Shortly after Tommy's car vanished from sight around the block, Becca's bedroom door opened once more, and the blonde resurfaced at the top of the stairs. "Is he gone?" she asked, footsteps pounding down the stairs as she looked around for her cousin, though Steve was already long gone. "Where'd he go?"

"Yeah," Anna said, nodding as she crossed her arms over her chest, Steve's words from before still fresh in her mind as she looked back out the window to the same spot where he'd gotten into the car. "Tommy and Carol came back to pick him up. Looks like they managed to outrun Officer Callahan, after all."

"Shame," Becca sighed.

A shrill ring sounded through the house as the phone began to ring on the wall, pulling both of the girls' attention to the source of the noise. Becca exchanged a brief confused glance with Anna before walking over to it and picking up the device, holding it against her ear.

"Hello?" Becca asked into the receiver. "Michelle, oh my God, are you guys alright? How's Jonathan?" she paused as she listened to whatever Michelle was saying on the other line before she held out the receiver in Anna's direction. "They want to talk to you,"

"They?" Anna mouthed, but Becca merely shrugged as she passed her the phone. "Hello?" she asked. "Michelle?"

"Hey, Anna," Michelle's voice came through the device. "You haven't seen Dustin around today, have you?"

"Dustin?" Anna asked, her eyebrows furrowing together slightly. "I saw him this morning before I left, he said he was going over to Mike's, but not since then. Why?"

Anna could hear murmuring from the other end of the call, though she couldn't make out any distinct voices before a new one spoke into the receiver, one that she didn't quite recognize right away. "Anna, this is Chief Hopper," he said, "It's a lot to explain over the phone, but we have reason to believe your brother and his friends may be harboring a girl that escaped from Hawkins Lab last weekend. We don't know where they are, but we might be able to reach them. Could you meet us at the Byers' house?"

"Yes," Anna said, her eyebrows furrowing together as panic began to set into her chest, "We'll meet you there, Chief."

"Chief?" Becca asked as Anna hung up the phone. "Why were you talking to the chief?"

"We need to go to the Byers', right now." Anna said urgently. "The boys are in some kind of danger, and we need to find them before somebody else does. Where are your keys?"

"By the door," Becca said, rushing for where she'd dropped her purse in her haste to come inside the house earlier, scooping them up off the floor and beginning to rummage through the bag for the familiar jingle of her keys. "Got them, let's go."

The two girls ran out of the house for Becca's car, jumping inside the vehicle as Becca immediately put the key in the ignition, the engine roaring to life in response. Her tires squealed against the pavement as she reversed out of the driveway, before turning onto the main road that would lead them back to the Byers' house. While Anna had never considered the drive between the two houses to be far, each second felt like hours, the blood pounding in her ears as she wracked her brain trying to think of where Dustin and his friends possibly could have gone that had gotten them into so much trouble.

"So what kind of danger are we talking about?" Becca asked. "Did the chief say?"

"Something about a girl that escaped from Hawkins Lab," Anna said with a shrug. "I don't know, he hasn't told me any of this, but if the chief is calling us about it, it can't be good. Why wouldn't Dustin tell me?"

"In his defense," Becca said, pulling onto the gravel road that led to the Byers' house, "have you told him about anything we've been up to this week?"

"That's different," Anna said. "They're twelve. Besides, he's had so much going on with Will, I didn't want to bother him about it until we fixed all of this."

As soon as Becca shifted the gear into park, Anna jumped out of the vehicle, taking long and quick strides through the grass up to their front door, her gaze briefly falling on where a couple pieces of wood were nailed to the side of the house, though she shrugged it off as she began to knock on the door.

"It's us!" Anna called out, and the door opened moments later by Joyce, who hurriedly ushered the girls inside.

"Thank you both for coming," she said. "They're in Will's room, Nancy's trying to reach the boys through his walkie talkie."

"Of course, Mrs. Byers," the girls chorused, following the carpeted floors down the hallway to the last bedroom, which Anna knew belonged to Will. The door lay open, and she could hear Nancy's voice as she peered around the corner.

