Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Deep inside of a parallel universe
It's getting harder and harder to tell what came first
I'm underwater where thoughts can breathe easily
Far away you were made in a sea, just like me

September 25, 1985

Hawkins, Indiana

Nancy knew something was wrong the minute she crossed through her front door.

It had been a strange, slightly wonderful day, going straight from school to pick up snacks and soft drinks for the Dynasty watch party that evening. Joyce and Hopper were hosting. El had worked feverishly on the decorations, on cutting out magazine photos of the actress playing Amanda in a wedding gown, Joan Collin’s character looking marvelously glamorous, and the mysterious prince.

She’d moaned and groaned a bit about going, considering how much homework her teachers had been pushing at her—senior year, senior year—but there was something sweet about El’s countdown to the season premiere and all the themed desserts.

Nancy remembered how excited she and Barb had been to watch the royal wedding—the real royal wedding—and for the first time in a long time, she thought about Barb without that dizzying rush of sadness.

Barb would’ve helped El and Max mix “bloody” lemonade and bake Moldavian M&M cookies. Nancy had smiled and helped them find red food coloring.

The season premiere itself had been so-so; apparently, El had really been expecting some bloodshed, but Nancy knew better than to believe these soaps would ever actually kill anyone important off. Best you could expect was a kidnapping or some good ol’ amnesia, maybe with a clone or two thrown in for good measure.

It was still fun. Hopper had pretended not to be interested, but even he’d poked his head in, as Nancy and her mom and El and Max and Joyce all sat around the sofas.

Then, as the clock approached ten, Jonathan and Steve came back from their movie and joined them. El was attempting to summarize the laundry list of plot points and who had died and where Alexis might be hiding, and by the time Nancy started yawning, it was hideously late.

“Alright,” Nancy’s mom had stood up first and stretched her legs, even the injured one. She’d been walking a lot easier. “If I don’t get some sleep tonight, tomorrow’s going to be pretty ugly.”

They’d gathered up their stuff. Max was staying to spend the night at the Hopper’s, and Steve might too, at this rate, but Nancy was ready to crawl into the comfort of her own bed, even with four noisy boys downstairs.

Sussudio had played on the car radio. Nancy wasn’t sure if she or Mom had laughed first.

It was late September, but the night was still warm as they parked the car in the driveway and eased their way out, rubbing their eyes and yawning. Nancy was wondering how quickly she could brush her teeth and if Mike and his friends had used up all the hot water, when she fumbled with the door key and froze.

“What is that?” Mom whispered. It sounded like there was a baby animal was trapped somewhere, a bird or a tiny squirrel, with quiet, mournful cries.

The air felt oddly still.

Nancy couldn’t explain why she’d started to run, afterwards. When they’d all asked. But she did run, darting towards the basement door, flinging it open, and she stumbled down the stairs with her heart in her throat.

“Holy shit—"

Her mom must’ve only been a few steps behind her, because she heard a gasp in between all of the white noise.

They were pinned to the wall.

Mike, her brother, Mike, arm sticking out at a horrible angle, tied up and plastered against the wall, head dropped forward. Dustin, on the other side, and Lucas, too, and their mouths were taped shut, but Nancy could hear them now.

She rushed towards them, barely aware of what her hands were doing, except she had to get that tape off of them. Her mom was already lifting Mike’s head up.

“They took him!” were the first words out of Lucas’s mouth, in a desperate rush. “They took him!”

Him? Who was—

And then Nancy realized what she was looking at. Who she was looking at. And who was supposed to be there, who was supposed to be playing D&D with Mike in their basement, at the faded tear tracks on Dustin’s face and the terrible fear on Lucas’s and at her brother, slumped over.

“Will,” she whispered, and Dustin started shaking.

She couldn’t remember how they’d pried them from the walls or who had told them what, or when her mom had run upstairs to check on Nick, but she remembered dialing the Hopper house with trembling fingers. The sleepy “This is Joyce” she’d gotten in return, the dread seeping through her, and the way her own voice had cracked as she’d said, “You need to come over, come over quickly.” 

“Nancy, sweetie, what is it? What’s wrong?”

Nancy hadn’t known how to answer her. She couldn’t get the sight of Mike and his friends tied up out of her head, and maybe Joyce had known that this wasn’t anything that could be fixed over the phone, because she’d been in their driveway far too quickly.

Jonathan and Steve had run in behind her.

Hopper limping from the passenger seat.

El and Max rubbing their eyes tiredly from the back.

“Nancy—” Jonathan’s hands were on her shoulders, she thought, as she blinked and tried to speak. They’d celebrated their one-month anniversary a week ago. “What’s wrong? What happened?”

It was her mom who came up from the basement, though, eyes red. Nick was still sleeping on her shoulder. The boys were behind her, Mike supported in-between Dustin and Lucas, expressions so fucking sad that Nancy almost started laughing, on the verge of hysteria. After everything, she thought, head spinning. After the Electric Lamp Oasis, after everyone dying, after all of that.

“They took him,” said Dustin this time, voice raspy. “Will’s gone.”

//

Wednesday March 19, 1986 – six months later

Hawkins, Indiana

Lucas used to dream about fire. And if dreams behaved logically, the fire should’ve stayed.

Hadn’t there only been more flames to follow the tunnels last January, January of ‘85? Erica, sweating and shrieking while that thing possessed her over the summer and the cabin full of fire? The lamps burning around them, Mrs. Henderson and Officer Powell and Bob Newby’s dead bodies, and Billy’s hand reaching out of the car fire, God, shouldn’t Lucas be dreaming about Billy Hargrove in the wreckage of his stupid fucking car?!

But he didn’t. Lucas didn’t dream anymore at all.

Even though his alarm clock must’ve been going off for several minutes, no one knocked on his door. Lucas laid there, staring up at the ceiling, boredly going over his schedule for the week. Math test tomorrow, his reward for getting through this afternoon, then a project due on Friday before they were released into the wild.

Well, not really the wild. In fact, Lucas had been dreading this week for a few months now, but he’d resigned himself to his fate.

He walked past his parent’s bedroom on the way downstairs. The door was closed, but he could hear a muffled sound on the other side that twisted his stomach.

He kept walking.

To the kitchen, where he grabbed a granola bar from the pantry and started to pack his lunch from the leftovers in the fridge. Erica had gotten a head start on him and grabbed the good stuff, early because of some club meeting at the middle school.

Lucas would be staying after school instead, but usually there was pizza. He stuck his lunch in his backpack, swung his gym bag over his shoulder, and went into the garage before groaning.

Rain. Ugly, grey March rain. Spring Break in a couple of days, and it was still cloudy and gross.

Lucas gritted his teeth and eased his bike onto the rain-soaked street, all those months spent getting his learner’s permit feeling pretty fucking wasted as he pedaled and tried to keep his math homework from getting ruined. What good was a learner’s permit if he didn’t have a car to drive? The asphalt might dry before the afternoon, but he wasn’t counting on it. Even if it did, it wasn’t like Dustin or Max would show anyway.

El would, though. She had to. And Mike, too, who was biking out of his own garage to meet him, looking distinctly harassed.

“Doesn’t Nancy drive?”

“Who’s Nancy?” asked Mike, wincing as a drop of water hit him in the eye. “No, I don’t know, she had some meeting this morning.”

“Lucky her.”

“Mhm,” said Mike. “It’s going to be a slip and slide tonight, at this rate.”

“Maybe not,” said Lucas, as they both turned onto Cornwallis. It was supposed to be dry this afternoon, or that’s what Jeremy kept saying, but Jeremy Edison also had worms for brains, so what did he know? “Might be refreshing, actually.”

“Hah.”

More cars than usual spilled out of the Hawkins High lot, which at least meant Lucas and Mike had their pick at the near-empty bike rack. A couple of people were decked out in gold and green—not as many as there would be at the basketball game tomorrow, even though the team was shit, but Lucas would still take it as a win.

He had to. Because otherwise—

Nope, Lucas thought, mechanically walking towards his locker. There was a decorated Spirit Box inside, which was sweet. Max might’ve gotten a kick out of it.

Their middle school teachers hadn’t exaggerated; high school really was more work than eighth grade, more pages of reading and more pop quizzes. Mr. Brownstone didn’t really care about making biology seem cool or interesting or even worth Lucas’s time.

He’d still selected honors chemistry for next year, though, because Mr. Whitlock’s chemistry class was a total joke, and he’d be balancing that with geometry and hoping to make the Varsity team. And SAT prep, he could hear Dustin add, but Dustin would be lucky if he didn’t end up repeating ninth grade altogether, at this point.

Lucas gripped his textbooks and fought the urge to slam his locker shut. They were stumbling through The Odyssey in English class. Odysseus had just escaped from the cyclops, and Max had been chosen as the one to read out the dialogue, yelling about how “Nobody has blinded me, nobody has blinded me!” and for half a second, they’d looked at each other and laughed and everything had been normal.

Jenny Michaelson was arguing with Mr. Brownstone about evolution being against the Lord’s teachings, and Lucas took his seat, wishing he had a religious excuse for performing like shit on last week’s pop quiz. “Alright everyone,” said Mr. Brownstone loudly, sending Jenny back to her chair fuming. “Let’s get started.”

Biology dragged, then English and Algebra, too, but at least the rain had stopped by the time Lucas slept-walked into the cafeteria, facing another difference his middle school self wouldn’t have seen coming.

Mike didn’t sit with him at lunch anymore. Or, maybe more accurately, Lucas didn’t sit with Mike. Seven years in Hawkins and—well, it wasn’t Mike’s fault. Lucas didn’t think it was his fault, either, except of course it was.

On his right, Jeremy Edison and Roger Appleby and George Allen Arthur, and on his left, Mary Martin, Jennifer Hayes—if only his seventh-grade self could see him now—and, of course, El. Jane Hopper herself, a school-bought lunch replacing that old pink lunchbox, wearing white barrettes with her blonde hair and bangs. Not as blonde as Jennifer, but blonde enough that Max made a comment about it, back when he and Max were still on speaking terms.

“At least it stopped raining,” Roger was saying, and Lucas willed himself to pay closer attention. “How do you think McKinley will do?”

“Depends on if Matt Donovan runs,” said Jeremy. The four of them all nodded, solemnly, Lucas included, even though he didn’t really give a shit if Matt Donovan ran or not. Jeremy, Roger, and George Allen ran on the Hawkins High Junior Varsity Track and Field Team because try-outs were easy and they enjoyed it and liked to win.

Lucas ran because he thought he might break in half if he didn’t.

“If you look at his time from two weeks ago—”

“Well, they might be holding him for State—”

Lucas nodded and threw in a comment every other minute, only half paying attention as the girls giggled and talked about whatever girls talked about beside them. Spirit boxes, maybe. Lucas’s was still in his locker; he didn’t know how he felt about carrying it around, but he could tell it was Mary Martin’s handiwork with the painted letters and stylized tie-dye print.

El would’ve used more glitter.

The Hawkins High Pep Squad split its time between all the different sports, and while most of the actual cheerleaders sat at the table with the basketball team, shit as they were, track and field had so many members with a pretty low entrance bar that they had their own casual fans. Even if they mostly talked about the weather and speculated endlessly about Matt fucking Donovan.  

“What do you think, Sinclair? Think he’ll run tonight?”

Yesterday morning, Lucas had woken up at 4:45 and put on his tennis shoes. His dad wasn’t there, in his chair, to talk him out of it, even though the streets had been too dark and too damp from the heavy grey chill. When he’d come back in, calves and chest burning, he’d heard muffled sobs from underneath his parent’s bedroom door. His mom’s bedroom door. Same sound as this morning, and the same as seven months’ worth of mornings before that.

Somehow, seven months had passed since his dad had run away without a word. Seven months since the fire at the Electric Lamp Oasis, since the possessed bodies blew up in front of their faces, since the funeral and Billy Hargrove trying to kill Lucas with his car, and seven months since Lucas pulled Max out of the wreckage and left Billy to die.  

Seven months since his dad left, and six months since Will had vanished, too.

Erica and her former best friend Tina had gotten into a blowout fight because your dad isn’t actually dead, you know. Lucas suspected that if he and Dustin spent enough time together to actually get into a fight, he might hear the same thing.

“Sure,” said Lucas, because Matt Donovan ran the first leg, didn’t he? Just like Lucas. And Matt Donovan was fast, but what did he have to outrun? “Why not?”

//

Between the months of—actually, strike that. Steve wasn’t sure if the Stanley Hotel on Oak had any months where it kept itself busy, but March definitely wasn’t one of them.

There had been a bit of a peak in November and December. Grandparents and other holiday travelers, shuttled off to these dark, decrepit halls instead of staying with their families. But thinking of that made Steve realize that he’d been working at the hotel close to five months now, which made him want to throw up in the empty lobby.

They had three guests in the hotel right now: Number 212 took his coffee black, Number 230 had a severe peanut allergy, and Number 302 was having an affair with Ellen Walsh, of all people. Steve had copies of their driver’s licenses, passports, and Social Security cards.

Jack Lovett, the dead lab agent, had been living under all of their noses for months. Something like that wasn’t going to happen again.

Steve stretched and glanced up at the clock. He could take his lunch break. Hawkins High was taking its lunch break, if he remembered correctly, which meant he would’ve been eating anyway if he’d stayed. If he’d stayed, if he’d stayed—if he’d gone back, right? And wasn’t that the fuck-all of it all?

Nancy, Jonathan, his parents, everyone seemed to forget that if he had actually graduated, he wouldn’t exactly be back eating lunch and taking classes again either. In some ways, this was the more normal option. Most of his customers just assumed he’d gotten his diploma and decided to stay in Hawkins and work at a hotel no one ever stayed at anyway.

Wasn’t he supposed to move on from high school? Did the lack of diploma really make that much of a difference? His lack of a functioning hand made way more of a difference, and there wasn’t much that Steve could do about that, was there?

“Might as well,” Steve muttered, pulling out a slightly wet sandwich from his lunch box and remembering the summer months where he and Jonathan had eaten together with a bittersweet twist.

Eating most of his meals alone wasn’t fun, but there wasn’t much Steve could do about that, either. Nancy, his ex-girlfriend and person he spoke to most frequently, was in school. Any of the friends Steve might’ve called on had either gone off to college, like Christina or Matt, or were dead.

Lonely? Was that the word for it?

Steve still saw Heather sometimes, when he was sleeping, holding that knife. He’d thought he was going to die, and then she’d died instead, and no one could tell him exactly how or when except that none of the possessed had made it out of the burning lamp factory.

Steve didn’t know where Jonathan was, if he was eating lunch or not. He shoved that thought aside and finished his ham and cheese, bored and guilty for feeling bored, when it could be a lot worse.

He might be Chief Hopper, except Hopper wasn’t chief anymore, wasn’t on the force at all. Hopper had thrown his badge down and picked up a truck key instead and spent his time driving all over the goddam US. Looking, looking, still looking. He might be Joyce or Jonathan, ghosts even when they were in Hawkins, or El who’d lost her powers and was doing even less to look for Will than Steve was.

Or he might be Will. If Will was still alive.

Steve shouldn’t have been able to remember that day in September so clearly, first because he and Jonathan had smoked a joint before watching Back to the Future, rendering the plot a complete blur beyond the main kid definitely wanting to hook up with his mom, or maybe the other way around, but the effects had mostly worn off by the time they returned to Jonathan’s house.

They’d worn off even further by the time Steve had been preparing to go back to his own house, when the call came in.

Joyce had answered. And Steve remembered, with striking clarity, climbing into the car with Jonathan’s family and a half-asleep Max Mayfield, a strange fear underneath his skin that he couldn’t explain, as they’d raced over to the Wheeler’s.

“They took him,” Dustin had said, and Steve blinked, trying to understand the sight in front of him. Mike Wheeler propped up between Dustin and Lucas. Nancy was shaking. Nancy’s mom’s eyes were red. “Will’s gone.”

Then, things started to move a lot faster. Jonathan had charged down the basement stairs, as El knelt in front of Dustin, Max right behind her with Joyce and Hopper saying what everyone was thinking. “Where’s—”

“It was the lab,” said Lucas. Steve could hear Jonathan’s footsteps pounding back up. “They came out of nowhere. At least a dozen agents, they broke down the basement door.”

“Fuck—”

“I thought they were going to rip Mike’s arm off—”

“They—”

“Will,” croaked Mike Wheeler, his eyes starting to flutter, and now that Steve looked properly, arms definitely weren’t supposed to stick out at that angle.

Jonathan had reappeared, eyes slightly wild. “When were they here?”

“Hours ago,” said Dustin hoarsely. “It must’ve been.”

“Shit.”

“We need to drive after them—”

“Drive where?!”

“The lab has Will,” was Joyce’s faint response, and Steve could still hear that whisper, sometimes. He could still see the way her face had paled, so quickly that he’d actually been the one to pull a chair towards her. “We have to find him."

“How?!”

The heads had turned to El then, of course, even though they probably all knew. Did Steve know then? He couldn’t remember, but he did remember the crestfallen expression on her face. “I can’t find him,” she’d whispered, shaking her head slowly. “My powers are gone, I can’t—”

Someone rang the hotel bell.

Steve jumped, sandwich crust in hand and brain still in September, as Ellen Walsh in a ridiculous blonde wig stared back at him. “Room 302 needs more soap.”

“What?”

“Room 302,” she repeated. “Needs more soap.”

Her lack of embarrassment was so outstanding that Steve just did as he was told, happy at least for a task to actually complete, instead of just watching the clock and ruminating. He’d do that too, afterwards, but at least he had plans tonight:

The Hawkins High JV Track and Field Match. Take that.

--

Sitting next to his ex, his ex’s mom, and his ex’s two little brothers to watch high school freshmen and sophomores run around in circles and poorly throw javelins should’ve been objectively terrible, but Steve still had a few brownies saved from when he and Jonathan were on speaking terms, and he’d eaten a quarter of one before the meet.

Now, he sat sprawled out between his ex, his ex’s mom, and his ex’s two little brothers as they didn’t get rained on, making a comment here and there about how very fast and talented these runners were. Totally under the radar.

“Oh, the relay is up next! That’s Lucas’s relay!”

Steve clapped along as Nick Wheeler repeated “relay, relay!” when suddenly a boisterous cheer, far louder than the rest of them, interrupted with “LUCAS! THAT’S MY BOY!”, so loud that Steve nearly rolled off of the bleacher.

“Fuck—”

“Sue!” said Karen Wheeler brightly, moving over with a speed that left Steve dizzy. Lucas’s mom, right, was holding a large, floppy sign with green and gold on it. Steve wasn’t sure if the creature was supposed to be a tiger or if he’d had more brownie than he thought.

“Jesus,” muttered Mike, who’d acknowledged Steve’s presence with little more than a nod, which was at least better than it had been when he and Nancy were actually dating. Considering they’d almost been burned alive together, though, it felt a little cold.

“It’s nice that she’s so enthusiastic,” said Nancy, something tight about her smile, and Steve didn’t want to be the distraction again, but, well, here he was.

“Doing anything for the break?” he asked Mike, who raised an eyebrow at him.

“Dustin didn’t tell you?”

“Tell me what?”

Mike shifted in his seat and squinted at Steve, even though it wasn’t sunny. “We’re going to Iowa,” said Mike. “For a week-long educational summit for youths seeking a greater civic connection.”

Steve blinked, before suddenly remembering Dustin complaining about the rise of patriotism and nationalism in schools, except he could’ve sworn Dustin had mentioned Idaho. “I don’t talk to Dustin that much,” he said.

“More than the rest of us,” said Mike, and Steve wasn’t going to respond to that. Not with Nancy’s still-tight smile, flickering a little with Iowa, and Karen looping an arm around Sue Sinclair, who was wearing sunglasses, even though it still wasn’t sunny.

“I don’t know why no one else bothers. If we sign up for the week, it counts as a full year of civics credit. Do you know what that means?”

“No, Mike,” said Steve, wishing he’d had less of the brownie. Or maybe more. “What does that mean?”

“It means we won’t have to take Mr. Nielson’s civics class senior year,” said Mike flatly. “If we make it to senior year alive. Spring break in Iowa is worth that to me.”

He stalked off somewhere. Steve hadn’t even noticed him stand. Then Nancy was mumbling, “I could have gotten out of Nielson’s dumbass civics class by going to Iowa?” and Steve hadn’t taken any civics class at all because he hadn’t graduated from high school. Or had he?

Last year was a fuzzy one. The crowd cheered, but Steve wasn’t sure who’d run and who’d won.

//

At least the rain stopped before the track meet. And at least, even though Nancy and Mike had looked over more than once, Karen had managed to escort Sue Sinclair back to her car and give her some water before driving her home.

Lucas had vanished before Karen could offer him a ride, too.

Karen’s family sat around the table. Ted was on a two-week business trip in Cincinnati, so it was Nick in his highchair on one end, Mike and Nancy flanking him, with El in Ted’s normal seat, in that precious Pep Squad skirt suit. Karen herself had ironed it the day before.

“Lucas did really well,” she said, cutting into her carrots with the side of her fork. She’d tried a new recipe. They were softer than usual.

“Lots of fast running,” said Mike dryly. “Some slow running, too.”

“That Matt Donovan kid is pretty good,” said Nancy. “From McKinley. I’m surprised he’s still running JV. Lucas almost caught him, though.”

Karen swallowed down her carrots. “Four decent runners will always be better than one flash in the pan and three extras,” she said. It sounded a little sanctimonious, but she liked it. “And El, I thought all the cheers you did looked very good.”

Maybe it was because she herself had been a cheerleader, which wasn’t quite the same thing as Pep Squad, although there was some overlap, but Karen had always supported the sweet girls on the sidelines. Chrissy Cunningham had started out on Pep Squad, and now she was head cheerleader at the basketball games, which would’ve been more fun to spectate if the team itself was any good.

Alas.

“Thank you,” said El, who seemed to be pointedly avoiding the carrots.

Karen turned to Nancy, who didn’t look happy to be eating the softened carrots but was at least putting them in her mouth. “How was Mock Trial?”

The rest of dinner continued in more or less the same fashion, small talk from school, and a grin that looked more like a grimace from El when Karen asked, casually as she could, where Joyce and Jim were this week.

“Hop and the truck went to Loo-ey ville,” El said carefully. “Then Kansas City. But he’ll be back tonight. Joyce also said—she said she would be back tonight, too.”

Karen wondered if what Joyce had really said was that she’d be back in time for El’s game, but she wouldn’t comment on that. She also wouldn’t comment that she’d asked where, not when. “That’s good,” she said, instead. “Do you want to spend the night here again?”

“No, that’s okay,” said El. She was already starting to stand. “Thank you for dinner.”

“I’ll drop you off at your house,” said Nancy. “I’m going in that direction, anyway. I need to pick up some poster board before school tomorrow.”

El squinted at her, likely trying to determine if this was true or not—Karen doubted it, considering the breadth of their crafts closet—but she relented, picking up her backpack and brushing her blonde hair out of her face. She’d be due for some highlights, soon.

Mike was standing, too, and gave them both the barest of waves before sprinting upstairs, muttering “Math test tomorrow,” under his breath and Karen sighed, facing the dirty dishes in the kitchen on her own. A glass of white would help, at least, as she started to scrub.

An hour and a half later, the kitchen was clean, her youngest child was slumbering, her oldest child had returned without any poster board in sight, and her middle child had finally turned his lights off. Karen sighed and stretched and climbed up towards the bathroom, arms aching.

She took off her earrings and began to wash her face, allowing her expression to finally sink from the smile it’d been stuck in all evening into its true form: pure, unbridled exhaustion.

Sue hadn’t just been overexcited, she’d been shit-faced drunk, and anyone with two brain cells could’ve put that together. Karen hadn’t seen Joyce in over four days, or Jim in almost two weeks, and if their fridge and freezer weren’t filled with meals Karen herself had made, who knew what they were eating?

So, then, El at their dinner table, where at least Karen could know. She’d tried extending the same offer to Jonathan without much success. Although, if what she’d overheard from Nancy was true—Karen dabbed eye cream onto her fingers.

There was a lasagna in the freezer for the Sinclair’s, and several jars of pasta sauce and noodles downstairs for the Henderson’s, after a few too many times of her food going unheated and uneaten. Meals mostly went refused at the Mayfield-Hargrove’s—now just Mayfield—but Karen had a plan for that, too.

She couldn’t find Will. She wasn’t sure if anyone would be able to find Will, at this rate. But she had to do something.

Into her pajamas and slippers, so tired she could barely blink, but Karen’s mind went on racing. Went on wondering where Joyce and Jim might be, if they were really coming home tonight like El had said, or if El just felt guilty accepting help and hospitality. She set down her glass of wine from dinner at the chair beside her bed and pulled out the previous Sunday’s newspaper, flipping through it with a sigh.

Karen never had enough confidence to fill out the crossword in pen, so pencil it was. She frowned. She’d been fussing with one particular section the past three days, and Mike had been too busy with school and getting ready for his Spring Break civics trip to help her.

Now, though, the grey rainy day had settled into night, which meant Karen could sit and think for a few minutes before curling up under her comforter and attempting to fall asleep.

Hold on, she thought, whipping out her eraser again. Thirty across: someone who might study Smith and Keynes. Someone, not something, and she erased ECONOMICS and replaced it with ECONOMIST, slowly nodding her head.

That certainly helped matters. Sixteen down could actually spell out a word, now, and one might hide this in an ear had to be WORM, which was silly, but LEMON made sense for a bad deal, if she thought of it in terms of cars, and she had no small amount of pride looking at the completed section.

Done without Mike’s help, thank you very much, and—

Karen’s eyes widened.

“Worm,” she whispered, starting at three across. “Isabella, lemon, linguistic.”

Nine across, one might hide this in an ear, and the daughter of Ingrid and Roberto and a bad deal and of or relating to languages, and Karen set her pencil down, heart racing.

“Worm, Isabella, lemon, linguistic,” she repeated. “Itch, satire.”

Something one might scratch, seventeen across. A parody, twenty-one across.

Her hands began to sweat. “Hiatus, economist, by any other name, thirty-four across—” She shakily filled in ROSE. Finally, thirty-five across, lend me your___, and—

It couldn’t be, could it? But she’d already stood up. She was already moving towards her bedroom door.

They’d all been keeping tabs on the newspapers, the Classifieds especially, but the crossword puzzles? Who would bother to hide something in a crossword puzzles?

“These maniacs would,” she huffed, stumbling over her feet in the dark to find a jacket. Shoes and a jacket. Three children safely slumbering—and she did check each of their doors, because she’d learned her lesson—and Karen was tiptoeing downstairs, heart in her throat.

Jim and Joyce might not even be home yet. Hadn’t El just said sometime soon, whenever that meant? But Karen wasn’t going to fall back asleep, not when there might finally be something to go off of.

She took the folded-up newspaper with her into the car, stared at it, checked her work, stared at it, and nodded. “I’m not crazy,” she whispered aloud, sticking her key into the ignition. “I’m not.”

The streets of Hawkins were dark and empty at this hour. At least the rain had stopped. Karen kept herself from throwing her foot on the accelerator, still speeding a little, but everyone in Hawkins sped a little, even after Billy.

She slowed as she approached. Jim’s giant truck was in the driveway, which meant that the only one away for the night might be Jonathan.

Well, Jonathan and Will.

Karen squeezed the newspaper and refused to think about it.

Parking her car behind Joyce’s, she stepped out into the drizzle and wind and shivered. If she was wrong about this—hell, even if she was right about this—Karen shook her head. One step at a time. Literally, as she carefully eased over the gnarled weeds and broken brick of a once well-maintained front yard. Even her new lawnmower wouldn’t stand much of a chance.

She knocked on the door. No one answered, at first, probably because it was close to three o’clock in the morning, so she kept knocking, until finally the door swung open, and Jim Hopper’s exhausted face stared back at her.

Somehow, he looked even worse than he had a few weeks ago. Or had it been over a month, now? “How was Louisville?”

“Karen,” he said. “What do you want?”

Another figure appeared behind his shoulder. Joyce. Maybe they’d been talking. Maybe she’d woken both of them up, Jim’s greying hair and Joyce’s red, weary eyes, and she hesitated. They’d already been burned so many times and lost so many leads.

Were they really leads, though? Karen thought. Or were they just guesses? If I’m right about this, if I’m reading this right—

“Hi Karen,” said Joyce softly. Already thin, Joyce looked like a breeze might knock her over.

Was she really going to do this to them? It could be a coincidence. A hell of a coincidence. Was she really going to—

“I think I found something,” Karen said, before she could stop herself. “A clue.”

And really, the only thing worse than her friend’s hopeless faces, were those same faces, suddenly and disbelievingly, affected by hope.

Chapter Text

September 25, 1985

Hawkins, Indiana

Her baby was gone. Her baby was gone.

Joyce forced down the nausea rising from her stomach. There wasn’t any time to panic. Not with the two-hour lead that the lab agents already had. “You need to go to the hospital,” she said, and Karen blinked at her in surprise. “Take Mike to the hospital. For his arm.”

Mike didn’t even argue with her, and that was more telling than anything. It was a bad break; Joyce didn’t have to be a medical expert to see that from the angle.

“Right,” said Karen. “Right, um—” She looked around the crowd, baby Nick Wheeler dangling from her arm. “I’ll—”

“I’ve got him, Mom,” said Nancy.

Karen fumbled with her purse, hands shaking, and pulled Mike away from his friends and towards the car. Joyce had been so sleepy after the show, that delightful soap opera of El’s, but now there was only adrenaline.

She’d found Will once before. She would find him again.

“Go through the basement,” said Hopper, and the three teenagers blinked at him in surprise. Jonathan, Steve, and Nancy holding Nick. “See if there’s anything they left behind and patch up these two.”

He gestured to Dustin and Lucas. “Can you do that for me?”

“Yeah,” said Jonathan, voice hoarse. “Yeah, we can.”

Tasks are good, thought Joyce, squeezing her other baby’s shoulder. Discrete tasks. That’s what worked before. That’s what will work now.

“What about you?” asked Steve.

“We’ve got all of that stuff about the agents still at the house,” said Hopper, already moving towards the door. “We can grab the files and come back over here. Come up with some sort of game plan.”

El and Max followed them outside. Joyce didn’t bother telling them to stay—it would be good to keep an eye on El, anyway, just in case there were agents watching them. Could there be agents watching them?

The drive back to their house was silent but determined. Joyce was already planning out what they could do next; what calls they could make, which places they could try. Finding Will without El’s powers might be harder, but not impossible.

Nothing felt impossible. Nothing made her stop in her tracks, either, until they were pulling into the driveway they’d only left fifteen or twenty minutes before.

Their front door was open.

For one blissful second, Joyce let herself imagine that Will had come back. That it was all some terrible misunderstanding, or he’d been able to escape; that he’d teleported onto their lawn and forgotten to close the door, because he could do that, right?

He could teleport. He was so much stronger than when he’d gone missing the first time, it seemed impossible that anyone could keep him away from them.

“Oh my god,” Max was saying, as they went into the house. They’d been in the house fifteen minutes ago. “Oh my god.”

The living room was in shambles. Tables overturned; sofa shoved to the side. The remains of the watch-party food were on the floor.

More importantly, though, more horribly—

“It’s gone,” said Hopper, voice breathless. “All of the papers. All of the boxes. Let me—shit, there was some upstairs, wasn’t there?!”

Joyce didn’t bother running after him. Someone had torn through her house like a maniac, and none of them had thought to hide all of the evidence they’d gathered. Why would they? Who would they be hiding it from?

“You didn’t put any in the safe?!”

“No,” said Joyce numbly. El and Max’s eyes were huge, taking in the destruction. “The only thing in the safe are the passports. And money.”

Hopper’s footsteps were heavy and panicked. “Fuck,” he hissed. “What can you remember? You read more of that stuff than anyone.”

That was true. Joyce had. She’d poured over the documents and newspapers for months, memorizing names and dates and accidents. She’d read poems about missing children, missing children that might have belonged to anyone. She remembered Robin Buckley. Kali Prasad.

There was one name she should’ve remembered, though. One name that they’d all become wary of, a pseudonym of sorts, but just as it flickered into Joyce’s brain—

The name ???? vanished just as quickly.

The name ????—

????

A second later, it was like their entire existence had been erased, and Joyce blinked slowly, head heavy. “I don’t know,” she said helplessly. Her hands were sweating. Will was missing. Who was she trying to remember? What was she trying to remember?

“I don’t know.”

(early) Thursday March 20, 1986 – six months later

Hawkins, Indiana

The knock on the door wasn’t Will. Of course it wasn’t Will.

It didn’t stop Joyce from getting her hopes up.

Instead, Karen Wheeler in her bathrobe and pajamas, eyes wide and nervous. Oh no, Joyce thought. Something’s happened.  

Joyce didn’t have much space in her chest for worry, but there could always be more. Things could always be worse. She knew that, now, barely finding her feet as Karen came closer.

But it wasn’t El. It wasn’t Jonathan or any of the other kids, either.

“I think I found something,” Karen said. Nervous, she was nervous. “A clue.”

Will.

“I don’t understand,” said Joyce, because she didn’t, staring over Karen’s shoulder at the folded-out paper. “What are we looking at?”

They’d crowded around the kitchen table, like they had so many times before, back when solving poems in the newspaper actually got them somewhere. Now, Karen was trying again, this time pointing at the crossword section with the shaking hand of a prophet and shiny, red nails.

It was a stretch. Anything at this point was a stretch. But Joyce would take a crossword puzzle over nothing, even though the font was making her eyes swim.

“Look at these words going across,” said Karen. “Worm, Isabella, lemon, linguistic.”

“Karen—”

“Look,” Karen jabbed her finger harder. “Worm, Isabella, lemon, linguistic. Itch, satire. Hiatus, economist, rose.”

Joyce sucked a breath in sharply, the pencil marks suddenly becoming clear. “Ear,” she whispered. “Hop, look at the first letters. The first letters of each of those words.”

“The first—” And she knew Hop had been awake for too many hours, they’d all been awake too long, unable to sleep, trapped in this horrible dream, but she saw the moment he saw it, too. “Will is here.”

“It can’t be a coincidence, can it?” Karen was saying, as Joyce stared at it. WILL IS HERE, WILL IS HERE. “We know they used the newspapers to communicate. And I’d been looking at the Classifieds, but there hasn’t been anything. But this—”

“Will is here,” repeated Joyce. “Will is where?”

Karen grimaced. Looking at her again, Joyce realized her hair wasn’t done either. She’d wiped the makeup off of her face, taken her jewelry off, and looked nearly as exhausted as Joyce felt. “I don’t know,” she said. “But I think the three of us can figure it out.”

They sat down at the table. Joyce had checked on El, at one point, but she slept more soundly than the rest of them did. Jonathan’s bedroom was empty. She hadn’t been able to go in Will’s room for a few months now.

So, it was just the three of them in the kitchen, the crossword puzzle spread out in the middle and three cups of tea, at Karen’s insistence. “Maybe there’s something to these clues,” said Hop, running a hand through his thinning hair. “Why worm to start? One might hide in an apple?”

“What about the big apple? New York?”

They passed the words back and forth. “Daughter of Ingrid and Roberto is Isabella Rossellini—could Will be in Rome?!”

Considering how many far-flung towns in the US Hop had been to, Joyce could almost believe that Will was on another continent, although the thought made her dizzy. Anywhere, he could be anywhere.

Smith and Keynes were the economists mentioned, and they were both British, Joyce thought, but then linguistic had Karen wondering if maybe a second language was involved somewhere.

It might’ve been an hour or two before Joyce saw it. They’d written out the words, then written them out again, but it was only the second time that Joyce began to trace what was in front of her.

“Hold on,” she said, leaning in closer. Karen was on her third cup of tea. Hop had just gone ahead and switched his out with a can of beer. “Worm, Isabella, lemon…”

“We know that part,” said Hop, but Joyce shook her head.

“Not the first letters,” she said, grabbing a pencil. “The last letters. Worm, Isabella, lemon, linguistic, itch, satire, hiatus, economist, rose, ear.”

“Manchester,” said Karen and Hop at the same time, looking at each other, and then at Joyce. “It’s a city in England, isn’t it? The one with the soccer team.”

“Why England?”

“Why anywhere?” Joyce held up the puzzle. “The puzzle could’ve used any words beginning with W, I, or L. It’s got to be it.”

Karen was nodding slowly. Hop didn’t look as convinced. The red numbers on the clock glowed fifteen minutes past four. “I want to go.”

“What?”

“To Manchester,” said Joyce, blood humming with something unfamiliar. Something like anticipation. Something she thought she’d lost. “Surely there’s at least one seat on the flight for the morning, right? From Indianapolis to—well, London is a more likely shot, isn’t it?

“Joyce, you can’t be serious.”

Joyce stood. “I’ve never been more serious about anything,” she said. “Is my large suitcase in the closet?”

She could hear Hop or Karen or both of them sputter and follow after her, as she went into her bedroom and threw open the closet door. Sure enough, there was the suitcase she’d packed up her California life with and promptly shoved in here. No need for it until now, but Joyce wasn’t sure how large the city of Manchester was and how long they might be looking.

“We need to talk about this.”

“What if it’s wrong?” asked Karen breathlessly, over Hop. “We don’t know for sure.”

Joyce spun around on her foot. “If it’s wrong, we’re in the same position we are now,” she said. She wished her hands would stop shaking. She wished for a lot of things. “But if we’re right about this…I have to take that chance. I have to.”

“Joyce—”

“It’s better than spending a week in Louisville!” Hop fell quiet, and Joyce closed her eyes. “I don’t mean it like that. I just mean—it’s not a coincidence. It can’t be. What do we have to lose?”

She wished she could read Hop’s thoughts. She’d used to be able to, when the light was soft and the summer was warm and green, and it was three sets of laughs outside the window instead of none. Her throat ached.

“Okay,” said Hop, and Joyce released a breath. “You’re right, it’s probably not a coincidence, but—”

“We need to make sure the flight has three seats, then,” said Karen. “There should be a direct flight to London. This time of year, spring break trips, there might be a flight with three seats.”

Joyce and Hopper stared at her wordlessly. She was still holding a half-finished mug of tea. “Am I wrong?” Karen asked, tersely. “You’re obviously going, Joyce. And if Joyce goes, you’ll go too, Jim. And if either of you think I’m staying here, then you’re completely delusional.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“Say ridiculous again, I dare you.”

“Of course you’re coming,” said Joyce, stunning them both silent, but she was suddenly grateful for Karen’s offer. She knew if she got on that plane, Hop would follow her. And she didn’t trust herself to be alone with Hop. “Let’s meet back here in an hour.”

“I never doubted you, Joyce—”

“Hold on,” said Hop, louder than before. “Aren’t we forgetting about something? A few certain someone’s?”

“Who’s we?” asked Karen. “Because you certainly wouldn’t dare be referring to our children, would you? Do you know what your daughter ate for dinner tonight? Or where? Or cooked by who?”

Joyce’s cheeks reddened. Hop’s did, too, the elephant in the room none of them had been brave enough to mention. Karen’s hands were on her hips now, though, as she stared directly into Joyce’s soul. “Do you know what starts this weekend?”

“This weekend?” Joyce mumbled.

“Spring Break,” said Karen, and Hopper threw his hands up into the air.

“That’s worse, isn’t it? They won’t even be in school.”

“Will you listen to me?” Karen rolled her eyes. “I guess she didn’t bother telling you, did she? El is going with Mike and the others to the civics conference. You know, the one they’ll get class credit for? It’s been planned for ages. Nine days of wholesome, adult-supervised activities in Iowa. Nancy’s touring a couple colleges in Illinois, and she even convinced Jonathan to come her, how about that? Two for two.”

The word colleges next to Jonathan’s name should’ve sent Joyce spiraling, but she’d been spiraling for six months now, so she only managed to nod. She didn’t know anything about a civics trip to Iowa for class credit. “And Nick?” she asked hoarsely, because Hopper looked like he’d been punched in the face.

“There’s a camp that some of the teenagers put on,” said Karen, more calmly than before. “Chrissy is one of the counselors. Ted is still out of town next week, anyway.”

She looked at them both closely and sighed. “I don’t blame you, you know,” she said, in a voice almost like pity. Joyce couldn’t bear pity. “If it were me—”

“Meet back here in an hour,” said Joyce. “We can drive to the airport in your car.”

--

They didn’t speak as they packed. On one hand, it might’ve been to keep from waking up El, as they moved like fugitives in the night. On the other hand…

Joyce sighed. Karen would be here any minute. She’d folded shirts and jeans and underwear, a couple of sweaters, and that old plush of Will’s, buried in the depths. She gently traced its whiskers, ache in her throat hardening into something stronger. Crying hadn’t brought him back. Neither had screaming or pleading or any of the meetings or drinking or the tarot cards she kept in her jean pocket.

This could, though. Joyce zipped up the bag and lugged it towards the front of the house, where Hopper was waiting.

He’d changed into a different flannel and combed his hair. Joyce wished she didn’t notice, but she did.

“It’s still a long shot,” Hop said quietly. Joyce’s eyes stayed trained to the floor. “But you’re right. It’s not any longer than any of the others.”

“Did you write them a note?”

He nodded. “Same old,” he said, before hesitating. “About what Karen said—”

“They understand,” said Joyce. “Or they will understand, anyway. And touring colleges and Iowa?” She gripped the suitcase handle tighter; afraid she otherwise might float away. “That sounds like a fun week to me.”

“Alright,” said Hop, and then Karen Wheeler’s car was creaking up the driveway. They tucked their suitcases in the trunk, and Joyce wordlessly stuck herself in the back. Hopper knew the directions better to the airport, anyway.

Rushing felt a bit pointless, but so did waiting around. They wouldn’t be able to wait in the ticket line until closer to seven or eight, Joyce guessed, but she hadn’t taken a flight in years. None of them had. They drove away, and Joyce hunched over, hugging her knees.

None of them noticed the car waiting in the darkened shadows beneath the oak trees. And none of them noticed as it turned its headlights on and creaked forward to follow them.

//

El knew the house was empty again before she opened her eyes.

As she’d twisted and turned during the night, the house had creaked in a warmly familiar way—not Will, no, but she could smell Joyce’s hand lotion and hear Hopper’s rumbling voice even in her half-awakened state.

She’d folded over herself and slept a little easier, only to feel their missing presence once again when the thin light filtered through El’s window.

Her feet were cold, even under the covers. El kicked and contemplated not going to school that morning. There was no one to tell her otherwise, was there? Jonathan only seemed to go every other day, if that, and her math class was horrible, and Mary Martin hadn’t invited El to her sleepover birthday yet.

El only knew about the party because Jennifer mentioned it, and El guessed that Jennifer had only mentioned it because she assumed El had been invited—assumed, that silly, stupid word, but El hadn’t been.

Jane hadn’t been invited. El flopped around underneath the covers. She hadn’t been Number Eleven in a long time.

But then, she thought about Will. Her Will, who’d once slept in the twin bed beside hers, who she’d sometimes roll over to in the middle of the night.

He hadn’t liked that at first. But he’d allowed it, back in Lenora, on those cold nights when El’s brain wouldn’t fall asleep and he would cry or scream out, they would hold each other like twisted soft pretzels from the mall in Indianapolis.

If El closed her eyes a little longer, she could imagine it. She could imagine him here, safe, where nothing would ever hurt them ever again.

It was a nice thought. El allowed herself the in-dul-gence before sighing and sitting up, swinging her feet onto the cold floor.

Her hair was starting to yellow. It would need more of the foamy white bleach that Ms. Karen used, in between the shiny foils. Max had laughed, when she saw it, but Jennifer was blonde, and everyone loved her. Mary Martin was blonde, too.

“You really want to be like Jennifer Hayes and Mary Martin?” Max had asked, lip curling up.

“Why not?” El had asked her back. They used to sit together in biology class. They didn’t anymore. “Everyone likes them.”

El stared at her yellow hair in the mirror and mechanically grabbed a comb. Her pink lip gloss sparkled, courtesy of Ms. Karen, too, and she forced her lips into a smile.

“Hi Mary,” she said to the mirror. Girls like Mary and Jennifer didn’t say what they meant, most of the time, but El had spent the past six months practicing. “I think Jeremy likes you, Mary. Would you like to know how I know?”

She smiled again, making her teeth extra big, before leaving her room. There was a note folded up on the kitchen table. El didn’t bother reading it.

On Thursdays, she and the other girls had their Pep Squad Debrief to discuss how they’d done at the meet the night before, but mostly they talked about boys. Boys and boyfriends and boys on TV, and El did alright with boys on TV, but she’d never had a boyfriend before and wasn’t sure how she would go about finding one.

“Jane, you know, I thought you and Lucas…” Mary Martin had giggled, exchanging a look with Jennifer that El hadn’t known how to read.

“Me and Lucas?”

Mary and Jennifer had giggled again, and something sunk in El’s stomach. “No,” she’d said. “He does not like me…like that.”

“You sure he knows that?”

El shook that memory away. She was sure. She was very sure. But without a boyfriend of her own, sometimes it was hard to come up with new things to say. This was especially true this particular Thursday, because everyone was going to the beach for Spring Break.

Everyone except El. And Lucas, which she was beginning to blame him for.

“The beach is going to be so cold,” said Lucas. It was limp pizza for lunch today, and flat orange soda.  El was still reeling from another math homework with more wrong answers than right and how very little she’d had to contribute at Pep Squad that morning. All the boys and girls did during track was run around in stupid circles.

“Seriously, E—Jane. Lake Michigan is cold.”

He lowered his voice and leaned in. “And I know it’s not—look, it’ll be fun, right? Mike said it’s like summer camp. Rock climbing, archery, arts and crafts. You like arts and crafts!”

El’s lip-gloss-lips pursed. “Do you like arts and crafts, Lucas?”

“Not really,” said Lucas. “But Mike—I don’t know, he’s in a tough spot. And he’s really been looking forward to it. Or at least looking forward to the class credit, you know?”

El glanced over her shoulder. The tough spot was that Mike ate lunch with Max and Dustin every day, when Dustin actually came to school, even though Max wasn’t talking to Lucas anymore and Lucas was only sometimes talking to Max and Max and El didn’t talk, just like Dustin and El didn’t talk, and Lucas and Dustin only talked a little bit. Mike was the one in the middle.

Well, except Mike didn’t really talk to El very much either, which made her cross her arms and sit back in her stupid plastic seat. “Is Iowa by a beach?”

“Ha,” said Lucas. “No.” He paused, following El’s eyes. “If you don’t want to go, though,” he said, using the same careful voice that Jonathan sometimes would. El willed her eyes not to burn. “You don’t have to, you know? If it’s going to be weird—”

“It won’t be,” said El, even though it most certainly would. Over the summer, the idea of spending a week with Max and Dustin would’ve been a dream. Now, El could feel her lip gloss sliding off onto the greasy slice of pizza. “You’re right. It will be fun.”

The house was still empty when El got home.

She threw her backpack at the sofa and didn’t bother picking it back up when it flopped down to the floor. She flung open all of the kitchen cabinets, even the ones with coffee, and ripped into a bag of potato chips, eating them in handfuls straight from the bag as she sprawled out on the couch.

Over the summer, El could’ve turned on the television without even blinking. Now, she stared at it and stared at it, nothing but numb, white fuzz in her brain, and with a suddenly she launched the bag of potato chips forward and allowed the horrible sickening scream to finally release, both arms out, she should’ve been able to turn on the TV, she should’ve been able to burn the television—

El screamed and screamed, a useless baby, a useless, yellow-haired little girl, oh if Papa could see me now, she thought wildly, throwing the potato chips and sinking her fingernails into the printed pillows, hating Jack Lovett for stealing her powers and hating herself even more.

No one was there to watch her scream and shake. No one was there to watch her finally stop, slow, and lay lethargically on top of the sofa.

El wiped the stupid, pathetic tear from her left eye. Will wouldn’t lose his temper like this. Will would never make a mess. It was Will she channeled, then, as she dutifully ducked down and picked up the fallen potato chips one by one.

She wouldn’t ever be him. No matter how many potato chips she picked up. No matter how good she was. And it wasn’t just Joyce or Jonathan either: she knew all of them, all of their friends, would’ve traded her for Will in an instant, if they could. El didn’t even blame them.

She would trade herself for Will, too.

They were meeting at the Wheeler house to talk about Spring Break. El didn’t want to go. She hadn’t finished her math homework yet, and Hopper wasn’t even around to yell at her about it. El didn’t want to go, because she didn’t want Dustin to look at her, and she didn’t want Max to ignore her, and she didn’t even like Mike anyway, and she definitely wasn’t going to like Iowa, no matter what Lucas said.

She wouldn’t. She wouldn’t.

She picked up her backpack anyway.

//

Jonathan held a ripped postcard between his fingers, driving at least fifteen above the speed limit, and wished he hadn’t broken up with Nancy Wheeler.

Well, he hadn’t really broken up with her—neither of them had talked about it, at all, but they didn’t talk about anything anymore. Not that Jonathan talked to anyone much these days. Not his mom or Hopper, who kept chasing stupid clues, not Steve, who’d made one gentle suggestion too many, and not even Argyle, although Argyle kept calling anyway.

The ripped postcard fluttered on his dashboard.

He didn’t want to enlist Nancy. She’d made it really fucking clear how she’d felt about it, hadn’t she? Even though she should understand—she should understand better than anyone, right? She should—

Dionne Warwick sang on the radio. Jonathan gripped the steering wheel tightly. The crux of the matter was that he didn’t have the answer. The crux of the matter was that Nancy might be able to help him figure it out, if he could get past the bullshit of “Are you sure about this?” and “Maybe it’s time to” or, even worse, “Will wouldn’t want this, would he?”

None of them could say what Will would or wouldn’t want, because Will was gone. He wasn’t dead, Jonathan knew, with a cold certainty, but every night that he stood under a hot shower and ate food at their kitchen table, cooked by Karen Wheeler or otherwise, and climbed into his warm, comfortable bed, he knew, with that same certainty, that his little brother wasn’t doing the same.

Jonathan gripped the steering wheel tighter. If it was for Will, it was worth it. If there was any chance that this postcard had any of the answers, then he’d just have to put himself at Nancy’s mercy.

She was the smartest person he knew. She’d figured out Jack Lovett’s secrets the first time; maybe she could help him again.

He didn’t drive straight to her house, though. He needed ammunition.

The air was stale as he stepped inside. Still, like no one had breathed in it, and the floors didn’t creak as he jogged upstairs. Empty room, empty room, and then Jonathan was digging through his closet, the boxes and bins he’d kept detailing every inch of Jack Lovett’s miserable little life.

They’d lost almost everything. Whoever had gone through their house, after taking Will, had left a terrible mess behind: boxes overturned, cabinets still open. Every meticulous note Hopper had taken. Every newspaper, and every stupid poem.

(He still remembered his mom telling them, the numb shock with some stupid, stupid optimism that maybe they could find Will anyway. Maybe one of them knew something, even just a name— 

None of them did, though. None of them could even remember a name.)

Jonathan had rebuilt a collection of his own.

Targeted, though. Much more targeted. As far as Jonathan was concerned, everything led back to Jack Lovett, which meant now Jonathan possessed the dead man’s original birth certificate, found after his first big win—a storage unit about to be sold, in goddam New Mexico.

His original birth certificate. Report cards. It all fell to the floor with a flutter, as Jonathan shook, eyes trained for—ah, yes.

Onboarding papers, for lab agents John, Katherine, and Louis Lovett. He’d underestimated the find at first, even though it had taken weeks to track down. The vital statistics were fine, sure, but what Jonathan narrowed in on now was the designation code of the Lenora Lab.

It was obvious, in hindsight, that these labs were spread out across the country like a spiderweb. Most shut down or had otherwise transformed into nice, palatable places like the Hawkins Lab before it met its demise, and Jonathan had spent the month of December attempting to uncover anything suspicious about the lab less than fifteen minutes from his house, but so far, his efforts hasn’t yielded much. He couldn’t even figure out if the Hawkins lab actually had patients or not.

So, he’d redoubled his efforts on Jack Lovett.

The New Mexico connection had been through the Lovett mother, and after figuring out that her maiden name had been Wainwright, narrowing down their childhood home hadn’t been hard. And one evening, in the fallout of a terrible fight with Nancy that Jonathan rather wouldn’t remember, he’d taken the chance and driven out there, rebuilding what had been taken from them.

“Please, just listen to me, when Barb—"

Jonathan carefully picked up the postcard. Finding Louis Lovett’s former pen pal had been a strange stroke of luck, although Jonathan had been skeptical at first. After all, he didn’t see much how Louis himself had to do with the entire mess, given when he’d died.

But one thread led to another, which led to some of the letters they’d exchanged, and as it turned out, this pen pal was the one who’d informed Louis, and presumably the rest of them, about the job in Lenora.

