Hey people who don't like gay ships: this isn't for you. Shoo.
Also, people sneering about how I'm just writing this to make it gay: I was actually more concerned about the fact that Season 3 turned the characters into flat, empty caricatures of themselves, the themes were flipped *completely* from the moral compass of the first two seasons, the writing became exceptionally soap-opera-y, the plot was action-driven instead of character driven, and the dialogue was overblown and unenjoyable, but go off I guess. Am I making it gay? Of course I am. That's a bonus.
All right, continue on with your lives now.
Will
Chester trots around the Wheeler's basement, curious and excited to be somewhere new.
Dogs aren't allowed in the Wheeler house. Ted is allergic, and Karen is strict about keeping fur out. But when they got close to the Byers house, walking shakily in the rain, Will balked. "Wait," he said, "No, I don't want my mom to see me. If she comes home and sees me like this..." He swept a hand over his face, indicating the puffy eyes, the snot, the blood. "She'll freak." So they turned for the Wheeler's house - but Chester was barking up a storm inside. He's always been able to tell when something isn't right. In the Upside Down, Will could have sworn that Chester could see him sometimes, or maybe smell him. Will would often hear the dog's heavy, panting breaths nearby, the jangle of his collar, as if Chester has followed Will's scent to the mirror image of Castle Byers, finding him even across dimensions. So they ducked into the house - and, thank god, his mom wasn't home yet - and collected the dog.
And now here they are. Back in the Wheeler's basement, side-by-side on the couch, with Chester's tail wagging back and forth across the space, disappearing and reappearing around furniture. The campaign from earlier is still on the card table. Will is wrapped in one of the Wheeler's scratchy blankets. Mike had his raincoat so he's only a little damp, his hair dripping. But Will was soaked to the bone by the time they got to the Wheeler's house, abandoning their bikes under a bush. Thanks to Chester, jogging along on a leash beside Will's bike, it was a long, slow journey.
Will has finally stopped bleeding. Mike brought him a warm, damp washcloth from the bathroom to sponge his face with, and it took approximately a whole box of tissues to stop his nosebleed. He must have smashed it on the ground when he fell. He doesn't think it's broken, but for a while there, he wondered.
"I need to tell you something."
It's nearly a whisper. Partly because he screamed himself hoarse, taking down Castle Byers and then facing... whatever that was. But partly because he doesn't want to say it. He's been willfully ignoring it for the past day, because it wasn't real. It wasn't. It wasn't. It was all in his head. He was never in the Upside Down in the movie theater. He never felt the Mind Flayer.
But now, the thick, gelatinous sludge on Will's shoes says otherwise.
He can see Mike in his peripheral vision. Sitting forward on the edge of the couch cushion, hands clasped tensely between his knees. Listening. Will hasn't said much since they crashed into each other in the woods, and he knows Mike has been waiting for an explanation.
It takes a long time to kick his jaw into action. His vocal cords simply refuse to move. He doesn't want to say it. He doesn't want to. He doesn't want it to be real, and if he says it, it'll become real.
But, at last, he does.
"The Mind Flayer," he forces out, and beside him, he feels Mike go tense. "I think it came for me again."
Mike's hand closes like a vice over Will's upper arm, snapping into place like a magnet before he realizes how tightly he's holding and loosens his grip - but only a little.
"What? No. That's - El closed the gate." His voice is flat with willful disbelief, but as the words tumble out, they pitch into panic. His palm slips down Will's arm, as if testing to see if he's cold. Like he's rubbing at Will's skin, trying to buff the warmth back into his flesh. "It's gone."
"I know, but... I saw it. I saw him."
Mike's eyes are huge. He barely whispers it: "The Mind Flayer?"
"Not the whole thing, not like before, but it was like..." Will is shaking again. He doesn't want to, he hates himself for it, but he can't stop. Squeezing his hands together only makes it worse. His knuckles go white, the blood leaching out of them. "A little piece of it, like a... shard."
"Like the piece of it that came out of you before?"
Will nods - and then he meets Mike's wide, scared eyes, and says, "It came for me, but something... Something happened. Something really weird."
Mike, voice shaking, breathes, "It got you?"
And Will looks back at him, his own eyes just as big - and shakes his head. "No. I don't think so. I think I..."
He trails off and Mike's head gives a tiny, impatient swivel, like he's goading Will to speak.
"What?"
"I think I did something."
"What?"
"I dunno, I... I don't know how to explain it. I just..."
Will lifts his hands, trying to recreate what happened, trying to explain, but he doesn't know how to say it. He doesn't even really know what he's explaining. It was something to do with the air... the prickle of electric tension, the lightning overhead, the rain, the storm. A feeling that clogged his nose, stuck to his skin, laid semi-tangible hands on his cheeks like a second layer of humidity. The smell of ozone and petrichor. A shivering, crackling tension that jumped through him, raising the hair on his arms, tunneling his vision until -
"I don't know," he repeats, softly, and at the tone of Will's voice, Mike tilts closer to sling an arm across his shoulders. Will leans into it gratefully, breathing into the anchor that is his best friend, stabilizing himself against Mike's side.
Neither of them move. They don't speak, even when Chester appears at their knees, pushing a wet nose against Will's leg with a whine because he can tell his person is upset.
