Steve tore his way back through the school cafeteria, shoving chairs out of his path. Robin was keeping up with him step for step. He hated this room. He hated this building. In '83, the place had seemed like a palace. It bowed and curved to his every social need. The halls were full of pretty girls and high fives, the gym was his sanctuary, the cafeteria his playground. Bagels in the early classes, making eyes at Nancy Wheeler when she passed his locker. Laughing until spit flew with Tommy and Carol at the most coveted lunch table around.

Hawkins High had been emptier then. And this was midnight.

During Spring Break.

Now the school seemed to have swallowed Henderson whole. The Upside Down was a staircase away, and the kid had gone missing. Steve couldn't stand the feeling rising in his chest every time he yelled Dustin's name and nobody yelled back. They raced through the corridors, jiggling doorknobs and bursting into classrooms and any unlocked offices.

"Steve?" said Robin, rounding the next corner with him. "Hey! Dingus."

He didn't stop, turning halfway. "Robin, we don't have—"

"Shut up, listen to me." Robin raised both hands. "My grandmother always says you find things faster when you've got a clear head."

"Isn't your grandma, like, ninety-five with dementia?"

"This was before the dementia kicked in."

"And the cigars, y'know she was high that whole time at Thanksgiving—"

"Steve." Robin huffed. "Look, what I'm saying is, right now—your head seems really, really not clear. Like—even less than usual."

Was she serious? Steve tilted his head at her, scoffing. "Uh, yeah, no duh, Buckley, we're missing a kid here. I'll be calm when the census is back to normal."

"Dustin's a genius, remember?" Robin opened the next door, fruitlessly poking her head in and out of a closet. "He wouldn't do anything this stupid."

"Exactly, he wouldn't do anything this stupid, so something's gotta be wrong." Steve slammed open the next door, way harder than necessary, shouting Dustin's name and feeling it vibrate at the back of his throat. The Benson guy had been caught so easily in the school, just carrying out whatever newspaper things needed to get done that night. The thought of any one of his friends repeating the performance was giving him what he had to assume were the early stages of an ulcer. Ever since he'd fallen in with this group, he felt like he'd jumped from 18 to 30 in the span of a single year.

"Okay, granted, this is weird, but the more wigged out we get—hey—" Robin veered in front of him, a hand on each of his shoulders, forcing him to stop and breathe and look her in the face. "—the more likely we are to miss any clues."

Steve rolled his eyes, but he felt his chest unwind a little. Something about Robin's steady babble, her nails digging into the seams of his jacket, pushed him to slow down and regroup.

"Inhale," Robin ordered, voice gentle.

He pursed his lips, glancing at her out of the tops of his eyes. But he obeyed.

Robin raised her eyebrows. "Good. Keep doing that. Let's find us an egocentric nerd child." She clapped him on the back, jock-style, and headed for the next room.

Steve shut his eyes for a moment after she let him go. They'd been through worse than this. If he was going to have a cow every time one of these little brats got themselves in a tight spot, he was going to be a very burnt-out father someday. Save some cows for the nuggets, he told himself, which was smart because no one else would have understood that sentence.

He turned to check Click's classroom, glaring at the door when it refused to magically unlock. Then something caught his eye, a bit to the left.

A walkie talkie. Sitting on the floor. Outside of…

Steve hurled himself across the hallway and into the east men's restroom. "Henderson—"

Dustin, shrieking, whirled around to face him. The two of them cursed in harmony, breathing hard. The kid had just dropped a wadded-up paper towel on the ground.

"Geez, why are you yelling—"

"You little son of a—"

"Almost gave me a heart attack—"

"I almost gave you a heart attack?" Steve raked both hands through his hair, unwilling to blink, staring at Dustin until his eyes hurt. Half rage and half sit-down-and-cry relieved. "I almost gave you?"

"Yes—

"Gave you?"

"Yes!" Dustin was doing that thing where he talked like you were a small child. Nancy's baby sister got more respect. "What's going on? Why do you look like that? Talk to me."

"Like what?"

"Like somebody kicked you in the groin, man. You're white as a sheet right now."

"You gotta be kidding me."

The door swung open and Robin let out a long, loud, ragged sigh of complete solace. "Ohohomigod, you found him!"

Dustin glanced between the two of them, eyebrows knit. "I was peeing."

"Thank you." Robin was laughing now, almost hysterically. "Thank you for peeing. Thank you. He was peeing," she added deliriously to Steve.

"Yeah, nice clear head you got there," he grunted, smirking at her.

"We found him!" Robin shouted, turning and bolting out the door. They could still hear her as she went careening down the halls. "We got him, guys! You guys!"

Henderson pushed past Steve, leading the way out of the bathroom. "I was barely gone ten minutes and you people fall apart?"

"Dude, I am gonna kick your—"

"Oh, thank God." Nancy was the first to arrive out of the calvary Robin had been calling for. Her hair was a mess, her makeup was worse, her eyes were fixed on Dustin with the exact same look her mother wore whenever Mike stayed out too late. Steve felt his lungs trying to give up on him. She was a knockout. "What were you thinking?" she snarled into Dustin's face, marching up to them. Steve didn't think he'd ever been more spellbound.

Dustin leaned backward, wrinkling his nose. "I was thinking I had to take a leak, what is going on, guys?"

Max appeared behind Nancy, practically tripping over her own feet. "Why didn't you answer?" she snapped, shaking her walkie talkie. "I've been calling and all I get is radio silence!"

"Uh, sorry if I feel a little weird having the walkie on when I'm using the bathroom," Dustin scoffed, blinking repeatedly, arms up. "You do see that I'm in one piece, right? Everybody?"

Lucas joined them, gasping for breath, Robin at his side. "Next time," he panted, "use the buddy system, man."