He was always cagey with the details. They both were, really, half of every message in some kind of code and the other half destroyed with either age or intention. But with some time, Jonathan had figured out that the pen pal almost certainly also worked for the lab in some capacity.

In the weeks before Louis Lovett’s untimely death, the messages had a strange tone of warning. They were being watched, or someone suspected they were communicated, someone suspected they were conspiring—conspiring about what, Jonathan wasn’t sure, except that both seemed to have figured out that the lab subjects they were working on weren’t brain-addled, broken lab rats.

They were kids. They were El. And this pen pal referenced others.

If there were others out there somewhere with powers like El’s, a different lab with a different set of agents and doctors, Jonathan had a grim feeling who else they might be interested in.

Nothing ever referenced a location. The letters and notes from Louis Lovett didn’t even reference Lenora. Jonathan had always been shit with hidden codes, though. He’d been about ten minutes from breaking and asking his mom for her thoughts, despite his rule about bringing his mom into this and getting her hopes up, when he’d gotten wind of a second storage unit earlier that week.

A second storage unit. Jonathan might’ve jumped for joy if he had any left in his body. So he’d skipped two of his pre-Spring Break midterms and driven out to the middle of Texas, heart pounding the entire time. Hop had been on his way to Louisville or Kansas. His mom had been at another one of those stupid grief counseling sessions, the kind where you talked about your feelings and held each other’s hands.

Nancy and Steve had made it perfectly clear that they didn’t want to be a part of this. So, he’d driven to Paris, Texas. And most of the stuff inside had long been damaged by water, covered in a thin dusting of mold, but he’d found the postcard.

He’d found the postcard, and he gathered up the rest of Louis’s letters and the pen pals’ and walked out of his room.

Past El’s closed door and past his mom’s and past Will’s, too, where Jonathan stopped. He turned the handle.

Mom had come in a lot in the first week or two, when it was like Will had vanished into the Upside Down again, and they’d been so fucking naïve. Naïve and optimistic that they’d be able to track the lab agents down quickly, that it’d be a long twenty-four or forty-eight hours, but that they’d find him, they’d get him back. Over a weekend like everything at the Electric Lamp Oasis, hah.

Will had been gone for almost six months. Jonathan set his box on Will’s nightstand and crawled on top of his brother’s bed, careful not to disturb any of the pillows. He laid there for a few minutes and stared up at the ceiling.

He’s alive, Jonathan thought, and he’d never admit it in a million years, but it didn’t make him feel much better. Sometimes when he stared at the ceiling from his own bed, he swore he could hear Will screaming.

Back in the car, Dionne Warwick was singing again. Jonathan drove over to the Wheeler’s, parked in the driveway, and prepared to beg.

There were a couple of bikes leaning against the side of the house. He walked past them and knocked on the door, trying to keep his hands from shaking.

“Jonathan!” Nancy’s eyebrows disappeared into her hair, as she blinked at him several times from the front door. “I thought—”

“I know you wanted to talk tomorrow,” said Jonathan, who was absolutely going to avoid that conversation if he could. “But I wanted to talk right now.” He hesitated. “Is that okay?”

“Of—I mean, of course,” said Nancy. “Steve is in the kitchen.”

For some reason, Jonathan didn’t feel an ounce of surprise. He just nodded and walked in, past the shut basement door.

“Jonathan!” said Steve, in a pitch eerily similar to Nancy’s. “What’s, uh, what’s going on?”

“I need your help with something,” said Jonathan, and he held his hand up before either of them could say anything else. “Can we go up to your room?”

Nancy blinked. “Sure,” she said, leading the way. Jonathan didn’t want Mike or Karen Wheeler overhearing this. “Where were you, this week?”

If she was trying to sound casual, it wasn’t working. They walked into Nancy’s room, with the posters and ballet pink, and Jonathan tried not to think about the last time he’d been in here alone with her. Well, Steve being with them helped.

“Texas.”

“Texas?!”

“Yeah,” said Jonathan. “And I know what you’re going to say, I know you think I’m looking for something that doesn’t exist—”

“I didn’t—”

“Texas?”

“But Jack Lovett didn’t just appear out of nowhere. He’s at the center of—”

“But Jack Lovett is dead,” said Steve, as Nancy looked at him sadly, and Jonathan knew this had been a mistake, he knew it. “How can—”

“Never mind, Jesus.”

“Don’t just run out of here—”

“Hey!” Nancy blocked the door with her entire body, and Jonathan probably could’ve forced his way through, eyes blurring as he gripped onto the stupid postcard, but he was suddenly exhausted and horribly, embarrassingly, wanted to cry.

Maybe Nancy could sense it. Maybe she noticed the postcard in his hand, and that brain of hers wanted to know what it said. “Talk to us. What does Jack Lovett have to do with Texas?”

Jonathan sat on the edge of the bed and looked down. “Not much,” he said, as Steve slowly moved to sit next to him. “But there’s—well, okay, Louis Lovett had a pen pal—”

He filled them in on the past couple of months, taking only a little pleasure in watching their eyes grow the size of dinner plates, although that might be attributed to how much school he’d been missing for these road trips. Jack Lovett and the storage locker and Louis Lovett and the pen pal, and finally Nancy stretched out her hands.

“What does it say?”

“It’s dated October of ‘83,” said Jonathan. “So, only a short time before Louis died. And only part of the message is legible, but you can make out some of it.”

Nancy and Steve both leaned in. “October 3, 1983,” read Nancy, squinting. “Dearest Lou, then it skips, and there’s something—I think that says meet, then maybe east?”

“I don’t see how either of you can read any of that.”

“So, if this message was written to Louis Lovett, then could this person have known he was in trouble?” Nancy trailed off. “Was it written by another lab agent?”

“I don’t know,” said Jonathan. “I’ve just been calling him the pen pal. I don’t know much about him, but if he sent this postcard—it sounds like he might have wanted to meet up somewhere, or the answers Louis was looking for might’ve been somewhere. It might be another lab, like the one in Lenora and the one in Hawkins.”

“Another hideout for the lab agents,” finished Nancy.

Jonathan flipped the postcard over. “This is where I need your help,” he said. “I can’t tell where it’s from. It’s on a coastline somewhere, I think, and it looks like it might start with the letter M, or maybe an N, but I think it’s an M, and then that looks like the edge of a lighthouse, don’t you think?”

“Oh, yeah,” said Steve. “The white against the sky, right? The—Nancy, are you okay?”

The color had seeped out of Nancy’s face so dramatically that Jonathan was surprised she hadn’t fallen to the floor, paler than a ghost, eyes suddenly wide and dark against bloodless cheeks. “Oh god,” she said aloud, more like a mumble than anything else. “Oh my god.”

“What?” Jonathan’s pulse quickened. “Do you recognize it? Do you know where it is?”

Nancy turned to him, with that same expression. “He must have told you, right?” she said. “No, I know he did. We were missing for an entire day, he must have.”

“What are you talking about?!”

“Montauk,” said Nancy, and Jonathan just stood there blinking at her. His ears were starting to fill with static, though, which wasn’t helping. “Montauk. Are you sure he didn’t…?”

She suddenly spun on one foot and started moving out of her room with such a violent speed that Jonathan and then Steve were forced to run after her, tripping over the hall rug, and she was down one flight of stairs and moving to the next. “Nancy—”

“Max!” Nancy called out. That didn’t make any sense to Jonathan either, except he’d seen the bikes, hadn’t he? But what did—“Max!”

“Hello?” Jonathan heard, cautiously calling up from the basement, and then Nancy was charging down the basement stairs, and Jonathan couldn’t do anything except follow her.

The little group of them should have been huddled around the D&D table, except they were oddly far apart, only Mike in the middle, looking at his sister like she’d totally lost her mind. Then again, it wasn’t like any of them played D&D now that they were in high school.

Lucas and Dustin were on opposite corners, then Max with her head tilted in confusion, and Jonathan raised half a hand in El’s direction. Her hair was yellower than he remembered.

“Uh, what’s up?” asked Max, at the same time Nancy said “Montauk” again with a slightly feverish expression.

“What?”

“Montauk,” Nancy repeated. Jonathan felt dizzy. “Did you tell any of them about it? I don’t think I ever did, I assumed you did, or Will must have, right? He must have, right?”

At Will’s name, Jonathan could feel the air shift with something warmer and worse. A couple of them lowered their heads. Mike Wheeler’s hand drifted towards his arm, the arm that must’ve been broken in this very room. Because that’s where it happened.

He’d been taken from right here.

“Did I…?” Max blinked rapidly. “I don’t—I don’t know, I don’t remember.”

“What’s Montauk?” asked Lucas, and then Nancy was giving a desperate look at the rest of them.

“Mike?” she asked. “El? Will never—then what’d he say, how did he explain it? We were gone overnight. We literally appeared back in the car, it must’ve come up!"

“By the ocean,” said El, and Jonathan suddenly remembered.

“I found Will. He’s by water.” El’s head had tilted from behind the blindfold. The TV had crackled. She could still use her powers, and she could still find people. Jonathan had been shot at by Jack Lovett. Jonathan had stitched his arm back together.  “With Nancy.”

“The ocean,” said Jonathan. He could see Will approaching him and Mom on the day they’d laid low, like he’d been nervous to admit something, but Jonathan had been keeping something from him too, hadn’t he? Jonathan and Mom, keeping their secrets, and what had Will—

“Don’t you want to know?” Will had asked, beside them on the couch. “Where I was yesterday?”

And they’d—

“No,” said Jonathan. “The ocean. Like, in California. Right?” He didn’t want to see Nancy and Max’s pale faces, filled with a horrified understanding. “He’s only ever teleported between here and California. Why would he go anywhere else?”

“He didn’t know, either,” whispered Nancy. Max didn’t look like she could speak at all. “He’d never heard of it. None of us had heard of it, we just got there, and then—well, we wanted to get back, right? So, we weren’t there very long, but it looks like the beach on this postcard does, with the water, and it had a lighthouse, too. It was closed that day, but there was a lighthouse.”

Dustin and Lucas’s mouths were both open. Mike looked like he’d swallowed a bug.

“What if they took him back there?” asked Steve, the only one brave enough to speak. “What if he’s been there this whole time? In, what, Mon-rock?”

“Montauk,” said Nancy and Max in unison, and Jonathan gripped his fists tightly, trying not to float away.

Chapter Text

If Nancy thought too closely about how stupid she’d been, how slow and stupid, she was going to scream, so instead she pulled out Jonathan’s ripped-up postcard, as carefully as she could.

“The lighthouse here,” she said, pointing. “It might be the one that I saw in the gas station.”

“Can we back up several seconds?” asked Steve, holding his hands up. “Or several months, I guess? What are you talking about, reappearing in the car? You mean, what, the three of you?”

He sent a slightly hopeless look in Nancy’s direction. This wasn’t exactly how either of them thought this afternoon might go, no matter how many times they’d gone over the script. Nancy supposed that tracked; after all, how often had her life followed the script?

Lately, though, she’d been trying. There wasn’t any other option. Sink or swim. Nancy had sunk once before, and none of them had any time for that anymore.

She’d allowed herself to get a B in Calculus, almost dizzyingly proud of herself when the report card came back in December, the weight of her own expectations less like a noose. She’d taken the recommendation slip to talk with their school counselor, first two copies torn up and tossed into the trash, and made herself go, once a month.

It was horrible and awkward, and it wasn’t like Nancy could actually tell this woman any inch of the truth, except that her best friend was dead and would never come back, but maybe that was enough. She wasn’t sure if it was helping, but she was going, she was trying.

She’d joined their school’s Mock Trial team. That one was more of a secret, since if her dad found out she’d been glancing through law school pamphlets he might never shut up about it. Half the team were hyper-argumentative freaks, and the other half were drama club students doing this for credit, but Nancy didn’t mind. She liked reading the prompts and trying to pull apart the best plan of attack, with lower stakes than what she typically used that skillset for.

Like with Jonathan. Nancy still didn’t know how to fix that.

He hadn’t actually broken up with her, and maybe that was what stung worst of all. If she was still his girlfriend, then shouldn’t she be allowed to ask questions? Shouldn’t she be allowed to help? Shouldn’t he lean on her, instead of skipping class and roaming around half the country in search of a lead that might not even exist?

“You of all people should understand,” he’d said, and Nancy blinked that memory away. They were looking at her and Max now, Jonathan with something almost accusatory in his eyes.

“There’s not much more to say,” said Nancy. “Will teleported to Montauk. He’d never been there, didn’t have any idea why he’d brought us there, and then he teleported us home.”

“Why didn’t you say anything about it?”

“Why do you think?” Nancy turned on Jonathan. “Don’t you remember what was going on? The lab agents, the possessions—”

Dustin flinched from the couch. Nancy lowered her voice. “And oh, I don’t know, I thought he would mention it to you!”

“He tried,” said Jonathan. He sounded like he’d swallowed something sharp. “But I didn’t understand what he was talking about.”

“Nothing really happened, though,” said Max. “I mean, the only reason we were there overnight is we had to wait for him to wake up. We barely even saw the water. Why would it mean he’s there now?”

Max sounded like she was trying to convince herself as much as she was them. If Will was there, and she and Nancy had just been sitting on the information…

“Walk us through it,” said Jonathan. “You get there, and what? Where’d you land? By the lighthouse?”

“There’s not much—”

“Please,” said Jonathan, and Nancy wasn’t going to deny him after that.

She and Max walked through that strange block in time, from how they’d stumbled along the stretch of road, thinking they might be close to Lenora, too, and then the gas station and all the lighthouse pamphlets and the word Montauk. Then, the town itself, the beach and the tourists, and the motel they’d found and waiting for Will to wake up.

Nancy left out some parts, though. They didn’t need to know about her bursting into tears on the floor of the Sunset Guest House or her apology to Will on the coast. Thankfully, Max didn’t mention it either.

“And you never looked up Montauk afterwards?” asked Mike. Nancy had been wondering when he’d start with the questions. She was surprised it wasn’t sooner. “Nothing about it, nothing about the geography or the history?”

“The history?” asked Max blankly, and Nancy sighed and shook her head.

“Why would we?”

The expression on not just Mike’s face but Lucas and Dustin’s might’ve been funny if Nancy’s stomach wasn’t churning so badly. “Do you still have your encyclopedia set?” asked Dustin.

Mike nodded. “Sure,” he said, standing up—when had he gotten so tall—and moving over towards the towering set of books stacked by the bookcase in the corner. “Too bad the library is closed.”

“Does it matter?” Jonathan said, and Mike sent him a sour look.

“It might,” he said, pulling the encyclopedia marked M. Nancy wasn’t sure that it did; she could sense what Jonathan was thinking, what he was almost certainly going to do, and her mind had already jumped to how she should handle it.

Handle it. Like Jonathan was a problem that needed to be fixed. It felt like it sometimes, though, like earlier that day when Nancy and Steve had met up, not as exes or even mutual friends, but as two people with a mission.

“Should we call it an intervention?” Steve had asked, grimacing and pulling at the collar on his polo. Nancy had shaken her head, even though the word INTERVENTION was in bold, underlined letters at the top of her notebook.

“Not to his face.”  

Neither of them even knew what state or city he was in, or when he’d left, or when he might be coming back. Monsieur Marchand had stopped asking Nancy to deliver make up assignments.

“We can’t have two high school drop-outs,” Steve had joked, but Nancy knew he was nervous, too. It was why they’d—

“Montauk,” said Mike, reading aloud from one of the encyclopedia books he’d begged their parents to buy a million years ago. “A Native American tribe that once lived on the eastern and central parts of Long Island in New York.”

“They must have named the town after them,” said Lucas, as Mike flipped a page.

“On Long Island…the lighthouse is called Montauk Point Light…. oh, interesting.”

“What?”

“Montauk has been used as an Army, Navy, Coast Guard, and Air Force base,” read Mike. “The United States Military established Camp Hero during World War Two, leading to the debunked conspiracy theory about the Montauk Project.”

He looked up from the book. “Debunked conspiracy theory?”

“And military involvement?” Nancy started nodding her head. “Like the cover for the Hawkins Lab being the Department of Energy.”

Mike’s expression was eerily close to respect, which Nancy didn’t want to delve into.

“It can’t be a coincidence,” said Jonathan. He stood up, and Nancy could see the words handle it floating beside him mid-air. She was sure Steve could, too. “It can’t be.”

And as Jonathan turned to charge up the basement steps, both she and Steve rose and ran after him, ignoring the protests from behind them.

Max was closest. Nancy could spare about two seconds. “We’ll take care of it,” she said, and she shouldn’t have been as relieved by the jerky nod she’d gotten in return.

By the time she’d caught up with them, Jonathan and Steve were in the front yard, facing off underneath the old, weathered oak tree. Arms were crossed. Chests were out. Nancy hoped she wasn’t about to make the second biggest mistake of her life.

“You can’t stop me,” were the first words out of Jonathan’s mouth. Nancy couldn’t tell if his eyes were red, or if it was just the light. “I was in the middle of fucking Texas this morning. How far away is Montauk?”

“Jonathan—”

“Don’t pull that,” snapped Jonathan, and Steve’s mouth turned into a thin line. “Come on, any of us would leave the fucking country if we had to, even for a guess.” He stared them all down. Nancy realized his arms were shaking. “It’s the closest thing we’ve had in six months,” he said. “Six fucking months. I know you think he’s dead.”

“I don’t—”

“But at this point, I’m more afraid that he’s not,” Jonathan finished, and the chill hung over Nancy like a shroud. “Either way, I have to know.”

“It depends,” said Nancy, finally speaking, and both Jonathan and Steve turned to look at her.

“What?”

“You asked how far,” said Nancy. Her hands were cold. Her heart kept thudding. “It depends on whether we drive or get on a plane.”

“Nancy,” said Steve, voice full of warning. No one was blinking. “Nancy.”

Nancy wished she’d brought a warmer sweater. “I still remember looking at the distance,” she said. “Before we knew that Will could teleport us back. If we fly, it’d be into LaGuardia, and then it’s a train ride out into Long Island. The drive is probably at least fourteen hours.”

“Fourteen hours is nothing.”

“That’s exactly what we were going to—”

“One condition,” said Nancy, heart still thudding. “You’re not going alone.”  

“Not going—Nancy—”

This had not been her and Steve’s plan. But she had to be flexible, didn’t she? “Pack up a suitcase, and we’ll leave first thing in the morning. And I swear to God, if you try to leave before then, I’ll call every state trooper in the county.”

“And tell them what?”

“God, Jonathan, does it matter?” Nancy threw her arms up. “We care about you, okay? I care about you, and if there’s any chance Will is in Montauk, then obviously you should go, but obviously, we’re going with you, got it?”

Steve was muttering something under his breath. Nancy couldn’t have read Jonathan’s expression if she had a million years and better lighting than the shitty moon.

“Two hours,” said Jonathan, finally. Nancy realized she’d been holding her breath. “Two hours from now, not a second later, and one piece of luggage each.”

Steve raised his working hand. “Do weapons count as luggage?” he asked, but Jonathan was already backing away, back into the shadows, back to where he’d been before Montauk entered the scene.

“Not a second later!”

“Jesus Christ,” muttered Steve. “New York, Jesus Christ.”

Nancy shivered as he retreated. “New York,” she repeated. “If there’s any chance—”

“Shit, I know,” said Steve. “Believe me, I know.”

//

The Indianapolis International Airport was still closed when their trio arrived, so they all sat sulking and silent in the car. With how fast they’d moved, Hopper couldn’t be sure what he’d packed or what the weather in Manchester, England was supposed to be in March, or where they were going to stay or where they first might start looking.

Still, it was something. And they hadn’t had something in a long time.

Hopper wasn’t sure who’d been more surprised when he turned his police badge in, himself, Joyce, or Callahan, who’d been promoted to chief after his resignation and Officer Powell’s death in the Electric Lamp Oasis. It didn’t make any sense though, sitting on his ass in Hawkins where they knew Will decidedly wasn’t. And he’d taken the job in the first place to solve one mystery, hadn’t he?

Companies were always looking for long-haul truckers for overnights. Too many people crashed and burned, sometimes literally, and after a couple of months on the job, he’d been able to have more say in where he drove.

So, he drove. And six months after Will’s disappearance, he hadn’t gotten any closer.

To his knowledge, Joyce and Jonathan hadn’t either, although none of them had exactly sat down to talk about it, so this crossword puzzle represented basically their only clue, after whoever took Will had torn through their house, taking everything else.

And Karen Wheeler was in the passenger seat beside him. Hopper couldn’t pretend to be surprised.

“What do you think the earliest flight will be?” she asked, as if overhearing him.

Hopper shrugged. “No way of knowing until its open,” he said, and no one said anything for the next hour, until the faint pink sunrise hovered over the horizon and a security guard unlocked the door.

As it turned out, Indianapolis to London wasn’t the most popular flight—fortunately, that meant they were able to get three seats in the same row, but unfortunately, it was an eight-hour flight that wouldn’t depart until much later in the afternoon.

Hopper hunkered down and bought a stupidly expensive cheeseburger. Karen grabbed some magazines and a neck pillow from the gift shop, and Joyce had excused herself, pacing the floor of the terminal like it might make time move any faster.

We have a lot of waiting ahead of us, Hopper wanted to say, but he didn’t. Joyce didn’t want to talk to him, which was great and completely fair, and Hopper felt the exact same way. He bit into the cheeseburger, cooked well past done, and refused to complain about it.

By the time the flight to London was called, Hopper had attempted unsuccessfully to take a nap, gone to the bathroom seventeen times, mostly for something to do, smoked through half a pack of cigarettes in the airport’s dingy smoking section, and bought another goddam cheeseburger. Not like he’d be seeing any in England, right? But it was finally time to line up.

Some of these international flights were fancy, triple row events, but they probably didn’t park their planes in Indiana. Still, Hopper loaded up his bag and offered to lift Karen and Joyce’s. Karen acquiesced without a second thought, but Joyce held hers back, despite the fact that she couldn’t reach the overhead bin standing on her toes.

“Come on.”

“No, I’ve got it—”

“Is this how you want to start the next eight hours?” Hopper asked, scooping up her bag and shoving it up ahead. “Didn’t think so.”

“Jesus,” said Karen, as she got squished into the middle seat. Joyce was already looking out the window onto the tarmac of nothing. “What’s gotten into you?”

Neither of them answered her. Hopper certainly wasn’t going to be the one to break. So, Karen just hummed and hawed and Hopper wondered if it was possible to hold his breath for long enough to knock himself out so he could get some sleep, and the flight attendant named Judy was entirely too cheerful for the mission they were trying to accomplish.

Will. This was about Will. It wasn’t about him and Joyce, and it wasn’t about Judy the flight attendant, and it definitely wasn’t about Karen Wheeler.

Somehow, the time passed even slower than he’d imagined.

Without an ocean to look at, or a romance novel to read, Hopper’s mind was left to wander. Old dreams about getting shot at, of hospital walls, replaced with fire and his body moving without his permission. He’d never found a chance to ask Will about the shadow that had possessed them both, about the cold limbs reaching into him, deeper than his bones. He’d been too much of a coward or he hadn’t wanted to bring it up to him or both.

And now, Will—Hopper gripped his seat, thinking instead about his leg getting pulled from its socket and the way El had screamed.

“Hop, you have to—”

“Please, Bob, please—”

“Mom—”

He doubted Joyce thought about any of that now.

When Judy’s boss announced that they were beginning their descent into London, Hopper tried not to think about the last foreign country he’d visited, all grinning guns-a-blazing and that stupid confidence. Instead, he wondered how they’d get from London to wherever the hell Manchester was, and then once in Manchester, what, a turn at the little British town square?

He might’ve made himself laugh, except Karen was muttering about customs under her breath and Joyce hadn’t slept in five months and twenty-four days.

They waited. The plane landed. They waited some more, stumbled off the plane, waited in line, and then waited in line to get on a bus, which Hopper very much hoped would take them to Manchester, except they’d arrived at some silly time and the bus won’t leave until it has a few more passengers than three dumbass Americans.

It was two in the morning, British time, Hopper thought exhaustedly, or maybe earlier or later when the bus driver was still mumbling about dumbass Americans and only four passengers, but the doors shut. They were going to drive.

Hopper drifted in and out of dreams as the bus rumbled beneath him, injury on his leg aching, wondering and getting mad at himself for wondering if they were in the same time zone as Will. He remembered—

“You’re killing her! Stop it, you’re killing her, you’re killing her!”

“Claudia. Oh, God, Claudia.”

The bus hit a bump, every half hour, and by the time they slowed to a stop, Hopper was sure that this was the worst sleep he’d ever gotten in his life.

Rain and fog disguised the weak daylight, but daylight there was. It was Friday, now, even though they’d left Hawkins on Wednesday night. He helped Joyce with her bag and shook Karen awake, as they groaned and stumbled and tipped the driver with green American dollars.

“We’ll have to swap currency,” Karen mumbled.

Hopper’s eyes itched as he blinked into the fog, counting their bags and counting their motley little crew, and the fourth passenger on the bus was stepping off now, the convenient stranger that helped convince their extremely irritated bus driver that the trek was worth it—

But the woman staring at them wasn’t a stranger. Hopper blinked and then blinked again, but it was Karen who gasped.

“Sue?!”

Sue Sinclair’s apparition did not vanish. In fact, she gripped her suitcase tighter and stared each of them down. “You know something about my husband’s disappearance,” she said. “I’m here to find out what.”

//

Max watched Jonathan, Steve, and Nancy rush out of the house and turned back to the others, stomach sinking. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “I had no idea he never brought it up.”

She addressed it to Mike, maybe because he was the one in the middle of the room, but it was El who responded.

El, with her yellowing blonde hair, and earrings just like Jennifer Hayes’. “I should have known,” she said. “I should have looked at the water more carefully.”

“I should’ve told someone,” said Max, determined not to let the blame slip off too easily, but then Dustin and Lucas were looking at each other, too.

“Any of us could have asked,” said Lucas.

“We don’t know that it means anything, either,” said Dustin. “Right? It could be a coincidence.”

“But what about the postcard?” Max gestured upstairs. “They’re going to go. Like, they’re probably making plans to go to Montauk right now.”

As if cued, the front door flew back open, and this time there was no one to stop Max from jogging up the stairs, El and the boys behind her. It was only Nancy, though. Jonathan and Steve weren’t with her.

She looked frazzled. She looked determined. She looked up at the five of them, set her lip in a straight line, and Max knew what the line was going to be. “We’re going to look for him.”

“Nancy—”

“No, Mike,” said Nancy sharply. “It’s just going to be the three of us. I can’t put you in that kind of danger, none of you, got that? Trust me on this one.”

“Trust you,” said Mike. “That’s not what this is about, I wanted—”

“You want to look for him. I get it, I really do, believe me.” Nancy let out a harsh laugh. “That’s why you have to stay here. You’ll have to cover for us, until we’re up there. Mom will be home any minute, and we’re leaving in a couple of hours.”

“A couple of hours?!”

Mike was shaking his head. “Nancy, that’s crazy, in two hours? You can’t even get to the airport—”

“We’re driving,” said Nancy, and Max could feel the frustration rolling off of Mike, off of all of them, and maybe Nancy could too, as she looked at them all and sighed. “It’s the only thing that makes sense. We don’t even know for sure that he’s there.”

“But he could be,” said Lucas quietly. The guilt came back, sitting heavily in Max’s stomach. He could be. Will could have been in New York this entire time, rotting away, while Hopper drove his truck around the country after quitting his job.

God, she was so stupid. Why hadn’t it occurred to her to even mention as a possibility? Even though nothing had happened on the trip, even though she hadn’t met anyone (right?) or spoken to anyone (had she?) Max still should’ve said something.

“He could be,” said Nancy. “Which is why we have to go.”

She was moving upstairs before Mike could get another word out, packing, probably, for the long-ass drive ahead of them. “Bring more cash this time!” Max yelled, flushing a little when the others looked at her. “What?”

“Jesus,” muttered Mike, and he stalked upstairs to keep the argument going, which unfortunately left Max, El, Lucas, and Dustin in the Wheeler’s kitchen.

Fighting would be better. Anything would be better than the silence stretching between them, awkward and obvious, as Max fidgeted with her ponytail and El avoided eye contact. They had to be thinking the same thing, as Lucas grimaced and Dustin checked and re-checked his backpack, remembering the same thing, also in the Wheeler’s house.

Upstairs, a door slammed. Mike was still pleading his case, although Nancy wasn’t letting him get many words out.

“Iowa,” said Lucas finally, and Max swiveled to stare at him. He looked nervous, which was unfortunately at odds with the obnoxious jock she kept building him up in her head as. “Are we excited about Iowa?”

“So excited,” said Max, forgetting they weren’t supposed to be speaking, and their eye contact held for a second too long.

“Pull away, pull away!”

“He’s going to fucking learn—”

“You’re going to kill him!”

Max felt the steering wheel underneath her palms and looked away. The next thing she remembered, she was in the hospital with a concussion and Billy was dead.

“Educational,” said Lucas, and Max wished she could laugh. She wanted to laugh. She wanted to pretend that nothing had changed, but everything had changed, why couldn’t he see that?

The fridge opened. Dustin was looking for something, or pretending to look, scouring the Wheeler’s perfect shelves with Tupperware containers full to the brim. Mrs. Wheeler kept trying to bring food by Max’s house, like she couldn’t get through her head that it only made Max’s mom feel worse. House was a stretch, too, but Max didn’t want to think about that.

“Where’s Nick?” she asked, to get them away from fucking Iowa, but it was El who had an answer, and too much had changed between them, too.

“Chrissy watches him,” said El. “Sometimes.”          

Right, Chrissy Cunningham, perfect Chrissy Cunningham who wore Hawkins green and gold every day, ponytail perky and high, cheering for the shitty basketball team. Chrissy lived in a cul de sac even nicer than this one. Max felt herself start to sour, the bland expression she’d taken on start to slip, and they might have faced a repeat of last December if Nancy and Mike hadn’t stormed back down the stairs.  

“I’m hoping to stay at the same hotel as last time,” said Nancy, unfazed by Mike sputtering behind her. “So, call the Sunset Guest House if you need anything.”

“Is that in the Yellow Pages?” asked El, perfectly serious, as Nancy swung her duffle bag around and checked the various pockets.

Max remembered the salty wind as they’d winded down the road, Will perched on Nancy’s back, looking for any sign of civilization. She remembered the sand in her socks, the pulpy orange juice at the breakfast buffet, and she almost remembered someone saying something to her, too, but the memory kept fading in and out, even when Max tried to focus on it.

“I visit Montauk every year around this time. It’s a beautiful little town. I’m sure you’re planning to see the lighthouse?”

Max’s brain slid over the memory, more interested in the New Cokes she’d bought for the three of them and Will’s sweaty hand wrapped around hers. Will, who’d said “That’s not why I don’t like you,” Will who’d seen right through her, seen right through all of her fake arguing with Lucas. Would he be disappointed to know they were all fighting for real now?

She thought they’d made it out alright, in the end, her and Will, but maybe she was misremembering again.

“I’m going to drive over,” Nancy was saying, as Max willed herself back to the conversation. “El, do you want a ride back?”

“We still haven’t talked about Spring Break,” said Mike shortly, and Nancy’s expression softened, just a little bit.

“Right,” she said. “I forgot about your trip. Take some pictures, okay? Of the arts and crafts and rock climbing. It’ll be way more fun than anything we’re doing.”

Max privately disagreed and still barely believed Mike had convinced them all that this would be worth one fewer class senior year, but she knew that wasn’t the real reason she, Dustin, Lucas, and El had agreed.

Guilt was funny like that, sometimes.

“More fun,” said Mike, before letting out a sigh. “Alright, Nancy.”

Nancy hugged him and gave a small nod to the rest of them, slinging her bag over her shoulder and walking quickly towards her car. They all watched the station wagon back out, and Max realized that Steve was in the passenger seat, arms crossed and irritated.

Same here, Steve, she thought, as the car drove away. It had to be awkward as hell, road tripping with your ex. Lucas shifted beside her, and Max fought the urge to let out a sigh herself.

“Alright, Mike,” she said. “Let’s get this over with.”

Mike didn’t move. His dark eyes stayed on the car, even as it turned away from Maple Street. “Earth to Mike?”

“She’s not as smart as she thinks she is,” said Mike quietly, and that got Max’s attention.

“What?”

“Who, Nancy?”

“You don’t think Will is in Montauk?” asked Lucas. “What about the postcard?”

“Will might be in Montauk,” said Mike, and he turned around to face them. There was a gleam in his eyes, and an energy buzzing beneath his skin that reminded Max of the Electric Lamp Oasis, of adrenaline and someone with an idea.

“Might be?” asked El.

Mike took a slow, steadying breath. “I guess it’s finally time,” he said, bizarrely, before his lips turned up into a Cheshire-cat grin. She sat with Mike every day at lunch and hadn’t seen him this alive in months. “You didn’t really think we were going to Iowa for Spring Break, did you?”

Chapter Text

Until the fifth time Dionne Warwick and company sang That’s What Friends Are For—and Steve was counting—none of them spoke.

It had been a tight turnaround, Nancy waiting impatiently in the driveway as Steve flung random belongings into a backpack, hindered by the one-handedness of it all, and he’d thrown out some excuse to his dad, ambivalently watching basketball in the living room.

To their credit, his parents had given him a lot of grace, for being a high school dropout. Steve was still careful not to push his luck too far.

They’d driven over to meet Jonathan at his house and argued about which car to take—“Jonathan, it’s literally falling apart, my fingers have rust on them”—which meant it was Steve’s car suddenly tasked with a thirty-hour roundtrip.

Worth it, though, thought Steve grimly, as they all piled in. He hadn’t even had a chance to fill up some water bottles. If Will is really there.

The same question had to be hanging in the back of all of their heads, if, if, as Steve pulled away and started the drive towards the first of many highways. After getting out of Indiana, they would wind through Ohio and the frankly enormous width of Pennsylvania before approaching New York.

Fourteen hours, without any stops, and they’d already had to make one stop for gas.

Thursday night dwindled into a very early hour of Friday when That’s What Friends Are For played for the fifth time and Steve finally cleared his throat.

“Did either of you ever play the license plate game as kids?”

He got two, slow blinks in response. “You know,” said Steve. “The license plate game. We look for license plates from each state and try to find all fifty.”

“All fifty?” asked Nancy skeptically. “Do you really think we’ll see a plate for Hawaii? Or Alaska? I mean, even California—”

“Just as many as possible,” said Steve. Jonathan still had his arms crossed, turned towards the window. “We could even do extra points for hard-to-get states.”

He and Nancy played halfheartedly for about an hour, until they’d seen so many Ohio license plates that Steve wanted to bash his head into the steering wheel. “We need more gas,” he said finally. “And we should probably switch drivers.”

Nancy took over outside of Akron. It was just after three in the morning, half of the gas pumps out of service, and Steve pictured Hopper on these lonely, dark roads, going miles without passing another driver. Soda and trail mix and candy sat in the console, and Nancy sipped and grimaced on coffee in a paper cup.

“You can sleep some, if you want,” she said, as they moved into Pennsylvania. A quick glance behind him confirmed that Jonathan’s head had lolled over. Steve wasn’t sure if he’d slept in Texas or wherever, or if he’d just driven straight back up to Indiana. “We’ll all need to.”

“In a bit,” said Steve, because he didn’t love the idea of Nancy driving awake by herself, and by the look she gave him, she guessed why. “I’ll sleep when Jonathan gets up. That way you two can, uh, catch up.”

Nancy sighed, and for one horrifying second Steve thought they were going to talk about it, but she drummed her fingers against the steering wheel instead. “I’m surprised Mike didn’t try to hide in the trunk,” she said, and Steve almost got whiplash from looking behind him. “I checked. It’d be stupid, but it’s the exact thing I would have tried, you know?”

“Or run after the car,” said Steve, only half joking. “Or hire a car to drive after us.”

She bit her lip and eased into the left lane. “He understood, in the end,” she said. “Everything else aside, it would be crazy to drag eight people to New York on a guess. I feel crazy enough with just the three of us.”

“Oh, we’re well past crazy,” said Steve. “I mean, do we even know what we’re looking for? Do you think that one of those maps might have ‘Evil Secret Lab’ written on it?”

“We’ll figure it out once we’re there,” said Nancy decisively, but she gripped the steering wheel harder. “We have to try, don’t we?”

Neither of them spoke much after that.

Steve drank his New Coke and fiddled with the radio, trying to find something that wasn’t static as they kept moving eastward. His eyes itched with tiredness. He thought about the kids, all crowded together in the basement with big plans about a civics camp in Iowa. He thought about Lucas’s mom, drunk at his track meet, and the sorry state of the Hawkins basketball team. Would anyone bother going to the game tomorrow night?

He thought about Mike spitting out something about Steve seeing Dustin more than the rest of them, and could that really be true? Steve liked Dustin. Steve liked all of the kids, even though spending time with them usually meant he was in danger of losing a limb. And he and Dustin might have even been friends, if Steve hadn’t lashed out at him for visiting him too much in the hospital and feeling sorry over his stupid hand.

Then again, Dustin had probably forgotten all about that. Not with his mom…

Steve shook his head. Took another sip of his soda. A very tiny voice in the back of his head wondered why Mike Wheeler hadn’t tried to hide in the trunk, as Dionne Warwick started singing again.

//

“You didn’t really think we were going to Iowa for Spring Break, did you?”

Dustin blinked, but Mike hadn’t said “just kidding” yet. In fact, he was waiting expectedly for something, some sort of response, but all Dustin had for him was “I mean, yeah?”

“You’ve been talking about this for months,” said Lucas. “What do you—I don’t get it.”

For the first time in forever, he and Lucas were on the same fucking page.

“Yeah,” said Mike. “I’m actually extremely passionate about American civics. Did you know the Constitution has twenty-six amendments? It’s like they keep changing their goddam mind!”

Dustin blinked, looking over at Lucas with a far too familiar expression, before they both turned away. Mike sighed.

“I’m joking,” he said blankly. “There is no week-long civics camp in Iowa. Or, I mean, there is one, but it doesn’t provide any credit that Hawkins High accepts and we’re not actually going. I can’t believe no one tried to fact check me on that at all.”

“I don’t get it,” said Max, and Mike sighed again.

“Come on,” he said. “I’ll show you what I’ve been working on.”

They followed him inside and back down towards the basement, like bewildered ducks. Dustin felt like a bewildered duck, anyway. He couldn’t say the same for El or Lucas, since he refused to look in their direction, and Max’s ponytail was in front of him.

“Oh, you miss him?  You miss him, huh?”

“Yeah. I do. Is that a problem?”

Mike was standing on his toes, reaching up to the highest shelf that Dustin couldn’t have reached in a million years, and a few of the magazines in front fell down—“Dude,” said Dustin, and Lucas let out a surprised laugh. “You have to get a better hiding place—”

“That woman isn’t wearing a shirt,” said El, faintly from behind him, and Dustin almost allowed himself to laugh at that, too.

“Gross, Mike.”

“That’s the right reaction,” said Mike, pulling down a box. “Not that my mom or Nancy ever come down here, but, you know. It’s always good to have a Plan B.”

“Plan B being jerking off?”

“Oh my god, Lucas, not you too—” But Max was laughing now, Dustin could hear it, and he could feel himself start to laugh, too. It was so ridiculous, the Playboys staring up at him against Mike’s extremely unimpressed expression.

“Yeah,” said Mike. “I jerk off to American civics.” He turned the box over, and they all fell silent.

It was a map of the United States, pins and notes stuck on as Mike unfolded, leaflets and photographs and so many papers that Dustin couldn’t make any sense of it, the sheer scale of what he was supposed to be looking at. “We know the lab was involved in Will’s disappearance,” said Mike. “So, I’ve been trying to figure out which lab.”

Which lab? Dustin thought wildly, already feeling ten steps behind, but it was El who ended up saying what was next on his mind.

“Will?” she asked. “This is about Will?”

Mike stared at her, eyes squinting. “Of course,” he said. “What, you thought I was going to let ‘let’s drive to New York with no sleep’ go if I wasn’t already working on a plan? It’s the only thing I’ve been thinking about for the past six months.”

None of them knew how to answer him. Dustin definitely didn’t, because as much as he missed Will, as often as he replayed that evening in Mike’s basement when the lab agents swarmed, he’d replayed a different moment many more times, until he was sick and screaming.

So, he shouldn’t have felt guilty, as Mike stared down each of them. “Okay,” said Mike. “I’ll start from the beginning. The lab agents took Will. You remember Will? He was kidnapped in my basement?”

“Mike,” said Lucas, as El flinched.

“So, the question is, where are the labs?” Mike continued, ignoring both of them. “We know there was a lab in Hawkins, and there was a lab in Lenora, but there were a dozen agents in here and probably more lined up waiting to grab Hopper’s stuff once the house was clear. And to me, we really only had one clue.”

“Jack Lovett?” offered Max, when no one else answered. Mike shook his head.

“Your dad, Lucas,” he said, and this time Lucas flinched. “He was associated with the lab somehow. We know that.”

“We do?” asked Max, head swiveling around, but Dustin remembered.

“We do,” said Mike. “And I thought about how much you moved around before Hawkins. Town to town, state to state—don’t you see the pattern?”

“What pattern?” asked Lucas. “Okay, we moved around a lot. You don’t know that my dad has anything to do with this—”

Mike shook his head impatiently. “I don’t mean your dad and Will. I mean, think of every place you told me you lived before Hawkins. I almost can’t believe we didn’t figure it out sooner.”

Dustin watched Lucas take a breath. “Ohio,” he said. “I lived in Ohio, and I lived in Illinois, and—”

“Where in Ohio?”

“Jesus, fucking, in London, Ohio and Lebanon, Illinois, and—”

“Paris, Texas,” said Lucas and Dustin in unison, Dustin’s brain swirling. He didn’t want it to, and he tried to hold on, but he could see Mike’s eyes gleam in response.

“Isn’t that a coincidence?” Mike asked quietly. “Unless it isn’t.”

“Other cities or countries,” said Dustin. “Like it’s some kind of—” He stopped himself, but Mike took over.

“Code,” he said. “Like it’s some kind of code.”

Lucas’s arms were crossed. Dustin wasn’t sure when they’d gotten that way. “There are probably hundreds of places named after other towns or whatever,” he said.

“Hundreds,” agreed Mike. “But it was a good place to start. And I won’t bore you with all of the details, but I think I narrowed it down.”

He leaned in closer on the map, straightening out a section of the west coast, when Max held her hands up. “Am I missing something?” she said. “You’ve been talking about this stupid Spring Break trip since January. Have you known where Will was since January?”

Mike was shaking his head before she finished. “No,” he said. “It was like a self-imposed deadline. I had the idea, but it didn’t seem solid enough to tell Hopper or Joyce about. Like Lucas said, there are probably hundreds of places named after other cities and countries. But I thought, okay, I can figure this out by March. And then—well, I got lucky. I found a clue.”

He pulled out a newspaper and flipped to a well-worn crossword puzzle, filled in with ballpoint pen. “Notice anything strange?”

Dustin sighed and looked down. He hadn’t done a crossword puzzle in ages—he and Mike would get competitive together, but that felt like a lifetime ago. Still, his eyes followed the clues to the section circled.

“A type of thinking, pleasing to the imagination,” he read aloud. “Wishful thinking.”

“An object’s resistance to change,” said Lucas, an object, an object, resistant to change? Like its property—

“Inertia,” said Lucas and Dustin at the same time, and Mike rolled his eyes.

“The answers are already filled in,” he said. “You can just read them, look.”

But Dustin hadn’t used his brain in ages, so he skimmed through the clues anyway, following inertia with unaware of being led to slaughter which was probably—

“Lamb,” said Dustin. “Then, the lion—what kind of lion? How many letters?”

“Leo,” said Max, this time, shaking her head. “The astrological sign. But what does—”

Then, Dustin saw it. Eyes sliding away from the clues, to the boxes Mike had already filled in, the clues for the words wishful, inertia, lamb, and leo uncomfortably familiar given what they’d just been talking about. “The first letters spell Will,” he said. “The first letters spell—”

“Will is here,” gasped Lucas. “It spells out will is here.”

“Will is here,” repeated Mike. Dustin felt a chill roll down his back. Wishful, inertia, lamb, leo. Then, blood of the gods, ichor, and Nevada mountains in California, sierra, then— “Each of the first letters.”

“Will is where?” asked El, and Mike leaned close to the paper again.

“I wasn’t sure at first,” he said. “But if you look at the words, each of the first letters spells out the first message. And if you look at the last letter of each word—”

“Laboratory,” said Dustin suddenly. Wishful, inertia, lamb, leo. Mike nodded. “Holy shit.”

“Not very helpful on its own,” said Mike. “But it meant someone was using the crossword to communicate, right? And while I kept going through potential options, I waited for another message. A couple weeks ago, this one appeared.” 

Another filled-in crossword puzzle. Something one might be up against, wall, the Italian lovers, innamorati, in between a hip and foot, leg, David, of Dune, Lynch—

“Will is here, again,” said Dustin, abandoning all pretense of not being interested. This was crazy. Lucas was leaning down beside him, Max peering over both of their shoulders. “L-I-G-H—lighthouse, the last letter of each word spells out lighthouse.”

“There was a lighthouse in Montauk,” said Max. “And on the postcard.”

Mike nodded slowly. “I didn’t know about Montauk,” he said. “Which is why—I don’t know. Nancy might have the right idea. It’s worth having someone go and investigate, anyway.”

“But…?”

“But,” said Mike. “I found somewhere else. A town named after another, larger city, and even though like, crazy few people live there, it’s close to a lighthouse. There’s a history of military presence in the area, but not anymore, and maybe even more importantly, it’s not that far from Lenora.”

He laid down the map and pointed. “Manchester, California,” he said. “I don’t think it’s a new lab, at all. I think the stragglers from Lenora went out to the coast, using this spot as a signal to the other labs of where they are.”

“The postcard started with an M,” said Lucas.

“It’s a long shot,” said Mike. “And I kept waiting to see if there would be another crossword puzzle with a clue, but I haven’t seen one. It’s a long shot, but I think—I think Will might be in Manchester.”

Dustin stared at the map, the little yellow flag on the California coastline, and a traitorous bubble of hope rose up from his chest. He’d blocked out most of that last D&D game, of the lab agents swarming in, the snap of Mike’s arm and there was a person, wasn’t there? A person who’d said something, but Dustin couldn’t remember a face. His brain kept slipping over it.

He couldn’t remember much beyond waiting, pinned up against the wall, for someone to come find them, so scared for Will he’d felt sick.

“So, what do we do?” he asked aloud. “None of us can drive.”

“I have my learner’s permit,” said Lucas. “So does Max. We still need a car, though—”

“We’re not driving to California, are we?” asked Max, and Dustin was about to argue with her—this was their chance, wasn’t it?

But the expression on her face was too shrewd. And Mike was smiling back at her, before dropping five pieces of paper on the table. “Plane tickets,” he said. “Not to Des Moines.”

“Oh my god,” said Dustin. “We’re already going to the airport Saturday—are these for Saturday?” He’d been so focused on trying not to think about Spring Break that he’d forgotten that Mike mentioned getting the plane tickets to Iowa weeks ago. “Are we going to California on Saturday?!”

Indianapolis to LAX. Ten o’clock, Saturday, March 22. Mike looked grave.

“It’s a long shot,” he repeated. “And even if he’s not there, it could be dangerous.”

They’d never done this by themselves, Dustin realized. There had always been an adult, or hell, even Nancy or Steve. Hopper, Joyce, and Jonathan had always been around to lean on, but Mike was suggesting taking things into their own hands. Flying across the country, where Will might not be at all, just the five of them.

Alone.

“Why didn’t you tell Nancy?”

“I tried,” said Mike. “She wouldn’t listen. And if she actually thinks my mom is coming back tonight—” He shook his head. “Her suitcase is gone. I think she, Joyce, and Hopper are following another lead. El, did they say anything?”

“They are always following a lead,” said El shortly.

“Okay,” said Max, starting to pace on the floor. “Okay, so, what, we just pretend that we’re going to Iowa, pack up, go to school tomorrow, and then—go to the airport? Saturday morning?”

“Can your mom still drop us off?”

“If she can’t, I’ll ask my mom,” said Lucas. Dustin’s stomach kept twisting. “So that gives us a week.”

“The return flight is for the weekend of Easter,” said Mike. “It could be sooner than that, though. We could exchange them. If he’s really there. If we really do this.”

The possibility hung out in the open, the possibility that they might actually find him and bring him back, that he wasn’t gone forever. If Dustin wasn’t careful, his eyes were going to water.

“It’s Will,” said El, and she took her ticket. Lucas, Max, and Dustin each took theirs, too. “We have to.”

“We have to,” said Dustin. It was late. Nancy and the others had almost certainly already started their drive. The adults might have been anywhere in the country. No one to call, and no one to pull in as backup. “What do we have to lose?”

//

The house was still empty when El returned.

She’d ridden her bike alone in the dark, brain whirling and swirling with too many thoughts, Man-chester, Man-chester. She pulled a tub of frosting out of the cupboard and idly ate it with her fingers.

No one to tell her otherwise. No one to tell her anything.

El had never been on an airplane. An airplane, with wings, to fly them back to California, because Will might be in California. Mike might have found him.

Something ugly rose up in her throat, and El set the frosting aside.

She would need to pack. Mike had told them all to pack. Mike had given them the plane ticket, after showing them the map and all the work he’d done, all the work he’d done to find Will, while El had been worrying about Jennifer Hayes and Mary Martin’s stupid sleepover party.

While El had been sulking like a baby, so useless she couldn’t even help Hopper search, could barely look Joyce or Jonathan in the eyes, knowing they must hate that Will was taken instead of her, that Will wasn’t the one eating breakfast every morning.

A stupid tear leaked out of her stupid eye, and El wiped it furiously. She wished she was on the plane already, but her feet carried her to her bedroom, and the suitcase El hadn’t touched since California.

California. If El closed her eyes, she could feel warm sand against her feet and remember the yellow sun, the wide-open horizon, and Surfer Boy Pizza on a sign. Most of her time in Lenora, she’d been trapped inside. But she remembered pizza and the sun on her back and looking out at the world like nothing would ever catch her, ever again.

Pajamas. Her new white sneakers. And El would have time, after school tomorrow, if she forgot anything, but at the thought of school, she laid on top of her bedspread and blinked over and over at the ceiling.

She would pretend. She would pretend, just like she’d been pretending for six months, and even though there was no one looking, El practiced a big, wide smile.

--

It was like being caught in a dream. And El had dreamed many times, even about school, about being called on in class and not knowing the answer, but as a boy snickered beside her, she couldn’t bring herself to mind.

Tomorrow, she thought, looking at another math homework with red bleeding all over it. El sat next to Lucas at lunch, but neither of them talked about it, just jumping and fidgeting every time anyone mentioned the break.

“So, Jane, you and Lucas are both going to this camp thing?” asked Mary, and Jennifer giggled.

“What?” asked Lucas quickly. “Yeah. Yeah, we’ll be at the camp all week. Totally inaccessible. I don’t even think they have a landline.”

“In Iowa,” said El. Mary and Jennifer giggled again.

After lunch, El and Lucas walked towards their lockers, neither mentioning Mike’s maps or California at all. “Is there something funny about Iowa?” El asked, after a minute.

“Beats me,” said Lucas. “Those girls are weird.”

In biology, all El could think about was the strange puzzle with boxes that Mike kept mentioning. The others recognized it, all the little boxes stacked on top of each other in the newspaper, and El had been too embarrassed to ask what it was. Cross-word, Mike had said, pointing out how the letters spelled out Will is here but also Laboratory, but El didn’t know how he’d found the right letters to shove in.

She’d tried to read one: in between the hip and foot. Why did they all know it was leg? Why couldn’t the word have been knee? And some of the words El had never heard of: inertia? Ichor? David Lynch?

But Mike was smart. Lucas, Dustin, and Max were smart, too, and they could look at these boxes and make sense of them. El was too stupid.

“Why don’t we set up a time to meet after Spring Break?” asked Mr. Brownstone, much nicer than he usually was, when biology let out. El nodded jerkily and walked away.

Stupid, stupid, but Mike had somehow found time to find Will and make A’s in all of his classes. Lucas joked that he was on track for valedictorian, whatever that meant, and all El had done was mix up which parts of the cell did what again.

Lucas also would’ve said that Mike had more time because he wasn’t running track or on pep squad or even playing D&D much, anymore, but El felt like that was still an excuse.

“Have fun in Iowa with Lucas!” called out Mary, at the end of the day, and El did her best big grin back at her. Would she need anything from her locker in California? Nancy hadn’t needed to go to her locker.

