A/N: Content Warnings: Fear, Language, Disturbing Content, Death.

"Let me out of here," Joyce yelled, struggling helplessly with her bindings. She sat handcuffed to a chair at an empty table in one of the numerous observation rooms of Hawkins National Laboratory. The wall on her left had a large mirror that reflected her image back at her, giving her a clear view of herself as she rattled her cuffs again. "Somebody, please! Let me out!"

She tried her hardest to pull her hands free from the metal that surrounds her wrists, grunting with each tug, but ultimately fell short. The sound of the door being unlocked grabbed her attention and she became still and attentive. The door opened and revealed a tall, white-haired man. The lighting was so dim that she could not make out his face as he entered the room. Turning away from her, the man began to pace in the shadows.

"Your son. We know you've been in contact with him," he announced.

"You have to let me-" The man neared her, allowing Joyce to finally see him clearly. She recognized his face immediately. He was the man who was behind the experiments at the lab, the psychic girl, everything. Dr. Martin Brenner.

"When...and how did you make contact with him?" Brenner asked.

"What?" Joyce whispered, frowning.

"Hmm?" His eyebrows raised, and he waited for another answer that didn't come. He rocked on his feet slightly, adding, "Six."

"What?" Joyce repeated, shaking her head.

"Six," Dr. Brenner said the number once more, pacing over to the table and removing his suit jacket. "Six people have been taken this week." He placed the jacket over the back of the chair and rested his hands upon it, leaning over to peer straight into her eyes. "This...thing that took your son...we don't really understand it. But its behavior is predictable. Like all animals…" He paused for emphasis as he pulled the chair out and sat across from her. "It eats. It will take more sons. More daughters. I want to save them. I want to save your son. But I can't do that. Not without your help."

"Stop," Joyce spat out, glaring at the man with open disdain. "I know who you are. I know what you've done. You took my boy away from me! You left him in that place to die! You faked his death! We had a funeral. We buried him, and now you're asking for my help? Go to hell."

Brenner's face remained passive while the woman spoke. Once she was done he lifted his head, examining her. After a brief moment of contemplation, he pursed his lips and his eyes flashed with a hidden anger.

Part Eight: The Upside Down

The moon was rather beautiful in the night sky. Surrounded by an ocean of stars, like a large painting floating above him. Valentin gazed at them, having never taken the opportunity to truly look at the Earth's orbiter. He heard a wistful sigh to his left and turned to see Steve leaning back onto his hands on the hood of his BMW, looking out over the edge of Sattler's Quarry. The brunet had told him that he had started coming here when he was a teen whenever he needed to think, or get away, or waste time.

Of course, Valentin had already been here once before. But that particular time, he had been about two hundred feet below and watching from the In-Between as opposed feeling the breeze in the real world.

After cleaning the marquee above the theater, they grabbed dinner at Steve's favorite diner and attempted to get to know each other better. Not that he needed much help with that, but he had humored his new friend, as that was what friends were supposed to do. He had read Steve's mind afterwards, and the other boy had been quite impressed by what he had discovered about him.

Valentin was not exactly sure what Steve had expected, but he was satisfied that it had been an enjoyable experience for the brunet. But after they had finished, Steve hadn't been quite ready to go home.

So instead Steve brought them here. He noticed the boy turn to look at him out of the corner of his eye before asking, "Never looked at the sky without the town lights around, huh?"

Valentin shook his head slowly from side to side, and turned to stare into his friend's eyes, seeing a bit of green scattered among the dark brown. "There is much that I have failed to experience outside of the school, the library, and my house." He had been hiding from society for the past four years, a fact that left him unable to be comfortable spending more time than he needed to in public.

"Well, luckily you have a new friend that's gonna to change that!" Steve flashed him a charming grin, a large amount of said charm lost in the dried blood that still covered his face. He paused for a moment before adding, "So, look, I've been thinking…" Valentin tilted his head quizzically and waited for him to continue.

"I don't want to be King Steve anymore. He's a jerk, a total asshole," the teen said, his hands swinging wildly in front of him. "I don't know who I want to be, but I want to start figuring it out. And that means trusting my gut."

"Okay," Valentin responded.

Steve raised his brows at him. "Okay?"

