Chapter 36: PROOF
Max was eating cereal when I walked into the kitchen the next morning.
She took one look at my face and set down her spoon. "What happened?"
I held up my arms. The burns were visible now—red lines tracing patterns on my forearms where I'd pushed through my heat immunity's limits during the Phase 3 burst. They didn't hurt much anymore, but they were unmistakably injuries.
"Something attacked me last night."
The words hung in the air. Max's expression cycled through confusion, concern, and finally that sharp focus I'd learned to associate with her processing something important.
"Come to my room," I said. "I need to show you something."
Susan was in the living room, folding laundry, so we passed through without comment. Neil's truck wasn't in the driveway—work, probably, or whatever counted as work for a man who'd learned to avoid his own house. The new arrangement was holding, had been holding since I'd made my position clear weeks ago.
My room was unchanged from last night—bed unmade, clothes scattered, the Polaroid camera I'd bought last week sitting on the desk. I'd stopped at the quarry this morning before Max woke up, taken photos of the burn pattern where the Demo-dog had died.
I spread the pictures on the bed.
"This is what attacked me."
The photos showed scorched earth in a distinctive pattern—the outline of something roughly dog-sized, the ground blackened in a way that ordinary fire couldn't achieve. Not conclusive proof of monsters to someone who didn't know what they were looking at.
But Max wasn't someone who didn't know.
"What..." She picked up one of the photos, studied it closely. "What the hell did this?"
"The locals call them Demo-dogs. Short for Demogorgon, from Dungeons and Dragons. They're creatures from another dimension—a place called the Upside Down."
Max stared at me. The disbelief I'd expected was there, but it was fighting with something else. Trust, maybe. The knowledge that I'd never lied to her, not about anything important.
"You're serious."
"Completely serious." I sat down on the bed, suddenly exhausted. The fight, the sleepless night, the weight of everything I'd been carrying—it all came crashing down at once. "The wrongness I've been sensing since we got here? It's real. There's a tear between dimensions somewhere under the government lab. Monsters come through. People die. The government covers it up."
"And you killed one of these... Demo-dogs."
"Last night. At the quarry. It ambushed me during training." I held up my burned arms again. "This is what it cost to put it down."
Max was quiet for a long time. She set down the photo and sat beside me on the bed, close enough that our shoulders touched.
"The kids I hang out with," she said slowly. "Dustin, Lucas, Mike, Will. They know about this."
It wasn't a question, but I answered anyway. "Yeah. They were there last year, when Will Byers disappeared. They helped close the Gate the first time—or at least, they were involved. Will especially." I paused. "He spent time in the Upside Down. It did something to him. Changed him."
"He's been weird lately. Spaced out. Like he's somewhere else."
"He might be. The connection he has to that place—it's still active. And whatever's on the other side is using it."
Max processed that. I could see her putting pieces together, connecting dots that had been floating in front of her for weeks. The strange behavior of her new friends. The whispered conversations that stopped when she approached. The drawings Will made that looked like nothing in this world.
"Why didn't you tell me before?"
"Because knowing is dangerous." I met her eyes. "The people who cover this up—they're ruthless. If they think you're a threat to their secrets, they make you disappear. I couldn't risk that. Not until I had proof."
"And now?"
"Now the timeline's accelerating. The monsters are active. Whatever's coming—it's coming soon." I took a breath. "I need you to know what's happening. In case something goes wrong. In case I'm not around to protect you."
Max's expression hardened. That steel I'd glimpsed occasionally, the core of strength that had let her survive Neil and her father and everything else life had thrown at her—it came to the surface now, unmistakable.
"No."
"No?"
"You don't get to tell me this and then ask me to sit on the sidelines." She stood up, turned to face me. "If there are monsters in Hawkins, if people are going to get hurt, then I'm not hiding in my room waiting to find out if you survived. I'm fighting."
"Max—"
"Don't." She held up a hand. "You taught me that yourself. That first day in California, when you showed me the fire. You said you weren't going to hurt me. You said you'd protect the family. Well, I'm family. And family doesn't let family fight monsters alone."
I wanted to argue. Every protective instinct I'd developed over the past months screamed at me to keep her safe, to shield her from the horrors I knew were coming.
But she was right. She'd been right about everything—about my training, about my secrets, about the threat I'd been preparing for. And she was stronger than I'd given her credit for.
"Okay," I said. "You're in. All the way."
"Good." She sat back down beside me. "So what's the plan?"
"The kids you've been hanging out with—they have experience with this. They fought the monsters last year and survived. If we're going to face what's coming, we need to work together."
"You want me to introduce you?"
"I want you to facilitate a meeting. Somewhere private, somewhere we can talk without being overheard." I paused. "They already know something about me. Dustin especially—he was at the quarry the night I was training. Saw me use the fire."
Max nodded slowly. "He's been asking about you. Whether you're dangerous. Whether you can be trusted."
"What did you tell him?"
"That you're weird but not the worst." A small smile. "Same thing I told you about them."
Despite everything—the exhaustion, the burns, the weight of revelations still settling—I laughed.
"Fair enough."
We sat in silence for a moment, the morning light streaming through the window, the ordinary sounds of the house continuing around us. Susan calling that breakfast was ready. The distant hum of traffic on the main road. The ticking of the clock on the wall.
Normal sounds. Normal life. But nothing was normal anymore. Maybe nothing had ever been.
"We should go," Max said eventually. "School. We're already late."
"Yeah."
Neither of us moved.
"Billy?" Her voice was quieter now. "You really think we can fight this? These monsters, this government conspiracy, everything?"
I thought about the Demo-dog, burning in the dark. About the wrongness spreading beneath Hawkins like cancer. About the Mind Flayer waiting on the other side of the Gate, cold and patient and hungry.
"I think we have to," I said. "And I think we have a better chance together than apart."
Max nodded. Stood up. Headed for the door.
"Then let's fight."
We drove to school in the Camaro, both of us silent, both of us processing the new reality we'd just stepped into. The same roads I'd driven a hundred times looked different now—not because they'd changed, but because I had.
No more secrets. No more pretending everything was normal. The time for preparation was over.
The time for war had begun.
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