Chapter Seventy-One: Hoax

It. Was. Chaos.

At first, no one could move. The air had seemingly been sucked right out of the room as the horror came upon them all. Nancy had been Vecna's next target.

They basically put her in the monster's lair. How could she not end up in his clutches?

Steve looked up at them and shouted, "Someone, find something!"

And then, everything was happening all at once, people were yelling across the trailer, digging through every single drawer they could open up.

They were in Eddie's room, going through it all. Erica ran into the room, taking Annie's attention. "Steve says hurry!"

"Yeah, no shit!" Dustin yelled back.

"We're trying, we can't find anything!" Max yelled back.

They were trying to find any music Nancy might like. The one thing they knew worked against Vecna. It was all they had, and it was the only thing they were missing. The blood rushing in Annie's ears nearly drowned out her own shield.

"Seriously, what is all this shit?" Robin asked, yelling at Eddie, who's room they were ransacking. He didn't mind at the moment, but maybe after.

If the after wasn't another dead body.

"What are you even looking for?" Eddie asked, a stack of cassettes in his cradled arms.

Robin shook her head as she sorted and threw the cassettes in her own hands. "Madonna, Blondie, Bowie- music! We need music!"

Eddie picked up a discarded tape and help it up. "This is music!" he practically screamed back at her.

But the names made Annie perk up. "Holy shit. Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit!" she yelled, getting the room's attention. She turned to Max first. "Did you see where I dumped my backpack? I swear to god I brought it with me."

"Yeah, out in the living room, by the gate."

Annie turned and immediately ran out of the room, Erica jumping out of her way at the last second.

She heard footsteps following behind her, but Annie had no care for them. All she wanted was her backpack.

Her backpack full of different cassettes.

She zeroed in on the bag and practically fell to her knees in front of it. She unzipped it and dumped the entirety of it's contents out on the floor. "Find something, anything!" Annie yelled.

Two more people fell to their knees beside her- Max and Robin- and they all searched through the pile. When Robin had listed off those singers, Annie knew she might have something that would work for Nancy.

At least, she hoped and begged she did.

They found the Madonna tape Max had given her just a few months ago. "Here! Here!" Robin shouted.

Annie snatched it from her hands and stood up. She ran over to be right under the gate and looked up at Steve. He was still there, shaking Nancy's shoulder and shouting at her to wake up. To stay with him.

"Steve!" He looked away for the first time in a bit. "I got something that might work!"

"Great! Play it on something!" he shouted back, then went back to what he had been doing.

Annie looked around the room, trying to find a speaker or anything. Even some random boombox would do.

But there was nothing in the trailer that would work. At least, she didn't think there was.

"I'm holding out for a hero til the end of the night..."

The faint music had been totally forgotten during the chaos. Annie pulled the headphones off and unclipped the Walkman from her pants.

"Steve! Use this!" she cried, holding the Walkman and tape up in the air.

He looked up at what she was holding, and instantly he shook his head. "No- no way Annie! That's putting you at risk right there!" he yelled.

Annie shook her head. "She needs it right now, Steve, please! Just get ready to catch!"

"No!" He held eye contact with her, forgetting about Nancy for a single moment. "If Vecna jumps out of her mind into yours, what then? I'm not risking you, Annie, absolutely not."

Annie dropped her arms and shook her head. Then what did they have? She turned to look down the hall where everyone else was, excluding Max and Robin still on the floor by her bag.

"We need a speaker or a Walkman or something! Eddie, please tell me you have any of these things!" Annie yelled.

Something thumped above her. Annie looked back up and saw Nancy was awake, on the floor, but awake. "Nancy!" Annie called, relief pouring through her system.

That got everyone's attention, and soon they were all crowded underneath the gate, watching Steve hold and comfort Nancy. They were all breathing heavy and were all unsure of what to do next.

It was Steve who gave them their next move. "Come on! We need to get her out of here," he said, helping Nancy up to her wobbly feet.

Annie and the others cleared the landing zone and watched as Steve helped her up and out of the Upside Down. Once she crossed that threshold, she went falling to the mattress, landing on her back like the other two.

Robin was immediately at her side, helping Nancy off the mattress and into a chair rather than the floor. As much as Annie wanted to make sure Nancy was okay (trick question, no one is ever okay after a run in with Vecna), but right now, Steve was her focus.

While basically everyone else was surrounding Nancy without being too overbearing, Annie stood below the gate and watched as her big brother finally started his climb out.

He had the most graceful landing of the bunch, managing to flip and land on his feet. Annie didn't waste a damn second, instantly pulling Steve into a bone-crushing hug.

