Chapter One

MISTRESS OF THE WEB

i) The Mark of a Pro

Scatterboy knew the game was up when Mank walked in through the office door and shot his enforcer, Pedro Callaghan, twice through the chest.

PHUT! PHUT!

Pedro 'the bull' Callaghan slumped to the ground, leaving a slime trail of crimson in his wake. He tried to suck air through two ragged holes in his chest, managing a couple of soggy breathes before expiring mid way through the third.

Scatterboy was on his feet in an instant, a curse exploding from his lips, blood pounding against his temples. This was how it was going to end. This was the stark moment before the lights went out.

Mank waved his gun, indicating Scatterboy should sit down again, it was a simple gesture, almost friendly, but the undercurrent of threat was like a physical force that slammed Scatterboy back into his seat.

'Take it easy,' Mank advised him as the four members of his crew spread out and searched the office, 'won't take a second.'

'Who…?' Scatterboy flinched as a filing cabinet went over with a crash.

'Not your worry,' the assassin assured him. He sounded almost distracted as he watched his men tear the office apart.

'Why…?' Scatterboy sobbed.

Mank turned to him and dropped a grey wink, 'you already know the answer to that,' he said.

Scatterboy forced a hard lump of fear down his throat. He stared up at Mank. A cold feeling of resignation spreading through him. This was it; his past had caught up with him, he could see it in the killer's eyes. Scatterboy's elaborate little retirement scheme was about to cost him the whole game. He slumped, face twitching with nerves. 'You boys here to do the dirty deed?'

'Matter of fact we are.'

Struggling to keep his voice level, Scatterboy said, 'you gonna do it slow and painful? That your style?' He cleared his throat, 'Or quick and simple; the mark of a pro?'

Mank shrugged. 'No point in drawing things out,' he raised his gun and took careful aim.

Slowly regaining his wits, Scatterboy forced a smile, 'can I just say something?'

'No,' Mank replied, and shot him once through the forehead.

The mark of a pro.

*

Mank and his crew left Scatterboy's innocuous little office, retracing their steps past the six men and women they'd 'sanctioned' on the way up. The passage stank of cheap death and charred carpet, bodies scattered here and there; a couple of security guards, a secetary who'd chosen the wrong moment to take a tea break. The filters emitted a strangled whine as they struggled to clear the air of carbon discharge.

The crew stepped into a lift and Mank thumbed the doors closed. No one spoke on the way down to ground floor.

Mank studied the faces of his sanction crew by the slow wink of the floor counter. Erwin Trent, aka Boondog; sniper and munitions expert. Fan Dubois, aka Nightman, explosives expert and field engineer. Alf Slatter, aka Creep; specialist in stealth combat and intel gathering. Loh Gul, aka Doc; poisons expert and interrogations officer.

Hardened killers, every one of them, each man an expert in his chosen field. They were the best crew Mank had ever worked with and in his time with the agency he'd worked with a fair few.

The assassins stood blank faced, emotionless, dressed in uniform grey overcoats with cracked leather lapels. Identical coats, identical faces. None of them returned Mank's gaze.

*

Stepping out into the steel pulse of the city, the five men instantly evaporated into the thick crowds that surged along the sidewalks. Such vanishings were easy, this was Golgotha Falls after all; a city of ninety million souls, some of them divine, some semi-divine, but the large majority mortal and nondescript.

Ghost squads and sanction crews prowled the fringes of Golgothan society; professional hit men and women paid top credit to settle underworld scores. It was more than a profession, it was a calling, and those involved were willing to sacrifice the greater part of their humanity in exchange for body augmentations, cyber prosthetics, techno grafts - anything to give them that killing edge out in the field.

Mank's crew worked for an agency known to its operatives as Mother. They had no direct contact with it. They knew nothing about it other than the chores passed down through middlemen. In the high stakes game of professional assassinations, the less you knew the longer you stayed alive.

ii) The Cobra Lounge

After Mank split up from his sanction crew he headed for The Cobra Lounge, an old and familiar haunt.

The Cobra Lounge was located in the district of Tiffany, a low-rent province filled with labyrinthine housing estates and second-hand tech malls.

The lounge was buzzing with illicit trade when Mank walked in through its famous winged doors.

No one paid him any attention as he sifted through the bar-side crowds, his eyes working the shadows for his contact.

