Quick note: yes, homophobic people, I see you. No, I don't give a fuck. Mmkay? Mmkay. :)


Nancy

The camera flashes. The rat screams.

It's been pressed into the shadowy back corner of its cage, cringing away from the beam of dusty yellow light cast by the wobbling, naked bulb that hangs from the basement ceiling. And now, as Jonathan's camera goes off again, the rat goes nuts. Screeching, jerking away, scrabbling at the mesh of the cage like it's trying to dig its way out. Nancy exchanges a look with her boyfriend.

"Excitable little fellow, isn't he?" is Mrs. Driscoll's comment. She's standing back with a grin on her face, seeming pleased by all the fuss, letting Jonathan circle around the space with his Pentax. He's photographed the holes chewed in her walls by the departed stream of rodents; the remnants of her industrial-sized bags of cat food, shredded and nearly empty thanks to the small, hungry army that passed through; and now, the prisoner of war himself: the single unfortunate rat, digging frantically at the floor of its miniature cell.

"Has it been doing that this whole time?" Nancy asks. Her voice sounds a little uneven, even to her. The edge of her notepad is going damp and frayed with sweat, and she grips it tightly as she takes notes. The dim, dank basement has been giving her the creeps - and that was before the rat started screaming like that.

"On and off."

Jonathan has stopped taking pictures. He's crouched down in front of the table, frowning at the rat with an air of uneasiness, watching it howl and hiss and bash its little skull against the corner of the cage.

Its fur is grimy. Rail-thin, the knobs of its spine are visible under the matted gray pelt. It smells like sewer and dumpsters, even from several paces away. Flecks of grayish foam crust around its mouth. Its long front teeth are a gritty, oily yellow, and its eyes are dull and black, like two little buttons. Shallow and vacant, even as it strains against the unyielding bars - trying frantically to move... where? Somewhere northeast, it seems. Like it's trying to follow its brethren into the forest.

But, no, Nancy reminds herself with a shake of her own head. She's letting her mind run away with her now; it couldn't know which direction the rest of the swarm went. Rats don't have compasses in their heads like birds do. It's just trying to escape the hot, blinding flash of the camera.

Fingers shaking, Nancy goes to crouch by Jonathan. She puts a hand on his shoulder, partly to steady herself as she crouches in her heels, partly just to squeeze him in a wordless, this is it. Her heart is beating against her ribs, hard and trembling, but she's not afraid anymore. She's excited. Because this? This is a story. Whether it's rabies or plague or whatever disease Mrs. Driscoll was on about - whatever it is, it's creepy. It's interesting. It's unusual. It's attention-getting.

And in a tiny, sleepy town like Hawkins, where nothing ever happens? It's news-worthy.

But if they're going to convince Tom of that, they're going to need as much evidence as they can get their hands on.

Twisting on her heels, using Jonathan for balance, Nancy looks up at Mrs. Driscoll. She quirks her pen towards the cage. "I don't suppose it would be possible for us to take this back with us."

Mike

The Party is up a creek without a paddle.

More specifically, they're down a dungeon without a bard.

And they're split up, which never ends well. They didn't mean to split up - it's just, the tunnel started collapsing around them, and a failed saving throw got Lucas's character trapped under a piece of debris. Now they're facing two different villains without their ranger, and to make matters worse, the tunnel isn't done falling apart around their ears.

It's so weird for him not to be sitting behind the Dungeon Master screen. The table looks bigger from here, somehow, more open.

It's a whole different can of worms, being just a player in the game versus the DM. And Will has been stumbling a lot - having to stop and look things up, or ask Mike about a rule or a stat - but he's doing pretty well. It's a good campaign, honestly, and Mike did get into it for a while there. But the minutes are dragging on, and he can't help that his mind is wandering a little.

It's just, he wonders what El is up to. Probably curled up on the couch, watching a show. She's not really supposed to watch as much TV as she does, but Hop can't enforce rules when he's at work, and El takes calculated advantage of that. Plus, there's only so much she can do at the cabin by herself. Board games are a no-go; solo card games get dull fast. Mike has been bringing her books, but she's still pretty slow at reading and it frustrates her quickly. She prefers him to read to her aloud. If he was there, that's probably what they'd be doing. He'd be sitting on the couch with the book in front of him, and she'd be leaning against his shoulder, watching as he traced the words with his finger so that she could follow along. Or, if she was bored with trying to read along, she'd scoot down and rest her head in his lap and just listen. And then, when she got tired of reading altogether, she'd probably sit up and turn and kiss him right in the middle of a sentence to shut him up. She's subtle like that.

He's staring right through the game board by now, daydreaming with his chin in his hand. He's thinking about El's rosebud lips, her hot-chocolate-colored eyes, her button nose. About how holding her hand reassures him that she's there - how he still dreams, sometimes, that he turns around and she's gone again in a swirl of black flakes, like soot-snow.

She looks a lot different now than she did then. And Mike likes it - for the most part. How could he not? It's El. And those are the things you're supposed to notice, when you're dating your first-ever girlfriend. Like how soft her lips are - he's mostly used to the sticky lip gloss by now - and how long her hair has gotten. He liked it when it was nearly nonexistent, he liked it when it was short and spongy-curly, and he likes it now that it's grown out, the weight of it pulling most of the curls into waves. He likes the way her nose scrunches up when she giggles, and he likes her perfume (some sort of musky-fruity thing that Nancy selected for her), and the way he can see the slight dip of her waist when she ties a jacket around her waist, cinching in her usually loose-fitting clothes. And he swears it's not like he's looking on purpose, but sometimes - every once in a blue moon - she'll twist just the right way, or the light will hit her at a certain angle, and he can make out the curve of her chest that wasn't there a year and a half ago.

That's something that surprised him a little, when they started seeing each other more often a few months after the Snow Ball: how much more she looks like... well, a girl. Her frame is slender, but just beginning to curve in ways that it didn't when they first met - not like the straighter, more rectangular shape of a boy. El's lips tend to blush pink, aided by the flavored gloss she favors, instead of red. El's hands are dainty and soft, nails sometimes painted a bright color, palms pink and white, lacking the callouses that boys tend to gain from bike riding and tree climbing and fort-building. El is still inches behind Mike, whereas Will is coming worryingly close to getting even with him. Not quite - Mike still has an inch and some on Will. He can't lift his chin and rest it on Will's head anymore, like he used to in seventh grade, but Will still has to look up at Mike - and one side of Mike's mouth twists up in a wry smile, because that, at least, has never changed. Will has always, ever since that first day on the preschool playground, had to tilt his chin up a degree to meet Mike's eyes with those hazel ones, which turn into a kaleidoscope of green and brown in the sun and -

"Mike."

Mike jolts out of his thoughts guiltily, head lifting from his hand. Will is watching him, waiting for a response.

"Your action?"

"Uh." Mike sits forward and scans the board.

