She always does.

My agents found the boy. Will Byers. A ghost in the flesh. Eleven didn't kill him—she lost him. She was trying to run, trying to hide, and she shoved him into the only place she knew: the dark. The Demogorgon followed the scent. Now the boy is in the Upside Down, a perfect negative of our world, and Eleven is the only one who can find him.

I sit in the wreckage of the lab. The gate is dormant, but not sealed. A thin seam of light still bleeds through. The Demogorgon is dead, but its mother—the Mind Flayer, the shadow that lives between worlds—I glimpsed it in the final second. It saw me. It smiled with her face.

She looked at the Demogorgon. Then she looked at Mike. And she smiled. Not my smile. Not the smile I taught her—the empty one, the one that meant yes, Papa, I will hurt who you want.

I am not a cruel man. I am a necessary one.

Tonight, she made contact. I felt it in the flicker of the lights. She was listening. She was watching . Through the boy—Mike—she reached into the Void and touched Will Byers. Her nose bled. Her face was peaceful. For the first time, she wasn't afraid.