Summary:Gwen has an encounter with a spider, and gets bitten. Log Info:Storyteller: None |
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Getting into the place had been easy. An abandoned biotech lab isn't too hard to find, if you happen to know the son of the guy who owns the company, who can tell you the address and the password to get in — easy peasy. It's not like Gwen had come to check out some hideous death lab either, the place was already cleaned out; no hazardous materials, no proprietary stuff, no experiments left running. In fact, other than Gwen, absolutely nothing other than a spider hanging out in a web up near the ceiling.
Gwen lets the door close behind her, and flicks the switch on her flashlight. Predictably, nothing happens, so she rattles it and tries again. Finally a cone of light bursts into being, illuminating a large room with a tiled floor and walls, all in rather antiseptic, hospital colors, occupied by three long workbenches, and some pretty clear spots along the walls that are less dirty than everywhere else, where equipment once resided.
Actually, some stuff is still here; there's a few pieces of diagnostic equipment and some storage gear that's just been fully abandoned, and left right where they were to slowly decay. It's this sort of stuff that Gwen is interested in; after trying the light switches to confirm they don't work (and then realizing that most of the florescent light fixtures are without tubes, and a few are hanging crookedly off the ceiling) she moves in with her flashlight and phone, looking for details she can take pictures of. It's for a project for one of her classes, looking into disposal of bio-hazardous wastes; getting some pictures and practical examples out of a real, abandoned lab, well that's gotta be worth extra credit.
While Gwen is busy, the single occupant of the lab, the spider, is on the move. It abandons its web, eight legs scurrying along as it makes its way across the ceiling. It maneuvers its way around the broken light fixtures, across the top of a ceiling section and then back out into view again. It's not really an ordinary spider, either; there's a little number '7' stamped into its thorax, for one thing. It's eyes glow softly on their own, and Gwen might even see it, if she were looking up and… not using a flashlight. Heck, a geiger counter might even help, but she doesn't have one of those either.
"Oooh, that's neat," Gwen mutters, looking at an old spectrometer. Likely it's been left behind because it's clearly broken. Very broken. But, it still has chemical stains on it; so Gwen takes pictures, being careful not to touch anything, of course. …Let's be honest, it's probably just rust stains from water; there is a steady drip drip drip coming from behind one of the walls, after all, there's probably water damage to literally everything. But, it still counts, right? Water is a chemical.
The spider attaches a thread to the ceiling and descends, making it about halfway down before Gwen moves, suddenly interested in something else. The spider stops where it is, wriggling its eight legs in the air and swinging from side to side in the wake of the young woman's movement. It isn't long before she comes back again though, and the spider releases its silk, dropping down the last, short distance, to land in the hood of her jacket.
Gwen goes to look up into a couple of the fume hoods; while she's at it, the spider crawls out of her own hood, and wanders down her back. Once it reaches the bottom it loops around, dangling off a thread and squirming for a moment before it climbs back up the inside of her jacket. Being busy investing a really cool abandoned lab, and preoccupied for the moment trying to find the source of the dripping (it turns out none of the taps on the workbenches work) she doesn't notice the quarter-sized arachnid crawling around in her jacket. It scurries all the way back up to the top, and reemerges out the collar, under her chin.
A text arrives on Gwen's phone, and she puts the flashlight down for a moment to answer it. Perhaps it's attracted by the light, or maybe it was just going that direction anyway; the spider climbs down Gwen's arm on the underside of her sleeve. Just as Gwen finishes sending her reply it emerges on the back of her hand, moving right to the middle where it stops and hunches down.
"What th-OWWW!" Gwen tenses as the spider bites her, digging its fangs in deep and injecting a large does of venom into her bloodstream. She drops her sucks in a breath; her heartrate doubles, and her phone tumbles from her fingertips, bouncing across the workbench a couple of times and landing in a (thankfully dry) sink. Gwen's eyes go wide as she stares down at the spider; at first just frozen, but then doing her best to swat it off herself, without actually touching it with her other hand, somehow, all while waving the hand that it is on in the air like that might convince it to go away.
"Getoffgetoffgetoff!" she half-shouts and half-pleads, and then manages to dislodge it. It tumbles to the floor and lands on its back, legs already curling up in a rictus of death. Gwen has other things to think about, looking down at her hand where she got bitten. "Ow," she pronounces. "What the heck was that for? That hurt." She rubs her hand a few more times, before gathering up her phone and turning it over, to make sure it's not damaged. (It isn't. Hooray for protective cases.)
Gwen hurriedly gathers up her flashlight; suddenly the place has taken on a much more sinister feel, so it's time to go. Time, definitely, to be somewhere else, preferably home. Home would be great. Where's the bus stop again? Gwen wants to be home basically just right now.