"Next time drink some coffee," Dustin retorted, shooting a grin up at Steve. "I flicked a Nutter Butter off his nose. Didn't budge."

Steve did not smile back.

"You are never supposed to go anywhere alone in here, okay, nobody is," Nancy said. "You have to tell us where you're going."

"Yeah, we were screaming like maniacs all over for you, how could you not hear us?" Robin demanded.

"I. Was. Peeing."

"You pee that loud?" Lucas huffed.

"Gross, don't answer that!" Max's hand waved away Dustin's response.

"Okay, okay, sheesh. I will tell someone next time. Happy?" Henderson snatched his walkie up off the floor, stuffing it in his back pocket. Then he paused, casting a lightly baffled look to Steve, then Lucas, then everyone in turn. He shuffled in a circle, head twisting around. "Where's Eddie?"

Steve shrugged, barely containing the urge to roll his eyes again. "I dunno, somewhere around here. Probably still wasting time tryna find you."

"Wasn't he with Chrissy?" Max asked, head tilted.

"No, he followed you, right?" Steve nudged Lucas.

"Never saw him. Didn't Chrissy go with you guys?" Lucas shot back, pointing between his ex and Nancy.

"I…thought she was with Robin," Nancy replied, round blue eyes stabbing the taller girl, face going slack.

Robin glanced at Steve, her own gaze wide and dreading. "It was just us."

Steve pressed his hands to his face, feeling that chest thing start to flare up again. "Okay," he mumbled through his fingers, words riding on an exhale. "Round two."

Eddie hit the ground and thought he might have broken his back for a second. Didn't you lose all feeling when you broke your back? He hadn't lost feeling. In anything. It hurt. It all hurt. And it was freezing, the world was freezing, and everything always hurt worse in the cold.

That included the vine. It was still wrapped around his ankle. His eyes were trying hard to get used to the lack of light, but the shock of the change in temperature, of the distance of the fall, the heat piercing through his sock, the fact that it was suddenly really really hard to inhale without coughing—his body had too much to care about. Sight went to the bottom of the priority list.

With a sound that was probably an evil, squishy version of what happened when Spider-Man comics wrote thwip in fat letters, the vine released him. The force of it bounced his body a bit, so that his head collided with the floor again and he saw spots.

Eddie cursed loud, gasping for breath. Ankle burning, throat constricting, head aching. He heard a long, low, guttural noise and started to panic before realizing he was the one making it. A stretchy, weak groan of spiked adrenaline and pain. Everything was bad. Barring death, no more damage could be done to him physically.

Then Chrissy fell on him.

This called to his attention the fact that all the injuries and the release of the vine had been happening in the time it took to clap. Maybe in crises, you processed things slower. Or maybe that was just him.

It also called to attention the fact that Chrissy A) weighed next to nothing but B) was really bony, and even a five-year-old can cause harm if they land on someone from a solid enough distance.

He yelped, raspy, but didn't try to move. Everything was sore. He felt like he'd just gone ten jovial rounds with Wayne on a Friday night, fifteen again and laughing, tumbling over the living room carpet. But this sort of sore wasn't the good, wrestling kind, and it probably couldn't be fixed with a hot shower.

Chrissy shrieked upon entry. She had been clutching his arm when they'd gone in, but the vine had been pulling him more aggressively than she seemed prepared for. She'd lost her grip milliseconds into the fall.

She was practically in his lap now, and she looked way more shell-shocked by the descent than he hoped he'd been. Her arms and legs jerked slightly on impact; her back thudding against his legs. He didn't hear any cracking, so that was something. But his eyes were adjusting, and she looked paler here in this low, low blue light, her whole body shuddering for a moment. She sucked in, groaning, and immediately started to hack.

His brain was still doing that slow thing, because he was, in hindsight, stupidly sluggish in reacting to the next turn of events.

Before she even opened her eyes, Chrissy was dragged bodily away from him, off toward the wall beside the stairwell. Two of the vines had her by the wrists.

The moment he felt her slide off, Eddie launched himself to his feet, muscles and back hating him for it. He didn't know what to do. The slimy tendrils were biting into Chrissy's skin, pulling her arms tight, pinning her against the wall. He didn't know what to do. She was screaming, legs thrashing. He had to do something.

Dodging more vines on the floor, Eddie grabbed a slick, moldy chair. It was missing a leg and had been more brightly-colored and dusty in their own dimension, parked in a corner. He ran to Chrissy, slamming one of the chair's legs into the vine gripping her right wrist. No effect. It was like poking a tree trunk with a stick.

"Help—help me!" Chrissy shrieked, still struggling madly. She was half sobbing as the vines stretched tighter and tighter. "Eddie, please—"

She was in total panic, he could tell by the wild tint to her voice. That was making him panic too. Eddie moved in a haze of fear, barely aware of what he was doing. He chucked the chair aside and went storming around this Upside Down version of the school basement, throwing things out of his way and opening file cabinets with a slam. All the while, he danced around the sticky, black chunks that seemed to cling to everything.

His foot knocked into something, something that went rolling with a hollow tinkling sound. An empty, glass Coke bottle. Probably left over by the janitor in the real world, the right world. The world flipped the wrong way through the hole in the floor.

He grabbed the bottle, fumbling at first, and without hesitation smashed it against the nearest file cabinet. Tiny specks of glass went into his thumb, flicked against his jacket, and glittered to the floor.

Eddie attacked the vines holding Chrissy with new vigor, using the jagged edges of the broken bottle, driving them into the dark mass with a much more satisfying result. He gritted his teeth, profanity and animalistic noises hissing out between his molars. Come on. Come on.