Nancy sat on the bed, Will's walkie talkie held firmly in her hands as she spoke into the microphone. Michelle sat next to her on one side of the bed while Joyce sat back down on her other side, and Jonathan leaned against the wall behind them, his gaze fixed firmly on them. In front of them stood Chief Hopper, watching them with his arms crossed over his chest, though his gaze briefly wavered to take in the two girls that had entered the room.

"Mike, are you there?" Nancy asked into the device. "I need you to answer, Mike." she sighed, defeated as she looked back over at Hopper. "He's not going to answer me." she said, her hand falling away from the call button.

"Anna, would you try?" Joyce asked, and Anna nodded as she stepped forward, Nancy reaching out her hand still clutching the walkie talkie to pass it to the girl.

Anna took the walkie talkie, holding it firmly as she pressed down on the call button and leaned in closer to it. "Dustin?" she asked, the device crackling softly, but still remaining devoid of any response from the boys. "Dustin, it's Anna, can you hear me? We really need to talk to you, please answer?"

Anna waited for a moment as the walkie talkie continued to crackle, praying for any sign from her brother and his friends that they were alright, that whoever was after them from Hawkins Lab hadn't found them yet. However, no sound came from the other end of the call, leaving them alone in a frustrated silence as they continued to wait.

"Dustin?" Anna tried again. "Dusty, come on, this is serious. I need you to pick up, please."

Chief Hopper reached forward, taking the walkie talkie from Anna and holding it up to his mouth. "Listen kid, this is the chief." he said. "If you're there, pick up. We know you're in trouble, and we know about the girl. We can protect you, we can help you, but you gotta pick up. Are you there? Do you copy? Over."

Hopper stared at the device for a moment before he sighed, defeatedly placing the walkie talkie on top of Will's dresser before looking back at the rest of them. "Anybody got any other ideas?" he asked, but the others simply shook their heads.

"Yeah," a voice suddenly spoke up, accompanied by the static crackle of the walkie talkie, pulling their attention to where the device sat on the dresser. "I copy. It's Mike. I'm here. We're here."

Anna let out a sigh of relief as she picked up the walkie talkie. "Dustin, you're there too?"

"I'm here," Dustin's voice came through the receiver. "Hi, Anns."

"Are you guys alright?" Anna asked. "Where are you?"

"We're at the old junkyard." Mike said. "The one off the railroad tracks just outside of town."

"I know where that is." Hopper said. "I'll go get the kids, you all sit tight."

"The chief's on his way." Anna relayed back into the walkie talkie. "We'll see you soon. Over."

"Copy that, Anna." Dustin said. "Over and out."

A silence settled over the group as Hopper left the room, the sound of the front door slamming behind him echoing throughout the house, followed closely by the muffled sound of a car engine starting from outside. The sound of tires crunching over the gravel driveway grew further and further away as Anna's eyes stayed glued onto the walkie talkie, even though it had long gone silent.

"So who is this girl the boys have?" Anna asked, looking back over at Joyce. "What does she have to do with all of this?"

"Her name is Jane Ives," Joyce began to explain. "We don't know much about her. She was taken from her mother at birth for this study called MK Ultra. They've been studying her all these years, according to her aunt, Jane's mother Terry always claimed she had these telekinetic abilities, could move things with her mind, stuff like that."

"Like the sort of stuff that's straight out of a comic book?" Becca asked, eyes widened in disbelief as she and Anna exchanged a look, and Jonathan nodded.

"We don't know how, but somehow this girl's connected to whatever happened to Will and Barbara." he explained. "If we can talk to her, figure out what that connection is, maybe she can lead us right to them."

Anna's head began to spin as she took in their words, from a girl with abilities straight out of one of the boys' Dungeons and Dragons campaigns somehow being connected to the monster in the woods, and whatever other Hawkins Nancy had found herself trapped in the night before. All along, Will's disappearance had seemed like such a simple puzzle to be solved, that the answer they'd been desperately searching for was somehow right in front of them, but now the pieces were just growing messier and messier.