The villains are closing in - both of them - and it honestly looks like the Party might not make it through. But he's distracted now, his head not exactly in the game, and he flounders. He falls back on a standard attack, rolling the d6. On the next turn, Will's wizard casts lightning bolt - a risky move that ends up backfiring, dealing him a huge HP hit. Will's forehead crinkles up as he pencils in the damage onto his sheet. There's a real chance that Will the Wise could die here - and Mike kind of wishes he was more in the mood for this, because it's a moment of high tension for the Party. But his surge of energy has been depleted, and now he really does have to wrap things up and get going. He is so exceptionally late to meet his girlfriend. She's gonna be pissed.

Right in the middle of Will's next sentence, a sharp jangle cuts through the background patter of rain. The phone.

Mike's eyes meet Lucas's, both of them communicating the same thought: that's gotta be one of the girls.

They scrabble for the receiver, chairs abandoned by the table, Will protesting, "Hey - come on -"

Lucas gets ahold of it and Mike wrenches it out of his hand, the silent wrestling match ending abruptly as Mike fits it to his ear and says, "Hello?" His heart sinks, the hopeful little spark in his chest going cold. "No... Sorry, not interested." He drops it back into the cradle. "Telemarketers."

He and Lucas exchange another glance. Surreptitiously, Lucas peeks at his watch.

"Well," he says, at the same time that Mike says, "Yeah, uh -"

They speak over each other, stumbling as Will's face begins to fall.

"It's getting kind of..."

"Good campaign. Good campaign, we should -"

"Yeah, we should definitely finish some... Sometime, uh -"

"I'm late for -"

"- need to get going pretty soon -"

"- really should check up on El, you know, she's been alone all day -"

"- fun though, we should... Yeah."

"Yeah."

Will is getting annoyed now. "Can't we finish the campaign? We're almost done. God, when did you guys get so boring?"

The annoyance carries over into Mike, and his lips flatten. Then he shrugs. "Okay, well... then I'll use my torch to set fire to the breach, sacrificing myself, killing the umber hulks, and saving the town."

"Victory," Lucas summerizes, and their high-five connects without looking.

"Okay." Will's staff bounces off the corner of the table as he drops it. "Fine. You guys win."

Will is shoving the hat off his head, snapping shut his notebook so fast that some of the pages crinkle, and Mike is surprised to see that Will is genuinely - and, it seems, deeply - upset. And Mike's stomach gives a sharp little twist. Because all at once he's looking at the board and the discarded costume and thinking, oh, shit, I'm being a jerk.

It's something that keeps happening - as Nancy has been all too happy to point out. Mike will be going along, just trying to live his life, and all at once he'll see the expressions on people's faces and realize what's been coming out of his mouth. And it's not like he means to be an asshole, he just... It just...

"Congratulations," Will snaps, and Mike lifts his hands in a slow down gesture.

"Will, I was just messing around," he offers.

Will shucks the costume with his back turned, and Mike circles around the table, trying to catch his eye. "Hey. Let's finish for real. How much longer is the campaign?"

Finally Will looks at him, but just long enough to spit out, "Just forget it, Mike."

"No -" Turning to Lucas for aid. "You want to keep playing, right?"

"Yeah - totally."

"We'll just call the girls afterwards."

Will wheels towards him, dishevelled bangs getting in his face, and Mike is taken aback by the harsh shout - "I said forget it, Mike, okay?" And just like that he's gone, striding across the basement without even collecting his things. "I'm going home."

"Come on, Will," Lucas says, but Will just shoves at him with a bark of, "Move!"

Mike climbs over a chair and brushes past Lucas to follow the retreating stomp of Will's footsteps. He chases him through the kitchen and out the garage door, calling after him.

"Will, come on."

The garage door is open, and a silvery curtain of driving rain delineates outside from in. Humidity hangs in the cool air like a tangible thing, thick in Mike's mouth, the taste like petrichor and asphalt. This is all wrong. Mike is the one that's supposed to storm out, seething and stubborn, secretly hoping that somebody follows him. Mike is the one that yells and loses his temper and kicks things around until he runs out of steam. Will is supposed to be the one that waits nearby, listening to him rant, silently communicating with his eyes how dumb Mike is being. He's the one that tells Mike to stop being a big baby and just come back inside already. But everything is all turned around this summer, and nothing is like how it used to be, and for once that puts a bad taste in the back of Mike's throat.

"You can't leave. It's raining."

Will is heaving his bike upright, shoulders hard, ignoring him. Mike darts over to stand almost-but-not-quite in the way, chest tight. Hating this. They fight all the time, but not like this. Not in a way that makes a sour sweat prickle up under his arms because he knows something is really wrong.

"Listen, I said I was sorry, all right? It's a cool campaign, it's really cool. We're just not in the mood right now."

"Yeah, Mike, that's the problem." Will's voice is rough as sandpaper, and it rises as he goes on. His eyes are pinched at the corners, and Mike realizes with a sick swoop of his insides that Will is about to cry. "You guys are never in the mood anymore."

Will

He just wants to go home.

He's so stupid. This whole thing was so stupid. His face is burning.

"You're ruining our Party."

A defensive frown. "That's not true!"

"Really? Where's Dustin right now?"

Mike's head swivels minutely, his gaze flicking down.

"See? You don't know and you don't even care, and obviously he doesn't either and I don't blame him!" Will's words are starting to run together as his voice hitches up half an octave, but he can't stop now. If he runs out of angry momentum he'll probably cry. So he keeps shouting. "You're destroying everything, and for what? So you can swap spit with some stupid girl?"

His body gives a nearly imperceptible twitch, like a little electric shock, as the light at the front of the garage flickers. But, no. It wasn't a flicker. Just a flash of lighting, or maybe a tree branch bobbing in front of the porch light, and his own blurred vision tricking his paranoid brain into seeing things that aren't there - and meanwhile Mike is yelling back.

"El's not stupid! It's not my fault you don't like girls."

Everything in Will shudders to a halt. The rain is a staticky white noise pressing in on his eardrums like air pressure. His eyes flick back and forth between Mike's, his mind catching and looping like a stuck record. He knows what the words mean - in a distant, muted way, he knows - but it's like he's stuck. Frozen. Like he can't breathe or talk or do anything. It's like a slap in the face, and Will can't even think. He can't un-stick himself from that one sentence, can't move his brain past it, not even when Mike's eyes close for a moment in a wince. And it's not fair. It's a cruel, pointed trick of the universe - the way that even now, in this moment, something in the back of Will's mind takes quiet note of the way Mike's dark lashes almost touch the pale skin of his cheeks when his eyes close. How his hair curls with the moisture. His freckles, his lips barely parted over his front teeth. And Will hates it, hates everything, the whole world, and hates Mike, and hates himself more than anything.

Mike's mouth opens and closes as he seems to search for words, and Will is still frozen-numb, his mind and body half a step out of sync.

