The chapters are getting shorter as we move toward the climax. All the threads are coming together.
We go into the Upside Down for the first time in this chapter. Please remember, like I said at the beginning, I started writing this story before Season 2 came out, so there was no Mind Flayer in my draft of this story. So our heroes aren't going to run into the Mind Flayer while they're walking around down there. I went in kind of a different direction. I still like the Mind Flayer, I'll just use him in other stories, instead of rewriting my plans for this one.

Chapter 8

"Three o'clock," Dustin said in a super-loud wisper. Will and the others snapped their heads around to the right, where they saw an agent in a black suit over by the mall's food court, touching a hand to his earpiece, presumably speaking to his other agents. Will and the others stopped in their tracks, spun around, and disappeared into the JC Penny.

"Did he see us?" Will asked.

"I don't think so," Dustin said.

"We look conspicuous," Mike said. "The four of us and a baby? We're easy to spot. If enough agents start combing through the crowd, they'll get us for sure."

They paused in the aisle between the men's shoes and women's clothing departments.

"I don't see a way out of this," Dustin said, panic starting to creep into his voice.

"Guys, I... I can help." Will said quietly. Everyone turned to look at him. Something in the tone of his timid voice held their attention. He suddenly felt like he was under a spotlight as the three others stared at him curiously. He swallowed against the sudden dryness in his throat and searched for the right words. Allie squirmed in Mike's arms as the silence stretched out.

"What's your plan?" Dustin asked, prompting Will to talk.

"I think I can take us..." Will glanced over his shoulder reflexively, but stopped himself. He didn't need to worry about people listening in. Not now. "I can take us into the Upside Down," he blurted, before he lost the courage to say the words out loud.

"What?!" Mike asked, then glanced around the crowded JC Penny himself, probably wishing he hadn't said it quite so loud.

"You can do that?" Dustin asked, his eyes gleaming with excitement. That wasn't the reaction Will had expected.

"I can do it," Will repeated. "The agents won't be able to follow us. We can go wherever we want to, and then I can bring us back."

"How does that work?" Mike asked.

"You're a Planeswalker?" Dustin asked in awe. Will realized that he should have known his friend better. Dustin, of all people, wouldn't be afraid of the Upside Down. Will was, but Dustin had always been able to see the "fascinating" in everything.

"I've been able to do it ever since..." Will told them, nervously hunching his shoulders, as if he were hiding from watchful agents. Or from a prowling demogorgon.

"Ever since you were taken," Dustin said, matter-of-factly.

Will nodded.

"How come you never told us?" Mike asked, shifting the baby in his arms.

"I always suspected you'd have some lasting effects from your time in that place," Dustin said, not waiting for an answer.

El craned her neck to look as a man in a suit as he walked past. Everyone followed her gaze and held their breath as the man drew near. She didn't do anything more than inspect him with her eyes, and possibly more than her eyes, so Will relaxed, just a little. False alarm.

"We should hurry," Mike said, when everyone had taken their eyes away from the random JC Penny customer in a suit. "How does this work?" He asked Will again.

"It's pretty simple," Will said. "I just... shift."

"Is it safe?" Mike asked.

"It's kind of empty," Will told him. "After El killed the Demogorgon," he glanced over at her, "I don't think there's anything else dangerous in there. Not really dangerous, anyway."

"So we just shift into another plane," Dustin said. "And then we find a safe place to revert to our world. Somewhere far away from the agents. They'll have no idea where we went or how we got there. It's a great plan."

"The only thing..." Will said, biting his lip. "I don't know if it's dangerous for Allie. I mean, a baby might be more vulnerable than adults."

"How long would we be there?" Dustin asked. "Your mom and Hopper were in the Upside Down for a little while. Nancy, too, and they didn't have any after effects, did they? Or are your whole family Planeswalkers now?"

"No," Will said. "Nothing ever happened to them, that I know of. I was there the longest. And I was a kid, so maybe it effected me worse. That's the only thing I'm worried about." He gazed down at the baby in Mike's arms. Mike looked from Allie to El. Will watched them share a wordless conversation. Over his years with El, Mike seemed to have done pretty well to make up for his lack of psychic abilities. He could understand El's eyes better than any of them. The two of them shared a long, long moment without words, then Mike finally nodded and broke eye contact. He turned back to Will and nodded again.

