Infante

I had to step around to Gordon’s side to see.  As I did, the man on the bench of the coach looked up, staring down at us.  He’d refreshed his cigarette since I’d last had a look at him.

He followed our line of sight, down to his pants leg, which was torn, with a trace amount of blood collecting at the base of his boot.  His leg jerked, and in that motion, he realized what had really happened.

The flesh of his legs had been joined, a ragged strip cut away, attached to the other leg.

“What?  What’s the- what!?” he jerked more frantically, cigarette falling to the base of the bench.

“Don’t tear it,” Shipman said, “Don’t- careful!”

As the man struggled, one of the spiders from Whitney moved off to one side, away from the flailing legs.  Once two legs, they were now functionally one.  The Spec-3 saw the thing and twisted, pulling out his gun.

> > [...]

It’s okay.  One of the spiders must have gotten onto the coach,” she said.

“What the fuck?  What the fuck?  I didn’t even feel-”

“Specialized anaesthetic and very standard coagulants,” she said.  “It dulls your sense of touch, makes you feel like the limb is asleep, it cuts out partial sections with the incisors and stitches them to adjoining parts with its own silk and its forelimbs.  Even if it had a few days with you, it probably wouldn’t kill you.  It’s just for the psychological effect.”

Esprit-de-corpse 5.7 Twig