"Hello, Kali," Nancy said.

There was a brief look of surprise on Kali's face, but it was gone so quickly Nancy was not entirely positive it had been there.

"Hello, Nancy Wheeler, isn't it?" Kali replied.

"Yeah," Nancy nodded.

She wasn't surprised Kali knew her since El had shown everyone her memories, and she guessed Kali and her friends had seen them too.

"Hold on, this is Kali?" Robin interrupted.

"Oh yes," Nancy replied, "How did you keep everyone away from the Lab when you practically demolished it and launched those fireworks?"

Kali leaned against her van and rubbed the blood still trickling down her face with the back of her hand. "I created an illusion so then everybody in the town apart from everyone Jane cares about didn't see them. When we arrived, it would have taken forever to find out where you were all hiding after that battle with Vecna, so I needed something that would attract your attention and I decided to go for the Lab."

"That explains why the roads were empty, but how long have you been here?"

"We've only just arrived," Kali replied, shifting her feet, and Nancy saw that despite her current manner, Kali was quite tired. She wasn't surprised since she had used a lot of her powers to fool everyone in the town except for everyone Eleven loved and cared about, but Nancy just hoped she didn't ask for a bath. Theirs was occupied at the moment.

But Kali was staring up at the Lab building with a cold expression on her face. Suddenly Nancy could see the conniving murderess who sought out justice for herself and for the innocent; ever since she and her friends and brother had been forced to fight off the Upside Down, Nancy had begun looking more favourably towards vigilantism after seeing how far many were willing to go to pervert laws which should never be broken. Unlike El, who'd likely been upset by what Kali had wanted her to prove, although she wasn't sure anymore about the younger girl's views, Nancy had no qualms or problems ending a life if it needed to be ended.

"It's been years since I've been here," she said darkly, gazing up at the Lab's main admin block while her gang kept silent for the time being, "I'd hoped me and Jane could smash this place together, and burn it to the ground when we met. Preferably with one or two of those bastards still inside."

Nancy wasn't surprised by Kali's dream and she wasn't surprised about what she wanted to do with Eleven, either. She would have felt it too, had she been kidnapped within a stone's throw of her home and brought here, and tattooed like a farm animal and then forced to play Brenner's games and the idea of calling the sonofabitch 'Papa' made her sick. To Kali, with her and Eleven destroying this place, it would have been a merciful release. "We did think about it, but we didn't want to be arrested," she said.

"It was tempting, though," Steve interrupted, reminding the two women there were others, glancing back at the building with a dark expression on his face that spoke volumes.

"Sounds like you've got history with this place, too," Kali commented.

"I thought you knew that."

"From a certain point of view, yeah," Kali said, "but Jane only shared memories from her point of view," she went on, "She didn't share any memories of anyone other than Creel," she spat the name out in disgust.

Nancy and the others shared her disgust and her hatred. "Where are the others?" She asked, looking around.

Kali smirked, and she closed her eyes. Right next to her, four people appeared. A tall, large black man, a thinner, rangy man with a mohawk, a wispy-looking woman, and a black woman with an afro.

"Why did you hide from us when we arrived?" Steve asked her curiously.

"I wanted to be sure it was you," Kali said, but Nancy was unsure if she was telling the truth; she knew enough about Kali to know she was sharp, sly, and cunning. "I didn't know if my illusions would have worked on all but the whole town; I've never had to focus them over such a distance."

"Kali, are you okay?" One of her friends, the wispy-looking woman asked in concern. And for the first time, Nancy and the others could see the woman looked exhausted.

"No," Kali gasped, and Nancy realised with horror the other woman had been holding herself up with sheer willpower alone.

"Quick, you'd better get her into your van, and you can follow us," Nancy said.

"Don't you tell us what to do!" The mohawk-styled man snapped.

"Axel, she's only trying to help," the big man said quietly, stepping in quickly to stand next to Kali and wrapping a protective arm around her waist so if she collapsed she would into his side. "And don't forget, these people are friends of Jane, too."

Axel grumbled to himself and conceded.

The brief moment gave Kali the chance she needed to recover from her overuse of her powers, and she stood up a little bit straighter although it was clear she was still weak.

"Can you take us to my sister?" She asked Nancy, a look of desperation on her face.

Nancy nodded. "We can."

The look of gratitude on Kali's face was heartbreaking. "Thank you," she whispered before she turned to her friends. "Follow them back," she said.

-8-

Karen was looking out of the window of the house they were staying in. She had been looking out at the street anxiously, waiting for her eldest child for what seemed like an eternity, and she wasn't the only one scrutinising the street. Joyce was with her, too. "The fireworks have died down," she commented.