Even in her daze, the excitement was palpable. People preparing for the beach, or days filled with fun: roller skating and mountains of breakfast food, and had Jane Hopper ever eaten a breakfast calzone before?

Was Jonathan in Mon-tauk, by now? El had never seen a lighthouse before, but she imagined a home, glowing with warm, yellow sun.

Mike knew what a lighthouse was. Mike had found lighthouse in the puzzle, found the clue, because he didn’t need powers to search for people. El pictured his brain, his shiny pink brain, like Mr. Brownstone had described in class, and imagined crushing it.

The house was empty.

El didn’t bother with frosting. Not when there was an entire frozen cheesecake in the freezer, straight from Mrs. Wheeler, and she ate while packing and fuming.

“Who does he think he is?” El muttered, throwing shirts and pants into her bag at random. “Will isn’t his brother.”

He acted like it, though. Mike acted like he knew everything—he’d even cornered El at school, reminding her to look for the fake passport for Jane Hopper that Hopper had made—but Mike didn’t know everything about Will. He couldn’t know everything, because he wasn’t there during the dark days, the days when Will screamed every night and El was the one there.

El was there, in the twin bed across from his. Mike didn’t know about Will’s stupid friends in Lenora. Mike didn’t know that a body had been dressed up like Will’s, a painted and stuffed corpse, left out in the garbage for Joyce and everyone to see.

Her hands were shaking. If El still had her powers, the door would have already slammed, but it stayed stubbornly open. And suddenly, she deflated.

None of it mattered, if they couldn’t find Will.

“I’ll help,” she whispered. This was her chance. Maybe Mike had understood the puzzle and maybe he’d figured out Man-chester and got airplane tickets, but once they got to California, El would pull her weight. El wouldn’t allow herself to rest until they had him back.

She brushed her teeth in the bathroom, grimacing at the taste, and stared at her foggy face in the mirror. Would Will recognize her with blonde hair? Ms. Karen promised to fix it and re-dye it, but El supposed she would have to do it herself.

They had some dye in the big bathroom cabinet—Joyce would not like this, but Joyce wasn’t here, so El fished around for the little containers and shiny foils. She rinsed off a brush and sat on the counter by the sink, eyes screwed up in concentration.

“He’ll recognize me,” she said, painting the sections of hair. Some of the pieces got more than others, but El hoped it didn’t matter. “He’ll be there, and he’s going to recognize me, and we’ll come home.”

She allowed the dye to set, picking out the rest of her clothes, and then it was time to rinse it out.

Did Will have a nice, hot shower wherever he was? El couldn’t remembering showering in the lab, if the water and been hot or cold, or if it had all been like the bathtub—she shivered. She still didn’t like taking baths.

Alarm set for very, very early, El looked once more in the mirror and gasped.

Her hair was pink.

“Oh no,” she whispered, faintly brushing against the half-rose, half-bronzed-and-bleached pieces. She’d messed up. She’d messed up again.

She’d—actually, it almost looked…cool?

It looked like something Max would point at in a magazine with envy. It looked like something Hopper would absolutely lose his mind over.

And Will would recognize her, anyway. She was his sister. She’d known him before all of them, before any of the boys, and definitely before Mike.

El laid in bed, heart racing, sure that it would take her ages to fall asleep. But her pink hair settled against the pillow, and she dreamed about slices of pizza.

Chapter Text

“You know something about my husband’s disappearance. I’m here to find out what.”

Karen’s brain stumbled around, refusing to believe that it was really Sue Sinclair in front of her, folding her arms over her chest. At the track and field game, Sue’s eyes had been blurry and rimmed red, but now they were unsettlingly clear.

“Your husband?” asked Karen finally, when it seemed like Jim and Joyce were incapable of speech. “No, darling, we don’t know where he is.”

“You do,” Sue insisted. “I know you do.”

“We’re looking for Will,” said Karen. “Their son, Will.” Jim and Joyce very slightly flinched, and honestly, Karen forgot that Jim wasn’t actually Will’s father. She didn’t know anything about the mysterious Mr. Byers and now did not seem like the time to ask.

“Will?” asked Sue. “I thought Will was accepted to that arts program in Canada. That’s what Lucas told me, that Will was living abroad. Is he…?” Sue’s voice trailed off, probably at the devastated expression on Joyce’s face.

After the first couple of weeks, when they realized finding Will wasn’t going to be the quick endeavor, someone had come up with the excuse. Someone had withdrawn Will from Hawkins High, and they’d all fed the gossip mill with rumors that he was happy and healthy somewhere else.

But they tried to avoid mentioning it around Joyce.

“No,” said Jim shortly. “He’s not. This doesn’t have anything to do with Charles.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Sue, it’s true,” said Karen. “Why on Earth would you think we knew where Charles was?”

Sue hesitated, glancing between them. She looked exhausted, too, face puffy and drained in an ill-fitting coat, like she’d packed just as quickly as the rest of them had, or hadn’t had time to pack at all. “I’m not…” She paused and shook her head. “So why did you sneak off to England? You think Will is here?”

They were all speaking over each other, exhausted and agitated—Karen privately wondered that if Sue had followed him, had anyone else? Were they being tracked, somehow? Thank God that Nancy and Mike were staying under the radar.

“We’re looking for—wait, what exactly are we—”

“Something like the lab.”

“Something like a lab?” asked Sue. “What are you talking about?”

Jim’s eye kept twitching. “A lab like the one your husband worked for.”

“Charles never worked for a laboratory.”

Karen didn’t want to have this conversation. Not after pretending she didn’t know, pretending she didn’t have any clue, and especially not after keeping secret exactly what Lucas and Erica were up to last summer and the school year before that.

But no one else was going to.

“Sue? Walk with me for a few minutes?”

At first, Sue didn’t believe her. Then, as the interrogation sharpened—“A lab with children? Human children? What the hell are you saying?”—Sue’s hand gestures got wilder and wilder, a gaping fish as she sputtered.

“I don’t understand,” said Sue, not for the first time. Karen could see Jim and Joyce, arms folded away from each other, on the street corner. “These things aren’t real. Things like you’re describing don’t actually happen.”

And without Will or El present to demonstrate, or a convenient monster to attack them, Karen wasn’t sure she’d believe it, either. “I can’t prove it to you,” she said. “All you can do is trust me.”

“Trust you?” Sue scoffed, but there were shiny, unshed tears in her eyes. “After you knew what might’ve happened to Ch-Charles and you never said anything?”

“I don’t know where he is. If I knew—”

“Right,” said Sue flatly, and she walked slightly ahead of Karen back towards the others. Karen half expected her to get back on the bus, but of course the bus had already left. “But he’s not here.”

Karen lowered her eyes. “I don’t think so,” she said. “We’re looking for Will. I don’t know why the two of them might be together.”

“So, I don’t have to worry about my husband being a kidnapper, too? In addition to everything else you’re accusing him of?”

It wasn’t clear that Sue actually expected an answer. If she did, Karen had no idea what to give her. None of this was logical, none of this felt possible to explain. “Sue—”

“This was so stupid,” Sue whispered. “God, I’m stupid.” Her eyes narrowed. “And you’re stupid too, if you believe half of this.”

You don’t even know half of it, thought Karen, but it wouldn’t be any use. Jim and Joyce looked unsurprised as Sue stalked back over, seemingly unconvinced of secret, psychic lab children who could explode things with their minds.

“I’ll get back to London tomorrow,” she said, as Karen’s headache flared. “If that’s acceptable to you.”

Acceptable, acceptable. Karen wasn’t her mother.

“Of course,” said Joyce gently, and Karen only felt a bit like screaming. At least she and Jim were on the same page.

The first three hotels they tried to rent rooms in were full, and feeling a bit like a dejected Mary and Joseph, Karen finally found one that would be available in a couple of hours, so all they had to do was wait for Friday afternoon to dick around with their suitcases in the middle of a city none of them knew anything about.

“I’m going to try to trade in some currency,” said Jim, which left Joyce, Sue, and Karen to sit outside a grey teashop in the fog. Karen did not understand this strange, milky substance that the Brits kept calling tea. 

None of them spoke as they sat there, drained and depleted, enough secrets swirling to keep someone busy for a lifetime. Karen knew Sue would have more questions—how could she not? But Sue drank her tea and didn’t speak, probably wondering what kind of hidden talents two kids could possess and what any of that had to do with the lab or her husband.

Or what drugs they’d all inhaled.

Joyce was quiet, too, like she’d been most of the journey, but her guard seemed lowered without Jim there. Maybe Karen could ask some of her own questions that had been buzzing around, about the tension between Joyce and her fake husband that didn’t just seem like two people grieving and looking for someone to blame.

Then again, Joyce had all but accused Karen of the same thing last summer, so she should probably keep her mouth shut. They had enough trouble on their plate—literally, in fact, since Karen was sure she’d ordered a biscuit which supposed to be soft and not this hideously hard thing—as it was.

Three women once united by book club and now united by, well, loss, Karen supposed. And their children, of course.

When it was time to check into the hotel, they passed a phone in the lobby on the way in—should Karen call? God, the cost of an international call, and then Mike and Nancy would know.

Nancy was on her way to Illinois, anyway, and Mike’s trip to Iowa was Saturday morning.

They would be fine.

//

Jonathan didn’t wake up until they were already in New York.

His throat started itching first, dry like sandpaper, eyes heavy as he tried to blink them awake. He’d been dreaming about Will again, about one of their last days in California, packing up their lives into cardboard boxes. Will had been helping Jonathan roll up some of the posters from his bedroom, just the two of them in the Lenora house while Joyce and El visited El’s mom one final time and Hopper boxed up his office.

Will’s mouth had moved, in the dream, but Jonathan couldn’t hear him speak. And opening his eyes, he found the clock on the car radio with a bolt of adrenaline. “What time is it?!”

“Good morning to you, too,” said Nancy from the driver’s seat. She had a can of Coke in between her knees. “Well, good afternoon.”

“Where—”

“We’re in New York,” said Nancy. “Probably just forty-five minutes or so until Montauk.”

There were dark circles under her eyes. Steve was slumped over in the passenger seat, mouth open, as the grey-blue sky passed by. “Did you drive all night?!”

“We switched off at first. But it’s more or less a straight shot, and the sooner the better, right?”

Jonathan stared at her. He’d been angry, hearing the explanation about Montauk, frustrated and irritated and impatient, but not at Nancy. How could he blame Nancy? She’d correctly assumed that Will would tell them what happened, and God, Will had tried.

Will had tried to tell him. Just chalk that one up as another of Jonathan’s many, many failures.

“I’m sorry,” he said finally, in the silence of the car. “You shouldn’t have had to do that.”

There were a lot of other things Jonathan probably needed to apologize for. There were a lot of things, unrelated to Montauk, that Jonathan very stupidly wanted Nancy to apologize for, that he would never admit out loud in a million years.

“We’re all doing a lot that we probably shouldn’t,” said Nancy evenly. “You needed the sleep. It’s 3PM on Friday.” She added, watching Jonathan squint. “We had to stop for gas and food a few times.”

“Right,” said Jonathan. “That makes sense.”

Silence filled the car again. Jonathan wished Nancy would turn on the radio, but her hands stayed fixed to the steering wheel in a death grip. The trees they passed felt different; skinnier, fed by salt air, maybe. Jonathan hadn’t been to the ocean in a long time.

It made him think about Lonnie. Jonathan generally, as a rule, didn’t think about Lonnie.

Now that they were so close, the “we’ll figure it out when we get there” of it all was more pressing. They could check out the lighthouse, maybe, and some of the gift shops that sold postcards, but otherwise Jonathan didn’t know what to look for. Would it be a lab the same size as Hawkins or Lenora? And if so, was it possible that this beach town could be hiding it somewhere?

“We can stop by the same gas station we stopped at the first time and get a few maps,” said Nancy, like she was reading his mind. “And stay at the same hotel, if you want.”

Jonathan had forgot that this would necessitate a hotel room. “Right,” he said, brain spinning a little. “So, you and Will just…waited thing out in a hotel room?”

“And Max,” said Nancy. “But yeah. It feels like so long ago.”

Jonathan suddenly wanted to know what they talked about. He hadn’t really counted how many hours they must have spent together, until now, but even once he and Nancy started dating, Will hadn’t ever said much about her. He’d never been mean, obviously, but Jonathan assumed they’d just never had time for a conversation.

Were they able to smile about it? Laugh parts of it off? Find some common ground?

He wanted to know, but he didn’t want to ask. Maybe he could ask Will when—no, Jonathan scolded himself. Don’t think that. Not yet.  

Half an hour or so passed when Nancy eased the car into a rundown parking lot off the side of the road. “We walked here,” she said. “I carried Will on my back.”

She shook Steve awake for Jonathan could respond to that.

“Hughh, wh—Nancy?”

“We’re here,” she said, without preamble, unbuckling her seatbelt. “Welcome to Montauk.”

Jonathan unbuckled his seatbelt, too, as Steve sputtered “you were supposed to wake me up”, and his legs ached a little, stretching after so many hours, but Jonathan couldn’t deny that he felt much, much better after getting some sleep.

The bored teenager behind the desk barely blinked as Nancy grabbed a few maps. “Is the lighthouse open?” she asked, thumbing through her purse for some change.

“Sure is,” said the teenager. “Happy Spring Break.”

Nancy nodded and led them back out to the car. She got in the driver’s seat above Steve’s arguing, “I know where we’re going, do you?” and took the main road into town with the windows down.

Montauk was cute.

Jonathan reserved the right to change his mind, depending on what kind of condition they found Will in, but the main thoroughfare was lined with sweet, low-slung souvenir shops selling saltwater taffy and lighthouse keychains. Tourists crossed the street without looking; families in blue and seersucker and teenagers with windbreakers, all dusted with a fine layer of sand.

They passed by several white and stone buildings before Nancy led them into the Sunset Guest House, about a block from the beach, marching inside on a mission. Steve and Jonathan grabbed their luggage out of the car, and Nancy already had their room keys when they walked inside the sleepy lobby.

Everything was blue and cream and probably really lovely, but as Jonathan planned out where he wanted to go first, he didn’t notice. He didn’t notice anything odd, either, even once they’d unlocked the room and Nancy had collapsed face-first on the bed, mumbling about needing a few minutes.

“Few minutes, my ass,” Steve was saying, pulling the suitcases inside. “We—oh, hold on.”

Jonathan looked up to see Steve’s raised eyebrows pointed towards the bed, the bed, as in one bed, that Nancy was currently already asleep on. “Don’t wake her up,” he said. “We’ll get another one with, uh—” Two beds? Three beds? Four hundred beds? “More space, later.”

“Right,” said Steve, nodding jerkily, but he didn’t say anything else about it. “So, where first? Lighthouse?”

“You don’t have to come—”

“Spare me,” said Steve. “I’m here, aren’t I?”

Sometimes, the summer they spent together as co-workers felt like a blip in an otherwise normal universe where guys like Steve Harrington did not hang out with guys like Jonathan. Jonathan had known plenty of Steve’s in Lenora, or he thought he had, until Steve nearly sliced his hand off and they faced down a maniac lab agent together.

Sometimes—

“Alright,” said Jonathan, folding up the map. “I’ll leave a note. Let’s go find this lighthouse.”

//

Mike wasn’t naïve enough to believe that his entire plan would go off without a hitch, but he hadn’t expected the first wrinkle to happen so quickly. “What do you mean your mom is out on emergency quiche business?”  

“I don’t know!” came Lucas’s exasperated voice over the phone. “She’s been acting totally crazy, I’ll tell you that much. Maybe one of the regional competitions opened early and she decided to go for it?”

“So we need a new ride to the airport,” said Mike, rubbing his eyes tiredly. It was Friday night; he’d finished packing hours ago and had been reviewing the map of Mendocino County, California for the hundredth time as Nick napped upstairs. “Who’s left?”

“Not Max’s mom. She works a double overnight.”

Mike groaned. “We’re so not in budget for a taxi,” he said. “I’ll—hold on, someone’s ringing the doorbell.”

He put the phone on hold and trudged upstairs. For all of his aggravation at his parents and Nancy sometimes, at least one of them might have answered the door.

“Hey—oh, hi Chrissy.”

Chrissy Cunningham smiled at him, shifting the purse on her shoulder. “Hey, Mike. Is Nick ready?”

“Is Nick—” Mike blinked, connecting the dots between his own, upcoming trip and his mom vanishing. At least she hadn’t totally left him out to dry. “You’re watching Nick this week.”

“Sure am,” said Chrissy. “It’s part of this camp. Trying to save up a little for college, you know? So, no beach trip.”

They stared at each other. Mike knew he was supposed to let her in, and that she could probably pack up Nick’s stuff better than he ever could, but an idea had taken hold.

“Chrissy?” he asked. “What are you doing tomorrow morning?”

--

“God, it’s so fucking early—Chrissy?”

“Good morning,” said Chrissy cheerfully, from behind the driver’s seat of a sedan. Nick was already sugar high in the back, as Mike and Lucas shrugged at Dustin’s flabbergasted face. As it turned out out, Mike felt much better about going into his dad’s wallet for Chrissy’s college savings, and two crisp $100 bills had more than done the trick. “Hop in! I’ve never been to Iowa before.”

“Iowa, right,” said Dustin, setting his suitcase in the trunk. “We’re going to Iowa. Thanks for the ride.”

“No problem!” chirped Chrissy, and then it was just outside of Max’s new neighborhood and finally El, alone in the Hopper’s driveway, with—

“Your hair!” said Chrissy, delighted, as she rolled down the window. “Oh my god, that’s so fun. It’s like Cyndi Lauper!”

El’s hair had, overnight, turned a weird shade of brown, blonde, and pink, and her face and bag were pink, too, as she climbed into the car. Mike was now in the middle of Max and El, who apparently weren’t talking, and Lucas and Dustin had Nick between them in the back.

“Chicer, though,” added Chrissy, oblivious to the sudden tension. She played with the car radio and Girls Just Wanna Have Fun started blasting out. It was 7:30 on Saturday morning, and as Dustin said, too fucking early for this. “Indianapolis, here we come!”

An hour and a half later, Mike’s brain sufficiently filled with bubblegum pop, they pulled up to the curb of the airport and stretched and climbed out.

“Thanks again,” he said, giving Nick a small wave goodbye, and Chrissy nodded.

“This is a huge help,” she said, gesturing at the cash. “Like, seriously. Thank your parents a million times. And have fun at that camp thing!”

Mike watched the car disappear and turned to his friends, all waiting behind him. They looked nervous. And Mike realized that if he was going to be in charge, he needed to be in charge. “Gate 7,” he said. “We board at 11:00.”

He’d been to the airport a few times, but not recently. Lucas had flown on a trip last summer, so he led the way, El sticking closely behind him with visible anxiety. “Have you ever been on a plane before?”

“What?” El’s eyes darted back, like she didn’t understand why Mike was addressing her directly. “No.”

“It’ll be fine,” said Lucas dismissively. “These jets basically never crash anymore.”

“Crash?”

“What’s wrong with you?” asked Max, hitting his shoulder, but then all three of them froze up, weird and awkward again, and Mike rolled his eyes.

Some Spring Break travelers added to the lines, but as they went through with their IDs—El’s with Jane Hopper on it—there was plenty of time to go to the bathroom and grab snacks. “It’s a five-hour flight,” said Mike. “And a pretty long bus ride, afterwards.”

He’d brought along The Shining, hoping it would quell some of the thoughts whirling in his brain, but maybe he’d been too optimistic.

They boarded.

El was visibly shaking by the time they found their seats, flinching away from the flight attendant who’d asked if she was alright, which might have been why she sat in between Lucas and Max.

Dustin and Mike would be one row behind them.

Even Dustin looked guilty at her obvious and very visible fear. “Once we’re in the air, you won’t notice at all,” he said, over in El’s direction, which must have been the most words they’d exchanged since—well, Mike didn’t want to think about that.

Eventually, after the flight attendants gave their safety demonstration and the plane started rolling towards the runway. El had both Lucas and Max’s arms in a death grip, and Mike was just glad that he and Dustin got an extra seat.

“Prepare the cabin for takeoff.”

Mike felt the engines click on as the plane started to accelerate, and he was suddenly nervous that El was actually going to start screaming, but she was just totally frozen, as the plane moved faster and faster before tilting up as the wheels lifted from the ground.

“Why aren’t the wings moving?” she kept saying, over and over, as Lucas started stuttering through an explanation of lift and gravity and Max said “Wait, you thought the wings would flap like a bird?”

Mike leaned back. Dustin was still leaning forward, probably to correct Lucas’s simplification of airfoils, but then he slumped backwards, too. Mike had a memory, suddenly, of him and Dustin over the summer, sneaking into the Electric Lamp Oasis and getting arrested together, and that he’d never thought in a million years they’d struggle for something to talk about.

Most of the time, when Dustin was at school, they could get away with movies, books, and comic books; he, Max, and Dustin had managed to turn DC’s insanely idiotic decision to cancel Wonder Woman into enough lunchtime conversations for all of February. And honestly, Max had contributed the biggest bulk.  

She and Dustin were at their best when things never got too heavy. When none of them acknowledged what happened over the summer, what happened to Dustin’s mom or Billy, and Mike was more than happy to oblige.

So, Mike tried to read The Shining, but his brain kept wandering back to watching Rocky IV in theaters with Max, of all people, after Dustin ditched; how Dustin kept showing up to the hotel Steve worked at, instead of his classes, and how none of them seemed able to convince him to leave The Stanley Hotel on Oak alone.

El’s grip had loosened on Lucas and Max, and the three of them were back to pretending not to know each other. Well, El and Lucas sat at lunch together, but Mike still didn’t know what they talked about because he could count every conversation he’d ever had with El on one hand.

“Hey Mike,” Dustin whispered. “Did you pack any other books?”

“I have The Odyssey.”

“For fun?!”

“It’s what we’re reading in English,” said Mike pointedly, and at least Dustin looked abashed. “Come on dude, you’re not flunking out of freshman English.”

“If we survive,” muttered Dustin, but he cracked open the book and started reading. Mike wondered if he should’ve brought Dustin’s missing algebra homework.

Five hours was a lot, but Mike had been waiting over five months for this. Not that he knew it’d be California, but for all of Nancy’s ranting and raving about how obsessed Jonathan was and how much his mom worried about Hopper and Joyce, Mike was pretty sure—well, he shouldn’t think that.

Every night, for over five months, Will’s terrified face as the lab agents swarmed and choked him unconscious. Every night, Mike moving too slowly, too frozen, then the snap of his arm that nearly always woke him up. If it didn’t, though, then the dream continued, and Mike would watch Will struggle to speak, to say one last thing beginning with the letter M—

He might have been calling out for his mom. He was probably calling out for his mom.

Other memories of Will filled in the gaps, too, ones that Mike tried to keep in a bookshelf, accessible only when he really needed to, and definitely not when Dustin was angrily reading The Odyssey beside him.

“Have you ever?”

“Ever what?”

“Dumped someone’s ass?”

Will had laughed. “No. I never—well, I was supposed to go to a dance in California, but she was just—I think she was probably just being nice. And then—”

“You got trapped in an alternate dimension?”

Mike had read page 15 so many times, his eyes were starting to blur. The snack cart was going to be at their seats, soon, even though they’d also all bought snacks. Dustin was grumbling about the Cyclops.

“And then I got possessed, and then I moved to Indiana.”

“The third one’s the worst, for sure.”

“I think it takes a long time, anyway.”

“What does?”

Coke in hand, Mike picked at his chips. Lucas had fallen asleep, face smashed against the window.

“Getting with someone. Being with someone. Even just like, liking someone.”  

“Oh,” Mike had said, and he’d opened his stupid mouth to ask—

“Hey Mike,” said Max, and Mike jumped. “Did you pack any other books?”

“Just take this one,” said Mike, handing over The Shining. “I’ve read it already, anyway.”

--

San Francisco International Airport didn’t feel much different from Indianapolis, except that Dustin had emerged from one of the gift shops with a 49ers hat. “It’s part of my disguise,” he said, at their reactions.

“On that note,” said Mike. “There’s a big state park nearby, with beaches and campgrounds and stuff. That’s where we’re going, if anyone asks.”

“Can we go there instead?” asked Max, before raising her hands. “Kidding, I’m kidding.”

“The bus leaves in half an hour,” said Mike, and they went to the bathroom again and bought more junk food and soda.

As he’d hoped, after calling the airport pretending to be his dad, Mike was right, and a sleepy bus pulled up to the curb at 2:02PM Pacific Time. Four hours was the straight shot, but with stops, probably closer to four-and-a-half or five, and Mike settled into his seat.

This time, Lucas then El squished up next to him, with Max and Dustin a few rows back, still reading Mike’s books. “I didn’t even ask,” said Lucas. “But are we—do we have, like, a bridge to sleep under, or—”

“I booked a motel room,” said Mike, and it felt a little good to have Lucas so impressed. “Did my best Ted Wheeler impression, and everything.”

“You planned this,” said El, and it was harder to gauge when El was impressed. Sometimes she got impressed by the weirdest things.

She didn’t look impressed. Her face was almost blank. “It’s for Will,” said Mike, because it was, and El’s brows furrowed deeper. “He’d do the same for us.”

Mike wasn’t sure why he added the last part, or if he really meant it—well, he did, because Will had gone after Mike in the Upside Down and saved his life, but that wasn’t why Mike had worked so hard to find him now. He wasn’t sure he could put it into words, or if he wanted to.

“I know,” snapped El. “He’s my brother.”

She moved to an empty row, by herself, leaving Mike to muse on the mystery of the female species, once again, while Lucas propped his legs up. Even though they didn’t eat lunch together anymore, riding their bikes in the mornings and showing up at Lucas’s track meets had done a lot of good.

It meant neither of them felt forced to come up with any small talk, for one, and this time Mike drifted off as the California redwoods bundled up thicker and thicker, bus winding up north. One of the small towns that peeled off the main road was Lenora Hills.

Every stop lurched Mike awake, but by the time the bus finally stopped as close to Manchester, California as they could get, he felt almost well-rested. Or, at least, as close to well-rested as Mike ever got.

“We’re near the water,” said Max. They stood alone, just the five of them, at the bus stop. She was right; the wind passing over them smelled like salt, as the orange sun flickered behind the hills and valleys, casting the same, orange-ish glow over each of them.

In Hawkins, it was sometime after nine.

“It’s a couple blocks to the motel,” said Mike, when he realized they were waiting for him again. “I thought it would be good to be in town.”

Manchester, California was smaller than Hawkins, which Mike hadn’t thought was possible. They passed by a grocery and a gas station and a store selling camping gear, then an optometrist’s office, before the sparse road leading up to the Wildflower Inn.

Mike didn’t see any wildflowers. It was dark now, though, and they’d been traveling for the past fifteen hours. “I’ll get the keys,” he said. “Just wait by the doors. So they don’t know we don’t have any adults.”

The old man in the lobby might not have noticed anyway, but Mike wanted to be careful. With the keys, he marched over to door number nine, unlocking it and throwing on the light.

“Cute,” said Max. “I like the purple.”

There was a double bed in the center, a pair of bunk beds by the bathroom, and a sleeper sofa that Mike set his own bag on. It wouldn’t be enough space for Will, too, but Mike figured that was by far the easiest bridge to cross.

Max and El took the double, Dustin and Lucas on the bunks, and even though they were creaking with exhaustion, Mike laid out the map and cleared his throat. “Okay, men,” he said, mostly to watch Max’s face twitch. “And women. Let’s plan on a good night’s sleep tonight, because tomorrow, we’ll go back into town and get some supplies, and then I think we should scope the lab out after sundown.”

“Lab?” asked Lucas. “You know where the lab is?!”

“Might have mentioned that first,” said Dustin, and Mike shrugged.

“I have a guess,” he said, thinking about everything they knew about these lab agents. About the way they worked and the way they didn’t, about the swarm in Mike’s basement, about the woman—it’d been a woman, Mike was sure of it, who’d spoken to them—and about the gaps in all of their memories.

They’d all forgotten things, that night. Swiss cheese holes where key players were meant to be, names and faces that had somehow slipped through the cracks.

(Or had been taken forcibly, but Mike--)

Mike didn’t like it. But he was used to not remembering. “Let’s see if these lab agents are as smart as they think they are.”

Chapter Text

They hadn’t fought over the top bunk.

Lucas laid awake, fuming and nervous and a million other words, from his spot on the bottom bunk, because instead of fighting for the top bunk, he and Dustin had fought over the bottom bunk which meant that technically, Lucas had won.

He shifted onto his shoulder, waiting for the rest of the room to wake up. Lucas had always been the first one awake at sleepovers, and it sucked as much now as it did back then. Worse, probably, because no one’s mom was waiting for them with pancakes.

Dustin creaked in the bed above him. Part of why Lucas wished they’d fought was to at least justify ignoring each other and making Mike split his time like the child of divorced parents.

But then Dustin would say, “Don’t joke about divorce, my mom is dead” and none of them had it any worse, none of them could say anything about it, not Lucas with his dad missing for six months, not Max with Billy blowing up in the car, none of them.

And definitely not El, thought Lucas, grimly, before Mike’s watch alarm went off and the room started grumbling awake.

Mike was sitting cross-legged on the sleeper sofa, looking like a goddam shark hunter about to board the Orca, except, that meant that Lucas was about to get on the same ship. They were in California. They’d gotten on a plane yesterday to California, where if everything went according to plan, they would break into a secret lab to rescue their friend with superpowers.

If everything went according to Mike’s plan: Lucas wasn’t sure when he’d found the time or focus to come up with all of this, when Lucas could barely manage his classes and running around in circles every afternoon.

“So, we’re scoping out this lab?” asked Max, after they’d all shuffled together, still yawning and blinking.

“Eventually,” said Mike. “First, I figure we get some supplies. Groceries, first-aid stuff. Anything we didn’t pack. Weapons.”

Weapons. Lucas had stuffed his old wrist rocket into his bag, from when they’d gotten trapped underground and almost set on fire, not that it had done him much good. “I’ve got my dad’s old binoculars.”

Mike nodded. “Good. I think it makes the most sense to split up. We’ll get the supplies, but then also have a chance to check out the town, see if anything in Manchester sticks out before scoping out the lab tonight.”

It did make sense. Lucas could be with El again, then Max and Dustin, but Mike was putting a crumpled hat in front of their faces, a hat with folded pieces of paper.

“Should I draw? Or is that not fair?”

“Draw what?” asked Dustin, eyeing the hat.

“I wasn’t going to say anything yesterday,” said Mike. “But for the next week, or however long we’re here, we can’t act like things have been at school—hold on, Dustin, let me finish. I mean it. It’s not fair for me to be on every three-person team, just so you don’t have to actually talk to each other, but it’s definitely not fair to Will.”

He stared at each of them, eyebrows drawn. “And that’s why we’re here. We’re here for Will, and we can’t walk into this if we’re not on the same team.”

The air conditioner sputtered through the silence, as Lucas waited for someone to argue. He didn’t have any issue working with the others. Four out of five, anyway.

“For Will,” said El, outstretching her arm.

“Okay,” said Mike. “You want to draw? Pick two names for grocery and medical supplies.”

She blinked at him, and Max took the hat, closing her eyes. Bizarrely, stupidly, Lucas found himself wishing—

“El,” said Max. “And Max. Me.” She showed them the names, already frowning. “Of course the boys get—”

“You’re the one who drew,” said Mike, as Lucas realized what that meant. “Dustin, Lucas, and I will try to get some weapons and gear. There should be a camping store on the main road.”

A few months ago, this would’ve been the easiest way to group off. Now, as they each got dressed and finished off the last of the candy and potato chips, Lucas kept wondering if he could get out of it. At least Mike would be there, Mike who’d just explicitly told them they needed to pull it together for Will’s sake, and Lucas could be mature, Lucas could be very mature, but Dustin jamming his new 49ers hat over his head was not filling him with confidence.

“Here’s an extra copy of the map,” Mike was saying to Max, as El folded her arms beside her. Once, Lucas thought that expression was intimidating. Now he knew better. “We’ll meet back up in two hours?”

“Sounds good,” said Lucas and Max, at the same time, and maybe Lucas was in a better position, after all.

“Alright,” said Mike. “Let’s go.”

--

Manchester, California hardly qualified as a town. London, Ohio had been a behemoth in comparison, but there were a few other wanna-be-campers trudging over towards O’Malley’s Fish and Hiking.

“The lake’s not much good for fishing, boys,” said the man—Mr. O’Malley, Lucas presumed—gesturing at a few flimsy nets. “Hiking, though. Hunting, some. You like hunting?”

Lucas couldn’t think of three people who looked less like hunters, except maybe El and Max, but Mike nodded. “What do you have?”

Mr. O’Malley wouldn’t sell them a rifle, but they got pretty close: Dustin was pretending to test the slack of some rope as Lucas pocketed matches and moved a jug of gasoline. Mike was looking at the knives available.

“Better for trapping than hunting,” Mr. O’Malley warned, and Mike assured him that the five knives, five sharp knives, would be perfect.

Lucas’s hand was steadier than he thought, holding it in his hand. A knife couldn’t cut through fire, or a Demogorgon for that matter, but it might have saved their asses earlier.

Dustin pocketed his with a grim silence.

By the end of the hour and a half, Lucas wasn’t entirely sure what they walked away with, or when Mike had squirreled all these funds away, and maybe it was that which broke the uneasy silence between the three of them, their own version of a truce.

“When did you start planning this?” asked Dustin, as they walked back towards the Wildflower Inn. Mr. O’Malley had also provided more maps of the area, the local campgrounds and beaches.

“Which part?”

“This,” Dustin gestured, widely. “Spring Break. California.”

“Off and on,” said Mike. “I didn’t know that I’d know anything by Spring Break, but…I don’t know, I hoped, you know?” They kept walking. Lucas wished they’d bought less gasoline. “Yesterday was his birthday.”

It wasn’t that Lucas forgot about Will. That wasn’t the right word. It was more that, every time Lucas remembered him, his brain kicked and screamed at trying to remember that horrible night in Mike’s basement when he’d been taken, the way the memories warped together, that sometimes it was easier to not think about Will at all.

He did now, though. Lucas thought about Will’s birthday last year, about piling their money together for a radio for him, how El had celebrated her birthday, too, with that wacky cake and a whole summer ahead of them, warm and green.

Did that mean they’d missed El’s birthday, too?

Both of them were fifteen, now. If Will was still—

“I remember,” said Dustin. “You’re still not answering the question.”

“A long time,” said Mike. “Ever since September, alright? I just didn’t know what it would look like.”

“You could have mentioned it.”

“Could I?” asked Mike, staring down Dustin directly, and Lucas would’ve preferred a fight inside the motel instead of in the middle of the street, but at least they could get it out of their systems before breaking into the lab.

But Dustin’s shoulders deflated. “I’m here now,” he muttered, swinging the bag of rope and flashlights over his shoulder.

Back in the motel, El and Max were already sorting their goods into piles: bandages, rubbing alcohol, and gauze on one side, and a bizarre mix of non-perishables on the other. Lucas grabbed a banana and found Max looking up at him, mouth lifted in almost a smile.

“Vitamins,” said Lucas. “Fiber.”

“Who knows what might happen if we don’t get our potassium?” she said back, while Mike and Dustin dumped out what they’d bought, laying it all out on the floor.

Max and El delicately took their knives, uneasiness back again, and started to fill water bottles as Mike put the map back on the floor and explained his theory behind the lab, a theory he’d somehow been working on while making higher grades than Lucas in biology and actually keeping up with reading The Odyssey.

“It’s not that farfetched,” said Mike. “We know that the Hawkins Lab disguised itself with being an offshoot of the Department of Energy, right? And that the lighthouse, for some reason, was a missing part of the puzzle.”

“Montauk,” said Max suddenly. “That’s why you wanted to know if it had connections to the military.”

“And it did, right?” asked Dustin. “Army, Navy, Coast Guard, and an Air Force base.”

Lucas felt himself nodding along. “Does Manchester, then? Is there a building around here with a military or government connection?”

“Coast Guard,” said Mike. “Inactive. Until two years ago, when a mysterious nonprofit partnered with both the Coast Guard and the Department of Transportation to acquire it.”

“No way.”

The only one not leaning in excitedly was El; Lucas wasn’t sure if she knew what the Coast Guard was, or how to explain it, but she didn’t ask, either.

“This might sound a little crazy,” said Mike. “But I think they’re actually inside the lighthouse.”

--

It was such a monumental pain to get down to Point Arena Light, Lucas almost wished they would rip the band-aid and break in now, but Mike was right: if Will really was being kept here against his will, the security would have to be strong. They’d need to sneak in using some disguise or ruse and have a plan on how to get back out.

Point Arena Light was a nice lighthouse, though. Lucas would give it that.

No one spoke much on the journey down, or as they cautiously walked down the road leading towards the white tower at the edge of a cliff, blue waters churning below. It was dark, but there were cars lined up off the side of the road, haphazard parking jobs that Lucas’s brain filed away for later.

Mostly flat, there were only a few, sparse trees for cover. “It’s too easy to get spotted,” he muttered. “We might already have been spotted.”

“We’re tourists for now,” said Mike, but he was gripping the spot where his knife was in his pocket. The shoreline seemed to travel all the way into distant mountains.

They waited, not entirely sure for what, near the cluster of cars with a decent view of the lighthouse base. “It should be closed at night, right?” Max whispered, before suddenly going quiet.

A man walked out. Lucas couldn’t make out his face, but he could see a cigarette light up in the darkness, and the bright white of a lab coat covering shoulders. “Holy shit.”

“Shhh,” Mike hissed, but a woman joined the man outside, also pulling out a cigarette and in the same jacket.

“I’m never allowed to come up until I have to smoke,” the man said, or something along those lines, and the woman laughed. “Don’t they know we’re pulling all-nighters down there?”

“Who do you think is making us pull all-nighters?”

Lucas didn’t catch the man’s response. But then, the woman was moving towards the cluster of cars, and Lucas pressed his back against a shrub, hoping the darkness was hiding them. “I’ll be back in the morning,” she called out. “No one else is going to feed my kids.”

“Yeah, tell the doc that yourself!”

The doc. Lucas felt El flinch. They waited, until the woman drove away and the man disappeared back into the lighthouse before being brave enough to talk.

“I think you’re right, Mike,” said Max. “Shit.”

But Mike was peering at the lighthouse curiously. “Allowed to come up,” he said. “That’s what the man said, right? Allowed to come up. Pulling all-nighters down there.”

“Oh my god,” said Dustin, and Lucas realized the implication two seconds later. “The lab is underneath the lighthouse. It’s underground.”

//

"So, what exactly are we looking for?” asked Sue, and without meaning to, Joyce, Hopper, and Karen exchanged a look. Joyce hadn’t imagined onboarding another adult into the fatalistic weirdness that had become their lives, let alone an adult like Sue Sinclair.

That wasn’t to say Joyce didn’t like Sue. Joyce respected Sue’s eye for flower arrangements and unflinchingly clean kitchen and excellent taste in literature. Then again, Sue had been married to former lab agent Charles Sinclair, so perhaps Joyce was judging her too quickly.

“Disappearances,” said Karen. “Anything like the ones we saw previously, in Hawkins.”

“But who else went missing from Hawkins?” asked Sue. “I thought you told me that Will went missing from California? And then went missing again—”

Hadn’t Sue said she was going back to London?

“We only got two names,” said Karen, after neither Joyce nor Hopper stepped in. “A girl named Kali Prasad, from Ohio, and Robin Buckley—remember Melissa? Melissa’s daughter.”

“They died in a car accident.”

And the thing was, Joyce knew how it sounded. She recognized the expression on a logical person’s face, a face like Sue Sinclair’s, who baked quiches and read novels. She knew how these conspiracies could completely undo someone, could undo her, how she barely felt that she could trust her own brain anymore.

But someone had written those poems in the newspaper. Joyce just wished could remember who.

Karen, bless her, was explaining what they’d found so many months ago; the poems of Kali Prasad and Robin Buckley and the two who’d remained anonymous. Even after her home had been ransacked, Joyce still remembered what they’d said:

HELP WANTED:

A promising young boy to come help me

A nice good boy from a nice good family

Does family mean much these days though?

I used to say yes, but now I don’t know.

ESTATE NOTICE:

Family of three, gone before their time

The widows will weep, the church bells will chime

We mustn’t disgrace our dearly departed

Though I heard he was a thief and that she was a coward

“We should have split up,” muttered Hopper, eyes flickering side to side. Voice lowered, just for her. “We don’t know if we’ll find anything here.”

“We don’t know if we’ll find anything anywhere,” said Joyce. “The only thing we know is that they’ve used newspapers to communicate in the past.”

“And that they’ve used former military bases as cover.”

“Are you familiar with any former military bases around here?”

“We could look,” said Hopper, louder than before, and Joyce realized that Karen and Sue were staring. Karen in particular with a knowing that Joyce didn’t care for.

What did Karen know, anyway? There was nothing to know.

“Just start with the newspapers,” said Joyce, and maybe it was pity, but at least no one asked anymore questions.

The hours ticked by. Manchester, like any city, had its share of crimes. England wasn’t exempt from car crashes and kidnappings, it seemed. Nothing stuck out to Joyce, though, nothing tickled the part of her brain reserved for the lab.

Nothing like FOUND: Little brown bird, missing her parents.

“I’m going to pull some old maps,” said Hopper, after a while. “Maybe we can see if there are any buildings that stand out.”

Sue looked like she wanted to ask what buildings he might be talking about but flipped instead to the next page in her paper. “I wish Charles were here,” she said quietly. “He’s always been good at puzzles. He used to do the crossword in pen.”

“Mike is the same way,” said Karen. “It’s a surprise I even got my hands on the one I found. He’s always getting to it before I do.”

“More free time,” said Sue, with a small smile, but Joyce’s brain was stuck a few minutes before.

Charles Sinclair, being good at puzzles. Being good at crossword puzzles, in particular. “Oh my God,” she said. “I didn’t even—we didn’t even talk about who might have written it.”

“Written it?” asked Karen. “What do you mean?”

“Someone trying to tell us where Will is,” said Joyce. “Or tell someone, anyway. A clue. Someone wrote the clue. What if…?”

“Charles?” whispered Sue, and Joyce always hated hope. She always hated giving something to someone when she might not deliver. “You think he might be trying to help you?”

Again, hadn’t Sue said she was going back to London? Or did she think this was still her best shot at getting answers?

Karen looked uneasy, and Joyce didn’t blame her. She didn’t actually know Charles Sinclair well, at all, and hadn’t heard about is history until he’d already skipped town. “It might explain why he left without telling anyone. Maybe he was being watched.”

“Nothing will ever explain why he left without saying goodbye,” said Sue, deadly calm, and Karen and Joyce both winced. “I don’t think I can get my hopes up. There was so much he didn’t tell me. So much my own children didn’t tell me. And both of you.”

“We—”

“I understand you were trying to do the right thing,” said Sue. They hadn’t even told her Erica had been possessed last summer. “But he’s my husband. These are my children. If there was anything I could’ve done sooner…” Her voice trailed off, choked-up but determined. “I have no idea what his motivations might’ve been. Or what they could be now.”

Hopper walked back to their table, barely appearing to notice Sue wiping her eyes, with a stack of maps and atlases. “The catalog system here makes no sense,” he said. “But if we split them up, maybe we can look for, I don’t know, military bases. What’s the British equivalent of the Department of Energy?”

“Probably still the Department of Energy,” muttered Karen.

“Department of Energy?” Sue stared at the stack. “Charles worked for the Department of Energy.”

“We know,” said Joyce. “That was the cover for the Hawkins Lab.”

Sue shook her head. “No, I mean, that’s who he’s always worked for. Even before Hawkins, when we were in London. And Lebanon.”

“You lived in London?!” asked Joyce, as Karen mouthed Lebanon. “Why didn’t you mention that? We were just in London, we could have—”

“No, no,” said Sue, waving her hand dismissively. “London, Ohio. That was before we were in Lebanon, Illinois.”

London, Ohio. Lebanon, Illinois. London—

“Kali was from somewhere in Ohio, wasn’t she?” asked Karen, breathlessly. “Could it have been London?”

London, Ohio. Lebanon, Illinois.

Joyce suddenly felt like there were a million eyes on her, all whispering the same thing, a realization so obvious that it crashed into her with the force of an avalanche. She hadn’t even considered. She hadn’t even contemplated—

She’d always been terrible at geography.

“Oh my God,” whispered Joyce. Hopper’s head was swiveling between them like a pendulum. “London, Ohio. What if we’re in the wrong Manchester?!”

//

“Without me? You just decided to wander around Montauk without me?!”

“You were exhausted, we weren’t going to—”

“Oh, so you just let me sleep?” Nancy knew it wasn’t logical to fume, but waking up to a dark, empty room had sent her into a tailspin, and Jonathan and Steve’s explanations weren’t making her feel much better. “What if something happened?”

“Nothing happened,” said Steve, exasperated, at the same time Jonathan said, “We think we found the lab.”

Nancy’s ears rang. “You think you found it?”

The lab, the lab, she remembered sneaking into the Hawkins Lab with Jonathan, after hearing him tell her about the cover-up the Lenora Lab had done with Will. She’d wondered since what might have happened if Barb’s death had been covered up in the same way, if she and Steve might not have been accused of murder, even though they’d just as well as—

Nancy took a slow breath. It was getting easier, but it didn’t mean it was easy. “Where?”

“There’s a military reservation called Camp Hero nearby,” said Jonathan. “Abandoned. Decommissioned, allegedly. Some parts are supposed to be sold to the National Park Service.”

“Convenient,” muttered Steve, flexing his broken hand. “But we didn’t go out there, or anything. This is just what we heard in town.”

“Let’s go,” said Nancy. Two blinking faces stared at her. “Put your shoes back on, let’s go.”

Adrenaline was a sweet drug. She’d gotten some at her first Mock Trial competition last month, cross examining the prosecution’s fake witness, but this was the good stuff, 100% pure and un-bottled. “Where is it on the map?”

“You’re suggesting we go right now,” said Steve. “To this former military base. Right now.”

“When else?”

“She’s right,” said Jonathan, and Steve started groaning. “We’re here, aren’t we? Let’s go.”

“I can’t believe you’re making me be the sensible one here,” said Steve, but he was putting his shoes back on. He was unfolding the map, one handed, and pointing at the corner. “We’ll need to figure out how to sneak in.”

“We’ll figure it out when we’re there.”

“Jesus, okay, do I at least get something to defend myself with?!”

Nancy changed out of the clothes she’d driven in, wincing a little at how stale she smelled, but it wasn’t anything a different pair of jeans and blouse couldn’t fix. She paused long enough to finish the flat can of Coke and tie her hair back before going through her bag to answer Steve’s question: the rifle, good, good, as Jonathan took his handgun, and Steve picked up Nancy’s softball bat, looking dubious. “This?”

“Have you ever shot a gun before?”

“No,” said Steve. He swung the bat through the air. “What the hell is this going to do?”

“Sorry I didn’t have time to drill spikes into it,” said Nancy dryly. “But, you know, good idea for later?”

“Jesus,” said Steve again. Nancy had no idea what time of day it was, or even what day it was, but she knew she couldn’t waste any more time. Not if Will was really in Montauk. Not if he’d been in Montauk this entire time.

The wind was cooler, as they walked out of the hotel. Cool, salt wind skimmed over them, and the distant laugh of high schoolers on spring break without any secret missions. Sand on the paths turned to smooth stones, clumps of gravel, as Steve followed the map towards Camp Hero.

Camp Hero. Abandoned military base, sure, sure—Nancy hissed, a rock digging into her shoe painfully. In Hawkins, they’d basically just walked into the lab.

And gotten captured, Nancy’s brain reminded her, but the situation with Jack Lovett had been different.

“We’re getting closer,” said Jonathan, looking down at the map.

They saw the ugly wire jutting up first, the thick mesh of radar-detecting-who-knew-what.

The rock road winded up towards it, towards the iron-wrought gates cracked open, rusted and well-worn. A plated sign signaled they’d arrived, Camp Hero, but no armed guards jumped out to intervene as they continued walking down the path, slipping in between the opening of the gates. “Keep going,” said Jonathan. The gravel felt looser beneath Nancy’s feet.

Thin, green trees greeted them as they walked farther and farther in. Nancy’s hand stayed in her pocket, ready if things got crazy, but no one jumped out at them. No one was there, it seemed, anyway, complete silence save for bird chirps as they approached a building.

“We can’t just walk in, can we?” Steve whispered, door now in sight. One of the doors, anyway. “It’s probably locked.”

The door wasn’t locked.

And with nervous-but-determined expressions all around, they walked in.

Employees didn’t scuttle around or balk at them; no one was making coffee or hanging out by the office refrigerator, the way that some of the workers at the Hawkins Lab had. Empty halls loomed out in front of them, concrete and faded wallpaper, but it wasn’t dirty.

It definitely wasn’t abandoned, either. Nancy couldn’t put her finger on it, but life hummed around them, just underneath them, just out of reach.

Someone had walked these halls recently.

“Did we think there would be a neon sign?” scoffed Steve. “A big arrow?”

“Let’s move clockwise,” said Jonathan, ignoring him. “If we find any stairs, up first, then we can work our way down.”

Nancy’s shoulders stayed tense, as they walked through the halls, wishing she’d thought to bring flashlights—it wasn’t that dark, but dark enough to make her nervous, and they didn’t have any way of staying in contact with each other if they split up, no radios like Mike and his friends, but Nancy didn’t mind not being able to split up anyway.

A draft blew through one of the twisted, concrete staircases.

Nancy shivered.

“There’s something wrong with this building,” said Jonathan, after what felt like hours of wandering around dead-end hallways and corners.

“Yeah, it feels haunted.”

“No,” said Jonathan. “I mean the building doesn’t make any sense. Architecturally speaking, it doesn’t match what the outside looks like at all.”

“Oops,” Nancy heard from behind her, a female voice, and she spun around, heart in her throat, hand in her pocket, but a sudden burst of white light came over her.

She was unconscious before hitting the floor.

--

The first thing Nancy noticed was a dull, throbbing pain in the back of her head, far enough away that she almost couldn’t feel it, but stronger with every faint pulse. The second thing was voices, a pair of noisy voices, echoing back and forth and making her headache much worse.

“Ow,” she mumbled. It was still dark, still foggy and black, oh, my eyes are closed, I should probably open my eyes. Nancy did, or she tried, anyway, blinking groggily at the light.

A face swam in front of her, a frantic, familiar face, lips moving, lips that she’d kissed once, but that didn’t narrow down much. “—ancy?!”

“Mhm,” said Nancy, blinking heavily again, and it was the pair of lips she’d kissed more recently that hovered in front of her, Jonathan’s brows creased tightly together. “I’m here.”

“Jesus Christ,” he said, as Nancy tried to remember how she’d ended up on the floor and why Steve was yelling—oh, right, so much for not getting caught—Steve was yelling at bars, bars set around a cage, they were in a cage.

“Where—”

“Don’t sit up too fast,” said Jonathan. “Jesus, you worried me.”

“I worried you?” Nancy tried to laugh but winced, setting her hand against the back of her head. “So, I guess we weren’t as sneaky as we thought. Has anyone come in?”

“No.”

Nancy closed her eyes, wishing she’d been more patient. Now, no one knew where they were, not that it mattered much. Of course the lab would keep some kind of surveillance. It would be stupid not to, and they might have been watched from the second they left the road or sooner. “I’m sorry,” she said. “This is my fault.”

“What? No, it isn’t,” said Jonathan. “I was coming here one way or another. And this is good, isn’t it?”

“What do you mean?”

“If it were abandoned,” said Jonathan, eyebrows creasing again. This time more determined. “Then why the cage?”

Nancy’s heart leapt. That was true; in some ways, getting captured was good, because they assumed Will was captured, too. It might make it harder to sneak out with him, but even just seeing him alive—

“Hey!” Jonathan shouted, above Steve’s whines. They both quieted. “Whoever brought us here, whoever’s listening, I want to talk to you!”

No one answered, at first, and Jonathan rose to his feet. “I know you’re listening,” he said. “You’re probably watching us right now.”

“If they bring anyone out, it’s going to be to torture us,” said Steve. “Stick knives into our eyeballs and cut our ears off and force us to drink poison—”

“Why would we do that?”

Steve yelped and Jonathan gasped, and white noise rang in Nancy’s ears, ringing and ringing, and the two girls were right in front of them.

One was standing farther back, arms crossed, long dark hair and a dark brown complexion. The one closest to them, the one who’d spoken, was pale and freckly, long neck and wide eyes peering at them curiously.

“Wh—hello?”

“Why would we do that?” the girl closer to them repeated. “Stick knives into your eyeballs and cut your ears off.”

“We usually do much worse to intruders,” said the girl in the back, and Nancy stiffened, cold again. They didn’t look dangerous. But Nancy knew better.

