The Spider Assassin #39.
Time fractured.
Jake's consciousness flickered between states like a dying bulb. Aware. Gone. Aware again. Each cycle different. Each one worse.
The first time he woke, his mouth tasted like blood and chemicals. His right hand moved instinctively toward the food bags. Found the Chinese container. Rice. Cold. Congealed. His body didn't care. He ate. Managed more this time -- maybe the whole container. His stomach accepted it with marginally less complaint.
He passed out mid-bite.
The second time, his left arm was screaming. Not metaphorically. The nerves in the blackened flesh were firing distress signals that his enhanced awareness couldn't filter. The limb felt wrong -- heavier, harder, like someone had replaced muscle and bone with concrete that was still trying to move.
Jake forced himself to sit up. Looked at the arm in dim light filtering through broken blinds.
The black had spread. Past his elbow. Creeping toward his shoulder. But it wasn't just discoloration anymore. The flesh looked… rigid. Inflexible. Like it was transforming into something that didn't belong on a human body.
He tried to move the fingers. They responded. Barely. The motion was delayed, sluggish, like sending signals through thick syrup.
'Getting worse,' his analytical mind observed.
'Getting BETTER,' the second voice corrected. 'Getting stronger. Getting perfect. Just like she needs.'
Jake fell back. Unconscious before his head hit the pillow.
The third time, eating was easier. His stomach had adapted. Or his healing factor had repaired enough damage. Or he was just too exhausted to register nausea. He consumed everything within reach -- the remaining Chinese, half the pizza, even the cold burgers that had been sitting out for hours.
His body processed it with desperate efficiency. Converting calories to cellular repair. Prioritizing critical systems. The fractures in his right arm sealed completely. The chemical burns on his torso began forming scar tissue. His spine settled into proper alignment.
But his left arm kept getting worse.
The fourth time he woke, the pain had changed. Not burning. Not throbbing. This was pressure. The blackened flesh felt like it was expanding from within. Like something inside was trying to burst through skin that refused to tear.
Jake sat up. The motion took effort -- his left arm's weight had increased dramatically. It pulled at his shoulder, stressed his spine, threw off his balance.
The bed had collapsed.
He tried to lift it. The limb barely responded. When he managed to raise it six inches, the weight was staggering. The arm felt like it had been filled with lead. Or stone. Or something denser that physics couldn't explain.
The skin was stretched so tight he could see the texture beneath -- not muscle, not bone, something else. Crystalline structures? Mineral deposits? His enhanced vision picked out patterns that looked almost geometric, like his flesh was trying to become architecture.
'This is wrong,' the analytical voice said.
'This is EVOLUTION,' the second voice countered.
Jake's right hand pressed against the blackened flesh. Firm. Unyielding. Like pressing against a boulder.
The Kobra-Venom. The Joker toxin. The metabolic byproducts. They weren't killing the arm -- they were transforming it. Turning living tissue into something that had no business existing.
And it was getting worse.
The fifth time he woke, the pain was unbearable.
Not pain. Beyond pain. Pain was a signal meant to encourage behavior modification. This was his nervous system screaming in a language his brain couldn't process.
Jake rolled off the bed. Hit the floor. His left arm barely moved when he landed -- the limb had become dead weight, heavy enough that falling pulled at his shoulder joint in ways that threatened dislocation.
He looked at it properly for the first time in… hours? Days? Time had lost meaning.
The blackened flesh had expanded. The arm was now twice its original size. The skin stretched impossibly tight, and beneath it: movement. Shifting. Like whatever was inside was still growing. Still transforming. Still trying to--
It was going to burst.
The realization came with absolute certainty. The pressure was too great. The skin couldn't contain it. And when it ruptured--
'Cut it off.'
The thought arrived without hesitation. Not panic. Not emotion. Just problem-solving.
The arm was ruined. Unsalvageable. The toxins had transformed it into something that would kill him if it remained attached. The infection would spread. Already spreading. The black had reached his shoulder. Soon it would creep toward his neck. His chest. His heart.
'Cut it off NOW.'
Jake's right hand moved instinctively toward his back. Found the remains of his suit. Found a torn strip with reinforced edging.
Not sharp enough.
His eyes scanned the room. Found the bathroom. Pulled himself across the floor -- one-armed, dragging the dead weight of his left side.
The bathroom mirror was cracked. Perfect.
Jake's right fist drove into it. The glass shattered. Shards rained into the sink. He selected the largest -- eight inches long, wickedly sharp, thick enough not to snap under pressure.
This would work.
He positioned himself. Back against the bathtub. Left arm extended. The blackened flesh gleamed in fluorescent light, pulsing with that internal pressure.
'Where to cut?'
Above the elbow. Had to be above the elbow. If he cut lower, the infection might remain in the shoulder. But cutting higher meant more to remove. More blood loss. More risk.
No choice.
Jake's right hand gripped the glass shard. Positioned it against his upper arm. Where black met normal flesh. Where corruption ended and humanity remained.
'This is going to hurt.'
He pressed down.
The glass bit into flesh. Blood welled -- red, blessedly red, not green or black. His skin resisted. The glass was sharp but his enhanced durability made cutting difficult.