Rain drumming, roaring on the garage roof. A fine mist of it bouncing back up from the pavement, drifting inside, sprinkling over his legs. Mike's curls just barely brushing one eyelash, almost getting caught.

It's not my fault you -

It's not -

It's not my fault you don't -

Mike

He didn't mean that. Not like that. He would never - he did not mean that. He wouldn't say that. Wouldn't think that. Doesn't think that. Will gets bullied enough for people saying he's...

Mike's mouth works for a moment, casting around for words, but his brain snags on the look in his best friend's eyes. A glassy, deer-in-the-headlights sheen. Will is scared. And Mike doesn't have time to think it through, he's been silent for too long already, and if he hadn't messed up before, he really has now. So he backpedals, hard.

"I'm not trying to be a jerk," he says, unsure where he's going even as his mouth begins to run. Just anything, anything. Anything to move on from that. "Okay? But we're not kids anymore." The spark of fear in Will's eyes has dulled to hurt, and he holds Mike's gaze with a kind of cold, shaky bitterness as Mike says, "I mean, what did you think, really? That we were never gonna get girlfriends? That we were just gonna sit in my basement all day and play games for the rest of our lives?"

"Yeah." Will's face has twisted into something acidic, spitting his words as if to cover up the sniff that punctuates them. "I guess I did. I really did."

A cold, heavy, sinking feeling in his chest. Thick billows of invisible moisture rolling through the garage on bubbles of wind. The clatter of the bike stand as Will mounts and kicks off. His form hunched, silhouetted against the rain, and Mike is too late when he steps forward.

"Will -"

Silver plumes of water flung up from the bike tires as Will pushes away, the bike whirring underneath him.

"Will, come on!"

But he's talking to no one. Yelling with his arms lifted at his sides, with no answer except a crackle-grind of thunder. The tissues of his throat feel swollen, tender, and gooseflesh rises over his arms. It's sickeningly familiar. Standing in the mouth of the garage, watching Will ride away. How many times has he relived that memory? Looping it over and over in his mind, searching for clues, something he might have missed, something he could have done to stop it.

It was a seven.

Huh?

The roll. It was a seven. The Demogorgon. It got me. Whelp, see you tomorrow.

El

Rivulets of rain trace shifting patterns on the windowpane.

They got absolutely soaked running back to Max's house, and they're still a bit breathless, sniffling a little, noses cold and skin damp as they towel-dry their hair. Max's bright mane, sleek and shining with water, is a red flame in the middle of the room.

El smooths her fingers over the silky-new fabric of her clothes. She figured she may as well change into her new outfit, since her other one was all wet, and now she can't stop fiddling with the folds of material.

"Here."

Max tosses a few comic books on the ground between them. On the way home, they talked about using El's powers to spy on someone - an idea that made El somewhat nervous-giggly, because that's definitely against the rules - but they're saving that for later. For now, Max was the one that suggested comics.

When she settles onto the carpet, she drags a quilt down off her bed and slings it around both of their shoulders. It's slashed across with faded rainbow arcs. "It's crazy how cold this house gets. I swear, it was never this chilly in the summer back home. In California, I mean."

El isn't cold. She's used to the cold. Used to long, long, long nights curled up under the snow-heavy, sap-tacky boughs of trees, arms pulled into the oversized stolen coat to keep warm. Yes - she's used to the cold. But she doesn't want to move away, either. Max's arm and shoulder brushes hers under the quilt, their body heat filling the little bubble within moments. Max smells like something good, but not sugar-sweet - some sort of fruit, El thinks, or maybe a flower.

"I bet it's nice to get a day away from Mike, huh?"

El glances to the radio on Max's bedside table. It's turned off. They didn't want the guys interrupting their girls-only day. El shrugs.

"I bet the boys are having a nice time, too. He's probably not being such a jerk."

Max huffs a shallow laugh, but El cocks her head as she puts down her towel. "What do you mean?"

Max's autumn-leaf hair falls in front of her face as she turns away a degree, looking at nothing in particular, like she's uncomfortable. "I mean." An answering shrug. "Well, Mike tends to laser-focus on you. You know? Like, you're the only thing he sees when you two are together."

"Isn't that... romantic?" It sounds romantic. It sounds like something someone on TV would say. But Max makes a face.

"Um... I mean, I guess? Kind of? But kind of... I dunno, it's different. How he is with the Party, it's different."

El mulls this over. It doesn't sound so bad - does it? After all, she's different with Mike, too.

But that's the thing. She's different with Mike - and she's different with Max, and with Hop, and with Will and the Party. She was different with Aunty Becky. She was different with Kali. There are a lot of different Els.

Not Eleven. Not Hopper's daughter. Not Mike's girlfriend. Just you.

The problem: she's not sure who just El is. Who is she when she's alone, other than lonely?

She wonders if there are a lot of different Mikes, too. If he's a different Mike with the Party than he is with her, is there a different Mike for Will? For his mama? For Nancy? For when he's all alone? Does he feel like one person, or does he feel splintered and ambiguous like her?

Her eyes light on the comics on the floor. El likes comic books. They're easier to read than the thick, word-filled books that Hop and Mike bring her, and the stories are always exciting. This one has a raven-haired woman on the cover that El hasn't seen before. A queen, maybe - she's wearing a golden crown. El points.

"Who is that?"

Max does a double take. "See, this is why you can't just hang out with Mike all the time." She scoops up the book with a flourish. "This is Wonder Woman. AKA Princess Diana. She's from Paradise Island, which is, like, this hidden island where there are only women Amazon warriors."

El settles her head against Max's shoulder to see better, and when Max doesn't shrug her off, she stays there.

Outside, thunder rolls through the clouds.

Dustin

"Is Will here?"

Dustin, Steve, and Robin look up from their work. Lucas, out of breath and dripping, stands at the counter of Scoops.

"No?" Dustin looks around, just in case. "No."

"Have you seen him?"

"No." His eyes narrow. "Why?"

"Dude, where have you been? We were trying to get ahold of you." Lucas ducks under the divider to join them behind the counter, to a halfhearted objection from Steve. "Mike and Will just had some sort of fight, I don't know, I didn't really see it, I -" He runs his hands over his face, knocking his hat askew. "I don't even know what happened, man. Will ran off, who knows where he is. Mike went after him. I'm supposed to check here, but it... looks..."

Lucas, finally winding down from his spiel, has caught sight of their base of operations through the window to the back room.

"Uh... What's happening?"

The break table in the back of Scoops has been transformed into a tactical headquarters. They've spread out a huge expanse of butcher paper to write on; Robin's You Rule vs You Suck board has been repurposed for notes and equations; Dustin's library books sprawl out over the table, bookmarked to various pages, wide open. The tape recorder sits on one corner and his radio, tuned to what they've dubbed The Code Channel, fizzles on another. They've been hard at work all day. It's late afternoon - no, Dustin sees as he checks his watch, early evening now.

