Mystery at Midnight

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You hurried through the halls, keeping your footfall nimble and light. It was the drowsy, half-lit hours between curfew and morning training, so you didn't expect any spider people to scuttle down the ceiling or lurk behind shadowy corners. Still, it never hurt to be careful.

When you reached Miguel's sterile, silvery-walled lab, you shifted through the cracked door and ignored the stab of guilt. Your sister's chemotherapy treatment was in less than a week, and you'd promised to be there for her.

"It doesn't feel real," she'd nervously laughed after you'd gone with her to schedule the appointment. The sky above the hospital parking lot had shone purple; a drowsy, vibrant sunset. "Chemo's for dying people."

"Don't say that, Rebecca," you'd said with a shudder. "You're not dying. Just sick." You sidestepped into her beachy, white little car, slamming the door behind you.

"I don't want to do all this," Rebecca had admitted quietly, resting her dark, defined curls on the headrest of the passenger seat. "I don't want to lose my hair. I don't want them to hook me up to some machine."

"I'll come with you. Then I'll buy you a milkshake."

"Aren't milkshakes bad for sick people?" She giggled, and her laugh pattered gently like summer rain. She exhaled a shaky sigh, then forced a bright smile. "Promise?"

"I promise. I'll be there."

"Okay. Now shut up and drive, I don't want to spend the rest of my life in a parking lot." You'd pulled out of the parking lot, and when it rain actually splashed across your windshield, you turned on the wipers and tried not to cry.

Now, your steps sounded clumsy and loud to your ears, as if Miguel might roll from the shadows like a sea monster at any moment. You didn't want to betray him. You didn't want the delicate hope you'd seen on his face to wilt and darken. But you needed to steal a watch, for Rebecca, and now was your only opportunity.

With the power blackout, Lyla couldn't blip across your path and activate alarms. With Miguel incapacitated, slumped-over and exhausted in his room, he couldn't shink out his claws and punish you for stealing. With a wave of anticipatory dread, you wondered what the punishment for stealing would be.

As soon as you crossed dimensions, Miguel and Jessica would locate you easily enough. They would tear a whirling portal open, just like before, and drag you back to the Spider-Society training complex. Even once you slipped into your home dimension, you'd only have a few fleeting hours before they caught you.

The interdimensional watches were easy to find; they piled high in a black crate, as if they were nothing more than a collection of rubber duckies. You crept over, gliding across the shiny floor, and plucked the top one out. It glowed silver in the moonlight, compact and sturdy.

"Nice night for sneaking around, innit?"

Hobie's casual voice startled you into rigid terror. You whisked the watch away behind your back, almost dropping it. Hobie's feet softly landed on the floor as he dropped from the vent.

"Hobie," you breathed his name, your eyes blinking quickly with nervous guilt. You must have looked incriminating, slinking around Miguel's abandoned lab and hiding a hand behind your back like a bashful child hiding the last cookie.

"What are you doing here, luv?" Hobie's flat voice lacked its usual playful briskness. His dark, full hair haloed his head in the darkness. The cold metal of his eyebrow piercings glinted like a nocturnal panther's eyes.

"What are you doing here?" You challenged, spinning his question around. Hobie's lips quirked into a smile.

"Fair enough."

When Hobie didn't offer an explanation, you had an odd, shifting feeling that you weren't the only one concealing a secret.

At an impasse, you and Hobie both watched each other, the way boxers narrow their eyes before throwing the first punch. Mistrust thrust its rotten fingers into whatever camaraderie you'd shared.

"Let's keep this between us, yeah?" Hobie eventually said, and you quickly nodded in relief. He gave you a halfhearted, two-fingered salute with his gloved hands, and crawled up the wall on his fingertips, vanishing into the vent and jerking the metallic grate overtop of him.

But before he'd left, he'd slid a tiny, plastic box onto the table. Little glass beakers of neon orange liquid sloshed inside. He hadn't thought you'd noticed; his movement had been deliberately subtle, nothing but a flick of the wrist.

Why had Hobie infiltrated the lab under the cloak of midnight darkness? What had he left for Miguel?

Before your own nerves could shake themselves up like a jar of marbles, you clutched the watch tightly to your chest and rushed out from the mysterious lab.

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