Chapter 10: The Upside Down
"Oh, that's disgusting~"
Andy's wrist finally broke free from the last few fleshy tentacles. Those things emitted a tooth-aching tearing sound as they snapped, and a thick, black liquid like crude oil gushed from the breaks, making muffled "drip... drip..." sounds as it fell to the ground.
He stumbled back, a nauseating sensation coming from beneath his feet.
The soles of his shoes felt as if they were stepping into warm, rotting matter, every step accompanied by a sticky squelching sound.
Andy looked down; the ground wasn't soil, but some kind of dark, elastic substrate, its surface covered in subtle pulsations.
"This hellhole..." he muttered, forcing himself to look away.
Once he regained his footing, Andy immediately scanned his surroundings alertly.
This was the Hawkins forest, yet it completely wasn't. The trees were still in their places, but they looked as if they had all died, revealing blackened wood inside.
Even more eerie was that the posture of these trees was identical to those in the real world; even the old oak tree leaning to the left had its branches bent at the exact same angle.
Except, all the color had been drained away.
The world was in grayscale, like an overexposed black-and-white photograph.
The only color was the black secreted by those tentacles and the undried blood on his own hands; that splash of red seemed glaring and out of place here.
Andy took a deep breath, but his nostrils immediately wrinkled.
Only then did he notice the things floating in the air.
Grayish-white particles, light as ash, were slowly descending from above.
No, not the sky—there was no sky here at all.
Above was a thick, swirling dark red haze, and those particles were separating from the mist like a bizarre snowfall that would never stop.
A piece of the ash drifted in front of him, and Andy instinctively waved his hand to block it.
The moment his fingertips touched it, it was bone-chillingly cold. It wasn't an ordinary low temperature, but a kind of chill that could only be perceived through psychic power, penetrating the skin and piercing straight to the marrow.
"Cough, cough! What the hell is this stuff?"
In the interval of his coughing, the ground began to squirm.
At first, it was just a slight ripple, like an undercurrent beneath a calm water surface.
Immediately after, dozens of fleshy tentacles, like plant roots, burst out of the ground. They were as thick as an adult's arm, their surfaces covered in dark red veins that pulsed rhythmically.
Even more disturbing was what was happening at the remains of the tentacles Andy had previously destroyed.
From the edges of the shattered breaks, new fleshy tissue was growing, swaying slowly in the air like blind worms exploring an unfamiliar environment.
Then, all the tips, whether new or old, turned in unison toward Andy's direction.
They sensed him.
Or rather, they perceived him through some method beyond vision.
The cluster of tentacles began to accelerate their growth, surging toward Andy. They weren't fast, but they were coming from all directions, blocking all possible escape routes.
Andy's heart began to pound wildly. He glanced back toward the direction he had come from; the edge of the circular area he had cleared with his psychic power was already covered in tentacles again. The regeneration speed of these creatures was astonishingly fast.
"Damn it, what the hell is this place?"
He cursed under his breath, turned, and sprinted toward where he remembered the street to be.
While running, Andy could feel his stamina draining. Killing the Demogorgon earlier had already consumed much of his energy, and he was later forced to struggle with those tentacles; his nosebleed still hadn't completely stopped.
After running about a hundred feet, Andy abruptly stopped.
Ahead, more tentacles were growing out of thin air from under withered trees, rock crevices, and even the atmosphere.
They wove into a net, layer upon layer, blocking his path.
Looking back, the way he came had also been sealed off.
He was completely surrounded.
The cluster of tentacles slowly but firmly tightened the encirclement; the nearest ones were already less than fifteen feet away. Andy could see the details on their surfaces: within the dark red veins, some substance was flowing.
"Can't escape..." Andy panted, his gaze sweeping around. "Guess I'll have to do it one more time."
He took a deep breath and then slowly assumed a stance.
His hands were held out in front of him as if cradling an invisible object. Andy closed his eyes, pushing all stray thoughts aside.
In his mind, psychic power began to condense.
