Chapter Text
The demodog stands motionless in the darkness at the edge of the treeline, visible only by the full moon shining off its hundreds of jagged white teeth. It is completely, unnaturally still - the only movement coming from the thick cloud of white fog growing in front of its petaled mouth as its hot breath condenses in the suddenly-freezing air. The world seems to have stopped, freezing in place so as not to attract its attention. Even the breeze through the leaves has stopped.
“Mike,” Will breathes, barely more than a whisper in the vain hope it hasn’t noticed them. Eight feet away from Will, Mike’s eyes are wide, white showing all around the irises, and his hands tremble on the nail bat. “Run. Now.”
He doesn’t get the chance. The demodog snarls, deafening even from there, and pounces. It runs like a bat out of hell, heading straight for them. It covers multiple metres in a single bound, approaching them at terrifying speed. And Will’s head is pounding in time with its feet. For some reason this fact nags at Will even despite everything else going on, filling him with a cold horror.
Will looks down and realises he has instinctively begun loading the shotgun, ready to shoot it straight down the demodog’s throat, but the familiar flash of teeth and meat never comes. Mike is screaming for Will to run before it takes him again, but Will can only stare in horror as he realises that the demo isn’t heading for him.
It’s heading straight for Mike.
It happens faster than Will can react, his gun only halfway loaded. Mike swings his bat but the demodog is faster - it charges him down and leaps into the air. As it flies through the empty space, the ringing static that's been bothering Will for the last hour suddenly finds the right frequency and Will hears it; the pulsing chittering riptearkillobey of the Upside Down.
It doesn’t come to him in words or sounds or images; just an overwhelming, overpowering feeling of cold, furious hatred. It’s almost physical, and it doesn’t feel the same way it feels when Will is picking up other people’s emotions - it feels like they’re his emotions. It feels like standing at the base of a cliff and watching a huge rock fall towards you, powerless to stop it. The chittering hatred intensifies and somehow it’s big even though Will has never considered thoughts or feelings as having any dimension of size before. This feeling does. It’s huge and imposing and it knocks Will to the ground with its force and the second the skin of Will’s palms hit the spore-covered ground, Will understands what is happening.
“No,” Will gasps.
The headache, the foul mood, the increasing feeling of cold. It was all coming from the Upside Down. The hivemind.
The demodog turns its head and looks at Will even as it’s leaping through the air and for a second, Will feels the urge to turn his head too. Horror drips down Will’s spine as he connects the dots, and Will gets back to his feet, ready to shoot the monster, but then in a blinding, painful flash, Will is fully enveloped by the hivemind.
In a split second, Will’s telepathic sense is overwhelmed and he hears, sees and feels everything the demodog feels, including its commands.
The command to kill Mike.
The urge to follow that command is like nothing Will has ever felt. It’s biological. Trying to resist it is like trying to force himself to breathe in water - every cell in his body is fighting against him. Every muscle burns, but Will can’t. He won’t.
Will screams - inside his head or outside, he’s not sure, but he screams, locking every joint and muscle in his body as hard as he can so that he can’t move. Will isn’t just hearing the hivemind, now. He’s not even simply connected to the hivemind - he’s part of it. Like being a lamp plugged into a socket versus being part of the wiring in the walls. Will feels it all flow through him and he’s almost swept along with it. The urge to submitobeykillobey is so powerful and going against it feels so unnatural that Will’s body goes rigid and he chokes, clutching at his throat. His heart is pumping so hard that the lack of oxygen kicks in quickly and his head spins violently; Will can’t stay upright and he falls a second time.
Will hits the ground at the same time the demodog’s claws tear through Mike’s flesh.
“NO!” Will screams.
The hivemind’s hold breaks - the command has been carried out. The demodog rips a huge gash through Mike’s skin, from his collarbone to his navel. Mike doesn’t even scream, at first - his eyes get huge and he gasps as all his breath is forced out of him by the weight of the demo’s huge body slamming into him. Mike hits the ground spine first, and his head slams hard into the ground a second later. Too hard. Mike’s wide, terrified eyes suddenly unfocus and dim as he hits the ground and Will screams again, the loudest and worst scream he’s ever made, because Mike looks fucking dead.
