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Mike's eyes slowly opened, a severe headache making its presence felt behind his eyes.
It was painful.
It was extremely painful.
With great effort, he forced himself to rise.
Will.
Where was he? The last memory he had was of Vecna — enveloped in vines, advancing towards them with his hand extended as he telekinetically repelled a blazing inferno, eliminating at least five of the soldiers present.
The cold, concrete floor bit into his palms as he pushed himself up, the air thick with the scent of charred flesh and ozone. His vision swam, doubling the flickering fluorescent lights of the MAC-Z before settling into a nauseating clarity.
Mike's fingers trembled as he touched the side of his head, coming away sticky with half-dried blood. The taste of copper coated his tongue, metallic and sour, like licking a battery. His knees wobbled, threatening to buckle, but he locked them tight, if he fell now, he wasn’t sure he’d get back up.
Then came the sound, a wet, clicking scrape, like nails dragged across a chalkboard but deeper, primal. Mike’s breath hitched. Slowly, agonizingly, he turned his head toward the noise.
The demogorgon’s clawed fingers curled around the edge of the open metal flooring, its flesh pulsing with veins that glowed faintly in the dim light. Its flower-like maw split open with a hiss, revealing rows of needle-sharp teeth slick with saliva.
The creature’s head twitched in Mike’s direction, blind yet sensing, its entire body coiled like a spring about to uncoil.
Mike’s pulse hammered in his throat, his body screaming at him to run, but his legs wouldn’t move—rooted not just by fear, but by the sudden, gut-churning realization that the demogorgon wasn’t alone.
Shadows shifted behind it, figures emerging from the wreckage of what had once been a military base.
"Will," Mike whispered, the name tearing from his lips like a plea. He’d been near him when when Vecna walked through the entrance that Hopper had snuck through for 37 crawls.
Where the hell was Will now?
The demogorgon’s head snapped toward the sound of his voice, its blind face twitching as it took a lurching step forward. Mike staggered back, his boot catching on a chunk of debris, and the creature lunged.
Somewhere beneath the MAC-Z, in the tangled web of tunnels that stank of rot and wet earth, Lucas pressed himself against the damp wall, holding his breath. The demogorgon’s claws scraped against the soil just inches from his shoulder, its breath hot and rancid.
He’d lost the kids in the chaos, they had been dragged to the Upside Down, and now all he had was a flashlight clutched in his sweating palms, hardly a match for those teeth. Mike's Swiss Army knife, that he'd given Lucas was buried in the demogorgon's flesh, but so far it had been nothing but a thorn in its side.
He was so, so useless.
Just a little bit further, Robin’s back hit the splintered door of the truck they had been transporting the children in, her chest heaving as she tried to steady her breathing. Murray’s frantic whispers filled the cramped space, “Don’t move, don’t fucking move.” but it was too late.
The demogorgon’s head cocked, its petals flexing open as it zeroed in on their scent. Robin’s fingers found Murray’s wrist, squeezing tight, her mind racing through half-formed escape plans that all ended the same way: screaming.
In the tunnels, Lucas’s grip on the pipe turned slick with sweat as the demogorgon’s maw split wide, saliva dripping in thick ropes. He could see his own reflection in the shiny surface of his flashlight, terror stretched thin, mouth open in a silent scream.
The creature’s claws scraped concrete as it reared back, and Lucas knew, with a horrible clarity, that this was it. He braced, flashlight raised like a batter waiting for the pitch, but then, it froze, claw outstretched as something held it back, some unknown force that had just saved his life.
Will's outstretched hand trembled as the air around him crackled with unseen energy — his veins pulsed black beneath his skin, the whites of his eyes swallowing his pupils whole. The demogorgon convulsed mid-lunge, its limbs twisting inward with a sickening series of wet pops, like someone wringing a dishrag filled with bones. Its scream cut off abruptly as its body collapsed, bones breaking in a similar was as Max's when Vecna had gotten her last year.
Robin watched in horror and confusion, as the demo's bones snapped and it crumpled, dead on the slightly damp grass.
A scream tore through the ruined MAC-Z, raw and ragged, as Mike's knees buckled beneath him. A scream the shook Will out of his slight trance, his head whipping towards the direction it came from.
The demogorgon's claws — still twitching even as its body collapsed into a pulpy heap — had already done their damage. Blood bloomed across Mike's shirt, dark and spreading fast, his fingers fluttering uselessly against the jagged wounds. His mouth moved, forming Will's name, but all that came out was a wet, choked gasp.
The image would haunt him for years after.
The scent of iron flooded Will's nostrils, sharp and cloying, as he stumbled forward. His veins still burned with power — Vecna's power, that he'd stolen, and used to kill.
But what was the point?
He'd pictured Mike's face as he'd reached deeper than he'd ever before, and taken hold of the power with trembling hands. He'd pictured Mike's face as the power crackled through his veins. He'd seen Mike's face through the demogrogon's eyes, as he braced for impact.
He was one second too late.
He was one second, one measly, tiny, irrelevant, second too late, and the demogorgon had thrust it's claws through Mike's chest.
The aftershocks crackling in his fingertips, but all he could see was Mike's face — pale, slack, eyelids fluttering like moth wings against glass. The world narrowed to the awful gurgle of Mike's breathing, the way his blood pooled between them, thick and shining in the flickering light.
