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Chapter Text

“For you do not yet know the strength of your hearts, and you cannot foresee what each may meet upon the road.”

- J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

Kamchatka, Russia

July 1985

The screaming has started again.

It is damnably annoying. This wretched place is miserable enough on its own, the shrieks of pain and terror are hardly necessary. When Sacha had first arrived, his comrades had gloomily welcomed him to hell. Now that he’s seen the monster, seen the results of the American’s experiments, he has to agree with them. This place – this pit – is most certainly hell on Earth.

He has learned, by now, to tell apart the screams of those thrown to the monster and those given to the American. The frantic shrieks and agonized gurgles from those torn apart by the monster’s petal-like jaws were the worst thing Sacha had ever heard, until he had been set to guard the laboratory. At least the screams that rise from the monster’s cage are still distinctly human.

After laboratory duty, it is almost a relief to be set to guard the monster’s cage. Nothing much ever happens down here. Sacha hardly even sees the monster, except when they feed it. Or when the American demands more samples.

The American is pushy, for a prisoner. Cocky. As though he is in charge, and not in constant danger of his life. And always with that look, as though everyone else is either pawn or nothing to him. They have taken pains to treat him as any other prisoner, not to let him come to expect special treatment. But even when they beat him, he seems to know that he is too valuable yet to be truly harmed. Nothing quite seems to touch him. And he always acts as though he knows a secret.

Sacha does not admit it, even to himself, but most days he fears the American more than he does the monster.

He has long entertained thoughts of tossing the American into the feeding cage and loosing the monster on him, allowing them to devour one another. On long, dull guard shifts, when the inhuman shrieks of the American’s latest experiment ring off the metal walls all the way up from the very deepest level, it makes a good daydream with which to distract himself.

Sacha is deep in one such daydream when the alarms go off.

For a moment, Sacha does not realise what is happening. He stares, stupidly, at the red light flashing on the wall opposite him, listening to the frantic clamour of the alarms. His first, useless thought is to question if it is a drill, a test of some sort. Then the shouts and gunshots echo up from the lowest levels, and Sacha grasps his gun, all at once fully awake.

The gunshots below cut off, abruptly. With them go the screams.  And the lights. Apart from the regular blare of the alarms and their sweeping, searching red lights, all is in silence and darkness. Sacha scans the hallway that stretches out to his left and to his right, searching for any sign of movement. The fine hairs rise along the back of his neck, and he takes a step back, putting the rough metal of the wall closer behind him. The quiet is too quiet.

And then, from the stairs leading up from the lower levels, Sacha hears the metallic ring of footsteps.

He raises his gun and poises to fire, eyes straining against the dark. “Stop there! Identify yourself!” he barks, as a figure steps into view.

The figure – the man – does not stop, only continues, with a deliberate, almost swaggering stride, towards Sacha. The lights flicker on with a buzz, only for a second, before plunging them back into darkness. But, despite the red of the alarm’s glare colouring his face bloody, Sacha knows the man at once. Knows that swept-back silver hair, those steely eyes, that almost-smile, as though he knows something that Sacha does not. Knows the thick snarl of ragged scars that cover the left side of his face.

The American strides forward, raising a hand. Sacha fires.

He is an excellent marksman. He was a sharpshooter, before he was sent here, to hell on Earth. Sacha knows he did not miss. His single shot should have put the American on the floor, dead before he reached it with a bullet hole in the centre of his forehead. But instead, the American waves as though swatting a pesky fly, the lights flicker on and off and on and off, and Sacha hears the sharp sound of something small and metal clattering away down the stairs behind him.

The American keeps coming forward. Sacha keeps firing, blinking against the strobing lights, but not a single shot seems to touch the man. Sacha starts to back away, but stops himself short, not wanting to give ground to the icy blade of fear that slices through his insides. He’s seen how the men sent to the American have died. He’s always known the American was something less than human.

Then the American’s eyes dart to something over Sacha’s shoulder, his mouth twisting upwards into a small smile, as though at some private joke. Somehow, it is both fond and cruel. He puts his head to one side, ever so slightly, and crooks the fingers of his outstretched hand.

There is a shriek of metal from behind Sacha, and he spins, firing wildly. It does nothing to stop the reinforced door from tearing open as though it were paper, or to deter the monster that launches itself through the widening hole, the toothed petals of its horrible face already unfolding.

The last thing Sacha thinks is that, perhaps, he should have feared the monster more.

CHAPTER ONE

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Phone Home

August 22, 1985

El stands in the middle of the cabin, turning a slow circle as she takes in all of the things that have become so familiar in all the days she lived there. The mugs that had hung on the wall still lie in shards on the floor. The mounted deer’s head stares down at her with beady black eyes. Sunlight filters down through the broken roof, catching on motes of hovering dust. The wind whistles mournfully through the holes in the walls, halfheartedly ruffling the mismatched curtains.

The damage the Mind Flayer’s meat-body had done hasn’t been fixed or cleaned up. The whole place will be left to rot. No one, after all, was supposed to know it was there.

Home. Or the nearest thing El’s ever had. And now she has to leave it behind forever.

It’s starting to seem like a pattern. Her mama, her sister’s warehouse, the cabin…

Anywhere she calls ‘home’ is a place El will, sooner or later, have to leave.

Behind her, there’s a click, and a buzz of static. El’s feet don’t want to move, but she forces herself, slowly, to turn around. The television set is on, the screen fuzzy with grey-and-white snow. It blares an accusing white noise at her.

The lights on the radio blink on, one by one, and it adds its higher-pitched crackle to the static. In between the bursts of noise, El thinks, she can almost hear – a voice. Voices. Snippets of words.

Her breath catches in her throat.

El drags her reluctant feet over to the radio. This is familiar, by now, but she still hasn’t found the way to stop it. Just like the tests at the lab. The only way out is through.

“-El? Eleven? Jane?” The voices from the radio are all ragged, desperate, terrified, cutting in and out in bursts of static. El feels her own face crumple, pressing a hand to her mouth as she barely stifles a whimper. “- help – El – why?”

“I’m sorry,” El whispers, into her hand, as fragments of Kali’s voice, of Mama’s voice, of the voice of that nice man from the diner who’d fed El when she’d first escaped, spill from the radio. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I tried -”

The radio spits and pops, and the voice changes. El knows, before the next words come, who it will be.

“El,” Jim Hopper gasps, through the radio, silence eating holes in his plea. “- could – why didn’t y- save – help me -”

“I can’t!” El gasps, taking a stumbling step backwards. The fuzz of the TV’s static grows louder and louder in her ears, and she squeezes her eyes shut, but all that greets her is the dark of the inside of her own useless head. When she reaches for the void, for the memory of Hopper’s face and the sound of his voice – she finds nothing. Only, the way it always is now, a flat, dull emptiness where her powers should be. “I can’t, I couldn’t, I’m sorry -”

She wakes up.

El sits up in bed, breathing hard, ashamed of the tears threatening to squeeze, hot and sharp, from her eyes. She’s had this dream so many times, now. It shouldn’t still hurt like this.

It takes her a second to recognize the room she’s in as her own. It hasn’t been hers long, and she hadn’t had much to mark it with.

It even smells strange. Not quite the disinfectant-sharp cold of the lab, but not the friendly dust and wood polish of the cabin or the warm cigarettes-and-overcooked-food smell of the Byers’. This place smells like no kind of home El’s ever known.

Her teddy’s seated in the wicker chair by the window, though, and her Polaroids and the drawings Will did for her are there tacked to the ceiling that slopes down to the windows, and her posters are there on the cheerful yellow walls. Mike’s hawk and Wonder Woman’s stern, determined expression look down from the wall over the head of her bed. Max had given her the Wonder Woman one before she’d left. El had thanked her with an Amazon salute, hands in fists and wrists crossed, and they’d both laughed and hugged.

El hugs her own arms, now, and feels very small and very cold.

There’s a noise, from her right, and El bites back a gasp, jerking around to see –

Joyce Byers, hovering awkwardly in the doorway. When she meets El’s eyes, she gives a soft little smile. “Nightmare?”

El nods, and nods, feeling her heartbeat slowly return to normal, no longer hammering in her chest like it wants to escape. “Yes.”

Joyce’s smile gets a little bigger, but a little more pinched.

“Want to talk about it?” she asks.

El’s shaking her head no before Joyce even finishes the sentence.

Joyce lets out a long breath, her eyes turning sad as she looks at El.

But all she says is, “Okay. Do you want a minute to yourself, sweetie, or are you ready to come down for breakfast?” She jerkily gestures over her shoulder with a thumb. “I made waffles.”

“Eggos?”

Joyce gives her that pinched smile again. “Yeah, sweetheart. Eggos.”

El pushes the covers aside and climbs out of bed. “I’m ready now.”

Joyce doesn’t know about triple-decker Eggo extravaganzas. El hasn’t told her. And doesn’t think she will.

…

It’s the perfect kind of day to be up on Weathertop. The sky is a searing, even blue, fading to a hazy white around the horizon, just a few enormous confections of cloud starting to gather in the west. This high above everything else, Weathertop catches what little breeze there is, stirring the muggy air just enough to make Mike feel less like he’s drowning in his own sweat. The hot, dusty quiet of summer lies still and sleepy over everything.