Will isn’t really sure what happens next. One moment, he’s on the ground, several feet away from Mike, trying to get his body back under his own control. The next thing he knows he’s standing over Mike, holding a smoking shotgun, with the demodog’s head in tatters beside him.
Will comes back to himself between one blink and the next and all he knows is that his entire body feels like it's made of nothing but dust and static electricity. He must’ve shot it, but Will doesn’t know how or when. All he can think about is that horrifying blankness in Mike’s eyes.
Mike, who still hasn’t gotten back up.
Will kicks the demodog’s body aside like it’s trash on the street and tosses the gun to the side. He drops to his knees so hard something cracks, but he doesn’t give a shit. Mike is lying on the ground beneath him, drenched in blood, and Will knows that a lot of it is from the demodog but not all of it. The huge laceration down his chest is pouring blood in quick, alarming pulses and the fact that it's bleeding so fast means he's alive but Will feels almost no relief at that realisation, because Mike is paler than Will has ever seen him. His eyes aren’t open. His mind is too quiet.
“Mike?” Will shouts. “Mike, can you hear me?”
Mike doesn’t respond, and Will’s pounding heart starts going so fast that Will can hear it in his eardrums.
“Mike! Wake up!” Will yells, shaking Mike’s shoulder. Blood spills faster from the huge wound on his chest, and Will gasps, regretting his touch. "Mike, come on!"
There’s an awful second of nothing, and then Will’s extra sense picks up a slight sparking, like a lighter struggling against the wind. Then, the flame catches. Will catches a dizzy, sick swirling feeling. And then Mike’s brow twitches.
“Mike?” Will gasps. “Oh my god, Mike, you-” he starts, and then Mike’s brow twitches again, then he’s frowning.
“Loud,” Mike croaks, a crease appearing between his eyebrows.
Will can’t help it when he bursts into tears of equal parts relief and terror. He has never been so glad to see that frown.
“Will,” Mike says, voice hoarse. The sickening swirling grows as Mike tries to speak and Will realises it must be coming from him. “Hurts.”
“I’ve got you, you’re gonna be okay,” Will says. “I promise, you’re gonna be okay, I’m gonna-”
Will throws his bag off his shoulder, pours the contents out on the ground. There’s a first aid kit in there that’s probably useless at this point - the wound is too big for the meagre dressings he knows are in there. It’s too big even for Will to apply pressure to all of it, but he bundles his scarf up and presses it against the parts that seem to be bleeding the fastest. Mike groans in agony as Will pushes down on the wound and his whole brain flashes in bright yellow and black, almost losing consciousness from the pain of it.
“Hop…” Mike gets out through his clenched teeth, and Will is confused for half a second before he sees what Mike is thinking - Hop is on the other patrol. Hop can get them to a hospital.
Will nods and lets go of the wound to search the pile of stuff next to his bag, but he doesn’t see the walkie-talkie anywhere. He shakes the bag out again, but turns up nothing but receipts and old pens. He looks around, frantically searching, and his blood runs cold when he sees how far away it is. He must’ve dropped it somehow, but he doesn’t want to leave Mike. He’s scared of what will happen if he takes his hand off the wound, and he’s scared that there are more demodogs hiding, just waiting for Will to step away. Will knows now that they don’t want him - they want Mike, and they want him dead. The mounting panic paralyses him, and to make matters worse, Mike chooses that moment to cough. Flecks of blood appear on his lips and the sound is too wet and too weak.
“Help!” Will screams, desperately. “Help! Hopper, Steve! Code black! SOS!” he shouts, as loud as he can, and hopes that somehow they’re close enough to hear him. “Mike, stay awake, come on,” he pleads. “You’re going to be fine, I’ve got you.”
“Will,” Mike croaks.
“Don’t try to talk, just… just stay with me, okay?” Will begs.
Mike doesn’t try to argue with him, doesn’t even want to, and that frightens Will almost more than the blood. He just lifts the uninjured arm as much as he can and drops his hand clumsily against Will’s face. Mike’s mind is growing more and more sluggish and Will can’t read his face- whatever Mike is trying to communicate is lost as his eyes slip shut. Will grabs the hand on his face and squeezes it as hard as he can.
“Don’t fall asleep, keep your eyes open,” he commands - his voice sounds almost angry with how scared he is.
