Nancy
Jon's mom wasn't at work.
Hop wasn't at the station, either.
Florence didn't have a clue where he might be, other than saying she last saw him this morning. Out of desperation they tried Nancy's house. Nada. Her mom asked if they'd be back for the fair later and they said maybe. She made them take two little pieces of American flag patterned sheet cake, which they scarfed down gratefully in the car on the way back to the Byers. It's possible they just missed Joyce, and she needs to know about this. Hop too.
The Pinto is in the loop of the long driveway, but then, it was there this morning too. But there, as they come around the curve - the boxy, tan Chevy Blazer, police lights mounted atop.
They don't notice anything weird until Jonathan almost walks right through a tripwire. Nancy catches a glimpse of sunlight lancing off of a razor-thin line near the ground and grabs his arm, hauling him back and making him stumble.
Then they notice the windows. They're obscured, opaque, like blind eyes.
They glance at each other, each checking that the other saw it, and step painstakingly over the wire. Nancy gathers her dress and hikes it up to avoid snagging it, then bends for a gnarled branch lying in the grassy center of the driveway. She keeps it low, gripping the center and keeping it at her side as they approach the house with measured steps.
They creep up the porch steps, avoiding the one that creaks. They can't peek through the front windows, covered as they are by overlapping, off-white pages of... newspaper. It's newspaper.
Jon slides his key into the lock as smoothly as he can, twists, and pushes. The door opens about two inches before the chain stops it short.
Nancy shifts her grip on the branch, sap sticking to her fingers as she settles her weight. Jon lets out a breath, then leans forward, peering in - and then jerks back with a yelp as the muzzle of a rifle is pushed through the gap.
"Oh," says Hopper, withdrawing the gun. "You."
"Jesus," Jonathan hisses as Hopper unchains the door and waves them through like a drill sergeant. He keeps a wary eye on the woods behind them as they squeeze inside, keeping his thumb on the safety.
Inside, the space is dusty and dim, late afternoon sunlight diffused into a stifling glow. There are fans set up here and there to stir the air, but it isn't doing much. Newspapers plaster the windows; the phone sits on the ground, yanked from its cord; and there's not a single item or piece of furniture in the house that hasn't been overturned.
Joyce meets her son with a hug, then extends the same gesture to Nancy.
"Hey. Hey." She looks them over, patting shoulders and fussing over ruffled hair. "Where have you been today? Were you together?"
"Yeah," Nancy says, "We were - we need to tell you something." She goes to set her stick in the umbrella stand, but that's on its side too, contents piled next to a wall. She drops the stick on the clutter of umbrellas.
Jonathan is looking over her head, agog at the chaos. "What the hell happened?"
Meanwhile, Hop is securing the door and getting Jon's attention, fixing him with a serious stare. "Were you followed?"
His brows sink. "No." He looks to Nancy, who shrugs and shakes her head. "I - I don't think so. Why? Who would be following us?"
"We needed to make sure we wouldn't be seen," Joyce explains as she pours them Minute-Maid from a brown plastic pitcher.
"Or heard," Hop adds. He waves two metal chips in the air, each sporting two fine wires. Both are warped and crumpled - obviously smashed. "We already found these."
"We think that's it."
"Government?" Nancy guesses, accepting her glass of cloudy lemonade with a nod of thanks.
Jon is already working on his, and he takes a break from chugging to say, "The lab?"
Hop sinks into a dining room chair with a sigh. "Yeah, it sure looks like."
"Which one?"
"Well, maybe both. Take a look at this. You're here, so you may as well."
The dining room table is strewn with papers. Crisp, white, legal-sized documents, many blotted out with bars of black, some redacted almost entirely.
They catch Jon and Nancy up to speed over second helpings of the sour summer drink.
Hawkins National Laboratory, shut down and abandoned - and yet not quite. The concrete tunnels, mimicking something much more organic from days past, spreading from that hub. The box of forgotten documents - these documents. Dustin's strange transmission, the code, the radio signals coming from underneath Starcourt.
Nancy has come to the same conclusion far before the story ends, but they confirm her theory anyway: the US government has assembled a new team of scientists. A new lab - a new HNL. And that team is trying to reopen the Gate, reopen a way to the Upside Down.
"Why?" Nancy says, and immediately she feels like a child. But she says it again, even though the cry sounds thin and weak to her own ears. "What do they want with it?"
"Shit, who knows," Hopper mumbles. He's leaning over the pages, shuffling through them, speaking around a cigarette he lit a moment ago. The smoke thickens the muggy air even further. They haven't dared crack a window. If there were bugs inside the house, they can't be sure there isn't some kind of surveillance outside, too. "Same thing the government always wants, probably. Weapons applications. Power. Leg up on the Soviets."
Joyce's head wobbles a little, lifting like she caught a scent. "Hold on. Power."
Hop lifts his brows in her direction. Joyce slaps the table, eyes shining.
"That's why. That's why Starcourt."
"What strategic advantage would a mall in a small town give?" Jonathan says, squinting down at the map of Hawkins Joyce has produced from under a teetering slew of scribbled notes.
"Not military power." Joyce is tracing something feverishly onto the map in pencil, glancing up a time or two to gesture at Jonathan. "Literal power. Electrical power."
While she draws, Nancy picks up another copy of the map - no, not another copy, another type. "Where'd you get these?"
Hop touches the one on top, the street map. "Called in a favor at the Mayor's office last fall."
