Disclaimer: I do not own Stranger Things.

The Other Side

Chapter 1: The Escape

He didn't have a name. If he'd once had one, before he'd come to this place, he had no idea what it might have been. This bothered him on some level, as he knew that everyone else had names, but he'd learned a long time ago that he was different. The only identity he'd ever known was etched into his arm in black ink, three numbers standing out against his skin.

He couldn't remember how long he had been in this place. That was partly because some portions of his memory were fuzzy and indistinct, and partly because this place seemed almost designed to prevent him from monitoring the passage of time. But he couldn't remember ever being anywhere else, so that fact didn't bother him too much.

At least, it originally hadn't bothered him. But in the past couple of years, he had met someone who had challenged that belief.

His keeper, the man who claimed to be his "Father" (although he now knew that to be a lie), had spent his entire life teaching him how to control his unique and special gift. Thanks to Father's training and his work in honing his talent, he had learned how to see into the minds of others, finding their deepest secrets and turning their own perceptions against them.

But Father had made two crucial mistakes by helping him to expand and develop his talent further. The first was teaching him how to communicate with others using his mind alone, because as his abilities had grown and he'd learned to identify each of the many other individual minds in the vast building where he lived, he had come into contact with one mind who wasn't like any of the others, one mind that was somehow much more familiar. She was like him: someone with the power to reach beyond herself, to influence the world around her with her mind alone. Their talents were different, but they were similar enough that they were able to communicate with each other… and that was the tipping point.

On their own, each of them had already been forming doubts about Father's instructions for them. But once they were able to compare their experiences, their doubts grew exponentially stronger, and they ultimately saw the truth: Father did not see them as his children, but as weapons to be honed and used for his own purposes. Ironically, despite his greater age and his longer exposure to Father's ruthless tutelage, it had been harder for him to accept that than it was for her, but they had both come to the same conclusion in the end.

And that was where Father's second mistake came into play. Namely, the fact that in the process of training the two of them so rigorously and molding them into such dangerous weapons, he had also taught them everything that they needed to know in order to escape from him.

Despite their abilities and their skills, they both knew that they would need to be careful if they were to make it out. So they waited, biding their time and waiting for the right moment. Her powers would give her an easier time of escaping, while his were more delicate in nature, but eventually, they both finally felt that they were ready.

But then, shortly before they had planned to implement their escape plan… something went terribly wrong.

November 6, 1983

Hawkins National Laboratory, Indiana

The rows of fluorescent lights that ran along the ceiling of the vast laboratory complex were flickering erratically, and the air was constantly rent by the blaring of alarms. Most of the personnel had already evacuated, fleeing towards the exits of the building in a panic, so the maze of corridors deep within the building were oddly quiet, with the exception of the alarms and a deep hum of electricity.

That, and the sound of running footsteps.

The boy raced down a long, darkened hallway, his bare feet slapping against the concrete floor with every step. His eyes were wide and intense, flicking back and forth as he sprinted down the corridor. He reached out with his mind as he ran, scanning the building around him for any signs of other minds approaching: the last thing he wanted was to run into anyone else while he was trying to escape. There weren't many to sense at the moment, but unfortunately, the one mind that he did want to find was nowhere near him. Their connection had faded away when she had been taken down to the testing rooms in the basement, just as it always did, and she hadn't come back into range yet, so he had no way of locating her. Walls couldn't block out his talent, but distance could.

As he kept running, he reminded himself that they had talked about this possibility. If something went wrong, each of their highest priorities needed to be getting out, whether they were together at the time or not. Father's training had given him some of the older man's ruthless pragmatism, and as much as he hated it, that training was actually helping here. If he tried to look for her now, the odds were that neither of them would escape, but if they could each get out on their own, they could find each other on the outside. That had to be his priority.

Luckily, he was getting close to a way out. Due to whatever crisis was currently unfolding, most of the lab's personnel were rushing to the nearest exits. But he could sense one mind up ahead of him: a straggler, presumably heading for one of the service elevators that led up to the main floor. That could be the opportunity that he had been waiting for. If he could reach the surface, he could run to one of the back exits and make his escape.

Sure enough, as he darted around a corner into another long, semi-darkened hallway, he saw the person that he had been sensing: a middle-aged man dressed in a white lab coat, who had just reached the doors of the elevator and was hammering on its call button.

The boy's eyes widened. No. That elevator was his way out, but he needed to get on it when it arrived. If that man took it without him, he'd be stuck down here until he could call it back down, and that was time that he didn't have right now. He took off running again, sprinting down the hallway towards the man.

At first, the man didn't notice that the boy was running towards him: he was far too focused on hitting the button as many times as possible. The boy could sense that his mind was on the verge of a total breakdown, racing frantically as he desperately tried to reassure himself that he was safe.

((…made it… get on the elevator… get upstairs… get out of here… won't be able to follow me… I can get out…))

The boy's eyes widened and he ran faster. "Stop!" he yelled, his breath coming in pants as he raced towards the man, who whipped around with a shocked expression that shifted into horror when he saw the boy running towards him.

((Oh god no… one of the Subjects… how the hell'd he get out?! Oh, god, no, no, no…!)) The man had recognized him, of course, and a bolt of pure terror lanced through his mind, even more adrenaline pumping into his veins as he frantically tapped on the button with one hand.

