He wallows for a few minutes before he finally comes to terms with the fact that if anything is going to happen in this god-forsaken land, he's going to have to be the person to do it. He sighs heavily, dreading everything that will be involved in surviving this. He kind of just wants to sit on the ground, surrounded by vines that will inevitably crawl up his body and suffocate him.

He's done so much already. He's dealt with this parallel universe bullshit three times too many, and now he's stuck in the lightless, soulless version of Hawkins. He's alone; he knows that much. The Gate is closed, and El and Joyce and the kids are all safe; the Mind Flayer was outside the Gate when it closed, so it would have died; whether it was in Hargrove at the time or not, the kids have one less problem to worry about. His being here ensures that, because he's alone, cut off from the people he loves, and he thinks that maybe he's done enough already. Maybe it'd be okay to just sit here and let the vines do what they want.

But –

He can't help but think that El would be disappointed in him if he just gave up without even trying. He remembers that Will must've fought to survive; he's sure that Barb Holland did as well. How can he do any less, especially when he's got a kid waiting for him on the other side, and the promise of a date with Joyce on Friday at seven o'clock?

Jim fights his way to his feet, grimacing at the pain that lances up his back, that pulls at his face, that constricts around his throat, that jabs through his arms and legs.

First things first. Jim's gotta patch himself up as well as he can if he wants to make it through this, which means he needs to make it out of this underground lair, out of Starcourt fucking Mall, and through the streets of Hawkins to the hospital, because Jim sure as hell doesn't have the shit he needs to fix himself, and even if everything in the Upside Down is rotten and putrid, the hospital's his best bet for finding any of the stuff he needs.

Jim realizes about five minutes later that getting out of her is going to be far more difficult than he had first assumed. For one thing, he didn't exactly memorize the way in, and Murray is the one with the map. Of course, Murray not being here, this doesn't help Jim any. He's not sure how much the map would have helped anyway, given that the drill's explosion seems to have collapsed the catwalk up to the control booth.

"Fucking fantastic," Jim grumbles, kicking his foot out at the remnants of the drill and instantly regretting it when the painful sensation vibrates through his leg. "How the hell am I supposed to get outta here?"

The warped, vine-tangled metal doesn't offer a reply. Jim huffs loudly into the dead air and surveys the wreckage around him. He wonders, with a sort of repulsed reluctance, if he can use the vines that have crawled over every available surface to pull himself up onto the detritus that was once the catwalk, and – having come up with something resembling a way out of this hell-hole – resolves to try it.

Jim wanders over to some of the sturdiest-looking vines, wraps a hand around one, and gives it a solid yank; he makes a face at the slimy feeling of the invasive plants – no one is around to see him, at least; the creeping plant holds against the force he applies and despite the repellent texture, his hand doesn't slip. Jim sighs: he was kind of hoping that he'd have to find another way up and out, but he has realized that things rarely go the way he wants them to.

Annoyed, Jim gives the creepy crawly vines one last frustrated yank, just because. Then, he wraps the gross appendage around his hand, and begins to pull himself upwards, struggling to find footholds in the metal lurking behind the vines.

He wonders why it's so damn hard to scale vertical surfaces; it really makes his experience more unpleasant than it'd otherwise be. Zero out of ten for hospitality and comfort, really. Do the Mind Flayer and Demogorgons have something against, like, human trappings and basic comfort?

He could really use a drink or a smoke right about now, but his borrowed uniform has neither, and anyways, he's a bit preoccupied with climbing this damn wall.

It takes longer than he'd like, and he's glad that no one is there to see him struggle up a wall, but he finally makes it to the top. He staggers to the control room on sore legs. His entire body is aching, really, but he thinks that he can at least rule out the possibility of broken bones if he's managed to use his arms to climb and his legs to walk. If he's wrong, he'll just deal with it later.

Now that he's in a place that is semi familiar, Jim thinks that maybe he'll be able to back-track. He may not have Murray's map, but he does have a functional brain, even if said brain is what got him into this situation in the first place.

Jim trudges through the long, winding hallways of the Soviet base wishing that he had a vehicle because he's kind of over walking and other forms of physical exercise. Unfortunately, he has not had good experiences with relaxing in the Upside Down; he knows that Will was fine and assumes that the kid was able to get some rest while he was down here, so he doesn't know if it's just a Jim Hopper thing that means that vines try to strangle him the second he tries to take a break.

Maybe it was because he'd been trying to dig his way out of the tunnels after he'd smashed his way in. He knows that some things don't like being attacked, or whatever. So maybe the vines had just been retaliating, but Jim still doesn't trust them.

