LOCATION: STRATOSPHERIC DEPLOYMENT — INFINITY ISLAND VECTORTIME: 02:57 HOURS
Four insertion pods cut silently through the clouds, masked by quantum-cloaking fields. No radar signature. No sound. No trace.
Inside Pod Alpha, neural links synchronized, each operative running real-time mission overlays.
MISSION CLOCK: 02:59:48
OBJECTIVE:
— INFILTRATE: INFINITY ISLAND COMPOUND
— NEUTRALIZE: ALL HOSTILE THREATS NON-LETHALLY
— TERMINATE: RA'S AL GHUL AND ALL BLOODLINE HEIRS
— MAINTAIN: OPERATIONAL INVISIBILITY
— MINIMIZE: COLLATERAL
Spider-Wraith initiated uplink.
"Confirm readiness."
Cheshire: "Confirmed. Sedative blades armed."
Hook: "Entry vectors clear. Grapnels silent."
Copperhead: "Neuro-suppression gas active. Sub-lethal only."
"Execute."
03:00 HOURS — OUTER PERIMETER, INFINITY ISLAND
Pods touched down without impact shock. No pressure hiss. Just stillness.
Four black-clad figures dispersed into the terrain, moving in parallel.
Spider-Wraith: "Initiating Phase One. Perimeter control neutralization."
Cheshire: "North tunnel reached. Four guards present. Stun route mapped."
Hook: "Scaling east wall. Visual confirmed. Sleep darts primed."
Copperhead: "South vent accessed. Deployment optimal."
03:03 HOURS — PERIMETER INTERCEPTS
Spider-Wraith: "Drone One. EMP field. Radius: five meters. Release."
A soundless pulse disabled enemy gear. Two guards staggered—then fell unconscious.
"Two guards disabled. Secure. No detection."
Cheshire: "Tunnel cleared. Five immobilized. Pulse monitoring active."
Hook: "Rooftop cleared. Three subdued. Stealth integrity maintained."
Copperhead: "Chemical sweep complete. Two unconscious. No alarms."
03:06 HOURS — COURTYARD ZONE
Blueprint overlays glowed on their HUDs.
"Visual: 18 targets. Alert response within 40 seconds. Delay opportunity: 13 seconds."
Spider-Wraith: "Proceed. Contain."
They moved as shadows.
Cheshire deployed sleep darts with surgical accuracy. Hook used flexible restraint cable. Copperhead slid through the crowd, administering contact tranquilizers. Spider-Wraith engaged final hostiles using kinetic pressure-point takedowns.
Status: 18 targets. Immobilized. Pulse confirmed. No fatalities. No alerts.
"Courtyard secured. Silence maintained."
03:12 HOURS — INNER SANCTUM GATE
Obsidian doors marked with ancient glyphs.
Operators aligned. Override hack deployed via Spider-Wraith's interface.
"Unlocking completed. Thermal traps offline. Proceeding."
03:14 HOURS — INNER SANCTUM ENTRY
The obsidian doors slid open without a whisper. Beyond them, the chamber pulsed with flickering torchlight and a dim glow from ancient glyphs—Lazarus-infused, etched deep into the stone floor like veins of living fire.
At the center, Ra's al Ghul stood motionless in meditation, eyes closed, breath calm and measured. Nearby, Talia al Ghul waited in ceremonial armor, her sword at her side, gaze sharp and unwavering.
The infiltration team slipped in from three angles—ghosts within shadows.
Spider-Wraith:"Visual lock confirmed. Primary targets: Ra's al Ghul. Talia al Ghul. Lethality threshold lifted. Initiating strike phase."
Cheshire moved first—scentless, invisible, a phantom against stone. Her dagger caught the torchlight for a heartbeat before vanishing into the dark.
She lunged.
The blade arced toward Ra's al Ghul's throat—silent, precise.
CLANG.
Ra's moved with inhuman precision, pivoting as if forewarned by instinct alone. He seized her wrist mid-strike, the blade halted a breath from his skin. His eyes opened—sharp, ancient.
"You cannot mask the stench of betrayal," he said coldly.
With a vicious twist, he broke her invisibility and sent her crashing to the floor.
Before he could finish her, a whip-blade cracked through the air—Hook's strike coiling around Ra's arm, yanking him off balance.
Talia moved instantly, sword drawn, sprinting toward the fray. But Copperhead intercepted—tail gleaming with alloy, her bladed tip lashing out like a coiled serpent. Steel shrieked as blade met blade.
The sanctum exploded into chaos.
