“It’ll probably take a couple weeks to get them. But, when you say that the other two are partly done, you mean that you need something else to finish them off?”
“Yep. We can deal with not having the kids’ records for a while, but we’re going to need the parents nice and established pretty quick here.”
“What is it that you need?”
“Necromancy.”
“Ahh. I see. Hallström, right?”
Annika made her way over to her temporary desk and began to sift through the paperwork. “Yep.”
“I’ll contact Jerry later and see if we can get the ball rolling on those socials. Why don’t you give me some of the information on the other two?”
“Will do,” she said, fidgeting with the documents. With that, she began to read off the information, laying the foundation of their escape. The vial of venom, tightly capped, bit against her tensed fingers. Her new project would have to wait.
Spinneretta spent the entire day struggling with the hellish mechanism masquerading as a computer, breaking only for hasty and aggravating meals. She’d never seen so esoteric and arbitrary a set of glyphs as those that made up the basic navigational functions of the UNIX command line. It took her a long while, but she eventually managed to wrangle enough focus to force herself through the first chapter of the guide again. She had to make an effort to understand if she were to get anything done with it.
Her despair faded just a little when she realized the similarity between command arguments and the parameters passed into a simple programming function. Once she made that connection, she began to learn a little, step by step, making steady if glacial progress.
That evening, she had her first major achievement: she managed to add a user to the system whose password was not quite as disturbing as maywolf123. A good portion of the time devoured by that errand was spent trying to think of a handle to go by within the cyberhell. Finally, after glancing back at the book and being reminded of the out-of-place poem magnet, an impulse struck her. She decided on the username arachne.
But it was not long before she hit another wall, where the gap in her knowledge prevented her from doing anything else of use. An hour passed, frustration piled up, and at last she shut down the device out of rage again. And so silence fell once more upon the study. Her thoughts wandered, and soon she found herself thinking about Mark.
Goddammit, she seethed to herself. Was there nothing else to distract her? No interesting books. No working computer. Nothing. But the house was quiet with sleep. Spinneretta stood up, glancing out into the dark hallway. At some point, it had become the witching hour. If anyone was still awake, they were hiding from her.
If everyone’s asleep, no harm in slipping out for a run or something. Yeah. That was an idea. A run might help clear her head. And with any luck, it would clear it and keep it empty for a long while. To hell with your rules, she thought with a vindictive edge, I can’t stay here for another minute.
Chapter 26
Attrition
Arthr couldn’t sleep that night as he tossed and turned in the guest bedroom. He kept thinking about the modicum of praise Annika had given him on the range. He kept dissecting her tone, picking apart her word choice. Rest eluded him. At around three in the morning, he sat up. He had nothing to occupy himself with, but he couldn’t sleep. He had to do something to get his mind off her.
And so he went out the bedroom door, easing it shut behind him. He started down the hall toward the bathroom. But on the way, the light pouring from the study caught his attention. Arthr crept up to the door and peered through the crack. Behind the messy desk sat Spinneretta, who was typing at a computer. Exhaustion sagged under her eyes. Though he felt bad about bothering her, he was lonely and confused enough to lay it aside. He needed to talk to someone, bad. His knuckles rapped against the door, and Spinneretta started abruptly at the sound of the intrusion. For just a moment, as she squinted toward the door, she looked like she didn’t recognize him at all.
“What do you want?” she asked in a none-too-welcoming tone.
Feeling embarrassed, Arthr pushed the door further open. “Hey. Do you, uhh . . . Do you mind if I hang out with you for a bit?”
She blinked at him. Irritation weighed her eyelids down, and after what seemed to be an eternity she turned back to the computer and sighed. “Yeah, whatever. Do what you want.”
Arthr slipped inside, closing the door behind him. He made his way over to the chair that sat opposite his sister’s seat. He lowered himself into it, and then noticed the empty cans of assorted energy drinks littering the desk’s surface. “What the? Spins, you didn’t drink all these did you?”
“Mmm,” she said, typing something at the old-looking machine.
He stared at her. He now saw it was not merely irritation but also lack of sleep that pulled her eyelids low. “How long have you been awake?”
