(From the team that brought you Tinas Valentines Day Surprise. Thank you @Crab-Hermit so dang much for working with me again!!! XOXOX)

“You’re absolutely sure that you’re okay working with spiders, right Tina?” The research assistant smiled reassuringly. What was her name again?

“Sure, smile away. I’d be smiling too if I was on her side of the glass,” Tina thought. She stretched her arms out to her sides and spun around in a slow circle. Tina’s arms could just almost, but not quite, reach the walls of the cube shaped “Test Chamber” she was occupying. Dressed only in her underwear bottoms and surrounded by transparent walls, she felt very exposed.

Tina was nervous and feeling snarky. “If I tell you I’m NOT okay working with spiders, do I have to give all that money back?” Tina scanned the room again. She was assured there would be no cameras, but Tina was double-checking.

“Yes. Yes, you would.” Becky was still smiling. Tina was pretty sure she hadn’t blinked since they met two days earlier, either. Wait! Her name was Becky! Tina rejoiced momentarily from her triumph of mental recall. “Are you ready for phase 1, Test Subject?”

“The fuck did she call me??” Tina must have made a face.

“Just trying to keep things, you know, scientific.” Tina was suddenly wondering what community college Becky got her PhD from.

“Sure. For science.” Tina was simmering. “Hey, refresh my memory DOCTOR Becky, but what’s the science behind me having to do this topless?”

“Oh. That? That’s not for science.” That bitch still didn’t blink. “I just like boobs.” Whore. “Commencing Testing, Level 1.” Becky pushed a button on the panel. A tile on the floor in the testing chamber lowered and then glided silently underneath the floor revealing a circular “chute” approximately 18 inches in diameter. Moments later, I tiny, black spider came crawling out of the opening. The tile slid shut behind it and raised back into place creating a near-seamless floor once again.

“Hey Becky, you’re sure these spiders don’t bite, right? You swear to God. I think that’s what the brochure said.” Tina took a step back. The spider spun in one slow, complete circle. It stopped when it was facing Tina and began crawling directly towards her.

“I didn’t write that brochure, Test Subject.” For the love of God! “No, but seriously, they were engineered without mouths. Now relax Test Subject.” Tina was having major second thoughts and it showed. “Tina. Relax. It can’t hurt you.” Tina looked up and saw that Becky’s smile was replaced by a look of apparent concern. Tina exhaled hard, reassured by this display of human emotion.

“OK. And thanks.” Tina thought back to the orientation video. “So, I just kneel down right here?” Tina started lowering herself to the ground.

“Exactly. Try not to squish it. Those puppies are expensive.” Really? Didn’t look like anything special to Tina. As if wanting to prove Tina wrong, the raisin-sized critter leapt three or four feet and landed on Tina’s forearm. Its prickly little feet dug in, painlessly, but “weirdly” into her skin.

“Holy shit that’s weird!” Tina blurted out. The spider paused only a moment and began sprinting around her arm, trailing a blue tinted, glimmering strand of silk behind it.

“Yes!” Becky celebrated. “Optimum aggression. With zero provocation from Test Subject.” The silk webs were quickly accumulating enough to form an opaque layered band. Tina scraped at it with her other hand. The webbing stretched a little but ultimately snapped. Undaunted, the spider seemed to speed up, quickly replacing the webs Tina had ruined. “Hey, Test Sub…Hey Tina. Don’t do that.”

“Sorry Doctor.” Tina shouted back. She wasn’t supposed to interfere. Just be still and observe. If she wanted to. The government didn’t actually care. They just needed a warm body in the test chamber to see what this carefully engineered non-lethal weapon of mass suppression would do on instinct. At least for the Phase 1. Later Phases she’d have to be “Engaged.” Of maybe it was “Active.” Whichever it was, the brochure didn’t explain exactly what that meant.

The spider suddenly halted its seemingly endless laps around Tina’s arm. It shuffled its feet, seemingly unsure what to do. Every time it picked up a leg and replaced it, Tina’s skin raised just a tiny bit, as if from the suction of microscopic kisses.

Like a flash, the spider once again leapt with alarming energy from her arm down to the floor. Without losing an ounce of momentum, the spider then bounded back up and behind Tina digging its little feet into the thin skin covering her should blade. The spider trailed four thin strands of the translucent silk behind it. And all at once, the loosely dangling quadruple strand of silk went taught. Tina felt her arm being pulled by the tether around her back toward where the spider had anchored itself. Tina quickly flexed her arm. It was a struggle, but she managed to prevent the tiny bug from pulling her arm around behind her.

