KAT

A WHILE LATER, KAT WAS SHAKEN AWAKE BY ERICA. An angry 'wake up!' was hissed, and Kat had trudged along with them out of the movie theater and her nap. As they walked, the lights of the cinema hallways lit up more of her vision. The carpets were navy, with multicolored squiggles on the design, and the walls matched it.

"How long was I asleep for?" Kat yawned, as her feet, still in her sneakers with the laces untied, dragged against the linoleum.

"Ten minutes," Dustin said tightly, his head whipping around every nook and cranny.

"Really?" Kat furrowed her brows. "It felt like an hour,"

"Yep, yep, yeah," Dustin muttered distractedly. "God, where are they?!"

"Wait- who?" Kat said stupidly.

"Steve and Robin," Erica rolled her eyes as they speedwalked. "Missing,"

"Oh," Kat's eyes went wide. "Shit. Uh, maybe they went to the food court?"

"Not likely. They wouldn't even have the intelligence to go down an escalator," Dustin said impatiently. "Kat- check that house," he pointed at the door to another cinema compartment.

And Kat did. Some kid's movie was playing, the loud music extremely distracting from her scanning the faces for a familiar dingus and band kid. They weren't there, and Kat left the doors, disturbed.

"They weren't in this one," she said, facing Erica, who'd just reappeared from the house opposite them. The latter shook her braids, indicating Steve and Robin's absence from where she went as well.

"Shit," Dustin hissed, and broke into a run. Luckily, Kat was far taller than him and caught up easily. Erica, on the other hand, was short and still wore her backpack, shin, and elbow guards, took a few seconds.

Finally, they burst into a bathroom, all panting and out of breath. And there they were, Steve and Robin, sitting opposite towards each other, legs sprawled all over the place as they laughed together. Steve was laughing without the influence of the drug, Kat could tell, by the curve of his eyes and the way his ribs shook. Robin's hands clapped together as she laughed, and for a second Kat felt a twinge of envy.

"Okay. What the hell?" Dustin said, glaring down at the duo, who further erupted into laughter.

"Steve- what are you doing?" Kat said, a bit angrily now. The whole bathroom stunk of barf, and Steve was laughing along with another girl in the same stall.

"Oh-" Steve bit back another bout of laughter, the grin snapping out of his face. "We were interrogating ourselves. Like- to see if the drug wore off,"

"And did it?" Kat asked sharply.

"Uh- we think so," Steve said, looking between the two women in front of him.

"Well, come on, then!" Erica said impatiently. "Hey! Let's move!" She said again after Robin and Steve didn't budge.

"Okay, okay," Steve mumbled as he stood up and dusted his shorts, Robin groaning and doing the same thing. Kat shot the former a wary glare as they made their way out of the bathrooms. He gave her a 'we'll talk about this later' look as they lined up behind the doors. The frown remained on Kat's face as they peered through the door, the movie now finished.

"Aaaand...blend!" Dustin said under his breath as the five of them casually walked out of the restroom. A crowd of at least fifty, all coming from different movies, walked alongside them, wearing bright colors and jewelry and holding empty popcorn boxes. And as they walked, Kat gave a start of surprise as she recognized the Russians among vaguely familiar high school classmates. A bolt of panic ran down her throat, and she immediately made a run for it, followed by the rest of the four.

They slid downstairs through the gap between two escalators, slamming into bodies they didn't recognize, as the five of them tried to split apart and blend as well as stick together. Kat looked up, and with horror, recognized that the crowd of people were slowly filtering away, and that they were gonna be alone with the Russians soon.

NANCY

"HERE. RUBBING ALCOHOL AND A FEW SWABS," She said Jonathan dipped the ends of a couple cotton balls into the alcohol.

"If Kat was here she'd know how to clean El up," Lucas said, rubbing his face with the palm of his right hand.

Kat...the name echoed in her brain. "Mike- did Dustin say Kat was with them?"

"Uh-" Mike looked up, confused, before his eyes widened and his mouth parted in realization. "No..."

"Oh, god," Nancy said. There was no way Kat was in danger. She had just been hanging out with her to-be boyfriend and then she would've gone home. Right?

Nancy's shoes clacked against the linoleum flooring as she dialed the Wheelers' phone number into the phone hanging on the wall nearby. The line buzzed for a solid twenty seconds, as Jonathan anxiously peered over her shoulder.

The line was empty.

"Oh, no, no, no," Nancy mumbled under her breath as she fiddled with the rubbery coiled telephone cord. "Shit!"

"Is she there?" Jonathan asked, eyes wide.

