The Spider Assassin #45
Jake Spidersense was on alert.
Clayface moved ahead. His body shifted constantly, unconsciously, maintaining human form through visible effort. Each transformation attempt was aborted halfway, his molecular structure still recovering from the webbing's corrosion.
'Your heart is beating fast,' the second voice whispered. 'You are excited because you can't wait to see her? Harley. Your Queen. She must be thinking about you too. But you let her down--'
"Shut up." Jake's voice was barely audible over distant sirens. The voice had been getting louder, more insistent.
Clayface's shoulders tensed at the sound. His head turned fractionally -- not looking back, just acknowledging Jake had spoken. The shapeshifter's pace increased incrementally.
"Turn left at the next intersection," Clayface called back. "The restricted district is maybe half a mile north."
They dropped into an alley where smoke hung thick enough to cut. Jake's spider-sense painted threats in colors that tasted like ash, civilians huddled in doorways, gang members conducting turf negotiations with bullets instead of words.
His boots hit pavement without sound. Clayface landed beside him with a wet thud that suggested his body wasn't quite solid anymore.
"Can I ask--" Clayface started, then stopped when Jake's head snapped toward him.
"Keep moving."
"It's just--" He pressed on anyway, theatrical training overriding survival instinct. "You're walking into Falcone's stronghold. The man who put bounties on your head. Who hired hunters to kill you. And you're just--" He gestured helplessly. "Walking straight to him. Why?"
Jake's hand shot out, grabbed Clayface's throat. Slammed him against the alley wall hard enough to crack brick. The shapeshifter's features rippled, trying to dissolve and escape, but Jake's grip was concrete.
"Last warning."
The threat landed with physical weight. Clayface's eyes widened.
Jake released him. Resumed walking north.
"Keep moving. Don't waste more of my time."
Clayface rubbed his throat, features settling into something that approached theatrical curiosity.
He moved. Faster now, his body adapting to its compromised state, finding efficiency through necessity. He led them through shortcuts that suggested intimate knowledge of Gotham's geography, alleys that connected to maintenance tunnels that opened onto rooftops.
"This way," he called back. "We cut through the old factory district, it's faster."
Jake's spider-sense hummed. Not danger red. Something else. A frequency that suggested wrongness, that painted Clayface's suggested route in colors that tasted like deception.
His hand shot out. Webbing caught Clayface mid-step, yanked him backward. The shapeshifter hit the ground hard, his body spreading slightly on impact before reconstituting.
"What are you--"
"You're leading me wrong." Jake's voice carried absolute certainty. "That route doesn't go to Falcone."
Clayface's features cycled through expressions too quickly. Calculating. Deciding whether continued deception served survival better than honesty.
"It goes somewhere better," he said finally. "Two-Face. Harvey Dent. He's preparing an ambush against Falcone tonight. If you team up with him, your odds improve significantly."
Jake's right hand found Clayface's throat again. Lifted. The shapeshifter's feet left the ground, dangling uselessly while his body tried desperately to dissolve around the grip.
"You wasted my time." Each word came out measured. Controlled. The kind of calm that preceded violence. "I warned you about wasting my time."
"Wait--" Clayface's hands clawed at Jake's wrist. "This is what Catwoman would do. She'd want you to have allies. She'd want you to survive. I was just--"
"You think this is some role?" Jake's grip tightened. "Some amusing performance?" His head tilted. "You've tested my patience far enough."
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Time Bank: 00:09:47
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"Please--" The word choked off.
"Where are they?"
The question landed like a blade. Clayface's features froze mid-shift. His body quivered. Every instinct screamed that Jake meant it this time. The grip wasn't a warning anymore.
"The building. Exact address," Jake said, voice lower, sharper.
Silence.
Clayface tried to speak, tried to stall, tried to twist. Jake didn't move. He didn't release. His fingers were steel around the throat, holding life in place.
The shapeshifter realized then: if he lied, if he hesitated, if he tested Jake's patience again -- this grip would tighten, constrict -- toxic webbing would flow into his body and do more than compromise his molecular structure.
