The Spider Assassin #49
The speedster blurred.
Jake's enhanced perception tracked the motion through space -- every footfall, every shift in weight, the way muscle fired in sequence to generate velocity. The meta closed the distance in the time it took Jake's heart to beat once.
His fist drove toward Jake's sternum with momentum that would pulverize organs.
Jake's right hand fired webbing at the ceiling. The strand caught. He pulled himself up and away, feet lifting off concrete as the speedster's fist carved through empty air where Jake had been standing.
The giant's massive frame covered ground with the patient certainty of something that understood speed was irrelevant when you could absorb anything thrown at you. Each footfall sent vibrations through the floor that Jake felt through his boots.
Jake released the ceiling web. Dropped. His feet hit the giant's shoulders as momentum carried him down. The impact should have staggered something that size.
The giant didn't move. Just reached up with hands the size of dinner plates, fingers closing around Jake's ankle before he could launch away.
The grip was concrete. Unyielding. Enhanced strength meeting enhanced strength with the kind of force that made bones creak.
Jake fired point-blank at the giant's face. White webbing erupted from his wrist, caught the meta's eyes, sealed them. The giant's grip loosened fractionally as his enhanced senses struggled to compensate for sudden blindness.
Jake twisted free. Fired another web at the far wall. Yanked himself away as the energy projector's hands came up, fingers spreading.
Blue light erupted from the apertures between his digits. Neither heat nor flame. Kinetic force compressed into a beam that carved through the space Jake had occupied. The projection hit the wall behind him, punching a hole three feet wide through reinforced concrete.
Jake swung wide, using the wall's curvature to build momentum. The screamer was positioning near the windows, throat swelling as vocal cords prepared to weaponize sound.
The speedster had recovered, was circling, looking for the opening that would let him connect cleanly. The giant was tearing webbing from his face with methodical efficiency. The energy projector's hands were tracking Jake's arc, calculating the lead time needed to intersect.
Four simultaneous threats. Each one capable of killing him if they connected cleanly. Each one engineered to counter what made him dangerous.
Jake's analytical mind processed the tactical reality with chemical-purged clarity. The speedster was the immediate problem. Velocity plus enhanced reflexes meant he could close distance faster than Jake could web.
The energy projector controlled space, made staying airborne suicide. The giant was the anchor, the one who'd pin him if he got close. And the screamer was the wildcard, waiting for the moment when everyone was committed to unleash sonic assault that would shatter his enhanced hearing.
He needed to separate them. Needed to turn their coordination into chaos.
Jake released his web mid-swing. Dropped. His feet hit concrete and he immediately launched sideways, firing webbing behind him at the floor. The strand stuck, spread, created an adhesive patch eight feet wide.
The speedster hit it at full velocity.
His enhanced reflexes caught the trap too late. His foot planted in webbing that was engineered to hold a moving truck. Momentum carried him forward but his leg stayed put.
The sound was wet. Final. His knee hyperextended, ligaments tearing, bone dislocating with the kind of damage that would take months to heal even with enhancement.
The speedster's scream was professional -- clipped, controlled, but genuine. He went down trying to catch himself with his hands, and those hit webbing too. Now he was stuck, pinned, one leg bent wrong while he clawed at adhesive that hissed faintly where it touched his enhanced flesh.
One down.
The giant charged, covering ground with steps that made the floor groan. His webbed eyes had cleared enough to track movement, and he'd decided that Jake was something that needed to be crushed through overwhelming force.
Jake fired at his legs. The webbing caught his right ankle, stuck. Jake pulled, trying to trip something that massive.
The giant's leg arrested mid-step. His momentum carried his upper body forward. He caught himself with both hands, turned the stumble into a three-point stance that transitioned into a lunge. Fast.
His fist drove toward Jake like a wrecking ball.
Jake couldn't dodge completely. The severed arm's weight pulled him right when he needed to go left. The fist clipped his side instead of connecting cleanly.
The impact was catastrophic anyway.
Jake flew, accelerating through space with his ribs screaming and his right arm refusing to catch himself properly. He hit the far wall hard enough that concrete cracked. His vision whited out.
His spider-sense shrieked.
Blue light. Energy projection. Aimed at where he'd impacted.
Jake threw himself sideways. The beam carved through concrete where his head had been, superheated air making his mask splinter.
He hit the floor rolling. Came up with his right hand already moving, firing webbing at the energy projector's hands. The strands caught both aperture-riddled palms, sealed them, webbing thick enough that the next projection couldn't punch through cleanly.
The energy projector screamed frustration. Started clawing at the webbing with teeth that had been reinforced to bite through steel.
Two down. Disabled but not finished.
The screamer's throat swelled.
Jake's spider-sense painted the attack in sonic frequencies. He fired webbing at the nearest support column, yanked himself behind it as the screamer unleashed.
The sound was violence made audible. Not loud in any traditional sense. Just harmonics that resonated at frequencies designed to shatter bone, rupture organs, make reality itself vibrate wrong. The support column absorbed most of it, but what got through made Jake's ears bleed. Made his enhanced hearing translate the assault into mixing hues of deep colors .
He fired blind around the column. The webbing flew toward where his spider-sense said the screamer was standing. The strands caught something, stuck. The sound cut off abruptly as webbing sealed the screamer's mouth, then his throat, layers building until the weaponized vocal cords couldn't vibrate.
The screamer clawed at his throat, fingers tearing at adhesive that was already eating through enhanced flesh. The hissing was faint but present, the last traces of Jake's corrupted webbing doing damage even as his system purged the toxins.
Three down.
The giant was moving again. He'd torn through the webbing on his ankle with brute force, simply ripped the strand apart through sheer mass and leverage. Now he advanced with both hands spread, ready to grab and crush anything within reach.