"I-" Nancy's heart jumped before settling again as the automated recieving voice buzzed through. "No,"

Nancy hurried back, her mind a jumble of black and white stars. Kat Kat Kat Kat Kat. She must be with Dustin. So...at the movies? But there had to be something else going on. Kat would've called them, asked if they were safe hours ago.

"What did she say? Was she there?" Mike stood up as she rounded the corner, dark eyes open with anxiety. Nancy shook her head impatiently, as if bugs were crawling underneath her skin.

She was in trouble.

KAT

IF SHE CONCENTRATED, SHE COULD SMELL CHEESY POPCORN. Kat tried to thin her breathing, her back pressed against the aluminum of the register. The Russians are here, her mind whispered, and her eyes snapped open. The words curdled in her stomach like butter in cream. The voice of ice slithered in her brain- an unwelcome presence and one that had not been there for months and months.

It was stifled slightly when Steve shuffled up against the aluminum again, hiding his long legs from view. He pressed his palm against the back of her hand, and her heart slowed a few beats as her mind found recognition once more in his caramel-colored eyes. She was gonna die here. Wait- but she'd thought that, like, nine times today. Whatever.

A car alarm blared through the anxious silence, and Kat almost had a heart attack with the lightning bolt of sound that scarred through her brain. One of the guys muttered something in Russian (oh god, they were so close), before a series of loud crashes occured, a Russian led out a cut-off scream, and something so big crashed into the counter walls that the aluminum bubbled furiously, and set chills down Kat's spine.

They held their breath at least ten seconds more, before, out of the corner of her eyes, Kat saw Dustin furrow his brows.

"No-" Kat hissed sternly, but the idiot was too far away for her to pull down by the shirt. Dustin gently rolled over and peered over the counter. "No! Dustin!"

And nothing happened. Steve was next. And Steve was close enough for Kat to pull back down by the shirt. At her tug, he fell back on his butt, looking at her indignantly. She mouthed a no! at him, but it was no use, as Steve had already straightened his back, and- being the tallest of them, easily looked out at their...situation. Robin and Erica did as well, and Kat ran her eyes over them unbelievably before finally looking over herself.

The feeling that washed over her she had only ever experienced once before, after the tunnel chase with the demodogs. A mixture of relief, tiredness, hope, and unbridled joy shocked her to her sunny core, and she felt the feeling return to the tips of her toes and fingers again.

Nancy, Mike, El, Lucas, Max, Jonathan, and Will. Her kids.

The siblings ran to each other first. Nancy, with her stringy curls that now smelled of alcohol and blood. Mike, with his mop of a hairdo that Kat loved so much. Nancy accidently punched her a little bit trying to go for a hug, and hit the spot on her arm that was still tender from the Russians' hits.

"You have a bruise on your face," Mike mumbled against her chest, skinny arms hung around her waist.

"What?" Kat said, raising a hand and feeling a sore spot on her forehead. She let it drop. "Oh, who cares,"

The moment they released each other, Lucas came barreling into her arms, followed by El, as Kat's heart finally slowed, finally relaxed. So much so that the words of the people around her blurred into a sludge.

"-Goddamn low battery!" Dustin exclaimed, wringing his hands in frustration.

"How many times do I have to tell youwith the low battery?" Steve yelled, scrunching his face so hard that he reopened the cut on his forehead.

"Well, everything worked out, didn't it?"

"Guys," Kat interrupted.

"Worked out? We almost died."

"Yeah, but we didn't, did we?"

"Guys!" Kat yelled, and immediately regretted it as she touched her hand to her dry, cracked throat. She pointed at El, who looked on the verge of collapse. And El did collapse with a groan of pain. They rushed to her side, and it was then that Kat noticed the large, purple, pulsing thing crawling under her skin. "Oh my god, what is that?"

That looked like some weird conceptual monster stuck under El's skin, the kind of thing that only appeared in one of Briony Gibbons' weird comic books. Jonathan rushed away, and Kat turned away, the urge to throw up rising in her throat. Someone's arms wrapped around her as they covered her from the sight of El's struggling. A whisper to breathe didn't even register in Kat's brain, as she hissed out a sharp "No."

And then El stopped screaming.

Kat's knees almost gave out, as if some unknown force suspending her would let her fall like a ragdoll on the ground. Lashes shaking, she turned her head to see El panting and some gloopy slime a few feet away.

"The fu..." she breathed out, but as her eyes traveled upwards, she crashed to the ground because whoever was holding her lost their balance. So it was through very blurry vision through bleary eyes that she managed to sight the vision of some bearded guy, Hopper, and Mrs. Byers.