The walk to the elevator is unnecessarily long, but Jim gets there eventually. Of course, it's only after he's pushed the button to close the doors that he realizes the problem. There's no fucking electricity in the Upside Down, and there's no other way out of this fucking base, either. At least, there's no other way that Jim knows of.

He slumps down to the floor of the elevator and leans against the wall that is in the perfect location for him to bang his head against it in frustration. "You've gotta be fuckin' kidding me," he growls furiously. He stares up at the ceiling of the elevator miserably and doesn't bother trying to stifle the groan that escapes him at the sight of the grate there.

The last thing he wants to do right now is climb up an elevator shaft, even if it is his only way out. He'd rather get strangled by vines, which is a very real possibility. He can already feel them creeping forward in a mockery of an embrace. He shrugs them off with some disgust and stumbles to his feet before shoving the grate aside and heaving himself up to stand on top of the elevator.

The climb up the elevator shaft is even worse than the one up to the catwalk; his hands start bleeding part way up; he thinks about just… letting go, at one point, and then he thinks about how disappointed El would be if he just gave up; he thinks he's maybe a quarter of the way up when his muscles start burning, but he doesn't think he's got the ability to climb back down, and he doubts the vines would let him live through any rest he attempted to take, so he continues his shuffling climb, pulling himself up the braided metal ropes when the ladders mysteriously disappear. It reminds him a little bit of Chutes and Ladders, except it's real life, and not fun, and there're no slides involved; instead there are never-ending ladders except for when they do end, and there're metal cables dangling from the ceiling he can't see, and there're vines crawling over everything in a desperate bid to keep him from reaching his goal.

He just wants to get to the goddamn hospital. Is that so much to ask?

Apparently, now that the Mind Flayer is (presumably) gone, the Upside Down has a benevolent ruler. Jim makes it out of the ruins of Starcourt, down the various streets of ghost town Hawkins, and into the deserted hospital without any issues. He doesn't even see any Demodogs lurking in the surplus of shadows as he makes his trek.

In another stroke of luck – which Jim refuses to attribute to whatever being now oversees the Upside Down, given that he's stuck here without any way out – he manages to find some ointment for the burns on his back, and some bruise cream for his throat. He can't do much for his face, and his arms and legs aren't broken, just sore, so he slathers the various creams on, wraps his burns with some thankfully uncontaminated gauze, and pockets the tubes of ointment. Then he goes in search of different clothing; for some reason, he doesn't love the idea of wandering through the Upside Down – and possibly ending up back in Hawkins in the future – in a Soviet uniform. There's also the fact that the back is missing, thanks to Jim's near miss with the drill, and the Upside Down is not the warmest of places, even in what he assumes is probably summer, given how uncannily similar to Hawkins the place looks.

Every time Jim has been here previously, it has always struck him as odd that the Upside Down is such a perfect copy of Hawkins. He always wonders why it's Hawkins. Why not some major city? But then, Jim figures, maybe if he walks far enough, he'll find himself in the shitty mirror version of Indianapolis, or Chicago, or Los Angeles, or Vegas, or even New York City. Maybe the Upside Down is always Hawkins because that's where he's always entered it from.

Jim makes a mental note to not walk to the USSR – it would suck to be there if a gate opened; Jim has dealt with more than his fair share of Soviets for someone who works as the police chief in some random nowhere town in the middle of the States, and he doesn't really want to get spit out surrounded by more of them.

It gets him thinking, though. If the Upside Down really is an alternate universe's version of the world he knows and has a love-hate relationship with, where the hell are all the people? He's seen Demodogs and Demogorgons and repulsive, creepy-crawly vines, a distinct lack of food and water, and zero humanoid figures. If the Upside Down is basically evil-Earth, shouldn't there be, like, evil people, too?

Jim brushes the thought off. He's got enough problems to deal with without adding potentially evil people to the mix. What he needs right now is to survive this god-forsaken place, and to do that, he needs to figure something out for water and food and weapons.

He looks around himself. All he can see is gross Upside Down-ness; the hospital probably doesn't have much in the way of consumable items – and even if it did, Jim is very aware that hospital food is repulsive without adding the Upside Down into the equation – or weapons. He snags various bottles of medications, a first aid kit, and a rusted scalpel that he finds lying on the floor – either someone was doing surgery before everything went to shit, or someone tried to defend themselves from a Demo-something-or-other (Jim wishes he could scoff at such naivety, but here he is, picking up a scalpel to defend himself from monsters – before he leaves the hospital behind and heads for Bradley's Big Buy.