The vine on the right writhed and dropped her. The one on the left was more resilient, as if prepared for the assault now. It seemed the deeper he stabbed it, the more it tightened around his friend. He drew back and gored it again. Again. Again. Harder each time, letting the terror and the desperation fuel his arm. It got to the point where he was gripping the round end of the bottle with both hands, bracing his body with a shoe planted firmly on the wall, pushing and pushing until he felt the tip of the glass touch the solidity of the wall behind the vine.

Finally, it snapped off, the rope of it around Chrissy's skin unwinding and falling limply away. A disgusting squelching could be heard as those two vines in particular retracted completely.

Chrissy fell knees-first to the ground, coughing terribly. Eddie dropped the bottle, breathing hard, and sank down beside her. After a second or two, whatever milky-white dust that seemed to be wafting around them started to tickle in the back of his own throat again. Soon they were wheezing in harmony.

"Thanks," she gasped, squeezing her eyes shut and throwing an arm over her mouth. A moment or two passed, and she seemed to gain control of the coughing.

Eddie struggled to do the same, forcing his mouth shut and swallowing hard. "Yeah," was all he could manage.

Slowly, she stood up, and he followed her. Chrissy was shifting her weight from foot to foot, turning in a cautious circle to survey their surroundings. It really was just the same school basement—except filled with massive, dark creepers. Everything was sticky or moist somehow; everything was hard to see and focus on. The air smelled and tasted intolerable—way worse than it had when it had only been wafting up from the gate in their own dimension. There was a thunderclap somewhere far off. The cheer captain kept her mouth tucked into the crook of her elbow, breathing through the cotton of her hoodie. There was a sickly, vague look on her face, like she wasn't sure any of this was really happening. It made her eyes squinch up.

"You okay?" Eddie checked. "Anything…broken?"

She shook her head, her back to him now. Still staring around. Then she stopped and turned, hair swishing, to meet his eyes. "What about you?"

Eddie tried to smile. It was hard when his knees were knocking together and his back felt like what he assumed Wayne's back felt like on a daily basis. So he gave up the smile. "Well, uh, under the circumstances? I'd say I'm…I'm um…" He took a very large, careful step around another vine to stand beside her. He thought he saw it twitch and he fought a whole-body shudder. "Yeah, ask me again tomorrow?"

Chrissy nodded, eyes tracing the black that was crisscrossing the floor. "So," she said, soft, shaky, "it…it's just like Hawkins."

"Except nasty," Eddie surmised, clicking his tongue and swiping a bit of that milky dust off the shoulder of his jacket. "With killer plants. Thought Henderson might've come down here," he explained, tone low, "maybe tried that scouting crap he was talking about, but—"

"Me too," Chrissy mumbled, riding out another cough. "You don't…think he's still here somewhere? Do you?" She sounded like she really needed his answer to be no.

He really wanted to say no. He really wanted Dustin to come traipsing down those squishy stairs, alive and well and dumber than dirt, preferably in the next five seconds. He really, really wanted to pinch himself and wake up and not be here anymore. Most of all, Eddie wanted to be totally baked. And then wanted to come to on the couch back home, or the porch, or the back of his van, and to blink away the bad air and the scary foliage and the thunder still booming in the distance. To be able to say it was all a bad trip. But something about the Upside Down was altogether too real to be dismissed, no matter what you'd been on.

Before he could answer, Chrissy gasped. She had whipped completely around, facing him, arms tucked in to her chest. Now she was pointing, slightly. "Y-Your—hand—"

Eddie looked down, half expecting to see a random bloody stump, the way things had been going so far. He quickly prepared to throw up, maybe pass out. Turned out to be unnecessary—there was blood, but his hand was still there. Dark red was thinly trickling down to his fingertips, coming from one or two cuts on his palm.

They weren't stinging yet. Maybe he was in shock. This didn't warrant shock, but combined with falling into another dimension, fighting black sentient vines—that might. Eddie winced anyway at the sight, cursing under his breath. He'd been cut before, obviously. Usually the betrayal came from broken beer bottles, not Coke. It didn't make him woozy or anything, but he realized there was probably something new to worry about when exposing a wound to these specific elements.

"Must've been the bottle—"

He let the end of his nonchalant explanation inhale to a halt. Chrissy had stepped closer and taken his wrist in her hand, and now she was doing something to the base of her blouse, which she was digging for under her hoodie.

"Hold on," she said, almost to herself.

She was ripping it. A portion of the end of her white blouse, layered with blue Bengal-stripes, was rent apart, splitting by the seam, with a tearing sound that seemed louder to him than it probably was. She stuffed the shred of fabric into her hoodie pocket. Then she raised his upturned palm closer to her face, inspecting it. Eddie stared at his own blood, willing it not to get on Chrissy's fingers. It didn't listen.

Chrissy's expression twisted, lip curling, at the sight of his injuries. He almost apologized. "There's glass in your hand," she informed him, grimacing.

"…Yeah," Eddie agreed, looking from his cuts to her and back again. What else was he supposed to say to that?

She was gingerly tilting his palm this way and that, like she was trying to see the tiny bits of glass better. It couldn't have been easy; there was barely any light to make it glitter. In his skin. Maybe it was making him woozy.

Chrissy leaned down and started thumbing the edges of the larger cut, using her nail.

"What uh—" Eddie jerked back a little. "What're you doing?"

"I have to get it out," Chrissy replied, clearing her throat against another cough.

"Oh," he said, quickly, "no, I mean—you don't have to…do that, uh—"

She didn't seem to hear him. So they just stood there, in the middle of Vecna's version of the high school, flashes of red coming in from the basement's one hopper window, while Chrissy picked glass out of two slices in Eddie's right hand. There was a general wet sound, probably the vines or some creature or the sound of the last pieces of his comfort zone dripping away from him. Eddie's brain started breaking up and scattering.