Somewhere behind him, his mom was yelling, voice ragged with panic, but Will couldn't move.
He'd been too slow.
Again.
The realization hit him like a physical blow, he'd torn through Vecna's hold, bent the fabric of the Upside Down to his will, but none of it mattered because Mike was crumpling to his knees, fingers clutching at the ruin of his own chest.
His lips formed Will's name one last time, soundless, before he collapsed face-first into the congealing dark red pool, formed by his own blood.
Will ran-limped the distance between them, hands shaking as he turned Mike over.
Mike's lips moved again, barely a twitch, but Will caught it — the faintest shape of a word forming in the blood-flecked hollow of his mouth. He leaned in, his own breath held hostage in his lungs, until Mike's last exhale brushed his cheek like a ghost.
"Holly," Mike whispered, the name dissolving into the air between them, soft as a moth's wing catching fire.
Will's vision pulsed black at the edges, the power inside him thrashing like a caged animal. It wasn’t enough. He wished he'd ripped the demogorgon apart atom by atom, felt its flesh unravel like wet paper, but the damage was already done, Mike's blood seeped into the cracks of the ruined floor, the scent of it thick enough to taste.
The world tilted, his knees hitting concrete metal hard, but all he could focus on was the way Mike's fingers twitched once, twice, before going still.
Somewhere, Vecna was laughing inside his head.
This was his fault.
The soldiers lay strewn behind them like discarded puppets — some half-eaten, others twisted into impossible shapes, their limbs jutting at angles that made Will’s stomach lurch. Their uniforms were soaked through with blood that hadn’t yet dried, glistening under the fractured emergency lights like spilled oil.
One man’s fingers still curled around the grip of his pistol, frozen in a futile last stand, his face locked in a silent scream, bones broken, eyes sucked into his head. The stench of gunpowder and voided bowels clung to the air, thick enough to choke on.
Will's breath hitched — a jagged, broken sound — as he crawled toward Mike's body, fingers sinking into the warm blood between them. The world narrowed to the stillness of Mike's chest, the way his lips had parted slightly, as if he'd meant to say something else.
Will pressed his ear against Mike's ribs, desperate for the thud of a heartbeat, but all he heard was Mike's blood squelching against his hands. His own pulse roared in his ears, a frantic counterpoint to the silence.
"Okay," Will whispered, his voice cracking on the word, even though he was already gone. He pressed his forehead to Mike's, smearing blood between them like a promise.
"Okay, Mike. I'll—I'll get her."
The words tasted like ash, but he forced them out anyway, gripping Mike's limp hand tight enough to bruise. "I'll bring Holly home."
Above them, the ceiling groaned, chunks of debris raining down as the MAC-Z shuddered under another unseen impact. Will barely flinched, the distant scream of tearing metal meant nothing next to the weight of Mike's body slack in his arms.
He forced himself to pull back, to look at the wreckage around them — the scorch marks clawing up the walls, the flickering exit sign down the hall, and made a choice.
Mike's face was still warm under his palms, his eyelids soft when Will pressed his thumbs against them, closing them with a gentleness he didn't feel. There was no time for mourning, no space for grief in the hollowed-out cavity of his chest. Just the echo of Mike's last word — Holly — lodged like a bullet between his ribs. Will reached for the pistol still clutched in the dead soldier's hand, prying stiff fingers loose with a sickening pop of rigor mortis.
It was then he realized his mom was crouched beside him, sobbing in a way she'd done in the days after Bob and Hopper had died.
Joyce's hands were slick with Mike's blood by the time they reached the truck behind which they crouched. Her grip was slipping against his limp wrist as Will shouldered most of his weight. The boy's head lolled against Will's collarbone, his dark hair matted with gore — too much like Eddie's after the bats, from what Dustin had feverishly described, that same terrible stillness.
Joyce bit down on a sob, her nails digging into Mike's belt loop as they half-dragged, half-carried him away from the demogorgon's broken corpse, away from Vecna, toward another larger truck, where Mike coul — Mike's body could come to no further harm.
Robin's flashlight beam cut through the haze of settling dust, revealing Lucas slumped against the tunnel wall, his fingers trembling around a snapped walkie antenna. The shallow scratch across his chest gleamed wet under the light, but his gaze was sharp, locked onto the demogorgon carcass beside him, its bones caved inward as if crushed by an invisible fist. When Robin dropped to her knees beside him, Lucas flinched, his voice hoarse
"What the hell just happened?"
Murray crouched beside the creature's remains, nudging a twisted claw with the toe of his boot. The flesh gave way like overripe fruit, oozing black blood that hissed against the soil.
"Dunno," Robin babbled, her hands fluttering in the air like startled birds. "It seemed like Vecna, the way the bones cracked — but it couldn't be Vecna, cause why would he kill his own pets—" Her voice hitched as the walkie clipped to her belt suddenly crackled to life.
"Lucas? Robin? Are you there?" Joyce whispered.
"Yeah, I'm here. The kids got taken though, mine's and Robin and Murray's as well."
"Our's too. Vecna showed up."
