reese

Let the record show that Paige is really, really excited to be here.

The New York Genome Center is massive, standing at 23-stories tall and stretching far into the sky. It looks as impressive as it feels to stand inside it. Serving as New York’s hub for genomic research, Paige knows from an academic standpoint that this place is incredible. While genetics isn’t necessarily Paige’s favorite subject, she still finds the field endlessly fascinating, and under different circumstances, she’s sure she would be a little more interested in what is currently going on.

The issue is, the tour guide doesn’t look to be any more than 16, and he looks just as bored as Paige’s classmates do. It had started as an extra credit assignment from their professor, so Paige really can’t fault them for not being as invested, but the guide (Evan? Everett? Paige doesn’t remember) isn’t doing them any favors, either. He’s simultaneously lackadaisical and genuinely ignorant, as though he hadn’t bothered to learn the script he’d undoubtedly been given, his monologue full of umm’s and uhh’s. 

And the other issue, the one Paige thinks to be the most pressing of the two, is that she can’t take her eyes off of you. You, her best friend, who is a journalism major and a tour through a genetics lab is the last place she’d ever think you’d willingly spend your day when you usually spend it grilling the campus police chief on whether or not he’s going to take the scooter robberies seriously. The answer is always no, because “the stolen scooters are not registered through the transportation services department, and people should really be using bike locks, anyways,” but Paige secretly hopes that they never fix that issue because you’re pretty when you’re angry, and–

And it’s a big, fat, giant, enormous, major fucking issue! Paige is on a tour through the most impressive genetics laboratory she’ll probably ever see and all she can think about is your one-sided beef with the campus police department over scooters and how pretty you look with your arms crossed, jaw steadily working on a piece of gum, because you’ve all but mastered that look of sweet, saccharine interest that it almost fools Paige into thinking you genuinely care about the new gene the researchers found while studying mutations, even though she knows you’re actually bored as shit.

Paige doesn’t even know why you tagged along, but she’s not exactly complaining. She didn’t try to get a straight answer out of you, either – you’re obnoxiously good at deflecting (she thinks it might be the journalist in you) and for how good you are at deflecting, you do an even better job of flustering her. It’s pathetic and wholly a lose-lose situation, but such is life.

Evan Whats-His-Face leads the group deeper into the sleek lab, where the tables are full of terrariums containing spiders. He’s droning on about how, uh, humans and, um, spiders evolved from similar an…ancestry, and we share a lot of deox…deoxyribo… DNA with them, but Paige already knew that and Ethan’s inability to do his job is starting to grate on her nerves. It’s then that she feels you press a little closer to her, always obnoxiously aware of your presence, and the melodic tilt of your voice is a reprieve to her ears.

“You didn’t mention there was gonna be spiders,” you say teasingly, and she huffs out a quiet laugh in response, the apples of her cheeks warming from your attention.

“Thought journalists did their research,” she quips back. She doesn’t stutter, and she mentally pats herself on the back for succeeding socially. 

“Touche,” you concede. You reach out as if you’re going to run your fingers across the terrarium glass, but you seem to think better of it. The spider inside hardly stirs. Paige gets the feeling that it’s watching the both of you, anyhow. The group starts moving again, although the both of you linger at the back, not quite joining the rest of them.

But Paige is nothing if not someone who frequently sticks her foot in her mouth when she’s near pretty girls, so she starts to ramble. “They don’t mean any harm. The spiders, I mean. They pretty much mind their own business and only bite in self defense. Most of the time, they’re way more scared of you than you’re scared of them, and–”

She only stops talking when she realizes you’re staring at her, your expression a curious mix of interest and endearment. It’s the most animated you’ve been the entire tour, and it’s enough to make her train of thought derail entirely. “And?” you prod, head tilting ever so slightly.

Paige is sure that if her cheeks got any redder, she could pass as a traffic light. She reaches up to fidget with the frame of her glasses, a nervous habit she picked up when she was younger, and she tries to collect her thoughts. “And… uh, they’re good pest control. S’why they’re usually in the corner of your room. They keep the flies away.”

The way you’re smiling at her makes her feel every bit like a loser, her heart thumping unsteadily against her chest. God, she’s so fucked. “Sounds like you should be leading the tour,” you say softly, voice tinged with something Paige can’t quite place. Intention? Hope? She doesn’t know, and she doesn’t want to get her hopes up by being delusional. “Ezra doesn’t have a clue in the world.”

She swallows thickly. “Is that his name?” she asks.

You shrug a shoulder. “I wasn’t listening.” You glance up at Paige, and the amusement on your face is enough to make her laugh. Paige is quick to stifle it with her hand once she feels the heavy weight of someone’s stare on her, but you’re not nearly as reserved, carefree and a little reckless. That had always been one of the things Paige admired about you the most – how you were so steadfast and unashamed in who you were and how you acted. You were always respectful, of course, but you never shied away from things or let yourself change who you were or let yourself hide away in fear of public thought. The confidence and bravery was so impressive.

