Steve, Lyn, Dustin, Max, and Lucas were walking through the forest to see if they could find where the Demogorgons were going. "You're positive that was Dart?" Lucas asks.
"Yes. He had the same exact yellow pattern on his butt." Dustin said, making Steve throw him a judgmental look.
"He was tiny two days ago." Max points out.
"Well, he's molted three times already." Dustin put up three fingers.
"Malted?" Steve squinted. The only malted he knew was the shake and the candy.
"Molted, he shed his skin to make room for growth like hornworms," Dustin explains.
"That was the slimy thing you found in the basement." Lyn told Steve, who let out an 'oh' of realization. "What did you think that was?" She raises an eyebrow at him. She thought he knew that was Dart's old skin and that why he shows it to them.
"I don't know, I thought it gross so it had to come from the thing." He shrugs.
"When's he going to molt again?" Max wanted to know how much time they had until he became more dangerous.
"It's got to be soon. When he does, he'll be fully grown, or close to it. And so will his friends." Dustin said making a shiver go down Lyn's spine. They weren't even fully grown and they were more powerful than them. She wished she had a flamethrower to light them all up, but sadly she didn't. She would have to make do with her hairspray and lighter.
"Yeah, and he's going to eat a lot more than just cats." Steve grumbles. The bigger they get the bigger prey they can takedown.
"Wait, a cat? Dart ate a cat?" Lucas grabs Dustin's shoulder and turns his friend to face him.
"No. What? No." He shook his head.
"What are you talking about? He ate Mews." Steve narrows his eyes at Dustin.
"Shut your mouth," Lyn whispers to him.
"What's the problem?" He shrugs, not knowing why that would be a secret.
"Mews? Who's Mews?" Max turns to Dustin.
"It's Dustin's cat." Steve was wondering why his friends didn't know about his pet.
"Steve!" Dustin glares at him.
"I knew it! You kept him!" Lucas pokes a finger into his friend's shoulder.
"No! No. No, I... No, I... He missed me. He wanted to come home." Dustin was stumbling over his words before he came up with the story that Dart found his way home.
"Bullshit! Did you know about this too Lyn?" Lucas turns to her.
"Yeah, lay off. She only let him keep it because she wanted to keep a connection with Dustin, especially since he doesn't want to hang out with her anymore." Steve defends his friend.
"Steve! I told you that in confidence." She scolds him. She told him that when Dustin was sleeping in the car last night when they were driving around looking for Dart. She didn't want Dustin feeling bad about not hanging out with her. Steve was right when he said that Dustin wanting to spend time apart from her is health.
"Okay, what's your excuse?" Lucas pushes Dustin's shoulder to get his sad face off his sister.
"I didn't know he was a Demogorgon, Okay?" Dustin shook his hand. He felt like shit right now, he lied to his friends and got them in a big mess. On top of that, he has been making his sister feel like shit.
"Oh, so now you admit it?" Lucas glares at him.
"Guys, who cares? We have to go." Max looks around. Standing in one place couldn't be a good idea.
"I care! You put the party in jeopardy! You broke the rule of law!" He points an accusing finger at him.
"So did you!" Dustin screams in his face.
"What?" Lucas gasps.
"You told a stranger the truth!" Dustin flashed the light on Max's face.
"A stranger?" She gasps feeling insulted. She was their friend, not a stranger.
"You wanted to tell her, too!" Lucas glares. The only reason Max wasn't in the party was Mike.
"But I didn't, Lucas, okay? I didn't tell her! We both broke the rule of law, okay? So we're even.
We're even." Dustin screams back at him.
"No, no! We're not even. Don't even try that. Your stupid pet could have eaten us for dinner!" Lucas waves his hands around in the air.
Lyn notices Steve moving from the corner of her eye. She looks to see where he was looking. She moves in the same direction when she couldn't see anything, then she gasps when she heard the noise. "Guy, enough." She scolds them but they kept arguing.
