Chris yawned, swigging from his mug of coffee; Jill sat by him, also drinking from some steaming black coffee with Barry and Sherry both looking very tired, sitting looking at Rebecca. At the table, they all listened to Rebecca talking. Leon and Claire had been put to bed, in separate rooms naturally. It was two in the morning, and Rebecca was explaining what the hell was going on.

   "So, it's not fatal?" Chris said for the fourth time, this time finally being heard.

   "They'd be dead by now if it was" Rebecca explained "But there is something that…well…may not be particularly good for them."

   "Not particularly good for them" Jill stated flatly "You think the spider bite might have some unpleasant side effects, right?"

   "Their feverish state seems to have been brought on by some extreme hormonal change; not like oestrogen or anything like that, sort of like growth hormones or other types you see during puberty"

    The word that hung in the air began with an 'm' and it wasn't a particularly pleasant one.

    "They're mutating?" Barry said, at last.

    "Yes" Rebecca replied, "I don't know how. We're going to have to cross our fingers and hope it's not extreme."

    "Is that all we can do? Hope?" Sherry sighed.

    "Not much else we can do" Rebecca said kindly, "What happens next is all in the lap of god"

   Leon awoke at last, light spilling across the sheets under which he lay. Leon was aware that he felt fine. His fever had disappeared, and if anything he felt better than before he'd become feverish; crisp, alert and fresher than mountain dew in an advert for mineral water. He sat up, rubbing his eyes and looked out of the window. This was the house they'd bought in the city to lie low in after each campaign – Umbrella wouldn't dare touch them there, even if they knew.

     Leon, Claire, Rebecca, Jill and Chris all earned money for the many times they weren't out shooting up Umbrella's interests. They worked part time; Claire on Mondays, Tuesdays and Fridays in an office with Leon, with salaries that were oddly larger than the norm; it could be assumed this had something to do with Trent, their secret informant. Chris, who out and out hated that sort of environment, worked down at the Shooting Range as a supervisor, with Jill oddly enough. Rebecca was a consultant for the local hospital, Sherry went to school.

     He looked at the time; he'd be late for work if he didn't shift soon. He sprung out of bed, a little more athletic than usual. During his brief sojourn in the shower, he noticed how his bite didn't itch anymore, but paid little heed, even as he left, pulled on a dressing gown and then walked back into his room. En route, he met Claire, also looking bright and very much alive. She was smiling broadly.

     "Hey Leon! Still alive, huh?"

   She playfully punched him, and he found himself wincing; funny, shouldn't hurt like that…

    Claire looked him over.

    "Have you been working out? You just look a bit more…" she blushed "…athletic."

    Leon looked down at himself. It wasn't that he hadn't been fit before, but he had certainly bulked up a little. Not to big proportions, more like the T-1000 had been in Terminator 2.

    Odd metaphor he thought, and smiled.

    "Dunno, really don't know Claire. Anyways, we're going to be late soon if we don't hurry up!"

   "Sure, see you at breakfast!" she said, rushing into the shower. Leon got changed quickly, into a blue work-shirt, black trousers and a red penguin tie that Claire had picked for him. He grabbed his jacket, and ran downstairs, putting his left hand down on the banister rail, and then with a swift and effortless movement, flipped his entire body backward over to land on the floor on his own two feet. He blinked, and flexed his fingers.

    That certainly wasn't something he'd done before. Weird.

  He jogged over to the kitchen, where the others were sitting at breakfast. They all looked up as he walked in, smiling cheerfully.

     "Morning everybody!" he chirped, sauntering over to the coffee maker.

     Chris decided to ask the first question.

     "You feeling okay?" Chris enquired.

     "Absolutely fine, never better; the fever's gone" Leon replied, as he waited for the coffee to brew.

     "You certainly look very chipper this morning!" Jill remarked, sipping her orange juice.

     "Claire's fine too, she'll be down in a mo" he added, as the coffee began to heat up.

    "So you're both okay?" Sherry said, hopefully "Nothing's wrong?"

