Note: here is another installment in the one-shot that is rapidly turning into a multi-chapter series! :p It took a bit longer because I wanted to think through various things about what the future arc would look like and which scenes would occur in this chapter. I haven't made as much progress in reading the book as I'd have liked, but this is keeping up with where I'm at. You can think of this as a parallel timeline, where many things occur the same as the book but obviously with a few key changes! In terms of what the future Losers look like, imagine what you like, but I'm drawing my descriptions from a cute bit of trivia on IMDB where the actors (supposedly) named who they think should play their future selves. Haven't been able to track down the original reference, but anyway - in this chapter, Mike would be played by Chadwick Boseman and Stan would be played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt. For Georgie, after some deliberation, I picked Julian Morris. Thank you to every awesome person who reviewed the last chapter! I really appreciate your feedback. If you read this, and like it, and want it to continue, then please let me know! Your reviews are the reason I keep writing :) Hope you like the new chapter!

In the past, the awakening had been decided by a local event close to the heart of Derry. Riots, floods, violence, storms... all kinds of natural and unnatural disasters stirred the creature from its deep slumber beneath the paved streets. The awakening came particularly strongly when hatred ran high, directed towards whatever minority group was the flavour of the day. Pennywise didn't care: fear was the best fuel for hatred, after all, so where there was hatred there was plenty of fear to go around for him to feed off.

This time was different, though. The pulses of fear that rippled through the caverns beneath Derry came from much further away, but instead of a hundred voices rising up in fear, it was thousands. It was hundreds of thousands, millions upon millions. The world was rife with fear, and for the creature, fear was power. It sensed the violence driven by fear, the burning hatred for anyone associated with the unknown and the unfamiliar, the harsh suspicion aimed at some of the weakest in society. Violence in the name of religion, violence in spite of religion, violence against those who followed a religion. The persistent ability of the foolish humans to respond to fear, to question those who knew but believe those who lied. In the end, it worked in Pennywise's favour: the humans were more scared than they'd ever been before.

He rose from his sleep cheerfully with an inhuman cackle, revelling in the fearful world of the 21st century that he'd emerged into. If Derry had been a microcosm for the world in the past, then it seemed now its poison had spread well beyond the town borders into every corner of the planet. It gave the clown an immense surge of strength, more than ever before. He felt invigorated by what was to come, by the thrill of the hunt he would enjoy for the next months.

Aimed at no one in particular, he shrieked with happiness, delighted at the turn of events. This time was going to be lots of fun.

And then, without further thought, he set off towards the unsuspecting world above to satisfy his ravenous appetite. It didn't occur to him to check the status of his favourite captive prisoner, and if he had, his eagerness may have been quenched by some degree of apprehension.

In the main cavern, floating high above the ground, a figure stirred.

"While they were originally derived to help predict the weather, the Lorenz equations have since been studied in particular for this chaotic behaviour you see here on the board, with some solutions tending towards the butterfly wing pattern of the Lorenz strange attractor. They highlight the notion that a small change in initial conditions can in turn generate a massive difference in the final result."

He paused, chalk in his hand, looking across at his early-morning audience. There were varying degrees of glazed-over in their eyes, though a few in the first couple rows seemed particularly enamoured with the Lorenz examples he was detailing on the board. He glanced at the clock to the side, which was hovering around five to the hour, and decided to call it.

"Alright, we'll stop there and resume next time on other representations of chaos. Chapter 4, along with the end of chapter questions, to be discussed at the start of the next lecture."

The sudden shuffling of papers and books, alongside the loud clunks made as the fold-down wooden benches were released from the weight of sitting students, never ceased to amaze him with how quickly it filled the room as soon as the class was dismissed. Something supernatural about the reactions of students to the end of class, for sure.

He was stirred from his distracted thoughts by someone standing in front of him shyly.

"Professor Denbrough," she began.

"Dr," he corrected, smiling at the address. "Not professor."

"Dr," she smiled back. "I was going through the exercises from Chapter 4 already actually, and I didn't understand question 3... my answer doesn't match the one at the end of the book."

He nodded for her to show the question and her working. She held up her notebook, and he skimmed over it, and looked back at the answer in the book. He raised an eyebrow. There was a missing square root in the working of the textbook.

"Yep, you're right," he confirmed. "The answer in the book is wrong, well spotted!"

She beamed at him, proud of herself, and opened her mouth to say something else. But it was at that exact moment that his mobile phone buzzed in his pocket. Confused as to who would be calling him on his mobile at 10 in the morning, he pulled it out, staring at the screen in puzzlement.