"We're spying on the government," Robin stage-whispers. She's technically supposed to be manning the counter, but they haven't had a customer for a while now, and she keeps drifting into the back to be nosy. Dustin can tell that she isn't really taking this seriously - she doesn't quite believe his theory. But she's bored, and Steve likes her no matter what he says to the contrary, and they could use the extra head. No harm letting her help.

Lucas, on the other hand -

"Sorry," Dustin says with crossed arms, "This is a Scoops private party."

But Lucas is already pushing through the door to the back room, dripping all over the floor, reaching for an open book. "Is this one of your experiments, or...?"

"It's none of your business, is what it is," Dustin shoots back, grabbing the book out of Lucas's hand and snapping it closed. Steve gives him a don't be a jerk look, but Dustin pretends not to see. "Oh, what, now you're interested? You couldn't be bothered to help out last night but now you want to partake in the spoils? Well, that's too bad. This is our secret code, now get lost."

"You picked up a secret code on Cerebro?"

"Maybe we did, maybe we didn't."

Lucas, seeing he's serious, sighs and put on a contrite face. "All right, I'm sorry. Really." He extends a hand. "Peace?"

Dustin considers. His friend doesn't sound nearly as apologetic as he'd like, ideally, but... "Yeah. Peace. Now - check this out."


They catch Lucas up over pilfered sample spoonfuls. His expression goes from skeptical to curious to wide-eyed as Dustin talks.

They've been listening in on the government channel since they picked it up earlier today. The chatter isn't constant, but it's regular. They've heard somewhere between six and ten voices - it's hard to differentiate some of them - and what they've learned is... not much, to tell the truth. It's all very coded, or maybe just niche. Not to mention that the signal keeps getting fuzzed, going just barely in and out of range.

What they do know: IDCDs are, as far as they can figure, some sort of containment device. They figure that's what the CD part stands for. Or rather, Robin figured that. And it makes sense - from what they've heard, these device-gadgets are meant to contain some sort of substance. Contain it, or maybe destroy it. Break it down chemically, maybe, to stop it - whatever it is - in its tracks. Or maybe it's not chemical at all? He hasn't quite sussed that out yet. Whatever the case, these IDCD things are meant to prevent something from spreading past a certain barrier. Steve suggested lava, and was shot down by Robin, who said it could be some sort of infestation. Something as common and unremarkable as termites or rats.

Whatever the devices are, the government has been either making them or receiving them somewhere inside Starcourt.

"Why the mall?" is Lucas's first question.

"I mean, it sort of makes sense," Dustin reasons. He's stationed at the table again, wreathed in open books and scribbled notes, happily mired in his work. "If they need to transport these things into their super-secret base, it's a lot less conspicuous to be delivering something to a shopping mall than it would be to drive a bunch of big government trucks out into the wilderness."

Lucas is looking over his notes, trying to make sense of the organized chaos. He's making that face he makes when something doesn't quite add up. Then he meets Dustin's eyes, suddenly. "I bet it's underneath."

"What?"

"The government base. I bet it's underneath the mall."

Dustin processes this, then looks to Steve, who looks through the window at Robin. Robin doesn't notice; the rare trickle of customers arrived and she had to go up front to actually do her job for once.

"I mean, we know it's not anywhere in the mall," Lucas goes on. "We've been all over this thing. There's no way there'd be room for a whole government base. But your radio is picking up their transmissions, so it can't be very far away. So it's gotta be underneath."

Dustin can feel his eyes going big. "Like a secret tunnel system. Like Mazes and Monsters!"

Lucas makes a face. "Mazes and Monsters? You could've picked any secret tunnel system in all of fiction and you picked Mazes and Monsters?"

"You wanna come up with a better example?"

"Dark Crystal," Lucas says immediately, smug, and Dustin shakes his head.

"That's not a secret tunnel system, that's just tunnels. And really it's just some cave hallways or whatever."

"Secret tunnels, underneath a castle!"

To drown out their squabbling, Robin twists up the volume of the in-store radio, and the first chorus of Teenage Wasteland crashes through the air. Then Robin is standing at the partition, making direct eye contact as she turns it up a notch higher, and Dustin is batting a hand at her telling her he can't hear himself think, and Lucas is rubbing his eyes like he has a headache, and it's over all that noise that they hear Steve scream.

Well, scream is perhaps an exaggeration. It was really more of a yelp. A distressed squeak, if you will. Robin punches down the volume and leans into the back, frowning as they listen.

"You alive back there, Dingus?" she calls.

A moment later, Steve comes power-walking out of the way-back. "There was a rat," he announces. "An honest-to-god rat."

He shakes himself with a shudder, and Robin bursts out laughing.

"There was not," she says, and Steve grabs a mop like he's about to go deliver some rodent reckoning. He peers towards the way-back.

"I'm telling you, it was -" he cuts off and holds his palms apart to demonstrate size.

"You can deal with slimy demo-" Lucas glances at Robin, then amends, "You can deal with a pack of, uh, feral dogs, but you can't handle one little mouse?"

"Rat," Steve corrects. "Big difference, buddy."

Robin folds herself through the window, perching on the partition to fix him with an amused smirk. "Well, see, I told you. Your super-secret government code is probably all a clandestine arrangement with pest control."

"Still doesn't explain the original code," Dustin offers, but by now they're too busy bickering to hear him.

His radio clicks, squeals, and a woman's voice comes on. He dives for it, yanking a pad of paper towards him, ready to transcribe.


Joyce

Joyce hates this place.

She hated it when she had to take Will here every month for the doctors to poke and prod him, taking detailed records of his height, his weight, his blood pressure, pupil dilation, reflexes, brainwaves. The pattern of his speech. The trace of shadow in his blood. And that was before the end of October - before the real horrors started.

The worst moment of her life happened here. Watching her child scream his throat bloody-raw in agony as they rolled him down the acid-white-blue fluorescent-lit hallway on a stretcher.

It was the powerlessness that really broke her, right then. Even when Will was pronounced dead, that first November, she could still do something. She could still look for him, she could still keep trying, she could do something. But when they had him on that stretcher, alive and writhing with his hair stuck to his forehead with sweat, there wasn't one single thing she could do except hold him - and they hadn't even let her do that.

Now, like then, they enter straight through the front doors.

Jim already cut a hole in the chain link fence to get them onto the sealed, abandoned property. Now, as they huddle against the side of the building to stay out of the stinging, driving rain, he works at the chain on the double doors. It's a heavy, dull silver chain, dripping with moisture and clinking musically as he repositions his grip with a swear. If it wasn't for the deafening roar of rain, Joyce would be chewing her nails with nerves over somebody hearing them.

"Here," she says suddenly as the wire cutters slip in his hands. She needs to do something or she'll crawl out of her skin. "Here, let me."

