𝐖𝐎𝐑𝐃 𝐂𝐎𝐔𝐍𝐓 : 6.0k

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𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐓𝐄𝐍𝐒𝐈𝐎𝐍 𝐈𝐍 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐁𝐘𝐄𝐑𝐒' 𝐇𝐎𝐔𝐒𝐄 𝐂𝐎𝐔𝐋𝐃 be cut with a knife. Most of them had made it out of the lab relatively unscathed. Even Will had made it home free of harm, while still under some sedation from the lab as he laid on the couch. However, with the bits of information Owen had managed to pick up along the way, she learned that everyone else's safety had come at a price.

Joyce had basically locked herself back in his room the second they returned home, understandably not in the mindset to be around others. Hopper, on the other hand, swore that he was going to be able to call in the big guns to help them out — whatever that meant.

In order to survive the palpable tension in the house, Owen chose to wander through the available rooms and halls, following the extensive drawings that covered the walls and floors. The blue and black scribbles snaked around and across furniture, held together by tape. So much tape. Owen hadn't even bothered to ask what the drawings were, aware that everyone was far too busy worrying about other things to explain.

"I don't know how many people are there! I don't know how many people are left alive!" Hopper snarled through the phone, voice booming through the house. His plans of calling in back-up must not have been going according to plan. "I am the police! Chief Jim Hopper!" Owen's eyes rolled discreetly. Oh great. They were seriously screwed if calling the police was Plan A from whoever was on the phone.

The chief barked out some more information before hanging up. The loud, resounding ding following his forceful slam of the phone back onto the receiver caused Owen to jump, even while in another room.

"They didn't believe you, did they?" Dustin assumed, actually sounding disappointed that he was right for once. Owen chose to follow one of the blue scribbles that would lead her into the kitchen with everyone else, still listening intently.

"We'll see," Hopper stated, grimly. The uncertainty of it had Owen's eyebrows knitting together, her pace quickening so that she could insert herself into the conversation if needed. But Mike was already on it, calling the chief's bluff.

"We'll see? We can't just sit here while those things are loose," Mike protested.

Owen stepped into the room, a frown on her face. "He's got a point, chief. I mean, are we actually just supposed to wait around and let those monsters invade Hawkins?" she scoffed. Hopper's jaw clenched, growing annoyed with the kids' impatience and lack of understanding. "We stay here and we wait for help," he commanded, resolutely. The unusual levelness of his voice was enough for Mike and Owen to lay off, watching as he exited the room without another word.

Owen propped herself up against one of the kitchen counters with her arms crossed in front of her. "This is bullshit," she muttered once Hopper was out of earshot. "We need to do something before it gets worse. And honestly, it could get worse very fast."

"Love the optimism," Steve remarked, leaning back against the kitchen sink.

She pursed her lips and rolled her eyes at the sarcastic comment. "Bite me," she grumbled.

After that, a melancholy silence fell over the house once again. The weight of the situation hung heavily over everyone's heads and wrapped tightly around each heart in the room. Owen had only met Bob Newby briefly in an oxygen-deprived haze when he and Joyce had come to save her and Hopper from the tunnels. But from what little she knew of him, Bob seemed to have been a pretty stand-out guy; it's not every day that you meet someone who would sacrifice himself for the greater good like that.

"Did you guys know that Bob was the original founder of Hawkins AV?" Mike pondered, having gotten up and drifted over to a pile of games left in the Byers' living room. The other three kids at the table looked over at him, curious about where he was headed with this.

"Really?" Lucas asked, quietly.

"He petitioned the school to start it and everything. Then, he had a fundraiser for equipment," Mike went on, a gentle smile curving the corner of his mouth. "Mr. Clarke learned everything from him. Pretty awesome, right?" The two boys made little sounds of agreement, watching closely as Mike sat one of the puzzles from the stack of games on the dining table. "We can't let him die in vain," he asserted, making eye contact with everyone in the room.

"Well, what do you want to do, Mike?" Dustin sighed in exasperation. "The chief's right on this. We can't stop those demodogs on our own."

"Demodogs?" Max repeated with a quirked eyebrow.

Dustin stared incredulously at her for a moment. "Demogorgon dogs... demo-dogs," he explained, walking everyone through his process behind naming the creatures. "It's like a compound. Like, a play-on-words..."