Before they could respond to that not very startling, not worrying at all information, Will's hollow voice came through next, flat as a guillotine blade "Mike's gone." The words hung in the air, heavier than the smoke curling from the half closed gates in the tunnel. Lucas's fingers spasmed around the broken antenna, the metal snapping completely as his breath left him in one ragged exhale.
Robin's mouth opened, closed—no sound came out, just the soft click of her teeth meeting.
The walkie's static hissed like a dying breath, stretching the silence between Will's words and the horrified comprehension of the others. Lucas's voice cracked through first, raw, disbelieving.
"What do you mean gone?"
But Will didn't answer. The walkie slipped from Robin's fingers, hitting the tunnel floor with a dull thud, the plastic casing splitting open like a rotted fruit.
The Upside Down pulsed around them like a living wound, throbbing vines, the air thick with spores that clung to Eleven’s trembling lips as she reached out with her mind, trying to force a hole through the weird, fleshy wall. Kali was helping her, but they weren't making so much as a dent.
Steve’s flashlight beam cut through the gloom, illuminating Jonathan’s pale face as he pressed his ear to the walkie, static hissing like a taunt. "Nothing," he muttered, knuckles white around the device.
"Just fucking nothing." Dustin’s breath hitched beside him, the sound swallowed by the distant screech of something moving in the dark.
Hopper’s hand clamped onto Eleven’s shoulder—too tight, desperate—as Kali paced behind them, her boots kicking up swirls of ashen debris, as they tried and failed, yet again, to break a hole through the wall.
"Again," Eleven snarled, veins standing stark against her temples, but Kali already knew. She’d scraped her mind raw against the barrier, felt it resist like a membrane stretched taut between worlds.
Blood trickled from her nose, hot and metallic, as she strained forward, fingers clawing at the air as if she could tear the rift open with her bare hands. The wall held. Always held.
Even Kali and Eleven's powers combined couldn't break through the it.
Steve's flashlight flickered, the beam cutting through the swirling spores as he turned toward the group, jaw set.
"We should probably head back. There's nothing here." His voice was hoarse, stripped raw by smoke and exhaustion.
Dustin whirled on him, face smeared with dirt and something darker—his hands clenched into fists at his sides. "How?" he snapped, the word cracking like a whip.
Before Steve could reply, Nancy stepped forward, her rifle stock digging into her shoulder. "Holly is still missing," she said, low and dangerous. "How do you expect me to leave her here?"
Nancy’s grip on the rifle tightened until her knuckles whitened like exposed bone. The barrel trembled slightly, not from fear, but from the sheer force of her fury. "Regroup?" Her voice was a blade honed to a razor’s edge.
"Jon’s head is bleeding, Dustin’s ankle is twisted, and you want to regroup?" She took a step forward, close enough for Steve to see the blood vessels fracturing the whites of her eyes. Behind her, the Upside Down pulsed like a rotten heart, the vines twitching in time with her ragged breaths.
Jonathan flinched but stepped between her and Steve, his hands raised in a placating gesture that only seemed to stoke the fire in Nancy’s chest.
"He doesn't Nance. But lets face it, theres nothing we can do here. The wall is a circle. We're not leaving Holly behind, not really. We'll go back, regroup and come here again. I'm positive Mike will have another genius idea."
Nancy’s lips curled back from her teeth, her finger twitching against the rifle’s trigger guard. The thought of retreating — of leaving her baby sister alone in this hellscape — sent white-hot rage licking up her spine.
"You were asking how, Henderson?" Steve said suddenly, voice rough but steady. He raised his flashlight, the beam slicing through the swirling spores to illuminate the ground ahead. Tiny, puckered wounds marred the earth — each no larger than the other, the edges pulsing faintly with that same sickly red glow as the mothergate.
They dotted the landscape like a trail of breadcrumbs, leading deeper into the Upside Down’s writhing heart.
"That’s how," Steve finished, jaw tight. "Vecna’s been busy."
Dustin’s breath hitched as he crouched, fingers hovering over the nearest micro-gate. The air above it shimmered like heat off asphalt, distorting the shapes of the vines beyond. When he flicked a pebble into it, the stone vanished with a wet pop — no sound of impact, no echo. Just gone.
"Son of a bitch," he whispered, eyes wide. "He’s turning the whole damn town into Swiss cheese."
Erica's sneakers skidded against the tunnel's damp, earthy, yet dry soil as she rounded the corner, her ponu whipping behind her like angry snakes. The flashlight beam bounced wildly off the walls, catching the whites of her wide eyes and the sweat-slick panic on her face.
"Lucas!" Her voice cracked mid-shout — half relief, half terror, as she took in the scene: her brother slumped against the wall, Robin's hands fluttering uselessly over his shallow chest wound, Murray crouched like a startled gargoyle over the demogorgon's remains.
Erica's knees hit the soil beside Lucas, her small hands already ripping open the first-aid kit she'd scavenged from a dead soldier's pack.
"Jesus, Lucas, you look like microwaved ass," she snapped, but her fingers trembled as she pressed gauze to the weeping claw marks on his chest. Lucas hissed, his body jerking against the wall, but Erica didn't let up.
"Stop squirming or I'll staple your stupid face shut," she growled, but her voice wavered on the threat.
Behind her, Robin made a choked noise halfway between a laugh and a sob.