He felt his temples throbbing, and warm liquid gushed from his nasal cavity once more.
But he did not stop.
His hands slowly pushed outward to both sides. The movement wasn't large, but Andy concentrated all his psychic power into this single push.
With Andy as the center, an invisible ripple spread out in all directions.
Everywhere the ripple passed, the cluster of tentacles instantly turned into black powder. It wasn't burning, it wasn't shattering; it was direct decomposition into the most basic particles, like a sandcastle dissipating in the wind.
Withered trees were uprooted but did not fall; they began to disintegrate as they rose into mid-air. Trunks, branches, and roots all turned into grayish-white debris, mixing with the black tentacle powder to form a swirling cloud of dust.
Even the ground was scraped away by a layer; within a thousand-foot radius, everything vanished.
Like using an eraser to remove pencil marks, this area was restored to a "blank."
After the strike ended, Andy breathed heavily. At this moment, he could even hear the rushing of his blood flowing in his ears, and his heartbeat echoed in his chest like a war drum.
He opened his eyes and stood in the center of the perfectly circular clearing, looking around.
There was nothing left.
No trees, no tentacles, no floating particles—those things had been blown further away.
"Where exactly is this?" he asked in a low voice.
His voice was exceptionally loud in the silence, even producing a brief echo.
There was no answer.
Andy knew he was lost.
Not in the usual sense of losing one's direction, but a more fundamental loss; he didn't know what this place was.
But fortunately, his psychic power had grown strong enough over the years.
He closed his eyes and began to slowly expand his psychic perception. Like a diver plunging into the deep sea for the first time, he let go of his consciousness's restraints bit by bit, allowing his psychic power to spread outward.
At first, there was no sensation at all.
But suddenly, his psychic power seemed to enter a void, meeting no resistance and touching no "existence."
This emptiness was unsettling, like reaching out in the dark and never being able to touch a wall.
Andy continued to dive deeper.
Then, intense pain struck.
It wasn't physical pain. It was a deeper, neurological sensation of tearing.
It was as if countless red-hot needles were simultaneously piercing his cerebral cortex, stirring, puncturing, and burning within the folds of his consciousness.
"Ah—!"
Andy cried out in pain and collapsed to his knees. He clutched his head tightly; the pain was so severe that flickering white lights began to appear in his vision, and a sharp ringing sounded in his ears.
Three minutes.
The pain lasted for a full three minutes. To Andy, however, it felt like three hours.
He could feel warm blood gushing from his nose, flowing over his lips, gathering into drops at his chin, and then falling to the ground. The taste of copper filled his mouth; this was the first time he had "tasted" his own blood so clearly.
Just when he thought he would pass out, or worse, the pain suddenly lessened.
It didn't disappear, but... he had adapted to it, as if his body had triggered some mechanism in an extreme environment.
Andy panted, slowly lifting his head. Sweat soaked his hair.
But he couldn't worry about that, because he felt the texture of space-time.
Not as a metaphor, but in the literal sense of "texture."
The surrounding space-time was viscous; when he was still, space-time would slowly "heal," trying to erase the traces of his existence.
This was the reason for the distorted sense of time. Here, time was not a steadily flowing river, but a stagnant, uneven gel.
"This is the world behind that door," Andy murmured, finally understanding the situation. "The door Henry opened three years ago... did it connect to here?"
And "here," according to the fragmented theories he had learned at Hawkins Laboratory, was likely the "dimensional rift" that Dr. Brenner had been researching, the place privately called "The Upside Down" by researchers.
Andy struggled to stand, wiping away the mixture of blood and sweat from his face.
Concentrating his mind again, he gathered his power—
Psychic power began to converge as usual, but the process was completely different.
In the real world, this process was easy and natural, like breathing; but here, he had to forcefully squeeze his consciousness to make the psychic power flow. That feeling was like trying to squeeze the last bit of toothpaste out in a vacuum.
Then, he expanded his psychic power outward.
He froze.