"GUYS!" Steve yells louder than they were arguing. Lucas and Dustin shut up to see what he wanted when they heard the same noise. He moves his hand and the group ran in the direction of the sound. Lyn stops when she notices Max didn't move. She ran back for her.
"Hey, guys, why are you headed towards the sound? Hello? Hello?" Max yells into the woods.
"The price of knowing is that you have to keep up." Lyn grabs the redhead's wrist and tugs her along. Following the noise lead them to a cliff, where the loud roar seems to be echoing around.
"I don't see him." Dustin shines his light out over the woods.
Lucas looks around using his binoculars. "It's the lab. They're going back home."
"Well then, let's make sure they stay there." Lyn walks back down the cliff, so they could be on level ground and have a clear path to the lab.
Dustin ran right beside her. "I didn't mean to push you away. I didn't want to feel like a little kid with my big sister having to accompany me everywhere." He took his hat off to scratch his head.
"It is fine, I get it. It wasn't like I was hanging out with mom all day when I was 13." She shrugs.
"Still, it crappy of me to be taking your money and coming to you with all my problems but not let you hang out with the party, especially when they're your friends too. So, if you ever want to come along, you can." He put his hat back on and fixes his curls so they weren't in his eyes.
"That's nice, maybe I'll come along sometime. But, it really is fine. I think us spending time apart was healthy for both of us. You got to explore your independents and I made friends my own age. It's what we both needed." She pats him on the back.
"That was so cute." Steve came from behind them and pulls them into a hug.
"Yeah, I'm tearing up." Lucas fake cried into his hands. Max joins in as she dramatically sobs.
"Screw off," Lyn push Steve off of her.
"Assholes," Dustin sneers.
The group was finally at the edge of the forest that would lead them to the lab. "Hello? Who's there? Who's there?" A voice that Lyn recognizes yells out at them.
"Shut up Jonathan, we don't want everyone knowing we're here." She shines the flashlight in his face to shut him up.
"Lyn? Steve?" Jon and Nancy were surprised to see them coming from the forest.
"Nancy?" Steve looks between the two, wondering if she moved on already.
"Jonathan." Dustin chimes in wanting to be included.
"What are you doing here?" Nancy looks at Steve. She wasn't surprised that Lyn was with the kids, but she couldn't picture Steve tolerating them.
"What are you doing here?" He asks her back. His question was more aim at her being with Jonathan.
"We're looking for Mike and Will." She points to herself and then Jon.
"They're not in there, are they?" Dustin nod to the lab.
"We're not sure." Nancy shrugs.
"Why?" Jonathan asks. A Demogorgon roar from the woods answers his question.
"They're all running in this direction. They even stop attacking us to come here." Lyn explains to them.
"When was the last time you saw Will and Mike?" Jonathan asks.
"Not since Will's last episode at the school." Lyn thought back, that would have been two days ago.
"He had another episode." Jon gasps. Steve bite his tongue to stop from saying if he wasn't so busy stealing people's girlfriend then he would know more about his brother.
"Two episodes in two days," Lucas put up two fingers.
"Did anyone else see him since them?" Jonathan looks at everyone else.
"We haven't seen Will," Steve spoke for everyone when no one answers right away.
"I haven't seen him since..." Lucas was trying to think if he saw him since that day at school. He felt like he had too, Will was one of his best friends but it wasn't coming to him.
Nancy turns around to look at the lab and announce, "The power's back." Jonathan ran to the security booth to push the button that opens the gate, but it wasn't budging. He kept pushing the button, hoping that it would.
"Let me try." Dustin went into the booth.
"Hang on." Jon put his hand up as he kept pushing the button.
"Let me try, Jonathan!" Dustin pushes himself in front of Jon, who rolled his eyes at the younger boy. Dustin pushes the button and looks up to see the gate not opening. "Son of a bitch! You know what..." He pushes the button over and over again.
"How about we try something else?" Lyn snaps.
"Like what?" Nancy asks, open for suggestions.
"Let's hops the fence." She looks up. It was tall, but she felt like it could be done.