As they waited, Joyce led the five teenagers back into the living room, and for the first time after rushing in in her haste to contact Dustin, Anna allowed herself to take in the sights of the family living room. Strings and strings of colorful Christmas lights covered every inch of the ceiling, though they remained unlit, and on the wall, under rows of lights, the alphabet had been hastily scrawled over the wallpaper in black paint.

"I've been speaking to Will through the lights," Joyce explained as Anna reached a hand out, tracing over the letter R with her fingertips. "I don't understand it, but wherever he is, somehow he's able to reach me through them."

Anna's blood turned to ice in her veins at Joyce's words, and the way her voice seemed to brighten at speaking about her son in the present tense. Anna didn't know how he'd survived, or why, but somehow, somewhere, Will Byers was still alive, and she finally allowed herself to feel hope that, one way or another, they would find him and bring him home.

When the sound of tires finally returned on the gravel driveway, the others nearly leapt up from their spots, Joyce rushing out of the house with the others hot on her heels. As Hopper opened the door to his truck, followed by the kids climbing out of the back seat, Anna caught sight of the familiar head of curly hair tucked under a hat, and her heart leapt into her throat at finally catching a glimpse of her baby brother.

"Dustin!" Anna called, bounding down the steps as the boy began to run, the Henderson siblings throwing their arms around each other as they embraced tightly. "I'm so glad you're okay."

"I'm glad you are, too." he said, pulling away and looking up at his sister with an impressed grin. "Chief said you guys went after a monster in the woods. Badass."

"Looks like we've got a lot of catching up to do, too." Anna agreed, her eyes wandering over the kids before taking in the sight of the girl next to Lucas.

The girl was no taller than the boys, wearing a dirty pink dress with a blue windbreaker overtop, and long socks peeking out of a pair of sneakers. The only thing that appeared out of place was her hair, shorn down into a buzz cut as she looked around nervously at the rest of their group.

"Is that my dress?" Nancy asked, studying the younger girl.

"This is Eleven," Mike introduced. "She's our new friend, and she's going to help us find Will."

"She's so cool," Dustin said excitedly, turning back to Anna. "She flipped a van over with her mind."

"Everybody inside, now," Hopper ordered, gesturing for them all to go back into the house. "Wheeler, why don't you start to explain what you told me in the car?"

"Sure," Mike said, looking over at Joyce as they walked into the kitchen. "Mrs. Byers, do you have some paper and a marker I could borrow?"

Joyce frantically moved over to the counter, ripping a piece of paper out of a notebook and pulling a red marker out of a cup before handing them both to Mike. Mike uncapped the marker, beginning to scribble across the page before holding it up to show the others an image of a line across the middle, with a stick figure standing on top of it next to a much smaller dot.

"Okay, so in this example, we're the acrobat." Mike explained, pointing to the stick figure before moving down to the dot. "Will and Barbara, and that monster, they're this flea. And this is the Upside Down, where Will is hiding," he explained, pointing to the line. "Mr. Clarke said the only way to get there is through a rip in time and space."

"A gate," Dustin added.

"That we tracked to Hawkins Lab." Lucas said.

"With our compasses," Dustin added, causing the others to stare blankly back at them in confusion. "Okay, so the gate has a really strong electromagnetic field, and that can change the directions of a compass needle." he explained.

"Is this gate underground?" Hopper asked.

"Yes," Eleven spoke up in a soft voice.

"Near a large water tank?" he asked then.

Eleven nodded. "Yes."

"How do you know all that?" Dustin asked, but Hopper stayed silent.

"He's seen it," Mike guessed.

"Is there any way that you could..?" Joyce trailed off. "That you could reach Will? That you could talk to him, in this-"

"The Upside Down," Eleven finished for her.

"Down, yeah," Joyce muttered, causing Eleven to nod in response.

"And my friend Barbara?" Nancy asked. "Can you find her, too?"

