Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Dustin’s last message is still glowing on the Lite-Brite when the Wheeler living room finally stops blinking.

STAY
HOLD TIGHT
WE GOT YOU

Steve’s still bent over with his hands on his knees, catching his breath, staring at that WE GOT YOU like it might wink out if he looks away. His lungs burn from the run. His back stings where the first round of Upside Down wildlife took a chunk out of him. His hair’s full of ash and… whatever passes for snow here.

The bulbs flicker once, twice, then settle into a steady, headachey glow. No new letters appear.

Robin hugs herself, fingers rubbing her upper arms, trying to warm skin that never quite stops feeling damp here. “Okay,” she says, voice a little too high. “Okay. They know we’re not dead. They’ve got a gate. We’ve got, uh, a half-plan. Which is more than zero plan. I’m thrilled. I’m ecstatic.”

Eddie paces in front of the curtained window, boots leaving wet squelchy marks on the warped floorboards. “Knowing Henderson, ‘hold tight’ probably means ‘don’t die in the next ten minutes, we’re making this up as we go,’” he mutters. “Which, like, relatable.”

Nancy doesn’t answer either of them. She’s at the wall by the kitchen doorway, still holding her diary, hands shaking just a little.

NOVEMBER 6, 1983.

The corner of the page is stuck, refusing to turn.

Steve forces his gaze up from the Lite-Brite. The Wheeler living room is familiar in that bad-dream way, with everything in the right place, yet everything wrong. Couch, TV, shelves, that stupid horse painting. All of it coated in a gray film. Vines curl along the walls and ceiling, sinking into outlets, wrapping the lamps. The air tastes like dust and old pennies.

“So,” he says, voice rough. “Four years of Hawkins. But this side never made it past one night.”

The night everything started. The night Eleven opened the gate. The night Will Byers disappeared. 

Nancy drags in a breath and turns away from the calendar, back to the Lite-Brite on the coffee table. Her fingers hover over the words, not quite touching. “Dustin said there’s another gate,” she says. “At Eddie’s trailer. If we can make it there–”

“We’re out,” Steve finishes.

She nods once. “If Vecna doesn’t find us first. Or the bats. Or whatever else is crawling around this version of Main Street.”

“Really selling it, Wheeler,” Eddie says, trying for a grin that doesn’t quite make it. “Ten out of ten travel brochure.”

Robin shifts her weight from foot to foot. The Lite-Brite pegs throw weird little stars of color over her face. “We sit here, we’re sitting ducks,” she says. “Ducks who are inside a haunted snow globe. I am anti-snow-globe right now.”

Steve straightens, working his shoulders. The cuts on his back flare hot, then settle. “Yeah,” he says. “We move.”

Nancy’s already at the front door, hand on the knob. The wallpaper around it peels in damp curls. The brass is half-swallowed by that fleshy growth; she has to pry it away with her fingertips before the latch will turn. Cold air breathes in, carrying that metallic, swampy smell.

She cracks the door, peers out. “Street’s clear,” she whispers. “I don’t see any of them. Yet.”

They line up automatically. Nancy first, then Steve, then Robin, Eddie taking the rear. Steve glances back one more time at the living room. The motionless lights, the calendar stuck on NOVEMBER 6, and then pulls the door shut behind them with a soft, wet thunk.

Outside, the ash falls in slow, lazy spirals. The sky is that same bruise-red, clouds lit from below by something that never quite shows itself. The houses are all there, sagging under vines and rot. Cars in driveways look dipped in gray wax.

The world hums under Steve’s feet. A low, steady vibration, like there’s a giant power station buried beneath Hawkins, overclocked and ready to blow.

They move down the porch steps towards the bikes. The wood is soft under their boots, the railing wrapped in cords of vine that pulse faintly under the red light. At the edge of the yard, the mailbox leans, flag half-melted.

“We cut across Main, angle toward Forest Hills,” Nancy murmurs, like she’s reciting a route she drove a hundred times. “If the layout’s the same, we pass the library on the way.”

Robin squints through the falling ash. “I never thought ‘let’s bike past the cursed library’ would be a thing I’d be on board with, but here we are.”

They stick close to the shadows. The sidewalks are cracked, grown over. Every few steps, a patch of that organic stuff squishes under their shoes, oozing cold. A tricycle lies overturned on one lawn, vines threaded through its wheels. The swings in a backyard creak very softly even though there’s no breeze.

Steve keeps his eyes moving. Windows, roofs, sky, he counts ten heartbeats between every glance up. It helps. A little.

They turn onto Main, and the storefronts huddle on either side, signs half legible through the grime. Radio Shack’s window is cracked, shelves inside sagging under warped boxes. The diner’s neon sign is choked in vines. 

“Shortcut,” Nancy says. “If we go around, that’s more street, more sky. If we cut past the library–”

A shriek rips across the air.

They freeze.

It’s distant at first – metallic and sharp, like someone dragging a fork across the inside of a car hood. It echoes off the buildings, direction hard to pin down.

“Please be Upside Down seagulls,” Robin whispers. “Please be… anything with a beak.”

The second shriek is closer.

Steve’s head snaps up.

The red clouds churn. Something darker boils out of them, a patch of shadow that moves against the rest. It spreads, rippling, then resolves into shapes.

Bats. Dozens, then more. A swarm, spilling out from somewhere near the lake, spiraling higher, then angling down, drawn toward town like somebody rang a dinner bell.

And they’re coming their way.

“Oh, come on,” Eddie groans. “Do we have, like, a scent? Is it me? It’s me, isn’t it?”

“Run,” Nancy says.

She doesn’t yell it. She just moves, and they move with her.

They bolt across the street, shoes slapping wet concrete. The air fills with the beating of a hundred wings, the shrieks tangling together into one long horrible sound. Shadows flicker over the pavement as the swarm descends, fast.

Something darts past Steve’s face, close enough that he feels the wind from its wings. Another swoops at Nancy and she ducks, hair whipping.

“Left!” she shouts. “Alley!”

Robin points, breath hitching. “There, there – between the library and the – whatever that used to be–”

Eddie’s sneaker skids on a slick patch. He pinwheels, arms flailing. Steve grabs the back of his vest and yanks him upright without slowing.

The first bat hits his back.

Hard.

Air goes out of him in one ugly grunt. Claws tangle in his hair, teeth snapping near his ear. He swears, shoving the nail-studded oar up and back on instinct. It connects with a crunch he feels all the way up his arms. The bat shrieks, high and metallic, then slides off him, leaving a smear of dark, tar-thick blood cooling on his neck.

“Go, go, go!” Robin screams. “They’re–oh my God– move!”

The alley yawns ahead – a narrow cut between two hulking shapes, full of shadow and hanging vines. It smells like wet stone and batteries left too long in a drawer.

They dive for it.

Vines drag across Steve’s arms, cold and rubbery, leaving that pins-and-needles tingle behind. The shrieks behind them bounce off the brick, close and getting closer. Claws scrape as bats slam into the walls, wheeling, regrouping.

A sign looms out of the gloom at the far end of the alley, hanging crooked over a pair of double doors, metal warped, letters rusted.

HAWKINS PUBLIC LIBRARY.

The bats shriek again, this time right above them. Steve feels the rush of air as the swarm pours over the mouth of the alley, circling.

“Inside!” Nancy barks.

She doesn’t wait for agreement. She slams her shoulder into the right-hand door. It’s sealed over with a film of that organic junk, and it stretches before it tears, snapping in sticky strands. The door stumbles inward.

They spill through in a knot of limbs. Robin whirls and hauls the door shut just as something hits the other side. Claws scrape, wings thud against wood. The whole frame shivers.

“Block it!” Steve gasps.

Eddie grabs the nearest thing–a returns cart tipped on its side, wheels frozen—and rams it under the handle. The metal screeches against the floor. Robin snatches a second cart, muscling it in on the other side. Between the two, the door jams.

The pounding goes on for a few seconds. Then it fades, the screeching moving higher, away, the swarm retreating to circle above the building instead.

Silence settles in thick.

Not real silence. There’s still the low hum, the far-off rumble, the slow drip of something down somewhere in the stacks. But it’s a lot better than bat-audio.

Steve peels himself off the door, pressing his palm to the cut on his neck. His hand comes away with dark smear. It’s already sticky, cooling.

“Okay,” Robin pants, braced on her knees. “That was – I never want to know what shampoo they use. Ever.”

Eddie tips his head back and laughs, one short, too-loud bark. “This is officially the worst field trip I’ve been on,” he says. “And I once watched a kid puke in the planetarium.”

Nancy’s flashlight beam cuts through the dark before either of them can wind up again. “Stay quiet,” she says. “They’re still out there.”

The library feels smaller than Steve remembers and bigger at the same time.

The old carpet is gone, swallowed by stone and patches of pulsing growth. Shelves rise up like ribs on either side of the main aisle, bowed under the weight of swollen, damp books. Vines run along them in thick cords, climbing to the ceiling where they spread out like roots upside down.

Shapes cling to the high rafters.

Bats. Dozens. Maybe hundreds. They hang in clusters, wings wrapped around themselves, claws hooked into the wood. Some twitch, unsettled by the recent commotion.

Steve lowers his voice to barely more than breath. “I’m just gonna say it: we should not be under that.”

“Then we don’t linger,” Nancy says. She stares up at the rafters, calculating, then lets the beam drop back to the ground. “We find an exit, see if we can get out on the far side. Fewer open streets, fewer eyes on us.”

“Bats don’t technically have eyes the way you’re thinking–” Robin starts, then winces. “Right. Not the time. Yep.”

They move in a cluster down the center aisle. The air smells like a basement after a flood– damp paper, mold, something rotting underneath. Every step squishes or scrapes. Somewhere in the stacks, a book gives up the fight and slumps over, hitting the floor with a muffled thump.

Steve’s sweeping his light across the floor when something bright catches at the edge of the beam.

Not bright like normal. Bright like… wrong.

“Hey,” he says softly. “Hold up.”

The others stop. Nancy swings her flashlight in the direction he’s looking.

At first it’s just more of the same – gray stone, creeping vines, dead chairs overturned and half-swallowed. Then the angle of the light changes and the thing in the center of the side aisle glows.

It’s about the size of a beanbag chair. Maybe a person curled up. The surface is a stretched membrane, taut and semi-clear, wet shine catching the red overhead. Thick veins run through it in a spiderweb, glowing with this weird greenish light that doesn’t match anything else they’ve seen here. The light pulses, slow and steady, traveling out along the veins that snake away into the shelves, into the floor, up the walls.

It looks like the Upside Down grew a heart right in the middle of the library.

Eddie takes one look and stops dead. “Absolutely not,” he whispers. “Nope. That is some egg-laying, face-hugging, sci-fi nightmare.”

“It’s different,” Nancy says quietly, stepping closer. “The color. The… focus.” Her nose wrinkles at the smell - stronger here, sharper. Like ammonia and copper and dirt. “Everything else feels spread out. This is… concentrated.”

Steve can’t stop staring at the shape of it.

The way one side bulges more, like a rounded top. The way the bottom narrows. The suggestion of angles under the membrane, like something’s pressed tight against it from the inside.

He swallows. “Tell me I’m wrong,” he says hoarsely, “but that looks kinda… human.”

Robin squeezes her eyes shut. “Steve, I swear to God, if you have made me walk into a chestburster scene, I’m going back to the boathouse and letting Vecna kill me.”

Nancy lifts the flashlight higher. The beam hits the membrane dead-on. The green veins flare in response, pulses doubling for a moment, racing outward like the thing is reacting.

Under the surface, something shifts.

All four of them flinch.

Something – some shape – moves inside, just enough to distort the membrane. A hint of an arm, elbow tight to a body. A curved line that could be a spine. A shadow where a head might be.

Robin’s voice drops. “Is it… alive?”

“We’re not walking past it without checking,” Nancy says. The words are steady; her hands aren’t. “If there’s someone in there–”

“Someone?” Eddie hisses. “As in ‘citizen to be rescued,’ or as in ‘new kind of demon we should absolutely not poke’?”

Nancy meets Steve’s eyes. There’s a lot packed in there – Barb, Will, the fake body at the quarry, the upside-down version of the Byers’ living room she saw once in a grainy sheriff’s office photo. All the times they didn’t get there in time.

He doesn’t make her say it.

He’s already moving.

He drops to one knee beside the pod-thing. The floor is cold through his jeans, damp seeping in. Up close, the membrane has a texture, tiny ridges like stretched plastic. Little droplets of fluid sweat through it, beading, then sliding down the curve.

He sets his palm on it.

It’s cold. Not just cool. It sucks the heat out of his hand so fast his fingers ache. Something flutters underneath – a weak, answering twitch, like whatever’s in there is pushing back with all it’s got and not getting far.

“Steve – ” Robin’s voice is a warning.

“I’ve got it,” he mutters. “Just–be ready to shoot it if it has too many teeth, okay?”

He digs his fingers in.

The surface stretches, resisting. The green veins flare brighter around his hand, fighting him. He feels the membrane give all at once, then tear.

The sound is wet and awful. Fluid spills out in a rush, thick and cold, soaking his hands and splattering his shoes. The smell hits them like a slap–rot and chemical and something sharp that makes his eyes sting.

He coughs, turns his face away for a second, then forces himself to look back and pull.

The tear widens, jagged. More of the goo slides out in ropes, pooling on the floor. Inside, something pale presses against the opening, pushed by gravity and that sluggish stuff.

A hand slips free.

Small. Pale beneath the grime. Fingernails bitten short, rimmed in dark gunk. It drops over the edge of the torn membrane and hangs there, limp.

Steve’s stomach flips.

“Oh my God,” Robin breathes. Her voice is barely there.

Nancy’s flashlight shakes in her grip.

Steve keeps pulling.

The membrane peels back like wet paper now. The opening yawns wider, sagging. More of the… person inside rolls toward it, carried by the flow of fluid.

An arm. A narrow shoulder. A thin chest in a soaked striped sweater. A puffy vest, darkened by whatever he’s been floating in. Jeans. One sneaker. One sock.

A head tips forward as the pod empties. Dark hair, too long, plastered to a small forehead. The face is slack, eyes closed, lips pale and parted just enough to show the edge of teeth. There’s a faint smear, something like the imprint of the membrane, across one cheek.

He looks like a kid who fell asleep on the couch halfway through a movie.

He looks like a picture Steve has seen a hundred times on flyers stapled to every pole in town.

Nancy makes a sound like she just got punched.

That’s–” Her voice cracks. She swallows hard, tries again. “That’s Will.”

Eddie’s gone quiet. Completely quiet. The pick he’s been worrying between his fingers drops to the floor with a little plastic tick.

“Byers,” he says hoarsely. “That’s Will Byers. He’s– he’s supposed to be, like, Henderson and Sinclair’s age now, right? Same as Wheeler. He–” His gaze flicks over the small body, the too-short limbs, the kid-sized sneaker. “This is… this is wrong.”

Robin’s eyes are locked on the kid’s chest. “Is he–” She can’t finish the question.

Steve leans in before he can talk himself out of it. He puts two shaking fingers just under the boy’s jaw, against skin that’s cold as the membrane was.

He feels nothing at first. Then, faint, way down, something taps once. Then again. Slow. Stubborn.

His lungs finally remember how to work.

“He’s alive,” Steve says, voice barely more than air. “He’s – Jesus – he’s alive.”

Nancy doesn’t move for a heartbeat. Two. Her brain is doing the math and rejecting it in real time.

“We know Will,” she says, the words coming out thin and scraped raw. “We… we rescued Will. Joyce pulled him out. Hopper was there. He was in the hospital, he–” She breaks off, staring at the eleven-year-old in the torn pod like the floor’s dropped out under her. “Is this… really Will?”

The green veins in the floor around the ruptured pod dull, their light flickering, like something important in this place just got unplugged.

Steve stays there on his knees, hands dripping, staring at the kid who should be in California and instead has been sleeping in a monster’s egg for five years, and for the first time since they got dragged back into this, he has absolutely no idea what the hell happens next.

Chapter Text

The van smells like old cheese, hot plastic, and whatever Argyle calls “herbal clarity.”

‘It’ sits on the floor in the back, spine against the wall, sketchbook braced on Its knees. The Surfer Boy logo on the opposite door wobbles with every bump, yellow and blue blurring together. Outside the windows there is nothing but desert and sky, the highway stretching out straight and endless in both directions.

Up front, Argyle is humming along to some mellow song on the radio, palms loose on the steering wheel. Jonathan’s in the passenger seat, map unfolded across his lap, eyes flicking between the scribbled coordinates and the road signs.

They got those coordinates from Suzie. Nevada, middle of nowhere. El.

They’re driving to get her back.

Mike is on the bench seat behind the front row, hunched forward, forearms on his knees. He’s staring out the windshield like he can make the horizon move faster just by glaring at it.

“We’re not lost,” Jonathan says for what has to be the fourth time. 

“Yeah, man,” Argyle adds. “We’re exactly where we’re supposed to be.”

Mike doesn’t laugh. “We don’t even know if she’s still there,” he mutters. “We don’t know what they’re doing to her. We should’ve already–”

“We’re going as fast as we can,” Jonathan says, more gently this time. “We’re gonna find her.”

It has a pencil in Its hand. It’s been dragging it over the page in small, meaningless lines. 

It adds another line that doesn’t matter, just to keep Its hand moving. Good brothers draw. Good friends sit quiet and don’t make Mike more frantic than he already is.

The van hits a pothole. The pencil jumps. It’s grip doesn’t.

It’s about to say something reassuring. Something small and easy, like, We found her before, we’ll do it again, when it hits.

The world slips.

Sunlight through the windows cuts out. The bright Nevada sky disappears. For a heartbeat, all It sees is dim red leaking through a roof that isn’t there, shadows of shelves, thick veins glowing sickly green.

The van’s smell of grease, weed, dust wipes away, replaced by cold, wet mold and metal. There’s a sound, close and wrong: a wet tearing, a rush of heavy liquid, someone gagging. A rough voice It almost recognizes saying, “Oh my God,” like they’re holding something precious and disgusting at the same time.

And underneath it all, something inside It moves.

For three years there’s been a steady, distant hum in the background of It’s awareness. A pressure point somewhere far below Hawkins. A line leading down and sideways to a small, bright knot of power that the network used like a peg.

The knot shifts.

It feels like a hook in Its sternum gets jerked sideways. Not ripped out. Just… re-angled. The echo of a second heartbeat thuds against It’s, out of time, then jolts away, not gone, but not anchored where it was.

The pencil slips out of Its fingers and hits the floor with a soft tap, and drags in air like coming up from a dive. Nevada slams back into place around it: sunlight, radio, Argyle’s off-key humming, and the endless road.

“Dude?” Argyle glances at it in the rearview. “You good back there, my guy? You just did, like, the thousand-yard stare.”

It realizes it’s half off the floor, one hand flat against the metal wall, heart rattling around like it wants out.

Mike twists around on the seat. “Will?” he says. “Hey. You okay?”

Three sets of eyes. Three lines of attention, heavy and bright and focused.

It smooths It’s face out. Small, embarrassed, not alarming. “Yeah,” it says, voice catching only a little. “I’m fine. Just… got dizzy for a second.”

“Car sick?” Argyle asks. “You want me to crack a window, let the vibes out?”

“I’m okay,” It repeats.

It picks the pencil up, more for something to do with It’s hands than because It cares about the drawing. The sketchbook page looks wrong now anyway. The bunker door is too small. The shape in his head is bigger. Wider. Shelves. Veins. A pod splitting open.

The presence at the back of its mind tightens.

It’s not a voice, but if it were, it would have said: What was that?

It doesn’t speak back – never has to. It just lets the moment replay in Its own thoughts: the slip, the cold, the sound of tearing, the anchor shifting. That small bright knot of power – the original – getting unplugged from its slot and doing something it hasn’t done in years.

Moving.

Cool curiosity washes through It. Measuring. Calculating. No anger. No crack of displeasure.

The master has noticed. It isn’t afraid.

If the master isn’t worried, It doesn’t need to be. That’s how the structure works. The big piece decides what matters. The smaller pieces follow.

But It’s still thinking about the boy.

In the beginning, It had needed that knot, remembering the early days, not as Will, not really, but as something blurred and half-formed in the dark, hanging off a boy-shaped outline like a shadow trying to learn bones. All that power running through the original’s terrified little system, his memories, his fear, his stubborn refusal to break – that was the mainline.

The master fed on it, while its servant learned from it. Drank from it. Took from it.

Now It has other sources. Joyce’s worry. Jonathan’s exhaustion. Mike’s devotion and doubt, layered and tangled. The Party. All this messy, ongoing human life It can sip from without anyone noticing.

It’s refined now. Self-sustaining. It could live without the original.

It just doesn’t like not knowing where the original is.

Mike is still watching him, jaw tight. “You sure you’re okay?” he asks. “We can swap seats if–”

“I said I’m fine,” It says, a hair too fast.

Mike flinches, just a little, then nods. “Okay. Just… tell us if you feel weird.”

Weird.

It could laugh at that. It doesn’t.