Maybe it's childish - and Will swore he was done with that at Castle Byers, done with being a stupid pathetic kid - but for a moment, he closes his eyes. Soaking this in. It's a rare luxury these days, being with Mike like this - alone, without El or the Party. And despite the circumstances, Will can't help but feel a momentary prickle of triumph. Mike is actually listening to him, engaging with him instead of acting like he's too cool for whatever's going on. It's a much-needed breath after being underwater. It's like it used to be, like they used to be, before everything was ruined. Before Mike changed, closing himself off, becoming one of those hard-shelled, cynical teenagers that don't care about anything fun. Before last winter, when everything got bad and stayed that way, before everything got wrong and different, even after El closed the Gate.
And for a moment - just a brief moment - Will almost feels a sick, twisted kind of relief that things are going wrong again. Because at least this kind of wrong is normal. They're used to this kind of wrong, they've been through it before. This kind of dread, this kind of danger... This is familiar. Horribly, nauseatingly familiar - but familiar. And there is comfort in familiarity. Will doesn't know how to cope with the fact that his friends all seemed to grow up and leave him behind, or that he's never going to have a normal life like everyone else, or that he still has panic attacks sometimes, or that his best friend isn't interested in him anymore because he's constantly sucking face with his girlfriend. But Will knows survival. He knows about monsters from another world. He knows about running and hiding, fighting, surviving. This, he knows. And there's a strange comfort in that.
And there's an even bigger comfort in having his best friend back - here, present, talking like they used to. Side by side on the couch, like Halloween night. Will knows how to survive alone, but right now, he doesn't have to.
He doesn't want to move, or speak. He doesn't want to leave this moment.
But if Will is saying this, he should say all of it. They should be on the same page.
"There's something else."
Mike doesn't react except to brace his arm more firmly around Will's shoulders, listening with a set jaw.
"In the movie theater. Could you see me? When I left the auditorium?"
"Yeah."
"I couldn't see you."
His brows furrow, and then his lashes flicker with understanding. "You were seeing -?"
Will nods.
"Viewmaster," Mike mumbles.
"It's happening again," Will confirms in a slurred, wet whisper. He swallows to keep his throat from swelling. Chester whines, louder this time, and paws at his leg until Will reaches down to pet the white, furry head.
And then Mike, quietly, says, "We need to call El."
El
The moment Mike sets the plate of Eggos down on the coffee table, freshly steaming and smelling wonderful, three hands and one furry snout close in on it. Will manages to pull Chester away before he can snatch one.
Max's house phone rang late at night, after they had already gone to bed. Max jumped up to answer it because she didn't want it to wake up her family - and plus, they thought it might be Hop trying to call El back. She had tried calling him before they went to bed, to explain that she was at a sleepover at Max's, but he didn't answer. So she had hung up without leaving a message, grumpy and a little worried about him, thinking, Fine. He doesn't need to know where I am, anyway. I make my own rules.
But when Max answered the call, mumbly and cantankerous from being woken up, it wasn't Hop on the phone. Her expression changed, and she waved El over - and it was Mike. Saying that he'd been trying to contact them by radio for an hour. Saying it was a Code Red. Saying that Will was in danger.
One wet, cold ride across town later, with El standing on the back of Max's bike, and they're in Mike's basement. El and Max's raincoats - well, technically they're both Max's, she lent El her old one - hang up to dry next to Mike's. But their hair is soaked, again, and El's clothes are damp and uncomfortable. She had to change before they left; it was too cold outside to make the journey in pajamas.
Mike seemed to have something to say about her new outfit, but she wasn't paying much attention. She was too busy prodding at the massive bruise-scrape on Will's cheekbone, making him wince and jerk away.
They nibble at the Eggos without much appetite. Max is pacing. Will is holding Chester back from snapping up the whole plate. And Mike is hovering. He's nearly standing on El's feet, he's so close, and she wants to elbow him away with a glare. She can't breathe with him right there, not right now when, suddenly, things are so bad.
"From the beginning," she says. She sits beside Will, her stomach aching.
Mike sits next to her, almost on top of her, and leans his head against hers. This time El does push him. "Mike," she growls, and he frowns at her.
"What?"
"I can't breathe," she snaps. "I can't do this right now. Okay?"
He shuffles off, hands raised sarcastically like he's saying well, sooorr-yyy. She huffs, because he knows she hates when he's sarcastic like that. Then she turns back to Will. She can't always just be Mike's girlfriend. Does he not get that? Right now she has to be Will's friend. In fact, right now, maybe she has to be Eleven.
"Will."
He looks at her over his Eggo, apparently jerking back to reality. "Huh?"
"Tell it from the beginning," she prompts gently.
She's heard it the way Mike told it - or, rather, she's heard it the way that Max said that Mike told it. But she has to hear it from Will. She can't, won't believe that this is real until she hears Will say it.
Will presses his lips together, and as he thinks, Chester breaks free of his grasp and wolfs up two Eggos from the edge of the plate, then runs off to chew them.
"I didn't think it was anything, at first," Will starts. The rest of them are dead silent, listening. "I mean, I think I just didn't want to believe it."
El nods; she understands this.
"The first time I felt it... was in the field near the Nelson farm."
"Weathertop," Max says, and Will nods.
"And then I felt it again at Back to the Future that night."
Will glances at Mike as he says this, like there's a thought flashing between them, invisible. They do that sometimes.
"Then again, tonight, at Castle Byers."
Before El can ask what happened at Castle Byers, Max says, "What does it... feel like?"
"It's almost like..." Will pauses, eyes flicking around like he's looking for the words on the table in front of him. El watches him, mouth dry. "You when you drop on a roller coaster?"
"Sure," says Mike.
"Yeah," says Max.
"No," says El.
"It's like... everything inside your body is just sinking, all at once, but - this is worse. Your body - it goes cold, and - and you can't breathe."