He nodded, eyes focused intently on his friend. The books he had read insisted that eye contact was crucial for developing a strong bond. "What you did to Jonathan and Nancy was very cruel," he elaborated upon realizing that his friend wanted more substance from his response. "I know that, whoever Steve is, he is not a cruel person."

"Sure, yeah," Steve shrugged, cheeks turning pink. "I guess." They hadn't been friends longer than a handful of hours, so he knew Steve still found him a bit awkward. He listened as Steve also internally acknowledged that referring to himself in third person sounded stupid once he had heard him do it too. With a huff, Steve decided to reiterate the point he felt he had missed. "What I'm trying to say is… My gut is telling me I need to apologize to Byers."

"Okay," Valentin said again.

"Because it's the right thing to do." Steve looked at him expectantly. It was silent for a minute, the brunet staring unblinking into his eyes.

Valentin stared back with a vacant expression, noticing Steve's left eye twitch, a sign of displeasure. "Do you want my approval?" He finally asked, uncertain about what he was supposed to say.

'Give a guy a break here', he heard Steve think.

His friend wanted his opinion on how the apology would go. He nodded softly. "I do not see why Jonathan would be unreceptive to you."

"Cool," Steve sighed in obvious relief. His friend's thoughts began to fill with self-assurances as Steve first told himself that they would have plenty of time to work on normalizing him before planning what he wanted to say to Jonathan.

Jonathan was somewhat of an interesting case in Hawkins. That was the reason Valentin had been torn about who to select to be his first friend. He had sensed that the teen had anger buried deep within, but he also was aware that Jonathan was not an inherently violent person, so when he had learned of Steve and Jonathan's physical altercation, he had known that the quieter boy would likely be very remorseful. As such, he was certain that Steve's apology would not be rejected.

They sat in silence for a few more minutes before Steve looked at him again, eyes filled with a sudden determination. "You guys kind of talk, so you're coming with in case it goes south again. Is that cool?"

"I have no objections," Valentin replied honestly. Steve nodded before he pushed himself off the hood and turned around to give him his hand. He took the offer, being guided down off the front of the BMW.

"Let's go, Boy George," Steve joked. He furrowed his brows, causing the brunet to smile widely.

"Who is Boy George?" Valentin asked. Three separate people had referred to him by that name, and he was filled with an overwhelming desire to know why. Steve burst into a fit of laughter that echoed through the night air, refusing to answer the question. The pair slipped into the car and started the drive to the Byers' house.

Hopper gritted his teeth as electricity coursed through his body, courtesy of the taser pressed against his collar bone. He gave a pained grunt and panted for air he instant it was released.

"Okay, now what do you know?" The security director asked from where he stood beside Connie Frazier and another male agent. Both stared down at Hopper with a cold and calculating gaze.

"I'm sorry," Hopper said in jest. "Did I stutter? I told you. Everything."

Connie slowly cast a glance at the man next to her. Hopper's body seized up once again as the security director jammed the taser into his shoulder a second time. After a moment the pain stopped and he leaned forward to vomit on the floor.

"What do you know?" Connie asked, sounding agitated.

Hopper leaned back against the wall, flashing them a defiant look. "I know you do experiments on kidnapped little kids, whose parents' brains you've turned to mush," he spit out."And I know you went a little too far this time and you messed up in a big way. I mean, you really messed up, didn't you? Big time. That's why you're trying to cover your tracks."

With deep satisfaction, Hopper watched Connie glance away and the agent's composure began to crack. Hopper looked between the pair as he added, "You killed Benny Hammond, you faked Will Byers' death. You made it look like that little girl just ran away. See, I told you. I know everything."

"All right, who are you working with?" The male agent asked impatiently.

"Nobody. But I did give all this over to my friend at the Times. He's gonna blow this thing wide open," Hopper chuckled, but his mirth quickly turned to another tortured groan as he was tazed again. They yanked him from the floor and shoved him roughly into a chair.

The security director leaned down close to his ear and muttered, "You're just a junkie. A small town cop who had a really bad week." As the man said it, the other male agent began to prepare a syringe full of a clear solution. "Took one too many pills this time," the director finished.

Connie stepped in front of Hopper and crossed her arms. "You made a mistake coming back here."

