Episode 1 - A Ticking Clock

  Chapter 7 - Spider's Web

  “Biochemistry?” I’ve never been there, but I recognize the name.

  He hums his affirmation, eyes on the elevator door now. As they open, we step into the hallway, and he glances in both directions before prowling to the left. I pad stealthily along after him, looking around the level that I’ve never seen before but still have a familiar sense of from seeing other levels lower in the building. His hand brushes the wall, unloading his symbiont, who races along the wall, keeping pace with us. The span of its legs when outstretched would wrap around my face. The Vespa remains on his ear, occasionally fanning its wings or rotating its position.

  We pause at the door to the Lu lab, marked with an aluminum name plate, his theraphosid already hovering over the card swipe.

  “Where do they keep the fridges?” he asks, clipped and professional.

  “Utilities run up the center of the building. Anything needing decent electrical loads will be positioned there.”

  The door lock snaps, and he pulls it open, sweeping inside and pausing with it held open long enough to let myself and his symbiont enter behind him. We pass the lab benches and whirring centrifuges, making our way back towards the center of the building where shut doors dampen the noise from banks of equipment beyond. The doors are decorated with a variety of safety warnings and images of the required PPE for each. He glances through each one as he passes, his theraphosid following us on the ceiling now. He halts suddenly at one, presses against the window to study the room beyond, then furtively glances about before pushing the door in.

  There are six fridges; several upright and a chest freezer. And every one has a physical padlock hanging on them. He blinks, and I hover in the doorway, waiting. This time the hesitation seems less intentional.

  “You got this far and don’t know which fridge or how to get into them?” I hiss.

  He casts a castigating glance over his shoulder. “Like you know everything.”

  I step within the room with him, casting a glance at the Vespa on his ear still. “Do you know which one?” I ask.

  There is a long moment of silence. “Chest freezer is my guess. The rest look like they aren’t cold enough.”

  I crouch to look at the mechanism of the chest freezer’s lock. It’s built into the handle, the cylinder on the chest turning a latch that hooks up into the handle of the lid - like most things, it’s about deterring people instead of offering actual security. I kneel and glance at the underside, then pick a tiny plastic cap off to expose the hex screws used to mount the handle when it was originally assembled. He kneels with me, narrowing his eyes as he watches my fingertips pick off each of the plastic caps one by one, gathering them in my palm.

  I wander back out into the lab and glance around the benches, feeling slightly bemused despite my beating heart when I sense him follow. I pick up a pair of nitrile gloves from a nearby bench, pulling them onto my hands, and search the benches, before finally spotting a toolbox on one shelf. I pull it down and bring it into the equipment room, retrieving a hex key set.

  “No, I’ll do it,” he instructs, his fingers brushing my own as he plucks the set from my hands. “Find an icebox and some dry ice if they have it. Something no one will notice going missing.”

  By the time I’m back, the handle is removed and the chest freezer lid open without disturbing the lock. He’s bent over the fridge, shuffling through the contents for his quarry. I glance at the time on my monitor on the underside of my wrist.

  “Half an hour before shift change,” I offer unprompted.

  He doesn’t even acknowledge me. Doubled over the freezer, I can see his scrubs riding up, revealing black body armor and a glimpse of a tactical harness around his waist - and a sheath covering a weapon. After only a moment, he has what he’s looking for, palming a tiny vial I barely see and stashing it in the small ice box I’ve brought him between the dry ice. Then he hefts the fridge lid back into position, his muscles rippling beneath his clothing, and returns the handle to its position, wiping everything down with a rag from one pocket. He holds an arm out, ushering me back out as well and working his way back along every surface.

  “Who are you?” I ask as we walk back to the elevators. His symbiont follows along the walls again. He has the rope handle of the icebox threaded over one wrist.

  “You don’t seriously think I’m answering that?” he replies gruffly.

  “I helped you, you owe me,” I try hopefully.

  The sound of footsteps sends my heart leaping. He grabs my hand and pushes through the door to one of the equipment rooms, pulling me after him. Roughly, he pushes me against the wall by the door, my back to his chest and his torso pinning me against the wall. I can feel his breath on the back of my neck, the rise and fall of his hard chest against my back. I can smell him: herbal sage and citrus mixed with sweat.

  I take a ragged, nervous breath, and he pins me tighter against the wall. Out of the corner of my eye, I can see him peeking out the window into the hallway. The silence between us only broken by the continued footsteps and the whir of compressors around us. As the footsteps disappear, I hold my breath and whisper, “take me with you.”

  He tenses. I can feel his lips against my ear. “Why?” I suppress the shudder that it sends down my spine. I can hear the buzzing wings of the Vespa on his ear.

  “What the fuck am I going to do here after this?” I whisper in response.

  “And what exactly do you think this is? Hmm?” he growls. “You’re not my problem. You put your neck through the noose on your own.”

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  “I can’t stay here. I’m good at this sort of thing. I almost never get caught anymore-”

  I can almost feel his smirk in the subtle brush of his lips against my ear. “Anymore? You break into secure labs on the regular?”

  “Not this, but I break things, just for-”

  “Rebellion against the system? Makes you feel alive?” he finishes, his voice a purr. My breath catches.

  He flips me, pressing his forearm against my throat, and I feel the tip of something cold and sharp at the side of my neck. His blue eyes catch mine, hard and callous in the flashing green and blue status lights of the equipment room. I can feel the contrast in my own rushed nervous breaths, and his languorous confident ones. His hands are steady.