Erica's fingers clenched around the bloodied gauze, her breath coming in ragged bursts as she pressed harder against Lucas's wound — like if she pushed hard enough, she could shove the skin and blood right bacl. "
Mike," Lucas choked out, his hand scrabbling at her wrist, smearing red between them. "Mike, he—"
Erica's stomach plummeted before he even finished the sentence. She'd seen bodies in the MAC-Z, the ones the demogorgons left behind, the one's she had left behind as fear crawled through her for Lucas's life — ribcages pried open like cabinets, faces frozen in silent screams.
The thought of Mike joining them made her pulse stutter in her throat.
Robin's fingers hovered over Lucas's shoulder, her face ashen under the flickering lights.
"It's only shallow," she said — too fast, too loud — as if saying it would make it true. "Thank god," she added, the words brittle, like she was convincing herself more than anyone else.
Lucas's laugh was a wet, broken thing, his head thudding back against the soil. Behind them, the demogorgon's corpse twitched, its flesh still oozing black blood that sizzled against the floor of the tunnel. Robin's gaze flicked to it, her mouth twisting.
"Who did that?" she whispered, more to herself than anyone. "How the hell did they dothat?"
Murray's flashlight trembled between his fingers, as he stared at the pulsing remains of the demogorgon. His voice was gravel wrapped in barbed wire when he finally spoke: "We need to get to Mike." The words hung in the air like a guillotine blade. "Get his—his body out of there.".
Erica's breath hitched harply, like she'd been punched, but her hands didn't stop working. She wound the last strip of gauze around Lucas's chest with brutal efficiency, tying it off so tight he wheezed.
"Then move," she snapped, shoving the first-aid kit into Robin's limp hands.
She couldn't allow herself to break, not now.
Not for the boy who was the primary reason she had gotten into D&D. Not for the boy who taught her how to play, sat beside her patiently, when Lucas was too busy with Max. Not for the boy she cried to when there was no one else. She had to stay strong. For him. For the boy who always let her win, was like her brother as much as Lucas was, but the softer kind.
Her sneakers squeaked against the bloody soil as she stood, her pony swinging like a pendulum counting down to disaster. The flashlight beam caught the glint of something metallic half-buried in the demogorgon's carcass — Mike's Swiss Army knife, the one he'd bragged about rigging with a makeshift flamethrower attachment.
The sight of it made Erica's stomach lurch.
Robin's fingers curled around Lucas's forearm, hauling him up with more force than grace. His knees buckled instantly, but she locked an arm around his waist, her grip slick with sweat and blood.
"Come on," she hissed, dragging him forward — toward the MAC-Z at the tunnel's end. The chemical stench of coolant and burnt wiring grew stronger with each step, mingling with the coppery tang of Lucas's blood in the air. Somewhere ahead, machinery groaned like a dying beast.
The radio station's windows rattled with each wind howling against them, dust sifting down from the ceiling like morbid snowflakes onto the scattered maps and half-empty coffee cups.
Dustin's fingers hovered over the dials of his walkie, his voice cracking as he repeated, "Will? Mike? Lucas? Come in, goddamn it—" Static hissed back, the sound punctuated by Steve snapping fresh batteries into their dying flashlights with too muchforce.
Then, "Dustin?"
Erica's voice came through the walkie, tinny and frayed at the edges but unmistakable. "I thought you were dead in a ditch, Henderson," she spat, but the tremor beneath the bravado was unmistakable.
Dustin's fingers locked around the walkie like a lifeline, his throat working soundlessly for a moment before he choked out, "Erica? Holy shit, where—"
"Tunnel junction under MAC-Z," she interrupted, her voice sharpening.
Dustin's grip on the walkie turned bone-white as Erica's voice crackled through again, "Lucas is alive, and Robin's holding him together with duct tape and prayer. But Mike—"
Her breath hitched audibly, the pause stretching too long before she hissed, "We lost him, Dustin. Vecna's fucking pets ripped him apart." The static swallowed the last word, but the truth of it slammed into Dustin's chest like a sledgehammer.
Across the room, Steve's flashlight clattered to the floor, the beam rolling in a wild arc that illuminated Nancy's bloodless face — her lips parted around Mike's name, unspoken.
Eleven's knees hit the floor hard enough to crack bone — but she didn't feel it. The world had narrowed to the echo of Erica's words in her skull, each syllable driving deeper than any demogorgon's claw ever could.
Blood dripped from her nose, as she screamed so loug the window's shattered, splattering onto her clenched fists where they pressed against the ground. She didn't wipe it away. The metallic taste filled her mouth, thick and coppery, mixing with the second scream building in her chest that had no sound left to give.
Beside her, Hopper's voice was rough bark—"Kid, breathe—"
But El wasn't breathing.
She was unraveling.
Unraveling with the boy who was her first friend, her first love, the first person who was kind to her, who understood her.
The edges of her vision pulsed black, the same way they had in the Rainbow Room when 001 made the other children disappear one by one. Only this time, it was Mike's face she saw fracturing into the void, his lopsided smile dissolving like sugar in water.
Her fingers scrabbled at the walkie in Dustin's hands as if she could claw the words back inside it, make them untrue through sheer force of will.