It was freezing. Chrissy's brow knit when she was concentrating. What were those white things floating everywhere? He missed Wayne. How much glass could there be? Her grip was very gentle, almost nonexistent, along his wrist. Place smelled like roadkill and winter. Were his knees still shaking? And how did she continually smell good, here in Satan's armpit? The cuts were starting to sting. Not too much. Enough. There was a piece of her hair looping out, not falling straight like the rest. It was bothering him. Was he going to get some kind of infection from this? If only it were deeper. He'd have a scar.

Chrissy glanced up for a second. "Sorry," she said, breath crystallizing in the air, turning back to her work. "Almost done."

"No, it's just—" Eddie pursed his lips, leaning in a little and whispering like he was sharing a secret in kindergarten: "This is actually the first time I've ever held hands with a girl."

She paused, eyes flicking up to him again, and he bared his teeth in a wince of faux embarrassment. Then she burst out laughing, breathy, half-hearted. "Really?"

He grinned, feigning indignance with every muscle in his eyebrows. "Surprised, Cunningham?"

Chrissy made an obvious effort to pull her laugh back in, startled by the question. It was fun watching her squirm for the politest way to respond. "No, I—I mean—well—"

"I was kinda hoping there'd be less blood involved when it happened, but…I guess beggars can't be choosers, right?" Eddie sucked in a breath when she pulled out a bigger piece.

She winced for him. "Sorry."

"Oh my god, stop saying sorry."

"Sorry!"

"Chris-sy!"

Their dual chuckles petered out and he was left with that moist, stormy background noise to focus on. It was a little pathetic that this, for him, passed as hand-holding. The cuts made it a bit more metal, in a way. Chrissy was meticulous, the small amount of blood coming out of him starting to dry out, making her fingernails look rusty. Her hands were really cold. And really little. He parked his eyes on her delicate, blood-stained fingers while his mind ran around, trying to distract him from the general circumstances and the fact that she was standing that close and touching him for this long.

It shouldn't have mattered in a life-threatening hellscape. It almost didn't. But experience taught him that hormones probably could've taken on Vecna himself and won. The human body did what it was made to do, apocalypse or no. He could feel his heartbeat pounding and pounding through his wounds.

Finally, finally, she stopped and examined him one more time. "Okay," she said, under her breath, swallowing. Then she pulled out the blouse scrap from her pocket and started wrapping his hand up.

Eddie didn't pull any faces or use any strong language, though it did hurt. He watched her slowly and gently wind the strip around his palm, tying it off on the side. "Where'd you learn this?"

"Um…I think I saw it on M*A*S*H or something," Chrissy muttered distractedly, tightening the knot. "I mean, you—you probably shouldn't just…leave it open like that, so—"

"Sorry about the shirt," he offered, quiet.

She pressed her lips together like she wanted to laugh again, eyes on the fabric, speaking just as softly. "Stop saying sorry."

Eddie felt something unwind in his chest, some curled-up thing that had been pushing extra nervousness into him ever since they'd been dragged in here. Having someone to talk to would be easier than searching for Henderson (or his worm-eaten little body) alone. Having someone to chuckle with was better. Having someone to tease him was probably the highest level you could get to in this scenario. It was a little slice of normal in all the crazy. The fact that that someone was Chrissy felt like a bonus, like extra whipped cream on a banana split personified. With green sprinkles. Now he was hungry.

Something echoed around them, something distant and loud at the same time. A voice.

They both froze, looking around with twin pairs of huge eyes, as though afraid of what they might see. Nothing. The basement was the basement, gross and dark and ominous.

It happened again. This time, the words "in there" showed up.

Chrissy wrinkled her nose, letting go of his hand. "Was that—"

"Mayfield," Eddie confirmed, stepping away to do a broader search, edging around the vines toward a filing cabinet. "Red?" he shouted, hoarser than he'd intended.

Several voices came, then, in response. Multiple echoes chasing each other.

"Eddie!" Chrissy was standing over the gate, mouth wide open.

Eddie hurried to join her, leaning slightly over the edge of the hole. He looked down and back every few seconds, trying to be certain the vines near his feet remained still. Warm, red light was pulsing up through the gate, making Chrissy and her hoodie and her big eyes look pinker.

The further out he leaned, the more people he saw on the other side, in the correct dimension. The Rightside Up? Their world. Max was standing in the center of the group back in the real Hawkins, in the parallel basement. It was like looking into a lake with his friends replacing his reflection, far, far away. Steve was on her left, Sinclair on her right, Robin behind them, Wheeler beside her. And in front of Max…

Dustin jumped a little when they came into view, shaking Lucas' shoulder excitedly. He shouted an expletive, then called out, "There you guys are!"

Eddie felt his heart drop. He let out a guttural laugh through his teeth, low and forbidding. "Dustin…" he began, practically spitting out the name.

"Thank God!" Robin shouted, hands raking through her hair. Her torso leaned backward, face splitting with a grin. "We thought you guys were either dead or making out in a closet somewhere, and I have to say, between the two I definitely preferred the closet thing—"

"Robin," Steve and Nancy interrupted her simultaneously, deadpan. Wheeler put a stalling hand up, as if to hold back Buckley's words. They still carried.

Chrissy made a small huff of laughter beside him, relief and chagrin mixed. Eddie didn't care what foot the band geek was currently eating. His eyes were still glued to Dustin, who was grinning his stupid, stupid gap-toothed grin at Harrington and standing there very alive and very safe. For a moment, Eddie wanted to remedy that himself.