  The knife at my neck should fill me with terror, but… It’s everything I crave - color, fear, adrenaline, life, a way out - anything except more gray walls, beige doors, sunlight barely reaching me, and windows I’ll never freely look out. Another meeting with HR, cages and dead-end hallways and closed doors in every direction I look. I’m barely better off than the symbionts, except I need food and air to keep on subsisting. I’m sick of hoping for the realistic and settling for reality. I want something more.

  “I want out,” I assert, meeting his gaze with my own.

  “You think this is a game? That I’m doing this for fun? Someone pays, and we retrieve. Same cogs, different system. Got it?”

  My breath catches, and the reality of his words washes over me. Of course, everyone is employed by someone. Fuck, I must look like a child to him, swept up by the rush of sudden danger. But I want it so badly. I’ve never felt so alive.

  “What would you do if I didn’t show you how to get past the locks?”

  “Break it,” he replies simply. I can see that muscle in his jaw clenching, almost hear the click of his teeth as they meet.

  “And they’d know you were here then, what you took? You think your client wanted that?”

  The Vespa buzzes, and in the hum of its wings this close to his face I swear I can hear the words, “she’s got a point, Everett. Just let her go.”

  He narrows his eyes, pressing a little tighter with his forearm. I gasp slightly at the pressure of the blunt edge of his knife. “I’ll tell someone if you leave me. You might as well kill me,” I threaten, meeting his eyes.

  He watches me, his eyes darting as if he’s truly looking at me. I can feel his breath and the movement of his chest when he sighs. Then he pulls back and releases me. The Vespa in his ear continues to buzz.

  “I’m not killing you. And, if you do talk, it’ll go worse for you than me. I won’t be here.” He pulls down the collar of his scrubs to return the combat knife to a sheath in the harness over his body armor. I take a huge breath and lean against the wall. Rubbing my neck, I can’t feel any mark on my skin.

  He leans against the window of the door peering out in thought. “What’s your symbiont?” he asks, returning to the casual, disinterested tone he used when we first met.

  I hesitate, and he slowly turns arching an eyebrow. “You’re not fucking bonded yet?” he hisses incredulously.

  “What of it?” I bristle back.

  He pushes the door open again and we continue to the elevators. His symbiont is already waiting, calling the elevator, and I notice him casually brush against the wall again for it to step onto his arm.

  He huffs, is he amused? “And you just happen to know what symbionts the different security shifts have as a hobby?”

  I watch the elevator numbers change as we descend. “No… I, uh, work in the basement taxonomy labs. I’ve interviewed a bunch of people doing descriptive work…” I trail off. That still doesn’t explain why I know so much about security specifically. I bite my lip thinking of how to explain myself without giving myself away. It feels like a step too far to outright say I can see symbionts. I’ve never told anyone, only my Dad knows. It’s a line once crossed I can never take back. I’m desperate for this, but even my appetite for risk only goes so far.

  Deflection seems easier. I mask my subterfuge in truth. “I started just stealing things when I was barely a teen. I got caught and reprimanded, got my Dad in a bunch of trouble. But we’re serfs, they can’t get rid of us so easily. I properly look at things, pay attention to the details. So I got better, paid attention,” my voice gets stronger as I speak, growing in confidence. “Management doesn’t care. Security just doesn’t want to do paperwork. We’re dregs to them, I’m as invisible to them as symbionts are. As long as we keep on working, producing new research for Murasaki to sell to other companies, they’ll keep us fed and clothed and caged. All for what? So they get windows and ferns instead? What are they gonna do to me, deduct more credits that they already do?”

  The elevator doors open, and the stranger leans against the doorway, scanning the lobby before stepping clear and sweeping towards the turnstiles again. He pauses, letting me pass through first and dropping his theraphosid to reboot the mechanism as he passes after.

  “And what? You think I’ve got the authority to just take you with me?” he asks, bee-lining for security. The theraphosid unloads from his hand and hunkers down on the workstation, glowing blue along its markings and at the joints of its segmented legs again.

  “I need to get out before I manifest…” I admit breathlessly.

  “Life is what it is,” he replies mildly, and I feel all my adrenaline drain. He’s not taking me with him?

  “You can’t leave me here,” I plead.

  “What’s so bad about manifestation? You got bad genetics?”

  I swallow. He leans on the security desk as his theraphosid returns, crawling up his torso now and settling on his shoulder, folding its legs tightly. Without even looking my way, he strolls casually for the exit, hands in his pockets with the ice chest hanging from his wrist as if it’s just the end of any other workday.

  “I…” He’s a stranger, he doesn’t care. He couldn’t make it any more obvious. The wind rushes out of me with a sigh, and I feel drained and exhausted like I haven’t in a very long time. “Maybe genetics that are too good. It doesn’t matter.”

  He pauses in the doorway, looking past me outside. The Vespa on his ear buzzes. The fangs of his theraphosid gleam as it watches me back with eight shiny black eyes of various sizes. He lifts his hand, pulling down his collar to withdraw a card from a pocket on his harness underneath. With two fingers, he extends the business card to me, and I stretch my hand, cautiously taking it. Then he pushes the glass doors at the entry open with no reply.

  I turn the card in my hands. It’s made of black textured card, I can feel the paper fibers with the tips of my fingers. On one side is a single embossed logo in burnished gold, an Aquila with wings spread. And not a single written word.

  “There’s nothing-” By the time I look up, he’s disappeared into the street.

  I shove the door open and jog into the darkness, trying to spot any trace of movement, desperately listening for quiet footsteps in the dark. My breath catches, and I can’t help it when I crush the card in my grip.