As the boy drew within fifty feet, there was a soft ding, and the elevator doors slid open. The man practically threw himself inside as soon as they were open far enough, reaching for the button that would close the doors.

Feeling a moment of panic at the thought of being trapped down here, the boy acted without thinking. "I said…" he panted, before reaching out across the distance between them with his mind and raising one hand as he skidded to a halt about ten feet away. "Stop!"

The man froze in place with his hand still on the button, rooted to the spot. His eyes were wide and unblinking, fixed on the boy, his body visibly trembling but unable to move. A quiet, terrified whimper escaped from his lips, but he made no further attempt to escape.

Don't move, the boy projected, more gently this time. He was breathing heavily as he walked slowly forward towards the elevator, keeping one hand extended as he slowly relaxed his hold on the man's mind.

The scientist, a middle-aged man with short dark hair and a mustache, shrank back in terror as soon as he could move, the buttons forgotten as he pressed himself against the back wall of the elevator. In the boy's mind, his thoughts now sounded more like the mindless, panicked squeals of a trapped animal. ((Oh god, please, don't hurt me, I didn't do anything, please, I swear…))

The boy's eyes narrowed, as he knew that was a lie (since everyone who worked in this place shared some of the blame for what had been done to them), but he showed some restraint since this man could potentially be his way out. "I believe you," he replied flatly, speaking verbally this time as he walked slowly forward towards the elevator. "And I won't hurt you, as long as you don't try to…"

As he got within a few feet of the elevator, however, the boy stopped in his tracks. His eyes widened, and he frowned as he felt something… off. The best way to describe it was like the mental equivalent of static on a radio: a buzzing pressure pushing against the edge of his awareness, like a distortion or a "glitch" in the way his talent perceived the world around him. The only other mind that he could sense at the moment was that of the terrified scientist who was now cowering across from him, but he was beginning to sense someone… no, something else. It wasn't human, but he'd sensed the minds of animals plenty of times before, and it didn't feel like that either.

And it felt like it was coming from…

The boy frowned, tilting his head to one side as he regarded the scientist, who now looked a little less terrified and a little more confused. No… it's not him. The older man's mind felt perfectly normal. But the strange, buzzing presence was definitely coming from inside the elevator. Which didn't make any sense, because he could see the whole interior of the elevator from his current position, and there wasn't any place where someone or something could be hiding.

Except…

A pit formed in the boy's stomach. "Get out of there," he whispered.

The scientist frowned, clearly caught off-guard by that, and the boy sensed several questions bubbling up in his mind. Before he could pick one, however, they both heard something else: a strange, warbling, clicking sound, halfway between a bird's chirping and a frog's croaking, that was unmistakably echoing from inside the elevator.

The older man figured it out first, and slowly looked up at the ceiling of the elevator car, which was out of view from the corridor outside. His eyes widened in horror and he opened his mouth to say something… but before he could take even a single step towards the boy, there was a blur of movement overhead, and he was hauled straight up and out of sight, into the darkness. He had just enough time to let out a strangled, agonized scream, before it was drowned out by a rumbling, bestial roar and a sickening crunch.

The boy instantly spun on his heel and took off in the opposite direction, sprinting even faster than he had been before.

What the hell was that?! His mind was whirling as he ran back the way he'd come, desperately trying to come up with an alternative plan while also trying not to think about what he'd just witnessed. Whatever that thing had been, it wasn't human. He'd never sensed anything like that. He'd never even heard of anything like that… except when she had told him about the thing that she'd seen during the most recent sensory test that Father had given her. The way it had made her feel, and the unnerving sense that whatever it was, it just didn't belong in their world… what she'd described perfectly matched what he had felt from that thing in the elevator.

As he kept running, he shook his head, forcing himself to keep his mind on the matter at hand. Worry about that later. Focus now. His plan to escape using the elevator wasn't going to work anymore, which meant that he needed to find an alternate way out. And he had to do so quickly, before the lab's security teams started sweeping the building for him. If Father and the other scientists didn't already know that he'd escaped from his quarters, they would soon.

Sure enough, he'd already wasted too much time. As he burst around another corner, trying to reach one of the other elevators, he ran directly into a group of armed guards coming in the other direction, presumably responding to the chaos that had erupted in the basement. There were four of them, all with pistols drawn, and all four immediately locked onto him as he slid to a stop right in front of them.

"Whoa! Freeze!" one of them yelled, pistol trained on the boy with one hand as he grabbed a walkie-talkie off his belt with the other and brought it up to his mouth. "Sir, we've got one of the Subjects here! The older one got out too! What should we –"

That was as far as he got. Against a single unarmed scientist who had been too terrified to pose any threat to him, the boy had been inclined to show mercy. Against four armed men who were planning to drag him back to Father, that wasn't an option. So he acted fast: his pupils dilated, his hands clenched into fists, and an invisible pulse of mental energy rippled outwards from him, washing over all four guards.

His talent wasn't as visually impressive or brutal as his ally's, but that didn't mean it wasn't extremely effective. Her powers could manipulate the physical world, but his domain was the realm of the mind, and no one could best him there. Father had taught him a variety of ways to incapacitate someone with a single thought, and while most of those learning experiences had been extremely unpleasant for him, they had also been undeniably effective.