“What time’ve you got?” Lucas asks Mike, who checks his watch.

“Five to three.”

“Great, they should be coming on soon.” Dustin settles himself down in the grass beside Cerebro’s controls, fiddling with the frequencies. “Cleric, Mage, do you copy? Come in, Cleric. Come in, Mage.”

Mike looks over at Lucas and Max. Max shrugs, and Lucas nods, so Mike sits beside Dustin, where the ham set’s mic will better pick up his voice. The dry grass scratches against his bare legs, and he shifts uncomfortably, brushing away an ant that crawls over the toe of his sneaker.

The sun beats down. The ham set crackles as Dustin scrolls through the frequencies, repeating his hail. The little breeze eddies around them, and then dies back into baking stillness.

And then, Will’s voice buzzes out of the speaker. “This is Cleric. We copy. Over.”

“Will!” Dustin shouts, right in Mike’s ear, and holds the mic up with a broad, only slightly toothless grin. “Guys, say hi to Will!”

Lucas lets go of Max’s hand to hurry over, kneeling down in the grass in front of Dustin and Mike. “Will! Hey, how’s Chicago? How’re you settling in?”

Max rolls her eyes, but she’s smiling as she joins Lucas in the grass. “Good to hear your voice again, dork.”

“Thanks, I think,” Will says. “Hey, my mom wants to say hi to you guys -”

There’s a crackle from the speaker, a short and muffled protest, and then Joyce Byers’ voice, a little too loud. “What? No, no – oh, okay. Hello, boys. And Max. Jonathan? Jonathan, come say hello -”

There’s another crackle, and a rustle, and then Will says, “Sorry, guys. I think she’s missing Hawkins more than she wants to let on.”

“What’s your new place like?” Mike asks. Even though he’s genuinely curious, even though he’s thrilled to hear from one of his best and oldest friends, he’d be lying if he said he isn’t also listening hard for El’s voice.

“Met any cute girls yet?” Dustin asks with an enormous grin, and they all hear Will’s exasperated sigh.

“Only me,” a second voice says, quiet and deadpan.

“El!” Mike says, and shoots a glare back at the knowing smiles his friends turn on him. “It’s, it’s good to hear from you.”

He can hear the smile in El’s voice as she answers, “Yes.” Can picture her lying sprawled out on her back on her bed, her walkie cradled lovingly next to her ear, eyes on the ceiling but not seeing it as she pictures him right back. Or maybe she’s lying on her stomach across Will’s bed, the two of them shoulder to shoulder, sharing Will’s walkie to cut down on radio interference. And maybe feel, a little, like they’re not really so far away from all of their friends.

For a second, Mike misses them both so much it makes his chest ache.

“Do you know what school you’re going to yet?” Max asks, when Mike doesn’t say anything else. He’s not sure how to make that huge, hot ache into words. Somehow, I love you and I miss you just don’t seem to cut it. “Know anybody else who’ll be in your classes?”

“Not yet,” Will says. “We really just got settled. El and I haven’t exactly had a chance to get out and meet anybody yet.” His voice goes kind of…annoyed and sad at the same time. “Seems like everybody’s coupling up out here, too.”

The Party members gathered on Weathertop share a glance. Out of nowhere, Mike catches himself thinking about the fight he’d had with Will after El had dumped him, about the way he and Lucas had found Will afterwards. And the way they’d found Castle Byers. As far as Mike knows, none of the Party have been back since that night. The place is probably still a mess.

“Well, I’m sure you guys won’t have any trouble making friends,” Max says, confidently, though she gives the boys a wide-eyed glare and a ‘go on’ gesture.

“Yeah, who wouldn’t want to be friends with a couple of cool dudes like you two?” Dustin agrees, enthusiastic as always. “You guys are like…Batman and Robin. A superhero and her sidekick who saved the world three times over. Maybe by Thanksgiving, you’ll have so many friends you won’t even want to come home!”

Mike glares at him. The walkie hisses. Dustin shrugs. “What?”

“Yes. Excuse me,” El says, and then there’s a rustling sound from the speaker.

“What?” Dustin repeats. Max slaps a palm to her forehead with a groan. Lucas shakes his head. Dustin looks back and forth between them like if he looks enough times, he’ll see the answer written on one of their foreheads. “What’d I say?”

“Look, we can’t wait to see you guys again,” Mike says, a little desperately.

“El’s gone, Mike,” Will’s voice says, sounding resigned even through the speaker, and Mike feels his heart sink into his sneakers. “I think she went to the bathroom.”

“So? You’re my friend. I’m looking forward to seeing you,” Mike says, hating how defensive he sounds, hating how it feels like an argument.

“Yeah, Will. You better be getting ready for the most epic campaign of our lives,” Lucas says, smoothly interrupting Mike’s flailing. Mike shoots him a grateful look, and he nods back. “I’ve been working on getting Max to roll a character. I think I’m wearing her down.”

“In your dreams, geekbreath,” Max says, giving Lucas a shove in the arm.

“Don’t you think she’d make a great barbarian?” Lucas asks, and Max gives him another shove, toppling him over in the grass. He pulls her down with him, and she shrieks.

“Yeah,” Will says, sounding distracted. “Yeah - listen, I’ve gotta go.”

“Aw, Will, you just got on!” Dustin protests, but Will keeps on talking.

“Sorry, guys. My mom. Talk to you again same time next week, all right?”

“All right,” Mike says, his good mood now thoroughly punctured. “We’ll be looking forward to it!” he adds, almost shouts, and Dustin gives him a pitying look.

“Yeah, Will. Hey, and next time, warn your mom so we can talk for longer, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Will says. “Cleric over and out.”

And then there’s just static.

“Well,” Dustin says, looking at the ham set for a long moment before turning it off. “That could’ve gone better.”

Mike huffs out a frustrated sigh, and gets to his feet.

“They just got there. I’m sure they’re still just upset about having to move in the first place,” he says, though the words sound hollow even to him. “Things’ll be better next week.”

Dustin doesn’t look like he believes Mike, but he takes the hand Mike offers to pull him to his feet. “Sure. If you say so.”

“I know so,” Mike says, with a confidence he doesn’t feel. “It’ll get better. You’ll see.”

…

Steve managed to make it a year between the first time he had to fight a monster and the second. But it’d barely been six months between that crazy night in the tunnels and blowing up the mall. So he guesses it only figures that it’s not even September before weird shit starts happening again.

It’s nothing he can put his finger on, at first. That’d be too easy. Just…an unsettled feeling. Like eyes on the back of his neck. Creepy, somehow. And constant. Almost the way he used to feel walking down the halls of the high school, in the bad old King Steve days, just flipped – hah – upside down.

Like he’s being watched.

The doctor who’d come with the military that night, the one Chief Hopper’d called, seems to think it’s normal. That it’s just paranoia, that it’s left over from when Steve was held and interrogated, that it’ll get more manageable with time. At least, that’s what he says. But Steve, smart or not, has gotten better at reading people. And when the doctor says everything’s going to be fine, his good-natured smile never quite seems to reach his eyes.

The doctor – Owens or Olsen or something like that – has checked in on all of them at least once since the mall. Steve can’t exactly blame the guy, given how they’ve managed to get themselves into apocalyptic levels of shit three times in two years. He still can’t understand how a handful of geeky middle-schoolers can get themselves into so much trouble. If he had that doctor’s job, he’d be putting the entirety of Hawkins under 24/7 surveillance and still probably never sleep again. The fact that the guy’s only done the one check-in says a lot about how much faith he has in them, to keep their mouths shut and handle their own shit. Or possibly about how busy he is with his own shit.

Or, possibly, that he does have the entirety of Hawkins under 24/7 surveillance. And, at first, that’s all Steve thought it was. Just some government goons, watching his movements, keeping an eye on him.

He’d meant what he’d said to Nancy, what feels like a lifetime ago. Better to keep their heads down, pretend nothing out of the ordinary’s going on, and not get themselves or their families messed up by their own government. After having been subjected to the Russians’ tender mercies, Steve’s happy to double down on that piece of advice. He’s in no rush to see the inside of an interrogation cell ever again. Even if he’d been high as a kite and can’t fully remember what had actually happened down there and what had been a wholesale hallucination, he still remembers enough to know it hadn’t been an experience he’d be eager to repeat.

(For the record, he’s pretty sure all the stuff with the brightly-coloured ponies had been a hallucination. Probably. Almost definitely.)

So Steve had put his head down and resolutely ignored the watched feeling until it came up at the check-in with the good doctor. And he’d been ready to go on ignoring it, until he opened his big stupid mouth and said, “You know, whoever you’ve sent out here to spy on us is doing a real good job of staying out of sight,” and looked up at the doctor.

And realized the guy either missed his calling in Hollywood, or genuinely had no idea what Steve was talking about.

So, it’s not government surveillance. At least, not American government surveillance. And the only options that that leaves aren’t great.

