11.

El watches them leave rather than looking at Will. Even once they're out the room, the lock's been turned and Hop's given her a thumbs up through the small window in the door, she still doesn't look at him. She reads the posters beside the door instead, 'believe and you can achieve' and 'single file, no running or pushing', and the big, embossed sign above it, Hawkins Middle School.

Apparently, Hop's had a key to the building ever since she killed all the bad men that Papa set on her and her friends, and he was the Chief investigating it. With all schools being shut for safety reasons and only the High School being used as the emergency Shelter, he'd offered to open it up for her to use to kill 001. It didn't matter that Will knew the building, as long as he didn't know they were there.

She looks at him now, blindfolded, tied up and trembling head to toe. There's not much she can say to make him feel better, but she can get it over for him as soon as possible.

"It's time," she says.

His mouth opens. First, she thinks he's going to say something. Then, she thinks he's going to vomit. In the end, neither happens, but his shaking gets worse and his breath starts falling in short, sharp gasps, and she knows he's doing it. He's letting 001 gain control.

There's no way she's hurting Will a second sooner than she has to, but she knows she needs to be prepared. She repositions herself into her fighting stance; her feet, squashed into too-small trainers, further apart from each other than is casual, her right arm held out in front of her. She didn't even realise she had a fighting stance until Max pointed it out to her one time, but now she knows, she's not going into battle in any other way.

"Hello, 011," a voice says. It's Will's voice and yet it sounds nothing like him.

"001," she replies.

He tries to take a step towards her but is held in place by the chains. He laughs. "Poor little Will, tied up yet again."

"It's you we tied up."

"Oh, is it?"

With one swift movement, 001 whips his hand from behind his back, sending El flying across the room as he does so. She hits the wall with a thud and crashes to the floor. It hurts, but it's nothing she hasn't experienced before. The pain barely registers compared to the panic that squeezes her lungs. She should have known he was going to do that. She should have known.

She scrambles to her feet, her eyes on 001. He's pulled the blindfold off and as she edges closer, she sees the hatred in his eyes. It looks all wrong coming from Will's face and that scares her even more. His hands take hold of the chain around Will's chest and she sees blood on them from when he forced them out of the cuffs. She bites down on her lip, hard, trying not to think of Will inside there, already getting hurt.

001 snaps the chain and it falls to the floor wish a crash. Immediately, El throws out her hand, freezing 001 in place just like she did to Will when he'd had the gun to his head. But here, it's a useless move, painless and easy for 001 to break if he wanted to. But he doesn't fight it and she can tell he's mocking her, knowing she's putting off having to do anything that will cause Will pain.

"You can't hurt me without hurting him, 011."

"Will is strong. He will be okay."

"You think he can survive me a third time?"

"Yes," El says, firmly. She doesn't know if Will can hear her, but it helps to remind herself of it anyway.

"Do you think you can survive me?"

This time she's prepared for the force he sends in her direction. She answers his question by pushing back, sending 001, and therefore Will, skidding back against the wall. He thuds into it much more gently than she did before and even remains standing. She tries not to let her frustration at herself show. It's so much harder fighting 001 while he has her friend's face.

"You're not a little kid anymore, 011. You can do better than that."

She pushes him sideways. He stumbles but she knows it's nowhere near enough to force him out of Will.

"Or perhaps my earlier questions weren't the right ones. You're not worried I'll kill Will, you're worried you'll do that yourself. You realised I was right. I am not the monster, you are."

"If you're not the monster, prove it," she says. "Leave my friend alone."

"When I'm ready. When he's no longer any use to me."

It helps to her hear him talk like this, like Will is an object he owns, something he can abuse and damage for his own benefit. It reminds her of Papa and the lab. She feels the anger inside her grow and she channels it, letting it tingle in her fingers. With a yell she throws that force at 001 and he flies across the room, this time hitting the wall hard and crumpling to the floor.

With her arm outstretched, she lifts him into the air. She flicks her wrist, turning him round to face her. There's a cut on his head. Will's head.

"It's interesting, isn't it, 011. You can't kill me without your friends dying first. Little Will and Maxine... What will you do? Are you going to kill them?"

A shiver runs down her spine. She knows she needs to break the connection 001 has with Will and Max for her to be able to kill him, but the thought of them dying too makes her chest hurt. She has to maintain the belief there is another way, that this is just 001 playing games with her mind to distract her, to make her lose the fight.

