Into the Spider's Web

Jace thought about Elthera as he fell asleep. Her voluptuous form. Her radiant green face. He dreamed of holding her; her green, cold cheek touching his…

He was to meet her on the bridge that morning. He almost didn't find the way again in time and he arrived a little breathless.

She was stationed at a computer near the great window that looked out onto space. She turned and grinned at him as he entered, but the Admiral was pestering her with questions about something, bother him.

She turned to pore over the computer screen again, its glow shining off her green cheeks. "I've been searching for this program for days, Admiral. It was buried in the Deep Code level before the Robots left the station. I can scan the lower levels now… the robo-rats are coming from the station core. There is activity down there. Maybe it's their nest..."

She continued answering the Admiral's questions and Jace looked around the bridge. There was another lady near the Admiral's seat. A brunette. She also had a silver striped uniform like Elthera. She must be another lieutenant. Everyone else on the bridge had either bronze stripes, like Nestor, or the turquoise stripe of some lower rank or other.

Elthera turned to Jace. "Sorry, Jace. Please come over here."

Jace had been standing awkwardly near the entrance, but now he made his way carefully across to her computer that was set near the Admiral's seat. It was a long way from the entrance, but he was sure he shouldn't run.

At that moment, a guy in a shabby red suit came storming onto the bridge. Josh recognised him from the gambling table at Stumpy's place. He had been one of the gamblers who had lost to Elthera. He was holding what looked like a large, metal rat by its tail.

"You're landlords!" he was shouting at the Admiral, Elthera and the brunette lady. "You're responsible for pest control."

"How did it die, Stumpy?" asked the brunette. "Did it get in the food?"

"It ran right across the swindelstones table!" Stumpy shouted, waving it in the air. "If you don't do something I'll…"

"You'll what?" said the brunette. "Oh, please say you'll leave. I'll take the rat over you, any day."

"Cool it, Penelope," said Elthera hastily to the brunette. She turned to Stumpy and the green plastic skin of her neck creased in a weird way as she did so. "Stumpy, I am working on it. Please just have a little faith."

Stumpy grumbled. "Well let me know how it goes tonight."

He nodded at Jace and then turned to leave. "See you then," Jace blurted out because he wasn't entirely sure what the Station's etiquette demanded he say.

Stumpy turned around. "Well aren't you the friendly young fellow? Come down to my place tonight, then. Look forward to it."

Elthera's dark green lips twitched to form a smile. Penelope tsked rather loudly and turned back to her own terminal. Elthera's beauty was even more unreal when seeing her next to Penelope. Her features, the bridge of her nose, her cheekbones and jaw were so perfectly sculpted, as though she had been deliberately shaped from green plastic to be as perfect as any statue. Elthera touched Jace on the arm with a gloved hand. "Sleep well?"

"Um, yes. You?"

"Fine, dear." But her blue eyes looked a little sad for a moment, just like they had after the fiasco in the Titanic restaurant the previous day. "Listen, Jace. We're going to go down and investigate the robo-rat problem. It'll be your first test. But don't worry."

"Try to make it worth everyone's while, boy," said the Admiral. Jace couldn't guess why he'd say that.

"Alright, Ajax," said Elthera softly. She stood, taking Jace's arm in hers and then led him to the elevator.

"Hold on. It may be a bumpy ride. We're going such a long way down…"

She pressed a small, ivory button with a label in a code of some kind that Jace could not read.

The doors slid silently closed and Jace had the sensation of the elevator descending and then lurching off to the side.

There was a window pane in the lift and Jace could see scenes from the different decks of the station flashing past as the lift zoomed in different directions, all the while going downwards. He became aware of Elthera's gaze on him. He wished he could read the expression on her green face. What was she looking at him like that for? What was she thinking?

"Tell me, Jace. What was it that first made you want to be a metahuman?"

Was she starting the formal interview right here and now, in the lift? He wished he could remember all those answers that he had rehearsed for the standard interview questions. "I want to be useful in the fight against the evil Avatars. My father had ambitions for me too. He wanted me and my sister to both enter the Academy, but then my sister ran off and got married and he did not forgive her for that. When he was on his deathbed, his last words to me were, "it's up to you now Jace.""

Elthera looked anxious… possibly. The way her mannequin face moved, it looked like her brows would have drawn together if she'd had any. She touched his arm. "Oh, Jace."