Clayface's body froze completely. His features stopped shifting. He swallowed. "Trask and Eleventh," he said finally. "Find the old Gotham Gazette building. The one with the broken clock tower. Falcone's in the warehouse two blocks east. Red brick. Five stories. That's everything."
Jake's grip relaxed fractionally, enough for Clayface to draw a shallow breath.
But Jake's right hand didn't leave him.
It shifted position on Clayface's throat. His grip tightened. Positioning. Fingers found the base of the skull, thumb pressed against the opposite side of the neck.
"Wait--" Clayface's voice cracked. "I told you everything. I gave you the address. You--"
"You earned yourself a quick death." Jake's voice was empty.
His hand twisted.
The motion was efficient. A sharp rotation that vertebrae weren't designed to survive. The sound was wet and final -- cartilage separating, spinal cord severing, the connection between brain and body cut with surgical precision.
Clayface's eyes went wide. His mouth opened but no sound emerged. His hands flew to Jake's wrist, clawing, but the strength had already left them.
Jake held him there. Watched the light fade. Watched the shapeshifter's features ripple one final time -- not transformation, just molecular bonds losing the conscious will holding them together.
Then he released him.
Clayface's body hit the ground with a wet thud. His form immediately began losing cohesion, spreading across the pavement like spilled paint. Without the consciousness directing it, his flesh reverted to its base state. Formless. Dissolving.
Within seconds, the corpse was nothing but a spreading puddle that reflected firelight from buildings burning blocks away.
Jake turned away. His right hand fired webbing at the nearest rooftop. The strand caught. He pulled himself upward without looking back at what remained of Basil Karlo.
He was done wasting time.
The landing on the rooftop was rougher than intended, his right shoulder screaming from sustained effort.
Behind him, something moved.
Not threat-red. Not safety-blue. Just presence, sudden and absolute, appearing where nothing had been moments before.
Jake spun, his spider-sense painting the figure in colors that hurt to perceive. A woman. Dressed in black. Standing over Clayface's dissolving corpse with the patient regard of someone witnessing something inevitable.
Their eyes met for half a second. Her face was obscured by shadow and distance, but Jake felt recognition crawl up his spine. Familiar. Wrong. The kind of wrongness that came from seeing something that existed adjacent to reality rather than within it.
League of Assassins? Had to be. They moved through Gotham like ghosts, appearing and disappearing with supernatural efficiency.
His spider-sense spiked.
Different signature. Multiple sources converging with the coordination of professionals moving.
Jake turned, tracking the motion across the rooftops, synesthesia painting them in a uniform taste he instantly recognized.
Orange and black.
Deathstroke.
Jake glanced back to where the woman had been. She was no longer in sight. Her signature had vanished altogether.
Strange.
The orange and black signature descended with casual confidence. Boots hit concrete with precision that made the landing look choreographed.
One glance at Deathstroke revived his compromised adrenal system. One jolt was all it took to fire a webline so fast he wasn't sure his wrist had moved.
The line caught Deathstroke's armor.
Jake yanked. But Deathstroke had already anticipated by jumping. He rolled on the ground, sword drawn.
Jake's web returned to him with nothing but a clean cut where Deathstroke's sword had cleaved it.
Jake jaw clenched. He didn't have the time for this.
His fingers twitched, ready for rapid fire.
"I'm not here to fight," Deathstroke's words came out faster. "Not here. Not today."
"Then step out of my way," Jake's voice was venomous. Measured.
He stepped forward. Focused. Brushed past Deathstroke, Spider-sense humming.
"You're colder than I expected." Deathstroke said, voice carrying a twisted satisfaction. "That's even better."
Jake didn't bother to respond. He was already swinging to the next rooftop.
Deathstroke watched him soar. He felt unbothered despite the rude dismissal. Instead, he was impressed.
"An unbroken spirit despite losing his mind and limb," Deathstroke admired. "He will make an excellent addition to the League."
"Another time."
Deathstroke vanished into the shadows.
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Death was kind, but misunderstood.
