"I'm getting real fucking sick of this place," One muttered to herself as she crossed the threshold of the portal into the Upside Down.

One was greeted with screams and roars on either side of her but she didn't have time to worry about them, she had to find Eleven. If she was even here. When One had opened a portal beneath James she hadn't really been thinking of a specific place in the Upside Down, rather just getting James out of Hawkins. One couldn't even say for certain where she was, given how notorious her portals were for opening wherever they damn well pleased. She just had to hope they were in the same place.

As One trekked along the barren, black wasteland of the Upside Down, it became more apparent to her that she was in Snikwah. She came across the arcade, with its flickering neon lights that sprayed multi-colored sparks at her as she passed by. Next was the movie theatre, which was missing enough letters on the marquee that the only ones left conveniently spelled "death". She could see the hospital looming in the distance, which seemed like a cruel joke since it wouldn't be able to save anyone.

Next One came upon the police station where her father worked in another world. She hoped he was okay and that Steve was able to get him out. She also hoped that she'd be able to see him again, but she had to push that worry aside when a loud crack echoed through the abandoned town.

"This place is wonderful, isn't it?" James' disembodied voice echoed around her. He was nowhere to be seen.

"Agree to disagree," One called back as she turned in slow circles looking for him.

"But don't you feel the untapped power here?" James asked, his voice almost like a whisper in her right ear. One turned sharply to the right but she still didn't see him. "It's surging all around us. You just have to focus."

"No thanks," One answered absentmindedly. Her primary focus was finding James so that she could get Eleven back. Where the hell was he?

"I'm glad you followed me here."

"You didn't really give me a choice," One growled. "Now where is my sister?"

"Don't worry, we'll get to that," James answered calmly. Too calmly, like he was discussing washing the dishes instead of the abduction of her sister. "First we need to have a chat."

"I'm not here to chat!" One shouted into the sky. She was becoming incredibly frustrated that he could see her but she couldn't see him. It made her feel vulnerable and there was nothing she hated more than feeling vulnerable. "Give me back Eleven! Where is she? Did you hurt her?"

Just then, James suddenly appeared from the stale darkness between two buildings. His features shifted as the muffled light from the cloudy sky slowly illuminated more of him, but something in her gut told her it wasn't just the light. Something seemed different about him...

Following James out of the darkness was a second person: Eleven. Eleven's mouth was sealed shut and she stared straight through One like she wasn't even there. Her arms hung stick straight at her sides and her fists were clenched tight, but overall, she seemed okay, which gave One a small sense of relief.

"El!" One shouted, although she knew Eleven wouldn't respond. James undoubtedly still had her under his control.

As quickly as Eleven had appeared, she disappeared back into the darkness and One moved to follow her but James put a hand up to stop her.

"You've seen that she's okay, now we talk," James said.

One continued to move towards the space where she watched Eleven disappear, completely ignoring James. She had a strong inkling that James was no longer able to control her after their last fight at the Lab when she was able to break free. If he could, he would have done so by now. "Try and stop me."

James chuckled before replying, "You're right, I can't. Whatever you did back at the Lab has negated my abilities against you, but that doesn't mean that I can't hurt her."

One came to a halt and slowly set her lifted foot back down on the ground with a deep scowl etched into her face. She had contemplated attacking James to get to Eleven, but she knew that James could hurt Eleven before One could get to her. One was also filled with a dreadful sense that James seemed more powerful here, which she couldn't quite figure out.

"You wanna talk?" One said after a few moments of contemplation. "Then talk. But I have nothing to say to you."

"Oh, but I think you will," James smiled.

He sauntered closer to her and One resisted the urge to strike him on the spot. The only thing stopping her was Eleven's safety. James wasn't dumb. Maybe he couldn't directly control her with his abilities, but he could control her with Eleven's life.

"Get started already, I don't want to be here any longer than you do," One snapped and crossed her arms in front of her chest protectively. As if on cue, a round of howls echoed in the distance and she pulled her arms in tighter.

"But that's where you're wrong!" James shouted gleefully, his echo stirring some smaller creatures from the trees. "I do want to be here, and soon you will too! Well, at least for the time being."

"Over my dead body," One spat.

"I should go back and start from the beginning," James said. "From when the demogorgons took me."

He continued to walk around One in slow circles and at first she followed him but after a couple rotations she became dizzy and stood still. Her head still followed him though, despite how much it hurt her neck, because she didn't trust having her back to him.

"Why didn't they kill you?" One asked suspiciously. Even though she was beyond furious with him, she did want to know what the true story was behind that day and not the lie that James had initially told her.

"I thought they were going to kill me at first too," James answered. "But I was wrong. They wanted to show me something."

"Show you what?" One asked slowly. What could those monsters possibly want to show James other than his own insides?

"Power," James answered. His voice somehow amplified with the word. "Like I told you before, it's everywhere if you just look for it. How else could this world exist?"

One glanced around at her surroundings and tried to focus. While she couldn't see anything, she couldn't deny that she felt something. In a strange way, it felt familiar, like it had followed her during those eight years when she was stuck here, but she had never noticed it before. Or at least, she hadn't looked for it. Could this have been what prevented her portals from working for so long?

One quickly shook the feeling aside. She was just buying into James' craziness.

"When the demogorgons dragged me away they took me here. To Upside Down Hawkins."

"Snikwah," One subconsciously corrected him under her breath with a small cough.

Not having heard her, James continued, "They showed me how to harness that power and strengthen my own abilities. They showed me the truth about this world and about us. You see, you and I, and even Eleven, we're not from the dimension we think we know."

"Then what dimension are we from?" One scoffed in disbelief.

