The Smuggler's Dock

The foreman hasn't met my eyes once since the barge tied up. He doesn't need to — the mark burned into the crates and the sword on my back tell him everything. Falcone pays for professionals, and tonight the cargo is mine to protect until the wagons come at dawn. A simple contract. Clean lines.

Simple. Sure. Then explain the voice I heard from the dark while the crew was sweating crates down the plank — 'anyone not scared off yet, try to keep up.' That wasn't a threat, soldier. That was an invitation. She's out there somewhere picking her ground while we stand in the lantern light like targets at a fair.

Catwoman: I'd know that silhouette anywhere. Slade Wilson — Falcone's guard dog, a contract with teeth. The old man must be sweating blood to pay for you, which means this cargo's worth more than my first guess. So tell me, soldier: what does he pay you to stand in the cold? I'll double it to look the other way.

Behind the foreman, the inner warehouse door hangs open a hand's width. Something in there is breathing — slow, patient, in time with the river slapping the hull. The crew pretends not to hear it. Men who work Falcone's docks know better than to ask what waits in the dark.

And higher still, on the far warehouse roof, a cowled figure has been watching the dock for the better part of an hour. Not the crates. The men. Counting us — the way the woman is. Two watchers, one shipment, and a thing that breathes where nobody looks.

Dock Foreman: Mr. Wilson. The last crate's marked for the inner warehouse — it goes inside before the wagons come. Boss says you walk it in yourself. On account of the locks.

Deathstroke: Catwoman... Looks like I have to skin a cat tonight. And I never go back on a contract. You're late to the deal.

The longsword clears the scabbard with a sound like a whisper of silk over stone. The weight of it is familiar — a contract in my hand, the way other men carry a rosary. I never break a contract. I never even bend one. That's the line that keeps me alive in this city.

Skin a cat. The old saying tastes different with her standing there in the dark, all teeth and green eyes. She thinks this is a game. Let her think it — games are how people underestimate me, and underestimation is how the bills get paid.

The dock crew freezes mid-motion. Lantern light catches the foreman's face as he steps back behind a stack of crates, one hand going to his belt — not for a weapon, but for the whistle he hopes he won't have to blow.

Catwoman: Skin a cat? Oh, darling — you'd have to catch me first.

She doesn't flinch at the blade. If anything, she leans into it — a dancer testing the floor. Her weight shifts, ready to spring either way, and I know from the old stories that killing her would take longer than killing most men, and that she knows it too.

Catwoman: But keep that sword up, soldier, and the thing breathing in your warehouse is going to eat your cargo while we posture at each other. You hear it? Steady as a bellows. That's not a rat. That's not a man. Whatever Falcone's got locked in that crate, he didn't buy it from a dealer — he dug it up.

Catwoman: Besides — we've got an audience. Far roof, west corner. Cowl, cape, been counting heads since before you got here. You want to play swords with me, fine. But he's the one who'll be picking the bones after we're both dead tired.

The warehouse breathes. Slow. Patient. In the pause between her words, the foreman's torch guttering, I can feel it — the thing inside waiting the way a spider waits, and the cowled watcher on the roof who has seen everything we've said.

Deathstroke: Batman.

I say the name like a fact, not a guess. I've watched that silhouette from rooftops and alley mouths for years — the way the cape falls, the way he stands at a roof's edge like he owns the night itself. There's only one man in Gotham who carries himself like that.

For a long moment the cowled figure doesn't move. Then the wind catches his cape and he drops — not a fall, a descent, from the warehouse roof to the shattered pier with less sound than a cat makes landing on silk.

Batman: Slade.

Just my name. No greeting, no threat — a statement of fact, the way a judge reads a charge. His eyes move past me to the crew, past them to the warehouse door that hangs open a hand's width, and stop. The breathing inside goes quieter, like a held breath.

Batman: I'm not here for the cargo. I'm here for the men Falcone will feed to it. Whatever he's got locked in that warehouse, it isn't merchandise — it's a predator. You've stood guard over worse things than this, Wilson. You know what the crates mean when the crew won't look at the door.

The crew's eyes flick between the two of us, then to the door. The foreman's hand is still on his whistle, and I can see the thought behind his eyes: two monsters on his dock now, and one of them wears a cape.