They called her the enemy. The end. The darkness that swallowed everything. She'd heard every epithet humanity had invented across millennia -- Reaper, Harvester, the Final Shadow, She Who Takes.
Never She Who Guides. Never She Who Waits Patiently. Never She Who Cares.
The truth was simpler and infinitely more complex: Death was busy.
Too busy for public relations. Too busy to defend herself against accusations written by those who feared what they didn't understand. Too busy to explain that her work wasn't taking but transitioning, wasn't ending but beginning something else entirely.
She barely managed time to dress herself, though by gods she was stunning anyway.
The black form-fitting material wasn't vanity -- it was practicality. Something that moved with her as she slipped between moments, between heartbeats, between the space where living ended and whatever came next began. The mask wasn't theatrical -- it was mercy. Most souls found the transition easier when they weren't confronted with the absolute finality of what she represented.
Today, like every day, she was at work.
Someone had died. Multiple someones, actually. Gotham was burning and mortality was having a profitable evening. But time didn't matter when you existed outside it. She had the time for everyone who needed her. Could be present for each transition simultaneously because linear progression was a concern for things that measured existence in heartbeats.
She'd been collecting a gang member -- seventeen years old, bullet through his lung, dying in an alley while his friends ran -- when her awareness had pinged with another departure.
Basil Karlo. Shapeshifter. Actor. Forty-three years of playing roles, and now the final curtain.
She'd materialized on the rooftop where his signature pulsed, ready to offer the transition she'd offered countless times before.
But something was wrong.
Not the puddle of dissolving flesh where a body should have been -- that wasn't even close to the top one-million weirdest death scenarios she'd experienced. She'd collected souls from beings who'd exploded into vapor, from those who'd been absorbed by other entities, from creatures whose entire existence had been retroactively erased from timelines.
A shapeshifter melting into component molecules barely registered on her weird-scale.
What was strange was the human.
The one-armed figure who'd stood there, one rooftop away, staring directly at her.
Their eyes had met.
Not the glazed half-awareness of someone dying, their consciousness already fragmenting toward whatever came next. Not the confused panic of someone experiencing cardiac arrest, brain firing randomly while blood flow ceased.
This was direct eye contact. Recognition. He'd seen her. Actually seen her.
Which never happened.
Only the dead saw Death. Only those transitioning, caught between states, awareness expanding beyond physical limitations. Or god-tier beings -- entities that existed on her level, that could perceive what mortals were designed to overlook.
But nothing about this human suggested either category.
His record -- and she'd checked, pulled the file with the portion of her awareness not focused on Basil's collection -- showed standard enhanced human. Spider-based abilities. Chemical exposure leading to moderate corruption. Compromised but functional.
Not dying. Not transcendent. Just enhanced.
Yet he'd looked at her. Had tracked her movement with spider-sense that shouldn't have registered her presence at all. Had dismissed her with the casual certainty of someone who'd acknowledged her existence and found it irrelevant to his current priorities.
Impossible.
She'd considered the alternatives. Coincidence? His gaze had simply aligned with her position through random chance?
No. She'd felt his awareness. The weight of his perception landing on her like physical touch. Recognition that went both ways.
Failed record update? His condition worse than documented, death approaching fast enough that his consciousness had begun expanding toward transition?
Possible. The records weren't perfect. Reality moved quickly and bureaucracy -- even cosmic bureaucracy -- had delays. If he was dying, which was possible in his current situation, that would explain the impossible perception.
She'd filed the observation away. Something to follow up on after collecting Basil. A mystery to solve during one of those rare moments between collections.
Then she'd turned to where the shapeshifter's soul should have been waiting.
And waited.
And waited.
And waited.
This was wrong.
Souls didn't take this long. The transition from living to dead was instantaneous from her perspective. The moment consciousness ceased, the moment that final electrical impulse fired and then stopped, the soul appeared. Ready. Present. Waiting for her to explain what came next.
But Basil Karlo's soul wasn't here.
