Unknown, VINTAGE AUSTRALIAN SPIDER SCIENTIFIC ILLUSTRATIONS

#00 . . . YEAR ONE

MANTIS RELIGIOSA is a large insect from the family Mantidae, which themselves are the largest family of the order Mantodea. Better known by their common name, the praying mantis, these animals are most easily recognisable by the pose they assume at rest: one of prayer, or worship.

Or, perhaps, by the way that the female of the species tends to rip the heads off the males after sex.

There's an explanation for this phenomenon, don't worry: although male mantises are active, agile, their female counterparts are superior in strength. And with this strength, most female mantises attempt to kill males on sight.

So they must find another way to approach.

It's a game of trickery, really, and so many words can be used to describe it: careful, calculated, cowardly. Since the mere sight of a male is enough to provoke a female, the former must move when the latter isn't looking—so that's what he does. Utilising the fovea in his compound eyes—which face directly forwards, allowing the insect to view his prospective partner in accurate detail—he draws closer when the female isn't looking, stopping then starting again when necessary.

This process, predator-like, can take up to several hours. Scientists do not call it a courtship, because it is not: the word, courtship, suggests the female is receptive to the male's advances. Considering she almost always attempts to kill him afterwards, you can assume she is not.

When the male is close enough to the female, he opens his wings to aid the jump he makes onto the female's back. Once he lands, he uses his raptorial legs to hold onto her; once he is secure, copulation begins; and once when he is done, he makes a run for it, covering a distance of about fifty centimetres for his own safety.

There are a variety of prey that the mantis favour while hunting, other than their own kind: crickets, cockroaches, centipedes, anything that can be trapped between the small spikes on a mantis' femora and tibiae. Lizards, too—Spencer Sato has seen it on YouTube, videos of smaller reptiles who seek larger insects like the mantis for a snack, only to find their prey wants to play a different part today, that of the predator. Spencer Sato has seen it, as the mantis wrestles with its opponent, struggling for a moment before locking its neck in its forelegs. Spencer Sato has seen it, as the underdog mantis holds the lizard's jaw open then strikes, sinking its mandibles into flesh, pink and vulnerable, and delivers the death bite.

Spencer Sato has seen this video a thousand times. A million. But her favourite will always be the one she saw in middle school, pulled up secretly after her classmate Peter Parker managed to hack through the internet firewall—he'd beckoned her over with a conspiratorial grin on his lips, shifting halfway off his seat so she could join him at the carrel. Praying Mantis vs. Huntsman Spider!!!!! the title had said, its abundance of punctuation marks enough to make Spencer, an exclamation-point-minimalist, cringe—and the "match", as the video description had called it, was staged, with both specimens forced into a small plastic container that served as the battleground for their fight to the death. But Spencer had half-sat on the seat anyway, stared at the bulky computer monitor, as said praying mantis took on said huntsman spider.

It took longer to eat the thing than it did to defeat it.

Still, the huntsman spider was a formidable opponent to any insect in the animal kingdom. The giant huntsman spider, known as Heteropoda maxima, is considered the world's largest spider. In her father's study, hanging on the wall behind his desk, is one of these Heteropoda maximas, this specimen in particular with a leg span of twenty-nine centimetres, just one off the longest recorded length. Spencer's father had always liked the huntsman—going as far as to name himself after it—and out of all his extensive collection, this was his favourite: protected from the world in its little glass case, it was mounted with pride, boasting long, hairy limbs, a gleaming amber abdomen, and those vicious fangs.

Spencer had always hated his study. All those eyes, all those legs, all those pincers—her father kept hundreds of spiders on those walls, some ordered in from around the globe, some caught by his own two hands. It astounded Spencer sometimes, to think that there was some measure of control in her father, that there was something in the world he was willing to handle delicately, gently.

It meant that there was a part of her father that could catch a spider with crushing it. A part of him that could kill it, carefully, in a way that didn't destroy its body beyond repair. A part of him that could pin and place the arachnid and all its parts, its legs, fangs, abdomen, perfectly.

A part of him that treated dead animals with more kindness than he ever had his daughters. It brought both comfort and unease to Spencer in knowing that although her father showed literal spiders more respect than he did her, the stupid bug still ended up dead.

What that meant for her, she didn't want to know.

