The Spider Assassin #53
The makeshift throne sat bathed in firelight filtering through the eastern window.
Harley Quinn smiled at him with makeup freshly applied over tear-tracked skin. Her sequined jacket -- the one she'd torn apart to wrap his wounds -- was gone. She wore something salvaged instead. Mismatched fabric stitched together with the kind of desperate care that came from having nothing left but the will to try.
Jake's grip on the severed arm shifted. Positioned the crystallized flesh for the swing that would end this. Spider-sense hummed. The room was clean. Just her. Just Harley. No threats. No complications.
Simple.
She didn't move from the chair. Didn't reach for weapons. Didn't flinch when his feet crossed the threshold and brought him three steps closer.
"Look at you," she breathed. The words carried weight Jake didn't want to acknowledge. "My Good Night. My perfect weapon. You came back."
His jaw clenched behind the mask. The chemicals were gone. The conditioning was dead. Her words meant nothing except proof that she was still trying to manipulate. Still reaching for control she'd lost when he tore the rose from his back.
"Stand up." His voice came out empty. Flat. "Fight back."
Harley's smile faltered. Her eyes tracked from his face to the blackened arm he held. To the space where his left shoulder ended. The recognition bloomed across her features like watching glass crack in slow motion.
"Baby," she whispered. "What did you do to yourself?"
The question landed wrong. Like she genuinely didn't understand. Like the direct consequence of her choices was somehow mysterious.
"Stand up," Jake repeated. His right hand tightened until crystalline tissue groaned. "Defend yourself."
"I don't want to fight you." Her hands stayed in her lap. Open. Empty. "I just want to talk. To explain. To make you understand that I was trying to help."
His chest burned. The rage that had carried him through four floors threatened to crack his ribs from the inside. She was still performing. Still playing victim. Still refusing to acknowledge what she'd done.
"You drowned me." Each word scraped his throat raw. "Twice. Made me into something that laughed while killing. That murdered guards and pilots and tournament fighters because the chemicals made resistance feel like betraying you."
Harley flinched. The motion was small but genuine. Her fingers twisted together in her lap.
"I know," she said quietly. "I know what I did. And I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, baby. I thought the soup would make you perfect like it made Mister J perfect. I thought wrapping your wounds would help them heal. I thought--" Her voice cracked. "I thought I was saving you."
Jake's analytical mind cataloged the performance. The tears were real. The pain in her voice was authentic. But authenticity didn't mean truth. Harley Quinn was a therapist who'd specialized in understanding human psychology before the Joker had broken her. She knew how to weaponize emotion. How to make sincerity look like redemption.
"Fight back," he demanded. The severed arm rose higher. "Give me a reason. Make this fair."
"It's not fair." Harley stood slowly. The motion was careful. Deliberate. Not threatening. "Nothing about this is fair. You stole my mallet. I drowned you. You cut off your arm. I wrapped your wounds. We hurt each other because we didn't know how else to--"
"Stop talking." Jake's voice cracked. "Stop making excuses. Stop trying to justify what you did."
She took a step forward. Then another. Her hands stayed open. Stayed visible. Stayed empty of everything except desperate hope that words could bridge the gap between them.
"We could start over," Harley said. Each word measured. Controlled through obvious effort. "Just you and me. Against the world. Like always. We can survive anything if we just--"
"I survived you." The correction came out venomous. "Barely. And only because I cut away the parts you corrupted."
Harley's eyes tracked to his missing arm again. Something broke in her expression. Not performance. Not manipulation. Just raw grief at what her choices had cost someone she'd believed she was helping.
"We can fix it," she breathed. The words tumbled out faster now. Desperate. "I know we can fix it. We can find scientists who could grow you a new arm. We could steal the money we need. Together. We could--"
"There's no we." The words came out flat. Final. But Jake's hand hesitated.
His spider-sense rippled.
Something about the room felt off. The way light caught the corners. The way shadows lay across the floor. His enhanced perception painted everything in clear colors but underneath ran a frequency that suggested wrongness he couldn't properly categorize.
Harley noticed the hesitation. Her entire body language shifted. Hope blooming like poison flowers in her eyes.
