Come Together - Steve Harrington [1]

21: spy

"Love you too,"

Jen put the phone back on the wall and glanced at Matt while walking back towards Steve. Mike suddenly got up from the table and crossed the room to grab something. When he turned, he was holding a sort of blue box in his hand.

"Did you guys know that Bob was the original founder of Hawkins AV?" he asked, looking at the younger kids.

"Really?" Lucas asked.

"He petitioned the school to start it and everything," Mike told him. "Then he had a fundraiser for equipment. Mr. Clarke learned everything from him,"

"That's awesome," Matt chimed in, a small smile on his face.

"Yeah," Dustin agreed.

Mike set the box down on the table and looked around at his friends again. "We can't let him die in vain," he decided.

Jennifer furrowed her eyebrows at this. She couldn't imagine how Joyce was feeling then. She actually hadn't seen her since they had gotten to the house, but she hadn't expected to, really.

"What do you want to do, Mike?" Dustin asked suddenly, raising his hands.

"Yeah, the Chiefs right on this," Matt agreed, glancing at Dustin.

"We can't stop those demo-dogs on our own," Dustin continued, resulting in strange looks from everybody else in the room.

"Demo-dogs?" Max asked, her eyebrows raised.

Dustin looked towards Max and sighed. "Demogorgon dogs," he said, putting his hands together. "Demo-dogs... It's like a compound... like a play on words, you know-,"

"Okay!" Max interrupted, her eyes wide.

Dustin clamped his mouth shut and looked away from the girl. "I mean, when it was just Dart, maybe," he started.

"Well, it's not just Dart anymore," Jen chimed in, her arms crossed. "There's a whole army,"

"Precisely," Dustin agreed.

"His army,"

Everyone turned to look at Mike in confusion when he said this. Steve glanced at Jen a second before moving forward.

"What do you mean?" he asked.

"His army!" Mike repeated. "Maybe if we stop him, we can stop his army, too,"

"I'm sorry, but who is him?" Jen asked, her face contorted in confusion.

Mike put a finger out towards her before rushing out of the kitchen and into the living room. He returned seconds later with a piece of paper in his hand. He showed it to Dustin first.

"The shadow monster," Dustin said, his eyebrows furrowed.

"It got Will that day on the field," Matt said, looking between Dustin and Mike.

"The doctor said it was like a virus, it infected him," Mike chimed in, his words jumbling together due to how fast he was speaking.

Dustin passed the paper to Jennifer and she leaned towards Steve so that they could both look at it. She had always known Will to be a great artist, but this was almost eery. A large, spindly legged creature loomed over what looked like the Byers backyard, an array of dark clouds behind it.