Funnily enough, it’s Robin who brings it up first. She looks like she’s been sleeping about as well as Steve has, which is to say, not well. He’s caught her dozing off once or twice on shift at the video store, and she looks like shit. Pale, almost corpse-y, with epic bags under her eyes.

“You look like shit,” Steve says, and Robin flings the empty plastic case for Invasion of the Body Snatchers at his head. He ducks a little too slow, but it bounces off harmlessly. “Ow.”

“You’re not looking too hot yourself, Harrington.” Robin points an accusing finger at Steve’s pride and joy, his luxurious mane. “Have you done anything with that mop at all this week?”

Steve hasn’t. Well, no more than the absolute bare minimum. He’s overslept more in this past week than he did in his entire career at Scoops Ahoy – not that that’s saying much – and hasn’t had the time to do much more than brush his teeth and scram if he’s gonna make his shifts. He’s aware that the hair that earned him his nickname has been looking the worse for wear, but he can’t seem to make himself give a shit. If he could just get some of the nervous energy that keeps him awake until ungodly hours of the morning to not evaporate the minute the sun comes up, maybe he would. It’s like the second the sun sets, every paranoid thought that’s ever crossed his mind all settle into his skull for a party. And they’re determined to trash the place.

The doctor says that’s normal, too. It might be normal, but that doesn’t mean Steve has to like it. He doesn’t need more shit to keep him up at night. He still can’t look out at the pool after dark. All he can think about is Barbara, sitting on the diving board, her blood falling in the water –

“Steve?” Robin snaps her fingers in his face, pulling Steve up out of whatever dark corner of his own mind he’d gotten lost in. “Hey. Still in there?”

“What? Uh. Yeah.” Steve gives his head a shake, squeezing his eyes closed for a second before cracking them open again. The fluorescents in the shitty strip-mall storefront burn like a bare bulb pointed directly into his eyes, burrowing a dull ache through his eye sockets and into his skull, pulsing down into his jaw. He scrubs a hand down over his face, rubbing his chin, and bristles snag against his fingers. He could use a good shave. “Sorry. Haven’t been sleeping so good lately.”

Robin’s laugh is bitter. “Tell me about it.” She taps the corner of a VHS tape vacantly against the countertop before popping it into the rewinder, like she’s deciding whether to say anything. She doesn’t look at Steve as she says, just a little too lightly and yet somehow also a little too seriously, “I have…been having some seriously fucked-up nightmares.”

Steve manages a weak smile. “Tell me about it.”

Neither of them says anything for a minute or so after that, listening to the rewinder hum and the fluorescents buzz overhead. Springsteen’s ‘Glory Days’ echoes tinnily from the radio on the counter, its lyrics weirdly mocking if you ask Steve. There’s a jangle as somebody pushes open the door, letting a waft of hot, asphalt-scented August air in to sully the perfectly air-conditioned store.

“Well, time slips away, and leaves you with nothing, mister, but boring stories of glory days…”

It takes the girl who’s walked in what feels like hours to pick a movie. In the end, she rents Sixteen Candles and maybe flirts with Steve a little bit while he checks the movie out for her. Steve doesn’t really know. He doesn’t really care. He thinks, briefly, that she’s no Nancy, and then there’s that drop, like missing a step in the dark, like finding out something you thought was certain and solid is really just smoke and mirrors and bullshit and there’s nowhere to plant your feet. It’s getting to be familiar, by now, less of a shock every time it comes, but – still. Even with friends who deserve the title, Steve’s starting to find out, you can still sometimes be lonely.

He waits until the chime of the bell over the door fades back into the humming quiet before he says, “So.”

“So,” Robin echoes. There’s a little smile tugging at the corner of her mouth as she looks him over. “You gotta start putting the effort in with the hair again, Harrington. Girls can overlook the total lack of game, but not without the coiffure. It’s gonna start affecting our profit margins.”

“Yeah. Yeah – hey, have you – have you ever considered doing standup comedy? Because you’re hilarious.”

“It’s a gift,” Robin says, with a shrug and a perfectly straight face.

“Seriously, though,” Steve says, leaning back against the counter and crossing his arms over his chest. “What am I supposed to do with myself when school starts back up again and you go back to all your clubs and shit? Or worse, when you graduate? And, uh, how – how’re you gonna fit your comedy tour in between band and theatre and four different languages?”

He knows he shouldn’t have said that last bit as soon as it starts coming out of his mouth. The lame attempt at a joke can’t cover up the genuine fear in the question that came before it, and trying just makes him look like a loser. It’s the first time he’s dared to mention the dreaded g-word. And doesn’t that just sound sad. No way Steve Harrington is afraid of talking to a girl.

It’s just – Robin’s really the only friend anywhere near his age he has left in this burg. When she’d agreed to go job hunting with him, he hadn’t wanted to look the gift horse in the mouth. But September is closing in fast, and – well. No use denying it. Steve, selfishly, doesn’t want Robin to quit. Even though he knows – he knows – that the best possible scenario, on every level, is for her to graduate with honours and a list of extracurriculars as long as her arm, get snapped up by Harvard or something, and get the hell out of Hawkins. Robin’s smart. She’s got options. Got a future.

She shouldn’t get stuck here just because she got saddled with Steve.

Robin looks at him with the biggest eyes and the smallest shrug he’s ever seen. “Pig Latin’s not a real language, Steve. Thought we’d been over that.” And then, her eyes focusing on something over his shoulder, “Hey, do you – do you think there’s any way the Russians could’ve come back?”

Steve blinks at her. “What?”

“Nothing. Forget it.” Robin focuses back on Steve’s face, with a big, obviously fake smile. “Didn’t get a laugh, so I’ll take that one out of my set.”

Steve turns around, trying to see whatever Robin had been looking at. Out the plate-glass window, in the parking lot of the strip mall, a battered blue pickup with a broken taillight bumps down over the curb, into the street. There’s a lady with a little fluffy white dog on a leash passing by on the sidewalk, and a couple of kids coming out of the arcade. Nothing that looks like it could be hiding a secret Russian operative.

Still, the hairs on the back of Steve’s neck rise, and they don’t go back down.

…

Will raps his knuckles against the bathroom door. “El? Eleven? Did you fall in?”

There’s a soft sound from the other side of the door, quickly cut off. Will sighs, and leans against the door. “Are you okay in there?”

There’s the unmistakeable sound of someone blowing their nose, and El says, in a voice just a little too choked to be normal, “Fine.”

“Okay. Well, if you’re fine, will you come out? I need to pee.”

The door stays closed. Will counts slowly to five in his head before he says, “You know Dustin didn’t mean anything. He was trying to give you a compliment. He’s just bad at knowing when to stop, sometimes.” It’s all true. Will wishes it didn’t feel kind of hollow.

Maybe…you won’t even want to come home!

“They still want to see us,” Will continues, a little louder. He debates with himself for a moment before he adds, “They still want to see you.”

There’s a click and a rattle from the lock, and Will takes a step back before El swings the door open. Her expression is solemn – although that’s nothing new – and her eyes look maybe a little red, but there’s nothing screaming that she’s been sitting in there crying.

“Not that,” she says, in that almost-creepy soft voice she gets sometimes.

Will waits for her to elaborate, but she seems to be done talking for the moment. And she’s showing no sign of moving out of the bathroom door. “Then what?”

El bites her bottom lip.

Then she turns around to face the narrow bathroom, and thrusts out a hand towards the bottles of shampoo sitting in the corner of the tub. Will can’t see her face, but he can see the tendons straining in the back of her hand. Can see the way her fingers start to shake, just slightly.

Nothing happens.

El lets her arm drop, with a sigh. When she turns back to face Will, she’s wearing a sad little half-smile. “No superpowers.” She shrugs, her smile slipping. For a moment, Will almost thinks she’s about to say something more – but then she gives her head a little shake, and the moment passes.

“Too bad,” Will says. Maybe not as sympathetic as he could, but – he’s lived his whole life without superpowers, except the ones that tried to eat his brain, and somehow he’s managed.

El gives Will a serious, piercing look, the one that always makes him wonder if she really can’t read minds, and says, “And you’re not a sidekick.”

Will abruptly feels like a shit.

“Look,” he says. “Batman doesn’t have any superpowers either, and he’s still a hero.”

El gives him a look that Will is completely unable to read. “None?”

“None,” Will confirms, with a nod. “Just a utility belt full of cool gadgets.”

El looks at him for a moment longer, before stepping past him, out of the bathroom. “All yours.”

“Thanks,” Will says.

He doesn’t shut the door right away, though. “Hey, El?”

El turns, and gives him a big-eyed look. She doesn’t say anything, just waits.

Will takes a breath. “If Lucas and Max are rolling her a character for our Thanksgiving campaign…I know I gave my sourcebooks to Erica, but if you want, we could at least start building you a character. So you could play too?”

El’s smile is unexpectedly brilliant. “Yes. Thanks, Will.”

Will nods, and smiles back, and then does shut the door. It’s a beautiful moment, probably, but he does still need to pee.

…

“Jonathan? Jonathan Byers?”

Jonathan doesn’t turn until whoever it is says his last name. He doesn’t recognise the girl who’s smiling at him from the other side of the photo counter. He hates that his first response is suspicion. “Do I know you?”