"We get it, Dustin," Owen sighed, reaching up to rub her hands over her tired eyes.

"I mean, when it was just Dart, we might've been able to do it," Dustin acknowledged.

"But there's an army now," Lucas muttered, sounding as defeated as everyone else felt. Well, almost everyone else. Owen spotted the wheels turning behind Mike's eyes from across the kitchen.

"His army," Mike clarified, drawing everyone's attention.

Steve's eyebrows furrowed. "What do you mean?" he asked, unsure what the younger boy was insinuating.

"His army," Mike repeated with more power behind his words. "Maybe if we stop him, we can stop his army, too." He abruptly walked out of the kitchen, hurried footsteps carrying him down the hallway towards Jonathan's room. Everyone jumped up to trail along behind him, interested to see where he was going with this idea.

Amidst the chaos that covered every inch of the house, Mike instantly found a drawing on top of Jonathan's desk. Although, this drawing was far more detailed than the blue scribbles that covered the walls. In black crayon, a spidery black monster hovered over a forest, standing tall beneath a dark cloud full of red bolts of lightning. It looked like something out of Law's comic books.

"The shadow monster," Dustin recalled upon seeing the drawing.

"It got Will that day on the field. The doctor said it was like a virus, it infected him," Mike specified, causing Owen's eyes to nearly bug out of her skull. "Did this thing cause Will to have that seizure out at the McCorkles' farm?" she questioned, glancing between Mike and the shadow monster. The dark-haired boy gave a slow nod, his lips pursed sadly.

"And so this virus, it's connecting him to the tunnels?" Max mused.

"To the tunnels, monsters, the Upside Down, everything," Mike answered, talking a mile a minute. "Whoa. Slow down. Slow down," Steve insisted, lifting the drawing up for a closer look. Mike pressed his lips together, trying to keep his irritation at bay before he explained any further. "Okay, so, the shadow monster's inside everything. And if the vines feel something like pain, then so does Will."

"And so does Dart," Lucas chimed in.

"Like when they were burning the tunnels that day in the field..." Owen breathed, finally connecting all of the dots. The painful, distorted look on Will's face that night flashed across her mind, causing her to wince at the memory. He was literally feeling the fire from those scientists' flamethrowers.

"Yeah, it's like what Mr. Clarke taught us. The hive mind," Mike nodded.

"Hive mind?" Steve repeated, still lost.

"A collective consciousness. It's a super-organism," Dustin interpreted, trying to bridge the gap between their nerd language and the rest of the world. Mike's finger prodded the crumpled paper of the drawing in Steve's hand. "And this is the thing that controls everything. It's the brain," Mike told them.

"Like the Mind Flayer," Dustin said with urgency. Owen watched as recognition, followed by horror, flickered across Mike and Lucas's faces. While this clearly meant something to the boys, the other three were left totally in the dark.

"The... what?" Owen, Steve, and Max simultaneously wondered aloud.

Once everyone – aside from Joyce and Will — reconvened in the kitchen, Dustin slammed a huge Dungeons and Dragons manual onto the dining table. He had found the page that he was looking for strangely fast — Owen could tell that the boys weren't messing around it when it came to their fantasy game.

"The Mind Flayer," Dustin announced, pointing to a picture in the manual that looked nothing like Will's drawing. Hopper glared apprehensively at him, not happy to have been dragged out of his conversation with Joyce in the back.

"What the hell is that?" The police chief muttered.

"It's a monster from an unknown dimension," Dustin started, unfazed by Hopper's disgruntled expression. "It's so ancient that it doesn't even know its true home. It enslaves races of other dimensions by taking over their brains using its highly-developed psionic powers," he rattled off, eyes bouncing excitedly amongst the group.

Hopper's stare bored into Dustin's from across the table. "Oh my god, none of this is real. This is a kids' game," he grumbled.

"No, it's a manual. And it's not for kids," Dustin said matter-of-factly. "And unless you know something that we don't, this is the best metaphor–"

"Analogy," Lucas corrected.

"Analogy? That's what you're worried about?" Dustin deadpanned. Owen lowered her gaze, arms still tucked in front of her. Clearly, whatever problems the two of them were having earlier were still not resolved. "Fine! An analogy for understanding whatever the hell this is."

Nancy's hands flew up defensively, as if trying to dismiss any lingering conflict in the air. "Okay, so this mind flamer thing—" she started, leaning in to get a better view of the manual.

