One by one, the group flooded out of the Byers house in search of the cars sitting in the driveway, everyone eager to follow Chief Hopper with his plan for the sensory deprivation tank. As they hurried outside, Jonathan and Michelle ran for the shed in the backyard, to retrieve the old kiddie pool in the hopes that, by some miracle, they would now be able to use it to find Will in the other, darker Hawkins the kids had referred to as the Upside Down.
"Where are we going?" Joyce asked as Hopper led the group, pulling open the door to his truck.
"The high school," Hopper explained. "They've already stocked up on salt for de-icing this winter. It might be a long shot, but if anywhere will have enough, it'll be there. Joyce, you and the kids ride with me, the rest of you, follow close behind."
"Here," Becca said, turning to Anna and tossing her her car keys. "You drive over Dustin, and I'll hitch a ride with Jonathan. I think you two have a lot of catching up to do, and you might not get a chance for a while."
Anna glanced over at her little brother, who had parted from his friends to come join her, and then looked back at Becca, nodding. "Thanks, Becs." she said. "Come on, Dusty, you're with me."
"We'll meet you guys at the school," Nancy said as Anna and Dustin hopped into the front seats of Becca's car, the eldest of the two Henderson siblings quickly turning the key in the ignition to start the engine.
It was quiet inside the car, except for the melodies of a Blondie tape playing softly through the speakers at a low volume. As Anna followed Hopper's car out of the Byers' driveway, she finally looked over at Dustin, who was staring out the passenger side window. "So when did you guys find her?" Anna finally asked, breaking the silence as Dustin turned to look back at her.
"The night we both snuck out to look for Will," Dustin said softly. "I know, I know, I shouldn't have lied to you and said that we didn't find anything, but we didn't want to risk you telling Nancy and having Mr. and Mrs. Wheeler find out Mike was hiding her in their basement."
"You guys hid her in a basement?" Anna asked before shaking her head. "Okay, back up. Tell me everything that happened that night. The truth this time, Dustin. You and I split up so I could go meet Becca and Landon and you could go meet the boys. What happened then?"
"We rode our bikes down to Mirkwood to look, like I told you," he explained. "Only, we didn't go back to Mike's just because it started raining. When we got to Mirkwood, we found Eleven out in the rain. She escaped from the bad guys in the lab and had nowhere to go, so Mike had the idea to take her back with us. Turns out, she's got these super badass powers and knew Will. She'd seen him before, in the Upside Down, so she's been helping us try to find him.
"Anna, she's so cool." Dustin continued. "She flipped that van with her mind, and she made Troy pee himself in front of everybody at school. Broke his arm, too, when he tried to mess with us."
"And what about the bad guys?" Anna asked. "The ones from the lab?"
"They mean some serious shit." Dustin said. "They've been trying to come after us to get Eleven back. That's why we were hiding out at the junkyard when you called us on the walkie. They made her open the gate between here and the Upside Down in the first place. Whatever they want her for, it's not good. We could be saving the world by protecting her from them."
Anna's stomach turned at the thought of the men working for the lab going after the boys in order to get Eleven back in their grasp, couldn't bear to think about what might happen to her brother and his friends if anything went wrong, but she pushed the thoughts out of her mind as he continued speaking.
"So what about you?" Dustin asked. "Did you find anything that night? How did you end up monster hunting in the woods?"
"That part was true, the search parties didn't find anything." Anna explained. "The night of Becca's party, Barb went missing, and Jonathan took a picture of her with that creature in the background. We were trying to hunt it down, see if we could find where it lived and hopefully find Barb, but Nancy wound up trapped in the Upside Down and we had to get her back out."
"I'm sorry I didn't tell you about Eleven." Dustin said quietly. "Or any of this stuff. We just wanted to find Will."
"I'm sorry, too." Anna replied. "I just wanted to keep you safe with everything you had going on. But from now on, we're honest with each other about all of this, okay? No more leaving each other in the dark. Agreed?"
Dustin nodded, the smile finding its way back onto his face. "Agreed."
"Good," Anna said, reaching over to knock off his cap and ruffle his curly hair as he began to laugh, and she pulled the car into the parking lot of the school, switching the car into park in a spot next to Hopper's truck and killing the engine. "Ready to go find Will?"
