The Spider Assassin #42.
Seconds earlier:
Jake's right hand fired webbing the moment smoke obscured the sight line. Not at Deadshot's building. At the structure between them -- a partially collapsed office tower, its upper floors exposed like broken teeth, skeletal framework visible where walls had burned away.
The strand caught rebar. Jake pulled.
His body launched horizontal. Not swinging -- yanking himself through space with violent acceleration that made his shoulder scream.
He hit the exposed framework. Caught himself one-handed on a beam that groaned but held. His spider-sense painted trajectories through the skeletal structure -- paths through space that normal vision couldn't process, angles that physics said were impossible but his enhanced perception knew were there.
The building's collapse had created an accidental maze. Vertical beams crossed horizontal supports at random intervals where floors had pancaked during the fire. The destruction had exposed ventilation shafts, elevator wells, spaces between walls where people weren't supposed to go.
Jake moved through them.
Not swinging. Climbing. His right hand found purchase on steel still hot from recent flames. His legs caught beams, pushed off, launched him upward through spaces barely wider than his shoulders. The severed arm scraped against metal, chemical burns leaving toxic residue that hissed and steamed.
He emerged on the building's roof. Deadshot's position was one structure over. Maybe forty feet horizontal. Twenty feet higher elevation.
Normally impossible. But Gotham was burning.
Jake's enhanced vision tracked the smoke patterns. Thermal updrafts from fires below created columns of rising air -- invisible highways cutting through Gotham's chaos. His spider-sense painted them in colors that tasted like opportunity.
He stepped to the roof's edge. Waited for the updraft to build. His right hand ready.
The thermal column hit. Hot air rushing upward with enough force to carry embers and ash like snow falling wrong. Jake fired webbing -- not at Deadshot's building, at the smoke itself. The strand caught particles, created surface area, became a makeshift sail.
The updraft yanked him.
Not gracefully. Not controlled. Just raw physics exploiting chaos. His body flew upward, carried by superheated air that seared his lungs even through the mask. The severed arm swung wild on its harness, forty pounds of dead weight trying to pull him into an unrecoverable spin.
Jake fired a second web. Caught Deadshot's building's edge. Used the line to kill his vertical momentum, convert it to horizontal. The physics were wrong -- body position compromised, trajectory off, only one arm to correct with -- but his spider-sense guided each micro-adjustment.
He landed on Deadshot's rooftop. Silent despite everything. Behind the assassin. Close enough to smell gunpowder and professional-grade tactical gear.
The smoke between buildings cleared.
Deadshot's scope swept the empty rooftop where Jake had been. Calculated escape vectors that were already wrong because the target had used destruction as infrastructure.
His combat instincts screamed their warning.
He spun.
The one-armed Spider stood three feet behind him.
Impossible. The target had been three buildings away. Three buildings. Through smoke and chaos and--
'How--'
The thought didn't finish.
The Spider's right hand was already moving.
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Deadshot's hand went for his sidearm -- years of muscle memory, draw-aim-fire compressed into point-four seconds.
The Spider was faster.
White-green webbing erupted from his wrist. The strand hit his pistol. Wrapped. Pulled.
Deadshot's grip was trained. Perfect. He'd maintained weapon retention through disarmament attempts by meta-humans twice his strength. The technique was flawless.
The pistol clattered across the rooftop anyway.
"Deadshot." The Spider's voice was ruined. Chemical-scarred. Each word scraped across damaged vocal cords like broken glass. "How does it feel to miss?"
Deadshot's hand found his belt. Combat knife. Sheath behind his right hip. Reverse grip. Muscle memory so ingrained he could execute it blind.
His hand closed around the handle. Drew. The blade came free with satisfying mechanical precision -- seven inches of blackened steel, edge maintained at molecular level, designed to punch through bone efficiently.
Deadshot drove it toward the Spider's kidney. Perfect angle. Perfect speed. Perfect execution.
The Spider's right hand caught his wrist mid-thrust.
Not blocking. Not deflecting. Just... there. Like the hand had been waiting in exactly the right position before Deadshot's arm had even started moving.
The grip was immovable. He tried to twist -- standard knife retention, use the blade's edge against the grabbing hand -- but the Spider's fingers were concrete.
"Unsettling, isn't it?" The Spider's head tilted. The eyes behind the mask were clear. Focused. "You should be scared."
Deadshot didn't stop. Training overrode analysis. His left hand came up -- palm strike aimed at the Spider's throat, designed to crush the larynx, disable speech and breathing simultaneously.
The strike landed.
The Spider's head rocked back slightly from the impact. Then returned to center. No gasping. No retreat. Just that same tilted-head regard, like Floyd had done something mildly interesting but ultimately irrelevant.
Deadshot drove his knee towards the Spider's compromised left side -- where the missing arm created imbalance, where the weight of the severed limb pulled his center of gravity wrong.
The Spider shifted. Not dodging. Just... being somewhere else. Like he'd known exactly where the knee was going before Deadshot's muscles had fired the neural impulse.
Deadshot's knee hit air. His balance compromised. The Spider's hand -- still holding his knife wrist -- yanked.
Deadshot flew.