"I'm not lying," she insisted. "I promise. Cross my heart and hope to die. We can fix everything. We can make you whole again. Make us whole again. We just need--"
"Stop." Jake's voice dropped to something dangerous. "Stop pretending this is about us. There is no us. There was never an us. Just you drowning me and calling it love."
The tears on her face were genuine. The way her hands trembled was real. But Jake's spider-sense kept humming that wrong frequency. Kept suggesting the room held more than just Harley and her desperate pleas.
"Please," she whispered. "Please don't kill me. I know I messed up. I know I hurt you. But I can make it right. I can be better. I can--"
His hand fell.
The severed arm dropped six inches. His grip loosening fractionally. Not releasing. Not surrendering. Just exhaustion breaking through rage.
"You're a manipulating bitch." The words came out tired. Bitter. "And you're not even good at it anymore."
Harley's face crumpled. The hope that had been building shattered like glass. She stumbled backward. Her hands went to her mouth. Covering the sob that wanted to escape.
"I mean it," she gasped through her fingers. "I really mean it. I want to help. I want to fix what I broke. Please believe me. Please--"
Jake's spider-sense spiked.
The wrong frequency resolved into clarity. The corners of the room. The shadows. The way certain sections of wall were positioned too deliberately.
Turrets.
Automated weapons positioned with professional precision. Covering every angle. Every approach. But dormant. Sleeping. Representing no active threat until someone activated them.
His right hand found the severed arm properly. Repositioned it. His stance shifted. Defensive. Ready.
"You were trying to soften me up. Make me feel vulnerable before you could ambush me."
The words hung in the space between them. Harley's face transformed from grief to confusion in the span of a heartbeat.
"What? No. Baby, I didn't--"
"Enough." Jake's voice hardened. "You played your part. But it wasn't convincing enough."
"No!" Harley's denial came out sharp. Genuine. "I wasn't--"
Light flared throughout the room.
Holographic projection materializing in the space between them. Carmine Falcone's face rendered in blue-white wireframe. Larger than life. Expression carved from something cold and final.
"Harley Quinn." His voice carried disappointment that made her flinch. "We tried it your way. You insisted he could be reasoned with. That your connection would make him hesitate." A pause. "I'm a very impatient man."
The turrets woke.
Servos engaged with mechanical precision. Barrels rotated. Targeting systems engaged. Jake's spider-sense exploded into threat-red as every corner simultaneously announced lethal intent.
"Fire."
The word was ice wrapped in silk.
Muzzle flashes erupted from eight positions simultaneously. The turrets had been positioned with professional precision. Overlapping fields of fire. No escape vectors. The kind of coordinated assault that assumed the target was enhanced and prepared accordingly.
Jake's body moved before conscious thought engaged. His spider-sense mapping trajectories that screamed death from every angle. The bullets carved through space with velocity that made dodging feel impossible.
But Jake had fought Deadshot. Had faced professional marksmen. Had learned to read threat assessment faster than most people processed visual input.
He dropped low. The first salvo passed overhead. Concrete exploded where he'd been standing. He rolled left. Webbing erupted from his wrist -- glands regenerated during Harley's performance -- caught a support column. He yanked himself sideways as bullets tracked his movement.
The turrets adjusted. Compensated. Their targeting algorithms were good. Military-grade. Designed to predict enhanced movement patterns.
But they couldn't predict spider-sense.
Jake swung between salvos. His enhanced perception located safe spaces in the chaos. Three inches left. Six inches right. Duck. Roll. The bullets carved reality into geometry of death and he navigated through it with precision born from desperation.
His right hand fired constantly. Creating webs that obscured targeting. That gave him fractional seconds of cover. That bought moments when the turrets had to recalculate.
Harley had dropped to the floor. Her hands covered her head. She was screaming something Jake couldn't hear over gunfire and his own heartbeat thundering in his ears.
The hologram flickered. Falcone's expression held satisfaction. He'd known the turrets alone wouldn't be enough. Had understood that Jake was too dangerous for automated systems.
Which meant--
Jake's spider-sense spiked different.