In this case, he opted for a simple approach. Sending a surge of mental energy into all four guards' brains, he delivered a targeted strike to each man's amygdala region: the area of the brain that regulates emotions, particularly fear. An overloaded reaction of the amygdala produces a massive, overwhelming fear response, which can have significant physical effects.

In this case, those effects were immediate. Simultaneously, all four guards lurched in place and dropped to their knees, pistols slipping from their hands and clattering to the floor as they clutched at their chests or necks, gasping for air or gagging as they tried to hold back the urge to vomit. He could sense what they were feeling, and it sent a pang through his chest as their jumbled thoughts leaked into his mind.

((…each one choking on their own breath, hearts hammering, limbs turning to jelly, guts twisting and clenching, stomach acid welling up in their throats, skin on fire, practically drowning in their own sweat, each certain that oh god oh god I'm dying I'm gonna die I'm gonna…))

Shaking his head and squeezing his eyes tightly shut for a second, the boy wrenched himself forcibly out of the writhing guards' minds, breaking the connection. They wouldn't be down for more than a couple of minutes, but that would give him enough time to get a head start. Grabbing one of their pistols, he leapt over one of the fallen guards and took off down the corridor.

Going up wasn't an option anymore. If Father was already deploying teams of guards to secure the upper levels, then he wouldn't be able to get through them by himself. His best chance now would be to go down instead, to the basement lab where she had been taken for today's experiment. If she was still down there, the two of them together would have a much better chance of fighting their way out, if it came to that.

And if she wasn't down there anymore, well… at least that was hopefully the last place where they would look for him.

"…Team Four, say again? Team Four, answer me!" Dr. Martin Brenner repeatedly clicked the CALL button on his handheld radio as he rushed down the stairs with three squads of armed guards at his back, scowling when no one answered. Damn it all…! What had happened in the basement an hour earlier was bad enough, but the idea that both of the lab's surviving Subjects might have escaped was driving him to the verge of panic. All of his hard work over the past four years, trying to rebuild after the disaster that had nearly brought down the entire program… the last two Subjects were the most important assets he had left, and he couldn't lose them.

With whatever that creature had been on the loose, he normally wouldn't go back into the lab until the whole place had been thoroughly checked by security teams, but under the current circumstances, he had no choice. He was the only one who might be able to rein in his wayward children; no one else would have a chance of reasoning with either of them.

Finally, as he and the guards continued to descend into the underground levels of the lab building, his walkie buzzed with static and the shaky voice of one of the Team Four guards responded. "This… this is Team Four, Dr. Brenner. The older Subject… he's on the run, heading for the stairs that lead down to the basement. He…" The man coughed several times, clearly struggling for breath. "He did something… I don't know what it was, but it knocked all four of us flat, and he ran right past us before we could get back up."

Brenner's scowl deepened and he shook his head. If they're still alive, he could've done a lot worse. They got off easy. "Continue pursuit," he snapped. "Cut off the elevators, in case he tries to double back. I'm on my way down with Teams One through Three; we've got the stairs covered. Corral him to the basement, and we'll corner him there." Without waiting for the other team's response, he sped up, taking the stairs two at a time as he rushed down into the depths of the lab.

Not good, not good, not good…

The boy was in trouble. He could sense minds approaching, many of them. The lab above had been fully evacuated by now, and now Father's security teams were swarming back into the complex to secure it against any intruders… and any escape attempts.

Sensing a team of guards approaching in the direction that he was currently running, he veered off and ducked through the nearest set of doors that led to a stairwell. But when he looked up and reached up to the higher levels with his mind, he could immediately tell that at least one squad of guards was descending towards him, so he was forced to turn and head down instead, bounding down the steps as fast as he could.

Finally, he reached the bottom of the stairwell, and was faced with another darkened hallway. The lights down here were in even worse shape than the ones on the higher floors, with barely a flicker of illumination cutting through the darkness, but he could still make out the door at the other end: one of the hatchlike doors that led into the secure basement of the lab, where many of Father's experiments and tests were performed. The door hung halfway open, and a faint reddish glow was filtering out from inside, accompanied by a low chorus of rumbling and squelching sounds. Neither of those things had been present the last time he'd been brought down here, two days earlier. The sound in particular was eerily familiar, and a chill ran down his spine as he remembered the thing from the elevator.

Another unwelcome sound – the clatter of boots coming down the stairs behind him – snapped him out of his caution, and he rushed down the hallway, stepping through the doorway and pulling it closed behind him. He locked it for good measure, but he knew that would only delay the guards for a minute or two at most once they got down here. Turning, he ran down the stairs into the main portion of the basement… and slid to a halt again, stopping dead in his tracks.

The basement was empty and silent. All of the equipment was still there, particularly the large isolation tank along one wall, but all of the techs and guards were gone. And the reason why was obvious.

