The rosy smile that had adorned Eleven's cheeks quickly faded as Mike pulled his car in front of the Byers' house. Mike had to park his car at the end of the driveway because two squad cars and a black coroner's van took up all the space. A group of people were congregated between the vehicles and Eleven recognized them as Sarah, Joyce, and Will. The only person she didn't recognize was a blonde woman in a police uniform that looked to be roughly around her own age.

"Whoa, what happened?" Mike asked, his eyes straining to make sense of any movement he could see through the dark.

"I don't know..." Eleven answered, slowly pushing the door open and climbing out, her eyes glued to the house the entire time.

Before Eleven could slam the door shut, Mike asked, "Do you want me to come with you?"

"No..." Eleven answered, glancing back at Mike briefly. "I'll be okay..."

Mike opened his mouth to say something more but nothing came out. Rather than speaking, he decided to give Eleven a small nod and a wave before turning around and heading home. Eleven didn't even notice because she was already halfway up the driveway.

"What's happened?" Eleven demanded as she approached the group, a look of worry in her eye. Now that she was closer, she could see that Sarah, Will, and Joyce were okay, but there was still one person from her family that was missing. As if in response, the front door of the Byers' house swung open and the missing person appeared, calming the beating heart in Eleven's chest.

"Coroner is going to take the body now," Hopper informed the group. Another officer trailed behind him who Eleven recognized to be Officer Callahan. She instinctively looked for Officer Powell, but then she remembered that he had retired the year before. The female officer standing before her seemed to have taken his place.

A spark of familiarity intrigued Eleven to peer closer at the female officer's name tag, which read, "J. Hayes". A double-take confirmed her suspicion; it was Jennifer Hayes, a fellow classmate of hers. Although, she should have guessed the woman's identity based on her body language alone. She stood closer to Will than the others, her eyes glancing towards him more frequently than the rest. Will, meanwhile, was trying his hardest to avoid looking at her, his cheeks glowing bright red in the dark.

"Whose body?" Eleven asked, moving to get a better look at the stretcher carrying a large black body bag out the front door.

"Mark's," Sarah answered, her swollen red eyes never leaving the ground at her feet. "Somebody murdered him."

"What?" Eleven gasped. "Who?"

Sarah shook her head. "We don't know. 'Rose' was Mark's last word."

"A name?"

"We're not sure," Sarah answered. "Could be."

"I don't know of any Rose's in Hawkins," Hopper said. "Unless you count Eleanor Gillespie, who goes by Rose to friends. But she's pushing ninety now, I don't think she did this."

"Maybe it's somebody from outside of Hawkins," Joyce offered.

"Whoever it is, they're involved with Malcolm," Sarah said confidently, her voice rising above the rest. Her brows narrowed, casting a darkness over her eyes. "And I'm going to find them."

As Sarah slept, she dreamed of the Upside Down. Though, she knew it not to be a dream, but a live feed of the situation surrounding the cabin where James was still posted. She watched it continue to slowly expand, inching closer and closer to the rest of the town, but she was relieved when no new creatures emerged from it. For now, the threat could take the backburner as she focused on finding Mark's murderer.

Sarah awoke when her view of the cabin abruptly disappeared, replaced with an emptiness that startled her. She was then startled by a new sight: James sitting at the end of her bed.

"Good morning, sunshine," James greeted her with a blinding smile.

"For the love of God," Sarah groaned as she covered her face with a pillow. She hoped that when she removed it that James would be gone, but she wasn't so lucky. His stupid, smiling face was still there. "How did you even get here? I thought you were at the cabin."

"I have my ways," James answered, his smile never faltering. "In for a big day today, are we?"

This response made Sarah realize that their connection must be a two-way street, even when they were separated. While she knew about the situation at the cabin, James knew about Mark's mysterious death. She didn't know if this was a relief or another reason to bang her head against the wall. Before Sarah could think up a witty response to James, a knock at the door echoed through the room.

"Sarah?" Eleven's voice called from the other side. "Are you awake?"

"Yeah, come in," Sarah replied. She begrudgingly pushed herself into a sitting position.

Eleven slowly pushed the door open until she caught sight of James and stopped. He offered her a smile but she didn't return it.

"You," Sarah said, looking at James. "Get gone."

"Come on, think of me as one of the girls!" James whined. Sarah only glared in response. "Fine," he sighed before disappearing into thin air.

While Sarah couldn't see him, she knew that he hadn't completely vanished. She could feel his presence lurking around in the back of her mind, once more a figment of her imagination.

"What's up?" Sarah asked Eleven. She pulled up her legs to make space for Eleven to sit.

"I just wanted to check on you to see how you're doing after everything that happened yesterday," Eleven answered, taking a seat.

