The Laughing Spider #35.
The syringe felt heavier than it should. Or maybe his hands were just that weak.
Jake's wrapped fingers tightened around it. Not desperation. Not control. Not even hope.
Just pure, undiluted will. The same will that had made him steal from Gotham's monsters. That had made him swing through a city that hated him. That had made him survive the chemicals once already.
The will to choose. Even if the choice was between dying fast and dying slow. Even if both options led to the same darkness.
At least it would be his choice.
Jake's hand moved. Barely. The effort visible in how his entire arm shook, muscles spasming under chemical-scarred skin. The syringe rolled in his palm, and his fingers couldn't grip properly -- bones just reset, tendons still learning how to fire correctly, everything screaming.
But he was trying.
Harley pushed herself away from the wall, one hand pressed against broken ribs, the other reaching toward him. "Baby, no. Don't-- don't do it. We'll find another way. We'll--"
Her voice triggered the pheromones. Even now. Even dying. The compulsion surged: make her happy, ease her fear, be good, be hers--
Jake's hand moved again. Slower this time. More deliberate. Fighting the chemical imperative with nothing but stubborn refusal. The syringe rolled toward his fingers. One digit curled around it. Then another. Not a proper grip. Just enough.
His other hand -- the left one, less damaged -- moved to assist. The wrappings tore as he brought both hands together with glacial slowness. Green fluid leaked from his wrists where the effort reopened chemical burns, dripping onto concrete that hissed and steamed.
He tried to laugh. The sound bubbled up from his wrapped chest, pressed against ruined vocal cords, and died somewhere in his throat. Didn't make it out.
But his lips pulled back anyway. Grinning. Somehow it felt perfect -- better even -- because within that failed laugh was proof that he could still fail at something. Could still resist. Could still choose silence over the manic cackle the chemicals demanded.
Being stuck between laughing and not laughing, just grinning in defiant silence, felt more satisfactory than anything had in forever.
His hands trembled, bringing the syringe toward his neck. The needle point wavered in the air. Missed the vein entirely. Scratched skin but didn't penetrate.
Second attempt. Closer. The needle touched, pressed, but his hands shook too badly. It skittered across chemical scars, drawing a thin line of blood.
Third attempt. The needle found the vein Bane had identified earlier -- carotid, pulsing weakly but present. Slid in with the inevitability of choice made flesh.
Jake's wrapped thumb found the plunger. Pressed.
The green liquid disappeared into his bloodstream.
Bane leaned back, expression unreadable behind the mask. "Now show me you are not just easy bounty," he said quietly, watching Jake's hands fall away. The empty syringe clattered on concrete, rolling until it hit the tunnel wall.
The effect was immediate.
Jake's body seized. Not the small convulsions from bone-setting. Not the tremors from toxin exposure. This was total system failure and reboot happening simultaneously. Every muscle contracting at once, pulling in impossible directions, trying to tear him apart from the inside.
His back arched so violently that the spine Bane had corrected threatened to warp again, vertebrae grinding against each other. The wrappings began tearing -- not from his movement but from his frame expanding. Muscles swelling with forced growth as Kobra-Venom flooded his system and demanded MORE.
Steam rose from his skin. Chemical burns bubbling as three poisons collided: Joker toxin that had rewritten his neurology, Ivy's pheromones that had enslaved his will, and now Bane's venom demanding supremacy over them all.
🕸️🕷️🕷️🕷️🕷️🕷️🕷️🕸️
Life flashes before your eyes right before you die, so they say.
For Jake, it wasn't any different.
Memories swarmed his broken mind like moths drawn to dying light -- frantic, desperate, consuming themselves in their urgency to be seen one last time.
Fragments of a world that felt increasingly fictional. A life lived in fluorescent offices and rush-hour traffic. Faces he'd known. Names he'd spoken. A reality where "enhanced strength" meant hitting the gym consistently and "spider-sense" was just good situational awareness.
The chemicals had been eating those memories. Dissolving them like his webbing did concrete. But now -- suspended in this moment between breaths, between heartbeats, between existence and whatever came after -- they surfaced with violent clarity.