A silent, shaking breath leaves El's lips. She thinks she knows. She knows what he's talking about. She's only felt it twice before - once, when she blasted apart the Demogorgon and sank between worlds, and once at the Gate.
"I've felt it before. Whenever he was close."
"Whenever who was close?" Max says.
They all know already. Max knows. El can tell by the glance that they all share. Maybe, like El, like Will, Max doesn't want to believe it until she hears it. El wants to put a hand over Will's mouth, suddenly, and just say it herself, because she recognizes the numb-hurt that fogs over his eyes. She understands that, too; she hates saying the word Papa.
But -
"The Mind Flayer."
"It doesn't make sense," El murmurs. "I closed the Gate."
"I know, but..." For the first time, Will meets her eyes, head-on. The numb-hurt is still there, but fading, being replaced with something more urgent. "What if he never left? What if we locked him out here with us?"
Billy
They're fucking rats.
Billy launches upright, screaming wordlessly, slapping at himself like an idiot. His arms strike warm, furry bodies, hurling them off him, and he shudders as he starts to run. He thought he felt something, as he was waking up, maybe lots of somethings, and he tried to brush it away while half-asleep, but then -
Jesus, they're fucking everywhere!
Swarming over the floor, screeching, he can smell them, like sewage and wet dog -
Where the hell is he? Oh, god, where the hell is he?
It's some sort of basement, he thinks, industrial-looking, oh fuck he just stepped on one of the goddamn things -
A staircase. There's a staircase. Is it a staircase? He can barely see, it's pitch black. The paltry glow illuminating the staircase comes from somewhere above, and it's distant, weak.
He sprints for it, flailing - well. It's as much of a sprint as he can manage, considering the ground is made of rats. Where the hell are they all going? What's on the far side of this basement? What are they swarming to? He's not sticking around to find out. He pounds up the stairs - yes, they are stairs, and there's the handrail - no longer caring what he steps on, his boots crunching wetly over warm rodent bodies, releasing the stench of crushed flesh. Something runs over the backs of his fingers with sharp little feet and he yanks his hand from the railing. This is a nightmare. This is a nightmare. This is a -
Warehouse. He's in some sort of abandoned warehouse, he thinks, the only reason he can see anything at all is that distant yellow glow. He stumbles towards it, yelling.
"Hey!" His voice sounds like absolute shit, like he smoked three packs in a row and then gargled glass. "Hey! Hello? Help me!"
The sound of the rats is awful. Hundreds of little feet skittering, hundreds of warlike little screams, high and grating.
He makes it out of the warehouse door and -
It's his car. The light he saw was the light of his own headlights, still blazing. In fact, the car is still running, despite the massive hole punched into the very center of his windshield. The front fender is caved in, wrapped around the warehouse support beam that the car crashed into. The engine idles.
"Fuck!" he spits. His car. His fucking car -
Whatever. Fuck it. He has to get out of here.
He scrambles into the driver's seat and kicks at the gas before he even wrenches it into reverse. The car strains forward, then wrenches backwards, and he's speeding back, barely looking in the mirrors, just as long as he gets away from that place -
The car peels around, he slams it into drive, and the tires jump and screech (like the rats, he shudders) as they fling up dirt, gain traction, and launch forward. Away from the warehouse, up onto a road, into the night. Wind blasts through the hole in the windshield, buffeting him.
Okay. Okay. He couldn't have been there that long, if the car was still running. He just - it just -
Telephone booth.
He slams on the brakes and jumps out of the car almost before it stops moving, bursting into the booth and snatching up the phone, dialing 9, 1 -
Wait.
Something in the back of his mind is stopping him. Telling him to wait.
Calm down, something whispers. Don't do that.
What the hell is he doing? What is he thinking? What the hell am I going to say? he wonders, tapping the receiving against his chest. "Hello, this is Billy Hargrove, some sort of formless shadow-ghost just made me crash my car and then I woke up in a warehouse covered in rats, please send the FBI"? What are they gonna do, arrest the fuckin' rats?
And anyway, the shadow... Well, it must've been... What? Something big enough to leave that hole in his windshield. A bird, maybe? Big one? A bat? Are there bats in Indiana? Shit, probably. There's every other type of pest and rodent in this shithole.
He puts the phone back on the cradle.
Will
Will slams a paper down on the table and starts scribbling, pressing hard with the charcoal so that it leaves a thick layer of dust on top of the paper.
"This is him."
Mike called a Code Red at 6:00am. Nobody slept much last night; as much as Dustin and Lucas griped and moaned about being woken up at the crack of dawn, they stopped complaining much when they saw the bags under everyone else's eyes. Now, they're all gathered together around the table as Will catches them up to speed.
"All of him. But that day on the field -" He tries not to think about it too much even as he says it. After talking about it with Max, El and Mike for hours last night, talking in circles, trying to figure out if there was any other explanation, of course he had nightmares for the few hours he did sleep. "A part of him attached itself to me."
He sweeps his hand across the rough drawing and holds it up. This is the fastest way he could think to explain, to demonstrate. He didn't want to dwell on it any longer than necessary. Now, Dustin and Lucas look at Will's charcoal-marked palm and then at each other as Will goes on, going over what they already know.
"My mom got it out of me and El closed the Gate. But the part that was still in me..."
He flips the paper and presses a charcoal palm print onto the blank side.
"Shit," mutters Dustin.
"What if it's still in our world? In Hawkins?"
"Wait, wait, wait," Lucas says, holding up his hands. His tank top is on backwards; apparently he was rushing to get to the rest of the Party when Mike called the Code Red. "The demodogs died when El closed the Gate. If the brain dies, the body dies. Remember?"