All she knew was that her father was just like the creatures pinned up on his walls, and though he believed she took after him—a spider, by both nature and nurture—she would always be the prey to his predator, another insect wrapped and trapped in his web.

There were better spiders, deadlier ones, that Spencer Sato's father could have named himself after—for a man who loved his poisons, something like the brown recluse spider (Loxosceles reclusa) or the funnel-web spider (Atrax robustus) might have been more appropriate, as the former's venom targets the molecules that comprise cell membranes and transforms them, and the latter attacks the nervous system. Raised on both her father's cruelty and his knowledge of the natural world, Spencer could list a dozen more accurate specimens than the huntsman.

But it didn't matter what kind of spider her father was, what name he liked to use when the time came to put away the gloves and the pins and the preserving solution and take out the knives, guns, grenades instead.

It didn't matter. Spencer Sato's father could be anything he wanted. A mantis could kill a lizard—it could kill a spider too.

𓆦

"GOOD GIRL," Dexter Dewitt said to his daughter, and although his expression couldn't be described as anything more than indolent—or bored—the approval in his voice was almost enough to distract her from her task.

Almost. She took the comment like venom to the heart, allowing it to numb her for a moment, before catching her opponent by the wrist, taking advantage of his momentum and using it against him to throw him over her shoulder, in the same way a hunter might throw their kill.

But to a hunter, their kill is valuable, and to Spencer, this man is nothing. With a name Spencer didn't even remember, he was one of many who sought to join her father's network of elite mercenaries, known to the public as the reputable private military firm Envenom International, and to the criminal underworld as the Web. Her father strived for perfection, in both his family and his business, and he only took the best of his best into his ranks. That said, there were menial tasks that needed to be carried out by menial people, and Spencer supposed this man was one of them.

She slammed him into the concrete and dealt a swift kick to the side of his head, giving herself a fleeting few seconds to meet her father's eyes. Dexter Dewitt was handsome, or at least he had been when he met Spencer's mother back in the day. Shiori Sato might have been fooled then by the chiselled features he wore like a mask, by the smile he could turn on like a demolition switch, by the body of hard lines and harder muscle, but Spencer was not blinded by the same kind of love. Or any love at all. Six foot five, he dwarfed his daughters, and he was intimidating before you even knew what he was capable of. White, with pale eyes and paler hair, you had to look closely to find what little likeness he had passed on to his daughters.

This upset Spencer when she was younger—she hated looking out of place when she already had so much trouble fitting into the small space of Scout's shadow. Older now, she was grateful. There was nothing in her father she wanted to resemble.

Still, Spencer looked closely now. If he had been impressed before, he was no longer—all she saw when she met his gaze was that endless, steel grey. No love, no affection, no nothing.

If that was what she wanted, she would have to look a few feet to his left to find it: there stood her sister, Scout, tossing a knife between her hands, the blade gleaming, grinning. It wasn't meant to intimidate, or intimidate Spencer at least. With hands like theirs, trained since birth to kill and to maim, it was best to keep them occupied. Otherwise, they would find themselves where they had been taught to belong, around someone's throat with digits pressed to flesh, feeling the life ebb away at the ends of their fingertips.

It wasn't as if this wasn't what Dexter expected from his girls. But right now, it was Spencer's time to shine. So Scout simply stood, silent and brooding, watching on with interest that succeeded in appearing subdued. She was beautiful, having inherited the best of her mother's features and what could be salvaged of her father's. One of Dexter's favourite venoms was that of Cheiracanthium inclusum, the yellow sac spider—it produced a substance that caused necrosis, and Scout Sato was the same kind of toxin.

Cell death in the flesh, all long legs and lush curves, disarming smiles and doe eyes, she was another one of her father's perfect little creatures, perfect little creations. Like so many of his poisons, she worked best on the heart; whenever they were out in public, masquerading as a family, all eyes were on Scout, and it wasn't hard to see why. It was her lips, so often twisted in a smirk that seemed capable of total paralysis. Or her eyes, a deep brown that teased the promise of a good fight or a good night—the fact that she was still legally a child hadn't stopped Dexter from leasing her out for both.