The air left a foul taste in his mouth; the hard tang of off-world narcotics mixed freely with the stench of sweat and despair. Everyone wore a mask: cartoon, celebrity, animal and fetish, you couldn't get into the place without one. Anonymity was a big thing in the lounge and Mank wore a mouse mask, flat cartoon eyes concealing the steel of his gaze as he worked his way to the back of the bar where a numer of small alcoves were located.

The man Mank had come to see was Abdul Qassam, a middleman between the agency and her crews. Abdul sat in a shadowy alcove right next to the kitchens, lace curtains cutting him off from the rest of the bar. He wore a raccoon mask, its mouth spread in a luminous grin. 'You boys done me proud?' he asked as Mank settled into the booth beside him.

Mank placed the padded bag he carried on the table. 'The sanction's been carried out,' he told him and tapped the side of the bag, 'I have your receipt right here.'

'Mother has another chore for you.' Abdul's voice sounded slightly muffled behind his mask. He was a large man, three hundred and fifty pounds of flab hung on a skeleton designed to carry one-seventy at the most. He felt every ounce of his excess girth. His skin was pasty grey, corpselike, and he wheezed with every other breath. A gravy-like stench seeped through his pores that no amount of cologne could subdue.

'So soon?' Mank was surprised. There was usually a rest period of several days between Mother's assignments.

Abdul nodded. 'This one's in the district of West Helia.' he said.

'I'm familiar with the area.'

'The target is one George Favos aka George Esquire, patron of the Café Libre. He's been positively identified as a runner for the Heathen.'

'The insurgents?' Mank frowned behind his mask. 'You know this for a fact?'

Abdul shrugged. 'Mother is never wrong,' he said.

Mank considered this for a moment then nodded, 'I'll bring receipt of the sanction in the morning.'

After he'd left, Abdul sat studying the bag on the table. Finally he reached out and unzipped it, pulling the lips carefully aside.

Scatterboy stared back up at Abdul. His severed head looked oddly fitted in the bag's padded interior, eyes focused on infinity.

Abdul closed Scatterboy's eyes, a small token of respect for the man whose death he'd ordered.

'Those boys are good,' he sighed as he re-zipped the bag and placed it at his feet.

*

Dressed in a black, tailor-cut suit, Mank met his sanction crew on a vertical shuttle southbound for the district of West Helia.

The shuttle moved through pressure sealed vacuum tubes that spread across the sheer face of the parent towers like varicose veins. Millions of shuttles moved through these transparent tubes at any one time, trafficking between city districts, illuminated like fireflies against the sterile dark of the Infernum.

The sanction crew: Boondog, Nightman, Creep and Doc, all wore identical suits; black bespoke tailoring, white shirts, skinny ties. They looked like a family jazz quintet as they hooked up with Mank, their faces surgically altered to resemble each other as closely as possible.

When they met on the shuttle they said nothing, acknowledging each other by not so much as a nod.

They stood on the third deck, surrounded by an anonymous crowd of commuters. Mank stared out the shuttle windows at the swarms of private ships and cargo carriers that plied back and forth through the Infernum They formed constellations of light with their aft burners as they moved between the vast Olympiad towers. Only here in the vertical shuttles could one glimpse the true unimaginable scale of this megopolis, only here, suspended between districts, could one look upon the tyrant architecture of a city built for gods.

The shuttle was infested with holographic ads, holoverts; floating, dancing, parading through the air, zipping amongst the listless commuters like manic dreams, desperately trying to attract their attention. Mank and his men wore expensive shades to filter out the holoverts. Everyone else ignored them.

*

The shuttle stopped briefly at West Helia Central Station where the sanction crew disembarked.

West Helia smelled of diesel and hard sulphur. It was an industrial district, made up of vast factory complexes and chemical processing plants, its skyline crowded with belching chimney stacks and burning waste funnels. The holographic sky was tuned to static. No one wasted good holographics on a dead district.

Most of the work here was carried out by automatons; the few thousand citizens that chose to live in West Helia were collected down in Helmont, a small ramshackle crome on the southernmost tip of the district.

The streets of West Helia were crowded with automaton commuters, humanoid robots marching in perfect formation, humming high-pitched work mantras.

The roads were clogged with insectile machines, steel centipedes and titanium beetles, scurrying over and around each other, antennae whipping frantically back and forth. The sky was black with metallic locusts, swarming to and from the great automated factories in the north.