Chester, recognizing the word dog, lifts his head.
"But he's not body," Will says. "He's the brain. Even just a little part of him. Still brain."
"We need to assume the worst," Mike cuts in, all business. He's been in Leader Mode since he woke up - actually, Will isn't sure that Mike did wake up. Will isn't sure if Mike slept. "The Mind Flayer's back."
From across the table, El starts chewing on a thumbnail. She deliberately positioned herself catty-corner to Mike when they gathered around; they've been having one of their twice-weekly spats again.
"Yeah," Will agrees softly. "And if he is, he'd want to attach himself to someone again. Like last time. He can't function very well in our world without a host." He takes a deep breath. "That's why he came after me again."
"But it didn't work this time," Dustin says. "Right? You said you were okay this time. You said on the phone that -"
"He stopped it," El says. She gives Will a tired, proud smile, but Will just shakes his head.
"Delayed it. It didn't get me this time, but if he comes back... I don't know if I can do that again if he comes back. I mean, if it comes back. That little piece of him."
Lucas frowns down at the charcoal handprint, arms crossed, trying to hide that he's scared. "Delayed it how?"
This again. Will's lips press together and he sighs. "I don't know. I really - I don't know." He meets Mike's eyes and Mike gives a little nod; they were talking about this again last night, after the girls curled up in a sleeping bag together to get some sleep. "But it might have something to do with... Do you remember last Halloween?"
Solemn nods all around. Of course they do.
"You remember when we were talking about Dart, in the AV room?
Nods from the boys - El and Max shrug at each other.
"Oh," Dustin says, eyes going wide as he catches on. "True sight."
"True sight?" Max says.
"It means he can see into the Upside Down," Lucas explains. He has an arm around her shoulder, and the gesture of affection makes Mike and El's uncharacteristic distance even more conspicuous in comparison.
"Sometimes," Will clarifies. "And not on purpose. But it happened in the theater, and at Castle Byers last night when he - when it tried to take me again."
Something strange happens when he says it this time. He thought he'd be scared, again, still, or maybe just numb after that endless night. But he's not. Will is furious. All at once, with a stab of seething anger right at his temples, making him grit his teeth. Again. When it tried to take him again. Because, goddamnit, Will just wanted a normal summer. A normal life. And he should have gotten one. He never wanted to go through this, never wanted to be what he is. Scarred, broken. Different. He never asked for any of it. He just wanted to go to a movie with his friends, and He just had to come ruin everything. Ruin Will's life, again. He's tired of it. He's had enough. He's done.
I'll kill him, he thinks, somehow very calm and seething with rage all at once. He's looking down at his smudged handprint, and his own hands are shaking, but it's not from fear anymore. I swear to god, I'll kill him.
"Wait," Lucas is saying, "So if Will can see into the Upside Down again -"
"True sight," Dustin says again.
"- and that piece of the Mind Flayer is active again, those things must be related. It must mean that the Gate is open again, right?"
El and Will make eye contact across the table, comparing thoughts through a look.
"I don't think so," Will says, and El jumps in, "Maybe. It doesn't feel open again. Not like last time. Last time - I could feel it. It's like an open door in a room. There's kind of a... draft?"
She looks to Will again for confirmation and he nods. This doesn't feel like last time. Not quite. And anyway - "If it was, he'd be here already - all of him. He had..." He shrugs uncomfortably, gaze going distant for a moment. "Plans. He wouldn't just wait around in the Upside Down if the Gate was already open."
"But it might be," Lucas presses, "Or how else would -?"
"I don't know, okay?" Will snaps, at the same time that El and Mike respond, and the Party devolves into a tangle of raised voices. They're all stressed, scared.
And then, yelling over them, Dustin. "Hold on, hold on - shut up! So if the Gate might -" He holds up his hands, placating. "- might be open, and we've been hearing coded scientific chatter on the radios from somewhere in and-or under the mall... Those are two pretty weird things to happen simultaneously without being related, yeah?"
The Party stares at him. Several seconds go by, and then Mike leans forward.
"You've been hearing what?"
Nancy
At 8:00am, Nancy and Jonathan clock in to work.
At 8:04, they're standing in the dark room, staring open-mouthed at the hulking, skinless abomination that's writhing in the erstwhile rat's cage.
"What," Jonathan says, "The actual shit."
"It wasn't like that last night, was it?" Nancy tremors, and then adds, "Oh, god," and lifts a sleeve to her nose. The thing smells like rotting sewer meat. It makes a sort of twisted noise, like door hinges - god, it's still walking, tottering around on swollen appendages.
"I -" He gestures with the cloth cover, apparently at a loss. "I dunno, I -"
The door starts to open and they whirl, Jonathan diving to replace the cloth cover, but just as quickly, the door closes again and Gloria's voice says, "Oh, right, sorry. Red light. Should have knocked. Tom can see you in his office now."
They elected not to show Tom the "rabid" rat.
And good thing, too, because Tom apparently needs no extra incentive to be royally pissed off after hearing what they had to say.
"I've worked at this paper for twenty-five years. Twenty five years." Tom has his hands on his hips. He's pacing back and forth behind his desk, and every time he passes in front of his rotating fan, an eye-watering wave of cologne washes over them. Nancy fights the urge to wrinkle her nose. "Now, we're a small-town paper, but we have something the big papers don't have: trust. The trust of our community."