To Spencer, the real reason that her sister was so alluring, so naturally magnetic, was the fact that she existed in spite of their father. By virtue, that made her everything he was not—sweet, merciful, kind—but there was still something insidious inside her, written into her blood, written into her bones. A bedtime story, a monster that needed the fear of children to stay alive, to make the woods seem darker and the path seem thinner, it demanded acknowledgement.

But not today. Scout only nodded, but Spencer knew what it meant. Don't stop. Don't let me down.

Don't let him down.

The man on the floor groaned in pain. Pathetic. In the field, this man wouldn't last a day. In fact, Spencer was surprised he had made it this long. He would have been fine if he hadn't come to the house: although most of Dexter's business was conducted in his upstairs study, and most of his daughters' day-to-day training took place in the basement fitted out just for that purpose, the house was still what he liked to pretend was a home. The property line was a boundary not to be crossed. Especially not by a nobody. Dexter could tolerate a visit from his most trusted confidants, could welcome them into his home and offer them a glass of whiskey and a warm meal—but not some upstart who thought the Web owed him something. Who thought the Huntsman owed him something.

He didn't even owe him an execution. Dexter prided himself on the skill of his daughters, his little spiders, and he sought "learning experiences" for them wherever he could. What was a man's life if he couldn't benefit from it?

So here Spencer was, tenderising the meat before her father made a meal of it. Maybe she was a hunter, after all; she could tell herself she wasn't like her father, (or her sister for that matter) that she was better than both of them, that she was doing this only because she had to.

But people like her, like her family, didn't kill for survival.

They killed for sport. Scout had taken her first life at age nine, ever the perfect daughter. She was now almost eighteen, and the bodies had piled up, the number of lives she'd taken growing exponentially as the years passed. Three years younger, with no kills to speak of, Spencer was a failure.

Not for long. Dexter looked his youngest daughter up and down, his gaze a scalpel. Scout's presence beside him was the only anaesthesia Spencer would receive; regardless, she stood awkwardly, not sure what to do. The light that shone on her from above was cold and clinical. It did little to cleanse her, absolve her—in fact, it made the blood on her hands even more red, even more a hallmark of her hereditary cruelty.

"Finish it." Dexter said.

Spencer stopped. She had been instructed to brutalise the man, beat him up. Not kill him. The blunt-force trauma of her father's words was enough to kill both her and the man on the floor. "What?"

Dexter gave her a look, and Spencer felt her heart in her throat. "Sorry," she rushed to corrected herself, her head bowing in shame, "Excuse me, sir?"

"I said, finish it."

"Give me a weapon, then." Spencer replied, with as much piety she could muster without it sounding manufactured. Her father had a ego, but he wasn't stupid—he knew flattery and he despised it. "A gun, or a knife."

She looked to Scout now, who had shifted to lean against the display case on the wall. Here was only a small selection of the Huntsman's grand arsenal—the display comprised a variety of knives and small firearms, weapons that could be grabbed at a moment's notice. Weapons that would make this so much quicker.

So much easier.

"No," Dexter shook his head. His eyes didn't leave Spencer's. "Use your hands. That's what they're here for."

"But you—" Spencer faltered, and the blood on her hands had never felt more warm. "But Scout got to use a knife her first time." The story of Scout's first kill had been told so many times, spun like silk over and over, that Spencer knew it practically off by heart.

Dexter had brought in one of the higher-ranking Web members for questioning—an old friend, rumoured to have betrayed the organisation to the FBI. Spencer had spent the day with a trainer, another old friend named Taskmaster, so Scout was the one by her father's side when the traitor made an attempt to escape. He'd grabbed the girl, hoping to use her as leverage for his own life.

But, bored, she'd been playing with a knife her father had given to her while he and his former friend talked. And even since they were children, the Sato girls knew that when they were given something, especially by their father, they were never to let go. So the man had grabbed her, pressed a gun to the side of her head, and she had slit his throat. Scout had always been the favourite, but ever since that day she had been valued infinitely higher than Spencer ever would be, afforded more chances than Spencer had ever been given. She would be eighteen in a few months, and then she would take her place as the Huntsman's right hand, usurping the work of a dozen men who had spent a decade trying to get close to Dexter, trying to earn his trust.

Trust—a currency Dexter refused to afford. But his daughters, so desperate for his love and approval, were an investment that would never stop returning. And the thought of that day, that smile that her sister carved into the man's throat, always returned to Spencer. Cruel, it taunted her.