He grumbles something she can't hear over the rain, but hands it over, and she braces the metal pinchers on either side of a link and throws herself into it. The pinchers bite down on the link - a cold, grating feeling through the rain-slick handles. She leaves two sharp little indentations in the link, but in the end, it's Jim that breaks the chain. He pulls it from the handles in a cacophony of rattling, and then all at once the doors are opening, signs flashing momentarily in a gout of lightning -

Warning! Restricted Area. This building has been declared a restricted area by the authority of the Commanding Officer in accordance with the provisions of the directive issued by the Secretary of Defense. (Section 21, Internal Security Act of 1950.) Unauthorized entry is prohibited.

- and darkness yawns within.

It's the smell that, for the first time since they hatched this plan on the floor of Melvald's, makes her hesitate. The summer has been scorching, but the exhale of stale air that pushes out between the doors is ice cold. It smells just like she remembers. Not just like the lab, but like that night in particular. Sterile-chemical-hospital smell; the metal-and-ozone smell of fried wires and haywire electronics; spores from the tunnel; and the dogs. Those demodogs from the Upside Down, their rubbery flesh carrying the rot-stench of their birthplace.

She's never quite forgiven Dustin and Steve Harrington for shoving one into her fridge. Maybe they didn't quite deserve the amount of shouting she did, but the thing nearly sent her into cardiac arrest. She swore she could still smell it, even weeks after some of Dr. Owens' government friends came and packed it away in a nondescript white van.

Jim is already a few feet in, clicking on the flashlight from his belt, before he notices that she's still at the entrance. "You okay?" he asks, but before he finishes she's already muttering, "Fine," and stepping into the shadows. She doesn't need him worrying over her.

Lacy shreds of shattered glass still cling to the frames of the inner glass doors. The fractals of cracks catch the light of Joyce's own flashlight as she turns it on. More crumbles of glass on the floor, crunching under her work shoes. Brown leaves on the dust-gray tiles.

The lobby is big, and open, and empty, and dark. Their flashlights, along with the watery bar of light from the open door, are the only sources of light. Their footsteps echo. Here and there, a haunting sign of disarray: a plaster ceiling tile shattered on the floor. An overturned row of waiting chairs.

She's trying not to think about it. She's really trying. But when Jim's flashlight beam lingers for a moment on the bold letters in the center of the floor - hnl -

Bob. Bob, sweating in his mint green hospital scrubs, the coiled earpiece dangling from his ear. Bob seeing her across the lobby, straightening, smiling, thank god he's okay, thank god -

And then the dog. Bob's grunt of shock, the lobby echoing and reverberating with screams, the skull-splitting crack! crack! crack! of Jim's gun, and then more dogs pouring into the lobby and her shoes skidding over the tiles as Jim hauled her away through the doors -

hnl

They both avoid the letters as they cross the lobby, hugging the walls, heading for the doors that will take them deeper into the lab.

"No one here," she says - whispers, really, since she can't bring herself to break the dusty silence. There's a draft, somewhere, and the building seems to breathe. Icy air slithering past her cheeks. The whistle of breeze somewhere. Thunder outside, muffled through all the floors above them.

"Yet," Jim says, but she shakes her head.

"There's no one here." This she says aloud - her voice pitched low, barely loud enough to hear, but aloud. There's no point whispering. No one has been in here for a long time. "I'm sorry, I don't even know what we're doing here. This is..."

She leans against the nearest corner, nearly blinding herself with her flashlight when she reaches up to rub her eyes.

Jim returns from where he had been scouting a few feet ahead. She can hear his footsteps; even with her eyes closed against the memories she can tell when he stops just beside her. "Maybe," he says, lowly. "Or maybe not."

She opens her eyes, gestures - blinding him, this time. "You said yourself you've been watching. If there was somebody in here you would have seen it."

"Joyce -"

"Listen, I'd rather just go. Okay? This was a mistake."

"Joyce. You know something I've learned about you?"

She halts, looking up at him skeptically. He's already gazing down at her. Since he adopted El, stress eating has started to catch up with him. He's a little more padded around the middle, of late. Built like a hobbit, was Will's way of putting it once. Except hobbits are about four feet tall, and the chief of police has always towered over her. Joyce feels like the hobbit, looking up at him in the darkness that her eyes are just starting to adjust to.

"Your gut instinct is usually right," he says. "If you say something is wrong, something is wrong. Let's poke around a bit, yeah?"

She gives an uncomfortable head-bob. Thinking. If they're following her gut, then -

"Down," she decides. "You would have noticed if anyone was in the upper levels. If anyone was here they'd be underground."

He agrees with a single nod and they're off, padding wordlessly through the halls, jumping at every tiny noise until they reach a stairwell. The complete blackness below is stomach-flipping, and for a moment, she feels like a little girl again. Five years old and standing at the top of the basement stairs, looking down into the spongy darkness and wondering - no, knowing that there was something down there, despite what everyone assured her.

Jim speaks up and she startles a little.

"And speaking of," he says, as if their conversation hadn't underwent a two minute gap. "You know, I was thinking... with Melvald's not doing so hot and all. Maybe you'd want to come work with me."

She laughs, then - actually laughs, and then covers her mouth with a hand as it echoes around them. "With you? As a - what, a police officer?"

She thought he was just kidding around, being ridiculous just to get her to laugh. But if he's joking, he doesn't show it when he says, "I was thinking more detective."

"Detective Byers." She scoffs.

"It has a ring to it."

She shakes her head. And maybe that laugh did her some good, because she's the one that steps forward first, leading them down into the dark.

Will

He's in Castle Byers, and it's all wrong.

All of this is wrong.

He's been hanging out in here, hiding away from everything, for several hours. He's been trying to read some comic books, trying to distract himself, but it's not working, and it's so frustrating because it just doesn't work anymore, it doesn't fit anymore - just like him, folded in half to fit in his fort. The only place he ever felt safe in the Upside Down, the only constant safe place he's had since the night his dad left, and he doesn't fit anymore. It's not the fort - nothing is wrong with the fort, it's him. It's Will. It's that he has to stoop to avoid scraping his head on the tarp roof, now, and his legs are cramped from being curled up inside the too-small space, and he can't even get lost in a comic book anymore. He stares at the pop of color on the page, reads the words, follows the plot, but it's all muted. Disconnected. It's just ink on a humidity-swollen page. It's not working. Nothing works anymore, nothing is right anymore, it's all wrong and he's wrong and -

He slaps down the comic with a huff.

The rain is getting in. Droplets pepper the comic, his arms and legs, the blanket beneath him. Everything is damp. Not slimy, but damp, in a way that's much too similar.

