Will
The world ended with a sound like tearing fabric.
One second Will was riding his bike, lungs burning, heart trying to punch its way out of his chest and the next, he was somewhere else. The air felt wrong immediately. Thick. Cold. Like breathing through a wet cloth.
The Upside Down wasn't silent.
It watched.
Will hid where he could: behind walls that looked like his house but weren't, inside places that remembered shape but not safety. Castle Byers existed here too warped, rotting, threaded with gray vines that pulsed faintly, like veins under sick skin.
He learned rules quickly.
Don't scream.
Don't run unless you have to.
Don't touch the vines.
Time didn't move normally. Will counted breaths instead of hours. He talked to himself just to hear a human voice. Sometimes he heard noises that sounded like Hawkins distant echoes, like the world bleeding through.
Other times, he heard it.
The creature didn't rush him. It hunted slow. Curious. Like it knew fear made prey careless.
Once, Will watched it crawl across the ceiling of a school hallway that looked like his own. Its limbs bent wrong. Its head opened like a flower that had never learned how to bloom.
Will pressed his hands over his mouth and prayed.
He didn't know how long he could survive like this.
But he knew one thing with absolute certainty:
Something wanted him alive and that was worse than being dead.
Barb
Barb woke up screaming.
The sound echoed back at her, flat and artificial, bouncing off hard white walls. Her throat burned. Her body felt heavy, wrong like it didn't fully belong to her anymore.
She tried to sit up.
Pain shot through her wrists.
Straps. Thick. Tight.
Her breath hitched as she looked down. Tubes ran from her arms into machines beside the bed. A collar pressed cold plastic against her neck. Monitors beeped steadily, calmly like nothing was wrong.
Panic came fast.
"Hello?" Barb croaked. "Nancy?"
A door slid open with a hydraulic hiss.
Men in lab coats entered. Soldiers stood behind glass walls, hands near their weapons. No one looked scared. No one looked kind.
"Subject regained consciousness," one man said into a recorder. "Cognitive awareness intact."
"What is this?" Barb demanded, voice shaking. "Where am I?"
"You were recovered near a breach site," the man said calmly. "You've been exposed to an unknown environment."
"You kidnapped me," Barb said.
"We contained you."
Her chest tightened. "My parents"
"Have been informed you're missing," he said. "For now, that's sufficient."
Barb thrashed against the restraints. Tears streamed down her face. "You can't do this!"
No one answered.
Behind the glass, scientists watched her vitals spike. They didn't comfort her. They took notes.
Barb realized then with terrifying clarity that whatever had happened to her wasn't over.
She wasn't lost.
She was claimed.