The only sounds in the belly of the ferry were the groaning of stressed metal and the soft scuff of our boots on the grime-slicked deck. A heavy silence, thick with the smell of river water and rust, stretched between us—a predator's pause before the strike. He was a machine, thee Deadshot. Not a man. His movements were an exercise in fluid dynamics, a ballet of lethal economy. His twin pistols, customized and gleaming even in the dim light filtering through the grated floor above, tracked my every twitch. They weren't aimed at me; they were aimed at the space I was about to occupy.
He opened the dance.
Two deafening cracks echoed in the iron tomb. I was already moving, diving left behind a stack of corroded shipping crates. Sparks erupted where my head had been, chewing dime-sized holes in the steel bulkhead. A third shot tore through the air, punching through the crate and sending a spray of rust and splinters past my ear. He wasn't missing. I was making him miss, reading the subtle shift in his shoulders, the almost imperceptible tightening of his trigger finger. It was a deadly conversation held in microseconds, a dialogue of predictive ballistics. We circled each other in this steel gut, two ghosts in a dying machine. Every shot he fired was a perfect, calculated kill. And every move I made was a perfect, desperate negation.
My lungs burned, not from exertion, but from the sheer, suffocating tension. The ferry's cargo hold was a deathtrap of his design—a maze of rusted machinery, dangling chains, and skeletal support beams. It offered cover, but it was an illusion. Deadshot didn't need to see me; he just needed to know where I was going.
I broke from the crates, darting towards a cluster of massive, chain-wrapped engine parts. He was ahead of me. A round screamed past my cheek, close enough to feel the heat of its passage. Another slammed into a hanging chain link inches from my face, the impact severing it with a sharp twang. The heavy iron length whipped down like a striking snake, forcing me to tuck and roll. As I came up, a white-hot poker slammed into my left shoulder.
I grunted, the sound swallowed by the cavernous space. The bullet had gone clean through, a testament to its velocity and his precision. Liquid fire radiated from the wound, down my arm, across my back. My blood, dark in the gloom, began to paint a grim abstract on the rusted steel. He didn't pause to admire his work. Another shot, and I felt the searing kiss of lead as it grazed my ribs, tearing through my jacket and scoring a bloody line across my side. Pain was a rising tide, threatening to pull me under. Each movement was now a negotiation with my own screaming nerves.
Deeper in the shadows, huddled behind a defunct generator, I saw a flicker of movement. The Tinkerer. The whole reason I was here. His eyes were wide, twin pools of terror in a face smeared with grease and fear. He was paralyzed, a mouse watching two vipers tear each other apart. His survival depended on mine, a thought that was both a burden and a focus.
Deadshot was methodical, herding me, cutting off angles, turning my sanctuary into a cage. He wasn't just trying to kill me; he was dissecting me with gunfire, piece by agonizing piece. I was bleeding, slowing, and he knew it. I needed to change the board.
A stray round from his last volley had punctured a low-hanging coolant pipe. A thick, white vapor was hissing out, clinging to the floor like a morning fog. It was acrid and choking, but it was my only chance. Kicking over a barrel for a moment's distraction, I plunged into the cloud.
His sight was compromised, but not his instinct. I burst from the smoke, knife in hand, aiming to close the thirty feet between us in a heartbeat. He was ready. There was no surprise on his face, only cold, professional adjustment. He holstered one pistol with impossible speed, his own combat blade appearing in his hand as if by magic.
We crashed together in a shower of sparks. The clang and hiss of steel on steel replaced the thunder of gunfire. My style was raw, built on speed and exploiting openings created by pain and panic. His was… efficient. There was no wasted motion. Every parry flowed into a block, every block into a potential strike. He moved like a martial algorithm, deflecting my wild slashes with minimal effort before countering with a brutal elbow strike that sent a starburst of pain through my jaw.
I staggered back, spitting blood, and pressed again. My blade darted for his throat; he deflected it with his forearm guard. I swiped at his legs; he simply stepped out of range. Every time I felt I was gaining a sliver of an advantage, a gap in his defense, the pistol still in his right hand would bark. A round seared the flesh of my forearm. Another tore a chunk from my thigh armor. He was using his firearm as a point-blank scalpel, proving his reputation wasn't legend; it was a physical law. He never missed.
The culmination was swift and brutal. I lunged, a desperate, overextended thrust born from dwindling stamina. He punished it instantly. Instead of parrying, he stepped inside my reach, smashing the butt of his pistol into my wounded shoulder. The agony was blinding. My arm went numb. As I reeled, he shot me.
