LACUNA | WILL BYERS ¹ ✔

The Flea and the Acrobat - [Pt.2 - FINAL PART]

-Back into Mike's basement-

Mike was demonstrating to El how this gate thing worked. He jabbed the pencil through the paper he was using.

"It would take a lot of energy to build a gate like this. But that's gotta be what happened. Otherwise, how'd Will get there, right?"

"Right." El answered, clearly confused.

"What we wanna know is, do you know where this gate is?" Lucas asked her.

I looked around. Dustin was randomly pacing, staring at a compass. El shook her head.

"Then how do you know about the Upside Down?" Lucas asked. El twiddled her thumbs.

"Hey, it's okay." I said. "No pressure."

Lucas rolled his eyes at me, no big surprise.

"Dustin, what are you doing?" Mike asked. Dustin was still pacing. "Dustin? Dustin!"

"Dustin!"

"Dustin!"

He finally looked up. "I-I need to see your compasses." He stammered."

"What?"

"All of your compasses, right now!"

Then the next thing I know, all of our compasses were clattering onto the D&D table.

"What's exciting about this?" Mike asked.

"Well, they're all facing north, right?"

"Yeah. So?"

"Well, that's not true north."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean exactly what I just said, that's not true north. Are you three seriously this dense?"

Lucas shrugged.

"The sun rises in the east, and sets in the west, right? Which means, that's true north." He said, pointing into another direction.

"So what you're saying is the compasses are broken," Mike said, trying to comprehend.

Dustin sighed. "Do you even understand how a compass works? Do you see a battery pack on this?" He said, annoyed. I snickered.

"No?"

"No, you don't, because it doesn't need one. The needle's naturally drawn to the Earth's magnetic North Pole."

"So what's wrong with them?"

"Well, that's what I couldn't figure out, but then I remembered. You can easily change the direction of a compass with a magnet. If there's a presense of a more powerful magnetic field, the needle deflects to that power. And then I remembered what Mr. Clarke said. The gate would have so much power--"

"It could disrupt the electromagnetic field," Mike concluded.

"Exactly."

"Meaning, if we follow the compasses' north,"

"They should lead us to the gate,"

"And we can find Will," I said, a smile forming on my face.

-Later-

Right now, we had our backpacks and were on the train tracks in the middle of nowhere, following the compasses.

I was behind El and Mike, who were behind Lucas and Dustin.

The only thing on my mind was Will.

I prayed and prayed, and hoped that he would be alive by the time we get to him.