His apartment. Small. Cluttered with comic books and empty takeout containers. The jacuzzi he'd saved six months to afford, used maybe twice. Windows that looked out on a city skyline he'd once found beautiful.
His friends. Their faces swimming up through chemical fog. Mike, who'd dragged him to conventions. Sarah, who'd argued Spider-Man versus Batman with the passion of religious conviction. David, whose couch he'd crashed on after the breakup.
The breakup.
Her face resolved with painful precision. Not beautiful -- he'd learned that distinction the hard way. But compelling. The way she'd laugh with her whole body. How she'd trace the scar on his shoulder and ask again how he'd gotten it. The morning she'd looked at him over coffee and said with devastating gentleness: "I don't think you're actually here."
She'd been right. Even then, part of him had been somewhere else. Chasing that itch. That hunger for something more than "fine" and "comfortable" and "safe."
The memory should have hurt. Should have carried weight. But the chemicals wrapped around it like parasitic vines, squeezing, reshaping, until--
The face changed.
Not subtly. Not gradually. Just transformed mid-thought into something else entirely.
Harley Quinn.
Perfected by chemical corruption. Her face glowed with impossible light. Those ponytails -- one pink, one blue -- defied physics, floating around her head like halos. The sequined jacket (somehow pristine, somehow whole, not the tattered strips wrapped around his dying body) caught nonexistent light and threw it back as pure joy.
She smiled at him. That smile. The one that made his chest compress and his hands twitch toward her and his entire existence narrow to a single imperative: please her.
In his twisted memory, they were somewhere beautiful. Not Gotham. Somewhere green and alive. A garden that had never existed. She knelt in flowers -- roses, all of them, green roses with thorns that gleamed like surgical steel.
"For you, baby," Memory-Harley said, her voice honey wrapped around broken glass. She held out a rose. "Smell it. Feel it. Let it inside."
Dream-Jake (or was he Memory-Jake? The distinction had dissolved) leaned forward. Breathed deep. The scent invaded his lungs with the force of a drowning. Not floral. Not organic. Something chemical and perfect and absolutely essential.
His chest ballooned. Joy exploded through him like fireworks in his ribcage. Everything wrong became right. Everything painful became pleasure. The hunger -- that constant, gnawing need for totems and time and survival -- disappeared completely.
Because she was here. And she was happy. And he'd made her happy.
Memory-Harley's hand found his face. Cupped his cheek. Her thumb traced chemical scars that didn't hurt anymore, that felt like badges of honor, like proof of devotion.
"You'd do anything for me," she said. Not quite a question. Not quite a command. Just observation of truth as fundamental as gravity.
"Anything," Dream-Jake echoed. The word felt sacred. "Everything. Always."
"Even die?"
The question landed without weight. Without horror. Just another truth waiting to be acknowledged.
"Especially die."
And he meant it. In this memory-that-wasn't-memory, in this chemical-corrupted paradise, the thought of dying for her felt like the most beautiful thing imaginable. Like purpose given form. Like meaning crystallized into a single moment of perfect sacrifice.
She was worth it. Worth everything. Worth the laughter he couldn't stop. Worth the bodies cooling in the factory. Worth Lady Vic's spine snapping. Worth King Snake's neck breaking. Worth helicopter pilots screaming. Worth--
The garden shuddered.
Not earthquake. Not wind. Just wrongness bleeding through the edges of the hallucination. The green roses began wilting. Petals falling. Turning black. Dissolving.
Memory-Harley's smile flickered. "Baby? What's--"
Something moved in the flowers. Coiling. Massive. Scales catching that impossible light and throwing it back as threat instead of beauty.
A snake.
Bigger than natural. Venomous green the same shade as the roses, as the chemicals eating Jake's body, as the Kobra-Venom now spreading through his veins.
It moved with horrible purpose. Wrapping around Memory-Harley's legs. Her waist. Her chest. Constricting with the patience of something that understood prey and time and inevitability.