    "Nope!" Leon replied, with a broad grin at her, winking.

  Rebecca chanced a cautious look at Sherry, before she turned back toward Leon.

     "Hey, before you go, mind if I give you both an X-ray? Just for scientific purposes?"

    "Um…" Leon scratched his head "…sure, if you like"   

   Chris nodded at Rebecca, agreeing vehemently with her suggestion. It wasn't like Rebecca was always like this, but when it came to biology and medicine there was really nobody else to ask.

    Leon felt something tingling his neck.

   Suddenly, behind his normal field of vision, an image flittered past; of colliding bodies, of plates…it was like a film had slipped its sprockets for a few moments, btu he saw it. On impulse, he leapt toward where Jill was sitting.

    Jill stood up, as did Sherry; neither of them was aware of each other, until Sherry walked into Jill, who tipped backward and the four plates shed' been carrying flew into mid-air.

     The movement that Leon had made reached them just as the plates flew up into the air, and as they came down he caught them in one hand, one by one. They all stared in amazement as Leon looked at them, feeling uncomfortable under their withering gaze.

     "What?" he asked irritably.

     "You moved before it even happened, how the hell did you do that?" Chris asked, in disbelief.

     "I…I…" Leon felt insecure "I don't...know..."

     He grabbed the coffee, and sat down, studiously ignoring them for the rest of breakfast, despite their stares.

    Claire was getting dressed. She didn't know why she felt fine, but something side her was saying that not everything was as it should be. Maybe it was because of the fact she'd known that bar of soap was going to be on the floor before she even stepped inside. It had obviously fallen, but before she would have just walked in and slipped on the damned thing.

    How could she have known?

  It could just be a coincidence or something. What certainly wasn't a coincidence were the odd looking blemishes on her wrists; they were like she'd been burned, not very noticeable but pigmented so that if you looked closely enough you could see them. And Claire certainly could, particularly when she was scrubbing herself.

   She decided that at work, or in the car, she'd ask Leon if he had the same blemishes; she had, so he might too…after all, they were both bitten by a spider…

    As she finished dressing, she frowned in the mirror. The spider bite. Did that have a role to play in this? It was like something out of Spiderman; except that was fiction, this wasn't. She laughed the thought away.

     Don't be stupid she thought as she walked downstairs for her breakfast you'll be thinking that you are Spiderman next. Well, SpiderGIRL, actually.

     As she got into the kitchen, she noticed the tense silence.

     "Um…is everything okay?"

     Leon looked up, half-smiling.

      "Hey Claire, want some breakfast?"

      "Sure…" she said, a little uncertainly considering how apprehensive he seemed. Everybody smiled a little sheepishly at her; by this, she could see that Leon wasn't totally happy with them for some reason.

      "What's going on?" she asked firmly, deciding to get to the bottom of it.

      "I caught some plates, and everybody thought it was weird beyond belief." Leon replied "So what? I just caught some plates"

      "Yeah, but you'd started moving five seconds before and were there to catch them! You didn't even see me and Sherry collide" Jill pointed out.

       "Okay, you don't need to keep pointing it out!" Leon replied, again irritable.

"Leon, can we do that scan?" Rebecca said, eager to prevent conflict "You as well Claire?"

"Sure, come on Claire" Leon responded, Rebecca guided them towards the small tool-shed, converted into a laboratory for purposes of studying Umbrella's records and samples that they often retrieved from their trips. She scanned them one at a time, taking notes discreetly and then dismissing them like a schoolteacher would to her students.

   Leon was relieved to leave the house, he didn't like the stares he was being given by the others.

   He could barely wait to get out of the door, no sooner had Claire finished brushing her teeth he was dragging her out into the morning air.

  "I think Leon's a bit touchy" Chris said, turning to Jill.

  "I think he's just feeling a bit insecure, the feeling that everybody's watching him; I think we ought to be less obvious next time"

   Rebecca nodded.