"That's what I've been trying to find!" James shouted manically. His knuckles turned white as he clenched his fists harder and the veins in his eyes became more noticeable. "The Upside Down was created by someone like us, someone with powers. Like us, this person came from another dimension, let's call it 'the Diagonal', where everyone is born with special abilities. Each different, but each incredibly powerful. Just think: if one of these people has enough power to create an entirely new dimension, just think about what the rest of them can do. What I can make them do."

"Then why aren't we as powerful?" One still didn't believe a word James was saying, but the thought of him controlling other people with strong abilities terrified her. He had nearly killed Steve when he controlled Eleven and her.

"Our blood is tainted," James explained with a sour look on his face. "Your mother and my father traveled to Earth and fell in love with humans there. We're only half of what we could be."

The way James said "humans" made One feel like he was talking about cockroaches.

One took a moment to process the information James had given her. A small part of her wanted to believe him. It had never made sense to her why she had special abilities when others did not and it did stand to reason that if the Upside Down existed that other dimensions could exist as well. Then there was also the strange feeling she picked up on, the "power" that James had been talking about. But that was all too crazy, right?

"I still don't get how I factor into this or why the demogorgons didn't kill you," One stated.

"While I've grown much more powerful from the power here, the power that was left behind by the individual that created this dimension, I'm still limited in what I can do." James paused his pacing to turn and stare directly into One's eyes. His eyes seemed darker than normal and this unnerved her. "I need your abilities to open a portal to the Diagonal through Earth."

"I would never help you, and even if I did, why Earth? Why not just go straight to 'the Diagonal' from here?" One used her fingers to make quotation marks when she said "the Diagonal".

"The Upside Down has been completely sealed off from the Diagonal because of the dangers that lurk here. But because our parents came from the Diagonal to Earth, there has to be a connection there," James explained as he resumed his pacing around her. She felt like a dying animal being circled by vultures. "The demogorgons and all the other monsters want out. They want a new world with new life to feed on, so we struck a deal that they'd show me how to harness the raw power of this place if I helped them take Earth."

One tried to hide her shock about James bargaining away an entire dimension to a bunch of flesh-eating monsters but she couldn't. She had to shake her frozen features back into motion before speaking again. "You figured out how to get there before. Why can't you do it again?"

James sighed before answering. It was clear that he was getting frustrated that she didn't understand. "When you knew me, I could only control people, right?" James stopped and looked at One for confirmation and she slowly nodded her head. "But now I can control almost everything; atoms, inanimate objects, emotions, thoughts, reality...the only thing I don't have a strong grasp on is space. I can open rifts but they're small and weak. I need something bigger."

One's mind ran through the list of James' new abilities again and some puzzle pieces started to click into place. He was obviously more powerful than he ever was before, so that's how he could control Will and Steve from a distance. If he could control reality, that must have been what happened at the cabin when "Brenner" opened a "portal" to them. Brenner and James were never actually there, James just made them think they were. That's why the portal disappeared after Hopper and Eleven broke the door down. And if he could control inanimate objects, he could make the whole cabin shake and make music play.

One began to question everything that had happened in the last couple weeks. What had been real and what hadn't? Could she have seen the signs sooner? One gripped her forehead with her hand as she felt a headache coming on.

"Hold on, wait a minute," One shook her head and moved her hand from her forehead to out in front of her. Things still weren't adding up. "Why now? I was in the Upside Down for years after I lost you."

"By the time I realized that I needed your abilities and tracked you down to Minnesota, it was too late. You were already gone." 

"So that's why you came to Hawkins?" One asked. She paused for a moment as another thought came to her. "Then what about the time you tried to kill me? Now that I know that you were in control and not Brenner, it's pretty obvious that you, and you alone, decided to make Will choke me."

James rubbed his forehead and let out a hearty laugh before answering. His laugh seemed to continue even after he stopped and it sent chills down One's spine. It almost sounded like it was coming from multiple sources, like the whole of the Upside Down was laughing at her.

"I wasn't trying to kill you. No, I was trying to scare you away from Will."

"Why?" One asked suspiciously. "What does Will have to do with anything?"

"I've dealt with him before," James answered. "He could have ruined everything."

"You know Will? How?" One demanded. One's head was still swimming with new information that she didn't know how to process. Supposedly she was from a different dimension and possibly even a different species of super-powered individuals and now Will was involved? None of it was making sense! There was still some big puzzle piece that was missing in James' story.

"Oh, we were very close not so long ago," James answered. "Thankfully he didn't recognize me in this form."

"'In this form'? What the hell are you talking about?" One's stomach began turning in knots and she felt her voice shake. The hairs on the back of her neck stood up stick straight and her palms became clammy. Something was nearby. Something big and something bad.

"I think it's about time that I show you what the demogorgons showed me all those years ago: how I harnessed the power of this place." As James spoke, his body began to fade in and out of existence, like a mirage. The only part of James that didn't fade in and out were his near-black eyes. They continued to bore into her soul until he disappeared all together.

Just then, One had to cover her ears to block out a loud rumbling noise that shook the earth beneath her feet and every bone in her body. It reminded her of the sound Steve and her had heard at the cabin. The sky became darker until it was nearly impossible to see her own hand in front of her face and an icy chill coated every inch of her skin.

One's eyes darted up to the overwhelming darkness above her when a lightning bolt streaked across the sky and illuminated a large figure hovering over Snikwah. It had long limbs that sucked up the ground they stepped on like cyclones and a large head with no discernible face. It was unlike anything she had ever seen in the Upside Down, but she immediately knew what it was from the stories Mike, Eleven, Will, Dustin, Lucas, and Max had shared with her.

It was the Mind Flayer.

It was James.

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