The group ambles along with your guide still half-assing his way through whatever it is he’s talking about next. You’re quietly telling Paige about a new development with Scootergate when something brushes against the back of her neck. Focused on what you’re saying, she reaches up to straighten out her pony, but the sudden, sharp pinch of pain makes her swat her neck in reflex with an accompanying ouch!

You look at her again, concern and befuddlement written clear as day on your face, your words faltering. “P?” you say. “You okay?”

Her neck still tingles as she brings her palm into her view. A spider lays unmoving on her hand, her skin smeared with a thin line of blood, and her heart all but falls out of her ass. “Fine!” she squeaks, knowing she does not sound nor look fine at all, and she quickly wipes her hand off on her jeans, trying for an expression of nonchalance. You look like you don’t believe her at all, which is something she’d been expecting. “I, uh, my hair touched me weird. Just scared me after seeing all of those spiders.”

You scan her features, eyes darting across her face. The spider bite combined with the lie makes her feel nauseous, but for all of your confidence, she knew that revealing the bite to you would undoubtedly freak you out. She was fine. She was just a little shocked – that was it. There was no way the spiders here were venomous. The bite itself is most likely superficial at best. She was fine.

Fortunately, you seem to take her words as they are. “Don’t worry, they’re all in the terrariums. But...you are a pest, so maybe you’re right to be a little scared.”

Paige clicks her tongue, smiling despite it all. “Whatever,” she says under her breath, and you laugh again next to her. Still…she’s a little uneasy, and before the group rounds the corner into the next room, she glances back to the terrariums lining the tables. She spots one with the lid slightly askew. Paige clenches her jaw, taking a deep breath so as to not get herself worked up.

She was fine.

Fine might just be a subjective statement. 

After the thirty minute bus ride back home, Paige felt like she was on her last leg. You had been concerned, reasonably so, but Paige lied again and told you that she stayed up really late the night prior, studying for one of her classes, and she was wiped out after the really long tour.

If she had actually been conscious, she would have been able to see that you didn’t really believe her. You knew her as well as she knew herself and Paige rarely jeopardized her sleep schedule for anything. She wasn’t though, and she spent the bus ride in between waves of vertigo and nausea. You had offered to walk her back to her apartment, but she said she was fine and that she just needed a nap. You begrudgingly let her go after a lot of convincing. Paige barely had the sensibility to wave back to her roommate, Nika, before she collapsed into bed and promptly fell asleep.

Paige thought she would only be out for a quick power nap, but when she wakes in a cold sweat to banging on her bedroom door, she immediately understands that something has gone wrong. That feeling is only amplified by the briefest feeling of a free fall, then her body slamming into the floor. Paige groans, pain quickly spreading through her entire body. The door’s creaky hinge seems to echo directly in her brain as someone pushes the door open.

“Paige?” Nika’s voice sounds like it’s right next to her eardrum, even though she confirms the girl is hovering by the door, almost unsure if she should come in any further.

She and Nika were good friends. Outside of you, Paige was sure Nika was her other best friend. She was an extrovert through and through and she treaded the line between respecting Paige’s boundaries and pushing her out of her comfort zone. Clearly, the situation must be worse than what Paige thinks, seeing as Nika looks like a fish out of water in every sense of the phrase.

“Damn, P,” Nika says lightly, a sort of dry humor in her tone. “Did you get shitfaced last night or were you really at that genetics lab with your girlfriend?”

“She is not my girlfriend,” Paige says in rebuttal, and she instantly knows that was probably not the best thing to choose to take from Nika’s statement.

“Right,” Nika agrees in that familiar tone of voice that says I know you’re full of shit.

Paige finally takes stock of her surroundings. She’s on the floor, as if she needed to visually confirm that after physically feeling it. She’s still dressed in the clothes she wore yesterday, shoes and all, and she’s so bothered by the fact she hadn’t showered before going to bed that she doesn’t realize she–

“Oh, shit, twin,” Nika says consolingly, in shock. Paige senses her moving before she sees her move, and she watches with rapt attention as Nika bends down to pick up her glasses. One of the lenses is cracked and the frame is split haphazardly down the middle, and for a moment, Paige wonders why this is an issue. She hadn’t even noticed she wasn’t wearing them. She could see just fine, and–

That gives her pause.

She can not see just fine. It’s a longstanding joke between her and Nika, because she let Nika wear her glasses one day and the prescription strength had made her so nauseous that she had to go sit down. Paige being blind is a universally accepted fact and she knows with greater certainty than she knows the sky is blue that she did not go to bed wearing contacts.