"Tom," Nancy cuts in, "If you just -"
He raises his voice to talk over her. "You know how I build that trust? By placing my faith in something the two of you don't seem to value a whole lot. Facts. Facts. So, while we're here, let's go over the facts. Let's see if I have this straight. Fact one: you neglected to tell your superiors about the call that The Hawkins Post received - not you, Miss Wheeler, the Post. This was not your phone call. In fact you're not even supposed to be answering phones unless no one else can get to it, am I right?"
"Gloria was in the bathroom, no one else was around."
"This woman called the Post, and rather than following procedure, you decided to steal that story for yourself. Is that right?"
"Tom, I didn't mean -"
"Two: you falsely identified yourselves as reporters, repeatedly lying to an elderly woman -"
"We never actually said we were -" she starts, but he doesn't care.
"Three: you have spent the last twenty four hours chasing this story, that was not yours to pursue, instead of completing the assigned work that we were counting on you to do."
Jonathan makes an attempt, saying, "Actually, I got the pictures developed from the -"
"Four," Tom nearly yells, "This story that you wasted so much time on? Utterly worthless. Waste of goddamn time."
Nancy's mouth opens. "I'm sorry?" she laughs, abruptly and deeply pissed off.
Tom leans forward to give the final blow, mouth set in a hard line. "Mrs. Driscoll is a paranoid schizophrenic. You didn't know that, did you? No, because if you had bothered to get permission from anyone before going on this little venture, we would have told you that we get a call from dear old Mrs. Driscoll about every other week. And it's always stuff like this. Aliens, zombie ants. Diseased rats."
Nancy's stomach is sinking through the floor.
"Now," Tom goes on, sounding tired. "Disease-carrying rats, as witnessed by a lonely, paranoid schizophrenic that lives alone and makes a 'report' about the apocalypse every other week out of boredom? Does that sound credible to you, or perhaps does this sound more like the delusions of a very sick old lady?"
"I didn't know that," Nancy says, evenly.
But her mind keeps skipping back. The rat. The rat they took, it's real, there's something wrong with it, it's in the darkroom right now -
She opens her mouth to say, We have proof, it's in the darkroom, we can show you - but there's her intuition again. Stopping her. Something about that rat wasn't right. Something about that smell was too familiar. She can't put her finger on it, but it made the hair on the back of her neck stand on end.
In Nancy's experience, there are two types of strange. There's the normal type of strange - the type of strange that exists in the everyday world. Ghost stories, unsolved crimes, bizarre natural phenomena that you read about in textbooks. And then there's another type of strange. The type she didn't know existed until a little over a year and a half ago, when her little brother's best friend went missing and Nancy crawled through a tree trunk to another world. And this rat, this... thing that the rat became... It smelled an awful lot like Category Two.
"Well, now you know." Tom sits, finally, slumping in his chair. "And you would have known a lot sooner if you had followed procedure. Hopefully you've learned something valuable here. In the workplace, in the real world, there are consequences to your actions."
She doesn't want to glare at him - well, she does, but it wouldn't be professional. So she glares at her shoes, instead, leaving Jonathan to be the nice one and say, "We're very sorry. It won't happen again."
"No, it won't," he agrees. "Because you're fired. Both of you."
"It's not fair. According to Tom, Driscoll's just a schizophrenic? And the rats were just regular rats?"
Jonathan, at the wheel of the car, casts a glance into the backseat. They smuggled the cage out, under its cover, along with most of their stuff. Now it's strapped in with a seat belt. The twitching, fleshy mass within has gone eerily quiet. Nancy wonders if it's even still alive.
"Definitely not a regular rat," he mutters, and Nancy gestures sharply.
"Exactly! But what were we supposed to say? Oh, no, actually we have a small bloody monster in a cage to prove it? It was totally a rat last night, I promise?"
He tilts his head to acknowledge her, glowering at the road.
She tosses herself back against the seat.
"What do you think is wrong with it?" he says quietly.
Nancy has an inkling. But she's never seen something from the Upside Down that looks like that. And anyway, it wasn't anything from the Upside Down. It was a rat. A regular... Well, a mostly regular rat.
"I'm so screwed," he mutters darkly.
"We're screwed," she corrects, and to her surprise, he raises his voice.
"No, Nancy, I am screwed. Okay? I'm screwed!"
She scoffs. "It's a summer job, Jonathan, your life is hardly over."
"I don't live in a two-story house on Maple Street. My dad doesn't earn six figures. Hell, he isn't even around."
She is not in the mood for this. "God, here comes the Oliver Twist routine," she snaps.
"Mortgage. College tuition. You know, they're real things, Nancy. Things that you don't care about, only because you don't have to."
"I didn't realize I lived in a bubble," she sneers, sarcastic. Does he think she doesn't understand these things? That she doesn't know what it's like to be disadvantaged in society? She's a girl. That puts her at a bigger disadvantage than a lack of money ever could.
"Well, you do!" he snaps back. "You want everything handed to you on a silver platter -"
"Excuse me? I'm a girl. Woman! I'm a woman, I've never gotten anything handed to me on a silver platter, I have to fight like hell for anyone to take me seriously at all -"
"We were interns, Nancy! Interns! What did you expect, that you would make star reporter in a month? Crack the big case?"
He's hitting far too close to home, being far meaner than the Jonathan she knows, and she's furious to realize that tears are hot in her throat. "You sound just like them. You realize that, right? Just like Bruce and those assholes -"
"Yeah, yeah - those assholes gave us jobs."
"Is that what that was?" she bursts out. "That was humiliating!"
"Yeah, the real world sucks. Deal with it like the rest of us."