The girl points at her face, with a sardonic smile. “Think this, but with black lipstick.”

It takes Jonathan a second. He snaps his fingers when it comes to him. “Tina’s Halloween party, right? S- Stephanie?”

“Samantha,” the girl whose name is definitely not Stephanie says, her grin turning a little sarcastic. “Although I don’t blame you for not remembering. My hair was longer. And you were a little distracted by Steve Harrington’s girlfriend.” She says it easily, like it was a joke on Jonathan instead of a snub to her. Maybe, Jonathan thinks, she’s right.

“Yeah. Sorry, didn’t recognise you without the -”

“Makeup,” Samantha finishes for him, with a knowing nod.

“Siouxsie Sioux,” Jonathan says hastily. He’s not sure why it’s important to him now to make sure she knows that he knows his British punk rockers, that the Halloween party hadn’t exactly caught him at his best. “Not KISS. Obviously.”

Samantha’s smile only gets more knowing. “Obviously. So what brings you all the way up here? Headed to college in the fall?”

Jonathan can’t help the wince, and Samantha makes a little understanding noise. But she doesn’t understand. Can’t. And he’s got nothing to be ashamed of. “No, I’ve still got a year of high school left. The whole family moved.”

Samantha’s little understanding noise repeats, with a little more understanding this time. “It was your little brother who went missing, right? Gotta say, I’m surprised it took you guys this long to get out of that town.”

“Yeah, well…some things changed, back in Hawkins. What are you doing here?”

“School,” Samantha says. “College, starting in September. And I landed an internship at the Tribune. I’m working on layout and graphic design.”

Envy tastes bitter on Jonathan’s tongue as he forces a smile. “That’s incredible.”

Judging by the look Samantha gives him, he hasn’t done quite a good enough job hiding his envy. “Yeah, it’s a coup. I was really lucky.” She leans on the counter, giving him a thoughtful look. “You were really into photography, right? Nicole said you were always using the darkroom whenever she had to develop prints.”

That’s a bitter memory, too. “Yeah,” Jonathan admits.

Samantha drums her fingers on the counter, then reaches down to rummage in the patchwork bag slung over her shoulder. “Tell you what. I’m gonna give you a number, you should give this guy a call.” She pulls out a spiral notebook covered in stickers and a ballpoint pen, ripping a page out of the notebook. “Drop my name. No guarantees, but maybe you could get your foot in the door for next summer.”

She says it so easily, like she’s not doing a shockingly generous favour for a near-stranger. Jonathan watches her scribble down a name and phone number in truly atrocious chicken-scratch, trying to think of something to say.

When she hands him the piece of paper, he manages a mumbled, “Thanks.” She must notice how dumbfoundedly he’s staring at the paper, because she gives him a broad smile.

“Of course. Us Hawkins weirdos gotta stick together.” Her smile softens a little, and she says, “Besides. It’d be nice to have a friend in the newsroom.”

“Yeah,” Jonathan repeats. “Always nice to have a friend.”

Samantha nods, and tucks her notebook and pen back into her bag. “See you around, Jonathan Byers. Good luck!”

Jonathan waves a little as she turns and heads up to the front of the pharmacy. Then he looks back down at the sheet of paper in his hand.

Under the name and number for the man at the newspaper, she’s written, ‘Samantha “Siouxsie” Stone’ and a phone number that must be her own. And drawn a little smiling face. With the stylized eyes of the Banshees’ logo.

Jonathan smiles, a real smile this time, and folds up the piece of paper, slipping it into the back pocket of his jeans.

…

“I don’t know,” Joyce says, turning her head left and then right, examining her reflection in the mirror propped against the counter. “I’m not sure blue is…my colour.”

“Oh, come on,” Rhonda says, leaning her chin in her hands and her elbows on the beauty counter. “With your complexion? Everything’s your colour. Seriously, sugar, what’s the secret to your skin? I’m jealous.”

Joyce bites her bottom lip and manages a smile. “Just lucky, I guess.” The smile feels a little easier as she teases back, “And I don’t have time to spend lying in a tanning bed.”

Rhonda, who clearly does have time to spend lying in a tanning bed, grins back. “All right. Blue eyeshadow’s out. But how about a little blush? Bring out that gorgeous smile.”

Joyce thinks she probably doesn’t need artificial blush right about now. “You’re just flattering me because you haven’t made any sales today and you want me to buy a lipstick, aren’t you.”

Rhonda throws her hands up, batting her heavily-mascaraed lashes. “Can you blame me, hon? Honestly, it’s a crime, you being so pretty with just a little eyeliner and mascara. If I were twenty years younger, I’d still need eleven products to look even half as nice.”

Thankfully, Joyce is saved from having to respond to that by Mr. Baxter’s annoyed, “Does no one work around here?”

Joyce spins around on the stool at the counter. Mr. Baxter does a double take. “Joyce. That’s, uh, a very bold look.”

“I tried to tell Rhonda,” Joyce apologises. “She didn’t listen.”

“She never does,” Rhonda says, with a broad smile. “Because if she did, you’d always play it safe. You’re young! You’re pretty! You should be -”

“Please tell me you haven’t set up another blind date for me,” Joyce groans, and Rhonda’s grin gets broader and more shameless. “No! Rhonda, how many times do I have to tell you -”

“At least one more,” Rhonda says. “You’ll like him, honey! He owns his own business -”

Joyce pushes herself off the stool, holding up both arms, elbows crooked, palms out, like Rhonda’s holding her at gunpoint. “I’m not – Len, please tell me there’s some shelves that need stocking. Does Jonathan need more developing chemicals? The back room need sweeping? Anything?”

“You’ve gotta get back on the horse, sweetheart, or you’re gonna spend your whole life scared of getting kicked,” Rhonda protests. “Tell her, Len.”

“I’m not getting involved in this,” Mr. Baxter says, backing away. “Joyce, you can sweep out the storeroom if you’re really that desperate for something to do.”

Joyce presses her palms together, mouths a silent thank you at Mr. Baxter, and flees.

…

By the time Dustin makes it home, the distant piles of fluffy white clouds on the horizon are not so distant, and not so white and fluffy. The wind kicks up, roaring in the trees and howling up and down the roads, turning the few last blocks of Dustin’s bike ride into an epic struggle against the elements. By the time he pulls into the carport, he can hear thunder grumbling discontentedly off in the distance.

Dustin carefully unloads his precious cargo, hiking the backpack carrying the ham set and the other assorted delicate mechanical bits he can’t just leave on an open hilltop higher on his shoulders as he tucks his bike into the carport. The backpack’s heavy enough that it nearly pulled him off his bike four times on the way home, and it nearly topples him over again as he tries to lever open the front door. He wobbles on the threshold for a second, trying to catch his balance.

“Dusty! Be careful!”

“Yes, Mom,” Dustin calls, struggling to maneuver his burden through the doorway without smacking it into anything. He succeeds. Mostly. “Nothing broken!” he adds, as insurance. Of course, he can’t actually know that yet, but…

“No, no – Tews!”

There’s a moment of confusion, when Dustin tries to step back and his mom tries to lunge for the cat and Tews, scenting freedom, makes a break for the door and the all-you-can-eat mouse buffet that lies beyond. Somehow, it ends with nothing broken and Dustin’s mom gently cradling Tews in her arms while Dustin huffs through the icy electric zap of a banged funny bone.

“You can’t let her get out, Dusty,” his mom scolds, gently. “Not after poor Mews.”

“I know, Mom. Sorry.” Dustin gives his sneakers a wipe on the mat before starting across the living room.

“And Mrs. Mason’s poor little Snowball. And George Crenshaw’s Duchess…and the Allens’ poodle, just yesterday.” Dustin’s mom shuts the door firmly, despite Tews’ mewling protest. “I don’t want this precious girl anywhere near that door. Dusty?”

Dustin pauses in the hallway. “Yes, Mom. I won’t let the cat out.”

“I don’t want you out too late, either,” his mom says, bustling over to plant a kiss on Dustin’s forehead.

“Aww, Mooooom!”

“I mean it, Dustin. Exploding malls, missing children, and now - who knows what’s been getting after people’s pets? It could be another coyote. I don’t want it getting my baby boy, too.”

Dustin manages to squirm out of further displays of affection. “I’ll be careful, I promise. Now can I go put my stuff in my room?” He shrugs, showing off the unwieldy bag. “This’s heavy.”

“You tell your friends too, pumpkin,” his mom calls after him, as Dustin escapes into his room. “Be careful. And keep their pets inside!”

…

Lucas barely makes it through the front door before Erica is on him, like a shark that’s scented blood.

“There’s my beloved big brother who never lets me down. My, you’re looking handsome today. And so strong and tough!”

“What do you want, Erica,” Lucas sighs.

Erica crosses her arms over her chest. “I need a favour.”

“Fine, but you know the price.”

Erica gives Lucas her best death glare. Lucas smiles mildly back.

“Fine,” Erica snaps, at last. “I don’t like you hanging out with that Max kid, nerd. She’s a bad influence.”

Lucas smiles a little wider. “What’s your favour?”

Erica gives him a long, assessing look. They both know it’s her last chance to back out.