"You see the barbed wire on top, right?" Steve pushes her chin all the way back, so she was staring at the barbwire.
Lyn pushes his hand off her chin and tugs on his bomber jacket. "We throw this over it and climb over."
"We are not ruining this jacket, use your sweater." He tugs on the sleeve of her Frankenstein sweater.
"I only have a bra on underneath this." She glares.
"That doesn't sound like a good excuse." He tilts his head to the side as he smiles smugly at her.
"Don't flirt with my sister in front of your girlfriend. Don't flirt with her at all." Dustin yells at him from inside the booth.
"I don't think she's my girlfriend anymore, are you?" Steve looks over at her. Nancy bites her lip as she shook her head no. Jonathan stares at the lab not wanting to look at him. Lyn took a step back like it would lessen the awkwardness she was feeling.
"I got it!" Dustin scream, breaking the tension. They look back to see the gate opening.
"We'll drive up there. You guys stay here." Nancy said. Jonathan and her got in his car and drove in, leaving the rest of them to wait there.
Lyn leans against the security booth as she thought about how she was going to deal with her mom when this all over. She would probably find her crying on the recliner with no clue that her children weren't home. Lyn wonders if she could buy her a new cat and everything would be solved or if her mother would find that insulting to Meow's memory to get another too soon.
"Guys," Max shook them out of their boredom. Lyn watch as the Byers and Hopper's cars speed towards them.
"Get off the road." She pushes Lucas and Dustin into the security booth while she went on the grass with Max and Steve.
Hopper stops in front of them. "Get in." He orders.
Steve opened the passenger door and pushes the seat forward. "Come on." He waves towards the kids. They squeeze into the backseat. He pushes the seatback in place. He sat down and pulls Lyn on his lap before closing the door.
Lyn was sitting on the kitchen table with Max, Mike, and Lucas. Dustin was standing behind her. Steve walks in from the living room where Jonathan and Nancy were watching over Will.
"How many people at the lab? I don't know how many people are there! I don't know how many people are left alive! I am the police! Chief Jim Hopper! Yes, the number that I gave you, yes. Okay, yes, I got it. 6767 - I will be here." They listen to Hopper yell to some higher up organization on the phone. He slams the phone down, frustrated with the lack of urgency.
"They didn't believe you, did they?" Dustin put his hands down on the table as he stares at the chief.
"We'll see." He spat out.
"We'll see? We can't just sit here while those things are loose!" Mike rejected the idea.
"We stay here, and we wait for help." Hopper orders before walking out of the kitchen. He walks down the hall to go into Will's room to check on Joyce.
Mike got up and pick up a Rubik's cube that was painted blue. "Did you guys know that Bob was the original founder of the Hawkins AV club?" He looks up from the cube to tell them.
"Really?" Lucas asks. He knew that Bob like the same type of thing they did, but he didn't know that he started the club that they all loved.
"He petitioned the school to start it and everything. Then he had a fund-raiser for equipment. Mr. Clarke learned everything from him. Pretty awesome, right?" Mike told them about the hero that he had the honor to get to know.
"Yeah," Lyn nods. To think that one person impacts so many other lives. Some might say it is just a school club, but it encourages kids to learn and explore science. If it only changes four kids lives, then that was more than most people did.
"We can't let him die in vain." Mike slams the cube on the table.
"What do you want to do, Mike? The Chief's right on this. We can't stop those Demo-dogs on our own." Dustin screams at him. If a bunch of scientists who were studying them couldn't kill them, how were they supposed to?
"Demo-dogs?" Max raises her eyebrows at him.
"Demogorgon dogs. Demo-dogs. It's like a compound. It's like a play on words." Dustin kept dumb it down for her. Lyn turns around to shoot Steve a glare. He was leaning against the kitchen counter. He was the one who turns her gentleman into a jerk.
His eyes went wide under her evil stare. He thought she must have been mad about his groin slam into her ass when she was sitting on his lap. I'm sorry, he mouthed to her even though it wasn't his fault that the back road was bumpy. She rolls her eyes and turns back to the table, knowing that Steve probably didn't know why he was saying sorry.