And, yes, the street map is marked with ripples of red pen and blue Xs, all converging on the location of the old lab. Doubtless something leading up to the horrific day in the lab, the one Mike has only told her about once or twice. The day that ended with Nancy holding her boyfriend while his baby brother thrashed and screamed on the cot they had tied him to. But the other maps - maps outlining the paths of water and sewage pipes, elevation, electrical lines - those are mainly untouched.
Joyce's pencil falls to the table. "There. See?" She's highlighted a branching web of power lines, a thick nexus that centers directly on Starcourt.
Or where Starcourt would be, if this map wasn't a few years old.
Hop seems to be catching her drift. "You think they relocated because they needed more power?"
"Maybe that's why it failed the first time. At the old lab. I mean, you said El opened the Gate the first time, right? They've been trying to replicate what she did, but they can't. Or they couldn't, so -"
"They bought the land, built a new lab and built Starcourt on top of it to mask how much energy they were using," Nancy finishes.
But Joyce's eyes are flickering back and forth - she's thinking something through, processing something at high speeds. "This machine they're powering up... It sent out some sort of pulse, right, on the night of the blackout?"
Jonathan nods sideways, maybe remembering their frantic scramble to get to work on time the morning after. "Right... So?"
"So, that's electricity. So that would affect, um..." She starts clicking her fingers, looking to Hop for help. "Mrs. Ratliff's tenth grade science class. Remember?"
"No."
She remembers it with another snap. "Electromagnetism!"
"Okay..." Hop echoes Jon. "So?"
"So maybe that's why the magnets keep falling."
"The magn-? Oh, oh, right. And this is important... because...?"
"Because that must have taken a huge amount of energy. I mean think about it, if that pulse was enough to affect magnets all over town -"
Jonathan figures out what she's getting at before Hop does, his face sobering. "Then maybe it's enough energy to open the Gate this time."
"If they haven't already."
Nancy's boyfriend has the side of his hand pressed just over his mouth, like he's about to wipe his lips. It's a nervous gesture he almost shares with his mother - Joyce traces her lips with a knuckle. Her heart gives a little ache and she rounds the corner of the table to lean against him, letting him rest his cheek against her frizzing hair. Jonathan looks somewhat pale and haggard on the best days, but now stress has drawn his face in hard angles and pulled his shoulders up past his ears, rounding his back in a stiff and sullen hunch. She wants to reach up and rub the tension from those shoulders, but this day isn't over yet, and there'll surely be fresh causes for anxiety in the hours to come.
We'll get through it, she wants to say, We always do.
But she's all-too-aware of how much their survival so far is based on sheer dumb luck. How many things could have gone wrong in that lab, in the tunnels, at the exorcism bed? How long will their luck hold out?
Please, God, she prays, just a little longer. Just one more time.
And she has the strange feeling that it will be just one more. That, for better or worse, this is the last chance. The last fight. Whatever happens, this is it.
Nancy's shoulders harden.
Well. If this is the final battle, then so be it.
Her mother thinks she's a fighter.
And she's goddamn right.
Jon's head lifts, suddenly. "Is Chester not here?"
"Oh." Joyce frowns unhappily. She's wringing her hands, maybe unconsciously. "I'm not actually sure, sweetie. I haven't seen him since yesterday." Her expression changes, focusing in on him with the shrewdness only a mother can achieve. "I thought you had work today."
"Oh, uh," Jonathan says. Nancy twists to look up at him, apologies written all over her eyes, but he just grimaces and looks back at his mother. "We - I got fired."
"What?"
Nancy breaks gently free of Jon's grip to step forward. "That's what we were gonna tell you."
Together, they summarize. But it's a hard story to put into summary. Every detail seems important, every moment crucial - because what if it is? What if the one thing they omit is the detail that would have unlocked some life-saving piece of data?
But they make it through the call at the news station, Mrs. Driscoll, the hungry and single-minded army of rodents - the adults glance at each other when they hear the word rat, like that means something to them.
And then the rat. What happened to it overnight. And what they did to it in the shed.
"Spies," is all Hop says.
Joyce looks haunted. "Like Will."
"How? If the Gate is still closed, then the Mind Flayer should still be on the other -" Jonathan stops in the middle of his sentence as it hits him. "But - that little piece that came out of Will, do you think -?"
Hop nearly talks over him. "You said that's what the rat looked like. At the end, you said it expelled a shadow."
"Will never did that," Nancy insists. She can't get the image out of her head - the oily shine of the furless, skinless flesh, the pulsing veins clearly visible, the rows of teeth.
Jon tips his head in acknowledgement, pacing, hugging himself as he thinks. "Maybe we got it out of him before it happened?"
"There was one in the mall," Joyce says, and Hop pops the tip of his pen towards her in acknowledgement.
"In the vents, yeah."
"So the Mind Flayer is keeping an eye on the lab," Nancy sums up. "Makes sense. I guess he has a vested interest in seeing the Gate open, right?"
Hop harrumphs. He's unsettled by this and doesn't want to show it. "Right. Okay. So if we're assuming that the piece from last time is still in our world -"
He doesn't get to finish. Jon's head whips towards his mother, eyes wide, as something clicks in his brain. "Where's Will?"
Mike
They're in the middle of a heated argument when the girls burst in.
They all have different ideas about what they need to do first. Lucas wants to team up with as many allies as they can muster and storm the lab by force ("Desperate times call for desperate measures!"), Will wants to team up with El to sneak in and shut it down from the inside out ("She's the only one we know can close a Gate."), and Dustin wants to finish cracking his code because he's stubbornly sure that there's no way they'll make it into the lab in the first place without it.