In the real world, when psychic power expanded, it would touch various consciousnesses: human thoughts, animal instincts, even the faint life signals of plants.
Like throwing a stone into a pond, it would always stir up ripples and always encounter resistance.
But here, the psychic power spread out and entered a pure, boundless, dark void.
No resistance, no ripples, no echoes.
It was like light shooting into the vacuum of space, going forward forever, never meeting a boundary, and never receiving a response.
Andy's eyes widened.
It's the Void!
Andy still remembered Eleven describing this place.
She said that when she used her abilities deeply, she would sometimes "fall" into there: a place with no sound, no light, and no boundaries, where time lost its meaning and the self began to dissipate.
Three years ago, in the Rainbow Room of the Lab, Andy had tried to enter the Void countless times.
Dr. Brenner said that was the foundation of high-level remote viewing abilities, the "medium layer" for all remote perception.
But no matter how Andy tried, there was always an invisible barrier blocking him.
But now, in this dimensionally distorted place, the barrier was gone.
"Is it because the reality structure here is inherently weak?" Andy whispered to himself. "Is there some kind of... connectivity between the Upside Down and the Void? Or has my ability been unlocked here?"
A thought struck him like lightning.
"Wait, if I can enter the Void, does that mean I can establish a connection like Eleven does?"
He remembered the training scenes in the Rainbow Room: Eleven sitting in a chair with a photo of the target in front of her. She would close her eyes, her breathing would become steady, and a few seconds later, she could state the target's location—no matter where they were in the city, or even hundreds of miles away.
Andy didn't have a photo, but he had memories.
More accurately, he had strong, vivid memories of Eleven.
He closed his eyes again, this time not to probe, but to "search."
In the darkness of his consciousness, he began to construct an image: a thin girl, pale skin, shaved hair, wearing oversized clothes in a burger joint.
Then, he let himself "sink."
Not a fall, but a conscious, controlled descent. Like a diver adjusting buoyancy to slowly descend into the deep sea.
At first, there was only darkness and void.
"Eleven!" Andy called out in his consciousness, his voice traveling through the void without an echo. "Can you hear me? Eleven!"
There was no response.
He continued to sink, continuing to search for Eleven in the darkness.
At that moment, like a camera lens slowly focusing, a blurry image began to coalesce.
Then, the picture suddenly became clear.
It was a basement.
Andy immediately recognized the place: Mike Wheeler's basement.
Three years ago, this was where he had first met Mike, Lucas, Dustin, and... Will.
Time seemed to stagnate here; the same old sofa, covered in a plaid blanket with edges already worn and frayed.
The same low table was scattered with board game pieces: Dungeons & Dragons character cards, polyhedral dice, and several hand-drawn maps.
But some things had changed; the three boys in front of the sofa had grown up.
Mike had grown quite a bit taller, his once-rounded cheeks now more angular, though those earnest eyes remained the same.
Lucas had a shorter haircut, and his expression was more alert than it had been three years ago.
Dustin... well, Dustin was still Dustin, just with a larger pair of glasses.
And sitting in the middle of them—
Was Eleven.
Andy's heart contracted sharply.
She had escaped.
She was wearing the oversized yellow t-shirt she'd put on when escaping from Benny's, and over it was an obviously oversized jacket that didn't belong to her; judging by the style, it was likely Mike's.
She was looking down at the boys, while the three boys surrounding her observed her like some kind of rare specimen.
"Do you have your parents' phone number?" Mike asked, his tone serious.
"What about your hair? Do you have cancer?" Dustin leaned in curiously.
"Did you run away from home?"
"Are you in some kind of trouble?"
"Is that blood?" Lucas pointed at the stains on Eleven's clothes.
Andy watched this scene, feeling a strange sense of déjà vu.
Three years ago, it was an almost identical scene. Four boys had surrounded him after he just escaped from the Lab, asking similar questions with similar expressions of mixed curiosity, wariness, and sympathy—only it was him in the middle back then.
Andy's thoughts were pulled back to the present. He noticed there were only three boys in the basement.