"Okay." Max glare at Dustin for treating her like an idiot. It wasn't like demo-dogs were a common thing.
"I mean, when it was just Dart, maybe..." Dustin's sentence fell off. He was still convinced that it was his fault for keeping Dart.
"But there's an army now." Lucas finishes for him.
"Precisely," Dustin nods.
"His army," Mike stares down at the table in realization.
"What do you mean?" Steve asks, wondering if the kid knew who the alpha of the pack was.
"His army. Maybe if we stop him, we can stop his army, too." Mike ran out of the room. They got up to follow him into Will's room. He picks up one of the drawings and hands it to Dustin. Lyn looks over her brother's shoulder to see it. It was the Byers backyard but there were dark clouds with lightning striking down. A large dark monster that had many long arms was hanging over it.
"The shadow monster," Dustin recognized it.
"It got Will that day on the field. The doctor said it was like a virus, it infected him." Mike informed them.
"And so this virus, it's connecting him to the tunnels?" Max asks.
"To the tunnels, monsters, the Upside Down, everything," Mike explains further.
"So, how do we get it out of Will?" Lyn ask. If they took the virus from the host it would die.
"Whoa. Slow down. Slow down." Steve went into the circle that the kids and Lyn made to grab the picture from Mike.
"Okay, so, the shadow monster's inside everything. And if the vines feel something like pain, then so does Will," Mike dumb it down for Steve, who unlike Max was grateful for it.
"And so does Dart." Lucas picks up on where he was going with this.
"Yeah, its like what Mr. Clarke taught us, the hive mind." Mike brought up the science theory.
"Please say you know everything about this and I'm not going to have to call him." Lyn pleads.
"We do." Lucas nods making her feel relieved. She was already scared and stress. She didn't want to be creep out too.
"What's a hive mind?" Steve asks. Max was grateful for it. She didn't want Dustin and Mike to think she was stupider than they already did.
"A collective consciousness, it's a super-organism." Dustin explains.
"And this is the thing that controls everything. It's the brain." Mike point to the shadow monster.
"Like the mind flayer," Dustin said. Mike gasp, it was so clear he didn't know why he didn't see it earlier. Lucas snaps his fingers before pointing at him.
"The what?" Max, Lyn, and Steve asked.
"Lyn get everyone into the kitchen. We are going to find Will's dungeon and dragon manual." Mike orders as he went over to Will's bookshelf.
She nods her head and ran out of the room. She went to the living room where everyone else was. "Come to the kitchen, the boys got something." She told the room. She didn't stay to answer any questions. She turns around to make her way to the kitchen herself.
"What's going on?" Nancy was the first to enter.
"I don't really know. Mike told me to gather everyone up." She looks them over. From Joyce and Jonathan's distraught faces, she hopes that this idea the boys had worked.
Mike came in with his party and Steve behind him. "The mind flayer," He drops the manual down. It was open to a page with a man that had a squid head on it.
"What the hell is that?" Hopper asks.
"It's a monster from an unknown dimension. It's so ancient that it doesn't even know its true home. Okay, it enslaves races of other dimensions by taking over their brains using its highly-developed psionic powers." Dustin explains.
"Oh, my God, none of this is real. This is a kids' game." Hoppers scoff.
"And a few years ago, you would have said the same thing about another universe filled with man-eating monster right under our feet. You don't get to shoot down ideas when your only one is to wait around for the government when they might not be coming to save us." Lyn glare at the chief. Hopper put his hands up in surrender. He knew to not get in between a mama bear and her cubs. It didn't mean that he believes the kids.
"And it's a manual. And it's not for kids. And unless you know something that we don't, this is the best metaphor..." Dustin points at the book.
"Analogy," Lucas corrects him.
"Analogy, that's what you're worried about? Fine. An analogy for understanding whatever the hell this is." Dustin glares at his friend for cutting him off.
"Okay, so this mind flamer thing flayer," Nancy looks down at the book.
