1.
Somewhere in London, a man is waiting for a train.
Due to a some niggly detail that no one but some low-ranking technician will probably ever really know about, or understand, or even, for that matter, care about beyond the effect of the cause, the expected arrival time of half-past-eight comes and goes and the tracks remain empty in the station.
The man continues to wait. He keeps his eyes forward and his shoulders square. He has stood longer vigils than this.
The low-ranking technician is likely being sacked by his superior, after explaining the missing cog or shorted wire or squirrels nesting in the engine. Or perhaps, his supervisor is a kind and forgiving type and knows that he and the missus have finally had success with the baby they've been trying for and that really, the cog or wire or squirrels are something that happened somewhere, anywhere, and certainly not due to any action or inaction on the low-ranking technician's part. You can believe that if it brings you comfort. However, I certainly wouldn't count on it, as it is nearly ten-to-ten when a train finally pours, shrieking and spitting and squealing into the quiet of the station.
The man grimaces at the cacophony, and takes a step forward, leaning heavily on an ugly medical supply cane that, despite how starkly it contrasts against his dark trousers, an observer might be forgiven for not noticing at all; an accessory incongruous with the patient quiet bearing (shoulders square, spine straight, eyes forward, feet slightly apart, standing for over an hour) of the man standing watch for a train for over an hour. Since it is nearly ten in the morning on a week day, and the only people that didn't make alternate travel plans when the train failed to arrive as scheduled are a pair of teens snogging against the far wall and a woman in her sixties dozing over the cloth cat carrier in her lap, the man's painful, limping journey through the door of the train goes unnoticed by much of anyone, so no one wonders at the dichotomy.
The man is shaken out of the roaring metal tube near the hospital at which he first learned to mend failed parts of frail humans. He firms his jaw and takes a breath to prepare for the walk ahead of him, thinking disconsolately of his student days, when he would travel this very route hundreds of times a month without a thought or a twinge, in fair weather and foul, drunk, sober, or on his second day without sleep, but never first having to take a breath to prepare for the walk ahead. He wonders if returning to the walls within which he was so young and fresh faced will make him feel ancient. He rather suspects that it will.
He arrives in the lobby after only one pause for rest on a bench, and speaks to a friendly if flustered young woman who directs him to the area for persons in charge of such things as taking on war-torn alumni as part of London's pit crew to humanity. The offices are, of course, on the far side of the building on the top floor.
After a brief meeting ('Oh yes, your records...we have them here' 'Quite good, quite good - in school you were in the top third, is that correct?' '...just lost someone in A&E, if you're interested...' '...as soon as your service documents arrive, of course...' 'So nice to meet you.' 'We will be in contact soon.') he takes the elevator back down to the main floor, and passes the young woman again on the way out. He nods a greeting, but she is preoccupied, balancing two polystyrene cups of hot coffee while navigating around the burbling brook of humanity wandering in and out of her path. He heads out into the London afternoon sunlight. He has at least two more stops to make before returning to the train, and the ache in his leg is already making him wince every third step.
He doesn't return to the small room in a friend's house until two hours after the sun has set. He is too tired to eat dinner, so he just changes into his worn t-shirt and loose-fitting pajama pants before pulling back the bedspread and letting himself fall onto the firm mattress. He hopes he will be too tired to dream, but of course, he isn't.
The man drifts into violent and troubled slumber. A former low-ranking technician from the railroad tries to figure out how to explain to his remarkably pregnant wife that he isn't quite sure how they will pay their mortgage. A Detective Inspector sighs as a press conference is interrupted repeatedly, via text message. A woman in a pink suit smiles a secret smile as she steps into a waiting cab. A nice young forensic pathologist frowns as she takes meticulous notes on the lividity resulting from post-mortem trauma to a corpse. A tall, pale man wonders (somewhat indifferently), if he will be able to find anyone to split the rent on the flat into which he is in the process of moving his possessions.
None of them contemplate the consequences of delayed public transportation. They have no reason to do so. After all, none of them are aware of how a cog or a wire or a squirrel gone awry can interfere with a chance meeting of old classmates that would lead to a chance meeting of two men in a hospital morgue, which would lead to a borrowed phone and viewing a flat and viewing a crime scene and dinner and running over rooftops and a cab ride and a single shot and a shock blanket.
Instead, the man with the limp (his name is John) hears gunfire in his sleep and cries out, waking his friend in the next room. Instead, the tall pale man (his name is Sherlock) is called to a crime scene where he is barred from contact with the corpse by the lead forensics investigator after some unfortunate elucidation regarding wives and mistresses, and returns to his new flat alone. Instead, a cab picks up the pregnant young wife of a former railroad technician on her way home from a baby shower.
And deep in London's darkest heart, a small, unassuming spider sitting at the center of a glorious web, reaches out.