"We'll have to risk it. I don't see any other way past the agents, except for El bringing the roof down on our heads," Mike said to Will. "We'll just need to be fast. We get in and out, so Allie isn't exposed to the place any longer than she needs to be."

"Ok," Will said. He looked around the store one more time. All the passing customers were making him nervous. "Not here, though. We should find somewhere away from all these eyes."

"In here," Dustin said, pointing to the fitting rooms in the back of the women's clothing department. Mike nodded again, and they moved off as a group. Will hoped no one was watching as four adults (only one of them a woman) and a baby squeezed into one of the little fitting room booths. A silky night gown dangled from a hanger in their little booth, and it fell to the floor as Dustin squeezed in, shutting the door behind them.

"Ok," Will said again. "I think this will work. I've never taken people with me before. Uh... maybe hold hands?" They instantly complied with his suggestion. Will felt the weight of all the eyes on him again. "Maybe you should cover Allie's face?" He said. "The air down there is full of... particles." Mike took off his jacket and wrapped the baby in it. Will realized he was stalling. It was time for him to work his magic. He looked at each of his friends in turn. "Ready?" He asked, as much for himself as for them. They nodded somberly.

Will closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He didn't usually travel in this direction. He knew how to come back FROM the Upside Down. That was easy by now. Getting there was the same principle, though. Trying to shut out all the outside distractions, he focused his mind and pushed.

He had gotten used to the feeling of falling and spinning 180 degrees by now. It had happened to him plenty of times. Before he opened his eyes he felt the familiar cold that seemed to penetrate his clothes. It wasn't just that the air in the Upside Down was a lower temperature than the normal world he'd left behind. It was just a sense of pitiless, lifeless cold.

Along with the cold was the dank and moldy smell, the smell of decay, as if everything in the Upside Down was in a constant state of dying, but nothing ever decomposed and went away. It was always there. All of it.

Will opened his eyes and looked around at his friends. Their faces were a sickly gray in the unnatural darkness. Dustin swung his head in every direction, his expression half amazement and half revulsion. Mike looked down at Allie, his face tense with worry. El's face had a touch of fear. It was only a touch, but it was there. She drew a little closer to Mike, and they shared another of their wordless looks. Will had never really asked El about her short time in the Upside Down, but he'd always assumed it had been a terrible event.

"This is... whoa," Dustin said, still staring around in wonder. "You sure there aren't more demogorgons?"

"I've never seen another one," Will said. "I always guessed the one that El got rid of was one of a kind."

"Which way?" Mike asked, starting to stare around at the place himself. "It all looks so different down here."

"We're in the same place," Will told him. "It just looks broken and crumbling and... rotting, and stuff. Look. There's the cash registers, and there's the jewelry counter. The parking lot is this way."

They started to move out of the little fitting room, which only had two of it's original four walls. The other two walls had crumbled and fallen down. Dustin tripped and nearly fell.

"You'll need to watch out for those vines," Will told him. "They don't really do much, but they move a little. They kind of grab. It's easy to get caught up and trip on them."

"Got it," Dustin said, watching the floor as he picked his way carefully through what had been a clean and brightly lit department store. "Whoa! What are these?" Dustin pointed with the toe of his sneaker and poked a finger-sized slug that was creeping along one of the vines.

Will instinctively put a hand over his mouth. "Don't worry about those," he said. "They're gross, but they're pretty harmless."

They worked their way through the store and out into the parking lot. Instead of the sunny, blue sky they'd left behind, the air above them was dark and full of mist, as if there never had been and never would be a sun. Will didn't pay much attention. He'd seen it before. He put his hands in his pockets, even though he knew it wouldn't help to keep them warm, and trudged ahead, leading the way with Dustin at his side. Mike and El followed behind, keeping very close to each other.

"Does it always look like this?" Dustin asked, gaping up at the sky.