"Time to stop talking," she says.

She squeezes her hand so that 001's throat also constricts. He gasps for breath. It makes her feel good. Powerful. She squeezes tighter and his feet begins kicking, trying to break free. She realises she could do it, here, now, she could stop him breathing.

Except she can't.

In fear of what she's doing to Will at the same time, she drops her hand, letting him go.

001 lands in a heap on the floor, but he's laughing. "You can't do it. You actually care for this pathetic little boy, don't you?"

"I'm not like you," she says. "It's good to care. And Will's not-"

"You think little Will cares about you?" 001 cuts her off. "Let me tell you the truth, 011. I could do with some fun before I kill you."

She shakes her head, confused.

"Did you not believe what I showed you before?" he taunts. "Will and your precious Michael. These humans that you're willing to die for… they don't care for you at all."

"You're wrong," she says.

With a whisk of his hand, El flies backwards, pinned up against a wall. She remembers being trapped in the vision and expects to feel vines creeping across her. But none come, instead her head is forced to the side, so she can't avoid seeing what 001 wants her to.

Across the room, she sees two boys sitting side by side on the floor, her boyfriend and her brother. They look so real she'd believe they were actually there, if it wasn't for 001. She can't hear the words they're saying, but from the look on their faces, she can tell it's something important. She frowns, trying to figure out what. But then Mike leans forwards and presses his lips against Will's, placing his hand in his hair as he deepens the kiss.

El can't help the gasp that escapes her mouth. 001 had showed her something like this before, but it was from his vision of the future, the future they were trying to avoid, and so it hadn't seemed to matter. It hadn't felt real. But this one is different. Even though she can't project visions herself, there's enough overlap of their powers for her to know this one is true. A memory.

The vision vanishes but El keeps staring at the space. She's so confused. She doesn't understand why Mike would kiss Will when he was her boyfriend, or why Will would kiss him back. She wishes Max was around to explain things to her.

Her thoughts are interrupted by 001 thrusting her a bit higher up the wall. As she struggles, he rips the metal bar off the fire exit door and slams it against her neck. The pain hits instantly and is shortly followed by fear as he starts to press it harder and she realises she can't catch her breath.

"You see, 011, you made the wrong choice. He doesn't care for you at all. Yet, you were so desperate to-" he mimics a childish voice, "save him, that you missed your opportunity to kill me. And now little Will is mine to use for as long as I need to. How's that for your dying thought?"

She struggles, trying to push him away using her own powers. Blood from her nose trickles over her mouth and chin but she remains trapped. The pressure of the bar and the force he's using against her are too strong for her to beat. Her hands grab at the bar, resorting to human methods, desperately pulling to try to get it off her. The pain cuts through her neck, throbbing all around her throat. She kicks her legs, gasping, trying not to panic as it becomes harder and harder to breathe.

She doesn't want to die here, like this. She doesn't want to fail everyone just like she failed Max. But she knows 001 was wrong about one thing at least. Will does care for her. He was willing to die for her, for all of them, he's risking his worst fears for the chance of killing 001. So even as the pressure on her neck gets tighter, that thought keeps her fighting.

And she knows someone who can help.

Gradually, the darkness begins to fade. It's still dull but Will can see enough to make out, strangely, his middle school gym with vines that weave across every surface. It's cold. It makes his bones ache in a painfully familiar way.

In front of him, is El. Her stare is hard and she's looking at him with such suspicion it makes him tremble. He sees her lips move but can't hear what she says. He tries to tilt his head, to take a step closer to hear better, but his body doesn't seem to work. And now that he thinks about it, there's a faint tingling across his fingers and toes, dancing all over his skin. He tries to ask El for help, but the words get stuck. He can't move his mouth or make a sound. He can only watch.

With a jolt, he remembers the last time this had happened to him. He was in a hospital bed, frozen as his words put the people he loved in danger and sent soldiers to a certain death. That same panic floods over him and he scrambles to regain control. He feels like he's screaming, panting like he's run a race, pushing so hard everything has started to ache, but he can't make any muscles move nor any sounds from his lips. He can't even cry.

And then he sees his own arm move, sending El flying across the room.

She lands in a heap but jumps straight back up, her own arm held out this time, ready for action.

