I put as much distance between myself and that gate as I could without crashing face-first into one of the vines covering half the goddamn forest.
Trees blurred past me.
My boots struck the dead ground in quick, controlled steps.
Every few seconds, I changed direction.
Anything that might make it harder for something to follow the exact path I had taken.
The Demogorgon's final screech still echoed in the back of my mind.
Maybe it had been nothing more than a death scream.
Maybe every monster within a mile had heard it and was currently heading straight towards where I had entered.
I wasn't particularly interested in finding out.
So I kept moving.
Until my lungs burned.
Until my legs started protesting.
Until the place where I had entered the Upside Down was far enough behind me that I could no longer even guess exactly where it was.
Only then did I finally slow down.
I slipped behind the thick trunk of a dead tree and pressed my back against it.
Then I listened.
Nothing.
I waited.
Still nothing.
No screeches.
No snapping branches.
No heavy footsteps.
No seven-foot-tall carnivorous flowers charging through the woods after me.
Good.
I stayed completely still for another minute just to be sure.
Nothing.
I had either shaken off anything that might have followed me…
Or nothing had been following me in the first place.
Either option worked for me.
I finally allowed myself to breathe properly.
Then I felt the sting in my shoulder.
Right.
The cut.
I looked down.
The wound I'd made earlier was still bleeding through my clothes.
I had no desire to turn myself into a target for another man-eating creature.
"Yeah. That needs to stop."
I crouched behind the tree and pulled my supplies out.
For now, I only needed something quick.
I pressed clean gauze against the cut, wrapped a bandage tightly around my upper arm and secured it in place until the bleeding stopped.
Tears gathered in my eyes.
I bit down hard on my tongue to keep the scream from escaping my throat while I treated it.
The last thing I needed was to alert something to my location.
Fuck, that hurt.
I hadn't realised just how much until now.
I'd been too busy trying not to die for the adrenaline to let me notice.
Now that I'd stopped moving, though?
Yeah.
Definitely noticed.
I squeezed my eyes shut for a second.
Ignore it, Erica.
You're fine.
You need to be fine.
I forced the pain into the back of my mind and focused.
Will.
That was what mattered.
I could clean the wound properly once I found somewhere safer.
I packed everything away again and stood.
Now.
Will.
I forced myself to think back to the show.
Where had he hidden?
Familiar places.
That was the important part.
Will had been twelve years old, terrified, completely alone and trapped in a nightmare version of his own town.
So he'd gone somewhere familiar.
Somewhere that felt safe.
His house.
Castle Byers.
Places connected to home.
Places that could give him even the smallest illusion of comfort.
The Byers house was the obvious first choice.
I knew where that was.
I started moving.
This time, I didn't run.
Running was loud.
And I had absolutely no intention of announcing my presence to the entire Upside Down.
Besides, I needed to preserve as much energy as possible.
I had no idea when I might suddenly need to run for my life again.
Clint had taught me plenty about disappearing when I needed to.
How to use the environment to break sightlines.
How to move through cover instead of open spaces.
How to sneak around without drawing attention to myself.
And Natasha—
Well.
Apparently all those boring ballet lessons had applications beyond making me suffer.
Balance.
Control.
Knowing exactly where and how to place my feet without making a sound.
I controlled every step with deliberate precision, weaving around the vines without slowing myself down more than necessary.
I slipped between the trees like a shadow.
Or at least what I imagined a shadow looked like.
Hopefully I didn't actually look like a ten-year-old covered in monster blood trying very hard not to trip over a root.
The vines were the biggest problem.
They were everywhere.
Across the ground.
Wrapped around trees.
Crawling over buildings.
Pulsing faintly beneath that disgusting layer of decay covering everything.
And I knew enough about this place to understand that they weren't just plants.
The Upside Down was connected.
One enormous biological network.
Disturbing one of those vines could be the equivalent of announcing my presence directly to Vecna.
So I treated every one of them like a pressure plate.
It was like walking through a minefield.
One bad step and something might know exactly where I was.
Eventually, the trees thinned.
And there it was.
The Byers house.
A familiar place in this inverted reality.
I stayed hidden among the trees for several seconds, watching.
Nothing moved.
I approached from the side instead of walking straight towards the front door.
Natasha would have approved of the caution.
Probably.
Clint would've asked who exactly I thought I was hiding from.
There were probably only three human beings in this entire dimension right now.
Assuming Henry Creel still counted as human after shedding basically everything human about his appearance.
So, yeah.
Maybe I was being paranoid.
