"-WHERE HE IS!" Mike said with a flourish.

"Um, what?" Kat said, stepping out from the bathroom.

"We gotta turn this house upside down," Hopper said as he brushed past her roughly.

"Will's connected to the monster, and if we make this house unrecognizable he can spy for us!" Lucas said excitedly.

"Oh..." Kat said, slightly confused.

"We gotta change up the walls, tape the tarp up, lemme get some people here to move the furniture, let's go!" Steve called, walking to the living room.

"Oh- okay," Kat said, and hustled to an armchair to pick it up.

They carried furniture outdoors, covering it in plastic tarps. Wallpaper was covered, trash was poured on the grass outside. Old fans, furniture, and cabinets were raided from the nearby dumpster as the Byers house was gradually morphed into a chicken shed.

Then, it was waiting time. Kat and Dustin were both pacing nervously around the kitchen, Nancy leaned her body against a wall, face twisted with uncertainty as she watched Steve practice swinging his baseball bat in the air. Max and Lucas sat facing each other against the tunnel drawings as they all waited with bated breath for the results of Will's interrogation.

The door banged against the wall as Hopper stormed in.

"What happened?" Dustin demanded.

" I think he's talking, just not with words," Hopper said agitatedly, scribbling on a piece of lined paper as they all crowded around the table. He drew a series of dashes and dots, reminiscent of the books she used to borrow from the library as a kid.

"What is that?" Steve said, bewildered.

"Morse code," the boys responded in unison.

"H-E-R-E," Hopper gritted out in concentration.

"Here," Kat tasted the word upon her tongue. Will really was spying for them. It was strange, but in a twisted sort of way, kind of cool.

"Will's still in there. He's talking to us," Hopper said, placing the pen down and looking up at them all for assent. Jonathan and his mother then proceeded to go back to the shed, talking to Will so they could get more information. Using the walkie-talkie system the Party used, they got through letter by letter, until Nancy scribbled out the words upon the back of a notepad; CLOSE GATE.

What gate? Kat thought, before a phone ringing startled them all, the sharp tone slicing through their stilled, tense ambience as heads raised.

"Shit, shit," Dustin mumbled, as he ran towards the phone and picked up to make it stop ringing, before slamming it back onto the holster. They took a breath of relief, Steve lowering his bat from where he previously had it in strike mode. Then, the damn thing rang again, nearly scaring the shit out of Kat, before Nancy picked up the phone from its place on the wall and threw it to the ground with a grunt of effort and frustration.

"Do you think he heard that?" Max asked breathlessly, red brows curved upwards.

"It's just a phone. It could be anywhere. Right?" Steve replied. "Right?"

A monster screeched in the distance, the same call that had stunned Kat's reality only a few hours ago. The same chill ran through her body starting from the nape of her neck, as her hands instinctively balled into fists.

"That's not good," Dustin murmured.

The kids rushed up to the living room window, faces pressed nervously against the glass. Nancy gripped Kat's shoulder in anxiety as Steve raised his nail-studded bat.

"Hey. Hey, get away from the windows!" Hopper stormed in once more, two firearms in hand. "Do you know how to use this?" he pressed Jonathan.

"What?"

"Can you use this?" he said.

"I can," Nancy said, with renewed courage as she let go of Kat's arm and took the gun.

"Nance?" Kat mumbled softly as Nancy reloaded the gun.

Nancy pointed it at the door, the harsh environment stiffening as the group waited for the monsters to arrive, the only sound being scared breaths and the ticking of the Byers' wall clock. The warm yellow walls became mustard-colored with unease, Will's drawings snaking around them in enclosed hostility. 

"Mike, stick next to me," Kat whispered, and Mike nodded silently, moving a little ways behind her to clutch at her arm, just like how he did when he was little. Kat stared ahead at Nancy right in front of her, willing to step forward within a second. A louder growl sounded from nearby, with the noise of multiple feet pounding at once. The group turned frantically towards the door, Kat's breath growing fainter with each second. On the contrary, Nancy's breath grew heavier as her hands started wobbling on the gun. The urge to grab them and hold them in comfort was overwhelming, but the fear of what lay outside the walls was greater.

"What are they doing?" Nancy breathed, her voice trembling as the bushes outside swished with an unnatural swoop. The monster snarled, startling them to turn to the windows once more as Kat stood in front of Mike, parting her legs to better maintain her balance. 