"Flayer. Mind Flayer," Dustin interrupted, seriously.

Nancy sighed. "What does it want?" she asked, eyes narrowing at him.

"To conquer us, basically. It believes it's the master race," Dustin explained, lips pursed.

Steve snapped, like something finally clicked for him. "Like the Germans," he said with total confidence, only to earn totally confused looks from everyone at the table. Hopper even pinched the bridge of his nose exasperatedly, head tilting back.

"Uh, the Nazis?" Dustin asked, trying to see the connection. Steve looked like a deer in the headlights, glancing around all wide-eyed. "Yeah, yeah, yeah, the Nazis," he nodded, the tips of his ears burning.

Steve mistakenly glanced over at Owen for reassurance, but her look of bewilderment, consisting of a curled upper lip and furrowed eyebrows did quite the opposite. "What the hell are you talking about, dude?" she whispered through gritted teeth, unsure why he was choosing now of all times to make history references. His shoulders shot up in a defensive shrug.

"If the Nazis were from another dimension, totally..." Dustin said, trying to throw him a lifeline. "Uh, it views other races, like us, as inferior to itself," the younger boy tried to move on, redirecting everyone back to the topic at hand.

"It wants to spread, take over other dimensions," Mike added.

"We are talking about the destruction of our world as we know it," Lucas concluded, speaking with pessimistic language that Owen understood. Mass destruction certainly wasn't something that she liked the sound of, but she would never shy away from some good ol' realistic cynicism.

Steve, on the other hand, didn't seem as cool with it. His hands carded through his hair, mussing the carefully constructed style. "That's great. That's really great. That's awesome, actually. Jesus..." he babbled, stepping away from the table for a momentary freak-out.

Nancy picked up the D&D manual, examining the tiny drawing of the Mind Flayer. "Okay, so if this thing is like a brain that's controlling everything, then if we kill it..." Nancy trailed off.

"We kill everything it controls," Mike said, finishing her sentence.

"We'd win," Dustin stated.

"Theoretically," Lucas pointed out.

"But how do you kill it? I mean, I thought killing a demogorgon was hard enough. But an ancient monster? In an unknown dimension? That sounds like the boss level," Owen sighed, glancing amongst the three boys. However, none of them looked especially thrilled with going any further with their encyclopedic knowledge of the board game.

Of course, Dustin took one for the team. "Uh... you summon an undead army, uh, because... because zombies, you know, don't have brains and the Mind Flayer, it... it... it likes brains," Dustin stammered through the explanation under the weight of everyone's unimpressed stares.

"Well, unless one of us has been secretly dabbling in necromancy, I think we're screwed," Owen muttered. "It sounds like our best bet right now is Hopper's military back-up and I'm not even sure that's actually gonna happen."

"It is!" Hopper snarled, shooting a scowl at her from across the kitchen.

"Even if they come, how are they gonna stop this? You can't just shoot this with guns," Mike shot back.

"You don't know that!" Hopper angrily reminded him. "We don't know anything!"

"We know it's already killed everybody in that lab," Mike retorted. "And we know the monsters are gonna molt again," Lucas said. "And we know it's only a matter of time before those tunnels reach this town," Dustin noted.

Damn, they're good, Owen thought to herself. Once all this was over, she needed to tell them all about the Speech and Debate club at the high school. They would be a great addition to the team.

"They're right," a voice croaked from the hallway. There stood a tearstained Joyce, still in her scrubs from Hawkins Lab. Owen's heart ached at the sight of her. "We have to kill it. I want to kill it," Joyce agreed with that same raspy tone.

"Me, too. Me, too, Joyce, okay?" Hopper told her, sounding softer than he had all evening. "But how do we do that? We don't exactly know what we're dealing with here."

"No... but he does," Mike mentioned, walking into the living room where Will was still sleeping. "If anyone knows how to destroy this thing, it's Will. He's connected to it. He'll know its weaknesses." The group followed him further into the living room.

"I thought we couldn't trust him anymore — that he's a spy for the Mind Flayer now," Max reminded him, arms crossing.

"Yeah, but... he can't spy if he doesn't know where he is," Mike realized, slowly turning back around to face them.