The girl closest to them laughed. “She’s joking,” she said. The girl in the back did not look like she was joking. “So, what do you want to talk about?”

This was directed at Jonathan, who blinked, before remembering what (and who) they came for. “We’re, uh,” he cleared his throat, swallowing hard. “We’re looking for someone. A boy.”

“What kind of boy?”

“My brother,” said Jonathan, voice cracking, and realizing it, Nancy slipped her hand around his. It was trembling. Steve’s arms stayed crossed, staring down the girl in the back. “He’s short, brown hair like mine, would’ve gotten here about six months ago—”

“Oh,” said the girl closest. She sounded disappointed, which was nothing compared to the look on Jonathan’s face. “No one new has come in ages.”

“No one—are you sure?”

“Of course we’re sure,” said the girl in the back. “Is that what you were snooping around for? No one’s supposed to be here, you know.”

Nancy had been so sure, so sure once she saw the postcard, once she realized that Will had never told his family what happened. “Please,” she said. “Can we look around, at least? He’s only fourteen—”

“Fifteen,” Jonathan’s voice cracked again. “He turned fifteen yesterday. Please, just let us look around.”

“I don’t think you understand,” said the girl in the back. “No one new has been here in years. And fourteen or fifteen would’ve been far too old.”

There was something lurking, an undercurrent of something, between the two girls and their long, loose dresses and uncut hair. Not a smidge of makeup on either of them, but it wasn’t that, no, it wasn’t that, and it wasn’t until Steve took a half-step back and said “You’re not wearing shoes” that Nancy realized what it was.

The two girls reminded her of how Jonathan had once described El, when she was Number Eleven. The two girls—

“Who are you?” Nancy whispered, much more afraid than when she’d woken up in the cage.

Lab agents were one thing. The Lovett family, the poor dead Lovett family, that was something Nancy could deal with. But when she was really scared, it wasn’t Jack Lovett who leered over her, it was the bodies used as puppets. It was Claudia Henderson and Bob Newby.

Before that it was a grey, horror-movie creature, ten-feet-tall with a mouth that was all blades, the creature that had killed Barb and hunted down Will and that would’ve killed her, too, if her mom and Joyce and Jonathan weren’t there.

Wrong things, her brain supplied. Bad things, worse things, stranger things.

But the girl closest to them smiled, with her pale, freckly face. “You can call her Jean Grey,” she said, sounding delighted, even as the dark-haired girl in the back, Jean Grey, rolled her eyes.

“Which makes me Batman.”

Chapter Text

Batman and Jean Grey, okay, yeah right, but the girl who’d just referred to herself as Batman didn’t blink. Steve wasn’t sure if either of them had blinked, staring at them while they were locked in a cage, but no one had started shooting, so they weren’t in worst-case scenario territory yet.

“Batman?” he asked, because one of them had to, right? “Batman?”

“Steve,” hissed Nancy, and Steve let it go. Or he would have, except Batman stepped even closer to the bars.

“Steve?” she said. “Like Steve Rogers?”

“Oh, sure,” said Steve. “Just like Steve Rogers. Who’s Steve Rogers?”

“Captain America,” said Jonathan, sounding pained. “Right? Isn’t Steve Rogers the civilian name for Captain America—”

“Enough,” snapped Jean Grey, the darker-haired girl in the back, although Steve was wondering if it wasn’t just that she was sick of the superhero names, too. “You shouldn’t be here, and the boy you’re looking for isn’t here, either. You should go.”

Batman was pouting, but Steve seized on—“You’ll just let us go?”

“Of course,” said Jean Grey. “You pose no threat to us. And you won’t be very successful looking for your brother inside that cage.”

Steve wondered if this was Jean Grey’s way of making a joke, as she pressed a button on the wall and the door unlatched. Still, it was pretty good luck, all things considered, until he looked back and caught sight of Jonathan’s devastated face. His chest clenched. This was their only lead. And unless the two girls were lying, Will wasn’t here.

“Please,” said Jonathan. “Please, just can I look around? Just a few minutes—”

“You did look around,” said Jean Grey. “For a couple of hours, in fact.” But Batman whispered something in her ear, and Jean Grey sighed. “If it makes you feel better,” she said, and Jonathan practically ran up next to her.

“Thank you,” said Nancy, to Batman, as the strange group started forward. “Really, thank you.”

“You shouldn’t thank us,” said Jean Grey, looking almost sorry about it. “He isn’t here.”

--

Steve wasn’t sure how they’d missed some of the corridors and rooms during their first sweep, but the strange building was still practically empty. More lived-in, to be sure, but nothing indicating a hidden prisoner. Jean Grey and Batman showed them a tidy kitchen, with old-fashioned appliances, a few rooms that might have been classrooms—Steve saw musical instruments, in one, and a blackboard in the other—and as much as he wanted to leave, his curiosity had been piqued.

“So, you live here?” he asked Batman. “Like, all the time?”

“Where else?” Batman asked in return, and Steve wasn’t sure how to answer that. It just seemed so institutionalized, so orderly and empty, none of the weird chrome and white of the Hawkins Lab, but cold, in a different way.

“Does anyone else live here? Can we call out for Will?”

“If you want,” said Jean Grey, nonplussed, and so they did—Jonathan, Nancy, and Steve, all calling out for Will and just hearing their voices echo.

They could be hiding him. But even though the girl’s name obviously wasn’t Batman, and she looked weird as hell, Steve trusted her.

“Where else could he be?!” Nancy asked. Jonathan looked despondent. “Are there other places like this?”

If Steve wasn’t mistaken, Jean Grey’s smile was a little sad. “I think it’s time for you to go.”

The two girls walked them back out through the surprisingly short hallway, considering how long they’d wandered around, and to the front door. It wasn’t as grim, either; the walls seemed cleaner, floor less dusty, although Steve still wouldn’t fancy living here.

“Good luck,” said Batman, giving them a wave, and then the three of them were right back where they started, in the middle of Montauk, New York, sky pitch black overhead.

It could’ve been midnight or five in the morning. And they’d have to walk all the way back to the inn.

“We have to go back in,” said Nancy, even as they started walking back towards the gate. A cold wind blew over them, and she shivered. “They know something, I know they know something.”

“It’s no use,” said Jonathan, and this time Steve shivered, too. Despair wasn’t a strong enough word. “It’s like you said, it was a guess, we didn’t know anything. Fuck.”

He threw his fist out at one of the trees, before wincing and keeling over. “Fuck.”

“Hey,” said Steve. “We’re going to find him.”

“How the fuck are we—”

“I’m going back,” said Nancy, spinning on her foot and marching back up the path as Jonathan and Steve gaped at her. “Obviously, they have to know more. Otherwise—”

“Otherwise what, Nancy?!”

“It doesn’t add up!” she shouted, before craning her neck back at the old army fort. “There’s so much that doesn’t add up, about Will’s disappearance, about how all of our memories are so spotty, about why Will brought me and Max to Montauk in the first place, about the postcard, Jonathan, you found a postcard linking the lab agents here! Then we end up in a building where the dimensions don’t make any sense, and the only two humans we see are, well—”

She stopped, panting for breath, and looked at the building again. In the dark, the trees loomed much higher, something spooky and empty and waiting, almost like Steve was in the tunnels again, thrashing the machete wildly, without any idea of what might happen next.

Prickling on his neck. Something that made his wrists itch and missing fingers ache.

“You mean they’re like El and Will,” said Steve. “You think—”

A cloud passed in front of the moon, and then they were all walking back towards the door, a strange unity binding them together, even Jonathan, quickly wiping his eyes. Nancy got there first and started to hit her fist against the wood, joined by Steve, and Jonathan’s other hand, hard and frantic enough that when the door did swing open, they all fell flat on their faces.

“I told you they’d come back,” said Batman. “I told you.”

“You were right,” said Jean Grey, standing beside her. Steve suddenly wondered if they’d just been waiting in the front hallway, having a similar argument to the one that just happened outside. “Alright,” she said, facing them squarely. “Your brother isn’t here. There are only four people within these walls. But if you tell us what happened, we might be able to help you.”

Steve’s stomach twisted again when he looked at Jonathan’s face. As bad as the despair was, the very fragile hope was almost worse.

--

The room Jean Grey and Batman brought them to was one just off the main hallway, a smidge warmer, although the two had to be freezing in those weird white dresses.

“You said there are four of you here,” said Nancy, as they sat down. “Who are the other two?”

“Superman and Spiderman?” asked Steve. Only Batman laughed.

“They’re not interested in visitors,” she said. “I am, though. Tell us about your brother. Why are you looking for him?”

Nancy and Steve both turned to Jonathan, who for a second seemed incapable of speech, before closing his eyes. “I don’t know where to start,” he said, finally. “It’s been a really weird three years.”

“We have nowhere else to be,” said Jean Grey simply.

“Okay,” said Jonathan. “Okay. November 6, 1983, my brother Will went missing. The next day my friend and I found a girl, head shaved, in a hospital gown at a pizza parlor.”

Steve had heard the story, in bits and pieces, but woven together like this, everything in Lenora—“and then Will’s body was found rotting in the dumpster, and we weren’t invited to the funeral” and “El left the lab, but when we went back to check, there were dead bodies everywhere” and “when my mom found him, he’d gone to an alternate universe in Indiana”—God, it was really a shitshow, wasn’t it?

Jonathan detailed the attack and later disappearance of the Demogorgon, injured by El, the teleportation abilities gained by Will right before getting possessed, the decision to move to the strange town in Indiana—here, enter Steve and Nancy—with its own series of unexplained disappearances. 

“El thought she closed the gate,” said Jonathan. “The gate between real-Indiana and the other Indiana, the upside-down version, but last summer, things started to pick back up again.”

Possessions, the lab agent Jack Lovett—Steve’s own head was spinning, and he wasn’t sure how much Jean Grey or Batman were taking in, or what they could do about any of it. “We thought it was really over, after that,” said Jonathan. “El couldn’t use her powers anymore. A few months passed, but then—someone got him. Someone got Will. We don’t know who, or why, or—”

“The why seems obvious,” said Jean Grey. “What an extraordinary gift.”

She hadn’t spoken through Jonathan’s entire story but appeared thoughtful now, drumming her fingers against the mahogany desk. “You cannot remember anything about the person who took him? Or about the people behind the other attacks?”

“None of us were there,” said Jonathan. “But a few of his friends were, and they don’t remember.”

“A lot of our memory is foggy from that week,” added Nancy, and Jean Grey hummed. Batman was biting her lip. “Do you think you can help us? Do you have any idea where he might be?”

Jean Grey rose to her feet, and Batman quickly followed. “We’ll need to consult with the others,” she said, before abruptly leaving the room.

Steve, Jonathan, and Nancy looked at each other wildly before following, a strange combination of hope and confusion surging through Steve’s chest. He didn’t like the reminder of the gaps in memories that week, gaps he hadn’t even been sure the others felt, too, but he could ignore that for now. “You think you know why he was taken?”

“Again, the why seems obvious,” said Jean Grey, keeping a brisk pace. “Your brother has immensely strong powers which no one has taught to control or master. Arguably, this El had powers that were even stronger, or more destructive, perhaps, but then these were lost somehow. It may be that the only reason he wasn’t taken sooner is that this person was—”

“More interested in El,” Nancy finished. Jean Grey nodded. “So, you believe it? You believe one person might be behind all of this?”

“Every problem that you’ve had since 1983? No, probably not. But,” Jean Grey smiled cryptically. “Like I said, we’ll need to consult with the others.”

“Who are the others?” asked Jonathan. “You mean, if they don’t want to, you won’t help us? You won’t tell us what you know?”

They’d reached another door. Batman rapped twice, before pushing it open, into what must have been a courtyard, except, well—

“What the hell?” Steve managed, looking at the garden they’d walked into, a dizzying floral smell and green glossy leaves fanning out at every angle. Bright pink and orange flowers burst out of the bushes. There was grass underneath Steve’s feet, thick, green grass like nothing he’d ever seen from a Hawkins lawn. “Where are we?”

It was a stupid question. They were in Montauk, New York. But Jonathan and Nancy didn’t laugh, and all three of them stepped closer as Jean Grey and Batman led them into the garden.

Steve swallowed. If his skin had been itching before, it was nothing compared to the electric hum surrounding them now, the uneasy bright colors and floral smell.

“Now, who do we have here?”

They jumped, all three of them, and Steve barely managed to keep in a yelp as two boys their own age, or a bit older, appeared right behind them. One had his arms crossed. The other was sitting in on a branch in one of the low-slung trees.

“Steve, Nancy, and Jonathan,” announced Batman. “Meet Professor X and Magneto.”

The one from the tree leapt down, bare feet on the grass. None of them were wearing shoes. “That’s not fair,” he drawled, and the four formed an uneven circle around them. “How come he gets to be Professor X?”

//

The wrong Manchester. The wrong Manchester.

“We’re idiots!” Joyce was seething. Hopper could barely keep track of her, as she stormed around the hotel room, flinging clothes back into her suitcase. He wasn’t sure when she’d had time to unpack. “Why would Will be in England?”

Hopper was pretty pissed himself, but one of them had to play the other side. “Why would Will be anywhere in particular? England was as good a guess as any!”

“But we were wrong,” Joyce shook her head. “And we wasted so much time, God, this is so stupid.”

“Joyce, there’s literally no way we could’ve known that London, Ohio might have the answers—”

“I should’ve known!” yelled Joyce. “I read about that girl in the paper! Even though they took all the papers, I remembered London, Ohio, I should’ve known, I should’ve known—” 

“Okay! You should’ve known! Is that what you want me to say?!”

They were glaring at each other again. They were almost always glaring at each other, or ignoring each other, and if they weren’t doing either of those things—

Hopper shook his head. No one needed anymore distractions. “We’ll get there as soon as we can,” he said, calmer. “We’ll get to the airport, and we’ll fly to fucking Ohio, and we still have a lead, right? We still know more than we did a few days ago.”

Joyce sat down on the edge of the bed and rubbed her eyes. “I don’t know if I can do this,” she said. “I don’t know if I can keep doing this.”

“Of course you can,” said Hopper. “Just grab the rest of your stuff. Sue and Karen said they’d check out for us, all we have to do is get on the bus.” He knelt beside her. “We get on the bus, then we worry about what’s next, alright?”

Joyce responded by kissing him.

The tears stuck to his face; they’d kissed once, Hopper knew, when neither of them had been crying. It was a memory he kept trying to hold onto, even as she kissed him harder and bit his lip, that once, maybe, she’d associated kissing him with something happy.

He’d once thought, as Joyce pushed him backwards, digging her knees into his stomach without even bothering to climb up onto the bed—he’d thought, as she climbed on top of him, that this would never happen. Or that if it would, it might be something happy, too.

“I don’t think we have time,” said Hopper, instead of no.

“I think we do,” said Joyce, eyes still red, as she leaned in closer. Visibly heartbroken and angry at herself, Hopper knew she’d regret it—they both did, each time, but knowledge of future regret wasn’t enough.

Still, Hopper didn’t move his arms to reach for her. “They’re going to be looking for us.”

“Let them look,” said Joyce, and Hopper still remembered the first time it happened, swearing to himself that he wouldn’t let it happen again, but he’d been so naïve.

--

“We were knocking on your door,” said Karen sourly, with the expression of a woman who knew too much, but Hopper doubted she would say anything. And hey, maybe if she did, it would have the convenient ripple effect of forcing them to talk about it, which he and Joyce had avoided at every turn.

Joyce swung her suitcase forward. “We must not have heard you,” she said. They were back to ignoring each other. Hopper wasn’t sure if that was better or worse. “Let’s go catch the bus.”

This time, driving back to London, England so they could somehow get to London, Ohio, Hopper didn’t bother pretending to sleep. He thought instead about the tangled knot of a mystery they were left with: London, Ohio. Manchester, ???

Surely, there was some resource dictating stupid American towns named after British ones. But without even knowing the state, Hopper guessed they’d have to go through each one, and how would they know if they got it right? It was a big fucking country, and he would know, after driving all around for months, looking and not knowing what to look for.

He could’ve driven right past Manchester, ??? and never known.

But hopefully, there would be some sort of clue in Ohio, whether Charles Sinclair was hiding out there or not. Someone had written the crossword puzzle clue. Someone knew where Will was.

Five hours later, the bus finally dropped them off at the London Airport. A flight for Cincinnati would leave in another seven hours, then it would be another eight-hour flight, but they were five or six hours ahead, so Hopper wasn’t sure what time or even day they’d end up landing.

What day was it now? Sunday? It couldn’t be Monday yet, could it?

Hopper drained a watery beer from the airport bar and bought another, nearly as quick, trying not to think about Joyce, even though his other options—thinking about El or Will or Jonathan—were almost worse.

He hoped they were all okay. He guessed, uneasily, that they probably weren’t.

//

“We’ll sneak in tomorrow,” Mike had said, when they returned from the trip to the lighthouse, the first words any of them had spoken since seeing the man and woman smoking and talking outside.

El felt like the only one who was afraid.

They were really going to do this.

She missed Will so terribly she could barely breathe, and even though they might be closer than ever, the tears pooled in El’s eyes when she finally laid down in bed. Her back was to the rest of them, back to Max, who’s back was also to El’s, unlike all the sleepovers they’d used to have, looking at magazines and comic books.

Will would tell her what the crossword puzzles meant. Will would have explained how the airport worked, and that she was supposed to put her bag on the moving belt, and he would’ve helped her show the man her ID, too. El didn’t even know she had an ID, but of course, Hopper must have found her one that said Jane, just like the ones Will and Jonathan had with their new last name.

And now, they were planning on sneaking into what was probably a new lab, just like the one El ran away from, and her hands wouldn’t stop shaking. If she had her powers—but she didn’t, she didn’t have her powers, she just had the stupid knife that Mike gave her, Mike who talked to her like a baby.

At least Dustin and Max never did that.

The only person El wanted to sneak into the lab with was Will, and he was the one they had to rescue. If he was there,

He has to be, El told herself, burying deeper into the bed. She wished she could sense him. She wished she could know for sure.

But when they all prepared to leave the next day, a grim silence settling over the room, El felt nothing. She tied up her pink hair and took a shaky sip of water. Maybe Will would even be proud of her.

“Okay,” said Mike. “When we get inside, if we have to split up again, I think we should decide now.”

“Why would we have to do that?” asked Max.

“If there’s more than one floor.” Mike pulled out the radio that Will had. Lucas and Dustin did the same. “Or more than one wing. Or if something happens – we only have three radios.”

Max nodded. And El felt queasy, as they all reached their hands in, hoping that—

“Me, Dustin, and Max,” said Lucas. “So, Mike and El.”

El thought a very bad word in her head, and from Mike’s expression, he was doing the same. It was his idea, though. El could behave. “We may not have to split up,” she said, turning away from any of their faces.

The bus ride to the lighthouse took less time than El wanted.

She had never seen a lighthouse before, and had stupidly, so stupidly been picturing a small house awash with light, not a very tall house with a light at the top. She didn’t understand why Mike thought the lab was under the lighthouse, and she thought she could if just one of them would stop and explain it to her, but the idea of asking was so mortifying that El couldn’t bear it.

It didn’t matter. She would follow them in, and they would find Will, and Mike could be the hero with his brilliant plan.

“We can go in single file,” whispered Mike, voice low. None of them had spoken again, the entire bus ride, or even as they approached. El wished they would. But she didn’t know what to say, either.

“How will we know when the coast is clear?” asked Dustin.

“We won’t,” said Max, grimly. “But at least there’s no one standing outside. Double doors on three?”

El didn’t feel ready. But she didn’t think she would ever feel ready, so she nodded along with the rest of them, overly aware of the knife in her pocket.

“One, two—”

Mike went first, then Max, and they followed like bunny rabbits in a row, towards the double doors, which opened when Mike tested them—surprise number one—and which opened onto—

“An elevator,” said Lucas. “Look, the numbers go down instead of up. I bet that means it really is underground.”

“Let’s start from the bottom and work our way up?”

Lucas, Max, and Dustin all nodded. El remembered her first time in an elevator—no, it wouldn’t have been her real first time, but she remembered getting into an elevator with Joyce when they’d gone shopping. She’d started crying, like a baby, when the doors had closed with no way to explain why.

Even now, as the doors closed, El couldn’t stop shaking.

“Are you okay?” whispered Max. El blinked, startled, wondering for a wild second if Max was talking to someone else, but she wasn’t. They were all looking at her.

“Yes,” said El.

“Wait, hold on,” said Dustin, Dustin, really speaking to her, as the elevator started to move. “Was there an elevator like this in the other lab? In the Lenora lab?”

El hummed, feeling her feet rock back and forth. She didn’t like thinking about the Lenora lab, and even now, her brain protested against the memories, creeping in like upside-down vines—

“Oh my God, what’s going on?!”

“Run, run!”

“Number Eleven! Number Eleven!”

“Yes,” said El again. She’d taken the elevator to the bathtub. She’d opened the gate in Indiana—hadn’t she? The gate opened, but was El the one who’d—

The elevator dinged, before they could ask her any more questions.

It was cold, underground. El shivered, as they walked through the deserted hall, unnerved by the empty, echoy-ness of it all. Lucas wondered aloud if they couldn’t find some disguises. Dustin followed that up with “you mean like the Stormtroopers?” and even Max laughed. El was surely informed at some point what a stormtrooper was, but she’d forgotten or didn’t care, and remained vigilant for someone to see them.

Someone would eventually see them.

At the end of the hall, they reached a staircase and climbed up a level, starting the process over on another, mostly empty floor.

The biggest difference was that on this floor, all the doors were locked. El rested her hand against a door handle, cold to the touch and shivered, worse than before. None of the doors had windows, either.

“God, this is freaky,” whispered Lucas, when suddenly, a red light started flashing and a deep, wailing alarm started to screech. “Oh, shit!”

“Fuck, they must know someone snuck in—oh, fuck, fuck.”

“Okay,” said Mike, looking at them all wildly. “El and I will go up a level. Lucas, Dustin, Max—check the second half of this floor. Then up to, shit, whatever fourth from the bottom is, if you can.”

“Mike—”

But Mike was already moving, and El followed him, to the stairwell. Footsteps pounded from above them, but the stairs were empty, at least for now, as they went up a floor. He pulled her into the first door on the left, a cramped storage closet. El bolted it behind him.

They waited. The alarm continued to blare and whine, as Mike tapped his foot anxiously and checked his wristwatch. Thirty minutes, Mike told her, became an hour before the alarm switched off, just as suddenly as it started.

None of the footsteps had passed by their hiding place.

“Do you think they got caught?” El whispered, and Mike’s mouth was set into a thin line. El hoped not. But even though she remembered very little about the lab in Lenora, she remembered all of the cameras, and she remembered that it had been difficult to escape.

Mike unbolted the door and let it swing open, both of them holding their breath. It was still empty, though, and they carefully climbed out. “Seems like a lot of wasted space,” muttered Mike. “Let’s check this floor out and then keep going up.”

With no way to know if Lucas, Max, and Dustin had been found, El nodded, and they crept through the hallway together, checking empty rooms and more locked doors. “Wasted space,” El agreed, and she thought Mike almost smiled.

Back to the stairwell, they walked up again, and El wondered where they were, where were the bad men with guns. Did they already have the other three? Did they think that was all?

A bad feeling crept over her, as Mike opened the door to the next floor. Bad and cold, not on her outside, but inside, cold and afraid. 

El shivered.

They crept through another empty hall. Mike was nervous. El wasn’t sure how she knew, except she did, and if it were anyone else—even Dustin—El would have squeezed his hand, but she doubted Mike would want any reassurances from her.

She was also sure that he would’ve rather been with Dustin, Max, or Lucas, but at least they were on the same page about that.

The hallway forked left and right. “What do you think?” Mike asked quietly, and El was so certain he couldn’t be asking her opinion about this that she didn’t answer, mouth gaping in surprise. “Alright, we can just—”

“Left,” said El. “Let’s go left.”

“Okay,” said Mike, in the same voice Hopper and Jonathan used sometimes, but instead of feeling annoyed, El just wished they were with her instead.

They turned left, and El shivered again—cold, when had it gotten so cold? She was wearing a jacket—

El stumbled, blinking rapidly, and she might have imagined it, could almost have believed she imagined it, if she didn’t still feel the eerie chill. For less than a second, her arms had been skinny and bare. For less than a second, her arms had been Will’s.

“I feel him,” she whispered, and Mike stopped behind her. “I—”

She closed her eyes, trying to focus on cold arms, cold, bony arms that didn’t belong to her, tried reaching for a rabbity pulse that didn’t belong to her, like she once had in Lenora after not understanding what Joyce wanted her to do, after letting Will stay stuck for days longer than she could have, stupid, stupid.

What had she heard? What message had she intercepted?

“I am Will. I’m Will, and I ran—I ran from Rivendell.”

“I’m Will,” said El, feeling her cold arms and heartbeat. There was a different fear racing through her, desperate where El’s was slow; cold arms, cold head, cold feet, they’re going to get me, they’re going to kill me, run away, run away, run, run, runrunrunrunrun—

El gasped and her feet started to move, copying footsteps, she hoped, she hoped, that horrible, rabbit-like terror shooting into her legs like pins and needles. “El!” Mike hissed, eyes wide. “El, you can really sense him? Is it your powers?”

She couldn’t answer Mike and focus on Will’s frantic fear at the same time, but Mike followed her anyway, the two of them jogging down a narrowing hallway. El hadn’t felt fear like this in a long time; not even Will’s disappearance had pulled it out of her.

This was like dying, this was the lamp oasis and seeing Hooper scream and scream, so much fear that her eyes started to water.

They started passing doors, no, they’ll check, they’ll check everywhere, and El’s hands wandered into her hair, clasping at the roots to try to concentrate. “Whoa, holy shit—” Mike’s hands were on hers, an oddly comforting weight. “This was what Will did when the lab agent had you,” he said. “Tell me where to look, tell me what you’re seeing.”

El suppressed a helpless laugh, thinking of how Jonathan and Hopper and Joyce had asked her to use the crayons, everyone always trying to figure out what she was trying to say, and how the only person who never needed to ask was who they were looking for. “Looking for a place to hide,” she said, breathing faster. “Hide—no, not there, not the doors.”

“A place to hide,” Mike repeated. “A place to hide.”

El hoped that none of the bad men rounded the corner, because they were too exposed, nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, nowhere—

There was something shiny on the wall. El’s fingers glanced by it, an old handle, rusted down metal, barely indistinguishable from the rest of the pattern. A drop of blood spattered on the handle, before vanishing as she blinked her eyes and sucked in a sharp inhale of breath.

She pulled it.

Mike was behind her shoulder, as they leaned into the strange, narrow chasm—“It looks like it was once a trash chute, or something” Mike was murmuring, but El’s throat constricted before she could answer, and Mike made a choked noise as he saw the same thing.

“Oh God, Oh God.”

It was like El was looking at a photograph of herself or a funhouse mirror, and she didn’t know where she possessed the sense to stick her arm out to stop Mike from leaping into the hole towards Will, Will, who was a crumpled heap at the bottom, motionless and pale.

But it was unmistakably him.

“I won’t be able to pull you out,” said El, as Mike tried pushing past her. “You are too heavy. Help me down, and you can pull us both.”

Her voice came out calm. Will’s panic had fled, taking some of her own fear with it, and now the task ahead was clear: she extended both hands, and after a flurry of fumbling, Mike’s sweaty hands grasped hers.

Lowering down, the drop wasn’t very far, but it was dark. El squinted, trying to keep the same calm as her feet hit the floor, and Mike leaned down dangerously above them. “Will?” he called out. “Will?!”

El knelt down next to her brother. He was breathing; El watched his chest move slowly, waiting for the relief to flood in, but in the deepest part of her core, she’d never believed Will was dead. It would have killed her.

He looked dead, though.

His eyes were closed, face waxy and pale, matted blood on his lip and yellowing bruises poking out from the sheet-like gown, just like the gown El had once worn. El placed a shaky hand on his arm, wincing at the bones protruding through, slowly pulling him upright.

“Oh my God,” Mike kept saying, and El guessed what caught his attention, but it made her stomach cramp. She guided him over, lifting him up into Mike’s hands, light, he’s so light, and Mike took him away from her with too much force, letting out a yelp that might have been funny under any other circumstance.

Mike reached for her next, eyes still wide and wild. “His head,” Mike said, lifting El and pulling her out with a grunt. She grabbed the edge and heaved herself over the side. “His head.”

Will’s hair was shaved close to the scalp just like El’s had once been. And in the light, El’s stomach turned again—looking at Will’s forehead felt wrong, like he was totally naked—but it wasn’t just the hair, or the bony contours of his skull.

Anger hummed through El. Cuts and scrapes and yellow-purple bruises, just like the ones on his face, but worse were the burns. Mike’s hand hovered over a shiny, pink scab, where Will’s bangs should’ve been. Something hardened in El’s chest.

“Can you carry him?”

Mike didn’t respond at first. His face tilted towards Will, so sad that El momentarily felt struck, one hand still resting around Will’s wrist where he’d pulled him up. “He’s really here,” whispered Mike. “Do you think he’s been here this whole time? Could we have found him sooner?”

We wouldn’t have found him at all, without you, El thought, but she didn’t know how to tell Mike that. “He’s really here,” she agreed instead. “And so are we. We need to leave. And we need to find Lucas, Max, and Dustin. Can you carry him?”

Mike nodded jerkily and lifted Will’s limp body up, setting him on his back with an ease that made them both wince. El couldn’t tell if Will had gotten any taller at all; he looked shrunken child, bare feet dangling from the thin gown.

She couldn’t think about what Joyce and Jonathan would say. She couldn’t think about who had done this, who had touched him, who had hurt him, and why.

All El could do was take out the knife that the boys had bought from her and hold it out. When Lucas had handed it to her, El wasn’t sure she’d be able to use it. Now, that fear seemed silly.

“Let’s go,” she said. She could drive the knife into flesh. She welcomed the opportunity.  

Chapter Text

Batman, Jean Grey, Professor X, and Magneto. Their judge and jury, turning with expectant eyes to Jonathan, with Steve and Nancy by his side.

Jonathan suddenly wished he had a lawyer.

Nancy stepped up to the front.

“Jean Grey, and uh, Batman already heard this,” Nancy began. “But we’re looking for a boy named Will Byers. His younger brother. We think he was kidnapped by lab agents interested in using or obtaining his powers, somehow.”

“Teleporting,” added Steve. “And stuff.”

“What’s that got to do with us?” asked Professor X. He was the sturdier of the two boys, with lighter hair and more serious eyes. A wanna-be leader.

Nancy hesitated. “If you can help us…well, we think Will’s in a lot of trouble.”

“He probably is.”

“He’s only a kid,” said Steve. “Why wouldn’t you want to help him? It’s not like you have to go anywhere, but if you have an idea where he is—”

Magneto snorted. The skinnier of the two, with eyes that kept darting back and forth. “No skin off our back, huh? I think we know better than that.”

“We could be involving ourselves with something dangerous,” said Jean Grey mildly.

Batman frowned. “Not that dangerous to us,” she said, even as the other three didn’t look very convinced. “Come on, you don’t even want to try?”

This turned into a flurry of whispers which turned into a strange, unsettling staring contest. Nancy was gripping her fists, like the right magic words could convince them that this was worth their time. Worth whatever danger that Will had already been subjected to for months.

“Let’s vote,” said Professor X, and Jonathan wished he could be more surprised when only Batman raised her hand in favor of yes.

He didn’t like them. None of them, not even really Batman, not with the expressions they kept making, like they knew something Jonathan didn’t, and they thought they were above it all. Like Jonathan’s little brother being held captive somewhere wasn’t their problem, so it didn’t matter.

But it did matter.

It mattered a whole fucking lot.

“Please, listen to us—”

“Come on, he’s just a kid,” Steve was saying. Jonathan wondered if this was how El felt when she was angry. When she would scream with rage.

“You think this doesn’t concern you?” asked Jonathan, instead of all of that. He was done begging. He was done waxing poetry about how important Will was to them, how nice they would be if they helped. Nice. “These people targeted my sister, too, and now she’s lost her powers. They were stolen from her. They basically tortured them out of her.”

“That’s not possible,” said either Professor X or Magneto.

 Jonathan was fucking done.

“For your sake, I hope that’s true. I hope I’m wrong. Because once El wasn’t useful anymore, they turned to Will, and once Will isn’t useful anymore, they’ll be coming for you, too. Either to figure your powers or take them away from you, and I’d bet on the latter. You think you’re safe here? You think that these people will respect boundary lines and knock on the door? They’ll steal your powers or kill you.”

“Jonathan—"

Jonathan shook his head at Nancy. “It’s not our problem anymore. You didn’t see El when they took everything from her, I did. You didn’t see when Will was first teleporting and how they could fucking read each other’s mind and end up in alternate dimensions—I did. It’s scary. It’s even scarier if you don’t understand it, and these people seem hellbent on making sure every failed experiment ends up dead or in a glass jar somewhere.”

He stared at all four of them. “It does concern you. It’s happening, whether you want it to or not, and it’s going to end up on your front door unless you do something about it first. Don’t wait for them to decide you’re too much of a risk. Because if we could find you…”

Jonathan was suddenly exhausted, drained from not sleeping in a bed in what felt like a week, and the past six months like a rash that was never going to leave. “Fine,” he said. “Fine, we’ll just—”

But the four of them were looking at each other. Talking without talking, maybe, like Will and El had once been able to do.

Wary. Considering.

Jonathan refused to allow himself to believe anything had changed, was so sick of getting his hopes up only to have them crushed and swallowed each time.

“Let’s vote again,” interrupted Professor X, looking thoughtful. “Right?”

Batman put her hand in the air. Professor X followed.

Magneto’s arms stayed crossed. Jonathan, Steve, and Nancy stayed frozen, waiting, not daring to move, until slowly, Jean Grey rose her hand, too.

“You’re joking,” said Magneto flatly, as Batman let out a cheer. Jonathan didn’t know how he was supposed to react. “You think any good will come from this?”

“It might,” said Jean Grey. “And besides, Jonathan is right. This enemy could be after us, too. It’s prudent to act decisively, rather than wait around. A worthwhile cause.”

“Worthwhile,” scoffed Magneto. “Sounds like you’re trying to play a hero. And you should know better than anyone that we’re not built for that.”

“We could be,” said Batman, and Magneto didn’t appear to have a response to that. “Alright,” she said, victoriously, turning to the three interlopers. “Let’s go.”

“Go?” asked Steve blankly. “Go where?”

“Do you know where Will is?”

Jonathan still didn’t think he could speak. Despite being outside, the sun’s position hadn’t changed from the sky, and hadn’t it been night, in the first place, when they’d arrived? He got a headache, sometimes, when Will and El spent too much time talking back and forth with their telepathy. He threw up after teleporting and was deliriously wondering if this superpower shit just didn’t sit right with him, like his body rejected it outright.

Which raised another question. “And how can you help us, anyway?” asked Nancy. “You never answered that.”

“Come on,” said Batman. “We’ll show you. Well,” she amended. “I don’t think I’ll be helpful. But I can show you anyway. Do any of you speak another language?”

Nancy blinked. “I can speak some French,” she said, which was more than Jonathan could do, his own enrollment in French class be damned.

“Great,” said Batman. “I can’t at all. Go ahead and say something?”

“Uh…Je m'appelle Nancy, j'ai deux frères…ma couleur préférée est le violet…" 

“Is it?” Batman asked. “I would’ve guessed pink.” She laughed at Nancy’s face. “I’m joking. But, uh, I’ve got special ears. I can hear what people are really saying.” Batman smiled, a little. “That means I can translate things from other languages without much work at all.”

“Holy shit,” said Steve, and Batman looked oddly pleased.

It wasn’t made for battle the way that El and Will’s powers could be, but Jonathan bet there were a hundred uses for it, anyway. Although none of them very likely to help them find Will, unless he was stranded in Europe somewhere.

“You’ve already seen mine,” said Jean Grey, breaking the silence. “When you first arrived.”

“What are you talking about?”

Jean Grey smiled wanly. “When you walked around in circles for an hour? My ability is to create illusions. Trick the mind into seeing something that isn’t there. I can be very convincing.”

“All of us can be convincing,” said Professor X, and the four of them exchanged a small laugh. An inside joke, maybe. “Convincing enough that we can travel quickly and inconspicuously.”

“How?” asked Nancy, and three seconds later, there was a Winnebago in the middle of the courtyard.

Jonathan blinked, but the image didn’t disappear. A real van, with the paneling and printed W. “Where did that come from?”

“Best not to ask too many follow-ups,” said Magneto. Now that they’d voted, he seemed less irritated. Instead, he was handing them each a dark piece of fudgy—

“Is this a brownie?” asked Steve blankly. Then, “Oh my God, is this an—”

“We use many tools to help free the mind of worldly constraints,” said Magneto, sagely, taking a bite for himself. And honestly? Jonathan was more than happy to indulge.

Only Nancy held off, eyes wide like they were lunatics. “We can’t take drugs from strangers,” she hissed.

“But we’re going to get into a magic van with them?” asked Steve, already settling into one of the seats. “We can trust them, right, guys?”

Jonathan also felt more relaxed. The panels of the van felt real. Magneto was even playing music, fingers moving nimbly against a stringed instrument. “It’s called a lyre,” he said. “Sounds good, huh?”

“Yeah,” said Steve and Jonathan, in unison, as Nancy groaned.

“Whatever,” she said, putting the brownie in her mouth. It was kind of a large piece, for someone who hadn’t even smoked before, but Jonathan couldn’t quite manage to tell her that. “Whatever, whatever.”

“Great,” said Professor X. “Then let’s take a ride.”

The Winnebago was rising in the air. Jonathan had seen this in a movie once and viciously dampened every part of him that refused to believe it was possible; they were flying, they were flying, as Professor X spoke in a low, confident tone and Magneto played his lyre and Jean Grey sat behind the steering wheel, face pulled in concentration.

They were flying.

“We’ll make one stop along the way,” said Jean Grey. “It’ll be quick.”

“Where?” asked Professor X.

“Does it matter?” But she let out a sigh, as they all hovered there, lifted by a magic Jonathan had once thought impossible. He’d seen the impossible a thousand different ways. Was this really any different? He squeezed Nancy’s hand, and she squeezed back, eyes already a little glassy.

“My hometown,” said Jean Grey. “It’s a place called London, Ohio.”

//

Forty thousand feet above the Atlantic Ocean, four adults slept restlessly, tossing and turning as the flight attendants passed by. The dark blue water rippled, caught with streaks of white moonlight and low sweeping shadows, and each of them dreamt of shadows, in their own way, curling into the recesses of their minds.

Sue Sinclair replayed the last day she’d seen her husband, when she hadn’t known anything was wrong. It was a dream that replayed many times, seeing him in their kitchen before the call that Lucas was in the hospital, that Billy Hargrove had almost certainly tried to kill him with his car, and how many times Sue had worried about these small towns that they kept moving to, so far away from family or the churches she’d known growing up.

She’d been meaning to talk to Charles about it after the funeral, after Calvin and Claudia had been killed, afraid of losing some of their only friends—not that she wanted to move, Sue didn’t think she could do that to Erica or Lucas, but just to talk.

And then Charles had vanished. And then Erica and Lucas had kept so much from her, so many secrets, secrets she could hardly wrap her head around.

Sue thought about the little girl and boy who’d been by her house, the girl on pep squad who cheered at Lucas’s games and the boy who’d gone to school in Canada, except he’d actually been kidnapped and both of them had magical powers.

Powers, thought a voice in her dreams, casting deeper shadows onto the twins’ faces. Sue didn’t notice, still stuck in a rumination that might never end, the consequences of a lie that started almost twenty years ago, and oh, how lies like that can fester, don’t they? And you know about festering, Charles.

Beside her, Karen Wheeler’s head rocked back. She didn’t think about her husband at all, and in truth, wasn’t thinking very much about her youngest child. She should. She knew she should, even within the glow of her dream, where things were easy.

For Karen, easiness was unspeakable. For Karen, easiness was without her children, without anyone, just her own, gilded life and what might have been, no expectations.

Expectations, thought a voice in her dreams, the same voice in Sue’s dreams, nothing more than an observer, for now, as their plane floated a mile high. Expectations meant the blonde hair and diets, of course, of course, but other things, too; nobler things, like dyeing another child’s hair blonde and feeding her stories about cheering on the sidelines and being liked instead of loved.

The sidelines? Perhaps that is where she belongs, without any powers. Uninteresting.

Karen shifted in her seat, but she couldn’t put a name to it. She wouldn’t be able to put a name to it either, because the only person who could tell her couldn’t tell anyone anything, ha, ha, ha.  

Did Joyce Byers shift, too? No one knew that last name, in her new town, but she was tied to it, a noose around her neck as she dreamed about bodies stuffed with cotton left out in the sun to rot. Had Brenner done that? No, that wasn’t Brenner’s style. He hated things that smelled.

Joyce dreamed about Will’s body, about where he might be, the empty outline that haunted her, wide-eyed and pleading. Will always pleaded, in Joyce’s dreams, begging her to find him. He begged her to look harder, try harder, but Joyce could never reach him, as he flipped upside-down and wasted away.

The Will in her dreams was shrunken, sunken version of himself with angry eyes. Dream-Joyce saw the anger directed at her, wished she could do something more, wished she could be in control of herself, not let everything spill over into needing someone to touch her, weak, weak, what a weakness.

Joyce did not dream about her other children. The man named Jim Hopper did, though.

Hopper had voices in his head once, one in particular, interesting, one that had wanted to protect Will Byers and knew that his friends and family would fail him. Hopper didn’t dream about that, though, as the plane hummed and hovered.

His mind remembered a good day, without any fire, the day they’d gone to the mall and watched that movie and ate soft pretzels. The five of them, together, the way it was meant to be. Everything had gone wrong when they’d moved to Indiana. If only the gate hadn’t opened in Indiana, if only El hadn’t opened the gate at all—but no, it was useless thinking like that. Even in the sweet safety of his dream, Hopper knew that.

He'd driven all over the United States and never once to London, Ohio, never once to any town called Manchester, that he knew of, and there might not be any answers waiting for them.

In his dream, El flicked a piece of salt from the pretzel with her finger, unable to fling it, no powers to speak of. Foolishly, Hopper had been almost relieved. These powers were a burden, and he knew she just wanted to be normal, not that he had any idea what normal was anymore.

Hopper’s eyes twitched, before resettling on the pleasant: a flicked piece of salt, the smell of summer grass, birthday cake from last March, Jonathan cooking pancakes, a nostalgia for something that barely existed, maybe, but weren’t they allowed to think of nice things? Did they have to torture themselves even when they slept?

Of course, thought a voice that Hopper could not hear. Humans insist on torturing themselves, on creating prisons where none exist, and that no one can escape from.

Flight attendants began to prepare the next meal, working quietly in the sleeping darkness, thinking about the customs line and hotels in Ohio and where they’d be sent to next. One thought about the four strange Americans, an odd combination of three women and one man unlikely to be siblings, but neither of her coworkers wanted to gossip.

The plane would land in Cincinnati in a few hours. None of them would remember they’d dreamt at all when they woke up.

//

Max was so sure that they were going to get caught that she didn’t even mind how closely pressed together she, Lucas, and Dustin were until at least twenty minutes had passed with no sign of the siren stopping soon.

It was like boys wanted to smell as much as possible. “Do you own deodorant?”

“We’re going to have this conversation right now?”

“Guys,” Dustin hissed. “I think I hear footsteps.”

They quieted, all folded together into the first unlocked closet they’d found, behind rows of dusty jackets and a large square of tarp. It was also way too close to the actual alarm itself, head-poundingly loud, bright lights sharp and disorienting.

Footsteps passed by, but didn’t stop. And for the next thirty minutes, Max didn’t hear anything beyond the alarm and the sound of her own breathing, tight and shallow with nerves—and also the smallness of the room, constricting them together.

Maybe an hour after it started, the alarm stopped. They all blinked at the door.

“What do you think?” whispered Lucas, but Max was already pushing the door open, and they tumbled out onto the tile. “Jesus Christ.”

“Looks clear.”

“You didn’t know that before.”

“Guys,” said Dustin again, and Lucas and Max quieted. She’d almost forgotten—well, she hadn’t forgotten how much she’d liked spending time with him, but she had forgotten how easy it was. “Mike said to try to meet, what, two floors up?”

“Unless the alarm only stopped because Mike and El got caught,” said Lucas. “Shit, what if the lab agents here recognized El?”

Neither Dustin nor Max had an answer to that. Max had noticed her shaking, when they’d snuck in, but thought it was like her own nerves. She hadn’t even thought about El returning to a place that she’d once successfully escaped and felt immediately worse. Not that she’d been a good friend recently, anyway.

“Let’s meet up where we said we would,” said Max, instead of all of that. “And we’ll figure it out from there.”

They crept towards the staircase, feet echoing, and Max wondered why they’d only heard footsteps pass by their hiding place once. Weren’t these people total freaks on a mission? Or maybe Jack Lovett had been uniquely obsessive.

Up one floor, and then another, Max held her breath, waiting for the other shoe to drop. The agents had to be looking for them, right? They had—”

Something clattered to the floor.

“Shit,” Dustin hissed, but there was nowhere for them to hide. They could only dart behind a corner, hoping, praying—

Max ran face first into a squishy human being with the hardest, boniest head she’d felt in her life—motherfucking, shit—except, instead of a lab agent, she recognized the yelp that fell out of the skull with dizzying relief and only a little irritation. “Mike, do you ever look where you’re going?!”

“Holy shit—”

“Is that…?”

It took a few blinks for Max to understand who she was looking at, and why Lucas and Dustin had their jaws dropped open, stunned into a silence even worse than the one they’d crept through before.

“Will,” she whispered, and even after Mike explained his entire theory and even after they’d gotten on the plane and even after sneaking into the lab, she hadn’t really allowed herself to believe it. She’d really thought he was in Montauk, but he was here, right in front of her, and he looked—

“Is he alive?” asked Lucas.

“Yes,” said El. God, those bruises. Yellow and purple, and someone had shaved his head, too, shiny burn scars and rough, red patches of scrapes.

“Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ.”

They stayed there on the floor, the six of them together for the first time since lunch the day of the Dynasty premiere, when they all sat at the same table, and things weren’t perfect then—Max only had to think about Billy’s car and the fire, or the way Dustin and El couldn’t look each other in the eyes, but it was before The Fight, it was before they said any of it out loud.  

They stayed there, on the floor, and Max tentatively wrapped El’s hand in her own, El’s other hand stubbornly around Will’s. He was breathing. Max could see it now, could feel it, the faint, shallow flutters.

Mike was shaking. Max remembered the way his arm looked, snapped in half, the night of Will’s disappearance.

“You found him,” said Lucas quietly. “You really found him. He was really here.”

“Yeah,” said Mike, without anything else, and as nice as it was to finally be reconnected, it would be even nicer when they weren’t in the fucking lab.

So, Max stood up first, and met their pale, stricken faces with a determination that was mostly forced. “Let’s get out of here,” she said. “Let’s bring him home.”

Four nods met her. Something they could finally all agree on.

“The elevator would be easier than the stairs,” said Mike, easing Will onto his back, where he must have been carrying him. “Even though he doesn’t weigh very much.”

“Elevator is this way,” said Dustin. “Okay, yeah, here, like that—”

They formed a strange creature, limping towards the elevator, Max’s hand resting on the knife. Elevators made noises. If they climbed in the elevator, and it made a noise…no, she shouldn’t think that way, yet.

Max wished she were naïve enough to wonder how people could justify shit like this. “Almost there,” she said, under her breath. El looked like she was about to blast someone into outer space, eyes and mouth completely rigid. “Almost there.”

Elevator in sight, they climbed in through the doors, and Lucas pressed the button for the top. It’d be a miracle if they made it out. A miracle, a goddam miracle, as Max watched each floor light up, one by one—

“Fuck,” whispered Dustin. They were stopping second from the top. Which meant that—

The elevator doors opened. And a woman was standing right in front of them, laughing mid-conversation, in a suit jacket and holding a briefcase, and Max lunged forward, running out of the elevator and out of the way with Lucas and El hot on her heels.

“Hold on—”

They’d escaped from the woman before she could say anything or shoot them, but now they needed to get to the staircase, which was across the entire fucking hallway, Will’s head rolling back and forth as Mike tried to jog. “Be careful—”

“I am,” snapped Mike. “Here, what about that door?”

“Shit, it’s locked.”

“What’s the point of all of these doors if they’re just going to lock all of them?!”

Max saw another one to their right. “Turn here, turn here!”

Five people frantically running was much louder than their smaller groups—Mike had been right that they should split up—louder and they’d already been seen, hadn’t they? They’d already been spotted, so it was only a matter of time before they were caught.

Lucas reached the door first and flung it open.

A dozen lab agents looked up from their desks.

For a horrible, frozen second, no one said anything. Max’s heart was going to explode out of her chest, as she took a shaky step back, half-shielding Will with her body. El did the same on the other side, even though it didn’t matter. They could see him. They could see all of them.

One stood, off to the left, and Max saw Lucas reach into his pocket.  

We can’t stab all of them, Max thought wildly, even as her own sweaty hand found the knife the boys had bought. And they would never be able to run fast enough with Will still on Mike’s back.

“Let’s not do anything rash,” said the lab agent who’d stood, a man with a brown-grey beard. He probably thought they had guns. Or backup. Or any kind of plan at all. “We can talk this out.”

“Gary,” hissed one of the women beside him. “They have the patient with them.”

“I can see that, Linda.”

Gary. Linda. Max swallowed hard, hearing Dustin’s shallow breathing.

The one named Gary took a step forward. “Earlier, we’d thought the patient might’ve run away. We looked for him, but none of us could find him. We figured that he’d gotten away, and maybe that was for the best.”

“Gary,” hissed Linda, again, but the other man next to Gary gave a small nod and two more of the women at their desks averted their eyes.

“For the best,” echoed another lab agent, beside an oversized typewriter.

Max wished she had telepathy, because it sounded awfully like—well, it sounded like the alarm had gone off because Will had made a run for it, and that the lab agents had looked, but not very hard. It sounded like at least Gary and some others didn’t mind not being able to find him. It sounded like—

“You’ll let us go?” Mike asked the question, but they all must have been thinking it. And Gary didn’t say anything, but he sat back down at his desk, determinately flipping through a paper file.

The others followed, even Linda, slowly returning to their work. None looked up as Mike took a hesitant step forward, or when Lucas took a step, too.

“Come on,” Max murmured to El, the only one still frozen, like she couldn’t believe it. “Let’s get out of here.”

They crept forward, in slow motion, as the lab agents deliberately looked away. It’s going to be okay, thought Max. We’re actually going to get out of here, we’re actually— 

The door behind them slammed shut.

Everyone in the room jumped, not just Max, even as she was already calling herself stupid for believing them, but the agent closest to her looked just as surprised—Linda said shit out loud, a woman who didn’t look like the cursed very much, but then something else thumped to the floor. Mike let out a startled sound of surprise.

“Will?”

Will was crouched on the floor, feet firmly planted down, and Max realized with a swoop of relief that he’d woken up. His arms and legs were trembling, like he was too weak to fully support himself, but they could all carry him out, now.

El was whispering something, over and over, nonsense words in Will’s ear, like, “you’re here, you’re here,” and then Mike was bending down to pick him back up, “We’re going to get out of here, they’re letting us go.”

“Come on,” said Lucas, gently trying to help Mike, but Will stood up on his own.

Swaying, but on his feet, he faced the rest of the room. And Max finally realized that the lab agents were on their feet, backing away, yelling and stammering out things she couldn’t fully piece together.

“Just stay where you are!”

“Stay back!”

“Don’t come any closer!”

Max blinked, trying to make sense of it, making eye contact behind Will’s back with Dustin, who looked just as confused.

“They’re going to let us out,” Mike was saying, to Will, almost urgently. Why was everyone suddenly so amped up? “They’re going to let us out of here, they will.”

“He can’t hear you,” said El, bizarrely, and she sounded afraid, why was—

Max tasted something sour and metallic on her tongue. One of the lab agents was pointing a gun at them, hand shaking so violently Max had the ridiculous fear that he might shoot one of his own colleagues, why had the door closed?

“Please!” yelled Gary, none of the easy calm he’d possessed earlier, and then a drop of blood rolled down Will’s nose.

The room burst into flames.

Max felt the heat sear into her eyes, scream halfway out her mouth before realizing she wasn’t on fire, she wasn’t in the car with Billy or in the exploding lamp factory or in the underground tunnels, and she stuck out her hands wildly, reaching for Lucas or Dustin or El or Mike or—

“Will, stop! You have to stop!”

