All-Chemical Spider #112
Jake fired a line into the dark above the canal and pulled himself into the gap between the warehouses.
She stood below with her sword at rest and her eyes on him, reading his retreat, and he let the swing carry him around the corner of the building and out past the water where the amber lights bled into the black surface.
She watched until the arc carried him beyond the roofline, and then she turned, her hand finding the sword's grip, and began to walk.
The web line sang behind her before she had taken another step.
She turned and saw him coming in low, his body angled against the drag, the bag heavy in one hand and the other trailing silk that smoked where it scraped the stone.
He landed between her and the canal with his knees absorbing the impact and the bag left his hand before he stood, sliding across the wet stone and settling at the center of the space between them.
"You're only here because you saw the post," he said. His voice came out flat and carried the edge of the fight still humming in his jaw. "The full amount is in there, as promised. Waste my time no longer. Hand over what I came for."
She looked at the bag without moving. Her eyes measured its shape, the slack in the fabric, the slump of it on the stone, and then her blade cleared its sheath in a single motion that opened the bag from end to end while her hand stayed clear of the material.
The sword's tip entered the gap and lifted, spreading the sides, and she looked down at the bundled notes with her face holding still.
"Where's the rest of it?" she said. Her eyes lifted and found his with the same exactness she had used to read his strikes. "You took more than this when you robbed the bank."
"Take it or leave it."
Her wrist turned and the blade described a swift arc that pried the bag fully open, the bundles spreading across the stone between them. She looked at the money and then at him, and her weight shifted into a posture that carried its own threat.
"I was sent to find the thief who robbed a client of ours, a few hours ago," she said. "My original orders were to kill you." She paused, letting the blade rest against her shoulder. "That was before our intel found your post. With the money shot."
She looked at the scattered notes with something close to disappointment.
"And even without your little cipher hiding the drop point, that post was a novice's error. Obvious. Tracking you would have been simple."
Jake's hand twitched at his side, the possessed one slowly arming itself with the blade.
"Your determination to waste my time will be met with severe punishment."
The corner of her mouth moved. She held his eyes, and something in her frame softened into a posture that carried its own heat, her hip shifting and her weight settling into a different center.
"Don't tempt me," she said, and her voice dropped into a register that carried heat beneath the threat, a current running through her frame that showed in the shift of her hips and the sudden awareness in her shoulders.
She kept her imagination off her face. Then she straightened, the play dropping from her shoulders, and the blade came up to point at his chest. "But playtime's over now. You need to understand what you've gotten yourself into."
"I said I don't care."
"You don't look like you would enjoy a hunt by assassins."
He gave no answer. His hands hung at his sides, the web-fluid trickling down his mechanical arm.
He stayed motionless.
Her jaw loosened, the tension there easing into something still and waiting.
"Take the deal I offered you," she said. "Spend enough money to disrupt a growing supply chain. Then you will be done."
"There's never being done with the League of Shadows."
"You're right." She nodded, the movement small and exact. "You stole from one of our clients. Eventually, you will have to pay. The alternative is you pay right now, before you accomplish what you hoped."
"I have survived worse threats."
She made a sound low in her throat, something between a hum and a catch, a breath that turned warm and edged.
"So I've heard, Spider." She looked at him, and the darkness behind her eyes seemed to deepen. "But the League of Shadows is the worst there is. For those who live in the shadows with no knowledge of what made its home there."
She moved. Her blade dipped under the edge of the torn bag and lifted it, the weight settling on the flat of the steel, and she flicked her wrist and sent the bag back at him. It landed at his feet, the notes spilling across the stone.
"You risk nothing," she said. "The money was never yours to begin with. Think about it."
She turned and walked toward the dark where the gantry rails crossed above the canal, her steps silent against the stone.
"By the way," she said, facing forward. "What is it they always say about drugs? The first one is free?"
She stopped at the edge of the dark and looked over her shoulder at him.
"The wild goose nests where the old tree weeps," she said. "And the boat that won drifts below. Sound familiar?"
He gave no answer. The words mapped in his head to the coordinates he had buried in the riddle on the post, the numbers sitting behind their names: the goose, the tree, the boat, the trophy. He knew the location by heart.
"The next pickup won't be in London," she said. "Don't be late."
She stepped into the dark between the warehouses and the space took her. He reached out with his sense, trying to find her as he had tracked Deathstroke through Gotham's shadows, looking for the weight and heat of a body in motion, but the return came back scattered across every vector, fragments of movement that dissolved as soon as they formed. Then the fragments stopped, and the silence that followed was complete.
He stood in it for a stretched breath, the canal water moving below him and the amber lights still burning along the far bank. Then he crouched and gathered the torn bag and the fallen bundles, the silk leaving his wrists in quick lines that wrapped the notes and pulled them into a compact mass against his chest.
He fired a line at the gantry rail above and pulled himself into the dark, the weight shifting as he swung, his body finding the arc that carried him east along the canal.
The warehouses passed below him, their loading bays sealed and their roofs level against the sky, and he dropped where the gantry rail ended, landing on stone that was slick with the spray from the water.
He went through the gap in the wall and found the interior, moving past the columns and the stacked crates to the back corner where the case sat against the wall.
It was metal, small enough to carry under one arm, and the note on top was folded into a precise square. He opened it and the script was the same code he had used in the post, the same language of objects and numbers. The lines read: The trophy sits where the goose swims under the tree, and the boat docks below.
He read it, working through the cipher. The trophy and victor was the first mark. The goose meant the second. The old tree held the third. The boat below carried the fourth. He mapped it in his head, the story becoming coordinates.
He closed his fist around the paper and crushed it, the sound of the crumple loud in the empty space, and threw it into the dark.
He opened the case.
The compounds were racked and sealed. The quantities were right, enough for his initial synthesis. He closed the case, and turned toward the gap in the wall.
The web line left his hand and found the rail outside, and he swung into the night, the case tight against his side and the canal winding below him toward the estate.