Dustin's hands convulsed around the walkie, the plastic creaking under his grip like a dying thing. His mouth opened, a soundless void where words should be, before his knees buckled and he crashed into the radio console, sending coffee cups and loose papers flying.
Static roared in his ears, drowning out Steve's frantic shouting, Nancy's choked sob. All he could see was Mike's face the nights they played D&D together, laughing so hard milk came out his nose. Now that nose was probably smashed in, those eyes glassy and—
"Where?" Jonathan's voice cut through the static, low and urgent, his fingers digging into Dustin's shoulder hard enough to bruise.
The walkie crackled again—Erica's ragged breathing filled the space between them, sharp and wet like she'd been punched in the gut. "He's at the MAC-Z, near the radio shack. They were trying to get the kids out before Vecna got them." she spat, but the bravado shattered halfway through, her voice breaking like a dropped plate.
"We're in the the—the tunnels under it. We're heading towards them."
A wet cough, then silence.
The tires of the stolen station wagon screamed against the cracked asphalt as Jonathan fishtailed onto the main street, the rear bumper clipping a streetlight with a shower of sparks. Inside, Eleven gripped the dashboard so hard her knuckles blanched — from the raw, crackling energy seething beneath her skin like a live wire.
Through the spiderwebbed windshield, the MAC-Z came into view, its fractured lights flickering in time with the static spitting from Dustin’s walkie. Nancy braced herself against the passenger door, her rifle digging into her thigh, her teeth bared in something too feral to be a smile.
Why hadn't she told Mike that she'd seen him die, all those months ago? Not even when they came half true? Why?
She was trying to protect him, much like Joyce tried to protect Will, but there was a huge difference.
Joyce was succeeding. Whatever happened, she got Will back in the end. She never gave up on him. She was good enough.
Nancy was not.
She shouldn't have let him out of her sight. She'd grown lax over the months, with Vecna nowhere to be seen. She'd looked away for one minute, and now she was left without a brother.
This was all her fucking fault.
Nancy dug her nails into her palms forcefully enough to bleed and tried not to cry as they hurtled towards where her brother's body lay.
Joyce's fingers trembled against Will's back as they crouched behind a collapsed truck, the metal still warm from the flaming inferno that Vecna had caused, twice. The scent of burning insulation mixed with the coppery tang of Mike's blood drying on Will's shirt — a smell that made Joyce's stomach roll violently.
Will's breath came in ragged bursts against her collarbone, his entire body rigid as he clutched the dead soldier's pistol with white-knuckled intensity. Every few seconds, his gaze flicked back to where Mike's body lay shrouded under Joyce's bloodstained flannel, his expression hollowed out like someone had taken a melon baller to his soul.
The MAC-Z exploded with the screech of tires and the sickening crunch of metal as the station wagon plowed through the chain-link fence, fishtailing to a stop in a spray of loose gravel.
Eleven was already halfway out the door before the car fully halted, her bare feet slapping against the asphalt as she sprinted for the gaping maw of the entrance — her scream of "Mike!" raw enough to flay skin. Behind her, Steve vaulted over the hood, his flashlight beam jerking wildly as Dustin and Jonathan stumbled after him, their own voices rising in a chorus of Mike's name like some terrible song.
The flickering emergency lights cast jagged shadows across Lucas's face as he limped into view — one arm slung over Erica's shoulders, the other gripping Robin's shoulder like a lifeline. His torn shirt clung to his chest, soaked through with blood that wasn't entirely his own, and his right leg dragged behind him like a broken marionette string.
Behind them, Murray emerged from the tunnel's throat, his cigarette dangling from lips pursed tight enough to crush it, his eyes darting past them to the empty space where Mike should have been. Erica's pony swung wildly as she adjusted her grip, her small frame trembling under Lucas's weight, her voice a hissed warning, scared, terrified, "Don't fucking faint on me, Lucas Charles Sinclair."
Eleven's knees buckled, just once — before she regained her footing, her body moving forward with the jerky momentum of a sleepwalker. The sight of Joyce and Will hunched over Mike's limp form sent a jagged bolt of electricity straight through her sternum, her fingers twitching at her sides as if she could physically pull him back from wherever he'd gone.
Will's head snapped up at the sound of her footsteps, his face slick with blood and sweat, his pupils blown so wide his irises were nearly swallowed whole. His lips moved, forming words Eleven couldn't hear over the roaring in her ears, but Joyce's hand — streaked crimson up to the wrist, reached out to her in silent invitation.
Nancy's legs gave out the moment she saw the dark shape beneath Joyce's flannel, the too-still outline of shoulders she'd carried piggyback as a kid, the familiar swoop of Mike's bangs peeking out from under the fabric. Her rifle clattered to the concrete, forgotten, as she crawled forward on hands and knees, her fingers catching on the frayed edges of his blood-soaked jeans.
She pressed her forehead against his thigh, inhaling the mingled stench of iron and Upside Down rot, and for one delusional second, she thought she felt his leg twitch — but it was just Joyce's hand on her shoulder, shaking gently.
Nancy's fingers curled into the fabric of Mike's jeans — once blue, now stiff with dried blood, and painted with red — her nails digging crescent moons into his cold flesh. The sob tore out of her throat like a living thing, raw and guttural, her shoulders heaving as she pressed her face harder against his knee.