"I'm...fine..." Sarah tried to answer as confidently as she could but her tone didn't convey her intention. Eleven's arched eyebrow informed Sarah that she didn't buy it. In an effort to skirt around the topic of her feelings, the feelings that were sitting on her lungs and making it hard to breathe, Sarah steered the conversation in another direction. "So...you left with Mike last night..."

Eleven's eyebrow didn't falter but her cheeks began to glow pink. "Don't think I don't see what you're trying to do," Eleven replied in a knowing tone. When Sarah just shrugged her shoulders, she sighed and continued. "Yeah, I wanted to talk to Mike about something."

"About what?" Sarah pushed.

"Well, we haven't talked one-on-one in a while and I just wanted to catch up," Eleven replied innocently.

Sarah studied Eleven's face for a moment before a smile crept its way across her cheeks. "You two totally made out, didn't you?"

"What?" Eleven sputtered, her face growing even redder. "I didn't...We didn't..."

Sarah's smile was so large it threatened to rip her face in half.

"Listen, yes, we did kiss, but that's not important right now, we've got bigger things to worry about," Eleven retorted.

"I knew it!" Sarah shouted gleefully. "So are you two dating again now, or what?"

"I-I don't know, it's complicated, but again, bigger fish to fry..." Eleven replied. Her cheeks were so red that they looked like they were about to burst into flames.

"Fine," Sarah sighed, her smile lessening but still holding firm. "You're right. I'm just happy for you."

Eleven couldn't help but smile in return. "I'm happy too."

Sarah's eyes gravitated towards the floor and stuck there as the smile on her face finally faded away. The lull in their conversation presented an opportunity for the feelings to come back and now they were creeping up her throat, threatening to choke her if she didn't open her mouth. "If I'm being honest, I haven't felt very happy lately."

Instead of speaking, Eleven scooted closer to Sarah, encouraging her to continue.

"Don't get me wrong," Sarah immediately added. "being reunited with you, dad, Joyce, and everybody else has been amazing. I just...sometimes I think you guys would have been better off had I never came back."

"Why do you think that?"

"If I hadn't come back you guys wouldn't be wrapped up in this Malcolm mess. There'd be no Upside Down around the cabin and Mark would still be alive. You guys have made a life without me, a life that honestly seems better without me. You've got a job and a life in Oregon. Dad and Joyce are married and happy. Steve and Quinn..." Sarah found herself unable to finish the last sentence.

Eleven opened her mouth to say something but Sarah cut her off before she could utter a word.

"And before you say anything, I know that that's not actually true. I know it's not. But it doesn't stop my mind from thinking it, all the time," Sarah continued. "Any time there's a gap in my thoughts, that thought pushes through and it's really hard to get rid of. No matter how much I distract myself. No matter how many times people tell me it'll be okay."

A moment of silence passed between them as the weight of Sarah's words settled.

"It sucks," Eleven said, breaking the silence with a supportive smile. "Trust me, I know. It really, really sucks. But you're not alone."

Sarah forced her face to replicate Eleven's smile as she wiped away a tear. "It really does suck."

"I know you probably already know this, but you can talk to me about these things," Eleven said as she laid her head on Sarah's shoulder. "And I know it's difficult to talk about these things, and I struggle to follow this advice myself all the time, but it helps. It really helps."

"You sure know a lot, huh?" Sarah chuckled in an attempt to lighten the mood once she felt her eyes grow misty.

"Of course I do," Eleven replied confidently. "I paid twenty-three thousand dollars for a piece of paper that tells the world I know things."

"Damn, college is expensive."

"Yeah, but in like twenty years it's probably going to be four times as expensive. Inflation is crazy," Eleven replied as she pushed herself off the bed and walked towards the door. "I'm going to go gather the rest of the party to start searching for this 'Rose', want to come with?"

"Go ahead without me," Sarah answered, letting her bare feet press into the carpeted floor. "I'll catch up with you guys later, I've got something I need to do first."

Eleven nodded her head before pausing in the doorway. "But you're okay?" she asked.

Sarah nodded her head with a smile. "I'm okay."

"And if you're ever not?"

"I'll talk to you," Sarah answered, locking eyes with Eleven. "I promise."

☆ ★ ☆

Sarah could hear the doorbell echoing throughout the house as she watched eagerly through the small stained-glass window mounted in the door for any movement. Her ears strained at the sound of footsteps nearing the door, even though she still couldn't seen anyone through the glass. When the door swung open, it became evident why.

"Hello?" the little neighbor girl, who stood about four-foot-five, greeted Sarah.

Sarah watched the girl's eyes wander from her face down to her side, where a black dog with white paws and a white spot on its stomach was standing, its tail thumping excitedly against Sarah's leg.