"Uh-huh," Will said.

"Do these work?" Mike asked, nodding toward one of the many cars parked outside the mall. Will shook his head sadly.

"Electronics don't last long down here," he explained. "I brought a video camera once, but these cars have been here a long time."

"How often have you been here?" Dustin asked, still taking in the apocalyptic version of the Chicago suburbs that surrounded him.

"More often than I'd like," Will said. "It started after Mom and Hopper brought me back. I didn't know what it was or how to control it. I would just shift at any random time. It was so scary. At first, I didn't know how to come back, so I'd just curl up in a corner and shiver and cry until I shifted back. Sometimes I'd be gone for hours at a time. Sometimes I'd wake up in the morning in the Upside Down. I'd shifted there some time in my sleep without knowing it. I never told anyone, though. I made up a million excuses. If you ever remember me vanishing in the middle of class, and later I'd tell you I had to run to the bathroom or something..."

"I assumed you were developing irritable bowel syndrome," Dustin said honestly. "Stress can do that to people."

"Nope," Will laughed, for the first time in a few hours. "I was just taking involuntary vacations to the Upside Down. Eventually I learned how to control it, though. After a while, I didn't shift away very often, and I figured out how to come back. I never thought it would be useful one day."

"You should have told us about it," Dustin said. "Maybe we could have helped you."

"I didn't tell anyone," Will said. "It just made me feel like a freak."

"But you're our freak," Dustin told him, putting a hand on his shoulder. "And look at you now. Will the Planeswalker, saving all our lives."

"Does it hurt you?" Mike asked from a few paces behind. "Or does it drain your batteries when you use your powers, like El?"

"I wouldn't call them powers," Will said with a shrug. "But no, it doesn't take anything out of me. We could shift back and forth all day if you wanted."

"We should tell Lucas where we're going so he can meet up with us," Dustin said, holding up his home made radio. "Will this work in here?"

"The signal will be a lot weaker," Will told him. "I mean, I guess El could boost the signal, but we can just wait to call him until we shift back."

Lucas put his hands behind his head and turned around, as the agents demanded. He heard the click and rattle of a pair of hand cuffs as one of the two agents came up behind him.

"Am I under arrest?" He asked, fishing for information. "Who are you guys? NSA? FBI?"

"Quiet," the first agent said to him. Then, to the other agent, he said "Radio back to Smith. Tell him we got one of them."

Lucas listened to the second agent speak into the radio. Nothing about this felt good. Most government agents were required to tell him that he was under arrest, and that he'd get to speak to a lawyer, eventually. If these suits were going to put him in a little box for who-knew how long while they continued to chase after Mike and the others...

"Is it against the law to climb a power pole? I just wanted to see the view from up there." Lucas winced as he realized the agent with the handcuffs was moments away from searching him and finding Dustin's home made radio. Not only would they be keyed into the channel Lucas and Dustin had been using, but, if they were devious enough, the agents might just call out to Dustin and the others, say that they'd caught Lucas, and threaten to shoot him if the others didn't turn themselves in. Lucas was very much afraid his friends would be foolish enough to take the bait.

"Listen, guy," he said over his shoulder. "On the off chance that you're just a patriot doing your best to serve your country, I apologize for what I'm about to do."

The agent grunted in surprise, but Lucas was already spinning around. His fist caught the man in the jaw before he had time to react. Before the first agent hit the floor, the second agent whirled around, looking up from his radio conversation. Lucas barely had time to cover the distance between them as the second agent was reaching for his gun, but he dropped that one with a second punch. He snatched up their guns and radios from the ground before they started to wake up.

"Sorry guys. I hope this is all just a big misunderstanding." He briefly considered taking their car, but was sure it would have a tracker on it. With the unshakable feeling that he'd jumped headfirst into the deep end, Lucas sprinted off after his friends.

Hopper leaned heavily against the payphone at the Mobile gas station in Cartersville as he listened for the phone to ring. He drummed his fingers nervously, afraid of what no answer might mean.

"Hello?"