Mike agrees with one person one moment and switches sides in the next. He's scattered, rattled, undecided. He can't think straight, everything is just too big and he doesn't know what to do. For a few minutes he debated the merits of just gathering everyone they love and getting the hell out of dodge, leaving Hawkins to its fate - but how would they ever convince all their parents to go along with it? How would they make anyone believe them? And then what about everyone else? Mr. Clarke, Mr. Melvald, the old lady next door, the annoying little kids Mike has to babysit sometimes when Holly invites them over to play in the backyard? Their classmates, their neighbors, the shop owners who have known them by name since they were kids? All the people they don't even know, who are just living their lives, completely unaware of the dangers lurking below? Leave them all to die?
No. That's not a paladin's way. And anyway, who says it won't spread? They could run - they could run as far as they could, all the way to California until their toes hit saltwater, and it might not matter. If the lab does this, they'll let in something that won't stop at Hawkins. At least, that's what Will told him once, voice stretched thin and eyes distant. Hawkins is easy. It's convenient. The walls here are thin. Easy to puncture. But the Mind Flayer doesn't want Hawkins, he wants everything. And if they run, what then? They'd just be facing the same evil again in a few years, or a few months, or a few days. And by that time it would be stronger. Bigger. Maybe unbeatable.
But now - right now, they still have a chance.
At least, they do if they get moving. It's already mid-evening.
Time is running out.
That's what he's thinking when something slams into the basement door from the outside, making everyone jump a foot in the air. The doorknob rattles violently, and then someone pounds their fist on the wood, twice.
"Open up! It's us!"
Max.
Both girls come marching through the door like someone lit a fire under their asses. No one has to demand an explanation - they're talking before Lucas even closes the door behind them. And Mike barely has time to be pissed off that El just flounced right back through the door like nothing happened.
Well, strike that. He's pissed as hell. But there are bigger things happening.
The Void. The bloody lump. Billy.
And the worst part, the most worrying part: how he saw El, saw her where no one should ever be able to see her.
"How is that possible?" Mike demands, though he knows El doesn't have an answer.
She doesn't look at him. They've been avoiding addressing each other directly if it can be helped, standing pointedly on opposite ends of the room from each other.
"It wasn't Billy," she says - to the Party, not to Mike. She glances at each person except for him. "I mean, he didn't do it."
Her gaze lands on Will and stays there. They're sharing a thought, communicating with expressions, and after a moment Will folds his arms with an uncomfortable shiver. She holds his eyes as she says, "Do you think... if the Mind Flayer is here, that piece of him... He'd need a new army?"
"He'd want to attach himself to someone again." Will's confirmation is grim, assured.
They're all thinking it; Lucas says it. "A new host."
For a moment, no one moves. Then Mike slaps his knees and stands. "Okay. So, we need to know for sure. If he is a host, we can't let the Mind Flayer run around Hawkins doing whatever he wants."
People are stirring, standing, or stepping away from walls or furniture they were leaning against. Good. This feels good, this feels better. Action. Mike needs to move move move move move. He can't stand around arguing anymore or he thinks he'll burst into flames.
Dustin flicks the bill of his hat, popping it back on his head with a jaunty grin. Pushing through the dark by lighting up. "Aye aye, cap'n!" He rubs his hands together. "What's our first move?"
The Party pulls on their backpacks, checks to make sure each person has a weapon.
"El said he was in a public restroom with a blue door. That's gotta be the pool."
Will takes Chester out, leaves him some water and cold chicken from the Wheelers' fridge, and tells him to be good. Lucas secures a bandana around his head. Dustin paints a stripe of sunscreen down his nose. El ties her hair back.
"Hold up," Lucas had interjected, a lightbulb going off above his head. "Isn't there a sauna at the pool? Hey - that's my backpack. Hey, that's my backpack!"
"You think we can get the Mind Flayer out of him? Like Will?"
"Switch with me."
"No!"
"We have to try."
"If we're gonna do this, we have to move fast. If I was the Mind Flayer, I'd want my army near the thing that's gonna let him into our dimension. He might already be at the mall. Ow! Don't push!"
"Gimme my backpack back -"
"Just take the pink one!"
"You take it!"
"El?"
"He's still there... I think. It's... hard to tell, I can't... It's like his signal is... bad. I can't lock on."
"Max, do you want the pink -?"
"No."
Through the door, out of the cool safety of the basement, into the close heat of late sunlight. Bikes rattle and squeal as they're righted.
Everyone realizes, almost at once, that El is standing around without wheels. And that she always rides on the back of Mike's bike.
Max looks like she's about to say something when Will taps El's arm.
"Here. Hop on. Yeah? I won't crash, I promise."
She nods, braces herself, and swings up behind him as he pushes off.
As Mike follows, sore and bristling at the sight, he barely catches what Max mutters towards the horizon -
"I hope it's not you. I really hope it's not you."
Steve
"... and we thought it was gone for good, after that. But I guess Dustin was saying that part of it - the part that was in Will - it survived. And now, if the Gate opens again..."
Robin finishes, "The rest of the Mind Flayer will come through and take over the world."
"Right." Steve looks at his unlikely companion, huffing out a laugh. "You don't believe me at all, do you?"
Robin smiles and says, "Nope," popping the P.
Then she looks out over the roof, brows furrowing as she squints through the rippling heat waves, and shrugs.
"Maybe. I dunno. I've seen some crazy shit today. Just... Nothing as crazy as a ten-story-tall shadow spider that possesses people."