   "Just keep one eye out. I think they'll feel intimidated otherwise"

   Chris shrugged.

    "Yeah, I guess" he sighed "Anyway, come on Jill; we're going to be late ourselves if we're not careful!"

    Jill nodded.

    "Come on, give your teeth a scrub"

    Chris moaned a little.

     "Do I have to?" he asked, like a five year old child being scolded to do something he desperately didn't want to do. They'd been through this so many times; Jill was slowly but surely grounding him; she'd made him quit smoking and was ensuring his personal hygiene remained constant, and one way to do this was the regular brushing of teeth, something Chris saw as a waste of time in the morning.

      "Want your breath to smell like a dead rhinoceros?" Jill said, in clipped tones.

       "Okay, okay…" he replied, plodding upstairs towards the bathroom.

       "Come on Sherry, get your bag" Jill said, turning to Sherry. Sherry's school was closer to where they worked than Leon and Claire, so Chris and Jill gave her the lifts in the morning. Barry was still asleep, so they decided to leave the house discreetly before he woke up.

        "Alright Jill!" Sherry said cheerfully with a beam, as she shouldered her bag "is that lazy mule Chris going to keep us all day?"

        "Hey, that's my boyfriend you know!" Jill scolded playfully, grinning as she said it.

   "My condolences" Sherry giggled.

   Chris heard this as he walked down, and grinned roguishly at her.

   "Ah, shuddup" he said, waving his hand at her dismissively. 

"I mean, what are they bothered about?" Leon said, as he drove the car up towards the building where they both worked.

 Claire looked down at her lap.

  "I don't know Leon…maybe we really are changing"

 Leon considered this; something inside him told his soul that this was true. That elegant backflip from the stairs, the catching of the plates by seeing the event before it had happened…what was this? He certainly hadn't been like it before.

    Claire unsheathed her cuff, showing Leon the blemish on her skin.

     "Look at this. I have it on my other hand as well, do you have them?"

     Leon stared at it, eyebrows furrowing. He hadn't looked, to be honest; so on cue, she pulled up his sleeve to look at his wrist. Sure enough, on the underside of the skin of the wrist, Leon saw an odd but only mildly pigmented blotch that looked like Claire's.

     "What the hell is it…?" he mused out loud.

     "I don't know" she replied, as Leon brought the car to a skilful stop outside the towering construction of steel and glass that evoked a true sense of the modern age, the modern day cathedrals of mankind; okay, so they didn't look as pretty or awe-inspiring, but were still damned big.

     "You think we should be worried about it?" Leon asked, "I mean, we've seen one or two changes, what if it got worse?"

     Claire bit her lip.

     "I…don't want to think about that" she murmured "Just promise me you'll call me on the internal phone or come and find me if you find anything out, okay?"

     Leon smiled, clasping her hand in his.

    "I promise" he said quietly, voice imbued with what Claire had recognised to be the spirit he reserved for very tender and true moments. "Come on, we're going to be late" 

   "I'm scared, Leon" she said, quietly "What if this turns out to be a real curse?"

   "Claire, I swear what is happening to us will ruin our lives, okay?" Leon replied, squeezing her hand yet tighter.

   She smiled at him, as they clambered out of the car into the clear morning sunshine.

     Yet another day of being a working drone for a processing company was about to begin; except this day was going to be slightly different.

   Leon stood impatiently in the queue to the photocopier, tapping his foot lightly on the ground as he waited for the man to finish his ridiculous amount of photocopying. The repetitive, droning sound of the copier at work got on his nerves, and made him more on edge than usual. He didn't like mechanical machines like these on principal; they jammed, they got stuck, they crashed, they whined…at least computers told you why, even if it was in a near impossible to comprehend fashion.

     He had to copy twelve or so pages for the boss, and this lug in front of him was seriously wasting his time.

    "Hey Reeves, could you please hurry up?!" Leon exclaimed after a while.

    Reeves, from accounts, turned to him, face dark.

     "The accounting copier's broke, so I'm up here. Got a problem with that?"