It was Mike’s voice, raising over the panicking shrieks and cries of pain. Lucas and Dustin were both frozen, eyes wide and barely breathing—Billy’s car, the Electric Lamp Oasis—they’d all almost been burned, seen people burn, but this was worse: the agents were on fire right in front of them.

Smoke couldn’t fill the room fast enough to obscure the melting hands and faces, clothes turning into ash, the smell wafting up—Max gagged, head in between her knees, and Will was in the center of it.

Will was causing them to burn somehow.

If they didn’t get out of the room, they might burn, too.

“Will, come on—”

“He can’t hear you!”

“What does that mean?” Mike spit out, at El, the two of them glaring at each other, but also shrinking in, away from the flames and closer to Will. Max pulled Lucas and Dustin closer in, too.

The lab agents were falling. Dying, or so injured that dying was inevitable. Through the smoke, there was one figure still standing—Linda, Max realized, frantically pulling on the shut door.

And Will started to walk towards her.

“Please,” cried Linda, even above the din of wails and collapsing flames. “Please, oh God, please.”

Max could only watch, horrified, as Will stepped closer, barely holding himself upright as the agents burned around him. Linda continued to pull desperately on the door, shaking with sobs.

A flash of something metallic jutted out from his sleeve, and Mike yelled “wait!” one more time before Will thrust his hand into Linda’s throat, a knife in his hand, a knife in his hand.

She gasped, a terrible, high-pitched wheeze that Max could hear even from the distance, as blood gurgled out of her throat. Will twisted the knife tighter, and the blood started gushing, dark wine red all over Linda’s shaking body and Will’s white gown.

“Holy shit,” whispered Dustin, but none of them could say anything else.

Linda fell to the floor, knife still in her throat, twitching. Will sunk back down to his knees, covered in blood, and closed his eyes before leaning back against the wall.

The fires extinguished. All of the lab agents were unrecognizably burned and, Max hoped, dead.

El went towards him first, arms carefully outstretched, and the other four hung back for a second to give them space. “He took my knife,” said Mike, which Max hadn’t been thinking about at all, brain still caught up in all of the flames and the screams for mercy. “I didn’t even notice.”

Max didn’t know what she could say, what any of them could say, as El brought Will back up to his feet and limped over to the door. She pulled on it, and it opened. “Come on,” she said, voice remarkably steady. “Let’s get out of here.”

Chapter Text

Lucas walked past the burned corpses, past the woman named Linda still twitching and bleeding on the floor, and opened the door. They weren’t far from the elevator.

Throat clogged with an emotion he couldn’t speak aloud, he nodded in the elevator’s direction. The smell of smoke and skin would fade, Lucas knew, but the memories had a funny way of sticking around. Will may as well have hit them with a blowtorch; Lucas’s brain couldn’t comprehend that the fire had appeared from the same magic of teleporting or telepathy.

In D&D, Wizards could cast fireballs. But Lucas had seen enough fire for a lifetime.

“Lucas?! Lucas, say something, Jesus Christ.”

“Call an ambulance!” 

He might be stuck watching Billy Hargrove’s car burn forever, at this rate, as Billy himself rasped out “please” and Lucas left him there to die.

Lucas blinked, and they were in the elevator. He blinked again, and they were walking out from underneath the lighthouse, in Manchester, California, towards the bus stop. Will was on Mike’s back, and now three of them were covered in blood.

“We can’t get on the bus,” he said, slowly and ridiculously, as they waited.

Mike shrugged, but his shoulders were tense. “What other option do we have?”

Dustin let out a small, hiccupping laugh, with badly disguised panic. “He set them on fire,” he said. “He set them on fire.”

And shanked a woman in the throat, thought Lucas, and the bus drove up with only two or three people pressed up against the windows.

The driver gave them a look but didn’t say anything. Maybe stranger things had come out of the lighthouse than someone covered in blood and burns.  

Burns, thought Lucas, delirious again as the bus began to drive. His brain couldn’t connect anything, couldn’t put the pieces together, or he’d start screaming, too, and they really didn’t have time for that.

Green, California wild passed by, a forest that looked unlike any of the forests Lucas knew from his other small towns; green, new growth reminding him that it was Spring. They’d made it past another Winter. A year ago, they’d been celebrating Will and El’s birthdays, and Lucas felt like he’d aged a couple of centuries since then, an old and withered high school fucking freshmen.

By the time the bus pulled up to the stop closest to their inn, Lucas was surprised they were all holding it together as well as they were. Then, the awkward limping, a pace so slow Lucas wanted to scream again.

“Check and see if anyone’s in the lobby,” Mike muttered.

They made it inside, miracle of all miracle’s, bananas and oranges and trail mix sitting on the table where they’d been left hours ago. Pajamas and open suitcases, and Will Hopper back from the dead.

“I guess we can take turns showering,” said Mike, when no one else said anything. Neither he nor El made any sign of moving. “You can go first.”

El gave him a withering stare. “I’m not leaving him.”

“I didn’t say that, did I? I said you can shower—”

Spinning on her foot, El pulled Will into the tiny bathroom with her and slammed the door. Lucas blinked after her, as Mike nearly tumbled forward, blood smeared all over his shirt. “What’s her problem?”

None of them answered him. And then, Max turned around—“I’m gonna go outside for a bit” and it was just Lucas, Dustin, and Mike, in the middle of the floor.

The water turned on.

Lucas sat on the edge of the couch, before remembering that it was where Mike was sleeping. Mike shrugged at him, still standing and staring at the closed bathroom door. “Doesn’t matter, does it?”

“You found him,” said Dustin. “You really found him.”

They sat and stood with that, the truth of what they’d found, after the hours in a car and plane and bus, and this inn around them, proof of Mike’s plan, and the running water in the bathroom proof of something else.

Lucas’s hand was shaking.

“What did they do to him?” he whispered, without meaning to. Dustin’s mouth snapped shut. And for a second, Mike’s face shuttered into something so sad Lucas almost couldn’t look at it, the past six months disappearing into the moment they’d been pulled down from Mike’s basement walls, terrified out of their minds.

He loved them both, he really did, why was it so hard—

“It doesn’t matter,” said Mike. “He’s back now. We’ll figure it out. We’ll fix it.”

“Sometimes things can’t be fixed,” said Dustin, voice harder than before, and he stalked outside, too, because he and Max could talk to each other, and Lucas was going to go crazy, he really was, he couldn’t stand it.

Just him and Mike.

“We can’t fly back, can we?” he asked. “Not like this.”

Mike’s eyes didn’t move from the carpeted floor. “We don’t know that yet,” he said. “We don’t know anything.”

Lucas allowed that. They’d know more once El returned from the bathroom, but the person who’d set the lab agents on fire couldn’t board a plane. They didn’t even have clothes for him, a problem that Lucas only realized once the running water stopped.

He could offer some extra pants and underwear. The least, really, that any of them could do, with Dustin outside and Mike still staring down motionlessly.

Fishing through his suitcase, Lucas knocked on the bathroom door. “El?” he called, hoping she’d be more receptive to him than the others. They’d become friends this year. Not that they hadn’t been before, but El was the only one who understood that sometimes assimilation was easier than annihilation. She understood that the path of least resistance didn’t always mean cowardice, it meant surviving another day. “I have some clothes.”

El opened the door, eyes red, but otherwise calm. “Thank you,” she said, as steam leaked from the bathroom. Lucas could just see Will’s limp body in the white tub. “I think we may need more supplies.”

“Supplies?” asked Lucas, but El had already shut the door. “Like, medical supplies? What kind?”

Mike was sitting on the floor now, face far away. “We should’ve found him sooner,” he murmured, and Lucas didn’t think he could deal with that. “El?” he called, knocking sharply. “What supplies?”

By the time Dustin and Max wandered back in, Lucas had made a list of additional things to acquire—gauze, antiseptic—steadfastly ignoring his own question to Mike about how the hell they planned on getting back to Hawkins with a bald fourteen—no, now fifteen-year-old covered in bruises and burns who couldn’t speak and recently set several people on fire.

“Maybe some rubbing alcohol?” Max suggested, leaning over Lucas’s shoulders. She wouldn’t look him in the eyes.

Then finally, El and Will emerged.

He looked too small in Lucas’s lent clothes, and without the hospital gown, the shaved head and cuts and scrapes were only more visible. Same, too, the extruding bones and thin wrists. El was wearing her own clothes, pink-brown-blonde hair wet, but also seemed too small, like she couldn’t figure out how to take up space anymore.

“Go ahead and shower,” said Lucas, to Mike, when none of them moved, and it took a few, long seconds before Mike moved, still smeered with blood.

An unconscious Will between them, it was Lucas, Dustin, El, and Max again, an uncomfortable silence despite everything that happened. Or maybe, because of everything that happened.

Lucas took the chance to look over Will’s condition, wincing. It wasn’t just the injuries, although those were bad; he’d always been on the small side, but now he was nearly emaciated. “How are we going to fly back?” asked Max, echoing Lucas’s question from earlier. “There’s no way.”

“What are you talking about?” asked El. “We’re not leaving him here.”

“That’s not what she said, is it?” snapped Dustin. “Just that it’s going to be hard to get on a plane like this. We have to be realistic.”

El’s mouth clicked  shut, and Lucas knew what they were all remembering. She wasn’t going to tell him off. She didn’t think she could. But Lucas was ticked off, now. “We’ll figure it out,” he said, echoing Mike.

“How? How, Lucas?”

“Oh, we’ll uh, scream at each other a bunch? I think that sounds really productive!”

“Fuck you,” said Dustin. “This is serious. You can’t just pretend like everything’s normal.”

Lucas wondered if his eyes were going to pop out of his skull. He could feel the remnants of a headache, a very old headache flaring up against his temples. “Pretend like everything is normal?”

“Guys,” said Max, but Lucas had been patient enough.

“You want to do this? You really want to do this?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Dustin. “All I know is that someone who moved on months ago isn’t going to be the most objective when it comes to taking the next step.”

“Moved on months ago?” Lucas repeated, and now he was angry. “I’m sorry that some of us don’t have the luxury of getting to have a breakdown, but—”

“The luxury?!”

Lucas wasn’t sure when he’d stood up, but he was facing Dustin and Max and yes, he knew what he said. He knew he meant it, too, and that he was so tired of not being the one allowed to lose it. His mom could lose it, Erica could lose it, Max and Dustin could ditch class and drop off the face of the Earth, but Lucas—and El, for that matter—couldn’t even complain in their heads.

And he was about to open his mouth and say it, but then the water running in the bathroom stopped and Mike stepped out, towel dripping wet with one of the most unimpressed expressions Lucas had ever seen. “Really?” he asked. “We’re doing this again?”

The arm holding up the towel was the crooked one, the one that the lab agents had broken. Lucas and Dustin both winced. “Mike—”

“Don’t bother,” said Mike, stalking over towards his suitcase and grabbing a shirt. “El, how’s he doing?”

El blinked at him. “The same,” she said, voice slightly hoarse.

“What do we need while we’re still here? More medical supplies? More food?”

“Should we stick around too long?” asked Max. “I mean, what if—what if someone from the lab sees what happened?”

“Who? They’re all dead.”

“Dustin,” said Lucas, without any heat. El was nearly as still as Will, just staring off blankly into space.

Mike rubbed his wet hair. “I think we can stay the night,” he said, eventually. “I’m exhausted. I think we all are. So, we can go into town if we need to and get more supplies.”

“We still don’t know how we’re going to get back, though.”

“I could drive,” said Lucas, mouth moving without his permission. Four heads swiveled towards him. The fifth stayed slumped over. “I have my learner’s permit. And I’ve actually taken driving classes.”

This was directed mostly at Max, who scowled. “A learner’s permit isn’t the same thing as a license,” she said. “I have my permit, too.”

“Have you practiced driving?”

“Have I—”

“No offense,” cut in Dustin. “But either of you driving is crazy. We can’t drive back to Hawkins, that’s like, a thousand miles.”

“Not a thousand.”

“Maybe we don’t need to drive to Hawkins,” said Mike, who’d previously complained about not turning fifteen until April. “Maybe we just need to buy ourselves some time. If Will wakes up by the time we get to, I don’t know, where’s another airport?”

Max hummed. “With a direct flight to Indianapolis? LAX, probably. You think we could try to drive to Los Angeles?”

“Better than driving to Hawkins.”

“Are there any train stations nearby?” asked Dustin. “Well, I don’t know if we could get on a train either, but there could be a train station in Los Angeles, too.”

El didn’t say anything, but her eyes flicked back and forth, arm still wrapped around Will’s chest. Lucas wasn’t sure if she didn’t care or didn’t know what LAX was, remembering abruptly that their flight to California had been her first flight ever.

They were friends, though. Lucas knew she’d ask him if she were really confused.

Eyelids heavy, they all started to get ready for bed. Lucas was too tired to shower, but he did anyway, all of them brushing their teeth and not speaking to each other in the cramped bathroom. And when it was time to sleep, El pulled Will into the bed with her and Max.

Max sent a flabbergasted expression in Lucas’s direction, which would normally find funny, but there was nothing funny about El not wanting to let him go, if he thought about it too hard, so he shrugged, and Max shrugged back at him.

It was a big-ish bed. They were three small-ish people.

Lucas didn’t want to fall asleep, knowing what was probably waiting for him. He hadn’t dreamed about fire in a long time, but he guessed that would change tonight.

//

If this was being stoned…

Nancy swallowed, a little thirsty and a little headachy, but she couldn’t deny feeling less anxious about apparently hovering in a magic van hundreds of feet up in the air. Hundreds? Thousands? Nancy couldn’t manage to see what was outside the window, nor did she want to.

Faith, trust, and pixie dust, right? Nancy fought the urge to giggle.

“So,” asked Steve, in Batman’s direction. “What’s with the codenames, anyway? You read a lot of comic books or something?”

“We already read everything else,” said Batman. “Have you ever been to a movie theater?”

“What? What kind of question is that?”

“He means yes,” said Nancy, cutting in. Batman swiveled to her. “There’s a movie theater in our hometown. There’s an even nicer one in Indianapolis with more screens.”

Steve kept blinking, like the idea that the four wilderness teens they’d found in a nearly abandoned building might not have ever been to the movies never occurred to him. Nancy still kept finding things El had never done—going through a car wash. Ice skating. Making peppermint bark.

“What movies do you watch?”

“Jonathan’s the movie guy,” said Nancy, pulling him from the bubble he’d created around himself. “He actually worked at a movie theater.”

“No way,” said Batman, eyes huge. “You must have seen a million movies. What are they like? Are the screens really that big?”

Jonathan threw a half-hearted glare in Nancy’s direction, but Nancy knew him; even worrying about Will, he could rattle off facts about movies.

And anyway, she had a few questions of her own that she wanted to ask. “London, Ohio,” she said, in Jean Grey’s direction. “I feel like I’ve heard of that place before.”

“You might be thinking of London, England,” said Magneto, dryly, and Nancy rolled her eyes.

“No, no,” she said. “Like I think I know someone who lived there. Or moved from there.”

“Maybe,” said Jean Grey. “I don’t remember it very well. None of us have strong memories from before.”

Before. It lingered in the air. And Nancy realized that they weren’t shutting her down. In fact, Jean Grey looked as though she expected the questions to continue. “Before?”

“Before we met each other,” said Jean Grey. “Before Val.”

“Who’s Val?

The four exchanged a look, even Batman falling away from a conversation about Animal House. “We’ve already made our choice,” said Professor X. “We’re here, aren’t we?”

This seemed to be directed at Magneto, whose arms were crossed. “We could turn around.”

“No, we can’t,” said Jean Grey. “If I’m to understand the series of events you described, then I believe that Val may be one of the women you’re looking for.”

“One of the women…?” asked Steve, sounding lost.

“Yes. Although you can’t seem to remember them, which would suggest some tampering of your memories—albeit poorly done. When you spoke, you spoke around two women, sending messages and disguised around your town, but every time you came close to speaking about them, you’d jump away.” Jean Grey’s eyes narrowed. “You might not even remember that I asked about them. Several times, in fact.”

Nancy didn’t. She racked her brains, everything from last summer and before, the lab agents, the searching—

“The Jean’s!” Jonathan gasped, bizarrely. “Oh my God, we—there were two women! They went by Jean!”

“Jean? Like the substitute nurse at the hospital?” Steve asked, and suddenly Nancy’s head hurt, too, visions of a woman with white hair—no, two women. Not the same, although they looked quite similar, and they looked like—

“There’s a substitute teacher at the school named Jean,” said Nancy, cold all over. “And the woman who sits in for Flo at the police station is named Jean.”

“Holy shit—”

“How did we forget?” Nancy turned to the four, who looked completely unsurprised. “How could we have forgotten something like that? These women, was one of them the one that took Will?”

“Probably,” said Magneto.

“But—”

Jean Grey raised her hands. “You told us your story,” she said. “Let us tell you ours. Or, part of ours. The women you knew as Jean are almost certainly Val, the woman who raised us, and Val’s sister. They aren’t twins, but apparently, they look a great deal alike.”

Val. Val’s sister. Nancy’s head was already swimming.

“They were probably keeping an eye on Will and this Eleven you mentioned,” said Professor X. “If they have powers. Val searches for kids who might have talents, like ours. That’s why she searched for the four of us. So, I’m sure she would’ve been interested.”

“Interested,” repeated Nancy. “If she’s the one who took him, why wasn’t Will with you?”

“Now that’s a better question,” said Magneto. “Val has been traveling more, the past couple of years. More of her trips, even though she doesn’t come back with anyone new, anymore. But if the sisters fought over him, you should hope Val won.”

“Why?”

“Val looks for people with powers to train them, make them stronger,” said Jean Grey. “Val’s sister looks for people with powers to kill them.”

The silence hung over them, sharp and numbing at the same time, Nancy’s brain still trying to grasp onto these women that she’d once known, once looked for, God, their own memories weren’t even safe?

“Why?” asked Steve again, much more strangled. Jonathan looked green.

“Val has powers, like us,” said Magneto. “Like your Will and El. Val’s sister doesn’t.”

“So, what, that means people without powers should die?” Jonathan clenched his fist and unclenched it. “No, it can’t be her. If anyone wanted Will or El dead…” His voice trailed off, but Nancy heard him. It would’ve been easy enough without the theatrics of a kidnapping.

And El didn’t have her powers anymore, anyway. A nugget of a theory started to build in the back of Nancy’s head, but she would focus on it later.

“You think if we find Val, that we’ll find Will?” she asked, focusing on the more pressing issue.

“I think it’s a good place to start.”

“Hold on,” said Steve, even as their strange vehicle began to dip, lowering them sooner than should’ve been possible. None of this should have been possible. “Powers. What kind of powers? Teleportation? Blowing things up? What exactly are you even doing now?”

Jean Grey glanced at them again, and Nancy could almost hear Magneto’s refrain of “now that’s a better question” from his smirk, so different from the composed line of Professor X’s mouth. It was funny. He might have fit right in at their school, behind the desk in Mock Trial or running cross country or anywhere else, if he cut his blond hair shorter.

“Welcome to London, Ohio,” she said, instead, and the bright vivid world appeared around them again, in grey and brown rooftops and no Atlantic Ocean in sight.

//

The first step was stealing a car.

After plotting and planning on his own for so many months, Mike should’ve been grateful to have the help, but he just stood there and sweated as Max promised that she would return with “something bitching.”

“I don’t want something bitching,” said Mike, but the only people in the room with him were El and Will, and Will was still sleeping.

“Bitching?”

“Never mind,” said Mike, wishing Lucas would hurry up in the bathroom. Dustin had gone with Max to steal a fucking car. “Did you finish eating? Do you think Will can eat anything?

El glared at him, from her spot on the bed. “You’re not my brother,” she said, bizarrely. “You’re not Will’s brother, either.”

“I know that—”

“He’s my brother,” said El. “I knew him first.”

Mike did not understand this girl. “Right, yeah, I know that. All I’m asking is if you ate, or if you think he could eat.”

Suddenly, El was standing, eyes red. “You can’t be his brother!”  

“I don’t want to be his fucking brother!”

The bathroom door opened, steam pouring out, before Mike could take it back. He could feel himself shaking, as El stared at him, up and down, with those wide, creepy eyes. Lucas walked out onto the carpet, frowning. “Is everything alright?”

“I’m just trying to help,” said Mike. “I’m sorry. I won’t do that anymore, will that make you happy? Would you have been happier if we didn’t come at all?”

“No,” said El, almost genuinely taken aback as Lucas mouthed “what is wrong with you?” “Of course not.”

“I’m just trying to help,” repeated Mike, still stuck on I don’t want to be his brother, I don’t want to be his brother, well, why don’t you want to be his brother, Mike? You’d be fine with being Lucas’s brother or Dustin’s brother, wouldn’t you? So, what’s the difference? 

Mike knew the difference.

“Great,” said Lucas. “You’re trying to help. We’re all trying to help. Were you going to shower?” He raised his eyebrows. “Or like, go for a walk? Burn off some steam?”

It was annoying to be coddled, after all the shit they’d put him through the day before, but Mike nodded jerkily and went into the bathroom. Closing the door, he could hear Lucas start to talk to El, something more comforting than Mike could ever come up with, as the key rattled.

He wasn’t really dirty. He’d already showered the blood off the night before.

Dustin’s voice followed, a second later. They’d found a car. And Mike knew better than to leave them alone, because the trouble always happened when they were alone, but faced with the prospect of several hours in a car together watching Lucas drive—well, Mike might as well enjoy the hot water while they had it.

He knew why they kept apologizing, and it didn’t matter, not really, not with everything else, but Mike let them. Maybe he shouldn’t. Maybe that was why they couldn’t get past The Fight.

Standing underneath the water, he remembered it, remembered the cold December and three months of Will’s disappearance, a Thanksgiving without him and Christmas around the corner. Hopper had just quit his job as sheriff.

“So like, did you and Max break up?” Mike had asked, which might have been his first mistake. Or maybe the mistake was hosting them all at his house to study for their biology final together, because it was going to be their hardest test, and Mike had recently discovered the immense freedom keeping his grades up resulted in.

No amount of fake happiness or play-pretend calm kept his parents at bay like making A’s. And Mike had never been a poor student, but with his mom’s attention fixated on his friends and Joyce and Hopper, every progress report meant less parental oversight.

It turned into a bit of a game. The more time Mike spent studying, the less time he spent pacing a hole on his floor, frantically sticking maps to the wall and wondering if he’d be smart enough to spot the sign when the time came.

Why he’d been so certain—well, that didn’t matter. Not in December. And not when Lucas turned to him, badly plastered expression of confidence. “We’re taking a break,” he’d said, and Mike should’ve called things off then, but he hadn’t.

They’d been reviewing the structure of animal and plant cells, Mike remembered, and he couldn’t remember how it had gotten started—no, that’s right, he thought grimly. Lucas had mentioned that his dad had been really good at quizzing him on random shit like this. And then worst of all—

“I miss him.”

“Oh, you miss him?” Dustin had responded, setting his pencil down. “You miss him, huh?”

“Yeah,” said Lucas, looking up from his own paper. “I do. Is that a problem?”

It had been bubbling up for weeks, months, even, and El was in the corner watching both of them warily. Max and Mike exchanged a look.

“Because it’s different for you.”

“Different?”

“Yeah, different,” said Dustin. “It’s different for you than me and Max—”

“Hey, don’t drag me into this—”

“Your dad—”

Lucas stood up suddenly. “You aren’t the only one who lost someone over the summer,” he said. “You’ve been acting like you are, but you’re not.”

A horrible silence filled Mike’s basement. It had been hovering over all of them, the thing no one wanted to say, as Dustin spent less and less time at school and walked around like a zombie when he did, the kind of thing that people didn’t always come back from. Mike wanted to shake him, sometimes, or tell him how sorry he was, but he couldn’t—

Dustin shoved him. It wasn’t hard, but Lucas took a stumbling step backwards anyway. “My mom is dead!” Dustin shouted. “My mom is dead, because you killed her!” And this time he pushed Lucas hard enough to send him straight into El, who shrieked, both of them falling to the floor.

“What the fuck?” said Max, as Mike felt his mouth hang open, standing a second too late to stop Max from hitting Dustin back. “My brother’s dead, and I’m not going around hitting people!”

“You didn’t even like him! This was my mom,” Mike had never seen Dustin look angrier. “This was my mom, and she’s dead, because—”

“I’m sorry!” El had pulled herself off the floor, looking a little wild. “Dustin, I’m sorry, I—”

“Sorry isn’t going to bring her back!”

“Please—”

Dustin pushed at her, again, as she came close, and then Max was grabbing Dustin’s arm and Lucas was in his face, all of them talking over each other.

Mike could only watch.

“Jesus Christ, calm the fuck down—”

“Don’t tell me to calm down—”

“Stop it—”

“She’s dead!” Dustin yelled again. “She’s dead, and it is worse, it’s worse than your stepbrother and it’s worse than your dad!”

“It doesn’t give you the right to hit people!” Lucas shouted back. “It doesn’t give you the right to throw a fucking temper tantrum!”

“Say that again!”

That was Mike’s third mistake, really, aside from not noticing how bad things had gotten and bringing them together in the first place, El and Max still wide-eyed in the fray as Dustin and Lucas grabbed onto each other, and Jesus Christ, fists were swinging now, and Mike stood up, as Max pulled at both of them, and El pleaded, trying to guide Lucas backwards.

“Please, don’t do this—”

“Get the fuck away from me—”

“Then you get the fuck away from me—”

“Guys—”

“Is all of this—” Mike had said, about to finish with really necessary, when suddenly a terrible pain ricocheted through his skull and he fell backwards, black spots around his eyes. His nose and eye throbbed.

“Ow,” he gasped, cheek against the floor. Someone was shouting, or still shouting, and someone else had their hands on his wet nose, almost as bad as when his arm had snapped in this exact room—

“Holy shit.”

“Mike, fuck, why were you—”

“You shouldn’t have—”

“This is both of your faults!” Max shouted, the one closest to him. Mike couldn’t keep his eyes open. He thought, deliriously, that neither Lucas or Dustin could’ve thrown a punch this good if they’d tried. “No, come on, this is a shitty time for a nap, Mike.”

That was the last thing Mike remembered. One second, he was on the floor in his basement, the next, he was blinking awake to his mom’s frantic expression, shining a flashlight in his eyes. “You boys are too old for wrestling like this!” she was saying, and Mike never corrected her.

One black eye from Dustin, leaving a layer of swollen purple and yellow and green near the top of his cheek for weeks. At least it helped return his reputation at school for being someone to stay away from. And Lucas had broken his nose.

“I’m so sorry,” Lucas had said, first to apologize, once everyone else had left. He’d lingered in Mike’s driveway, eyes wide and desperate. Mike’s nose was still pounding, underneath the bandages, but his mom had to pick up Nick before they could go to the doctor to have it reset. “You know I would never—”

“I know,” Mike had said. And then, done what he probably should’ve done earlier. “I miss your dad, too.”

Lucas’s head lowered. “I know it’s not the same,” he said. “Obviously. But I haven’t seen him in months, you know? So, he might…” His voice had trailed off. “It’s hard. And El’s been killing herself over it. And Billy…”

They never spoke about Billy. Not once, since after the giant funeral when Mike and his family had come across Lucas carrying Max away from the burning car, not once had either of them uttered Billy’s name. Mike was too much of a coward.

“We’re all doing all we can,” Mike had said, eventually. “But maybe we shouldn’t hang out all together, anymore.”

Lucas almost looked grateful. And he’d biked away, leaving Mike to his fucked-up face, dreading the same conversation with Dustin, for slightly different reasons. The thing was, Mike almost agreed with him. El did kill his mom. They’d all watched it happen. Mike wasn’t sure, if he were in the same place, that he could forgive and forget, either.

But that conversation would come later.

The water was getting cold. Mike stepped out of the shower, nothing but silence ringing in his ears. At least they weren’t fighting. In some ways, he thought, putting his shirt back on. This is worse.

“Not bad,” said Lucas, as they examined the car. A ’78 or ’79 Ford something with a pretty good something, and Mike nodded along, helping Will into the backseat. Since she was the only other one with a learner’s permit, Max would sit in the passenger’s seat next to their slightly shaking driver.

That left El, Dustin, Will, and Mike in the back, and Mike maneuvered himself into the middle, next to Dustin, leaving Will in between him and El, which hopefully meant a total barrier on communication.

“Okay,” said Lucas. “Okay, we can do this, right? We can do this.”

“Who’s we?” asked Max, but they were all in their seats. The luggage was packed. Will still hadn’t moved or spoken, eyes closed since they’d shut the day before after—

No. Mike didn’t want to think about the fire or the knife Will took from his pocket. Why should he care about the lab agents that had kidnapped Will?

“Will, stop! You have to stop!”

Mike shuddered, hoping Dustin didn’t notice as Lucas carefully eased the car from the gravel parking lot and onto the dirt road. A dirt road would be easier than the fucking highway. Will’s head rolled against Mike’s shoulder, still crusted with scabs.

“Please,” the woman had begged, before Will stuck the knife through her throat. “Please, oh God, please.”

Someone had left those bruises, though. Someone had held Will’s head and shaved it, and Mike’s fingernails dug into his palm, as Max fiddled with the radio. Maybe they wouldn’t have to speak to each other for the entire drive from Manchester to Los Angeles, ha, ha, ha.

Or Lucas would steer them headfirst into traffic first. Mike closed his eyes and pretended Will’s slack hand wasn’t resting against his own.

--

“Credit where credit’s due,” said Max, after a couple of hours. “You’re not that bad at this.”

Lucas, visibly gripping the steering wheel even from where Mike was sitting, barely nodded. They weren’t going very fast, but maybe that was a good thing. Madonna sang on the radio. No one sang along.

California wasn’t what Mike expected. Will didn’t miss it, might have a dad somewhere out here loafing around, a deadbeat like Max’s, but Mike kept wishing he could touch it deeper; the warm, dry sunlight and open spaces, nothing like Hawkins in its claustrophobic glory with someone always watching.

A truck like the one Hopper passed them in the left lane. Mike wondered where Hopper and Joyce had disappeared off to and if his mom had joined them. Did his dad know? Did his dad care?

“Jesus,” Lucas hissed, as another truck scooted up behind them.

“C’mon, if you want to switch—”

“I got it, I got it.”

Dustin had fallen asleep, drooling against the window. El’s arm had slipped from Will’s shoulders, that protective spot, eyes closed even as Madonna kept singing.

Eventually, they hit traffic, the sun blaring down. Mike yawned. Max played with the radio again, switching between three channels and a handful of static, Lucas’s arms stuck at 10 and 2.

Mike didn’t notice the other change until it was too late.

He’d gotten too warm and comfortable, less aware of the body breathing beside him, registering only faintly that the shallow, even breaths had sped up, just a little bit, that the heartbeat pressed against his own wrist had gotten quicker, too.

He’d gotten too comfortable, pressed against Will’s body, that when Will’s body suddenly moved, Mike could only gape and watch. “Will—”

Will was moving.

Will was fumbling with the latch to the trunk, and the trunk door flung open, and Will rolled out, into the road, where several cars honked, and Mike could only stare open-mouthed.

“What the fuck?!” shouted Max, as Lucas gaped, too, still gripping. Dustin and El blinked awake. “What the fuck?!”

“He—” Mike sputtered, watching Will rise to his feet and run, oh god, where was he running to, how was he running, they needed to catch him. “Lucas, turn around! Take the exit!”

“What?!”

“Take the exit,” Max repeated, as Mike unbuckled his seatbelt. “Take—Mike, don’t you fucking dare, Dustin, grab him!”

Dustin’s arm looped around Mike’s torso probably wasn’t enough to really stop him, not if he tried, as Mike hung halfway out the car. “We have to catch him!”

“Stay in the fucking car, Mike!”

“The exit,” said El, eyes wide. Lucas was cursing, maneuvering the car over as others honked, all of them still mostly stuck together as the sun beat down.

Mike watched Will’s thin figure disappear behind a straggly tree line, the exit closest to them if Lucas could change fucking lanes—

“I’m trying!” yelled Lucas, and Mike realized he’d spoken out loud. “You know if we get pulled over we’re really fucking screwed, right?!”

Their progress was agonizingly slow, as Lucas moved the car over to the right, so slow that they almost missed the exit entirely. Mike was completely focused on the horizon line, on trying not to panic, that he didn’t notice what the nearby sign said until El drew in a sharp breath.

“What?”

“Lenora,” said El. “This is Lenora.”

Mike whipped his head back. Lenora Hills was there, in faded white letters, a place he’d never envisioned himself visiting, let alone on a wild goose chase. “How did he recognize where we were?”

“I don’t know,” said El, biting her lip and staring at the approaching fork in the road. At least traffic was lighter off the highway. “He wanted to go home?”

This isn’t his home, Mike thought, but didn’t say. They were at the fork. And all four heads in the car swiveled towards El, who scowled at them.

“I didn’t leave the house very much,” she said, with an edge of irritation.

“There’s a church steeple to the right,” said Dustin, leaning nearly halfway out the window. Without all the tree cover of Hawkins, it was easier to see some of the buildings. “Right? That probably means it’s in town.”

“Right it is,” said Lucas, taking a horrendously wide turn. “Oh, shit—”

“We might have to end up looking for him on foot, anyway,” said Max, in an attempt at a comforting voice, while Mike could only think about the way he’d moved too slowly again, too slow to stop someone who weighed about ninety pounds, covered in burn marks. “Hey, this is kind of cute.”

Mike wouldn’t have said cute, but as the slightly dusty, widening streets of Lenora Hills, California came upon them, he could admit a small amount of charm; it was sunnier, at least, than Hawkins and with fewer hills, despite the name.

El’s face stayed pressed against the window. Mike wondered if she’d been outside enough to begin to know where to look.

“Let’s park at the church,” said Dustin. “They wouldn’t tow a car from a church, would they?”

“Heaven fucking forbid,” said Lucas, parking the car on a sharp angle, and the two of them almost smiled.

They climbed out, stretching and scanning the nearby street corners. Will might have gone anywhere. Or he might have collapsed and passed out by the highway, and they’d driven right past him.

A couple of kids wheeled by on bright, blue roller skates, drinking milkshakes under the sun.

“Welcome to Lenora,” said El, gravely, and Mike knew he wasn’t leaving without Will this time. Not again.

Chapter Text

London, Ohio was almost cute.

Hopper scoffed inwardly, cute, but he couldn’t deny the charm; the downtown was a small, just a couple of squares like Hawkins, with a clock tower looming over bright green trees and tidy houses.

He felt perilously stretched thin, from the bus ride to the airport in Other London, to the flight, to another airport and another bus ride, and here they finally were: no idea what day of the week it was, except it was probably still March, and grey-green mist dampened the neat rows of streetlights.

“So,” he exhaled, after they got off the bus with their harassed suitcases and coats. “Where first?”

“At least we don’t have as many hotels to choose from,” said Joyce. “Right? We should probably find a hotel, like we did before, and then start searching. For Charles.”

Sue didn’t answer at first, and Hopper knew this was nearly as ridiculous as their journey to England had been. Who was to say Charles Sinclair had been here at all? Or even if he had been, who was to say he hadn’t left?

“I remember some of our old spots,” said Sue eventually. “There’s a hotel on South Main. That’s the only place large enough.”

They gathered up their luggage and walked, two by two; Sue and Karen in front, and Hopper found himself next to Joyce in the back, eyebags visible and dark. Hopper was sure his looked just as bad.

Neither of them had done much beyond exchanging pleasantries since hooking up in Manchester—hooking up, God, like they were teenagers. Nothing about this felt like teenagers, except for how irresponsible it was.

“Good morning,” said Sue, when they walked up to the front desk. It might have been six in the evening. “Could we get a couple of rooms?”

It was a misty, little town. If Charles Sinclair was hiding somewhere, they didn’t have many buildings to search in. Hopper cracked his back and splashed some water on his face, elephant in the room steadfastly ignored. Karen was staying with him, this time.

“It’s cute, isn’t it?” said Karen, digging through her suitcase. Hopper just nodded.

The four of them took off, their strange little crew, through baby-narrow streets and bright foliage. A poster with colorful Easter eggs hung in one of the church windows.

Sue first took them to the street she and Charles and the kids had once lived on, lined with maples, the house as ordinary as any.

“We should knock on the door.”

“Knock? Why would we do that?”

They did end up knocking, or Karen did, anyway, rolling her eyes at the others, but no one answered.

Hopper’s stomach growled, and Sue glanced at him sideways. “There’s a café on the corner. Lucas loved—well, both the kids loved going there.”

That was how they ended up approaching the café in question, hungry and a little damp, and that was how Hopper ended up looking in the storefront window to make direct eye contact with someone who looked exactly like Steve Harrington.

The Steve-lookalike mouthed “Hopper?!” back at him, hair flopping over his face, and Hopper kept blinking, but the apparition didn’t vanish. In fact, it got stronger, and then Joyce was beside him exclaiming “Jonathan?!” because right, that was Jonathan sitting beside him, Jonathan and Nancy, both of their jaws dropped open.

Joyce and Karen were moving before Hopper could, into the café Sue had mentioned, as Sue tilted her head. “That’s Nancy Wheeler,” she said. “What’s Nancy Wheeler doing here?”

“A good question any time,” said Hopper distantly, although, his brain started to put some pieces together. He knew Jonathan had been traveling, much like he himself had. He knew that he and Joyce hadn’t done much to discourage it, and from what Karen said, this was the kid’s Spring Break.

Of course they were also looking for Will. And something, or someone, had led them to London, Ohio, too.

As Hopper walked through the door of the café, giving a polite wave to the visibly confused high schooler behind the counter, he realized that it wasn’t just the three of them; four other teenagers, in varying states of disarray, were warily watching the scene go down. One had even stood up. They looked familiar, in a way Hopper couldn’t quite place.

“What the hell are you doing here?!”

“Me?! What are you doing here?”

Jonathan and Nancy were each facing their mothers, each gearing up for a fight, and Hopper cleared his throat. “Do we want to have this conversation outside?” he said pointedly, and Nancy marched past him in a huff, as if he wasn’t standing there at all.

Karen was a second later, then Jonathan and Joyce, all raising their voices even as the café door closed behind them, leaving him with Sue Sinclair, Steve Harrington, and the four teenagers, long hair in knots and a mix of curiosity and vigilance.

Sue ordered a couple of sandwiches. Hopper waved his hand in hello, as the sound of shouts outside got louder.

“Should we…?” Steve gestured at the window, and Hopper didn’t want to, but he hadn’t done much of what he wanted for a while.

“Sure, sure.”

“Good to see you Chief,” said Steve, and Hopper scoffed.

“Not Chief anymore,” he said. Steve shrugged. “Who are your new friends?”

“Oh, that’s Batman,” said Steve. “And Jean Grey, Magneto, and Professor X.”

Hopper wasn’t sure how to respond to that, given the impressively stoic faces from the superheroes named, although the one named Magneto almost smirked. “Sure,” he said again. “Nice to meet you, uh, Batman.”

“Likewise,” chirped Batman, and Hopper accepted the sandwich from Sue Sinclair with a sigh, turning on his foot to get in the middle of a fight he didn’t belong in. Sue, Steve, and the other four followed, with varying degrees of interest.

“You actually thought I’d be touring colleges this week? Are you out of your mind?”

With their arms folded over, Karen and Nancy looked remarkably alike. “You are graduating in two months,” said Karen icily. “I thought it wasn’t entirely out of the realm of possibility that you were thinking about your future.”

“Who gives a shit about our future?” Nancy threw her hands up. “We’re looking for Will! Isn’t that exactly what you’re doing?”

“Did you find some kind of lead?” Joyce asked. “Is that why you’re together?”

“Now you want to talk about leads, Mom?! You want to talk about jetting off?”

The words devolved into shouts, once more: irresponsible followed by what were you thinking and names, too, El and Mike and your baby brother, did you even think—

“Yes, obviously, oh my God—”

“You have no higher ground on this, you know that, right?!”

“Maybe not having parents isn’t so bad,” commented one of the teenagers behind Hopper, one of the boys, and just about as Hopper wondered what that was supposed to mean, Karen looked up and let out an exaggerated gasp.

“I know you!” she said, sputtering. Jonathan, Nancy, and Joyce followed the direction of her stare, to the group of teenagers who suddenly looked much more alert. “I know you!”

“That’s highly unlikely,” said one of the boys, calmly, but Hopper smelled something metallic in the air. Something else that was familiar, something that reminded him of—

Karen kept shaking her head. “No, I know I do. I know I do. You look just like her. You have to be—you have to be Melissa’s daughter, don’t you? Melissa Buckley’s daughter. Robin.”

Robin Buckley. Hopper remembered now, the strange poems and the mysterious deaths they’d searched through last summer. The story of the Buckley’s, how they’d been investigated by that strange man named Murray, and the ultimate conclusion that if Robin Buckley had survived the car fire, that she’d long disappeared.

“You knew my mom?” whispered the one they’d called Batman, eyes wide, and then everyone was staring.

“I did,” said Karen. “We went to school together. Well,” Karen almost laughed. “When I knew her, she was Melissa Harvey. But I knew she married and had a baby girl and—we read about you.” She gestured to herself and Joyce, suddenly much paler. “In the newspaper. About the accident, but we didn’t think you were really—”

“Dead,” said Robin Buckley. “No, I’m not.”

“If you’re Robin…” said Joyce carefully. “Then is it possible—Kali? Kali Prasad?”

The girl they’d called Jean Grey raised a single eyebrow, the picture of an unimpressed teen, but Hopper detected that same cold, charge in the air that he’d felt before. “Who’s looking?”

“Oh my God,” said Karen. “Oh my God.”

“I don’t understand,” said Steve. “What do you mean you know them? You went—high school together? You’re from Hawkins?!”

They were all standing there, blocking the sidewalk, pieces of sunlight breaking through the green mist. Hopper felt dizzy. “Maybe we should sit down somewhere,” he said, but the conversation had continued on without him.

“I don’t remember Hawkins,” said Robin slowly. “But my mother’s name was Melissa. And my name is Robin.” She smiled, a little. “Get it? Batman and Robin.”

“There were two others that we never identified,” said Joyce, looking at the boys now. “At least two others from the poems, I’m sure there were more, but two—”

Jonathan held his hands up. “You knew there were other people out there with powers? You knew there were other people like El and Will?”

“Powers?” repeated Karen, at the same time Joyce said, “Like Will and El?”

“We didn’t know anything about powers,” said Hopper, although sure, they’d probably suspected it. If he could ever move past the giant chunk of memories missing in his brain, they might have their questions answered for them. That was why the four looked familiar; he didn’t know their faces, but they held themselves the same way El once had, a bundle of nerves and confidence at the same time. “We just knew there were kids missing, okay?”

“And we’re looking for my husband,” cut in Sue, still biting into her sandwich. “Well, we were looking for Will, but now we’re looking for my husband.”

“You think Mr. Sinclair is here?” asked Nancy.

“I grew up in London, Ohio,” said Kali Prasad. “It was meant to be a quick stop. Then we were going to continue to search for Will, as well.”

“You know where he is?!”

“Mom,” said Jonathan. “We don’t, but we—”

“I’m so sorry,” said another voice, the red-faced high schooler who’d been behind the counter. “My manager says that you’re not allowed to stand in front of the doors if you aren’t going to buy anything.”

“Excuse me, I did buy something.”

“We’ll move,” said Hopper, pulling Joyce and Karen’s shoulders, even as they protested. “Look, we’re all just talking over each other anyway, and we should probably set a few things straight—”

“We?” They’d all followed, more or less, into the small park behind the café with benches, but now Jonathan looked enraged. “Who’s we, exactly? It hasn’t been we for a long fucking time, or else we—” He gestured to himself, Nancy, and Steve. “Would know where the hell you disappeared to and maybe you would know where we came from!”

“What do you mean, where you came from?”

“Jonathan, I’m sorry, I know I haven’t been fair to you.” Joyce sounded near tears. “I know I haven’t been there for you, but we’re here now, and we—”

“I don’t want to talk about this right now,” said Jonathan. “God, just tell us your stupid names already. Magneto. Professor X. You already know everything about us.”

Magneto and Professor X had been watching the arguments like a pendulum, less guarded than before, and almost approaching amused. The electric charge had died from the air, and Hopper wondered if this meant he didn’t have to worry about getting blasted into space.

“I guess the gig is up,” said Magneto, finally. “My name is Eddie. His name is Jason. So, you said you were looking for us, too?”

//

El remembered Lenora, mostly in pieces of dreams, behind window glass or from the seat of a car, on her way to and from Mama’s. Sometimes, she remembered it barefoot and terrified, the blurry days before she had a name, when this town was the largest thing she’d ever known.

Now, Lucas, Max, Mike, and Dustin were waiting. They needed to find Will, and Will had run towards Lenora, which meant El had to remember better.

“Maybe we could start with your old house,” suggested Lucas, and El could hear the doubt creeping in. He was right to doubt. El didn’t know where their old house was.

“It was not close to a church,” murmured El. “They did not go to church.”

She started to walk, each footstep less certain than the last. None of the houses were close to the church or the post office, up on the left, because the houses were on a different type of street with circles at the end and trees and mailboxes.

El never went to the post office. She never went to the grocery store, with Joyce or Jonathan, or even to the green-tiled milkshake parlor on the right, where a bundle of kids their age with big ponytails and lip gloss sucked on the straws and laughed.

Jonathan brought them home for her, sometimes. Strawberry for El, banana for Will, and she swallowed down the lump in her throat.

“Where’s the school?” asked Mike. “You biked to school, right?”

“I did not go to school,” said El. “I did not leave the house or go to school or ride bikes anywhere.”

She hated how she sounded, a stupid little girl, and barely liked the flash of concern on Max’s face either—concern, Max shouldn’t be concerned about El. “The library might have a town map,” said Dustin, probably happy that El spent all of her time locked up so she couldn’t kill people’s mothers, but then a whiff of something else, something else, stuck in El’s nose, and she stopped.

A memory, almost entirely forgotten: Hot sand underneath her feet. The yellow sun and the bright blue sky, going on forever, her stomach rumbling and desperate. She knew the smell now. Garbage, in big boxes, the kind in back alleys with children running who didn’t want to be seen.

She veered to the left and took them behind the storefronts. Nothing was shiny back here, and she thought she saw Lucas gag, but Will wouldn’t wander out in the open. He was too scared.

El had been scared once, too. She might always be scared. The smell worsened.

“Jesus, it reeks.”

“Bet it’s better than under your bed.”

On the other end, sand and gravel. Off and away from the main streets, El could breathe easier, remembering the hot sun on her back and letting her feet lead. She tried to remember the girl who’d hid in the metal yard, not recognizing the car scraps or what a car was. She remembered the dumpsters, smelling worse in the sun, worse outside of restaurants that filled with food, food—

She froze, looking up. But the sign was still there. “S-U-R-F-E-R,” she mouthed, just like she had in November of 1983. “B-O-Y.” Boy, like a man but smaller.

Hope flooded through her as she raced for the back door, turning it with a crank as the other four hissed and fretted, following behind her, “can’t we go through the front?” and “do you think Will is here?!”

Hope in the form of a boy-man in the kitchen, hair even longer than when he’d waved goodbye to them from the driveway as they traded one town for another.

“Argyle,” she said, and the four voices bickering behind her stopped.

“Hey there, secret-Byers,” said Argyle, as if he wasn’t surprised to see them there at all. “I didn’t know you were visiting!”

El burst into tears.

--

After two slices of pizza each, and some of her favorite soda, El let it all spill out: Will had been missing for six months, Joyce and Hopper and Jonathan had searched all over the country without any clues, Mike—and she did call out Mike by name, who seemed surprised, or maybe just alarmed by the tears—had figured out where he might be, they’d flown—“In the air!” hiccuped El, as Argyle patted her arm.

She told him that they’d found Will, they’d tracked him down, but he was hurt and wasn’t thinking straight and had jumped out of their car and made a run for it, “and we need your help,” El finished. “We don’t know where he is.”

It was better, letting it out instead of keeping it in, even though Dustin was looking away uncomfortably and Lucas looked like he pitied her again. Pity, pity. Argyle wouldn’t pity her, though. He would know what to do.

“So, Little Byers is missing again, huh?” Argyle exhaled. “How come Jonathan hasn’t called?”

“He might not graduate,” said El, which was only a half-answer, but Argyle nodded anyway.

“Eat up,” he said, pointing to each of them. “Especially you. You’re crazy skinny.”

“This has pineapple on it,” said Mike, whose pizza slices remained untouched. He kept squinting at Argyle, like there was something he was trying to figure out. “That’s gross.”

Max rolled her eyes and shoved it at him. “Don’t be a baby.”

“I’m not—”

“Then we can go and look around,” said Argyle. “I’d make a few calls, but, you know.” El nodded. She remembered what happened to Rocky, when she’d fled here for safety so long ago. Even though Papa was supposed to be dead, she had a bad feeling in her stomach ever since seeing Will’s shaved head.

After Mike reluctantly ate a slice, they followed him to his van—the van, yes, El remembered. She wished Jonathan were here. She wished Will were, too.

“Keep your eyes peeled,” instructed Argyle, cranking the van to life before they could buckle their seatbelts, and Max toppled on top of Lucas, elbows flying.

“Jesus—”

“Hold on to something that isn’t me, come on—”

Argyle swung the van wide, taking them onto the street, and El relaxed into the window seat. Argyle knew where their old house was. He knew hiding places. He’d known Will longer than any of them, and he’d helped look for Will the first time, too, when there had been a fake body behind a dumpster.

“Alright, Little Byers!” shouted Argyle, taking another turn. “Where did you disappear off to?”

Mike looked green. Dustin had ended up tangled in his seat belt, but it was Lucas who said, “I keep forgetting who Byers is,” and El nodded slowly. She knew what he meant.

“I think they don’t mind being Hopper,” she said. “Will didn’t care. Jonathan had…mixed up feelings.”

“Mixed up feelings,” said Max. “Yeah, I know the ones—hold on.” She leaned over El to better look out the window. “Look at all the bikes in that yard.”

She was pointing at a worn-down house on the corner, with grey, dusty walls and three bikes haphazardly piled on top of each other, like they’d been discarded in a rush, two blue and one pink. It made El think of the way they all piled their bikes in front of Mike’s house. It made El think of Will.

“Oh, shit,” said Argyle. “You know whose house that is? That’s Andy O’Neil’s house.”

“Andy,” repeated El. “Andy was friends with Will.”

“He sure was,” said Argyle, swinging towards the cracked driveway. Mike’s hands were clenched. Dustin and Lucas looked serious again, as Argyle parked the van, and they carefully climbed out.

“What, do we just knock on the door?”

El was already walking towards it. If Will was behind the door…well, before last summer, El would have just knocked it down. Maybe learning some patience wasn’t a bad thing.

She knocked and then Mike joined her, both their fists pounding on the faded wood, for what felt like several minutes before the latch unlocked.

“What the fuck?” said the person inside. The first thing El noticed was the boy’s dangling earring and bright, strawberry pink sweater. “You got a death wish?”

“Where’s Will?”

“Where’s—hey, who said you could come inside?”

But with all five pushing their way in, with Argyle behind them, Andy—if this was Andy—folded. And there were three people sitting around the table, two boys and a girl, and one of the boys was Will.

//

As Dustin lingered in the hallway, Mike and El both surged towards Will at the same time, elbowing past each other to reach the table first.

“Whoa, whoa,” said the one with the earring, Andy, Dustin’s brain supplied. “Who the fuck are you?”

Better friends than you were, thought Dustin listlessly, even as he stood still. He remembered now, what Will had told them: that none of his Lenora friends had visited him in the hospital or gone to the movies together once everything was over, and as angry as Dustin was—sometimes, he was afraid there was only anger in the very center of him now, a thick, brittle core of it—as angry as Dustin was, he knew his own friends would never do that to him.

The boy and girl flanking Will stood.

The girl, pardon Dustin’s French, had gigantic tits—like, melons, really and truly, held up by two skinny straps, with a bright blue bellybutton piercing, Jesus Christ. The boy was much less interesting, until he turned to the right, and Dustin noticed the wine stain birthmark stretching over half his face.

A birthmark wasn’t as good as boobs, though. Dustin would attest to that any day of the week.

“Friends of Will’s,” said Mike stiffly, when El didn’t respond.

“Sure,” said Andy, crossing his arms. “Friends, alright. From where, fucktown, Indiana?”

“It’s actually right outside of fucktown,” said Max, crossing her own arms and meeting Andy with a familiar, leveling glare. “Why, you know it?”

The girl with the boobs let out a nervous giggle. “Oh my God,” she said. “So you’re like, really from Indiana?”

“Like, really,” said Max, pitching her voice to match the girl’s.