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The next half an hour consisted of taking everything out of the Byers' old shed out back. Every bit of clutter was tossed out into the backyard in an effort to make sure there was nothing identifiable in sight. For whatever reason, Hopper had enlisted Owen to help him with all of the heavy-lifting. Although she theorized that this was his way of getting back at her for back-talking, the two of them worked alongside each other in total silence, too focused on getting the job done to chit-chat.

However, amongst all of the old, inoperable kitchenware and lawn chairs, Owen spied a real gem tucked away in the corner of the shed. She shoved her way in between a lawnmower and a workbench, fingers wrapping around a dirty old baseball bat. It was a little smaller than the usual bat, like it had maybe been used during a t-ball game. Hopper didn't even question her when she nestled the bat up against the outside of the shed, setting it aside just in case.

But pretty soon, everything else was stacked in a haphazard pile on top of the dewy grass, leaving the shed ready for some shoddy interior design. Owen and Hopper had meandered back inside the house, helping everyone collect items to prepare for Will's interrogation. As she walked, Owen artlessly swung her bat around, soon realizing that Steve's tricks took more skill than she gave him credit for.

Steve and Nancy passed Owen and Hopper in the backyard, their arms full of dusty tarps. "Don't hurt yourself, Webb," Steve teased with a smirk, spotting the look of pure concentration on Owen's face as she attempted – and failed – one of his tricks. Looking up from the bat, her eyes narrowed at him as they walked past each other. Without enough time to formulate a biting response, Owen knew that her middle finger and a scowl would get the same message across.

Steve and Nancy were headed to the shed in order to hang up some tarp over its exposed framework. With Nancy present, Steve tried to make stapling some of the heavy duty material to one of the wood beams look effortless. But she still noticed the way he had to press his entire body weight against the stapler just to get it to do anything. It made her smirk, but she did try her best to hide it.

"Hey..." Nancy murmured, after realizing that this may be one of the only times she and Steve would be alone in the near future. He peeked over at her, all wide-eyed and hopeful. "What you and Owen did, um, helping the kids... that was... really cool," she acknowledged with a sweet smile.

That wasn't what he was expecting her to say. "Yeah." Steve sighed. "Those little shits are real trouble, y'know?" He climbed back up onto the step ladder, pulling and adjusting the corner of the tarp.

"Believe me, I know," she chuckled, softly. Then, after a beat, Nancy peeked over at him again, a curious gleam in her eye. "So... you and Owen?"

Steve nearly gave himself whiplash with how fast he looked down at her. "What?" He felt the step ladder wobble beneath him. "No. No way," he replied with a scoff. Him and Owen? Where had she gotten that idea? Steve suddenly felt the urge to explain himself. "She's just... cooler than I thought she was, I guess. Or, I don't know — maybe cool's not the right word," he stammered, unsure why he was so nervous all of a sudden. She had just caught him off guard with such a question — that's all. He closed his eyes, willing himself to focus and find the right words that would get that knowing little grin off of Nancy's face.

"We're just friends, if that's what you're asking," he stated with finality.

Nancy's hands came up in mock defense. "I was just wondering how you two ended up babysitting those kids, but..." she trailed off, unable to fight the smirk on her lips. She hadn't expected to hit such a nerve there.

"Oh," he said, dumbly. But with the way Steve swiftly averted his gaze, Nancy chose not to say anything further about it. Instead, she and Steve spent the rest of their time in the shed focused on crafting the space into something totally indiscernible to Will.

It wasn't long until everyone had congregated in the shed, hanging up cardboard boxes, newspapers, and old blankets over every square inch of the place. The bitter taste of glue sat on the tip of Owen's tongue from all the duct tape she had torn using her teeth. A single chair was placed in front of a couple floodlights — just blinding enough to blur over any potential imperfections in the wall-coverings.

Then, it was time to bring Will out. Owen watched through the kitchen window as Jonathan carried his younger brother's limp body out to the shed. Will hadn't even been able to change out of the lab's hospital gown yet, but of course, Jonathan had taken the time to wrap him up in a blanket before taking him outside. Everyone except Joyce, Hopper, Mike, and Jonathan had collected inside the house, just waiting to hear what would come of the interrogation.

Once she saw the others disappear into the shed, Owen pressed herself off and away from the kitchen sink. She snagged her bat off of the dining table as she strolled into the living room, in search of Steve. Owen found him alone, staring at the front door as he both tactfully and mindlessly swung his bat.