Finally, she huffs a disgruntled sigh. “You gotta take me to the movies.”

“What? Can’t you go with your own friends?”

“Not any more.” Erica purses her lips. For once, Lucas gets the feeling she’s not making the face at him. “Apparently, since somebody burned down the mall, all of a sudden it’s not safe for us to hang out by ourselves after dark. Even if we’re just going to the Hawk downtown. We have to have a chaperone.” She says it like it tastes bad. Lucas can’t blame her.

“Says who?”

“Says Mom.” Erica cocks her head to one side, daring Lucas to keep arguing. He doesn’t. The tricks he’s learned from dating Max might work wonders on two of the women in his life, but he doesn’t have enough of a deathwish to try any of them on his mother. “And Alicia’s sister’s got a date. So, either you come with us, or I don’t get to go.”

“And if I say no?”

Erica leans in, glaring up at her brother. Her voice and her humourless smile are both poisonously sweet as she says, “Trust me. You do not want to find out.”

Lucas looks down into the teeth of his sister’s glare, weighing his options.

“Fine,” he says. “But you owe me.”

Erica just rolls her eyes.

…

Max flips her board up, tucking it under her arm. She pauses in front of the door, listening, but everything’s quiet inside. She waits a couple of seconds, just in case she’s caught them in a lull, but the quiet continues. Max breathes out, and opens the door.

“I’m home,” she calls, shutting the door carefully behind her. Maybe, with any luck, her stepdad’ll be out –

“Maxine? Come in here.”

Max swallows, turning toward the kitchen. Neil doesn’t sound mad, exactly, but he sure doesn’t sound happy either.

She drags her feet into the kitchen. Her stepdad’s sitting at the table, kind of hunched over with his elbows rested on its surface and a piece of paper in his hands. Her mom’s sitting beside him, back perfectly straight, hands clasped in her lap, eyes down on her hands. Neil looks up when Max stops, just inside the kitchen doorway, and – he looks pissed, but no kind of pissed Max has ever seen on him before. Almost like his anger’s…fragile, like if Max said anything or touched him he might burst into tears.

Her mom doesn’t look up at all.

Max looks from her mom to her stepdad and back to her mom. “What is it? What’s going on?”

It’s her stepdad who answers her, tossing the piece of paper across the table towards her. Max is half expecting him to shout, but the grimly furious deadpan that grinds out of him instead is somehow worse.

“Coroner’s finally released your brother’s body.” He looks up, meeting Max’s eyes. Max can’t move. “We’ve got a funeral to plan.”

…

Jonathan gets home from work to find that, by ‘I’ll make dinner’, his mom apparently meant she’d order takeout from the Chinese restaurant down the street. In the dim, watery square of late-afternoon light sneaking between the buildings outside and into the narrow kitchen, Will’s picking morosely at a white folded takeout box, while El appears deep in a dissection of a deep-fried chicken ball. His mom’s smile is shaky, appearing and disappearing with the quick flicker of a closing shutter.

She starts when Jonathan shuts the door behind him, her head snapping around to face him. For a moment, he almost doesn’t recognize the way she looks at him, all stark fear and steely anger. But it’s only there for a split second before she realizes it’s Jonathan and breaks into a broad, relieved, bright smile. “Jonathan! Hey, honey, come eat. I got ginger beef. That’s still your favourite, right?”

Jonathan pauses a moment before he nods, shucking his jacket and hanging it up on the hook by the door. Will looks up too, at the sound of his mom’s voice. El glances back over her shoulder with a bright flicker of smile, and for a moment Jonathan’s struck by how much it reminds him of his mom.

He really hopes El isn’t going to grow up with that same anxiety living just under the surface of her thoughts. But even as the thought crosses his mind, he knows that she’s got more than enough reason to. Her and Will both.

Jonathan wonders, briefly, sharply, if any of them will be able to escape it now. If it’s in them, infecting them all, like the Mind Flayer had Will, a fear like poison that can’t be drawn or burned out. A fear that can control them all without their ever realizing something else is pulling the strings.

He wonders whether leaving Hawkins was escaping, or just running away.

Will smiles, and the moment passes. Jonathan grabs the empty fourth seat, across the table from his mom, and pulls a white paper carton towards him at random. “This smells great. Thanks.” He peers into the box. “What’s this?”

“Maggots,” Will says, innocently. Jonathan shoots him a glare, pushing the box of plain white rice back into the centre of the table and grabbing another box. El giggles, and reaches down underneath her chair, coming up with the thirdhand Polaroid One-Step 600 Jonathan’d helped his mom pick out as a going-away gift for her. She snaps a picture of Jonathan’s face before he can fully push the image of a Chinese takeout box full of squirming maggots out of his head. He wrinkles his nose in her direction, and she smiles, a real smile this time.

“I was thinking,” Jonathan’s mom starts, resting her arms on the table in front of her and lacing her fingers together, “maybe before school starts, we could go see where your new school is and what it’s like. Just – so it isn’t all such a surprise, on the first day.”

Jonathan looks up from the ginger beef he’s finally located. His mom’s smile is nervous, as always, but sincere. He wonders if she actually believes her own reasoning. Maybe they’ve seen enough weird disasters by now that she can admit that she wants to see it, before she takes them all there and leaves them there alone. That she wants to make sure it’s safe.

He can’t tell if leaving Hawkins is making her better, or worse.

“What’s the point?” Will asks, jamming his chopsticks hard into the carton he’s holding. His mom’s smile falters, coming back more earnest – and more nervous.

“It’s going to be the first time El’s gone to school -”

“I’ve gone to schools,” El interrupts, with a little frown of confusion and a glance over at Will. He doesn’t seem to notice, all his attention on whatever’s in the takeout carton in front of him.

“No, no, sweetie, as – as a student.”

“My friends aren’t going to be there,” Will continues mulishly. Jonathan shoots him a glare, and he returns it, wide-eyed and mutely angry. “It doesn’t matter if I know the building better than the ingredients for a resurrection spell or go in blind. It’s still going to stink.”

“Will,” their mom says, and there’s a pleading note in her voice. “Come on, baby, I know you’re upset, but I’m – I’m sure you’ll make lots of new friends.” The smile gets a little brighter, a little more desperate, as she leans across the table to ruffle Will’s hair. Will bats her hand away. Jonathan busies himself with the ginger beef and pretends he didn’t see the flash of hurt in his mom’s eyes. “Maybe – I’m sure some of the other kids must like Dungeons and Dragons, too. Maybe you could start another party -”

“I don’t want another party!” Will bursts out, slamming both hands down on the table on either side of his carton of takeout. Noodles go flying. “And I don’t want new friends! I want my friends!”

He’s on his feet before Jonathan can even set down his box. “Will -” his mom starts, but Will’s already storming out of the kitchen. Jonathan can hear his footsteps pounding up the stairs overhead.

El looks back and forth between Jonathan and his mom. She clears her throat, quietly. “I’d like to go,” she says, like she’s not sure she’s allowed. “To…school.”

Jonathan’s mom starts, turning away from the doorway, then back, like Will might have come back down in the half-second she was looking away, before turning a smile and her full attention to El. “You’d like to see it before you start there?”

El nods once. “Yes.”

“Okay. Okay, we – okay, honey. We can do that.” Jonathan’s mom leans on one elbow, looking over at the Polaroid El had taken of Jonathan’s face. Her brow furrows, and she darts a mischievous look at Jonathan before she says, with affected seriousness, “Oh, that’s a good one. I think that’s a keeper.”

El nods, seriously, but she also shoots Jonathan a darting, teasing look. “Yes. For the fridge?”

Jonathan’s mom cocks her head to one side, still with an exaggerated frown that can’t quite hide the smile that’s struggling through. “I think…that sounds like a really good idea.”

Jonathan sighs. El abandons her focus on her de-battered chicken ball to watch with a slow, spreading grin as his mom, with great pomp and circumstance, pins the photo of his disgusted face to the fridge with a novelty magnet of a carved squirrel with a sign saying ‘Wyoming’. He doesn’t even remember ever visiting Wyoming.

“There,” his mom says, taking a step back to admire her handiwork, hands outstretched like she expects the magnet to fall off the fridge and she’s bracing herself to catch it. But it stays in place, and after a second, his mom turns back to the table with a triumphant smile, clapping her hands together. “There. Preserved for posterity.”

“ ‘Posterity’?” El asks.

“Oh. The future,” his mom explains, turning her attention to Jonathan. “Jonathan? Would you like to come with us?” Her smile gets coaxing, like he remembers from when he was little and got sick, and she was trying to get him to take his medicine. “I hear the new high school has a much nicer darkroom…”

“My whole life is a dark room,” Jonathan mutters to his ginger beef.

“What was that?”

Jonathan looks up. “Sounds great, Mom.” He points, with his chopsticks, to the white takeout boxes scattered across the table. “Thanks for taking care of dinner.”

For maybe the first time tonight, his mom’s smile looks real, and despite himself, Jonathan feels a smile drag itself across his face, too.

…

Nancy sets down her pen with a groan, leaning back in her deskchair, and looks up from the first draft of her college essay.