“That’s totally tubular,” said the girl, without a hint of irony, and Dustin barely managed to avoid choking on his own laugh. He made eye contact with Lucas, for a perilously close second. “I’m Laura. This is Greg, and that’s Andy, and we’re so sad that Will has like, leukemia or whatever, but isn’t it, like, amazing that he’s here?”

Dustin coughed, knowing that if he looked to closely at Mike’s face, he would let out a horrible giggle of his own. This was so bizarre.

“Leukemia,” said El, potentially the worst of them to be dealing with this. “Will does not have leukemia.”

With his shaved head and gaunt bones, it wasn’t a ridiculous assumption. Will was awake, too, which was new, but he wasn’t making eye contact with them. Just staring, float away into space, with a few slow blinks.

“Hey, Argyle,” said Lucas. “We left our car by the Presbyterian church. It’s got all of our stuff in it. Do you think you get it for us?”

“You drove here?” asked Greg, with the birthmark.

Lucas stared at him, just as level. “What’s it to you?”

“Sure,” said Argyle, looking as though he’d rather not deal with whatever was happening either. Dustin fought the urge to ask to go with him. “I can do that.”

“This is so crazy,” said Laura, with the boobs, when Argyle left, leaving them in the stillness of Andy’s front hallway without any words. “Like, totally crazy.”

“You’re very insightful, Laura,” said Andy. Greg shoved his arm. “I mean it. Anyway, friends of Will’s, were you the ones who left him in the alley behind the roller rink for dead, or was that like, a crazy coincidence?”

“What?” Mike, this time. “We’ve been trying to find him, and now that we’ve found him, we’d like to go—”

“Find him? How’d you lose him?”

“This is Will we’re talking about,” said Greg. “Getting lost is sort of his specialty.”

The temperature in the room turned colder. Dustin saw the smile slide off of Laura’s face, and knew, without a shadow of doubt, that if El had her powers, the kid named Greg would be flat on his ass already. Partly because she’d lunged at him.

“What the fuck—”

“Take it back!” shouted El. “Take it back!”

Mike was the one pulling her off of him, another familiar and bizarre sight, especially when Mike also looked a little like he wanted to punch Greg in the face.

“Will frowned,” whispered Max, to both him and Lucas. “Look at Will’s face. I think he can hear what they’re saying.”

Dustin scanned—okay, he could see it a little, a small amount of movement where there’d been none. But El wasn’t finished. “I know you,” she said, scathingly. “I know you were his friends and then you left, you stopped, you were supposed to be there for him after—after everything, and you never came by the house, you never talked to him at school, and I did! We did!”

“Who the fuck are you to say any of that?” Andy lifted Greg from where he’d fallen and got into El’s face just as close. “We went to his fucking funeral.”

Cold air, again. Funerals. Dustin knew, in theory, that Will had a funeral, because he knew the story from everyone else. But now, funerals meant something different. Funerals with no bodies, not even fake ones, because the skin and bones had melted into indistinguishable ash.

“We were in seventh grade,” Andy continued. “Seventh fucking grade, and we were the last people to see him alive, and then a fucking funeral? Do you have any idea what that’s like?”

“He wasn’t dead,” said El, quietly, and this time Greg rolled his eyes.

“You think we knew that then? No, we go to his funeral, which his own family doesn’t show up at, by the way, and cry like a bunch of fucking babies, and think that’s it, right? Like there’s some goddam pervert who murdered our best friend, no one wants to talk about it, and then he shows up back at school, like a ghost!”

“Did your friends visit, too?” Dustin had asked, after hearing the story of Will falling into the well, which of course, was really the Upside Down.

“I think I was hard to be friends with.”

“No way,” Mike had said. “You were missing for ten days, and what, they didn’t even come by the hospital?”

“But he wasn’t dead,” insisted El, again, even as Dustin started to slowly put the pieces together. “He was in the hospital, and you didn’t even visit—”

“None of us knew he was in the hospital!” yelled Andy. “I found out what happened from the fucking newspaper!”

Laura sniffed. “It was so sad,” she said. “And at school, he never wanted to talk to us, and then it was like, he just totally stopped coming to school at all.”

“You knew where he lived,” said Mike. “You couldn’t have just gone to his house?”

“Where the chief of police answered the phone half the time?” Andy scoffed. “My dad said he moved in because they were afraid the guy who tried to kill him would try again.”

“Your dad’s a moron.”

“Yeah? Go tell that to his face,” said Andy, gesturing over his shoulder, and Dustin realized with a start that there was an unconscious man draped over the sofa, beer gut belly hanging out.

“Think he’ll wake up?”

“Hope not,” said Andy, voice bright with false cheer. “Or he moved in because he wanted to fuck Will’s mom. It doesn’t really matter. Then they fucked off to Indiana, without saying goodbye, and next thing I know, I find your friend looking like a ghost again without anyone in sight. I guess that makes me a bad person, right? Picking him up and bringing him back here?”

Dustin didn’t know what to say. Everything about Will’s story, about Will and El, to some extent, hinged on the other, impossible things that chased them. Possessions. Bleeding noses and teleportation. A body coming back from the dead without any explanation would probably freak him out, too.

Will’s face was pinched in something almost resembling confusion, but he was still only halfway present. Mike and El had taken a step back, less visibly angry, and even Max had lowered her arms. Everyone waited for someone else to say something, until Laura clapped her hands together.

“We can turn this into a party!” she said. “Oh my God, wouldn’t that be fun? I’ve got some rum at my house, and my parents won’t be back until the end of the week!”

Dustin tried not to watch her breasts swish together as she talked and privately thought that if Will ingested any alcohol, he might actually die.

“Maybe not the best idea, babe,” said Greg. “Since they want to fuck off back to Indiana so badly.”

“Maybe not the best idea, babe,” mimicked Andy, and then suddenly Greg was the one glaring at him. “What? You don’t want some rum? You don’t want to party?”

“Fuck off, Andy.”

“No, you fuck off, you’re the one who brought her—”

“Why wouldn’t I want to see Will?” wondered Laura aloud, absently patting his shiny, bald head, as Greg and Andy started shoving each other. Dustin swore he saw Will’s eyes twitch.

Mike and El seemed frozen, eyes flickering between the strange argument, and Dustin felt Lucas take a step forward too, like he also wasn’t sure if they should interfere; it was like some alternate reality they’d been flung into, where they were just watching some TV characters’ lives.

“Look, I don’t know what your problem is.”

“I think you do, Greggy boy—”

“God, you’re such a fucking faggot—”

Laura screamed, flinching away from Will’s head like she’d been burned—and she had been burned, Dustin realized, watching in slight horror as she desperately waved three pink fingers. A tiny pool of blood dripped out of Will’s nose, the precursor to something much worse if they didn’t get out.

Greg and Andy stopped. Laura was still shaking her hands. “What the hell happened?” Greg started to ask, but then a groan sounded from the living room, and Andy’s eyes widened in true alarm, the first Dustin had seen.

“You need to go.”

“What?” asked El, but Greg and Laura were already beelining for the stairs. “Where are you—”

“Who’s wearing motherfucking whore perfume in my goddam house?!”

“Holy shit,” whispered Max, eyes wide, and they started to run upstairs too, Mike and El scooping up Will as they went, Andy pale and following behind them as the man—Andy’s dad—started to mumble louder, words slurred together that Dustin had never heard combined in his life.

By the time they’d reconnected in what had to be Andy’s room, Lucas and Max were both shaking, mouths agape, and Andy gave them a tight smile. “He’s charming when he’s sober, too,” he said. “You know, like Will’s dad. Hey, I bet he took the police chief moving in with his family really well, huh?”

For all Dustin knew, Will’s dad was dead.

Well, he probably wasn’t dead.

Then, fucking finally, the car they’d stolen from Manchester creaked into the driveway. Argyle had come back. “I think that’s our cue.”

“Yeah, alright,” said Andy, shoving his hands in his pockets.

Laura sniffed. “I’m going to miss you,” she said, hugging Will tightly. “Take medicine for the leukemia, okay? Then you have to visit again. All of you,” she said, even cradling her burned hand. “All of you can visit, whenever you want.”

Downstairs, Andy’s dad let out another intelligible shout, and they all winced. “You go first,” said Andy bluntly, to Lucas. “Then the girls.”

“Jesus Christ,” said Lucas, but he eased himself out the window, sliding down and helping El next.

Laura was writing her phone number on Mike’s arm with a Sharpie, lucky sonofabitch. Greg’s arms were crossed. Andy let out a laugh that sounded a little sad, and he finally turned to face Will.

“Can you actually call, this time?” asked Andy. “Or, I don’t know, pick up a fucking pen?”

Will stared at him and slowly nodded, the first indication he could really hear what was happening—if burning people didn’t count—and Andy nodded back.

Greg didn’t say anything. And maybe Will expected that, too, because he finally allowed himself to be led away, into Argyle’s waiting van, where Lucas and El had already loaded their luggage in.

Dustin watched Andy’s face from the window, as Greg turned away and Laura’s breasts were—Jesus Christ, the thought, cheeks burning. He coughed when Max sent him a quizzical look. “Where are we going?”

“We can go back to my place,” said Argyle. “And then, I don’t know, where do you want to go?”

“We were trying to get to the airport,” said Mike. “LAX.”

“To fly back to Hawkins?”

They nodded. Then Will shook his head. “Will?”

“What is it?” asked Mike, leaning up to the front. “You don’t want to fly?” Dustin wasn’t sure if Will even could fly, no matter if they gave it some more time, but Will shook his head again, pointing out the window.

“What?”

Will grabbed the wheel.

In retrospect, maybe Dustin shouldn’t have been as surprised, but as he collided into Lucas’s shoulder and felt Mike’s elbow dig into his stomach, all he could think was, Jesus fucking Christ, why’d we let him sit in the fucking front seat?

“Not cool, man!” Argyle yelped, wrestling control back. “Not—oh, shit, you want to go here? This is where you want to go?”

Dustin looked up, groaning. At first, he thought they were in the middle of a field, but upon El’s sharp inhale, he recognized the contours of a house, overgrown with weeds and falling apart. “Home,” said El.

“Jesus Christ, this looks like their house in Hawkins,” muttered Lucas, as the van shuttered to a stop.

Will climbed over them and opened the door, stumbling onto the knee-high grass and limping towards the door, or where the door should’ve been, since it had fallen off its hinges.

“It’s been abandoned since you all left,” said Argyle, climbing out to join him. “Nothing in there, Little Byers. We can get some stuff back at my place.”

But Will was determined, and so the rest of them followed after, through the weeds and grass to the dilapidated door frame. “Mike looks about five seconds from a freakout,” murmured Max, in Dustin’s ear, and it was true. He did. On the other hand, as Will nearly ate shit in the dusty living room—

“No one’s been in here in years.”

“Will, come on,” said El. “There’s nothing here. We took everything.”

They had. It was totally ransacked, just bits and pieces of garbage on the splintered floorboards. A cockroach scuttled by, and Lucas and Max shuddered.

“Will,” said Mike, again, but Will had shifted his focus to the wall, where an old clock was hanging. Barely tall enough to reach for it, his fingers grazed the wood before pulling it down.

The clock’s hands started moving backwards.

“What the—”

An electric hum ticked Dustin’s nostrils, the low vibration of someone using powers, the vibration that meant fire and blood, but Will walked towards the kitchen, holding the clock, and a box of pizza unfurled from thin air.

A box of pizza, and then napkins, piled on the counter, and then Will was opening the refrigerator door, blank only seconds ago and now covered in pictures and magnets, “What the fuck?” said Dustin, blankly, stupidly, all of them gaping as Will pulled a can of Coke out of the fridge.

The fridge was empty. The fridge shouldn’t have even been on, but Will drained the Coke can in one go, greedily, before wiping his mouth and moving into the hallway, electric hum following him.

Dustin’s feet followed, too, and the others must have as well, but all he could focus on was the dust and grime peeling off the walls, colors brightening into the spaces left behind. Will took a turn into one of the rooms on the right, and posters peeled in reverse direction, bedspread fluffing and folding itself, as Will started to dig through the top drawer of a dresser that hadn’t been there before.

“This is Jonathan’s room,” said Argyle. “This is Jonathan’s room from two fucking years ago, holy shit.”

“How is that possible?” whispered Max, looking over at El, but El’s eyes were glued forward. Dustin didn’t understand either. He thought he knew what their powers looked like, and he even though he knew how dangerous they really were—who else really knew, except him?

But as Will pulled a plastic sandwich bag filled with something green, tossing it in Argyle’s direction—“holy shit”—it was reality itself splintering off from Will, strongest closest to him, and seemingly unchanged the farther they got.

He moved to the closet next, digging through the clothes appearing from nowhere in his hands: a few flannels, a pair of jeans, a bright yellow knit beanie that Will stuck over his shaved head. El hesitantly picked up one of the discarded flannels, running the material against her own fingers. It didn’t disappear.

“This is crazy,” said Lucas, which was so much of an understatement that Dustin let out a nervous laugh. Mike’s eyes were trained on the clock.

Into the next room, and they all just kept following, nothing to do but watch as Will carefully propped the clock against him and held his hands out, ready to touch the bright silver safe that appeared a few seconds later, hands already twisting the knob.

“He said he didn’t know the combination,” said El, almost sounding put-out, as Will twisted the dial.

It opened. And instead of a bag of weed, Will pulled out a wad of cash, held together with rubber bands, brandishing in their direction with the ghost of a smile on his face.

“Jeeee-sus,” said Argyle. “Jeeeee-sus.”

“Is that enough?” asked Max. “For gas, or whatever else we need?”

This isn’t real, thought Dustin, a little hopelessly. This was money from a safe from two-years ago, probably a safe that still had money that was currently sitting in Hawkins. This broke every rule of time travel or time manipulation that every author he’d read had contemplated, and as Will’s eyes closed, the electric hum turned into murmurs.

Murmurs, voices, Dustin wasn’t sure what he’d call it. Shadows, dancing in the living room, lit by sunlight that that didn’t exist; phantoms opening the front door, phantoms setting an invisible kitchen table, phantoms that Dustin almost recognized.

“We’ll get back to them,” said Mike. He’d put his hand on Will’s shoulder. “Do you want to stay here? For the night? Then we can hit the road tomorrow.”

The question might have been directed at all of them. “Stay here?” asked Max. “Stay where?”

Two couches unfolded from the air, along with a pile of blankets. From the kitchen, the pizza boxes doubled, soda and popcorn joining them, and the house settled, finally, into something that felt less splintered. Will wanted to stay. Dustin wasn’t sure that arguing would do them much good.

The clock hands stopped. And when Will opened his eyes, Dustin swore they were shining with blood.

“At least the pizza doesn’t taste two years old,” said Lucas, as they ate together on the floor.

Argyle came back from around the corner, where he’d tried calling Jonathan. “No answer,” he said, remarkably relaxed. “I tried, uh, what’s that girl’s name? The one Jonathan talks about?”

“Nancy?”

“Oh, yeah. Nancy. Man, you would not believe—”

“Please stop talking,” said Mike, sounding pained. Max almost giggled. 

“They must still be in Montauk. We’ll just have to keep trying.”

After the Coke and two bites of pizza, Will had his eyes closed again, leaning up against the wall. With all of their luggage, it was a little like the world’s weirdest slumber party.

As they all eventually settled down, phantoms quiet, Dustin couldn’t fully get his hands to stop shaking. This was different. He’d thought he’d seen the worst of it, fell to sleep every night with his mom’s screams ringing in his ears. Either yesterday or two days ago, Will had burned a dozen lab agents alive.

But this was different. And as Dustin finally fell into an uneasy sleep, he wondered about Jonathan and Nancy and Steve in Montauk, and wherever Joyce and Hopper had gone, and also Hawkins, whoever was still there waiting for them.

Not my mom, thought Dustin distantly. Hawkins, Hawkins. But someone must be.

Chapter Text

It wasn’t until the fifth day of Erica Sinclair’s most boring Spring Break ever that things started to get a little interesting.

Normally, Erica might tag along with Tina to the beach, even though the beaches were still cold in March, but she and Tina weren’t on speaking terms, anymore, and Erica didn’t think they were traveling, anyway.

Ms. Yvonne had to get a job, after Mr. Calvin died. Erica had almost asked her own mother if she would have to get a job, since her dad had vanished without a trace, but thought better of it. Maybe they could all keep a few secrets, with Erica’s being that she’d watched Tina’s dad die and would never, ever tell her about it.

She thought her family might go on their own trip, but then Lucas told them all about how he and his dumbass friends were going to Iowa, and then right before school ended for the week, Erica’s mom vanished.

Emergency, quiche-related business.

I should probably be more concerned about this, she’d thought, waking up on Saturday to an empty house, again.

Instead, Erica had ordered as much Chinese food as she wanted with the credit card left taped to the fridge and stayed up until two in the morning for three nights in a row, no one to tell her otherwise. No one to bitch about what shows they wanted to watch, or about her eating an entire pint of ice cream for breakfast. And she might have continued in the same, glorious fashion if Chrissy Cunningham hadn’t knocked on her door.

“Hi Erica,” said Chrissy, very nicely. Mike Wheeler’s little brother was perched on her shoulder, and she looked slightly frazzled. “My name is Chrissy.”

“I know.”

“Oh,” said Chrissy, probably one of the most well-known high schoolers in Hawkins, even to someone like Erica in sixth grade. “Is your mom home?”

“No.”

“Oh,” said Chrissy again. “Do you think I could leave her a message?”

“You can try,” said Erica. “But she’s been missing since Friday. “

Chrissy’s eyes widened. “Friday?” she said. “Friday? Wait, missing? And you don’t know where she is? And you’ve been here totally alone?!”

See, this was why Erica hadn’t told anyone. She’d survived being possessed by a demon; how hard was it to keep herself alive for a week? But something in Chrissy’s expression made her sigh and open the door wider. Pizza and ice cream was starting to get old. “Why were you looking for her?”

“To be honest,” said Chrissy. “I think there’s something very strange going on.”

“Welcome to Hawkins.”

“What?”

“Nothing,” said Erica. “How come you’re not at the beach? Did you get stuck watching Nick again?”

Chrissy smiled tiredly. “That’s what I’m worried about,” she said. “I’m in charge of him, and I think he’s getting a cold—” As if on cue, Nick sneezed. “But I haven’t been able to reach Karen, and Nancy isn’t around, either, and I don’t think Mike is actually in Iowa, and I don’t know where Mr. Wheeler is staying, either—”

“Not in Iowa? What do you mean?”

“Well,” said Chrissy carefully. “It may sound crazy, but I don’t actually think they flew to Iowa. I drove them to the airport, you know, because Mike asked me to, and we got there crazy early, so I’m thinking man, it sucks that the flights to Iowa are so early, but when I checked, just to see what flight number they were on, well—”

“There weren’t any,” finished Erica, and Chrissy nodded.

“No flights out of Indianapolis to Iowa, or even Wisconsin or Minnesota. I guess they could’ve flown into Illinois, but there was a flight to Des Moines at like, two. So I guess I just don’t know why they needed to get to the airport that early.”

Erica should’ve known. Lucas had sounded pretty convincing, complaining about the upcoming trip, but there was no way Dustin and El were spending any time together that they didn’t have to. Actually, the only reason Erica could think of was—

“Will,” she said. “I bet they’re looking for Will.”

On one hand, part of her hoped they were looking for her dad—but no, Erica didn’t think Lucas would be able to keep that from her. And as for her mom and Mrs. Wheeler, Erica had no idea.

“Will?” asked Chrissy. “Will Hopper? I thought he went to like, art school in Paris or something.”

September was so many months ago. Things were already blurry, ever since July and the fire, ever since she’d gotten a letter from her dad that now lived under her bed. If Lucas had gotten a letter too, he’d never told her.

Then, Will was gone. Will, the only other person she could talk to about being possessed, since she sure as hell wasn’t talking to the police chief about it. He’d been kidnapped from Mike’s basement, right in front of her brother and Dustin.

Was it her place to include more people into the secret’s fold? Then again, Chrissy probably wouldn’t believe her anyway. “Do you believe in superpowers?” Erica asked, bluntly, and Chrissy gave her a slow, blue-eyeshadowed blink.

“Like Batman?”

Batman didn’t have superpowers. “Kind of,” said Erica, and then she told Chrissy everything she knew.

--

“Wow,” said Chrissy, after an hour had passed and they’d both gotten up a few times to get soda and then some sliced bananas for Nick, playing obliviously as Erica tried to remember if she’d forgotten anything. Brought into the fray late herself, she was sure Lucas knew stuff that she didn’t, but the important highlights had been hit.

Namely, a missing child with superpowers and five freakishly invested friends probably meant that they’d gone looking for him, either with a clue or not. And the whole damn family was the same way, which probably meant that her mom and Mrs. Wheeler had joined the search, leaving Erica to twiddle her thumbs at home eating ice cream.

“When you say possessed by a demon, do you mean that like, literally? Or is that a metaphor?”

“Literally,” said Erica. “That’s not super important, though. The important part is that I have no idea where they’ve even been looking for Will, so I don’t know where they are.”

Chrissy sipped on her soda. “Possessed by a demon,” she said, and like, okay, maybe Erica had focused too much on the wrong thing. “Like Creepy Creel.”

“Excuse me?”

“Creepy Creel,” repeated Chrissy. “It’s an old Hawkins ghost story. You haven’t heard of him?”

“No,” said Erica, although for some reason, the name Creel did scratch a small itch in the back of her brain. “Nobody ever tells me anything.”

“It’s kind of old school,” said Chrissy, resting her chin on her hand. “Like no one really believes it, you know? But basically, it’s like, if you say his name three times in a mirror—or, hold on, actually you might have to be blindfolded—”

“Blindfolded and looking in a mirror?”

Chrissy waved her hand. “Basically, this guy shoots his entire family and then himself. All four dead. Horrible, isn’t it?”

“And this actually happened?”

Chrissy nodded. “Years ago. People used to say the house was haunted, too, but then they tore it down. But yeah, people obviously wondered, you know, why someone would do something like that, and they said he’d been possessed by a demon.”

Creel, Creel. “Hold on,” said Erica. “I’m going to grab something from my room.”

Taking the stairs two at a time, she flung open her door and knelt down, digging underneath her bed for something she’d reread and reread before accepting that she wasn’t going to get any additional answers.

Dear Erica,

I’m sorry for leaving like this. If I could see another option, I would take it, but too much has already happened. My smart, sweet girl – I know you’ll have Copernicus and Descartes and Henri Briggs mastered in no time.

Keep reading and keep studying, and if you have to investigate like over the summer summer, be sure to creel around more carefully this time.

I love you so much,

Dad

“Creel around,” read Erica aloud. Her dad was such a careful writer. She’d assumed that he’d been in a rush, just like…

“Hey Chrissy,” said Erica, jogging down the stairs. “What was the Creel guy’s name?

“His name? I think the dad was Victor Creel.”

“What about the kids?”

“The kids?” asked Chrissy, as Nick gurgled and dropped a piece of banana. He didn’t seem sick. “I don’t know.”

Her dad mentioned three mathematicians, and like okay, sure, everyone knew Copernicus and Descartes, but Erica hadn’t known who Henri Briggs was—and it turned out that it was another typo, after she’d caved and looked it up at the library when she was sure nobody would see her. There was a mathematician named Henry Briggs, though.

Two mistakes, then. “That’s okay,” said Erica. “Do you want to go to the laundromat with me?”

Chrissy blinked. “Sure,” she said. “It beats trying to find Mr. Wheeler’s phone number.”

--

On their way over, Chrissy talked about all the babysitting jobs she had set up over the week, and how Nick was the best-behaved kid she’d ever sat for, “So, like, I’m probably overreacting, because nothing is ever wrong with this kid.”

They didn’t talk about possessions or superpowers or kids with superpowers that her parents might be searching for. Erica didn’t mind.

Standing in front of the laundromat, Erica didn’t think she’d ever guess there had been a haunted house there, first, but Chrissy had said the murder-suicide was a long time ago. “I never thought of it as anything except a terrible tragedy,” said Chrissy. “Creepy Creel, you know. Just so sad that the whole family died.”

She paused, shifting from one foot to the other. Nick let out another gurgle. “It kind of reminds me of the fire at the Electric Lamp Oasis,” she said. “You were there, weren’t you?”

If the deaths of the Creel family were anything like the fire at the lamp oasis, they were in serious trouble. “Yeah,” said Erica. “Me and my brother. We were helping unload boxes.”

The lie was hollow and heavy.

“So sad,” repeated Chrissy.

“Do you believe me?”

Chrissy shifted her feet again. “I don’t know,” she said eventually. “I’m not really sure that I want to. Stuff like that isn’t supposed to happen, you know? I always thought that people were the real monsters.”

There was something frank and sad in her voice that Erica didn’t know how to ask about. And it was partly true, wasn’t it? Plenty of people were awful even without being possessed.

“Henry Creel,” she said quietly, testing the sound of the name together. Could that have been one of the kids killed? Killed by his own father? And with the father dead, too, how could they look for him? “What does my dad know about you?”  

//

Robin thought that Jonathan and his mother would be happier to see each other, considering everything she’d heard two days before, but she supposed even people who loved each other very much might argue. The same could be said for Nancy and her mother, who were shouting even louder, but Robin found the tense silence between the mother and son more disconcerting.

Part of that, of course, was that Robin could hear through their silence.

They were a strange group. Robin knew that she was strange, she and her siblings, but their strangeness was as much of a shield as it was a lesson; get closer, the others dared, all three of them itching to prove themselves. That’s not how they’d say it, thought Robin. But it’s the truth.

And it was true that Nancy’s mother with the blonde hair had known Robin’s mother, oh, how very strange, because there was her mother, who’d died, and Val, who’d killed her, but Val had molded them out of clay. Val had protected them.

Val might have taken Will, thought Robin. She wondered if Will was truthful, like Nancy and Steve, or a little bit of a liar, like his brother. She didn’t think Jonathan meant to lie, but to her, it didn’t really matter what people wanted or didn’t want.

Robin would hear them, anyway.

“Montauk?!”

“And where exactly did you fly in from?”

This was boring. Robin knew that they’d come from home, which the others called Montauk, and that the adults had flown in from far away, another country, the kind Robin ached to travel or visit, but they hadn’t found Will. Of course, they hadn’t. Val would never get on an airplane, and Robin doubted that she trusted her own powers in such a strange place, although she would certainly never admit it.

Much more interesting was the man sitting just out of eyesight, at a table, with a newspaper in front of his face. Robin couldn’t see him, but she could hear him, and she made eye contact with Kali—who nodded in return—before slipping away.

Nancy, Steve, and Jonathan had asked what Robin’s powers were. She’d given them a demonstration, what’s your favorite color, Nancy? Do you even know? But of course, the ability to translate languages wasn’t what made even her own siblings shift away from her sometimes.

The man tensed as she approached but slowly lowered the newspaper. It was a copy of the Hawkins Post. “Hello,” said Robin. “What’s your name?”

He hesitated. “You don’t already know?” he asked, and Robin heard, ‘My name is Charles Sinclair.’

“Mr. Sinclair,” she said, and to his credit, Charles Sinclair did not flinch. “I think your wife has been very worried about you.”

His head dropped down. “You’re probably right,” he said. “Can I ask who I have the pleasure of speaking with?”

‘Are you with Val? Does Val know you’re here? Is Val following you?’

Sometimes, it was difficult to know what she should answer; what he was asking on the surface? Or, should Robin help him cut to the chase? Both, maybe.

“My name is Robin,” said Robin, only missing her superhero name a little bit. She could prove herself a superhero later. “Val isn’t with us.”

“Can you read my mind?”

‘Can you read my mind?’

“Not quite,” said Robin. “Why don’t you tell me why you’re here? Then, I’ll tell you what we’re doing here.”

Charles raised his head, eyes level with her. “Alright,” he said. “I’ve been trying to send clues to the two people over there—Joyce and Jim Hopper—because I suspect I know where their son Will is. I put fake crossword puzzles in the newspaper, and I thought—well, I thought that the message was being received by them, but now I’m not so sure. Then I found out my wife had left the country with them, and now my son and his friends have also left Hawkins.”

True, more or less. “You know where Will is?” she asked. “We’re looking for him, too.”

“But Val already got him.”

“We’re not Val,” said Robin. “We’re right, aren’t we? Val was interested. If he’s got powers like his brother was saying, he’s totally her type.”

Charles grimaced. “If you want to put it like that.”

“Okay, where is he? No, hold on. Tell me when you tell the others. I want to know how you know Val. She’s not very friendly.”

He didn’t open his mouth. And sometimes, although it took much more energy, Robin could hear the truth even when a person said nothing at all. “You’re outnumbered,” she said. “We’re just trying to help, too.”

“I know,” said Charles Sinclair, and finally stood, folding up the newspaper and setting it down. “I’m not sure my presence will be welcomed.”

‘I left my wife and children behind, and I’d do it again to protect them, but I’m afraid I’ll never be able to make it up to them.’

“You’ll make it up to them,” said Robin, and he let out a startled, unhappy laugh. “When you help us find Will.”

--

His wife screamed when she saw him.

Robin detached from his side and found Kali, Jason, and Eddie, listening to his apologies with a careful ear. Being sorry was a funny thing. All Robin kept hearing was that he’d do it again.

“So, this is the mysterious Charles Sinclair,” said Eddie. “What do you think?”

“He thought Val was with us,” said Robin. “That’s partially why he was staying back.”

Kali hummed. “So, he doesn’t know Val personally?”

“Her reputation precedes her,” said Jason. “And she wouldn’t like that we were here, either. These people are a complete mess.” He scoffed. “No wonder it was so easy to kidnap that kid. It sounds like they never know where any of their kids are.”

“Well, Val is the expert on that,” said Eddie, and they all watched the scene unfold, surely thinking the same thing: Val had kidnapped each of them, after all, but she didn’t usually leave anyone behind who might go looking for them.

And if she did, well, Val’s sister had a reputation for cleaning up messes.

Karen Wheeler had known her name, though. Hers and Kali’s. It was interesting when things slipped through the cracks.

“I think we should all go somewhere a little more private,” said Charles Sinclair, after his wife disentangled from his arms. She looked furious. She looked over the moon with joy. “And then I’ll tell you what I should have told you a long time ago.”

“I know a place,” said Kali. She smiled a little, at the apprehensive look sent their way. “Trust is a two-way street, Mr. Sinclair.”

They walked.

The conversation reminded Robin of waves; not that they went outside, much, but she’d stood by the coastline before, watching the waves rise up and down the sandy shore. Wetting her feet. The conversation ebbed and flowed like that, low now, as everyone thought many thoughts and didn’t say anything out loud.

Fear. Distrust. Hope. When emotions ran strong, Robin could hear them, too.

Robin wasn’t sure what type of building they were in—the types of things often evaded her, of buildings, but also cars and appliances and towns. She could sit there, mesmerized for hours, by the scope of variety. But she trusted Kali, who had grown up in London, Ohio, after all, and they all sat around, waiting for Mr. Sinclair to begin.

Such a strange number, twelve. First four, then seven, then eleven, and now twelve people, all gathered together, and the one named Steve Harrington sat down next to her and Eddie.

“Hello,” said Eddie. “How can we help you?”

Steve shrugged. “I’m not really in the mood to listen to them blow up at their moms again,” said Steve. “I don’t blame them, but it gets old fast.”

True, but also ‘I think you’re strange and interesting and I’m way more curious about what you have to say than Lucas’s dad.’

Mr. Sinclair, likely this Lucas’s dad, cleared his throat. “Some of you may know this, some of you may not,” he said. “But I once worked at a lab very similar to Hawkins National. A few labs. I was employed as a data analyst, first in Roswell, New Mexico almost twenty years ago.”

He smiled ruefully and waited for someone to interrupt. None of them did.

“It’s somewhat useful to start from the beginning, if you’ll bear with me. If only to understand that at first, these were regional projects, each one managed somewhat independently. The earliest labs—Montauk, Roswell, Lenora Hills, Hawkins—none of these were the franchise labs that developed later, distinguished by using the name of a foreign city or state, as I’m sure you already figured out.”

“Lebanon, Illinois,” said Nancy’s mom. “London, Ohio.”

Charles nodded. “At one point, there were over two dozen labs, coded alphabetically. A national structure was developed, when various facilities had success using drugs to stimulate previously unheard of powers in humans. At the time it was, well, it was exciting. I worked with several other veterans who’d returned to school and earned degrees that we hoped to use towards protecting our country.”

Kali’s eyes drifted towards Robin, and Robin gave the barest nod. So far, for the most part, he was telling the truth.

“My work, like many of my colleagues, kept me away from the test subjects.” His eyes were sad. “I studied the statistical likelihood of finding adults with certain traits in the population. Later, that was expanded to existing kids and infants. But then, something changed.”

He waited, as if for someone to say what changed, but no one did. “Lucas was born,” he said. “I became a father. And suddenly, it became very difficult to see my work as numbers.”

“I wasn’t the only person who was beginning to feel this way,” Charles continued. “Especially given how, even when these experiments went well, there tended to be violent outbursts. More deaths, among the employees, too, than could be overlooked. Lawsuits were being filed. And eventually, there was a schism.”

Schism, Robin heard, but she also heard split and division and they were wrong, they were the wrong ones, we did what was right, we made the right choice.

“My job changed,” said Charles. “I was part of the group that came to believe that what we were doing was wrong. That the labs were unethical. And that even when successful—”

“The results were too dangerous,” said Nancy, her eyes hard.

“Yes,” said Charles. “So, we traveled from lab to lab, and my job was to shut them down. Turn them into legitimate government agencies, either by relocating personnel or changing out the equipment entirely. By that point, very few of the labs actually had any children left. Some ran away. Some were sequestered into labs supported by the opposing side of the schism, who wished to continue the experiments. Many were already dead.”

Robin could feel the one named Steve looking at her. The adult named Joyce, too, but this was a story they’d heard from Val before.

Just like Val, Charles Sinclair was omitting and evading some of the truth. It didn’t matter much to Robin, either way.

“I shut down the lab in Lebanon,” he said. “And London and a few others. Then, we moved to Hawkins. By that point, there hadn’t been experiments performed in Hawkins in years. There was only ever one child. But still, I did the same job. Cleared people out. Offered early pensions or transfers. No one associated with the initial mission was left, and then it seemed like the work was mostly done.”

Charles shrugged his shoulders slightly. “That is, until Barb Holland went missing.”

“Barb?” Steve asked. “But she wasn’t—”

“Once you’ve been exposed to the supernatural, you can sense it,” said Charles. “There’s a smell. A feeling. I’m sure all of you know the signs by now. And I knew that something supernatural had taken her, and the others too, and that the lab had nothing to do with it. Well,” he amended. “Not knowingly, anyway.”

“Will didn’t ever stay long enough when he made those jumps to Hawkins for me to notice him,” he said, and Robin watched as every person in the room flinched at the name. Will. Will. “But when he and El teleported and were stuck over here for a while? It was like a beacon. And that’s when the Lovetts got interested. That’s when the Jeans got interested.”

“Jean?” Hopper repeated, before suddenly gasping, and then Karen and Joyce were gasping, too, just like when Nancy, Steve, and Jonathan had their memories jogged. Like Swiss cheese, Robin thought idly, halfway laughing at the thought of sticking cheese back in the fill the gaps.

Little circles of cheese. The name Jean. Who, of course, were really—

“How could we have forgotten?” at the same time as “She worked at the police station” and the same time as “She worked at the school.”

“Yes,” said Charles. “Like Martin Brenner, the Jeans—Val and Petra—ran their own labs and followed their own rulebooks. With me already in Hawkins, it became a bit of a standoff. Especially when you moved in.”

He sighed. “I must confess, I wasn’t very excited to have you as neighbors. But for better or worse, it was El that interested Val most. The offensive capabilities of her powers are something I haven’t seen since—well, it doesn’t matter. Will’s powers and temperament compelled her less. As luck had it, the Lovett siblings were also more interested in El, for personal reasons.”

“So, you knew,” said Joyce. “You knew what they might do, and you didn’t—”

“I never expected Petra to make the first move,” he said. “She’s the more cautious of the two. And I never thought in a million years that she had devised a method of removing someone’s powers.”

Less true, thought Robin, although she wasn’t totally sure what the truth was. Charles Sinclair might not know himself.

“None of us knew about the shadow until it was too late. That’s beyond me and Petra. Val, too.”

“The shadow,” said Kali, clearing her throat. “That’s what was responsible for these possessions you spoke about?”

She got stilted nods in return. “Interesting,” said Jason, folding his arms over.

“Once Petra made her move, I knew it was only a matter of time before Val acted. Part of why I left was—well, it didn’t work. As you know. I spent time using my old contacts to search for him, but he wasn’t turning up at any of the previously existing labs. Then, I received word that someone else may have restarted the Lenora Hills lab and moved it a couple of hours north, to a small, coastal town called Manchester.”

“Manchester,” sighed Karen. “In California? So, hold on, then you were the one who created the crossword puzzles?”

Charles nodded. “Among other things,” he said dryly. “I was trying to send signals discretely. I may have been too discrete. When I realized that you were going to England—”

“Why didn’t you just tell us?” asked Sue, finally. Her voice broke. “Why didn’t you ever tell me?”

Robin looked away. She hadn’t been in many rooms to read, but even she could read this one. “I’m going outside,” said Eddie abruptly. Robin stood up, too, just a second behind him, Kali, and even Jason, who’d turned out being more curious about this whole business than Robin imagined.

“Oh, you know what,” said Steve. “I think I’d like to go outside, too.”

Emotions are funny, thought Robin, hearing the sadness and anger and love, there was love there, too, maybe more than Robin had ever heard before, all jumbled up.

Jonathan and Nancy looked like they wanted to make an escape, too, but then Joyce was saying something and Karen was saying something else and Hopper seemed caught between speaking and crossing his big arms and ‘shutting up, it isn’t any of my business.’

Robin almost smiled. The air outside was a little sweeter, a little cooler, and Robin drank it in, thinking about mothers and Melissa Buckley and Karen recognizing her so quickly. Cardigans and car accidents and alternate dimensions and movie theaters.

Hawkins, Indiana, huh?

//

The day before the Byers-girl walked into Surfer Boy Pizza, with pink hair instead of no hair at all, Argyle had called Jonathan, not expecting a reply, but hoping to be surprised.

Things were bad. Things were so bad that Jonathan’s almost-girlfriend and friend Steve had told Argyle they were holding an intervention, because Jonathan might not graduate from high school and kept driving over the country looking for his brother.

Argyle had always hoped that if either of them didn’t graduate from high school that it’d be for a super cool, interesting reason, and not a depressing reason.

Then the Byers-girl, El, had shown up, with a bunch of other kids, and they’d found Will, and Argyle couldn’t even tell Jonathan about it.

Well, maybe that was for the best. He glanced back at where Will was sleeping in the back, shaved head covered up by a bright gold beanie. Will didn’t look good. Will might have actually looked better when they’d rescued him from that alternate dimension.

As they continued down the highway, Argyle had plenty of chances to look at the others: El, whose pink hair he was a big fan of, and the rest of their friends. The tall one, Mike, was apparently Nancy’s sister.

Interesting, thought Argyle, although he wasn’t sure why it was interesting, only that Jonathan thought it was, and Jonathan talked about Nancy and Mike more than a few times on their phone calls.

Then the other three, all equally gloomy. They were a gloomy bunch. That might have been why he was so amenable, when the red-haired one asked if they could make a stop.

“It’s been almost seven hours,” she said. “And we’re still, what, three hours from LAX?”

“That sounds right, yeah.”

“Great,” said the red-haired one. “Then let’s get out and walk around a bit. Then we have to wake Will up, right? We have to see if he can get onto a plane.”

Argyle had forgotten that was the plan. Ever since loading up from Lenora, where they’d all woken up feeling nauseous from two-year-old pizza and Will had put the magic clock back on the wall, Will had been asleep.

One of the gloomy kids, the one with the hat and braces, had actually thrown up. That’s when Argyle figured it was the pizza and not the joints he’d smoked, which was a relief, because Argyle had lit another one up at a gas station three hours ago.

“You know Santa Barbara?” asked Argyle. “They’ve got a crazy cool zoo. Like, giraffes and flamingos and shit? Did you know flamingos actually stand on one leg, isn’t that fucked?”

“Extremely fucked,” said the third of the gloomy trio. Lucas. “Max is from Santa Barbara.”

The red-haired Max glared at him, but no one seemed opposed to the stop, although El kept twisting her hairband around her wrist. Twist, twist. Nancy’s brother Mike had ended up in the front with him, but he was twisted, too, twisted around so he could look at them. At least Argyle had control over the music.

Max guided him over to an exit and then a sunny street lined with flowering, pink and white trees, and there was a gas station and a soda fountain. Argyle could smell the ocean the second he stepped out of the van, all salt and briny sand. “Alright, not a bad idea!”

It was good to walk, good to step into the sun and let the kids he’d picked up talk without glancing over their shoulder every two fucking seconds—like Argyle was a narc or something—but he got it. And after they negotiated their terms of who would stay with Will, and who might wake him up, Argyle whistled Blackbird and grabbed his Ziploc bag.

He thought about finding a payphone and trying to call Hawkins again. El and the others had told him that Jonathan, Nancy, and Steve had driven to New York, but since Will wasn’t in New York, maybe they’d finally made it back? Or maybe they were still looking.

Argyle kept whistling. A root beer float sounded pretty fucking good.

He took his drink and sat underneath a floppy tree, sun on his face, and everything was poised for a twenty-minute nap when he heard a voice around the corner.

“They’ve got the boy. Yes, I see him. Should we move in?”

The alarm bells were quiet at first, a little slow to make it all the way from Argyle’s ears and into his brain, but then he shot up. The boy. Move in. “No, no, no,” he said, before clamping his hand over his mouth. He didn’t even know where the voice was coming from.

A quick look told him he was alone, in the little courtyard. The crackling came from around the corner.

I’m their adult supervision, thought Argyle, a slow creeping terror in his stomach. Maybe he as overreacting. Maybe—

The man around the corner was holding a photograph of El.

At first, it was hard to tell what he was looking at, but it was a scan of a passport photo ID, El’s photo in the center, and JANE HOPPER circled in red ink. “Shit,” muttered Argyle. “Shit, shit, shit.”

It was a miracle the man wasn’t looking in his direction, but he’d turn his head soon. And Argyle had to figure out where the blasted kids went.

Back at the van, it was Mike stretched out on the backseat, parallel to Will with his skinny legs sticking out, crossed over the other, as Argyle slid up to the door with “Dude, dude!”

Mike sat up with a strangled gasp, neck nearly snapping with the movement. “What the fuck?”

“They’re onto us.”

“What? Who?”

“Some guys in uniforms,” said Argyle. “They’ve got a photo of El’s passport. I didn’t even know El had a passport.”

Mike paled. “Oh, shit,” he said. “They must have—oh, fuck, okay, I think Max went down to the water with Dustin. Lucas and El were—ice cream, yeah, I asked them to bring—”

El and Lucas appeared behind him, with dripping ice cream cones, and Argyle shoved her into the back.

“Hey!”

“What’s the—”

“We’ve been spotted,” said Mike grimly, accepting the chocolate ice cream cone. “Did Max and Dustin go down to the water?”

“Spotted?!”

“By who?”

“Got to go, got to go,” said Argyle, jumping into the driver’s seat and twisting the keys. “Hold on—okay, we’ll just go this way—”

The van screeched onto the road, but Argyle was already almost distractingly aware that they would be followed. Of course, they were going to get followed, so how were they going to get back onto the highway if these guys knew what the van looked like?

“Oncoming traffic!” yelled the one named Lucas. “Oncoming traffic!”

El was still splayed out on the back, holding her head in a daze. Mike gripped the ice cream cone and craned his neck back. “What did they look like?” he asked. “You said uniforms, but what kind?”

“Shit, I don’t know,” said Argyle, trying to picture them. “He was carrying a radio and the passport photo, but I didn’t get that good of a look.”

“Passport photo? What passport photo?”

Argyle saw red hair, walking close to a sandy boardwalk, and leaned his body out of the window. “Hey!” he yelled. “Get in the van!”

“Oh my God, you’re so bad at this—”

The van screeched to a stop. Dustin and Max both hopped in, looking squinty and confused. “Did you just yell at two children to jump into a van?” asked Max, but then Argyle was driving again, hoping he could be evasive enough to throw whoever was watching off the trail. At least momentarily.

“Jesus Christ—”

“What the fuck is going on?” asked Max, and Argyle focused on driving. They’d probably need to change cars. Which sucked, because Argyle liked this van a lot.

“We might need to—”

“Let’s—”

The kids argued furiously, as Argyle careened around corners. Then, El was pointing out the window. “What about that?”

“No way,” said Max. “No way.”

“The kid might be onto something,” mused Argyle, rubbing his chin. Sure, he’d never driven one before, but was it that much different than a van? “You did say we needed more space.”

“I was thinking an RV! Not a school bus.”

The mustard yellow bus winked at them. Argyle climbed inside, examining the controls. “Seems like it’s in pretty good shape.”

“How the hell can you tell?”

Argyle felt around the brake pedals as the five kids argued, albeit muffled and crouched down, Will still propped between them. He wasn’t particularly interested in what they decided, not when Argyle himself had decided that the school bus would suit them just fine. “Get in,” he said, swinging the doors open. “Grab a seat, there’s tons to choose from.”

“We’re still talking about this,” said Mike, arms folded, but then Argyle turned on the engine. “Are you—oh my God.”

“I guess we’re doing this,” muttered one of them, as they pulled their luggage and Will onto the bus, picking seats hesitantly. Argyle watched Will’s head loll backwards, as he started to back the bus out of the lot, eyes wary for any movement.

“The next city we’ll hit is probably Vegas,” said Dustin, reading from the map. “If we try to follow along I-15.”

Argyle eased the bus onto the road and the conversations behind him paled into murmurs, probably pointed ones. He didn’t mind.

In fact, it made it a little easier to watch the road and Will at the same time. They’d never tried waking him up. Not when they couldn’t get on a plane because of El, anyway. And Argyle had been avoiding thinking too much about Will, about the bones poking out and bruises, the look in his eyes that reminded him of the Lonnie days—and wasn’t that a trip?

Argyle had known Will as long as he’d known Jonathan. He knew that things had changed, that they were different, but there was different and there was being able to create two-year-old pizza out of thin air.

What’d they do to you? Argyle thought, not for the first time. He wasn’t the only one either, as they all eventually settled in, racing hearts settling as they hit the open highway. What’d they do to you, Will?

Chapter Text

“Will!”

They’d stormed the house. Will couldn’t see them, but he could feel them, at least five pairs of arms and legs holding him down, so fast that his brain couldn’t keep up, even as it was screaming teleport away, teleport away!

A cold needle plunged into his thigh. His friends were screaming, Will could hear them, but he couldn’t move, stuck in frozen terror, and something else locking his limbs into place. Something snapped, a terrible crack in the air, and other screams followed, but Will’s eyes weren’t focusing.

There was a hand around his throat.

“Let go of him! Let him go!”

Will’s eyes swam, bulging out, he couldn’t breathe, and he finally caught a glimpse of Mike, being tied against his own wall, and opened his mouth—for what, what can you do, you can’t do anything—before the black spots overtook his vision.

Will didn’t remember much, after that.

--

The first thing he felt was his neck.

Sore and sandpapery where he tried to swallow, Will blinked a few times before realizing that it was completely dark. Shadows pressed in, surrounding him wholly, as the memories started to flicked in. His thigh ached. But it was nothing compared to his throat.

Coughing, Will tried to shift around, but his arms didn’t move. His legs didn’t move, either, but he couldn’t see where he was or how he was being held.

They broke into Mike’s basement, Will thought, brain fuzzy on who exactly they were, unable to remember the specifics. He hoped his friends and family were okay. He hoped they would look for him.

Of course they’ll look for me, came a second later, an embarrassed thought. He knew they would come looking for him. That wasn’t the thing to worry about. The thing to worry about was wherever he was going, and if he was being used as a trap for the rest of them, for El or anyone else.

Will coughed again and winced. It was dark, but he could feel the faintest sense of movement. A slow rocking, back and forth, and maybe whatever they’d stabbed into his system hadn’t been flushed out yet, because Will blinked and fell back asleep.

The second awakening was a cold rush of water, drenching him to the bone, flinging Will out of his dream with a gasp and widened eyes. He tried to take in the bright lights around him and the looming shadows, blinking furiously, and wincing again, at the ache searing through his throat.

“Good of you to join us,” said a man’s voice from above him. Tall and thin, Will couldn’t fully make out his face, or that of the woman standing behind him. They were wearing white coats, though, and the fear that buzzed through him recognized the truth before Will himself could.

The lab. The lab had found him.

“You’ll be staying with us for a while,” continued the man, as Will’s heart raced. He leaned down, and Will flinched back, away from a pair of shiny eyes. “Until you learn to use those powers you’ve been wasting.”

“Learn?” croaked Will. “Let me go, let me—”

Pain seared through him, sharp and excruciating, and Will screamed, only twisting the ache in his throat even worse. The man leaned in closer. “You’ll learn a few things here,” he said. Will’s ears pounded. “One is that I don’t like when people talk back to me. Especially children.”

He stood, and suddenly there were hands on Will again, pulling him backwards. “We’ll see if you’re more well-behaved tomorrow.” One of them stuffed a gag in his mouth. Will’s brain kept swimming, shrieking that this was some kind of nightmare, that there was no way that the lab could’ve found him, even as they re-chained his arms and legs.

Then, it was dark again. He might have been alone or surrounded by eyes watching, as Will shifted and tried to get comfortable against the cold, stone floor without much success. The lab had broken into Mike’s basement and kidnapped him, but they were okay, weren’t they? Mike and Dustin and Lucas? And they would know what happened, and they would be able to track him down.

His family had once found him when he was stuck in an alternate dimension. They would find him again, Will knew it, and he closed his eyes, hoping still that this might be a terrible dream.

“Wake up!”

The cold water hit him again, knocking Will out of sleep with a gasp, eyes blindingly bright as he was dragged on the tiles again, even more sore than the day before. “We don’t permit sleeping in,” said the same man. In the light, it was easier to make out his face, not that Will wanted to. They were lifting him up off the floor, into a metal chair, and Will realized with numb horror that his clothes had been changed overnight.

Instead of his jeans and t-shirt, he was wearing a white gown, not unlike the one El had once worn so long ago. Face burning, Will fought against the restraints as they trapped his wrists and ankles. The gag in his mouth was nearly soaked through, and now his jaw hurt almost as badly as his throat.

“I know what you’re thinking,” said the man. “You think your family and friends will come looking for you. But they won’t.”

Will blinked and wished he could tell this freak he didn’t know what the fuck he was talking about, but then the man gestured to his right. “And I know that because my friend killed them.”

My friend killed them. Will’s arms and legs stopped struggling, even though he didn’t believe it. They were lying, they had to be lying—until he saw the woman’s face.

She had white hair, perfectly ordinary looking, except for the bright, wide smile on her face. Smiling, beaming, like she’d won the lottery, sending a pit of dread into Will’s stomach. They’d been looking for two women, hadn’t they? Jean and—

“This is Jean,” said the man, and the woman let out an excited laugh. “You can call me Dr. Brenner. Well, don’t call me that. I wouldn’t advise using your mouth to do anything except scream, and even that might be quite tiresome.”

Will had been afraid before. Many times, he’d felt the dull edge of panic spike through him, but as the man leaned over him, this fear was new. New and immobilizing, as my friend killed them, my friend killed them, rang in his ears.

“To be blunt, you did something very interesting when that horrendous building filled with lamps blew up,” said the man. You-can-call-me-Dr. Brenner. “And I want you to do it again. Whatever it takes.”

It took Will a few days to understand what that meant.

Every morning, the same routine: Will would wake up, covered in cold water on the floor. Sometimes, the gown would be changed overnight. Will stopped worrying about it.

Then, dragged into the chair, or a couple of horrible times to a table, strapped down so he couldn’t move. Metal devices, poking into his skin, syringes full of things that left his legs limp or aching like they’d been bruised again, confused and disoriented and in pain—my friend killed them, my friend killed them, I want you to do it again.

What did I do? Will kept wondering, when his brain could take the space to wonder, between the cold water and sharp metal pins. What did I do, what is he doing, what did she do to them, what did—

He didn’t understand what the self-proclaimed doctor was trying to do. He didn’t understand why the woman named Jean stood behind him to watch, occasionally running her fingers through his hair, and then the next morning, Will woke up with his hair shaved off.

For some reason, it was then, as Will felt his bony, stubble-coated head, that Will knew what they were talking about.