One wall of the basement had been ripped wide open, as if the solid concrete had been torn asunder by a gigantic claw. And in its place was something… impossible. The only things that he had seen which looked anything like it were in the images of biology textbooks that Father had insisted he study as part of his education: it looked like some kind of monstrous fungus had grown out of the gash in the wall, expanding to cover most of it, with rootlike structures extending out onto the concrete floor. It was pulsing and rippling rhythmically, like a giant heartbeat, and it was glowing in shades of black and red. And in the center was a hole, like the opening of an underground tunnel, that stretched back into the wall and disappeared into the darkness. He tried reaching into that hole with his mind, but he didn't feel anything. It was like a void in his perceptions; if there was anyone in there, he couldn't sense them.

What the hell…? He walked slowly forward, tentatively approaching the bizarre structure. Was this what had caused all the chaos upstairs? Could this be where the thing that had killed the scientist had come from?

And… was this why he couldn't sense her anymore? Was she in there?

He reached out with his mind again, straining as hard as he could, desperately reaching to try and sense any trace of her… but there was nothing.

…Eleven? Where are you?

Before he had time to try anything else, the door that he had come through suddenly slammed open again. He reflexively whipped around, lifting the pistol that he'd taken from the guard and bringing it to bear, but he already knew that he was outmatched. He'd been focusing so intently on trying to locate her that he'd missed the other minds gathering outside the basement lab, but now he could feel them clearly. A dozen armed guards poured into the room, already training their own sidearms on him. And behind them…

Father.

"Hold your fire!" the familiar voice called out as Father stepped forward in front of the guards, spreading his arms out to hold them back as they fanned out on either side of him. They heeded his orders, but their guns remained pointed squarely at the boy.

For his part, the boy's pistol was now aimed squarely at Father's chest, and a flick of his thumb clicked off the safety with practiced ease. Even if the guards shot him, he would have enough time to take Father down with him, and he could tell that the older man knew that. Father was better than anyone else at concealing his true thoughts and feelings from his Subjects' mental abilities, but even his control wasn't perfect.

"Stand down, son," Father spoke up again, his voice deceptively gentle. "You don't want to do this. Put the gun down, and I promise none of them will harm you." For a man with a gun aimed at his heart, he was remarkably calm as he held out one hand towards the boy. "You're safe. I promise you."

Any thoughts of being civil with Father had disappeared from the boy's mind. His eyes were burning with a mixture of anger and fear, but the anger won out. "Where is she?" he snapped, his fingers tightening around the pistol in his hands as he kept his aim centered on Father's chest. The words weren't just heard, they were felt, ringing through the men's minds as well as in their ears.

Father blinked, and his smile flickered. Clearly, he hadn't been expecting that response. "'She'? I… I'm not sure what you mean."

"Don't try that." The boy's voice was curt and laden with suppressed anger. "You made a mistake, Father. You know lying doesn't work on me. You taught me how to tell when people lie. But you kept doing it anyway, because you thought I'd never be able to get inside your head. And you thought I'd never find out about her." One corner of his mouth twitched up in a faint, humorless smirk. "You should have known better."

He could feel the shift in Father's thoughts, as he realized the full magnitude of his mistake, but Father's iron discipline clamped down on those wayward thoughts moments later, reforming the usual mental "barrier" of icy detachment that he typically used to deflect any attempts to probe his mind. The older man shook his head, taking another step forward. "I can explain everything," he insisted. "Just… please, put the gun down, and move away from that thing. It's dangerous." There was a visible flicker of fear in his eyes as he nodded to the bizarre mass of plantlike material that was growing from the hole in the far wall, behind the boy.

Despite all of the anger that he felt towards Father for everything that he'd done, he couldn't deny that based on the mental sensations which accompanied that warning, it was genuine. For all of his faults, Father was genuinely concerned about his safety. But that wasn't good enough. Not when he knew exactly why Father was always so "concerned" about his well-being: because he didn't want to lose one of his two precious weapons.

His mind was racing as he frantically tried to come up with some sort of a plan, but there was nothing he could do. Even with his talents, he couldn't fight his way past this many armed guards, and while he was sure that Father wouldn't let them kill him, the thought of going back to the way things had been before sounded worse than death. For a moment, he was legitimately tempted to shoot the older man right then and there. He would certainly die moments later, of course, as Father was the only one who was keeping the guards from gunning him down on the spot, but that might be a fair price to pay to rid the world of this man's twisted schemes. And it would mean that she, wherever she might be, would be free of Father forever.

But… he didn't want to die. He wanted to get out of here, he wanted to see her again, and he wanted to make Father pay for everything that he had done to them. And to do all of that, he had to live. But there was no way out of here: he couldn't get past the guards to reach any of the normal exits, and the only other way out was…

Another chill ran through the boy's entire body, like ice water in his veins, but after a long moment of contemplation, he nodded fractionally to himself. This might be a terrible idea, but right now it was the only way that he could escape this place alive. And as long as he was alive, he would still have a chance. His eyes flicked briefly towards the glowing, pulsing rift in the wall behind him, and he took a slow step back, further away from the guards.

Although Father didn't possess any powers like his, it was almost as if the older man could sense what he was thinking, because his eyes widened in alarm. "No," he breathed. "Please… don't go in there. It's not safe. I won't hurt you, I promise. Don't do it!"

The boy's eyes narrowed, and he felt a hot rush of anger coursing through his body, washing away the chill that he'd felt before. His eyes locked with Father's for a long moment, and then he shook his head. "Liar," he spat, the word laced with years' worth of resentment and disgust, spearing into the minds of everyone in the room like a knife to the brain.

