The light || Lucas Sinclair

pinky promise

Eleven was sprawled out on the couch trying to recover from earlier. The boys were spread out around the room trying to figure out what Will said meant. While Magnolia was sitting in the floor in front of the couch, occasionally looking back to see if El was okay.

"What was Will saying?" Mike asked. "Like home... like home... but dark?"

"And empty." Lucas adds in.

"Empty and cold." Commented from his seat in the stairs. "Wait, did he say cold?"

"I don't know. The stupid radio kept going in and out." Lucas said angrily.

"It's like riddles in the dark."

"Like home. Like his house?" Mike asks.

"Or maybe like Hawkins." Lucas suggests.

"Upside down." Eleven says from her spot in the couch.

"Upside down." Twelve repeats Elevens words.

"What's she say?" Lucas asks.

"The Vale of Shadows is a dimension that is a dark reflection of our world." Dustin says reading from the D&D book. "It's a place of decay and death, a plane out of phase. A place of monsters. It is right next to you and you don't even see it."

"An alternate dimension." Mike whispers.

"But how do we get there?" Lucas asks quietly.

"You cast a shadow walk." Dustin replies.

"In real life dummy." Lucas says rolling his eyes.

"We can't shadow walk but maybe she can." Dustin says looking at El.

"Do you know how to get there? To the Upside Down?" Mike asks Eleven. She shakes her head no.

"Do you know?" Lucas asks Leah.

"No, I'm sorry." She says quietly. In reality she did know how, she had read nearly all the case files at the lab and understood everything that was happening, but she also understood that it would be dangerous for the boys to try to purposely go to the Upside Down.

"Great." Lucas says putting his head down.

—

"I'm going to Will's funeral okay?" Mike says as he adjusts his black tie. "My whole family will be gone, even baby Holly so you can go upstairs and find something to eat. Just be back down here at five-two-zero, okay?"

"Okay." Leah responded while El kept quite.

Mikes mom called his name and he put in his jacket while heading for the stairs. "I'll be back okay?" He told the girls again as he rushed up the stairs.

Once Twelve heard the sound of the car pulling out of the driveway she decided it was time she asked Eleven a question that she had been holding in.

"You were the one who opened the gate, weren't you? I kept reading the files and all it said was GATE OPEN, it didn't say anything else. They must've moved that part to the vault."

"Yes, I did." Elven said quietly.

Twelve noticed a tear rolling down her face.

"Hey, it's okay. I know you didn't mean to." She said pulling El into a hug. "We'll figure this out together, I promise. But first we have to keep the boys safe."

Twelve held out her pinky and El stared at it confused.

"It's a pinky promise, you can never break it. Miss Susana taught me about it." Leah explained. Miss Susana was one of the workers at Hawkins Labs, she was the only one who would check up on the girl after the incident.

El hesitantly held out her pinky. Leah latched the two together and shook there hands up and down.

—

A few hours later and the boys had returned from the funeral, dressed in dark clothing. Mike was sitting on the couch as he tried to explain the Flea and Acrobat theory to the girls that Mr. Clarke had taught them.

"And then it creates a door, a gate, opening up to both dimensions so now the acrobat can get through it too." Mike explained. "It would take a lot of energy to build a gate like this. But that's gotta be what happened, otherwise how did Will get there, right?"

"What we want to know is, do either of you know where the gate is?" Lucas asks, both girls shake their heads no. "Then how do you know about the Upside Down?" Both girls kept silent, Leah looking over at Dustin who was pacing.

"Dustin what are you doing?" Mike asked the boy.

"Dustin!"

The curly haired boy looked up. "I...I need to see your compasses."

"What?" Lucas asked as he and Mike looked at Dustin with a shared confused look.

"Your compasses!" Dustin demanded. "I need to see all of your compasses!"

Minutes later, the boys had gathered all the compasses they could find and spread them on the table.

"What's so exciting about this?" Mike asked his friend.

"Well, they're all facing North, right?" Dustin asked causing the boys to nod. Leah looked over his shoulder studying each compass.

"Yeah, so?" Lucas questioned him.

"Well that's not true North." Dustin told the group.

"What do you mean?" Mike asks.

"I mean exactly what I just said." Dustin carries on. "That's not true North."

Everyone stayed silent.

"Are you both seriously this dense?" Dustin asks the two.

"The sun rises in the East." Dustin explains. "And sets in the West."

"Which means that's true North." Dustin adds pointing behind Mike.

"So you're saying that the compasses are broken." Mike says simply.

"Do you even understand how a compass works?" Dustin asks them. "Do you see a battery pack on this?"

"No." Mike says as Lucas shakes his head.

"No, you don't. Because it doesn't need one." Dustin explains to them as he picks up one of the compasses. "The needle is naturally drawn to the Earths magnetic North Pole."

"So that means something has a stronger magnetic pull." Leah says softly, looking up and seeing the boys looking at her, she mentally slapped herself.

"Exactly." Dustin says. "You can change the direction of a compass with a magnet. If there's the presence of a more powerful magnetic field, the needle deflects to that power. Remember what Mr. Clarke said. The gate would have so much power-"

"It would disrupt the electromagnetic field." Mike finished, finally understanding.

"Exactly." Dustin said again.

"Meaning if we follow the compasses North..." Lucas began, slowly catching on.

"They should lead us to the gate." Dustin finished