“You were right,” Mike’s voice reminded him. Mike who might be dead. “I noticed it this time, too, it is like everything’s slowing—”

“Slowed,” Will had whispered, when he’d woken up in the room filled with his friends and family, possessed bodies and frozen flames. “Or am I moving fast?” 

Will had stopped time, once, either by slowing down everything around him or moving so fast that everything else stayed still.

He’d almost told Mike, a week ago or two weeks ago or however long it had been, the same day that the lab had taken him. “I know you’re still wondering,” Will had said. “When you asked me how we got out of the ELO.

“Well, yeah. I wonder about a lot of things.”

“Or, almost a theory. I don’t know. It’s probably nothing.”

Why hadn’t Will told any of them? Why hadn’t Will at least told El?

Because now, it was increasingly clear that Dr. Brenner wanted to do it again. Luckily, Will didn’t know how he’d frozen time at the lamp oasis, but less luckily, he wasn’t sure how to stop it, however it was trying to be dragged out of him.

How long had it been?

“You’re not progressing,” said Dr. Brenner, and Will wanted to scream. He was soaked, again, strapped down to the table with an IV in his arm. He hadn’t eaten in—God, Will had no idea, because there had been a gag in his mouth the entire time, his brain completely disconnected from the rest of his body.

“You need to want to progress,” said Jean, maybe the first thing she’d said the entire time, voice softer and more girlish than Will expected. “You need to let go of the things holding you back.”

This advice was so absurd that Will laughed through the gag, a little desperate, and then Jean was pressed against his face. “Do you want to know how I did it?” she asked. “Whose arms I ripped out? Who bled to death? Whose house I set on fire? No, not yours, but that would’ve been sweet. Who’s the kid with the dead mom? He didn’t have much to live for anyway.”

Dustin. Will felt the straps tightening, pressed tighter against his wrists. His head was colder against the metal, water dripping onto the floor.

“He didn’t even beg,” said Jean. “You know who did beg?”

Will’s blood cooled to a sludge, something desperate and heavy making his head pound worse, thinking of Dustin and Mike and Lucas and his family. They’d faced so many threats, so many things worse than anything the lab could come up with, Will still couldn’t really believe it, couldn’t—

Dustin’s head rolled onto his feet.

Will screamed, suddenly louder than it had been in weeks, turning on his heel to run, oh god, bare feet pounding in blood-soaked grass.

The other body parts followed him, hands and feet slapping and bleeding as they followed him.

El was screaming, just like she’d screamed in the Electric Lamp Oasis, when they’d found her covered in blood in the room filled with mirrors—and as Will rounded a corner, one of the mirrors faced him, a spiderweb of broken glass. His own reflection beamed back at him.

“Weak,” his face said. “El got her powers stolen because of you. You could’ve helped her. You could’ve stopped it.”

El’s head rolled against his feet, dark red sockets where her eyes should’ve been, and Will screamed again, her hair wrapping around his ankles. His feet were stained green and red, from the blood and grass and dirt.

“Grass?” whispered Will. He hadn’t spoken words in weeks. There’d been a gag in his mouth. His bare feet on the grass, something was wrong—

Will slammed back into the lab chair with a gasp, head and throat aching. The gag was back, his feet once again bound by the metal cuffs, what had happened, where had he gone—

“Interesting,” commented Dr. Brenner, making a note in his clipboard. He was wearing a white mask now, stretched out over his face; Will hated doctor’s masks, hated when he couldn’t see what expression they had on.

Will shook, his entire body cold. It was like the gown they’d shoved on him shrunk, too, and he felt so exposed, like everyone in the room could see right through him. Doctors and clipboards, running their tests like he was some freak of nature. Dustin and El’s heads kept rolling, over his feet in the grass, their expressions frozen in terror. “I suppose it’s both,” continued Brenner. “I hadn’t considered that.”

“The psyche is an interesting thing,” said Jean. “I like that, though. It’s more of a game.”

Both, thought Will, black spots overtaking his vision. The doctors only looked at him with mild concern. Maybe they wanted him to pass out. Maybe they wanted to start whatever game this was again. What’s both? Who’s both? Where are they. What’d you do to them, Mom, please, get me out of here, oh God—

Cold water drenched him awake.

Dragged into the chair again, they forced his wrists and ankles into the restraints, these faceless agents with their masks and gloves. There were more of them, than the day before, all swarming, and Will waited to be poked and prodded again.

Instead, Jean appeared. “Want to hear more?” she asked, before plunging a shard of glass into Will’s neck.

The pain overtook him, not even able to scream as the blood sunk into his throat, wet and metallic as he struggled to breathe. “That’s what your brother sounded like,” said Jean calmly. “I slit his throat, too.”

And then Jonathan was leaning over him, bleeding and gasping for breath, each sound a terrible, rasping gargle. “Will, please—”

“Jonathan!” Will yelled. “Jonathan, no—”

His brother was being pulled away from him, body limp and pale, and Will pulled back desperately, a tug of war he wasn’t going to win, too weak again, his hands barely catching a grip. He’d shrunk more, pathetically small against Jonathan’s height and weight, and then he realized who was pulling him away.

“Mom! Give him back, please,” Will begged, his mother barely even looking at him, unable to look at him, wearing the black funeral clothes she’d worn to Bob and Dustin’s mom’s funerals, and then Will was falling, screaming into the dark earth.

He landed, coughing, blood going cold again at the shovels held above him. Jonathan. His mom. Hopper, holding El’s head in his arms like a baby. “No, please,” he said, gasping. He was in his coffin. The one bought for his fake body. “I’m not dead, I’m still here, I’m not dead.”

“Aren’t you?” a voice asked, and Mike’s eyes stared back at him. “It doesn’t matter, though, does it?”

“Why not?” Will whispered.

“You can just try again,” said Mike. “You can just go backwards and try again. Can’t you?”

“You were right. I noticed it this time, too, it is like everything’s slowing—”

“Slowed. Or am I moving fast?”

They were sitting in the coffin together, dirt falling on their faces. They were sitting at Mike’s kitchen table, the sunny afternoon in September when the season premiere of Dynasty was coming out, and Will felt his bangs brush against his face.

His hair had grown back, and was that his first clue?

Should he have realized sooner?

“I know you’re still wondering. When you asked me how we got out of the ELO.”

“Well, yeah. I wonder about a lot of things.”

“Or, almost a theory. I don’t know. It’s probably nothing.”

“I never told you,” said Will. “I never told you my theory. How do you know?”

Mike’s face started to peel, white flecks of skin and boiled red blood. Will didn’t flinch, this time, the truth sticking unpleasantly in his empty stomach. “You’re not real,” he said, and his wrists and ankles were cold again, against the metal restraints.

Head cold, hair gone.

Black spots.

Cold water drenched him awake.

“You’re too weak to resist forever,” said Dr. Brenner. Will didn’t know he’d been trying to resist. All he’d felt was flung from lab to memory, so quickly that his brain often couldn’t recognize the signs until El was there, trying to rip his teeth out of his mouth, and a part of him went hold on, what’s going, what’s going on? “Even Jean is getting bored.”

Will wasn’t sure how long it had been. And as Dr. Brenner loomed over him, hands gripping his neck, hands turning into Hopper’s hands, gripping his neck, then Jonathan, then oh God, Lonnie.

“You haven’t even called, Will,” said Lonnie. “Don’t you want to know what happened? Don’t you want to know what a bad son you are? Don’t you want to know how I knew the truth about you?”

“Not really,” said Will, but his voice was shaking. It was true; he hadn’t heard from Lonnie since getting his birthday card, months ago now, and none of them had called.

“You had a crush on that boy. I knew it.”

“What if I did?” asked Will. “What if I did have a crush on Greg? I don’t anymore. It doesn’t matter.”

Lonnie grinned. There was blood dripping from his eyes. “I’m not talking about Greg.”

The panic rose without Will meaning for it to, creeping into his bare arms and legs, obvious, he was always so obvious, everyone could see right through him, and Lonnie had his hands around Will’s throat again, both of them struggling against each other.

“That’s why they’re not going to search for you. They’re not going to look for you. They know the truth.”

I thought they were dead, thought Will, and then he was walking with Jonathan outside their old house in Lenora. Packing up the boxes before moving to Indiana, and Will had been terrified to tell him, even though he was sure Jonathan already knew. How he felt about Greg. How he would feel about—

“But he was right. He knew I liked Greg, and—and I didn’t even know—and he knew I’m not normal, it isn’t normal liking—liking b—you’re not supposed to—”

Jonathan hugged him, just like he’d been hugged in the memory. That’s where I am, Will thought, feeling his brother’s weight against him. He was inside the memory. Jonathan wouldn’t ever give up on him. “It’s okay,” he said. “It’s okay.”

And Will believed him.

Cold water drenched him awake. Dr. Brenner leaned down, only his pupils visible from behind the mask. “You can’t resist forever,” he said, and Will knew he was probably right, that he was too weak to do anything except allow himself to be dragged back onto the table, but he held onto the memory of Jonathan’s hug.

It only made things worse, in the end, but Will couldn’t have known that at the time.

After that, when his father lunged at him and Will stumbled through the woods, chased by something he couldn’t see, tripping over El’s severed head and Lucas’s detached hands, he ran into memories.

He tried returning to the memory of Jonathan that day before they left Lenora, but sometimes it was Jonathan sitting on the edge of his bed, reading, and sometimes it was Jonathan listening to music in his room, the memory of The Clash and David Bowie keeping him hidden longer and longer before waking back up again.

“Are you still alive?” Will asked Jonathan, in his old Lenora bedroom. Like the edge of a dream, Jonathan’s face had started to blur around the sides. “Are you looking for me?”

The memory never answered him.

He would jump over El’s severed head and remember El making him wear the corn-on-the-cob costume, to convince his mom and Hopper to move to Indiana. His mom would throw him into a coffin, begin burying him with dirt, and Will would remember eating breakfast all together, stacks of fluffy pancakes and orange juice, and he would ask her the same questions.

Then, cold water and metal restraints.

Will never ate. He never slept, and he didn’t think he ever shit, either, although his face burned at the thought. Dr. Brenner poked at things like this, Will’s embarrassment about being strapped down to the table, cold and exposed. Examined like the crowd of scientists wanted to dissect a frog and pin him against a board, always touching and pinching and stabbing.

Then Jean would appear, reminding him that she’d brutally murdered everyone he loved, sending him into deeper and deeper memories to try to outrun them.

Mike was chasing him, this time, both of them scrambling down a straight-edged cliffside that Will knew he was supposed to recognize, terrifyingly far below. Mike’s hands were missing, and blood spurted out, staining Will’s faded gown. “Just die already,” said Mike. “Just die, just die—”

He pushed, and Will fell, screaming, into the gorged-out abyss—the Quarry—he remembered, as it sped up towards him, and he squeezed his eyes shut, trying to fight for one of the warm breakfasts, waking up late in the summer—

The breakfast table appeared in front of him, set with pancakes and orange juice, but Will didn’t recognize the people sitting next to him.

Frozen, Will waited for their features to come into focus, but they stayed strange, unfamiliar blurs, eating at his family’s table like they belonged.

“Who are you?” asked Will, but none of them answered him. The strangers just kept eating, forks to mouth, and suddenly Will felt more afraid than he’d been on the cliffside. “Who are you?”

“Gotcha.”

Will screamed, head close to exploding in less than a second—dark spikes of pain, flaring up all over, this was the end, this had to be the end, and there was blood dripping from his eyes, almost like the Electric Lamp Factory, it was like something was being ripped out of him—

“No,” Will gasped, but he couldn’t stop it, couldn’t run anymore, couldn’t teleport away from the digging through him, useless powers, can’t do anything, El would have killed them by now, El would have stopped this.

He tried searching for a memory, tried summoning anything with his brother or mother, but nothing came, nothing he could hold onto, nothing—

“Don’t be such a pussy!” his father yelled. Will was whimpering, on the floor. Will was a child, and he’d spilled juice all over the carpet, and his dad waved a lighter in his face. “Don’t be such a fucking pussy!”

Towers of flames, frozen in the Electric Lamp Oasis. “You can stop it, you can do something about it.” Terrified, frozen faces. Arms thrown out. Bob Newby’s dead body. “You can do something.”

“Will! Will, you have to wake up, you have to wake up, you have to!”

“Will, Will, wake up, wake up, oh God.”

“Will! You have to—”

His brother burned the Demodogs. His mother and Karen Wheeler cut the Demogorgon in half, and then it burned in the school. Billy had burned in the car fire, the bodies had burned at the Electric Lamp Oasis, and fire was the only thing it was afraid of, wasn’t it? The Shadow Monster. El had burned it out of him, or she’d tried.

The blood started to run out of his nose.

“You can’t resist forever.”

“Will!” Andy shouted, as they all sat cramped around the game board. Dungeons and Dragons. Back when they would play. Before it was a game for babies. “Cast a fucking fire ball! Don’t be a pussy!”

Will had always been good at drawing things. His mom told him that, but she really meant it. She didn’t say it just to make him feel better.

“Cast a fucking fire ball!”

The blood pooled from his nose into his throat. For the first time, Dr. Brenner, looming over him in the lab where they’d returned to, looked afraid. And then Will smelled smoke.

Cast a fucking fire ball.

All Will ever did was run away.

He screamed, and the fire ripped out of him, pulling from his stomach and legs, pulling exactly where Brenner and Jean had pulled before, looking for Will’s ability to run away, I’m not running, you won’t let me run, so I’ll make the only thing that’s ever worked.

Will burned, and the fire burned out of him, forcing the lab workers away, the fear shining back at him behind their masks. It slipped out of him, this thing he’d created that he couldn’t control, just like the last thing he’d created, oh Will, why can’t you remember how this always goes?

He screamed and burned, and when the fire finally stopped, he’d ended up inside another memory; Mike, this time, as the Dungeon Master. Dustin and Lucas were beside him. “What’s your roll, Will the Wise?”

Cold water didn’t drench him awake, after that. Will didn’t wake up at all, after burning Brenner, who seemed oddly indifferent to Will suddenly gaining the ability to create magic fire.

“Val is bored,” he said, once. Will had been trapped in the Upside Down, again, begging for someone to find him. Brenner had watched him try to burn his way out, with little success. “It may just be me and you, for a while.”

“Who is Val?” asked Will, and Brenner sighed.

“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “Your memory is spotty enough, isn’t it? I’ve been to your house, and this doesn’t look much like it at all. And Number Eleven had hair, last I checked.”

Will glanced over. They were floating, somewhere, with wooden floorboards and dusty walls. He didn’t see El around at all.

“You’re going to die here,” said Brenner, and Will didn’t feel any particular way about that. He wasn’t sure that he was still alive; his body had been burned and bruised so many times, but kept healing, just so he could get hurt again. He hadn’t drunk a sip of water in what felt like months. “Resistance is futile.”

Will wanted to play Dungeons and Dragons.

He sat in Mike’s basement, but Mike wasn’t there, anymore. Only Dustin and Lucas, and a blurry figure without a face who handed him the dice. And he wasn’t totally sure that was Lucas across from him—was it? He remembered watching a movie with Lucas, just the two of them, for some reason, in Lucas’s house. They were watching the first Star Wars movie on tape.

But when he appeared in the memory, on the couch, Lucas wasn’t beside him. Another stranger, eating popcorn, without a face.

“Resistance is futile, Will.” When the hands touched him again, aimed around his neck, Will let the fire burn through both of them.

Painful and freeing, the blood always dripped from his nose.

He ran through the Upside Down to try to find—who was he trying to find? Someone, Will thought, unable to put face to name. Brenner would try to follow him, but Brenner wasn’t as fast combing through Will’s memories after the fire. On the flip side, Will saw things blurrier, too, memories filled with people he couldn’t recognize.

His birthday party, not even a year ago, shared with someone, but where were they? Who had he shared his birthday with?

Will didn’t recognize anyone at the Dungeons and Dragons table, in the strange basement. He didn’t—

Where was Brenner?

Time moved differently, when Will jumped from memory to memory. Without being pulled back into the lab, he couldn’t be sure if any time had passed at all, but now he sat on the metal table, again, like he had so many times in the beginning, but no one was there.

Well, some of the lab agents were there, but no Jean or Val or whatever her name was. And no, Brenner, either.

Cautiously, Will sat up. They weren’t watching him very carefully, almost bored from behind their screens, and Will’s foot hit the tiled floor—

Stuck, pain, w r o n g, in his throat, couldn’t b r e a t h e, not a lab, not a lab, darkness but not dark e n o u g h,

out of his throat, out o f, wires and tubes stuck into his v e i ns, the largest a b u l g e down his

Pull, p u l l, can’t b r e a t he

C a n ‘t

“Oh, honey,” said a voice. “You don’t want to be awake for this. You want to go back to that nice dream, don’t you?”

Eyes can’t s e e all d a r k except his body floating in, n o, pinned into, n o, get me o u t, h e l p

“Go back to that nice dream,” said a woman, not Jean, but someone whose face burned into Will’s memory for that terrible second—

Will gasped, lurching up in the middle of a cold, wet forest. His hands flew to his throat, seconds before, filled with something—can’t b r e a t h e, can’t—

He ran to another memory, still coughing and clutching his throat as he went, pain as terrible as it had been when he’d first been trapped here, trapped in the lab. He wanted—who did he want—but he got someone driving him, letting him sit in the passenger seat as the tears pooled into his eyes.

“It’s okay, man,” said the voice. Steve, Will remembered. The person driving him was Steve. “You don’t have to worry. Shit, I get nightmares, too.”

Was this a nightmare? Was this one gigantic nightmare?

“You’re not completely wrong,” said Steve, but then he started to transform. The doctor. He was driving the car, now, as Will kept trying not to cry. He looked tired.

“I guess I shouldn’t leave you alone for this long. That’s my fault, Will.”

“Why are you doing this?” asked Will. “Why are you doing this to me?”

The fragments of strangers floated around him, memories that he could run to empty of anyone he knew, floating miserably until his feet had landed on the tile and he’d—

“Don’t think about that,” said the doctor. “And you know why I’m doing this. Why I have to do this.” His gaze slid over Will’s face. “We’re alike, you and me. I want to create a different world. You hold the key to that world, Will. I thought Number Eleven might, but now she’s no use to me at all.”

“Who is Number Eleven?”

The doctor smiled a tired smile. “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “You can’t resist forever. You’re turning yourself into a shell, can’t you feel it? I was worried this would happen.”

“Please,” said Will. “Let me leave. I just want to leave.”

“It’s funny,” said the doctor. The car stopped driving. The shadows around them loomed, stretching and strengthening, and Will shivered. “You don’t even know my name, do you?”

--

Will was swimming underwater.

He’d run through the Upside Down, screaming and begging, and pulled out by a blonde woman whose face vanished seconds later. He’d run from a faceless possessed man and run, again, from a whole flock of them; faceless strangers in his bedroom, watching him sleep, trying to eat with him and touch him, and he ran away from them all.

The fire ripped out of him, sometimes.

Not now, though, because he was swimming underwater.

Cold, drenched but not awake, Will fell deeper. There was a body at the bottom, with glasses and reddish hair. “Barb!”

Barb, Will remembered, floating endlessly. Had the doctor found him? Had he burned them both, again?

His limbs became heavier, held down by weights. He’d heard Barb cry out, hadn’t he? In her last moments, when they’d both been in the Upside Down. They’d both—

“Nancy!”

Nancy.

Will surged through the water at breakneck speed, remembering waves crashing on a sandy shore, the smell of salt and melted ice cream, the sun above him last summer. “What’s your favorite flavor?”

“What?”

“Of ice cream. I’m a pistachio girl, myself.”

It wasn’t necessarily a good memory, that he’d dropped into. Will had run out of those a while ago, or they became so filled with strangers that it couldn’t help him. He’d forgotten about Nancy, until she appeared in front of him, ocean wind blowing through both of them. She’d made him teleport to Montauk. But he didn’t hold that against her.

“I’m so sorry,” the memory continued. “I’m so sorry, I never should’ve—I really fucked things up, and I’m just so sorry.”

“I understand,” said Will, which might not have been what he said back then. “I forgive you.”

They stood there, in the sun, and Will felt something that might have been peace. It wouldn’t last but seeing the details of Nancy’s face—her jaw and cheekbones and eyebrows, all the things Will might not have noticed, he allowed himself to follow her back out of the sand. Montauk. Why had he ended up in Montauk, anyway?

“If we only relied on the two people with powers, that’d be awfully short-sighted of us, wouldn’t it? Your mom and my mom killed the Demogorgon. They don’t have any powers. Jonathan doesn’t have any powers. Maybe I can do my part, too.”

Your mom. My mom. Jonathan. Will willed himself to think of them, of his mom and Jonathan, but their faces wouldn’t come. He knew he’d forget his brother’s name again, once Nancy wasn’t standing in front of him.

He was using his own memories as scaffolding to escape, and the price was empty, blank faces and rooms he couldn’t run to anymore. Even now, he soaked up Nancy’s face, remembering how smart she was and brave and shortsighted.

Someone loved her a lot. Who loved her?

Her face resembled another face that he’d forgotten. Before the doctor’s arms could reach for him again, he felt the sun and smelled the salt, these tiny, useless comforts. “Are you looking for me?”

“You don’t even know how long it’s been.”

Will sighed, the flames screeching up in self-defense as the doctor approached, the doctor whose name Will also kept forgetting. He seemed to find that funny. “It’s sad, isn’t it?”

“What’s sad?” asked Will. The blood dripped from his nose. “What do you want from me?”

“You don’t remember?”

Will sighed again, the flames rippling like a wary shield. The doctor ignored them, but he stayed a few feet back. “That’s not helpful,” said the doctor, sounding resigned. “Val doesn’t know what the fuck she’s talking about.”

“Who’s Val?” Will had asked this at least two dozen times.

The doctor rubbed his head. “Val is the one who kidnapped you,” he said wearily. “The one who was watching you and your stupid friends and family for months, pretending to be a teacher or whatever. Val and her stupid, stupid sister.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah, oh,” said the doctor, before the room got colder. Room? They weren’t in a room, they were buried in the dirt, Will stuck inside his own coffin again, an old recurring nightmare that he couldn’t shake. Alone, Will pounded on the coffin walls.

“Let me out! Let me out!”

“They didn’t even go to your funeral, Will,” a voice whispered, curling around Will’s throat, as he struggled uselessly. “Not your mom, not your brother, not your dad.”

Brother, brother, do I have a brother? “Let me out!”

The dirt clogged his nose and lungs, not even letting the blood out, and fire wouldn’t be any good in here, would it? Not against the walls or the layers of Earth, buried and forgotten about, left to die. He’d forgotten every face he’d ever known, leaving just the fire behind, burning up in his intestines without his control, slipping through his fingers as he coughed.

“I’d kill to have Jonathan as a brother,” said a different voice, a girl’s voice. Jonathan. Brother. A hand made gentle movements against him, someone’s lungs close enough that Will could feel them breathing.

“What’s your brother like? Stepbrother, I mean.”

“I’d be upset if he was dead. But he’s pretty shitty, too.”

Will didn’t open his eyes. He focused on the breathing, on the person lying beside him. He couldn’t bear to forget another face. Not even Max’s. “I’m going to die here,” he whispered. “Either they’re going to kill me or I’m going to forget everything.”

Max hummed, and Will was oddly grateful they didn’t have many good memories together, not just the two of them alone. And their trip to Montauk hadn’t really been a good memory either, when they’d argued, but then he’d found someone kind and scared. A little like him.

“You’re not going to die,” said Max’s voice. “In fact, I think you’re about to have your chance.”

Will stopped breathing and almost opened his eyes, but something told him not to. It was Max’s voice, but it didn’t belong to this memory. “My chance?”

“Yes,” mused Max. “You’ve got to wake up, Will. You tried it before, but you were unlucky. Someone was watching.”

“I’m talking to myself.”

“Maybe.”

Will groaned, frustrated. “I don’t want to go back to the lab,” he said, thinking about the metal restraints and needles and eyes watching him. “I want to stay here.”

“Where are you really, Will? Where’s your body? You know, don’t you? You know it’s not here, and you know it’s not in the lab.”

Will’s hand floated towards his throat. The memory, clearer than anything else he possessed, of the woman’s face who’d f o r c e d him back i n to—

“I can’t.”

“You can,” said Max’s voice. “Do you feel him? The doctor? He’s not here, Will. He’s not watching you. He left, just like he left before, which means you have to try to wake up.”

Was it true? Will allowed himself to search, feeling through his own mind the same way that the doctor felt through his, leaving enough of an imprint that Will knew his patterns and heavy footfalls like he knew anyone’s. Max was right. The doctor’s overwhelming presence had faded. The other person, his helper, hadn’t been there in (months).

“How do I do it?”

“Wake up first,” said Max. “Go to the lab, just like you did before. But remember, the lab isn’t real, either. You’re not real in the lab. You have to make yourself real.”

Before Will could ask anything else, the weight beside him vanished. And Will opened his eyes back in the lab.

He was wearing the same gown. Nothing had changed, except there was no one to greet him; no doctor, no agents in the background. Just him, alone, on the flat bed, wrists and ankles still held by metal restraints.

“I’m not real in the lab,” whispered Will. “The lab isn’t real, either.”

He sat up. The restraints melted away. The lab isn’t real. Will took a careful step onto the cold tile, flinching as the other foot joined him. His heart beat wildly out of his chest. The lab isn’t real.

“If it’s not real, how do I get out?”

There was a door, on the other side of the room. A door seemed like the way to leave a room, even a fake room, and Will gingerly walked towards it, the anxious terror surging through him with every step.

He didn’t know what was on the other side. He was terrified of what was on the other side, that one, clear memory almost more frightening than being stuck in the coffin or drowning or falling off of cliffsides, because it was—

Will opened the door.

He

couldn’t

b r e a t h e.

Gasping, with no air coming through, Will felt the shock of pain all-encompassing, in his legs and arms and chest and oh God, his throat, there was something in his t h r o a t.

Will couldn’t flinch away, couldn’t see well enough to understand, until blinking several times through the darkness. Not a lab, at least, not the kind he’d imagined with white walls and white coats. Instead, the horror of the machine he was trapped in, wires in his arms—were those his arms—and the terrible horror of the thing in his mouth, reaching all the way down into his stomach.

He had to pull it out. He couldn’t pull it out, couldn’t breathe until he could pull it out, couldn’t m o v e his a r m s rip the t u b e s from your a r m s—

Every part of his body on fire. Ripping the IV should have hurt much more, but the pain was everywhere and all encompassing. His weak hand reached for the tube in his throat and started to pull.

It set off his gag reflex immediately, stomach empty except for the tube itself. Will remained determined, though, knowing there was no way to go back, no way to stop now that he’d started. He would choke if he couldn’t manage, which almost made him laugh—bad idea, he thought grimly, deliriously, as he pulled.

An eternity later, the tube was gone. His throat and stomach ripped to shreds, but now he could try to climb out of the thing keeping him captive. No one was watching, not even the woman he’d seen before, as Will crawled out.

His legs could barely carry him, shrunken and wasted away. Will ripped monitors from his still-shaved head, ripping them so fast they burned, his entire body a bruise.

Then an alarm started to ring.

Panicked, Will stumbled over his bare feet, all bones. He hadn’t used his feet since, when, when, but he used them now, tripping as he tried to find his footing. Everything hurt. He could barely see in front of him, eyes disoriented from being shut for so long (months), as a red alarm kept wailing.

You’re not going to die, Max’s voice had told him, but he was going to die, he was going to die here, too slow to outrun anyone that might be sent after him and too injured to keep going.

Please, Will thought, as he flung himself around the corner. He was bleeding, from somewhere. Maybe his nose. Maybe his head. Please, get me out, get me out of—

There were so many rooms to choose from, some locked, some stupid, but Will’s hands found a notch on the wall. Were they chasing him, yet? They must be, they had to be.

His hands found the notch and opened. Will couldn’t see the bottom. He folded himself up anyway, jumping down the chute, and falling until his body finally couldn’t take anymore and slammed into unconsciousness.

--

He heard mumbling sounds.

Quiet and muffled, Will’s ears couldn’t make much sense out of them. By any metric, he didn’t recognize them, the low rumblings that gradually became louder.

“Let’s not do anything rash. We can talk this out.”

“Gary, they have the patient with them.”

That voice he recognized. The woman’s. It went through him, cold, the memory of waking up in the m a c h i n e for the first time, before he’d been put back in. She’d called him honey. She’d told him to get back to his nice dream.

The rage flared quickly and unexpectedly, a heat searing through him that Will didn’t think he could stop if he tried. Honey. Nice dream. She’d plugged him into that thing. She’d forced that thing down his throat and those wires and tubes into his body. And the other voices, the other people talking around him—other agents?

He wasn’t on his feet. Someone was carrying him. Were they going to put him back? “Come on,” he heard, and Will’s ears twitched. He knew that voice, too. It had just been speaking to him, telling him that it was time to make a run for it. “Let’s get out of here.”

Good idea, Max, thought Will, although it might be his own brain, again, parroting back to him what he needed to here. Max’s voice had helped him escape once. But he needed to do this properly, now.

His feet hit the floor. Arms and legs shaking, he was the heaviest he’d ever felt, barely able to stand, but he did, he did stand, without any of the hands trying to touch him. Max was one of the people beside him, he could see her hair. And one of the other faceless strangers had a knife in his pocket.

The lab agents made noises. The faceless strangers made noises, too. Will couldn’t hear any of them over the searing pain in his stomach, desperate to escape.

Cast a fucking fire ball!

Will felt a drop of blood fall down his nose. The fire ripped out of him.

Screams erupted, like the screams from his dreams, and Max was screaming, too, but Will could keep the fire away from her—he could try, anyway, as the flames hungrily ate everything around them, just like in every useless nightmare. He didn’t want to burn the woman who trapped him, though. He was too angry.

Anger didn’t stick to Will easily, and it was a shame, Will thought, as he started to walk towards her. He didn’t smell the flesh melting. He couldn’t hear the voices calling to him, couldn’t recognize them or understand what they were saying, but he heard the woman beg.

“Please,” she was saying, but all Will could do was remember the look in her eyes when she’d told him to go back to his dream. His dream, where all he did was burn and scream and die, over and over, forgetting the face of everyone he’d ever loved. Maybe he was back in the dream now.

If he was still dreaming, this was easy. Will pulled the knife from his sleeve and stabbed her in the throat.

How do you like it? He thought, detached from his body as she gasped and wheezed, unaffected as the blood splattered onto him. Pulling that monstrous wire from his throat had nearly killed him. Maybe it had killed him.

The last of his energy withered away, and Will’s eyes closed again. To another dream or awake, he wasn’t sure.

--

Brief moments passed over him:

Warmth, from streaks of sun as someone held his arm. Water, like the depths of the Quarry from his dream, but Will didn’t shiver.

He floated, among voices that tugged back and forth, a push and pull. He floated, as someone put his head down and covered him with a blanket, the cool darkness that followed softer than anything Will had felt in months.

The voices got louder, the light outside his eyelids a little brighter, but Will held back from blinking—watched, watched, you might be watched. Instead, his ears tried to decipher the voices, but they were muffled.

His head was cold. There were arms resting against him.

Music and muffled static—this was music, right? Will thought so. He hadn’t heard music in a long time, hadn’t since—

Oh no.

They’d gotten him, hadn’t they? They’d found him.

Trying to keep the panic at bay, Will tried desperately to recognize any of the voices, but he couldn’t. None were familiar, none of the three bodies closest to him. Two boys, and a girl, but otherwise, frustratingly silent.

He had to escape then. He had to run, and if he didn’t run, he would burn, and Will didn’t think he could burn again.

His hands found a latch.

He was rolling out onto pavement.

Horns, shouts, Will picked himself off, eyesight still a blur, but whatever lay in front of him was more familiar than what was behind, something about the flat skyline familiar.

Will ran, not realizing how close he’d come to being hit by a car until he’d already passed, into the tangle of weeds and grass, and a sign that said—

LENORA

Oh, Will thought, eyesight becoming clearer. He squinted from the sun. Home.

Like he’d once run through the Upside Down, Will ran into home, the place with his house and his school and his friends, if only he could picture them, and others that he was sure were waiting for him.

Someone had to be waiting for him, right?

Cars drove by, but none stopped. Will was almost out of breath already, barely onto the main road, but determination surged through him. He forgot about what he was running from. All he focused on was one foot in front of the other, lungs burning at the strain.

He hadn’t breathed on his own in months. He hadn’t taken steps with his own feet in months, and now he was running, careless and determined.

The black spots were appearing at the edge of his vision, again, he was overdoing it, and Will knew he was overdoing it, but he was home, he was finally home, he would finally see—

Well, he would know them when he saw them, right? Surely, he would recognize the people searching for him once he saw or heard them. 

The last thing Will remembered, before falling again, was another familiar sign for a shop or arcade. He’d been on this street before, been behind this building, and all he heard was “Byers?!” as his eyes shut one more time.

-- 

Moments in a fog, again.

Voices.

The push and pull, but louder, this time, an argument, argument, that was the word, that wasn’t going to stop. He knew some of these voices. He knew the voices that were shouting

Cast a fucking fire ball!

Andy. The person arguing was named Andy. And the person he was arguing with was Greg. These people meant something to him, once, Will knew, but a pit of disappointment grew in his stomach. They weren’t the ones he was looking for.

“What? You don’t….? …party?”

“…off.”

“No, you …. the one who …her.”

Her? Who was her? There was a hand touching his head. Will realized, gradually, that his eyes were actually open. He’d just forgotten how to focus them and see. And as the room became clear, there were faceless strangers at the door, Andy and Greg arguing beside him, and Laura, that’s right, Laura, who was touching his head. 

“….Will?” said Laura, she was saying his name. He kept tuning out of sentences, but he remembered Laura.

“…problem is.”

“I think you…”

“God, you’re such a fucking faggot—”

The word ripped through him, and without meaning to, without even wanting to, Will felt himself burn again. She screamed, or maybe Will just expected a scream, now, as the thin blood dripped from his nose.

It meant he couldn’t resist when the strangers picked him up. But then, his eyes caught up and he saw red hair—Max, he thought, relaxing into the unknown arms. Max had appeared again, if this was real.

Laura was hugging him. More words, that he didn’t are about, because Will was starting to remember. He remembered Greg, and something twisted low in his stomach. He remembered Andy, and suddenly, confusingly, couldn’t find anything in him that was angry.

Maybe Andy was someone who’d looked for him.

“Can you actually call, this time?” he asked. “Or, I don’t know, pick up a fucking pen?”

Will thought he could do that. He thought he might even want to, maybe, and moved his neck muscles to nod. Up, down. Difficult, difficult. Andy nodded back at him, and then Will was being pulled away, again, by the strangers and Max, again, but this time he was awake.

They were talking, arguing, and Will almost recognized the person waiting by the car, but the name slid out of his brain. A someone, though. Someone good. Will knew where he wanted to go.

“What is it?” asked one of the strangers. “You don’t want to fly?”

Fly, that was silly. Will knew what street they were on. He hadn’t made it this far for nothing. His neck muscles shook side to side.

“What?”

Stupid to waste time. Will took the steering wheel into his hands, ignoring all the shouts, and drove into the grass of home, this was home, this was—

“Home,” said one of the strangers. It wasn’t her home, though. It couldn’t be.

“Jesus...this…their house…Hawkins.”

Hawkins. Home. Will ignored the nervous feeling in his stomach and stumbled onto the knee-high grass, limping a little to drag his weight towards the door. There was a door, Will thought, walking inside. It didn’t look like it was supposed to. It was all wrong.

He tripped forward, a little, onto the wooden floor. The strangers had followed him, still talking, and Will willed himself to listen to them.

“No one’s been in here in years.”

Years, Will thought, and his eyes started to prickle. Too late, again. Too slow, again, but—

“You were right,” A voice had reminded him. A voice that might be dead. “I noticed it this time, too, it is like everything’s slowing—”

“Slowed,” Will had whispered. “Or am I moving fast?”

Will had stopped time, once, either by slowing down everything around him or moving so fast that everything else stayed still. If he was to trust the stranger, Will hadn’t been to this house in years. He hadn’t been home in years.

How awful, thought Will, the sadness spinning through him, but instead of reaching for the fire, he allowed himself to reach for the clock on the wall.

Years? Had it been years? Had he been missing for years, stuck in that machine, the doctor wanting Will’s ability to stop time, all while wasting Will’s time away?

He wanted those years back.

For someone who hadn’t known how to give the doctor what he wanted, now that Will set his mind to it, he saw the path forward easily; he could slow time or stop it, so why couldn’t he go backwards? Why couldn’t he rewind the hands on that clock?

The hands on the clock started to move, at the thought. Easier than the fire, easier by a mile, because Will had wanted to go home very badly once before, and this was much less work, and much less dangerous, too.

He pictured home, without being able to remember it, and walked into the kitchen, hungry. Not sure what he was hungry for, the memories of pizza and—yes. Will opened the fridge for a can of Coke, exactly what he wanted, and he drank the entire thing. It stung his throat, going down, but Will was already moving on.

Details filled in behind him, things he couldn’t have articulated out loud but that followed him alongside the group of strangers. A bedroom—not mine—but there was something in the top drawer for the tall person he vaguely recognized with the very long hair, and there were clothes in the closet, better than whatever he had on now.

It should’ve scared him, how easy it was.

What did the strangers want? They wanted to travel, they wanted to go somewhere. They’re helping me, Will thought, which seemed right. They needed something, needed supplies, needed money, and Will took the clock with him to where the money was supposed to be.

His hands remembered the combination, even though Will couldn’t be sure who the safe or money belonged to.

Seeing the bundled-up cash, Will almost smiled. Like it had been left for him, as a treat. Like it was proof that he had been here, once, that he’d existed outside the nightmares and metal restraints of the lab within his own mind.

“Jeeee-sus,” said the long-haired man. Will knew him once. Will trusted him. “Jeeeee-sus.”

“Is that enough?” asked the red-haired girl, Max, that was Max. “For gas, or whatever else we need?”

He let the voices sink over him, keeping the hands of the clock still on an hour he couldn’t fully remember. People who’d been waiting for him. People who might have even been looking for him, whose names and faces stayed blurry. He missed them all the same, though, safer in this carved out moment than he’d felt in a long time.

“We’ll get back…,” said one of the strangers. He was the blurriest, or maybe the second blurriest, but he still put his hand on Will’s shoulder. “Do you want…? …night? Then we can…tomorrow.”

“Stay here?” asked Max’s voice. “Stay where?”

Will did. He wanted to sleep in this house, and he wanted to fall asleep on his own instead of passing out. He wanted to eat something. He wasn’t sure what his ripped-up stomach and esophagus could take. He wanted these people he couldn’t remember.

His nose didn’t bleed, not like it did with the fire. His eyes felt slick and shiny.

Someone held up a pizza close to him. They were tentative, a little afraid, and Will wasn’t sure how to tell them not to be. After all, he was afraid, too. He took two bites, enough, that’s enough, and gradually settled into a comfortable position, allowing the voices to wash over him.

Even though they were strangers, Will was starting to appreciate them, although he liked when Max talked best. Max and the long-haired one, who was older, he thought, than the rest of them.

This time, when Will fell asleep, he didn’t dream about anything.

--

When he woke up, he realized that he’d left them stuck in that moment in the past.

Will didn’t feel bad but just too tired, like the sleep wasn’t enough to make up for keeping them in that bubble. Everyone else was slow to rise, too, slow and complaining, until Will put the clock back on the wall.

Then, they helped him back in the car. The girl with the red hair was leaning over him, Max, and her expression was hard to read. Afraid. Awed. A little pitying, too, but she set Will up against one of the windows. “Don’t jump out this time,” she said, and Will wouldn’t.

He closed his eyes again, lulled back into sleep, aware of the way they stared. Eyes watching, but Will had gotten used to that, hadn’t he? He’d find the people looking for him. Hopefully, Max and these strangers would help him find his friends and family, if they weren’t already dead.

Hopefully he could trust them.

Chapter Text

They pulled over to stop sooner than El might’ve liked—she’d glanced behind her constantly, waiting for lab agents or mysterious government figures to steal her and Will away for the past several hours—but it was late. It was later than late, moon heavy and full in the black ink sky.

She thought she’d known the desert. Desert, with one s, not dessert with two. She’d thought that Lenora was the desert, but the stretch of flat earth that they’d been driving on was the kind from her geography textbook.

Will might have liked painting it. He’d been awake briefly, glassy-eyed and sad, and El didn’t know how she knew that Will couldn’t hear her, except that she was sure of it.

She didn’t try to explain any of it to Mike or the others. Some things about their powers, her powers, once upon a time, were difficult to explain.

Will had been stuck inside his head. And he was still a little bit stuck, a little bit lost. El hoped she’d be able to help him come back, and it’d be easier if she could just go inside his head again—something that once had been so easy, but…

El swallowed. None of them had asked about her powers the entire trip. Maybe they were glad that they only had one set of powers to worry about.

Argyle drove them up towards a motel. He parked the school bus, blinking sleepily, and waved for them to help unload. It was a dusty place, across the street from a strip mall and junkyard, with a 24/7 diner shining enticingly bright light around the corner. They’d subsisted off of gas station food for hours.

“This looks like the set of a horror movie,” said Dustin, as they climbed out, stretching and wincing. “I bet there’s a mummy behind the front desk.”

No mummy, but an old man who peered at them and their school bus curiously. “Field trip?”

“Oh yeah,” said Argyle. “It’s like, culturally significant, you know?”

“Sure,” said the old man. If El remembered correctly, they were on the outskirts of a city called Vegas. “I think I’ve got the perfect room for you.”

“Birds,” said Lucas, when they reached number 317. “Birds.”

There were birds. Not real birds, but painted birds on the walls, and the beds were—“Nests,” she said, marveling at the design. A room with six bird’s nests. Argyle had heard six beds in one room and immediately agreed, claiming a single room across the hall.

“Yell if you need anything,” he said, before shutting the door, leaving El, Lucas, Max, Mike, and Dustin to their nested glory. And Will, of course, who’d managed to wake up enough to walk up the stairs on his own accord. El considered it a huge success.

“This one is the nest of the blue jay,” read Max. “And this is the—wait, no way this is a real bird. The tufted titmouse?”

“Dibs on the tit mouse bed,” said Dustin, and El wanted to laugh, she really did, but she didn’t think she was allowed to. Instead, she sat on the edge of the nest marked northern cardinal and watched as Will slowly made his way to the one by Dustin’s tit mouse.

Mike was watching him with that exaggerated concern. El wanted to shove him into the wall, a little bit, but held off. She’d felt stupid enough when Mike had told her that he didn’t even want to be Will’s brother.

No one seemed to want to shower or break off for the bathroom, even though they’d all sweat on the yellow school bus. Will’s yellow beanie stayed pinned to his head.

“Well,” said Max. “Goodnight, I guess.”

Will laid down after that, and it must have been what they were all waiting for. Each in their strange nest, with facts about the bird in question pinned to the side.

El tried to get comfortable, in the pajamas she’d packed in a rush, with her rose-gold hair and half-assed toothbrush job. She was tired. So, why was she staring up at the ceiling, waiting for sleep to hit her in the face? Argyle probably hadn’t brushed his teeth at all.

The air conditioner was too noisy. The traffic outside too close, too random. El could almost feel each of her friends fall asleep beside her, in the weird circle the nests made; Will first, then Max, Lucas, and Dustin, and finally, she was sure that it was just her and Mike.

Neither of them wanted to be the one to break. But eventually, El shifted over onto her shoulder and closed her eyes, turning away from the glowing red alarm clock and red bird, looking at her fiercely.

Red bird, red bird.

El shifted over again. The air conditioner had kicked off, but now it was too quiet. Someone was snoring. Snoring made El think of Hopper, who she missed almost too much for words, and she wondered where he and Joyce might be. If they’d found out about Montauk, from Jonathan, or if they might have passed their school bus on the highway earlier that day.

The comforter wasn’t very comforting, but at least it wasn’t like sleeping in a real nest. Or maybe, El wanted to sleep in a real nest, instead?

Her dreams turned into fragmented things; birds chewing worms that they’d plucked from dewy grass. A bird feeder that she’d seen at someone’s house—Lucas’s, maybe? Mike’s? El liked the idea of feeding birds just to look at them, without any desire to catch or kill them.

Red birds and blue birds, all flying merrily together. Friendly birds without a care in the world, dipping over the clouds and flying into birdhouses for merriment.

She must have been dreaming, then, to wake up so suddenly.

Blinking, El groped through the darkness. Had only an hour passed? Maybe two? She couldn’t make out the number on the clock. Why had she woken up, though, if—

“He’s gone!”

El’s stomach knew who he was, even as someone else tiredly asked “Who? What’s going on?” El knew. El should’ve known they couldn’t let their guard down, even to dream about birds.

“Will!” she called out, cold feet on the floor. “Will!”

Someone threw on the overhead lights. Will’s nest was empty. “Fuck,” swore Dustin. “Do you think he ran off again?”

“His shoes are gone,” said Mike. “Who has a room key? Is there one missing?”

They’d come in with two keys, and they had two, now. Will hadn’t taken a key with him. El wondered how far of a head start he had—an hour? Longer? Had he simply waited for them all to fall asleep and then made his escape?

El wanted to bang her head against the wall, but she was too tired. She’d thought he’d finally understood—no, she should’ve known better.

They put on their socks and shoes and sweaters and stepped out into the motel hallway, no one bothering to knock on Argyle’s door. It would take too long to explain.

El shivered, glancing around at where he might have gone. There weren’t many options—had he been hungry? Afraid? Had he hitchhiked or gotten into a car, somehow, already a hundred miles away?

“Maybe he wanted something to eat,” suggested Lucas. “There’s the diner on the corner. I think I also saw a 7/11 when we got off the exit.”

“Should we split up?”

Mike grimaced. “I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t think so. I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”

Bad feeling, well, Mike wasn’t the only one. El didn’t like the way they’d all huddled outside the motel door, and in the dark, it was clear how exposed they were. Nothing to hide behind.

“What if Will didn’t leave?” she asked quietly. “What if someone took him?

“Broke in?” Max looked up at the walls. “One of us would’ve heard, right?”

“Either way, we’re wasting time just standing here,” said Mike, taking the lead down towards the strip mall of stores. El held back from rolling her eyes.

Dustin jogged up to join him. “If he did make a run for it, he might have collapsed before making it too far.”

“I don’t know,” said Lucas. “He was fast getting out of the car to Lenora.”

Even scanning the street, side to side, El knew Will wasn’t hiding out here. There wasn’t anywhere to hide, it was too flat, too open, even for someone like Will who hid better than most. She did check the dumpster behind the 7/11, pointedly ignoring the four expressions sent her way.

For all their bravado, El felt like the only one who ended up getting her hands dirty.

None of the stores were open. The diner was open, across the street, but her friends avoided the bright lights and clear walls. They could basically see who was inside, anyway, and none of the patrons had on a yellow beanie.

He could still be hiding, El thought, but honestly, she just really wanted a stack of pancakes. The pizza in their house had been two years old and made El nauseous.

So, they crept towards the junk yard, all looming hunks of metal and rusted car parts. Plenty of places to hide, and the others must have been thinking the same thing.

They walked, single file, shining flashlights into dark crevices. El hoped Will was still wearing the yellow hat. It would make him easier to spot, easier if he was still close by and hadn’t already run back to California or been kidnapped by government agents or—

All of their flashlights cut out.

El stood, paralyzed in the darkness for a second, before reaching forward to grasp onto shoulders. Max’s shoulders. “Holy shit,” whispered Dustin. “What just happened?”

Afraid to speak, El tried to squint, but the junk yard wasn’t lit at all. Not even a streetlight nearby.

“Will?”” hissed Lucas. “Is that you?”

“Turning off our flashlights?”

“We don’t fucking know, do we?”

“Guys,” said Mike. “Let’s get back to the road, okay? We can’t see shit over here.”

They crawled over, much slower than the first time, stepping carefully over the shards of metal and twisted up garbage. El stubbed her toe and bit her lip to avoid crying out, tired and frustrated and they’d barely started their search. Then again, in such a tiny town—town wasn’t even the right word—where could he be?

“Okay,” said Max, when they finally reached the side of the road, underneath a pale orange light. “Where next? Back to the 7/11? The diner?”

El waited for Mike to answer, but he didn’t. And then El looked around, the others doing the same, and only four of them had made it to the streetlight. “Mike?!”

Craning their heads, they looked all around, but Mike wasn’t a few steps behind or already moving on to the next place to look. He’d vanished. El’s blood went cold.

“I can’t believe he’d run off on his own,” said Lucas. “Like, Jesus Christ, we have to stick together here.”

El shook her head. “I don’t think he ran off,” she whispered. “I think someone is following us.”

“Someone? Where?”

Dustin and Lucas looked disbelieving. But El could feel it, feel him, feel someone’s eyes over their shoulders, waiting for them to make a mistake. Maybe they’d already made their mistake. “We could go back to the motel,” she said. “Wake Argyle up.”

“We can’t just abandon Mike,” said Dustin. “Or Will.”

“Not abandon,” said El. “Help.”

“Oh, yeah, a lot of help—”

“Stop,” said Max. “Both of you. How’s Argyle going to help? We can’t call anyone, either, not if the government agents are already looking.”

“Or already here,” said Lucas, ominously, and El swallowed. “Maybe we should go back.”

“What? Why?”

“I don’t know,” said Lucas. “Maybe because we’re in a crazy amount of danger? Maybe because Mike just fucking vanished?”

“That means we look for him,” said Max. “That doesn’t mean we give up.”

“Give up? I’m not talking about giving up, I’m talking about—”

“Mike would go back into the junk yard for you!” Dustin yelled, getting closer to his face. “Even in the dark, you know he would!”

“And what are you going to do?” asked Lucas. “Punch me in the face?!”

“Guys,” said Max again, as El looked away. She was so tired. She was so tired of getting her hopes up, Will, Will, and then none of it mattered. She was tired of feeling so useless, feeling like the only reason she kept waking up every morning was to pretend to be someone she could never be.

Jane Hopper failed her math tests and didn’t get invited to the right slumber parties and dyed her hair pink instead of blonde or brown. Number Eleven killed people’s mothers.

They were coming to some kind of compromise. Lucas, Dustin, and Max being smart and making the right decisions. They’d go back to the motel but look around the diner first, the only place they hadn’t checked. They would ask the people behind the counter if they’d seen any kids.

El’s head hurt. All she wanted to do was crawl back into her nest bed, so she silently followed the other three as they crept back across the street, the only people outside for miles.

None of them spoke. El wouldn’t have cared if they did. She dangled her useless flashlight beside her, letting it hit her knee, as they approached the diner. It was even brighter than it looked before, nearly glowing translucent and yellow, and maybe she could grab some pancakes while the others actually did some searching for a change.

She could feel herself growing angrier and more tired, could feel her feet dragging more and more, but what was she supposed to do? None of them would ever choose her over Mike or Will. None of them would look this long and hard for her.

Lucas opened the door to the diner, and they walked inside, squinting, a little, at how much brighter it was than the shadowy darkness. Diners didn’t normally have chandeliers, did they?

“Hello?” Dustin called out. “Is anyone working here?”

El was sure she’d seen someone behind the counter before, but now there was no one. No one was eating, either, no plates on any of the tables at all. It was late, though. How many people passed through this exit?

She turned again, just to be sure, and Lucas and Max were gone.

“Dustin,” she whispered. “They’re—”

The lights went out.

Startled, El dropped her flashlight and Dustin swore loudly, both of them twisting around in the darkness. “Where’d they go?” he asked. “What the fuck is going on here?”

We’re being watched, was El’s constant, panicky thought. A rabbit-like terror, similar to what she’d felt from Will when he’d been running down the lab halls, and a little bit like herself, her old self, taking those first steps into the Lenora sand.

“We have to find a fucking light switch,” Dustin huffed, and El could hear his footsteps, but he seemed far away. The space around them felt larger, much larger than the diner had been. Colder, too. “Jesus Christ.”

He flung the light on and froze. El froze, too, heart thudding painfully in her chest. This was a dream. This had to be a dream.

They were in the basement of the Electric Lamp Oasis.

//

“Wait! Please!”

Dustin was sure he was stuck in a nightmare.

He’d had dreams about the lamp oasis before. Many of them. They bled into each other, different versions of reality from his memories; sometimes, his was able to reach his mom before her head rolled off her shoulders. Sometimes, he kept running on a seemingly endless track, knees and ankles giving out as he was forced to watch.

Sometimes El was at the center of it, arms outstretched to deliver the death blow. Other times, it was Dustin himself, his hands covered in blood.

He willed himself to wake up. He’d learned, after enough times waking up screaming, that usually once he realized he was dreaming, he could start to snap out of it, but the walls of the Electric Lamp Oasis basement remained dark and foreboding.

