I'd given Will as much time as I could.
Not enough.
He still had a slight fever.
But as much as I could.
He was sitting against the wall of Castle Byers, wrapped in everything I'd been able to find, looking marginally less like he was about to keel over and die.
Marginally.
His colour had come back a little. His breathing had steadied. He'd even managed to keep down some water and protein bars.
Good enough.
It had to be.
"We need to go."
Will looked up at me.
For a second, he didn't move.
Then he nodded.
No complaints. No asking for another five minutes.
That worried me more than if he'd argued.
But I'd already wasted enough time sitting here.
Every extra minute we stayed in one place was another minute something could find us.
And Castle Byers wasn't safe.
Even if Will had managed to hide here for some time.
He probably figured being this deep in the woods would keep him safe. Besides, he'd been scared, and Castle Byers was familiar. Somewhere he felt safe.
It was actually the opposite.
We couldn't see anything approaching through the trees, and the fort itself was too small and too fragile to offer any real protection. The second something broke through those fragile walls, we wouldn't even have enough room to dodge.
Even if we heard an attack coming, the woods killed our mobility. The trees and uneven ground meant no car, no bike, nothing that could give us a speed advantage.
We could only run.
On foot.
Against creatures that were faster than us.
Not exactly a race I was betting on winning.
Worse, Will had already been here. If one of those things had tracked him here once, there was nothing stopping it from coming back.
A hiding place only worked for as long as nobody knew where it was.
Nothing in this fucking place was safe.
I held a hand out to him.
"Think you can walk?"
Will looked at my hand.
Then at me.
"I think so."
Not exactly inspiring confidence.
But I'd take it.
He grabbed my hand.
I pulled him carefully to his feet.
His legs wobbled.
I caught his arm before he could fall.
Will steadied himself against me, breathing hard.
Right.
This was going to be fun.
Finding him had been one thing.
Now I had to get us home.
Which would have been considerably easier if I actually had a fucking way home.
The gate I'd used to get here was useless.
We needed another way out.
The obvious answer was Hawkins Lab.
The main gate.
Permanent. Stable.
And completely fucking suicidal.
If we went through that gate without anyone on the outside knowing what was happening, they'd probably kill us just to cover the whole thing up.
And if they tried, I'd have to fight back.
Against that many armed people, I'd have no choice but to reveal my powers if I wanted even the slightest chance of getting us out alive.
And the second they saw what I could do, killing me would probably be off the table.
Why waste a perfectly good superpowered lab rat?
Sure, I could escape to the Marvel universe if they captured me.
Will couldn't.
He'd still be a witness.
It would mean leaving him there to die.
I wasn't taking Will anywhere near that place unless every other option failed.
And even then, we'd be relying on a man who experimented on children being nice enough not to attack us and just let us walk out.
Not exactly comforting.
Which left temporary gates.
The Demogorgon could move between worlds.
I'd already proved that.
It had opened the one I'd used to get here.
The problem was getting another one to do it without becoming dinner in the process.
Which meant attracting their attention from here was out of the question.
They needed a reason to go somewhere else. If I gave them a reason to come here, they wouldn't lead us anywhere. They'd just hunt us inside the woods.
Whatever caught their attention needed to happen somewhere outside this dimension, and I needed to be there at the exact moment a Demogorgon opened a portal.
I couldn't exactly be everywhere at once.
Sure, there was always the tiny chance we could stumble across one at exactly the right moment.
But relying on dumb luck or some imaginary protagonist plot armour wasn't a plan.
My best chance of getting through another temporary portal was to rely on the attacks I remembered from the series. Those were the only times I knew where a Demogorgon would hunt and, more importantly, roughly when it would happen.
Until then, there was nothing I could do.
We had to wait.
Possible when I'd been alone.
With Will barely able to stand?
Different story.
I glanced at him.
He was still leaning against me more than standing on his own.
No chance.
I needed somewhere defensible.
Somewhere with open space.
Clear sightlines.
More than one exit.
And preferably something solid between us and anything with too many fucking teeth.
I mentally ran through Hawkins.
The school?
Large. Multiple exits. Plenty of rooms.
Too far.
The police station?
Better structure. Weapons, assuming their Upside Down counterparts were actually useful.
Still too far.
The Byers house?
Closer.
But no.
If Vecna was looking for us, that would be one of the first places he'd check.
I needed somewhere that gave me both.
Cover and mobility.
Trees close enough to disappear into if necessary.
A road close enough that we could use bikes if we were being chased and running stopped being enough.
Space around the house so I could actually see something coming before it was already on top of us.
Then I remembered.
A swimming pool.
A diving board.
A girl sitting alone on the edge.
Blood dripping into the water.
Barbara Holland.
Oh.
Fuck.
Steve Harrington's house.
Of course.
It wasn't just somewhere we could wait.
It was where I needed to be.
Steve's place had space. A big house. Open ground around the pool. Multiple ways out. Woods close enough to use as cover without trapping ourselves inside them.
And roads.
Actual fucking roads.
If we had to move fast, we could use bikes instead of trying to outrun a Demogorgon through trees.
Better still, it wasn't even that far from where we were.
Plus, if everything went catastrophically wrong, the gate at the lab would be our last possible way back to the real world, and it was roughly as far from the Harrington house as Will's house was, keeping it within reach in an emergency.
But none of that was the real reason.
Barb.
I remembered that scene.
The party.
Steve's house.
Barb alone by the pool.
The cut on her hand.
The scent of blood had attracted the Demogorgon.
And then she was gone.
Taken into the Upside Down, where she died.
Which meant the Demogorgon would open a gate there.
A temporary gate.
Exactly what I needed.
And unlike every other possibility I'd considered, I knew roughly where.
I knew roughly when.
I knew why.
My stomach twisted.
Because for that portal to open, Barbara Holland had to be sitting beside that pool bleeding.
In the original timeline, she disappeared.
She died.
Not this time.
I wasn't waiting around for a girl to get dragged into this fucking place just so Will and I could use the door behind her.
But I didn't need to.
I only needed the Demogorgon to try.
Let it come for Barb.
Stop it before it reached her.
Get Will through the gate.
Follow him.
Save Barb.
Get home.
Simple.
Which, considering my luck lately, meant something was almost certainly going to go horribly fucking wrong.
Still.
It was a plan.
And right now, a plan was considerably better than sitting in Castle Byers waiting to die.
"Will."
He lifted his head.
"We're going somewhere else."
"Where?"
I adjusted his arm more securely over my shoulders.
"Steve Harrington's house."
Will stared at me.
"What? Steve Harrington? Nancy's boyfriend?"
Fair reaction.
I started towards the entrance.
"I'll explain on the way."