+1-207-287-1116 calling

An American number? He glanced at the clock again, it was the evening there. He recognised the region code too... Maine. Inexplicably, a feeling of dread came through him. He hadn't been back to his hometown since before he left for college, and after that, he'd moved overseas to Australia so fast there hadn't been any time to even consider dropping in. Without giving it too much more thought, he answered the phone.

"Hello?"

"Georgie?"

The long-repressed name shot through him like an icy bullet, numbing his insides instantly. Nobody called him that anymore. He almost felt physically ill, his brain suddenly foggy and confused. Who was even calling him?

"Georgie," came the voice again, softer. "It's Mike."

Mike... In a rush, memories flooded back to him of a tall grinning boy with dark curly hair. Memories that hadn't crossed his mind for years. Of the group of kids who'd for some reason always been there looking out for him as he grew up, even though he was a few years younger than them. He remembered their hangout place, and how they'd always let him join them, joking that having seven in their group of Losers had seemed more natural anyway. Until Bev had left to live with an aunt, then Richie to California, and then one by one each of them slowly moved away, himself included. And despite their friendship in his younger years, somehow the thought of them hadn't really surfaced in his mind since he left Derry behind.

"Gosh, Mike, I'm sorry," he managed.

"It's okay, Georgie," Mike said in an understanding voice. George suddenly had the distinct impression that Mike had had this conversation before, as if he expected him to not remember him at first.

"It's George," he mumbled without thinking, flexing the artificial limb of his right arm. He'd been George Denbrough since his first day at college, subconsciously shedding the affectionate nickname Georgie in the same way he'd shed the memories of his childhood.

"Oh," Mike sounded vaguely surprised. "George, then."

"What's going on, Mike?" he prompted, aware of the student's curious eyes on him. He turned away from her to face the chalkboard. "It's been... forever."

There was a pause, much longer than could be attributed to the time delay of electromagnetic signals passing from Derry to Sydney, and it was heavy. A bit of noise crackled on the line, though maybe it was at Mike's end.

"Look, Georgie, I wish I didn't have to be calling you about this," Mike said regretfully, slipping back to his previous name without even noticing. "But it's happening again."

He put a strange emphasis on the word "it", and George's brow furrowed in confusion. What could he mean by that? George stared at the chalky calculations scribbled on the board, his mind drifting back to a time when he was just a boy, when he'd been chasing a paper boat down a flooded street, a time when he'd been soon after wracked with the most unimaginable pain in the world as a piece of him was torn away by the savage teeth of a wild animal.

Not a wild animal.

Not an animal at all.

IT.

"Shit," he breathed, his face draining of colour. All at once he remembered the silver eyes flashing in the darkness, the blood-red lips parting in a sick grin as the foolish Georgie reached out for the paper boat his father had made for him earlier that afternoon. He remembered being dragged into the sewers, the whispers in his ear promising a terrible fate, the foul water choking his lungs as he breathed it in. The blood dripping from the place where his arm had been, but he couldn't feel it, couldn't feel much at that time. A large cavern, which he only saw through foggy eyes, his vision clouding from the head injury due to a collision with a road sign above ground. And then afterwards a darkness thicker than anything he could imagine, anything he could even begin to describe (despite his training in the physics of the world around him), a darkness so black he just wandered lost in it for what seemed like an eternity.

Until the Losers rescued him. He couldn't remember the details now, though they threatened to return like a flood of grey water through his mind, but somehow they'd gotten him back from the monstrous clown that lived in the sewers. They'd rescued him, and then in the later days they'd all made a pact that they would return one day if it ever happened again. Ben seemed to think it would be sometime when they were all adults, quipping about history repeating itself. There was something very important locked in all this misty recollection. Was it so important to them to protect the future generations of children from the clown? He supposed so... But the months had passed and the memory of that time had so rapidly faded from them all, lost in the golden rays of their summer together.

Had it even been real at all?

"Georgie - will you come?"

He stared at his phone like it was poisonous. To go back to that forsaken place was suicide, of that he was sure. Mid-semester exams were next week, and he was supervising. There was a sailing event on the weekend that he was a core member of, as part of the university team. He had to sit on an early career researcher panel across the Science faculty on Monday. A proposal deadline for supercomputing time on Wednesday. A million and one reasons to hang up the phone and wipe all memory of Mike and the Losers and that god-forsaken clown from his mind, again, this time for good.

George closed his eyes, feeling a long-absent throbbing return to the place where his right arm met its manufactured counterpart.