There were very few flesh and blood commuters. For good reason. Flesh was soft and vulnerable and West Helia was a district of machines; cold, emotionless and ruthlessly efficient. A walk along any of its thoroughfares was a risk, something Mank was keenly aware of, but he didn't want his trip to Helmont logged so he avoided the bullet shuttles or the autocabs.

'I am Charley the self-assembled car,' a vehicle pulled up alongside them as the crew strolled through a reinforced underpass. It was a large, mongrel machine, composed of cannibalized auto parts mounted on a discontinued chassis. The name CHARLEY was illuminated on the roof in red neon letters.

The vehicle stared at the five men through stalk-like headlamps. 'Can I ferry you to your destination?' it asked in a grinding voice, 'I am a machine in search of a function. Would you like me to carry you? My seating is designed for human specifications.'

'Do me a favour, Charley,' said Mank, 'fuck off.'

'I'd be delighted,' said Charley and followed the five men for nearly half a block before he realised he'd been dismissed.

iii) Tightening the Noose

The sanction crew had no need to talk to each other. Each of the men had a neural monar embedded in the centre of his brain. The monar allowed them to carry on a form of artificial telepathy, communicating via amplified thought waves. For assassins it was an invaluable piece of stealth technology and worth the frequent migraines the embeds produced.

'Something's wrong with the chore,' Creep transmitted, 'doesn't feel right.'

'You say that each time, every time,' Boondog replied, his thought pulse like a cold tickle along the length of Mank's spine.

'Keep NTs to the min,' Mank warned them, 'we can be hacked any time.'

Their neural embeds were open twenty-four hours a day, almost continuously shunting messages back and fourth between the five-man sanction crews. Their minds were in constant fusion - they learnt to complete each other's thoughts, to dream each other's dreams, to think in perfect tactical harmony. The embeds forged a peculiar intimacy amongst Mother's sanction crews, making them amongst the most efficient of all Golgotha Falls' assassin cults.

Mank's crew arrived in the squalid crome of Helmont a little after midnight, Meridia Time. The holographic sky over West Helia was switched off every evening just after six, leaving a black, featureless void in place of the daytime static. The perfect cover.

The crew quickly located the Café Libre on Carnival Street; a boulevard that ran straight through the dark heart of Helmont.

Carnival was a street of plasma ads and rundown shops, the air crawling with holographic porn and tacky commercials. Stiletto freaks with cheap face grafts howled for man trade from the electric sidewalks, dog-faced pimps lurking in side alleys, geared up for trade or trouble. Assembly line sex dolls competed with f and b whores on every corner. Street kids roamed in large feral gangs, every bit as dangerous as the grown-ups, communicating in secret patois and mongrel dialects known only to each other.

The hard faced pedestrians that frequented Carnival Street came here for what few pleasures they could grab before dawn returned them to the auto junkyards to the east where they scavenged each day for a living. Addicts and drunks sobbed and laughed in open doorways, confidence tricksters pitched their scams from side street shadows, and here and there a body lay face down in the gutter, victim of summary justice or chance robbery.

Mank and his crew slipped down a side alley a couple of doors from the Café Libre.

'Creep and Boon, work the upper floors,' Mank broadcast. 'Doc and Night, stick with me.'

Creep and Boondog sprayed their shoes and gloves with a chemical adhesive. An instant later they were scuttling up the wall of the alley, clinging to the brickwork like giant insects. They vanished quickly into rooftop shadow. From there they would access the Café Libre through its upper floors.

As Mank turned to the remaining men he caught sight of an old woman huddled behind a trash can. He crouched down in front of her, signalling Doc and Nightman to move on ahead of him. The old woman had barricaded herself behind dozens of plastic bags, probably her life's possessions. She was blind, her scrawny flesh clothed in mismatched rags. She was feral, a homeless vagabond, the alley was most likely the only home she knew.

'I am looking for a man.' Mank told her.

'No men left, child,' the old woman croaked, 'only marks.'

'His name is George Esquire.'

'I know him,' the woman nodded almost immediately, 'I know him, I do. Owns the Libre. Kindly soul. Rare breed. Has a way about him folk naturally take to. You want to tell me why you looking for old Georgey?'

Mank shrugged, 'He owes tax.'

'You're no taxman,' the old woman said with a soft laugh.

'How can you tell?'

'You got blood on your hands, child. Taxmen suck it, you shed it. You killed today. Can smell it clear.'

Mank ignored this remark. 'Aside from the front and rear,' he said, 'is there another way into the Libre? A side entrance, perhaps. Maybe a basement level.'