“Don’t know. Clock on this thing isn’t working yet. Probably forty hours.”
“Spins, what the heck’s wrong with you? I’ve never seen you like this before.”
“New idea: I’m going to start charging people to tell me that,” she said in a weary tone. “You can be my first customer. Doubt you’ll be the last.”
A sick feeling stabbed his gut as he studied the empty cans. “Wait a minute, where did you even get these? Kyle doesn’t drink Thunderjolt. How did you . . . ?”
“Bought ’em at the convenience store down on Main Street. Or whatever the shit-town equivalent is called.”
The sickness validated itself with a frigid vengeance. “What? I thought we weren’t supposed to leave!”
“Ahh. You’re right. I couldn’t have left since they said not to. It seems I’ve created a paradox. The timeline has been irreparably damaged, so I’d better get rid of the rest of these before reality collapses into itself.”
“Spins, what the hell’s going on with you? Are you—”
“Look,” she spat, turning to face him. “I’m in no mood for you of all people to start telling me what to do. What I do is none of your damn business.”
“It sure as hell is my business! We’re hiding from some spider-cult corporation, and you think leaving without permission is somehow not my concern? Given everything that’s going on—”
“What the fuck do you know about what’s going on, Arthr?” she snapped. After a moment of frigid silence, she turned back to the keyboard and started to type something. “Sorry. I just . . . I don’t want to hear it right now.”
Arthr nodded a little and looked away. He didn’t have the stamina to fight her over nothing. “Fine. Whatever.” For a few moments, neither of them said a word. The only sound was the crunching of the old keyboard.
Spinneretta tried to ignore Arthr. She just focused on the primitive text editor open before her. After hacking away at a shell script that was surely not going to work, she paused long enough to wipe her eyes with the back of her hand. She unfurled her spider legs behind her, stretching them out and relishing the popping that came to her joints.
“I think you need to get some sleep,” Arthr said.
She shook her head. “Can’t sleep.” Arthr then leaned back in his seat, and let out a nervous little sigh. She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye, suddenly suspicious. “Is something on your mind?” she asked.
Arthr was quiet for a moment. His own spider legs fidgeted, a nervous electricity buzzing between them. “Umm . . . Spins, can we have kids?”
Her fingers froze at the keyboard. “What?”
At once, his face lit up with embarrassment. Another nervous laugh bubbled up from his chest. “Oh, n-no, I mean . . . I didn’t mean with each other.”
“That fucking goes without saying!” She huffed and turned back to the terminal emulator on the screen. But the pointless endeavor painted on the stained screen couldn’t distract her.
Arthr was quiet for a moment. “Are you saying you’ve never thought about that question before?”
“Of cou
rse I’ve thought about it,” she said, feeling a scathing bitterness at the timing of his question. It was a question as old as the enigma of their origins.
“Well, I’ve been thinking about it a lot more lately. Because of all this.” He gestured around him with his spider legs. “Like, if we’re some kind of once-in-a-lifetime promised children, then, like, what would happen, you know?” Another nervous laugh that said he was hiding something. “Like, if I just knocked some girl up, would the kid come out normal or would it be like us?”
Her molars pressed against one another. “Now hardly seems like the time to have borderline responsible thoughts like that.”
“You think this is a new thing? I’ve always had that thought hanging around in the back of my mind. Just especially now, you know. Like . . . Would it even work? Or are we evolutionary dead ends?”
She scoffed. “I wouldn’t hold out much hope of us being promised children. It’s one fucked up promise if we are.”
“Whatever we are, it doesn’t change my question.”
She glared at the command prompt. Command not found. She was getting damn sick of that error. “Do you really want to know what I think?”
“Yeah. That’s why I asked.”
She took a deep breath and yawned, calling back the obsolete conclusion she had once sealed the question with. “I think whatever created us was either such a fluke that it could never happen again, or was such a marvel of science that nature could never replicate it. Let’s say you were to knock up some girl,” she said, taking offense to the taste of the phrase, “what would happen? Your floozy might not even have the right chromosomes to match whatever gave us our legs. My guess is those genes would get left behind, and your kids would come out normal. That’s my guess.”