"What were you thinking?" Dustin bellowed. "How did you even get through without—"

"Henderson, when I get outta here…" Eddie began, cutting him off. Chrissy was shuffling next to him. Shoulders bobbing. Was she really, full-on laughing now? No, her fingers were curled against her mouth. She was trying not to laugh. That was just as bad.

"He was peeing," Max explained loudly, with an expression that told everyone exactly what she thought of this.

Eddie dragged his palms over his face, cursing.

"What's that on your hand?" Lucas asked, squinting at the stained wrapping along Eddie's right hand.

"Is that blood?" Robin gasped. "That's blood, holy sh—"

"Bottle broke," Eddie rasped through his fingers, stifling a cough. They weren't going to get a better explanation out of him than that. He was going to dive through that hole, kick Dustin from the high school to the Quarry, and then promptly pass out right there in the woods.

"Okay, again—what were you thinking?" Dustin demanded, cupping his hands around his mouth.

"We were looking for you," Chrissy suddenly burst out, shoving her hair out of the way as she leaned down. Her eyes flicked from one person to the next, clearly drinking in the warm lighting and the sight of other people. Like she needed a reminder that this setting was temporary, that the other dimension existed. "We—w-we got kind of sucked in, um—one of the vines—"

"Why in Hell would I go through the gate? By myself, are you crazy?"

Eddie's hands snapped away from his face and he pointed roughly toward Henderson. "Hey, don't pull that with me, man, you were the one talking about scouting missions, all right?"

"But I was never gonna do it alone," Dustin scoffed, arms spread. "That's suicide. You never split up the party. Do I look like an idiot?"

"Well…" Steve tilted his head, clicking his tongue.

Nancy gave a loud huff, silencing any more arguments. "It doesn't matter. What matters is getting them out of there before anything…" She shuttered to a halt, mouth opening and closing. Eddie did not like the expression on her face. Like Wayne the first time he had asked him if his dad was ever getting out of jail. Something uncertain and unpleasant. Checking himself, not wanting to divulge details. "Before anything…happens," Wheeler finished lamely.

Dustin nodded. "Okay, you guys sit tight, we're gonna find a way to pull you through." He turned to the rest of the group. "We need something long, like a rope. Something sturdy."

"We could make a human ladder," Lucas suggested.

"I can't hold anybody, I'm completely useless equilibrium-wise," said Robin, lifting a hand.

"How 'bout a real ladder?" Max grunted, readjusting her headphones.

"Nah, no way, you bring one of those and we're gonna break our necks on it," Eddie informed them. "Thing's farther down or—up—than it looks." His spine echoed the sentiment, still smarting from his initial entrance.

"You're not really in a position to be picky here, dude."

"Don't screw with me, Harrington, I'm in no mood—"

"You can use the hose," Chrissy said, covering a cough of her own. It seemed the shouting was sucking in more of those white flakes than a normal volume did. "In the janitor's closet."

Robin instantly turned around, grabbing Steve by the sleeve and dragging him out of sight, presumably heading for the janitor's closet. Eddie glanced at Chrissy, watching her watch the others. Her mouth was still twitching like she wanted to smile. There was something really full and pretty in her expression—hope, solace, plain weak happiness at knowing they were gonna get out of here that quickly? Whatever it was, it was getting stronger the longer she listened to everyone banter and bicker.

"So. Did you guys happen to get any intel while you were in there?" Dustin asked. There was an innocent roundness to his eyes that made Eddie want to sucker punch him for a minute, or maybe just knock him down and sit on him awhile. That blue twinkle was back, too.

Eddie gave him a warning look, louring.

"Just in case!" Dustin raised his palms and his eyebrows in tandem.

Robin, out of breath, returned alone. "Locked," she gasped. "The janitor's closet. It won't open."

Eddie opened his mouth to respond—so did Dustin—but it was Chrissy who said, "Use a credit card."

Everyone paused briefly to look at her. The heads on the other side of the gate swiveled to gaze up and to their right, like people at the movies in the front row. Eddie's hair swung when he turned to follow the crowd.

"It got me into the counsellor's office. Earlier." Chrissy didn't look any shyer than usual for the revelation. Her eyes flicked to Eddie; she looked startled to see him nearly grinning at her. Someone had been listening to his advice after all.

Robin hurried to test this theory. The others got busy trying to find some kind of "landing pad" for Eddie and Chrissy once the hose could be retrieved. He wanted to tell them there'd be no need; the vine had yanked him in hard and he still hadn't damaged any bones on impact. No matter how bent out of shape his back currently felt, faintly throbbing. Nancy was in the middle of suggesting they go get the cheer mats, pile them up, when a horrible sound from the Upside Down side of things interrupted her.

It was a kind of sucking, snuffling. The wood of the door upstairs rattled. Once. The noise turned Eddie's blood to ice; he could feel his arms and legs going colder.

Both he and Chrissy's heads snapped toward the stairwell.

"What?" Dustin asked, voice pitching oddly. Everyone's faces on the other side of the gate had gone deathly still. "What happened?"

"Shh!" Eddie held out a hand at him, fingers splayed wide.

Another rattling, louder. More snuffling.

Chrissy's chest was heaving. "What is that?" she whispered. All he could see were the whites of her eyes.

Eddie's own breath started coming in spurts as the rattling became worse, repeatedly, faster, harder. Whatever was upstairs—whatever was on the other side of that door—it was trying to come downstairs. It was trying to get into the basement. Hive mind. The words flew into his head, making his hands numb. Monsters.

Then something louder than the rattling, louder than the snuffling. A guttural, drippy, animalistic warble.

Lucas' voice floated between dimensions, hushed. "Demodog."

Eddie heard a low moaning sound. It was him. He was moaning. His hand gripped the hair on the crown of his head, eyes glued to the stairwell. He didn't know what a demodog was. He didn't have to. The thing just feet above them, the sounds it was making as it tried to reach them—it painted an ugly enough portrait.