Her memory board stares back at her, inanimate, accusing. Pictures tacked over pictures, keepsakes and mementoes. Her entire childhood pinned down and held in place. Like Nancy could hold onto it, somehow, if she could just stick it to the board. Like it was safe there. Unchanging. Forever.

Barb’s face stares back at her, out of so many of those pictures. So many of those memories.

Nancy shakes her head, letting out something that’s half a laugh even though nothing’s funny. Barb’s dead and probably wouldn’t even recognise the person Nancy is now, there’s a hole in the world that keeps tearing open and letting out monstrosities beyond human comprehension, and Nancy is trying to write a college essay. Trying to come up with a time you were in a difficult situation that a stranger who may never meet her will believe and a way you handled it that doesn’t involve a firearm. Or fire. She can only imagine what the applications people would think if she told them even half of what she’s been through in the last two years.

And yet, somehow, even after everything she’s been through, every horror she’s stared down, the thing Nancy’s most scared of right now is the phone.

The whole thing seems absurd – maybe even a little bit bullshit – but Nancy runs her hands through her hair and turns her attention back to the sheets of paper on her desk. Enough checking over her shoulder every few seconds just in case the phone on her bedside table is about to ring. Enough moping about people she’s lost. The phone isn’t going to ring, and Barb isn’t going to stop being dead, and Nancy is going to write this stupid essay. She’s going to have a life after the Upside Down. She’s going to have a life. This is just step one of making that happen.

And Nancy Wheeler doesn’t know the meaning of the word ‘retreat’.

She gets up to telling the admissions board about how she’s going to graduate without her best friend before it’s too much. Nancy gets up from her desk, and steps back. She stands in the middle of her room, her chrysalis, and looks around, feeling a sudden and unfamiliar rush of melancholy. For all that she’s printed her personality on every inch of space between the now bright-purple walls, it won’t be her room for so very much longer.

She breathes in and out, long deep breaths until the hot, stinging feeling in her eyes starts to fade.

Then she tucks the draft of her essay into a folder for safekeeping, shuts it in her top desk drawer, and leaves the room, slamming the door behind her. And she doesn’t look back at the phone on her way out.

Nancy’s mother looks up from the veg she’s chopping when Nancy comes down the stairs. “Nancy! Going out? Dinner’s almost ready.”

“Yeah, I know, I -” Nancy tries and fails to give a convincing smile. “I’m just going around the block. I’ve been working on that essay too long, I need some air.”

Her mother puts the knife down, wiping her hands off on the dishtowel hanging under the sink before she crosses the kitchen. She’s giving Nancy that awful soft, pitying look that everybody used to get when she walked into a room after the news of Barb’s death had broken. Nancy’s always hated that look. It’s useless. It doesn’t do anybody any good. It was such a waste of time for people to pity Nancy when none of them bothered to get to know Barb in the first place. Or notice she was even missing.

“Mom,” Nancy says, her voice and her smile a little steadier this time. “I really do just want a quick walk. I’ll be right back in time for dinner.” She’s trying to say, without saying it, I’m not sneaking out to cry in secret. Even thinking it just makes her feel pathetic.

Her mom sucks her lips together, like she’s the one trying not to cry, and suddenly Nancy wants to laugh at how absurd it all is. She reaches out to Nancy, both arms open, and Nancy sighs, but she steps forward, letting her mother enfold her in a hug.

“Sweetheart, you know I don’t mind you going out to the cemetery. I just wish you’d spend more time with the living. Or at least tell me where you’re really going,” her mom says quietly, into Nancy’s hair. “And be careful, okay? Back before dark.”

Nancy has to bite back a snort of unamused laughter. Spend more time with the living. Sure. Maybe if the living wanted to spend any of their time with her. Maybe if there was a single other person left in Hawkins who could possibly understand even the tiniest little sliver of what Nancy’s been through, what she’s going through, and doesn’t hate her. Or isn’t her little brother’s friend.

Maybe if Jonathan would call her.

It’s all still absurd – maybe even a little bit bullshit – but Nancy wraps her arms around her mother’s waist and presses her face into her mother’s shoulder anyway.

She’s not sure how long they stand like that before the timer on the oven goes off. Her mom sighs and pulls away. She gives Nancy a smile that’s only slightly watery, then glances back over her shoulder into the kitchen. “That’ll be the meatloaf. Would you run up and tell your brother dinner’s in five minutes?”

“Oh – Mike’s not up in his room,” Nancy says. “He went out with his friends earlier, he isn’t back yet.”

“Really? It’s almost six.”

Nancy shrugs. “I haven’t seen him.”

Her mother sighs, sounding exasperated, but there’s a little worried crease between her eyebrows. “Well, he knows where we live. And if his dinner gets cold, I guess he’s got no one to blame but himself.”  

…

Mike says his goodbyes to the rest of the Party, and then turns onto Mirkwood.

He’s got no luck today. When he pulls up to Will’s old house, there’s a station wagon parked in the gravel drive, beside the sleek Lincoln town car that belongs to Mrs. Byers’ real estate agent. Somebody’s looking at the house.

Mike knows he’s being ridiculous. It doesn’t matter whether the house sells or not. They’re not coming back.

Still, he thinks about some stranger living in Will’s house, and wants to throw a rock through the front window.

Instead, Mike hangs a right, and bumps off into the trees. The cabin’s way back in the woods, well out of anybody’s way. And it’s, like, a hundred years old and full of holes, now. Nobody’s going to bother trying to sell it.

He hopes.

The trip wire’s long discarded. Mike rides his bike right up to the porch, bouncing over tree roots and hidden rocks. He leans his bike against the rough boards of the porch and takes the stairs at a run, but hesitates in front of the door.

Will’s mom had taken them back only once, after – after. They’d all helped pack up anything El might want with her at the Byers’. It hadn’t been much. She hadn’t lived there long. Hadn’t had much to pack.

El hadn’t come with them. Mike can’t blame her.

Mike knows that Will’s mom’s been back a few times since then - he saw some of Hopper’s old stuff in the garage sale they held before they moved - but he hasn’t been inside since they stripped El’s room. He doesn’t entirely know what he’d find on the other side of that door.

Whatever it is, though, it won’t be El, smiling, and Hopper yelling at them to keep the door open three inches.

Mike takes a long, deep breath in, and then lets it out.

And then he turns away from the door, like he always does, and goes and leans against the porch railing, staring out at the woods.

He stays there until it starts to rain.

…

“You have got to be joking. How hard can it be to find?”

In his many, many years, first with the army and then in the nameless jobs doing much the same stuff as he did in the army, only quieter and more so, Douglas J. Wallace has answered to a lot of people. There are a handful of basic personality types, he’s observed, who make it to a certain level in almost any organisation, but especially anything government. The drill sergeant. The cutthroat bitch. The schmooze. The spoiled brat. The evil genius.

He’s not sure yet which one Dr. Lisa Conners fits into, and it makes him uneasy.

“We’ve had teams out scouring the woods since the breach,” Wallace tries, and the doctor squeezes her eyes shut under the thumb and forefinger she’s using to pinch the bridge of her nose, giving a huff that sounds like she’s barely bitten off a few choice words. “But there’s practically nothing to go on. No reported attacks or disappearances, other than a few pets, and there’s miles of woods out there -”

“I can’t believe this,” Conners interrupts him, straightening up and waving dismissively in his direction with the hand she’d been leaning against her desk with a moment before. “You’re really telling me he got it all the way here from behind the Iron Curtain, and you managed to lose it in a city the size of a postage stamp?”

She turns to stare at Wallace like she’s actually expecting an answer.

“We’re doing our best, ma’am,” Wallace says, after a moment’s deliberation, as carefully lifeless as he dares. “There’s a lot of woods out there. It might help if I had more men at my disposal -”

Conners cuts him off again, with a wave of her hand and a roll of her eyes, pacing the length of her desk in one direction and then the other. There are still unpacked boxes stacked in every corner of the mostly-intact room she’s claimed as her office, but she’s apparently taken the time to set out a framed photograph and an engraved nameplate on the desk. Just like a dog pissing on a hydrant. Marking her territory. “Washington won’t spare us any more resources. Officially they claim it’s because we’re supposed to be keeping a low profile.”

Wallace is pretty sure that the fact that there’ve been two massacres of government employees in this particular postage stamp of a city in the last two years probably plays into it, too. Although he’s equally certain the concern is less about loss of life and more about loss to the bottom line.

He doesn’t say any of that, though, even if the way Conners’ lips are pursed suggests she’s thinking along the same lines. A person doesn’t get as far as Wallace has in his profession of choice by having opinions. And you never know who might be listening.

Speaking of which. “Is a manual search our only option?”

Conners gives him a long, thoughtful look, before shaking her head. “I’m not sure I understand what you’re driving at, Mr. Wallace.” She leans back against the edge of her desk, half-sitting on it, kicking one ankle over the other with a quiet rasp of pantyhose, and crosses her arms, staring Wallace down. There’s the shadow of a smile starting across her face, and a glint of something dangerous in her eye.

Wallace isn’t fool enough not to notice the warning. He bites back the rest of the request.