03:15:17 — COMBAT ESCALATION
Copperhead engaged Talia, footwork a blur, each strike driven by augmented muscle and merciless instinct. Talia countered with calm fury, parrying with fluid, brutal efficiency. Their blades sparked like lightning as the duel raged.
From above, a shadow fell.
Spider-Wraith descended—web lines firing mid-drop to anchor him as he shot forward like a missile. He landed hard, stone cracking beneath his boots.
Ra's turned, eyes narrowing.
"You dare betray me," he said.
Spider-Wraith: "Betrayal? No. I'm simply finishing what you started."
He launched forward. Ra's parried a strike, then another—but Spider-Wraith was fast. Too fast. His fists moved like battering rams—rapid, punishing, precise.
A web shot to Ra's sword, yanking it aside mid-swing. Another line pinned Ra's foot to the floor—but the assassin master broke free with raw force.
Still, the tempo shifted. Spider-Wraith was relentless.
Ra's struck at the masked figure's ribs—but the blow only glanced. Spider-Wraith caught his arm, twisted, and slammed him headfirst into the floor, webbing his other hand down.
Ra's gritted his teeth, dazed but not broken.
"You were all forged by me," Ra's spat. "Taught the blade. The kill. Discipline. And now you wear masks and serve a new master?"
Spider-Wraith:"You taught obedience. The new master gave purpose."
Ra's al Ghul lunged, decades of mastery compressed into a blur of steel and motion. His hidden blade carved the air with surgical intent, aimed straight for the jugular.
But Spider-Wraith was already inside the strike zone.
His left hand shot out, catching Ra's wrist mid-swing — the bones audibly ground against each other as his superhuman grip locked down.
With his right hand, Spider-Wraith clamped onto Ra's neck — fingers digging into the sternocleidomastoid, just beneath the mandible.
The sudden choke cut off Ra's air and broke his rhythm.
Then, with a violent pivot of his hips and a torque from his shoulders, Spider-Wraith lifted Ra's al Ghul clean off the floor. The man's spine bent under the force, his feet kicking at open air.
WHAM.
Ra's skull collided with the stone ceiling. The occipital bone took the brunt, fracturing on impact — hairline cracks webbed across his cranium. His cervical vertebrae — C1 through C4 — compressed violently, causing immediate spinal trauma.
Blood burst from Ra's nose and mouth.
Before his body could slump, Spider-Wraith rotated.
He snap-fired a web-line to the far wall — the filament glowed faintly as tension built.
With a downward arc, he hurled Ra's like a wrecking ball.
CRACK.
The impact was devastating.
Ra's hit the stone floor spine-first. The force crushed his thoracic vertebrae — ribs splintered inward, puncturing the left lung. The pelvis shattered on contact, snapping through cartilage and muscle. One femur twisted grotesquely from its socket.
The floor buckled, sinking into a crater nearly three feet across.
Dust exploded outward. Bone fragments littered the epicenter.
Ra's convulsed once — a sharp, reflexive twitch — and then lay still.
His chest heaved in a final, shallow gasp. The light in his eyes — once sharp with pride and ancient fury — dimmed like a dying star.
Gone.
Spider-Wraith stood motionless above the ruined body.
His suit hissed as micro-actuators realigned. He didn't tremble. No adrenaline rush. No celebration.
Just breath. Even. Measured. Cold.
The assassin turned message.
A weapon, once shaped by Ra's own hand, now the instrument of his end.
There was no vengeance here — only fulfillment of a mission.
A precise kill.
Clean.
Irreversible.
Spider-Wraith:"Target one: terminated. Confirmed kill."
03:15:45 — Talia's Desperation
Talia al Ghul's eyes locked on the shattered body of her father — the once-immortal Demon's Head, broken and still in a crater of fractured stone and blood. The stench of iron filled her lungs. Her heart thudded violently, like a war drum echoing in a hollow chamber.
Her scream cut through the air — not a cry of sorrow, but of unbridled fury.
She surged toward Copperhead, blade in hand. The Damascus steel glinted under flickering light, its edge trembling with her rage. She moved like a storm, but her strikes lacked the sharp cohesion of her usual discipline. Her foundation was cracked — grief bleeding into every motion.
Copperhead's tail lashed toward her — the strike fast, low, and coiled with devastating tension. Talia barely raised her sword in time, the bladed tail clang-ing against steel with a force that rattled through her ulna and radius. The nerves in her forearm flared, her grip faltering slightly.