"Ralphie!" the little girl shouted, barreling out of the doorframe to wrap her arms around the dog. Ralphie responded by jumping up and down and slobbering her face with kisses.

Sarah watched fondly as the little girl reunited with her dog, trying to erase the memory that the poor thing had been a monster trapped inside Joyce's shed only an hour ago. When Ralphie was finally done licking the girl's face, he ran through the door, barking hello to his other owners.

"Thank you so much for brining my Ralphie back!" the little girl beamed, and before Sarah knew it, her arms were wrapped around Sarah's waist.

"N-no problem," Sarah replied, trying to steady herself from the sudden force of the girl's hug. While she was counting down the seconds until the girl released her from her grip, she also realized that the thoughts that had been plaguing her since she first stepped foot back into Hawkins momentarily disappeared.

She realized that for a moment, she was happy.

☆ ★ ☆

"Finding anything?" Lucas called to Mike, Will, Eleven, Dustin, and Max from across the library. A sharp hush from the librarian caused Lucas to step out from behind the bookshelf he was searching and give a glare to the woman with the pinched nose and tiny glasses at the front desk.

"I found a Yellow Pages from 1991," Max informed Lucas as he joined them at the large wooden table in the center of the library. She leafed through the thin pages, scanning the tiny names and phone numbers printed on them, but quickly became disheartened when she noticed the large chunk of pages that she still needed to get through.

"This is going to take forever," Dustin groaned, shutting the book in front of him with a loud clap. He winced at the noise and quickly peeked over his shoulder to make sure that the librarian hadn't heard it. Thankfully, she was away from her desk for the moment.

"We need to keep digging," Eleven incentivized them, her own eyes glued to the 1993 Hawkins High yearbook in front of her. With each picture, her heart leaped at the chance that it could be the Rose they were looking for, and then fell when she realized it wasn't.

"We still don't even know if it's a name," Dustin replied.

"What else would have murdered Mark, a plant?" Lucas scoffed. Dustin side-eyed him in response.

"Maybe we just need to look farther back," Mike suggested. Eleven thanked him with a small smile that he returned. The other party members noticed this but collectively decided not to say something. Yet.

"Farther back?" Max asked. "How would that help us? This person is in Hawkins now, not twenty years ago."

"I don't know, it's just a hunch," Mike replied sullenly.

As the party debated whether or not to call it quits at the library, Eleven meandered back to the bookshelves to look for any other books that might be useful. She let her fingers trace over the bindings as she walked towards a corner of the library that she hadn't yet explored. Overhead, the old wiring caused the light above her to flicker, illuminating one book in particular that stuck out a little farther than the rest.

Eleven's feet dragged as she got closer, her eyes glued to the capital letters on the binding. Everything became silent except for her beating heart as she read and re-read the title. An assortment of thoughts reverberated in her skull; It wasn't possible. How had the library acquired it? Everything had been destroyed.

Yet somehow, this had slipped through the cracks: "U.S. Department of Energy Conference 1975: Hawkins National Laboratory Findings".

Eleven's hand tremored as she pulled the book from the shelf, pinching it by the corner with her fingers like it carried some sort of disease. She carried it back to the group at an arm's width, dropping it on the table with a clatter. Another sharp hush from the librarian echoed through the library, but Eleven was too distracted to care.

"What is that?" Max asked, pushing herself out of her seat to get a better look. She fell back onto her chair when she read the title.

"Holy shit," Mike muttered to himself. "How did this get out?"

"I have no idea," Eleven answered. "But I know myself and Sarah are in it."

Eleven took a deep breath before flipping open the cover, her eyes struggling to meet the words on the other side. She had thought that she was past this. She had thought that the destruction of the Lab had meant that she could move on. But she still felt a numbness travel throughout her limbs as she lowered her eyes to the first page.

"It's a table of contents," Will announced after scanning the page. "Information on 'Subject 001' starts on page five and information on 'Subject 011' starts on page ninety-seven."

Eleven flipped through to the pages about Sarah, but she flipped too quickly and accidentally ended up on the section about Subject 002. She was about to turn back when something caught her eye.

"'Subject 002'," Mike read out loud. "'Abilities include mind-reading and matter manipulation'."

"Whoa, doesn't that girl look familiar?" Max asked, pointing towards a black-and-white picture in the bottom left corner of the page that Eleven was also fixed on. It depicted a little girl, about ten, in a hospital gown with a shaved head. Her straight-lipped glare into the camera threatened to reach the party members on the other side, but her dark eyes were more than just menacing, they were familiar.

"'Subject name'," Mike gulped as he continued to read out loud. "'Quinn Mason'."

★ ☆ ★ ☆ ★