It flips to a new page in his sketchbook. The pencil moves almost on its own, lines scratching out the shape of a town pinned in place under dark clouds. Then another shape, a smaller figure, half-formed, lying curled in something round.

It pauses, pencil tip pressed hard enough that the paper fuzzes.

If the original is out, if someone has cracked that pod open and pulled him free, then that means there’s another Will walking around somewhere in the Upside Down. Eleven years old, small, scared. Plugged in for years and now suddenly loose in the dark.

It imagines. The same face, but softer. Less blame carved into it. The same eyes, but younger. The same voice, pitched higher with fear.

The master will want that back. Its anchor. Its tidy little power core. It’ll want to repin the map, shove the original back where he belongs, use him until there’s nothing left but static.

It rolls the thought around, tasting it.

It doesn’t mind serving. It likes rules. Likes systems. The Mind Flayer made It. Gave It a face, a story, a family to sink Its teeth into. It’s only right to do Its job.

But if the original makes it to someone important like Joyce, Jonathan, Mike, any of the ones who matter, then the story breaks.

Two Wills. One night. Too many questions.

People start pulling at threads. They tug on memories. They notice gaps. They realize the boy at their table is not truly their son. Their friend. And that the false boy has eaten more of their lives than anyone should.

It’s not interested in being torn apart on a lab table or chased into the woods like a monster. It likes Will’s bed. Will’s posters. Will’s family and friends.

It could tell the Mind Flayer what It felt. Pass along the shift. Let it send something through the cracks to drag the original back down before anybody smart gets to him.

It probably should.

Or–

It could make sure nobody does.

If the original is weak, half-frozen, and dropped into some ruined place full of teeth and claws, then It doesn’t have to do anything. The world might just solve the problem for It.

If not… there are other ways.

The thought sits in Its head, neat and clean. Not horrifying. Just… practical.

It taps the pencil against the sketchbook, once, twice.

Up front, Jonathan and Argyle are arguing about which exit to take. Mike’s gone back to staring out the windshield, whole body wired, mind miles ahead in a secret lab in the desert with a girl who still thinks she has to save everyone.

It glances at Mike’s reflection in the window. At the line of his mouth. At the way his shoulders hunch like he’s carrying all of Hawkins by himself.

It hopes, very calmly, that whoever opened that pod wasn’t someone important.

If they weren’t, It can flag it for the master. Let it reel the anchor back in, pin the map down properly, keep the structure intact.

If they were–

It turns the page again. Starts a new drawing.

It’ll just have to make sure there’s never a spare Will lying around to take Its place.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Line break ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Nancy’s brain will not shut up long enough to let her breathe properly.

The boy at their feet doesn’t move. He’s small under Steve’s jacket, soaked clothes clinging to a frame that looks like it hasn’t seen real warmth in years. Too young, her mind keeps insisting. Not thirteen. Not sixteen. Not the teenager she’s seen hunched over Dungeon & Dragons books in Mike’s basement.

Eleven, exactly.

They had rescued Will though, she thinks, not for the first time. Joyce pulled him out, Hopper carried him, she saw the tubes in that photograph, the hospital bed, the frail kid blinking under harsh fluorescent lights. People don’t hallucinate entire hospital stays.

But this boy.

This boy is wearing the same striped sweater and puffy vest from the posters. Same haircut. Same too-big cuffs.

The Upside Down is frozen on the night Will disappeared. She knows that. They just saw the date. It makes a terrible kind of sense that if anything was going to stay the same, it would be him.

It still feels like trying to breathe underwater.

“Nance.”

Robin’s voice cuts through the noise in Nancy’s head, thin and tight.

Nancy blinks, realizing she’s been staring at Will’s face without actually seeing it. Her hand is still hovering uselessly an inch above his chest, as if she’s afraid touching him will make him vanish.

“What?” she says, too sharp, turning.

Robin’s standing with her back half to Nancy, half to the rest of the library, neck craned back. Her flashlight beam is aimed up into the rafters.

Where the bats are.

“They’re moving more,” Robin whispers.

Nancy follows her gaze.

The shapes up there have shifted. Wings that were tucked tight are starting to loosen. A few of the leathery bodies twitch. One lets out a small, testy screech, answered by another further down the beam.

Underneath, the hum that’s always in this place deepens, a note lower, angry.

There’s another sound too, farther away but getting closer – a chorus of shrieks outside, muffled by the walls but still loud enough to raise the hair on Nancy’s arms.

Her pulse spikes. “Shit.”

Eddie edges closer to them, eyes flicking between the ceiling and the boy on the ground. “Okay, so, love the emotional crisis,” he mutters, voice shaking, “really into the identity horror, but can we maybe do it somewhere that’s not under a bat chandelier?”

He’s right. Of course he’s right.

Every part of Nancy wants to stand here and keep staring and demand answers from a kid who isn’t awake to give them yet. But the screeching outside is getting sharper, like something is circling the building and tightening its path.

She pushes everything else down. “We have to move,” she says. “Now.”

Steve is already shifting into position without her asking. He’s kneeling at Will’s head, shrugging his jacket tighter around him.

“How do you want to do this?” he asks, voice low. “Piggyback? Fireman’s carry? I do not want to drop him, Nance, I’d never sleep again.”

“We can’t run as fast if you’re carrying him on your shoulder,” Nancy says. “Tie him to your back. Robin, help, use your sweater, anything.”

Robin is already yanking her overshirt off, leaving her in a damp t-shirt. Eddie shrugs out of his vest without being asked, hands it over. “Please don’t stretch it,” he says, then laughs at himself, a short, hysterical sound. “Fuck it, stretch it. Kill it. Let’s just get out of here.”

Between the three of them they manage to maneuver Will onto Steve’s back. He’s lighter than he should be for his height, dead weight but not heavy enough to drag Steve down. His arms flop for a second before Robin loops them over Steve’s shoulders and starts tying sleeves around his chest and waist, knotting them tight.

Will’s cheek ends up pressed against the side of Steve’s neck, hair obscuring his face. Steve flinches at the cold touch, but doesn’t pull away.

“Okay,” Robin mutters, fingers fumbling with the last knot. “Okay, okay. He’s on. You are now officially a human backpack.”

Steve tests the weight, shifting from foot to foot. “I’ve carried heavier kids,” he says, trying for a joke. “Sinclair when he refuses to walk, for example.”

“Which one?” Eddie asks weakly.

“Both,” Steve and Nancy say at the same time. It’s not funny, but it steadies them anyway.

A shriek rips right overhead, loud enough to make Nancy’s teeth ring.

The bats in the rafters answer, a rustling wave of leathery wings. One drops from its perch, hanging only by its feet now, head swiveling, sniffing.

“Out the back, if there is one,” Nancy says, already moving. “If not, we go out the front and run like hell.”

They move in a tight group down the central aisle, boots squelching and scraping. The pulsing growth on the floor seems slower now around the deflated pod, veins dimmer, like something in the library’s wiring got unplugged.

They pass stacks of swollen, rotten books. A magazine rack collapsed in on itself. A kid’s picture book half-fused to the floor, a cartoon bear’s face warped into a smear.

The screeching outside shifts as they move, tracking them.

“Please don’t be smart,” Robin whispers to the ceiling. “Please be dumb murder bats.”

At the back of the building there’s another set of double doors, half-covered in that gray webbing. Nancy doesn’t slow. She slams into them with her shoulder, feeling the membrane stretch and then tear, hitting her with a fresh wave of mold-and-metal stench.

The doors give.

Outside again. The air is colder, moving more. The sky above is a mess of red cloud and swirling black shapes.

Their bikes are where they left them, scattered near the alley mouth and on the street.

They are also… occupied.

Bats cling to the frames, to the handlebars, to the wheels, wings wrapped around metal like they’re roosting on tree branches. More circle above in angry loops. The moment Nancy appears, heads swivel, eyes glinting red.

“Guess we’re walking,” Eddie says faintly.

“Running,” Nancy corrects.

They run.

Steve takes off at a loping pace that keeps Will from bouncing too violently. Robin stays at his elbow, one hand hovering near the knots, the other clutching the flashlight. Eddie brings up the rear again, chain jingling, eyes everywhere.

Nancy leads, brain flipping through a mental map of Hawkins. Library. Main. Cut across. Forest Hills.

They duck behind rusted cars and through yards choked with vine. The streets are slick under their boots, strange organic growth giving underfoot with wet little pops. The screeching above follows, a furious halo.

A bat dives low enough that Nancy feels the gust of its wings at her back. Another claws at Eddie’s hair, ripping out a chunk and earning a stream of inventive swearing.

“Trailer park is there,” Robin gasps, pointing when the low, familiar shapes of the Forest Hills sign and rows of trailers finally slide into view, distorted but recognisable. “Come on, come on–”

The Munson trailer is a shadow of itself, sagging, half-wrapped in vines, windows like dead eyes. The air around it feels thicker, charged.

Nancy doesn’t let herself think. She beelines for the door, boots thudding on the metal steps, shoulder-checks it inward, stumbling into the dim interior.

The upside-down version of Eddie’s living room is gray and rotten. Furniture half-fused to the floor. Posters on the walls melted into unrecognizable blotches.

And in the ceiling, a tear hangs open like a wound – jagged, pulsing around the edges, the familiar buzzing shimmer of the gate filling it, with a rope of bedsheets already hanging and ready to grab.

Voices filter down through it. Frantic. Familiar.

“ pull harder, come on –”

“Don’t you drop it, Henderson–”

“I’m not dropping it, why is it so damn heavy –”

Erica’s flattened, unimpressed drawl: “Maybe because he’s full of bad decisions.”

Relief hits Nancy so hard her knees wobble. “They’re here,” she says, half to herself.

“Ladies first?” Eddie says, looking between the gate and the door where the screeching is building again.

“Robin,” Nancy orders. “You go. Then Eddie. Then Steve with–” Her eyes flick over Steve’s shoulder. “ –with him. I’ll follow.”

Robin doesn’t argue. She scrambles up onto the couch under the ceiling tear, grabs the dangling sheet-turned-rope with both hands, and starts climbing. The gate buzzes around her arms, Upside Down grime rubbing off on real fabric.

Hands reach down for her from above. Dustin’s, she recognizes, and Lucas’, both braced on the trailer ceiling.

Robin vanishes through the tear.

“Your turn, Munson,” Nancy says.

Eddie swallows. “If I get bat rabies from either side of this I’m haunting all of you.”

He clambers up after Robin, legs scrambling against the armrest for purchase. Dustin and Lucas haul him the last few inches with a grunt.

That leaves Steve.

He hesitates only long enough to adjust his grip on the rope and check that Will is still secured.

“Hey, buddy,” he murmurs, like Will can hear him. “Field trip’s almost over, okay? Just hang on a little longer.”

He plants one foot on the couch, grabs the rope, and starts climbing one-handed, using his legs and core more than arms to keep Will from swinging.

“Got you, Steve!” Dustin’s voice calls from above. Closer now. “We see you–wait–who is tha–”

“Just pull, Henderson!” Steve grunts.

They do. For a second, his weight and Will’s together are too much, his grip slips, and the world below him yaws open, red and hungry.

Nancy shoves up from behind, bracing his calf with her shoulder, giving him the extra push he needs. Steve and his small, limp backpack disappear through the gate in a tangle of limbs.

Nancy takes one deep breath, glances once over her shoulder at the red sky, the swarm of bats pouring toward the trailer like a black wave–

—and jumps for the rope.

Her hands close. The gate’s energy buzzes up her arms, too warm and too cold at the same time. She hears Dustin yelling something–“We got you, we got y–” but it warps and stretches, turning to echoes.

The world cuts.

She’s not in the trailer anymore.

She’s in a hallway.

The air is too still. Too clean. The walls are wrong, with peeling wallpaper, and a grandfather clock sitting like a rotten tooth at the end. The sound is wrong too: no bats, no friends, just the slow, heavy tick-tick-tick of something that isn’t really a clock at all.

Her hands are still on the rope. She can feel it. But her body isn’t moving. Her feet are on carpet that smells like dust and age. Her lungs can’t pull air right.

“Nancy,” a voice says, and her stomach flips because she knows that voice now, knows it better than she should. “We have so much yet to do.”

Somewhere far away, someone is yelling her name.

The vision wraps tighter. The house. The kids in the pool of blood. Barb’s empty eyes. Vecna stepping closer, reveling in her helplessness, feeding on the way her fear spikes.

She tries to pull back. To kick, scream, bite, anything. Her mouth doesn’t work right here. 

Hands clamp around her wrists. Real hands, hot and desperate, not part of this place.

“Nancy!” Steve’s voice, sounding like it’s coming through three walls. “Nancy, come on, wake up, you’re okay, you’re here–”

The grandfather clock cracks down the middle. Sound itself seems to lurch.

Vecna’s voice is in her ear, crawling along her spine. “You can’t run from this,” he murmurs. “Not this time.”

The hands on her wrists yank, hard.

Air slams back into her lungs.

The hallway dissolves into static. The clock, the walls, Vecna’s looming shape–all of it rips away like wet paper. She’s hauled up, through, out–

–and lands flat on her back on a stained carpet that smells like cigarettes and stale air.

The real Munson trailer. The real world.

Her chest heaves. She stares up at the ceiling, at the jagged red wound in it sealing over, the Upside Down’s version fading as the connection snaps shut.

Someone is saying her name over and over. Fingers tap her cheeks, not quite slapping.

“Nancy, hey, hey, hey, look at me,” Steve says, leaning over her. His face swims into focus. His hair is a mess. There’s grime on his forehead. His eyes are blown wide with panic. “You with me?”

She nods because it’s easier than talking. Her throat feels raw. Her arms ache where he held on.

Around them, everything is noise.

Max and Lucas are there, faces white. Dustin’s hair looks like he’s been electrocuted twice. Erica stands off to the side, hands on hips, assessing the chaos like she’s grading it.

“You good?” Erica calls. “You looked super possessed up there. Ten out of ten creepy. Negative ten out of ten practical.”

Nancy pushes herself up on her elbows. Her legs still feel like rubber. The trailer is crowded, bodies and weapons and blankets and Dustin’s ridiculous cap all crammed together.

Someone near the door says, “Damn, did you find a body or something?”

Everyone turns.

Steve, following their gaze, frowns. “What?”

Dustin points. “Dude.”

It takes Steve a second to realize they’re not staring at his face. They’re staring at his back.

He reaches blindly, fingers brushing cold fabric. For a heartbeat he thinks maybe the pod-clammy texture came with them, that he dragged some piece of the Upside Down through. Then his brain catches up.

“Oh,” he says. “Right.”

Very carefully, he shifts to his knees and starts working at the knots Robin tied. The sweater sleeves bite into his chest when he pulls at them; his fingers aren’t as steady as he wants them to be.

“Rob,” he says. “Gimme a hand here.”

Robin is there in half a second, fingers tugging at damp fabric, muttering, “What did I say about double knots, why am I like this.”

The last knot comes free.

Steve eases the weight off his back and onto the carpet.

The room goes weirdly quiet.

There’s the hum of everyone breathing, the faint whoosh of air through the hole in the ceiling, the distant, muffled screeching from outside where the bats are still circling. But nobody speaks as Steve lays the boy down on his side, then gently on his back, jacket still wrapped around him.

Upside Down grime streaks his face and hair. His skin is too pale, lips edged blue. The striped sweater is soaked and stained. He looks like he’s been dragged out of a freezer.

He also looks exactly like a picture they’ve all seen.

Dustin drops to his knees so fast his cap nearly flies off. “No way,” he whispers. “No… way.”

Lucas stands over him, eyes huge. “Is that–”

“Will?” Max finishes, voice a rasp.

For a second everyone seems to be waiting for him to correct them. To say, No, it’s a trick, it’s some kind of monster, relax.

Nancy doesn’t.

Up close, the details are even worse. He’s so tiny. Baby faced. Little kid sneakers. All of it ripped wholesale out of 1983 and dropped here on the carpet like no time passed at all.

“That’s Will,” Lucas says, with the stubborn certainty of someone who’s seen enough weird to trust his gut. He drops into a crouch next to Dustin. “That’s Will.”

Dustin’s hands hover over Will’s shoulders, not quite touching. “But he – he’s in Lenora,” he stammers. “He’s in California. He–”

“Apparently not all of him,” Robin says weakly.

“Is he breathing?” Max asks.

Steve swallows and forces his hand out, fingers trembling only a little as he presses them to Will’s throat, same spot as before.

There it is. Faint. Slow. But there.

“Yeah,” he says. His voice cracks on the word. “He is.”

Dustin finally lets his hands settle, one at Will’s shoulder, one at his wrist. He seems to need the contact. Lucas mirrors him on the other side, fingers brushing Will’s cold hair back from his forehead, checking for a fever that isn’t there.

“What the hell is going on,” Lucas whispers.

No one has an answer.

They don’t get a chance to even start trying to make one.

The shrieking outside spikes, sharp enough that it pierces the ceiling. Something slams into the trailer roof hard enough to rattle the light fixtures. Another hit follows, then another. The tear in the ceiling–still closing, edges knotted with weird red tissue–shivers.

A black shape pushes through.

A bat forces its head and shoulders past the narrowing gate, wings beating frantically against the constraints. Its jaws snap, teeth clicking, eyes fixed not on the group as a whole, but on the one motionless figure on the floor.

Two more wedge in beside it, bodies writhing, fighting for space.

“Shit,” Erica says succinctly. “Absolutely not.”

“Move!” Nancy snaps, the fog in her brain burning off in an instant. “They’re coming through–away from the gate, now!”

The kids scramble. Max grabs a broken table leg. Erica hefts her spear. Dustin flails for his backpack, probably going for a weapon buried in snacks and notebook paper.

The bats aren’t aiming for them.

They dive for Will.

The first one squeezes through with a wet pop as the hole tears wider for a second. It drops straight down, wings tucked tight, claws outstretched.

Lucas doesn’t wait to think.

He lunges forward, scooping Will up in both arms with a grunt, hugging him tight against his chest and rolling sideways. The bat hits the spot where Will’s chest was a half second before, claws scraping the carpet.

Steve’s swing is already in motion. The nail-studded oar comes down on the bat’s back with a sickening crunch. It screeches, flailing, black blood spraying across the carpet and his shoes.

More are forcing their way through the gate, bodies piling, wings beating in a furious knot.

“This is bad, this is very bad,” Robin babbles, backing away. “Can they just–can they just, like, download themselves into our world? Is that a thing now? Because I vote no.”

“Out the door!” Nancy shouts. “We can’t fight them in here.”

“What about–” Dustin starts, pointing at Lucas.

Lucas is already on his feet, Will a limp weight in his arms, one of Will’s socks half sliding off. “I got him!” Lucas pants. “Just go!”

They move as one, panic finally breaking their paralysis. Max yanks the door open. Hot, real-world air rushes in, full of dust and the distant sound of sirens no one has time to process.

Steve goes first this time, batting away a bat that dives low, its claws grazing his arm. Robin and Max follow. Dustin stumbles after them, hitting the ground hard when he misjudges the steps, then scrambling up again.

Lucas barrels out last, Will held tight against his chest. Behind them, in the trailer, the ceiling tear belches another swarm of bats into a room that’s suddenly empty of human prey.

They don’t care.

Their shrieks follow the group out into the park as the kids do the only thing they can do now.

They run.

Chapter Text

They run like the world is still ending behind them, because it sure sounds like it.

The first stretch is all panic and bad footing. Gravel sprays under their shoes, somebody trips and swears, Steve nearly brains himself on a low-hanging satellite dish. Lucas’ arms are on fire, with the kid in his grip dead weight and ice-cold, jacket bunched in Lucas’ fists. Every breath feels like glass in his chest.

Behind them, shrieking can be heard in Eddie’s trailer – bats slamming into walls, claws raking metal, wings beating themselves stupid against the ceiling. For a moment, the whole thing vibrates like it’s going to shake apart.

They hit the edge of the lot, cut between two other trailers, and burst out into the more open row that runs along the park’s perimeter.

The shrieking stops as quickly as it started.

Lucas risks a glance back, heart still jackhammering.

Nothing is following them out.

He slows without meaning to. His legs are still ready to sprint, but his body is realizing it doesn’t have to, just yet. The others stutter too, running tapering to this messy, gasping stumble-walk.

“What–” Robin wheezes, half bent over, hands on her thighs. “What are they doing, hanging back for round two? Because I vote no.”

“They’re not coming out,” Nancy says, still breathing hard. She wipes her forearm across her forehead, then squints past Lucas. “Listen. You can’t hear anything anymore.”

Steve squints too, one hand braced on his hip, the oar hanging loosely from the other. The late-afternoon light hits his eyes, making him wince. “Maybe they don’t like the sun,” he says. “Or… being seen. Can’t exactly unleash your murder flock on suburban Hawkins at three p.m. without someone calling it in.”

“Vecna’s not stupid,” Robin mutters. “If it wants to keep operating under the radar, maybe step one is not sending its creepy bat cloud on a daytime tour of the trailer park.”

Eddie huffs out a breath that’s half laugh, half still-panicked wheeze. “Yeah, cool, great, love that they’re respecting a monstrous bat stealth doctrine. Can we, uh, not stand in the open while we appreciate their tactical restraint?”