Arthr nodded. “But, what about the . . . Uhh, extra chromosomes or whatever?”
She shook her head and fought back another yawn. “I’m not a biologist. That’s just what I think would happen. Opinion. Hypothesis.” She finished off the night’s third can of Lightningjolt and crumpled it in a pair of legs. “Why are you bringing this up now, anyway?”
He took a deep breath. “Because I think I’m in love with Annika.”
The air suddenly tasted like poison. Spinneretta’s fingers fumbled and splashed random letters across the command line. “Oh God, Arthr! Tell me you’re joking!”
He shook his head in a solemn gesture of denial. “I don’t think I am.”
“God, no. What’s the matter with you? What the hell do you see in her?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “She’s . . . I don’t know, she’s just really . . . Like . . . ”
Spinneretta grumbled. “Let me guess, it has nothing to do with her personality.”
He shook his head, and his spider legs waved in a defensive gesture. “N-no, it’s not like that. I like her personality, too.”
She scowled. “Then we have nothing further to discuss.”
“What? She’s . . . sweet?”
“No, she’s a bitch.” Her fingers tapped at random keys to disperse her frustration. “I would have believed you if you’d said she’s hot and I want to fuck her, but now you’re just trying to save face. And it sickens me.”
“It’s not like that.”
“And she’s much older than you, you know. She’s like twenty-two or something like that.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“You know? Then what’s the matter with you!?”
“It’s not like I’m choosing this,” he spat. “I just feel it happening and can’t control it.” He crossed his arms and looked away from her. “I mean, I understand. I do. That this is hardly the time for that kind of shit. It’s not . . . It’s not appropriate or necessary for anything, but I can’t stop myself. I just . . . I felt like I needed to vent about this to someone.”
“Congratulations. You vented, and you’re still an idiot.”
“It’s not like I can help it.”
She sighed, disgustingly aware of her own hypocrisy. His words were so goddamn familiar. He was right—and so was she. It was hardly the time for getting bent out of shape over something as inconsequential as love. But she couldn’t help it, either. The Instinct. It had been the Instinct that started the downward spiral leading to her embarrassment on the night of her skirmish with Pat. It was the Instinct that led to the ruination of Mark’s plan to dismantle NIDUS. More than any simple infatuation, how much of what she felt was owed to that animal Instinct? And if it was indeed the Instinct’s fault, then what if Arthr’s infatuation with Annika was the same? Even Kara understood the Hunting as she called it, so it was not an unreasonable conclusion.
She took a deep breath. “Arthr,” she said. “Have you ever felt something unusual come over you? Like, an adrenal rush of some kind?”
“Yeah, all the time,” he said, eyebrow cocked in confusion. “When I’m fighting, especially.”
“I don’t mean a regular adrenal rush. I mean something different.”
He stared at her. “Different?”
Spinneretta sighed, feeling exposed. “Sometimes this weird feeling comes over me. It’s like . . . I can only describe it as feeling drunk, except all my senses get completely out of control. I can hear forever, I can smell blood, and . . . Yeah, and my reflexes, too.” She bit her lip. “Is that how Annika makes you feel?”
Arthr fidgeted. “I . . . Well, not exactly. Weird feeling, check and mate. But I don’t get drunk off it or get super senses. That’s ridiculous.”
She focused on the screen before her and tried for a third time to open the configuration file in Vim. Dead end. “Well, whatever. Like her if you want; just don’t expect me to approve or help you.”
He nodded, looking dejected, and folded his spider legs around himself. “Spins.”
“Mmm?”
“Let’s do something.”
“Huh?”
“Let’s do something. Like, play a game or something else dumb. I need to take my mind off this.”
She pressed her palms against her eyes for a moment, watching the rainbow amoebas scatter and reform in the darkness. “Whatever.” She needed a break from this pointless distraction, though a distraction from a distraction was just delaying the inevitable. It was nothing more than adding another layer of denial. “What did you have in mind?”
