The designers. This is what happened to them.

I found myself back in Arachne’s factory, though I didn’t know how I’d got there. The walls and floor were white concrete, and beyond the stacks of boxes and racks of clothes I could see Arachne herself weaving great tapestries with giant black spider legs that reached to the ceiling. Her spider people were at work all around me, their deceptively human faces slack and expressionless. I recognised the face of Victor Mal among them. The designers. She turned them into her spiders. This is what happened to them, I thought. Brunette was there too, also a drone. Now that I knew what lay beneath the illusion of that superficial skin and bone I watched the creatures with trepidation as they moved back and forth, back and forth, some passing only inches from me, carrying the awful black and emerald parcels, destined for victims unknown.

I had to get out before I was discovered. Before Arachne did the same to me. Before I became one of these awful, mindless creatures.

What do I do?

The fire exit was still there, but there was no fire hose. I didn’t have my satchel to knock them down. When they noticed me, I would be in terrible danger. Motionless and terrified, I stood stock-still amongst them, breathing quietly, as silent and invisible as I could manage. Slowly, I tilted my head and looked down at myself. I too was wearing one of the green aprons.

No!

A thunderous knocking came from the fire exit, and in seconds the heavy door swung open and Second Lieutenant Luke Thomas stepped through – Luke, my friend, my would-be boyfriend, the beautiful Civil War hero come to rescue me. I felt a rush of relief, and I tried to step towards him but my legs would not budge.

What’s wrong with me?

‘Luke!’ I dared to yell across the warehouse floor, no longer fearing the drones, no longer fearing Arachne in his presence.

Lieutenant Luke valiantly held his unsheathed sword aloft, a heroic vision, and the spider people stopped what they were doing and cowered, as if answering a silent command.

‘Luke! Help me! I can’t move!’ I called out to him. ‘I can’t move my legs!’

And then he looked at me across the warehouse floor.

It was then I saw his pallid complexion, the blood around his mouth, the awful, ropey blue veins that wove across deathly white skin. His uniform was tattered and blood stained, and worst of all, his eyes . . . his beautiful, bright blue eyes were beautiful no more. They bulged round in their sockets, bloodshot and terrifying. He had no eyelids.

My pleas froze on my lips.

The creature that was Luke marched towards me, parting the spider people like water with the end of his bloodied sword. Arachne’s workers fell to pieces around him, melting into pools of seething spiders, and I worried fleetingly that I might do the same at his deadly touch. He opened his mouth to speak and I realised with horror that Luke’s teeth were pointed and stained. How had I never noticed his sharp teeth? His lidless eyes? The menace of his glowing red glare?

‘Which do you choose, Pandora?’ he demanded in a booming voice. ‘Will you be one of them, or one of us?’

And I saw his army. Behind him, wave after wave of bloody revenants appeared; a grisly army of dead Civil War soldiers gathering at his back in perfect, deadly formation.

The Revolution of the Dead.

I looked down and saw that my hands were made of spiders.

I screamed.