"No, I didn't," Hopper replied, eyes focused on nothing in particular. "Here's what's gonna happen. You're gonna let me and Joyce Byers go...you're gonna give us anything we need, and we're gonna find her son." The man looked directly at her, narrowing his eyes. "And then we're gonna forget that any of this ever happened."

"Oh, is that right?" Connie asked humorlessly.

"Yeah." Hopper stared daggers into her. "That's right."

Eleven's head still rested on Mike's shoulder as he, Dustin and Lucas waited tiredly on the bleachers of the Hawkins Middle School gymnasium. His leg fidgeted and he looked over at the doors leading to the parking lot. Where were they? Mike glanced at his watch impatiently before standing up from his seat. Eleven's head fell a few inches at the unexpected absence of his shoulder and, without sparing a glance back at them, he ran out of the gymnasium.

They should have been back by now. Mike threw open the doors to the parking lot and called out, "Nancy? Jonathan?"

He realized very quickly upon seeing the missing cars that he and his friends had been left alone. A moment later he stalked back into the gym to inform the group of his discovery. Lucas looked up at him with a frown as he stormed across the wooden floor.

"They're gone," Mike announced.

"What?" Lucas asked.

"Nancy and Jonathan." Mike gestured back at the door he had just entered through. "His car's gone."

Dustin shrugged carelessly. "They're probably just sucking face somewhere."

"Gross," Lucas shot out.

Mike agreed, shaking his head in disgust. "No! No way!"

"Did they go with the chief?" Dustin asked.

Because Mike had totally been informed of where they disappeared to, which was why he was telling them all right now instead of earlier. "I don't know."

"No," Eleven whispered, making the three boys turn to look at her.

"What? Did you see them?" Mike asked, wondering how she could know. "Do you know where they went?"

"Yes."

"Where? Where did they go?"

Eleven gave him a significant look that made his blood run cold. "Demogorgon."

Mike looked around at his friends to see a similar expression etched on their faces. He hoped Jonathan had a plan, otherwise Will would be coming back as an only child.

Jonathan sped up the driveway to his house before screeching to a stop in front of the porch. He and Nancy climbed out of the car and headed straight to the trunk. He opened it and removed the box of hunting supplies as Nancy retrieved the gas canister and stolen fire extinguisher. She shut the trunk with a loud slam and they made their way into what would be the monster's final resting place.

Once inside the house, they dropped the items on the living room floor. Jonathan rested his hands on his hips and gazed silently at Nancy. He flashed her a look, an unspoken question. With the same intuition he read her answering stare. They started hurriedly replacing each bulb to every lamp and every Christmas light strung up through the wrecked home. Then, they prepared for battle.

Jonathan nailed the bear trap into the floor midway down the hallway leading to the bedrooms. He pulled on the contraption to check for stability and when it didn't budge he turned and nodded at Nancy. She responded in kind. He then searched for and eventually found one of his mother's cigarette lighters in the kitchen. He checked that it could produce flame before heading back to the living room. Once there, he watched as Nancy calmly loaded Lonnie's gun with the ammunition they had bought. He grabbed the bat that she had taken from her family's garage and started hammering nail after nail through its surface. As he did so, he heard Nancy go into the hall and start pouring gasoline in a trail from the bear trap to Will's bedroom.

He had gone over the plan with her on the drive there. If everything went accordingly, the monster would be caught in the bear trap, which they would see using a rigged alarm in Will's room, and then they would set it on fire. The gun and the nailed bat were just precautionary measures in case the plan didn't go smoothly.

With a final smash of the hammer, Jonathan threw the bat down onto the coffee table and examined it. The long lengths of the nails stuck out from different sides around the bat, creating a formidable spiked weapon. Moving to Will's room, he placed a bright, yellow yoyo with a smiling face over the back of a chair. He took the toy's string and stretched it from the chair to the door, tying the end around the doorknob. Finally, he and Nancy met in the hall to set the bear trap.

That was the part he was most nervous about, because one wrong move meant a potential invitation to the afterlife. Or at the very least the loss of a limb. Nancy used her body weight to hold the springs steady as he pulled the jaws of the trap open. Once they were fully separated she attached the pin to the pan. Very slowly, he let go of the jaws and Nancy eased off the springs. The trap did not activate, meaning that everything was set.