Jake pressed harder. The shard sank deeper. Reached muscle. His nervous system reported this development in screaming detail.
His right hand kept cutting. Sawing. The motion methodical. Efficient. Like butchering meat except the meat was himself.
The glass hit bone. Scraped against it. His enhanced skeleton resisted -- the Kobra-Venom had reinforced it, made it harder than normal bone, designed to support the enhanced musculature.
Can't cut through the bone.
Jake adjusted his angle. Found the joint. The elbow. Where bone met bone with cartilage between. Softer. Cuttable.
He repositioned the glass. Cut into the joint space. The blade scraped against cartilage. Separated the joint surfaces. Blood flowed freely now - bright arterial red mixing with something darker from the blackened flesh.
The pressure inside the arm released.
Green sludge erupted from the wound. Not blood. Not pus. Something else entirely. Thick. Viscous. Glowing faintly with that nightmare green. The toxins and metabolic byproducts concentrated into liquid form.
The sludge splattered across the bathroom floor. Where it landed, the tile hissed. Dissolved. Chemical burn eating through cheap ceramic. Behind the sludge: fresh blood. Normal blood. Red and clean and proof that his body was still trying to function properly.
Jake kept cutting. The last tendons. The last connective tissue. The muscles that hadn't transformed. Everything holding the arm to his body.
One final cut and--
The arm separated.
It fell to the bathroom floor with a sound too heavy. The dead weight of transformed flesh hitting tile. The blackened limb lay there, disconnected, still pulsing with that internal pressure.
Jake stared at the space where his arm used to be. Blood poured from the stump. A lot of blood. Too much blood. His enhanced healing was trying to engage but there was so much damage, so much exposed tissue--
Then it started.
The bleeding slowed. Stopped. The exposed flesh began closing over itself with speed that was almost visible. New skin forming. Muscle knitting. Blood vessels sealing. His healing factor working at a level it never had before.
The toxins. Even corrupted, even concentrated in the severed arm, they had enhanced his entire system. Upgraded his healing past normal spiderman levels into something unprecedented.
In thirty seconds, the stump was sealed. Pink scar tissue covering where his shoulder ended. No infection. No complications. Just clean amputation and immediate closure.
Jake sat against the bathtub. One arm. One stump. Staring at the severed limb leaking green sludge onto dissolving tile.
He'd lost part of himself. Literally cut it away. And he felt…
Relief.
The pressure was gone. The infection contained. The constant pain that had been building for hours -- gone. Just clean removal and the manageable ache of fresh scarring.
Harley did this, his analytical mind observed.
She tried to help, the second voice countered. She wrapped your wounds. She protected you. She--
"She drowned me." Jake's voice was steady. Clear. The first time since the chemicals that he'd spoken without the laughter trying to escape. "Made me--"
You took her mallet first. Consumed her identity. Her purpose. She wasn't wrong to take yours.
The logic hit like cold water. He HAD stolen from her. Had consumed the totems. Had taken what people valued most and turned it into currency for his own survival.
But--
"I don't care." The words came out flat. Final. "I will kill her with my bare hand."
Your bare hand is on the floor, the second voice observed with that maddening logic.
"Then I'll use the other one."
His heart lurched.
Not metaphorically. Actually lurched. The rhythm stuttered. Skipped a beat. Then another. Then established a new pattern that felt wrong. Too fast, then too slow, then something between that his cardiovascular system didn't recognize.
Jake's right hand went to his chest. Felt the irregular thumping. Each beat announced itself differently -- some heavy and pounding, others barely perceptible. Like his heart was forgetting how to be a heart.
Then it stopped.
One second. Two. Three--
It restarted. Different rhythm. Even more irregular.
What--
The interface shimmered into view.
Not summoned. Not requested. Just appearing with the inevitability of something that couldn't be ignored.
The Progress Tab. Usually transparent. Usually background. Now blazing with urgency that made his chemical-scarred eyes water.
🕷️
Time Bank: 00:00:01
🕸️
One minute.
One. Single. Minute.
Jake's mind raced. Five days. He'd been out for five fucking days. The Time Bank had been counting down while he fought for survival, while he recovered, while he--
No totem. No fuel. No way to--
The bathroom's shadows deepened.
Not naturally. Not from the flickering fluorescent. This was wrongness bleeding into reality. Darkness that existed independent of light. Shadow that cast itself.
A figure materialized from that impossible darkness.
Tall. Impossibly tall. The ceiling was eight feet and this thing's head scraped it. Robed in something that looked like cloth but moved like smoke. A hood obscured most of its face but what was visible was--
Bone. Not skull. Not death's-head. Just absence. The concept of face removed from reality and replaced with void.
In one skeletal hand: a scythe. The blade gleamed with light that had no source. Each edge perfect. Surgical. Designed for separation -- soul from body, life from death, existence from whatever came after.
The Grim Reaper.
The interface pulsed once more:
🕷️
Time Bank: 00:00:00
🕸️
Time was up.
The Reaper's empty eye sockets found Jake. Regarded him with the patience of something that had all eternity and none of it simultaneously.
The scythe rose.
Jake stared at Death incarnate. One arm. Broken. No totems. No fuel. No way to--
The blade fell.
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