"But, where's the other one?" Andy muttered to himself. "I remember there weren't just three of them. Where's Will—"
His words came to an abrupt halt.
Because Eleven, on the sofa, suddenly turned her head and looked straight in the direction where he was.
It wasn't an accidental shift of gaze, nor was she attracted by something else in the room.
Her eyes were truly focused on Andy within the Void; those large eyes, always filled with confusion and alertness, were now opened even wider, her pupils contracting slightly.
In the void of darkness, Andy's consciousness was like a suddenly lit lamp, and Eleven sensed that light.
"Eleven? It's me, Andy! Can you see me? Hear me?"
Eleven's lips parted slightly, and at the same instant, she suddenly stood up from the sofa.
This action left the three boys stunned.
"What's wrong?" Mike asked, his voice tinged with confusion and a trace of tension.
Eleven didn't answer; she walked toward the corner, her eyes fixed on the empty wall as if there were something there they couldn't see.
"Andy?" she whispered, her voice so small it was almost inaudible.
But Mike heard it.
His expression underwent multiple changes in an instant: confusion, shock, disbelief, finally freezing into a complex look of mixed hope and fear.
"What? Andy?" Mike's voice rose, creating a brief echo in the basement. "You know Andy? Are you talking to Andy?"
Lucas and Dustin spoke at the same time, their words overlapping and coming out rapid-fire:
"Wait, doesn't she seem just like Andy was back then?"
Lucas turned to Mike, a light of realization flickering in his eyes.
"Suddenly appearing out of nowhere, not knowing where she came from, wearing weird clothes, and those... abilities?"
"So, she escaped from the Lab too?"
Dustin turned to Eleven excitedly, almost jumping up.
"Are you friends with Andy? Are you both from the Lab? So the 'Eleven' Andy was trying to find back then was you?"
"Can you feel Andy? Where is Andy now? He didn't leave Hawkins?"
"Wait, since Andy has superpowers, do you have them too? Can you... find things like Andy could? Can you help us find Will?"
The three boys spoke too fast, questions hitting her one after another, and Eleven couldn't get a word in at all.
She just stood there, her eyes still fixed on the wall, as if listening to a voice only she could hear.
Finally, Mike raised his hand, signaling his two friends to be quiet.
The three boys looked at each other, then simultaneously turned their gazes back to Eleven.
"Find Will? What does that mean, Will is missing?" Andy asked curiously within the Void.
"What happened? When did Will—"
A sudden change occurred; the vines were back.
They surged from the edge of the circular clearing, more numerous and thicker than before, the pulsating veins on their surface emitting a dark red glow like bleeding wounds in the grayish-white world.
"Damn things!" Andy snapped, his consciousness forced to withdraw from the Void.
The connection with Eleven was instantly severed, the image vanished, and he was back in the Upside Down.
The vines had already surged within thirty feet.
Andy gritted his teeth, his psychic power condensing once again.
He hadn't wanted to consume too much power here; overusing his ability could result in his consciousness being unable to sustain itself, or he might even be drained to death in this world forever.
But he had no choice.
His psychic power transformed into invisible blades that swept out, and the first dozen or so vines to approach were severed at the root.
But more vines filled the gap; they seemed endless, and Andy could feel his mind growing foggy as his nose began to bleed again.
"Can't keep this up..." Andy panted, continuing to sever the vines while thinking rapidly.
These vines were the same kind of creature he had encountered before in the Hawkins forest.
But here, they seemed... more organized. It wasn't a blind attack, but a strategic siege.
Suddenly, an idea flashed through his mind.
Since these vines were biological, or rather, organic life forms.
Then they should have a source, a core, a control center, just like a queen in a beehive.
If he could find that source...
In the gap between severing more vines, Andy quickly split off an extremely fine thread of psychic power and, like casting a fishing line, accurately attached it to the cross-section of a severed vine.
Then, he traced back along that vine.
Not by seeing with his eyes, but by using his perception to "follow" that invisible connection.