“Tina, please. Let it go.” Becky requested. Tina wasn’t sure. She was starting to seriously regret her decision to take part in this “Important Government Program.”

“That little guy is way stronger than he looks!” Tina laughed nervously. The spider adjusted its stance. Its feet planted more of those now familiar tiny kisses on Tina’s back. Then it pulled even harder on the shimmering line. Tina flexed her arm and pulled in against her body, just barely able to stop it from being wrapped around behind her.

“Look Tina, this is extraordinary. This is leaps and bounds ahead of where I thought we’d be. I think we can move on to Phase 2 right now.” Becky was way too happy about Hercules’ (that’s what Tina was calling the spider) super strength. Tina was pretty sure Becky was rooting for the spider.

“Bull. Shit. Becky. Gas this bug now.” Tina was referring to what the brochure referred to as the “100% Effective Safeguards,” that made participation “Absolutely Safe.”

Becky was having none of it. “Please Tina. Don’t say the word. Let me take it up to Phase 2. I swear. It’ll be totally fine. And you’ll be done that much sooner. Please. Please. Please!!”

“Abort!” Tina stated firmly, glaring holes with her eyes through the chest of the now frowning Becky. The spider was full-out jerking Tina’s arm back instead of just constantly pulling. God that thing was strong. Each yank caused Tina to give ground. As ridiculous as it seemed, that miniscule bug might actually overpower her given enough time.

HISSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

Tina could hear the gas but not see it. Just as the brochure promised, at any time, “upon use of the safe word, the attending scientist would release an invisible, odorless, harmless gas that would render any and all spiders involved in the experiment instantly inert.” Moments later, Tina felt the tension on the silken strand relax completely. She stood up and lifted her partially wrapped arm. The tiny spider dangled there from its strong braid of web.

“Is it asleep?” Tina asked.

“No. Dead.” Becky responded solemnly. “We can’t open the test chamber if any are still alive.” Something about that last sentence caused a pit to form in Tina’s stomach. The nearly invisible door in the thick glass wall glided open. “But we got the data we needed, so it’s fine. Tomorrow we’ll move to Phase 2.”

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“I told you; I just like boobs.” Tina was starting to think this bitch actually did have a sense of humor. “And we also want to see if the operatives react to areas of greater sensitivity as they were designed.”

Tina was hoping they wouldn’t react to her sensitive areas as designed, but she signed the waivers and she cashed the checks, so it is what it is.

“In other words, THEY were designed to like boobs too?” This whole thing seemed screwed up. “Just…. whatever. Can we get on with Phase 2 so I can get back to real life please?” Not that Tina was looking forward to the remaining experiments, but she was resigned to seeing them through and didn’t see any point in dragging out the process.

“You got it Test Subject.” Becky actually chuckled. Tina couldn’t help noticing her shift from stoic scientist to this practically giddy schoolgirl temperament.

“You’re pretty excited to get this over with too, then, huh Becky?” The large tile in the floor of the testing chamber lowered and slid out of sight once again.

“Very excited Test Subject 17. I’ve never quite gotten past Phase 1 before. This is really cool if you ask me!” Tina didn’t know which was more alarming, the fact that this was brand new ground in the experiment or the fact that she was apparently the 17th guinea pig stupid enough to sign up for it.

Five raisin-sized fuzzy black spiders crawled up out of the chute. The white tile glided smoothly and silently back into place.

“Remember Test Subject 17, Phase 2 is “active resistance.” So please try your hardest. No shit I’ll try my hardest, Tina thought, backing against the wall behind her as the five bugs approached her in unison.

“Right. So does that mean I’m allowed to squish them this time?” Tina remembered Becky saying they were expensive and didn’t want to lose her deposit. Tina laughed internally at her joke about the deposit.

“Well, you can. But I wouldn’t recommend it. It would probably really piss off the other ones.” She DOES have a sense of humor! But as Tina’s eyes darted quickly away from the spiders to steal a glimpse of Becky, she didn’t detect the slightest hint of a smile. “Now let’s see your active resistance Test Subject 17.”