“You still got that other pair, right?” Nika asks, glancing at Paige, her soft brown eyes full of mischievous concern. “I really ain’t got the time to be your seeing-eye guide roommate or whatever.”

“I mean, yeah,” Paige agrees, ignoring the latter half of her sentence, but the glasses are the last thing on her mind right now. She braces her hands against the floor so as to lift herself up, but when her hands seem inexplicably glued to the floor, she stops in her tracks immediately. She looks down, trying to lift her hands again, but they don’t budge. Her heart thumps erratically against her chest, fear calcifying in her bones, and the only thing that really makes everything worse is how she can sense that Nika is confused by her behavior and growing suspicious.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Nika asks. “You slept through your alarm and your first two classes. I thought you were just under the weather, but your girlfriend–” Paige narrows her eyes, leveling Nika with a sort of glare that clearly states they’ve been through this a time or two or a million, “but your friend called and said you missed lunch. I said I’d check on you before she broke the door down, but I come in here and you look like shit–”

“Thanks, Nika.”

“Are you concussed?” Before she knows it, Nika has a finger in her face. “How many fingers am I holding up?”

“Nika–”

“Answer the question!”

Paige sighs, rolling her eyes. “One.”

Nika flicks up a few more fingers and Paige tries really hard to curb her irritation. “Four. Nika, these aren’t even–”

Again, Nika adjusts her fingers. “Nika, you’re pre-med, you know this is not how you check for a concussion, dumbass!” Still, she wiggles her fingers as if to be annoying, and Paige lifts a hand to swat her away. Except…her hand sticks unyieldingly to Nika’s skin, even as her roommate yanks her hand back.

“Dude, let go of me,” Nika deadpans, tugging again.

“I’m not even–” Before she can get lost in another argument, Paige groans again, focusing intently on where she’s holding onto Nika. Gingerly, she removes her fingers one by one until her palm remains, which she also pries off with considerable difficulty.

Nika glances at her, then her hand. Her nose wrinkles dramatically and she wipes her hand off on her shorts. Paige can see what looks to be spider webs sticking to Nika’s clothes, but she hardly has the time to ponder that before her roommate stands to her feet. “I’m gonna text your girlfriend back and tell her you’re just being weird as shit. Nothing to freak out about, but she’s into your weird ass, so maybe–”

“She’s not into me,” Paige says quickly. Again, she realizes that was not the part of Nika’s statement that she needed to comment on, but Nika just looks at her with an expression of amusement and thinly veiled disbelief, as though Paige is just an oblivious idiot.

“Whatever, P,” she says, making her exit. “Feel better!”

“...Thanks.”

The door shuts behind her, and Paige feels as though her world narrows into this room alone, like all of her senses are heightened. Perhaps they are. Her vision is suddenly better and her hearing is so sensitive – she can hear the water flow through the pipes in her apartment, the low hum of the electrical current, even the sound of Nika’s thumbs as they tap against her phone screen in the other room. She could almost sense things before they happened and the way her hands stuck to every surface she touched – the floor, Nika’s hands…

Her head is spinning. There’s no real, logical explanation for anything that is happening. Ever since yesterday at the genetics lab, she’s felt like something has been off with her, ever since the spider–

The spider bite.

Paige hates how that simultaneously makes her feel as though she’s found her answer, but also like she’s losing her fucking mind. Saying a spider bite has given her these new abilities sounds entirely preposterous, but…there’s no other explanation. She was in a genetics lab where researchers were using genetically modified spiders to study changes in gene expression and DNA. Spiders and humans shared a good majority of their DNA, after all. She was bitten by one of the genetically modified spiders, and it is likely that the bite could have transferred something to her.

Paige feels sick all over again. She didn’t even need that fucking extra credit, but she went to the lab, anyways. Now, her entire life has just changed, and she has no idea what to do with it or who she can even tell. Nika would really think she was concussed, and you – Paige doesn’t even know what you’d say. Maybe you would just stare at her in that way you do, with a soft, endeared little smile, the one you always wear when she’s explaining something you really don’t understand but you enjoy listening to, regardless.

There would be time for freaking out later, Paige thinks, because now is not the time. She’s still sitting on the ground, her other hand still stuck to the floor and her ass hurting from her earlier fall. Much more easily this time, she removes her hand from the floor, and she examines it closely, brows furrowing. It doesn’t look as though she’d submerged her palm in super glue, and when she drags a finger across her palm, it doesn’t stick nor does it feel gluey.

But she tests it again, pressing her palm to the floor. There, it sticks firmly, the same way a spider or a lizard’s foot might stick against a surface. Setae, Paige thinks, tiny microscopic hair-like structures. She raises her palm to her face again, taking one last close look, and she swears she can make out grooves in her skin that weren’t there before.