"Uhh..." Hopper was surprised by the unfamiliar voice.

"Hancock residence. This is Don. Who's calling?" Came a polite, middle aged male voice.

"Who the hell are you?" Hopper demanded.

"Don Hancock. And may I ask who's calling?" The voice was stupidly polite, as if he'd called some customer service line.

"I just called Will Byers' house. You're not Will," Hopper growled into the phone. "Who are you?"

"I'm sorry sir, you must have the wrong number," the voice said. "If you tell me who you are, maybe I can help you find who you're looking for."

"Listen you slimy-"

"There's no need for that, sir. Just tell me who you are and I'm sure I can help you find your friend."

"Did you do something to Will?" Hopper demanded.

"I really don't know what you're talking about," the polite voice said. "Now I'm sure I can help you if you'll just-"

"What are you doing on Will's phone? If you've hurt him, so help me-"

"If you'll just calm down, sir," the voice said.

"Listen, whoever-you-are," Hopper yelled. "When I find you-"

"Please sir, there's no need-"

Hopper slammed the phone down and glared at it. He'd expected the nervous fear that would come from getting no answer at Will's house and not knowing if there were government suits there, or if Will was even caught up in this whole mess, whatever it was. Instead he'd gotten something worse.

He stomped across the gravel and dropped back into his truck, slamming the door shut. Sam offered him a cigarette.

"Someone else answered Will's home phone," Hopper growled. "They really wanted to know who I was, too."

"So that means they don't already know to be on the lookout for a Jim Hopper," Sam offered. "They would have access to phone recordings of your voice, and they'd know it was you right away, if that's what they were waiting for. So that means, whatever these Suits are working on, they don't know exactly who's involved in it, which means we still have the element of surprise."

Hopper sucked at the cigarette angrily, thinking.

"Do you want to do this the smart way, or the crazy way?" Sam asked. "I'm up for either one."

Hopper cranked the key and put the truck in gear. "I'm going to Chicago. You sure you want to come along? I might end up in jail or shot."

Sam rolled his eyes. "Just drive."

Joyce wasn't handcuffed to the chair, but she was a small room with no windows and no knob on the inside of the door. There was a tiny security camera mounted in one corner of the ceiling. She wasn't sure exactly how long she'd been inside, since they'd taken her watch. She'd spent some time banging on the door and shouting for them to let her out, or come in and restrain her, or something, anything. But they seemed content to keep her on ice for a while, so she'd grown bored of all the kicking and screaming and sat in the lone chair at the lone table and waited there, glaring down at her fingernails, until they finally decided to make their move.

The sound of the door opening woke Joyce from her angry trance, and she looked over her shoulder to see a single man in a dark suit. He brought a chair of his own in with him. After closing the door behind him, he walked slowly and purposefully over to the opposite side of her little table and sat across from her. It was the same man who'd slammed his car into her, or let her slam her car into him, right after she'd gotten off the phone with Will. He sat in silence for a long time, waiting for her to speak, but she only glared back. Finally, he broke the silence and reached inside his suit jacket to offer her a pack of cigarettes.

"Mrs. Byers. May I call you Joyce?" He asked.

"No."

He continued to hold the pack of cigarettes toward her for another moment, but she ignored them.

"Alright, Mrs. Byers, then," he said, dropping the rejected cigarettes on the table. "I'll be quick and I'll be honest. Your son is in danger. We're trying to protect him. I need you to tell me where he is."

"You're wasting your time," she told him.

"I hope not," he said. "Because I really am trying to help. I don't think you understand the situation. Will is in real danger. His life is at stake. Other lives, too."

"You mean he's in danger from a bunch of Suits in black cars and white vans?" She asked.

"I told you, we're trying to help," he said. "I believe you can tell me where your son is. Help me to help him."

"You're wasting your time," Joyce repeated. "He's in a place you'll never find him."

"Where?"

"You wouldn't believe me if I told you," she laughed.

The man scowled at her. He took a long breath, maybe to calm himself, glanced over at the camera in the corner of the room, then dropped a file folder on the table. He opened it and turned it around to face toward Joyce. She saw a few old photos of Hawkins lab before she looked away in disinterest.

