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1983
"Shit..." Ethan thinks, slowly pulling his head up to look around at his surroundings.
It's cold, and dark. The air is polluted with some white bulbs of dust or something. It's genuinely hard for him to breathe here. His throat stings, his lungs feel heavy, yet also like they're being cut open with microfibers of glass.
He looks behind himself, making sure to stay silent just in case. He was laid up against a tree next to a run down looking lab. No doubt it's Hawkins National. He slowly picked himself up, almost falling over in the process. His whole body feels weak, and his head hurts like a fucking bitch. He feels fatigued, and tired. His mouth and forehead are covered in dry blood and spit. He feels beyond disgusting. He looks down at his arms and legs, scattered with scratches, and his left knee has a large scab scarring up now. His clothes are torn and stained with blood, mostly his.
He picks himself up from the tree, wobbling around like he was some elderly person trying to walk without their walker or cane. He keeps his balance on the tree, trying to stand correctly. He slowly walks towards the building, and the gate around it. There was a massive tear in the wire fence, he could just walk right through. The scratchy, yellow paint on the building read "HNL".
Great.
There was no sunlight, all cold, and dark, and scary. He could inference this is the Upside Down, given context clues. Plus the Demogorgon bashing his head against the wall also ties up with his headache, the blood. His body is in so much pain. He doesn't know what day it is, what happened, and how he ended up so far away from the school. Now isn't the time for questions, he needs to get home, before a Demogorgon scoops him up and eats him. Or even before the bad men find him, wherever they are.
Looking back at the view behind him, he could just barely see the quarry where Mike jumped off and lived, where Dustin was held at knife point and he couldn't do shit because more people knowing about his powers would only make everything worse. Down the hill a bit towards the left is a white converse. Just one shoe, with blood splatters on it, real fucking blood. Great to know someone's died here. He looks up at the sky, dark blue or grey, or black, he can't even tell. But there was enough light to see something in the sky, like some weird spider thing that almost looked like it was a tornado, but it was living? What the hell.
He's already freaked out enough as he quickly walks into the lab, where the gate is. It's literally right there, it's huge, the size of a car in height. It's reddish, and pulsing like a heart, and there's this weird, slimy layer covering it so he can't see what's on the other side. He walks up and touches it with his fingertips. He hates how it feels, it's disgusting.
But he can't stay here, even if it means being trapped in the lab again. He has to find his friends, and his mom. He needs to make sure they're okay, He needs to talk to El again, he needs to see Mike's victory face after he's won an arcade game again. He needs to see Dustin's smile again, he needs to see Lucas smile after proving Dustin wrong, he needs to see Will just... be okay.