'You gonna kill George?' The old woman asked, 'he your mark?'

'That's not your concern.'

'He's protected, child. Couldn't off him even if you'd wanted to.'

Mank smiled. 'Protected by whom?' he asked.

The old woman gave a high, childish laugh. 'Mistress of the web,' she replied, 'haven't you heard? George belongs to her. Once a fly always a fly. I'll tell you where he is, but it won't do you no good. The mistress looks after her own.' She told him of a side entrance several metres down the alley. It had underground access to the Café Libre, she assured him.

'Who is this mistress of the web?' Mank asked out of curiosity.

'No one mentions her real name hereabouts,' the old woman said, 'and if you don't aim to cross her then you don't need to know, right?'

'Thank you,' Mank got to his feet, 'I'm going to put you to sleep now.'

'You don't need to off a blind woman,' she said, 'I can't finger you.'

Mank sighed. 'In our profession,' he said, 'why take chances?'

After he'd sanctioned her, Mank went to the side door she'd told him about and forced it, tech-enhanced muscles making easy work of the lock. The door sprang open and Mank slipped into a pool of darkness. He stood and listened for a moment, ears tuned to the slightest sound. Then slowly he moved forward, down a series of stone stairs and along a smooth foot-worn passage.

He heard rats scurry from his path, their shrill squeaks bouncing off damp walls.

Mank was at ease in the dark. He relayed his co-ordinates to his crew via his neural embed, and they updated him on their own progress.

Creep and Boondog had already made their way into the Libre through a forced skylight. Nightman and Doc were meanwhile slipping in through the back of the building, making their way along oddly deserted corridors, an empty kitchen; a silent staff room.

'There's no one here,' Nightman broadcast. 'The whole place looks like it's been shut down.'

From the third floor Creep confirmed this suspicion.

'Motion detector reads flat,' he transmitted, 'no-one here but us. Now ain't that strange.'

Mank reserved his judgment as he came up into the Libre through a basement storage room. He met Nightman and Doc in the main bar area. Nightman had his gun held ready. Doc looked edgy. The three men gazed around at the deserted café, sharing a moment of puzzled silence.

Nightman broadcast all their fears. 'Maybe our mark knew we were coming?'

Before Mank could reply, Creep signalled them from upstairs, his neural transmission loud as a gunshot in Mank's head. 'Guys!' he broadcast, 'you need to get up here and see this.'

Mank took the stairs three at a time, Nightman and Doc close behind.

In an upstairs bedroom they found Creep and Boondog staring down at a shop window dummy lying on a double bed.

A tag around the dummy's neck read:

GEORGE ESQUIRE IS NO DUMMY!

'We've been made,' Creep said. It was the first time any of them had spoken aloud that night. Doc crossed the room and stood at the window, staring down into the street below.

Mank pulled his gun from its holster. He clicked the safety catch off and nodded to the others.

Creep and Boondog pulled their revolvers clear, spun the chambers and clicked them tight. Each chamber held a plasma round with the impact force of a shaped explosive. Mank was about to signal a retreat when Doc gave a sudden cry and started back from the window, snatching at his gun as he did so. In the same instant the window exploded inwards, filling the room with a storm of glass shrapnel. The men ducked down, covering their heads.

Mank was first on his feet, but in the split second he'd lost sight of the window, Doc had vanished. The window was gaping ruin, the sound of Helmont's nightlife rushing in to fill the room. It was as though Doc had been sucked out of the room by an enormous vacuum force.

Mank was moving fast towards the window, but staggered back an instant later when Doc's death screams filled his head, broadcast through his neural monar with mind-numbing force.

'Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!' Nightman howled; hands clamped to his ears.

Creep and Boondog were heading towards the window but Mank stopped them, 'we're aborting the mission,' he yelled, shoving them back towards the door, 'Doc's dead. You can't help him now. Let's move.'

Nightman had activated his motion detector, its luminous radar reflecting off the grim set of his features. 'Something's up on the roof,' he informed Mank, 'moving due east.' His eyes widened in shock, 'Damn, nothing moves that fast…' He shook the detector, 'Mank - we got trouble.'

'Head down to the basement,' Mank yelled at them, 'it's an ambush.'