"It can smell the blood," Max practically whispered. Echoes of her words drifted up to the two in the Upside Down, far too prettily for the circumstances. Deceptively calm.

"Steve…" Henderson's voice became a squall at the end, gaze on the gate, head angled toward their basement's exit.

The rattling was now a slight splintering, and Eddie thought his stomach was turning inside out.

"Run!" Nancy's shout suddenly cut through the terrified silence.

Amazing. That one word made every single thing about this situation scarier.

"What?" Eddie did straighten, voice shrill, jerking back and forth a few steps, not sure where exactly he was supposed to be running. He would love to run. But this place was all walls. Walls and vines and he wanted to wake up.

Everyone on the other side started talking at once. Chrissy was a raw, shaking five feet and three inches of nerves beside him, her head still completely trained on the doorway entering the stairs. He felt her arm trembling violently against his.

"Doesn't matter, just get out!" Nancy barked. "There's no time, get out!"

"Ohmigod, Steve—Robin, hurry—" Max went racing out of view.

Where were they with the hose? Why weren't they back yet? How long did it take to break through a door and grab a rolled-up chord of rubber? He couldn't remember how far the janitor's closet was from the basement. Somewhere upstairs. Upstairs where that thing was. The demodog. For him, for Chrissy, not for them, not for the people on that blessedly clean-looking, warm, light, safe version of this building. The version in that hole inches from his feet. Away from the creature. Why shouldn't the two of them just jump in? What was a twisted limb or two among friends?

There was a massive cracking, crashing sound, around the corner. Up the steps. Chrissy screamed, Eddie cursed, loudly, one long yell. The door was breaking down.

Suddenly they were all screaming something.

Wheeler shrieked the word gun, he thought, mixed with some kind of sentence probably, and took off running on their end of things. Lucas had his hands gripping the sides of his head, wildly gesturing with his arms, drowned out completely by Dustin.

"Go, go, go!" Dustin was screeching. "We'll find you, we'll get you out!"

Eddie was yelling something back. Maybe it was coherent. A question.

Chrissy broke away from him as Dustin spoke, flight winning over fight. No—she slammed her body into one of the filing cabinets, shoving it with every ounce of weight she had. She was pushing it toward the wall. He could see it out of the corner of his eye.

"Skull Rock!" said Dustin. "Go to the Skull Rock gate—"

"Wh-wh-what do you mean, Skull Rock gate?" Eddie demanded. They were bowling over each other's voices now. Drawn-out, thin scratching sounds were coming from upstairs. Crackling. More warbling.

"I mean get out of there, get to the woods, get to Skull Rock! Patrick died there, he died so there's a gate at Skull Rock, go!"

Eddie whipped away from the gate, from that comforting reddish light, stumbling back into the shadows of the room. He headed for Chrissy, who had managed to get the filing cabinet a few feet toward the wall beneath the hopper window. The window. She was Einstein. She owned pom poms and she was the smartest girl he'd ever met in his life, screw Nancy Wheeler. That window looked friendlier and somehow smaller with every passing heartbeat.

He rammed his shoulder against the tan, metal cabinet, hearing it screech as it was given its final shove against the wall. The dampness of the tiles beneath them seemed to make it easier, and it pitched and jerked over any tendrils in its way. They shuddered, but didn't snap or recoil or react much. Like the demodog could take it from here, threat-wise. Not comforting.

Chrissy put one shoe on one of the drawers' handles, trying to scale the cabinet, but her sneakers were soaked. It slipped off.

"C'mon, 'cmon!" Eddie cupped his hands beside her, the way he'd seen the squad do for her hundreds of times before during pep rallies and the occasional evening where cheer practice and Hellfire ran around the same time. Not that he stayed to watch the cheerleaders often—mostly just in passing. And his hands had to be much bigger and therefore a much better launchpad than Mandy Fleming's.

Chrissy didn't miss a beat. She stepped into his hands and pushed off his shoulders, hoisting herself up in one fluid athletic movement. In half a second, she was on the top of the cabinet, had the window pushed open and out, and was crawling through to the grass outside.

That was when the door to the basement, wet and surely half-rotten by this time, flipped and clattered down the steps. The monster had broken in.

Eddie was halfway up the cabinet when he made the mistake of turning to look at it.

Slimy, skeletal, hunched on all fours and horribly fast. It was worse than anything in the Monster Manual. Worse than nightmares. Seeing it made every piece of skin on his body tingle with dread and disbelief. It had no smell and no real texture for the human eye to focus on. No eyes, no nostrils. Its whole head was a shut-up rosebud of flesh, and as it rounded the corner, it paused, clearly trying to sense the meat in the room. The demodog was pawing with actual nails, not claws, through the vines, free to brush against them as it went, zero consequences. It was feeling for them with something too much like human hands, following the scent of the old blood on Eddie's palm.

He might have swallowed his heart by now. No. It was stuck in his throat somewhere. He was frozen on the cabinet, one long-legged push away from safety, gawking at the spiny, withered thing prowling toward him. A scream was forthcoming. If he ever found his voice.

Chrissy had seen it too, kneeling on the grass and straining to help him up. He heard her suck in, make a choked sound, and hiss his name shrilly. "E-Eddie—"

It heard her. Without ears. The demodog stopped snuffling and sprang right at him. It was so fast. He felt the feet between them disappear in a heartbeat; one second it was on the ground, searching, and the next second it was in the air, practically on him.