Regardless, as far as Dexter was concerned, Scout's story was pedestrian. Nothing more than an anecdote to be traded between family friends, a tale to be told at the dinner table. But to Spencer, it was equal parts impressive and terrifying. This was the side of her sister that wasn't sweet, merciful, kind. This was the side of her sister that had spent her life leagues ahead of Spencer, who always had Dexter's praise, attention, whatever else he substituted for love. This was the side of her sister that did everything their father told her to, who believed that blood was thicker than water just as he did but still had no qualms in spilling it.

What would Scout do if Dexter told her to hurt her sister? The answer scared the shit out of Spencer—because she didn't know what it was. And that uncertainty was terrifying, worse than the fear of all those spiders in the study, worse than the fear of her father's wrath.

"You are not your sister," Dexter said coldly. "And you make that clearer every single day."

A knife to the heart. In that moment, Spencer would have hurt Scout if she was told to. Anything to prove she was worthy. "But—"

"Scarlett got to use a knife because she took the initiative. You, Spencer, have never been anything special. You never will be, because you never act. You only react."

"Dad," Scout interjected, stepping forward, but Dexter silenced her with a hand. Hearing Scout call him Dad was enough to send a fevered jealousy pumping through Spencer's veins, a fast-acting poison that paralysed her with anger from the inside out.

"This instruction is as far as I can take you. Prove you aren't dead weight. Finish it."

Spencer swallowed as she turned back to the man. He was close to death anyway, she told herself—he'd been out for too long, so chances were that he wasn't going to wake up. Not with a level of brain function that was even close to what he had had before. Still, as she knelt beside him, Spencer hesitated.

"Spencer, do it. Now."

Her hands went to his throat. He should've been an easy kill: he was weak, for fuck's sake. He was unconscious.

"Spencer." In periphery, she saw someone shift, and she braced herself for the blow she knew was coming, the punishment her father oh-so-loved to execute.

But it didn't come. It all happened in a blur: her hands were pushed away, her body shoved back, and there was a guttural cry, a flash of the light, a gleam of a blade. Then, there was red, more than there had been before, so much more, pouring forth from the man's throat.

Scout was kneeling across from her, already wiping the blood off her knife. "She's not ready." Her voice was background noise, ambience that barely perforated the shell of herself Spencer has retreated into. That smile, again, that crimson grin. She couldn't escape it.

"Do you think I don't know that? She's weak, Scarlett. She's not like you."

Scarlett looked up at their father, who was out of sight now. Her expression was uncompromising. "No one's like me. You have a meeting to go to, Dad. I'll take care of this."

"Make sure she knows what she is. Or what she isn't." Dexter seethed, his voice full of quiet fury. Spencer winced at the sound. But he did leave, his footsteps loud at first before fading into something Spencer could pretend was rain, leaving Spencer and her sister alone.

Scout waited for a few moments before rising, stepping over the body as the last few litres of life left it. She extended a hand to help Spencer up. "Are you okay?"

This was the side of her sister that would never hurt her, savage in discipline, sweet in temperament. This was the side of her sister that snuck her Japanese sweets from the Asian supermarket after training, that bought Sailor Moon band-aids to cover Spencer's wounds even when they were far too great to be healed by a simple plastic strip, only because she knew those were her favourite. This was the side of her sister that let Spencer sit in her bedroom when she was practicing the cello, the only time of the day when she wasn't under their father's surveillance; that showed Spencer all the parts of her instrument, that let her bow the strings while Scout stopped them in place.

"I'm fine." Spencer said shortly, ignoring Scout's outstretched hand. "You didn't have to do that. I had it under control."

"Sure you did," Scout said. She pulled her sister up regardless, then crouched down to meet her at eye level, checking her face for any cuts and scrapes she could clean. This was Scout's way of coping: small wounds. Small wounds were manageable. Small wounds could heal and you could pretend that the real hurt wasn't more than just surface-level, more than just skin-deep. It was inside, a seed sown since birth, and no amount of band-aids, Sailor Moon or otherwise, could fix it. So Scout kept to the little things, the scratches and bruises and sprains, the minor injuries she could kiss better or distract from with a well-timed trip to the cinemas or a stash of Spencer's favourite snacks. "Are you hurt?"