     "Well why are you taking so damned long?" Leon replied, in frustration.

     "Accounts have to have copies of everything, in triplicate" Reeves said, in that fatuous way Leon was used to him using whenever it involved exemplifying the importance of his job.

     "Damn it, you're an assistant accountant, stop making it sound so frigging important!" Leon said, shaking his head in bemusement.

     "Everybody has an important role in this company; even you do, in some small way"

   The emphasis of the word 'small' made Leon want to hit him, but the knowledge that he'd be able to put Reeve's neck out of action for a month or so put him against such an idea; it'd not only be one sided, but could result in Leon being 'marked' and being fired was not something he wanted.

     "Oh…screw you" Leon muttered, turning away and stamping off. He thumped the flat of his palm against the departments note crowded message board to vent his spleen, and began to walk off when Reeves called back.

     "Hey! Don't take half the goddamned board with you!"

   Leon frowned, and looked at his hand. About four or five pieces of paper were attached to his hand by some imperceptible suction; he grabbed them and slowly peeled them off, making a sound like peeling Velcro. It was like his hands were covered in glue…but they weren't, they looked and felt as normal as ever.

     Like Velcro…

Leon decided the best place to go was the washroom. He surreptitiously slipped out of the office area, and down the corridor. Leon stared at his hand, flexing it a few times. Why did it do that? It had stuck itself to the wall…once inside the toilets, he gazed in the mirror, blinking. He twisted the tap, a gush of water flowing out into his hands, with which he splashed his face.

    His hand didn't stick to the tap though…he'd been angry when it had happened and had wanted something to happen. Was this something that phased with his moods or was it something he could control?

     There was only place to experiment with it.

     Outside.

The building was quite a number of stories high, soaring up into the bluish sky above his head. Leon stared blankly at the wall; it looked quite uncompromising, and he felt as if it was stubbornly trying to resist his willpower. Leon was thinking, something he often did, but not about this sort of thing; he was pondering climbing the wall. No, not with any handy climbing equipment; Leon was considering doing it with his bare hands. Like a spider.

   While he didn't share a spider's looks, he was certainly sharing a few attributes with them now…anyway this was beside the point.

    Climbing the wall.

   It was a little daunting to say the least. Climbing up a sheer wall was not one of his life ambitions, but now here he was giving it a try; his super sticky hands had given him something of an idea, and well…this was it. It was a preposterous idea. A ludicrous idea. A silly idea. A physics defying idea. And it might just work.

    He walked up to the wall, as if facing his nemesis in a duel. He took a deep breath. Leon placed his left hand on the wall, feeling its cold roughness beneath his skin. He raised his right, and put it above the other. When Leon was sure his hands were pressed firmly up against the wall, he took a deep breath…and lifted himself. To his surprise, he was lifting himself off the ground. He pressed his toes against the wall, and repeated the motion. Leon repeated the motion, hands coming away easily and securing themselves down just as easily. He licked his lips, and began to slowly but surely climb up the wall. By the time he'd reached the eighth floor, he turned and looked down. He stared down, at the impossibly distant ground where he'd begun his climb, the windows stretching down into near infinity. But he was only eight floors up!

     The adrenaline backwash began to tack effect. He grinned like a child, lips stretching so far he was starting to look like a monkey.

     "WAHOOOOO!!!!" he crowed in triumph. Leon started climbing at a running pace, reaching the rooftop easily; but that wasn't enough for him, catapulting himself upwards and over the roofs of the commercial area, springing as high and as far as he would and could. Leon landed on top of some solid metal crane support struts, laughing and breathing hard as if he'd just had the most intense experience of his life. And he had. Leon couldn't quite believe what he'd just done, it was like he'd just achieved a lifelong childhood dream, and after all he was laughing like a schoolboy. He looked back at the roof of the building where only a short while ago he'd been an ordinary worker. Leon was different, he knew this now. And…

   Something struck him. What about Claire? What about her? She had been showing the same signs of…change as he had. He knew now he had to get in touch with her.

