vision. He gasped for air that couldn’t reach his lungs as the pressure grew greater around his neck. Just before he lost consciousness, he saw Will’s hand fall limp, and his brown irises return. 

Horror flashed across Will’s face before Luke closed his eyes. 

One second, Luke was choking in the Void, and the next, he was lying on the floor in the radio station's basement. El stood between him and Will, her chest heaving and eyes blown wide.

Luke gasped and sucked in air as his hands touched his burning throat. 

“What the hell happened?!” barked Hopper. 

Luke couldn’t speak. He lulled his head to the side and met Sunshine’s worried gaze, hovering over him. When he looked to his other side, he saw the bloodshot eyes of a sobbing Will, who was staring at Luke with a look locked in horror. 

Several tense, silent seconds passed before El answered. She hid her trembling hands in fists. “We found him.”