Tina remembered how fast the strong just the one spider was during Phase 1, but she was only allowed “passive resistance” yesterday. Today, she was going to kick arachnid ass. Her lips curled into a confident smile, and she moved into a martial arts defensive pose like Neo from the Matrix. As if they’d been waiting for this cue to start, the spiders sprang into a remarkably synchronized chorus of action.

Two spiders went high. Their explosiveness still amazed Tina. Another launched itself straight into Tina’s midsection. Tina couldn’t track the other two while trying to defend against the first three. Tina ducked and weaved to the side as the highest leaping spider flew past her head and clung to the glass wall just behind her. At the same time, Tina swatted the second spider out of the air with an open hand. The third spider landed on Tina’s stomach. She clenched her abdominal muscles expecting the force of a punch but instead only felt the creepy but not painful prickling suction-y feet as the spider clung to her flat belly. Instantly, that spider started performing the same rapid circles around her waist that the one used yesterday to wrap her arm.

Tina momentarily considered grabbing at the spider weaving her a silken belt, when she suddenly felt her right arm being dragged down and do her left, in the direction she’d swatted the second spider. That’s when she noticed the translucent streak trailing from her wrist down to the ground. The tiny pest had managed to get a loop around her wrists as she was slapping it from its flight path. Now it was trying to pull her down the floor by her tethered wrist.

“Little fucker was tougher than Tina expected.”

Tina knew losing the high ground would take away one of her biggest advantages, so she leaned back and away and yanked with her shoulders. Tina felt what had to be more webbing wrapping up her left ankle. But she had to get her hand loose first, so she ignored the fourth spider for now. She yanked and twisted her torso away from away from the spider pulling on her wrist and was surprised when there was no resistance. The spider had let go. All of Tina’s momentum was now taking her down and to her right. Tina also felt the belt pulling her down toward her belly. That spider had landed and was pulling a tether from her belt, using Tina’s own momentum to knock her off balance. She tried to step forward to catch herself, but her left foot was now securely tied and anchored to the ground. Tina was falling flat on her face. She got her left arm down to break her fall. Tina had thrown her right hand out to the side, wildly trying to snap the tether. That arm was now extended out to the right, and to her dismay, Tina realized the spider had hitched a ride on its web tether all the way to the closest wall where it was now busy securing the braided strand holding Tina’s wrist.

“You’re supposed to be “actively resisting,” 17.” Becky’s words were thick with dissatisfaction. Two spiders were now on Tina’s back. They were working together to flex Tina’s right leg all the way so that her foot would be up against the back of her thigh. When she hit the ground, she had to let that leg bend to roll with the impact. The spiders had been waiting, anticipating the reaction, and now had several tough strands over her ankle and were pulling it down to the back of her thigh.

“I am resisting, damnit!” Tina declared. Tina rolled herself up into a semi-seated position, trying to get up away from the spiders again. Doing so flexed her right leg and the fifth spider was now running circles around her thigh. With her other ankle anchored and her right arm stretched up and out to the wall, she didn’t have enough balance to lift up off her bent leg. Taking advantage of Tina’s weight pinning her own foot for them, the spider quickly had her right leg frog tied.

“No. Not resting! RESISTING!” Tina thought about calling “abort” to spite the sarcastic bitch but stopped herself. The sooner she gets through this experiment, the sooner she can get back to college life, with enough cash for tuition and rent and a few new outfits, at least. With maximum effort, Tina just managed to lift herself back up onto her haunches. Her right leg was now frogtied. She felt the spiders tethering her bound waist down, both front and back. Tina was worried they’d soon frogtie her left leg too. She also noticed the spider with her right wrist tethered was now scurrying along the wall around behind her, directing her outstretched strong arm off to the side and toward the back.

“I’ve had enough…” Tina grunted. She rocked as hard as she could to the left. The multiple shimmering lines of web securing her waist to the ground creaked and stretched. Tina flexed her left calf and pressed off the ball of her foot as though she were trying to stand on her toes. The mound of webbing groaned. It was pulling away. “…of these fucking spiders!”

With a forceful lurch, Tina shifted has hard as she could to the right. She ripped her left foot out of the webs and planted it out in front of her in a genuflect pose. With a now stable base, she was able to use that leg to press down. Inch by inch, the tethers were giving. She placed her left hand on her left knee and used her arm to push her chest up. She’d be damned if these tiny monsters would overpower her.

“Looking great Test Subject 17!” Damn straight I’m looking great. Just wait until I step on your messed up little experiments. “But look out for those two.” Which two?? Tina looked around but not in time to see the attack before it had already connected.