"Help me," Memory-Harley gasped. Not a command. A plea. Her eyes -- those perfect eyes that had looked at him with such devotion -- now wide with genuine terror. "Good Night. Baby. Please. Make it stop. Make it--"
Dream-Jake tried to move. His body wouldn't respond. Or couldn't respond. Or--
No.
The truth hit like cold water.
He didn't want to respond.
Part of him -- the part buried so deep the pheromones couldn't quite reach, the part that had screamed uselessly while his hands killed, the part that had begged Batman to save him -- watched the snake constrict and felt something that wasn't quite satisfaction but wasn't quite horror either.
The snake squeezed. Memory-Harley's scream cut off as air left her lungs. Her face went red. Then purple. Her hands clawed at scales that wouldn't budge.
Dream-Jake took a step forward. Finally. Moving.
His hand reached toward her. Toward the snake. Toward--
Clarity struck like lightning through fog.
The garden wasn't beautiful. It was Gotham's decay wearing a mask. The roses weren't flowers. They were thorns dripping poison into his bloodstream, into his mind, into everything that made him human.
And Harley--
Memory-Harley's face shifted. The devotion in her eyes became calculation. The smile became predatory. The sequined jacket dissolved into what it really was: torn strips wrapped around his dying body while she hummed and pretended wounds covered were wounds healed.
The snake wasn't attacking her.
It was attacking what she represented.
The conditioning. The pheromones. The chemical chains that had turned Jake Cross into Good Night into a weapon that laughed while killing.
And suddenly the snake wasn't constricting fast enough.
Dream-Jake's hand moved past her reaching fingers. Found the snake's body. Squeezed. Helping. Encouraging. Willing it to finish what it had started.
"No," Memory-Harley gasped, but her voice had changed. Less plea, more accusation. "You're mine. My mallet. My Good Night. You can't-- you're not supposed to--"
"I'm not yours," Jake heard himself say. The words came from somewhere deep. Somewhere the chemicals hadn't fully corrupted. "I was never yours. You drowned me. Made me into something that laughs while children die."
The snake constricted harder. Memory-Harley's face went gray. Her lips blue. Her perfect ponytails falling limp.
But even as Dream-Jake helped kill her, another part of him -- the part soaked in pheromones, the part that would do anything to keep her safe -- screamed in protest.
Two imperatives warring in chemical soup:
Protect her. She's everything. She's purpose. She's--
Kill her. She's poison. She's corruption. She's--
The memory fractured. Couldn't hold both truths simultaneously. The garden collapsed into itself, roses becoming concrete, beauty becoming decay, devotion becoming rage becoming devotion becoming--
Equilibrium.
Not peace. Not resolution. Just two forces perfectly balanced in their opposition. Jake Cross wanting to strangle Harley Quinn with his bare hands. Good Night willing to die if it meant she smiled.
Neither winning. Neither losing. Just suspended in chemical stalemate while his body decided whether to live or die.
The hallucination dissolved completely.
Back in reality, Jake's body went completely still.
No breathing. No heartbeat visible through torn wrappings. Nothing but corpse stillness that made Harley sob and crawl closer despite her broken ribs.
Forty seconds. Forty-one. Forty-two.
At forty-three seconds, Bane's jaw tightened imperceptibly. He had broken men who lasted longer. Perhaps this one was merely another disappointment after all--
At sixty seconds, Jake's chest hitched.
One breath. Shallow. Weak. But present.
Then another. Stronger.
Then a heartbeat. Strong. Regular. Almost human.
Bane's smile returned. Not cruel. Not kind. Just satisfied recognition of flames that refused to die.
His hand found the wrapped neck, checking pulse. Finding it steady. Finding the healing factor engaged.
"Good," Bane murmured. "The flames persist."
Inside his wrapped skull, Jake Cross agreed. And so did Good Night.
Both of them, for once, smiling the same smile.
MimicLord~
Only one more chapter to the end of the Laughing Spider. Coincidentally, only one more chapter to the end of the Spider Assassin Arc for Early Access Readers. Go check it out on Patreon.com/mimiclord