He realizes, all at once, that the rain could end up destroying all of this by the end of the night. Castle Byers isn't exactly up to architectural code. He turns, his eyes moving over everything in the fort. Little pieces of his life that he hoarded away in here. Memories, mostly. Toys and ticket stubs. There's a Dungeons and Dragons book becoming waterlogged next to one wall. Will the Wise, drawn on lined school paper, tacked to a support beam. Crumpled tubes of acrylic paint on the upturned-crate-turned-table. And then he sees the pictures.

A drop of water makes the Party's Ghostbuster picture tremble, and Will picks it up, thinking he'll wipe off the water. Thinking that he'll save it. The storm might wash away the rest of his fort, but he at least has to save the picture. He never quite gets around to putting it in his pocket, though. He's stuck as soon as his eyes land on Mike.

Will knows. He's known since the Upside Down, really, though for a long time afterwards he tried hard to un-know. But the shed last November was the nail in the coffin, and now -

Will knows he loves Mike.

Kind, loud, messy, outgoing, stubborn Mike. The natural leader. The Paladin. Smart, confrontational Mike, who wears his heart on his sleeve and cares so deeply about things being fair. Clumsy, brave, demonstrative Mike, who really can be an asshole sometimes. With his dark, wavy hair and deep-dark eyes and smattering of caramel colored freckles, and his slanted cheekbones, and his smile. Mike.

But Mike -

Does he know?

That's been the question stewing in the back of Will's mind ever since that moment in the Wheelers' garage. The same question, the same thoughts going around and around in his mind.

Does he know? Does Mike know? He said - well, he could have meant something else, but... But the way he flinched after... As if he knew what he said was over the line. As if he knew exactly how close to home he hit.

It's not my fault you don't like girls.

Isn't it?

Jim

"The hell's that?"

The place is a ghost town, and yet Jim hasn't been able to shake the feeling that there's something just around the corner. Maybe he's just paranoid. Maybe it's just the deep-carved muscle memory, on high alert for the click of long, curved claws on the tile floor, the chortling cackle of the creatures from the tunnels. Or maybe - just maybe - they were right to come here.

Because now they're standing in the old control room of the lower levels, surrounded by lifeless consoles full of buttons and spiderwebs, and something isn't right.

"I dunno," he mutters in answer to Joyce's whispered question.

This is where the Gate was. This is where El first opened it, that fateful night when a young boy vanished into thin air - and this is where she closed it again. Way down here in the belly of the lab, where the scientists in their white hazmat suits used to bustle about, self-important in their work.

Now, Jim and Joyce crouch together at the doorway of the control room, peering down into the gaping hole in the ground where, once, demodogs emerged. Clicking their flashlights. Trying to see through the dark and the dust and the haze of cobwebs. Except -

Not nearly as many cobwebs as there should be. In fact, there are hardly any down here. In the upper levels, you couldn't walk five feet without walking straight into one. Here, they've barely seen ten spiders - and that, believe it or not, is a low number.

That on its own wouldn't be so concerning. No, what's concerning is the enormous hole they're staring into.

The Gate is gone - El made sure of that - but something's not right. The cavern where it used to be looks tattered, like a scar. A wound in the fabric of spacetime. The lab told him they had sealed the whole thing up with concrete, but now that gaping wound in the floor is back, pieces of gray sealant clinging to the sides, crumbling away, like an infected gash in the building. The effect is worsened by a black burn mark licking up the wall of the cavern below. An effect of the fire in the tunnels... maybe. Jim hunkers down as far as he can, getting on his belly to see into the yawning pit. Their flashlights barely penetrate the shadows.

"I thought they sealed that up," Joyce says.

"They did." He flicks his light at the chunks of concrete. "Look."

She gets on her belly beside him to see, and for several moments, silence rules. He finds himself acutely, uncomfortably aware of how deep underground they are. How many tons of metal and concrete and glass are above them - how hard it would be to find their way out if they dropped their flashlights down this endless hole.

"Why would they seal it up and then clear it all away again?" he mutters. "And then why would they leave it?"

Because that's the thing: there are cobwebs. Not as many as there should be, but they're there. Someone came and did this. Someone opened up the hole again; someone climbed down into the cavern. Someone blasted that far wall with... something, fire maybe, something to make it turn all blackened and cracked like that. But whoever it was, they haven't been back for a while.

There's something else, and he grabs Joyce's arm so suddenly she squeaks. "Look," he says, pointing with his light. Down, down, down into the dark, all the way to the bottom.

"What?" she hisses, and he jiggles his light at the distant... what? Slab of concrete? Table? Whatever it is, it wasn't there before. It wasn't there when Dr. Owens took him down to see the Gate, and it wasn't there when he returned with El to close it - but it's there now.

"That platform?" Joyce says, and he nods.

"It wasn't there before." He clicks off his light and rolls over, sitting up. "Someone's been here. Someone's been..."

He trails off, because he doesn't want to voice the horrible suspicion that's taking form in his mind. Joyce's eyes are huge, the whites glinting in the dark as she scoots herself away from the hole and stands. She breathes, heavily, and then looks at him and says it herself.

"Someone's been trying to open the Gate again."


"It doesn't make sense. I've been watching. I would have known if this place was in use again. I mean, they would have needed equipment, people..."

"You think Owens?" Joyce says. Her voice is hollow. She's sitting on an equipment cart at the edge of the control room, he flashlight aimed at the ground between her feet. Jim is pacing.

He gives it some thought. Then - "No. No, I've been in contact with him since November." He thinks of the doctor's mangled leg, his limp. "And somehow I doubt he'd be at all keen on opening this up again."

"Then who?"

"And how?" He stops pacing. "It doesn't make sense. Joyce, I swear to you. I have been watching."

Her head lifts. There's an idea brewing behind her eyes; he can see it. "Unless..." she ventures. "Unless they knew that."

Will

"Stupid."

Ghostbusters and D&D. Crayon drawings. Comic books. Toys. Popsicle stick crafts.

Kid stuff. Stupid kid stuff.

Of course nobody wanted to play D&D today. Of course nobody has wanted to play for weeks. It's because he's the only one who's still trying to hang onto it.

Everyone else has moved on. Why can't he? Why can't he pack away old toys and enjoy going to the mall and the pool and the movies like everyone else? They're all growing up. Him included. And it's not fair. He's supposed to have more time.

More time before suddenly he's an adult and he has to face everything alone. Trade in everything fun and good for things that are just necessary. Work and bills. Round and round.

More time before he becomes cynical and cruel like his father, or tired and overworked and anxious like his mother, or fake like Karen Wheeler, or empty like her husband. Or dead like all those people like him in the news.

He's not supposed to grow up yet.

They aren't supposed to grow up yet. They can't. He can't. He's not ready.

