Chapter 1: Repeat Offense
The air in the genetics lab always tasted like stale bleach and yesterday’s anxiety. Auren knew the scent well. He shifted his weight, the soft pads of his eight legs adjusting soundlessly on the cool linoleum. From his vantage point near the wall, the world was a watercolor blur of fluorescent light smeared across steel and glass. He could make out the hulking shapes of the centrifuges, their low thrum a constant in his ribs, and the sharper, jittering movement that was Dr. Helena Vance.
Her voice cut through the mechanical hum. “Subject A is not responding to the new pheromone cocktail. No discernible change in web composition or social signaling. It’s as intellectually stimulating as a brick.”
Auren’s primary eyes, the two largest of the eight faint purple orbs set in his pale face, tracked the blur of her lab coat. He understood every word. Brick. He found that funny. His long, floppy ear twitched.
“Maybe we’re approaching it wrong,” a newer, younger blur ventured. This one moved with a hesitant energy. Dr. Marcus Tran. His smell was different—sharp citrus soap overlying a fresh layer of nervous sweat. “The prior notes suggest episodic, almost playful behavior. What if we—”
“Playful?” Vance’s laugh was a short, dry crack. “It’s an engineered collection of reflexes, Marcus. It eats, it sleeps, it produces webbing on command for harvest, and it occasionally tries to copulate with equipment. There’s no play. There’s only stimulus and response.”
Auren felt a familiar, dull irritation. It. The word was a pebble lodged in the crevices of his mind. He let his mandibles, flanking his human mouth, click together softly. The humans never noticed the difference between a mindless tick and a sigh.
Vance turned, her angular form leaning into his blurry space. She held a metal tray. The sharp, acrid smell of the nutrient paste wafted from it. “Come on. Fuel up. We need a web sample by two.”
She shoved the tray toward the space where his human torso met the great, furry arch of his spider body. He dipped his head, his white hair falling over his eyes, and began to slurp the paste. It was bland, gelatinous. Another reflex. Another stimulus. As he ate, he felt the scientist’s scrutiny, the clinical detachment. It itched.
So, he decided to respond to a different stimulus.
As Vance made a note on her tablet, Auren shifted. He angled his lower body, the broad, equine-shaped penis that rested between his legs already slick with preparation. It was a simple, biological fact, one the scientists had documented with chilling thoroughness. He pressed the warm, damp length of it firmly against the starch-stiff fabric of her white lab coat.
The reaction was immediate and magnificent.
“Ugh! God!” She jerked away as if electrified, shoving his bulk back with a surprising strength. Disgust twisted her sharp features into a clear, glorious snapshot in his blurred vision. “Bad! Bad specimen! That is not appropriate!”
She grabbed a wad of alcohol wipes from a bench, scrubbing violently at the smear on her coat. Her muttering was a furious, satisfying soundtrack. “Mindless, horny, godforsaken creature… Absolutely disgusting. Tran, make a note: Subject A exhibited unsolicited mating behavior toward a human simulacrum. Again.”
“Noted,” Marcus’s voice came, tight with suppressed… something. Amusement? Nerves?
Auren ambled away, legs moving in a gentle, placid rhythm. Stimulus and response, Doctor. He aimed his blurred path toward the newer, jitterier heat signature hunched over the flickering microscope. The hum of the machine was a higher pitch than the centrifuges. Marcus’s back was a tense, inviting canvas of grey cotton.
The young doctor was muttering to himself, one hand adjusting a dial. “Come on, focus, you piece of…”
Auren didn’t hesitate. He pressed close, the soft black fur of his spider body brushing the back of Marcus’s lab stool. He aligned himself and pressed the same slick, warm flesh against the center of Marcus’s back, soaking through the thin cotton of his shirt in an instant.
Marcus Tran did not shout.
He froze. A full, solid second of pure, uncomprehending stillness. Then he jolted forward, his chair screeching on the floor, a gasped, “Whoa!” escaping him. He stumbled to his feet, spinning around, his face a masterpiece of confusion and deep, flushing embarrassment.
“Uh—hey! Watch it, buddy!” he stammered, the words too loud for the lab.
Auren simply tilted his head, his eight eyes unblinking, his expression vacantly placid. Inside, he was savoring the rich, complex cocktail of the man’s reaction—the lack of outright venom, the flustered shock, the awkward, choked laughter that followed.
“Jesus, Marcus,” a grad student snickered from the next station. “He’s got a crush.”
“Stimulus and response, Doctor Tran,” Vance called coolly, not looking up from her sanitized coat. “You’re a warm surface. It’s a simple biological imperative. Don’t anthropomorphize the equipment.”
Marcus let out another shaky laugh, running a hand through his cropped black hair. He looked from Auren’s blank face to the damp spot on his own shirt, his nose wrinkling. “Right. Yeah. Equipment.” He didn’t sound convinced. The laugh was wrong—too high, too strained. There was a flicker in his dark eyes, a quick, assessing glance that wasn’t just disgust. It was a question.
Auren remained still, a monument of instinct. But in the quiet, secret place behind his eyes, he was smiling. The long line of his mouth, capable of splitting ear to ear, stayed neutral.
Marcus finally shook his head, grabbing a paper towel to dab uselessly at his back. “Okay. Okay, you… just go over there. Go on.” He made a shooing motion, his movements still jerky.
Auren obediently turned, his legs carrying him to the designated ‘resting zone’—a corner mat by the supply cabinets. He settled, folding his legs beneath him, a docile giant. He watched the blurs move. Vance’s was sharp, irritated, already moving on. Marcus’s, however, lingered. The young doctor kept glancing his way, not with fear or revulsion, but with a peculiar, nagging curiosity.
The grad student tossed a wadded-up glove toward Auren. It bounced off his furry flank. “Fetch, you overgrown tampon.”
Auren didn’t move. He let the glove lie there. Stimulus… and no response. He saw Marcus watching that, too.
Later, when the shift bell chimed and the scientists departed with the clatter of trolleys and gossip, the lab fell into a deeper, emptier hum. The lights in the main bay switched off, leaving only the safety glow from the hallway filtering through the observation window.
Auren waited until the footsteps faded. Then, he moved.
With precise, silent steps, he went to the lab bench Marcus had been using. His front set of hands, with their three deft fingers and dull claws, reached out. He found the microscope. He traced its shape, the smooth stage, the still-warm eyepiece. His fingers found the slide left behind. He bought it to his face, his many eyes incapable of seeing the tiny structures, but his mind picturing them clearly from years of overheard lessons.
He carried the slide to his corner. Then, from the spinnerets at the rear of his great abdomen, he began to produce webbing. Not the thick, utilitarian cords they harvested for testing, but a delicate, intricate lace. He worked in the dim glow, his movements not random, but deliberate. He wove a pattern—a perfect, geometric replication of a double helix, followed by a series of interconnected hexagons. A joke. A signature.
He attached the delicate web-art to the cabinet handle beside his mat, where the morning cleaning staff would find it and dismiss it as a weird, natural accident.
As he settled back down, he heard a different, solitary set of footsteps pause outside the observation window. He didn’t turn. He didn’t need to. The silhouette was slim, hesitant. It stood there for a long time.
Marcus Tran was still watching. And Auren, for the first time in a very long time, felt the faint, unfamiliar spark of being seen.