"I wasn't here when all those things happened in Hawkins," the man said. "But I have read about it. I know the whole story. I know you were unlucky enough to run into some very... unpleasant individuals."

"Unlucky?" Joyce mocked.

"Dr. Brenner, for example," the man said, not responding to her. "From everything I've read he was the worst kind of man to be running a research agency. He caused a lot of harm. But he's gone now, and everyone who worked closely with him. That's not who we are. We're the good guys, Mrs. Byers. You might not want to believe it, but we're not the kind of people who keep a child in the basement of Hawkins Lab and try to turn her into a weapon against the Russians. Those people are gone."

"Tell me another story," Joyce said. "Maybe I'll believe that one."

"I'm telling you the truth," he said. "I'm from small-town America, just like you. I joined the army, because I wanted to serve, and then I got picked up to work for this agency. We do good work, Mrs. Byers. We protect people. We watch for potential threats. And sometimes, we have to clean up messes. I really hope this isn't going to turn into a huge mess. That's not what either of us want, is it?"

"Are you going to bring in your taser or a truth serum or something?" Joyce asked. "Because I'm not going to help you."

The man pushed back from the table and dug his fingers into this temples. Joyce felt pretty good to see him get stressed out. With a heavy sigh, he got up from the table and walked over to unplug the security camera.

"Is that supposed to scare me?" Joyce scoffed. "You don't want them to see what you're going to do to make me talk?"

"No, Mrs. Byers, it's because they don't have the clearance to hear what I'm going to tell you," he said, his voice sounding more tired that it had before. "My team, and the agency I work for, are tracking a pyrokete, a firestarter. That's a human with the psychic ability to move fire with their mind. Move and create fire, I guess. We've dealt with them before. Not many of them, but they're almost always dangerous. Did you see Waco Texas on the news?"

Joyce glared down at the table. He was just trying to rattle her.

"Fire is a very unstable element, from what we understand. It's very hard for a person to control, so even a person who isn't malicious is still dangerous. It's hard enough for a full grown man or woman to control, but we're tracking a baby. As far as we know, a baby with really frightening powers and absolutely know control over them. I'm pretty sure that I saw this baby, with my own eyes, blow up a house not two miles from where you live."

Joyce looked up in surprise. She'd talked to Karen Wheeler on the phone that day. A little kitchen fire at Mike and El's house had gotten out of control. She knew that's what it was.

"Hmm. Do I have your attention now?" The man gloated. Joyce hated him for it, but she didn't look away this time. He went on. "You know all about Mrs. Wheeler, I assume. You know her as Eleven. I've read all the files that survived when Hawkins Lab was shut down. It seems she was very, very powerful. I'm guessing you've seen what she can do first hand. We don't know everything about psychic abilities. Our eggheads are working on that, but we do know it has a genetic component. The agency I work for was very aware that any child of "Subject Eleven" would carry the same genes. When that baby was brought home from the hospital a year ago, she was assigned a monitor. All we did was keep an eye on her, to make sure there was no danger. Passive surveillance. Nothing more. Most recently, I was that monitor, conducting surveillance on the Wheeler baby. I was outside their house when it exploded. Bright orange flames, as high as you could see. It scared me, Mrs. Byers. It should scare you, too."

She ground her jaw hard, glaring up at him as he leaned over her table.

"There are eight million people in the Chicagoland area. How big of a fire do you think one little girl can make? How many people can she incinerate if she gets scared and has an outburst? Nobody wants that. I'd bet even your son Will, and Mike and Eleven Wheeler don't want that. That's why I need you to trust me. I need you to help me find them."

The monster had his firestarter, and he was happy. Fire was powerful, and it was an ability he lacked himself. Often, in the time since he'd ceased being a man and had become something more, he'd wished he could do more. The abilities he did posses were impressive, to those with no abilities, but he always craved more. He always wished for more power.

