The room behind the second door is very different from the XGen lab. It’s darker for a start, and we’re totally blind for the few seconds it takes for the lights to buzz into life. We’re standing at the beginning of a corridor with closed metal doors lining each side. While the other offices in the building have name plates on the doors, or friendly looking labels saying ‘Boardroom’ or ‘Storage’, the doors here are assigned just numbers and letters.

‘This must be the place we need,’ Kat whispers. ‘It’s a bit more Hawkins than the XGen labs.’

‘Definitely more of a dungeon vibe,’ I say as I walk to the first door. Karim puts his hand on the handle, but hesitates. ‘It’s like ripping off a plaster,’ I say. ‘It’s gonna hurt either way, so you might as well get it over quick.’

‘What if there’s a Demogorgon in there?’ Kat says.

‘If you were keeping a Demogorgon locked up 81in an underground lab,’ I say, ‘you wouldn’t keep it in the room nearest the front door. If it got out of its room, it could wait till someone opens the door from outside and force its way through. Or, if it wanted revenge, it would just block the door and murder anyone who tried to leave.’

‘Where would you put it, then?’ Karim asks.

‘Towards the back, in an area that hardly anyone accesses, and with another concealed exit somewhere close by in case things went bad and you had to abandon ship and leave it shut in the lab forever.’

‘Will you at least give it a comfy room?’ Kat says. ‘Poor Demogorgon – no wonder he wants to kill everyone.’

Karim pulls down the handle and swings the door open. It’s just a storage room full of empty glass tanks, microscopes and piles of sealed cardboard boxes.

‘How could you contain a Demogorgon anyway?’ Karim says, as we move to the next room. ‘Surely it would just go back to the Upside Down and then reappear somewhere else.’

‘Maybe you could find a way to control it,’ I say. ‘Weaponise it against your enemies.’

82 ‘Why can’t people just leave the Demogorgons alone? They should be left to roam free in the Upside Down.’ Kat pulls the handle of the next door and we peer into a room full of metal shelving, each shelf holding racks of test tubes full of flies. Each test tube is labelled with a code, and the flies ping angrily against the glass from the inside. There’s a PC on a desk in one corner, and charts of data stuck up on the wall above it.