"Yeah," Joyce nodded before she turned to her friend and smiled at her gently. "She's a tough cookie, your daughter," she commented with a smile, "and she's grown so strong over the last few years."

Karen looked down. "I wish she hadn't grown strong because of these nightmarish years, Joyce. How do you cope? I mean, after what happened with Will-."

Joyce interrupted her gently. "I was scared out of my mind when Will went missing. Don't think it was easy for me to discover my youngest went missing and fell into some alternate reality, Karen. I spent days being ridiculed, mocked and ignored by everyone, but it wasn't until they saw the proof that Will was alive and after El found him in the Upside Down, that we all realised there was more going on," Joyce looked down as she remembered how things had gone from there. "And believe me, it wasn't easy after that. Owens was better than Brenner, but he worked for the Lab, and they didn't have a clue, Will had to cope with the Mind Flayer inside his mind and body. It treated him like a host, spying on us. So many died, including Bob," she added with a sad smile as she remembered her boyfriend at the time. Unlike Lonnie, who couldn't have cared less about any of his kids, or her, Joyce had met a man who was truly caring and kind-hearted, and then he was taken away. She would never forget the screams as he was torn apart.

Karen watched her sadly. "I wish I'd known, I could have helped."

"I wish I could have told you, but you wouldn't have believed us, and besides we had to sign so many forms swearing us to secrecy, and after seeing what they were capable of, I don't know to know what they would have done to us if we'd talked," Joyce said.

Karen shuddered at what she had seen from El's point of view. "And…El?" She asked as she got to the subject she partly wanted to get to.

Joyce blinked in surprise at this twist. "El? What about her?"

"You took her in, you gave her a home."

Joyce smiled as she thought of her adoptive daughter, but it was tinged with sorrow. "I knew things weren't easy for her, Karen, believe me. She was a child who'd been kidnapped and tortured for years. Well, you saw those memories from her point of view. It was no wonder she had problems settling in, but me and Jonathan and Will did our best to help her, we could see that despite being happy and cheerful at times, she missed her powers so much; sometimes I would see her trying to move something with her mind, but I couldn't help her."

Karen put her hand on her upset friend's shoulder. "There was nothing you could have done, Joyce," she said. "Just like I couldn't have done anything when Barb was taken, or when Holly was taken by Vecna."

Joyce shuddered at the mention of Barb and Holly, but before either woman could speak or change the subject, the walkie-talkie crackled. "Mike? Mum? Joyce? Hopper? Come in!" Nancy's voice crackled.

The two women rushed towards the walkie-talkie, but Hop got there first. "Yes, Nancy, go ahead?"

"We're coming back from the Lab," Nancy said, and over the line they heard the sound of doors closing.

"What was going on?"

"The roads were empty to the lab, Hop. We could hear and see the fireworks from the sky as we got closer, but they stopped when we got there."

Hop exchanged concerned looks with Joyce and Karen, while Ted, and the others who'd come in overheard enough to see this made little sense. "What do you mean, the roads were empty? Those fireworks were loud enough to wake the dead."

"Kali is in Hawkins. She's with her gang. She rammed three trucks into the Lab building and lit the fireworks while casting an illusion on the whole town to make them think nothing was going on."

"Kali?" Mike gaped.

"Kali's in Hawkins? Where is she?"

"We're bringing her back with us now," there were rustling sounds over the line, it sounded like Nancy was getting strapped into the passenger seat, "she's quite tired; I dunno if she'd need the bath as well."

"Well, its occupied," Hop said wonderingly. He didn't know anything about Kali, or what she was like, and Hop was concerned about how she'd cope. El had met Kali when things between them weren't quite cordial, and he had been caught out lying about her mother. "Okay, Nancy, we'll see you in a bit."

"Okay. Out."

-8-

Inside the void, Eleven was alone and cold, but at the same time she felt relaxed, and she also felt as if a weight she had never even known about had been lifted off her shoulders. She had spent so long hiding herself, hiding her past from so many people, that letting it out beyond her family and friends was a relief, and she had never expected that.

Okay, granted, she knew it was dangerous, especially if she wanted to move on from the nightmare that was Vecna and the Upside Down, but revealing the truth of what happened with Will, Barb, Billy, Bob, and so many other victims in Hawkins for the last few years was a relief. A sadistic part of her was also relieved she had shared her memories with the likes of Angela, with a bit of luck the Queen Bee would be a bit more wiser.

There were downsides, though.

She still felt some exhaustion from sharing her memories with most of the world, but she was coping. She wondered how long it would be before she left the relative comfort of the void, and returned to the real world.

Eleven was tempted to reach out and touch the minds of her family, but she decided against it. She would need a little bit longer just to recover, but she would soon be out of there.

Why did she feel she was being watched?