The bullet tore through my right thigh, shattering the bone. My leg simply ceased to exist, replaced by a universe of white-hot agony. I went down. Before I even hit the deck, he was on me, his armored forehead crashing into mine with the force of a battering ram. The world dissolved into a kaleidoscope of light and ringing noise. My knife, my last line of defense, slipped from my nerveless fingers and clattered uselessly on the steel floor.
I was on one knee, head hanging, blood pouring from a half-dozen wounds. My vision swam. He stood over me, a monolith of deadly certainty. The barrel of his pistol leveled at my face, a perfect, black circle. His voice was calm, devoid of triumph or malice. It was the voice of a man closing out a ledger.
"End of the line, Ghost."
Through the haze of pain, a flicker of clarity. My mind, my only true weapon, was still working. Behind him, running along the curve of the ferry's hull, was a thick, yellow pipe. Faintly stenciled letters read: PROPANE – HIGHLY FLAMMABLE. An old ferry, poorly maintained, retrofitted for cheap fuel. My eyes traced the line from his pistol's muzzle, through my head, to the pipe. It was almost perfect. Almost.
I let my body slump, a calculated shift of an inch to the left. It cost me the last of my strength, but it aligned the shot. I forced my head up, meeting his unwavering gaze. My lips, slick with blood, pulled back into what I hoped was a smirk.
"Then don't miss."
Arrogance was his one flaw. He took the bait. He wouldn't just shoot me; he would make sure I realized my mistake.
He fired.
The bullet was a masterpiece of precision. It punched through my left shoulder, exactly where I had positioned it, missing my vitals but sending a fresh wave of blinding pain through my system. The round, barely slowed, continued its trajectory and tore through the brittle metal of the gas pipe behind me.
A high-pitched hiss sliced through the air, the smell of propane instantly overwhelming the scents of blood and decay. Deadshot's eyes widened a fraction of an inch—the first crack in his machine-like composure. He had made a perfect shot. And he had lost.
I had one move left. My gaze fell upon a shattered electrical conduit on the wall, its frayed wires spitting blue sparks intermittently. With the last ounce of will I possessed, I kicked out with my good leg. My boot connected with the junction box, tearing it from its mounting. The box, trailing a tail of sparks like a dying comet, flew through the air and into the rapidly expanding cloud of gas.
The world became a white roar.
The sound wasn't heard so much as felt—a physical hammer blow of pressure that tore the air apart. The ferry's hull ripped open like wet paper. The deck plates beneath us buckled and flew. I was thrown, a rag doll in a hurricane of flame and shrieking metal.
I came to amidst the chaos. The hold was a vision of hell, wreathed in fire and choking black smoke. My ears rang with a deafening tone. I was alive, somehow. Pushing myself up, I saw him.
Deadshot was pinned beneath a massive, burning I-beam. His legs were crushed, his armor fractured. His pistols were scattered on the warped deck, just out of reach. But he wasn't finished. Even trapped, even dying, he was a predator. With a grunt of pure, indomitable will, he reached a bloody hand and grasped one of his fallen pistols.
He raised it, smoke coiling from his burning clothes. He fired.
The bullet, his last, hit me in the side. A final, perfect shot from a dying man. He never missed. I staggered, the impact nearly putting me down for good, but rage and adrenaline were a potent fuel. I grabbed a jagged length of rebar, a spear forged in the explosion, and limped towards him.
He was trying to reload.
There were no more words. I drove the steel beam down, through his chest, pinning him to the flaming wreckage beneath. The impact was a sickening thud of metal through armor and bone. He gasped, a wet, final sound. But he didn't scream. He didn't plead. He just glared up at me, his eyes unblinking, filled with a cold, professional hatred, even as the fire began to climb his body.
I held his gaze as the flames engulfed him, watching the last light of the world's greatest assassin extinguish. Then, I turned and stumbled through the inferno to find the Tinkerer.
From the riverbank, the ferry was a burning pyre against the bruised purple of the sunrise, a funeral ship for Deadshot and his team. The Tinkerer and I crawled onto the muddy dock, a pair of broken things coughed up by the river. I collapsed, coughing up blood and ash, the world tilting precariously.
The Tinkerer knelt beside me, shivering. "Is it… is it over?"
I stared at the burning wreck, the grave I had made. My body was a roadmap of another man's perfection, but I was the one breathing.
"It's over," I whispered, the words grating in my raw throat. "For now."