Chapter Text
Will wakes up on the floor. It’s a nice floor, carpet, all fuzzy like it’s been vacuumed recently. But he bolts upright. Because . . . because he didn’t fall asleep here. He wasn’t trying to sleep, last he recalls, he was . . .
Tearing demos to pieces after hijacking into Vecna’s hive mind. In the middle of a military base. At night.
So how’d he get here?
Slowly, he climbs to his feet. The room’s large, with a pair of doors on one wall, and sunlight-filled windows lining the other.
Did he lose consciousness after the battle? Did his mom and the others have to carry him here? Wherever here is?
Will presses his face to the glass. A manicured lawn sprawls into the distance, stone paths arcing across it. He cranes to the side; is that a fountain?
Where is he?
He backs away, approaching one of the doors. It creaks when he opens it. The hallway beyond is so silent that every footstep he takes, every popping ankle and knee and breath, rings too loud in his ears.
The hall turns, winding past several other doors, then ends in a massive lobby, with a wide staircase leading up a floor, and a set of double-doors presumably heading outside.
It’s a . . . a mansion.
“Hey, Will!” a voice shouts from the top of the stairs.
Will whirls.
But it’s just Mike.
“Hey!” Will calls back. “Where are we?”
Mike frowns, slowly coming down the stairs, fingers dancing on the polished railing. “I was hoping you could answer that.”
Will’s eyebrows furrow. “What do you mean? You didn’t . . . I mean, is anyone else here?”
Mike shrugs. “You’re the first person I’ve found.” He reaches the base of the steps, and stops, just looking at Will. “You did that thing to the demos,” he says.
Will crosses his arms, hoping a blush isn’t visible. “What . . . thing?”
“You snapped them in pieces!” Mike says. “Like a real life sorcerer.”
Will scoffs. “I mean . . .” He glances around the lobby. “Is that a knight statue? Two of them? And wow, whoever designed this place likes the color red—”
Mike steps closer, clapping a hand on Will’s shoulder. His eyes bore into Will’s. “You saved our lives. My life.” Then his gaze slips away. “Thank you, is what I mean.”
Will can’t breathe. Which isn’t new; every time Mike touches him, his heart tumbles like a diver in the air and his lungs forget what they’re supposed to be doing. You’d think Will would get over it. But he hasn’t.
“Um,” he works out.
“Hey!” another voice shouts.
Mike’s arm drops and he spins; Will’s eyes dart up to the top of the staircase, where someone else has appeared. But he doesn’t recognize her.
“Who are you?” she shouts.
She reminds Will of Mike’s sister Nancy, except her hair’s darker, and given her curled fists, she looks like she’d punch a demo before shooting it.
Will puts his hands up. “My name’s Will!” he says. “We didn’t mean to intrude, it’s just—”
“We woke up here,” Mike says, “and we’re not sure where we are or how we got here.”
She frowns.
“Oh and my name’s Mike.”
“You don’t know where you are?” she asks, and starts down the stairs, heavy boots clopping on the carpet. “I find that hard to believe.”
“Honest!” Will says. “We’re from Hawkins, Indiana, and we’re technically under quarantine—”
She stops, about a dozen steps between them. “Quarantine? For what? And this is a far cry from Indiana. So start yapping about how you broke in here, or I’ll have to quarantine you in the basement.”
Will gulps.
“You haven’t heard about what happened in Hawkins?” Mike asks. “The earthquake, the strange snow . . .”
“I’ve never heard of Hawkins in my life.”
Mike’s jaw drops. “How?”
“In fact, I’m pretty sure Hawkins, Indiana isn’t a real place.” Her gaze hardens. “I would know, I’m from Indiana.”
“Oh, that’s nice,” Will says, but she’s charging down the stairs.
“Run!” Mike shouts, but Will doesn’t need encouragement.
They bolt for the doors, yanking them open and scurrying down the ramp. This isn’t the lawn with the fountain, but still, it seems to go on forever, dotted with trees and—is that a swimming pool?
“This way!” Mike runs down a path to their right, and Will follows, gasping for air.
“You have no idea where you’re going!” Will shouts.
“Yeah I do; away from here!”
A blur shoots out of the wall and tackles Mike to the ground. Will screeches to a halt. It’s the girl from the stairs. Will gapes for half a second at the wall she appeared out of—it’s solid brick—then grabs at her arm, trying to free Mike.
But his hands go right through her.
“Get off me!” Mike coughs, wriggling. “Get off!”
Will tries grabbing the leg that’s locked around Mike’s neck, but his hand goes right through that too. “Who are you?” he shouts. “Let go of Mike!”
“Unlikely,” she growls.
Mike’s coughing cuts out, and his face starts turning red.
“Quit choking him!” Will shouts, trying and failing to shove her off.
“What’s happening here?” a Russian accent says, and Will spins.
It’s a giant metal man. Will’s eyes bug out, hang on, is this . . .?
“They were sneaking around the mansion,” the girl says.
Mike struggles weakly.
“Said they were in quarantine for something,” she continues, “so I figured, better quarantine them in the basement before they let out an alien disease. Like the last intruders.”
The metal man laughs. “Can’t be too careful, eh?” Then he grabs Will by the front of his shirt and hauls him up like he weighs nothing.
“Wait,” Will says, kicking uselessly at the man’s legs “no, it’s not like that! We’re just lost. Let my friend go, he didn’t do anything!”
But the metal man ignores his protests. He marches inside, carrying Will in his stretched-out arm. Will grabs his wrist, trying to break free. It’s like a toddler wrestling a weightlifter.
The metal man covers Will’s face with a cloth bag. Actually, by the musky scent, it’s probably someone’s dirty shirt. And it’s so stuffy inside that Will’s shouting is making him lightheaded, so he quits to save his breath. To listen. Another pair of muffled footsteps join them, and the girl mutters about . . . carrying Mike? A body thumps metal.
They walk somewhere. An elevator dings, and they step inside, metal ringing on metal. They move downward. They walk more, and Will’s tossed unceremoniously to a cold, hard surface.
“Enjoy quarantine!” the Russian guy says, and a door slams.
Will tears the bag off his head. It is, in fact, a shirt, stained with mud. He tosses it to the corner. Mike’s unconscious behind him, the red fading from his face. The room’s small enough Will can extend his arms to either side without brushing both walls, but not by much. The light’s obnoxiously bright, and there’s no windows, except a tiny one in the door. But when Will gets up to check it, the other side’s covered by something black.
He twists the doorknob; it’s locked from the other side.
Will slumps to the ground, hands clawing through his hair. How’d they end up in this mess? Kidnapped by . . .
“Mike,” Will whispers, “I think those were the X-Men.”
Mike doesn’t rouse. So Will sighs, hiding his face in his knees. How’d they end up here? And how do they get back home?