Not far. Maybe four feet. But the trajectory was perfect. He hit the rooftop's HVAC unit back-first. The impact drove air from his lungs. His knife clattered away.
The Spider was already there.
The hand found Deadshot's throat.
Fingers pressed against carotid with surgical precision, cutting off blood flow with the efficiency of someone who understood anatomy at expert level.
Deadshot's hands moved automatically. Training kicked in -- pressure points, nerve clusters, joint locks. He found the Spider's elbow, pressed hard enough to make bones grind. Found the wrist, twisted at the angle that should make anyone's grip fail reflexively.
The Spider's grip didn't loosen.
Deadshot's vision began tunneling. Gray creeping in from the edges. His hands tried different techniques -- thumb to eye socket, palm heel to nose, anything to break the hold -- but his execution was slowing. The blood flow restriction was working.
Three seconds until unconsciousness. Maybe four if he was lucky.
The Spider leaned closer. His face filled Deadshot's tunneling vision.
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Time Bank: 00:11:16
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"I've wasted four minutes on you," Jake said quietly. His hand tightened incrementally. "You will give me back my time."
Deadshot's right hand scrabbled at his belt. Flash-bang. Smoke grenade. Anything. His fingers were numb. Clumsy. The gray was spreading.
"What is it that you value most, Floyd?"
Deadshot's eyes -- fighting to stay focused -- flickered to his rifle. Custom built. Irreplaceable. The tool that had made him what he was.
"No." The Spider's voice carried something that might have been satisfaction. "It's not that rifle."
The fingers pressed slightly harder. Deadshot felt his pulse hammering against the constriction. Felt his heartbeat trying to force blood through vessels that were closed.
"It's something else," the Spider continued. "Something you were smart enough not to carry around with you." The grip adjusted. Professional.
Deadshot's mind raced through the gray. What did the Spider mean? What had he left behind? His safe house? His backup equipment? His--
No.
The Spider had just called him by his first name. Thinking about it could give it up.
"Whatever it is, I'll be coming for it," the Spider said. His voice dropped lower. Chemical damage making it sound like something from a nightmare.
Deadshot's right hand found something on his belt. Flash-bang. His fingers were barely responding but training was training. He triggered it.
The concussion exploded between them -- sound and light compressed into a sphere of sensory overload designed to disable opponents for three to five seconds.
The Spider's grip didn't loosen.
The hand tightened instead. Deadshot felt cartilage compress in his throat. His vision went white -- not from the flash-bang, from oxygen deprivation. His body convulsed. His hands tried one last time to break free.
The grip released.
"You are more useful to me, alive."
Deadshot collapsed. Hit the rooftop. Gasped air that tasted like smoke and defeat. His hands found his throat, checking for crush damage.
Bruised. Not broken. The Spider had measured it exactly -- enough to prove dominance, enough to deliver the message, not enough for permanent injury.
A professional courtesy. Or a warning.
Deadshot looked up through vision that was slowly clearing.
The Spider stood over him. One arm. Carrying his own severed limb like some grotesque trophy. The blackened flesh pulsed faintly with internal light. His eyes -- visible through the mask -- were clear. Focused. Absolutely certain.
Deadshot had fought meta-humans. Had killed people with powers that should have made them invincible. But this was different.
The Spider wasn't powerful because of his abilities. He was dangerous because nothing in his body language suggested doubt. No hesitation. No second-guessing. Just absolute conviction that anyone standing in his path would be removed.
The Spider watched for three seconds. Then turned.
"Even Batman knew when to run."
His right hand fired webbing. Caught a building to the north. He swung away without looking back -- one-armed, carrying that crystallized limb, moving through Gotham's chaos like it was infrastructure designed for his convenience.
Deadshot lay on the rooftop. Breathing. Processing.
In seventeen years, he'd made 1,247 kills. For the first time, he'd been the target. And he'd lost in under ten seconds of actual combat.
His hands shook while retrieving the rifle. Barely noticeable. Barely. He steadied them through pure discipline. The Spider was already gone -- swinging north through smoke that turned him into suggestion rather than target.
Deadshot's scope tracked the movement anyway. Old habits. Muscle memory. The crosshair settled on center mass. His finger found the trigger. Stopped.
The Spider had spared him. Professional courtesy. The next shot would be answered differently. Deadshot lowered the rifle. Sometimes survival meant knowing which fights to walk away from.
But.
Three million -- the Spider's bounty doubled, three days ago -- was a lot of money to walk away from.
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Jake swung north.
The confrontation with Deadshot had cost him four minutes. Four minutes of his remaining time spent proving a point, delivering a message, establishing that he wasn't prey anymore.
Worth it.
The Chemical Factory was close. Maybe a mile. He could make it. Had to make it.
The timer counted down with patient inevitability:
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Time Bank: 00:11:13
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Eleven hours. Thirteen minutes. Enough time to finish what he'd started.
The severed arm pulsed against his torso. The crystallized flesh warm despite being disconnected from his body.
He wasn't becoming something anymore. He'd crossed over. The man who'd hesitated before stealing Harley's mallet was gone.
What remained measured lives in minutes and carried its own severed arm like a grotesque trophy. Harley would understand that.
Right before he killed her.
Villains are made, they say? We shall put that to the test.
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