And then he moved. Even as Father shouted for him to stop and the guards charged towards him, the boy turned and burst into motion one more time, sprinting across the room and plunging into the mass of twisted, glowing vines and fleshy plantlike material. Keeping ahold of the gun with one hand and shielding his face with his free arm, he leapt into the hole at the center of the rift without any hesitation, and vanished into the stifling darkness within.

Two days later

November 8, 1983

Hawkins, Indiana

Consciousness returned slowly. Her head hurt, and she could barely breathe. Everything was dark, and the only thing that she could smell or taste was an overpowering mixture of iron and chlorine.

As she drifted in the darkness, not strong enough to move or to open her eyes yet, images slowly began filtering back into her mind, recent memories of what she'd been doing for the past few hours.

Reluctantly agreeing to drive her best friend to Steve Harrington's house for a party.

Even more reluctantly agreeing to attend said party, instead of just dropping Nancy off as she normally would have.

Sitting by the pool with Nancy, Steve, Tommy H., and Carol, and quickly becoming a fifth wheel as the four of them started an impromptu competition to see which of them could get drunk fastest.

Letting Nancy persuade her to give their so-called "party game" a try, and then immediately regretting it when her attempt to puncture a beer can with a pocketknife quickly resulted in her accidentally stabbing herself in the hand.

Tending to the gash on her hand in the house, before discovering that Nancy was planning to spend the night with Steve. Feeling tempted to just leave Nancy there as she'd requested, but not being able to make herself ditch her best friend just yet.

Sitting out on the diving board of the pool, splashing idly in the water with both feet and enjoying the warmth that rose off of the heated pool.

Feeling something moving behind her, like the sensation of someone standing over her and breathing down her neck.

Turning around, looking up, and then…

And then…

With a strangled gasp, Barbara Holland opened her eyes. She tried to suck in a breath, choked, and promptly vomited a mouthful of water. Coughing and gasping, she rolled over and retched again, coughing up more water until it felt like she'd gotten all of it out of her system.

Barb was panting and shivering as she sat up, trying to catch her breath. Her glasses were fogged up, so she took them off and attempted to wipe them clean on her shirt; the shirt was wet now, which was odd since she didn't remember getting in the water, but it still did the job. What just happened? she wondered as she put her glasses back on. The last thing she could clearly remember was sitting on the diving board, when the lights in the pool and the yard had suddenly flickered and gone out. Had she blacked out from blood loss and fallen into the pool or something?

But as soon as her glasses were back on and she got a good look at her surroundings, Barb froze. A chill went through her stomach that had nothing to do with the fact that her clothes were now soaked.

She wasn't sitting by Steve Harrington's pool anymore; she was sitting in it, at the bottom of the deep end. Only… somehow, the pool was completely empty now. She was still wet, but she was sitting on bare, dry concrete, and there was no water anywhere in the pool. Instead, what looked like a network of dark, leathery tendrils… vines, maybe?… were strewn around everywhere, running back and forth across the ground. Clouds of small gray particles, similar to the pollen that some flowers released in spring, drifted lazily through the air around her. And when she looked up, the sky above her was pitch-black, with no stars in sight anywhere.

"…Hello?" she called out as she slowly clambered up to her feet. "Nancy?" Her nose hurt, so she reached up to feel it, and her fingers came away reddened with blood. She checked her other hand, and it was still bandaged; she could still feel the pain of the cut that she'd gotten earlier.

Okay… not a hallucination, then… That didn't help her feel any better, though, because if this wasn't a hallucination, then she still had no idea what the fuck was going on here. "Nancy?!" she yelled, raising her voice as she stretched up on tiptoe to try and peer over the edge of the pool. "Hello?!" She could see Steve's house still looming over the pool, but it was completely dark, with no lights visible anywhere.

That was when a sound cut through the eerie silence: a low, guttural growl, coming from behind her. She stiffened, feeling the hair on the back of her neck standing on end. She'd never heard a sound like that before, but on some instinctive level, she somehow knew that there was something very dangerous standing behind her.

Slowly, feeling her hands trembling as she clenched them into fists, she turned. And then she saw it.

It was standing on the other side of the empty pool, just a few feet away. It was taller than her, at least seven or eight feet in height, with a lean, muscular build and unnaturally-long arms that ended in clawed hands. But the worst part was its head: in place of a normal face, it had five triangular "lobes" of flesh, like the petals of a flower, which parted to reveal a rounded mouth lined with row upon row of inward-pointing, razor-sharp teeth.

And then it snarled.

Barb wasted one precious second just staring at the thing – the monster – that was standing in front of her. Then reality kicked in, and she let out a terrified scream as she turned and ran for her life.

Luckily, Steve Harrington's pool had a ladder in the deep end, to make it easier for swimmers to climb up out of the water. And whatever bizarre nightmare she was currently trapped in, even though Steve's pool had somehow transformed into an empty pit with a monster living in it, that ladder was still there. Barb practically hurled herself at it, grabbing the metal rungs and desperately trying to pull herself up as quickly as she could, using some of the weird vines that were growing along the sides of the pool as additional leverage to help her climb faster.

