On the screen, a future version of Mike Wheeler, older, with tired eyes and a beard, sat in a dimly lit bunker. Behind him, a clock was melting into a grandfather clock shape—not from heat, but from something wrong .

"Uh, Steve's not gonna believe this," he muttered.

Dustin squinted. Sure enough, a faint, translucent red 'N' pulsed in the corner of the grainy preview frame. "Yeah," he whispered. "And the date stamp says... 2022."

"Hello, little Henderson," the thing said through Mike's mouth. "You think the gate is closed? I'm not in the Upside Down anymore. I'm in the signal . And you just invited me into 1985."

Dustin grabbed his walkie-talkie. Static. Then a voice, not Eleven's, not Mike's—something older, colder, whispered through the crackle: