Belle faltered. Swimming through the gate had been one thing, but the sudden change in gravity wasn't what she'd been expecting. Nor was the red hue to the world that reminded her starkly of her nightmares. Hearing the Upside Down was like what she'd seen before was something she thought she'd prepared herself for; but seeing it brought the stark reality of that fact to light.

Nancy whacked one of the creatures with an oar, sending it whimpering away from Steve.

'Hey there,' she said.

Belle's attention went to the sky, knowing that Robin and Nancy would deal with the bats attacking Steve. She couldn't stop her thoughts from going to Axel though. To the fact he'd been here every time she'd had nightmares about it. Whoever he really was, he was part of all this. That much she was certain of.

With reluctance, Belle forced her thoughts away from everything else and towards the task at hand. Vines spider webbed across the floor around them; trip hazards.

'Kill it! Kill it!' she heard Eddie yelling.

'Um, guys, incoming!' Belle called as a bat came hurtling towards her. It pulled away, but as she stumbled she noticed it was readying itself for another attack. Without a weapon, there was very little she could do to actually fend it off.

But there on the floor, a torch still wrapped in the bag. It wasn't much, barely anything really, but it was enough for her. Trying to avoid the vines, she scooped the torch up and turned to face any oncoming attacks.

The sky seemed to be filled with the creatures; all circling as if waiting for their chance to attack. Belle tried not to think about what might happen if they decided it wasn't worth waiting. Tried not to think about the tiny teeth and claws.

One flew towards her face, and with a yelp Belle swung the torch. It collided, but another one was already on her. Scrabbling through her hair and towards her face. In an instant, she dropped the torch and instead got to work on pulling the creature free. She felt strands of hair pulling loose, but gritted her teeth against it.

'Belle!' Eddie's voice was close, cutting through the noise of chittering creatures, thunder crashing and the others all trying to fend off the creatures themselves.

With one last tug, Belle freed the creature and sent it flapping back into the sky. It circled, and before she had a chance to grab the torch again, started heading towards her.

She raised her arms, determined to protect her face, but the impact never came. Eddie yelled, and when she moved her arms he was standing in front of her, an oar wielded before him.

'Thanks,' she said, patting his back before grabbing the torch. She shifted so her back was to Eddie's, determined to try and make sure none of them snuck up on him.

Steve, she realised, was standing again. He gripped the tail of a bat, his foot keeping the creature in place. And then he pulled. Belle looked away hastily, not wanting to see what happened next.

But the air no longer seemed filled with creatures. Instead, the space around them was littered with bodies.

'Steve!' yelled Nancy.

'Jesus Christ. Jesus H. Christ!' yelled Eddie, throwing the oar down.

Belle wiped a hand across her face, feeling the pin prick marks of claws she hadn't even realised had reached her. They were going to sting something fierce when she finally got around to cleaning them.

'Eddie?' she asked softly, earning his attention in an instant. Fear was something she was growing increasingly familiar with on his face, and she saw that now. She offered him a small smile, the only thing she could do. Empty promises made with words weren't something she was willing to make.

'Uh, do you guys think these bats have, like, rabies?' asked Robin, crouching with her flashlight aimed at one.

'What?' asked Steve.

'It's just that rabies are, like, my number one greatest fear. And I think we should probably get you a doctor really soon because once the symptoms set in, it's too late. You're already, like, dead.'

'Way to be optimistic, Robin,' Belle joked softly.

More bats screeched in the distance, flying forms heading their way; they landed near the red light of the gate and Belle shifted the grip on her torch.

'All right. There's not that many,' said Steve as the creatures screamed at them. 'We can take 'em. Right?'

Thunder rumbled, more creatures chittered.

'You were saying?' asked Robin.

'The woods. Come on,' said Nancy, darting off in that direction.

'Great,' complained Robin, but Belle was already racing towards the treeline, jumping any vines she spotted and trying to ignore the thunder and red lighting brightening the sky around them.

Eddie was doing far more running than he'd initially thought would be necessary. Sure, he was on the run from the police, but he'd hoped to just be hiding out in Rick's for the duration. Actual running wasn't one of the things he'd assumed would happen. And yet once again that's exactly what he found himself doing: running through a forest.

Belle was haring off in front of them all, seeming to not mind that there were things littering the way. But he realised she was slowing, and panic formed a heavy lump in his chest. He picked up the pace, reaching her just as she stopped and looked back at the others.

'Do you think we lost them?' she asked, hands resting on her sides. She barely seemed winded by the run; but then, he knew she ran often.

Eddie looked up. There was no sign of any more creatures; just the too red sky and the lightening breaking across it every so often. 'I think so.'

'Good,' she said, offering Robin a small smile when she joined them. 'If this place is backwards, maybe rabies do good things here.'

Robin shot her such a disbelieving look it shocked Eddie. Not only that she was capable of that sort of venom, but that Belle didn't seem to bat an eyelid at it. She merely shrugged and shifted her attention towards Nancy and Steve.

'Skull Rock's that way,' Steve said, not letting up in his jogging. Eddie wondered if perhaps he couldn't. If he stopped, he might not start again.

Nancy followed suit, motioning them to follow. She stuck close to Steve though, a protective shadow. Robin followed swiftly, with only a mumbled comment of complaint.

'Thanks,' Belle said as they started after the others, her pace much slower than it had been before. 'For earlier. Eddie the Brave.'

'Someone had to stop you from being a bat-snack, Cinderella,' he teased. She chuckled softly, but Eddie had meant it. Of all the people he knew – though, he was beginning to realise that present company needed to be considered – Belle was the most likely to not look out for herself. She'd go out of her way to protect others, to make sure they were safe, but when it came to self-preservation, Eddie worried she didn't contemplate it.

Silence settled heavily between the two of them. Eddie tried to keep his breathing even, tried not to let himself look too winded because Belle didn't even seem to be breaking a sweat. She wouldn't have judged him, he knew that, but that didn't matter.

'Do you think the others are OK?' Belle asked after a moment, picking the pace up as something chittered in the distance.

'Probably safer than we are,' he said, though he understood her anxiety. They had no way of checking in with Dustin and the others. And, while he was sure they could handle themselves, that didn't stop his concern. Both Max and Mia had been marked with Vecna's Curse. What happened if music only worked for so long? 'What's your favourite song?'

'Not sure,' she admitted, though she continued before he could remind her the stakes, 'but I'd say something by Deep Purple.'

The band he'd never thought she'd like. She'd claimed it was because they were good to run to, but he'd seen the smile on her face when he'd put it on in the van once.

'How about yours?'

Eddie mulled the question over, grateful that he could see the top of what he assumed was Skull Rock coming into view. Picking a favourite song was hard, though. There were the songs his mother played for him growing up; the ones she'd taught him guitar to. There were the ones Wayne played; not exactly Eddie's taste, but the way his Uncle seemed to come alive with the music was something he could never complain about. And then there were the songs that Corroded Coffin had learnt.

And the ones that he only ever associated with her. He'd even tried learning that song from Back to the Future after they'd seen it together, no matter how different it was to his usual style. But she'd been so excited throughout that entire scene, how could he not?

'Right now?' he asked, picking up the pace a little more, eager to get to the shelter of Skull Rock. 'Master of Puppets.'

'Metallica?'

Eddie gasped, and her attention was fully on him in an instant. He shot her a smile, trying to reassure her that it was just a joke. 'Didn't think you'd know that.'

Belle shrugged as they ducked beneath the rock face, joining the others. 'What can I say? My teacher of metal music was reasonably well informed.'

'Thought you'd be the first here,' Robin teased as Belle tucked herself beside her best friend.

'I wanted to give you a fighting chance,' Belle commented, a small smile on her lips.

Eddie settled himself on her other side, attention on the sky as more bats flew overhead.

'Mia!' Her mother's voice was far shriller than Mia had been expecting, and it was punctuated by her being pulled into a bone crushing hug. Whatever had happened in the past few hours had worried her, and that only concerned Mia.

'Where's Luis?' Mia asked, knowing that he had to have been there when Patrick died. It wasn't until now that the realisation had dawned on her. Two calls from the police. Two teenagers already dead. Two children unaccounted for. Her mother was right to be beside herself.

At least the police were waiting until her parents had turned up to officially start questioning them. With all the others accounted for, she'd been left to pace the hallway and wait. Probably to see if her story matched with theirs.

'We were going to ask you that, mija,' her father said, carefully prying her mother away from her, if only so he could hug her. The noise of the other parents fussing over their children, the attempts of the police to bring some semblance of order to it all, became merely background.

'I thought he'd be home,' she said, carefully pulling herself free and looking between the two of them. They looked sick, and she hated knowing that she'd been part of the reason they were so stressed.

'He was at town hall,' her father explained, a bite behind his voice that made her stomach flip. 'With Jason and Andy talking about how some kid is cursed.'

'You believe it?'

Her mother was already shaking her head. 'It doesn't matter. Fighting violence with violence is never the answer. I thought Luis knew that.'

'He does,' her father said, voice slightly sharp. He exhaled deeply, ran a weary hand down his face. 'At least, I thought he did.'

'But he's safe?'

'As safe as any of us,' her father murmured. 'I just hope he doesn't come face-to-face with the killer.'

Mia bit back the comment of how he probably wouldn't. Even if Luis did somehow find Eddie, he wasn't the killer they all thought. And, as far as she was aware, Luis hadn't been having any issues sleeping, or with headaches.

And he didn't have Santos in his past to worry about, either.

'What were you doing at Lover's Lake, mija?' her mother asked, a sternness behind her voice that contrasted starkly with her tone moments before. For a second, Mia worried that it was the beginnings of another vision, but something told her it wasn't. This was simply her mother trying to take control of the situation before it got any further out of hand.

'Swimming?' she tried, but thankfully her need to expand was cut off by Powell's voice over a swelling argument in the living room.

'Shut up!'

There was a moment's pause before he came out of the living room, followed by a sulky looking Max. He paused when he spotted her, spotted her parents.

'Actually, you first while we wait for guardians.'

Mia looked quickly at her parents, looked to Max, and knew that she was going to have to try buying them some time.

'OK,' she said, rolling her shoulders. Then, she moved to give Max a hug. 'Story?' she whispered.

'Midnight swim. No swimming,' Max said before they were ushered apart.

'Behave,' Mia said, only half joking before following Powell and Callan into the study.

There was no way of knowing how long they were huddled together under the rock for. How long they spent catching their breath It could have been five minutes. It could have been five hours. Though, Eddie was pretty sure it was closer to the former.

'Oh… OK,' said Robin, daring to stand and move away from the safety of the rock. 'That was close.'

'Yeah,' agreed Eddie. 'Too close.'

Eddie started towards the trees, trying to see if there was any sign of something useful.

'Steve? Jesus,' said Nancy, earning Eddie's attention as she hurried over to where he was now slumped against a rock.

'I'm fine. I'm fine,' Steve insisted.

'Sure look it,' Belle said, her brow pinched with concern.

'No, no, no. You're not. You're losing blood. Come on, sit. All right?'

Steve dropped to the floor, and Belle sucked in a deep breath as Robin hurried over to him. Where the others were heading towards him, she took a step away. Eddie offered her a small smile, one he hoped was reassuring, before he started towards a nearby rock. With Robin's rambling and Nancy's shirt ripping, there was very little else he could do to help.

'It's exactly like back home,' Eddie muttered, feeling Belle moving to his side. 'Just. Dark and spooky and... wrong.'

'Some people probably think Hawkins is like this all the time,' she said softly as he peered at one of the vines.

Eddie hummed his agreement, there were plenty of people he knew that probably felt that way.

Skull Rock, however, wasn't exactly where he wanted to be. He wanted to be back in that version of Hawkins he complained about. Wanted to be somewhere there were no bat creatures ready to eat flesh.

'What're you doing?' she asked as he clambered onto a nearby rock for a better view.

'Seeing what's out there,' he said. It was just like the forest he'd met them all in. The rock he'd been on when he jumped down. When she'd hugged him, glad he was still alive. 'So, uh, this place is like Hawkins, but with monsters and nasty shit?'

'Pretty much,' agreed Nancy, ducking out from beneath Steve's arm. He now had a bandage of sorts wrapped around his abdomen; Belle moved towards Robin, carefully stepping over more of the vines that snaked across the floor. 'Wait, watch out for the vines. It's all a hive mind.'

'It's all a what?' asked Eddie.

'All the creepy crawlies around here, dude. They're, like, one or something. You step on a vine, you're stepping on a bat, you're stepping on Venca,' explained Steve.

'Shit,' cursed Eddie, carefully stepping over one of the vines as it moved in front of him.

'But not in a good way,' murmured Belle.

'A good way?' asked Steve, slight judgement coating the question.

'It's not like if we killed a bat, we kill Vecna. Because that would make things far too easy,' she said, folding her arms across herself.

Steve offered her an almost apologetic smile. 'Seems not, Clary.'

'But everything from our world is still here, right? Except people, obviously?' asked Robin, turning her attention to Nancy.

'As far as I understand it, yeah,' said Nancy.

'So, theoretically, we could go to the police station and steal guns and grenades and whatever we need to blow up those bat things that are guarding the gate,' said Robin.

'Yeah, I highly doubt the Hawkins PD had grenades, Robin,' noted Steve. 'But, I mean, guns, yeah, sure.'

'Well, we don't have to go all the way downtown for guns,' said Nancy simply. 'I have guns in my bedroom.'

'You, Nancy Wheeler, have guns, plural, in your bedroom?' asked Eddie, jumping down from the rock.

'Full of surprises, isn't she?' said Robin.

'A Russian Makarov and a revolver,' said Nancy.

'Yeah, you almost shot me with that one,' Steve joked, stepping up behind her.

Eddie rolled his eyes, slipping his vest off.

'You almost deserved it,' she retorted, a smirk on her face.

Eddie threw his denim vest at Steve's chest. 'For your modesty, dude.'

The earth shook. Instinctively Eddie grabbed onto Robin as she stumbled towards him, cushioning her fall as they were sent to the floor. Someone yelped. Eddie's skin ran cold. Trees creaked; creatures bayed in the distance.

'Belle?' Eddie asked once the world seemed still once more. In front of him, Robin shifted and her attention snapped to her best friend.

'It's fine,' she said, but her hand went to her ankle. She prodded it, wincing.

'What happened?' Robin was up and by her side in an instant, Eddie close on her heels.

'Foot got caught. It wasn't a vine. Just... Just a root,' Belle said, accepting the extended hand of Robin and shakily getting to her feet. She tested the weight on her ankle, and flinched. 'It's just twisted. I can walk it off.'

Robin hummed disbelievingly.

'Trust me,' Belle insisted, her attention straying to Steve. Eddie knew that she was thinking about how he was carrying on.

'Come on,' Eddie said. He moved closer, but realised just how much he'd have to crouch so as to help her at all.

'It's fine. I'll walk it off.'

Eddie glanced briefly to Robin, but her attention was focused on Belle.

'Yeah,' he said uncertainly, glancing back at Steve; Nancy, he noticed, was making her way over to them, 'so guns seem like a pretty good idea to me.'

'Yeah, me too,' agreed Robin.

'So what are we waiting for?' asked Steve, putting on the denim vest.

'Come on,' said Nancy, putting her arm around Belle's waist. She offered her a small smile, and Belle wrapped her arm over Nancy's shoulders. 'Let's go.'

Mia fidgeted, tried not to let her nerves get the better of her though. If there was one thing she needed to do it was buy the others a little more time. Dustin had said something about finding more gates, and with the police eager to speak to each of them, there'd be no time to actually get a plan together.

Unless someone was stalling them. But, between the dressing down from her mother for not telling them Luis was with the jocks the whole time, and the disapproving looks of the other parents because she hadn't stopped the kids from going to Lover's Lake, she was spent. And then there was the worry for the others, she wasn't sure she could necessarily hold it together.

Though, that might work in her favour.

'Why were you there?' Officer Callahan asked, leaning forwards on the table. For some reason, they were keeping the light in the room low. She guessed it was an intimidation technique. It wasn't working on her, though. She'd dealt with less light to figure out scenes.

'We wanted to go swimming,' she said, keeping her attention on the table. On her left, she felt her father shifting ever so slightly. This really would have been easier without him there, but her mother was still calling round to Luis's friends' houses, trying to track him down. She didn't envy him the wrath of their mother when she found him.

'In a lake where somebody died?' Callahan's voice dripped with scepticism.

Mia cringed ever so slightly. 'We didn't realise that.'

'Only one lake around here,' Callahan said simply.

'What are you implying, Officer?' her father asked, voice firm with accusation.

Callahan shifted, Mia heard the chair moving and wondered if perhaps he wasn't wishing that Ivan Moreno wasn't in the room as well.

'Nothing,' Powell said, taking control of the questioning with that simple word. 'We're just trying to figure out why you all broke curfew.'

'Curfew?' Mia asked, attention snapping up to him.

A small smile ghosted at the corner of his mouth. 'Missed that town meeting, huh?'

'That's not a crime,' Mia said softly.

'It's not,' said Callahan, moving forwards once more, 'but I'd think with a killer on the loose, you might want to attend them.'

'We did,' her dad said, leaning forwards on the table. 'We just hadn't told them about it all yet. We were waiting for a good time.'

'So, where were you then?' Powell asked, turning his assessing gaze towards her.

'Like I said,' she told him, trying to keep the frustration out of her voice. She could feel a headache building behind her eyes, but she didn't think it was anything Vecna related. More just a headache because of everything that had happened. Vecna adjacent rather than anything else. 'We were looking for a lake to go swimming in.'

'Why?'

'Why not?' she asked, before huffing out a sigh. She wasn't purposefully being difficult, and it was a fine line between keeping them occupied and boring them so they moved on to somebody else. 'With everything that's happening,' she said, lowering her gaze to her hands and hoping Nancy wouldn't hate her too much if this came back to bite them, 'we wanted to take Nancy's mind of everything. It – it was all reminding her too much of Barb.'

She felt her father rest a hand on her back, rubbed it comfortingly as she fiddled with her fingers.

'So why do the others think she wasn't there?' Powell asked.

'Because I met them there,' she said, moving a shaking hand to push her glasses a little further up her nose. 'I – I'd asked Steve to get Nancy, but I bumped into the kids at the shore.'

'So you were out there alone? While there's a killer on the loose?'

'Mija?'

'I – I thought it'd be safe,' she murmured, pitching her voice just too low to be heard easily. 'He'd already been there, so, I guessed, he might be far away. Or, at least, moving away from the scene of the crime.'

Powell exhaled slowly, and her father's hand stilled on her back.

'You can't assume anything with these people,' Powell said softly.

Slowly, Mia raised her eyes to look at him. 'I thought... I don't know.' She looked back at her hands.

'OK, thank you,' Powell said. 'I think we're done for the moment.'

Mia looked up at him sharply, but nodded meekly at the questioningly raised eyebrow he shot her way.

'I'll sit in here,' her father said when she didn't stand up straight away.

She nodded her thanks before leaving the room; really hoping that Max might have more luck with keeping them talking than she had.