It’s only then that it really sinks in: Forest Hills is not empty.

A TV rattles behind thin walls somewhere, game show audience laughter leaking out through a badly shut window. A kid’s bike lies on its side in a yard, back wheel slowly spinning. Two lots over, someone bangs a screen door, steps out onto their stoop, and stares.

They are six filthy teenagers, one very wanted metalhead, and a soaking-wet unconscious child in Lucas’ arms. Standing in broad daylight.

Eddie yanks his hair forward, trying to shield as much of his face as possible. “Oh yeah,” he mutters. “Forgot I’m Hawkins’ favorite Satanist. This is fine. This is all so fine.”

A woman in a faded robe leans against her railing and squints. “Y’all hear that screamin’ just now?” she calls. “Sounded like a damn zoo in a blender.”

Max moves before anyone else can panic and make it worse.

She scrubs her hands over her face, smooths her hair back, and throws the woman a lazy, put-upon teen look. “Some idiots were setting off fireworks,” she says. “We told them to knock it off. Sorry.”

The woman’s eyes linger on Lucas and the bundle in his arms. “That your little brother?” she asks. “He don’t look so well.”

“He’s fine,” Lucas lies. “Just… fell. I’m taking him home.”

“Mm.” She doesn’t sound convinced, but she also doesn’t sound motivated enough to come down off her porch. “Tell your mama to keep y’all out of the street.”

She goes back inside. The door slams.

Max exhales slowly. “Okay,” she says. “We’re not doing this in the middle of the park. My place. Now. Casual faces, people. Walk.”

They start moving again, forced into a too-fast walk that’s supposed to read as normal but doesn’t quite. Steve flips the oar so the nails point down, trying to pass it off as… a weird long stick. Robin hooks her fingers in her pockets and hunches a bit, hoping “slightly less insane” is still possible. Eddie keeps his gaze locked on the ground, shoulders hunched, using his hand and hair as a shitty half-mask.

Lucas hangs at the center of their little cluster, keeping Will’s head tucked against his shoulder as much as possible. The kid feels less like ice now and more like… fridge-cold. Which is not a medical term, but it’s all Lucas has.

They’re almost to Max’s row when the body in his arms shifts.

A tiny twitch at first, just enough for Will’s hair to drag against Lucas’ jaw. Then a small, broken sound breathes out of him.

“Mom…”

Lucas almost drops him.

Dustin bumps into his back. “What? What, what, what–”

“He’s waking up,” Lucas says, voice low and a little wild. “He– he said something. We gotta move.”

Max’s trailer is three doors down.

“Faster,” she says, already picking up the pace.

They speed-walk the last stretch, every nerve screaming at them not to break into an outright run. Max hits the steps at a jog, yanks the door open without bothering with the key because apparently it was never locked, and stands aside.

“Inside,” she snaps. “Now.”

They pile into the dim little living room, and Lucas finally, finally lowers Will onto the couch just as the kid’s eyelids start to flicker.

Inside, the trailer air hits them like a wall: smoke, cheap floral spray, and something sour from the sink.

The blinds are half-closed, striping the living room in dusty light. Couch. Coffee table with an overflowing ashtray. TV in the corner with a crooked antenna. It’s cramped with just Max and her mom on a good day; with all of them, it feels like a clown car.

Lucas’ arms are shaking. He pretends they aren’t and heads straight for the couch. He kneels and lowers Will as gently as he can.

Will lands awkwardly, half on his side, head lolling. Steve’s jacket slides off one shoulder, heavy with slime. The striped sweater underneath clings to him, dark and wet. Up close, he looks worse; pale in a way that isn’t just lack of sun, lips edged with a faint bluish tinge.

“Uh, towel,” Dustin blurts, hovering. “Where’s your towel situation?”

“Bathroom,” Max says, breathing hard. “Cabinet under the sink. Just grab whatever doesn’t have a science experiment on it.”

Nancy’s already moving down the hall.

Lucas keeps one hand on Will’s shoulder. It’s not medically useful; it just feels wrong not to be touching him.

For a second, Will is still.

Then he detonates.

He sucks in a breath like he’s been underwater for hours and jerks up, whole body snapping tight. His eyes fly open, wild and unfocused, and he tries to twist off the couch like he’s got to run right now.

Lucas reacts on instinct.

“Whoa– hey, hey,” he says, hands clamping down, one on Will’s shoulder, one across his chest. “You’re okay. You’re okay, you’re on a couch–”

Will fights him anyway. He’s small, but panic makes him weirdly strong in that flailing, uncoordinated way. His heel skids on the cushion, almost catching the edge. For a second Lucas sees the whole scene: Will slamming sideways, whacking his head on the table, them explaining that to Joyce.

“Don’t–” Will gasps. “Don’t touch me! Wh–where is it–”

“Will, stop, you’re safe,” Lucas says, tightening his grip. “You’re not there. It’s me. It’s Lucas. You’re safe.”

That last part is a stretch, but Will doesn’t need a lecture on Upside Down physics right now.

Dustin rushes in on the other side and grabs for Will’s wrists before he hits someone in the face. “Dude, hey, hey, it’s us,” he says, talking fast. “You’re not–no creepy vines, no monster, okay? Just ugly furniture.”

Will’s gaze snaps between them, searching. For a second it’s like he isn’t seeing anything in front of him, just some afterimage burned on the inside of his skull.

Then something flickers.

“L…” His voice is shredded. He swallows, tries again. “Lucas?”

The way he says it punches right through Lucas’ ribs. “Yeah,” Lucas says, breathless with relief. “Yeah. It’s me.”

Will’s lungs do that weird double-take thing again, like he’s re-learning what breathing is as he turns to look at Dustin.

“Dustin?” he rasps.

Dustin makes a noise that’s basically a squeak with aspirations. “In the flesh,” he says. “Slightly taller flesh, but still me.”

Everything else around the couch is just shapes to Will. He’s staring at Lucas and Dustin like they’re the only solid things in the room. His gaze skims over Steve, Nancy, Max, Robin, Eddie, Erica like they are furniture.

“Where’s my mom?” Will blurts, words tripping over each other. “Where’s Jonathan? Mike? Did they–” His chest stutters. “Did they make it home? I was– I was in my fort and it found me, i–it broke in, it grabbed me–”

His voice spikes, scrapes out, collapses in on itself.

“Okay, okay.” Dustin glances up at the others like someone please help before I say something stupid. “Let’s– hang on, one thing at a time.”

Nancy comes back with a towel that’s… mostly clean. She slows when she sees Will halfway upright, jammed between Lucas’ hands and his own panic. She sets the towel on the back of the couch and kneels a little, staying out of grabbing range.

“Hey, Will,” she says, voice gentler than Lucas has heard it in a while. “It’s Nancy. Nancy Wheeler. You’re in Hawkins. Max’s trailer. It’s… a lot, I know.”

Will looks at her like she’s just another stranger on the street. The name doesn’t click.

His eyes flick to the others– Max at the hallway, Robin just behind Nancy, Eddie near the door, Steve standing there with the nailed oar still in his hand like he doesn’t know what else to do with it. Erica has edged in by the counter, arms folded, watching.

Nothing. No spark of Oh yeah, you.

He drags his focus back to the only things that make sense. Lucas. Dustin. There’s a third figure, smaller than he remembers but sharpened around the edges– dark eyes, same face, just… older.

“Erica?” he whispers.

Erica’s chin pops up. “Took you long enough,” she mutters, but her mouth twitches.

Will’s shoulders sag a little. The fight goes out of him all at once. Lucas feels it like someone let air out of a balloon under his hands.

“Okay,” Lucas says, easing his grip, helping him sit back against the couch. “That’s good. That’s… really good. You remember Erica.”

Will holds onto Dustin’s sleeve like an anchor. His fingers are still cold. His breathing’s still all wrong, fast and shallow, but at least he’s not trying to fling himself onto the floor anymore.

“Last thing I remember,” he says, voice shaking, “I was in Castle Byers. Not… not the real one. The other one. It was all wrong and cold and I could hear it, and then it… it got in. I heard it, and there was light and then– ” His face crumples. “Then nothing. Just… this.”

Lucas’ stomach turns. Castle Byers. In the Upside Down. The demogorgon tearing through it like tissue. It lines up with what they heard back then, with what Joyce said, with that empty, wrecked space in the woods.

So he remembers that. The worst part. Of course he does.

Dustin swallows, hard. “Okay,” he says. “So your last save point is, like, way back. That’s fine. That’s… fine. We can work with that.”

Will licks his lips, eyes darting. “How long?” he asks. “How long was I there?”

No one jumps on that one.

His gaze lands on Lucas again. Lucas feels the weight of it. He looks older than Will now, taller, somehow in charge despite never wanting that job.

“Five years,” Lucas says quietly. “For us. It’s been five years.”

The number just hangs there.

Will stares. His eyes flick over Lucas again, like he’s checking the math himself. The height, the shoulders, the deepened voice. Over Dustin’s face, less round, braces gone. Erica being not eight and annoying, but thirteen, and now older and taller than him. 

His mouth moves, but it takes a second for any sound to come out. “That’s not… funny,” he manages. “Don’t– don’t joke.”

“We’re not joking,” Dustin says, voice small. “It’s been 5 years. We’ve had, like, three apocalypses since you left. You, uh… missed some stuff.”

Will’s throat works. His eyes go shiny. “Where’s my mom?” he asks again. “If it’s been five years, where is she? She was in the house. She tried– she tried to talk to me, I think, through the lights, and then…” He looks at the floor like he can see through it. “She was gone.”

“She’s in California,” Nancy says. “You all moved there. With Jonathan. And–”

“And me,” Max cuts in, leaning on the doorframe. “New girl, California transplant, hi. We’ve technically never met. You were already…” She gestures vaguely downward, meaning underground, not dead. “Out of town.”

Will blinks, trying to absorb that. “We moved to California?” he repeats, like she said Mars.

“Yeah,” Dustin says. “It was a whole thing. New house, new school, new Argyle. You– uh. The other you.”

Will’s head snaps up. “What?”

Lucas feels the moment tilting toward the cliff and wants to haul it back, but there’s no good way around this.

“After Castle Byers,” he says slowly, “your mom didn’t stop. She went into the Upside Down with Hopper. They found you. This… you.” He nods at Will. “In some kind of nest. They pulled you out. You weren’t breathing. Hopper did CPR. You… woke up.”

“I didn’t,” Will says. His fingers start to shake on Dustin’s sleeve. “I was still there.”

“I know,” Lucas says. “That’s the part we didn’t understand until just now.”

Dustin pushes forward, words coming faster, like if he stacks enough of them it’ll hurt less. “We saw pictures,” he says. “Tube-city. Hospital stuff. Then you came home. You were different, yeah, but we figured– huge trauma, right? You were cold all the time, you drew a lot, there was… some possession stuff – long story – but you were with us. We played D&D. You yelled at us for not sticking to the campaign. We– ” His voice trips. “We thought we got you back.”

“But I was still there,” Will says. His volume doesn’t change. It just gets thinner. “In that place.”

Lucas has to fight the urge to look at the deflated pod in his mind’s eye. “We know that now,” he says. “We didn’t before.”

“So there’s… two of me,” Will says. “One that got rescued. One that didn’t.” His eyes flick to Nancy, to Robin, to Max, to Eddie, to Steve, taking them in properly for the first time. “I don’t know any of you.”

It lands like a small bomb.

He points, hand trembling a little. “I know Lucas,” he says. “And Dustin. And Erica, sorta. That’s it. I don’t… I’ve never met you.”

Robin lifts a hand in a tiny wave. “Hi,” she says, because it feels weirder not to say anything. “Robin Buckley. I work with Steve. I also have never technically met you, so we’re even.”

“Same,” Max says. “I just heard stories. Mostly from him.” She juts her chin at Dustin. “And Mike.”

Will’s eyes snag on Steve for a second. Steve gives him the automatic Harrington half-smile, nervous and a little lopsided. Will squints at him, like he’s trying to make a picture line up with the wrong frame, and then looks away.

Steve doesn’t seem to notice. He wouldn’t expect a middle schooler from four years ago to know him.

Lucas does.

Mike never shut up about Steve dating his sister in sixth grade. King Steve and his stupid hair, King Steve and Nancy. Stuff they had to listen to for months. Even if Will never talked to Steve, he should at least have that vague oh, that guy impression.

Now there’s just… nothing.

Lucas files that away in the growing Is-this-brain-damage-or-something-else? folder and tries not to let it show on his face.

“Okay,” Dustin says. “So you don’t know them yet. That’s fine. We can do introductions later. First thing is: your mom.”

Will’s jaw tightens. “Yeah,” he says. “My mom. You said she’s in California. With…” His voice catches. “With him.”

“Yeah,” Dustin says, voice barely above a whisper. “She thinks you’re with her. That he’s you.”

Will goes very quiet.

You can almost see it land, that idea: Joyce Byers setting the table, calling “Will, dinner,” and some thing sitting down in his chair. Jonathan driving “Will” to school. Mike calling a different version of him every day for a year. Five birthdays. Five Christmases.

His face crumples.

“She doesn’t even know I’m gone,” he says, and that one breaks something in Lucas he didn’t know was still intact.

Will’s eyes overflow properly now. Tears spill onto his cheeks, not the single dramatic track from movies but a messy, steady flood. He drags a hand across his face, angry at it, but it just makes streaks.

“I’m sorry,” Dustin blurts. “We’re sorry. If we’d known, if there’d been any sign…”

Will shakes his head, hard, like he can throw the whole thing off. It just knocks more tears loose.

Lucas doesn’t give himself time to think.

He slides closer on the couch and gets his arm around Will’s shoulders again, this time deliberately. He pulls him in, slow enough that Will could pull away if he wanted. He doesn’t. He folds into the space like he doesn’t know what else to do.

Dustin jostles in on the other side and hooks an arm around both of them. It’s more a three-kid tangle than a proper hug, but it works.

Will is swallowed up in it. His face presses into Lucas’ chest. His fists bunch in the front of Lucas’ jersey like he’s afraid if he loosens his grip they’ll vanish.

The size difference is ridiculous.

Lucas is suddenly very aware of how much bigger he is than he used to be. Will barely reaches his collarbone, even curled up. His whole back fits under Lucas’ arm. Dustin’s hand on Will’s shoulder looks huge.

“You’re with us now,” Lucas says into his hair. His voice shakes. “We’re gonna fix this, okay? We’re gonna get your mom back and make sure whatever that thing is doesn’t get to keep your life.”

“We’re not leaving you alone with any of this again,” Dustin says. “I swear on my dice. On my entire campaign folder. On all of it.”

Will doesn’t say he believes them. He doesn’t say anything at all. His shoulders just shake against them, quiet, tired sobs that sound like they’re coming from the bottom of a very deep well.

They hold on.

After a moment, there’s a soft throat-clear from the doorway.

“Okay,” Max says, voice softer than usual. “Um. Maybe we… give them a minute?”

Nancy nods, eyes shiny. “Come on,” she murmurs. “Kitchen.”

They peel away, Max, Nancy, Steve, Robin, Eddie, Erica leaving the three of them on the couch in a little pile of striped sweater, jersey, and Hellfire tee.

Lucas keeps his arm firmly around Will’s shoulders. He’s not letting go until someone physically makes him.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The kitchen is basically the end of the living room with a counter in it, but it’s enough space to pretend it’s separate.

Robin leans back against the laminate, hands braced on either side of her. The sink is full of dishes. There’s a cereal box open next to a half-empty bottle of cheap vodka. A magnet shaped like a flamingo holds a crumpled paper onto the fridge.

Through the thin wall, they can still hear muffled voices– Dustin starting to ramble about some campaign, Lucas saying something low and steady, Will’s breathing hitching now and then.

It feels like a raw nerve.

“Okay,” Robin says, because someone has to pop the bubble. “Status report. We have: one very real, very tiny Will Byers fresh from Upside Down goo. One other Will Byers facsimile in California with Joyce and Jonathan and Mike. One decaying murder wizard who wants to fry Max’s brain. Plus a monstrous pet bat cloud, which apparently knows about the concept of ‘not being seen by the neighbors.’”

Eddie snorts weakly, shoulder still pressed to the fridge. “Don’t forget one wanted cult leader,” he says. “Hi. That’s me.”

Nancy presses her fingers into her temples like she’s holding her skull together by force. “We need to decide what we actually can do from here,” she says. “What we can’t, and what has to wait.”

Steve is at the phone already, body angling toward it like a compass. “We call Joyce,” he says. “First thing. If there’s a chance she’s with… him…” he jerks his head at the living room, meaning Fake Will, “we warn her. We at least try.”

Phone’s mounted on the wall, beige plastic with a tangled cord. There’s a scrap of paper under a flamingo magnet on the fridge with the California number on it.

Robin peels it off, slaps it into his hand. “Dial fast,” she says. “Before my brain finishes the sentence ‘what if he picks up.’”

Steve dials.

The line clicks, hums. They all go quiet without meaning to.

It rings. Once, twice, three times. Robin counts in her head like she’s timing a bomb. Seven. Nine. Ten.

Nothing.

Steve’s jaw tightens. He hangs up, exhales through his nose. “Again.”

He dials. Hums. Rings. Same dead, empty nothing on the other end.

He puts the receiver back in the cradle more gently than Robin expects. “No answer,” he says. “Either they’re not home, or–”

Joyce has a Telemarketing job.” Nancy interrupts. ”That’s what I heard anyway, so she might be busy with that.”

“She could be working” Robin says. “Or… out somewhere. Or the phone line is cut. Or all of the above.”

“For three days?” Max shakes her head. “Joyce always calls back  That’s, like, her whole thing. This is not… normal.”

“So add ‘The Byers missing in action’ to the list,” Steve mutters. “Cool.”

Robin drags a hand through her hair. “We can’t do anything about the California horror movie from here,” she says. “Not right now. So… we focus on the Hawkins one.”

“Vecna,” Nancy says. “He’s still one kill from the last gate. The vision I saw… if he finishes, Hawkins is gone. That’s the clock we’re on.”

“Four gates, fire everywhere, giant shadow thing over town,” Max says. “Yeah. Not on my bucket list.”

“So we stick to the plan,” Nancy says. “We get weapons. Rope, molotov materials, anything we can use against him in the Creel house. We hit him while he’s in a trance.”

Eddie licks his lips. “And the Will situation?” he says. “Just–sorry, but– are we sure that’s him? The original? Because we pulled him out of a giant glowing egg with a direct line into the Upside Down’s nervous system. That feels… important.”

“He’s the same age, same clothes, same night,” Nancy says. “The bats went feral trying to get to him. The Upside Down’s frozen on November sixth, 1983. If he’s not the original, I don’t know what he is.”

“Older Will has been with us the last five years,” Max points out. “School, possession stuff, the whole ‘mind flayer uses me as a spy’ thing. This one hasn't. It’s like someone split their save file. That’s… creepy.”

Robin chews her thumbnail. “Maybe the older one got… overwritten from the outside in,” she says. “New memories grafted on. Meanwhile the original got stuck on the last autosave before everything went to hell. I don’t like what that says about who’s more ‘real,’ but either way, both of them are in trouble.”

“We keep the one we have alive,” Nancy says. “He doesn’t go near Vecna. Or the Upside Down. Or the Creel house. Something in the upside down wanted him for some reason, and it can’t get him back.”

“Where do we keep him, then?” Eddie asks. “Because this trailer is one bat-hole away from being real estate in the Upside Down.”

Nancy glances toward the front window, where the argument from earlier seems to have moved inside. “We get the RV,” she says. “We all go to War Zone. Will stays in the RV. No way in hell are we leaving him alone anywhere.”

Robin peeks through the blinds. The beige RV sits a few lots down, slightly crooked, door shut. No humans in sight. Just the echo of yelling from inside the neighboring trailer.

“Grand theft auto for the greater good,” she mutters. “Sure. Why not. Today’s already a crime buffet.”

“Borrowing,” Eddie says automatically. “We’re borrowing it.”

“Yeah,” Max says. “And if we live, we can bring it back with a thank-you note and some gas money.”

Robin looks toward the couch through the wall. “What about him?” she asks. “Does he get a say?”

As if summoned, Lucas appears at the edge of the kitchen, one arm still looped around Will’s shoulders. Will hovers just behind him, towel around him like a cape, eyes red and hollow. Dustin sticks close on the other side, as if afraid he’ll blink and Will will vanish.

“We heard ‘RV’ and ‘we all go,’” Dustin says. “Just checking that ‘all’ includes the guy the bats seem to really want to eat.”

“It includes him,” Nancy says. “He stays in the back at War Zone. No store. No guns. No creepy older men asking why an eleven-year-old looks like a missing kid poster from 1983.”

“I can help,” Will says, voice small but stubborn. “I… I know stuff. About that place. Even if I don’t remember… after. I could…” He trails off, uncertain.

“You already helped,” Lucas says. “If you hadn’t been there, Dustin and the others wouldn’t have opened that gate. We’d still be stuck.”

“And you are on, like, one hit point,” Dustin adds. “You’re the wizard with no spell slots. You don’t send the wizard to tank the boss.”

“I’m not a wizard,” Will mutters.