"Mind flayer," Dustin corrects his first crush.
"What does it want?" Nancy ignores him correcting her.
"To conquer us, basically, it believes it's the master race," Dustin told them.
"Like the Germans?" Steve said. He was glad to have some understood in this supernatural mess.
"No, Steve that was the Nazis. Don't category a whole country as that evil shit." Lyn corrects him.
"Yeah, yeah, yeah, the Nazis," He nods to her.
"If the Nazis were from another dimension, totally, it views other races, like us, as inferior to itself." Dustin shrugs.
"It wants to spread, take over other dimensions." Mike build on that thought.
"We are talking about the destruction of our world as we know it." Lucas let them know how dangerous this really was.
"That's great. That's great. That's really great. Jesus!" Steve steps away from the table to take a breath.
"Okay, so if this thing is like a brain that's controlling everything, then if we kill it" Nancy picks up the book.
"We kill everything it controls." Mike nods to her.
"We win." Dustin cheer like they already did it.
"Theoretically," Lucas wanted everyone to stay realistic about this.
"Great. So how do you kill this thing? Shoot it with Fireballs or something?" Hopper took the book from Nancy to read.
"No, no, no Fireballs. Uh, you summon an undead army, uh, because… because zombies, you know, they don't have brains, and the mind flayer, it… it likes brains." Dustin was explaining when he realizes how ridiculous he was sounding. "It's just a game." Lyn slams her palm into her forehead.
"What the hell are we doing here?" Hopper slams the book down on the table.
"I thought we were waiting for your military backup." Dustin mocks him.
"We are!" He yells at them.
"How are they going to stop this? You can't just shoot this with guns." Mike pointed out to the officer.
"You don't know that! We don't know anything!" Hopper yells at the kids.
"Yeah, we do know. When we were at the middle school last year, there was only one Demogorgon and all of the agents unload their clips on it. The monster wasn't even wounded." Lyn snaps at the stubborn man.
"We know the monsters are going to molt again," Lucas told the officer that waiting would literal only make their problems get bigger.
"We know that it's only a matter of time before those tunnels reach this town." Dustin points to the walls that had Will's map on it.
"They're right." Joyce croaked from her spot in the living room. They turn to the mother of the son the shadow monster was possessing. "We have to kill it. I want to kill it."
"Me too, me too, Joyce, okay? But how do we do that? We don't exactly know what we're dealing with here." Hopper walks over to talk some sense into her.
"No. But he does. If anyone knows how to destroy this thing, it's Will. He's connected to it. He'll know its weakness." Mike walked to the couch that Will was laying on.
"I thought we couldn't trust him anymore. That he's a spy for the mind flayer now." Max follows him into the living room.
"Yeah, but he can't spy if he doesn't know where he is." Mike points out.
"The shed," Jonathan said.
Hopper and Mike went out to give it a look over. The rest of them stood in the backyard waiting to see what they had to do. Hopper waves them over to start working.
Lyn helped Hopper throw everything out of the shed. Steve and Nancy were taping trash bags over the windows. She looks over at them whispering to each other. She hoped that they both found happiness, whether it be with each other or not. She let out a groan as she picks up a heavy box.
"You alright kid," Hopper asks her when he saw the box she picked up was marked tools.
"I live with Dustin and my mom. I do the heavy lifting," She walks out of the shed and throws the box down outside. Hopper watches her go. He took a big sigh and look up at the sky. For being the chief of a small town, he really didn't know anything. He had been to the Henderson house a few times when their mother was going hysterical over something insignificant. He never realized that she didn't have a husband. Now it made sense why he always saw the girl walking dogs for that vet. To him, there was nothing sadder than when a child had to pick up the slack for their parents.
"Hey, just because I do all the heavy lifting at home doesn't mean I'm going to do it here." She snaps the officers out of his thoughts. He chuckled shaking his head and grab the lawnmower to throw it out.