"As ready as I'll ever be," Dustin said, taking a deep breath as they opened the car doors to rejoin the rest of the group, Jonathan's headlights coming into view a few moments later as the rest of Anna's friends caught up to them, kiddie pool in tow in the trunk.
"Alright," Hopper said as everyone gathered together in the parking lot, pitch black except for the streetlamps lining the sidewalk outside of the building, and his gaze fell to where Dustin stood next to Anna. "Henderson, what all did you say we needed for this tank?"
"The pool, salt to float in, and a pair of goggles." Dustin explained. "Just something thick enough to block her vision, so her senses are contained inside the tank."
"Right," Hopper said, turning to Nancy. "Wheeler, you and your brother go get the hoses from the shed. Jonathan, you're with me to get salt, Joyce and Michelle, you'll take Eleven to find goggles in the chemistry lab. The rest of you, get the pool set up in the gym, and we'll reconvene in fifteen minutes."
"The pool's back here." Becca announced, pulling open the trunk of Jonathan's car to reveal the small kiddie pool rolled up inside. "Careful, it's heavy,"
Lucas scoffed. "Heavy, shmeavy."
"Yeah, we're men now, Becca." Dustin retorted, attempting to pick the pool up out of the trunk and instead dropping it on the floor. "Shit, that's heavy," he murmured. "But you know what? Rolling it works too, let's go."
Dustin bent down, beginning to roll the bundled up kiddie pool in the direction of the school with Lucas not far behind, and Becca and Anna ran ahead to hold the door open for the boys. While Becca held the door, Anna made a beeline for the gym, turning on any light switch she could find along the way to illuminate the darkened halls of Hawkins High School.
Anna opened the doors to the gym, turning the lights on as the others emerged not far behind her. "This damn thing is heavy," Dustin groaned, continuing to roll the bundled up kiddie pool until they reached the center of the basketball court, where he finally let it fall.
The four of them instantly began to get to work on the pool, unrolling it and spreading it out to begin setting it up. By the time they managed for the kiddie pool to be able to stand up on its own, Nancy and Mike entered the gym with a wheelbarrow full of hoses, and got to work connecting them to make a chain long enough to reach the janitor's closet down the hall.
"Alright, this is probably going to take forever to fill up, so let's get started." Nancy said, checking the clock as Hopper, Jonathan, and Michelle were nowhere to be found with the salt, nor Joyce and Eleven with the goggles.
Nancy took the two ends of the hose chains, dragging them in the direction of the janitor's closet while Mike set the other ends in the kiddie pool, and Anna took a seat on the floor next to the pool as she waited. As a small hissing sound came from the hoses, water began to pour into the pool as Nancy turned on the faucets, slowly beginning to fill it up.
"Lucas, do you still have that thermometer?" Dustin asked as Lucas began to rummage through his backpack, the tool appearing in his hands moments later.
"Got it," Lucas said. As the pool slowly rose towards the top, Lucas placed the thermometer in the water, gauging its temperature. "Colder!" he shouted to Nancy, studying the tool as it began to change before letting out a small sigh. "Too cold," he muttered. "Warmer!" he shouted before a satisfied smirk crossed his face. "Right there!"
The gym doors slammed open from the other end of the room as the group looked up to see Michelle rolling in a cart full of bags of salt, with Jonathan and Hopper right behind them with carts of their own. As they reached the pool, Hopper pulled out a pocket knife from his jacket pocket, slicing open the first bag and beginning to dump it into the pool.
As bag after bag of salt dissolved into the water, Dustin picked up a carton of eggs they'd taken from Joyce's fridge, setting one on top of the water and testing to see if it would float. As the first egg slowly sank to the bottom of the pool, they continued to pour in bag after bag of salt, until the bags around them lay empty. Although, as Dustin tested out the second egg, it stayed at the very top, floating in the water as he watched it with a proud smile.
As Mike set up his walkie talkie on a cart near the pool, Joyce joined the rest of the group in the gym, with Eleven hot on her heels. Joyce carried a pair of safety goggles from the chemistry lab, bound tightly with duct tape to keep out any of Eleven's surroundings. As she reached the pool, Eleven leaned down to pull off her socks and a watch, handing the device to Mike before Joyce handed her the goggles.