“Right now you are,” Dustin says. “You’re the important one. The one Vecna and his bats actually care about. You don’t get to die again. That’s the rule.”

Again hangs there.

Will looks between them, at all the unfamiliar older faces, then down at the towel twisted in his hands. “You’re all… older,” he says quietly. “I missed everything. And now I just… sit in a car?”

“In an RV,” Dustin corrects, because he can’t help himself. “With us. We’re not leaving you behind.”

Lucas squeezes his shoulder. “We’ll go in,” he says. “We’ll get what we need. You stay with Eddie and Erica, lock the doors, don’t talk to anyone. Then we come back. We deal with Vecna. Then we get your family back. That’s the order.”

Will stares at the floor for a long second. “Okay,” he says finally, voice barely above a whisper. “Just… don’t take five years this time.”

Lucas’ throat tightens. “Not even five hours,” he says. “Promise.”

Dustin sticks out his pinky automatically. “Pinky swear?”

Will looks at it, then hooks his own small finger around it. The size difference is ridiculous. It still counts.

“All right,” Max says, grabbing her jacket off the chair. “Field trip to felony town. Let’s go.”

• -  

Stealing the RV is almost insultingly easy.

They wait until another round of shouting starts up in the neighbor’s trailer and then spill out of Max’s in twos and threes, heads down, trying to look like bored kids and not like a burglary squad.

Eddie and Steve go for the driver’s side. Eddie’s hands shake, but not enough to stop him from yanking open the panel and doing his hot-wire thing. The engine coughs, then grumbles to life. The sound makes Lucas’ shoulders crawl– they’ve had enough sudden loud noises– but no doors fly open. No one yells.

“Everybody in!” Robin hisses from the side door. “Welcome to crimes. Watch your step.”

They pile inside.

It smells like stale cigarettes, old upholstery, and that weird air freshener stuff that never actually fixes anything. The carpet is patterned and stained. A plastic Jesus is taped to the dash.

Steve slides behind the wheel like he’s been doing this his whole life. Nancy claims shotgun with the map. Robin, Max, and Erica take the dinette. Eddie hovers between front and back, like he doesn’t trust the floor to stay put.

Lucas steers Will toward the long bench in the back. They sit him between Lucas and Dustin, belt him in. The towel is still around his shoulders. His sneakers don’t quite touch the floor, toes brushing the cabinet edge.

“You okay?” Lucas asks under the hum of everyone else getting settled.

“No,” Will says, honest. Then, after a beat: “But… I’m with you.”

“Progress,” Dustin says. “I’ll take it.”

Up front, Nancy points at the map. “Left at the light, then straight,” she tells Steve. “War Zone’s just past the strip mall.”

Steve nods, eyes on the road. The RV lurches out of Forest Hills, past the leaning sign and the rows of trailers.

Lucas watches Will watch Hawkins go by through the narrow window. Same town. Wrong size. Wrong time.

Out there, somewhere in California, Joyce, El, Mike and Jonathan are living with someone that might not be the boy they think he is. They can’t touch any of that from here yet.

Back here, they’ve got this Will. Eleven years old. Last memory of a fort in the dark and a monster breaking through.

Lucas leans back into the seat, shoulder pressed lightly against Will’s, like a promise.

For now, they’re moving.

For now, that’s enough.

Chapter Text

Sam’s hand had started to cramp somewhere around page twelve.

He flexed his fingers, pen hovering over the line that asked for another justification, in triplicate, for the power draw of the NINA project. The hum of the generators in the walls made the paper vibrate very slightly under his wrist.

Fluorescents buzzed overhead. The little office they’d carved out for him consisted of a metal desk, two folding chairs, a filing cabinet that stuck on the bottom drawer, and smelled like coffee that had gone cold hours ago.

He was halfway through deciding whether “necessary to prevent the world ending” would fly as a budget note when someone stopped in the doorway.

“Dr. Owens.”

He didn’t need to look up to know who it was. He set the pen down and raised his head.

Eleven stood there in the frame, bare feet on the concrete, damp hospital gown hanging off her narrow shoulders. The buzzcut suited her in a way it shouldn’t, it made her look tougher and smaller at the same time. There were faint red marks on her wrists where the straps had been. Water had left darker patches on the gown that hadn’t dried yet.

She wasn’t shaking, but she had the look of someone who could start any second if you knocked her the wrong way.

He pushed the paperwork aside. “Hey,” he said. “Need anything?”

“I found them,” she said.

The words came out flat, but her hands were tight at her sides, fingers curled in the thin fabric.

Sam realized that she had used her telepathy, and he was on his feet before he realized he’d moved. “Who?” he asked. “The others in Hawkins?”

She nodded, once. “Max. I saw Steve. Nancy. Robin. And Eddie.” The names came quickly, like a roll call. “They are together. In Hawkins.”

Relief hit so hard. For all they knew, the town could already be ash.

“Are they hurt?” he asked. “Is everyone–?”

“They are in danger,” she cut in. “Vecna is not done.” Her eyes flicked past him, to the blank wall like she could still see something playing on it. “They have a plan. Max will… let him in. So she can trap him. They will go to his body. In the house. They want to kill him there.”

Bold as hell, those kids. Reckless as hell, too.

“That’s…” He caught himself before the word insane got out. “That’s risky.”

Her jaw tightened. “It is all they have,” she said. “They think if they do not stop him, Hawkins will break. Burn.” Her brow furrowed. “I saw… something. Fire. Gates. Like… wounds.”

Yeah, that tracked. He rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Okay. Okay. So they’re moving against him. That’s good. We can coordinate around that. You did good, finding them.”

She shook her head, impatient. “I was too late,” she said. “I cannot help them from here. I can only watch.”

“You can help them by being ready when they need you,” he said automatically. It sounded thin even to him. “Every time you go in there, every time you practice, you–”

“I heard something else,” she said, steamrolling over the pep talk. Her gaze had gone unfocused for a second, like she was confused. “About Will.”

That pulled him up short.

“Will Byers?” he said, even though of course it was.

“Yes.” She stepped into the room properly now, enough that the motion sensor clicked and the overhead light brightened a notch. “They were talking about him. They said… real Will. Fake Will.” She frowned, the words awkward in her mouth. “They said Will is there. With them. But also… not. I do not understand.”

A cold spot opened up just under his ribs.

“What exactly did they say?” he asked. His voice came out tighter than he meant it to. “Can you remember the words?”

She hesitated, then nodded. “They said this Will… the one there… he remembers Castle Byers. The night he was taken. That he was in the upside down this entire time?” Her face twisted briefly, like that part hurt. “They said he is small.”

Owens stared at her.

“Small,” he repeated. His brain was already running numbers on its own. “And the other one?”

“The Will in California.” She looked at him, confusion and accusation in one. “You told me he is safe. With my mother. But they said… maybe he is not him. Nancy said they thought they saved Will before. In the hospital. That they saw pictures. But this one…” She shook her head. “He does not remember. He is… wrong time.”

Memory shoved up, uninvited: a boy on a hospital bed four years ago, skin sallow under fluorescent light, sweat slick on his hairline. Monitors spiking with every degree they raised the temperature. EEG patterns that looped and knotted like nothing Owens had ever seen before.

Abnormal vitals, he’d written. Core temp variable. Heart rate not fully correlated with stress markers. Possession, they’d called it. Foreign entity in the host. When it was over and the thing crawled out of him, they’d chalked the leftovers up to trauma.

What if it hadn’t all been possession? What if some of it had just been… whatever was playing as Will.

“What else?” he said. “Did they say what they think is fake about him?”

El’s eyes went distant, replaying. “Dustin said they have had three… apocalypses,” she said slowly. “That Will was with them. That they played games. Fought monsters. That he was… there. But Max said this Will has not done any of that. That he is like… a save file. Stuck before the end.”

He swallowed. “Did anyone say he looked… sick? Different? Like last time? Cold, shaking–”

She shook her head. “They said he was… small,” she said. “Younger. He cried. They hugged him.” Her voice went softer. “He asked where our mother is.”

His throat worked around nothing.

“Will Byers was the boy stuck in the Upside Down,” someone said behind him. “Correct?”

Owens didn’t bother hiding his flinch this time. He turned.

Dr. Brenner stood just outside the door, hand on the frame like he’d only just arrived, like he hadn’t been listening long enough to pick his moment. The white hair, the neat collar, the bland, polite half-smile: all exactly where they always were. The only thing that ever changed were his eyes.

Right now, they were bright. Interested.

“Yes,” Owens said. He kept his voice neutral. “He was the first victim. The boy taken by the creature when the gate opened. The boy your project opened the door for.”

If that landed, Brenner didn’t show it. His gaze was on El.

“You saw him?” he asked her, tone mild. “Heard them speak of him?”

She shifted, the towel around her shoulders sliding a little. “I heard them,” she said. “They were… confused. Afraid for him. For my mother.” Her hands twisted in the edge of the towel. “They said she does not answer the phone.”

Brenner hummed, a little sound in his throat that always meant he’d just filed something away.

“The boy survived for days in that world,” he said, like he was lecturing in a classroom. “He was the first we know to have extended contact. Longer than any of our subjects.” His eyes flicked to Owens, and for a second there was a glint of something sharper. “His case has always been… anomalous.”

Owens felt the old argument rising automatically. We are not talking about him like a lab rat. Not again. Not with her here.

But Brenner was already moving on, the way he did: stepping neatly over the parts that didn’t serve him.

“In any case,” he said, shifting his attention back to El, “your friends’ situation only makes one thing more clear.”

He stepped into the room properly now, close enough that Owens could smell antiseptic and whatever aftershave the man still used, like they weren’t buried in a concrete bunker under the desert.

“You are not ready to face him.”

El’s chin snapped up. “I stopped him,” she said. There was a raw edge to it. “At the graveyard. I hurt him. I can do it again.”

“You slowed him,” Brenner said, in that patient doctor voice that made Owens want to put his fist through the wall. “You interfered. And that is… impressive, given how far he has come. But this Henry–this Vecna–has had years to hone his abilities. You have been back at this for days.” He spread his hands. “You think you can simply walk out of here and defeat him? As you are now?”

She hesitated. Her shoulders hunched, just a little. “I have to try,” she said. “They are my friends. He will kill Max. He will kill Lucas, Dustin, Steve, Nancy, Robin, Eddie, Will–”

“And if you fall,” Brenner said, voice lowering, “he will have all of you. Your friends. Your family. Your town. And you will have given him the very thing he wants most.” He tapped two fingers lightly against his temple. “You.”

Owens watched the words land. El’s fingers dug into the towel so hard the fabric bunched.

“We don’t have time for a perfect scenario,” Owens said. “They’re moving now. You heard her. They’re already putting themselves on the line.”

“And you would send her after him half-formed?” Brenner’s gaze cut to him. “We tried that once, remember? We sent a child into a war she did not understand, and we paid the price for years. I will not make that mistake again.”

Bullshit, Owens thought, but didn’t say. You’d make that mistake twice and call it data.

Brenner turned back to El, soft smile back in place. “I know you want to help them,” he said. “I know you feel responsible. For all of this.” His hand twitched, like he wanted to touch her shoulder and thought better of it with Owens standing there. “But if you go now, you will die. They will die. Hawkins will fall. If you stay, if you train, if you push yourself further than you ever have… then you will have a chance to save them. All of them. Even Will.”

The name was almost an afterthought. Owens didn’t buy that for a second.

El’s gaze dropped to the floor. A drop of water slid off her buzzed hair and hit the concrete with a tiny dark circle.

“How much longer?” she asked quietly.

Brenner’s eyes flicked to the monitor on Owens’ desk, as if the answer might be written there. “Until you are strong enough,” he said. “As long as it takes.”

She didn’t like that. It showed in every line of her body. But she was a kid who’d spent most of her life being told when to eat, when to sleep, when to breathe. Habit ran deep.

“Okay,” she said, even though it sounded like anything but. “I will train.”

“Good girl,” Brenner murmured.

He shifted his attention back to Owens. The warmth drained from his face like someone flicked a switch.

“Run the data from her last session,” he said. “I want to see how far the piggyback extended. Any changes in pattern. Anything new.”

Owens held his gaze. “I’ll look at it,” he said. “All of it.”

Brenner gave him a thin, knowing little smile, like they’d just agreed on something they hadn’t actually agreed on. Then he gestured for El to follow him.

She hesitated for half a heartbeat. Her eyes flicked back to Owens.

“My mother,” she said. “If you find out anything…”

“You’ll be the first to know,” he said. That, at least, he could give her without lying.

She nodded once and went after Brenner.

Owens watched them go, the two of them framed for a second in the hallway light: the man who’d opened the door to this mess, and the girl they were all hanging their last hopes on.

Will Byers, he thought. Somehow at the center of this again. 

Brenner had let that sit there like it was just another detail in a report. A boy younger then he should be. One “real” and one “fake” version, but which was which?

There was no way Martin Brenner breezed past that.

Owens had seen the way his eyes sharpened at the mention of two Wills. The same way they used to sharpen when Henry’s old test results came up, back when Henry Creel was still Subject 001 and not the thing rotting in the Upside Down. Back when Brenner was first realizing that the boy’s abilities hadn’t started in the lab at all.

They’d started after contact.

After the shadow. After that first brush with the thing on the other side.

Henry’s powers had bloomed in the wake of whatever that world was, twisting what he already was into something else. When Will–or who was thought to be Will–was rescued by his mom, it was pure luck that Dr. Brenner had been unavailable at the time, that he had been too injured to do anything for over a year. If Will Byers had been soaking in that same environment for days, then months, then years, and if one version of him had come back young, vulnerable, and still wired into it somehow–

Brenner wasn’t thinking “poor kid.” He was thinking “live case study.” A second data point to prove his favorite theory: that the Upside Down didn’t just invade; it made things.

Owens sat back down slowly, pen forgotten on the desk.

If there really was an eleven-year-old Will on a stranger’s couch in Hawkins, and a sixteen-year-old “Will” living with Joyce Byers in California, that wasn’t just a family tragedy. That was exactly the sort of anomaly Brenner had always wanted to cut open and understand.

And Owens knew, with a cold, tired certainty, that Martin Brenner was not going to let Will Byers go again– not if there was even a hint that the boy’s time in that world had changed him the way it changed One.

Which meant somebody had to be ready to say no.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Will sits on the back bench of the RV and tries very hard not to feel like somebody’s kid brother who got dragged along by mistake.

Everyone’s crammed in up front, arguing and planning and looking appropriately end-of-the-world. Steve in the driver’s seat, hands loose on the wheel. Nancy with the map. Robin, Eddie, Max, Erica, Lucas, Dustin all filling up the middle.

They’re taller. That’s the first thing.

Lucas’ shoulders are way wider than they should be. Dustin’s neck actually exists now instead of just being curls and a baseball cap. Erica is… not small. At all. Her legs stretch out farther than his when they sit on the bench together, heel kicking idle at the cabinet.

He’s noticed it already, back at Max’s, but seeing them in daylight, in a moving car, with the rest of the world actually going by outside–

It hits weird.

Five years for them. Zero for him.

Max had dug out some old clothes for him before they left. Her “smallest ones,” she’d said, apologetic.

The shirt’s soft and washed-out, some band he doesn’t recognize cracked across the front. The neckline keeps slipping off one shoulder if he doesn’t keep tugging it up. The shorts are cinched as tight as they’ll go and still too loose, so he’s had to roll the waistband over twice. They puff out funny over his knees when he sits, and if he stands up too fast he can feel them threaten to slide south.

He hooks his fingers in the hem now, just in case.

Outside the narrow side window, the War Zone parking lot drifts into view. A blowing American flag, a big red-and-white sign, pickup trucks lined up.

Steve parks a few rows out. The engine grumbles down.

“Okay,” Nancy says, twisting in her seat. “Quick in and out. We stick to the list. No improvising.”

“Bummer,” Robin mutters. “I was excited to see you freestyle-bargain for a flamethrower.”

Erica snorts.

They start sorting themselves.

“Me, Steve, Robin, Erica inside,” Nancy says, already moving into Command Mode. “We buy what we need. Lucas, Dustin, you guys will help carry. Max, Eddie, you stay with Will.”

Will’s head snaps up. “What? Why?”

“Because we can’t bring an eleven-year-old into a gun store,” Nancy says, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “There’s panicking townsfolk, angry jocks, loaded weapons. It’s not safe.”

“I’m not– ” he starts, then clamps his mouth shut, because saying I’m not a kid when his feet don’t reach the floor feels stupid.

Dustin catches his eye, face pinched. “Dude, we’re not leaving you,” he says quickly. “You’ll be right there. We’re just… dividing roles.”

“I can help,” Will insists. The words come out sharper than he means. “I– I’ve used a gun before.”

That earns him a whole round of looks.

He stares down at his hands. “I shot it,” he mutters. “The… thing. In the forest. I know how to aim.”

Silence.

Steve’s the one who breaks it. “Not doubting your sharpshooter cred, man,” he says, a little too light, “but I really don’t want to explain to Joyce why her kid got trampled by bargain hunters at the ammo aisle.”

Max shifts closer on the bench. “We’re not saying you can’t do anything,” she says. “Just that this specific thing? Maybe not your scene.”

Will wants to say more. That this feels worse, somehow. That they’re all bigger and older and carrying him around and telling him to wait in the car like he’s seven.

He doesn’t.

He just fixes his eyes on the window and says, “Fine.”

Max winces, but doesn’t argue.

The side door hisses when Robin shoves it open. Air swirls in, hot and dry and full of asphalt. One by one they climb out: Steve, Nancy, Robin, Erica, Lucas, Dustin. The door slides shut with a clunk, leaving Max, Eddie, and Will in the dim, stale quiet.

For a minute nobody talks.

Eddie’s in the kitchenette area, peering through the greasy curtain at the front, fingers twitching at the hem of his vest. Max sits sideways on the dinette, one leg up, watching the storefront through the side window.

Will stares at the pattern in the carpet. It’s some kind of brown-and-orange swirl. It makes his eyes hurt.

“So,” Eddie says finally, voice too loud in the cramped space. “How’s everybody enjoying our fun family road trip? Ten out of ten, I assume.”

Max snorts. “You know people are gonna recognize you, right?” she says, not taking her eyes off the window. “You’re, like, on the news. And you still look like… you.”

“I always look like me,” Eddie says. “That’s kind of my thing.”

Max flicks her gaze over at him. “I mean the hair,” she says. “The jacket. The whole… thing.” She gestures at him, bracelets clacking. “You ever think about just… not looking like a wanted poster for five minutes? I dunno. Tie it back. Lose the vest.”

Eddie looks scandalized. “Excuse you, Mayfield,” he says. “This is not a ‘thing.’ This is a lifestyle. Also, what, you want me to put on, like, a polo shirt and blend in? ‘Hi, yes, hello fellow upstanding citizens, I too enjoy lynch mobs and organized sports.’”

“ I’m just saying, maybe don’t look like yourself when the entire town wants to nail you to a flag.”

“Conformity is for cowards,” Eddie says. “And people with boring hair.”

“Conformity is for people who don’t wanna get shot buying rope,” Max shoots back.

They’re both half-whispering, half-bickering, and for a second Will almost smiles. It sounds like old fights he only half remembers from the playground; dumb and sharp and weirdly familiar.

It also means they’re not looking at him.

Through the little window, normal people move through the parking lot. A woman pushes a cart. A guy in a baseball cap loads something into the back of his truck. No one is running. No one is screaming. No one has a monster in their walls.

He presses his palm against the glass.

He wants to be that. Just– getting dragged to the store by his mom, whining about it on the way home, going back to a house with bad wallpaper and a working TV.

Instead, he’s here. Too young, too behind, stuck on the bench while everyone else goes in to get weapons for the next apocalypse.

His chest sparks with something hot and tangled. Anger, maybe. Or panic. Or both. They say he is too young, yet Erica was included despite only being 13, two years older than him.

He slides off the bench before he can talk himself out of it.

He reaches the rear door. Someone had said earlier you can’t open it from the inside. Safety thing. Whatever.

He grabs the handle anyway.

It doesn’t move at first. Just rattles in his grip.

Will tightens his hand until the edges of the metal bite into his palm.

He’s so tired of locked things.

A buzzing starts behind his eyes. Not the soft hum that means the other place is close; sharper, like a wire pulled too tight. His ears ring. For a second, the RV feels too small, like the air’s being sucked out.

Then the latch clicks, and the door pops open an inch.

Will blinks. The buzzing cuts off. Something warm drips from his nose; he wipes at it with the back of his hand and comes away with a red smear.

It seems that it wasn’t locked after all. 

Will slips through the gap while Max and Eddie continue to argue, oblivious to his actions, one hand yanking his shorts up, feet hitting hot pavement.

The door thunks shut behind him.

For a moment he just stands there, heartbeat thudding in his ears, nose stinging. The blood trails toward his lip; he wipes it again, annoyed, and starts walking before Max or Eddie realize he is gone.

The War Zone doors wheeze when he pulls them, a waft of cold air and metal and something sharp. Oil? Cleaner?

Inside is bright. Too bright.

Fluorescent lights buzz overhead. Shelves rise up in long aisles, stacked with boxes and bags and shiny things he doesn’t recognize. Guns line the walls behind the counter, neat rows of black and silver.

His eyes catch on a shotgun.

It’s not the same one as the gun at home. Different stock. But the shape is close enough.

He remembers his own hands wrapped around a barrel. Plaster dust in the air. A door blown inward with a roar that shook his teeth. The thing screaming, black blood on the floor–

He drags his gaze away, throat tight.

Another shotgun hangs a few feet down. He edges toward it, pulling his shorts up again with an irritated little jerk.

He’s so focused that he doesn’t see the person in front of him until he walks right into them.

A solid chest meets his nose. His foot tangles with a boot. He goes straight back on his butt with a yelp, palms scraping on the rubber mat.

“Whoa, hey–”

A hand closes around his forearm, hauling him up before he can properly process the fall.

“You okay, man?” a voice asks. “That was a solid tackle.”

Will blinks up.

The guy is tall. Blond. He’s wearing a green-and-gold Hawkins letterman jacket over a polo shirt, sleeves pushed to his elbows. There’s a white bandage taped over one hand, stained at the edge. His face is… familiar in the way all popular jock faces are: square jaw, straight nose, bright eyes.

“I’m fine,” Will mutters, cheeks burning. “Sorry. I didn’t see you.”

“No harm done.” The guy smiles, big and easy. “You here with your parents, kid?”

Will bristles at the word kid. “Yeah,” he says anyway. It’s easier than explaining RVs and monsters. “They’re… around.”

“Cool, cool.” The guy lets go of his arm. “You into this stuff?” He nods toward the guns. “Or just checking it out?”

“I was looking at the shotgun,” Will says, before he can stop himself.

The guy’s eyebrows go up. “Your dad teach you?” he asks. “He hunt?”

“…Yeah,” Will says, after a second. His dad had shown him how to aim, among other things. “We used to go out. In the woods.”

“Huh.” The guy looks almost impressed. “Well good on your dad, it's an important skill to learn– how to defend yourself.”

Before Will can say anything in response, another voice can be heard across the isle. 

“Yo, Jason,” 

Two more boys walk up, both in jackets, arms full of gear. Rope. A crowbar. Duct tape. A box of something that looks like flares. One of them balances an axe against his shoulder, grin a little too bright.

“I think we got everything,” he says, dumping the pile into a cart.

Will looks at the assortment and grimaces before he can stop it. “Those aren’t good for hunting,” he blurts. “You’ll scare everything off. Or just… hurt it and not kill it.”

All three of them glance at him.

The second guy huffs a laugh. “Good thing we’re not going after Bambi,” he says. “Hawkins is pretty unsafe right now, little man. Satanic cult, murder stuff. Can’t be too careful.”

Satanic cult.

Will’s skin crawls. “I’m from Hawkins,” he says. “What… happened?”

All three jocks stare at him.

“You’re from Hawkins and you haven’t heard?” the axe guy asks. “What, your folks got you living under a rock?”

Jason – apparently that’s his name – shakes his head, softening it with another smile for Will’s benefit. “Lot’s been going on,” he says, like he’s explaining stranger danger to a kid. “Few months back, one of our guys got killed. Chrissy, my girlfriend. Then others. Cops dropped the ball. So we picked it up.”

He leans down a bit, like he’s letting Will in on a secret.

“You see the news?” he asks. “Guy named Eddie Munson? Freaky hair, metal band, plays some game called Hellfire?”

Will frowns, recognising the club. “Hellfire’s just D&D,” he says. “It’s a club for a game.”

Jason’s smile gets tighter.

“That’s what they tell you,” he says. “But all that ‘game’ is just a gateway. Symbols, rituals, opening yourself up to things you don’t understand. Eddie leads it. People die. You put it together.”

Eddie.

Will’s brain supplies: wild curls, ripped vest, just like the Eddie that had been in the upside down when he was found. The Eddie that was currently sitting in the RV with Max. 

He tries to match that image to what Jason is saying.

“That’s not…” he starts, then stops. He doesn’t know Eddie, not really. He didn’t even realise Eddie was a wanted man, because apparently no one thought to tell him. 

He glances past Jason’s shoulder, looking for something, anything else to latch onto, to figure out anything else that his friends might not tell him, and catches a flicker of movement at the end of the aisle.

Nancy.

She’s got a basket hooked over one arm, a coil of rope and a box of shells inside it. Robin’s a shadow at her shoulder. Nancy’s eyes snag on Will, on Jason towering over him, on the mess of weapons in the cart.

Her jaw tightens.

She nudges Robin and murmurs something. Robin peels off toward the counter. Nancy starts down their aisle, steps quick but controlled.

Lucas is a little farther back, half-hidden by a rack of fishing gear. He follows Nancy’s gaze, clocks Jason, then Will. His eyes widen. He elbows Dustin, jerks his head toward the front.

They start drifting away, trying to be casual.

Will drags his focus back to Jason as he continues his rant.

“I’m telling you the truth,” Jason says. “People died because of that freak and his little cult. Half this town won’t say it out loud, but they’re scared. And they should be.”

“You shouldn’t say that,” Will blurts, heat rising in his neck.

Jason’s eyes narrow a fraction. “Why not?”

“Because it’s not… that’s not what D&D is,” Will says. “We used to play it. Me and my friends. It’s just… stories. Dice. You pretend to fight monsters. It doesn’t make you–”

He stops before he says possessed. Or special. Or target.

Jason studies him more closely now. “You play?” he questions. 

Will nods his head. “Yes. We had our own party.”

One of the other boys squints at him. “You really from Hawkins?” he asks. “You kinda look li–”

“Will.”

Nancy’s voice cuts across the aisle like a whip.

He turns.

She’s right there now, basket in one hand, the other reaching for his shoulder.

“There you are,” she says, smiling too big and too bright. “Come on. Your mom’s looking for you.”

Jason’s eyebrows shoot up. “Nancy Wheeler,” he says. “Didn’t expect to see you here.” His tone when he was talking to Will is gone. This one has teeth. “Stocking up on protection? Can’t blame you. Especially with your little brother’s club being what it is.”

The words hit like a slap.

Will stiffens.

“No,” he says, before Nancy can open her mouth. “You don’t get to talk about Mike like that.”

The air around them tightens.

The fluorescent lights overhead flicker. A second-long stutter, buzzing louder, then settling. A rack at the end of the aisle shivers, a single box of ammo clattering to the floor.

Jason frowns, just a fraction, eyes flicking up at the lights.

Nancy’s grip on Will’s shoulder turns from gentle to iron. “We’re leaving,” she says, through a smile that isn’t a smile. “Sorry,” she adds to Jason, voice going sugar-sweet. “Family emergency.”

Jason watches them.

“Sure,” he says. “Run along. But you should keep an eye on Wheeler’s little friend group. Hellfire’s bad news. That Munson freak? He’s dangerous. You see him, you stay away.”

Nancy’s fingers twitch on Will’s shoulder.

She doesn’t answer him. She just turns, steering Will out of the aisle fast enough that his oversized shorts slip again and he has to grab at them with his free hand.

As they pass the end of the row, Will hears one of Jason’s friends murmur, low, “I swear that kid looks familiar. His name is Will? Like that Byers k–”

The rest gets swallowed by the noise of the store.

By the time they hit the front, Steve has an armful of bags and Erica is arguing with the guy at the register about a bulk discount. Robin is already halfway to the door, eyes a little too wide like she’s waiting for everything to explode.

“Time to go,” Nancy says briskly. “Now.”

No one argues. Erica snatches the receipt, Steve scoops up the last bag, and they all funnel out into the parking lot like a badly organized field trip.

The RV door slides open under Robin’s hand. They hustle the gear in first, then themselves.

Will gets shoved up the steps in the middle of the pack and almost trips. Max catches his elbow from inside, eyes wide and furious.

“What the hell, Byers?” she hisses as he squeezes past. “We told you to stay put.”

Eddie’s in the kitchenette, white-knuckled on the counter. “We nearly had matching heart attacks when we turned around and you were gone,”

Lucas and Dustin are already in the back of the RV both a little pale and wild-eyed. Steve slams the door and drops the locks like something might try them.

Voices start all at once.

“Seriously, man, what were you thinking?”
“You cannot just wander into a gun store alone–”
“You talked to Jason? What did he sa–”
“You could’ve been grabbed, or recognized, or–”

“I just wanted to help,” Will snaps, louder than he meant to. His face is hot. His head aches. “I’m not useless.”

Everyone goes quiet for half a second.

Nancy exhales. Some of the sharpness bleeds out of her shoulders. “You’re not useless,” she says. “No one thinks that. But there are rules. We can’t protect anything if we’re constantly doubling back to not lose you.”

He stares at the floor.

A drip hits his bare foot.

He frowns, wipes at his upper lip. His fingers come away red again.

“Oh, hey–” Nancy fishes in her pocket, pulls out a crumpled tissue. She steps closer and gently tilts his chin up. “You’re bleeding.”

“It’s fine,” Will mutters. It doesn’t even hurt that much. “It just… happened.”

“Did you hit something?”

He shrugs, eyes sliding away. “I don’t know.”

She finishes wiping, then freezes for a second with the bloody tissue in her hand.

The RV hums quietly around them. In the back, Dustin and Lucas share a quick, sharp look.

Will doesn’t miss the look. He just doesn’t know what to do with it.

He sniffs once, wipes the last of the blood on the back of his hand, and drops into the corner of the bench. He just wants to relax. To see his mom. To see Jonathan. Mike. He hasn’t really slept since he woke up after being saved from the upside down, since they wiped the grime off him, shoved him into clean clothes, and kept going.

His eyes start to sting, lids heavy. The low vibration of the engine and the sway of the RV turn the voices around him into a blur, a soft rise and fall he can’t quite follow. He tucks his knees up a little, Max’s borrowed shirt falling over them, and lets his head rest against the cool window.

Will’s eyes slip shut with the first turn out of the parking lot, the world outside smearing into sunlight and motion as he finally dozes off.

Chapter Text

The bell over the War Zone door gives a lazy jingle as Jason shoulders it open.

He stops on the concrete slab just outside the door, plastic bag handles cutting into his fingers. Andy and Chance clatter out behind him, the cart wheels bumping over the threshold.

Across the lot, an RV pulls out slow, merges into the thin line of traffic, and heads toward town.

“Yo,” Chance says, coming up on his left. “You good, man? You look like you just saw a ghost.”

Jason doesn’t answer right away.

He’s thinking about the boy in the aisle. Small. Swallowed in a shirt that didn’t fit. Doe eyes, wide and sharp at the same time. 

That Byers kid.

His mom had taped those posters to the fridge five years ago. That kid’s face–terrible bowl cut, striped shirt, shy almost-smile–had watched him eat cereal for months. The whole town had been looking. Praying. The first big prayer chain he’d ever gone to that wasn’t for someone’s grandma’s hip.

Missing. Then found. Then… different.

She took the posters down after Joyce Byers son was found, but the picture never really left. Folks talked. Teachers. Parents at church. Coach once, after practice, low, saying “Poor kid’s not all there anymore.”

And now there’s a smaller version of that face standing under fluorescent lights in a gun store, five years too late.

Andy nudges him with the cart. “Jason,” he says. “What are we doing? I thought we were heading back to the gym to–”

“Did you see that RV?” Jason asks, still staring at the road.

“Yeah?” Chance squints down the lot. “Lot of RVs, dude.”

“The one Wheeler got into,” Jason clarified.

Andy snorts. “You mean that RV?” He jerks his chin at the disappearing bumper. “Yeah. Saw it. Wheeler, her boyfriend. Don’t know who else”

Jason hears him, but his brain is still arranging pieces.

Nancy Wheeler in a gun store, buying rope and shells.

A kid who looks like Will Byers, and the way Nancy had dragged him away as soon as she caught sight of the kid. 

His stomach twists.

“Maybe… they did something to him,” he says, mostly to himself.

Chance frowns. “To who?”

“The kid,” Jason says. “Will.” He turns a little, eyes scanning his friends. “Nancy tries to claim him like he’s some visiting cousin. That make any sense to you?”

Andy shrugs. “Could be a cousin.”

“In a town this size?” Jason shakes his head. “You grew up there. You ever hear about Nancy Wheeler having a cousin named Will who looks exactly like the Byers kid that disappeared?”

Andy opens his mouth, then closes it.

Jason presses on. Momentum feels better than doubt.

“Remember when Byers went missing?” he says. “Whole town out with flashlights. Cops, volunteers, the whole thing. Remember the rumors?” He doesn’t wait for them to answer. “That he’d last been seen with some friends. Then he apparently rode home alone and… poof.”

Chance shifts his grip on the axe handle. “It was dark. Anything could’ve happened.”

“Right.” Jason looks back at the road. “But you know who his friends were? The ones who last saw Will?” He taps the side of his bag with one finger, like he’s tapping a Bible verse. “Sinclair. That curly haired kid… Henderson, and Nancy's brother. All in the Hellfire cult.”

He’s not a stupid guy. People think jocks are, but he’s spent enough Sundays listening to the Pastor’s sermons to know how patterns work. Temptation. Sin. Consequence.

A kid vanishes, comes back, and soon after the family moves. Out to California.

“Maybe he never came back,” Jason says quietly. “Not really.”

Chance laughs, but it’s weak. “What, you think the kid in there was a ghost?”

Jason shakes his head. “I don’t know,” he says. “I just know… that's not normal. They have to have done something.”

He thinks about how the little kid had bristled when he said Hellfire was a cult. Like he was defending them. Defending Eddie.

You don’t get that loyal without strings being attached.

“How many of them are in that club now?” Jason asks. “Henderson. Sinclair. Wheeler’s brother. The same group that last saw Byers. And now the kid is here, looking like he never aged a day.”

Andy sighs. “Coincidence, man.”

Jason looks at him. “You believe that?”

Andy looks away first.

“Town’s got bodies,” Jason says. “Chrissy. Fred. Patrick.” His throat tightens for a second on Patrick’s name. He pushes through. “Cops did nothing. We step up, we get called crazy.”

“Maybe I should’ve talked sooner,” Jason says. “Maybe if we’d all paid attention, Chrissy wouldn’t have ended up–.” he chokes off.

The image hits hard enough that he has to blink it away.

He looks back at where the RV vanished, like he can still feel its shadow on the asphalt.

“What if they’re going to do it again?” he says. “Finish what they started back then. Sacrifice. Ritual. Maybe they messed it up with Byers the first time. Maybe that’s why the town’s been cursed ever since.” He jerks his chin toward the road. “That kid? He’s the target.”

The words taste awful, but they make a terrible kind of sense.

He had never really believed in all that deal with the devil talk. At least before Patrick died. Now Jason realizes that all the seemingly stupid talk about the power of the devil is true. You invite evil in enough times, something’s going to answer.

“Jason,” Andy says slowly, “are you saying we just watched them walk out with the next victim?”

Jason sets his jaw. The plastic bag handles dig deeper into his skin. He doesn’t loosen his grip.

“Last time, we watched,” he says. “We went to vigils. We prayed. We let other people handle it.”

Chrissy’s face flashes in his head. The way she looked at him in the gym. The way she looked when she was found dead, mutilated beyond what anything human could do.

“Not again,” he says.

He drops the bags into the cart and straightens up.

“Get in the car,” he tells them. “Now.”

Chance glances from the cart to the road. “We’re just gonna… follow them?” he asks. “Like, what’s the plan here, man? We bust in with a crowbar and a Bible and ask if they’re killing kids for Satan?”

“If they’re innocent, then we watch,” Jason says. “If not…” He looks down at the axe, the ropes, the hardware they just bought. “We stop them before they can hurt anyone else.”

He doesn’t say the word kill. Doesn’t have to. It sits there between them anyway.

Andy’s throat bobs. Then he nods, jerky. “Okay,” he says. “Okay. Yeah.”

Chance hesitates half a second longer, then swears under his breath and peels off toward the Bronco.

The sun beats down on the asphalt. Somewhere behind them, the War Zone door jingles again as some stranger comes or goes. Normal people buying normal things in a town that thinks the worst is just bad kids and drugs.

Jason takes one last look at the road.

This time, he tells himself, they’re not going to hide it for long.

He grips the axe handle tighter, feels the weight of it, and heads for the car.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The door clicked shut behind Eleven, and the echo of bare feet on concrete faded down the corridor.

Martin Brenner watched for a beat longer than he needed to, fingers still resting lightly on the jamb. Her hospital gown was damp, shoulders squared in that stubborn way she’d picked up from the outside.

Love for her friends. He could almost hear Owens’ voice saying it like a virtue. For Martin, it was just another lever. Fear of losing them. Guilt. Responsibility. All he needed to do was press in the right place.

She would stay. She would train. He had her long enough to make something useful out of what was left.

But the name she had mentioned wouldn’t leave his head.

Will Byers.

He turned away from the doorway and crossed the small office. It was identical to Owens’ in shape, containing a metal desk, humming vents,  and concrete walls, but the details were different. No family photos. No cartoons stuck to the filing cabinet with magnets. Just neat stacks of binders, a locked drawer, and the ever-present buzz of machines through concrete.

He sat, slid the top drawer open, and pulled out a folder. Yellowed edges. HAWKINS NAT’L LAB stamped across the tab. The ink on the label, BYERS, W., was his own handwriting. Martin was glad he had taken the time to print all the data obtained in the lab after he had been… temporarily indisposed.

El’s halting words were still fresh.

They say he is small. Younger. They say he has been in that place this entire time.

He flipped the folder open.

Lab notes from four years ago. Owens’ neat, compressed script. Temperature charts. Heart-rate graphs. EEG printouts in faded black-and-white.

The first page was intake: November 1983. Male, 12. Found in systemic shock. Hypothermia. Possible anoxia. Owens had underlined exposure to unknown environment.

He ran his thumb down the vitals. Baseline temperature: low. The boy’s core temp sat a degree below normal even after they’d warmed him. Heart rate drifted in a way that didn’t match any standard recovery curve: spiking at rest, calming under stress. Sleep cycles fragmented, but not in any pattern Brenner recognized from nightmares, withdrawal, or standard trauma.

The EEG sheets were worse.

He smoothed one flat. Long bands of scratchy pen lines ran across it. On a healthy child, those bands had a certain order. Waking, sleeping, dreaming. Predictable rises and falls.

Will Byers’ chart was a knot. Frequencies bled into each other. Spikes shot straight through the page, too chaotic to be anything close to normal. 

Owens had written POSSESSION? in the margin and circled it twice.

Martin tapped the word with his finger.

Possession had been the convenient term. The thing inside the boy. The shadow mass they’d blamed was the cause for all of the weird results, the substance that eventually crawled out of what was thought to have been Will Byers. Everyone had been so relieved to have something solid to blame that they’d rushed to assign it everything.

But El’s report shifted the frame.

Two Wills.

A “fake” one who’d lived with his family for years, accumulating memories, mimicking growth.

And a real one, still small, unchanged, frozen on the night he disappeared and only now stirred.

He turned to another page. Bloodwork. Electrolytes, glucose, cortisol. Again, off. Nothing he had ever seen in a living person. 

If the creature had only been using Will as a meat-puppet, those patterns should have flattened when it left. Trauma would leave scars, not ongoing structure. But Owens’ notes weeks after “recovery” still mentioned episodes. Headaches. Temperature shifts. 

He’d written RESIDUAL EFFECTS? and then, later, RESOLVED after a quiet period.

Martin didn’t believe in resolved.

A boy pulled into that world for days. The perfect age: young enough that his mind was still plastic, old enough to have formed connections. Then returned. Altered.

And now El was describing a duplicate. An eleven-year-old copy, unstuck in time. Wearing the same clothes, crying for the same mother, remembering the last thing the real boy had seen before the dark took him.

The “rescued” Will had grown. Changed schools. Moved states. Kept his family busy.

A decoy, perhaps? A placeholder organism? An approximation painstakingly filled in from stolen memories while the original stayed in stasis.

He leaned back in his chair, and closed the file, breathing out slowly through his nose.

But why keep the original alive? Why not kill the boy and move on, as it had with so many others?

Maybe the boy had something unique. Some quirk of brain or blood that made him a better anchor. Maybe his fear, his love, his stubbornness produced a stronger signal. Maybe he had nothing special at all, and the true experiment was simply: what happens if we don’t erase this one?

Whatever the reason, the result was the same.

One specimen, divided. One half out there, wearing a life and feeding information back into the dark. The other half finally shaken loose, wandering Hawkins in a borrowed shirt, carrying years of exposure in his cells.

Both, in theory, accessible.

He thought of the rows of children in the rainbow room. of Henry with his blank eyes and clenched fists. Of Eleven in the tank, veins standing out at her neck when the lights went, the fleas rose, the men screamed.

He had tried to breed power in a closed system. To stack the deck. To take what Henry had and strip away the unpredictable parts.

And still, at the edge of his success, the floor had opened and something other had reached up and taken one of his subjects out of his hands.

Now that same something had quietly raised a second case for him.

Martin let his gaze linger on the BYERS, W. on the folder tab.

The Department would see a missing child. Owens would see a victim. El would see a friend.