"That's not all. I want to be someone. Do something useful. Stop the Avatar menace before they rise from the darkness."

Elthera nodded. He went on; "I'm nobody at the moment, because I haven't proven otherwise. I've proven I'm not someone…"

OK, that hadn't come out as he intended. Elthera was staring at him, her blue eyes wide.

Maybe it wasn't wise, but he was determined to say what else weighed on his mind. "At the moment, I'm a boring nobody. So plain and uninteresting."

"No! And you're not plain." She touched his cheek with a gloved hand and he felt a thrill at her touch once again. He stared back at her. Did she find him attractive? Was it possible?

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

She smiled at him. "Back on the Ganymede base, auburn hair and green eyes were uncommon, so we thought them a hallmark of beauty. Having a freckled face was too, because the poor old Sun wasn't strong enough to make a decent sunrise on Ganymede and we had a sort of … collective nostalgia." She considered this for a moment. "Hmmm. Yes that would fit. Having a freckled or tanned face showed that you had felt the sun full in your face."

The lift had picked up pace now and was diving steeply downwards. Outside, all was darkness.

Jace wanted to show that he had done research on the evil avatar robots. He started to tell her his thoughts on what he'd learned. "It's funny how the game architects made iconic spirit guides for the avatars who would not be able to win. Like the evil player characters who were not as brave, nor as successful as Jackals – they got spider icons."

"Indeed." Elthera's green face was grave. "They are another type of enemy. I doubt they'd start trouble. Unless the others put them up to it." She stroked her green cheek with a gloved finger, lost in thought.

"And the way the player characters in the game talked, often saying 'greetings.' Or when the evil player characters saw the living whirlwind they'd go, 'foul thing, what manner of pestilence are you?' Did anyone on Earth ever speak like that?"

"No, that was a hackish attempt by the game architects to make them sound old-fashioned. But then only the player characters talked like that, so it didn't make sense in their universe either."

"Yeah. Even in the player character's own country, they were the only character who ever said 'greetings.' Or stuff like, 'greetings, rotten old goat,' or 'greetings fetid creature or foul mutants.'"

The lift came to a halt. Elthera opened a panel and drew out two belts with little torches set into them. As Jace strapped his on, she picked up two devices that resembled pens and handed them to him. "Circuit jammers. These should take out the rats."

The doors slid open and Elthera slipped her arm in Jace's, for which he was grateful. The corridor outside the lift was totally dark, except for the light from their belts, which played eerily over Elthera's brightly coloured face. Down on this lower deck, there was an ancient, fusty reek, like that of an underground dungeon. There were old boxes piled up everywhere and only a narrow path between them.

A robo-rat scurried across their path and Elthera pointed her circuit jammer at it. The metal rat froze in position, immobilised. There was a scratching sound somewhere nearby. Jace gave a little start.

"Don't worry, dear. It's only another rat." Elthera's low, sweet voice was so out of place in this dreadful pit, Jace thought.

There was a scurrying in front of them and a whole swarm of robo-rats came in their direction. They both fired their circuit jammers, immobilising the rats right and left.

"Their behaviour is not typical," said Elthera, looking down at the pile of metal rodents. "They wouldn't be running to us… unless running from something. Could there be a different robot infestation?"

"What would that be?"

The pale light of their belts played over Elthera's perfectly sculpted features. She looked quite ghostly in the near darkness. "Something's wrong… there's something … some malevolence at work nearby…"

Suddenly there was something like an explosion without sound and they were both catapulted away from each other by the force of it. Jace collided with a pile of boxes. He sat up, a little dazed, but then to his utter horror, he saw the grey, hairy bodies of fat spiders crawling all over him. He jumped up, yelling and frantically brushing himself.

As if from far away, he heard Elthera's voice. "Jace! Come to me! Please!"

But he had no sense of direction. Where was she? Then near at hand he saw clusters of gleaming red compound eyes in the darkness and the sound of clicking and salivating...

Elthera's voice again. "Jace! It's an illusion! Don't move, I'm coming!"

But Jace could hardly hear her. Filled with panic, he bolted. The spiders fell from him as he ran, but now he could feel sticky, white strands hanging from the ceiling brushing and groping at him, like the strands of an enormous cobweb…

He ran harder, heart pounding. Soon he had no idea where he was. He paused, panting for breath.