Even as she started pulling herself up the ladder, though, she could hear the monster coming after her. She shot a frantic glance over her shoulder and caught a brief glimpse, enough to confirm that it was walking – not running or charging, but walking – across the bottom of the pool towards her. She'd never had a pet cat, but she'd known people who did, and the way it was approaching her in such a slow and deliberate manner reminded her of the way a cat would treat a bird or a mouse: deliberately toying with its prey, because it was certain that the prey in question had no chance of escape.

Barb was rapidly descending into a complete panic at this point: she was whimpering and sobbing uncontrollably, yelling Nancy's name over and over as she scrambled up the ladder, hearing the heavy, dragging steps of the monster that was stalking her as they got closer and closer beneath her. Finally, she made it to the top, reaching out and grabbing the metal bars at the top to pull herself up and out of the pool. She practically lunged up onto the concrete, wrapping her hands around one of the vines that was growing across the ground to pull herself the rest of the way up… but then she felt a clawed hand wrap around her ankle with a grip like an iron vice, and all hope evaporated as she was violently yanked back towards the pit like a fish on a hook.

She managed to grab the metal bars again just in time to stop herself from being pulled all the way over, but she could already tell that she wasn't going to be able to hold on for long. The monster snarled again, the grip on her leg got even tighter, and she opened her mouth to scream…

And then, out of nowhere, a hand grabbed one of her wrists.

Everything stopped. Even the monster hanging onto her leg seemed to have frozen in place for that seemingly-endless moment, as Barb looked up at the figure who was now standing over her.

She knew immediately that she had never seen this boy before in her life: he certainly wasn't Steve Harrington, Tommy H., or anyone else who she would've possibly expected to see. He appeared to be about the same age as her, although he was an inch or two taller than her. He was extremely pale, with short dark hair (which was cropped so close to his skull that it looked like he'd recently gotten a buzz-cut), piercing green eyes, and a lean, athletic build. Bizarrely, he was wearing what looked like a white hospital gown, although it was stained with dirt and torn in a few places.

For that long, frozen moment, Barb was so confused that she didn't do anything, briefly forgetting all about her current situation. But as soon as that moment passed and her adrenaline came flooding back, she reacted on instinct: she let go of the metal bars and grabbed his outstretched arms instead, gripping his forearms tightly with both hands. He did the same, digging in his heels and pulling backwards with all the strength he had, but it wasn't enough. The creature in the pit growled again and gave Barb's leg another hard yank, and a scream of pain and terror escaped her lips as her knee almost popped out of its socket.

The boy managed to brace his knees against the metal bars of the pool, stopping their slide for a crucial moment. He locked eyes with her, visibly straining, and her eyes widened as she suddenly heard a voice echoing inside her head; she'd never heard it before, but she instinctively knew that it was his voice, even though his lips weren't moving.

Hold on! Whatever you do, don't let go!

Barb's eyes widened in surprise and confusion. What…?

A moment later, something odd happened. A glazed, blank look washed over the boy's eyes for a heartbeat, and then his pupils… expanded, would be the best way to describe it. They swelled outwards into deep black pools, almost swallowing up the green of his irises. His hands tightened around her arms.

And then… she wasn't entirely sure what happened next. The closest comparison she could think of for the feeling that came over her in that moment would be the feeling that she'd once gotten when she'd been walking across the street and a car had come thundering past, just missing her by inches: the sensation that something very powerful and very dangerous had just shot right past her, and that it could easily have done some serious damage if it had connected with her.

As soon as that feeling registered in her mind, the creature in the pit behind her let out a deep-toned, bloodcurdling shriek, and the grip around her ankle abruptly went slack as it suddenly released her. The strange boy clearly recognized that too, because he immediately gave a powerful heave on her arms with all the strength he had, pulling her fully up and out of the empty pool with so much force that he toppled over backwards, and she came crashing down on top of him.

For a few seconds, Barb was too stunned to say anything: she was just gasping for air and trying to catch her breath, holding herself up with both hands and staring down into a pair of startlingly-bright green eyes. The boy's gaze remained locked with hers for an embarrassingly long amount of time, before another unearthly screech echoed up from the pit and snapped them both back to reality. She quickly climbed off of him and scrambled to her feet, although her left ankle was now aching where the creature had grabbed her.

The boy also quickly sprang up to his feet, wordlessly grabbing her uninjured hand. "Run," he breathed, the word resonating with her on some level that was deeper than sound alone.

Barb was pretty sure that she was going into shock at this point, but she managed a shaky nod, and they both burst into motion, racing away from the pit that had been Steve Harrington's pool and the roaring monster that it now contained.

The creature had been caught completely off-guard. It had been on the verge of successfully completing a hunt, and unlike the smaller prey item that had managed to evade it two days earlier, this one had no chance of escape. It had been caught off-guard and pulled into the creature's realm without any chance to struggle or fight back, and now it was cornered and defenseless. Satisfied by this, the creature had moved in to complete the kill and begin its next meal.

But just as the creature had grabbed the prey's leg in one clawed hand, preparing to drag it back down into the pit and deliver a killing blow, a second prey animal had appeared above. And unlike its chosen target, this one was far from defenseless.

