Short Stories From Fading Worlds

The Angel and the Spider: Chapter 3

His friend looked up at him as he gripped one of their arms with two of his own, almost trembling with adrenaline.

"Come on, we're getting the fuck out of here!"

Elias looked at them, a level of fear in his eyes that Wander hadn't seen from anyone in a very long time.

"Wander, I can't- I can't control it, Wander! I don't want you to get hurt because of-"

"Shut the fuck up." he said without a single bit of vitriol in his voice. "If I get hurt it'll be because of my own dumb decisions, not you, so keep fucking running!"

They ran through empty corridors and abandoned cell blocks, ones that hadn't been in use since the incident that wiped out half of the complex when he'd only just arrived here.

He'd heard more than one staff member muttering that they wished they'd had him with them back then. It wasn't him that they actually wished had been around of course, just his toxins. He was unsure exactly how the pills and injections would have stopped the rampage that had occurred, but then he supposed that since they'd refined his venom there hadn't been another break-out attempt. Well, not that he knew about anyways.

"Wander, wait, my- it's the powers, I can't- they'll lead them to us, to you, Wander, I don't know how to-"

He interrupted his friend as he crouched low and peaked around a corner then continued running. The footfalls of his friend were far louder than his own, but then not everyone had his years of practice.

"How do you normally suppress it?! We haven't got much time before they start searching the area, so we need to be quick."

"I- I don't know, they give me pills to keep me- I mean to keep my powers calm! Can we find any?"

Wander looked around almost frantically, as if someone would just have left a bottle of pills lying around and that he would happen to recognise them if they did.

"What were they?"

"What?"

"The pills, what were they?"

Elias gulped, drawing in a series of uneven and sucking breaths.
"I don't know, they never tell me, they just say it's from the toxins of someone else here! Someone like us, like me, I mean!"

Wander looked at his friend a moment with all eight eyes, thinking hard, before a revelation came to him.

No, no, we are not doing that. That cannot be right. His toxins were for inhibiting the violent killers of D-Ward, not for sedating calm and gentle souls like Elias. That was just wrong!

It did make sense though; In all the years he'd been at this facility there had only been one other person who'd produced toxins, and he hadn't really seen Wander around after the scientists had run the tests on the ones they'd extracted from his own chelicerae.

Wander really hoped those two things weren't connected.

He shook his head, getting himself back on track.

"Well, we don't have the time to find any. Not whilst they're looking for us. Can you hold on for just a little- shit, quickly, in here!"

He pulled his friend into a small alcove mostly shielded from the hallway, having heard the shout of a facility guard the next hallway over, and gathered as much shadow as he could around them without it seeming suspicious. He pulled Elias close to him, trying to muffle their hyperventilating breaths so as to keep him from giving them away, but it wasn't any good. Even if it would have worked, the light he would soon be emitting would smother any of the shadows he tried to conjure.