"Ow, ow, ow," he whispered, and Annie pulled back.

"What happened?" she asked, just noticing the cloth wrapped around his stomach. There was blood on it. Then, she saw the line-like marks on his neck and gasped. "Oh my god, Steve."

He shook his head, and pulled Annie back into a hug, this one much more gentle. "I'm okay, we're all okay," he breathed. It sounded like he was convincing Annie and himself at the same time that these things were true.

She was glad they (relatively) were.

"You scared the shit out of me, okay? Not funny," Annie said as she finally pulled away. Her voice was low, as to not talk over whatever was happening off to the side.

Steve managed a genuine smile. "Payback."

Annie gave him a gentle punch to the shoulder. "Asshole," she muttered, but still couldn't stop the smile.

Steve smiled back. He put an arm around Annie's shoulders and they walked over to Nancy and her posse.

"Hey, guys, come on. Give her more than a couple inches to breathe, please?" he asked, taking his arm back and gesturing for the others to take some steps back. Max moved over to stand next to Annie.

Steve knelt down in front of Nancy. "What do you want to do?" he asked.

Even though she was still a mess, Nancy was able to form words that made some sense. "Vecna... he- he showed me things. I- I- I..." Tears started pouring again and she had to cover her mouth.

"Why don't we go to my place?" Max offered. "It's right across but it's still away from the gate. A good place to recharge and take a breather."

It was pretty easily settled that that was the new plan. Steve and Robin helped Nancy up and stuck right by her side as they made the walk over.

Max turned and handed Annie her backpack. "Robin and I threw everything back in there for ya, just so we didn't leave anything in Eddie's trailer. Might not come out the same," Max joked.

Annie laughed, accepting the bag. "Thanks. I'm just lad Nancy's okay and that we didn't have to try all the different music to get her out. We'd have no way to know what was and wasn't working..."

"Well," Max said, stopping the negative train, "luckily you two have similar music taste, so we would've been prepared. I'm glad you thought of your bag. That was really handy- well, for a second."

Annie smiled. "I try," she said, shrugging. "Should we start doing that now? Have emergency bags with each of out favorite songs in them? So we're all ready?"

The girls smiled and laughed quietly to themselves. "Not such a bad idea, but that would require us going to houses that may or may not have cops on duty, looking for us," Max said.

The brunette hummed. "Right, I actually forgot about them for a while. That was nice while it lasted."

They finished the walk to Max's and all got settled inside. Lucky for them, Max's mom worked until much later that day, when it was actually light out, so they didn't have to worry about anyone.

"Hey, can I borrow a sweater?" Annie asked Max once they got inside. The redhead nodded, and Annie turned and went down the hall to her girlfriend's room.

Max walked up to Nancy and awkwardly cleared her throat. "If- if you wanna change, or something, I'm sure my mom or I have something you could wear."

Nancy smiled and shook her head. "I'm okay, thank you." The older teen did shiver, though, something Max noticed right away.

She grabbed a blanket from the couch and brought it back to Nancy. "Here," she offered. Nancy took that and almost immediately wrapped it around her shoulders.

"I'm gonna go make us some coffee," Steve said, getting a nod of approval from Max before going off to do so.

A few minute later, Annie rejoined the group in a new, navy blue sweater. "Looks cute," Max complimented once she was next to her, then leaned over and gave her a quick peck.

"Thank you very much, as always, but I think you say that about pretty much everything I wear," Annie noted.

Max shrugged. "True, but especially when you're wearing my clothes."

"I think you mean our clothes."

The girls giggled, completely unaware of the different people looking at them.

Nancy was smiling. She remembered when her and Johnathan were that close, that cute all the time. She even remembered a time she and Steve were like that. But it had been a while.

Lucas had a split second where he wished it were him and Max, something he hadn't really thought about since last summer. But the moment that thought came, he squished it. They were happy together.

Eddie thought to himself. Being the token 'freak' meant a lot of things to a lot of people. Mostly about how he was repeating his senior year for the millionth time, how he played Dungeons and Dragons, or how he happily went against societal norms.

No one usually picked up on other aspects, though.

"All right, I've got some coffee," Steve quietly announced as he re-entered the room. Once he handed Nancy her cup, he asked, "So... what happened?"

She hesitated. Scared. Clearly she had been given a message, with the way she was still alive, but for who?

A/n: double post! It's what happens when I completely skip a day, at least for this book. My other books........ oh well. Anyway, it's awkwardly cut off because I didn't realize how long this chapter was getting to, so you'll see the rest tomorrow! (Hopefully.)