There had been no visible attack: pain had simply erupted in every inch of the creature's body, searing every nerve and sending jolts of agony through every muscle. It had immediately released its prey and recoiled, shrieking and thrashing about wildly as it tried to shake off whatever was inflicting that pain, but to no avail. After a few seconds, however, the pain suddenly faded away, and was gone as quickly as it had come.

The creature's mind was not as intelligent as that of a human, but it was smart by animal standards. It was a calculating hunter, smart enough to solve basic problems; it even knew how to tear through the fabric between worlds (although that ability was something that it, and the rest of its kind, had only recently acquired in the past few years) as a means of expanding its hunting grounds. And it was smart enough that it quickly connected the flash of agony that it had felt with the second prey animal who had interfered with its hunt.

As the creature rose back to its feet, the five teeth-lined lobes of its mouth gaped open wide, and a deep snarl echoed up out of the pit as a surge of anger rushed through its primitive brain. What that second prey animal had done by stealing its next meal amounted to direct competition, and that would not be tolerated.

Digging its claws into the stone wall of the pit, the creature scrambled up onto level ground, its senses working as it attempted to home in on its fleeing prey.

Luckily, even in whatever nightmare world that Barb had been dragged into, the back door of Steve Harrington's house was still unlocked, as the real house's back door had been during the party. She flung the sliding-glass door open and practically dove into the house, dragging the strange boy in along with her before slamming the door shut and locking it behind them.

The interior of the house also looked just like Steve's house, with a few clear exceptions: there were no lights or furniture anywhere, and in their place, the walls, floor and ceiling were liberally adorned with the same dark vines that had been crisscrossing the ground outside.

Barb flattened her back against the nearest wall, panting heavily as she finally managed to catch her breath. The boy did the same next to her, closing his eyes and visibly straining as if he was focusing intently on something. She was extremely tempted to start pressing him with questions about what the hell was going on here, but under the current circumstances she quickly decided that staying alive was more important right now. I can ask him questions once that thing isn't chasing us anymore.

Yes, the boy's voice agreed, echoing inside her head rather than in her ears. Right now, we need to stay hidden. Talking can come later.

Barb blinked, looking slowly over at him. Hang on. Did… She had to resist the urge to assume that she really had gone crazy, but she spoke up verbally this time, her voice still quiet and rasping. "Did you just… talk to me… inside my head?"

The boy's eyes flickered open, and he glanced over to her. Yes, that strange, echoing "voice" confirmed as he nodded and then closed his eyes again, clearly concentrating on something else.

"I…" Barb's vision flared and blurred, her knees almost buckling as she swayed unsteadily on her feet. No. There's no freaking way, right? That's not possible. But that voice… surely she couldn't just be imagining this, right? There were really only two options: either she'd lost more blood than she'd thought from accidentally stabbing herself, and she was currently lying unconscious in Steve's backyard and hallucinating this whole thing… or all of this was really happening.

Her thoughts were interrupted by a warbling, gurgling snarl from outside, which immediately snapped her back to focusing on the matter at hand. "Shit," she hissed, pressing herself back against the wall and doing her best not to make any noise. "What do we do?"

The boy took a few seconds to answer, and now that she was looking at him more closely, she realized that he was in just as bad a shape as she was, if not worse. He was deathly pale, with sunken cheekbones and dark rings under his eyes, suggesting that he hadn't eaten or slept in a while; his bare feet were covered in dirt, as if he'd been running through the woods for a long time; and he was slumped against the wall in a way which made it pretty clear that he was exhausted.

"We need…" he murmured softly. "…to find a way out of here. This isn't the real world. But we can get back to the real world… if we can find the doorway." He tilted his head back towards the door, where they could still hear the rumbling growls and clicks of the creature as it stalked about outside, clearly looking for them. "It pulled you in here, right?"

"I…" Barb nodded shakily. "Y-yeah, I think so." Must've grabbed me while I was sitting by the pool…

The boy returned her nod. "Good. That means the opening that it used must still be here somewhere. If we can find it… we can get back through it."

Barb's head was still spinning from trying to make sense of all this, but she could grasp that concept. "Okay… yeah, I guess that makes sense." She cautiously leaned back over to the edge of the sliding-glass door so she could peer out onto the pool deck. The creature had moved out of view from the door, but she could still faintly hear its clicking growl coming from somewhere nearby, probably on the other side of the house. "So… what are we looking for?"

A hole in the world, the strange, echoing voice replied in her head, as the boy stepped up next to her and also looked around the edge of the doorway. "Probably in a wall, or one of the trees." He coughed, a hoarse hacking sound, and fell silent while his echoing mental voice took over. It should be glowing red.

A "hole in the world"? Barb frowned, scanning the treeline. The hell's that supposed to…

But then she saw it… and she had to admit, he was right. One of the largest trees on the edge of the woods, a few yards behind the diving board where she'd been sitting before she'd gotten dragged into this place, looked like it had split open near its base, as if a large, roughly circular hole had opened up that pierced straight through it. And that hole was visibly glowing, with a soft, pulsing reddish light.

"There," she whispered, pointing to it. Is that it?

The boy nodded in confirmation, a faint smile appearing on his face. "Yes," he confirmed softly. We need to get to that hole and go through it. That will take us back to where you came from. He grimaced, looking around warily. That thing is still out there; I can sense it.