Her head already hurts, so she decides not to dwell too much on what that could mean right now. She pushes herself to her feet, surprisingly quicker than she thought she was capable of, as though her reflexes had been heightened. Perhaps they had been, because her gaze follows the lazy, slow flight path of a moth by her lamp, suddenly so much sharper. It’s like she can see the movement before it actually happens and she can hear every flap of the moth’s wings, its beating heart.

It’s impressive, seeing how different she is. With the panic now gone and a scholar’s curiosity taking over, she ambles over to her desk, reaching for a notebook and a pen, and she begins cataloging every new change in her body that she can remember from waking up. Heightened senses – hearing and vision. Sensing things before they happen??? Sticky hands an

A sudden, thick cord of viscous webbing shoots out from her wrist and covers her notebook page. It’s enough to startle her – she drops her notebook with a surprised yelp, although her newfound senses allow her to recover quickly and she grabs the notebook before it hits the floor. With her heart pounding against her ribcage again, she examines the paper, brushing her fingers across what looks like spider webs. They’re sticky to touch and the webs cling almost uncomfortably to her skin, but these webs are so much stronger than what you would expect from a normal spider. It takes considerable force to break them.

Paige swallows thickly, looking down at her hands again. She doesn’t know what triggered this, or that she could shoot webs from her fucking wrists, but she tries again. She imagines the webs extending, slamming against the wall. Unsurprisingly, nothing happens, and Paige frowns.

“Please?” she says obviously, as if manners would suddenly make her body function again. Again, she splays her palm out, pointing it directly at the wall, thrusting forward in hopes the force would be enough.

It’s not.

Huffing, Paige tries what feels like a hundred different variations of activation words and different hand positions. She starts feeling a little stupid when she tries abacadabra paired with a finger gun and she’s close to giving up until she finds what actually works. With her hand upside down and her middle and ring finger pressed to the center of her palm, she gives her wrist another meaningful flick and genuinely jumps for joy when the webbing shoots out. She’d, unfortunately, fucked up her angle and ended up knocking a glass of water off of her nightstand, but she doesn’t care.

She tries it again, and again, and again, until her bedroom looks like a Spirit Halloween. All of these new abilities are so exciting and she doesn’t know what she’d been so scared of in the first place. Public perception, maybe, because she still thinks that it might be a little too soon to tell you or Nika. It’s a mix of fear and hesitance – fear because what if you don’t believe her? What if it changes everything? – and hesitance because it’s so soon. There’s so much that Paige doesn’t even know about herself or these new abilities yet.

Her phone’s vibration pulls her from her thoughts. She can hear that her phone is trapped under a few layers of blankets, but it’s as though the sound is directly in her eardrum. That was going to be something she had to get used to – the sudden sensitivity to everything. When she locates her phone, she powers it on to find a few missed calls and a few unread messages from you. Paige hates that she’d missed them, but your last one reads:

You: according to nika you’re alive so… lunch on me? frank’s is doing $1 slices today

Paige finds it difficult to curb her growing smile, so she texts back:

Paige: I’m On my way! I’ll meet you there in 15

Paige: I meant On my way!

Paige: on my way*

You: relax i already said yes

Paige: 😐

The next few days pass in an uninteresting blur of classes, studying, and Paige slowly getting used to her new abilities. She wishes she could say she was having an easy time adjusting, but that couldn’t be further from the truth.

Suddenly being aware of everything is probably the hardest part of it all. When she sits at her desk poring over her homework, she finds herself distracted by the specks of dust lit up by the sun. It used to not bother her, but now it’s like she’s viewing everything in super ultra mega high definition resolution. She wouldn’t be surprised if she could somehow develop the ability to see the atoms in the air around her, but she’s really hoping it doesn’t come to that.

Hearing is something she could get used to. Adjusting to the constant noise in New York wasn’t something she was unfamiliar with now. She did it once and she could do it again. She figured out how to deal with constantly being sticky all of the time (as awful as that particular word choice is) pretty quickly, and she thinks the better reflexes and the new sixth sense she has for things are blessings in disguise.

Part of her wishes increased intelligence came with the spider bite, but as she stares mournfully at the laptop screen before her, her brain not processing any of the problem sets she’s working through, she wonders if it truly would have been of any help to her. She has an exam bright and early tomorrow morning and yet there’s just something about the material she can’t wrap her head around. Granted, she’s had quite a bit on her plate following the lab tour, but she didn’t think that also meant she’d be trading in her brain cells for spider webs.

She reads one more convoluted equation before she sighs, closing her laptop with a firm click and rubbing her eyes tiredly. At the rate she was progressing, she wasn’t going to get anything done if she didn’t take a break right now. Paige reaches for her wallet, her phone, and her keys, pocketing them all and sliding her glasses onto the bridge of her nose as she exits her room to make her way to Nika’s. She knocks a few times and lets herself in with Nika’s permission.