He saw an answer.

A chance to understand what that world did when it chose to shape rather than destroy. A chance to see, in living tissue, the possibilities Henry had shown before he slipped fully beyond their reach.

He slipped the file back into the drawer, shut it gently, and turned the lock.

Will Byers was no longer an old case. No longer a footnote in the history of Gate One.

He was where it started. Hawkins would be crawling with soldiers and cops soon enough. Somewhere in that chaos, one small boy would be easy to misplace. To redirect. To collect.

Martin steepled his fingers and stared at the bare concrete wall, seeing not gray but a pattern of red and black on the other side. He had to leave now. 

The Upside Down made things.

So did he.

And he was not, under any circumstance, going to let anyone else get to the boy before he did.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The helicopter hits the sand like the end of the world.

Mike’s still halfway out of the van door, wind slamming against his face, when the blast finally fades. The rotor is a twisted shape in the distance. The soldiers are… not moving. Argyle is yelling something about “that was totally gnarly, bro,” and Jonathan is swearing under his breath, but Mike doesn’t hear any of it.

He only sees her.

El stands in the middle of the road, hospital gown whipping around her knees. There’s dust in her buzzed hair and blood under her nose, and she’s looking at them like she isn’t sure they’re real.

Mike jumps before he’s thought it through. Feet hit sand, legs wobble, but he keeps going. The last few feet are a blur.

“El!” he shouts, and then she’s in his arms and everything else drops away.

She’s solid. Warm. Shaking a little. His hands find her back, the damp fabric, the curve of her neck. For a second he’s twelve again in a living room with Christmas lights and a girl who didn’t know what a friend was.

“You’re okay,” he keeps saying, like a broken record. “You’re okay, you’re okay.”

Her arms are banded tight around his ribs. “I worried you were dead,” she mumbles into his shoulder. “They said… Max said–”

“We’re here,” he says, pulling back enough to see her face. “We’re fine. You did it. You– you saved yourself, like, again, and we’re gonna figure the rest out together, okay?”

Her eyes shine damp. For a second, the old look is there: like he’s the only thing tethering her to the ground.

Then her gaze shifts over his shoulder.

Mike lets go first, only enough to turn with her. “Hey, guys,” he calls, grinning stupidly because he can’t not. “She’s– we found her, she’s–”

Jonathan’s there, hugging El on the other side. Argyle does a sort of bouncing wave. 

And Will stands a little to one side of the group.

El steps toward him automatically, like she’s rewinding some memory of their last goodbye.

“Hi,” Will says, smiling. “You… did it. That was… wow.”

El stops one step short of where a hug would happen.

Mike feels it in the way her shoulder brushes his. The hesitation. The way her eyes flick up and down Will’s face like she’s looking at a drawing that’s a little off.

He opens his mouth to say, Go on, hug him, but El just lifts a hand instead. A small, awkward touch to Will’s forearm, fingers light. Not the crushing, relieved hug she gave Mike or Jonathan.

“It is good to see you,” she says.

Will smiles. It’s perfect. Even. Like a yearbook photo smile. “You too,” he says.

It should feel normal. It doesn’t. Mike can’t pin down why, exactly. Maybe it’s just that everything is insane and there’s a crashed helicopter behind them and he hasn’t slept properly in days.

“Okay, family reunion later,” Jonathan says, rubbing a hand down his face. “We really need to not be here when more military guys show up.”

“Yeah, can we maybe drive away from the blown-up government hardware?” Argyle adds. “Like, far away? Preferably toward someplace with pizza?”

They all start moving back toward the van in a loose, stunned herd. Mike squeezes El’s hand, doesn’t let go. Will falls into step on El’s other side, quiet.

Mike glances at him once.

He expects… something. A joke. A “told you we’d find her.” Even one of those half-annoyed looks he always used to get whenever El and Mike went all mushy in front of him.

Instead, Will keeps glancing at El, face weirdly blank. Mike decides it’s just shock.

There’s been a lot of that going around.

Chapter Text

The van rattles over another crack in the road and Mike’s spine thumps the metal wall.

Argyle’s driving like he always does: one hand on the wheel, one hand floating around making weird little circles, radio low. Jonathan’s in the passenger seat, map open, jaw clenched, staring so hard at the horizon you’d think he could drag Hawkins out of it by sheer willpower.

In the back, it’s cramped and weirdly quiet.

El’s on the bench, wrapped in a blanket someone found in the bunker. Knees pulled up, bare feet tucked under her. Her buzzcut is still patchy-damp from the tank, little beads of water drying on her neck. She keeps glancing at the metal wall like she can see straight through it to wherever Max is.

Will’s on the bench opposite her, one foot braced on the floor, arms folded over his chest. He’s angled toward El, not quite staring, but… close. Every time she shifts, his eyes track it. It makes sense that he’d be worried.

Mike sits on the floor between them, back against the wall, knees drawn up. He can feel Will’s sneaker pressed against his jacket.

Nobody talks for a while.

Then El says, “We need to stop.”

Jonathan half-turns in his seat. “We can’t stop yet,” he says. “We’re not even out of Nevada. We can switch drivers, but we gotta keep moving if we want to—”

“Not for sleep,” El cuts in. “For me.” Her fingers tighten on the blanket. “I need a place.”

Mike’s stomach does a small, ugly flip. “A place for what?”

“To find them again,” she says. “Max. The others. I can go back. Make sure they are okay.”

Mike leans forward immediately. “Okay. Yeah. We can do that. We can stop somewhere on the way, right?” He looks to Jonathan for backup.

Jonathan glances in the rearview. “Sure. There’s gotta be a motel or something before we hit the state line. But that’s gonna cost us time.”

“Time we don’t really have,” Will says, sudden and sharp.

Mike turns toward him. “Dude—”

“I’m serious.” Will’s got his hands locked around his knees, knuckles white. His voice is tight in a way Mike isn’t used to. “If Vecna’s going after Max, every minute we waste is… bad. El can’t actually do anything from here other then check to make sure they are ok. So what’s the point of stopping?”

That lands with a weight Mike doesn’t want to admit makes sense.

Because yeah. Sure El can do things from a distance but just… spying. Listening. Finding. Not… changing anything.

“Maybe knowing is better than not knowing?” Jonathan offers. “If they’re… already…” He doesn’t finish the sentence. “We should at least—”

“If they’re already,” Will cuts in, “then we can’t help them from a motel in Nevada. We need to get to Hawkins. That’s where this is happening.”

He looks at Mike when he says it, eyes intense, like he’s waiting for Mike to agree.

And Mike… kind of does. His brain keeps doing the math: miles to Hawkins vs whatever horrible clock Vecna’s running on.

“Will’s not wrong,” he says.  “If all you can do is watch, that’s—” he gropes for a word that isn’t useless— “that’s not gonna stop him.”

El’s jaw tightens. “You think I cannot help them from here,” she says. It’s not quite a question.

“I didn’t say that,” Mike says quickly. “Just— You… find people. You listen. You don’t… change it.”

“That was before,” El says.

She drags in a breath. Mike watches the way her shoulders square, like she’s bracing for impact.

“Papa taught me something new,” she says. “In the tank. A piggyback.” The word sounds weird in her mouth. “I can go into Max’s mind. Not just watch. Fight him. From here.”

The van goes quiet.

Mike feels something in his chest flip, like someone turned a light on. “You can fight him,” he repeats. “From here.”

“Wait.” Jonathan twists around in his seat, staring at her. “‘Papa’? As in… Dr. Brenner? He’s alive?”

El nods once. “He was with Dr. Owens. At NINA.”

Mike’s stomach drops. “He was there? With you?”

“Yes,” she says. “He helped me remember. Helped me get stronger.”

Jonathan’s mouth pulls tight. “So he was with those soldiers? With the army?”

“No.” El shakes her head. “He left before they came. He said he had to get something. Something that could help us.”

There’s a beat where nobody seems to know what to do with that.

Then El looks back at Mike, eyes hard. “But I can help Max now,” she says. “If we find a place. If you help me.”

He wants to say Of course, yes, let’s turn around right now and break into the nearest 7-Eleven freezer. But beside him, Will has gone stiff.

“That’s… different,” Jonathan says slowly. His eyes are darting between the road and the mirror. “That means if we stop, we’re not just… watching her die.”

“Or watching nothing,” Will says. He sounds… strained. “El, you said yourself you’re not as strong as before, right? What if you try and it doesn’t work? What if you just piss him off and then we’re stuck in the middle of nowhere while he kills Max anyway?”

It comes out harsher than anything Will usually says. Mike’s head snaps toward him.

El’s eyes narrow. There’s hurt there, yeah, but something sharper too. 

“Why don’t you want me to save Max?” she asks.

The question lands hard enough Mike actually flinches.

“I—I do,” Will says. The words stumble. For a beat his face just… blanks. Not embarrassed, not guilty. Just like everything behind his eyes drops out. Then it scrambles back into place: eyebrows creased, mouth pulled down. Hurt. “Of course I do. I just—if it goes wrong, we’re even farther away. We can’t get to Hawkins in time to—”

“You said we cannot help them from here,” El cuts in. “Now I say I can. You still say no.”

Her gaze is locked on him in this unblinking, almost clinical way that makes Mike’s stomach twist. He thinks about the way Will has been glued to El since she climbed into the van. The way he kept leaning in when she talked about Hawkins, about Max. 

Jonathan’s watching Will now too, brow furrowed.

“I just don’t think we should waste time,” Will says. Volume down, but the edge is still there. “We need to get home. Hawkins is what matters. If we stop, we’re gambling with—”

“I am gambling,” El says. “With my powers. Not yours.” She looks from Will to Mike, then to Jonathan. “You said you would help me save them. If I can do it from here, we do it. Yes?”

Mike opens his mouth. Closes it. The part of him that is all math and panic wants to argue logistics. The part that loves Max and Lucas and Dustin and everyone else more than his own lungs wants to shove Argyle out of the driver’s seat and scream to find the nearest bathtub.

“Yeah,” he says, feeling the word settle like a decision snapping into place. “Yeah. If you can actually fight him from here, then we stop. We find somewhere. Whatever you need.”

Jonathan nods. “I’m with El,” he says. “If there’s even a chance…”

All eyes swing back to Will.

For a long second he just stares at El. That blank look slides over his face again. Then, like someone flipped a switch, it twists into something else: wounded, tired, resigned.

“Fine,” he says, voice small. “If you think you can actually save her… fine.”

Mike’s shoulders loosen a little. Argument over. Decision made. He doesn’t like that they’re splitting the difference between “drive like hell” and “go mind-wrestle a serial killer in a freezer,” but at least it’s a plan.

El keeps looking at Will for a second longer, like she’s waiting for something else. Will just… breathes. Eyes a little too unfocused.

“You okay?” Mike asks him quietly, bumping his shoulder against Will’s. “You look like you’re gonna hurl.”

Will blinks like he’s coming back from somewhere very far away. His mouth twitches into a quick, almost-smile.

“Yeah,” he says. “Just… tired.”

Mike buys it. Because of course Will’s tired. They all are. Nobody slept. They drove across half the country. They watched a girl blow up military hardware with her brain.

He settles back against the seat, lacing his fingers with El’s. Ahead of them, Jonathan and Argyle are already arguing about the closest town with, quote, “a bathtub and chilled vibes.”

Behind his ribs, something nags. A tiny itch he can’t quite reach. Mike tells himself it’s just stress. Just everyone cracking in different places.

They’ll find a place. El will find Max. They’ll save her. Then they’ll go home.

Everything else can be weird later.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The RV turns off the road and bumps onto rough ground. Everybody sways with it.

“Careful, man,” Robin says from the front. “None of us have seatbelts.”

“This thing handles like crap,” Steve mutters, but he slows down anyway.

They roll into a flat, empty field with a line of trees between them and the road. The sky’s starting to go orange.

“Here,” Nancy says, leaning over Steve’s shoulder with the map. “Pull over. We’ll be out of sight from the road, but still close.”

Steve parks. The engine ticks as it cools.

Lucas looks to the back bench.

Will is curled in the corner, half lying against the wall. Max’s oversized T-shirt has slipped off one narrow shoulder again. The shorts are rolled twice at the waist and still look like they’re trying to fall off. One sock is halfway down his ankle.

He looks tiny. Like, if you didn’t know better, you’d think he was in elementary school.

He hasn’t really slept since Max’s trailer. They wiped Upside Down gunk off him, threw him into clean clothes, and just… kept going. No wonder he’s gone.

There’s a faint dried line of blood under his nose. Left from War Zone.

Lucas’ brain automatically throws up an image of El with blood under her nose. He shuts it down. Will panicked, fell, whatever. Nosebleeds happen. El’s the one who pops veins when she uses her powers.

A draft sneaks in from the RV door. Will shifts, curling tighter.

Lucas pauses before reaching up to the overhead cabinet, digs out a scratchy green blanket, and shakes it out. He hesitates a second, then drapes it gently over Will, tucking it around his shoulders so it doesn’t slide off.

Will makes a small noise, but doesn’t wake. Just burrows into the warmth.

“Okay,” Nancy says quietly. “Everyone out. We need to get ready.”

The doors hiss and clunk open. Hot air and the smell of dry grass rolls in.

Eddie hauls a big duffel out and dumps it onto the ground. They spread an old blanket and spill everything out on top of it: guns, rope, bottles, rags, nails, duct tape, tools, ammo.

Robin blows out a breath. “Great. A fun family picnic.”

“Not enough,” Erica says, eyeing the pile. “But it’ll have to do.”

Everyone gathers around.

“Plan,” Nancy says, kneeling by the blanket and flattening the map. “One more time, so no one screws it up.”

Lucas ends up next to Max, Dustin on his other side. Steve and Robin hover behind Nancy. Eddie crouches, hands on his knees. Erica stands with her arms folded.

“Upside Down team,” Nancy says, tapping the map. “Steve, Robin, me. Dustin and Eddie lead us to the gate at the trailer park, then stay near the gate as we continue to the Creel house.”

Dustin nods. “Gate tour guide. Got it.”

“Once we’re in, Eddie and Dustin handle the bats from the trailer roof,” Nancy goes on. “Steve, Robin and I go straight for Vecna’s body.”

She traces the route with her finger.

“Topside team,” she continues. “Max, Lucas, Erica. You go to the real Creel house. Max does exactly what she saw in her vision. You let him in, hold him as long as you can, and give us time to hit him inside.”

Max is staring down at the map, jaw clenched. Lucas wants to take her hand and also drag her away from all of this.

“And Will…” Nancy pauses, glancing back at the RV. “For now, he stays here. In the RV. Doors locked. Windows shut.”

Dustin’s whole face scrunches. “We’re just leaving him? Again?”

“We don’t have the people to babysit him and still run this plan,” Nancy says. “Bringing him into the Upside Down or the house is worse. We know Vecna and the bats both went for him first chance they got. We are not putting him in front of that.”

No one loves it, but nobody tosses out a better idea either.

“Once we get closer,” Nancy adds, “we’ll figure out where to park him. As far from the house as we can while still being able to get back to him.”

Lucas still pictures Will alone in the dim RV. 

“Inventory,” Nancy says. “Then we move.”

They gear up.

Shotgun to Steve. Handgun to Nancy. Ammo divided out. Bottles and rags to Robin and Nancy. Eddie helps pour gasoline. Rope around Eddie’s shoulder. Duct tape looped through Erica’s arm. Lucas gets a metal spear-thing they made and a flashlight. He doesn’t care, his real job is Max.

They test walkies. Erica goes to the far tree line and back, talking into hers. Robin practices the lighter until she can flick it without dropping it. Steve checks the shotgun again. Nancy runs through the plan in shorter sentences until everyone can say their part back.

The sun sinks lower. Sky turns purple. Lucas keeps glancing through the RV window.

Will hasn’t moved much. Still curled in the corner, cheek against the wall, breathing slow. The too-big shirt and shorts make him look even smaller. His hand is tucked under his chin like he fell asleep mid-thought.

“Time,” Nancy says eventually. “We go.”

They haul gear back into the RV and climb in after it.

Lucas heads straight for the back bench.

Will’s still out. Curled in a little ball.

“Hey,” Lucas says, nudging his shoulder. “Byers. Wake up.”

Will makes a small noise, scrunches his face, then blinks awake. His eyes are red-rimmed, unfocused.

“We there?” he mumbles.

“Field stop,” Lucas says. “We’re almost to Hawkins. We just went over the plan.”

Will sits up a little, rubbing his face. The shirt slides off his shoulder again. He hauls it back up automatically.

“Sorry,” he says quietly. “I just… I haven’t slept since…” He stops.

“Yeah,” Lucas says. “Don’t worry about it.”

Nancy leans over a seat. “Quick version,” she says. “Some of us go into the Upside Down through a gate at Eddie’s trailer. Some of us go to the Creel house. You stay in the RV. Doors locked. We’ll park you away from the house.”

Will frowns, still groggy. “In here?” he asks. “Alone?”

“For now,” Nancy says. “It’s safest. The upside down wants you. We’re not serving you up to it.”

Will’s mouth twists. “I could—”

“Will,” Lucas cuts in gently. “You’re running on fumes. You look like you’re gonna tip over. Just… rest for now. We’ll figure it out when we’re closer.”

Will presses his lips together, like he wants to argue but doesn’t have enough energy to back it up. “I don’t wanna just sit,” he mutters.

“You’re not ‘just sitting.’ You’re ‘not getting eaten,’” Dustin says from the aisle.

That gets the tiniest huff of something like a laugh out of Will. Then he leans back against the wall again, eyes heavy but open this time.

Steve starts the engine. They roll out of the field, through the trees, and back onto the road.

Hawkins slides into view in pieces. The water tower. Familiar streets. Houses with boarded windows and “For Sale” signs. It feels wrong, like someone messed with the saturation.

Lucas watches out the window, and when the trees thin he catches it: headlights behind them, not too far, keeping pace with them.

He squints, trying to see more, but they hit another line of trees and the view is gone.

“Everything okay?” Max asks softly from the aisle.

“Yeah,” he says. “Just watching the road.”

By the time they pull up a few streets over from the trailer park, the sky’s gone dark blue. The park itself is mostly shadows and porch lights.

Steve kills the engine. “All right,” he says. “Gate squad: this is us.”

Upside Down team grabs their gear. Steve, Robin, Nancy, Eddie, Dustin. Ammo, rope, Molotovs, spear, everything.

Dustin pauses by the back bench, looking at Will.

“Just sit tight, okay?” he says. “Be safe.”

Will straightens a little, still bleary. “You guys be careful,” he says.

“Always,” Eddie says, too fast.

Will’s fingers curl on the edge of the seat. “I don’t like staying in here,” he adds, a little stronger this time. “I can help.”

“We need you safe more than we need one more person swinging at bats,” Nancy says. “Right now, this is helping.”

Dustin hesitates, chewing his lip. Then he suddenly steps in and wraps his arms around Will in a quick, tight hug.

Will’s face hits Dustin’s chest instead of his shoulder now. Dustin is that much taller. The sound Will makes is a muffled, startled squeak, smothered in Dustin’s T-shirt. His hands hover for a second like he’s not sure where to put them, then clutch at the back of Dustin’s vest.

“Don’t die,” Dustin mutters into his hair.

“You either,” Will says, voice small and squashed against him.

Dustin pulls back, eyes shiny but determined, and gives his arm one last squeeze. Will just gives Dustin one more worried look and says, “Just… come back.”

Dustin smiles softly. Older, somehow, in a way that makes Lucas’ chest twist. “Promise,” he says, before turning to Lucas.

They look at each other for half a second.

“Don’t die,” Lucas says, blunt.

Dustin huffs a tiny laugh. “You either.” He steps in, gives Lucas a quick, hard one-armed hug, then pulls back and taps his chest. “See you after we slay the dark wizard.”

“You better,” Lucas says.

Then the five of them slip out into the night, hunched low, moving between trailers. They shrink to shapes and then disappear.

The RV feels emptier immediately.

Now it’s just Max, Lucas, Erica, and Will.

“Next stop, the Creel house,” Max mutters as she gets in the driver's seat. “Awesome.”

The drive to the Creel neighborhood doesn’t take long, but it feels longer.

The houses get bigger, yards wider. A few windows are lit, but most of the street is dark. 

Max pulls the RV over on a side street off from the Creel place, half hidden behind a row of trees and a sagging fence.

“Okay,” she says. “This looks like an appropriate distance.”

Lucas peers out the front.

The Creel house looms over the block. Dark, chipped, and heavy, like it’s sucking up all the light around it.

Max is staring at it too. Her hands are clenched into fists.

“All right,” Lucas says, more to himself than anyone.

They start sorting gear again. Max gets her headphones and Kate Bush tape, tucked in her pocket. Erica checks her walkie and the binoculars. Lucas gets his makeshift spear and flashlight, plus the bat from earlier. Just in case.

Will stands up slowly, blanket still around his shoulders like a cape. The nap helped; he looks more awake now, but there are deep shadows under his eyes.

“So this is it,” he says quietly, looking toward where the house must be through the trees. “This is where he is.”

“Yeah,” Lucas says. “Topside him, anyway.”