“Unless you can dig up one of those old test subjects, we’re stuck searching the old-fashioned way, for now,” Conners goes on, like she’d never paused at all. “And if you can’t pick up the pace -”

Wallace takes a risk, and interrupts her for once. “Not without decreasing surveillance on the subjects. We’re stretched too thin as it is.”

Connors just studies him for a moment, long and hard. The quiet’s filled with the muffled drumming of rain against the building. There’s a distant rumbling which might be thunder, or might just be the thing they’re still trying to put together in the basement.

“Do you know why they sent me here, Mr. Wallace?” Conners asks, finally, just when Wallace is starting to feel vaguely uncomfortable.

The real reason, Wallace knows, is that neither of her predecessors were up to the job anymore. Dr. Brenner – well, and Dr. Owens had gotten a little too buddy-buddy with that family, the one whose kid caused all the trouble. But Wallace isn’t sure what the official, approved, authorised version of events leading up to Conners’ appointment looked like.

And, even though he doesn’t officially have a rank or title in this job, the mister still sounds like an insult. “Because you were the right man for the job, ma’am?”

Conners gives him a knifelike little smile that doesn’t meet her narrowed eyes.

“Because, Mister Wallace,” she says, “they’re expecting me to fail.”

Wallace tries to figure out what the correct response to this one is, and decides probably silence.

He seems to have made the right call, because Conners gives him another little twist of a grin, leaning forward as she straightens up from the desk. “Look around you. Do you know how many bodies this place has seen?” She pauses, but doesn’t seem to expect any kind of response, since she starts talking again before Wallace can give one.

She paces across the room to the window as she talks, to stare out at the overlaid metal grid hiding the office’s light from anyone passing outside, and the rain pissing down beyond it. “No. You don’t. And neither do I, because officially, no one has ever died as a result of their work here, because we have to keep covering it up. Hawkins National Lab is a cursed assignment. It’s burned the last two poor idiots who tried to control it. So who’d they send for the third try?”

This time, she does actually seem to expect a response, turning to raise both eyebrows at Wallace with an expectant half-smile that’s about as encouraging as a drawn knife.

“Uh. You, ma’am?” he tries. It’s as diplomatic an answer as he can come up with.

Conners’ smile spreads out into a self-satisfied grin, crinkling the corners of her eyes. She leans back against the window well, crossing her arms again. “Someone expendable, Mr. Wallace. They sent me here with a skeleton crew and all assurances that if this goes wrong, they never hired me and didn’t even know I was here. I know you’re familiar with the concept.”

Wallace is. In his experience, though, it’s usually involved more jungles and deserts. Fewer small American towns.

“They set me up to fail here, Mr. Wallace,” Conners continues. She leans towards him, just slightly, before she adds conspiratorially, “They set us up to fail. They expect this assignment to blow up in my face, and then they’ll have a ready-made example to point to when they want an excuse for why they won’t put women in charge.”

She pushes herself back to her feet, starting to pace again. The constant back-and-forth is making Wallace a little seasick. “Well, I’m not going to let them. We really have something here, this time, and I am going to make it work. I am going to succeed where both my predecessors failed, no matter what I have to do or who I have to have dealt with to make that happen.”

There’s something sharp in her last few words, something very pointed in the look she fixes Wallace with. She’s still smiling as she stalks across the small room to where he’s standing by the door, her low heels clacking dully against the linoleum with every step, but it’s starting to look more and more like bared teeth. “And I am not going to stand for anybody undermining me, Mister Wallace.”

Wallace stands his ground as Conners steps up into his space, glaring up at him from under dark brows. The smile drops away so fast and so completely that Wallace is a little hard-pressed to even remember what it had looked like. “Are. We. Clear.”

She’s a scrawny little woman. There are at least seventeen ways Wallace could kill her, right now, before she even realised what was happening.

He swallows once, hard, before he answers, staring at a point just above and to the left of her head, “Crystal, ma’am.”

Conners studies his face with that flinty stare for another interminable moment, before she lets out a breath and takes a step back. “Fantastic,” she says, conversationally, like nothing just happened. “Keep your eyes on the subjects. And find that specimen. Bring it back alive.”

“Ma’am,” Wallace says, stiffly, and about-faces to face the door.

Cutthroat bitch, he decides, as he leaves Dr. Conners’ office. Maybe a little spoiled brat, maybe a dash of drill sergeant. But definitely cutthroat bitch.

…

Rain lashes wildly around the crown of the hill known as Weathertop. Under – and sometimes over – the constant boom and crackle of thunder, the wind falls and rises in an angry howl.

The spindly silver tower lovingly nicknamed Cerebro by its creator has stood through heavier downpours than this one. The lightning licking through the low-slung clouds holds no danger for it, thanks to a single telescoping metal rod strung through its centre and dug into the dirt at its base. It can catch and earth the electricity it attracts.

But it’s never had to contend with wind quite like this.

The reaching antenna-arms of the tower sway and wobble almost as though they’re dancing. The wind pitches out the odd reedy whistle as it whips through the struts and girders. There is a long, low, unearthly groan of metal under stress, barely audible through the clamour of the storm.

One swinging arm catches in the wind like a sail, and that groan rises to a shriek. For a moment, the whole tower twists – and then, with a pop like gunfire, the bolts holding the arm in place tear through the thin metal. The arm shears free, dangling from the delicate frame of the tower, banging against it as it flaps in the wind without rhythm or meaning, like a child hammering on a pot with a wooden spoon. It swings there for a few precarious seconds, before the last sinew tying it to the tower rips through and it tumbles to the ground.

It might be where and how the arm strikes the tower on its way down. Or it might be the ferocious gust of wind that flings raindrops sideways like stones from a slingshot and tears at the tower with clawed fingers. Or maybe it’s both. But the antenna arm thumps into the grass, almost silent under the roar of the raging storm.

And a few seconds later, in a series of metallic wails and groans and twanging pops, the rest of the tower follows it.

The triumphant howl of the victorious wind is all but swallowed by thunder. Thunder, and the thunderous rattle of the rain.

…

Rain rattles against the windows. Somewhere out in the night, thunder booms and grumbles. The sky flickers like an old black-and-white movie.

It’s been years since Steve cared about whether his parents are in town for any reason beyond party planning. But he catches himself wishing they were here, now, just so he wouldn’t have to be alone in the house. It’s way too quiet.

And he couldn’t shake the feeling, driving back from the video store after his shift, that he was being followed.

It’s probably the craziest paranoid thought he’s had since this all started. There wasn’t even anybody driving behind him most of the way home. Actually, traffic had been totally normal. Maybe even…too normal?

No. Nope. That’s nuts. He’s nuts. It’s official, Steve Harrington is out of his ever-loving mind.

He turns the TV on to MTV, with the sound up as loud as it’ll go, and stubbornly tries to pretend he doesn’t jump halfway out of his skin when the phone rings.

“Jesus,” Steve breathes, to himself, turning off the TV set before picking up the phone. “Harrington residence, you got Steve.”

“ ‘Harrington residence’?” Robin’s voice echoes, disbelievingly, and Steve breathes out.

“You try explaining to my old man why one of his business partners called his home number and got greeted with ‘You got Steve ‘the Hair’ Harrington at Loch Nora’s one and only 24/7 party pad, how can we get you fucked up?’” Steve waits a moment for Robin to stop laughing. “And yes, before you ask, that did really happen.”

“Oh my god, Harrington, how did it take everyone this long to figure out what a hopeless dweeb you are?”

Steve shrugs, before remembering Robin can’t see him. “It was high school. I had great hair, my own car, and a big house that’s empty half the time. It wasn’t me they cared about.” It hits him, as he says it, just how true it is. Thinking about it just makes him feel pathetic, though, so instead he says, “So. You got Steve ‘the Hair’ Harrington at Loch Nora’s one and only 24/7 party pad. How can we get you fucked up?”

Robin snorts.

“Don’t really need much more help in that department, thanks,” she says. “My grandparents went to a movie and I’ve got the house to myself. Mostly I just called you to hear another human voice.”

It wasn’t so long ago, Steve thinks, that getting a call from a girl who said she had the house to herself for the evening would’ve meant one thing and one thing only. That’s so far removed from what’s happening here that it’s almost funny.

He doesn’t laugh, though. “Yeah? Well, I’m glad you did. It gets way too quiet up here, too.” He paces across the hall, then turns around and paces out into the living room, going from the full length of the cord in one direction to the full length of the cord in the other. “You get home okay before the storm hit?”

“Yeah. I caught a couple drops pulling into the driveway, but I didn’t get, like, drenched. Or struck by lightning.” With eerily good timing, a flash lights up the sliding glass doors leading into the living room, illuminating the patio, the pool, and the woods beyond in sharp black-and-white for an instant before everything goes dark again. Steve mutters a curse, straining against the phone’s cord to try to reach the drawstring for the shades. The cord’s just about a foot too short. “What about you?”

“Wha? Oh, yeah. Definitely,” Steve agrees. “What – what were we talking about again?”

Robin sighs heavily into the phone. “Steve.” There’s a shade of concern in her deliberately casual voice as she asks, “Are you okay? You seem…more of a space case than usual lately.”