    Then, he felt a vibration on his belt, the vibration of the modern world getting back into contact with him. He reached for the phone, and pressed 'Receive'.

    Claire sat at the desk, trying to concentrate on her work. For some reason though, this morning she just couldn't make those lines in front of her eyes make any sense. They were refusing to reassemble themselves as they were supposed to; was it those blemishes on her wrists that were doing it? Yes, occasionally she did find her eyes wandering over to the odd little skin protrusions on her wrists…but why? Why was it a concern?

   Claire reached for the coffee cup by her computer, maybe that would calm her down. She couldn't reach it. It was a clear foot away from her outstretched fingers; some joker from accounts had probably pushed it up the tabletop.

    She grunted and reached again. Still, she couldn't reach the item in question. She flicked her wrist in a flurry of annoyance; what happened next was something Claire would never forget in her life, ever. There was the sound of something warm and sticky being dragged through a small hole. Something sticky and thick whipped out of her wrist, and clung with a vengeance onto the coffee cup, strands of silky threads stretching from the table surface too. Claire's eyes grew so wide they were like the polar opposites of black holes. Her mouth dropped open, as did the few other people who happened to be walking past at the time. She yanked the threads that seemed to be growing from the blemish on her left wrist. They didn't budge, clinging fast. 

     Okay…

   Claire got up, and walked calmly towards the exit; trailing her coffee mug behind her as it spilled its contents onto the carpet, staining it a faint brown as Claire affected her non-too nonchalant egress.

    Have to tell Leon, I have to tell Leon…she thought, shakily pulling out her mobile phone. The threads got tangled on her phone, and with a growl of annoyance, she yanked it away from the clinging strands with a vehemence that was impressive.

    She dialled his number.

    After a few seconds of the monotonous ring-tone, Leon picked up.

     "Claire?"

     "Leon, something really weird is happening…!" she hissed.

     "You're telling me!" he replied, in a similarly urgent voice "Claire, meet me in the alley behind the building…I've got something to show you…"

      Claire didn't know exactly what he was talking about, but she decided to go there anyway. If Leon sounded urgent, he obviously really needed to talk. 

      She didn't' bother putting her name in the signing out book, the office was so vast and bland nobody would notice she wasn't there for say…ten years?

      Claire started to amble down the stairwell, an odd sense of foreboding in her mind the further down she went.

  Claire was giggling, cheeks red as she landed again. Leon's little trick had not failed to impress her, and now they were both crawling up every available surface, exchanging daft quips along the lines of 'I'm hanging on' or the well-worn chestnut of 'I'm the king of the world!'.

    "This is incredible!" Claire gasped, still half-laughing "It's just amazing! I mean….wow!"

     "No kidding!" Leon replied with a chuckle, flicking his wrist at her, launching a sticky web in her direction. Claire dodged with inhuman reflexes, sticking her tongue out at him as he missed. It was like a pair of children with their favourite toys all over again. The web hit a wall, and Leon quickly yanked it off.

       "Damn, missed!" he said, chuckling.

       Claire looked out across the rooftops, a strange smile on her face.

        "My god…Leon…this is just…we're really different now! I mean, we're not just ordinary people; we've got this amazing power, and…now we can fire webs and we can climb walls…!"

         Webs…jumping…

     Leon put the two words together; and a roguish but incredibly amusing concept crept into his head. He felt his body tingle as he touched Claire's shoulder, a broad grin on his face.

     "Claire…" he said, barely containing his glee "…ever seen Spiderman?"

     "Of course, this is kind of like it isn't it?" Claire replied.

     "Well, actually…I was referring to how he gets around…"

     Claire stared at him blankly for a moment; then she began to vigorously shake her head, face disbelieving.

      "No way, no way"

      "Come on" Leon teased, temptingly "Wanna live life on the high road?"

      She replicated Leon's own devilish grin. After all, what harm could it possibly do? It was just a bit of fun after all…so her thrill-seeking side took over from there.

       "You're on"