Copperhead didn't let up. She spun low and kicked upward — the ball of her foot slamming into Talia's diaphragm. Air blasted from her lungs as her diaphragm spasmed violently, doubling her over.
But Talia retaliated with a reverse slash, nicking Copperhead's arm — a shallow cut, but enough to draw blood.
Talia gasping through gritted teeth "You will not take me down like this!"
But even as she said it, she knew the truth. Her body was failing her. Her balance wavered. Her sword felt heavier — the deltoid in her right arm trembled with every swing, lactic acid building under the skin.
Copperhead's tail slashed again — this time grazing across Talia's ribs. The impact jarred her thoracic cage, bruising the intercostal muscles between her sixth and seventh ribs. She winced sharply, every breath now accompanied by a stab of pain.
Then — a whisper cut through the chaos:
Cheshire: "Talia…"
Talia spun instinctively — too slow.
Cheshire was already mid-strike, her body tucked low in a catlike crouch. The dagger flashed — a karambit-style blade curved and vicious. It slid beneath the edge of Talia's armor and cut deep into the obliques on her right side, puncturing just under the eleventh rib.
Blood erupted — arterial, hot, and fast.
Talia gasped, stumbling back as her abdomen spasmed involuntarily. The blade had grazed the superior epigastric artery — not an instant kill, but a wound that would bleed her out in minutes if untreated.
Her sword wobbled in her hand.
Her breath came in ragged gasps as dizziness overtook her. Her world narrowed — the light dimmed at the edges of her vision. The pain was spreading, a firestorm across her gut.
"No… I will not fall. Not like this."
With a primal snarl, she lunged forward — her sword sweeping high in a reckless arc. Her deltoid screamed. Her obliques tore further. Her knees buckled beneath her own momentum.
Cheshire was waiting.
With a dancer's grace, she slipped inside Talia's guard, twisting the dagger to a reverse grip.
Then — a final thrust.
The blade punched upward, just beneath the sternum, sliding between the lower ribs and into the soft tissue behind the xiphoid process. It pierced the diaphragm and sank into the upper portion of the liver, nicking the edge of the pericardial sac.
Talia froze.
Blood burst from her mouth in a wet cough. Her pupils dilated. Her knees gave out as every signal from her nervous system screamed catastrophic trauma.
She dropped.
Her sword clattered across the stone.
She landed on her side, gasping, her fingers twitching in the pool of blood spreading beneath her. Her eyes — once so cold and calculating — now stared in shock, pain, and something else:
Loneliness.
Cheshire knelt beside her, brushing a blood-slick strand of hair from her temple.
Her voice, like a dagger cloaked in silk, whispered:"You were always your father's shadow, Talia… But shadows fade."
Talia's hand trembled as it rose — slick with blood, fingers curled toward the void above. Her chest heaved, shallow breaths rattling through cracked ribs, vision swimming in crimson blur.
And then — just above a whisper, more ache than voice — she spoke:
"…Bruce…" A single name, weighted with everything left unsaid. Love. Anger. Regret.
"…I tried…"Her eyes shimmered, unfocused. A tear slid down her cheek, mingling with the blood.
"…I tried to be more…" Her breath hitched.
"…Don't… forget me…" Her hand dropped.
The silence that followed was absolute.
03:16:00 — The Final Kill
With Talia's fall, the battle seemed to slow. The chamber fell into an eerie quiet, broken only by the heavy breathing of Cheshire and Copperhead.
Cheshire stood over the fallen woman, her dagger still slick with Talia's blood. She watched, unmoving, as the last flickers of life faded from Talia's eyes—each blink slower than the last until there was only stillness. Talia had fought with desperation, but it hadn't been enough. For a fleeting moment, something unreadable passed across Cheshire's face—pity, perhaps. But it vanished just as quickly. There was no room for regret. Talia's death had been necessary—part of the plan.
Copperhead, her tail still dripping with blood, stepped forward, surveying the battlefield. Ra's was gone, Talia was dead—yet there was a heavy silence in the air, one that felt like a final chapter had closed.
Copperhead: "It's over."
Spider-Wraith: "Target two: terminated. Confirmed kill."
He stepped forward, unblinking, scanning the chamber with methodical precision.
Spider-Wraith: "Secure the Lazarus Pit. Contain all volatile compounds. Any surviving assassins—neutralize and gather for extraction."
His voice echoed like a final verdict, emotionless and final.
The shadows of the League, once thought eternal, now began to crumble.
A/N
I feel bad killing Talia.
Next up Court of Owls.
[Power Stone]