The Spider Assassin #40
Jake rolled, the blade falling.
His body moved before conscious thought engaged. The scythe's edge kissed the air where his neck had been, so close he felt the displacement, the cold that had nothing to do with temperature.
The blade hit tile with a sound like breaking reality. The ceramic didn't crack. Didn't shatter. Just ceased. A perfect circle of floor simply stopped existing, revealing darkness beneath that had no bottom.
Jake's right arm caught the bathtub's edge, hauled himself away. His heartbeat was chaos -- three rapid thuds, then nothing, then two weak pulses that barely moved blood. His cardiovascular system was forgetting how to function.
'This cannot be it.'
The thought came with desperate clarity. The Reaper straightened, withdrew the scythe from the void it had created. Turned those empty sockets toward Jake with the patience of something that had witnessed every death since the first and would witness every death until the last.
'Not like this.'
Jake's mind raced through his time in this world. The swinging through Gotham. The stealing from monsters. The feeling of invincibility that came from enhanced strength and spider-sense and the pure adrenaline of defying a city designed to break people.
He'd earned this. The system. The powers. The chance to be something more than the nine-to-five existence that had been suffocating him.
Just 100%. That's all it would take. Complete all the totems. Claim the powers permanently. Make them truly his instead of borrowed time bought with stolen objects.
But he'd failed.
Gone soft with the locket. Let sentiment override survival. Selina's face when he'd returned it -- that genuine surprise, that gratitude -- he'd chosen that over forty eight more hours. Over safety.
And Harley. He hadn't fought hard enough. Not against the conditioning. Not against the chemicals. He'd let himself be drowned. Let himself become Good Night. Let himself kill while laughing because the pheromones made resistance feel like betrayal.
Pathetic.
The Reaper moved forward. Not walking. Just occupying different space. One moment at the bathroom door. Next moment three feet closer. The physics of it made Jake's chemical-corrupted brain hurt.
His heartbeat stuttered. Four rapid pulses. Then nothing for three seconds that felt like eternity. Then one weak thump.
Dying. Actually dying. His enhanced system was shutting down. The timer had expired and whatever mechanism kept him alive -- whatever force the system wielded -- was withdrawing.
The scythe rose again. Angled. Precise.
Jake tried to move. His right arm responded sluggishly. His legs wouldn't cooperate. The stump where his left arm used to be throbbed with phantom sensation.
'If this thing came for me personally--'
The thought crystallized with horrible clarity. This wasn't just death. Death was cessation. Peaceful nothing. End of consciousness.
She, Death herself, was beautiful. This thing was horrid. Tied to the system.
That suggested it was here to take him to some special hell reserved for disappointing the system; failure to achieve.
A place of broken dreams and wasted potential where he'd spend eternity knowing he'd been 'this close' to something extraordinary and pissed it away.
The blade fell.
Jake's spider-sense gave him angles. His body tried to comply. Rolled right. The scythe's tip grazed his shoulder -- not cutting flesh, just touching. Where it made contact, his skin went numb. Cold. Dead while still attached.
His heart stopped completely.
One second. Two. Three. Four--
It restarted with a violent lurch that made his chest cavity spasm. Arrhythmic. Each beat announced itself differently, like his heart was learning the job from scratch.
'Giving up. Being pathetic again.'
The accusation came from somewhere deep. The part of him that had stolen from Gotham's monsters. That had survived the chemical bath. That had fought Batman and lived.
He wasn't dead yet.
His hand found the bathtub's edge again. Pulled. His body scraped across tile -- one-armed, legs barely coordinating. The Reaper watched with infinite patience. No rush. No emotion. Just inevitable conclusion approaching at whatever pace necessary.
'Fight. Till the last breath.'
Jake's mind cut through the chemical fog with desperate focus. His heart was failing. But he was still conscious. Still aware. Still--
Time.
The thought hit like lightning.
The clock. The Time Bank. It had gone from 00:00:01 to 00:00:00. But that's not how time worked. Not really. The interface measured hours:hours:minutes. When it showed 00:00:01, that meant more than one minute remained.
00:00:00 meant zero minutes remained. But there were still seconds. Had to be. That why his heart was still beating.
Thirty seconds? Twenty?
However long, that's what he had left.
'Need time. Need a totem.'
The Reaper moved again. Closer. The scythe repositioned. Jake's spider-sense painted the next trajectory in colors that tasted like endings.
'The rose.'
The thought arrived complete. Ivy's pheromone rose. He'd torn it from his back in the tunnel. Scattered the petals. Only thing he'd been left with was--
One thorn. He'd removed one. Thrown it. Heard it clatter against--
Where?
The scythe swung. Jake rolled. The blade carved through the bathtub's side like it was mist. Porcelain and metal didn't shatter or bend -- they just stopped being. The tub now had a perfect curved absence, edges smooth as glass.