"Whoa there, slugger," Owen chuckled quietly, strolling up behind him. A final swing of the bat brought Steve to a stop, the sports equipment-turned-weapon coming to dangle at his side. He turned toward her, eyeing the metal bat in her grasp.

"Have you ever even swung a bat before?" he asked her with a doubtful look in his eye.

"Have I ever swung a bat before?" Owen repeated, as if his accusation was preposterous. She even tried to brush him off with a scoff and a roll of her eyes. But the skepticism written all over his face seemed to be pretty permanent. Her lips flattened into a firm line and her shoulders drooped, looking like a dog with its tail between its legs. "No, never," she confessed, her know-it-all ego collapsing in on itself.

Steve chuckled lightly. "If it makes you feel any better, swinging a bat to hit a monster that's coming at you is a lot different than swinging to hit a ball someone just pitched," he noted. Owen didn't mention the fact that that didn't make her feel better or worse. Instead, she just nodded along and allowed him to explain a step-by-step tutorial of the perfect bat swing — with a demonstration!

As it turns out, there were more steps to swinging a baseball bat than she realized. "And then this is the part when you fully extend your arms, actually swing the bat, and follow through with the hit. All that stuff before the swing is just what gives your hit its power," Steve illustrated, talking to her from over his shoulder as he held that final pose. "You get all that?" he asked, dropping the bat to his side again.

Owen hated to admit it, but Steve had actually explained the concept very well. But she would be damned if she allowed herself to gush over his baseball skills, making his head even bigger than it already was. She just nodded silently, instead, bringing the bat up into the first position that he showed her in order to practice the entire set of steps.

"And look, I know you said you've never swung a bat before, but I saw you with that pipe out at the junkyard," Steve mentioned, staring at her intensely focused profile. "You weren't too bad, actually. I mean, you kind of tore that one demodog a new one... literally," he admitted.

Then, it was her turn to glance at him from over her shoulder. Owen scoffed lightly at his joke, her dark eyes rolling playfully. But right when she redirected her eyes forward in order to attempt the perfect swing, all of the lights in the house began to flicker and buzz. Every lamp and overhanging light fixture blinked chaotically, catching the attention of everyone in the house. Owen slung her bat back downward, dangling it by her thigh as she worriedly scanned the room.

Everyone in the house quickly gathered in the kitchen, piling together to look at the shed through the window over the sink. "He's awake," Owen murmured, hand tightening around the bat. With each passing second, the lights began to flash less and less, until they slowed to an imperceptible flicker. Owen's curiosity was eating at her; she would've done anything to be in that dingy shed, able to actually hear what was going on with Will.

The hair on the back of everyone's necks flattened back out once it was clear that things had mellowed back out again in the shed. The younger kids all slumped back into the chairs lining the dining table, leaving few options for Nancy, Steve, and Owen. Steve chose to just press his back against the drawing-covered wall, the back of his head thumping against the drywall when he did.

Nancy, on the other hand, had chosen to press her hip against the edge of the counter, her eyes remaining fixed on the shed. Consequently, Owen then decided to haul herself atop a clear spot on the counter right beside her friend, resting her bat across the top of her thighs. She peeked up at the back of Nancy's head, eyeing the brunette tendrils. "So, where have you and Jonathan been all this time?" Owen asked, softly. It had struck her just how long ago it was that she had actually seen Nancy.

This brought Nancy's gaze away from the backyard, but the look of surprise told Owen that she really wasn't expecting anyone to talk to her. "Oh, um... we were just... righting some wrongs, I guess," she responded, vaguely. Owen's eyebrows twitched downward, mouth opening to ask for clarification when the house's back door burst open.

In walked Hopper, followed closely by Joyce, Jonathan, and Mike. The chief grabbed an opened envelope from the countertop before plucking a pen out of his own jacket pocket. Owen slid from off of the counter, huddling around Hopper as he scribbled something on the back of the envelope.

"What happened?" Dustin inquired, peering across the table.

Hopper sighed. "I think he's talking, just not with words." Owen leaned over his shoulder, examining the collection of dots and lines he had written on the paper.

"Hey, what is that?" Steve wondered aloud.

"Morse code," the younger boys answered in unison. Steve shot a look of confusion across Hopper's back, his eyes meeting Owen's. She offered a clueless shrug of her own, not having any experience with this dot and line language.