And Will hates himself for how betrayed he feels. Not just because the Party is leaving him behind, but because Mike is. And he knows it's dumb, and unfair, and untrue, but it doesn't stop him from feeling abandoned. Like Mike's place at Will's side - his attention and even occasional affection - were revoked and redirected when somebody more interesting came into his life, and it's not the same, he knows it's not the same, but it's so much like when his dad left. Like being all of five years old again and not understanding why his dad didn't want him anymore, not understanding why he wasn't good enough, thinking that maybe if he had been a better son his dad would have wanted to stay -

Or maybe if he wasn't so stupid his friends wouldn't be leaving him in the dust. Maybe if he wasn't the way that he is, none of this would have ever happened. Maybe if he just could have been born normal, he'd still have a dad and he'd still have his best friend. If he had been normal, maybe the Upside Down would have never picked him. Maybe that was his punishment. The universe's way of saying, you're not supposed to exist.

"So stupid," he says again, and he only realizes that he's crying when his voice cracks hideously.

The Party smiles up at him from the rain-splattered photograph. Dustin, and Mike, and Lucas, and himself. Grinning big and posing in their cobbled-together Ghostbusters costumes.

The same costumes they were still wearing later that night, when Mike walked him home. When Mike wrapped his arm around Will's shoulders and their steps fell into sync like they always do, and they dumped their candy out together and sat side-by-side on the couch in the basement. And Will told Mike what he had seen. He told Mike about the Shadow. About the Upside Down. About feeling like he was going crazy. And Mike said that they were going crazy together. And Will thought -

He thought -

He was so stupid.

So, so stupid to think it meant anything.

The damp paper crumples easily in his hands, and then he's tearing it, ripping it down the middle, and again, and when he throws it to the ground he snatches Will the Wise off the wall.

The stupid costume. The stupid D&D campaign. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

He grabs, rips, tears. Papers flutter to the ground. He's crying in big, wet, jolting heaves, and the force of it hurts his ribs.

He needs to grow up.

He wants it gone. He hates this, all of this, himself, the fort, the picture, all of it, everything. He wants it gone. He wants to smash it all to pieces until there's no evidence that it ever existed.

His hand closes around the handle of the baseball bat. And he's crawling. Out through the sheet door, into the lashing, bitter rain. Standing, the rain stinging his skin, ugly-crying as he starts to swing. Mud slips under his shoes and the first impact sends an electric shock up his arms and through his shoulders, so harsh and so sudden it makes his teeth chatter. He swings again. The world is a blur of rain and saltwater, the little battery powered lamp inside Castle Byers glimmering a faint golden even as he strikes again, again, again, and then he hurls the bat aside and starts in on the structure with his hands, yelling, "Fuck -"

And he rarely ever swears like that, with that word, but once it's out of his mouth he says it again, and a third time. Knowing no one will hear him out here, over the rain and the wind and the thunder, but half-hoping that someone does anyway.

He yanks down support beams. Tears off the remaining shred of a sign, feeling splinters bite deep into his fingers and not caring. Rips off the protective blue tarpaulin.

He thinks he might throw up. Something has been building in the pit of his gut, some antsy, crackling tension. Bracingly hot-cold, lashing out along the path of his veins. His hands burn like he plunged them into TV static as he throws apart the last of his childhood refuge, and he doesn't have time to wonder about it before his ankle catches on something and he falls. Hard. Teeth jarring together, tailbone bruised, face hot, eyes aching. Crying like a baby. Like a stupid, pathetic little kid.

And that's where it happens. Right there, sitting in the wreckage, crying, lightning strobing over the sky close enough to pop his ears when the thunder cracks all around him. That's when he feels the Mind Flayer again.

That horrible, dry, aching flutter scrapes through his nerves, prickling hard in the back of his neck, and he lurches to his feet. Gasping at the numb-cold swoop that drains through him again, like the bottom dropping out of the universe.

It's coming. He's coming. He's coming for Will, and he's coming fast -

One second, driving rain. The next, nothing. Nothing but cold and wet and gray, and thunder that echoes like the forest is a reverberation chamber.

His head whips back and it's already there. The Mind Flayer - and yet not. Not the whole shape of him. Just a piece. A shred. Like one of his spiderlike legs, detached - a form of its own. A dust-gray shape, twisting and writhing in the air like a flock of starlings. Screaming towards Will over the Upside Down forest at an incomprehensible speed, as if the piece of Shadow he expelled from his veins last fall has found him again - and wants back in.

Will whirls for Castle Byers, years-old instincts telling him that he can hide there, he'll be safe there -

But even this shadowy imitation of the fort is destroyed. Smashed and pulled apart, vines already making their slow progress over the ruins.

So he runs.

Limbs numb, lips numb. Flailing through the blue-gray gloom of night, lungs heaving and catching and spasming as he coughs. Senseless, animal terror.

Trees are vertical slashes of black in the murk. Lacelike swaths of fungus break off wetly as he sprints past. Leaves and vines and organic detritus, slick and spongy under his feet. He half-slides down a small hill. Can't see. Branches whip his arms, face. Numbness explodes through his arm as his elbow bangs off of a trunk, but that shadow, that little shred of the Mind Flayer, is close behind him. Catching up. The sound - that dry, screaming, scraping sound, like a million insect wings -

Rain. An icy slap of water that makes Will sputter, confused, lost - he's in the real world again, pelting through the woods -

A sickening shock as his shoelace catches on something and his hands flash out in front of him, too late to stop his fall. He barks his knuckles, takes the skin clean off his knee, retches, sobs out half a plea, and kicks to his feet again. The rain is gone. He's in the Upside Down. He blunders through mud and muck, the taste of it in his mouth, the burn of toxins at the back of his throat, in his lungs -

He can't look back, won't, but he can hear it. It's weaving between trees, the whoosh of its movements like a tornado. And then he does look back and he sees it. Darting across the sky over the branches, closing the distance between them by the second. No longer a distant smudge in the dark sky, but a solid mass the size of a car.

It's the field all over again. He's back in his nightmares - really, truly this time, with no relief of waking up. It's going to happen again. It's going to take him again, and he can't stop it.

Pain. His ears ring like a bell. He's on the ground again; he thinks he ran into a branch. It caught him directly in the eye. His diaphragm heaves, and he prays to anyone listening that he doesn't vomit, please, not now. The left half of his face throbs, temple-to-jaw. His cheek feels wet. His head swims.

Rain again, for a split second. And then again, a moment longer. And then he's back in the Upside Down. Red lightning, echoes of thunder. The whooshing scream of the Shred beginning its dive.

"Ow," he says, because it's the only thing his scrambled brain can reach, "Ow, shit - shit -"

He doesn't remember standing but he's on his feet again, sprinting, breathing so hard he can't tell if he's sobbing or hyperventilating and he can feel the tendrils of shadow grazing the hair on the back of his head and -

Out of desperation, Will pivots. He turns, lifts one hand as if he's hurling something at the shadow behind him though his hands are empty - he screams, wordless, a guttural expression of terror and rage and defiance. He thinks maybe it was no. No, not this. Not again. I won't let you.