Catwoman: Well, well. The big bat comes out of the night to play hero and the soldier still hasn't decided whose side he's on. Slade, darling — he's right about one thing. That crate's worth more dead than delivered. And I've got no quarrel with you, provided you don't make one with me.

Three of us now, standing on a dock that stinks of river and rot, with a thing breathing in the dark behind us and a shipment Falcone will want counted at dawn. The night is quiet, but the quiet has edges.

Deathstroke: I'm on the side of the contract. No one passes.

The words come out flat and final, the way they always do. A contract is a contract. Falcone's mark is on the crates, Falcone's coin is in my purse, and Falcone's name bought my sword before the sun went down. That's the whole shape of the world, and I've never been confused about which side of it I stand on.

Good. Clean. Certain. The wolf knows its job and the sheep know the wolf — that's how order survives in a city that wants to burn. She talks about predators and the bat talks about mercy, but neither of them will pay my debts or keep my word for me.

...Although. Three of us on a dead dock, a crew that'll scatter at the first scream, and a crate worth gods know what. Falcone's contract says deliver. It doesn't say deliver to Falcone. Just a thought. A hungry little thought, licking its teeth in the dark.

Batman's eyes hold mine for a long moment — reading me the way he reads everyone, looking for the seam where the soldier ends and the man begins. Then he moves, unhurried, to stand between the warehouse door and the dock. Not drawing steel. Planting himself.

Batman: Then you're guarding the wrong door. That crate isn't your contract — it's your leash. Falcone pays you to stand between him and the thing he's too afraid to touch himself. What happens when it gets out, Slade? Who does he blame? The guard who let it slip. Always the guard.

Behind us, the warehouse exhales — a long, wet breath through the open door, like something turning over in its sleep. The crew hears it too. Two of them set down their crates and back away slowly, and the foreman's hand goes white-knuckled around his whistle.

Catwoman: He's not wrong about that, soldier. Contracts end. Blame lasts forever. But I'm not going to stand here arguing while that thing yawns itself awake — you hold your post, I'll take my leave, and nobody has to bleed tonight except whoever Falcone already sold.

She turns — casual, insolent, like walking away from a sword is an ordinary thing — and melts into the shadow of a broken crate stack. But she doesn't go far. The glint of her eyes stays in the dark, watching. Waiting for the moment when the dock stops being a negotiation.

Deathstroke: It wasn't my job to chain it up. My job is to deliver. Whatever happens after isn't my business. I am the courier.

The courier. There it is — the whole code in one line. A man who knows where his job ends doesn't carry the weight of what comes after. Falcone wants it delivered, I deliver it. What it does when it's delivered is between Falcone and his god. Clean lines.

Courier, sure. And when the thing in that crate eats the foreman and the crew and half the dock, who do you think the city will name on the manifest? They always blame the driver first. Always. But that's a problem for tomorrow — tonight the code holds, and the code is what's left when everything else rots.

Batman watches me through the whole speech — the way a jeweler watches a stone, looking for the flaw. Then his gaze cuts to the warehouse door, and the air changes.

Batman: Couriers don't sleep through a storm. You've heard it breathing all night — you know what's in that crate. Falcone doesn't pay you to be blind. He pays you to stand close enough to catch the blame when it gets out. And it will get out, Slade. It always does.

The warehouse goes quiet. The breathing stops mid-breath — cut off, the way a man stops when he realizes he's being listened to. The lanterns gutter in a wind that isn't there. Every eye on the dock goes to the open door, and the door is a hand's width wider than it was a moment ago.

The foreman's whistle clatters on the planks. He backs away, mouth working, pointing at the warehouse door with a shaking hand. The last crate — the one marked for the inner warehouse, the one with the locks — sits between me and that dark.

Catwoman: Driver, not packaging. Must be a lovely way to sleep at night, soldier — right up until the cargo learns to open its own crate. I'll be up top if you need someone to talk to about better career options.

She's gone from the shadow of the crates — a flicker of motion, then the sound of boots on the warehouse roof above. The door stands open now, a hand's width and growing, and in the dark inside, something shifts its weight. Waiting for the man with the keys.

The standoff breaks like a bowstring. No word, no warning — my body moves before the thought finishes. I close the distance in three strides and the longsword sings, edge arcing for the seam between cape and cowl, the place where a man's neck lives.