And somehow, that helps him. It reminds him of the differences between this time and last. Before, he'd been both a victim and a villain, a scared kid being forced to hurt others. This time, he's neither. He's chosen to do this. He's not a victim this time, but a fighter with a job to do.

And this time, he has El.

Trusting her to handle whatever Vecna's doing with his body, he stops trying to claw his way back, instead letting himself sink into this purgatory. His vision changes and the scene in his middle school gym starts to appear less like he's physically there and more as though he's watching it through a television screen. Now it's happened, he remembers it from last time too, how the perspective had varied depending on how close he was to the surface at any one point.

And as the distance increases, he's suddenly propelled backwards, thrown out of his own body. He lands on the floor and quickly pulls his leg away from an encroaching vine. He climbs to his feet, eyes still fixed on what's going on between him and El, Vecna and El, in real time. It's nothing like a TV screen really, there's no box, certainly no set of controls. It's a window, a flickering image somewhere in the distance, colour breaking through the darkness, the edges of the scene pulsing, maybe even in time with his own heartbeat.

Last time, he was too young and terrified to do anything other than stay in front of it, watching all the terrible things he was being made to do, desperately trying to regain control and succeeding for mere seconds at a time. But this time, with El there to save him from doing anything awful, he relinquishes that effort.

Around him, there are more images than just the current-time one, some near, others further away. He looks at the closest one. He sees his mom and Jonathan in Hopper's cabin, crying and frantically shouting his name and then pulling him into a hug so tight it had hurt. He sees the bruises around his mom's throat that he had caused.

He tears his eyes away and onto the next image. Another memory, this time a more recent one. He watches again as Mike arrives at Lenora Airport focusing only on El, the stiffness in his back and discomfort in his eyes as he turns Will's hug into an awkward pat on the shoulder. He looks at Mike and El's hands clasped at the roller rink, Mike snapping at him when they could have been having one of their heart to hearts.

He visits another few memories; being trapped in the Upside Down, Troy calling him Zombie Boy, his Dad shouting and throwing a bottle of wine which smashes just inches from his head. All bad memories. Given it's Vecna who's trapped him here, that makes sense. It's what Vecna feeds off, what he uses to torture people. It's like his personal library of people's darkest thoughts.

But Will thinks there's got to be more to it than that. He just can't figure out what. He continues browsing the memories, feeling much calmer here than when he recalls them normally. He revisits the storm from his episodes, relives the moment the mindflayer possessed him. He watches as they leave Hawkins for California, his friends crying in the distance, sees himself running through the woods that night it all started, hears him and Mike shouting at each other last summer.

He's so engrossed, it takes a few seconds to recognise that someone is calling his name. El.

"Will!" she cries. Her voice sounds strangled.

He rushes back to the window showing reality and focuses on it until it grows bigger and it's more like a television again. El's pinned high up against the wall, a bar pushing against her neck from an invisible force. Vecna.

"El!" he shouts, "El, are you okay?"

She doesn't respond, just keeps on struggling. Will can tell from the creases between El's eyebrows and the blood trickling from her nose that she's trying to use her powers to escape, but it doesn't seem to be working. Instead, she's kicking violently, either trying to break free or trying to propel herself further up the wall to alleviate the pressure on her neck, Will doesn't know which. All he knows is she needs help.

"Will, can you hear me?"

"El! El, yes, I can hear!" he shouts, but his voice just echoes around the chamber. He can tell from her face that none of the words left his mouth for real.

"Will, help," she gasps. "I need you to… come back."

He looks frantically at the scene. He knows he needs to regain control from Vecna, even if it's only for long enough to release El, he just doesn't know how. He thinks back to how it felt when he'd found enough power to tap out morse code with one hand. He focuses on that feeling and on El struggling in front of him and he visualises seeing it all through his own eyes. He launches himself forwards, aiming to fall back into his own body.

Instead, he falls forwards onto the floor.

He springs back up, not even bothering to brush the dust from his knees and reaches both hands towards where El is fighting for breath. The image splinters. He remains where he is. With a yell of frustration, he tries again. The same thing happens. He's stuck, trapped here inside his own head.

And out there, El's kicks are growing weaker, she's red in the face and each of her pained gasps seem to wrap around Will's throat too. He knows this is it, he needs to act now before he ends up watching her die.

It's his turn to save her life.