They kept their heads. Despite the loss of Doc, they remained a tight unit. Men died in their trade, it was an acceptable part of the equation. The best way to honour Doc was by getting out of this trap in one piece.

iv) The Bedlam Crew

Once in the alley Mank and the surviving members of his sanction crew made their way back out onto the main thoroughfare, melting into the Carnival Street crowds, concealing themselves in a tight surge of anonymity. There was ever safety in numbers.

But no safety that night.

Creep was the next one to die; a steel noose, thin as flexi steel, dropped down from above, slipping over his head and tightening around his neck in a split-second. He choked, reaching for his throat. Suddenly he was yanked bodily into the air, vanishing into the yawning darkness above the streetlights.

This time Mank was driven to his knees by the force of Creep's telepathic screams. It felt like his head was exploding, a thousand slivers of ice penetrating the soft tissue of his brain. He propelled himself to his feet and managed to stagger to the side of the street.

Creep's screams ended abruptly. Blissful silence filled the inside of Mank's skull as Nightman and Boondog joined him.

The three remaining members of the sanction crew stared at each other. Creep's thoughts had become baseline static. They'd lost two men inside of ten minutes; unprecedented in all the history of the agency. Around them Carnival Street carried on as if nothing had happened.

Mank stared up at the rooftop shadows high above them.

The others followed his line of sight.

No words were necessary. No thoughts either.

Coating hands and feet with chemical adhesive, they took to the walls, scurrying up them like human flies. The need for secrecy was over. They were fighting for survival now.

In seconds they were amongst the rooftops, settling into the shadows with noiseless accord.

His hearing enhanced to five times that of the normal human, Mank could hear the beating of a moth's wings at just over thirty metres, a target's heartbeat at less than twenty. Crouching in deep shadow, he filtered out the hard breathing of his colleagues, tuning in to background ambience, listening for any unfamiliar sound no matter how innocuous.

At last Mank gave the order and the crew spread out across the roofs, revolvers held at the ready. They moved soft as ghosts, blending skilfully with the dark, relying on instincts heightened by technology and honed by years of training.

The rooftops consisted of multiple slopes interspersed with areas of relative flat; chimney stacks and massive air vents, water towers and broadcast receivers created a tangled landscape through which the three men cautiously picked their way.

'Mank, Boon…' Nightman's transmission was hard and urgent, 'over here.'

They joined him on the slope of a concrete sub-roof. He was crouched over the bodies of Doc and Creep, examining them with a pocket diagnostic. 'Dead,' he broadcast, as Mank and Boondog slid down the roof slope towards him.

Mank broke silence. 'How?' he asked.

'Desiccation,' Nightman responded. 'Bodies completely drained of fluids.'

Mank crouched down beside Nightman and studied the corpses of Doc and Creep. He didn't need a diagnostic; the mark of death was clear on both of them. Their skin was shrivelled, dried-out looking, as though left to tan several days in the sun. Sunken eyes, parched lips, powder-dry tongues. He examined their skulls. In the crown of each he discovered twin incision wounds, small and surgically precise.

'What the fuck did this?' Boondog was breathing hard, the sheen of cold sweat reflecting off his upper lip.

'The mistress of the web,' Mank muttered, half to himself, half in response to Boondog's question.

'The what?' Boondog and Nightman stared down at him.

Mank glanced at the dark roof-scape around them. Something was out there in the shadows. He sensed it watching them...studying them. The bodies of Doc and Creep had been deliberately left here for the others to discover. it was a psyche job. Whatever killed them wanted the survivors to know it was here, stalking them, and they were defenceless against it.

'I met a feral in the alley,' Mank said. 'She told me George Esquire was a protected man.'

Nightman frowned. 'Protected by whom?' he asked.

'The mistress of the web,' Mank shrugged. 'It didn't mean much at the time.'

Staring down at the bodies of his colleagues, Nightman said, 'means a hell of a lot now.'

Mank got to his feet. 'we've bitten off more than we can chew, boys,' he said matter-of-factly.

Boondog nodded. 'That's for damn sure.' He hawked and spat on the roof slope. 'Reckon we're dealing with one of the spider-gods.' He pointed at the puncture wounds in the skulls of the two corpses. 'Nothing else leaves that mark.'

There was silence for a beat, finally broken by Mank. 'Desdemona,' he said, 'it's got to be her.' His voice sounded brittle and lifeless. Lady Genevieve Desdemona was the most feared of all the spider-gods. Practically disowned by her divine house, she was rumoured to hunt amongst the mortal districts, dispatching her human prey with brutal efficiency.