He always wished for more power. He had witnessed other abilities that he did not posses. Fire, of course, was one of those. He had also known people who could create life-like illusions in the minds of others. He had known people who, with nothing but a picture, could view anyone at all from anywhere in the world. He had even known people who could see into the past and future. Those were not his own abilities. Once the scientists in a Soviet lab had done whatever-it-was they had done to him, his abilities had manifested themselves, and he had slowly learned to control them. They were impressive. But they weren't enough. He always wished for more.

If he couldn't control the fire himself, at least he could control the one who could control the fire. The two of them walked through the prison together. There was no outward sign that the firestarter was not acting of his own free will. A few prisoners in their orange coveralls crossed his path. The monster pushed his way into their minds and they turned to walk ahead of him. A little further down the corridor, he came upon a few more prisoners, and took them under his influence as well. They moved together through the prison like some sort of funeral procession, or perhaps like an honor guard. Sometimes the monster took pleasure in dominating the minds of others, but these common criminals were very uninteresting to him. He would use them like ants as long as it suited him, but he wouldn't gain any enjoyment from it.

His mind strayed to his future plans. He had one firestarter, and he knew of another. His dreams had shown him where she was. As far as he could tell, she might be even more powerful than the one he already possessed. Dominating people such as those DID bring him enjoyment.

Much later than he expected, a squad of prison guards showed up to block his path. The monster assumed that they had finally caught on to the spontaneous prison break and were in the process of locking the place down. He could have pushed himself into the minds of these few prison guards, as well, but instead he set his own thralls to fight them. He stood back to watch the melee take place, still a little bored. It had been relatively easy to slip into the prison undetected, but now that he had his prize, he was growing tired of skulking and hiding.

Even as his orange clad thralls wrestled with the small group of prison guards, he heard more approaching, their boots pounding against the prison's tile floors. The monster grew restless. He was eager to see what his new prize could really do. He turned to look at the firestarter, who still stood next to him, passively waiting, and issued his wordless instructions. The man took a few steps toward the prison guards. Bright orange flames erupted from his hands.

Walter stirred slightly in his sleep. It was still light outside, but he often dozed off a few times during the day. It put him in his most receptive state and opened his inner eye to whatever his subconscious wanted to show him. Aside from that, he had been given little else to do by the annoyingly idealistic Agent Jack Smith. The younger man seemed to be holding a grudge against Walter for going over his head with the information about the Wheeler child, and had sidelined him from the mission. That was only annoying, not upsetting. Walter had dealt with much worse. Over his many years since coming to this country, he'd negotiated his way around countless politicians, agents, functionaries, and bureaucrats. It usually wasn't difficult to manipulate them. His dreams gave him knowledge that very few others had, and knowledge was power.

His eyes began to dart rapidly under his eyelids. His breathing quickened. His hands clenched and unclenched on their own. His minds eye began to show him things.

Fire.

Walter saw a man, burning brighter than the sun, standing at the epicenter of a whirling storm of flames. He saw men in uniforms and men in orange jumpsuits engulfed in the flames, screaming in agony as their clothes burned and their skin melted. Then he saw a parking lot, packed with cars, outside of a shopping mall. The cars were burning, just like the men he had seen. So was the pavement. So were the buildings. He was on fire.

Walter was burning.

He felt the unbearable heat searing his skin. He screamed and thrashed around, trying to put the flames out.

His eyes shot open and he sat up in bed, still screaming and slapping at the flames that were no longer there. It was several long seconds before he realized he was safe in his little room, alone and untouched by fire, real or imagined.

He sat there, his heart hammering in his chest, as he tried to catch his breath. Images of the fire, almost as real as in his dreams, danced behind his eyes.

Walter threw his blanket off and stepped into his shoes as he stumbled toward the door. He grabbed the first agent he found by the man's shirt collar and demanded to know where Smith was. The crazed look in his eyes must have been enough to forestall any arguments and break through protocols. The agents took him to a closed door where two other agents stood guard. They told him to wait until Smith was ready to come talk to him. Walter pushed past them and yanked the door open. He was old, but he was determined. He found Smith inside, sitting across from a woman with a pack of cigarettes and an open file folder on the table. Smith looked up in surprise. Walter felt completely justified interrupting the man in the middle of whatever he was doing.