Still wasn't walking through the front door.
I reached one of the windows and carefully looked inside.
Empty.
At least from here.
I moved around the house, checking another.
Then another.
Still nothing.
Eventually, I slipped inside.
"Will?"
Barely a whisper.
No answer.
I searched.
The living room.
Kitchen.
Hallway.
Will's room.
Nothing.
But someone had been here.
Things had been moved.
There were marks in the grime.
The telephone on the wall hung loosely from its cord.
Little disturbances that meant almost nothing individually.
Together?
Someone had passed through this house.
Recently.
My heart sped up.
Will.
It had to be.
But he wasn't here anymore.
"Okay."
I swallowed.
"Next place."
Castle Byers.
I knew less about exactly where that was.
But Lucas, Mike, Dustin and Will had mentioned it enough times for me to remember the important part.
Will and Jonathan had built it together.
His own little hidden sanctuary.
And it was somewhere in the woods near his house.
Of course it was.
Because apparently my night needed more wandering through murder forest.
I slipped back outside.
Then started searching.
Quietly.
Carefully.
Minutes passed.
Then more.
I kept looking for anything unnatural among the trees.
Something built by human hands.
Straight lines.
Wood arranged deliberately instead of naturally.
Anything.
And eventually—
There.
I stopped.
Through the trees stood a small wooden fort.
Castle Byers.
Relief hit me so quickly I almost laughed.
I hurried towards it before catching myself and slowing down again.
Careful.
I approached from the side.
Listened.
Nothing.
I reached the entrance.
"Will?"
Silence.
I stepped inside.
Empty.
My stomach sank.
"No."
I looked around again.
Maybe I'd missed him.
Ridiculous.
The fort was tiny.
There was nowhere to hide.
"Come on."
I checked outside.
Behind it.
Around the nearest trees.
Nothing.
No Will.
I stepped back inside.
Where the hell was he?
His house was empty.
Castle Byers was empty.
Those were the two places I remembered him using.
Was there somewhere else?
Somewhere I had forgotten?
Somewhere the series simply hadn't shown?
God, this was turning into the world's most traumatic game of hide-and-seek.
"Think, Erica."
I turned—
And froze.
Something sat in the corner of the fort.
A backpack.
For half a second, my brain refused to understand what I was looking at.
Then my heart stopped.
No.
I crossed the fort in one step and dropped beside it.
I knew that bag.
Of course I fucking knew that bag.
I had packed it.
Will's survival kit.
The same backpack I'd practically forced him to take before he disappeared.
It was here.
Will wasn't.
Impossible.
I grabbed it.
Maybe it was empty.
Maybe he'd taken the supplies.
Maybe—
I opened it.
Most of the contents were still there.
My stomach dropped.
"No."
Will wouldn't leave this.
Not here.
Not after seeing what was inside.
These were critical resources he needed to survive this place.
He had been terrified when he disappeared.
He wasn't stupid.
There was absolutely no reason for him to willingly abandon the one thing giving him an actual chance of staying alive.
Which meant—
Something had happened to him.
The thought hit me like a punch.
No.
No, no, no.
What if I was too late?
What if changing things had made everything worse?
What if giving him the backpack had changed where he went?
What if something had found him because of me?
What if—
I got him killed.
My breathing sped up.
I got Will killed.
I came here to save him and I—
"Stop."
The word came out aloud.
I squeezed my eyes shut.
Stop.
Panic later.
Break down later.
Blame myself later.
Right now, panic was useless.
Panic made you stupid.
Stupid got you killed.
And if Will was still alive, wasting time falling apart wasn't helping him.
I inhaled slowly.
Held it.
Exhaled.
Again.
Think.
Facts.
Will had been here.
The backpack proved that.
He had left without it.
Probably not willingly.
That meant something had happened.
It did not mean he was dead.
Good.
Start there.
I sat against the wall of Castle Byers.
My legs were starting to ache now that the adrenaline was fading.
So was everything else, actually.
Apparently fighting a Demogorgon, crawling through an interdimensional rabbit hole and sneaking across murder-Hawkins wasn't particularly restful.
I needed a few minutes.
No more.
And I needed to deal with my shoulder properly.
I pulled out the medical supplies.
The temporary bandage was already stained.
I carefully removed it.
The cut wasn't terrible.
But an untreated wound in this place?
Absolutely fucking not.
I had no idea what kinds of bacteria existed in the Upside Down, and I had even less interest in finding out what an interdimensional infection looked like.
I cleaned the wound thoroughly.
