WARNING: Please do not read unless you've read Chapter 1: The Beginning of the End and Chapter 2: The Wrongside Up completely.
Ch. 1: https://strangerthings.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003462393
Ch. 2: https://strangerthings.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003463730
_______________________________________________
“Ted, I don’t know, the hospital’s not picking up and it’s been like ten hours,” worriedly said Karen Wheeler.
“Look, with all that’s going on, the staff are probably just barricading the hospital. And the hospital is the safest place in town, they’re fine. You’re worrying too much. How about you go and get some rest?”
Karen nodded and walked to the staircase. Ted went back into the living room, sat on his La-Z-Boy and turned on the television while eating KFC.
Twenty minutes later, Holly came to Ted with her Lite Brite. “Dad, where’s Mom?”
“Upstairs.”
And within the next half hour, three of the five Wheelers had been successfully Flayed. They joined the crowd of people marching through the town to Hawkins Lab, including Laura and Phillip Cunningham, Donald Melvald and… Mr. Scott Clarke.
For the first time in a long time, Vecna smiled. The last time he did, he was sent to what he thought was “purgatory” by an eight year old girl. After all these years, his plan was working. And nothing could stop it; not even Eleven has that much power. Soon, she and her pathetic friends would be dead, and he would be reshaping the world.
Sue and Charles Sinclair and Claudia Henderson were gathered at the Sinclairs’. They would meet at the Wheelers’, but for some reason, they weren’t picking up their phone. All three were worried sick about their children, and Claudia was downright crying.
“Alright, that’s it, call the police department Charles,” ordered Sue.
“I’ve already called them seventy times! That woman keeps telling me that they’re looking for them. Well I don’t see any results.”
“Then maybe we need to go out and look for them ourselves! Dusty was at the high school. Where were Lucas and Erica?” asked Claudia.
“They were at the Hawkins Memorial Hospital,” replied Sue.
Without further ado, the three piled out of the house and got into the Sinclairs’ car.
Meanwhile, Hopper drove through Chicago, following the map he had bought a couple hours ago. El was excited, anxious, overjoyed, scared, worried and ecstatic. A true roller coaster of emotions. It’d been so many years since she just left Kali in one moment. Would Kali still be mad at her? Or would she welcome her warmly?
“El, we’re here,” said Hopper.
“Oh my gosh, how does anyone stay here? It’s so rundown,” commented Lucas.
El’s heart skipped a beat. What if they are not here anymore? What if they left?!
But she’d come so far. “Come,” she called out to Hopper, Mike and Lucas. They walked into the seemingly abandoned warehouse. There was graffiti all over the walls, though, and spray cans laid scattered across the floor. There was no furniture or other household items of any sort, except for a few posters of rock bands.
“K–K–Kali?” El barely managed to call for her sister. “Kali? Kali! Kali?! Kali! Kali. Kali…” El collapsed onto the floor.
“El! Are you okay? El!”
She was okay. But she was crying uncontrollably. “El, it’s okay. Don’t worry. It’s fine. We’ll figure something out, okay? We’ll figure something out,” explained Mike. But they didn’t need to.
“Sister…” El, Mike, Hopper and Lucas looked to the direction from which the voice came. A female voice with a semi-British accent. Kali Prasad. Eight.
El stood up. “Sister.” The two ran and hugged each other.
“Jane… I’ve been looking for you for so long. I… I even went to Hawkins but… but I couldn’t find you. I couldn’t find anyone with the name Jane Ives. No one. Where… where were you? And… you finally remembered me…”
“I never forgot you… Never…”
Nancy had gone down to the cafeteria to get some food and Coke, so Steve and Robin were left in Max’s room.
“So…” Steve quirkily said.
“So what, Steve?”
“So Vickie…”
“Yeah, what about her? I’ve told you a million times, Steve, I don’t care. The world is quite literally ending right outside the window. There’s a time and a place to discuss romance, and that’s not in a hospital smack dab in the middle of the apocalypse!”
“Relax, Robin. El and her other new superpowered sister are going to save the world, like always.”
“I don’t think so, Steve. I really don’t. Maybe we should… Maybe we should leave Hawkins, get somewhere remote and… and hide in some underground bunker or something…”
“Robin, are you hearing yourself? We’ve been saving this town for four years straight. Now you just want to leave it?!” “No, Steve! Not want. Need.”
“And then what. We leave Hawkins, but the Upside Down won’t stop at Hawkins! It’ll spread.”
“Well… we survive as long as we can…”
Steve was about to say something, but was cut off by Nancy.
“Hey, so, I got three chicken salad sandwiches and a bottle of New Coke.”
Robin would have severely chastised Nancy for not getting regular Coke, but she wasn’t in the mood.
Nancy examined Steve and Robin’s grim faces. “What’s… wrong?”
“What’s wrong, Nancy? Really? What do you think is wrong?” asked Steve.
“Okay, sorry…”
Suddenly, sounds of screaming flooded in from the intercom, followed by a panicked woman’s voice saying, “The hospital is under attack, please evacuate the patients!”