"H-E-R-E," Hopper spelled out, leaning back in his seat as he examined the single word. "Will's still in there. He's talking to us." Joyce pulled in a shaky breath, plastering on a semi-hopeful expression that didn't quite meet her eyes.

But then, it was like something clicked for Jonathan upon hearing the chief's words. He broke off from the group, feet hurrying down the hallway towards his room. When he returned, he slammed his boombox onto the dining table, earning confused looks from everyone.

"This is his favorite band. This should keep him concentrated long enough to get a message through that will help us," Jonathan told them, lifting a tape into the air before shoving it into the cassette deck. "Hopper can use this to relay Will's morse code from the shed," he continued, sliding Will's walkie talkie across the table's bumpy wood grains.

Hopper grabbed the device before it slid too far, nodding at Jonathan in confirmation. "Just get a piece of paper and something to write with and write down everything Hopper sends you," he instructed, stare specifically settling on the younger boys.

"Got it," Lucas agreed, waving his own walkie talkie in the air.

Jonathan gave a stiff nod and pulled the boombox off of the table. "Alright, then. Let's do this."

Once the original group all returned to the shed, everyone inside the house began to prepare for their assigned task. Lucas cranked up the walkie talkie and rested it on the table. Owen searched through the kitchen's drawers, whipping out a pencil and a coffee-stained legal pad to write on. Thankfully, a box of crayons had been deserted on the dining table, allowing Nancy to pull out a dull red one to write with.

Then, the team began to work like a well-oiled machine. With a piece of paper torn out of the legal pad, Dustin wrote down every dash and dot as he heard them through the walkie talkie. Then, Lucas translated it into the regular-shmegular alphabet. And finally, Nancy combined each letter into words that would hopefully make sense to the rest of them that didn't speak morse code.

Eventually, all of the beeps filtering through the walkie talkie came to an end. Either the song had ended, or Will told them everything he could. Nancy tilted the legal pad upwards, making sure everyone was able to read it as they hurried to gather around her.

"Close gate?" They all read aloud. But Owen couldn't help but feel just as lost as she had when they started. What gate?

Suddenly, the telephone mounted on the wall of the kitchen began to ring, the loud noise causing everyone to jump as it tore through their contemplative silence. Scaring them was one thing, but the worst case scenario was the sound making it all the way out to the shed for Will to hear. "Shit, shit, shit..." Dustin stressed, scrambling across the kitchen to pull the phone off of the receiver. He slammed it back in place almost instantly, bringing the ringing to a stop — momentarily.

It wasn't even five seconds after the initial call that the phone started ringing again. Without thinking too much about it, Nancy reached up, tearing the entire phone off of the wall and hurling it down the hallway. It clanged against the wooden flooring before it came to rest silently in the living room somewhere.

Nervous, heavy panting from every person in the room filled the air, each of them rattled by the fear of their location being found out. "Do you think he heard that?" Max pondered quietly, like the sound of her voice would add insult to injury.

"It's just a phone. It could be anywhere... right?" Steve said in an attempt to reassure her and everyone else. But Owen couldn't ignore the awful feeling that settled into the pit of her stomach, suddenly acutely aware of the sensation as it crept up her spine. Her breathing picked up as she turned, eyes narrowing on the shed.

"He found us," she breathed, eyes widening. "He knows where we are."

"What? How do you know?" Nancy demanded, brows pinching together. Owen's shoulders defensively shot upwards, nearly meeting her ears as she did so. She had never been asked that before. How did she know? She wasn't sure they would trust or understand if she told them it was some gut feeling.

"I don't know! I just know, okay?" she sputtered, eyes darting between the scared faces of her friends and the Byers' backyard. Through the kitchen window, she saw Hopper, Jonathan, and Mike burst from the shed, looking every bit as frightened as the others inside. Then, with their horrifically perfect timing, the animalistic screeches of the demodogs echoed through Hawkins.

Everyone stuck together as they sped into the living room to listen out for the monsters, hoping to gauge how far away they were and how much time they had till they arrived. The next time they heard the pack of demodogs, it was even louder than before. "That's not good," Dustin mumbled. The hair on the back of Owen's neck stood as the feeling of dread began to consume her every thought.

Moments later, Joyce ran in through the back door with Will slung over her shoulder, fast asleep. Jonathan and Mike were close behind, hurrying to reconvene with the rest of the group. "Where's Hopper?" Owen asked urgently, not having seen him enter with everyone else. Jonathan looked behind him, clearly having lost the man somewhere along the way.

