"THE PEOPLE WHO WERE MISSING. It's Will Byers and Barbara Holland, right?" Steve and her were sitting on the mattress now. Sar was holding a notebook in her hand, jotting things down.

"Yeah," he said. "I don't know if anyone else has gone missing yet. We should check around. Maybe we'll find out there were more just out of town, or something like that."

Sar mumbled in agreement. "Well, Will is in that place. The opposite world." She was tapping her pen against her knee, a nervous habit. The girl was deep in thought. "If I can contact him like that, then I bet I can contact Barbara. This opposite world must be acting like some kind of megaphone, it's amplifying their thoughts and making me able to detect them."

"And what does this mean?"

"This means... I might be able to find them." Her blue eyes were hopeful.

"You think so?" Steve asked.

Sar shrugged. "Well if I can figure out where they are and where the portal is, then we can get to them. The only hard thing will be getting past the monster." Steve nodded at that. "Okay, so this girl you're dating — Nancy? — her friend was the girl that was taken? Barbara?"

"Barb, yeah. It was here, actually." He glanced out the window, Sar following his gaze. "We were having a party out back. Nance and I went upstairs and left Barb outside by the pool. The next day she was just gone." Steve crossed his arms over his chest. Then he raised a single hand to wipe underneath his nose. It was supposed to be nonchalant, but Sar knew how dishevelled he was. "We shouldn't have left her there." He was shaking his head.

"No, Steve, are you crazy? There is no possible way you could know there was a monster waiting to take her."

He was biting the inside of his cheek. "I was still an ass though."

Sar furrowed her eyebrows at that, but didn't quite know how to respond. She tapped her pen against the notebook. "Well, if the monster took her... why?"

Steve shrugged. "I don't know. She was a normal girl. Just Nance's friend. I guess it's the same as Will — just in the wrong place at the wrong time. It could have been anyone; could have been me." Sar could see how much that thought affected him. His knee was bouncing again.

Sar pursed her lips. "Was there anything odd that happened before? Did you notice anything?"

"Well, she cut her finger before we went up. It was bleeding. I don't know if that has anything to do with it."

"She cut her finger?"

"On a beer can," Steve clarified, "yeah."

"Okay." Sar placed the notepad on her knee and scribbled down the word 'BLOOD?' in scrawling writing. "So suppose — theoretically  — this thing was attracted to blood... that means this thing is somewhere around here, right?" She turned her head so she was looking out into the forest behind Steve's backyard, and saw him doing the same.

"We are right on the border of Hawkins' Lab," he said. "And the Byers kid, Will, they live on the other side. It all surrounds the lab. So it has to have something to do with them."

Sar nodded. "Definitely. And after all that shit they did to kids — probably still are doing — they're for sure involved. Maybe if it is attracted to blood, that's why it turned up so suddenly for her." She bit down on the inside of her cheek. "I'm not sure." She sounded defeated.

"Any more leads?" Steve asked.

Sar racked her brain. "Okay, well we know this thing needs to eat. When I was in that place it was eating a dead fox, so that's for sure."

"So it's taking these kids, why, to eat them?" Steve looked sick at the thought.

Sar felt like she was going to be sick too. "Maybe. But Will got away. So I'm not sure." She clicked down on the end of her pen. "It's hard to find leads when we know hardly anything about this place." She was biting down on her lip. "Would we be able to talk to Nancy?" Sar questioned. Her blue eyes bore into his.

Steve lay his hands in his crossed legs. "I don't know. She's pretty sensitive about this whole Barb thing. But I'm sure she'd like to help in finding her friend. We will find them... right?"

Sar clicked her pen with her thumb again finally. "Of course we will." For a second she sat there in silence. Then she shoved her notebook and pen into the bag beside her and stood suddenly. "Let's go talk to Nancy."

Steve scrambled up. "Oh — right now? Okay." He ran after her as she strode towards his car.

She slid into the passenger seat as he hopped into the other side. "Do you know where'd she be?"

Steve slotted the keys into the ignition and started the car. "Probably just at her house."

"Good. Let's go." When they pulled up at the Wheeler household, Sar jumped out of the car and jogged across the road. She didn't want more people to be taken. More people like Will, or Barbara. Steve was standing beside her with his hands in his pockets. Sar stepped forward to ring the doorbell. There were a few seconds where the two stood waiting, staring at the painted white door. A woman cried out, "Nancy! Could you get that, please!" Another person called back as footsteps sound towards them and the door swung open.

A girl wearing a pink sweater stood behind it. She had a pointed nose and pursed lips. Her eyes were her most striking feature, Sar thought, incredibly wide and bright blue. She was impossibly pretty. Nancy blinked at the two through long eyelashes. "Steve?" she asked. Then her eyes darted to Sar. "Who's this?"

Sar smiled at her. "Hey, I'm Sar." Nancy's eyebrows were furrowed in a frustratingly pretty way. "I'm, uh, Steve's friend. We just wanted to talk..."

"Nancy? Who's at the door?" An older woman's voice called out from inside the house.

Nancy turned back. "Just some friends, Mom!" she exclaimed. She looked back at them with confusion on her face. She blinked a few times. "Talk? About what?"

Sar and Steve exchanged looks. "It's about Barbara," Sar explained.