His heart gave three rapid beats. Stopped for five seconds. Restarted with a rhythm that felt more like suggestion than function.
'The wall. Threw it at the far wall.'
Jake's eyes tracked across the bathroom. His vision was fragmenting. But he could make it out.
There. Near the baseboard. A gleam of green. Small. Sharp. Curved like a question mark.
The thorn.
The Reaper was between him and it. Jake would have to go through it to reach survival.
'So do it.'
His right arm found the bathroom floor. Pushed. His body lurched forward -- not graceful, not coordinated, just desperate momentum. The Reaper's free hand reached down, skeletal fingers spread to grasp--
Jake's spider-sense painted the grab in red. He twisted mid-lurch. The fingers passed through space he'd occupied a microsecond before. Existential cold radiated from their passage.
His hand slapped tile. Found the thorn. His fingers closed around it even as his heart stopped again. This time for seven seconds. Eight. Nine--
"T. Finder, register totem!"
The thought was more prayer than command. His consciousness was fracturing. The edges of his vision going black -- not unconsciousness black, something worse. The black of ceased existence creeping inward.
The interface blazed to life. Not the usual transparent overlay. This was solid. Real. Desperate.
🕷️
[Totem collected!]
Category: Common
Reward: +12h to your Time Bank
Redeem totem to receive reward? (Y/N)
🕸️
His heart restarted. Weak. Irregular. But present.
'REDEEM!'
The thorn dissolved in his hand. Not the slow consumption of previous totems. Instant. Violent. The green material flashed white-hot, then cold, then simply ceased while light absorbed into his palm.
The interface updated:
🕷️
Time Bank: 00:12:00
🕸️
Twelve hours.
His heart stabilized. The rhythm still irregular but stronger. Sustainable. Life reasserting itself through sheer bureaucratic technicality.
The Reaper's skeletal hand stopped mid-reach. The fingers locked in place like they'd hit invisible wall. The entire figure went rigid.
Jake watched through chemical-blurred vision as chains materialized from nothing. Not metal. Not physical. These were chains of concept -- rules made manifest, cosmic law asserting dominance.
They wrapped around the Reaper's wrists. Its ankles. Its neck. Dozens of them. Hundreds. Each one pulling in different directions but all accomplishing the same goal: constraint.
The hooded head turned toward Jake. Those empty sockets held something that might have been surprise. Or respect. Or just acknowledgment that the game continued.
Then the chains pulled.
The Reaper's form stretched. Distorted. Like reality couldn't quite hold it once the rules demanded its removal. The scythe clattered to the floor -- physical, suddenly, just curved metal without the metaphysical weight.
The darkness that had bled into the bathroom's corners retreated. The cold withdrew. The sense of ending dissipated like smoke.
The Reaper vanished.
Just gone. No fade. No dramatic exit. Simply ceased occupying space, recalled by whatever force governed the system.
Jake lay on the bathroom floor. One arm. Exhausted. Alive.
His right hand trembled as he pressed it against his chest. Felt his heartbeat. Still irregular. Still weak. But steady enough. Twelve hours bought him breathing room. Time to heal. Time to think. Time to--
'Harley.'
The name surfaced from depths where rage lived. Where the analytical part of him that had survived two chemical baths kept meticulous accounts.
Jake pushed himself up. One-armed. The motion took effort but his healing factor was working overtime now. The Kobra-Venom and enhanced metabolism combining into something unprecedented. His right arm moved smoothly. His ribs no longer scraped with each breath. The chemical burns had formed thick scar tissue.
But the stump where his left arm ended was permanent. That loss was hers.
He has lost his time because of her.
His eyes found the mirror's remaining shards. Looked at his reflection. Chemical scars, healing, covered most of his face. His eyes were sunken, ringed with exhaustion that went beyond physical. His hair had patches where chemicals had eaten away at the follicles.
He looked like something that had crawled out of a grave.
Good.
Let Gotham see what it had created.
'You're thinking of revenge,' the second voice observed. Not judgmental. Just stating fact. 'Of finding her. Killing her. Making her pay.'
"No."
"Revenge is too shallow."
His heart lurched again. Not stopping. Just skipping beats. The twelve hours were already counting down. Each second bringing him closer to the next confrontation with the Reaper.
"I'll make a statement. Set an example."
'An example? For what?'
"Those who dare to waste my time." Jake said with crystalline clarity.
Bane had seen Jake's desire to kill Harley. He would have taken her back to the factory. He was waiting for Jake, ready to break him.
Jake clenched his fist -- knuckles cracked. He smirked, half his healed side grinning.
Only thing that would end up broken was Bane's bones. If--
If he didn't get out of the way.
If he chose to waste Jake's time.
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