“And you want me to just stay here,” Will says.

His voice isn’t groggy now. It’s flat.

“Yeah,” Lucas says automatically. “We park you here, doors locked. Erica’s gonna be out front, watching. We’ll come back as soon as it’s done.”

Will stares up at him.

“No,” he says.

Erica raises her eyebrows. “No?” she repeats.

“I’m not staying in here by myself,” Will says. “Not again. You shut me in this thing, I’m not going to just sit and wait. I’ll try to get out. I’ll try to follow you. I know I will. So it’s better if you just… don’t put me in that position.”

The words come out fast and a little shaky, but they’re clear.

Max looks at him properly now. Lucas does too.

Will pushes on, shoulders hitching under the blanket. “I can help Erica,” he says. “I can sit with her. Watch the house. Use the radio. I know how to spot… wrong stuff. I’ve been looking for it for years.” He swallows. “If something comes near you, we can warn you. If you leave me in here, I’m just going to end up doing something stupid and you won’t even see it until it’s too late.”

His eyes go a little shiny but he doesn’t cry. He just looks up at Lucas, straight-on, like he’s desperate for someone to actually hear him this time.

Puppy dog eyes. Will had this thing where he’d look at you like that and you’d cave.

It hits the same now. Except now Lucas is looking down at him. Way down. Will’s swallowed in Max’s T-shirt, shorts rolled twice and still slipping, socks half off. He looks like a kid who should be worrying about math homework, not apocalypse plans.

For a second Lucas can’t help thinking, How was I ever that small?

“This is what Nancy wanted,” Lucas says weakly. “You in the RV. Safe.”

“And Nancy’s not here,” Will says. “Just us. You. Max. Erica. You can put me with her, where you can actually plan for me, or you can pretend I’ll stay in the RV and act surprised when I don’t.”

Erica lets out a low whistle. “He’s got you there,” she says.

Max crosses her arms, looking between them. “I agree with him,” she says. “Locking him up in a big metal target, alone? That’s worse. If something happens, we’re screwed. At least if he’s with Erica we know where he is.”

Erica nods, already half sold. “I wouldn’t mind the backup,” she says. “Two sets of eyes could be useful.”

Lucas feels his stomach twist.

This is not the plan. Nancy didn’t sign off on this. Dustin would freak. Steve would definitely freak.

But he also knows Will’s not bluffing. Even when they were small—or smaller in Will’s case— Will could be stubborn. When he says he’ll bolt if they leave him, Lucas believes him.

He looks at Will again.

Up close, the kid really does look wiped. Yet his fingers are still tight on the walkie like someone’s going to snatch it away. But there’s something steady in his eyes now too. He’s not throwing a tantrum. He’s focused.

“If something happens to you out there…” Lucas starts.

“If something happens to me out there,” Will says, “it’ll happen where you can see it. Where you can maybe do something about it. Not in the back of a van with nobody watching.”

Lucas knew he was right.

Max nudges Lucas with her shoulder. “We don’t have time,” she says quietly. “Make the call.”

It hits him then: this is on him. Not Nancy. Not Dustin. Him.

He takes a breath.

“Okay,” he says finally. “Fine.”

Will’s shoulders drop an inch in relief.

“You go with Erica,” Lucas says, pointing at him. “You stay in cover. You do not go near the house. You listen to her and to me. If we radio and say run, you run. If you see anything weird, you don’t investigate it, you call it in. Got it?”

Will nods fast. “Got it.”

Erica sticks out her hand. “Come on, Byers. Guess you’re officially my assistant.”

Will huffs. “Co-lookout,” he says.

“We’ll renegotiate the title later,” she says.

They slide the side door open and climb down. Max and Lucas follow.

They move down the block, staying in shadow. The Creel house rises in front of them, dark and heavy.

Across the street, behind a low stone wall and a sagging hedge, sits a tiny playground; a rusted rocket ship, half-broken swings, and a scraggly clump of trees.

“That’s you,” Lucas tells Erica and Will, nodding toward the rocket ship. “You can see the front door from there.”

Erica climbs up the rocket first, binoculars bumping against her chest. Once she reaches the top, she finds a comfortable position and stays there

Will follows, blanket caught on the rust for a second before he tugs it free. He settles next to Erica, walkie in his hands.

Lucas crosses over to them for one last check.

“Channel three,” Erica says, lifting her own radio. “You, us, and Dustin’s group. Anyone weird shows up, we call. Then we run.”

“Good,” Lucas says. He looks at Will. “Remember what I said. No hero stuff.”

“I remember,” Will says. “I’ll stay with your sister.”

Lucas pauses. “Not leaving you alone this time,” he says, low.

Will smiles. “Good,” he says. “I’m kind of done being alone.”

Lucas takes one last look at the two of them tucked behind the hedge: Erica, small but solid, binoculars ready, and Will, even smaller, blanket wrapped tight, walkie clutched, eyes on the house.

Just two kids in a playground. He turns away before he can change his mind.

“Ready?” he asks Max.

She nods, jaw set, tape in her pocket.

They cross the street together toward the Creel house. Gravel crunches under their shoes. The porch looms.

“Let’s do this,” Max says.

Lucas follows her up the steps.

The front door groans as they push it.

The outside noise dulls as they step inside, and the door shuts behind them.

Chapter Text

Will pulls the blanket tighter around his shoulders and tries to sit still.

The metal of the rocket ship is cold under his legs. Rust flakes stick to the backs of his knees. From up here, through the gaps in the half-dead hedge, he can see the Creel house across the street.

Max and Lucas disappear through the front door. It shuts behind them with a dull thump.

For a while, it’s just crickets and the buzz of a streetlight at the corner.

Erica shifts beside him, binoculars pressed to her face. “Okay,” she mutters, more to herself than him. “Max and Lucas: inside. Front porch clear. No moving vines. Yet.”

She lowers the binoculars long enough to thumb the walkie.

“Lookout to Upside HQ,” she says quietly. “We’re in position. Eyes on the house. Over.”

Static. Then Lucas’ voice, a little fuzzy: “Copy. We’re in. Just waiting on showtime. Over.”

“Don’t be dramatic,” Erica says, but there’s a tiny smile at the corner of her mouth as she says, “Over and out,” and clips the walkie back to her belt.

Will lets out a breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding.

“How long do we stay up here?” he asks.

“As long as it takes,” Erica says. “Until Max comes out, or Lucas screams on the radio, or the house explodes. You know. Whichever.”

He swallows. “Has a house actually exploded before?”

That gets her to look at him properly for the first time in a bit. “Nah,” she says. “Not yet, anyway.”

She’s taller than he remembered. Last time he’d seen Erica, she was a mouthy eight year old kid in cartoon pajamas, yelling at Lucas over the TV. Now her legs are longer than his, sneakers braced on the rocket’s edge, braids pulled back, binocular strap cutting across her chest. She looks like someone who belongs on lookout duty.

He feels… small. Which he is. But sitting next to her like this, it feels worse.

“So,” he says, picking at a flake of rust. “What… happened? Here. While I was gone.”

Erica sucks air in through her teeth. “That’s… a lot,” she says. “Like, season two through four a lot. You should probably get the full story from my brother and your little nerd herd. They love exposition.”

“They keep saying that,” he mutters. “That they’ll ‘explain later.’”

“Yeah, because ‘later’ might actually exist if we don’t waste time on monologues right now,” Erica says. She softens it a bit. “You woke up in, like, the last chapter, Byers. We’re still catching up too.”

He gets that. Sort of. From their side, this is some big emergency in the middle of a bigger, longer emergency. From his…

He was on his bike. Going home. Cold air, wheels on road. Then the monster. Then the other world. Next thing he knows he was waking up and—

And now he’s here. Same day, same night, but everyone else aged five years without him.

“Does Lucas still make you do his homework?” he asks, because it feels like a safe question.

Erica snorts. “Please. I’m the one actually passing math. He comes to me.”

“Oh,” Will says.

“Oh,” she echoes, mocking his tone lightly. “What, you think I just sit around playing with dolls all day?”

“I didn’t say that,” he protests.

“You thought it,” she says. “Or something close.”

He looks away, cheeks hot. He had kind of pictured her still as that kid with the He-Man toy and the attitude. Not… this.

Erica rolls her eyes, but not unkindly. “Relax,” she says. “I know it’s weird. For you it’s, like, Tuesday 1983. For us it’s… everything after.”

He digs his toes into the metal rung. “It was a Wednesday,” he mutters on reflex.

She barks a little laugh. “Wow. Okay. Definitely still a baby.”

The word hits harder than he expects.

Baby. Little. Kid.

He used to be the same as the others. Now they’re all taller, deeper-voiced, talking about plans and guns and strategies. And he’s here using a blanket as a cape, feet not even touching the rocket floor all the way.

He imagines walking into school like this. Being the only one still in middle school. The idea makes his stomach twist.

What if they don’t see him as part of the party anymore? What if he’s just… the tag-along?

He swallows, trying to push that down. There are bigger problems.

“Earlier,” he says instead, staring across at the Creel porch, “you said ‘the Will in California.’”

Erica goes still beside him.

He pushes on. “You said… there’s me, and there’s the Will in California. And Max, and Lucas, and Dustin, and Mike, and even my mom…” His throat tightens. “They all talked like he was me until today. Until you found out. So… what does that mean?”

Erica presses her lips together, then lifts the binoculars again. She scans the house before she answers.

“Short version?” she says finally. “When you got taken, we think something made a copy. The thing in the Upside Down. Vecna, Mind Flayer, whatever you wanna call it. They thought they got you back. Turns out they got… something else. A fake.”

Will’s stomach flips.

“A… fake,” he says. The word feels wrong in his mouth. “But he— it— lived with us. With my mom. With Jonathan. For years.”

“Yeah,” Erica says. “We just found out that part’s whack. Real you was still in monster land, stuck on pause. Fake you moved to California, did school, lived a relatively normal life.”

Will feels cold in a way that has nothing to do with the night air.

Something else sitting at his table. Sleeping in his bed. Hugging his mom. Laughing with his friends. For five whole years.

“Does he…” He has to stop and restart. “Does he look like me?”

“Right now?” Erica glances sideways at him. “He looks like what you’d look like if you grew properly and never left Hawkins. Taller. Same face, just… stretched out. More hair.”

He swallows again. “And people… like him?”

It comes out before he can stop it. Small. Pathetic.

Erica lets out a breath. “Byers,” she says. “I hate to inflate your ego, but yeah. People like Will 2.0. He’s been, like, the sad little heart of this whole drama for a while.”

He stares at his hands.

So they already have a Will. One that’s older, and taller, and has been there for all the things he’s missed. One who’s been with Mike this whole time. With Dustin and Lucas. With his mom, Jonathan, El.

What if they don’t need this version? The younger, more scared one. The one who still wakes up thinking about sketchbooks and D&D campaigns they never finished.

“What… happens to him?” he asks quietly. “The fake one.”

“Hopefully?” Erica says. “We get you all out of this alive, deal with Vecna, and then the adults figure out what to do about Evil Clone Will. That’s above my pay grade.”

Will nods, but the words don’t really land.

He pictures some… thing, walking around with his memories. Smiling his smile. Saying his name. If his mom hugs it, does she notice a difference? Does Mike? Does anyone?

He’s suddenly very aware of his stupid bowl cut and skinny arms.

“You look cute with the haircut now, though,” Erica adds, like she can hear where his brain is going. “But by sixteen? You better have somebody besides your mom coming near your head with scissors. I saw what was happening when you left for California. That mop was a cry for help.”

A startled laugh escapes him. “Is it that bad?”

“It’s a helmet,” Erica says. “And trust me: sixteen-year-old you would be thrilled to start over before that tragedy.”

Cute. She said cute.

He doesn’t know if that makes it better or worse.

He pulls the blanket tighter, watching the house. “I don’t know how to… be around them now,” he admits, voice small. “They’re all so… old.”

“They’re sixteen, not thirty,” Erica says. “They’re still idiots. They just have more height to be idiots in.”

“That’s not…” He sighs. “You’re older than me now.”

“Yup,” she says, unapologetic. “Welcome to the food chain.”

“I’m supposed to be older than you,” he mutters. “I was. Before.”

She’s quiet for a second.

“Look,” she says. “You can spiral about this later, okay? Right now, the only thing that matters is nobody dying. After that? You can all cry and be weird about it together. That’s a problem for future you. And future me, unfortunately.”

He lets that sit.

Below them, the street is still and strange. No dogs barking. No TVs. Just that heavy silence pressing around the Creel place like it’s soaking everything up.

Erica lifts the binoculars again. “Front door still closed,” she narrates, more for herself than him. “No slime, no vines, no puppets hanging off the porch. So far, so not-Vecna.”

Will watches the upstairs windows. In his chest, there’s a tugging feeling. Not like the constant pull of the Upside Down, this is sharper, more focused. Like something in that house is drawing a line straight to his ribs.

He rubs at his sternum.

“You okay?” Erica asks, not looking away from the glass.

“Just… feels weird,” he says. “Like the air’s heavy.”

“Yeah, that’s Hawkins,” she says. “You get used to it.”

He doesn’t think this is just Hawkins, but he lets it go.

They sit in silence for a while. Erica occasionally flashes the flashlight as a “Lookout to House, still clear” and gets a quiet “Copy” flash back. Each time, Will’s brain relaxes one notch.

Then, somewhere down the block, he hears it: an engine. Low, rumbling, getting closer.

He stiffens. “Do you hear that?”

Erica pauses, then lowers the binoculars. “Yeah,” she says. “That better be nobody we know.”

They both lean forward, peering past the hedge.

Headlights turn onto the street from the far end. They flick off halfway down, but the shape of the car is still there in the dark. 

The Bronco rolls to a slow stop a little ways down from the Creel place. The engine cuts.

“What are you doing,” Erica whispers, as if the car can hear her.

The doors open.

Three boys climb out. All tall. All in Hawkins letterman jackets. One of them swings an axe out of the back like it’s a baseball bat. Another adjusts the strap on a rifle. The third—

Blond. Square jaw. Bandage on his hand.

Will’s stomach drops straight through the rocket floor.

“That’s him,” he blurts. “That guy from War Zone. Jason. He— he talked to me. In the store.”

Erica’s gone very still.

“I know who he is,” she says, voice tight. “That’s Jason Carver. He’s the one who’s been trying to hunt Eddie. And apparently now he’s coming to our haunted murder mansion.”

Jason’s car door slams, sharp even from here.

Will flinches and ducks instinctively a little lower in the rocket’s “window,” peeking out through the rusted metal edge.

Jason steps out, the other two guys spilling out after him. Same letterman jacket. Same axe. Same too-bright, too-angry eyes.

He looks up the street toward the Creel house.

Will holds his breath.

Jason’s gaze slides past the RV half-hidden in the trees. For a second it looks like he’s just going to keep going.

Then his eyes land on the playground.

On the rocket.

On Will.

They lock eyes.

It’s like War Zone all over again, those few seconds under the fluorescent lights stretched out here under the streetlamp. Jason’s face tightens with recognition, and Will’s whole body goes cold.

He doesn’t move. He doesn’t even blink. It feels like if he does, Jason will sprint straight for them.

“Shit,” Erica breathes next to him. Her hand clamps on the back of his T-shirt and she yanks him down. Will drops into a crouch, knees hitting the metal floor, heart slamming so hard it hurts.

He can still feel Jason’s stare like it’s burning through the rocket’s side.

Will risks one more quick peek through a gap in the rust.

Jason’s already moving. He says something to his friends and jerks his chin toward the house. One of the guys peels off in that direction, jogging toward the Creel place. Jason and the other one turn and head straight for the playground.

“They’re coming here,” Will croaks.

“No kidding,” Erica snaps, already shoving the walkie into her pocket. “Move.”

She grabs his arm and hauls him up. They scramble out of the rocket, metal ladder rungs clanging under their feet. As soon as Will hits the ground, Erica yanks him toward the hedge.

They don’t make it three steps.

Will starts to run, but fingers hook into the back of his borrowed T-shirt, right at the collar, and lift.

His feet leave the ground.

“Gotcha,” Jason says, breath hot against his ear. He spins Will around like he weighs nothing and holds him up by the scruff, face to face.

Up close, Jason’s eyes are bright and wild.

“Now where are you going off to, Will Byers?” he asks, voice low and satisfied.

Two feet away, Erica tries to bolt and gets snagged by the wrist. Chance hooks an arm around her elbow and hauls her back, not gentle.

“Let go of me!” she snaps, heels digging into the dirt. “You can’t just grab kids off a playground, psycho!”

“Relax,” Chance says. “We just wanna talk.”

“Yeah, that always ends great for us,” Erica fires back.

Jason ignores her. His eyes stay fixed on Will’s face.

“I remember you,” he says slowly. “Posters everywhere. Church prayin’ for you. Little kid on every telephone pole in town.”

Will’s stomach twists. “I— I live here,” he says. “People know me, that’s not—”

“And then you turned up,” Jason goes on, like he didn’t hear him. “Couple days later. Cops don’t explain anything. Adults say ‘oh, it’s a miracle,’ and then everyone just… moves on.”

His fingers tighten in Will’s collar for a second.

“I thought I saw you wrong in War Zone,” Jason says. “Thought it was just my brain messing with me. But you really do look exactly the same.”

Will’s heart is going too fast. His brain scrabbles for excuses.

“I’m eleven,” he blurts. “I’m supposed to look eleven.”

Jason’s mouth twitches. “Sure kid.”

Will opens his mouth. Nothing comes out.

Erica jumps back in like she can't help it. “People grow different,” she snaps. “Look at my brother’s baby photos, he had a huge head. You wanna arrest him for that too?”

“Erica,” Will hisses, panicked.

Jason finally glances her way. “So you’re Lucas’s sister,” he says, like he’s slotting a puzzle piece into place. “Sinclair.”

“It’s Erica,” she says, lifting her chin.

“Right,” Jason says. “Sinclair, Byers… kind of funny how it’s all the same kids around the same messes, huh?”

Will’s fingers curl around Jason’s wrist without really meaning to. “We’re not— It isn’t like that,” he says. “You don’t know what’s going on.”

“That’s exactly the point,” Jason says. “Nobody knows what’s going on. Cops sure don’t. Government sure doesn’t. So somebody’s gotta figure it out. Somebody’s gotta do something”

He leans in a little, eyes searching Will’s.

“I don’t think this is your fault,” he says, quieter. “I think they used you. Back then. And they’re using you again now. I’m not gonna let them.”

Used him.

The way he says it makes something unpleasant crawl through Will’s chest.

“Nobody’s using me,” he says, voice shaking. “They’re trying to stop it.”

“Stop what?” Jason snaps. “Devil house?” He jerks his chin at the Creel place up the street. “Devil game? The devil himself?”

“D&D isn’t a devil game,” Will says automatically. “It’s just… it’s just a game. I just— I played a lot wit—”

“Because your friends are in it,” Jason says. “Exactly.”

His grip shifts from the back of Will’s collar down to his upper arm. Still tight, but less like he wants to slam Will and more like he doesn’t want him to bolt.

“You’re coming with us,” Jason says. “We’re going to see what they are really doing in that house.”

“I’m not going anywhere with you,” Will blurts. The words come out before he can swallow them down. “You don’t get it. If you mess things up, more people will die.”

Jason’s jaw works. For a second, he looks almost… hurt. Like Will’s the one being unfair.

“I’m trying to stop people dying,” Jason says. “Chrissy. Patrick. All the others. And maybe you, if they’ve got you lined up as the next lamb.” His hand squeezes Will’s arm. “I’m not going to hurt you. You’re safe with me. Okay?”

No. Not okay.

But Will can tell from his face that Jason believes it.

Erica yanks against Chance’s grip again. “Newsflash: grabbing kids and dragging them toward murder houses is not ‘keeping them safe,’” she says. “You let us go or—”

“Or what?” Chance says. “You gonna call the cops? They’re a little busy.”

He starts tugging her up the street. Jason nudges Will forward.

“Walk,” Jason says. “We’re not asking again.”

Will’s legs move. They don’t really feel attached to him. The closer they get to the Creel house, the worse the air feels.

The lawn looks dead. Not just unwatered. Wrong. The grass is a weird gray-green, patches of dirt showing like something’s burned through from underneath. The air is cooler here in a way that has nothing to do with time of day.

The feeling crawls up Will’s spine like fingers. Cold. Familiar.

He knows this feeling. That weight in the air. The way the inside of his skull feels when something from the other side is close. Demogorgon, vines… he could feel it.

Whatever it is, though, it’s here. Awake.

His skin prickles. He swallows hard.

“Jason,” he says, urgent now. “Please. Something’s wrong. You don’t want to go in there.”

Jason barks out a short laugh. “Of course something’s wrong,” he says. “That’s why we’re here.” His fingers tighten on Will’s arm. “And I’m not leaving you alone.”

Up on the porch, Andy appears in the doorway, looking pale.

“Jason,” he says. “The lights went all weird and I swear I heard— I dunno, something. Place is messed up, man.”

Jason doesn’t slow. “Are Sinclair and the others inside?” he demands.

