With the third step, the timing not quite coinciding with my footfall, I heard the heavier step of Tristan’s boot.

Be mindful of the arm’s range, any weapons it might have, deflect if you absolutely have to, I thought, trying to visualize the upcoming situation, trying not to think about how my mom had drilled ‘visualize’ into me back when I’d played basketball. It’s okay to get hurt, so long as we all get through the door. Watch for anything it might push into us.

The arm unfolded, pulling free of the shuffle of forty or more limbs that were folded into one central area—no weapon—and swung backhanded. It couldn’t reach me. Nothing in its path to throw.

Others slowed. I was dimly aware of them behind and beside me. I didn’t slow down. I was confident of my estimation.

The hand dipped low, striking the damaged section of floorboards. It carved out a furrow, turning a hole into a ditch, a gap in the room with only ruined wood below, like it was broken floorboards or rafters with foot-wide gaps between pieces of wood, all the way down to fucking infinity.

Which meant that when I shifted course to favor the smallest portion of the gap and leaped the ditch, I was simultaneously going weak kneed, my mind wrestling with the idea that it might really be infinity, that what happened here could really be forever.

Muscle memory saved me, if nothing else. I landed on all fours, scooted one foot forward to be sure I could spring to one side if I had to, and twisted around to look up.

Just seconds ago, I’d estimated the number of limbs at forty. How long before that had I called it three spiders—three times eight?

Now I was closer, within reach of the longest arms, which were thin, tendril-like, and immensely strong. I could see it pulling more limbs free of the jumble, revealing something that looked like a disc, suspended in lightning that had been frozen in time. The disc barely concerned me, because I could have put the number of limbs I was seeing at anywhere from eighty to one hundred.

“It’s multiplying its arms!” I called out.

“No,” Sveta said, and the statement was punctuated by one arm high above me stabbing in my direction. It might have sounded like a sad, resigned thing, even an acknowledgement that I was well and truly fucked.

The hand was slender, considering the arm was about as wide as I was and the hand was disproportionately narrow and long-fingered for the arm. It speared down wrist-deep into floorboards, then moved, tearing another trench.