Like following a telephone wire to find the caller, or following a river to find its source.
His psychic power extended through the void, passing through forests and over the ruins of houses; following his perception, Andy also recognized this place.
This was the Upside Down's Hawkins; everything corresponded to the real world, though there seemed to be some distortions in time.
But regardless of what it was, Andy, who was being hunted, had no time to worry about irrelevant matters; the tracing continued.
Finally, he found it.
The source of the vines was at the edge of town, that "Cursed House."
In the real world, that house was merely abandoned, with broken windows and a yard overgrown with weeds—a place where kids went on dares.
But here... Andy's gaze focused on the house's location, and then he sucked in a cold breath.
The house itself was almost invisible. It was completely encased in thick, pulsating black vines.
Tendrils extended from the house's foundation by the thousands, like Medusa's snake-hair, spreading toward all of Hawkins.
They burrowed into the earth, climbed trees, and entwined houses, turning this small town into the internal organs of some massive creature.
Andy's psychic power tried to approach the house to investigate the interior.
But the moment it touched the outer wall, it was repelled.
No, not repelled, it was... devoured.
That house was like a black hole of consciousness; any psychic power that approached would be sucked in, crushed, and digested.
Andy felt a sharp sting and hurriedly retracted that thread of psychic power, but he had already lost a portion of it.
The feeling was like sticking a hand into boiling oil; although quickly withdrawn, the fingertips were already scorched.
Even more bizarrely, as he extended his psychic power along a vine to the area surrounding the house, Andy discovered a terrifying void.
In his mental perception, the entire Upside Down's Hawkins had a "texture"—that dark, decaying, but still existing texture.
Like a corpse; although life is gone, the form remains.
But only at the location of that house was there nothing at all, as if a piece had been carved out of the map.
Andy retracted all his perception and collapsed to his knees, panting heavily.
Cold sweat soaked his clothes, mixing with his nosebleed to form a sticky coating on his face.
His brow was furrowed as his brain worked rapidly.
For some reason, he instinctively felt that location was extremely dangerous.
Not a danger that he might be injured, but a danger that he might completely disappear.
That hollow texture, that devouring of psychic power... this house was not just the source of the vines; it was very likely the "heart" or the "tumor" of the entire Upside Down.
Andy felt a chill rise from his spine and spread through his entire body.
Over the years, as his abilities were used and grew, his premonition of danger had become clearer and clearer.
Although he hadn't reached the level of Lab Number Six, who could briefly foresee a specific future, his intuition for danger had almost never been wrong.
And right now, that intuition was screaming an alarm in his head.
"Can't go there," he muttered to himself. "At least not right now."
After all, Eleven was still alive and was with Mike and the others.
This meant she was safe for the time being—at least safer than being in the Lab, and safer than being in this godforsaken place.
The plan to find and help her could be delayed; he needed to first ensure he could escape from this world himself.
"If the vines could bring me here, it means a Gate exists," Andy wiped away his nosebleed, forcing himself to analyze calmly.
"Since there's a Gate, I can get out. It doesn't necessarily have to be an exit from this house; maybe there are other Gates, or... other ways to open a Gate."
He needed to find another way out.
Andy slowly stood up and took one last look in the direction of the house.
Although invisible to the naked eye, he could feel the existence of that void, like a blind spot in his field of vision, which was unsettling.
Then, he turned his back to the house and walked toward the depths of the forest.
In the air, those grayish-white particles that had been blown away began to gather again; they separated from the wall of mist and drifted toward Andy like conscious followers, forming a slowly trailing ribbon behind him.
Silence once again enveloped this blank area.
And deep within that house encased in black organic matter, a certain "person" slowly opened his eyes.
He felt it.
It wasn't the pain of a severed vine, nor was it an alarm of territorial intrusion, but rather a deeper, more ancient feeling—
A familiar consciousness fluctuation.
An "echo" he had waited a long time for.
A... kindred spirit.
In the deepest darkness of the house, something began to move.
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