Will realises, as he's doing something in between soothing and scolding Mike, all the while begging him not to shut his eyes, that he’s never been on this side of a crisis before. He wishes desperately, selfishly, that it was him who had been attacked. Mike wouldn’t have dropped the walkie. Mike would know what to do.
Will is just about to risk making a run for the walkie when suddenly there’s a bright flash of light. Two lights, in fact - the headlamps of a car coming towards them at a great speed. The brakes squeal, and Hopper is out of the car before Steve has even turned the engine off, sprinting towards them.
“What- how-” Will begins.
“We got your message. What did this to him?” Hopper asks, brisk and no-nonsense.
“A demodog. But I didn’t-” Will says. He doesn’t remember sending a message. He doesn’t remember using the emergency flare they each keep in their first aid kits, and he didn’t get to the walkie yet. He didn’t call Hopper. But for now, Will puts it out of his mind. There are much bigger problems.
“Did it get him anywhere else?” Hopper asks, oblivious to Will’s confusion.
“No,” Will says.
“Any other injuries?”
“He hit his head when it got him. He got knocked out.”
“How long for?” Hop asks. His concern is growing, and Will swallows fearfully.
“I don’t know. Thirty seconds? I’m not sure,” he babbles. “Is he gonna be okay?”
Mike’s eyes are barely open beneath them and he’s breathing fast and shallow. He looks paler than Will has ever seen him.
“We’re gonna get him to the hospital now. Steve, take his legs. Will, open the truck.” Hop instructs, rapid fire. He doesn’t answer the question, Will notices. But Will knows better than to argue now; he just opens the truck.
They get Mike into the truck bed, laid out flat on a ragged blanket. Steve and Will stay in the back with him to apply pressure to the wound, and it takes all four of their hands and Will's scarf to manage to cover the whole laceration. Mike’s agonised groaning as they press on it is awful, but at least it means he’s alive. Hopper drives off at a speed that is definitely illegal, causing the three of them to lurch about precariously.
Now that they’re on the way to the hospital, Will’s hands start to shake. Some distant memory of a biology class tells him that it’s probably something to do with adrenaline - he’s not crashing completely, but he will be soon. There is nothing Will can do right now but press firmly against Mike’s bleeding torso and wait to arrive at the emergency department. He looks up at Steve across from him, and finds that Steve is already looking at him.
“Steve,” Will murmurs. “How did you know we needed help?” he asks.
Steve frowns. “What do you mean? You radioed us for help.”
It’s Will’s turn to frown now.
“No, I didn’t,” he says. “I wanted to, but the walkie was too far away and I was too scared to leave Mike. I never got to the radio, but…”
“But we definitely got your message,” Steve murmurs. Will hears his mind clicking round, but he’s too exhausted to listen in properly.
“What did I say? In the message?” Will asks. He needs to know - for all they know, it could've been Vecna, and it could be a trap.
Steve’s frown deepens. He concentrates, and Will feels him trying to remember - but it feels like he’s trying to catch water in his palms. Steve can’t hold onto it.
“Y’know, I’m not sure,” Steve says. “I just remember you were panicking - screaming, really - and I knew Mike was hurt. But now that I’m trying to think about it, I don’t… I don’t remember any of the actual words you said.”
Both of them frown, now. There’s a pause as Steve ticks his way through a theory, interrupted only by Mike’s ragged breathing and the rumble of the tyres over the road as they speed towards the hospital. He doesn’t think fast, but he thinks steadily, and before long Steve’s clock strikes the hour. He meets Will’s eyes and lowers his voice, speaking very seriously.
“Will, your telepathic powers… do they go both ways?”
“Uh… no, they don’t,” Will says, confused. Then, he realises what Steve is suggesting. “But when the demo attacked him I kind of blacked out for a second. Maybe if I’m under a lot of stress…” he trails off.
“Maybe you can project it out,” Steve finishes. “Like… Like a speaker. Like overloading the signal or something.”
“I don’t think that’s how it works,” Will objects, but it’s weak - neither of them know a thing about how any of this works. At that moment, however, the car jolts to a stop and Hopper flings the door open.
“Let’s get him inside,” he commands, and neither Steve nor Will argue.
The three of them lift up the corners of the blanket, with Mike barely conscious inside it, and rush him into the hospital.