Then, the screeching stopped. Kat gasped ever so softly, before a dark colored object hurtled straight through the window near Hopper's feet. A scream burst out through her throat, the pent-up outcome of the past few hours of waiting. It knocked over a shelf full of sketchbooks, one thud with the amplitude of an earthquake. Steve and Hopper refocused on the object, which wasn't making any noise. Looking past Steve's hair, Kat could see one of the demodogs from earlier lying in the living room, it's face closed. Pages rustled as Hopper began moving closer ever slowly, the group following at his tails.

"Holy shit," someone muttered.

"Is it dead?" Max asked, her body still in a defensive pose.

Hopper didn't respond as he slowly raised his foot to poke at the demodog, which turned over with disturbing ease. He lowered the tip of his gun, causing the invisible pill Kat had been holding in her throat to finally swallow. Then the door creaked, Nancy and Kat whipping in its direction. The lock turned with one sharp stroke, ominous and startling with the click. Next, the Byers' swipe-lock fell down in one easy gesture.

Nancy raised her gun, before the door swooped in and in walked a young girl with short hair, jeans and a black jacket. Hopper let down his gun, and from the back, Kat could feel Mike brushing past her in disbelief. A droplet of blood ran down her nose, but she didn't seem to care, for her eyes were fixated on Mike, as his face shivered in astonishment and emotion before breaking out into a smile with the joy of a thousand suns. The duo moved closer to each other, and the girl gasped Kat's brother's name before she was pulled into a hug.

"Is that..?" Max murmured, and Lucas and Dustin nodded at her in sync.

The two exchanged tender words, Kat's heart expanding as she watched her baby brother express his feelings so freely and openly to someone he clearly cared about. They were only interrupted by Hopper, who had been 'hiding' the girl, Eleven, for the past months. Hopper dragged Mike by the arm to the nearby room, and their shouting could be heard from miles away. After Lucas and Dustin wrapped Eleven or El in a triple hug, Max greeted her warmly only to be curiously rejected as Eleven moved past deeper into the house in front of Kat.

"Tulips, do you grow tulips?" Eleven asked her, a strange eerieness to her tone.

"Um, yeah, I have a patch from my mom in our garden," Kat said. "I'm Kathryn, Mike's sister, or Kathy,"

"El," she replied, a curious smile on her face, as if she had checked a box to make sure Kat was nice before proceeding into the arms of Mrs. Byers, who embraced her tearfully as if greeting a lost daughter. 

El then asked to see Will, which made her come to the conclusion that she could close the gate. Then plans were made; Mrs. Byers, Nancy, and Jonathan would take Will to somewhere unrecognizable where they would get the monster out of him. El and Hopper would close the gate, and the rest of them would just hang out.

"Uh- not the rest of you, by the way," Hopper interrupted her line of thought. He pointed at Kat. "You're going to the hospital,"

"Oh, hell no," Kat said scathingly.

"Do you need me to explain the risk? You've took a decade of science class, you know it's too dangerous for you to be here with that wound,"

"I'm not just gonna leave Mike or Nancy-"

"-He's right," Mike interrupted, and Kat looked at him in shock. "Kat, you need to leave and get some care,"

"Mike?" Kat said confusedly. He was about to get mauled by a demodog, and now he was lowering his shield?

"I have other people here. I'm okay, Kathy. It's time for you to be," he said, with a maturity that made Kat's eyes water a little.

"Yes, sweetie, your brother's right. You need some medical attention- we don't know the severity of your arm injury- maybe the demogorgon was carrying some sort of disease?" Mrs. Byers said concernedly.

The rest of the group murmured their assent, Kat feeling suddenly overpowered by the attention.

"Yeah. You can take Will's bike," Jonathan agreed.

"Okay, but-" Kat said reluctantly. She turned to her siblings. "Are you sure you're gonna be okay?"

"Yeah," Mike grinned courageously.

"We'll be fine," Nancy said soothingly, running her hand up Kat's arm in a comforting gesture.

"Right," Kat cleared her throat. "Bye, then,"

It took less than five seconds for the heated planning to continue as Steve showed Kat to the door.

"Hey," Kat said before she stepped outside. "Talk to Nancy, will ya?"

"Yeah, I will," Steve grinned a little. "See you tomorrow, hopefully,"

"Don't die," Kat replied seriously, walking onto the porch and picking up a carefully-maintained shiny bicycle and wheeled it down the Byers driveway.