The girl in question is hunched over her desk, poring over what looks to be anatomy and physiology notes while what also looks to be a 10 hour loop of Coconut Mall plays on a YouTube video in the background. Paige doesn’t question it. Instead, she says, “I’m gonna go get a Red Bull. You want anything?”

“A bullet to the head would be nice,” Nika laments in response.

“Cool,” Paige says, and shuts the door with a gentle click behind her. That usually meant Nika wanted White Peach.

Paige leaves her apartment, takes the stairs down to the lobby, and exits into the crisp, night air. She takes a deep, calming breath, trying to regulate her shot nerves, but it only does so much before she walks directly into the remnants of what she’s sure is cigarette smoke. She coughs, wrinkling her nose – this time when she inhales, it’s cleaner air, and she absentmindedly stretches her arms over her head as she walks.

The corner store she frequents isn’t too far away – just a block or two if that, and she makes the walk over quickly. Besides her and one other woman, who is perusing the candy aisle, the store is empty, and she doesn’t waste any time before opening the drink coolers and reaching for Nika’s Red Bull. Truthfully, she hadn’t bothered to give much thought to which one she wanted, so she allows herself to linger as she puts too much thought into whether or not she’s buying a Wild Berry or Iced Vanilla Berry Red Bull, and–

The hair on the back of her neck suddenly stands on end, a tingling sensation tickling her skin right where the spider had bitten her, and anxiety pools low in her gut. She knew what this was – the sixth sense thing, although usually it alerted her to when Nika was coming in from class or when something was happening, like that time yesterday when the stoner in 3B set the fire alarm off because he fell asleep with his joint lit. Either way, she’s learned to trust that sense, and the reason for it walks through the doors only moments later.

The bell jingles far too cheerily for the moment. A man with a grey sweatshirt and the hood pulled over his head makes his way to the counter, his hand resting on his belt loosely, and Paige knows. With or without the weird spider bite senses, she knows, and she keeps her distance, not wanting to get put on the morning news after spending what could be her last hours alive studying for an exam of all things.

“I’m gonna need you to empty the register,” the man says slowly, only loud enough for him and the clerk and Paige to hear with her enhanced senses. “Don’t be a hero.”

The register clicks open with a ding, and Paige can hear paper sliding against paper as the clerk obeys. She cranes her head, watching in silence as her heart thumps erratically against her chest, and the man in the grey hoodie peers out of the door nervously. “Hurry!”

“I’m going–” the clerk tries to argue, money swiping faster, but it only sets the robber off more.

“Fucking hurry!” he shouts, and before either of them can react, he reaches for the woman who’d been scanning the candy aisle and he pulls the gun from his waistband, pressing the barrel of it to her temple. She yelps in shock and terror, but his other hand raises to cover her mouth to silence her as she trembles. “Faster, or I swear to God I’m going to shoot her!”

The clerk starts moving even quicker. Paige can hear the erratic thumping of everyone’s heartbeats – the woman and the clerk in fear, and the robber’s out of nervousness. The tension in the shop is suffocating, and Paige knows that no matter what, that woman is not leaving the shop alive. 

Paige knows. She knows she must act, that she must do something to help that woman, but she has to be smart about it or she’s only going to cause more harm than good. She lifts her head again, her vision narrowing down to the spot on the trigger where the man holds his finger. A second passes, then two, before he lifts his finger off of the trigger for a sliver of a second, and Paige’s body reacts before she gives it permission to.

Her wrist shoots out, fingers pointed and hand angled, and a strand of webbing shoots out with incredible accuracy and devastating speed. It collides with the gun and the weapon clatters harmlessly to the floor. Given the man’s split second of surprise, the woman extracts herself from his grip and bolts out of the store without another word.

Paige isn’t granted the time to dawdle. The man is quick to scoop the gun up off of the floor and he aims it directly at her with a quickness she hadn’t been expecting. Her world narrows, and for a moment, time seems to move slowly. She watches his finger move back to the trigger, watches him pull it, watches as the barrel explodes with the fired shot. Her neck tingles, her entire body coiled and ready to launch, and she ducks out of the way at lightning speed.

The bullet pierces the glass of the drink cooler behind her. A random can of something bursts open, but a second bullet fires in rapid succession. Paige dodges that one, too, hearing glass shatter behind her, and with her body on autopilot, she slowly begins inching her way forward. She sidesteps the third bullet, ducks under the fourth, and once she’s close enough to the man, she wraps her hand around his wrist, directing his fifth shot to the ceiling, destroying one of the fluorescent lights in the process.

Paige twists his arm until he gasps in pain, tears springing to his eyes, and she doesn’t stop until he drops the gun. She shoves him backwards against the wall and secures him there with four well-placed webs across all of his limbs and one more across his mouth for good measure. She bends down to collect the gun, intuition guiding her as she yanks the mag out and crumples the body of it. Paige tosses the remains of the weapon in front of the would-be robber, whose eyes shine with poorly concealed fear.