“I found an old Atari in the attic. It’s no fun to play those old crappy games alone, though.”
“Ugh. Pass.”
“Come on. It’ll take your mind off of whatever this is all about,” he said, gesturing to the empty energy drink cans.
She closed her eyes and wrapped her legs around her chest. The stress was building toward lethal levels. A stale breath forced its way out of her lungs, and she surrendered a weak nod. “Fine. But just for a bit.”
Spinneretta awoke to a throbbing headache mildly worse than the dream that preceded it. One hand went to her temple as she rolled over on the couch, upholstery crinkling as it peeled from her cheek. Warm sunlight greeted her as she forced her eyes open. What the hell even happened? The last thing she remembered was playing that stupid Atari game with Arthr. She couldn’t even recall going to sleep. The overdose of sugar and high-fructose corn syrup was the most likely candidate for the pain. As she sat up, she noticed something soft wrapped about her. In her half-awake daze, her first thought was that someone had been kind enough to place a blanket over her, but as she regained her senses she saw it was a bluish-gray jacket. Her heart skipped a beat. She pulled Mark’s jacket off her and held it in her hands. One sleeve, still stained with brown splotches of blood, thawed her cold disposition. Despite herself, she found herself beginning to smile. Stupid, she thought. Don’t think this changes anything. She folded the jacket up and placed it over the arm of the couch before stretching and stumbling to her feet.
“Spinny.”
She jumped in mid-stretch, heart jolted in panic. She spun around and found Mark in one of the old chairs in the corner. “Holy shit,” she gasped. �
��What are you doing?”
He gave her a puzzled look weighed down with a sad distance. “I was simply waiting for you to awake.”
“Waiting? How fucking long have you been there?”
“Since around noon.”
She paused. The golden light was from too low an angle for that statement to make sense. But the shadows were in all the wrong places. She gave her head a shake to try to slosh the pain out of her eye sockets. “What time is it?”
“Half to seven.”
“Oh, what the fuck.” How had that happened? With the caffeine of three whole energy drinks coursing through her blood, there was no way she should’ve slept so long. Forty sleepless hours must have made one hell of a counterweight. Either way, there was a bigger, heavier question. “Why the hell are you talking to me now? I thought the way we left things was pretty definitive.”
“Spinny, listen for a moment.” He took a deep breath. “I am sorry. For the other night. I . . . I should not have done anything. And I am deeply sorry for what happened. But I think it is pointless for us to avoid one another. At the very least, we are still friends, are we not?”
Sorry for what happened. Which part are you apologizing for, anyway? Friends, at the very least? Will you quit jerking me around and give me a straight answer for God’s sake? She bit her tongue. She was in no mood to fight him. “Fine. Friends. Whatever. So, why are you watching me sleep?”
His fingers curled slightly, clenching over one pant leg. A nervous twitch began in his cheeks. “Forgive me. I simply wanted to catch you before anybody else did.”
“Catch me?” A lump formed in her throat. “Why? Did something happen?”
“In a manner of speaking.” The corners of his mouth turned up in a forced smile. “I wanted to do something special for you. So I decided that I would take you out for dinner. For your birthday.”
Chapter 27
6,209 Days
Dinner passed in a blur for Spinneretta. The combination of caffeine, sugar, and syrupy awkwardness distorted her perception of time. She’d barely even started on her naked spaghetti, and then it was time for dessert: rice pudding. Goddammit. He remembered. It was bland and tasteless, which she attributed to being spoiled by Amanda’s mom’s cooking. And though it all passed by in a numb and mostly quiet haze, she couldn’t help but remember their not-date at that diner from before. Not-date. I guess I’m two for nil. She wanted to be mad at Mark for jerking her around, for not even being able to remain consistent with how he treated her, but it was useless. He made her comfortable, and even the way he’d stormed out on her the other night couldn’t change that. And it was just so much easier to let go and pretend, even for a moment, that they may yet have had something. It was this resignation that allowed bits of banter and conversation to flow through the cracks in her defenses over the course of the meal.
Helixweaver (The Warren Brood Book 2) Page 33