"Yes, I'll come," he said numbly. They exchanged a few words about the details, and then Mike was gone.

"Sir?" A faint voice broke his reverie, and he looked back towards the undergraduate student as if awakening from a dream.

"Are you okay?" she asked, looking nervously at his phone. "Was it bad news?"

"Something like that." He rapidly gathered his things, shut his laptop and disconnected it from the AV system. "Sorry - I have to go."

Without another word, he left the stunned student in the empty lecture hall and made his way back to his office. He barely saw anyone as he passed through the halls, a sharp contrast to his normal friendly self who greeted people as he went. Right now, he couldn't deal with anything or anyone but this weighty news ripped out of his past and into his otherwise peaceful present existence.

Thankfully, his office mate was out somewhere (probably getting coffee, Australians were obsessed with their coffee) and he had the room to himself. He walked to the window and stared out across the green square, where people were joyfully tossing a frisbee between them. If only they knew the things he had seen...! The things that lurked in the night waiting for weakness to show. The things that exploited the vulnerability and innocence of children in the worst imaginable way.

But no, that wasn't possible, that wasn't sensible, there wasn't really anything under your bed.

At least that was what the grown-ups would say. Was he becoming his six year old self again? Grown-ups? That was what he was now, not a kid anymore. An image conjured in his mind of a skinny boy with wild curly hair and a wry smile. Stanley Uris, the last person he'd lost contact with after he left Derry. What was he doing now? Something in e-business or so... the last time they'd talked had been an inane conversation about the stats of some underwater legendary Pokémon that Stan was a huge fan of, while George had been defending a dragon one. Why did he remember that, of all things?

He fumbled with his phone and scrolled through the address book, finding a number he'd not remembered he even had in the first place. Without thinking, he dialled, seeking once again the voice of reason from one of his longest and most forgotten friends.

The phone rang for several seconds, before a woman's voice picked up.

"Hi, is Stan there please?" George asked politely. He assumed it was Patty but it has been so long, he didn't really want to assume anything.

"Oh sure, he's a popular one tonight," laughed the voice at the other end. He could hear the traces of a game show playing in the background, an audience cheering and clapping along. She barely covered the mouthpiece as she yelled in the background.

"Stan, before your bath, there's someone on the phone for you!"

There was nothing on the line for an awkwardly long time, some muffled voices, then a faint thudding of feet on the floor growing louder.

"H-hello?"

It may have been years, but his voice hadn't changed that much. Though it did sound a bit hollow, maybe that was something to do with the phone connection.

"Stan!" George said brightly, momentarily forgetting the reason for his call. "It's George Denbrough."

"Georgie...?" came a halted whisper, not sounding like the Stan he remembered at all, but like someone he didn't have it in his heart to correct.

"Yeah, it's Georgie," he said. "Mike called me too."

Another silence.

"I was just... going to have a bath," Stan mumbled. "To clear my head."

George cocked his head to the side, a little confused by the strange tone in Stan's voice. It almost echoed of... guilt? Like being caught in the middle of something. He remembered suddenly, clear as day, when Stan came to the hospital and signed his temporary replacement arm: "To the little brother we all wish was ours, get well soon." George had never had any siblings after all, and Stan in particular had played the role of big brother so often. Sometimes George had felt as if he really did have a big brother watching out for him, thanks to his time with the Losers.

"Stan, you'll be there, right?" George asked, his voice shaking a little. Something deep down in his chest told him Stan hadn't planned to come, and George couldn't bear the thought of trying to face the clown without him.

He could hear Stan breathing, heavily, but there was no response.

"Mike needs all of us," George pressed, a slight pleading in his voice. "Please, come... I need you too."

"George," Stan said weakly. "I don't think I can face it again. He almost got me last time... I still have the scars. I thought we were done with all that, I thought the promise we made to Mike was just... just a kid's promise."

"We all lost a lot that summer," George acknowledged, hearing Stan sniffle a little and wishing he was closer to his old friend instead of thousands of kilometres away. "But we're still here. Others... aren't. We owe it to them to help make sure there are no more sacrifices to this monster."

"What if we can't...?"

"We will," George said firmly. "We will defeat it. You were just kids last time and look how far you got. You saved me. He won't even realise we're coming until it's too late."

Stan heaved a huge sigh, and George could almost hear wheels turning in his head. He imagined his friend standing near the stairs of his house, deliberating with his characteristic skeptical expression, but he couldn't have hoped to imagine the visions of razors dancing temptingly in front of Stanley Uris' eyes.

"Okay, Georgie... Okay. I'll be there."

"Thanks, Stan," George said, feeling like somehow this was the biggest thing he'd ever asked Stan for. "I promise we will be okay."

"You can't promise that, kiddo," said Stan wistfully. "But it'll be good to see you again."

"You too. I'll see you there in a couple days."

"Yeah."

The phone line went dead, and George found himself staring at the poster on his wall. The Crab Nebula, remnants of a long-dead star traced in all the colours of the rainbow, a spinning neutron star in its core. One of his favourite astronomical objects. He kind of wished he could gather his friends and teleport them all there, somewhere far away, to keep them safe. But really, he knew they all needed to be in Derry if they had a ghost of a chance of fighting the monster that lived in the sewers. Maybe this time, now that he wasn't a prisoner, he could play a part in the effort to bring Pennywise down for good.

After all, what arsenal could the clown possibly bring this time against 7 adults instead of 7 terrified children?

The breeze was cool on his face, even while the intense Australian sun beat down on him from above. He felt the sea spray against his cheeks and closed his eyes. He'd always been happiest on the sea, riding the waves with the wind in his sails and an open horizon before him. And the weather here in Sydney was almost always nice, making the water sparkle in the brightest shades of blue he'd ever seen.

As he passed the rocky heads that separated Sydney Harbour from the open sea, the water became a bit choppier, but that was to be expected as the wind picked up. The white peaks of the waves beckoned him, and suddenly he felt like going further than ever before, maybe to the edge where the azure sky met the sea. Freedom, he had always thought, looked like a lot like this.

But suddenly it darkened, and storm clouds began to roll in. That was unusual for October. He looked around him, nervously, as lightning flashed in the heavy black clouds above. This storm had really come out of nowhere, and before he knew it, the rain was pouring down from the skies above, drenching him and the sails of his small boat. The wind whipped around him, and visibility dropped to almost nothing. He squinted through the rain and mist, trying to figure out which way would take him quickest back to shore. He had a gut instinct, but in this kind of weather, it was difficult to say for sure.

The lightning struck again, and suddenly his attention was drawn to the other end of his sail boat. The visibility was tough even there, but not so much to miss the shadowy figure standing at the edge of the boat, balancing impossibly on the tip, long wet hair shrouding the face from view. A tall figure, with scraggly brown hair, dressed in what seemed like rags that were too small a long time ago. The lightning cracked, and the eyes rose to lock onto George's own.

Dark green, he could just make out, belonging to a face he'd never seen before, and yet there was something so familiar about these eyes. Something that reminded him of warm orange lights, distant music, and the smell of paraffin. But these were only the tendrils of a memory that refused to surface, and his chest ached at even the thought of it. The green eyes narrowed, and the figure blinked, and suddenly he was staring into the coldest, emptiest silver eyes imaginable.

He felt scared, alone and vulnerable. As he watched, the figure's mouth twisted into a haunted grin, teeth dark and dripping with blood, amidst seemingly endless rows of sharp pointed teeth.

He screamed.

George jolted awake, chest heaving and his hair matted to his damp forehead.

"Sir?"

An air steward was holding out a damp warm towel, concern etched across his face. George dropped his eyes to read the name tag pinned to his shirt: Amine.

"You were... er, stirring in your sleep," Amine said politely. Glancing around at the faces illuminated by their in-flight screens, with many passengers of his cabin darting sideways looks in his direction, George guessed he had been less stirring and more shouting in his sleep.

"Sorry," he said apologetically. "Bad dream."

He accepted the towel, and wiped his face with it, grateful at least that the seat next to him was empty on this flight from Sydney to Los Angeles. Amine waited patiently, and then took the towel back.

"Flights often unsettle people," he said with a charming smile. "If you need anything, sir, let me know."

"Thanks," George said, smiling back but knowing exactly where the source of his unsettled nightmares stemmed from. And it wasn't being on a plane, he did that plenty as an researcher. It was the ominous horizon approaching, a fear of what awaited him at the other end. He didn't know where that shadowy yet familiar figure had come from, but maybe it was just another representation of the clown eating away at his subconscious. He turned his head to stare out the oval plane window, resting his forehead against it. They were flying towards nightfall, and in the eastern sky he could see the hazy lavender of the Earth's shadow rising slowly, tinting the sky with a mix of pastel hues. It seemed fitting that they were flying into the night, it suited how he felt about returning to his hometown.

And he couldn't help but wonder how many more sunsets he would live to see.