"He's coming here," Walter said, almost tripping over his tongue. "The Russian is coming here, to Chicago!"

El had stopped eyeing every vine and every crumbling building in the Upside Down with fear and apprehension. It had taken a few minutes, but she'd mostly gotten over hear initial fears. Seeing that dark and decaying world had brought back memories of her childhood, of the first time she'd ever seen the demogorgon, of the first time she'd seen Will, from a great distance, trapped in the that unhappy place, of the brief time she herself had been trapped there, after fighting the demogorgon. She'd been a girl then, and as afraid of that creature as any little girl would be afraid of a growling, barking dog. She wasn't a little girl anymore, and she knew there were worse things in the world than hungry creatures. Shady government agencies, for example.

After the first few minutes, her fear had begun to ebb away. The old, unhappy memories, triggered by the cold and dark Upside Down world around her, didn't go away, but they did lose some of their life. She started to look back at them, from a distance of ten years, instead of living in them. Those things were in her past. They'd been terrible at the time, but they'd given way to much better things. She slid even closer to Mike and the baby as they walked.

"Is this how it looked before? When you were here?" Mike asked.

El nodded.

"I wonder how it got like this," he said, shifting Allie to his other arm.

El considered that. She hadn't really thought about it before. The Upside Down was just a bad place, to her. There were other bad places, like the bottom of the ocean, or the middle of a burning desert, or Hawkins lab. She had just always tried to spend her time in good places, when she could help it. But, now that she thought about it, maybe the Upside Down hadn't always looked the way it looked now.

A sudden wave of danger sense overwhelmed El.

It hit her as hard as if someone had shoved her from behind. She jerked her head around to look at Mike and the baby a tiny fraction of a second before things started happening.

Mike's eyes and mouth snapped open in a look of silent shock as his shirt started to catch fire. El instinctively pulled Allie out of his arms and toward her, but she had to stop in mid air. El's brain tried to catch up, but her instincts were quick enough to keep her from pulling a ball of fire into her arms. She wasn't fireproof anymore than Mike was.

She floated Allie a few feet away from herself and Mike as bright orange flames began to dance around the baby, emanating from her skin in all directions. Dustin pushed past El and jumped on his friend, slapping at the Mike's shirt to put the flames out.

El stood there, frozen, though every muscle in her body was screaming for her to move. Caught between her heart's desire to reach out and grab her child, and the awareness that she simply couldn't do that, she hovered, as if on the edge of a cliff. At the very least, Allie didn't seem to be hurt. The fire had already burned off her little clothes, but it did nothing to her own skin. She was upset, though. She screamed at the top of her tiny lungs, which was another punch in the gut for El. Her hands moved with a mind of their own, reaching out to grab Allie so that El could hold her to her heart and rock her in her arms and comfort her, but she couldn't do it.

Instead, as the ball of flames around the baby grew larger, El had to float Allie even a little further away. The heat on her face was becoming almost unbearable. He eyes watered, and her hair fluttered in the artificial breeze.

Mike separated himself from Dustin, his shirt no longer burning, and leaped toward El and the baby. She made sure to give him a gentle psychic shove, just in case he decided to act on the same crazy impulse that she felt and tried to jump into the fire to grab the baby himself.

The ball of flames grew even larger, and it began to incinerate the decaying, slimy vines that crisscrossed the mall parking lot. El heard the vines hiss, and then actually scream. They writhed and coiled, more like snakes than vines, and continued to give off a piercing shriek. She had to float Allie even farther away as the fireball expanded, to keep it from engulfing her and her friends. Mike came up to her shoulder and clutched her hand tightly. Dustin and Will hung back behind them, shielding their faces against the oppressive heat. El's hair and clothes were flapping in the growing heat-wind. The fireball only continued to expand.

"El," Mike said, needing to yell over the roaring of the flames.

She turned her head to stare into his eyes. They were wide with fear, just like hers. "Mike," she said, no other words coming to her mind. She squeezed his hand harder. The fireball continued to grow.