Instantly, Nancy's mouth fell open. Her eyes were widened, brows raised. "Oh, okay. Come inside." She opened the door wide enough to let the two teenagers through. She led them over to a set of stairs. "My room's just upstairs."

A woman walked out of another room, a pair of oven mitts on her hands. She stopped as she saw the trio of teenagers trying to get up the stairs. "Oh, Nancy, I didn't realise we were having guests over." Her mother smiled at the two.

She waved slightly. "Hi, Mrs Wheeler. I'm Sar. It's nice to meet you."

"An unusual name," Mrs Wheeler pointed out. "It's pretty. And you can call me Karen," she smiled.

"Okay, Mom, we'll be going upstairs now," Nancy said. Karen nodded at them as Sar jogged up the stairs after Nancy. When they reached her room, she closed the door behind them. "What's this about Barb?" Nancy looked between the two. "Do you know where she is?"

Sar was twisting her fingers in her hand — a nervous habit. "We don't think it's as simple as that. I just wanted to check with some who was close to her, see if you know anything."

"Take a seat," Nancy said, gesturing to her room. There was an armchair in the corner that Sar sat down in. "So what about Barb?"

"I was just wondering, was she acting weird or anything like that before the party? Did she say anything to you? Any indication she was planning on skipping town or going to stay somewhere?"

Nancy shook her head. "No, she was her usual self. She didn't want to come to the party but she came along anyway. She was... fine. Wasn't any different from normal. Why, you think something bad happened to her?"

"And you don't think she just... ran away?" Sar had searched adamantly for Barb's mind in the other world that night, but found nothing. Perhaps the girl hadn't been conscious at the time, or just wasn't within Sar's range. She really had no idea how seeing into this other world worked.

Nancy was shaking her head. "No. I know Barb. She would never have run away." Nancy seemed adamant about this. Her eyes were wide. "I mean... she wasn't popular, but she wouldn't have disappeared without telling me. Or her parents. Her parents love her." She looked as if she might cry. "She wouldn't have just left."

"Okay." Sar had the sudden urge to comfort the distressed girl. She understood the pain of not knowing where a friend was, and of losing them. "I'm doing the best I can to find her."

"I don't think Barb ever knew you."

Sar leaned back in her chair. "No. I didn't know her either. But some kids have been going missing lately and I wanted to figure out what's going on. Steve too." He nodded as he slipped a comforting arm around Nancy. "We think we have a lead on both her and Will." She looked at her notebook and the notes she'd scribbled down. "We're going looking for them. Since they both went missing around the same time, we think maybe—"

"Will Byers is dead."

"What?" Sar asked. She exchanged a wide-eyed look with Steve, who looked just as surprised as she was.

"They found his body last night. At the quarry." Her eyebrows were furrowed. "You didn't hear about this?" she asked Steve.

He was stammering. "No."

But that's impossible. I was talking to him only a few hours ago. Her eyebrows were lowered in thought, hands clasped together in her lap. The lab must have covered it up, they always did. They were good at that: making people think the ones they loved were dead; covering up tracks of missing children... It's what they did best. "I think he's alive," she said after a moment. "I think there's this bigger thing going on with Will and Barbara. You might not understand it yet... but I'm going to find them."

They left later, leaving Nancy still relatively confused, and with Karen Wheeler calling after them if they wanted to stay for cookies. They were back sitting in the car, car stalling outside the Wheeler house. They'd been sitting there idly for a few minutes in tentative silence. "Sar?" Steve asked her after a moment. She was staring intently at the road out the front window.

Her hands were planted firmly on the dashboard. "Steve. We're going to find them." Her jaw was clenched, and if Steve wasn't mistaken, there were tears in her bright eyes. She swallowed deeply. "We're going to find them. We have to."

And Steve wondered, what had made her so determined to save everyone.

•°•☆•°•

THE SHOWER HAD ALWAYS MADE HER FEEL UNEASY. Sar was standing in the bathroom, towel wrapped around her. Her eyes were latched on the glass walls in front of her. She knew it was silly, but the closed glass box made her feel closed in. The small walls reminded her too much of the lab: of the deprivation tanks and isolation chambers and the dark rooms they were forced to run tests in. It was something she had nightmares about more than she'd care to admit. She pressed her fingers up against the glass of the shower.

Lune was giving the scientists a thumbs up. Her wild hair was hidden under the large helmet. She was in that giant padded suit they made all the deprivation tank users wear. Sar still wasn't entirely sure what it was for.

Sar was crammed beside Eight, whose dark eyes were watching in both interest and disdain. Her expression matched most of the other children's. They let the others watch sometimes. Let them see what was in store for those who showed signs of these powers; and what they were aiming to find. The eleven children were crowded into a single balcony, lined with guards and soldiers. Sar had her arms wrapped around Katie from behind.

With the tug of a rope, the lift sunk Lune into the water. Bubbles rose from her helmet, carrying into the salt water above. Her eyes darted up to Sar on the balcony. She gave her a smile before closing her eyes.

She was doing that thing she did, walking in the 'dream world', as she and some of the other kids called it. Seeing without seeing. Her hands were clasped around the metal bars that secured her to the lift. Scientists were measuring her brain scans on computers in front of her, watching her through the thick glass tank. And whatever it was that Lune saw — she screamed.

•°•☆•°•

ok but i feel like nancy wheeler deserves some more love

ALSO I THINK NATALIA DYER IS SO PRETTY LIKE WOAH