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.

Shit, this is bad! If he starts to panic then he'll give us away for sure! Fuck what do I- what do I do, how do I-

The sound of footsteps echoed down the hallway, and though he could keep the two of them shrouded in the shadows that wouldn't do much good when he was staring down a torch attached to the barrel of an L85A3. He looked around frantically, almost desperately, for anything he could use to calm his new friend down.

"Come on, please just calm down, please just-"

His whispers appeared to confuse his friend more than reassure them, causing them to whip their head about the room in a panic as though wondering where his voice was coming from. Wander paled a little as a pair of combat boots ran down the hallway in front of the little alcove he'd hidden them both in, Elias opening their mouth to make a surprised exclamation.

Wander didn't give him the chance to give away their position.

As fast as he could recall ever acting, and with no small amount of panic flooding his mind, he clapped a hand over his new friend's mouth and sank his chelicerae into the angel's neck. Their friend stilled for a moment in shock, then went limp as a mixture of paralysing agents and flooded their system.

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As horrible as he felt for taking such an action, Wander was just glad he wasn't in his venom cycle at the moment; at least this had given him a non-lethal way to incapacitate his friend so he wouldn't give them away, even if they did hate him for it when they woke up.

He wouldn't blame him. Not after this.

Still, at least if his friend hated him after this then it would mean that they were still alive. Elias couldn't hate him if they'd been killed, after all. Or maybe they could. If angels were real then did that mean that heaven was real? And if heaven was real did that mean hell was real as well? And if hell was real then that was definitely where he was going since he was... well, he was a monster for a start, and now he'd just pumped dozens of millilitres of a highly potent toxin directly into an angel's bloodstream. If that didn't get you into hell then he didn't know what did.

The footsteps continued on past him, three more sets following the first, and not for the first time Wander thanked whatever creature had seen fit to bless him with so thick a blanket of shadows. He stayed there, huddled with his now unconscious friend, and waited for the last of the footfalls to fade away. When the cameras moved away from his position he bolted, [angel] in his arms, and made for the next little patch of shadow along the corridor. If he could just play it smart he could get his friend out, and then... and then he'd be out as well. Out. God, that felt like such a strange prospect to him now. He'd been in that concrete cell for what, two, three years? In all that time he'd never seen the sun, had never basked in the cold moonlight, had never so much as felt the wind on his cheeks or the rain in his hair. He would be free again. Free.

For a reason he told himself he wasn't quite sure of, despite knowing full well in truth that the revelation had brought this about, Wander began to cry. He would be out of here. No more tests, no more being prodded at like a lab rat, no more having his venoms extracted and refined for these men in their white coats and black uniforms. He would be free again.

He dashed through the facility from one dark corner to the next, moving as softly as his footsteps would allow him to go. He was very good at being stealthy, after all, he'd practically been created as a nocturnal hunter, but even his skills were challenged as he carried a pearly-winged angel who happened to radiate golden light from around their head seemingly at random. The constant training and tests had at least made him very good at what he did, but it also meant that the agency knew all of his tricks as well. Getting out was likely to be difficult, but he knew he could do it. He felt bad for those who he was leaving behind in here, but he'd never really been that attached to any of them. He hadn't really had the chance, what with the only times he'd ever really interacted with any of the others was when they were acting out and the diluted form of his toxins weren't enough to incapacitate them. That was all he'd ever been in here, a tool to keep everyone docile and unable to resist.

Well, he wasn't doing that any longer. He was going to leave this place and return to the forest, and he was going to learn how to do things the proper way, not the way that the agency wanted them to act. He was going to go back to the lowlands around the Cairngorms, he was going to find a nice forest somewhere to settle down in, and he was going to learn to control his venom cycles until he could almost change them at will.

More to the point, he was never going to be strapped into one of those extraction machines again. Never. He wasn't going back. He was going to leave this place, and he was going to be free.

Darting from point to point, whilst making sure to avoid cameras or shroud them in darkness where necessary, he gradually made his way to one of the massive air filtration systems next to the elevators that led back to the surface. Alarms were still blaring in the background, and soon enough he knew that the entire facility would be on lockdown, but if he was quick enough he now had his way out. Bingo.

Diving into the vent, two of his arms still cradling Elias he used the rest of his limbs to slowly make his way up the hundred metre shaft. Just by the tenth metre his arms were starting to burn, and by the fortieth he felt like he wouldn't be able to hold on anymore, but he had to. If he fell now then he would be the reason his friend died, and he would be dead as well. He couldn't let go here, he absolutely had to-

He blinked a few times in confusion, his eight eyes settling onto one of his hands touching the wall. They felt... sticky. Very sticky. As he drew his hands away a viscous white substance followed it, almost seeming to solidify as it came into contact with the air. Was this... had he done it? Had he finally done what all those scientists had failed to do in their years of research and testing? He had, hadn't he? Yes, spider-silk was coming out of what looked like a small vein in each of his hands, save those holding his friend. A quick test sent the strange liquid-web out of those hands as well, confirming that all of his hands were now seemingly able to send out webbing. He huffed out an exhilarating breath in disbelief, disbelief and more than a little happiness, as he let go of the walls and dropped a little. Sure enough his webbing held, and he dangled in place as he gathered his strength before making the climb once more.

The scientists had given him some comics once, probably about two months after they'd 'secured' him, about some American human with the same abilities. Wander didn't think he'd be able to sling himself up using his webbing, it wasn't a grappling hook after all, but it seemed that at the very least he could rest in here before climbing up the rest of the way to the surface. After that it was just... well, if home was the Cairngorms National Park and this was MOD Chicksands... if memory served correctly then it was a five-hundred mile trek north.

At least he wouldn't lack for exercise in the future.

And so over the course of the next hour he pulled himself up to the surface with his friend in tow and, stopping only for a moment to marvel at the beauty of the outside world and the moon and the clouds and the grass and- okay, maybe he'd stopped for a little longer than just a moment, but it had been two or three years, sue him! He shifted Elias a little so he could hold them with all six of their arms, not wanting them to be uncomfortable whilst they slept and he bounded past checkpoints whenever a cloud obscured the moon and gave him yet more darkness to play around in. When he'd broken himself from another reverie after hearing an owl in the distance and had forced himself to calm down from his excitement he, under the cover of night and with his only friend still lying unconscious in his arms, he ran as fast as his legs would take him away from the grasping hands of the agency.

It was cold out here, colder than he remembered the outside world being, but that didn't matter.

The cold on his skin just meant he was free.