“What? No, I’m fine.” Steve brings a hand up to run absently through his hair. Outside, through the raindrops smearing down the glass, he can still see the pool, even with its lights out. The clouds overhead crackle and glow with lightning, the sound of it hissing and popping in the phone line. The lights in the hall and the living room all flicker, and Steve’s heart clenches in his chest, but the steady glow comes right back, warm and reassuring. He breathes out. “Just, y’know. Haven’t been sleeping so great.”

“Steve,” Robin says.

“Right. Already told you that.” Steve squeezes his eyes shut. Thunder booms through the house like there are no walls between him and the storm, vibrating in his bones. A dull ache starts in his temples, works its way down into his cheekbones, his jaw. Those fucking Russian thugs must’ve fractured something in there, something that didn’t show up on the X-rays. The bruising’s all healed, but it’s still hurting whenever he gets stressed out. Which is…all the time, now. “Hey, what did you mean when you asked if the Russians could have come back?”

Robin is silent so long that Steve wonders if the lightning’s knocked out the phone line. “Robin?”

“Nothing. I didn’t mean anything. Just had a – weird feeling… Look, we probably shouldn’t talk about this over the phone.” Robin makes a token effort to sound like she’s joking as she says, “You know. Wiretaps.”

“Right. Gotcha.” Steve twirls the phone cord around his finger as he stares out at the patio. “You work tomorrow?”

“Yeah, but I’ve got the late shift. You’re on in the morning, right?” Robin pauses for a moment before she says, “Meet you at the diner for lunch?”

“Yeah, sounds good. Noon?”

“It’s a date,” Robin says. “Try and get some sleep, Harrington. Day of the Dead might be a hit, but it’s not out on tape yet, we don’t need a zombie in the store to advertise it.”

“Seriously. Standup comedy is missing you,” Steve sighs into the handset. “See you tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow,” Robin agrees, and then the line goes dead.

Steve keeps the handset pressed to his ear for a moment before he realizes he’s acting like a little kid with a security blanket, and hangs it up as fast as he can. The plastic of the cradle cracks with a sad little noise, just up in the top corner, and Steve flicks at it with one finger. He didn’t think he’d slammed it down that hard. Probably the plastic’s just gotten brittle from sitting in the sun.

He sighs, and turns the TV back on, turning up the Police’s ‘Every Breath You Take’. Steve already knows he’s not going to be able to take Robin’s advice. He hasn’t had a solid night’s sleep in a week, and tonight doesn’t seem set to break the pattern. It’s impossible to tell if the sun’s set yet behind the solid wall of black clouds blotting out the sky, but he’s already vibrating with nervous energy. Wide, unfortunately, awake.

Sting’s vocals aren’t exactly relaxing, either. Steve’s never really listened to the lyrics to this song, but it turns out they’re creepy. “Every bond you break, every step you take, I’ll be watching you…”

It’s stupid. Steve’s not a baby. He’s gone after way worse monsters than a couple of guys with funny accents, with nothing more than a baseball bat with a few nails hammered through it and a healthy helping of bravado. And he’d been fine afterwards. Sure, had a few nightmares about getting ripped apart by demo-whatevers – or having to watch the kids get ripped apart by demo-whatevers – but they’d gone away. Eventually. Mostly. And they hadn’t had him jumping at shadows like this, scared to be alone in his own house, too scared to sleep, scared to look out his own windows –

Lightning strikes, somewhere close by, throwing a sharp spotlight on the patio and the woods beyond. It goes on and on, for – it’s got to be seconds. Thunder smashes into the house and Steve’s ears along with it, rolling and rolling, rattling his teeth and making his jaw ache. Every light in the house flares brilliantly white, and then dies. The music dies with it, leaving only the drum of rain on the roof and the low, near-constant roll of thunder.

The lightning cuts out abruptly, plunging the world into darkness.

Steve steps closer to the sliding door, to get a better look through the streaks the pouring rain leaves on the glass. After the flash, mostly what he can see are purple afterimages. And, looking pale and scared and only halfway there, reflected in the depths of the dark glass, his own face.

But he knows what he saw, in that single, blinding flash. And he knows he sees it again, as his eyes adjust to the dark, as he presses his nose nearly against the glass, holding his breath so it doesn’t fog it up. A rounded shape, gleaming pale against the darkness, half-hidden back between the trees. A round, pale shape turned towards the house.

A round, pale shape at about the height of a face.

There’s somebody out there.

Somebody’s watching him from the woods.

…

The pulse and crackle of thunder echoes throughout the drenched streets and homes of Hawkins, huddled low and close against the fury of the late-August storm.

Lightning cracks the roiling sky in two.

The flash of it is twinned between the daylight world and its nighted double. A brilliant bloody burst of light soaks the rotted, abandoned hulks mocking Hawkins’ neat little houses for an instant, turning the shadows razor-sharp, before it dies away into a ground-quivering boom.

Not all of the light bleeds out of the twilit world of the Upside Down after the flash, though. There is a place where the crackling clouds never quite lose a diffuse crimson glow, bleeding through every crack and crevice, everywhere the thick cover of slowly-swirling tempest wears thin.

It has been waiting. It has been growing.

Another pop of red lightning illuminates a long flat stretch of ground, not far from where the glow is centred. For a moment, the way that flat stretch glistens makes it look as drenched as its daylight counterpart.

And then the living carpet covering it ripples.

…

El stands in the middle of the cabin, turning a slow circle as she takes in all of the things that have become so familiar in all the days she lived there. The mugs that had hung on the wall still lie in shards on the floor. The mounted deer’s head stares down at her with beady black eyes. Sunlight filters down through the broken roof, catching on motes of hovering dust. The wind whistles mournfully through the holes in the walls, halfheartedly ruffling the mismatched curtains.

The damage the Mind Flayer’s meat-body had done hasn’t been fixed or cleaned up. The whole place will be left to rot. No one, after all, was supposed to know it was there.

Behind her, there’s a click, and a buzz of static. El turns. The television set is on, the screen fuzzy with grey-and-white snow. The lights on the radio blink on, one by one, and snippets of words spill through its higher-pitched crackle.

“No,” El says, and storms over to the radio. She turns it off with one sharp motion and stands staring at it, breathing hard.

The radio clicks back on, with a hiss. El reaches out and turns it off again, but it turns itself back on before she’s even pulled her hand back. She yanks the plug out of the wall, and the radio falls silent for just long enough that she can catch her breath.

Then it clicks back on again.

El lets out a short scream of frustration, and grabs the radio with both hands. “I can’t! I can’t!”

The voices continue, oblivious, relentless. “Help - El – why - failed -”

El pulls the radio off the shelf and throws it, as hard as she can, at the floor. It crashes down with a crunch and a grind of metal, and lies there twisted on the bare boards. One dial pops off and rolls away across the floor with a little rattling sound.

For a moment, the only sound in the cabin is the quiet hiss of the TV static.

And then the radio crackles back to life. “-even? Jane? – help -”

El screams, and screams, and the roof tears off.

The walls peel back. The floorboards fall away. The TV and the radio both dissolve into swirls of colour and disappear into the blackness, the last echoes of Hopper’s voice going with them. El reaches out, but she can’t do anything. In seconds, everything’s gone. Vanished into a vast, empty, silent darkness.

Leaving El alone.

She drops to her knees, with a faint splash, the sob she’s been holding back for so long tearing at her throat. El wraps her arms around herself, digging her fingers into her shoulders until it hurts, and gasps and shudders with a grief that feels too big for her body.

“Eleven?”

El freezes.

The voice hasn’t changed. Kali was able to call it up so clearly because it’s always been burned deep into El’s memory. He doesn’t sound angry, only curious, a little surprised, as though he hadn’t expected to find her here. Somehow, it’s worse than El imagined it. It would have been easier if he’d been angry.

El doesn’t want to look. She can’t stop herself.

He’s standing a few paces away, looking at her – looking at her as if she’s some kind of stray pet. Or a specimen out of its cage. Something interesting but unpleasant, unexpected, pitiful. Something that needs to be cleaned up and put back in its proper place.

He smiles when her eyes meet his, that same old familiar smile. The scars that rope across the left side of his face twist it into a sneer.

“Papa,” El breathes.

“Eleven,” her papa repeats, taking a step closer, his shiny shoes plashing loudly in the echoing silence. El scrambles to her feet, tries to back away, but finds herself frozen to the spot. “Where are you…?”

“Papa, no,” El says, but she can’t stop her bedroom from swirling into sight all around her. Her papa pauses, near enough to reach out and touch her, and looks around. Then his gaze settles, once again, on El.

El backs away as her papa steps forward, but the backs of her legs hit the bed. There’s nowhere to go.

She can’t move as he reaches down, almost fondly, to cup her face in both hands. Can’t do anything.

“Don’t be afraid, Eleven,” her papa says, in the voice he always used to ask El to do something that wasn’t really a choice. Almost kind. His thumb skims over El’s cheek, cold as dead flesh, almost gentle. His smile is as cold as his hands. “You’ve been made entirely obsolete. But you’ll always be my Eleven. And I will always be your Papa.”

El wakes up screaming.