One spider launched itself from the ground up and over Tina’s head trailing a line a webbing behind it. As it flew past her, the line went taught, causing the line to break down and start wrapping in ever shortening, ever faster layers of web over the lower half of her mouth. The spider on her right arm was back to pulling it up and behind her making Tina lean over at the waist. She’d lost the ground she’d just gained. And she was concerned now that the web gag may cover her nose. Her right arm still out of commission, Tina started to lift her left hand up to rake the webs from her face.

The problem was the second spider Becky warned about. It had launched itself from the wall on Tina’s left side and used the same strategy of momentum that the “gag spider” had used only around Tina’s torso and left arm. With the speed of a centrifuge, her arm was pinned at the elbow against her side. Her hand stretched up futilely intending to claw at the gag webs but could only reach her shoulder height.

The torso spider slowed its rotations to a near stop when the right arm spider was joined by a friend and the two flew past Tina’s left ear dragging the tether with them. Once they secured themselves to a wall, they retracted the tether, bending her straight, right arm at the elbow and flattening it in an arm bar against her back with her wrist almost all that way up against her left shoulder. Tina winced from the sudden, sharp pain. Instinctively she tried to pull away from the spiders but while she was preoccupied with her arms, other spiders had reattached her belt to the floor. And then the torso spider somehow regained its momentum and began making long, orbits around Tina’s upper body, wrapping her arm barred arm tightly in place.

“This data is helping so much 17. Seriously. Keep trying to struggle.”

Mmmmffphhhhhfff!!! This sucked so bad, Tina thought, feeling all of those tiny, clawed feet popping and poking as they scurried over her body. She wasn’t going to call “abort.” She was going to let it play out so she could go home. But out of curiosity, she tried to open her mouth and found it impossible. Not only was the webbing now a thick, sticky layer holding her lips trapped together, but the strength of the stuff also prevented her from working her jaw. Also, there was a kind of lovely, sweet scent to the stuff. Tina wondered if THAT had been engineered to.

Tina’s left arm was still pinned against her. Her left wrist was soon wrapped in a web cuff and dragged back behind her and up toward her shoulder, mirroring the treatment of her right arm. The reverse prayer position was reinforced by even more wraps of webbing around her upper body. Defeat had set in and set in fast. Tina gave up. She dropped to both of her knees and let the spiders frogtie her left leg too. Her arms and legs were now folded up and tucked away under a heavy layer of flexible webs pulled tightly, constantly compressing her body.

“Time!” Becky shouted and pressed the gas button. Tina heard the hiss and soon all spider activity had halted. “That was 74 seconds Tina. Really good for a non-combatant like yourself!” Beck had come out from around the controls and stood in front of the glass. Tina hadn’t realized how tall Becky way. Maybe Becky had always been sitting. Or maybe Tina hadn’t been feeling frogtied in front of her. Either way, she suddenly felt quite small.

“So, look. Phase 3 is next. And the good news is that you really don’t have to do anything in Phase 3.” That was good news, Tina thought, enjoying that floral aroma. “You can basically just relax from here on out.” Relaxing sounds good because she was so dang tired. “I’ll meet you down in the lab.” Beck’s demeanor had returned to its original stoicism. She pivoted and walked to a door with a sign reading “Stairs” over it.

Tina blinked. Her eyelids were extremely heavy now. She realized she had been sedated. She also realized the tile in the floor had opened once again. Tina started to slump but tethers from different directions held her in her upright kneel. That allowed her to gaze down into the chute and see what looked like tidal wave of spiders washing up from the “lab” down below.

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Tina was stretched tightly between the floor and ceiling in a spread-eagle position. The fogginess had started to lift in time for her to observe what was being done to her. Something like a million spiders effortlessly lifted her up and lowered her down the chute into the basement lab. She’d been nearly cocooned in webbing at first, but the bugs had dissolved all of her initial bindings. Wasting no time, the huge, shifting mass of tiny individual spiders hoisted her up and created thick web cuffs around her wrists and ankles. The four cuffs were anchored to the ceiling and floor completing the spread eagle.

