007(ST-Steve Harrington)(On Hold)

30: The War Zone

March 26th, 1986

Seconds after Vecna kicked me out of Nancy's mind and I ended up back in the Upside Down. I fell back and Steve grabbed me as I stared up at the portal, in shock that I had been wrong this entire time. But it was slowly starting to make sense since I could never jump into minds before and only tried to do it after Max was forced into his little mind world. I willed myself to follow her and created the connection with Vecna, one that allowed me to latch on and piggyback onto someone. I had heard of Eleven doing it before in order to enter Billy's mind and see what was wrong with him but she needed a deprivation tank and a whole bunch of other stuff. My enhanced mind powers thanks to Dr. Coleman and his experiments allowed me to piggyback instantly. The tattoo was just telling me that I had Vecna wrapped around my finger and not the other way around.

"My god...it all makes sense," I muttered after staring at the portal for a solid minute.

I stood up and stepped away from Steve who was still staring at me in mild shock.

"Ren! Oh my god!" He exclaimed and grabbed my shoulders before pulling me into a very tight hug.

"I'm ok. Better than ok. My tattoo isn't a connection to Vecna, it's me being connected to him," I muttered and pointed at my left wrist. "This is how much control I have in his domain, I made myself follow Max and Nancy, not him. My powers are even more intense than I could possibly imagine."

"Can you get Nancy out?" Steve inquired and I glanced at her, thinking back to everything he told us.

"He doesn't want to kill her, he wants to scare her. Give her a second," I said and we watched as Nancy began to twitch but nothing more serious than that.

She eventually threw her head back and nearly collapsed, opening her eyes with a loud gasp. Steve and I ran forward and grabbed her before she could fall back as Nancy stared at us in concern.

"Nancy?" I asked and she glanced at me, a terrified look on her face.

"We're in danger...even more so than before."

We all locked eyes and I sighed, knowing that whatever she learned was big, real big. Even though my connection was better than I had originally thought there was still the fact that Vecna was at large and he wasn't stopping anytime soon. I had a sinking suspicion that he had finally revealed his master plan and it wasn't all that pretty.

March 27th, 1986

After Steve, Nancy and I had climbed out of the portal and a much needed night of rest, we all sat in Max's trailer since hers was a little less destroyed by the Upside Down. Her mom was luckily at work and didn't question the beat up teens all staring at Nancy with eyes the size of saucers. I was sitting on the couch with Steve and Eddie and her mind was a constant stream of concerns and worries that our fight was over before it had even began. I leaned forward and placed a hand on Nancy's, encouraging her to tell us what she saw.

"He showed me things that haven't happened yet. The most awful things. I saw a dark cloud spreading over Hawkins. Downtown on fire. Dead soldiers. And this...this giant creature with...a gaping mouth. And this creature wasn't alone. There were so many monsters. An army. And they were coming into Hawkins. Into our neighborhoods. Our homes. And then...he showed me my mom. And Holly. Mike. And they...they were all..."

Nancy trailed off as her bottom lip twitched and Steve held up a hand, looking unconvinced.

"Ok, but...he's just trying to scare you, Nance. Right? I mean...I mean, it's not real," Steve declared and glanced at me but all I could do was shrug.

"Not yet. But there...there was something else. He showed me gates. Four gates. Spreading across Hawkins. And these gates, they looked like the one inside of Eddie's trailer, but...they didn't stop growing. And this wasn't the Upside Down Hawkins. This was our Hawkins. Our home."