A. Ashley Straker

The military operation swiftly became one of disaster management and damage control, search and rescue.

For a moment, Simon's sympathetic nervous system forgot he was arachnophobic. The sight of those spindly legs rising, like an ink drawing popping out of paper into three-dimensional space, should have caused a surge of adrenaline, a yelp of panic, and at least three feet of involuntary back-peddling.

Odessa sighed. 'When I said you were one of the smartest people in the company, I was referring solely to your technical abilities. Now get to work.

Simon stopped listening. He realised he'd had enough. Enough of the theories, enough of the mystery, enough of the bullshit. Enough of the soldiers and guns and MI5. Enough of bugs in phones and in people he cared about. Enough of not being cared about back. Enough of uncertainty and lies and civilisation, collapsing or not. Enough of is part in it, his place, his role; the character of Simon Parfitt and all the baggage it entailed.

Something was wrong with the devices themselves. Digging deep into the internal structure of the circuit boards with powerful microscopes, Simon's team had discovered broken and incorrect connections, electronic dead-ends, short circuits, and nonsensical pathways.

He realised he was in a chair. The world was white and blurry in half his vision, and it took him a few moments to realise a sheet of paper was stuck to his face.

You state here that you believe your daughter, Amy, is no longer with you; that the girl living in your house - who looks and sounds exactly like Amy - is not in fact your daughter. Is this correct? Is this still the case?

But the things in the batteries couldn't be spiders. It just wasn't possible. There had to be another explanation. But of what kind?

Who gave you a gun?''The army.''Why?''That's what the army does, Simon.

...a fissure appeared. Splinters of plastic broke away around it, and the fissure widened, radiating further fractures.When the first leg broke out, Simon tried to shriek.

His desire for this to be a joke was quickly replaced by a desire for whiskey.

He had no problem with flies or bugs or beetles, even creepy ones like earwigs and cockroaches...Six legs were fine, but eight were alien and unnatural.'The same number of legs as four fully-grown serial killers!

Yes' Simon nodded. 'This would suggest that these patterns grow inside the batteries until a critical point is reached, when the shapes develop no further, and the phone ceases to function.

Fear is quite the anaesthetic

The unfortunate 8075 hadn't survived his assault, splintering apart, fragments of its casing skittering across the bench. The battery within had split along its plane, revealing something as out-of-place as a missile in a bathtub.

He reached the ground floor and flung the door open, fleeing into the street. He glanced back and saw that she wasn't following, so he slowed to a halt. His pulse raced. The entranceway was dark, the door swinging slowly closed. Movement to his left caught his attention: the camera on the corner of the building that covered the resident's parking. It swivelled to point directly at him, and he stared at it for a moment, suddenly doubtful it was a closed-circuit system after all.He ran for his car, and the camera followed.

Simon shook his head. 'I don't want to be a hero. I'd rather abandon the technology altogether, sit on a hill and speak to my neighbours by smoke-signal.