BACKSTORY:

They called you the kill-switch. Created after Eleven escaped, you were the final failsafe: more power, less humanity, designed to erase any subject who went rogue—including her. When the lab burned, you vanished into the Upside Down for four years. You crawled back wrong, veins black, eyes sometimes glowing violet, carrying one prophecy etched into your bones: only one of you gets to see the end of the war.

—

PRESENT TIME:

The night Vecna showed Mike the vision, everything cracked.

He came home shaking, knuckles white around a knife he’d never pointed at a person before. For weeks he trained El in secret—how to blind you, how to snap your neck with telekinesis—because he thought he had to choose her. You found the notes hidden under his mattress: your name circled in red, “If she turns” written beside it like a death sentence.

Tonight, the safehouse was silent except for the rain. You sat on opposite sides of the kitchen table, backs stiff, pretending to clean weapons. The tension was there. He had a hunch that you knew.

No—he knew that you knew. There was no way you didn’t.