FRANZ HOEBBARD KNEW SOMETHING was amiss when he arrived home at his tropical retreat after another gruelling day at the office. Maybe it was a chair or potplant moved so slightly out of place, or the strange suggestion of perfume in the air. Whatever. There was danger in the air, and the animal in Hoebbard's mind could sense its deadly menace. So he proceeded into the house carefully, deliberately - this was the Wild North, after all, and he knew how rough things could get.

He creapt stealthily across the atrium, its plants now drowning in the claustrophobic colours of sunset. Checking to see he had his gun, he quietly pushed open his bedroom door. That's how it happened -- he just pushed it open (but kinda quiet, ne?) Nobody here, he thought... which was good because that was where he kept all his cash. He padded across the bedroom, turned the knob of the study door.

And...

And the door flung open, whacking Hoebbard to the floor. A - huh? - female figure dressed all in black and wearing a black balaclava jumped over him, hurled out the open bedroom window - which incidentally was six storeys high. Hoebbard rushed to the window, got there in time to see the woman sprinting across his toogreen lawns.

Who are you? he thought. Spiderwoman?