She gapes at him. Is this Jonathan? Her supportive boyfriend? "You don't know what it's like," she breathes.
There's a hard beat, in which the car sweeps around a curve and Jonathan white-knuckles the wheel like they're moving at 60mph instead of 30.
"Neither do you."
Jim
It's been a less-than-stellar morning for the Chief of Hawkins Police.
At about 8:40am, Jim had a heart attack. Almost. He felt like he had a heart attack. Because when he returned to the cabin - bleary-eyed and exhausted from their late night infiltrating the HNL, exploring the man made tunnels, and trekking the miles back to retrieve his car from where they left it - El wasn't home.
His blood pressure didn't start to fall again until Karen Wheeler picked up the phone and cheerfully informed him that, yes, "Elle" was there. The Party had emerged from the basement for breakfast not ten minutes before he called - apparently they'd had a last-minute sleepover. He thanked her, made a mental note to ground El later for going out without permission and staying out for the night without even leaving a message to let him know she was safe. That is not the kind of nasty surprise he needs, especially not now, after what they found last night. And then he called Joyce, to let her know that Will was at the Wheelers'. It also didn't hurt to hear her voice; their brief conversation, commiserating over their teenagers, is the only reason he walked into work grumpy instead of fuming.
But, grumpy he was. And he was also late. Which meant that Florence was up his ass again, and he had a backlog of reports to look through. The usual small-town news. The petty theft of a bird feeder, with bored high schoolers suspected as perpetrators. Gunshots heard in the woods, which turned out to be a couple of drunk idiots shooting at squirrels. A rat infestation that someone decided to call in to the police station instead of an exterminator. Also, Joyce said that their dog is missing. Jim just hopes that it isn't on the side of the road somewhere. That would be the cherry on top of this week of shit.
They better have slept all in one room, he stews to himself as he licks a thumb and flips through the reports. If I find out that her and Mike were alone together, I'll -
"Uh, 'scuse me?"
He glances up at the half-familiar voice. It's that Harrington kid that hangs around with Jonathan once in a blue moon. Jim last saw him behind the counter of the ice cream shop in the mall, wearing the world's most hideous uniform. Today he's in street clothes, his hair poofed up in the teenage style that probably took about a pound of gel.
"Harrington," Jim grunts, taking his shoes down from his desk. "Steve, right."
"Yes, sir." Steve steps in. "The secretary said I could find you back here...?"
"No, I'm actually out to lunch," Jim deadpans. He's a bit disappointed that he doesn't get at least a chuckle; he thought that was a good one. He taps his cigarette on its tray. "Something I can do for you?"
"Well, I work at Scoops. You know, in the mall."
"Uh-huh."
"And, um..." The kid hems and haws until Jim is about to say, spit it out, but finally he blows out a breath and says, "There's something you should maybe look into."
"What, we got a dairy thief on our hands?" Jim mutters flippantly.
He's still preoccupied by what he and Joyce found. He has bigger fish to fry right now than frozen dessert crimes. Then he glances up and sees Steve's expression. He puts down the reports. "What?"
"Under the lab?"
Joyce nods.
Steve points down, as if pointing to the foundation of HNL, though they're miles away in the back room of Scoops Ahoy. "You mean that lab with the dogs? The demodogs that came out of the portal the El closed? The Gate? The lab from last fall. That lab. That's where the tunnels started?"
"And then they spat us out a mile past town," Jim says. "Least, the one we followed did."
Because Jim has an inkling that at least one of the HNL tunnels led here. To Starcourt Mall. Or more specifically, to somewhere under Starcourt Mall.
Crazy? Perhaps. But Jim has seen enough crazy in the past couple years that he barely hesitated to consider it. Especially considering the notes that he has in his hands. Most of it is scribbled in fourteen-year-old scrawl - Dustin Henderson's, if he's to believe the header claiming THESE NOTES ARE THE SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH AND PROPERTY OF DUSTIN HENDERSON - but it's enough to get the gist. Steve's handwriting is sprinkled throughout as well, and another - Robin's, apparently. The girl currently manning the front counter. She's been helping out with the investigation out of boredom, according to Steve.
There are a lot of fairly meaningless calculations, the same code written over and over with different dead-end analyses, and the most useful information: transcriptions of nearly everything that's been said on a certain radio channel over the past day and a half.
Technically, Steve is on the clock right now. Which means he had to change into his Scoops uniform the moment they entered the mall. The sailor outfit makes it a little difficult to take him seriously - not that that hair was doing him any favors in that respect to begin with. Still, he was part of the group last year. He protected the kids with the demodogs, he helped build the interrogation room in the shed, he helped to set the tunnels on fire to draw the dogs away from El when she most needed to concentrate. There are some experiences you can't share without walking away as friends, or at least allies. So, teenager or not, ridiculous costume or not, Jim listened seriously when Steve started telling them about coded government radio chatter coming from underneath Starcourt.
They picked Joyce up on the way here. And thank god they did, because she's making leaps and bounds in putting together the seemingly disparate puzzle pieces. Joyce always was brilliant; she was always so much better at science than him in high school. She even tutored him, once upon a time, although they rarely ended up actually studying. They were too busy goofing around. Now, she flips very seriously through the pages of teenage handwriting, pausing now and again to underline something.
They've been comparing notes. So to speak. It seems that their respective mysteries aren't as separate as they at first appeared. Because this chatter that the kids have been picking up - from a source that apparently has to be very close by, or else the little radio wouldn't be able to pick it up from here - sounds pretty damn familiar. Joyce said the same thing when they first started reading through the transcriptions: a lot of it sounds like the kind of scientific technobabble that Jim tended to tune out, back when he visited the HNL regularly. Back when it was still operational, under the administration of Dr. Owens.