'If it's Lady Desdemona,' Boondog breathed, 'we're dead already. She'll take us before we reach street level.'

Nightman was staring nervously around him. 'She knew we were coming,' he hissed, 'she must have fucking known. We've been sold out.'

'Abdul Q was the middleman,' Mank snarled. 'he's the only one who knew about the hit. If any of us makes it out of here we pay that fat fuck a visit. Agreed?'

'That's a pretty long "if",' Nightman noted.

Mank shrugged, 'I think we should negotiate with her. It's the only way.'

'Be my guest,' Boondog said, 'your death might buy us time to get down to the street.'

Nightman gave a harsh laugh. His eyes looked trapped and wild. 'Lady Desdemona doesn't negotiate,' he reminded Mank, 'she hunts and she kills and let's face it, she's better at it than us.' He glanced across at Boondog,' if we're going to move,' he said, 'it's now or never.'

Boondog looked at Mank. 'You coming?' he asked.

Mank shook his head. 'You run, you're dead,' he said blankly, 'the goddess spares no one.'

Nightman grinned. 'We'll take our chances,' he said.

*

Without warning Nightman and Boondog exploded into action, moving out across the rooftops with inhuman agility.

Spinning fast through concrete shadows, they catapulted off hard, angled surfaces, bodies describing elegant arcs through the air. They criss-crossed each other's paths, somersaulting off chimney stacks and roof slopes, racing up vertical surfaces and along razor-thin ledges, performing impossible leaps between buildings, each man acutely aware that speed was now the key to survival.

Nightman was slightly ahead of Boondog, keeping the other in his gun sights. They moved like twin ghosts, eyes hungry for motion, a target, something to aim and fire at.

Running flat-out, Boondog's foot hit something in the dark. He heard a high tension twang, a thin keening sound, and suddenly a feeling of coldness spread through his left leg. He stumbled, fell, reached down to clasp his injured limb and instead felt the gushing stump where his left leg had been moments before.

Boondog broadcast a telepathic scream, the mirror of his physical anguish. He tried to stem the flow of blood, clamping down hard on the artery, but he was weakening fast. He crawled against a cropped boundary wall, propping his back up against the hard stone. He left a thick trail of blood in his wake. Something had amputated his leg just below mid-thigh, the injury horrific in its surgical precision.

As he sat there Boondog saw a flash of motion, a shadow moving past him, almost too fast to register. A cold breath of wind blew against his face. In that instant Boondog felt a clamp of pain in his throat, as though every muscle had simultaneously seized up.

Suddenly his skull felt enormously heavy, succumbing to an indescribable pressure. He bowed his head, letting it fall forward on his chest and it continued falling, toppling off the severed neck, bouncing off his lap and rolling a short distance away from his lifeless body.

With a weightless sense of disbelief Boondog stared back up at his own headless corpse, still propped against the low boundary wall, but before he could comprehend this strange point-of-view, the last of his consciousness was extinguished, his eyes rolling up in his head, a final sigh passing through stiffening lips.

Nightman kept moving. He heard the mental scream as Boondog fell, but he didn't turn back. It was every man for himself now.

He paused only to plant crab mines, a handful sown in his wake. They were small automated disks, segmented legs resembling those of a crab. Nightman set them to maximum yield and watched them scuttle sideways into the dark. They would wait in the shadows, motion detectors covering a fifty-yard radius, ready to scurry into the path of anyone coming their way. Once stepped on, the mines detonated with devastating force.

Nightman was coming to the end of the roof. There was a gap of several metres before the next roof began at a slightly higher point. The gap should have been impossible to bridge, but Nightman did not even slow his pace and as he ran out of roof he leapt high and clear, his body hurtling through the air with inhuman force.

His hands reached out, fingers clawed to hook onto the opposite roof - he would have made it too - his angle of ascent was precise, his momentum perfect - but he didn't see the fine web spread through the air, suspended half way between roofs.

He hit the web hard, decelerating as it sucked the power out of his leap. Then with a violent snap it recoiled, bouncing him back into its clutches. He struggled in sudden panic, lunging, twisting, convulsing, but it was useless, the web held him fast, suspended some two hundred feet above the ground.

It was then that the pain hit him. It was excruciating, spreading across his flesh like a chemical burn - he screamed endlessly, trying to wrench himself away from that searing agony.

