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“I’m hungry.”
I am very hungry. We got on the road quickly, and we haven’t stopped driving except for the roadside collaring. There’s a sense of urgency, or there was. Now we’re stuck in this mid-century vault and it feels like we have all the time in the world. An eternity of subterranean imprisonment spent in the silk wrapping of my mysterious and potentially heroic abductor. Chief will not be pleased.
“Stay there,” Order says, as if I have any choice. “I’’ll make something for us.”
The kitchen is open plan to the lounge which is a very modern layout. I lie on the couch and watch as Order gets to work, shirtless in the kitchen. The cabinets are mounted with smooth rounded doors, and they open to reveal many packets of rations. Water flows from the tap when he turns it, and that’s a good sign.
Order’s different arms do different tasks, all six of them finding something to occupy themselves. The red mark on his front is mirrored on his muscular back and I find myself fixated on it, the way it moves with the rippling of his musculature, the danger it represents, the intense hotness of it all. Putting me in silk is cheating, as far as I am concerned. It doesn’t just physically stop me from getting away, it does something to my mind, too. It makes me softer and more willing, it makes me gentle and maybe even a little submissive.
I’m still mad as hell about being stuck underground though. I know it was a mistake, but my instinct to stay away from the deep hole was clearly correct.
I want to tell him to let me go, but I’m pretty sure if he removes this silk I am going to freak the fuck out. I do not like being trapped underground. I do not like being trapped at all, but what else can possibly happen to me if I choose to associate with a spider? Being wrapped and trapped is part of the deal.
“I can feel you glaring at me,” he comments dryly. “I hope this meal will improve your temper. If I have to manually adjust your attitude, you will not be happy.”
Obigor snuffles up over me, seeing no issue with our current predicament. As long as I am there, he feels perfectly safe, no matter where we are. He settles into the curve of my body, where my lap and tummy meet together, and starts snoring.
I’m not as uncomfortable as I imagined I’d be in this sort of situation. His silken grip is oddly comforting and doesn’t make me feel claustrophobic at all. Instead I feel swaddled and cared for, an impression that is made even more intense by seeing him cook for me and smelling some surprisingly delicious scents rising from what someone in the 1950’s thought was an advanced cooking method. I suppose it’s just an oven, maybe a microwave, but he’s also working over a stove.
I don’t want to ask him what he’s making, because I don’t want to make cheerful conversation with a man who just dragged me into a hole we’re now trapped in. The phraseI told you socomes very much to mind.
* * *
Order brings two plates of pasta with meatballs covered in a creamy gravy. They look absolutely delicious, and it is well seasoned. Obigor sits up on my lap as I squirm up to a seated position then lifts his nose, sniffing just as I am now.
“I suppose I should release your arms so you can eat,” he muses. “But I like you like this. You’re quieter and softer when you’re suitably restrained.”
He sits in an armchair at a 90-degree angle to the couch and sets one plate down on the table before him and another on the table before me. He uses one set of hands to manipulate his food, and another set to feed me.
“Eat up,” he prompts me, lifting a fork with spaghetti wrapped around the tines, and half a meatball on the very end.
I open my mouth and let him feed me, because eating is more important than telling Order off right now. I’ll wait until I am fully fed before I tell him that I don’t care to be soft and quiet for him. He can tie me up all he likes, I’ve still got a mind and a tongue and both of them are primed and ready to go.
Obigor does not whine for food, but he does give us both reproachful looks as food-laden forks pass over his head. He and I have suffered through a lot of things together. This is just one more weird thing we never saw coming.
The food is good. Really good. Order knows how to cook. That surprises me, though it probably shouldn’t. He is a very competent creature.
“Is this your mom’s recipe?”
“I don’t have a mother,” he says. “Or a father. I, like my siblings, was hatched.”
“Even spiders have mothers, though.”
“I’m not a spider.”
“You’re a hero?”
“Alright,” he says, setting the forks down. “Time to answer your questions, detective.”
It tickles me that I’m apparently interrogating him while bound and prone and slightly covered in pasta sauce, but hey, whatever works. Order sits back in the chair, his upper hands clasping together, second pair of hands below that, and third below them. His index fingers of all six hands steeple as he begins what I can only describe as a lecture.
“At the end of the Second World War, scientists were working on all manner of new technologies in the effort to end the bloodshed.”
“Like the Manhattan Project.”
“Like the Manhattan Project,” he nods. “All the projects were top secret. The Manhattan Project is now public knowledge because the nuclear bomb was deployed in such a way that its existence could not be denied. Our existence, the creation of my siblings and myself, that was a different matter. That remained a secret. It was so secret that not even the military were aware of it.”
“Wait. Does that mean you are almost eighty years old?”