The two are alone now, their young friends having departed in a tearing hurry to get the rest of the Party and tell them what they found out. Leaving the grown-ups to hold down the fort.
Typical. Yeah, let them boil to death on a hot roof while the kids race off to Mike's place, where Mrs. Wheeler will probably offer them otter pops and alcohol-free piƱa coladas with little paper umbrellas.
It's fine. Steve isn't jealous or anything. Plus, at least they won't die of dehydration, as much as the sun is trying. They've been taking turns climbing down the ladder into the mall and sneaking to the staff water fountains while the other keeps an ear on the radios. They can't leave the mall without losing the signal entirely. But they can't stay in Scoops, or anywhere else inside - too dangerous to be hanging out somewhere they might attract attention. Now that they know what they're dealing with, they're not taking any chances.
Well, the kids aren't. And Steve isn't. He's faced one too many petal-faced fuckers with nothing but a baseball bat in his hands. He's not exactly keen on letting someone open up the door and invite more into his dimension. He has enough to worry about with his school and career situation, all right? Not to mention the... somewhat abysmal dating situation. No way he's adding monster-fighting to that roster. No, they're gonna nip this thing in the bud before it starts.
But that requires the kiddos to tell the others what they know, rally the troops, come up with a plan of action and get their asses back here before someone notices two unwanted visitors in cheesy sailor outfits lurking around the entrance to their secret laboratory.
For now, they're listening. Huddled on top of the JCP, in the little block of shade provided by the protruding head of a ventilation shaft. It's the only source of relative reprieve from the heat; everywhere else is sweltering, the setting sun glaring off of every surface, heat rising in visible waves from the gravel-rough surface of the roof. Steve swipes an arm across his forehead, still holding Dustin's boxy Supercom. It burbles and squeals every few seconds, voices fading in and out from the static. From all the way up here, the signal is just barely within range.
But the lab has been busy. The channel is bustling with activity, multiple different voices sounding off at intervals. Safety checks. Personnel. Equipment. They're nearing blastoff.
After the I-D-Containment-Device went off and they were all punched in the chest by a shockwave strong enough to knock them over like bowling pins, Dustin and Lucas got up and immediately hauled ass to their bikes. And Robin demanded to know everything.
And she meant everything.
He tried his best, he really did. He went through the whole if I tell you the government might try to kill you spiel, but she was adamant.
"No," she had said, arms crossed and jaw set. "I just helped you sneak into some government storage area and I almost got blown up, and now our strange child friends are talking about opening a gate? What the hell is going on Harrington?"
And after a grueling two and a half minutes of this, he finally caved.
Now she hugs her knees as they stare out over the roof, watching the edges of the sky turn orange and pink as the sun begins to set.
When she speaks next, her tone is thoughtfully matter-of-fact.
"We are so fired."
"Nah, why?"
Could it be because they've spent the past two days doing anything but slinging ice cream?
They look at each other, then burst out laughing.
It's more comfortable, now. Sometime between yesterday morning and now, their coworker-awkwardness fell away entirely. They've been chatting on and off between transmissions, finally discussing something other than Steve's love life.
"Okay, well. It seems only fair that you get to ask me something now. Now that you've spilled your guts about your -" Robin lowers her voice and dips her chin, looking up at him from underneath her eyebrows - presumably in an impression of an Evil Government Scientist. "- secret interdimensional escapades."
"Uh, okay. What's..."
She gives a little gasp, shoulders straightening so suddenly that Steve almost jumps. Did he miss something important from the radio?
Her eyes are big, bright. "Interdimensional."
"Yeah, wh-" Then he gets it. His head rocks back, mouth slightly open. "Oh, holy shit. I. D."
"Inter-Dimensional Containment Device. IDCD."
"You believe me now?"
"Maybe, maybe not. Ask your question, dingus, before I rescind the offer."
"Okay, okay. Uh, what's your favorite color?"
"What? No. Lame." She kicks him. "Something else."
He blows a breath out from between his lips. His face and the front of his arms still feel a little tender - warm and slightly stretched, like a moderately bad sunburn. He should count himself lucky though. If he'd still been holding that thing, it probably would have blown his arms off or charred the flesh right off his hands.
If it wasn't the 4th of July, someone probably would have called the police - and then they'd have to explain to Chief Hopper why they're here again, poking around when they're supposed to be safe at home. As it is, people probably assumed the bright green flash was an early firework set off by some irresponsible teens like them.
"Uh... when was the last time you... peed your pants?"
"Today."
His head juts forward with an incredulous laugh. "What?"
"When that bomb went off like ten feet away from us. I thought I was gonna die."
Steve makes a sound best described as a snork, dissolving into laughter. "Oh my god."
Robin is laughing too, one hand covering her eyes as she leans over and then collapses onto the abrasive surface of the roof, keeping her head in the shade as she settles onto her back. Her hair spreads out around her head and her knees stick up towards the sky, drooping sideways as she takes her hand off her eyes to squeeze her thumb and finger together.
"It was just a little bit though. Don't say you didn't too."
"Uh, I threw up in my mouth a little, does that count?"
She snorts, then sits up again, resting her back against the ventilation shaft. It gives a hollow, metallic boom as her weight settles back. "All right, my turn."
"Okay. Hit me."
The radio interrupts. "Reese to Johnson."
"Go for Johnson."
"Bert and Ernie again," Robin observes, twirling a piece of hair around her finger. These two have been chatting back and forth all day. Mostly techno-babble. Some teasing and joking around, which is occasionally scolded by someone else - the woman whose voice they've already heard, usually.