"I-uh... he was-"

"I'm right here," Hopper announced, coming around the corner and into the living room with multiple guns in hand. "Hey. Hey, get away from the windows!" he barked at the kids, causing them to dart away from the glass. Owen reached out for them, shoving them behind her.

"Do you know how to use this?" Hopper asked Jonathan, lifting the extra gun between them. Jonathan began to nervously stumble over his words, not expecting to be put on the spot like that and not wanting to tell the chief that he didn't know how to use a gun like that. "Can you use this?" The chief demanded, brows furrowing in desperation.

"I can," Nancy finally spoke up, stepping forward. Without another question, Hopper tossed the gun to her. Owen had to stifle the proud grin that threatened to pull at her lips as she watched Nancy check the rifle's chamber before aiming it at the front door.

In her mind, Owen went over the steps Steve had taught her about the perfect swing again and again. Her fingers tightened around the now-warm metal as she prepped the bat over her shoulder, prepared to protect the unarmed kids behind her with everything she had. She glared at the darkness she could see through the front window, listening intently for any sounds outside.

"Where are they?" Max demanded.

Owen could feel her heart hammering behind her ribs, the sound nearly masking the crunch of leaves in the front yard. That stomach-turning chittering of the demodogs followed, signaling just how close they were.

Just when Owen was convinced that one or more of those creatures were going to slam through the front door and eat them all, there was a sudden, loud whoosh of air zooming past the front of the house. A foundation-rattling thud was the next noise to meet everyone's ears, causing all of them to jump and collectively turn in the direction of the sound.

"What are they doing?" Nancy worried. Through the dining room window, the overgrown bushes swished and shook, accompanied by the distinctive sounds of the monsters. "It's like they're messing with us," Owen muttered with a scowl. Another loud slam came from the other side of the house, drawing everyone's attention with it. All Owen could hear were otherworldly groans and screeches — similar to the sound of the demodog when she impaled it in the junkyard.

But then with a final crunch, silence befell the house again and Owen would never admit it, but it was almost worse. Then, one of those sharp pains exploded at the base of her skull, the sense of immediate danger making her forget how eerie the quiet was.

"Watch out!" Owen shouted, reaching back to shove the kids deeper into the hallway. Seconds later, a shiny, gray mass broke through the front window of the house, sending shattered glass in every direction. Owen's free hand raised to shield her eyes as she ducked away from the intrusion.

Once she realized they weren't being actively attacked, she slowly lowered her arm to see what had come through the window. Owen didn't expect to see the lifeless body of a demodog curled up on the floor of the living room. Her upper lip curled at the spectacle, now able to see the details of its slimy skin and the rows of teeth lining its mouth with help from the house's lighting. "God... and I thought those motherfuckers were ugly in the dark," she muttered, deciding to hang back as the rest of the group crowded around it for further inspection.

"Is it dead?" Max asked. Hopper stretched his boot-clad foot out, nudging it. He didn't even really need to reply — the limp way that it moved beneath his foot was enough of an answer. While everyone was focused on the demodog corpse in the middle of the living room, Owen felt her eyes being drawn towards the front door.

"Guys..." she murmured, trying to get everyone's attention. However, it was the creak of the old wooden door that actually brought everyone's gaze back towards the front of the house.

The deadbolt swiftly unlocked from the outside, causing Owen's head to tilt perplexedly. Then, the chain on the door slid out of place, dangling and leaving them exposed to whatever was on the other side. Although, Owen couldn't help but notice the absence of any of those gut feelings she had been having. No tingle, no stabbing pain, no pit in her stomach — she didn't even feel the urge to raise her bat defensively. All she could do was stare with her mouth agape when the door was finally pushed open.

Despite every logical thought that raced through Owen's mind, she couldn't deny the sight in front of her. Dark makeup was smudged across the girl's unmistakable cherubic features. Her hair was longer than the buzzcut she had last year, now being held back with copious amounts of gel. She wore black clothing that looked to be a few sizes too big, but it hung over a pair of rolled-up jeans and a pair of Converse that perfectly mixed in the typical Hawkins attire. But most notably, at least to Owen, was the dark streak of blood that dripped from her nose.

The corners of Owen's lips lifted as she pulled in a shaky breath.

Eleven was back.