His vision wavers, tunneling, spots of white spinning at the edges of his narrowing field of view. Something lurches in the very pit of his stomach, everything inside him jolting like he was electrocuted, his extended arm burning with pins and needles - and then all at once, it's over. He finds himself on his knees in the mud, in the real world, dizzy, the world spinning, rain sleucing down his tee shirt, his arm completely numb -

And above him, he can see the swirling Shred of shadow retreating, streaking off into the night.

He gropes at his face, his head, his mouth and eyes and ears, panicked, choking and gagging on spit and rainwater, but - he doesn't feel it. It's not in him. It didn't get him. He did it. Somehow, this time... he did it. He made it go away.

He stumbles to his feet, bleary. Still pawing at his face, hooking fingers into his mouth to check for anything that might have gotten inside. He grimaces when his hand grazes his left cheek.

For the past few moments he's been hearing something, but only now does he recognize the noise. It's a voice - a human voice. A boy's voice. He drifts towards it.

Mike

"Will!"

No, no, no, no. This cannot be happening.

"Will, where are you?"

The beam of his flashlight hangs in the air, made solid by the curtain of rain.

He didn't panic when Will wasn't home. He didn't panic when Lucas wouldn't radio back. No, Mike only panicked when he finally tried the only other place that he knew Will would be - only to find Castle Byers in pieces.

Now he's screaming. Drifting first one way and then the other, unable to pick a direction, heart jackhammering with an unnamed terror.

"Will!"

A figure stumbles into the beam of light so suddenly that Mike audibly startles, and then he's rushing forward, clapping Will into a tight hug.

"Oh, god - oh, shit, Will, I thought - I saw Castle Byers and I thought something... hap..."

He had drawn back to let Will breathe, and in doing so, he now sees the blood. Rusty-red, it oozes down Will's cheek and over his lips, coming from his nose and from a deep scrape just below his eye. Will is breathing like he ran a mile, shaking so hard his hands vibrate, his form a chilled, rain-drenched lump of gangly limbs and wild eyes.

"What happened?"

Will's mouth opens and closes. Like he's struggling to find words. His bangs drip into his eyes. Then he draws in a shallow, wobbling breath and glances towards the remains of Castle Byers. "I wrecked it," he says thickly, and breaks down.

Mike wraps his arms around Will's shoulders again while he cries. He has no idea what the hell is going on. He's totally at a loss for what else to do, and besides, this calms his own frantic mind. Will isn't dead. He's not trapped in the Upside Down again. He's here and he's alive and he's flesh-and-blood, getting blood and snot all over the shoulder of Mike's raincoat.

Mike drops his face into Will's hair, heart still kicking away at his ribs so hard it hurts, and something in his chest gives a relieved, contented little sigh when Will's own arms come up to squeeze around him in turn.


Joyce

Tunnels.

Not Upside Down tunnels. Manmade. Echoing concrete tunnels that seem to go on for miles.

That, as they discovered, was how someone had been sneaking to and from the lab.

Joyce's feet ache. She thought they'd never find their way aboveground again - but here they are. The tunnel they chose led them straight from the basement of the Hawkins National Laboratory to an old, crumbling farmhouse on the outskirts of Hawkins. At least, she assumes it's an abandoned farmhouse. The tunnel came up directly in the center of an empty, boarded-up kitchen.

Rain drums on the roof, which leaks in several places. Joyce rubs her arms

"It's clear," Jim says, startling her.

It's the first thing either of them has said since they crept from the mouth of the tunnel, his gun at the ready in case they ran into whoever was responsible for their subterranean adventure. But there's no one here. He had gone to do a sweep of the house to confirm; now he returns, carrying something under his arm.

"Find something?"

"Maybe."

He sets it down on the rickety kitchen table. His flashlight illuminates a nondescript brown cardboard box.

"It was by the front door," he says, peeling open the top. "Exit's that way, by the way. Looks like we're southeast of the Smiths' place. Must've walked two goddamn miles down there."

Inside the box: papers. Sheaves of thin, bright-white office paper. She reaches in to thumb through them.

"Doesn't exactly look like Farmer McDonald's tax returns," he says. "Gotta be from the lab."

"Why leave them behind?"

"I don't think they did. Not on purpose. It was by the front door on its side, like it fell off a dolly or something."

His voice is rough from dehydration. It must have been two hours since they climbed out of his car to cut a hole in the fence - and longer since they had any water. When she looks up, their eyes meet. And she knows - she just knows, in that moment, that they're thinking the exact same thing. Feeling the exact same thing, at the same time.

It's happening again, they both think.

It's a sinking feeling. Dread, yes - but also weariness. They've been fighting this shit for almost two years. And now, just when they thought it was truly over -

But it doesn't matter. Because as they look at each other in the dim light coming in through the broken-in windows of the derelict house, they rally. Yes, they're tired. Yes, it's all starting again. Yes, someone is trying to open the Gate again, to bring the Upside Down back into their lives. Yes, they will fight.

She doesn't need to say any of it. She can tell he knows what she's thinking. Instead, she looks back towards the conspicuous stairwell in the middle of the kitchen. "So, they packed up shop and left the lab."

"Seems like."

"After going to all the trouble of digging the tunnels to get in."

"So the question is, if they're not using the lab anymore..."

They both look towards the front door as a bolt of lightning turns everything bright and flat for a fraction of a second. Then Joyce finishes out the thought.

"Where did they go?"


The Shred

Rats and mice can only take one so far.

They've been useful for reconnaissance, but they are flawed. Namely, they have no connection to Home. Their bodies are too warm, too tethered to this soft dimension. Their matter just doesn't accept the Shadow. In order for them to be useful, they must be changed. And that takes time. And energy. Neither of which the Shred has.

What the Shred really needs is a host that already has a connection to Home - a host that's already suitable to its needs. The Shadow found one such host last cycle. So the Shred tried William Byers again - but he, like a petulant child, refused. He fought back. He's not worth the effort of subduing right at this moment - and besides, the Shred is running out of energy. The newly-formed fissure between realities is tenuous.

It will have to find a different human host, and resign itself to taking the time and energy to adequately change the host to fit its needs. The boy would have been ideal, but he's being troublesome right now. He'll have to be dealt with later.

In the meantime, the Shred is on the move.

The Shadow has been watching Hawkins. And the Shred knows what the Shadow knows. The fissure is too slight for them to reform into one, for now, but it's enough to relay information. Instructions.

The Shadow has been watching. All humans tend to blur together, but there is one in particular that could be useful.

The Shred needs a human host that other humans like. A human that is physically strong. Someone the inhabitants of Hawkins already respect to some degree.

One such human, as it happens, is currently soaring down the road in his automobile, his heat signature alight in the comforting dark of night.

The Shred gathers itself, plans a trajectory, and dives straight through the glass windshield of Billy Hargrove's Camaro.