The clerk just looks…astonished. He doesn’t say anything and neither does Paige, but she makes her way back to the half-ruined drink coolers and reaches inside for the Red Bulls she originally came here for. She produces a ten dollar bill from her wallet, knowing it’s enough to cover the drinks and then some, although the clerk doesn’t reach to accept her money. He doesn’t move at all, actually, and Paige figures he’s in…really, really bad shock.

Tentatively, she slides the bill across the counter to him. “Um,” she says smartly. “You didn’t see all of that. Okay?” He nods his head in agreement, still trembling. “Okay. Cool. Well, have a…a better night, I guess.”

The bell, oblivious to the events of the night, jingles happily as Paige leaves the store behind. The city is…still. Paige can hear a siren ringing in the distance, but the unsteady thump of her heartbeat in her ear drowns out the noise as she slowly walks back to her apartment. The drinks are cold against her hands, almost shockingly so given the misregulation of her nervous system. The further she gets from the shop, the more she realizes what just happened, the more the adrenaline starts to fade away and she’s left whole again.

She just witnessed a near robbery. She watched a woman tremble with fear with a gun to her head, all over the hundred or so dollars that were in the cash register, and she stopped it. Paige is the reason that woman made it home safely, why the clerk didn’t have to lose his life or his shop, and she doesn’t say that with any intent of being braggadocious. If she was not there, the events that transpired would have occurred much differently, and that is nothing if not fact.

With her new abilities, she has something to offer to the city. She has something that makes her different, something that is so needed, something that is better used to serve than to horde. Paige has the opportunity to protect people – she has the opportunity to do good.

That had been the goal from the start. She wasn’t physically strong by any means. She was smart and she worked hard and she was dedicated to obtaining her biomedical engineering degree, thinking that was her path to helping others. She had a gift before and she knew it was her purpose to use it. Now, she has something more than a gift. She has opportunity and ability and this just might be her calling, too.

She wills her legs to move faster after that. She needs to get home and talk to Nika — she had to tell Nika the truth. She couldn’t hide it for any longer. Not after tonight. Paige spent the last few days trying to make peace with her new life hoping that it hadn’t or wouldn’t change too drastically, not knowing that it already had. She just had to hope that Nika would understand and that you would, too. 

Paige takes the stairs back up to her apartment in a hurry, fumbling with her key in her haste to get back inside. Finally, it gives, and she enters quickly enough that she nearly forgets to lock the door back. “Nika!” she calls, beelining straight for her bedroom door. She knocks quickly and Nika sounds almost exasperated when she tells her to come in — not that Paige can exactly fault her. 

She throws open the door in a hurry and Nika spins in her chair to look at her. Her roommate looks twice as exhausted and just as over her studying as she looked before Paige left. Before Nika can say anything, Paige decides to just rip the bandaid off.

“I got bit by a genetically modified spider the other day and now I have superpowers.”

And Nika just…stares at her, which Paige had honestly been expecting. She has an expression of disbelief on her face so animated and aghast that Paige would probably find it funny in any other circumstance, but not right now. 

“I know this sounds completely insane and I swear I didn’t touch your brownies again, but I need you to believe me, Nika,” Paige says in a rush, pleading. Nika gestures to the foot of her bed, still looking as though she’s worried that Paige might have somehow gotten high on her trip to the store, but her gestures soften as Paige takes a seat. 

“When I toured the genetics lab, I got bit by one of the spiders they were studying,” Paige explains, and Nika cuts her off immediately.

“And you didn’t like, go to urgent care or anything?” she asks in disbelief. “You got bit by a Frankenspider and you didn’t say anything about it!”

“They weren’t venomous!” Paige exclaims.

Nika huffs. “But they gave you powers, allegedly,” she says sarcastically, not out of distrust.

Paige rolls her eyes. “Whatever, bro. Anyways, I was super sick when I came back home, and that’s when I slept for like, twelve hours, and you came and woke me up and I was acting weird. I think that’s when they, you know, developed. Suddenly, all of my senses were heightened and I wasn’t blind anymore and my hands are super sticky—”

“Gross,” Nika says, wrinkling her nose. 

Exasperated, Paige flicks out her wrist and a thin, accurate strand of web shoots out, knocking Nika’s airpod out of her ear and pinning it to the wall behind her. Nika blinks once, processing, and she doesn’t break eye contact for a long moment, until it’s like her entire body deflates, accepting defeat.