The web strands were coated with some kind of acid, burning right through his flesh, dissolving the muscle. Each frantic move he made forced them deeper. Blood erupted from the precise lines of his injuries, raining down on the street below. Nightman's screams became liquid, gurgling - he felt like he was drowning in his own blood.

Something was scuttling towards him across the surface of the web like a giant spider. It was a dark shape with long flowing hair and corpse pale skin, multiple limbs spread, eyes dark as pitch. He couldn't turn his head, couldn't see enough to tell what it was - humanoid, female, but too many arms, too many legs - some kind of freak - and the way it moved - like a freaking insect…

It was Lady Desdemona. The certainty hit Nightman worse than the pain.

He tried to scream again but there was no more voice left in him.

She was moving around him, circling his crucified flesh. She was above him now, looking down on him. He felt the long strands of her hair caress his burning face - he tried to raise his head but the web strands held him tight.

She was studying him. Even through the layers of his agony he felt her malevolent gaze.

End it - he silently pleaded with her - end it…I'm burning alive.

'Be still, darling.' He heard her voice inside his skull - not like a neural transmit - more like a voice heard in a dream. An ancient voice. The voice of deity.

Something entered the top of his head, slicing down hard through his skull, straight into the soft core of his brain - he convulsed, his body going into a violent spasm of shock, his mind filled with a searing white heat that engulfed him and burnt through him and Nightman felt himself being drawn out of his body through the wounds she'd opened in his skull, rising like a sinner absolved of all sin, rising out of his shell to merge with goddess, mother, bride…

'Be still, my precious…' her whisper filled his entire universe '…give your fears unto me'

*

Mank knew she was coming for him.

He sat by the corpses of Doc and Creep, studying his hands.

They shook. They were not the hands of an experienced assassin. Tonight they were more the hands of a frightened novice.

His skull was filled with cerebral feedback, a high continuous squeal, like tuning in to dead frequency. His face closed into a tight scowl as he recalled the mental screams of Nightman and Boondog, high-pitched, never ending, like listening to a part of himself die.

His neural monar was silent now. For the first time in a decade. He was suddenly alone inside the prison of his own skull. The voices of his colleagues were gone, faded into echo, torn from his mind like limbs from his body.

He laughed. There was a note of hysteria in his voice.

Silent-head. No one home. He hugged his knees, waves of vertigo rushing up from his belly, head spinning fast. It was too fucking quiet. He couldn't hear a thing. His ears were buzzing hard with the sudden vacuum between them.

She was standing behind him.

He didn't look up.

He sensed her eyes on him, her immortal gaze burning down into him, stripping all his pretences away until only the naked fear remained.

Keeping his eyes averted, Mank closed his shaking hands into fists. 'Goddess,' he stammered in a voice he barely recognised as his own. 'I didn't mean - we didn't mean to infringe on your territory - it was a mistake - faulty intel - a foolish transgression…'

There was no reply. Was she even listening to him? Was he making any sense?

She continued to study him. He sensed her gaze like a palpable weight on his back. He tried to raise his eyes, to look at her, but his terror had a gravity of its own and he kept his head bowed, eyes fixed firmly on his hands.

'I am prepared to make reparations,' he persisted, 'I only ask that you spare me.'

Still she said nothing. She hadn't moved. Not by so much as an inch. Was she contemplating his words?

'I will not flee,' he promised her, 'I will submit myself to your judgement, I swear it.'

When she finally spoke, her voice seemed like a thing half imagined. It was filled with labyrinthine echo so that it was impossible to tell where substance ended and vibration began.

'You are a professional killer,' she said.

'I am.' His voice shook so hard the words barely made sense. He was afraid, and he couldn't hide that fear no matter how hard he tried - it was leaking up out of his pores, filling the air with a sickly sweet stench.

He had every reason to be afraid. He knew it was her. Lady Desdemona. Rumoured to be over three millennia old, she was Elohim, one of Golgotha Falls' divine overlords. Mank stood no chance against this creature. She was genetically designed to take down far faster and far stronger than he.

She clucked her tongue mockingly. 'You ask me to spare you. A man who makes a living killing others,' she said. 'Do you fear death so much? Or do you fear the anger of those you sent on ahead of you?'

'I dream the dead,' Mank replied softly, 'every one of them, goddess. I remember the faces of those I've killed even as I forget my own. I don't fear death, but you're right; it's the dead that bother me.'

'Even gods will one day face their reckoning,' she replied. 'Tonight I am your reckoning, Thomas Mathias.'