Spencer scowled and tried to slap her away. "I said, I'm fine. It's going to be worse later."

"I'll talk to him."

"It's not going to stop him." It's not going to save me. "You know that."

"He listens to me now, Spence."

"Not with stuff like this."

None of the blood on Spencer's face was her own. Satisfied, Scout released her sister. "You'd be surprised. I'll fix it."

Spencer opened her mouth to retort, but Scout cut her off. "I said, I'll fix it. Stop giving me that look. Clean up, okay? We're going for a drive."

𓆦

SCOUT BOUGHT SPENCER ICE CREAM in Flushing, even though it was cold out. They parked the car right across from the ice cream shop and sat inside to eat, with Spencer leaning against the passenger-side door so she could take in as much of the street as possible. Close to winter, the world was slowly trading one slipcover for another; soon the autumn leaves that clung to New York City like a scab would peel away, leaving room for the threadbare blanket of winter to descend.

Though the radio was turned down low, Spencer could still hear the song that was playing—one of those old eighties hits that always made white people go crazy, she could feel its bassline thrumming through the shoulder she had pressed up against the speakers. Scout hummed along between mouthfuls, alternating off-pitch pre-choruses and spoons of peanut butter chocolate chip.

Spencer simply watched her sister, vaguely amused, studying her as if she was some specimen of rare insect. When her cup of ice cream was done, Scout licked her lips, and spoke. "Okay, time to talk."

"I hate talking."

"I'll eat your ice cream if you don't talk."

"You don't even like bubblegum."

"Not in the slightest. But I'll do anything out of spite." Scout shot her sister that sideways smirk, the one that drove boys crazy, including the sucker who had served them at the ice cream shop. She'd simply slanted him that smile and he'd given her Spencer's order for free, as well as his number—which Scout promptly crumpled up and threw into the bin once they reached the other side of the street. He's not my type, was all she'd said, her indifference accompanied by a shrug, but Spencer knew the real reason why she didn't bother. Dexter Dewitt liked to be the only man in his daughters' lives. Even an ice cream server was someone to contend with, and Dexter couldn't have that.

"I don't want to talk about it, Scout."

Scout sighed, and Spencer rolled her eyes, her focus shifting away from the street, past her sister and to the alley adjacent to the car. She could make out the silhouettes of a man, maybe two, just lurking.

She knew the looks on their faces—it was an expression her father wore well. They were watching, waiting.

On the hunt. Predator to prey.

"Do you want me to drop you at Gwen's for the night? She can just take you to school tomorrow."

"Scout, please stop."

"I'll give you guys some cash. You can go watch a movie, or something—what was that one you wanted to see? With like... the wizards, or some shit?" Scout gestured vaguely with her free hand, the other resting lazily upon the steering wheel. If she were a wizard, no doubt she would've set herself on fire by the mere recklessness of her wrist movements.

"Gwen's the one who wants to see that, not me." As if Spencer wouldn't go anyway. "I don't care about wizards. She'll probably just go with Peter. He's a nerd like that."

"I'll pay for Peter too, then."

"Scout, stop. Seriously. Just drop me at Gwen's."

"And you'll be okay?"

"I'll be okay," Spencer confirmed, twisting the rings that adorned her fingers. The idea of going to Gwen's for the night eased her nerves, soothed the stomach that swept in waves of ice cream and shame. Gwen's family was happy, for the most part, and normal: it was just her and her father. Even though George Stacy was rarely around—a captain in the New York City police department, he was almost always on duty—he was nothing like Dexter, and the apartment he shared with his daughter was full of life and warmth. Every inch of it welcomed her, from the fridge that had been stocked with her favourite foods since her second visit to the mattress that was made up on Gwen's floor every other weekend.

Spencer already knew what they would do when she went over—Gwen would break out the drum kit and convince Spencer to take up the bass guitar. (The instrument had been a thrift store find, one that Spencer kept in the back of Gwen's closet so that her father couldn't find it—she'd seen too many of Scout's bows splintered and broken after Dexter's temper reached its fever pitch.) They would play, and dream of becoming rockstars together, until their music attracted the attention of Gwen's next-door-neighbour Peter. Since Peter couldn't play any instruments—he understood the theory behind music, but all attempts to actually get him to play failed—they would migrate to the living room and turn on the TV. Sometimes they'd binge an entire franchise in one night, or a string of sitcom episodes with jokes they'd all heard before.