"Uh, could you confirm the status of grids A3 and B5?"
"Locked and loaded. All good here."
Reese starts to say something else, but his voice warps into static, and when the line clears again they're signing off.
Something skitters in the ventilation shaft. Robin makes a face, peering up and back at the vent - but nothing comes out. It's happened a few times since they've been up here. Steve only celebrated his victory briefly. He told her there were rats.
She waits until they're sure there's nothing else before she says, "Have you... ever been in love?"
Ooh, curveball.
Steve nods with a you got me gesture. "Yep. Nancy Wheeler. First semester, senior year." He makes a finger-gun and imitates a gunshot to the heart.
"Oh, my god," Robin groans. "She's such a priss."
"Mm." He thinks of Nancy with her hair tied back, standing in the Byers' living room with that pistol in her hand, her blue eyes gray in the dusty light and hard with determination. Taking shot after shot at the man-sized thing with a multi-way maw for a face. "Turns out, not really."
Robin scoffs. "Are you still in love with Nancy?"
The question shouldn't surprise him, but it does. Because for a time - a long time - he would have said yes. But...
"No."
"Why not?"
That one's harder. Why isn't he? Maybe it's just time, and its inexorable ability to heal all wounds. Time has passed, and that wound is just a scar now. And besides that, well.
You Rule vs. You Suck.
May as well give it one more shot.
His head sways for a moment as he debates - then commits. "I think it's because I found someone who's a little bit better for me." He says it before he can back out, lips dry. Looking out at the ruddy sunset instead of her. "It's crazy. Ever since Dustin got home, he's been saying, you know, you gotta find your Suzy, you gotta find your Suzy."
He takes a breath, rubbing a hand over his forehead as if that'll scrub away the nerves and second guessing, and Robin interjects -
"Wait, who's Suzy?"
"It's some girl from camp, I guess his girlfriend." His hand slides up and rakes into his hair, pushing sweaty bangs away from his forehead. "To be honest with you, I'm not one-hundred-percent sure she's even real. But that's not - that's not really the point, that doesn't matter." The hand drops, and he rests his wrists on his knees as he looks out at the treetops beyond the roof. Trying not to look tense. "The point is this girl, you know, the one that I like - it's somebody that I... didn't even talk to in school."
She's gone quiet, chin resting on her knees again when he chances a glance sideways.
"And I don't even know why. Maybe 'cause Tommy H. would have made fun of me, or... I wouldn't be..." His head bobbles as he says it, and the words come out wry. "Prom king?"
Primitive constructs indeed. It all seems to matter so little now. Maybe that's the larger-than-life looming threats talking.
Well, here goes. He's come this far. He's in her court, may as well make the shot.
"It's stupid, I mean, Dustin's right, it's all just a bunch of bullshit anyways. Because when I think about it, I should have been hanging out with this girl the whole time. First of all, she's hilarious. She's so funny -"
He's thinking about her putting on a bad Russian accent as she rolled jumbo-sized tubs of ice cream into place, pretending they were barrels of ammunition, and it's making him laugh all over again.
"I feel like this summer I have laughed harder than I have laughed in a really long time. And she's smart. Way smarter than me. You know, she can find, like, top-secret government bases, and... you know? She's honestly unlike anyone I've ever met before."
Her spiky leather bracelet is in his peripheral vision, and after a moment it shifts. Her dirty red Converse shuffle, as if she's about to move or stand up, but she doesn't. He moves instead, turning sideways to face her, and she re-situates in turn.
The corners of his mouth pull down. "What do you think?"
"About?"
"This girl."
"She sounds awesome."
"She is awesome. And what about the guy?"
"I think he's concussed, and he's not thinking straight." Cool - but gentle.
He pushes. "Really? 'Cause I think he's thinking a lot more clearly than usual. You know. Life or death really kinda puts things in persp-"
"He's not." She lifts her chin from her knees, sitting up straighter with a breath, seeming to brace herself. Steve braces himself too. He thinks he knows what comes next. "Look -"
Yup, here it comes. You're a nice guy, but.
"He doesn't even know this girl." She's looking at him steadily. Like she's trying to impart something vital. "And if he did know her - like really know her -" Her head shakes, mouth hanging open for a moment as she looks down and to the side, eyes and thoughts drifting off somewhere else. "I don't think he'd even want to be her friend."
"No, that's not true." His head dips, trying to catch her eyes, but her gaze stays down. "No way is that true."
Finally she looks. "Listen to me, Steve. It's shocked me to my core -" For the first time in several minutes, she smiles. "But I like you. I really like you. But I'm not like your other friends. And I'm not like Nancy Wheeler."
She's still dead-serious, her smile dimmed to something almost grim, but Steve gives a little chuckle.
"Robin, that's exactly why I like you."
She looks away for a moment with a frustrated little breath, chewing on her lip, and then says, "You remember how I said we had the same science class last year? With Mrs. Click?"
Steve nods. It came up in somewhat stilted coworker-conversation a couple weeks ago.
"I sat behind you. Like, right behind you. For months. And I..." She laughs out the word. "Hated you. Because... she wouldn't stop staring at you."
Steve's frown is stretching his bomb-burnt skin. He's not following. "Mrs. Click?"
She huffs out a breath, chain-necklaces shifting as her head swings. It takes her an extra second to go on, like she's trying to lift something heavy. "Tammy Thompson." Usually Robin fidgets. With her bracelets, her necklaces, her hair, her nails. Not now. Now the only thing that moves is her head, dipping the slightest bit as her voice turns rueful. "I wanted her to look at me. But she couldn't pull her eyes away from you and your stupid hair."