Somewhere in the back of her mind, she remembered teaching him to tie his shoelaces, his small fingers fumbling over the loops as she guided him through the motions.
Dustin's knees hit the concrete with a crack that echoed through the tunnel. His hands hovered over Mike's chest — untouched, pristine where the flannel didn't cover it—as if he could press the life back into him through sheer force. His breath came in ragged, wet gasps, his vision blurring until Mike's face swam in and out of focus beneath the fabric.
"No," he whispered, the word crumbling apart in his mouth. "No, you — you promised, man. You promised we'd co-write a campaign next week." His fingers spasmed, clutching at nothing, the absence of Mike's answering grin like a boot to his ribs.
It was like Eddie all over again.
Lucas's fingers brushed the edge of the flannel shroud hesitantly before recoiling as if burned. His breath hitched, a wet, broken sound caught between a laugh and a scream, because this wasn't real, couldn't be real, not when Mike had just been grinning at him over a dice roll three days ago, not when they'd pinky-sworn in fourth grade they'd die old and stupid together.
Dustin's hands fisted in Lucas's shirt from behind, his forehead pressed between Lucas's shoulder blades like he was trying to fuse them together, his whole body shaking with the force of silent, shuddering sobs neither of them knew how to survive.
Hopper’s boot crunched down on a shattered vial of god-knows-what, the glass grinding into the blood-slicked concrete as he swept his flashlight beam across the carnage.
The MAC-Z's emergency lights flickered overhead, casting jagged shadows over the dead soldiers — their bodies contorted mid-fall, fingers still curled around triggers they’d never pull.
The stench of gunpowder and charred flesh clung to the air, thick enough to taste. His light caught on a demogorgon carcass slumped against the wall, its torso caved inward like something had reached inside and twisted its organs into paste.
“Jesus Christ,” he muttered, the words ash-dry in his throat. “What the hell hit these things?”
Joyce’s grip tightened around Will’s shoulders, her fingers pressing into his collarbone hard enough to bruise. He was shaking — not from fear, but from something deeper, something seismic, like his bones were humming at a frequency only monsters could hear.
Hopper's gaze flicked between the dead demogorgon and Will’s blood-smeared face, the pieces slotting together with a sickening click.
“Will killed them,” Joyce whispered, more to herself than to Hopper. The admission tasted like battery acid on her tongue.
“He had — powers. Or something.” The last word fractured, because what else could explain the way the demogorgons had died, the way the air around him crackled with static even now?
Hopper’s flashlight beam jerked toward Will, catching the way his pupils dilated — blackish brown swallowing hazel in an instant. The kid’s hands twitched at his sides, fingers curling like he was still gripping an invisible throat. There was something wrong with the shadows pooling around him, how they seemed to stretch toward him instead of away, as if drawn by a gravity only he commanded.
Hopper’s jaw worked silently for a second before he ground out, “Christ,” and rubbed a hand over his mouth. The smell of ozone clung to Will’s clothes, mingling with Mike’s blood, and Hopper didn’t need Eleven’s powers to feel the wrongness of it — the way the air thickened like storm clouds around Vecna’s victims before their bones snapped.
Eleven's fingers twitched toward Mike's still face, stopping just shy of touching the blood crusted along his temple. The silence in her head was deafening — no whispered murmurs in her ear, no familiar hum of his heartbeat, no whisper of the bond they'd shared since she first crawled into his basement soaked and shivering.
And he'd given her that blue sweater and those gray slacks.
Just absence.
A hollowed-out ache where his laughter used to live inside her ribs. She wanted to scream, to tear Vecna apart neuron by neuron until the Upside Down ran red with his pain, but all she could do was press her palm flat over Mike's silent chest and imagine the warmth seeping back into his skin.
She could bring Max back, why couldn't she do it to Mike?
Her nose was bleeding again.
Will's mind was a shattered mirror — each fragment reflecting a different horror: Vecna's laughter vibrating through his skull, Mike's blood sticky between his fingers, the demogorgon's spine snapping like green wood under an unseen force.
The worst piece was the quiet. The absence of Mike's voice in his head — as if memories were disappearing along with Mike — that constant hum of sarcasm and Star Wars quotes, and you're not a monster, Will that had anchored him since '83.
Now there was just static, and beneath it, something slithering — Vecna's leftover fingerprints greasing the edges of his thoughts, whispering 'you did this'.
Will's whisper scraped against the silence like a rusted blade. "I was too late."
His fingers curled into Mike's bloodstained shirt, the fabric stiffening under his grip. The words weren't meant for anyone — just the hollow space where Mike's heartbeat should have been thudding against his palm.
Somewhere behind him, Eleven made a sound like a wounded animal, but Will barely heard it over the white noise filling his skull, the same noise that had drowned out Mike's last, ragged breath.
Will's nails bit into his own palms, crescent moons of pain that barely registered. He could still see the demogorgon's claws descending—the split second where time had stretched like taffy, where he'd almost reached Mike in time.
His throat burned with the scream he hadn't released, the one still trapped behind his teeth like shrapnel. If he'd worked faster if he hadn't hesitated when Vecna's powers slithered through his skull, if he'd fucking moved — Mike would be groaning about his headache right now, not lying there with his eyes half-lidded and empty.