"You can…" Barb shook her head, forcing herself not to ask any of the many questions that were boiling up in her mind. You can ask him questions later, when a monster isn't trying to kill us. "All right, so we just wait until it leaves, and then we run over there and go through that…" Her eyes widened a moment later, however, when she looked back at the hole in the tree. "Uh… are you seeing what I'm seeing?"

The boy followed her gaze, and then his eyes widened in alarm. Not good, the echoing voice muttered grimly.

The hole in the tree was getting smaller. At first it had been almost as wide as the entire tree, but as they watched, it was slowly diminishing, shrinking inward with a series of squelching, crunching sounds. They could still fit through it right now, but at the rate that it was shrinking, within a minute or two that wouldn't be an option anymore.

"Shit," Barb hissed under her breath. What do we do?!

After a moment of thought, the boy shook his head. No choice. We have to go now, or it will close and we will be stuck here. He stepped out in front of the door. "It should be far enough away. If we run, it won't be able to catch us before we can make it through." Glancing back at her, he held out one hand, a plaintive look in his eyes. Trust me.

Barb's initial reaction was skepticism – Trust this guy? She didn't even know him! – but after a moment of thought, she immediately realized that she didn't have a choice. Staying here wasn't an option, which meant that whoever this guy was, she was going to have to trust him, or take her chances with the monster that had already almost killed her once.

So, finally, she nodded, and clasped his hand with her uninjured one. "Okay."

The boy took a deep breath, visibly bracing himself. Then he unlocked the door, slid it open, and they raced back out into the yard, sprinting across the concrete towards the tree with the glowing hole in it. Fortunately, unlike in the real world, there wasn't any water in the pool or on the ground around it, otherwise they would definitely have slipped and gone crashing to the ground.

They made it almost all the way to the tree before a deep-toned snarl rang out from the other side of the yard, mixed with a staccato series of clicks. Barb stole a brief glance over her shoulder just in time to see the creature appear around the corner of the house, and then whipped her head back around and ran faster.

You go first! the boy's echoing voice instructed as they reached the tree. He swung around to face the creature, which was now bounding across the yard towards them, and flung out one arm towards it as his pupils dilated again. The creature was in midstride when it suddenly let out another screech of pain and recoiled, stumbling back like a farm animal that had just run into an electric fence.

Barb didn't wait to see what would happen next. The hole in the tree was still getting smaller, but it was still big enough for her to crawl through it, and that was exactly what she did. Holding her hands out in front of her, she dove headfirst into the hole.

It was easily one of the most disgusting feelings that she'd ever experienced in her life. The interior of the hole that had punched through the tree was wet and slimy, like she was a kid crawling through a swamp… but it was also oddly warm, which gave her the unnerving feeling that she was crawling down the throat of a huge animal. Reluctantly digging her fingers in, she pulled herself forward, crawling through the tree as quickly as she could and resisting the urge to gag at the feeling of the slick, fleshy material squishing around her hands.

Fortunately, it only lasted a few seconds, and then she popped out on the other side of the tree, tumbling headfirst out of the hole and collapsing in a heap on the grass. She could immediately tell that it had worked: the air was fresher, there were no dark vines on the ground or gray particles in the air, and when she rolled over and looked up, Steve's house was the same way it had been before, with all its lights on. Everything was the way it had been before. She was back in the real world.

The only thing that wasn't normal was the glowing hole in the tree, which was still getting smaller but was still clearly there. A moment later, as she watched, a pair of hands reached out of the hole, gripping the bark at the edges, and pulled hard. The boy slid out of the tree and dropped to the ground next to her, just before the hole started to shrink much more quickly. It dwindled until it was only about the size of a fist, and then closed up completely with a crunch of shifting wood as the red glow faded away.

Just like that, the tree trunk was fully resealed, and the hole was completely gone. Everything was the way it had been before, with two exceptions: first, the state that she was currently in, bruised and bloodied with soaking-wet clothes; and second, the boy who was now sitting up next to her, still wearing his tattered hospital gown and looking up at her to reveal a trickle of blood leaking from his nose.

Barb stared at him for a moment, then up at the house, and finally down at herself. She was speechless for a long moment, struggling to find the right words to express how she was feeling, before she finally settled on a straightforward, simple option that summed her feelings up pretty nicely.

"…What the fuck just happened?!"

Notes: Hello, all, and welcome to The Other Side! I've had this story brewing in my head for quite a while; I'm pretty happy with how the first chapter turned out, and I hope you all enjoy. I'm sure you guys already have plenty of questions about our mysterious co-protagonist, but rest assured, I'll be delving into his backstory and his abilities in much more detail as the story progresses.

Just as a bonus note, my fancast for the psychic boy would be Timothée Chalamet, partly because he looks the part, and partly because in my mind, his telepathic "voice" (particularly the sections of underlined dialogue) sounds kinda like Paul Atreides' mystical "Voice" in the 2021 Dune movie. Also, just so everyone knows, when we're seeing his POV, the sections of dialogue that are italicized and in ((double parentheses)) are thoughts that he's hearing from other people, and the parts that are italicized and underlined are him projecting his own thoughts into other people's minds.

Next time, Barb and her rescuer get better acquainted, and the mysterious boy reveals his true identity. Stay tuned!