She glances at the hair in question. Steve might be offended if he wasn't so busy trying and failing to catch her drift. Her eyes drop from his hair and now she's making eye contact, her own eyes wide with emphasis and misty with some emotion, and Steve still doesn't know why.
"And I didn't understand, because you would get bagel crumbs all over the floor. And you asked dumb questions. And you were a douchebag."
She does have him there, but -
"A-and you didn't even like her and - I would go home and just scream into my pillow."
She's obviously affected by this, but he's totally lost. All he can think to say is, "But - Tammy Thompson's a girl."
Her expression softens. "Steve."
"Yeah...?"
It's all she says.
And after a moment, it clicks.
He feels his own expression change despite himself, brows lifting out of a frown into something rounder, more startled. "Oh."
"Oh," she echoes. One side of her mouth twists up.
"Holy shit."
Steve does not suck. Steve is a moron.
"Yeah." She gives a restless, high-strung little wiggle, shifting on the hard, nubbly surface like she can't get comfortable. Her voice shakes - just the slightest. "Holy shit."
Her hands are fisted over her knees, and after a second she turns away. And she's not uncomfortable, Steve realizes. She's scared shitless.
And why shouldn't she be? She may or may not have heard some of the things Steve has said. But Steve remembers them.
He doesn't realize he's been in his own thoughts for so long until she ventures, "Steve? You get brain damage over there?"
"No, I just uh... just thinkin'."
She's back to fidgeting. One hand buried in her hair, messing with an earring. "Okay."
"I mean, yeah. Tammy Thompson, you know, she's cute and all, but."
He lifts a shoulder, rocking his head back and forth as if saying, aw, I dunno. Robin regards him from behind a fringe of hair, waiting with the hem of shorts fisted in one hand.
"She's a total dud."
Her face changes. Opening up with surprise. "She is not."
"Yes, she is. She wants to be, like, a singer. She wants to move to Nashville and shit."
She rises to the challenge. "She has dreams."
"She can't even hold a tune. I mean, she's practically tone-deaf, have you ever heard her?"
There's the smile. Robin's mouth drops open in an offended laugh.
"All the time. You see me now tonight," he sings, terribly, pitching his voice up into a wispy and atonal falsetto to imitate the generously-curved blonde.
"Shut up!"
"You see me more than -"
"She does not sound like that."
"That's exactly what -"
"She does not -"
"- that's a great impression of -"
"You sound like a Muppet."
"She sounds like a Muppet. She sounds like a Muppet giving birth."
That gets a belly-laugh, and through his own laughter Steve tries again, summoning his best Kermit impression.
"And if you could hold me tight -"
Robin joins, gesturing dramatically. "We'll be holding on forever."
"Exactly!"
"I know," she admits, and now she's laughing too hard to argue.
It's funny, the way that people become friends. You can sit next to someone at school for two whole years, talk to them every day, and never so much as learn their favorite color. Or, you can spend forty eight hours unraveling the truth of the top-secret US government facility somewhere beneath your feet, get bossed around by a fourteen year old, nearly get blown up, and hang out on the roof of a shopping mall, and find yourself with a new best friend. High-pressure circumstances and near-death experiences, paired with a dash of Rocky Road, tend to bring people closer together.
Will
El dismounts from Will's bike as soon as he brakes in front of the pool. The heat of her form disappears from his back and the bike tilts as she steps off, and then she's taking a few steps towards the building. He can only see her back - the yellow-black shirt with its criss-crossing suspenders and the black pants, somewhat rumpled now from continuous wear, and her hair stirring in the warm breeze - but he can tell she's scanning the structure. Looking for that door.
The sun is only just setting, but the pool closed hours ago. A poster taped to the front gate reads 4TH OF JULY HOURS: 9AM to 3PM. The normally packed space is deserted. The pool laps softly at its tiled edges; a napkin brushes over the ground as the breeze pushes it to a fence, where it sticks, fluttering.
They prop their bikes up across the street, leaning them against trees and fence posts, and march across the street as a group. They stop before the padlocked metal gate with the obnoxiously cheerful sign -
Oops, sorry - we're closed! Come back next time!
"We ready to do this?" Lucas says.
A moment later, the padlock clicks, twists, and falls to the ground.
Dustin gives a resolute nod. "Let's engage."
El looks to Lucas, who nods to Max, who glances at Mike, who claps Will on the shoulder. They push through.
The horizon eclipses the last sliver of sun as El lifts the security gate which bars entry to the open lobby. The light shifts within about ten seconds. Turning the world from gold-orange to purple-blue.
Darkness falls across the land, Will thinks. He doesn't know why, at first, doesn't remember where his brain dredged up those words, until the next line comes to him - The midnight hour is close at hand.
Though the lobby is open to the elements on both sides - little more than a short tunnel, housing the check-in counter, corkboard, locker room doors and towel receptacles - the temperature seems to drop ten degrees the moment they step into the relative darkness within. A small, scurrying body hurries along a far wall, startled by their appearance. It disappears into some little hole in the bricks, and Lucas cringes back and half-whispers, "Was that a rat?"
"Looked like," Dustin whispers back. "Wasn't a pollywog, that's for sure."
"That's disgusting."
Mike nudges them. "Stay on target."