The thought dug into Will’s ribs like barbed wire — 'One second earlier, and Mike’s fingers would still be twitching against his. One second, and that stupid, beautiful grin wouldn’t be frozen mid-smile under drying blood.'
The math of it was unbearable — how sixty ticks of a clock could carve out the center of the world, leave it hollow as a rotted log. He could almost see the other timeline flickering at the edges of his vision; Mike alive, blinking up at him with that what the hell, Byers expression, the demogorgon’s corpse cooling beside them instead of—
Eleven’s hand clamped over his wrist like a viper strike, her nails drawing blood. Her eyes were black holes, swallowing the dim light whole.
“You felt him,” she hissed, her voice cracking under the weight of accusation. “Vecna’s in you.”
The truth of it slithered between them—Will had killed those demogorgons, snapped its bones with a thought, and the power had tasted like stolen candy, sickly-sweet and wrong.
Dustin's voice cracked through the MAC-Z like a gunshot, raw and jagged. "I meant what I said when I want to see Vecna's heart on a platter," he snarled, spit flying from his lips as he kicked aside a demogorgon's severed claw.
The metal of a refile he'd snagged from a solider, screeched against concrete as he dragged it forward, his knuckles white around the shaft. In the flickering emergency lights, his face was a twisted mask of grief and fury — the same look he'd worn when Eddie died, only now it was sharper, hungrier.
"Not just dead. Dismembered. Fed to his own fucking creatures."
Dustin's fingers dug into the shaft until the meal groaned, his pulse hammering so hard he could taste copper in the back of his throat. The vision of Vecna's ribcage pried open — still steaming, still twitching — flashed behind his eyelids every time he blinked.
Eddie's broken guitar pick neckalce he'd made for Dustin swung against his sternum with each ragged breath, a pendulum counting down to vengeance.
Steve's jaw clenched so tight his molars ached, his fingers twitching at his sides like he wanted to reach out — toward Mike's body, toward Hopper's hunched shoulders, toward anything that might make this feel less like a fucking nightmare.
Behind him, Robin's breathed unevenly, her hands twisting in the straps of her backpack until the seams of the fabric split.
She'd seen Mike exactly a few times outside of school, but this memory stuck out, — renting Sixteen Candle's with that trademark Wheeler enthusiasm, elbows deep in the candy display as he argued with Dustin about sour patch kids versus gummy worms.
Now his Converse were caked in Upside Down grime, the laces still tied in the double-knot he'd and Robin had taught Holly last summer.
Steve's fingers curled into fists at his sides, his knuckles pressing against the rough brick wall of the tunnel as he watched Hopper's massive, calloused hand brush Mike's matted bangs aside with a gentleness that seemed uncanny.
The sight of it — Hopper's thumb wiping away a smear of blood from Mike's temple like he was tucking in a kid after a nightmare — made Steve's throat lock up.
He remembered Mike at fourteen, scrawny and determined, shoving a homemade spear into his hands at the junkyard with that stubborn set to his jaw. Now his jaw was slack, lips parted around a name that would never be answered.
Will's voice cut through the heavy silence like a shard of broken glass. "His last word was 'Holly,'" he said suddenly, the name hanging in the air like a whispered plea.
Eleven's breath stuttered, as her gaze flicked to Mike's still face, his lips slightly parted as if he'd been halfway through calling for his little sister when the light left his eyes. The image tore through her: Holly, small and oblivious in her pink pajamas, waiting for a big brother who'd never come home to tuck her in again.
Nancy's entire body spasmed as if electrocuted, her head snapping up from Mike's leg.
Holly — her baby sister, who still slept with the nightlight Mike had bought her after she'd cried about monsters in the closet. The realization punched through her so violently she gagged, bile scorching the back of her throat.
Vecna wasn't just killing them piece by piece; he was erasing the people who made them whole. Behind her, Jonathan's fingers dug into her shoulder — too late, always too late — as his breath stuttered against her hair.
She was a shit sister.
Karen Wheeler sat motionless in her wheelchair under the funeral home's fluorescent lights, staring at the casket — too small, wrong, wrong — with dry eyes that refused to burn. Her fingers dug into the armrests hard enough to peel back the upholstery foam.
Beside her, Ted's vacant expression hadn't changed since they'd wheeled him out of the hospital, his hands limp in his lap like dead birds. He'd cried like a baby for hours when he'd been told his son was gone, or so she had been told. The most emotional reaction he'd shown in years, after Holly's birth.
Someone had tucked a blanket over his legs. Someone had known to do that, and it wasn't her.
Her, on the other hand, could not bring herself to produce a single tear.
'At least he had a reaction.' First Holly, now Mike. You're a fucking failure of a mother Karen.' the traitorous voice in her mind supplied.
It felt wrong, to wipe away the little boy who proudly showed her his D&D material with a few tears. As if Mike's memory could be erased by shedding a few water droplets from her eyes.
Eleven stood rigid in borrowed black heels that pinched her toes, her dress smelling of mothballs and funeral home lilies. The scent made her stomach heave — it was wrong, all wrong. Mike hated lilies. He'd once shoved an entire bouquet into a trash can after Nancy's prom, gagging dramatically about the "grandma perfume stink."