Taking deep breaths, they leaned against the hall walls opposite from each other. Jonathan looked up at Nancy and she gave him a nod.

It was time.

Hopper sat alone in the dim, tiled room and waited. After a moment the door opened and Dr. Martin Brenner himself entered. The scientist paused to look down at Hopper before walking past him. As he did so he pulled out a crumbled pack of cigarettes and gave it to him. Hopper pulled out a lighter and cigarette from inside the box, placing a cigarette between his lips and lighting it.

Without any pretense, Dr. Brenner asked, "Where's the girl?"

Hopper inhaled deeply before breathing out a puff of smoke. "You gotta give me your word. Nobody's ever gonna find out about this," he said solemnly from his chair. "And those other three kids, those boys, you're gonna leave them alone. Then I'll tell you. Tell you where your little science experiment is." His voice dropped off and he took another hit from his cigarette.

Joyce struggled with her handcuffs once again when suddenly the door to her room flew open. Her mouth gaped as Hopper joined her in the observation room, followed by two military personnel. One came over to her and released her from her restraints before escorting her and Hopper through the lab, flanked by several other soldiers.

"I don't understand," Joyce whispered to Hopper.

"We came to an agreement," Hopper muttered, refusing to make eye contact.

She stared at him in disbelief. "What?"

"Look, everything that's happened here and everything that's gonna happen, we don't talk about," Hopper dodged the question. "You want Will back? This place had nothing to do with it. That's the deal. You got it?"

Joyce decided not to press him. They were directed into a side room where Hopper looked at two large hazmat suits hanging from a coat hanger. "What is this?" he asked.

"Protection," one of the scientists replied as a soldier closed the door. "The atmosphere is toxic."

"But my son's in there. He…" Joyce stuttered.

"Put it on," Hopper interrupted, pulling one of the suits off of the rack.

Beneath the lab, elevator doors opened and Joyce and Hopper stepped out in their bulky suits. Their flashlights illuminated the dark, drafty hall. Together, they set out with a steady pace until they reached it. A large gate, fleshy and disgusting and covered in gnarled vines. Joyce and Hopper stood before the mass, observing the dim glow pulsing from within it. They heard a distinct growling emanate from out the portal itself. The pair turned a weary gaze on one another and stepped forward.

Dr. Brenner marched with a small army of government agents and US military soldiers out of Hawkins Laboratory, Connie Frazier walking at his side. The men easily numbered over thirty, and all were armed.

"I'm telling you this is a mistake," Connie told her boss.

"It's gone," Brenner reminded her. "Isn't that what you wanted?"

"And if they find the boy?" she asked, looking at him expectantly.

"That's not gonna happen," Brenner replied.

The armed men scattered in the parking lot, loading into a back of unmarked army vehicles. Brenner and Frazier loaded into the passenger seat and back seat, respectively, of a black car at the head of the battalion. The driver put the car in gear, and the line of soldiers exited the grounds.

Hopper slowly pushed through the strange substance covering the wall, Joyce close behind. As they moved deeper into the fabric of another dimension, the web-like threads behind the shivered and mended themselves back into place. In the Upside Down, Joyce and Hopper made their way out of the dilapidated replica of Hawkins Lab. They took in the sight of the dead trees before them, and Joyce started to gasp for air in her suit.

Hopper placed a hand on her arm while keeping a steady grip on his weapon. "Hey, you alright?" he asked.

"Yeah," Joyce nodded as she tried to catch her breath.

"I need you to relax, okay? I want you to slow down your breathing, take deep breaths. In and out. Deep breath in...and out. In and out." He kept his hand on her shoulder as he guided her through his instructions. Joyce slowed her breathing as they continued their journey, Hopper turning to look at her again. "You okay?"

"Yeah. Yeah." Her voice was shaky. Hopper gave her a thumbs up to be double sure and she nodded. He turned his focus on the wasteland ahead and, gathering his gun in both hands, the pair eased forward into the unknown.

A/N: I will not be omitting anything from this part except for the first flashbacks to Hopper's life. That means this should be the longest part of the eight.

Next chapter we get some action!

Until next our stars align!