“I’m being punked,” Nika says, sure. Paige just sighs. She should have known better than to lay it out like this. She should have explained with a little more tact and sensibility, knowing that Nika is probably running on fumes after a twelve hour studying session. “Like, this is just one of your bits, right? Did I miss a random TikTok trend where you tell a friend some obscure shit just to see how they react? You went to the store and bought fucking silly string to gaslight me, right?” Paige has no response for that, a little alarmed by Nika’s crashout.

But Nika just continues on. “Or maybe I’m dreaming. I fell asleep on my anatomy notes and this is my body punishing me for not taking a real break or having a real dinner outside of Red Bull and Skittles, and–”

Paige doesn’t give her the chance to keep rambling. She leans forward to pluck a spray bottle full of water off of Nika’s desk – one she usually uses to wet her hair when she’s styling it – and sprays Nika with a generous amount of water.

“What the fuck is wrong–”

“Do you still think you’re dreaming?” Paige asks sarcastically. Nika rolls her eyes and Paige sprays her once more for good measure, although Nika is quick to shield her face with her hands this time, yelping.

“Okay, okay! Relax, twin, holy shit,” Nika sputters. Paige can’t resist a grin, although she does drop the spray bottle onto the bed in surrender. Nika wipes the water off of her face, honestly looking a little refreshed (Paige pats herself on the back mentally for that one), and she sighs. “You’re serious?”

“Was the web not proof enough?” Paige asks genuinely.

In lieu of a response, Nika slides her chair forward and reaches for Paige’s wrist. She pulls up both of the sleeves on her hoodie, inspecting her forearms as if Paige was actually hiding silly string in them or something. She inspects the hoodie pocket, too, where Paige was storing the Red Bulls she’d honestly forgotten about, and doesn’t blink when Nika takes the White Peach one out and opens it.

“You said heightened senses?” Nika asks curiously, taking a sip of her drink.

Paige nods, opening her Red Bull, too. “Yeah. Like I can hear everything. There’s a dog across the street panting, someone’s watching Criminal Minds in the apartment next to us – which sounds like I’m just making shit up, but this morning I heard you say, ‘Damn, my ass is fat,’ while you were getting ready for class.”

Nika’s cheeks are red as she says, “It is,” which all but confirms the validity of Paige’s statement. She glances down at Paige’s wrist, raising a brow in concern. “And the um…the webs?”

“Not silly string,” Paige says, then flicks her wrist out. Another web shoots out and sticks to Nika’s wall right next to the trapped airpod.

Nika looks as though she’s not sure whether to be amazed by it or completely irritated by how much webbing is now covering her wall. Paige supposes she should probably tone it down a little bit – it took her a decent amount of time to get her room cleaned up after experimenting with the new abilities. “Anything else, Mrs. Sticky Hands?”

This time, it’s Paige’s turn to blush, and she rolls her eyes. “It’s not even like that, bro,” she says, disgruntled. Nika gives her a knowing look. Figuring there was no better explanation than a demonstration, Paige stands up from the bed, kicks off her slides, and begins scaling up the side of Nika’s wall.

“What the fuck–”

Nika doesn’t even finish her sentence, too stupefied to continue. Her jaw is slack, staring up at Paige from where she’s still sitting on the chair, and she looks the most sober and alert she’s been all night. Paige smiles at her sheepishly, letting go of the ceiling with one hand and letting herself dangle with the other. “I’m gonna close my eyes and I want you to throw something at me.”

Nika’s brows shoot up to her hairline. “Throw something at you?”

Paige nods again, already letting her eyes slip shut. Honestly, dangling feels a little relaxing – it’s like all of the tension oozes out of her spine. “Yeah. One of the other things is I kinda have like, a sixth sense for things now? Like, I can–” the back of her neck tingles, right where she’d gotten bit, and her hand darts out to catch the object she knows is being thrown at her. Her eyes snap open, finding an empty can of Red Bull clutched in between her fingers, and she looks at Nika in bewilderment. “How did you even finish this that fast?”

Nika shrugs. “You kept talking and I kept thinking, damn, I wish I had something stronger,” she says. Paige huffs, mostly amused, and she releases the ceiling and falls to her feet gracefully. “I mean, I believe you. Obviously. I can’t argue against any of–” Nika waves at Paige emphatically, “you know. But it’s just insane.”

“That’s not all,” Paige adds nervously, knowing Nika’s reaction to the store incident will be a whole lot worse. Nika gives her another look, and Paige swallows thickly as she sits back down onto the bed. “The store I was just at got robbed. Or, like, he tried to rob it, but I stopped him.” Nika looks as though she’s about to say something else, but Paige continues quickly. “But I’m fine! Everyone’s fine too. Well, the owner was probably in shock after I dodged five bullets and tied the robber up with webs–”

“Jesus Christ,” Nika mutters, defeated.