After getting everything out, they went inside to cover the whole shed up with wooden panels, tarps, blankets, towels, and anything else they could find. Will wouldn't be able to recognize where he was. Lyn was even wrapping newspaper around the chair they were going to tie Will too. Mike was setting up bright light to be pointed at him, so it would be harder for him to see.
Jonathan carried Will in and with help from Hopper. They were able to tie him to the chair. "Alright, you ready?" Hopper asks Joyce.
"Yeah," She nods her head. Everyone went back to the house to give Hopper, Joyce, Mike, and Jonathan some privacy.
Steve and Dustin were sitting down on the couch. Lyn was walking around looking at Will's map. "If these are the tunnel they got all over town, we are screwed." She sighs.
"Don't talk like that. We got a plan. We just have to stick to it." Steve scolds her, although he wasn't too sure about this plan either.
When the light flickered, Steve grabs his bat and rush to the kitchen. The Henderson siblings were right on his heels. They look out the kitchen window to the shed for any signs of trouble.
It was a while until Hopper came charging out with Joyce, Mike, and Jonathan behind him. He entered the house and grabs a notepad. "What happened?" Lyn ran to the kitchen table that Hopper sat down on.
"I think he's talking, just not with words." Hopper draws dots and lines.
"What is that?" Steve asks.
"Morse code," Everyone answers, making Steve looked up to wonder how everyone knew that.
"H-E-R-E." Hopper translated.
"Here," The middle school kids read.
"Will's still in there. He's talking to us." Hopper looks at Joyce when he gave the good news.
Jonathan ran to his room to grab his stereo and tapes. He went back out to the shed. Mike grabs Will's walkie to sneak into the shed with him. Lyn put Dustin's walkie on the table.
"Dash, dot, dash, dot," She repeated for her brother to write.
"Yeah, got it," Lucas point to a letter on the translation chart that Will had in his room.
"C," Max told Nancy who wrote it down.
More beeps came over the walkie, "L" "O" "S" "E" "G" "A" "T" "E"
"Close gate." Everyone read out loud and jump when the phone rang.
"Shit. Shit." Dustin ran over to pick up and hang up the phone. When it rang again, Nancy rips it off the wall and throws it across the room.
"Do you think he heard that?" Max stood up from the table.
"It's just a phone. It could be anywhere. Right?" Steve agrees with her. Logic said that a phone ringing wouldn't tell him where he was, but her gut spoke differently.
The loud roar confirmed that they knew where Will was. "That's not good," Dustin said what everyone was thinking. They ran to look out the front window where the roars could be heard the loudest.
"Hey, get away from the windows!" Hopper came into the living room with a shotgun in each hand. They back away as Hopper went to look out the window before turning to them. "Do you know how to use this?" He held out the gun to Jon.
"What?" He backs away from the gun.
"Can you use this?" He repeated his question with more force.
"I can," Nancy said. Hopper throws it to her. Nancy and Hopper stood in front of everyone. Hopper had the shotgun pointed at the window while Nancy had hers aimed at the door. Steve with his bat and Lyn with her crowbar were the next line of defense. In the back were Dustin holding the hairspray and lighter and Lucas with his slingshot.
"Where are they?" Lyn glare. The roars were beginning to come from all different directions.
The bush moving and the low growl made them turn their aim to the kitchen window. "What are they doing?" Nancy asks. Demogorgon wasn't known for their taunting, they attack and devour.
A loud noise brought their attention back to the front window. The Demogorgon gave out a few more roars before it let out a loud cry than it flew through the window. It landed limply on the floor.
"Holy shit," The Henderson sibling screams out.
"Is it dead?" Max asks. Hopper went over with his shotgun pointed at it and gave it a few kicks to the head. There was no snarling, hissing, or biting. Its head only fell back to the floor with a thud.
"Okay, now I'm scared of what killed it." Lyn gasps staring down at the dead monster.
The lock turn and the chain on the door fell off by itself. Everyone stay on guard not knowing what was about to attack them. Lyn drops her crowbar when El steps through the door. Mike steps in front of the group and stares at her in amazement.