But the idea of that—of playing bass, of eating popcorn, of hitting Peter Parker over the head with a pillow when he tried to convince them to watch Star Wars for the umpteenth time—left a bitter taste in Spencer's mouth despite the bubblegum ice cream. Sure, she would have fun, because she always did with Gwen and Peter; enough fun, maybe, to forget the blood that had pooled at her feet and dried on her skin. But going to Gwen's would leave Scout alone in the house with their father.

She didn't want to think about that. So she continued her surveillance of the alley across, suspicion needling her skin. One of the men poked their head out of the shadows, his gaze fixed on a jogger who had paused a few storefronts down to change her song.

"We'll swing by home and then hit the Asian supermarket. Gwen likes the strawberry Pocky, doesn't she?"

"Why are you being like this?"

Scout scoffed. "Like what?"

"Nice."

A gasp. "Excuse me—I'm always nice."

"Not as nice as this," Spencer said indignantly. "What's your play?"

"I'm buttering you up so you'll talk to me."

"Subtle. Shouldn't you be the one who's gotta talk? You just killed someone."

Scout shrugged, threading a hand through her hair. Her nails were painted a glossy black, with no trace of the blood she'd spilled beneath them. "Conscience? Never heard of it."

"That's not funny, Scout."

"Wasn't meant to be."

"You're just saying that 'cause I didn't laugh." The runner, satisfied with her song choice, plugged her wireless earphones back in before re-commencing her jog. "And I didn't laugh because it wasn't funny. It was the unfunniest thing I've ever fucking heard."

"Hey! Language!" Scout snorted, her dark eyes drifting back to the ice cream shop, to the server whom she could see through the front window. Spencer wasn't too interested in boys—or anyone, for that matter—but Scout was, as much as she pretended she wasn't. And the server was just her type; Scout had lied through her teeth, and they both knew it. "For both the swearing and the use of the word 'unfunniest'. Is that even a word?"

"I think so?"

"It doesn't sound right."

"'Cause you're the expert on the English language."

"Out of the four languages I speak, I'd say yeah, I'm an expert on English."

"No you're not."

"Neither are you."

"In comparison to you, I am." Spencer finally smiled. "Indisputably. That's a big word. Can you spell it?"

"Ahahaha, you're so funny." It was Scout's turn to roll her eyes. "Bitch."

And Spencer's to gasp. "Of all the words in the English language—the very language, I might add, you claim to be an expert on—the only one you can think of is bitch?"

"Okay, Spence. You can stop now."

"Do you accept defeat?"

"Do you agree to talk to me?"

"I'm talking right now."

"Don't be a smartass."

"Not hard when you're around."

"If I was Dad, I'd wash your mouth out with s—"

The runner passed the corner that turned into the alley, and that was when the men struck. She was gone in an instant, her mouth covered and arms pinned back before she was even able to scream. A flash of lycra and she was swallowed up by the dark.

Scout had only just left the car, only just slammed the driver's-seat-side door shut by the time Spencer had reached the alleyway. Anger coursed through her veins, a burning righteousness that felt almost biblical as it consumed every inch of her being. She barely caught the "Spencer, come back!" that her sister yelled from behind—all her attention was trained upon the two men and their little corner of the world, the damp patch of concrete where they pinned the runner down, grabbing fistfuls of her hair, clothes, anything they could lay their hands on, anything they could claim.

The world sharpened before her eyes, as if its details had been carved by some invisible knife. "Get off her, assholes."

A whimper from the woman drew their attention to the girl that had interrupted them. Spencer had never been intimidating—she was small in stature, and she had only just begun to shed the chubbiness of childhood, her body metamorphosing into something that vaguely resembled a woman.

Vaguely—but it was enough. Men like this, they would take anything.

"Get out of here, kid. This is none of your business."

Spencer heard Scout's familiar footfall come to a stop behind her, the sound of her steps softened by the damp concrete. "I think it is."

"Spence," Scout hissed in her ear, "what the fuck are you doing?"

Spencer didn't answer her. The man who had spoken stepped forward to shove her away, but she beat him to the punch—literally. Her first blow was to his throat, drawing from him a choking sound that echoed off the cold walls of the alley. He sounded like a squealing pig.