Now they surrounded him like an apology no one could voice, their waxy petals brushing the casket's closed lid. Behind her, Dustin made a wet, aborted sound — half-laugh, half-sob — as if he'd remembered the same thing.
The church pews creaked under the weight of too many bodies crammed into too small a space — Hawkins' entire population, it seemed, drawn like moths to the raw, gaping wound of Mike Wheeler's absence. Hellfire forgotten.
Karen's wheelchair sat angled toward the casket, her knuckles bone-white against the armrests, her gaze locked on the polished wood like she could bore through it with sheer willpower. Beside her, Ted's vacant stare never wavered from the floor, his hands limp in his lap, the hospital bracelet still clinging to his wrist like a ghost of the life he'd lost before the funeral even began.
Joyce's fingers dug into Will's shoulder from the pew behind them, her grip tight enough to bruise. Will barely felt it — his entire body numb except for the jagged shard of knowledge lodged in his ribs: Holly was still down there.
Somewhere in the Upside Down's rotting veins, Vecna's vines curled around her tiny wrists like living handcuffs, her pajamas streaked with grime as she sucked in shuddering breaths through the haze.
Will had spent years folding his love for Mike into smaller and smaller shapes — tucking it behind rib bones like contraband, smothering it under layers of shared comics and Dungeons & Dragons manuals. Now it sprawled useless in his chest, a grotesque, flayed thing with nowhere to go.
No ears left to hear it.
Mike's casket gleamed under the funeral home lights, the wood so polished Will could see his own hollow-eyed reflection staring back — a funhouse mirror version of the boy who'd once shoved him playfully into a pile of leaves, laughing as Will's "angry face" crumpled into giggles.
Will's knees hit the hardwood floor of the church with a dull thud, his fingers curling around the edge of Mike's casket like he could claw through the varnished wood and stitch his words directly into the corpse's still chest.
I love you sat like a swallowed razorblade in his throat, cutting him open from the inside with every ragged breath. He'd rehearsed it a thousand times — whispered into pillowcases, scribbled in the margins of his D&D character sheets, etched it into his skin with bitten-down nails.
Now it would rot unspoken between his teeth, buried six feet under with the boy who'd never know.
Holly's stuffed rabbit lay abandoned on the pew, its fur matted with Upside Down grime and one ear half-torn off — the same one Mike had stitched back on after she'd cried over it last Christmas. Eleven's hand hovered over it, trembling, before her fingers clenched into a fist.
Nancy had brought it from their destroyed house as a sort of goodbye.
The realization hit Will like a fist to the lungs: Holly would stumble home to a house where Mike's jacket didn't hang by the door, where his half-finished bowl of cereal would crust over on the counter, where no one would tickle her until she shrieked "Mikey!" ever again.
The Wheelers' living room smelled of burnt coffee and wilted casserole dishes, the air thick with the kind of silence that clung like damp clothes. Nancy perched on the armrest of Mike's favorite chair — the one with the duct-taped seam where he'd spilled nail polish remover trying to fix a troglodyte figurine — her fingers tracing the jagged edges of his unfinished D&D character sheet still pinned to the corkboard.
Across the room, Eleven stood rigid by the fireplace, her hands clenched around the cuff of Mike's hoodie she'd stolen from his closet, the fabric still holding the faint, fading scent of his sweat and the graphite smudges from his frantic campaign notes.
Her fingers trembled against the hoodie — the fabric worn thin at the elbows from late-night D&D sessions, still speckled with ink stains where he'd chewed pens absentmindedly.
She pressed it to her face, inhaling sharply, but his scent was already fading, replaced by the stale odor of funeral flowers and dust. The static in her head screamed louder than ever — not the white noise she'd grown up with in the lab, but a deafening absence, the hollow space where thoughts of Mike used to hum against hers like shared laughter under blanketforts.
Eleven's fingers curled around the small "Mike the Brave" figurine — the one he'd painted himself, when he was twelve, with clumsy strokes of gold and crimson, the one that he always had with him wherever he went. The plastic edges bit into her palm, sharp enough to draw blood, but she barely felt it over the white-hot rage scorching through her veins.
Vecna hadn't just stolen Mike; he'd stolen the way his nose scrunched when he lied, the way his hands flapped when he rambled about orbital mechanics, the way he'd whispered "you're not a monster" into her hair the first time she'd sobbed in his arms near the quarry, after he'd jumped to save Dustin.
Joyce's fingers brushed Eleven's shoulder, hesitantly, feather-light, but Eleven jerked away like she'd been burned. The static in her skull wasn't just grief anymore; it was a live wire sparking against her synapses, screaming 'kill him kill him kill him' in time with her pulse.
Will's hands trembled at his sides, fingers twitching with the phantom echo of Vecna's stolen power. He hadn't just felt it—he'd liked it. The demogorgon's spine snapping under his will had sent a rush through him hotter than any victory roll in a D&D game. That hunger coiled in his gut now, whispering again as he stared at the shredded posters on Mike's bedroom wall.
Eleven was was furious. Will was consumed with the same fire. The others matched their rage, Vecna would not survive the force moving toward him. With both Eleven and Will wielding their powers at last, his fate was already sealed.