Add that to the apparently failed attempt at... something that they found in the lower levels of HNL, and the tunnels that allowed the failed experiment to be carted off to elsewhere, and now this scientific chatter coming from a short-range radio frequency underneath Starcourt, and Jim has a hypothesis of his own.
There's a new Hawkins National Laboratory, and they've set up shop underneath the biggest commercial hub in town. Joyce's hunch was right. The lab is up to something.
The question is, what.
That's where the notes come in handy.
While Jim tended to tune out the scientists in HNL, he did pick up a tidbit or two during his time there. And Joyce, fiercely determined to figure out what was wrong with Will, apparently picked up much more from the lab than Jim ever knew. She's the one that's been making the most headway in this, over the past hour or so.
Now, as they finish catching Steve up to speed - he was on duty for a while, so they were working on their own in the back while he served ice cream at the counter - Joyce caps her pen and sits back. Her hands fold, fingers fluttering nervously between her palms, and she glances up at Jim. He doesn't think she slept last night; her eyes are tired, her skin a little dull.
"We were right," is all she says.
"The Gate?"
A nod.
"The Gate that El closed last year?" Steve says. "The one you saw last night that looked all burned or something?"
Jim rubs his hands over his face. "That's the one. Do you have any coffee in this joint?"
"We have coffee ice cream," Steve offers apologetically, and Jim sighs.
"I'll take that."
It's something.
Joyce waits a moment before speaking again, and when she does, her voice is low. "They are trying to open it again."
"You're sure?"
"Look here." She scoots a notebook across to him and points at a section that she's bracketed. "They keep talking about these IDCD things."
"Robin thinks the CD stands for containment device," Steve pipes up. "We just can't figure out what it's containing."
"Termites!" the girl yells through the partition, and Steve yells back, "Not your conversation!" and pushes the partition closed behind her.
Through all this, Joyce doesn't break eye contact with Jim. They're both thinking the same thing, and it's not good.
"So, it's some sort of wall? A net?" Jim guesses. "A cage?" Like a cage for one of those creatures.
But Joye shakes her head. "It looks less... physical than that. They keep talking about reactions, like chemicals or something. I don't think it's a physical -" She slaps a fist into the opposite palm. "- block, it seems more like a..."
She's clicking her fingers, trying to think of something, and Jim starts guessing to help her out.
"Deterrent?"
"No, but that's almost it."
"Inhibitor?"
"No. Almost. Antidote isn't right, but it's all I can think of. Like a shockwave. Barrier! That's the word I wanted."
"But not a physical one."
"More like something designed to clash with..."
She trails off, unwilling to say it, and Jim fills in. "The Upside Down."
Joyce sucks in a breath, and nods. "To keep it contained."
"So they're trying to open it up again, but they've learned. This time they're taking precautions," Jim mutters, leaning over to examine the notes for himself.
"Well, that's good, isn't it?" Steve says. Sometime in the past few minutes he's fetched a small paper bowl, which he sets in front of the Chief of Police. It's his coffee ice cream, complete with pink plastic spoon. "I mean..." He sits at the small break table between them. "If they've been building, or transporting, or whatever, these device thingys - I mean if they're still working on transporting them, as of yesterday - that means they haven't done anything yet. Right? They're still getting ready. Which means we still have time to stop them."
"Whoa." Jim pauses in eating his coffee ice cream to gesture at Steve with the spoon. "We are not doing anything. You are not doing anything. You are going to quit your job, turn in your sailor suit and stay the hell away from his mall. You hear me? And you tell Dustin Henderson and the rest of the Party to keep away, too. You are staying away from this."
"Well, actually, no I'm not, 'cause I'm helping you guys."
"I think we've got it covered."
His eyebrows lift. "Really? Because I've been listening to this shit for the past day, and I've been working on it with Dustin. And Robin. I already know what we've tried and what didn't work. And, I actually belong at the mall. If there are government scientists out there somewhere -" He waves his ice cream scoop at the front of the store. "- they're not gonna blink if I'm around. I'm here all the time. Look at my uniform, you think I wear this for fun? You two, on the other hand, would have some explaining to do if anyone got suspicious." He points the scoop to Jim's uniform and Joyce's pajamas, which she never bothered to change out of.
Joyce looks at Jim, who looks at Joyce.
"So." Steve cracks his knuckles. "What now?"
Nancy
"Maybe Jonathan's right." Nancy is sitting on the counter, still in her work dress, her makeup still smudged from crying before her mother came and knocked on her door. "To be honest, I wasn't thinking about him. I wasn't thinking about anyone, really, I just... I wanted to be right. I wanted to be right so badly."
Because it was her way out. Her way out of the humiliation - a step up, a step forward. It was her chance. Except then it wasn't.
"And were you?" Her mother stands by the sink in her coral shorts, fixing a cup of tea.
"I thought so." She sniffs again. "But maybe I just... don't want to admit that I'm wrong. Because if I'm wrong, then -"
"You're what everyone thinks you are," her mother finishes, and Nancy nods with a snort.
"Just a kid who has no idea what she's doing." It's what she feels like right now.
Her mother nods. Then she sighs. "It's not easy out there, Nance."
"I know."
"People are always saying you can't. That you shouldn't. That you're not... smart enough, good enough. This world, it... it beats you up again, and again, and eventually, I -"
Nancy's head twitches, her chin jerking up a little as she catches the slip-up, even though her mother corrects it immediately.