The Party doesn't come here often. Billy is a lifeguard here, and none of them are super jazzed about spending a lot of time within his sphere of jackass-stench. Will has never met the guy personally, only seen him from a distance. And he'd be, well, not bad looking, if it weren't for the fact that he tried to beat up Lucas for spending time with Max. And for being black. So it doesn't matter how much he looks like a magazine model; he's ugly and officially right up near the top of Will's shit list. Will makes a point of never, not even once, daydreaming about that face or figure. Not even for artistic purposes. The bastard doesn't deserve it.
But that doesn't mean he wants to find Billy here, his skin ice-cold with a shadow burning his veins.
Will remembers that. He feels that, can still feel it if he thinks too hard. And he wouldn't wish that on anyone. Not even him.
The pool building is constructed mainly out of brown brick walls, which throw back hard echoes of their footsteps, their whispering voices. The air is thick with humidity and chlorine. It sticks in Will's nose. Puddles glisten here and there on the concrete floor. Festive 4th of July bunting flags are strung up over the office window and along the tops of the walls. The red CocaCola vending machine stands like a fat soldier in a corner, inner lights turned off for the day, humming to itself.
It feels wrong, being here when it's empty. The cool air, the all-encompassing dampness - it's a little too familiar. And Will finds himself edging to the front of the pack, brows drawn down, eyes scanning the darkest corners. If something comes leaping out at them he wants it to hit him, not his friends. Even if his fingers shake. Even if his heart wobbles in his chest. He's not backing down, he's not running away. Not anymore. And the Upside Down is not going to hurt his friends if he has anything to say about it.
El pauses in front of the corkboard, across the wide corridor from the locker room doors. MEET YOUR '85 SWIM SEASON LIFEGUARDS, it reads in large paper letters. Six photos smile out at the hallway from below. In the bottom left, Billy. But El reaches out and touches the photo just beside his. Heather, says her handwriting in the white space below.
Without pause or explanation beyond a grimace, she turns around and heads straight for the men's locker room.
The door is painted the same light blue as the metal structural supports that brace the walls and ceiling, and it's labeled with buffed silver letters: M E N.
The Party glances at each other. No one has said much since they crept in. If Billy - or anything else - is here, they don't want to attract any attention. Several of them reach into their survival packs for weapons. Lucas already has his chosen weapon equipped and loaded: a toy crossbow paired with dartboard darts in place of rubber-tipped foam missiles. Dustin hefts a mid-sized wrench from the Wheelers' garage. Max has a Swiss Army knife in her fist, the corkscrew extended between two of her clenched fingers right between her knuckles.
Guts cold and watery, Will hangs his pack from one shoulder, reaches in, and finds the wooden handle of the rubber mallet.
Mike opts for the sturdy janitor's mop leaning in a nearby corner, then takes his place near the head of the small army, just behind El and beside Will.
The door swings open without El lifting a hand.
Max reaches out and flicks on the lightswitch as they inch through the doorway. The locker room is brick-and-blue, too, with cream-tan curtains hung up by each shower stall and matching cream-tan lockers, double-decker, standing up against the walls. The floor is a rough, nubbly concrete, doubtless harsh against the soles of bare feet. The Party's shoes crunch oddly over a surface designed for barefoot use. Will's cheek throbs. He resists the urge to rub at his already-swollen eye with his free hand.
Something smells. Tangy, metallic. Like copper. And foul, like an outhouse. Like someone left a kid's diaper just sitting around unwrapped instead of throwing it away. But this is the men's locker room, and babies usually -
"Guys," Max whispers shakily, pointing.
On the wall across from the shower stalls, not immediately apparent from the doorway, there's a spray of red.
And underneath, a puddle.
Creatures crawl in search of blood...
Will's skin prickles. And not just because of the blood. He knows all too well what kind of hunter that scent would attract, if the Gate was open.
"Holy shit," Mike breathes. Someone behind Will gags.
There's a streaky trail, sloppy with zig-zags and signs of struggle, leading from the puddle to somewhere between the lockers and benches. Messy handprints and finger-claw-marks streak the floor, a shower curtain half-ripped-down, the lockers.
A fly buzzes somewhere in the room. No - multiple flies.
There's a clang, a hissing breath, and everyone whirls - Dustin has been turning in circles to scan the space, and now the back of his knee has hit one of the blocky wood-and-metal benches. He topples, momentum dragging him down with flailing limbs and a muted curse.
His hoarse shout rings through the space no more than a second later. Bouncing, echoing against all the hard surfaces as Dustin scrambles backwards in a panic, nearly crab-walking in a desperate attempt to get away from -
The Party rushes to him and they all see what he came nearly face-to-face with.
Heather.
Will can only assume it's her. There's nothing left to identify beyond a stained lifeguard's whistle and a bedazzled first-aid fanny pack torn halfway off the... body.
There's not as much left of her as there should be.
Dustin kicks to his feet, with the help of El, and immediately lunges for a bathroom stall to vomit into the toilet. Max is repeating, "Oh, my god, oh, my god," hands raised on either side of her eyes like blinders on a horse as if to keep herself from seeing it again, and Mike and Lucas seem frozen.
"That's what I saw," El mumbles.
"But - he's not here." Lucas tears his eyes away and focuses determinedly on El, his jaw set. He clears his throat to smooth the crack from his voice. "Maybe he moved on? To the mall? To the Gate?"
The Party begins mumbling amongst themselves, debating in hushed whispers, while Dustin finishes emptying his stomach and rolls over to lie on the ground with a groan of, "Oh, shit." They're all drifting, wandering back towards the stalls as a group, trying to put space between themselves and the bloody, stinking corpse. The flies continue their strident, sporadic dance.