"So how does this work?" Anna whispered to Dustin as they watched Eleven slowly climb into the kiddie pool, with the help of Joyce and Hopper.
"In the tank, she can use her powers better, without any outside distractions." Dustin explained. "So she can use her psychic link to the Upside Down to look for Will and Barbara."
The group sat silently around the pool as Eleven began to float. As she began to focus, the lights began to flicker around the gym, casting them briefly in a white flash of light before going out completely. Anna watched intently, heart pounding as she waited for Eleven to make any sort of move, anything to indicate that she'd found them.
"Barbara?" Eleven's voice squeaked out, and Anna and Becca instantly shared a look before turning back to Eleven.
As Eleven continued to float in the pool, her breathing grew heavier, causing the lights to begin to flicker again. "What's going on?" Nancy asked.
"I don't know," Mike said.
"Is Barb okay?" Nancy asked, looking back at Eleven. "Is she okay?"
"Gone," Eleven choked out, beginning to repeat the word over and over as Anna's heart dropped into her stomach. "Gone, gone,"
Nancy's hand found its way to her mouth as she began to cry, leaning against Anna as she wrapped an arm around her friend's shoulders, stunned speechless as Eleven's chanting grew louder and louder, Joyce murmuring consoling words to her in an attempt to get the young girl to calm down. Anna shut her eyes tight, the image of Barb sitting on the diving board in the picture coming to mind as she thought about her all alone that night in her final moments, while all of them had gone inside without her.
"It's okay, we're right here," Joyce murmured to Eleven. "We're right here, honey, I got you. Don't be afraid, I'm right here with you."
Slowly, Eleven began to calm down, holding tight to Joyce's arm as she grew quiet once more. "Castle Byers," she finally murmured, causing Michelle and Jonathan to exchange a look. "Will?" she asked, causing Joyce to gasp, and Anna's blood turned to ice in her veins.
"You tell him... tell him I'm coming." Joyce insisted. "Mom is coming,"
"Your mom, she's coming for you." Eleven murmured.
All of a sudden, the walkie talkie on the cart crackled to life, pulling their attention to the device. "Hurry," Will's voice rang out in a metallic tone, stunning the group into silence.
Michelle finally let out a sigh of relief, slumping against Jonathan, who put an arm around his younger sister's shoulders. Anna looked over at Dustin, who looked back at her with glassy eyes as he nodded in her direction.
Will Byers was alive.
"Okay, listen," Joyce instructed. "You tell him to stay where he is. We're coming, okay? We're coming, honey."
The walkie talkie began to crackle louder as Eleven burst out of the pool, attempting to catch her breath as she ripped the goggles from her face, and Joyce instantly pulled the girl into a hug to console her.
"Okay, I've got you," Joyce murmured. "It's okay, I've got you, I've got you. You did so good," she said, placing a kiss on top of Eleven's head, and the young girl began to cry.
"Come on, let's get her out of there," Becca suggested, grabbing a towel from the top of the cart as Joyce helped Eleven to her feet, wrapping it around her shoulders as they helped her out of the pool and over to the bleachers.
The kids joined Eleven on the bleachers as Joyce and Hopper walked back to where the teenagers now stood, except Nancy, who had bolted from the room. "Castle Byers," Hopper repeated, "Where is it?"
"It's in the woods behind our house." Joyce explained.
"Yeah, he used to go there to hide." Jonathan added as Hopper began to leave the room, the Byers family hot on his heels, leaving Anna and Becca alone in the gym with the kids.
"So what now?" Becca asked Anna. "How do they get to that... Upside Down to get him back?"
"There's a gate in the lab," Anna explained. "Dustin told me in the car that the people in the lab made Eleven open the gate. If they can go through there and get to that version of Castle Byers, then they can hopefully find Will."
The girls stood in silence as they watched the kids before the doors opened again, revealing Jonathan, Michelle, and Nancy walking back in the direction of Becca and Anna.
"Hopper and my mom are going to get him," Michelle explained. "But they're in danger with that thing still in there."
Anna and Becca exchanged a look. "What can we do?" Anna asked.
A sly smile crossed Nancy's lips. "We have a plan."