"Beep—beep—beep!"
A sharp alarm blared from behind the door. Bella froze awkwardly, her cheeks stiffening, her right hand still suspended in the exact position of pressing the button. Natasha shot her a long, judgmental stare, clearly asking: Could you have pressed it any faster?
"I swear, sometimes my hands move before my brain... my fingers are very flexible, you'll understand someday—oh! Look, it opened!"
Bella hurriedly tried to cover up her itchy-finger problem as the hidden door slowly slid open. No explosion. No mutant beast charging out. No missile dropping from the sky.
It was just... a normal door opening.
They leaned forward cautiously and peeked inside. The room beyond was eerily quiet.
"Move. Check what's inside. And do not touch anything without my permission. Especially buttons," Natasha warned.
"Yeah, yeah... okay, okay," Bella replied halfheartedly.
They stepped inside carefully. A sleek monitoring room came into view—cold lighting, softly humming machines, and several men in lab coats lying dead across the floor. Each corpse had a neat bullet hole in the chest or forehead.
The computers had been smashed. Paper files were scattered everywhere. Blood stained the floor in disturbing patterns.
"You get the hard drives. I'll look for clues."
Despite her earlier impulsiveness, Bella naturally took command. Natasha went to remove the hard drives while Bella paced the cramped room.
What were they monitoring?
Who killed them?
Why?
Bella tried to piece things together using the "logic" she remembered from writing Detective Conan-style mysteries, mixed with bits of analytical thinking Shaw had taught her.
The result?
Nothing.
Conan-style logic was unreliable—it always depended on whatever the author decided later. Shaw's knowledge wasn't much better. Bella strongly suspected that even when Shaw had been alive, she hadn't been the brilliant type. If she had been a spy, she was probably the reckless kind. Combining the two "knowledge pools" produced zero insight.
Bella glanced at Natasha, who was seriously working on removing the hard drives, and sighed inwardly. Natasha wasn't a detective at all, and Bella herself wasn't much better. There was no way they were uncovering anything meaningful here.
Worried that the spider horde might catch up, they grabbed a few intact hard drives and retreated immediately.
Before leaving, Bella doused the room with gasoline and burned the entire hidden surveillance station to ashes.
Whatever was behind Prosperity Town was far from simple. Whoever had been monitoring the town—or murdering these researchers—was powerful. And if those people returned and discovered evidence that Bella and Natasha had been here... would they really leave witnesses alive?
Bella could dodge handgun bullets. Sniper rounds? Absolutely not. Human weapons were still a lethal threat to her at this stage.
The surveillance room was only an unexpected detour. Whatever truth it held wouldn't help them right now.
Natasha, burning with anger toward the unseen enemy that had destroyed her hometown and killed countless friends, tightened her grip on the steering wheel and continued dragging the spider horde north.
Normal spiders had territorial limits; once prey crossed a certain distance, they would naturally give up and return. The spiders from Prosperity Town were starting to show the same behavior.
Bella and Natasha were forced to occasionally reverse the truck, letting the spiders catch sight of them again to keep them engaged.
Meanwhile, Samantha and Charlie seized the opportunity—clearing obstacles, fighting off spiders when they could, and abandoning areas they couldn't defend.
They burst out through the mall's front entrance and scrambled into vehicles.
Those without functioning cars helped one another. Neighbors who had known each other their whole lives still showed solidarity in disaster.
Despite Samantha's best efforts, the evacuation was chaotic, and the townspeople fled south toward Tucson.
"I need to save Bella!" Charlie shouted, panic gripping his voice as he imagined his daughter being swallowed by spiders.
Thankfully, the phone rang.
"We're fine! Get moving! The swarm is turning back!" Bella shouted from the other end.
Charlie didn't waste time on emotional speeches. He dove into Samantha's police car and floored the accelerator, following the convoy south.
Bella and Natasha also shook off the spiders—or rather, the spiders lost interest in them. After failing to catch up, the horde turned back toward the town.
The two circled the sandy outskirts in their pickup, and an hour later, they caught up with the fleeing convoy.
Of the thousand people who had originally escaped, fewer than eight hundred remained. Several cars had been overtaken by spiders along the way. Although many spiders eventually gave up, the losses were unavoidable.
"Bella! Thank God you're alive!" Samantha cried, rushing forward like an overexcited mother hen, grabbing Bella's shoulders and instinctively checking her for injuries.
Lady... we're not that close...
Bella stiffened, then noticed Charlie on the other side fussing over Natasha, which made her want to cover her face.
Still—concern was concern. Bella let herself lean briefly into Samantha's embrace.
Charlie, on the other hand, kept things more reserved. Natasha was "someone else's daughter," after all, so he settled for an awkward pat on her shoulder.
The highway to Tucson passed through several small towns. When the convoy reached the next settlement, about seven kilometers away, Samantha explained Prosperity Town's fate to the local mayor and sheriff.
Their response was blunt.
"We don't believe you."
Samantha didn't argue. After refueling and gathering supplies, she pushed the convoy south again.
The spiders following them were few now—but not completely gone.
Soon enough, the residents of the next town saw the calf-sized spiders with their own eyes.
Their reaction was exactly the same as Prosperity Town's.
Panic. Screaming. Flight.
A second town. Then a third.
By the time the massive convoy approached Tucson, a National Guard reconnaissance helicopter had just taken off.
Their response was slow—but at least it came. The helicopter scouted the route and sent back images. Over a thousand National Guard troops were urgently mobilized. State and federal authorities were alerted.
Armed units equipped with modern weapons moved out to exterminate the spiders—and to uncover the true cause behind this massive mutation disaster.