Will shakes his head as the Party talks about riding as fast as they can to the mall, where Billy must be trying to get to the lab and the Gate if he's a host. If he's what did this. But was he even what did this? How could he? What if it's a Demogorgon again? Should El go into the Void again to see where he is? Would that be too dangerous? What if he sees her again? What if the Mind Flayer does something to her in there?
Everyone is busy talking, arguing, and Will's vision blurs as he stares through the floor. What if... he could know for certain? What if he could check? What if he could help?
He breathes in, holds it, lets it out. Closes his eyes. His friends are on either side of him. If something happens, he has to trust them to react while he's blind.
How did this happen last time? In the theater, the night the lab first tried opening the Gate. The night they made a fissure between realities and allowed the Shred to stir. What did it feel like? What happened first?
Spreading. He could feel the blackout spreading. And then, only then did he feel him. And then he was just there. He doesn't know how to replicate it. All the other times there were triggers. He was shoved off his feet, last Halloween, and when he opened his eyes he was lying on vines. And then in the school, it was Dart. Both times, Will was scared. Startled. He wanted to get away. Like he wanted to get away in the shed, so long ago, on the night that everything started. He wanted so desperately, so fervently to get away.
I don't want to be here, he thinks, and he takes a step back without opening his eyes. He can still smell the body. I don't want to be here. I have to get away.
Go somewhere else. Be somewhere else.
He strains against something, some barrier in his thoughts, summoning up all the memories he can of stepping out of place, out of reality, juddering between two existences.
On his next step his heel touches down on something slick and rubbery.
Will's eyes flash open. It's dark. The overhead lights fizzle weakly, the glow feeble and pale. Spores and other floaters drift. Some of the lockers are open, doors bent and broken by the slow certainty of growth. His sneakers squelch as he turns.
The Party is gone. He can still hear them, distantly, but it's like they're speaking at the end of a long tunnel. And he can't see them.
He can feel his heart pounding like a piston, beating against his chest like they're bars of a cage, and he breathes through pursed lips like Dr. Owens taught him back when he had to go to the lab for monthly checkups. His fingertips throb in time with his pulse. His head swims.
He's not really here. Not really. The Gate isn't open; there aren't any portals, not now, and even if there were he didn't go through one. Not like Nancy's tree trunk in the woods. He's just seeing this place. That's all. He's just seeing it; he's not here. And if he focuses, if he tries with all his might to shift the reel back to where he started, he can hear the Party more clearly. The ground beneath his feet is slimy-dry, the air warm-cold, two sensations clashing and fighting for priority in his brain. And if he tries - if he really, really tries, pushing until his very brain aches and he feels blood drip down his lip - he can see a warmer light. A double-image, perfectly overlaid, the ghosts of his friends there and yet not.
It's making his head hurt and his vision blur, so he stops, hissing, holding his palms over his temples until it fades. If he focuses on one at a time it's not so bad. He pulls up the collar of his shirt to dab at his nose.
So - just for now - he focuses on the Upside Down.
Stepping forward, now, skirting the muffled echoes of his friend's voices, he begins scanning the space. Heather's remains are here, too, already being swallowed by the shifting vines. He creeps forward on silent and practiced feet, careful to avoid the fleshy vegetation.
The door to the weight room is ajar. Was it like that before?
The hair on his scalp rises as he focuses in, staring - and listening. And he hears something. Something moving - the swish of fabric, the slick sound of Upside Down residue being disturbed. An irregular crunching.
He gets just close enough to lean and peek through the cracked-open door.
There's a hulking human figure kneeling on the ground, shrouded in blue-black shadow, gnawing on what looks like a drumstick the size of a baseball bat. And then Will sees the silhouette of a foot.
Heather's? Or someone else? It looks large for such a petite girl.
In his own dimension, someone's voice raises into an argumentative shout - and the figure freezes. Cocks its head. Listens.
Stands.
Will draws in what he hopes is a silent breath and backs up, willing himself back to reality, reaching out his hands on either side and praying that someone gets the hint and takes his hand and pulls him back to -
His own dimension. The grip on his arm is Lucas's, and Will jets out a reverse-gasp of relief, patting his friend on the shoulder in thanks. When he twists his head and looks back at the door, it's closed.
"Will? What's going on? Did something happen?"
Lucas is confused, concerned - but Mike knows. Will can tell Mike knows.
Mike looks at Will, his expression, the direction of his glance - and without looking away, says, "Max, get away from the door."
Max, standing nearest to the weight room, says, "What?"
The door behind her blasts open.
The thing that is and is not Billy stands in the doorway. His frame is swollen, twisted. Muscles blown up to cartoonish proportions, skin tearing here and there to make room. His hands are elongated, razor-curved claws beginning to extend from where his fingers once were. His skin is a colorless gray, his hair knotted and dripping, and his mouth -
His mouth looks as though it's been ripped open on both sides, allowing his jaw to unhinge much farther than it should be able to as he pants. And there are other splits, too. Seams forming in the flesh on his top and bottom lip - as if his face is rearranging, preparing to open like a flower.
To terrorize y'all's neighborhood, Will thinks, halfway-hysterical, as someone yanks on his arm until his numb limbs propel him backwards.
The Party is scrambling away with shrieks of alarm, El throwing her arms out wide as if trying to physically shield each and every one of them. Mike is yelling, "Get back, get back!" as if anyone needs telling, and Billy curls a half-split lip as if about to speak.
His eyes are webbed with black veins.
If he had been about to say something, El doesn't give him a chance. With a snarl and a shove of her hand, she punches him backwards. And thus the battle begins.