Not the threat-red of bullets. Something else. Something distant. Something patient.
The eastern window.
His enhanced perception tracked outward through glass. Through smoke from Gotham burning. Through three hundred yards of open air to a rooftop where orange and black waited with rifle positioned.
Deadshot.
🕸️🕷️🕷️🕷️🕷️🕷️🕷️🕸️
Floyd Lawton's breathing was controlled. Professional. The kind of calm that came from making this shot ten thousand times.
The rifle's scope painted the fifth floor window in perfect clarity. The smoke complicated things but his enhanced optics compensated. Tracked movement. Calculated trajectories.
The Spider was chaos incarnate. Dodging turret fire with reflexes that shouldn't exist. But chaos followed patterns if you watched long enough. Found rhythms in the randomness.
Deadshot's finger rested on the trigger. Waiting. Patient.
The turrets would force the Spider into position eventually. Would herd him toward the window. Toward the exact angle where Deadshot's bullet could punch through glass and end this.
His eyepiece calculated windage. Elevation. The bullet drop over three hundred yards. The way smoke would affect trajectory. Everything compressed into numbers that promised certainty.
The Spider swung across the window. Too fast. Wrong angle.
Deadshot tracked him. Waited. His breathing slowed further. Three heartbeats per minute. Four at most. The body's betrayal minimized through discipline.
Movement in the scope. The Spider landing near the window. Positioning himself perfectly. Presenting the shot Deadshot had been waiting for.
His finger began the squeeze. The trigger's resistance measured in grams. The rifle's mechanism precise enough that even this slight pressure registered.
Three hundred yards. Through smoke. Through glass. Into a skull that had survived impossible trauma.
But Floyd Lawton never missed. Twice.
The trigger reached the breaking point.
🕸️🕷️🕷️🕷️🕷️🕷️🕷️🕸️
Harley's head snapped up.
Through the chaos. Through the gunfire. Through her own terror. Something clicked.
The eastern window. The only clear sight line. The position where someone patient would wait with a rifle.
Deadshot.
Falcone would have positioned him there. Would have planned for the turrets to fail. Would have created this entire scenario to force the Spider into that window.
And the Spider stood there now. Dodging bullets. Unaware that the real threat came from outside.
Her body moved before thought caught up. Years of acrobatic training overriding fear. Overriding pain. Overriding everything except the desperate need to protect what remained of her Good Night.
She launched toward the window.
Toward Spider.
Toward the trajectory she knew was coming.
Her body flew through space. The world compressed into singular focus. Glass ahead. Spider's silhouette. The knowledge that somewhere out there a bullet was already traveling.
She saw his eyes widen behind the mask. Saw his spider-sense trigger too late. Saw him try to move but momentum had him committed.
Harley's body intersected the line between window and Spider.
The glass shattered.
Multiple impacts. Turret fire catching her mid-flight. Bullets punching through ribs. Through lung. Through organs that had kept her alive through impossible trauma.
And one more.
Different sound. Different impact. The bullet that had been meant for Spider's skull entering her chest instead. Punching through sternum. Through heart. Through everything that made her Harley Quinn.
She crashed into the Spider. Her momentum carrying them both sideways. Away from the window. Away from the sight line.
They hit the floor together.
Harley's blood spread across concrete in patterns that looked almost artistic. Her breathing was wet. Labored. Each inhalation bringing pink froth to her lips.
Jake stared at her. His hands moving automatically. Trying to staunch bleeding that wouldn't stop. That couldn't stop.
"You--" The word caught in his throat. "Why?"
Harley smiled. The expression was genuine despite the pain. Despite everything. Her hand found his face. Touched the mask with fingers that trembled.
"My mallet," she whispered. Blood bubbled. "I really did... love you, baby..."
Her eyes held something Jake couldn't name. Something that looked like love filtered through corruption. Like devotion that had never learned healthy expression. Like someone who'd finally found purpose in the moment of losing everything.
The turrets fell silent. Their ammunition depleted. The hologram flickered out.
And Harley Quinn lay dying in a spreading pool of her own blood while Jake Cross knelt over her with forty pounds of blackened flesh forgotten beside him.