The Hatching (The Hatching #1)(43)

“Yeah, the temperature has been going up consistently. I didn’t even notice at first. We tracked it,” Julie said, nodding at the screen on the other laptop on the bench behind her, “but it wasn’t super obvious initially. It was so gradual that at first I didn’t really register that I was adding a degree, adding a degree. If you look at the data, there’s clearly a pattern.”

Melanie let her fingers wrap over the top of it, palming the egg sac just as she used to wish she could palm the ball back when she was in college and still thought there was a chance in hell she could dunk a basketball someday. Maybe if the hoops had been at nine feet instead of ten. And if she’d been able to go off a trampoline. Six feet was tall for a woman, but she’d never had great hops.

She realized that was what the egg sac felt like to her. Even with the small protrusions, the little knobs, it felt like a basketball. It was smaller, of course, small enough that it nestled in her hand. She wouldn’t have used the words sticky or tacky, as she might with the kind of basketballs she preferred, but there was something to it that kept it from feeling slick. She could imagine that before it became calcified it had been woven against a wall or inside a crevice somewhere, the silk spun into a cradle to hold the bundle of spiders waiting to be born. And it was hot. Not so hot that she had to take her hand off it, but warm, like a loaf of bread fresh out of the oven.

It was amazing to think the egg sac was ten thousand years old, that it had been buried for so long. And that it was part of a Nazca Line. That giant spider was like a message just for her, a sign for Melanie to pay attention. Yes, she’d write articles about it—this egg sac’s resurrection and what might be inside was the sort of thing she could run with—but more than anything, it reminded her of the fun her job as a scientist was, and of how truly amazing the world could be.

The egg sac gave a jerk under her hand. They were waiting to come out. How long had those eggs been in there? How long had they been waiting to hatch? And what was that sound? Something rising above the hum of the egg sac, a sharp tone. The tone was mechanical, it sounded like . . .

Oh. Melanie took her hand out of the insectarium and stood up straight. It was her cell phone.

She fished it out of the pocket of her lab coat. Manny. She thought about answering it, about talking to her ex-husband, and then she dug her thumbnail into the mute button and put the vibrating phone back in her pocket.

Bark was leaning down now, bent over almost comically, his chin pressed against the table so that he had an eye-level view of the sac. His mouth was open a little. “Yeah,” he said. “Here we go.”

“Where?”

“Here,” Bark said, and he motioned for Melanie to bend over. As she did, Julie and Patrick crowded in. “There, on the bottom. See the seam?”

Melanie didn’t at first, but then the egg sac gave another shake and she saw that what she had taken to be a difference in color was actually a crack, the beginning of an opening. She swung into action.

They double-checked that the video was recording, that the temperature streams were flowing through the computers. She sent Patrick running for the still camera and even took a few pictures herself to make sure they had enough light. In the few minutes that took them, the seam in the egg sac had already started to widen. Melanie was ready for it. Patrick was standing, but she and Bark and Julie were perched on stools, and Melanie had her hand resting on the top edge of the insectarium. It was still open, and she slid the lid closed, latching it shut from force of habit.

The egg sac went still, and Melanie realized she was holding her breath. All of them were so quiet Melanie could hear the ticking of the second hand on her watch. She wrapped her fingers around her wrist; the watch had been a birthday gift from Manny, the second or third year of their marriage, when things were still good. They waited. And waited. She unwrapped her fingers and looked at her watch. Thirty seconds. Forty-five. The egg sac was still. The humming sound had died down. One minute. One thirty.

Melanie felt the phone in her pocket buzzing again. She ignored it.

One forty-five.

Nothing.

Two minutes.

Julie cleared her throat.

Two fifteen.

“Maybe,” Patrick said quietly, but he didn’t say anything else.

Two minutes thirty seconds.

Three minutes.

Melanie shifted, and was about to look at her watch again when there was movement.

The egg sac pulsed. It pushed outward. The small, open seam puckered. There was something behind it. And there, on the top, to Melanie’s right, a pinprick in the shell. The pinprick turned into a crack, zippering down the side and meeting the open seam. The egg sac pulsed again, the hum suddenly returning, a car engine idling in a closed garage. The egg sac jerked to the left, tilting, and then again.

“Jesus,” Bark said. “They aren’t coming out easily.”

“Since the egg sac has calcified, it might be tougher than it usually is for them?” Julie had the camera to her eye, and the sound of the shutter opening and closing came to Melanie above the hum of the egg sac. She had to restrain herself from telling Julie to wait to take pictures until there was something worth taking pictures of. They could always delete any photos they didn’t need, but better to have too many than too few. “I mean, I know it’s scientifically possible, but I can’t really believe it’s hatching at all,” Julie added.