Tina looked around. The “lab” seemed to be one large room. There was a bank of monitors and keyboards up against one wall. Several chairs had been discarded into a corner. A pile of crates was stacked neatly in a corner. Each wooden crate was probably large enough to pack a ball-tied damsel. Tina frequently measured volume in terms of bondage capacity. Anyway…

There were several tables with various beakers and solutions and scientific-looking equipment. There was also one large machine that seems to be on an adjustable arm that was mounted to the ceiling. Tina noted that she was positioned right in front of the interesting piece of equipment. That must have something to do with Phase 3.

These details were all secondary to the truly dominant characteristic of the lab which is that it was absolutely overrun with the tiny black spiders that were the subjects of the government experiment. They seemed to be several inches thick on most every surface. They scurried over machinery and tables and keyboards. They were everywhere. But they weren’t on Tina. A fact she was both grateful for and curious about.

“I told you they wouldn’t hurt you 17, and I was telling you the truth.” Tina noticed that Becky had arrived in the lab. She was standing near a door presumably that led to the stair.

“Lucky thing, or I’d sue!” Tina gave a nervous smile. Becky smiled back but her smile was of amusement. Tina tugged on her restraints but couldn’t budge them. She had barely been able to break a single strand of the strange translucent webbing. The cable-like braids securing her were dozens of strands thick. “You know, I could have walked down here for you. You didn’t need to flush me down the spider drain.” Becky walked toward that larger machine in front of Tina.

“Be a good girl 17 and hold still for a minute or two while I scan you.” Becky was making adjustments to the controls. As Becky moved about the room, the spiders moved out of her way.

“You know what, I think I’ve had enough for today, Becky.” Becky didn’t look up from the machine. “Hey.” Tina tried to summon an authoritative tone. “I want to abort for today. Abort. Safe word. Hello?” Becky stabbed at a large button.

Colorful lights on the machine lit up and it let out a low humming noise. The machine raised up on its adjustable arm and began rotating in a circle around Tina’s suspended body. The “head” of the machine projected a wide red beam of light or a laser. As the machine rotated around Tina bathing her in its red light, an outline of her spread-eagled body was forming on the largest monitor.

“I said abort. You have to stop everything. Becky!”

“No, we don’t, 17.” Tina was stunned into instant silence. Then she gasped as her arms and legs were being drawn together. Tina looked up and down and saw mobs of spiders bringing the anchor points for her wrist and ankle tethers directly above and beneath her. She was now stretched tightly with her body forming an “I” instead of an “X.” “We don’t have to do much of anything that we don’t want to, 17.”

Becky walked to a darker corner of the room and the ceiling and floor spiders moved with her, dragging the suspended Tina along with them.

Tina realized that this wasn’t part of a legit government program. She didn’t know what was going on, but she knew it was bad and that she was in trouble. Desperate to get away, she tried the only thing she could think of.

“You need to let me go. My fiancé is important. He’s going to be in the Pennsylvania Congress. He’ll be President one day. His father is on the Supreme Court.”

Becky removed her glasses as she walked. “Well of course we know about your fiancé 17. That’s why you’re here. Or did you think we wanted you for your boobs?” Becky had reached the dark corner of the room. Somehow, Tina hadn’t noticed the 16 human-sized cocoons suspended from the floor to ceiling, just like Tina was. Spiders were now streaming up Tina’s legs and down her arms rapidly forming a shell of webbing around her just like the others.

“You see, we’re playing the long game 17. And we think your fiancé is going places. And we think you will be an excellent influence on him.” The spiders were wrapping Tina up quickly. She’d be encased in moments.

“I won’t help you! I don’t care what you do. I’ll never help you!” Becky removed her name tag and placed it, along with her glasses, on one of the sticky cocoons.

“That’s exactly what Becky said,” Becky stated while patting the weakly struggling cocoon. “She made the same mistake you made. She thought we NEEDED her help. But we don’t. All we needed was her scan.” The spiders had finished wrapping Tina’s face, but she could still see through the thin, translucent layer over her eyes.

“Well, there is actually one small thing we’ll get you to help us with eventually.” Becky walked up close to Tina, almost nose to nose. Remember how I told you that we don’t have mouths?”

Did Becky say WE don’t have mouths???

“Sorry but we lied about that.” To Tina’s horror, Becky’s skin, hair and clothes all began dissolving leaving behind a Becky-shaped mass of thousands and thousands of tiny spiders that broke apart and was absorbed into the sea of spiders that was filling up the lab. Tina tried and failed to scream, and she joined the other cocooned victims who hadn’t yet been used as food in hopelessly straining against their shiny, silken tombs.