Jake's ribs screamed. His right shoulder was compromised from the wall impact. His healing factor was working but not fast enough, not when he was still taking damage faster than it could seal.
He needed to end this.
His right hand found the severed arm's harness. Released it. Forty pounds of crystallized limb dropped into his grip.
The giant lunged.
Jake swung.
The blackened arm moved through space with momentum that came from desperation and enhanced strength channeled through dead weight that had been transformed into something harder than bone. The impact caught the giant's temple, the crystallized flesh striking reinforced skull with force that made both surfaces crack.
The giant's eyes rolled back. His massive frame swayed. Stayed vertical through sheer structural integrity.
Jake swung again. Same spot. The blackened arm's knuckles connected with the spreading fracture in the giant's skull.
This time he went down. All nine feet and six hundred pounds of enhanced biology collapsing like a building that had lost its foundation. The floor cracked where he landed. His breathing was shallow but present.
Four down.
Jake stood in the center of the third floor, chest heaving, holding his own severed arm like a club. The speedster was still pinned to the webbing, leg bent wrong, screaming through gritted teeth.
The energy projector had torn most of the webbing from his hands but the apertures were bleeding, damaged from the toxic residue. The screamer was unconscious, throat swelling from where he'd tried to scream through sealed vocal cords. The giant breathed but didn't move, skull fractured, brain hopefully not bleeding but Jake couldn't be sure.
Disabled. All of them. Not dead. Not terminated. Just removed from the fight with the kind of efficiency that came from being pushed to his limit and finding solutions through violence.
Jake started toward the stairs leading to the fourth floor. Where Bane--
Movement.
His spider-sense screamed too late.
The speedster had torn his hands free. His leg was still caught, but his arms were free and he'd grabbed something from the floor. A piece of rebar from the giant's impact crater. Three feet of rusted steel.
He threw it.
The rebar flew like a spear, rotating, aimed at Jake's back.
Jake's body moved on instinct, twisting, but his ribs screamed and his rotation was too slow. The rebar caught his right shoulder, punched through fabric and flesh, exited out the back in a spray of blood that was finally, finally red instead of green.
The impact spun him. His feet tangled. He went down hard, the severed arm clattering away.
The speedster laughed. High. Manic. The sound of someone in agony who'd just landed a hit anyway. "Got you. Finally got you, you one-armed freak."
Jake's right hand found the rebar protruding from his shoulder. Gripped. Pulled.
The extraction hurt worse than the entry. His healing factor was already trying to seal the wound but the damage was severe, muscle torn, possibly bone chipped.
He stood. Turned.
The speedster was still pinned. Still trapped. But his hands were free and he was already reaching for more debris. Another piece of rebar. A chunk of concrete. Anything he could throw.
"How many more?" The speedster's voice cracked. "How many more pieces of you do I need to hit before you stop? Before you just die like you're supposed to?"
Jake started forward. Each step deliberate. Measured.
"I've got time." The speedster hefted the concrete chunk. "You're bleeding. I'm stuck. But I've got hands and you've got holes. Let's see who runs out first."
Jake's spider-sense painted the throw before it happened. He ducked. The concrete sailed overhead.
Another chunk. This one aimed lower. Jake sidestepped. The debris hit the wall behind him.
The speedster's hands were bleeding now from tearing at the webbing, from grabbing sharp objects, from desperation made physical. But he kept throwing. Kept laughing. Kept wasting time.
"Come on! Come on! What's wrong? Too slow? Too broken? Too--"
Jake's hand closed around his throat.
He'd crossed the distance while the speedster was reaching for more ammunition. Now he lifted the meta one-handed, the grip crushing windpipe with enhanced strength that had no patience left.
The speedster's hands clawed at Jake's wrist. Enhanced strength met enhanced strength. The meta's fingers were strong enough to bend steel but Jake's grip was concrete, fueled by the kind of rage that came from having time stolen by someone too stubborn to stay down.
"You don't know when to stop," Jake said quietly. His voice was empty. "You just keep throwing. Keep wasting my time. Keep--"
The speedster's face was going purple. His legs kicked uselessly, still tangled in webbing. His enhanced metabolism demanded oxygen that wasn't coming.
Jake's grip tightened.
The speedster's eyes bulged. His mouth opened but no sound emerged. His hands on Jake's wrist were weakening, fingers losing strength as consciousness began fragmenting. Brain damage setting in.
Death approaching in seconds.
Jake's hand didn't falter or loosen.
Not even when he felt the familar presence behind him, sudden and absolute.
Snap.
The sound came from everywhere and nowhere. Like reality itself had been interrupted, then resumed with something missing from the middle.
Jake's grip was still tight. The speedster's throat was still crushed. But something had changed.
The meta's eyes were still open. Still aware. Still terrified.
But he wasn't dying.
Jake squeezed harder. His enhanced strength channeled through fingers that could bend steel. The speedster's throat compressed further, cartilage grinding, vertebrae threatening to separate.
Still breathing. Color creeping back into a face that should have been going pale.
Impossible.
Jake released him and stepped back--
--straight through something that made his entire body convulse. A soul-deep chill, like ice water poured directly into his spine.
His heart hammered as he fell through, rolled then turned.
She stood there.
His hand snapped toward his wrist on instinct, ready to fire webbing that had passed through her before.
"You…" His voice came out strangled. "What are you?"
She tilted her head slightly.
"I could ask the same question," she said, her voice touched with a British accent.
Then, more sharply:
"But I have a more pressing concern."
Her gaze flicked to the speedster, still gasping in his webbing.
"Where," she asked calmly, "are you taking my souls?"
~MimicLord
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