"Running from something, boy?"

Jace whirled round. There was a lady standing next to him. Very strangely, she had an old fashioned travelling hood drawn up. He could just about see that her pale face was framed with black hair. She drew back blood red lips to reveal her teeth to their fullest extent, her black eyes glittering.

"Greetings, you freckled plough-boy." Her voice had a harsh, metallic quality, like she had a throat full of drawing pins. She made a weird, slurping sound.

Oh no! She had said 'greetings…' and spoke like an uneducated game architects idea of an ancient Earth dialect…

He held up his circuit jammer, pointing it and clicking frantically. It had no effect. The Rogue Avatar lifted her hand that gleamed bone white in the darkness. Around her wrist, there appeared to be a bracelet of knuckle bones cobbled together. Jace remembered that in the strange world of their game, the player characters could cast illusion spells if they had bracelets of bone. The Avatar's outline seemed to burn and blur, wavering in front of his eyes as if through a heat haze. Her eyes seemed to bulge into grotesque clusters of compound eyes and her mouth stretched as spider fangs sprouted from her gums. Her pale arms shrivelled into hairy spider legs and more and more legs sprouted from her distending body.

It's just an illusion, he told himself. But it was no good. He stumbled and fell. He picked up an old wrench from the grimy floor and flung it at the Spider Avatar, but missed. She gave a hollow laugh. "Your death with be exquisite. I'll show your spotted pelt to the Cobra. Then he'll know that I'm a winner!"

But then a pile of crates fell onto the Spider and she shrieked, many arms flailing and knocking the crates aside. Elthera stood there, her beautiful green face seeming to glow almost like a beacon in the fetid darkness, her blue eyes furious, fixated. She gripped the Spider's forelegs and flung her backwards.

The Spider staggered. "Foul mutant! You dare come between my lawful prey and the white, sticky strands of my webbing?"

OK, a female player character should never use overtones like that, however depraved she might be.

Elthera gave a cry and hurled herself at the evil creature. The Spider's terrible jaws snapped furiously, but Elthera wrestled her to the ground. Jace picked up the wrench and leapt to his feet, wanting to help. He brandished the wrench, but the Spider shot a strand of webbing at him. Jace leapt back as it touched him, frantically trying to brush it off.

"You haven't produced any white sticky strands, carrot-top. I doubt the mutant lusts after you," sneered the Spider. "In gamespace, I've levelled whole villagers and burned a city-port to the ground. What is such as you against one such as I?"

She had several of her hairy arms around Elthera, but the green metahuman seemed to bend her body with inhuman elasticity and free her own arms, holding her circuit jammer in the air she brought it down hard into the Spider's bloated, hairy form.

The Spider gave a terrible shriek, hairy arms going rigid and releasing Elthera, who leapt to her feet. The Spider lay convulsing on the floor as Elthera stood over her. Evidently the circuit jammer did not work against the Avatars from any distance, but it was effective if inserted into them.

"You could at least have used an adaptor, you unnatural creature," said the Spider. She began to shrink and dwindle into her human form again. She lay on the floor, travelling hood still up, the circuit jammer protruding from her chest. "I see a white starship a – coming. It's coming for me!" Her outline wavered again and shimmered. All that was left on the floor was the form of a skeletal, steel robot. The lenses of its eyes glowed red for a moment and then went blank.

Jace's heart was still thudding. Elthera's breath was coming in ragged gasps and her gloved hands were trembling. Jace touched her arm tentatively. "Erm, well done…"

She gripped his shoulders. Her blue eyes were very wide in her green face and he thought they looked wild and anguished. He had not seen her with that expression. What was wrong?

She spoke and her voice shook. "Why did you run off like that? You could have been killed! I – I thought for a moment…" She choked.

His heart sank. He'd done something wrong. But then, the Spider's illusion had been so real. "Um… I thought I had… I mean, it looked like there were spiders all over me and that a giant spider chased me."

"Of course." She put her arms around him. He could feel her heart thudding in her breast. Despite everything, it was distracting to feel her firm breasts pressing against him. Her cold, green cheek touched his. She stroked his back. "Don't frighten me like that…" she sounded near tears.

Great. He'd almost made her cry a second time. Things really weren't going well.