Death's awareness expanded, searching. She perceived the dissolving flesh on the rooftop -- molecular bonds breaking down, the complex structures that had allowed transformation reverting to base components. She traced the chemical signature, followed the energy patterns, mapped every particle that had once been Basil Karlo.
No soul.
Not hiding. Not delayed. Not confused about where to manifest.
Just... absent.
Death stood on that rooftop, form-fitting black material shifting slightly in wind that didn't actually touch her, and experienced something she rarely felt.
Confusion.
In seventeen billion years of collecting souls -- give or take a few millennia, cosmic time was imprecise -- she'd never failed to find one.
Souls didn't disappear. Couldn't disappear. They were the fundamental component, the thing that persisted when everything else ended. Bodies died, minds fragmented, memories dissolved, but the soul remained. Inviolate. Eternal. Waiting for her to guide it toward whatever came next.
But Basil Karlo's soul was gone.
Death's head tilted. Her awareness searched deeper. Traced Basil's timeline backward -- his entire existence compressed into perception that existed outside duration. She watched him be born, grow, discover his powers, transform, perform, survive, adapt.
She saw him die. Saw the one-armed Spider's hand twist his neck with surgical efficiency. Saw the moment consciousness ceased, the instant Basil Karlo stopped being alive.
And she saw... nothing.
No soul emerging. No transition. No presence waiting for her to collect.
Just absence where something should have been.
"Impossible," she murmured.
The word hung in air that didn't carry sound. Her voice existed on frequencies humans couldn't perceive, in dimensions they couldn't access. Speaking aloud was unnecessary -- she only did it when processing information that defied her understanding.
Death crouched beside the dissolving puddle. Her hand extended -- not touching, just hovering. Feeling for resonance. For any trace of what should have been there.
The molecules that had been Basil Karlo contained no soul signature. No echo. No residue that would indicate a consciousness had once inhabited this flesh.
It was as if he'd never had a soul at all.
But that was impossible. Everything living had a soul. That was the rule. The fundamental law that governed her existence. Life created souls. Death collected them. That's how it worked.
Except apparently not this time.
Death stood slowly. Her awareness expanded further, searching Gotham's immediate vicinity. Checking nearby transitions, comparing signatures, looking for anything that suggested Basil's soul had simply... gone elsewhere.
Nothing.
She found the gang member she'd been collecting. Found twenty other souls that had departed in the last six minutes -- Gotham's burning was profitable for mortality. Found a cat dying in an alley three blocks east, its small soul ready for transition.
But no Basil Karlo.
Death's mind -- if "mind" was the right word for something that processed information across infinite dimensions simultaneously -- turned to the only variable that didn't fit established patterns.
The Spider.
The one-armed human who'd killed Basil. Who'd seen her. Who existed in her records as enhanced but not dying, as powerful but not transcendent.
He was the anomaly. The factor that introduced impossibility into equations that should have been solved seventeen billion years ago.
What had he done?
Death's awareness traced his path backward. Watched him climb to the rooftop, confront Clayface, extract information, deliver death with practiced efficiency. Standard murder. Nothing unusual beyond the enhanced strength.
But his eyes. The way he'd looked at her. That impossible perception.
And now a soul that should have existed simply... didn't.
Connection? Or coincidence?
Death stood on that rooftop as Gotham burned around her, fires painting the sky in shades of orange that mortals found beautiful and she found functionally irrelevant, and made a decision.
She would investigate.
Not immediately -- she still had collections to complete. The gang member needed transition. The cat deserved guidance. Others waited with the patience of those who had no choice but to wait.
But after. Once her immediate work was complete. Once the night's mortality had been properly processed.
She would find this Spider. Would understand what he was. Would discover why he could see her and what connection -- if any -- he had to Basil Karlo's impossible absence.
Death allowed herself something that might have been curiosity. Might have been concern. Might have been the first stirrings of interest beyond her work in more time than most mortals could comprehend.
The Spider was a mystery.
And mysteries, she'd discovered over seventeen billion years, were infinitely more interesting than certainties.
She vanished from the rooftop. Present one moment. Absent the next.