“My point is,” Paige stresses, knowing she’s about to sound completely insane, “is that I stopped the robbery. If I wasn’t there, the owner would have lost everything. The woman the robber held at gunpoint probably wouldn’t be alive. I don’t mean that in like a I deserve a medal of honor typa way, but I helped them, Nika, I did good. My goal has always been to help people, and now, I have a real physical way to do it. I can personally make a difference. This is a gift and I’d be stupid if I didn’t use it.”

Nika doesn’t say anything for a few beats, her eyes searching Paige’s. It’s like she’s still trying to process, trying to wrap her head around the fact that Paige has all of these abilities and she stopped a robbery. Finally, she finds her words, asking, “What are you saying, Paige?” Her voice is soft, not with any lack of confidence or faith in Paige, but almost like she knows what she’s suggesting and she’s worried about the consequences of it.

Paige takes a deep breath, not breaking eye contact with Nika. “People get hurt every day,” she explains quietly. “There will be another robbery tomorrow. Someone will get mugged in the morning. Something will happen, and someone will need help. And I have…I have this power now, this ability, and that makes me responsible. Am I just supposed to go on with my life, knowing I can do good, and decide not to do that? That’s not me, Nika.”

“I know,” Nika says in a whisper, swallowing thickly. “But you can get hurt.”

“Yeah,” Paige agrees. They both knew that – it wasn’t something either of them could get around. It’s not something Paige would be able to promise or prevent entirely, but Nika nods like the acknowledgement is enough, that she’s only slightly comforted by the fact that Paige at least knows what she’s getting into.

“You’re still human,” Nika reminds her, brown eyes imploring. “You’re a student with insane classes. You can’t be everywhere at once.”

“And that means I’m not supposed to at least try?” Paige murmurs. 

Nika shakes her head. “No, of course not. What I mean is…” She trails off, clenching her jaw like she’s willing the words to come to her. “I’m not trying to talk you out of it, P. I know you. But I think you should be a little realistic. You won’t be able to do everything, and I don’t want to see you hurt yourself because you think you can. Helping others doesn’t mean abandoning yourself, too.”

Paige doesn’t immediately have a response for that. In her heart, she knows Nika is right. This isn’t going to be something completely storybook where she’s just able to blow off all of her real life responsibilities to play vigilante hero for the city, as much as she wishes she could. She still had classes she needed to pass, a degree to earn, scholarships to maintain so she could keep going to class and being able to afford her share of the rent.

She needed to manage her expectations. She supposes that reality check is best given now, by her best friend who understands her and truly just wants her to be okay at the end of the day. It’s better to hear it now and not later when she has to retake her classes and miss out on her scholarships because most of them are contingent on her grades and good standing.

“I’ll be smart about it,” she promises Nika, who softens at the vow. “I’m not gonna do anything too crazy. That’s what you’re here for.”

“Oh, so you just decided to hire me without asking me if I wanted in on this little operation of yours?” Nika asks sarcastically, but the tension has all but dissipated and Nika is wearing a shit-eating grin.

“C’mon,” Paige says knowingly, smiling too. “You’re saying you don’t wanna be a part of this? Who’s Batman without Robin?”

“I would argue Alfred did way more for Batman than his sidekick ever did,” Nika mutters. Paige’s grin widens. “But…fuck it, I’m in. I’m not your sidekick though – let’s get that straight.”

Paige holds her hand out for Nika to dap up, and Nika eyes it warily. “Partners in…anti-crime?” Paige asks hopefully.

Nika shakes her head, amused. Still, she daps her up, agreeing, “Partners.”

“We have a lot to do,” Paige says, thinking out loud. “I need an outfit. Anonymity or some shit. And I need to train. I think my webs are strong enough that I can swing from them too. And–”

Nika holds her hands up in the timeout signal. Paige cuts herself off, sheepish. “As much as I love you and I can’t wait to help, you need to chill. All I’ve thought about for the past week has been the endocrine system. Let’s pass our exams and we can do all of the planning and preparing, okay?”

“Yeah,” Paige says, nodding her head, thankful for Nika reigning her in. She stands up, shoving her hands into the pockets of her sweatpants, bouncing on the balls of her feet. “Thanks for…you know, listening. And not freakin’ out.”

“If you told me this yesterday I probably wouldn’t have believed you,” Nika says honestly, grinning. “I still think you’re weird as shit, whether or not you’re SpiderPaige.”

“We are not calling it that.”

Nika’s grin only widens, mischief dancing in her eyes. “But you gotta have a hero name. SuperPaige? Insect-girl? Ooh, Spiderwoman?”

“Goodnight, Nika!” Paige says loudly, leaving the room to the sound of Nika’s loud laughter.

She can’t wipe the smile off her face, not even when she makes her way into her room, tidying up her desk and getting ready for bed. The smile doesn’t leave her face even as she hears Nika whispering to herself through the walls: “Spiderwoman…damn, I’m good.”