“I heard voices,” Andy says. “Then they stopped. It’s like the house is… listening or something.” He notices Will. His eyes widen. “Christ. You did bring the kid.”

“And his friend,” Chance says, giving Erica’s arm a little shake.

Erica glares up at him. “Touch me again and I bite,” she says.

Jason barely hears her. He marches Will towards the steps. Will digs his heels in on the first one, legs locking.

“No—” he starts, panic spiking.

Jason just shifts his grip and hauls him instead, one arm hooked under Will’s armpits. Will lets out a startled squeak as his feet leave the ground, sneakers kicking uselessly in the air while Jason carries him up the porch like he weighs nothing.

The wood flexes under Jason’s boots, soft, almost spongy. Like the boards in Will’s old house when the mold got really bad. Only worse.

The feeling in the air keeps building. Thick. Pressing. His head feels full of cotton. His chest feels too tight.

He knows that sensation. Knows it from nights where the lights flickered and the wall pulsed and there was something behind it.

He doesn’t know if that’s Vecna or just the Upside Down in general. All he knows is: it means danger.

“Please,” he tries again, last shot. “You don’t understand what’s in there. If you go in and start yelling and waving weapons around, you’ll wreck everything. My friends— they’re trying to stop it from… from spreading.”

Jason stops just long enough to look him in the eye.

“You had friends,” he says quietly. “They now hang out in a ‘club’ that plays demon games in basements. People started dying. That’s the pattern, Byers. I don’t see any ‘good guys’ in that.”

“I do,” Will says, before he can stop himself. His voice wobbles, but the words are real. “Lucas. Mike. Dustin. They’re good. They’re the only reason I’m not dead already.”

Jason’s mouth pulls into a tight line. “Then if they’re so good,” he says, “they won’t mind answering some questions.”

He turns back toward the door.

Cold air comes out of the Creel house like a breath. Dust. Rot. Something under it that makes Will’s teeth ache.

Behind them, Erica shifts, shoulder bumping his.

“We are so dead,” she mutters under her breath. “Just so you know.”

Will’s throat is too dry to answer.

He takes a deep breath that doesn’t help, and lets Jason pull him over the threshold.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Jonathan’s hands still smell like dish soap and cheap Surfer Boy marinara.

He wipes them on a towel and looks at the kiddie pool in the middle of the dining room again, because if he looks anywhere else his brain will start screaming.

The tub is full. Argyle and Mike hauled bucket after bucket from the kitchen sink, sloshing water everywhere. There’s pizza flour on the floor, chairs pushed back, blinds half-closed. The whole place smells like oregano, fryer oil, and nerves.

El stands over the tub in the yellow Surfer Boy uniform, bare feet on the tile, staring at it like she can will it to become the NINA tank.

Jonathan grabs the last big paper bag of salt they brought in and dumps it. White crystals scatter over the surface, then sink.

He squints. “That’s… not enough.”

“You sure?” Mike asks. He’s kneeling by the rim, forearms braced on the plastic, hair sticking up in a million directions. “We dumped in, like, a hundred pounds.”

El shakes her head. “Needs more,” she says. “I have to float. Like before.”

Jonathan groans. “We don’t have more.”

“Yes we do,” Mike says. “We had, what, four big bags? Right?” He looks around. “Will?”

Will is by the counter, where the cash register used to be before Argyle shoved it aside to make room for the radio. He freezes like a kid caught stealing cookies.

“Uh,” he says. “I… I left the other bags in the van. I thought this would be enough, I’m sorry, I—”

Jonathan’s brain does a quick rewind. The salt. The one thing keeping her afloat. The one job they’d actually given Will besides “don’t panic.”

He exhales through his nose. “So we’re short,” he says. “Okay. That’s fine. We’re all kind of losing it right now. Where’s the rest?”

El’s head snaps toward him.

“You forgot,” she says. It’s flat. Not a question.

Will ducks his head, cheeks flushing. “I didn’t mean to. I just—there was a lot, and I thought—”

“You had one job,” El says, sharper.

“Hey,” Jonathan cuts in automatically. “It’s okay, we can just—”

Will looks over at him, eyes wide and embarrassed. “I can go get them,” he says quickly. “I’ll grab Jonathan, we can bring them in. It’ll only take a few minutes—”

“No,” El says, hard enough that it slices through his offer.

Will blinks. “No?”

“You forgot,” El says. “You fix it.”

Jonathan frowns. “El, come on,” he says. “He’s just stressed. We all are. We can help carry them, you don’t have to—”

She doesn’t look away from Will. “You did this,” she says. “You fix it.”

For a second, there’s something cold in her eyes Jonathan doesn’t recognize. Not just mad. Suspicious.

Will’s face flickers—embarrassment, confusion, then that weird blankness that Jonathan’s been trying not to put a name to.

“Okay,” he says finally. Small. “I’ll… I’ll go get them.”

He glances once at Jonathan, then at Mike, like he’s hoping one of them will step in anyway. Nobody does. El’s stare has pinned the whole room to the floor.

Will hesitates, then turns and heads for the back door, shoulders hunched. The bell above it jingles when he slips outside.

The sound feels too loud in the sudden quiet.

“Harsh,” Mike says after a beat, looking at El. “He just made a mistake. You don’t have to bite his head off.”

Jonathan nods. “Yeah. El, what was that?”

El doesn’t answer right away. Her jaw is tight. She turns toward him instead.

“Can I see your wallet?” she asks.

Jonathan blinks. “My… what?”

“Your wallet,” she repeats. “Please.”

He reaches automatically for his back pocket, still half on autopilot. The leather’s warm from his jeans when he pulls it out. He hands it over.

She flips it open with careful fingers, thumb moving past receipts and cash until she finds the clear plastic photo slot.

She pulls out the little square and holds it up.

Three faces. Joyce with her hair longer, laughing at something off-camera. Jonathan, gangly and trying not to smile but failing. Will in the middle, bowl cut, striped shirt, gap in his teeth, grinning like the world hasn’t gone wrong yet.

The picture was taken a few months before he disappeared.

Jonathan’s throat tightens just looking at it.

“Why—” he starts, but El has already turned to Mike.

“Turn on the radio,” she says. “Static.”

Mike frowns. “Now? We don’t even have enough salt yet.”

“Now,” she says. “Please.”

Her tone kills the argument. Mike sighs, crawls over to the Surfer Boy radio Argyle dragged up front. He twists the dial until it catches a dead station. White noise fills the room, a low hiss.

Argyle, who’s been hovering near the ovens, looks up. “We doing the brain bath already, amigos?” he asks. “We’re, like, only ‘medium-well’ on the prep.”

El doesn’t answer him either. She puts the photo on the floor next to the tub, Joyce and both boys looking up at the ceiling. Then she kneels slowly, like she’s lining herself up with something only she can see.

“Wait,” Jonathan says, that knot of dread in his gut suddenly back at full volume. “El—what are you doing?”

She looks up at him, eyes serious.

“Trust me,” she says. “Just listen.”

She reaches for the bandana Mike had been using, ties it around her eyes, and lays back. Not in the water, just on the tile, head tilted toward the static.

Her breathing evens out. Jonathan’s watched her do this before, in the kiddie pool in the gym. The way she slides sideways, away from the room without going anywhere.

The radio crackles. The static hums. For a second, it’s just noise.

Jonathan’s brain jumps ahead on its own. The picture of his family in El’s hand. Mom’s face smiling up from the plastic. Of course, he thinks. She’s looking for Mom. For Joyce. If this works, he’s going to hear his mother’s voice coming out of a busted Surfer Boy radio.

Then the static shifts.

He’s heard this before too: the way it kind of… drops. Like someone tuning through channels and landing on something underneath.

Mike leans in, eyes wide. Argyle stops moving altogether, pizza box hanging from his hand.

Jonathan holds his breath.

For a moment there’s nothing but hiss. Then, under it, a man’s voice cuts through, and its someone he doesn’t recognize at all.

“Walk,” a man says. Sharper than the static, cutting through. “We’re not asking again.”

Jonathan jumps. The voice is unfamiliar. Young, but not a kid. Hard.

Beside him, Mike’s brow furrows. “That sounds like…” he mutters, mostly to himself, “Jason?”

Another sound, closer to the receiver, and closer to them, somehow. A breathy, small, “Wait—”

Then a kid’s voice. Wobbly. A little higher than he remembers, but the shape of it is—

“Jason,” the kid says, urgent. “Please. Something’s wrong. You don’t want to go in there.”

Jonathan’s heart stops.

That voice has lived in his head for half a decade. Saying ‘Jon, I had the craziest dream.’ Saying ‘You’re gonna be late’. Saying ‘It’s like I’m stuck’.

He hears it now in that one word, Jason, pitched with the same scared stubbornness he heard when Will was ten and refusing to admit he was sick.

Mike’s head snaps toward the radio “That’s—” he starts.

“Will,” Jonathan finishes, automatic. His chest feels like it’s full of bees. “That’s Will.”

Will.

And not the tired, slightly-off teenager who’s been shadowing them for months. Not the kid who stood at the airport and hugged him too hard.

This is younger. Like it’s coming straight out of the photograph on the floor.

The static wobbles again. The voices blur, like someone bumped the dial. Jonathan can’t make out the next few words, just tone: the man angry, the kid pleading.

“El?” he says. “El, what—”

She rips the bandana off.

Her eyes are huge, dark, locked on the photo.

“That was Will,” she says. “I found Will.”

It hits Jonathan like a truck. “We know, we heard him, but he’s—”

“No.” She shakes her head, hard enough that the bandana slides down her neck. “Not him.” She jerks her chin toward the door Will just went through. “Will. The real Will. In Hawkins.”

Jonathan stares. For a second, the words bounce off his skull without sticking.

“Time travel?” he hears himself say, because what else is there? “Are you seeing… past stuff? Old stuff?”

El shakes her head again. “No. Now.” She taps the photo with one finger. “I used this. This Will. I looked for him. And I found him. In Hawkins. In a house. With a man named Jason.”

Jonathan’s stomach drops. 

Mike drags a hand through his hair. “Okay, wait, I’m confused,” he says. “Will is here. Like, actually here. We picked him up, he’s in Nevada, he just forgot the salt. So how can he also be—”

El looks at him. “Because that is not him,” she says, low.

Mike goes still.

“When I was in the NINA tank,” El says, words coming faster now, “I saw Max. I saw the others. They talked about Will. They said real Will and fake Will.” She presses a hand over her heart. “They said they found Will in the Upside Down. From the night he disappeared. Still there. They said the Will with you… might not be him.”

Jonathan’s ears ring. He feels like he’s three steps behind the conversation and falling.

“You didn’t… think to mention that earlier?” he manages.

“I wasn’t sure,” El says. “I needed to see. To know.” She taps the photo again. “Now I know. I saw him. I heard him. That is him.” Then, flat: “This one is fake.”

Mike looks like she physically slapped him.

“Fake?” he echoes. “What do you mean, fake? Like… possessed again? Like the shadow thing?”

Before El can answer, the door jangles.

All three of them whip around.

Will steps back inside, arms wrapped around a fifty-pound bag of salt, another one dragging behind him, skidding on the tile. There’s a faint smear of dust on his cheek from where he must’ve bumped the van.

“Got it,” he says, a little breathless. Then he freezes.

They’re all staring at him.

His eyes flick from El on the floor, to the picture in front of her, to Jonathan’s face, to Mike’s.

Something shifts in his expression. For a fraction of a second, there’s that blankness again, like a TV turned to a dead channel.

Then he pastes on a nervous half-smile.

“What?” he says. “Did I… miss something?”

El stands up slowly.

“You are not him” she says.

Will’s smile twitches. “Uh… what?”

“You are not him,” El repeats. “Not the boy in that picture. Not the Will who was taken.” Her voice doesn’t rise. It just gets more certain. “You’re something else.”

Mike steps forward, hands up like he can physically slow the words down. “El,” he says. “Maybe we should—”

“Yes,” Will—or not Will says.

Jonathan hadn’t expected that.

The fake Will, because that’s what his brain trips over and lands on now, lets the salt bag slide out of his arms. It hits the floor with a crunch.

He straightens.

“Yes,” he says again, looking straight at El. “You’re right.”

Silence slams down.

Argyle swears softly and takes a step back.

Jonathan’s skin crawls.

“Okay,” Mike says weakly. “Not funny.”

“It’s not a joke,” Will says. The way he says it is all wrong. Too calm. Too… pleased. “When Will was taken, I took his place when he ‘came back.’” He pauses. “At first, we were… tangled. Almost the same thing in mind. Same memories, same feelings, just… layered. I took from him to survive, and in return, I suppose he was aware of me. To an extent.”

He lifts a hand, fingers flexing like he’s feeling something under the skin.

“But that was messy,” he goes on. “The Master didn’t like messy.” His eyes flick, almost involuntarily, upward, like he can see the sky through the ceiling. “So he… fixed it. Separated me from Will, so he couldn’t influence anymore. Get in the way of the plans”

Jonathan’s heart is pounding so hard, it feels like his entire body is shaking.

“The hive mind,” he says, voice coming out rough. “ When you– or he told us to close the gate. That was—”

“Annoying,” fake Will says lightly. “I suppose some of Will managed to get through the hivemind to me. You all listened, which was… disappointing. For him.” His mouth curls. “The master doesn’t like being disobeyed.”

El’s fists clench.

“After that,” fake Will continues, “I stopped leaning on him. I realized I didn’t need to. You were already giving me everything I needed to survive and thrive.” He looks at Jonathan, then at Mike. “A family. A best friend. People who loved ‘Will Byers’ so much they’d never question if he was… different.”

Jonathan’s vision goes hot around the edges.

“What did you do to my brother?” he says. The words tear out of him. “Where is he?”

“I told you,” fake Will says. “He’s still there. In that place. Stuck the way he was when he got taken. Scared. Crying. You want that back?” He tilts his head. “I am basically your brother. Just less of a crybaby. More… manageable.”

Jonathan actually moves then, closing the space between them in two strides.

“Don’t,” he snarls. “Don’t you dare talk about him like that. Don’t come any closer.”

He reaches for Will’s—no, its—arm. The thing in front of him doesn’t even flinch. It just shoves.

The shove looks lazy. It feels like getting hit by a truck.

Pain explodes across Jonathan’s ribs as he flies into the wall. The concrete bites into his back. The air knocks out of him in a single ugly grunt. He slides down to one knee, vision swimming.

“Jonathan!” Mike yells. 

“Stay back,” El snaps.

She throws out a hand.

Fake Will’s body jerks, like someone just yanked him by invisible strings. He skids backward a few inches, socks squeaking on the tile, but he doesn’t go flying like Vecna’s test dummies did. He just… leans into it.

“That won’t work too well anymore,” he says, almost conversational. “The Master has been… generous.” His gaze lands on El. “He doesn’t like you very much either, by the way.”

“Cool, join the club,” Mike mutters, edging toward Jonathan.

Fake Will keeps going, like they’re in some twisted group therapy session.

“You haven’t exactly been paying tons of attention,” he says, looking between them. “All those times he was quiet, pulled away, you just… let it happen. Easier that way, right? I was less trouble. You didn’t have to deal with all that—” he waves a hand vaguely— “crying and freaking out.”

Jonathan feels the words like a knife. Because there’s a part of him that knows how many times he told himself Will’s mood was just… teen stuff. How many times he decided not to push.

“I am not him,” fake Will says. “But I’m close enough. You could keep me. Do you really want to drag some broken little eleven-year-old out of Hell just so he can sob on your floor again?”

“That’s disgusting,” Jonathan spits, forcing himself upright. “He was a kid being tortured, you freak, what did you want him to do, tough it out?”

Mike looks like he’s going to be sick.

“And Will is not ‘less trouble,’” Mike says, voice shaking. “He’s my best friend. I don’t care if he cries, I don’t care if he freaks out, I—” his throat closes; he pushes through it— “I care for him. Not you. Him.”

Fake Will suddenly smiles.

“Well, that’s not what Will wants you to be,” he says.

Mike blinks. “What?”

Jonathan’s stomach twists. He’s seen the way Will looks at Mike when he thinks nobody’s watching. 

“Shut up,” Jonathan says.

Fake Will turns his head, studying him.

“Of course you’d get it,” he says. “Big brother, always watching. Always pretending you don’t see.”

He takes a step forward.

El doesn’t warn him again.

Her hand snaps toward the counter. A fork rattles, lifts, and rockets across the room in a blink.

It hits fake Will square in the eye.

There’s a wet, ugly sound. He shrieks—high and wrong, not a human sound, not Will’s voice at all. His hands fly to his face.

Black-green sludge wells up around the fork, spilling down his cheek. The skin around it buckles, warps, like wax under a flame. His features stutter, collapsing inward and then trying to rebuild themselves.

Jonathan stares, horrified. It’s like watching latex peel off to show something underneath, only what’s underneath is worse. The bowl cut blurs. For a second, there’s no face at all, just a kind of smooth, dark surface bubbling.

The thing staggers but doesn’t fall.

“I see,” it gurgles, voice warbling, too many tones at once. “As long as the real one is alive… you don’t like me.”

It takes a step backward. Its feet leave… residue. Blackish slime smears on the tile where the soles touch.

“El—” Mike says. “What is that, what is that—”

The fake Will starts toward the door.

El yanks at him with everything she has. He jerks, but this time instead of being dragged back, his legs just… give.

He collapses, what’s left of his body splatting against the floor. The shape doesn’t break into pieces; it goes down in one horrible, cohesive mass. The fork clatters out and skids away, clinking against the tub.

The goo spreads, pulling itself along the tile like it’s choosing a direction. It heads for the gap under the door.

“Stop it!” Jonathan croaks, stumbling forward. He slams his foot down. The stuff slides around his shoe like water around a rock. Cold stings his ankle through his sock.

“El!” Mike yells again.

She throws both hands out, eyes wide, face tight. The puddle shudders. For a second it looks like it might freeze.

Then it thins, stretching, a smear of black-green that pours under the doorframe and is gone.

The bell over the door gives the tiniest jingle as it settles back into place.

Silence.

Jonathan stands there, breathing hard, looking at the shiny wet footprints leading nowhere.

Argyle is the first one to move. He very carefully sets the empty pizza box down on the counter.

“So,” he says weakly. “That was… not normal, right?”

Nobody answers.

Jonathan’s ribs ache. His brain is trying to do three impossible things at once: process that his little brother has been somewhere else the whole time. Process that something wore his brother’s face for years. Process that… that thing just oozed under a door and is now God knows where.

He makes a small, ugly noise and grabs the edge of the tub because it’s either that or sink to the floor.

Mike’s hands are shaking. He presses the heels of them hard into his eyes for a second, then drops them.

“Okay,” he says, voice thin. “Okay. So the Will we thought we knew is really… slime. Real Will is… in Hawkins. Potentially in danger. Cool. Awesome. ”

El’s breathing is rough too, but her eyes are already going distant again. She looks from the door, to the radio, to the photo still on the floor.

“We don’t have time,” she says abruptly. “Max.”

Jonathan drags his focus up by force. Right. Max. Lucas. Erica. The whole stupid plan. The clock is still ticking.

“Is he okay?” he blurts. “Will. When you touched him, heard him, was he… did he look–”

“Safe,” El says. “Scared. Trying to warn someone. Jason.” She swallows. “But safe.”

Jonathan closes his eyes for half a second. It’s not enough. It’s everything.

“Okay,” he says. “Okay. Then we get Max. We stop this. Then we figure out what exactly has been going on.”

Mike nods, too fast. “Yeah. Right. One apocalypse at a time.”

Argyle, bless him, snaps out of it enough to grab the fallen salt bag. “We still gotta make the soup, dudes,” he says, voice light. “Brain soup. Extra floaty.”

They move like they’re sleepwalking. Jonathan and Mike haul the bag up and dump salt into the tub until the water goes cloudy and heavy. El steps in, shivering once as the cold climbs her legs. She lies back, hair fanning in the brine, nose already starting to bleed.

They set the pizza box with the Surfer Boy logo under her head as a pillow. Mike kneels at her side, fingers threading through hers. Jonathan crouches near the radio, salt crystals crunching under his shoes.

“Ready?” he asks.

El nods once.

He flips the radio back to static. The hiss fills the room again, softer this time under their breathing.

El closes her eyes.

The room gets very small and very big all at once. Jonathan can feel it, the way it goes wrong when she does this. Like pressure changes in a plane.

Her face smooths out. Her chest rises and falls slow.

For a long moment there’s nothing but noise.

Then El whispers, so soft Jonathan almost misses it:

“I see Max.”

Mike leans in. “Is she—”

“In the house,” El murmurs. “On the floor. In a trance. Lucas is watching over” Her brow furrows. “She is fighting. Vecna is there.”

Jonathan’s hand tightens on the radio.

“Is she alive?” he asks.

“For now,” El says. “She is… fighting. I have to go in more.”

She goes quiet again. The static stutters. Jonathan imagines what she’s seeing: peeling wallpaper, floating debris, Max’s blue eyes gone hazy with pain.

El’s fingers twitch in Mike’s grip.

“Others,” she breathes. “There are others.” she frowns. “Max is not— I–”

Her eyelids flicker. She pauses for a moment.

“Will?”