Thomas Mathias she had called him. He hadn't heard that name since childhood. He stared at his fists. Slowly he opened them. Miraculously his hands had stopped shaking.

There was a weightless moment.

She was preparing to strike. He felt the tension building even as the world fell deathly quiet around him, the sounds of the street fading into silence, the air becoming concentrated, volatile.

Mank gave no warning of his intentions, moving without conscious effort, whipping his revolver out of its holster, spinning, aiming and firing in one smooth, continuous movement.

But even as he fired, Mank knew she had anticipated this move.

The revolver bucked in his hand, the muzzle belching blue flame, but the goddess was no longer there. He did not even sense her move; it was as though she'd evaporated into cold air.

The plasma bolt tore through the area of space she had inhabited an instant before, striking the angle of a roof slope several metres beyond. It detonated with a dull boom and a rush of expanding heat.

Mank spun to his feet, his gun tracking the shadows, every sense screaming on overdrive. She was moving around him, too fast to follow, he half saw the phantom after-burn of her passing - nothing could move that fast - it was impossible.

He sprinted back up the slope of the roof, firing behind him, leaping forward the last few feet, firing again as he hit the ground.

As he fled across the roofs her voice mocked him from every shadow.

'That was terribly unwise, Mathias. Does poppet wish to play?' She was everywhere and nowhere. Toying with him. Prolonging the game.

He twisted as he ran, tattooing the shadows with plasma fire - the heavens were illuminated as a concussion wave of explosions ripped the roofs apart, fire engulfing his wake. He used every trick he knew, cannoning off chimneys, somersaulting sideways, ricocheting off boundary walls. He moved through the air with preternatural agility, hitting the ground and rebounding into spiral leaps, lacing the air around him with an orgy of hell fire.

She appeared like a ghost in front of him, her pale face floating in darkness, her lips spread in a crimson smile. She vanished before he could aim and fire, only to appear to his left, his right - she seemed to know his every move before he made it.

At last Mank's gun dry-clicked on an empty chamber. He threw the revolver aside, heading for a gap between roofs - accelerating as he prepared to fling himself across the abyss.

She took him then - he felt as though he'd been hit by a runaway shuttle, his body battered sideways by the force of the impact. He collided with a boundary wall and punched right through it, hitting the ground with bone-jarring force.

Mank tried to rise but she was on him in an instant, crushing him to the ground, one hand clamped around his throat.

He stared up at her. The eyes that stared down at him were cold as burnt-out stars. There was a madness in them, a depthless insanity. Was this the price of immortality? He tried to smile but his muscles had frozen his face into a mask of fear.

'I had to try,' he whispered.

She pressed her face close, her lips almost brushing his. 'I am the face of your childhood nightmares, Mathias,' she hissed, 'I am the dreaming terror of your species. Who art thou to defy the will of a god?' Her fingers tightened around his throat and Mank felt his consciousness begin to slip away, the blood pounding furiously against his temples. 'There are a thousand things worse than death,' he heard her say from the far end of a darkening tunnel.

He tried to speak but could not. He felt a sense of floating detachment, as the life was slowly, almost gently, squeezed out of him.

'Yes,' she whispered in his ear, 'all fear ends when the heart stops beating. I see your destiny, Thomas Mathias; it is laced with irony. It amuses me to let you live.'

She kissed him, released his throat, and was gone in that instant.

It took him a while to realise he was alone.

Shakily Mank got to his feet.

Why had she spared him? Why was he still alive?

He staggered back across the roof, seeking the quickest way down to street level. He still couldn't believe he'd been spared. Was it because he'd resisted her? Was she leaving him alive to spread her legend?

He shook his head, there was a one in a million chance of coming up against Lady Desdemona and surviving the encounter, yet somehow, miraculously, he'd beaten those odds.

He grinned. He'd build a new crew from scratch - he'd start again, better than before. He was getting sloppy. Tonight it had almost cost him his life. After he'd dealt with that traitor, Abdul Q, he'd build a sanction crew that would shake this city to its sordid foundations. He'd survived an encounter with Lady Desdemona; he was practically an immortal himself.

Preoccupied with thoughts of tonight's miraculous escape, Mank didn't see the crab mines scuttling out of the shadows to lie like innocuous pebbles in his path.

When he stepped on one he instantly recognised that sterile little click as the mine armed itself. There was time for a final quirky thought, 'she always gets the last laugh!' before his world was abruptly torn apart.

* * *