It was music to Spencer's ears.

"What the fuck—" the other man said, releasing the runner and rising to join the fight. (Spencer would hardly call it that.) He pulled a switchblade from his jacket pocket, flicked it open to reveal the small, silver blade.

Child's play. Scout sidestepped past her sister, striking the would-be assailant on the wrist—she was stronger than she looked and she sent the knife clattering onto the concrete with ease. Arrogantly she took a moment to flash him her signature smirk before she drove her knee into his groin.

Only Scout Sato could make hitting someone in the dick look graceful, but Spencer didn't have time to admire her sister's good work. Baring her teeth, she turned back to her own opponent, taking a few steps back to give herself the space to deliver a spinning kick, anchored off the side of the dumpster. Perhaps in the Dewitt house basement Spencer was a failure, but in the real world she was anything but.

Her kick landed perfectly, the technique textbook-precise, and the man stumbled back. Spencer took advantage of his shock and dealt another blow, this time to his jaw. She hadn't thought to take off her rings before challenging the pair, but she was grateful for her oversight as they caught on his skin, slicing the flesh of his face into ribbons.

One more punch and he was out, a crumpled mess of a man on the alley floor. Scout neutralised her own mark mere moments later, barely glancing at him as she crouched to check the runner for injuries. "Are you okay?"

She was in shock, but for the most part, unharmed. "Yeah. Yeah, I am." Then, she looked directly at Spencer and added, "Thank you."

"You're welcome," Spencer managed. She had too many thoughts racing through her mind, too many loose threads for her to reach out and pull on. This was what she was meant for. No father, no web, no spiders. This.

"Good." Scout gave her sister a strange look, then helped the runner up, taking the woman's phone from where it was strapped to her armband and dialling 911. "They'll be out for a while. Wait in one of the nearby shops for the police, okay?"

"Okay."

"And we were never here," Spencer warned, shoving her hands into her jacket pockets to hide the blood. She took a few steps back towards the street in retreat.

"You were never here," the runner repeated, dazed.

By the time she recovered and the police arrived, the Sato sisters were long gone.

𓆦

SPENCER LINGERED AT THE DOORWAY of her father's study. He still wasn't home.

Latrodectus hasselti, Phoneutria fera, Latrodectus mactans, Acantholycosa lignaria—she had read the names of these specimens a thousand times before, encoded every scientific classification to memory. When she returned to the house, however, she found the spiders less arachnids and more jumbled letters: she couldn't focus on anything but what had just happened, what she had just done.

She'd packed her overnight bag with shaking hands, washed free of blood but not of that feeling, that purpose. Images flashed across her vision, so fast she had mental whiplash—first, of the woman's face, grateful. Then, of her father, but he was gone in an instant, replaced by Peter and Gwen and the piles of comic books they owned between them, full of colours and Ben-Day-dots, masks and capes and morals that no-one, and certainly not Spencer, had to be ashamed of.

Gwen. Peter. The over-punctuated YouTube video. The fight to the death.

The victor. The mantis.

In her father's eyes, the world was a game of survival. Dog-eat-dog, predator-eat-prey. In this natural order of things, he, a lowly spider, had somehow found his way to the top.

Spencer took a deep breath and stepped through the doorway, avoiding the hundred tiny gazes of the spiders mounted on the walls either on side of her by keeping her eyes trained on the one right ahead: the prized Heteropoda maxima hung up behind her father's desk in all its fine-haired, long-legged glory.

The Huntsman. The Huntsman and his Web. The Huntsman and his daughters. The Huntsman and his hands.

It didn't matter. Spencer Sato's father could be anything he wanted, and he could believe in any world he wished.

But a mantis could kill a spider—so a mantis Spencer would become.

🕷 welcome to the prologue (?? it's a bit long??) of american animals!! sorry for the length, but there was a lot i felt i needed to establish. this chapter had me feeling like i needed a bibliography 😩😩 i'm sorry for any arachnophobes reading this. i feel your pain. . . also, if anyone goes looking for the praying mantis v lizard match, i'm like 99% sure it was staged. spencer and peter don't have to know that. anyway! let me know what you thought :)

graphic by soulofstaars . . . 🕷️