"Most people, they just... just stop trying."
Oh, Nancy thinks. It's a small, sad little realization - or maybe not so small. It's the very strange feeling of suddenly seeing a parent as just another person, instead of as a parental figure. She looks down at her hands, feeling guilty, like she's been thinking of herself this whole time and no one else -
The island counter wobbles as her mother slides up to sit next to her, and when Nancy looks up, her mother's gaze is direct, intense.
"But you're not like that. You're a fighter. You always have been." She looks to the ceiling for a moment, blinking away a moment of emotion, and laughs, "I honestly don't know where you get it from."
Nancy sniffs - the tears are rubbing off on her - and says, "Dad."
She gives it a beat before peeking at her mother, past her own rumpled bangs, and they make eye contact - and giggle.
"I think you were swapped in the hospital, to tell you the truth."
"No." Nancy laughs, sniffs. Her hand lands over her mother's, between them on the counter. "I get it from you, Mom."
Karen fights another bout of tears for a moment - goddamnit, Nancy can't ever see her mother crying without crying herself, it's a curse - and then manages, "Well, wherever you get it, I'm proud of you."
"Proud of me for getting fired?"
She hasn't told her mother everything - only the revised version. Obviously she couldn't mention the cage full of what-the-shit that Jonathan has with him. But the rest...
"That you stood up for yourself. That you stood up to those... shitheads."
"Mom!"
"Those shitheads. That you took a chance, and went after something. And if you believe in this story - look at me, Nancy. Finish it. Then go and sell it to the Indianapolis Star or whatever, and - I mean, can you imagine their faces when they read a story about their own town in a big paper like that?"
Nancy huffs out a laugh. "That would be pretty amazing."
"So, why not? Why not..."
"Finish it," Nancy agrees.
But she isn't thinking of the story, right at that moment. She's thinking of some other unfinished business.
The basement door slams open, making both of them jump. Dustin and Lucas burst into the kitchen, skidding to a halt when they see the Wheeler women staring at them.
"Sorry," Lucas says, "'Scuse us."
"Hey, where are you boys off to?" Karen calls after them. "Is Mike still down there?"
"Yeah," says Lucas.
"Mall," says Dustin.
And they're gone.
"We need to find out what's wrong with that rat." Nancy pushes past Jonathan into the Byers' house nearly as soon as he opens the door. "Is your mom here?"
"No, I don't know where she -"
"Where's the rat?"
"In the shed. Nancy -"
She's already heading through the house to the back door. They didn't part on the best of terms, an hour ago when he dropped her off at home, but they can deal with that later. This is more important.
"Um, Nancy?"
"The rat, there was something wrong with it." He stumbles after her down the porch steps. She's power-walking across the lawn in her dress and work shoes. "Do you have a space heater?"
"What? Nancy, hold on - just hold on!" She stops, whirling to face him with a set jaw - they're still mad at each other, emergency circumstances notwithstanding - and he gives her a look of complete befuddlement. "You wanna tell me what the hell is going on?"
"Did you smell it? In the darkroom?"
"Did I smell it?"
"Jonathan." She swallows. Now that her initial burst of courage is wearing thin, she's starting to get shaky. If this is what she thinks it is, they're in trouble. Big trouble. "Do you remember what the Demogorgon smelled like?"
Just like that, they're on the same page. Jonathan's face goes slack, and then goes white, and then he says, "Space heater?"
"Just in case," she half-whispers.
Five minutes later, they're standing in the shed with the overhead light blazing. There wasn't a single space heater left in or around the Byers house - Will has an understandable aversion to them, after what Nancy has come to think of as The Exorcism - but they did find a heat lamp. It used to be for Will's lizard, a couple years ago before it escaped its terrarium and was never seen again. On the workbench in front of them is the covered cage, rattling and screeching. The creature within is active again, and it is not happy.
They look at each other, and nod. Jonathan reaches out, and with one quick pull, yanks the cover from the cage.
The thing hates the light.
It cowers away, screaming, gnashing its teeth - except, there are so many more teeth than the rat started out with.
"You seen this before?" Jonathan says, tight-lipped, and Nancy shakes her head.
"Huh-uh."
It's like nothing she's ever seen before - including anything from the Upside Down. It doesn't have greenish-grayish, webbed skin like the Demogorgon or demodogs, or a cone head, or even... skin. In fact, it looks more like a rat turned inside-out. It glistens under the bright shed light, raw and shiny like a wet, open burn wound.
It sees them standing over it and screams again, hoarsely, snapping all of its teeth and rushing suddenly at the bars -
As if in retaliation, Nancy thrusts up the heat lamp. The abomination-rat lets out a piercing squeal, like metal scratching glass, and they both cringe from the noise. Nancy's ears hurt - she wants to claw her eardrums right out of her head, but she pushes the lamp even closer, chasing the creature into the corner of the cage as it writhes -
And then, as she watches, black veins begin to pulse under its glistening skin.
"Jonathan -" she gulps, and he yells back, "I know -"
"It's -"
But before they can finish, a fist-sized chunk of Shadow streams out of the rat's mouth.
They shriek and jump back, but it just makes a break for the window, slipping out a crack and disappearing.
Sometime in the past thirty seconds, they've joined hands. Nancy's heart is thudding against her ribs.
"That was like Will," she says, and Jonathan is already saying, "I know -"
"That was like what -"
"The piece that came out of -"
"So was that -?"
"The Mind Flayer?"
"But why the hell would it be possessing rats?"
She gestures sharply at the rat - except, when they look back, the mass of flesh inside the cage is very clearly dead.