“Oh no, oh no, oh no,” said Robin.
“Wait, uh, can we, like, get Max out of the bed? Like how does this work? Can we just… What do we do?!” asked Steve.
“We barricade the door,” replied Nancy.
The three took whatever they could find—a couple chairs, two chests of drawers and a table—and positioned them in front of the door.
The screaming in the hallways abruptly stopped. Now, all that could be heard was growling and squelching.
“Demodogs,” said Nancy and Steve.
“Demo what-nows?” asked Robin.
The growling got closer and closer and closer until it was right outside the door. And then…
There was more growling. There were about five Demodogs standing right in front of the door. Then they started headbutting the door with more guttural noises.
“OH MY GOD!!!” screamed Robin. But Nancy kept her cool. She found a pole behind Max’s bed.
“Stay back.”
Five seconds. Ten seconds. Fifteen seconds. CRASH. The door collapsed, and the Demodogs swarmed in, toppling over the chairs, the chests of drawers and the table.
“Move!” yelled Robin. She snatched the pole from Nancy’s hand.
“Robin! What are you doing?!” screamed Steve.
“Distracting.” Robin hit the Demodogs’ head, infuriating them. And then, she ran. She ran like the wind. She ran into the hallway, and the Demodogs, disregarding Nancy, Steve and Max, ran after her.
“ROBIN!” Steve ran out of Max’s room, but Nancy caught him. A Demodog pounced on Robin’s back and clawed at her. The rest of the Demodogs caught up.
“Steve! Steve.” She pulled him into the room and shut the door.
“But… But… Robin!”
“It’s done. It’s done. She’s gone.”
Steve collapsed onto the ground, and Nancy sat next to him.
It happened so quickly. Quicker than any other.
Steve stared into space.
“That… was… a lot,” said Kali. El, Hopper, Mike and Lucas had just given her a detailed summary of the story of the Upside Down and what was going on in Hawkins.
“That’s why we need you,” said Lucas. “El said you have powers too. That you can make people see— OH MY GOD! MIKE THERE’S A LION BEHIND YOU!”
“WHAT?!” Mike looked behind himself. “There’s nothing here, Lucas.”
“Well it just disappeared!”
“Yeah…” said Kali. “I can make people see things.”
Lucas nervously smiled.
“So, will you come?” asked El.
“Of course. Anything to help my sister. And… can I… can I talk to you privately?”
“Yes!”
Kali took El up a staircase. The second floor was furnished with chairs and tables made of decaying wood and a torn mattress.
“I… I stopped killing them,” Kali said.
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
“I… I’m proud of you.”
Kali smiled. “Thank you. And yeah… it’s given me a little peace of mind.”
“So… where are your friends?”
Kali poignantly chuckled. “Friends… Yeah, well, they left me.”
El didn’t ask why.
Five minutes later, the two descended down the staircase.
Eleven looked at Hopper. “Bloomington.”
“Hello?”
“Sam?!”
“Hello Cathy,” said Dr. Owens, smiling.
“Where have you been?! It’s been like a week! I’ve been worried sick! I thought you were dead!”
“Well I’m not out of the woods yet. I just called to make sure you were safe. You are, right?”
“Sam! You’re worried about ME?! Where are you?! What happened?!”
“I’m in Hawkins. Now I—”
“Time’s up,” said Sullivan. He snatched the phone away from Dr. Owens and hung it up. “You do want to save your town, don’t you?” Two of Sullivan’s men escorted Owens into Sullivan’s car.
It drove through Hawkins to the town center.
“You better not lead us wrong again, Kline,” said Major General Stepanov to Larry. They and Stepanov’s assistant Colonel Ozerov stood in front of the Wheeler residence.
“Trust me, I’ve learnt my lesson,” replied Larry Kline. He walked up to the door and knocked. No response. He banged on the door. No response.
“Kick down,” commanded Stepanov.
Larry was unsure. He had never kicked down a door before. He kicked on the door as hard as he could but that hurt him so bad that he yowled in pain.
“Ugh, move.” Ozerov pushed Larry aside and, with a single punch, knocked the door down.
The trio walked into the house.
“He–Hello?” called out Larry. “Hello?!”
Larry and the Soviets trashed the Wheeler house.
Stepanov and Ozerov looked at Larry in rage.
“Look, they–they must have gone somewhere… Somewhere…”
The Russian commanders closed in on former mayor of Hawkins Larry Kline.
“You–You need me! You need me! I–I can… I can… There are more people. So to heck with the Wheelers. What about… What about the Sinclairs! And the Henderson cat lady!”
“Henderson…” Ozerov scrunched his forehead. That name sounded oddly familiar. He had heard it somewhere, but he couldn’t put his finger on it.
He whispered something to Stepanov, and then, Stepanov faced Larry.
“Fine. We give last chance. Fail, you die. Understood, Kline?”
“Understood. Understood.”
In an abandoned facility in the outskirts of town, a crowd of about a hundred Hawkins residents gathered in front of a mass of particles in the shape of a distorted spider. It looked like a large shadow. A shadow monster.