Eleven nodded again as Nancy reached into her pocket, pulling out a remnant of one of the torn photographs Jonathan had taken the night of the party, depicting Barbara sitting on the diving board of the pool. Mike picked up Will's walkie talkie from the coffee table, setting it down on the dining room table as Eleven took a seat in front of it, the rest of them crowding around into the other three chairs as well as standing behind them.

Eleven took the photograph from Nancy, placing it next to the walkie talkie, and as she focused on the device, static began to pour out from its speakers, much louder than any other time she'd used them to talk to Dustin or any of her friends. As the young girl closed her eyes and began to focus, the static slowly faded away, leaving them all in a heavy silence as they watched her for any indication of having found either Will or Barb.

After a moment, the lights above them began to flicker violently, flashing back and forth between flooding the room with light and leaving them in pitch darkness before the lights came back on once and for all, accompanied by the last of the static leaving the walkie talkie's speaker and Eleven's eyes shooting back open. The girl breathed heavily for a moment, tears welling up in her brown eyes as her expression began to crumple.

"I'm sorry," she breathed out, defeated.

"W-what?" Joyce stammered, tightly clutching Jonathan's hand. "What's wrong? What happened?"

"I can't find them," she said, her voice breaking as she rose from the table, leaving the kitchen and disappearing into the bathroom.

"What just happened?" Becca asked, glancing back in the direction of the closed bathroom door.

"Whenever she uses her powers, she gets weak." Mike explained.

"The more energy she uses, the more tired she gets." Dustin said.

"Like, she flipped the van earlier." Lucas said.

"It was awesome," Dustin added.

"But she's drained." Mike explained.

"Like a bad battery." Dustin said.

"Well, h-how do we make her better?" Joyce stammered.

"We don't," Mike said, "We just have to wait and try again."

"Well, how long?" Nancy asked.

Mike shrugged. "I don't know," he admitted.

"The bath," Eleven spoke up, pulling their attention to where she now stood outside the bathroom.

"What?" Joyce asked.

"I can find them," Eleven explained. "In the bath."

"Bath?" Anna asked.

"Anybody know how to make a sensory deprivation tank?" Hopper asked.

"I think I know someone who might," Dustin said, quickly jumping up from the table and rushing towards where the phone hung on the wall. He picked up the phone, punching in a set of numbers before holding the device up to his ear. "Mr. Clarke? It's Dustin," the boy began, before waiting for a response from the other line. "Yeah, yeah, I... I have a science question. Do you know anything about sensory deprivation tanks? Specifically, how to build one?" he sighed at whatever question Mr. Clarke asked. "Fun," he said, shaking his head with a grimace.

"Think Clarke knows the answer?" Becca whispered to Anna, who nodded in response.

"I've hung out at a couple of their AV club meetings when Dustin's needed a ride." Anna whispered back. "If anybody knows, it'll be him."

"You always say we should never stop being curious." Dustin said into the phone, no doubt in a last ditch attempt to convince the man to help them. "To always open any curiosity door we find. Why are you keeping this curiosity door locked?" With a satisfied smile, Dustin pulled the phone along with him as he walked back to the table, grabbing another piece of paper from the counter along with a pencil as he began to scribble something down. "Uh huh," he murmured, writing frantically as Mr. Clarke began to give him directions. "Uh huh, how much? Uh huh, yep, alright. Yeah, we'll be careful. Definitely. Alright, Mr. Clarke. Yeah, I'll see you on Monday, see you on Monday, Mr. Clarke, bye." As he hung up the phone, he set it down on the table before looking back up at Joyce. "Do you still have that kiddie pool we bobbed for apples in?"

"Yeah, I think so," Joyce confirmed.

"Good, then we just need salt." Dustin informed them. "Lots of it."

"How much is 'lots?'" Hopper asked.

Dustin looked down at his notes briefly before looking back up at the chief. "Fifteen hundred pounds."

"Well, where are we going to get that much salt?" Nancy asked.

"I think I know," Hopper said, looking back up at the group. "But we need to move quickly."