Caught In A Web

one

"Yes, sir," you responded, balancing the phone between your ear and shoulder as you grabbed items and stuffed them into your backpack. "Yes, sir. I promise to be there early. I wouldn't want to miss being a part of the lab opportunity... Yes. Thank you again, sir. I will see you then. Bye."

You tossed your phone on the bed after hanging up. You let out a little squeal as you fell back on the bed. You had just been invited by your professor to examine some of the items and animals that had been infected with toxins after the Battle of New York. It was an honor to be invited. You knew it would be hard to keep your excitement at bay for the next few days. But you were going to have to try.

Ever since you could remember, you wanted to be a scientist. You've wanted to change the world with your discoveries. You studied a lot of Bruce Banner's works and were inspired by him. Though, you never wanted to experiment on yourself like he did—especially after what happened to him.

You sighed contently as you thought about all the possible things you might see when you visit the lab. But then you began to remember the Battle of New York. You shuddered as you sat up, knowing that if you thought about the actual too long the nightmares would return. And you had worked too hard to have them come back. That was 5 years ago. You were now 25 and working on your PhD. Things had changed for the better and you were hoping that it would only continue to go that way.

~~~

The lab was just as amazing as you thought it would be. Many plants, insects, and animals had been affected by the toxins the aliens brought when they attacked New York. Your Professor and those who ran the lab trusted you, and the other students in the group, to be careful as you were all basically allowed free rein.

You took your time, going from specimen to specimen, using the tablet you were allowed to borrow to read up on each one. The charts and test results were so interesting to you.

"Y/N," your professor called for your attention.

"Yes?" You responded, hating to have to pull your eyes away from your tablet.

"Would you like to hold one of the spiders?"

"Sure!"

You hurried over to where your professor was. He opened the glass tank that held a variety of spiders. On the outside, none of them looked like they had changed, but you saw the test results. Their DNA had been changed and it was changing more and more as the new eggs hatched.

"Go ahead," the professor encouraged.

You slowly placed your hand in the tank. You set it in front of one of the spiders, waiting for it to decide to crawl onto your hand. When it finally did, you held your breath. The tiny legs tickled the palm of your hand as the spider moved around. You moved your hand out of the tank to get a better lock at the creature.

"It's amazing that so much inner DNA has changed, but nothing physical," you noted in awe.

"Actually, we have found that some of this new generation of spiders have fangs and venom," one of the scientists said as they came up to you. "Don't worry though, those ones are in a different tank under observation right now."

"I have a few questions about that," your professor said, leading the scientist away.

That left you alone with the spider crawling around your hand. You watch in awe as you moved your hand around to keep the spider in your sight. It all happened so fast though. In a literal blink of an eye. You blinked and the spider bit you.

"Ow!" You exclaimed softly.

You quickly put the spider back in the tank and closed it. Looking closely at your hand, you could barely make out the bite mark. Not wanting to alarm anyone, you kept quiet about the bite. Unless something came up, it was no big deal, right?

~~~

The next morning, you woke up abruptly, needing to throw up. You rushed to the bathroom, barely making it before the contents of your stomach came barreling up. As your head was practically inside the toilet, you could feel the sweat gathering on your skin. You wiped your mouth off with a piece of toilet paper as you sat back against the tub. You closed your eyes, noting how everything hurt in your body.

Remembering the spider bite, you glanced down at your hand. There was no sign of irritation or that you had even gotten bitten. You immediately thought then that it must be some sickness going around.

After struggling to heave yourself off the floor, you went back to bed. You made sure to quickly inform your professors and your boss that you would be home sick for today. That went on for three straight days. You couldn't keep anything down, could hardly move, and had a fever that caused you to sweat and have chills.

You finally had a break on the morning of day four. You woke up feeling completely normal like you hadn't just felt like you were on your deathbed the days prior. Taking it slowly, you went to the bathroom and took a bath. Sitting in a warm bath and feeling like a normal person felt good.

Wrapping yourself up in a towel, you stepped out of the tub and moved to stand in front of the mirror. You needed to start getting ready so that you could actually go to class and work today. You pulled your hand away from your towel, only to have your towel come with you. You tried shaking your towel off of your hand, only for it to keep sticking. You removed your other hand to see that the towel was stuck to it as well.

"What the hell," you whispered to yourself.

Even with the towel stuck onto with of your hands, you did what you could to peel the towels away from your hands. It felt like you were peeling a sticker away from its backing. You let the towel just fall to the ground, not wanting that to happen again. Leaving the bathroom, you grabbed your clothes, only to have them stick to your hands as the towel did. Fighting with clothing, you tried to get dressed as quickly as possible.

In your rush, you fell into your desk, pushing it into the wall and causing it to create a hole. Your desk wasn't easy to move. It was a heavy, old wooden desk that you had to pay two men to move it into your apartment. Timidly, you gave the desk a pull back to its original position, which was too easy.

"How the—"

Your arm flung down and suddenly there was a sticky substance covering your foot. You crouched down to see that it was white—almost clear— and silky. Slowly, you reached out to touch it. It felt and looked like a spider web.

"No way," you breathed out. "What is happening?"

~~~

You could not get to your class fast enough. Thankfully, it was a lab day to work on your thesis project. You immediately swabbed your mouth, drew some blood, and grabbed some skin samples. There was something going on with you and you were determined to find out what.

There were other people in the lab with you, so you had to stay calm and collected when your newfound strength would break a beaker or your hand would stick to something. You realized that the more calm you were, the less likely you were to stick to something. So you put headphones in and blasted music that kept you in the zone and calm.

It took you two days—with long nights in the lab—to finish running the tests on yourself. Upon reading and studying all the tests, it was easy to determine that your DNA had been altered. And you knew exactly what it was that did it: the spider in the lab you had visited. The venom in the spider had changed your DNA and given you spider-like superpowers.