Eddie, yelling, kicked out blindly with one leg. Dumb luck—his foot rammed into the demodog's chest at the only available moment; it clawed at him briefly and went half a foot backward. Its paw hadn't reached him, just an inch out of range. Its spindly body hit the ground with a shriek. That rosebud head opened up slightly, revealing raw pink and hundreds of insane, poisonous-looking teeth, vibrating in predatory fury.

Chrissy was openly screaming now, still kneeling outside with her chest nearly touching the grass, arm outstretched to drag feebly at his jacket collar. "Eddie, move!"

His heart removed itself from his throat and went searing, throbbing, back to his chest, painful and forcing him into action. His hands were slippery, his feet were slippery, sweat or fear or Upside Down gunk or all of the above. But between his frantic scrabbling and Chrissy's even more frantic pulling, his head and shoulders were through the window before the demodog rallied.

And rally it did. He felt it scrambling to gain purchase on the filing cabinet, about three of its nails digging into his ankle. The same ankle the vine had chosen. Maybe the hive mind was left-brained. The nails didn't feel hot, though. They didn't feel like anything; they were busy ripping through the denim of his black jeans with a sickening, surreal shrrrrrrrip. Or maybe that was his skin coming apart and the jeans were wishful thinking.

His eyes were squeezed shut against the sensation; waiting for the flush of more of his O-positive to leak out all over his sock and reeboks. His teeth ground together, only parting to release a yell.

Chrissy gave one last huge yank on his leather sleeve, and Eddie dragged his lower half through the window, just barely fitting. His mind started doing that slow-motion crap again, its latest defense mechanism against unsavory experiences. If he'd been Henderson's age, his shoulders wouldn't have been such an obstacle. They'd've been slimmer, not so broad, not so damning. Now he wanted to wake up, he wanted a banana split, and he wanted to be fourteen. Harrowing adventures were teaching him nothing valuable about himself so far.

And he really wanted to still own a left foot. Add that to the list.

While his brain went sluggish, Chrissy was climbing over his legs, slamming the window shut and holding it there with both hands.

Eddie pulled himself out from under her, sitting on the grass and leaning back on his hands for a moment, breathing ragged. His eyes landed on his feet—both still there. Then he gave himself a good mental punch in the mouth and lurched forward, helping her keep the window closed.

The demodog went into a full roar, mouth on display like a bad dream's peacock feathers, still trying to rake its way up the filing cabinet. It couldn't get any traction; the cabinet's square top seemed too slick and too small for it to fit all four gangly limbs without repeatedly sliding off. It settled for a vicious display of frustration, gripping the rattling drawers of the cabinet and screeching up at the glass.

Eddie let his tongue work on autopilot while his mind and heart went berserk, gasping out the first thing that came to mind after a few muddled bits of profanity. "That," he exhaled, "would make a sick album cover."

Watching the demodog slither back down off the cabinet, pacing on the vine-ridden ground below, Chrissy tried to laugh and got out a half-laugh-half-cough instead. Her arms were Jell-O where she held the window shut. Eddie saw them shaking even harder than they had been moments before, when they'd heard the monster coming.

They waited until the demodog had turned away from the window, crawling out of sight, slowing down, before they released the glass and stood up.

"Come on," Chrissy repeated. Though she sounded like what he figured a mummy must sound like, speaking through exhausted, dry means, she wasn't even out of breath.

They raced away from the school, heading straight for the line of trees in the distance. Skull Rock was in the woods. The woods would have more shelter. The woods would have more places to hide. The woods were probably full of more monsters. Why had he ever agreed to leave his trailer and get mixed up in all this?

There was no sign of spring in this Hawkins. The sky was blue and black and roiling, one big bruise. Occasionally, peals of thunder and flickers of scarlet electricity would light up the area. That didn't make it any nicer to look at. There were shrieks and growls in the distance on all sides, mingling with the booming of the storms overhead. It was like running through a haunted snowglobe. A dome full of toxic air and deadly organics.

They reached the supposed sanctity of the woods, not slowing down until they couldn't see civilization in any direction. Bare, goo-encrusted trees everywhere you looked. White puffs in the atmosphere. Vines snaking through the dead leaves on the forest floor. The cheer captain hadn't hesitated or slipped once. She was a wisp of a person, but somewhere inside her was clearly an engine full of horsepower. Must've been Jazzercise or something. Yoga.

Eddie had, all this time, felt some kind of piercing, jutting pulse. Only when they eased up in their running could he take a second to pinpoint where it was coming from. The moment they paused for breath, he stumbled, cussing.

"Eddie?" Chrissy doubled back, nearly tripping on another vine pulsing in the dirt. "Ohmig—Eddie—"

She stopped dead, noticing three ribbons of red trickling down into his sock. Eddie rested a shoulder against a tree and gripped the knee of his jeans, tugging the left leg up a bit to reveal a few gashes in his ankle. So the demodog had taken a measly strip or two out of him. Still not woozy. Maybe this was his chance for a few good scars.

Maybe he was delirious. Adrenaline-drunk.

"That's…gonna cost me a couple of health points," Eddie gasped, low and raspy like he'd just woken up. How did she run like that and still function normally? Like she hadn't been running at all?

Chrissy's hand flew to her mouth, stopping halfway. She stepped over to him, and instead of stooping down to survey the damage, she started…

"Chrissy?" Eddie lifted his head a little, too tired to move away and too baffled to object. Man, those gashes were starting to ache. One or two spots tried dancing into his vision. He mentally flipped them off. Barely had breath enough to say Chrissy's name, let alone ask what she was doing to his vest.

She was tugging it open, pulling it away from his chest and reaching in. Apparently unsatisfied with the denim interior, she let go of his vest, flicked open his breast-pocket, dug around in there, and then went inside his jacket. Her hand went quick and almost angry, exploring between the leather and his Hellfire tee.