Dustin had forgotten how large it was. Large and long, like the boxes of lamps went on for miles.

“I guess I’ll start walking,” he mumbled, quietly.

The silence stretched, unnaturally, and Dustin shivered. He’d never been down alone before. “I’m not really here now,” he told himself. “This isn’t—”

His mom’s head rolled out of one of the boxes.

Dustin screamed, jumping to avoid it hitting his foot, and then started to run. Other heads were rolling out of boxes, heads in frozen expressions of fear, eyes melted and bloody. “Dusty!” one of them begged, and Dustin couldn’t squeeze his eyes shut fast enough.

Of course that meant he stepped on one of the heads next, foot squishing against skin and bone. Dustin screamed again, opening his eyes but refusing to look down, refusing to allow himself to focus on his mom’s face, the way it pulled and dripped.

“Dusty, you left me!” one of the heads cried. “You left me there!”

Dustin gasped, and suddenly his mom was looming over him, much larger than she should’ve been. Literally ballooning, filling the cavernous basement with furious eyes. “You left me there,” she said. “Tied up with rope.”

“We should’ve tied it tighter,” Dustin said. “I know we should have—”

“You let this happen!”

His mom’s arms were around him, not the hug that he’d missed so desperately for the past several months, but something that squeezed his bones. Crunched bones, squeezing into his lungs, ripping into his lungs, a pain that would’ve sent him howling if Dustin had any air to breathe in.

He was going to die, strangled to death, and his brain thought, that’s okay, I’m okay with that, for one delirious second before Dustin fell, crashing back onto the floor.

The giant version of his mom vanished. The boxes were gone, too, and Dustin rose shakily to his feet. He could see the staircase and ran for it, before anything else could appear.

He was crying. He could feel it, distantly, like his eyes and face belonged to someone else. He missed her so badly, even this warped version was better than nothing, as he reached for the staircase door—

Dustin’s hand slipped from the doorknob. He pulled away, and it was red, wet with blood, the entire door was bleeding.

Or someone is bleeding on the other side, Dustin thought. He had to open it, though. He had to get out, he had to escape. He put his hand back on the doorknob, wincing, and carefully turned it.

He wouldn’t look at the person bleeding on the other side, even though he knew who it was. Dustin closed his eyes, feet now damp with blood, too, as he began to climb.

“We have to run an errand.”

“Errand?”

“Yes.”

“To…?”

“Your friends called,” his mom had said, and he should’ve known. Why hadn’t Dustin known? Why hadn’t Dustin noticed how odd she was acting, realize what was going on underneath the surface?

Blinking away tears, Dustin kept walking through the blood. Up one stair and onto another. Just like countless times over the past several months, he tried to figure out where he’d gone wrong. What if he’d stopped them from all getting in the car together? What if—

Joyce stood in the middle of the road, in her red, radio shack shirt. There was a bruise underneath her eye, and she’d said, “I’m not going to let you do this.”

Then the car doors had opened. Steve had pulled Dustin out, broken hand clenched in his shirt, as Lucas, El, and Erica had all been pulled from the car, too.

“What’s going on? What are you doing?”

They’d been pulled from the bar, by Jonathan and Mrs. Wheeler and Nancy and Max, and then Joyce had stabbed his mom in the stomach. With her TASER, not a knife. “What did you do to here?!” he’d shouted, over his mom’s screams. “What did you do?!”

Not enough, thought Dustin, the smell of the blood almost unbearable. They hadn’t done enough to stop what was coming. They hadn’t made sure she couldn’t escape.

His mom’s screams had turned into howls, inhumane and angry, screaming, “You won’t get away with this!” She’d shaken against the rope Jonathan had used—too weak, not enough rope, why hadn’t they used more rope—“You won’t, you won’t, you won’t!” 

“We will,” Joyce had said. “We have before. We will again. Bob says hi, by the way.”

Bob had died, too. That day in the lamp oasis. Dustin’s stomach heaved, so overwhelmed that he had to stop moving. He couldn’t climb anymore. Bob had been possessed, just like his mom had been possessed, and they’d let it happen. They hadn’t done anything to stop it.

“Maybe if you acted a little bit more human, you’d be more believable.”

“Is that so?”

It wasn’t. And wasn’t that the most damming thing of all. Dustin hadn’t even noticed that his own mother was possessed. Lucas had noticed in time to save Erica. Joyce had noticed in time to save Chief Hopper. But his mom didn’t even have a chance, Dustin hadn’t even had a chance to try to remind her who she was and pull her from the thing that had taken hold.

She wasn’t important enough, a vicious voice told him. She wasn’t as important as Hopper. She was just collateral damage. Just like you.

Visions swarmed in Dustin’s head: their life before Will and El had moved from California to Hawkins, his life before Halloween monsters became the norm and people died, really died, because of superpowers that shouldn’t exist.

You think they’d go looking for you if you went missing? You think they’d help you if you were the one possessed?

“They would,” said Dustin weakly, against the voice pressing against his skull. His head was pounding. He felt sick, nauseous from the blood and bad memories, unable to take another step forward. “They’d look for me?”

Would they?

They’d tied his mom with ropes but not tight enough. They hadn’t thought to make her unconscious, somewhere, or leave someone behind to guard her. Dustin would’ve done it. He would’ve done anything to prevent what happened, anything to prevent—

A scream echoed from above him, and Dustin’s eyes shot open. “Mom.” He started to run again, slipping and sliding. She was screaming, and nothing like she’d sounded when she possessed—human, she sounded human and alone and afraid. Dustin would reach her this time. He would save her this time.

“Mom, Mom—”

Dustin flung the door open.

He was back in the basement, impossible, impossible, he’d just climbed the stairs hadn’t he? A dizzying terror came over him, and even though it was stupid, Dustin ran for the stairs again, the same staircase he’d just climbed up.

Blood spewed out at him the second he opened the door. Red and metallic, and Dustin screamed without meaning to, the blood getting into his mouth.

“Throats cut. That was it, wasn’t it? Old Farmer what’s-his-name said that the pigs’ throats had been cut.”

He heard his mom. He heard El, too, a feral shriek that made him slip up the stairs faster, filled with panic. Dustin had seen the moment so many times, behind his eyelids, of El’s outstretched arms doing their worst, but this was real, this felt real, she was going to kill her again, and he opened the door—

Back into the basement.

Dustin kicked the floor with a yell of frustration bordering on hysteria.

His throat clenched painfully. God, he was never going to get there, was he? He was never going to get there in time, he was never going to reach her, he was never going to hug his mom again.

Never.

“Dusty, please.”

“I can’t,” said Dustin, holding his hands over his ears. “I can’t, I’m sorry, I can’t. I can’t do it.”

Tears filled his eyes, wet and sick with mucus, his mom would’ve gotten him a tissue. His mom would’ve dried his eyes, but she never would, because she was—

“Dustin!”

Dustin opened his eyes, not realizing that he’d closed them. El was right in front of him.

He shrieked and scooted backwards, head colliding with one of the lamp boxes. It was El, but strangely enough, it wasn’t the El who belonged in the Electric Lamp Oasis. This El had slightly pink hair, a little bit longer. This El was talking to him, Dustin realized, even though he couldn’t quite make out what she was saying.

“…you…ay?”

Dustin blinked and tried to steady himself, the memories slow and soupy to return. El. They’d been walking outside, hadn’t they? Walking outside the lamp oasis? Why would they do that?

“Can you hear me?”

“I don’t know,” said Dustin, sniffing stupidly. He was covered in blood—except he wasn’t. But it had been spilling all over him only seconds before. “I don’t understand.”

“Something’s wrong,” said El. “Where did Max and Lucas go?”

Max? Lucas? And then, what about—

“Mike,” said Dustin. They’d flown to California. They’d been looking for—“Will.”

The fear didn’t completely seep away, but it changed, morphing from frozen terror to something stickier. He could feel eyes watching him, a looming presence that doused them both in a shadow. “Something’s wrong,” El repeated. “This isn’t real.”

Real, real, this isn’t—

A scream echoed from upstairs, just like before, and both of their necks snapped towards the sound. “Mom,” said Dustin, at the same time that El said “Hopper”, and then they were both staring at each other.

Something bitter sunk in Dustin’s stomach. Something that wasn’t fair, but life wasn’t fucking fair, was it?

“You saved him,” said Dustin. “You got to save Hopper.”

El turned to him with wide eyes. “Dustin—”

“It’s true, isn’t it? You got to save Hopper. You got to be the hero, you got to save the day, but my mom wasn’t important enough, was she?”

It was cruel. Dustin could feel it, spilling out of him, something angrier and crueler than he knew what to do with, a heightened version of the person he’d become when they’d gotten into such a terrible fight and he and Lucas had hit Mike. Now, he could barely remember Lucas or Mike’s faces.

Angry, angry, so angry. Who are you angry at?

“I’m angry at you!” yelled Dustin, and El flinched, crawling backwards. Seizing up inside of him, stronger and darker than anything he’d ever felt, every missed hug and good morning fully trained on the face in front of him. “You killed her! It’s your fault!”

Is it, Dustin?

“It is!”

“I’m sorry!” El was crying. Dustin might have been crying, too, with the hazy way the room started to spin and twist around them. He’d thought they were in the basement, surrounded by boxes, but they were upstairs. Upstairs, in the exact room where it happened.

In fact, if Dustin squinted, he could see the scene around them: bodies splayed out without faces, screams that twisted into nowhere, and the fury inside of Dustin’s stomach grew stronger and darker, in stark contrast to El’s rapidly paling face. “This isn’t you,” she said, bizarrely. “There’s something wrong, Dustin.”

“I know what’s wrong,” said Dustin. He was shaking. He could feel it in his hands and feet and arms, shaking and sweating, worse than the worst of his night sweats. Worse than any nightmare, because this was real, El was really in front of him, he was sure of it. “You’re wrong. Nothing bad ever happened before you and Will came to Hawkins.”

“Dustin—”

“No one died,” said Dustin, and El flinched again. He couldn’t stop the words from pouring out of him. Words he hadn’t even thought in his head, just feelings bubbling up, so fast that Dustin could barely keep track. He felt like a different person. He felt entirely himself. “No one died before you came. No one died, no one got possessed, no one got eaten.”

It flowed through him, almost unbearable. Every part of him hurt, his throat and his eyes and God, his head, pounding fiercely as the room got hotter. Just like when the flames had burst forward, trying to kill them, it was like there was a fire burning inside of Dustin’s skull.

“I’m sorry,” said El again. “I don’t know what I else I can say. I don’t know what else I can do.” She sniffed, and something else, not anger, not helpful, swept through him briefly before the fury returned. She deserves to cry. She deserves to suffer for what she did, doesn’t she?

“You can’t do anything,” said Dustin. It was like two people were speaking at the same time. “You can’t bring her back. You’re completely worthless. Weak and worthless.”

Whoa, thought Dustin, for a split second, but then the pain was back. The anger that he could hold onto, because the alternative was much worse.

“I know this isn’t you,” said El. “I know there’s something wrong, please, let me help.”

“Help?” Dustin scoffed. Dustin’s mouth scoffed. Dustin’s mouth felt faraway and removed from the rest of him, from the boiling pit of tar in his chest and stomach. She killed your mom. She killed your mom. Your mom is dead, nothing else matters, nothing else can win. No one has it worse than you, Dusty-buns, isn’t that right? No one could possibly understand.

“You can’t help me. You can’t help anyone. You can’t even help yourself. You’ll only make things worse, just like you always do, just like you made all of our lives worse.”

El blinked back more tears. She was always sniffing, always crying, always a baby, and what did Dustin care? Dustin had lost more than anyone, and he didn’t cry. He would never cry. “That’s not true.”

It is true. Isn’t it, Dustin?

“Yes.”

So she should be punished, right?

“Punished,” repeated Dustin, and El’s eyes widened again. There was a rope in his hands, just like the rope they’d used to tie up his mom, useless, useless, totally useless. “Your fault.”

He took a step towards her. She backed up into the wall, but there wasn’t anywhere to run. There wasn’t anywhere to hide. Every ugly emotion was finally on the surface, every terrible thought Dustin ever had. She hurt your mom, you can hurt her back. She deserves it. “Deserves it.”

“Stop,” said El. “Stay back.” She started hitting him with her fists, against his shoulder and back, but it was like the anger brought a strength Dustin shouldn’t have had, and it was almost easy to tie her hands behind her back. “Dustin!”

This is crazy, thought Dustin, another split second of quiet rationality before everything else took over again. The grief, morphed into a toothy monster, taller and meaner than the Demogorgon. He tied El’s hands together and then her feet, before wrapping a piece of the rope in her mouth, something he probably wouldn’t have even thought of except—

That’s better, isn’t it?

Yes, thought Dustin, but he was still so angry. So sad, too, even seeing El at her most helpless didn’t give him any strength back. It didn’t give him his mom back. Why wouldn’t his mom come back?

Because of you. It’s your fault, too.

“My fault,” whispered Dustin, and the horrible feeling grew stronger. He wanted to fling himself down the basement stairs. He wanted to run and hide, but the lights in the Electric Lamp Oasis glowed bright yellow. Everyone could see him, even El, with her wide brown eyes. Even himself.

He could’ve tried harder to keep her away. Or Dustin could’ve told her the truth from the beginning, like Mike and his mom, given her something to protect herself with. He could’ve noticed the signs sooner, spent more time at home to catch what was wrong, paid more attention to how Will, Mike, and Lucas had described the possessed.

And most damming of all, he could have used the syringe Mr. Sinclair had given them. Dustin had been wearing it, in a crucifix around his neck, identical to the one Will had used to neutralize Hopper. Identical to the one Mike had used on Heather.

“It was around our necks the entire time?! When the fuck did you find out?”

Oh, Dustin had been angry at Mike, and he’d been angry at Will, and he’d been angry at Mr. Sinclair for not helping more, for being so vague and then running away, for keeping an eye on his mom but not doing a good enough job.

But who’s job was it really? Whose fault was it really?

If it’s your fault, shouldn’t you be punished, too?

“Punished,” repeated Dustin again, hands trembling. He was still holding the rope. If he’d tied the rope tighter, she might still be alive. “My fault.”

El was trying to speak, through the rope in her mouth, but Dustin wasn’t paying attention anymore. All of his focus was on the rope, and the way it fit over his ankles, tying his feet together hard enough that he couldn’t kick it away.

Wrists next, which was more difficult—no, he had to put the rope in his own mouth first, or else the order didn’t make any sense. It fit uncomfortably, held back by his still-growing teeth, already dampening with spit. Dustin deserved it, though. He deserved to feel just like his mom had at the end.

Then, his wrists. It was difficult, but knowledge Dustin didn’t possess filtered through his brain, allowing him to make the knots. He couldn’t have his arms behind him, like El, but this was close enough.

Are you scared, Dusty? I was so scared at the end.

Dustin’s eyes watered. The fear in El’s eyes watching him tie himself up was nothing compared to the fear his mom must have felt. Nothing compared to the fear quietly screaming in the back of Dustin’s mind, the fear at his own hands betraying him—no, the only traitor was himself, a terrible, traitorous son. El might have delivered the final blow, but Dustin’s guilt wrapped itself around his limbs and throat.

Are you scared, Dusty? I burned at the end, you know.

Burned, thought Dustin, thinking of the fire in the in-between pit filled with vines. The fire that rushed towards them in the Electric Lamp Oasis, fire he still wasn’t sure how they escaped, except that they did. Dustin had escaped and left his mom to be burned, body unrecognizable in the rubble. Burned.

Dustin was holding a silver lighter in his bound hand.

He could almost see himself from above, pitifully small, skipping classes because he could barely stand to hear his own voice. A self-loathing so terrible that he could yell at El all he wanted, hit Mike in the scuffle, but none of it was enough. None was enough to keep himself from shaking every night.

You can fix it, Dustin. Your mom would want you to fix it. You can end things.

Fix it. Dustin ran his finger against the hinge of the lighter. His mom had always told him off for not cleaning up his messes. And it wasn’t fair, really. She shouldn’t have had to die so afraid, smelling the smoke, when Dustin had been able to escape. There was no escape from this.

El was shouting through the rope he’d gagged her with, and Dustin distantly felt sorry. She’d killed his mom, but she wasn’t any more responsible than he was. They were both guilty, and if you’re both guilty, you should both burn, isn’t that right? Isn’t that what’s fair?

The voice had taken on a mocking tone. Mocking and gleeful, and Dustin couldn’t even argue that it was wrong. He’d failed. El had failed.

Dustin raised the lighter and flipped it open.

El’s shouts had gotten louder, more frantic, eyes pleading with something Dustin couldn’t give her. How could he do anything else? How could this end any other way?

Gasoline spilled from the lamps in the room, all turned and knocked over. Dustin could feel it, soaking into his shoes and the frayed edges of rope. They’d been stupid too, playing with fire.

The girl can’t even put out fires, mused the voice. She can’t do anything. But you can do something. You can make things right.

Dustin held the lighted flame in his hand and

Threw

El screamed, trying to lunge forward, as Dustin closed his eyes.

It

At least he would see his mom again.

Down.

Chapter Text

“Guys. Let’s get back to the road, okay? We can’t see shit over here.”

Mike looked down one second, to make sure he wasn’t about to trip on the piece of car frame jutting out from the dark ground, and when he looked up, everyone was gone.

Mike blinked and blinked again, rubbing his eyes, but Dustin, El, Lucas, and Max had all vanished. A dry breeze swept through him. “Hello?”

It was stupid, to call out, but Mike felt a little stupid, blinking and craning his neck from side to side. Maybe it shouldn’t have been as strange, given what they’d gotten used to dealing with, but the last time Mike had vanished into another dimension, it’d been a little different.

Fewer vines, for one. Not as cold, either, nor the prevailing sense of something wrong. Then again, Mike thought he’d seen the moon when they’d gone to bed in their strange nest beds earlier that night, but this sky was empty and starless.

“Hello?” he called out again, easing himself up onto the main road. Nothing. Not a whisper, as Mike started to walk, back towards the motel.

Or at least he thought he was walking towards the motel.

A couple of years ago, when they were still in middle school and projects were occasionally interesting, he, Lucas, and Dustin had researched desert mirages. “An optical phenomenon,” said Mike aloud. “Where the rays of light bend via refraction and produce displaced images.”

Not a hallucination. Mirages could actually be photographed, which was the part Lucas had been fascinated by. There was some facet of reality, just misinterpreted by the brain.

Mike didn’t think that was exactly what was happening, but he guessed it was close: Not entirely real or entirely fake, but some third thing, lurking out of reach, which might have been why he didn’t jump when the voice started talking to him.

Clever, clever.

“Not really,” said Mike, continuing to put one foot in front of the other. Better not to stop for too long, even though he wasn’t sure where he was going. “I got stuck in an alternate dimension, once.”

An interesting hypothesis, mused the voice. A man’s voice. Where are you going, then?

Mike paused. With the question in his brain, he didn’t know, anymore. The road started to shift, from the empty outskirts of Las Vegas to something more—no, thought Mike. I’m still in Nevada. I’m not going anywhere until I find the others.

He started walking again, seeing the 7/11 and diner in the distance, even though he should’ve reached both buildings by now.

Interesting, mused the voice, again, and then Mike smelled smoke.

Spinning his head so quickly he felt sick, there was an orange fire in the distance. Too far away to hear anyone or anything, but a pit of dread sunk into his stomach. “Where are they?”

More smoke, and the sound of something actually breaking—Mike spun his head again and saw another fire, in the other direction. Two fires. He was right in between them.

Your choice.

“My what?!” Mike shouted, but some part of him understood. Two fires, and five missing friends. Were any of them together? Were the fires even real?

The mediator, isn’t that funny? Mediator Mike. It doesn’t suit you at all.

“What doesn’t?” asked Mike, swallowing dryly. Both were just as close. It was like one of those horrible logic puzzles Dustin would whip out, Prisoner’s Dilemma or whatever, or a trolley crashing towards a bunch of people tied up to the tracks. “I think you’re bluffing. I think they’re back at the motel, so I should go back to the motel.”

Still, his heart was hammering. And if the voice was inside his head, mad Mike, mad Mike, he was born inside of an insane asylum, or whatever, all because he didn’t have any friends, then the voice knew that Mike wasn’t entirely sure what to believe.

Should I tell you who is where?

“No,” said Mike, thinking yes. “It doesn’t matter.”

What if I told you they were doing a very bad job handling their problems? Would that surprise you? The voice seemed to laugh. I doubt it would surprise you. You’ve been carrying everyone’s baggage. And they’ve got serious baggage.

“It’s been a bad year.”

Has it?

Mike glanced around. The fires were still burning, but his feet felt glued in place. Once he could move them though, he’d run to the right. It was the first fire he’d seen. It was only fair—

Will isn’t there.

Of all the things the voice had said, it was finally this that made Mike freeze. Something sour stuck to his stomach, and his hands started to sweat. “You’re lying,” said Mike, struggling to keep his own voice even. “It doesn’t matter—”

The road started to crumble on either side of him, and Mike shrieked, swaying in his spot for a second, arms waving wildly for balance as the grass and sidewalk disappeared into a steep slope, a dozen feet above the ground, a hundred feet above the ground.

The road had thinned to the width of a balance beam. And like a gymnast on a balance beam, Mike stuck his arms out, the fires still burning in both dimensions.

That wasn’t what really scared him, though. What really scared him was that he wasn’t alone, anymore.

“Always balancing, Mike,” said the man, with the same voice as before. He was blond, with a narrow face and shoulders. He was handsome. “Thank you.”

Mike’s face flushed. “This isn’t very subtle,” he said. Always balancing, right. Balancing the splintered halves of his friend group, balancing keeping his grades up and the frantic, fanatic search for Will that brought them there. “Balancing, and I’m balancing on this stupid road.”

“I’ve never been known for my subtlety,” said the man. “Is it sex? Is that why you keep looking at me? Is that why you want to find Will so badly?”

The red flush darkened and spread further, making Mike’s hands sweat worse and knees momentarily lock. He had to hold onto himself, or he might fall. He had to hold onto himself: this isn’t real.

“Isn’t it?” asked the man. He looked equally bored and amused. “You’re a smart kid. Think about your stupid friends while you just stand here. You’re better than them. Smarter than them. Why don’t you prove it?”

“That’s not true,” said Mike. “Dustin’s a thousand times smarter than me.”

The man smiled, the same thoughts sticking in both of their heads, the same denials and the same terrible pride. But Mike would’ve been super fucked up if his mom had been exploded into jelly, so it wasn’t fair, really, and his arms swayed again.

“Humans are always policing their thoughts,” said the man. “Even when no one can hear them. And you and your stupid friends have very interesting thoughts. So interesting, I simply couldn’t help myself. So much anger. So much grief.” He spat the last word out like it was venomous. “Tell me, is it normal? To hate yourself so much? You would know, wouldn’t you?”

“I don’t hate myself.”

Alright, Mike. The man vanished, but his voice echoed, as Mike turned, trying to see both fires at the same time. Are you going to protect your friends? Be the big hero?

“This isn’t real,” said Mike, looking right again, but he wavered. What if the man wasn’t lying, and Will was in the other direction? What if Will wasn’t there at all? “This is just in my head. You can’t do anything.”

Oh, Mike. The voice tutted. You should know better than anyone that the things happening in your head are very real. How are you going to protect anyone if you can’t protect yourself?

Mike’s foot slipped and he was

Falling

Falling

“When I was seven, I jumped into Sattler Quarry.”

Spinning violently through the air, Mike screamed, too fast to do anything but squeeze his eyes shut as he braced for the impact of the water, close, closer, holy fucking shit—

“I can’t really remember what I was thinking, or anything. They kept asking me. My parents and doctors and stuff. If I understood. If I knew what normally happens if you fall from that height.”

He crashed into the water.

Sinking, every bone and muscle on fire, Mike forced his eyes open, unsure which direction and up and which was down. The water surrounded him completely, every direction, and he couldn’t see, he couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t move his arms or legs or try to swim, because after all of that, he’d never learned how to fucking swim.

He coughed, water seeping into his lungs, and the coughs came fast, after that, desperate and painful. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t breathe. But through the terrible panic, Mike’s squinting eyes caught sight of the foamy bubbles from his mouth spinning up.

Up, up, the surface is above you, it’s above you!

Like a dying man, Mike forced himself to crawl, harder than anything he’d done in his life. He was going to drown. He hadn’t died on impact, so he was going to drown, completely alone, and they would never find the body—

His hand touched air. And with a gasp, more water in than air, Mike reached the surface. “Fuck,” he coughed, nauseous and bobbing up and down in the water. His legs were lead weights. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”  

He kept coughing, lungs burning badly, barely able to keep himself afloat. One of his arms felt broken, of course, but Mike could breathe. Mike could breathe.

A body floated past him.

Pale and limp, Mike’s brain went to Will for a ridiculous second—Will had never drowned, to Mike’s knowledge, and so he should’ve figured it out. It was Mike’s own body, floating past. His own, younger body, with a twisted arm.

“Fuck,” said Mike again, cold all over, before he started to swim after him.

The churning water kept smacking him in the face, and Mike was so exhausted he could barely keep his head up. Around rocks and jetties of water, Mike gritted his teeth and bumped into the edges, legs scraping against something along the side.

Would the body be dead? Alive? Mike wasn’t sure which was worse, as they both continued down a river much longer and deeper than the Quarry had ever been.

He was inching closer, close enough to see his own, much younger face in greater detail, even with all the water in his eyes. And then the younger set of eyes snapped open.

“Help! Help!”

“I’m trying!” Mike yelled back, coughing out more water. It was almost impossible to control his motion, but Mike tried to launch himself against one of the rocks, gritting his teeth in pain but able to loop an arm around the flailing child. “Stop moving so much, Jesus fucking—”

“Help me! Please!”

Mike ignored the pleading cries and focused all his energy on moving, on—well, swimming wasn’t the right word, but he was guiding them towards one of the rocky shores, as their heads kept slipping under the water. Half of Mike’s lungs were probably filled with water, by now, and his throat ached.

His younger self was shaking with sobs, a wet leaf as Mike finally pulled them out of the river-Quarry. He was exhausted, completely drained to the bone, when his younger self started punching him in the stomach with feeble fists. “Hey, what the fuck?”

“I hate you!” younger Mike cried, relying on only one arm. The other arm hung limply next to him. “Why can’t you just be normal?”

Mike closed his eyes and let the fists hit his stomach. He was too tired to fight back. “What’s normal?” he asked. “How do you want me to be normal?”

“You still play all of these baby games. Everyone thinks you’re weird, they’re only friends with you because they have to be. Will disappearing is your fault, and you’re only looking this hard for him because you have a crush!”

Younger Mike hiccuped, as older Mike sat with that information. A crush, a crush. He should’ve laughed, but he still had too much water in his lungs.

“A crush on a boy,” said younger Mike, sad and disgusted.

He was laid bare, heart and lungs opened and exposed to the elements, as the wind blew by. The truth and parts of the truth dangled above him. Will had disappeared in his basement, under Mike’s watch, while they’d been playing one of these baby games.

There were about a hundred different things Mike wished he’d done differently. But never how hard he’d looked, never how deep into the weeds and maps he’d gotten, because they’d found him. After all of that, they’d found Will.

“Do you think you love him more than his mom and brother? Do you think that’s why you found him, and they didn’t?”

“No,” said Mike.

“It is,” his younger self cried harder. “That is what you think. That’s a horrible thing to think, you’re bad—” The tiny fist collided against Mike’s nose, and he rolled away. “You’re bad! You’re bad! Will would hate you if he knew you thought that, he would hate you forever, just like I hate you—”

Would Will hate him? Mike had thought about it, more than a few times. If anyone asked, Mike would’ve said the other part of the truth: Will had gone into the Upside Down for him, once, so of course Mike would return the favor.

But there was more to it. Of course there was.

“I think it takes a long time, anyway,” Will had said, in the aftermath of one of Lucas and Max’s fights, so many months ago.

“What does?”

“Getting with someone. Being with someone. Even just like, liking someone.”  

“Oh,” Mike had said, and he’d opened his big, stupid mouth to ask: “How long?”

Mike coughed up more water, grimacing. The strength of the fists against him had slowed. “He said seven years,” his younger self sniffed. “Seven years. Seven years to fall in love with someone. Seven years just to like someone.”

Even at the time, Mike thought Will was mostly bullshitting. “Like years,” Will had said. “Like, I don’t know, seven years.”

Maybe that was how long Will’s parents knew each other before they got married. Maybe it was Will’s kind way of turning him down, of saying I know how you feel, but it takes longer, doesn’t it? And we haven’t known each other that long.

Will would let him down nicely. Nicer than Mike deserved, probably, and it hadn’t changed how he felt, but it did soften things a little bit.

“I would’ve searched this hard for any of my friends,” said Mike aloud. “I would have.” He turned on his shoulder to face his younger self. “It’s worth it, you know.”

“Worth it?”

“Friends,” said Mike. “You don’t have any, but you will. And they’re worth waiting for. They’re worth looking for and fighting for.”

Strength surged through him, and maybe some clarity, too. This wasn’t really his younger self—this was a memory. This was a mirage. It was in his head, but what the blond man said was also right.

“I’m sorry,” said Mike, facing himself directly. “I’m sorry for being hard on you. I’m sorry for wishing you were stronger or better. I’m sorry that I don’t remember if I jumped or if I fell, or if it was on purpose or an accident.”

He took in a deep breath. “But I’m not sorry that I’m looking for Will. I’m not sorry I brought everyone else with me, because they’re my friends and they’re Will’s friends, too, and I know they’re in trouble, and I’m going to help them, okay? I’m going to help them, just like they helped me. That’s what friends do.”

His face, smaller and squishier, stared back at him before vanishing.

Mike was alone, stranded on the edge of the rapids.

He needed to get back to the main road with the fires. Even though it didn’t make any sense, Mike knew his friends were there, and that they needed his help. “I can’t swim back,” he said quietly, looking at the direction the water churned in.

If he didn’t swim, then climbing looked like the only option. Already winded and still hacking up water, Mike eyed the rocks warily. “Nowhere to go but up,” he muttered, setting his sneaker over the slippery edge. “Here we go.”

It was agonizingly slow. Each step, Mike waved his arms around, biting onto his lip hard and sweating the entire way. Higher and higher, he refused to look down at the waves churning below. One foot in front of the other.  

“I’ve never been known for my subtlety. Is it sex? Is that why you keep looking at me? Is that why you want to find Will so badly?”

Mike kept climbing. He’d been low before, so low that he might’ve jumped or fallen off this same cliff, but then he’d met Lucas. Then he’d met Dustin, then Max, and they needed him. Will needed him. Even El needed him, but it wasn’t just about being needed.

It had taken Mike a long time to understand that. Friendship wasn’t about keeping score. “Come on,” he murmured, going up a little higher. They needed him. But Mike also needed them, and that’s what his younger self knew he was missing out on without really knowing. “Keep going, keep going.”

Wind whipping through his skin and hair, he could fall back over at any time. He might drown again, might die on impact, instead. Mike kept going. There wasn’t any turning back.

The next time Mike blinked, the water had vanished.

He blinked again. He was back on the road, like nothing had happened. The motel on one side, the 7/11 and diner on the other, and two fires, orange and distant. Black smoke peeled up into the moonless sky.

Mike ran towards the first one he saw, refusing to look behind him. No time to double back. No time to overthink it. At least one of his friends was on the other end of the fire, and Mike had to try.

//

“Hello? Is anyone working here?”

Lucas took a step inside the diner and them found himself back outside. “What the…” His voice trailed off. Back outside, and Dustin wasn’t in front of him anymore. Neither was El. “What the fuck?”

The door to the diner was still there, but the diner wasn’t on the other side.

“Uh,” said Max, still beside him. “What’s going on?”

Lucas opened the door again, feeling stupid, but it just led back to the patch of road they were already on, dusty and dark. He went through it anyway, and then went through it a second time, while Max stood and watched. “This isn’t possible.”

“I don’t know if possible is what we want to hang our hats on,” said Max. “You know, after everything.”

After everything. Lucas’s mind swarmed back to Will literally turning back time in his Lenora house and the two-year-old pizza they’d eaten that had made them sick. “Fair enough.”

Neither of them moved, for a second, just hanging out in the doorframe until Max sighed and dropped away. “Well, we won’t find them in there, will we?”

The street was longer than Lucas remembered, and less well-lit, as they walked back towards the motel, feet moving but barely making any progress. It was like the strange town outside of Vegas had stretched like taffy, filling spaces it didn’t belong in, the sky endless and dark above them. “Something’s wrong.”

“No shit.”

“No, I mean seriously wrong.”

Max turned to face him. “No shit,” she said again. “We’ve lost four people, and our feet don’t fucking work.”

“I don’t think it’s our feet.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

Tires screeched.

Lucas looked up, surprised anyone was out driving this late, when suddenly there was a car barreling right at them. “Max!” he shouted, but she wasn’t moving quickly enough, too slow, and Lucas’s own feet were glued to the road, a familiar face behind the steering wheel.

Lucas heard Max gasp and knew she saw it, too.

He forced himself to twist out of the way, bracing for impact, but when Lucas opened his eyes, he was inside the car. Max was in the car too, in the passenger seat, which meant Lucas was behind the steering wheel, holy fucking shit. “Slow down!”

“I’m trying!” yelled Lucas, but the steering wheel wasn’t moving. His foot was stuck to the accelerator, speedometer needle swung to the right. They were flying, so fast that Lucas felt sick, his skin vibrating away from his bones. “I’m trying, I’m trying!”

“Lucas!”

There was a man standing in the middle of the road. The same face that had been behind the wheel before, the same face that showed up in Lucas’s dreams, somewhat regularly, standing in the middle of the fucking road, too close, too close, and Max’s hands were suddenly on the steering wheel. “No—”

They were spinning. Seatbelt choking him, Lucas couldn’t tell left from right or where they’d ended up until the car slammed into something and Lucas’s head jerked forward, neck nearly snapping with the strain, a huff of air exiting his lungs. He didn’t have enough in his lungs to scream.

“Oh my God, Lucas, can you hear me?! Lucas!” Max’s voice kept going in and out. Lucas hadn’t realized his eyes had closed—had they? He couldn’t see. Everything was black. “Lucas, we have to get out of the car, come on, get out of the car!”

She was panicking, Lucas realized dully, a second before holy shit, I smell smoke.

Max’s hand was futilely pulling him out, trying to untangle the seatbelt, but Lucas felt his legs pinned against the metal. “Get out of the car,” his voice slurred. “Get out.”

“I’m not leaving you in the fucking car—”

“There’s no time.”

The car exploded. White hot pain, searing through every part of him, screams and glass breaking and skin melting, worse than anything Lucas had ever dreamed. Someone begged “please”, and Lucas had let him die like this, worse than anything he could imagine.

Billy had begged “please.” 

“Help! Oh my God, please, help!”

The pain stopped.

Lucas opened his eyes, and he was standing on the side of the road again. Max was beside him, keeled over, gasping desperately for air. “Fuck,” she kept saying, as Lucas tried to understand what just happened. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

“Breathe,” said Lucas automatically, and then Max turned her bright red, tear-stained face towards him.

“Is that all you can say?” asked Max, chest still heaving. “We just fucking—we just died—”

But Lucas’s eyes were glued forward, the leftover terror and pain turning into something more acute. There was a car barreling at them again. “Max—”

“Not this time,” said Max, and two hands were pushing him out of the way, hard enough that he gasped—but now Max was the one stuck, the one in the car’s path.

“Max!”

The car hit her.

Lucas screamed, but then he was moving again, flying down a freeway ninety miles an hour, hands on the steering wheel. Max was beside him, face green, back in the passenger seat. “Holy shit,” she said, retching, like they’d just crawled off a rollercoaster. “I can’t, what’s—”

Billy was in the middle of the road again.

“Oh my God,” said Max and Lucas, at the same time, before Max whipped her head towards him. “You have to hit him,” she said. “Lucas, you have to hit him.”

“I can’t do that,” said Lucas, even as his hands were glued to the wheel again. His foot was pressed back against the accelerator. Afraid, even more afraid than before, because he knew what the flames felt like. He knew what the flames would feel like, and it didn’t matter, because he couldn’t stop.

“You have to,” said Max, but her face was wet and shiny with fear. “You have to, oh God, you have to—”

They approached, faster than a bullet, and this time both yanked their hands on the wheel, together, but in opposite directions—the car spun faster, worse than before, Lucas suddenly upside down and screaming as the flipped and fell, arms breaking with the effort. “No—”

He smelled smoke, again. Max was pleading, or maybe he was pleading, through the blood pooling in his mouth. And then the car exploded.

“Please,” Lucas heard, through the pain devouring his skull, every inch of him on fire, crushed and mangled with no way out. He couldn’t see Max or the rest of the car. He wasn’t even sure that he had eyes.

“Help! Oh my God, please, help!”

The pain stopped. Lucas opened his eyes, and he was on the side of the road again. This time, he and Max were both kneeling and bent over, the shock traveling up his body like an electrical charge.

“I can’t do it again,” Lucas heard himself say, like a broken record. “Not again, not again.”

“There’s the car,” said Max, and she was right. The car was barreling towards them. The car would keep barreling towards them, over and over, no matter what they did. “We have to run.”

Lucas didn’t even think he could stand up. “Go,” he said. “Run.”

“I’m not leaving you!”

“We have to—”

The car hit them both. They were both in the car. Billy was going to appear in the middle of the road, any second, and Lucas turned to Max feeling numb and terrified. “We can’t hit him.”

“We can’t change directions,” said Max, sounding just as scared. “We’re moving too fast—shit, do you think I can reach the brake?”

“I can’t get my foot off the accelerator.”

“Can you try?!”

They weren’t fast enough. The car was moving too fast. They creamed straight into Billy, his head detached and sent flying, spiraling at the same rate as the car, all of them screaming, even Billy’s head, lips flapping and mouth open, and they still weren’t going to stop.

The car crashed; Lucas’s head hit Billy’s head, the broken pieces of skin, the smell of smoke that Lucas could already smell, even before the flames came, even before it made any sense.

Smoke. Flames. Road. Crash. Car. Crash.

They were standing on the side of the road.

“I’m sorry,” said Max, eyes trained forward. The car hadn’t appeared yet, but it would soon.

Lucas exhaled, exhausted and frayed, his bones remembering the pain even if it didn’t exist anymore. “What for?”

“What for?” Max laughed, a little desperately. “I’ve like, dragged you into my nightmare with me. The steering wheel? Running over Billy?”

The car was coming for them, but Lucas looked over at Max instead. “Your nightmare?” he asked, and then the tires screeched, hitting them both before they landed inside the car. “Fuck—your nightmare?”

“What do you want me to say?” asked Max. “My stepbrother can’t leave me alone even when he’s fucking dead!”

They ran into Billy, car spinning, but Lucas tried to keep his brain straight. “It’s not just your nightmare,” he said. He could smell smoke. “It’s mine too.”

They were standing on the side of the road. Silent, underneath the night sky.

“Yours too?” asked Max quietly, and Lucas lowered his head. He couldn’t brace himself for impact anymore. He couldn’t hide from this anymore.

“He was alive,” said Lucas. “Billy was alive, in the car. I pulled you out, but I didn’t pull him out. He didn’t die on impact, he died in the car fire. That’s why we keep ending up on fire.”

“No,” said Max. “Jesus Christ, it’s not your fault. Don’t be a martyr about this. We keep ending up on fire because my stepbrother tried to kill you.”

“And I killed him,” said Lucas, setting his head on his hands. “I could’ve pulled him out of the car, but I didn’t.”

He let the honesty linger, and Max didn’t answer right away. She let it float there, above and between both of them, something Lucas had never confessed even though he knew what the response would inevitably be: oh, you didn’t have time to pull him out, too, or oh, you don’t know that he was alive, you probably imagined it.

None of it made him feel better. And maybe Max understood. “I didn’t know that,” she said quietly. “I don’t remember anything.”

“You didn’t want to talk about it.”

Max glared at him. “I didn’t want to talk about it?! I tried, you were the one—”

Tires screeched, and both of them looked up, sharply, to see the car barreling towards them. Lucas had forgotten it would, forgotten until it struck them both and sent him back into the driver’s seat.

They were driving, too fast, once again, but Lucas didn’t care about the road anymore. “How could I talk about it?” asked Lucas. “He was your brother, he’s the one who died.”

Max was silent. The road whipped on either side of them, so fast her hair was a horizontal bundle of red, streaming out behind her like blood. “Stepbrother,” she said, finally. “I know he’s dead.”

Lucas waited for her to find the words, just like she’d waited for him. “I’m sad,” she said. “But I think I’m sad in the wrong way. I think I’m supposed to be sadder.”

“He was a difficult person,” said Lucas, and Max turned to him, her blue eyes filled with tears, heavier than he’d seen in this entire, fucked-up loop.

“He was an asshole,” she whispered. “He was so awful I thought he might be possessed. Maybe it would’ve been easier if he was possessed, because I still don’t know if he would have turned the steering wheel away on his own. I don’t know if he was going to hit you or not. And I’m—” Max swallowed, harshly. “If he was going to hit you, then how can I regret it?”

How can I regret it? Lucas realized he was crying, too. “You don’t regret it?”

“I don’t think I can,” she said. “I wish—I mean, that’s why I feel so fucked up. I know I’m supposed to miss him more. I know I’m supposed to regret it. But I don’t, and if I did it again—”

The car slammed into Billy, in the middle of the road, but this time neither of the screamed. Lucas kept his eyes trained on Max, the weight of a question he hadn’t dared ask finally lifting off of him. How could he be entitled to ask if she regreted it? How many times had he wondered?

“I’m sorry,” he said, as they spun. “You shouldn’t have had to make that choice.”

“You shouldn’t have had to, either,” said Max. “To rescue someone who’d tried to kill you.”

The car landed, splintering metal and glass, but this time, Lucas found his seatbelt. He found Max’s too, and unlocked it, both of them staring at the passenger seat door. The only one intact enough to crawl through. “You can’t keep getting away with it,” she said. “Saving me like this.”

Lucas laughed, surprising both of them, even as he smelled the—“Smoke,” he said. “Come on, let’s make this the last one.”

It was hard, almost as hard as pulling Max from the car had been so many months ago, but they could lean on each other this time. Grunting and squeezing, Lucas didn’t feel as heavy as before, even when his legs ripped against the glass and metal shards. They were both bleeding. They were both moving.

Max landed on the grass first, wheezing, and pulling him nearly on top of her. They crawled away as the flames started to catch.

Stumbling out, they both watched as the car burned. Bright orange and sending black smoke into the sky, Max held out her hand. Lucas took it. He remembered the fluttery crush he’d had on Max since her first day in Mr. Clarke’s class, several lifetimes ago. This was similar, but in other ways completely different.

She didn’t regret turning the steering wheel. And maybe Lucas didn’t regret his choice, either, maybe like Max had worded it—maybe he couldn’t, maybe that’s why it all felt so bad and tangled up. Maybe that’s why the sadness was more confusing than debilitating.

He felt sorry for Billy, still, but he couldn’t change that moment, no matter how many chances either of them had.

“Should we put it out?” he asked aloud, finally.

Max looked at him and nodded. “Yes,” she said. “I think so.”

Both of them proved to be terrible at it, with the set of blankets they’d found that must have fallen from the car trunk, batting at the flames in a way that seemed to make it worse.

“I think you’re supposed to come at it from the side,” said a voice. “Not from the top.”

They spun around, and Mike was standing behind them, completely drenched like he’d just gone swimming and panting hard. “Jesus Christ,” said Lucas, and Mike surprised them all by pulling them into a three-person hug. “Why are you so wet?”

“I fell off a cliff,” said Mike. Lucas stiffened. “What? Not like that. At least, not really. None of this is real. But you probably figured that out.”

Of course it’s not real, thought Lucas, the ridiculous constraints of the world finally dawning on him. And Max, judging by her widening eyes, as Mike pulled away. “It’s a dream?” whispered Max. “But how can it be a dream if we’re all in it?”

“More like a mirage,” said Mike, picking up one of the blankets. “If we hit it from the top, that’ll just push all the oxygen down, right? So we have to hit it without introducing anymore oxygen.”

Dazed, Lucas and Max followed Mike’s lead, although what he’d described was easier in theory than practice. Still, they figured it out, all three of them batting the fire until the car emerged, like it had barely been damaged at all.

“Jesus Christ,” said Lucas. He wiped his eyes. “Jesus fucking Christ.”

“What do we do now?” asked Max, voice just as shaky. They both looked to Mike, who looked back at them with something funny in his face. “What?”

“I love you both,” said Mike, which was even more surprising than the hug. “We need to find the others. I don’t know if all three of them are at the fire or not.”

“The fire?”

Mike pointed ahead. There was an orange fire, similar to the one the three of them had just put out, at the other end of the road. “That wasn’t there before.”

“I didn’t even get to your fire until you were already putting it out,” said Mike, cryptically, before starting to move. “Let’s go.”

“Walk? You want to walk there?”

“Or run, I mean, you’re the faster runner—”

“Someone is doing this to us,” said Max, and Lucas and Mike looked over at her. Her arms were crossed, face set into a glare. “Messing with our heads. This isn’t real.”

“Just because it’s in our heads doesn’t mean it’s not real,” said Mike. “Or dangerous.”

But Max was already stalking towards the car and climbing into the front seat. “I don’t like this fucking dream,” she said, and inexplicably, there was a set of keys in her hand. “I’d like a new one, please.”

She turned the car on. And then she twisted around, looking back. “Are you getting in or what?”

“Or what,” said Lucas, looking at the car that had tried to kill them several times. But then Mike was climbing into the passenger seat, and Lucas climbed in, too, as Max revved the engine.

They started to drive, so unlike the strange loop they’d been stuck in before, that Lucas could almost breathe, even as the other fire got closer. Was it Will? Dustin or El? Had they all been pulled into nightmares, just like him and Max?

“What do we do once we get there?” shouted Max, over the sound of the wind whipping past them.

“I haven’t gotten that far,” said Mike, gripping the seat. “Getting there is its own challenge.”

Lucas bit his lip and gazed outward. It might be any of them, in trouble, but they were on their way. And surely, they’d be able to figure it out, get through whatever terrible trap had been set for them. The determined expressions on Max and Mike’s faces mirrored his own.

Determined and focused, nothing to do except focus on the fire in front of them that they raced towards—

Lucas opened his eyes, a speckled ceiling above him, and

fell

down

with a yelp.

Down? Where was—Lucas grasped around wildly, but he wasn’t in the car anymore. He wasn’t even outside anymore, he was in a bed, not his bed, though, something familiar and unfamiliar at the same time.

The nest.

He was in the nest he’d fallen asleep in, and he looked around frantically, catching sight of Max in her pajamas across from him, just as disheveled. “Where—” Lucas tried, throat hoarse. “What—”

“Holy shit,” he heard from across the room, and it was Argyle, looking more concerned than Lucas had seen the entire trip, even when they’d been chased by the agents. “I can’t believe that fucking worked.”

Lucas was too dazed to grasp onto the words, instead looking around to see Mike standing up from his own bed, bare feet on the floor, to El and Dustin—oh, shit.

El was on her back, face blank, thin streams of blood falling out of her eyes. Dustin was curled up, sobbing hysterically, loud and heavy and blood pooling underneath him, too. “Fuck,” Lucas cursed, trying to stand up, but he was too dizzy.

He touched his own face—no blood. No blood on Max or Mike, either, as they climbed up from their beds. “Dustin!” Mike urged, shaking him. “Dustin, it’s okay! You’re back!”

“El, come on,” Max was saying, leaning over her. “Snap out of it!”

She had snapped out of it, Lucas realized numbly, recognizing the blank face more than he’d care to admit. “El,” he said quietly, making his way over to join them, dizzy, dizzy. “It wasn’t real. Whatever it was, wherever you were, it wasn’t real, okay?”

El stared at him, eyes starting to water, before grabbing his arm. They stayed like that, the only sounds in the room Dustin’s gasps for air, until Mike turned to Argyle. “What happened?”

“You were floating,” said Argyle. He was wearing his pajamas, too, leaning back against the wall. “I was asleep and heard crazy knocks on my door, totally woke me up. It was Little Byers. He didn’t say anything, but he pulled me into the room—you were floating, all five of you. Over your beds.”

Lucas looked up at the speckled ceiling.

“Will did?” asked El, softly. Dustin had calmed down enough to sit on top of his nest-bed, eyes wide and confused.

“But Will was missing when we woke up,” said Max. “That’s why we left the motel in the first place.”

“Except we never left,” said Lucas, the realization dawning on him. “We’re all still barefoot. We weren’t awake for any of it. We’ve been in this room the entire time.”

All of it in their heads. Not just the car and the fire, but before, when they’d crept around outside. Lucas shivered.

“None of you would wake up or anything. And then we saw blood.” Argyle gestured towards El and Dustin. “And then Will—well, I don’t know. I guess it worked.”

“Worked?”

Will wasn’t in the room, but the balcony door was open. And Lucas realized that the vague scent of smoke he’d been smelling wasn’t leftover from the trap, as his mouth fell open. “Holy shit.”

They all stumbled to the balcony, even El and Dustin, where Will was standing. The street and desert beyond the street was a wall of fire.

Burning, flames leaping up, Lucas flinched backwards—he caught Max doing the same, as they all stared at the orange and red destruction. El was shaking. Dustin was shaking, too. Only Mike got close, taking it all in. “There was a man in mine,” said Mike. “He started out as just a voice, but then the body appeared, too. He talked to me.”

“We only saw—” said Lucas, before pausing. Max shrugged. “We only saw Billy,” he said, and registered no surprise. “No one else.”

El and Dustin didn’t respond. Actually, Dustin looked like he was going to throw up, and then he was throwing up on the motel carpet, face green. “Jesus,” said Lucas, but he couldn’t blame him. Will was still completely focused on the fire.

“What if it’s the person who put us in there,” said Mike. “What if it’s a real person?”

“And what, Will smoked him out?” asked Max, when miracle of miracles, Will’s head turned. Eyes trained on Max, he nodded.

“The guy I saw was human,” said Mike. “And if he’s human, he’s vulnerable. Right?”

Will didn’t answer, still looking at Max as the fire crackled on. Lucas hadn’t picked up on it before, when so many things were happening, but it was somehow now—Dustin’s vomit on the floor, El still trembling—that he realized the pattern. “Max,” he said. “Ask Will what Mike just asked.”

“What? Why me?” But with all of them watching her now, Max swallowed. “Is he right? Do you know who it is? Is this guy human?”

Will slowly nodded again, and Max turned to the others. “Why can Will only hear me?”

“He can hear Argyle, too,” said El, voice raspy. Argyle, still in the room with the beds, lifted his hand in weary support.

“I don’t think it’s just hearing,” said Lucas, satisfied but sad when Will didn’t look towards him. Not El, not Mike, and probably not Dustin, either, if he was remembering correctly. Every time Will had nodded or shaken his head or reacted at all, it wasn’t because of the four of them. “I think it’s about recognizing.”

“The specifics don’t matter,” said Mike curtly. “We need to get out of here.”

It was true; they’d been making good time, away from the cars chasing them down, but this would send every agent in the area towards them. A giant, burning beacon. “Probably get a new ride, too,” he said, as Argyle groaned.

“I’ll get my stuff,” he said, standing and leaving the room, but not without a strange, nervous look at the ceiling. Lucas kept looking at the ceiling, too, when he wasn’t slightly entranced by the sheer volume of fire.

“Yeah, let’s pack.”

“Will,” said Max, when she realized Mike was looking at her. “We’re leaving, okay? Can you get your stuff?”

Will nodded, moving away from the balcony. He was the only one who’d had a chance to put shoes on already. Shoes and the yellow hat, which might have actually stayed on when he went to bed.

“It’s like having a dog,” said Max under her breath, swallowing and nodding in Lucas’s direction before packing up her own bag. El slowly rose, too, and then Mike, and then it was just Lucas and Dustin, by the vomit.

“Do you want some water?”

Dustin looked completely wrecked. Nearly as bad as the days after the funeral—hell, maybe as bad as the day of the explosion itself, face completely consumed by something Lucas knew he couldn’t really understand, as close as he thought he could get. “No,” Dustin whispered. “No, that’s okay.”

Lucas nodded and extended his hand. Dustin stood carefully, like he might fall over any second. As they walked, El turned away. “It wasn’t real,” said Lucas. “Whatever it was, it wasn’t real.”

Dustin gave him a jerky nod and threw his clothes into his bag, no one speaking as they changed clothes and remembered—or at least, as Lucas remembered what had felt so real. The car. The fire. Max holding his hand, and Mike telling them he loved them, after they put out the flames.

That part was real, Lucas thought, something warm and protective hardening in his chest. That was real to me.