It stung like hell.
"Fuck—"
I clenched my teeth and continued.
Once I was satisfied it was clean, I dressed it properly and wrapped it securely.
Much better.
The bloodied gauze and old bandages were another problem.
Leaving them here would be monumentally stupid.
If Demogorgons could track blood, I wasn't leaving a pile of mine sitting beside the place where I intended to rest.
I gathered everything contaminated with blood, left Castle Byers and carried it a good distance into the woods.
Far enough.
I dumped it beneath a cluster of dead trees, then doubled back using a different route.
Clint would be proud.
Maybe.
Back inside Castle Byers, I sat down again.
Now.
What the fuck did I do?
Think.
Think.
Think.
Where could Will be?
His house?
Checked.
Castle Byers?
Checked.
Somewhere else familiar?
Maybe.
But why leave the backpack?
Unless he hadn't had a choice.
Unless something had taken him.
My thoughts stopped.
Taken him.
Wait.
Will wasn't dead when Joyce and Hopper found him.
He had been captured.
I sat straighter.
Where?
Come on.
I knew this.
I'd watched it.
I'd seen Joyce and Hopper find him.
Where was it?
Think.
The Creel house?
No.
Wrong.
The school?
No.
That was where the others were.
Where the fuck—
"Come on, remember."
Images flashed through my head.
Joyce.
Hopper.
The Upside Down.
Will unconscious.
Those disgusting vines.
The tendril down his throat.
Where?
Where?
Then it hit me.
"The library."
Hawkins Public Library.
Of course.
That was where Joyce and Hopper found him.
Eventually, Will had ended up there.
I stared at the wall.
If Vecna had already taken him…
Then maybe that was where he was now.
Maybe.
I couldn't know for certain.
This timeline had already changed.
I had changed it.
But it was the best lead I had.
Which presented one very small problem.
The library wasn't just another hiding place.
It had become some kind of nest.
A temporary base for whatever was controlling the Upside Down.
And if Will had already been taken there…
I might not just be dealing with another Demogorgon.
I might be walking directly towards Vecna.
Silence.
I stared at the backpack.
"Well."
That was bad.
Actually, no.
Bad was forgetting your homework.
This was catastrophic.
My chances against Henry Creel right now?
Approximately zero.
Maybe slightly below zero.
I wasn't Eleven.
I didn't have her raw power.
And even Eleven wouldn't stand a damn chance against him right now.
It would take years of training before she could actually go up against Henry and have a chance of winning.
I didn't even have the ridiculous surge I'd had when my abilities first awakened.
And Henry had decades more experience with his powers than I did.
Going anywhere near him was insane.
Which was particularly inconvenient considering Will might currently be there.
I leaned my head back against the wooden wall.
This wasn't the plan.
Not even remotely.
I'd planned this for months.
Prepared equipment.
Trained.
Thought through every possible problem I could imagine.
And somehow, reality had still looked at all of that preparation and told me to go fuck myself.
Then, of all fucking things, a Leonard Snart quote surfaced in my head.
I almost laughed.
Maybe the pressure really was driving me crazy.
Still…
It was annoyingly good advice.
"Make the plan. Execute the plan. Expect the plan to go off the rails. Throw away the plan," I muttered under my breath.
Somehow, saying it out loud actually helped me gather my courage.
I stared into the darkness outside Castle Byers.
"Okay, Snart."
The plan had officially gone off the rails.
Time to throw away the plan.
I stood.
My legs protested.
I ignored them.
Whatever had happened to Will, he was still alive until I had proof otherwise.
And if he was at the library, I would find him.
If something had taken him, I would get him back.
If Henry was there…
Well.
I'd figure that particular nightmare out when I got there.
Because there was one thing I knew for certain.
I hadn't crossed dimensions, fought a demogorgon and crawled through a disgusting flesh tunnel just to give up because things had gotten harder than I expected.
I rummaged through Will's backpack.
I couldn't take everything.
The extra weight would only slow me down, but some of Will's supplies were too useful to leave behind.
My eyes landed on the two Molotov cocktails I'd packed for him.
He hadn't got the chance to use them.
Oh, absolutely.
Those were coming with me.
They wouldn't fit with everything already in my bag, so I pulled out the food, water bottles and compact sleeping bag.
None of them were going to be particularly useful for what I was about to do.
The Molotovs went in instead.
I tightened the straps of my backpack.
Adjusted the bow across my back.
Then wrapped my hand around the mace.
I took one deep breath and stepped out of Castle Byers.
Time to improvise.