Hormones made their stand, but the general toll of the Upside Down took the lead. Plus his ankle hurt. Eddie stood there, staring down at the Queen like she was morphing into another demodog. His eyebrows were drawn, mouth slack. Gaze fixed on her like her head was going rosebud.

"Where is it?" She burst out, ripping her arm out from under his jacket.

"What?"

"The—thing!" Chrissy clapped a hand against her temple, desperately trying to find the right term. "The thing, the thing you used on my locker."

Eddie blinked, reaching into his back pocket to produce Wayne's multitool. "This?"

Chrissy snatched it out of his hands, fumbling with it for a moment as she tried to figure out how to open it. Her fingers jittered and nearly dropped it, flicking through the options with unbridled impatience. Finally, she found the tiny knife in the left handle and thumbed it out clumsily. She almost cut herself in the process.

"Woah woah, hey-hey-hey," Eddie held up a hand to stall her movements. "Not the blouse. Okay? I mean—I keep this up, there's not gonna be anything left, and uh—" He looked her up and down, suddenly realizing he had no idea how to finish this line of thought. "We don't want Vecna thinking you're that kinda girl, right?"

Chrissy made a pinched, baffled face at him—like she was barely following—and proceeded to pull off Jason's hoodie. The blouse was shredded just a little at the bottom, but when it wasn't tucked into her jeans it was long enough to preserve her modesty. Instead of attacking her own top, Chrissy slowly and clumsily cut off the right sleeve of the hoodie, from the elbow down. Eddie watched the gray threads snap apart under the tiny blade and wondered if it was too late in the game to pass out. A monster tried to take away his foot. Didn't he deserve a nap?

She tied the sleeve tight around his ankle, the same way she'd done with the strip on his hand. "They said…" She sucked in a breath. He could feel her knuckles shaking against his leg where she fastened the sleeve. "They said those things can smell blood."

Eddie raised his head, palms and back pressed against the tree and its sides, eyes darting between the trees. "Yes they did," he muttered, teeth clenched. The sleeve was too tight. Or it was tight enough—supposed to be tight—tight so it could stop the bleeding. Because he was bleeding. Twice he'd bled, twice, in an alternate dimension. With a cheerleader.

"Okay," she said, standing. "I think that's good."

Eddie glanced down at the patch-up and back to her. Her head was bent, analyzing her handiwork, so he tried to bend too to look her in the eye. "Y'know," he said, exhaling slow, "that's three times now you saved my sorry hide."

Chrissy looked up, shifting her weight, as though trying to find more even ground to stand on under the trees. She started tying the rest of the hoodie haphazardly around her waist. It looked odd, probably because she only had half a sleeve to work with.

"That's okay."

"Honestly," Eddie went on, steadfastly ignoring the pulse he could feel in his ankle. "I'm gonna have to start my own tab. What is that, like four IOUs? Total?"

She smiled. It made the traces of slime and dirt on her face and pieces of grass on her knees almost disappear. "Well," she said, sniffing and turning to continue their trek, "I didn't really save you. From the—gate. Thing."

"Pfff. Details." Eddie shrugged with his whole face, quickening to walk beside her. It was slower going. He wasn't exactly limping, but it was significantly harder to move when your hand and your ankle were actively against you. "It's the thought that counts, right? And hey—" He stuck his hand in front of her face as they went, fingers spread to their limit. Turning it frontward and backward. "I'd still be full of glass right now if it wasn't for you, so."

"But…" She kept her eyes on the ground, watching where she was stepping, eyebrows raised as she made her argument. "You saved me from the vines. And—with—just, with that plus the trailer, plus just now—"

"I didn't do jack at the trailer—"

"Yes, you did!"

"And you got us out of there in one piece, okay?" Eddie glanced at her sideways, lanky build stepping easily over a fallen tree. He offered both hands to help her scale it. "With the cabinet? The window? All you."

"I'm just saying," Chrissy chortled, stopping on top of the log. "I think we're even."

Eddie clicked his tongue. "I'm keeping the scoreboard on, Cunningham. Need to adequately track my uh—my suckery."

Chrissy grinned, accepting his good hand and letting him steady her as she stepped down. "Thanks," she said, and quickly supplied, "for the vines."

"Thanks for the blouse."

They shared smiles for a moment, and he made as if to keep walking.

Then he made a big show of turning back, loudly adding, holding up a finger for each item, "And the hoodie, and the hole…"

She spat out a laugh.

"...and the demodog, the window—"

"Eddie—"

"Yeah."

Chrissy held up their still-joined hands. "So, just—for the record? This is holding hands." Her mouth was doing that twitch thing again, eyes scrunched in slight awkwardness, but mostly glittering to match her teasing tone.

His eyes bounced from their hands to her smirk, savoring the total stupid, socially-ingrained discomfort the sight was supposed to spark. Her hand really was itty bitty. How had she ever hoped to keep that window shut, anyway? And it wasn't shaking now.

Eddie let his tongue visibly roll around against his cheek, feigning a student's interest. "Huh."

She started laughing again and he grinned, dropping her hand.

"Um," she said, and had to break for more mirth. Then she followed that with a much more articulate, "Do you…do you know how to get to Skull Rock? I mean, from the school?"

Eddie reached out an arm and let his hand slap against one of the thinner tree trunks as they started hiking again. "Guess we're gonna find out."(Author's Note: Thank you for the reviews so far! But honestly - there appears to be thousands of you reading [according to emails I keep getting?] but only seven reviews. Seven reviews? I just wrote upwards of nine thousand words. Does that not warrant a little bit of feedback? Appreciate you, readers. But speak up. Let me know you're enjoying it enough for me to keep going, because seriously, Follows/Faves do nothing for me motivation-wise. Thanks. -Doverstar)