Eleven

The boardwalk is El's favorite place in the city. It has games and rides and delicious food, and shops with fun things to look at or buy. It often reminds her of Max, in its way: the way they'd spent so much time that day in the mall, the way they'd been surrounded by so much color and light. The boardwalk is a lot like that.

Usually.

Right now, in The Void, the boardwalk is mostly black and water, with only a small radius of booths visible. She can't hear the ocean, but she knows exactly where it is from here. She can't see her favorite games booth, because her focus is on the plushie claw machine in front of her.

She'd felt something.

Working with Armand has been enlightening. That's the kindest word Eleven knows for it. She still doesn't trust him, but she wants to, and she can't tell if that's because he feels so familiar — he reminds her so much of Papa — or if it's because she's that naive. But she can't deny that her mind powers are growing. She hasn't needed eye contact or The Void to check in with Beverly or anyone else. She can simply think about them, and she becomes aware of them. It's like using The Void without using it at all.

It never lasts very long, but it lasts long enough to know they're okay, and that's all she needs most days.

Today, though, El realizes that it isn't just her friends. She's felt something else. It had been fleeting and ugly, but she'd felt it: an Upside Down thing. She's certain of it, but when she'd tried to feel it again, it had been gone. So she'd done what she knows, instead of what Armand has taught her. She'd sat down on her bed, blindfold on, phone playing white noise, and she'd gone into The Void.

She'd walked through this version of the boardwalk, watching colors rise and fall as buildings came into and faded out of view, until she'd found this claw machine. At first, she doesn't know why she's so drawn to it. It looks normal. It feels normal.

And then she realizes there's a shape behind it. The faintly mirrored glass of the back wall doesn't hide it fully but it makes it easy to overlook. It's a shimmering sort of shape, unmoving but out of place. She frowns and rounds the claw machine to see it better.

It isn't a Gate. She's nearly certain of it. But it is, at the same time. It isn't the fiery, burning gash in reality that she recognizes from Hawkins, but it does the same thing.

“No,” she whispers to herself, voice soft where she sits on her bed and softer still in The Void where she stands. She lifts a hand and tries to feel it, tries to grab onto it. Her powers are stronger than they've ever been. Training in Darrow and remembering Project NINA had combined, and she knows that she can close it.

Or she could, if Darrow let her.

It doesn't let her. She struggles and strains, but the shimmer doesn't stop. Her nose dribbles blood, drips it, her head aching faintly, but the shimmer doesn't so much as flicker. It doesn't shrink or knit together. It simply stays, unmoving, and El knows it's a Darrow thing.

She backs away from the rift and sighs softly.

“I won't let you hurt my friends,” she tells it. It doesn't react. “I will kill anything you send to us,” she adds, like she wants to goad it. It still doesn't respond.

That's okay. It doesn't have to.

El pulls her blindfold off and leaves The Void, the boardwalk, and the rift behind. Her upper lip is streaked in drying blood, but she lays back on her bed and sighs.

This is worse than she'd thought. She needs to warn her friends.