Me, Myself, and Her

Chapter Sixty-Five

Chapter Sixty-Five: Our Song

"I was right. Skull Rock was north."

Annie sighed and rolled her eyes, really hoping they had abandoned this argument by now. There were other things they needed to focus on. Like killing Vecna so Annie didn't have to wear headphones until the end of time warding off some psycho killer.

"Seriously? You're serious?" Steve asked. Dustin nodded. "This is Skull Rock! You're totally, absolutely, 100% wrong. Right now."

Dustin leaned forward. "Yes. And no."

Annie shook her head and mumbled, "Oh my god," under her breath. She was seconds away from drowning him out again with her headphones.

"This compass worked correctly when we left the Wheelers'. It was correct when we got in the car on Kerley. But it started to slip the further east we went," Dustin explained. "Now, it's way off. When I was leading us here, I wasn't wrong. The compass was."

Steve was so done. As were most of them. "So you're using faulty equipment. Dude- you're still wrong."

"Yeah, can we please stop arguing about this?" Annie asked, a hand on her headphones.

Her brother turned and pointed at her. "Those should be on."

She made a face and said, "They're playing, I'm fine."

"Anyway," Dustin said, stopping the sibling fight. "It isn't faulty. Lucas, do you remember what can affect a compass?"

Lucas, who was scratching the back of his neck, paused. "An electromagnetic field." He said it as if it were some grand reveal. Annie was still confused why this mattered.

"I'm sorry, I must've skipped that class," Robin said, begging for more words.

"In the presence of a stronger electromagnetic field, the needle will-"

"Deflect toward that power," Annie disrupted. "Yeah, yeah, I was in that class, what does this have to do with literally anything going on?"

He sighed. "If I could finish?" Annie held her hands up, a mock surrender. "This means there's either a super big magnet around here, or..."

"There's a gate," Lucas finished for him.

Annie's eyes widened. "Wait, the gate emits an electromagnetic field? Well if I had known that then of course I wouldn't have asked where you were going with all of that," she said.

"Never doubt me," Dustin said as he pointed to her.

"But, we're nowhere near the lab?" Nancy pointed out.

Dustin turned to her. "But what if, somehow, there's another gate? A gate that we don't know about. It'd have to be smaller, way less powerful."

"A snack-sized gate," Robin offered.

"How? Why?" Steve asked.

The kid shook his head. "No idea," Dustin said. "All I know is that something is causing this disturbance, and the last time we've seen anything like it, it was a gate. And I hope it is, because then we'd have a way to Vecna. And a shot at freeing Annie from this curse."

With that, he was off. "Where are you going?" Steve asked. Dustin didn't answer. "Hey, hey, hey, hey! Eddie's still a wanted man, we can't just... go for a hike in the woods."

Dustin held up the compass. "This little steel capsule might be the key to saving both Annie- you're baby sister- and Eddie. What say you, Eddie the Banished?"

They all turned to look at Eddie, to see what he was thinking. He turned and made eye contact with Annie, then back over to Dustin. "I say you're asking me to follow you into Mordor, which, if I'm totally straight with you, I think is a really bad idea. But, uh, the Shire... the Shire is burning."