Batman moves — not back, but into it, the way he always does — and the flat of his vambrace catches the blade a hand's breadth from his throat. But I'm not swinging at the flat of a parry. The edge bites through leather and into the meat of his shoulder where neck meets collarbone, a cut that would have opened a lesser man's throat.

Blood spills dark across his armor. He doesn't cry out — the Bat doesn't give me that — but I see the shock in the hitch of his breath, and I see him measure me fresh. He expected a guard dog. He's found a butcher.

The dock detonates into chaos. The crew scatters like roaches — crates crashing, the foreman already gone into the dark. On the roof, Catwoman's silhouette shifts, watching the two of us with a predator's patience. And behind it all, in the warehouse, the breathing starts again — faster now, excited, like a hound that smells blood on the air.

Batman: You'll get your delivery, Slade. You'll just have to carry it over me.

Deathstroke: Surrender.

I drive the boot into his midsection — the plate groans like a struck bell and the air leaves him in a choked gasp. He folds. And there's the opening. My elbow comes down in the same breath, connecting dead on the bridge of his nose. Cartilage cracks. Blood sprays black across the lantern light and the Bat goes back over a crate, one hand braced on the planks, head hanging.

He's hurt. Bad. Blood pools under his chin, drips off his jaw into the water between the dock boards. I could take his head off the neck with the sword in one clean motion — the contract wouldn't even blink. But that's not what I want from him. Not yet.

Deathstroke: Surrender.

One word. It hangs in the air with the smell of blood and river-mud. He lifts his head slowly — the mask is a ruin of red, but the eyes behind it are exactly the same. Flat. Unfinished.

Batman: Carry it over my corpse, Slade. That was always the price of the contract. You just haven't read the fine print.

He's pushing himself up off the crate when the warehouse door comes off its hinges.

Not with a slam — with a wet, splintering groan, like a ribcage cracking open. The dark inside the warehouse has teeth now. A thing of black timber and old iron unfolds itself through the frame, taller than a man and wrong in every proportion, and it is coming straight for the blood on the dock.

The breathing — the endless wet breathing from the crate — is not in the crate anymore. It's out here, in the open, and it has smelled the fight. Between me, the Bat, and the thing with the teeth stands the last locked crate and ten feet of open dock. The contract says nobody touches the cargo. The cargo has just touched itself.

Deathstroke: This is not my job.

The longsword goes home with a clean click — the sound of a contract closing. I speak it aloud to myself in plain words, the way I've settled a hundred jobs: the cargo voided its own terms the moment it stood up. I don't hunt beasts for Falcone. I deliver crates. I turn on my heel and walk, boot-heels steady on the planks, toward the barge line where the night opens up.

The mimic's head tracks me as I pass — a wet, wrong swivel, like a man's neck turning too far. It tastes the air with a tongue of black wood. My gauntlet is still wet with the Bat's blood from the elbow... it could follow me. But hunger beats caution every time. It drops off the crate and flows west, toward the bigger meal bleeding on the dock.

Batman: The fine print, Slade. You always read the fine print — and the manifest names the driver. This thing eats the dock, Falcone eats you. Every last mouthful.

I don't stop walking. The Bat's words are just noise over water now — and the Contract in my head agrees with me. Not my job. Not my bill. Then a voice drops from the roof above, silk and claws.

Catwoman: Contract just voided itself, soldier. That makes the cargo fair game. Walk if you want — I'll take the prize and send Falcone your regards.

She comes off the warehouse roof like a dropped kerchief — light, wrong, impossible — and lands between the mimic and the locked crate. One lock-pick in her hand, the prize on the dock, a monster twenty feet away and not looking at her. A cat burglar's dream, and she knows it.

Behind me the mimic closes the last gap to Batman — a tendril of black timber lashes out and he catches it on a broken crate lid, gritting blood through his teeth, buying seconds with the wreck of his own body. The whole dock is teeth and lantern-light and the wet sound of something feeding.

The barge line is four strides away. The river. The road. The contract says walk — and the wolf in me says walk, let it all burn behind you. And yet my boots have stopped at the plank's edge without my permission, and I can feel the weight of every name on that manifest sitting in my pocket like a stone.