Interlude #59
The bar had stopped being a bar somewhere around the eighth body.
Lobo's hook-chain whipped through what used to be the pool table, wrapped around the last Khund warrior's throat with enough force to separate vertebrae from skull, and yanked. The alien's head came off clean. Rolled across blood-slicked floor trailing ichor that hissed when it hit wood still smoking from plasma burns.
"Should've paid up when ya had the chance, ya fraggin' welchers!"
The Khund's body collapsed. The bar's remaining structure groaned -- one wall missing entirely, the ceiling sagging where Lobo's opening grenade had removed load-bearing supports. Fires burned in three corners. The jukebox was still playing somehow, country music warbling through damaged speakers.
Lobo surveyed his work. Eleven Khund enforcers, two Thanagarian debt collectors, and one extremely unlucky bartender who'd made the mistake of serving everyone. All dead. All very thoroughly dead in ways that would make identification difficult.
"Fraggin' idiots thought they could skip out on a debt to the Main Man." He spat something purple onto the corpse-strewn floor. "Twenty thousand credits for a simple cargo run, an' they give me attitude about--"
The combat implant in his skull screamed warning half a second too late.
Pain erupted in Lobo's chest. He looked down, saw the blade punching through his sternum from behind. Not just any blade -- Psion technology, designed to disrupt cellular cohesion at the molecular level.
His regeneration tried to activate. Failed. The blade's energy field was preventing his cells from communicating, from remembering how to knit back together.
"Hrrk--"
The blade twisted. Lobo felt his primary heart rupture, then his secondary. His backup biological systems tried to compensate, but the Psion tech was spreading through his bloodstream now, little microscopic machines eating his Czarnian cellular structure faster than it could rebuild.
He tried to turn, tried to see which bastich had managed to sneak up on the Main Man, but his body wasn't responding. His legs buckled. The floor rushed up to meet his face.
Through dimming vision, he saw boots. Military grade. Familiar design.
"Contract said no witnesses," a voice stated. Flat. Professional. "You saw the shipment. That makes you a witness."
Lobo tried to laugh. Tried to tell whoever this was that they'd just made the last mistake of their short, stupid life. That he'd regenerate in about thirty seconds and show them what happened to fraggers who stabbed the Main Man in the back.
But his regeneration wasn't kicking in.
The Psion blade had done something to his cellular memory. His body had forgotten how to be immortal. Forgotten the fundamental Czarnian biological imperative that said death wasn't permanent, wasn't real, wasn't anything more than a temporary inconvenience.
Fear hit him. Actual fear. The kind he hadn't felt since he was young enough to think mortality applied to him.
He was dying.
Actually dying.
The Main Man's vision grayed. Blood filled his mouth. The jukebox was still playing -- some sad song about lost love and open roads.
Then Lobo was gone.
🕸️🕷️🕷️🕷️🕷️🕷️🕷️🕸️
The transition happened without fanfare. One moment he was choking on his own blood in a shithole bar, the next he was standing in a place that felt like nowhere specific. Not Heaven -- he'd been barred from there after the incident with the harps. Not Hell -- they'd sent him back with a formal letter requesting he never return.
Just a space between spaces where Death waited.
She stood near something that might have been a bench or might have been a structural element of reality. Difficult to tell in a place where definition got slippery. Her motorcycle leaned against nothing in particular, matte black and somehow more real than everything else around it.
"Hello, Lobo." Death's smile carried genuine warmth. "You're looking well. Mostly intact, even."
"The frag I am." Lobo checked his chest. The wound was gone. He was whole again, wearing the same blood-soaked outfit he'd died in. "Some bastich with Psion tech just shut down my regeneration. Actually shut it down. I was scared, babe. Actually fraggin' scared."
"I know." Her tone suggested she'd felt his fear, had sensed the exact moment the immortal Czarnian had realized mortality might actually apply to him. "That doesn't happen often."
"Once is too fraggin' often." Lobo's hands flexed, muscle memory searching for weapons that weren't there. "Soon as I get back, I'm gonna find whoever stabbed me an' show 'em what happens when--"
"I have a job for you first."
The contract materialized between them. Actual paper, actual ink, hanging in the air with the weight of something that would bind even entities who thought themselves beyond binding.
"The pay's enough to make you forget about the Psion blade for a while." Death's expression remained patient, almost amused.
The words hung in the space between them with deliberate weight. Stated with the simplicity of someone who knew exactly what currency Lobo traded in.
"How much we talkin'?"
"One million credits. Guaranteed resurrection privileges for the next century. And one item from my personal collection."
Lobo whistled low. "That's some serious scratch just to put someone down. Who's the target?"
Death raised her hand. Reality responded with casual obedience. Something materialized in her palm -- a crimson stone that looked like compressed starlight, dark and luminous simultaneously. Patterns moved across its surface like thoughts trying to escape.
"The Spider," Death said. "Currently operating in Gotham City. Enhanced, dangerous, protected by an unknown reality-adjacent entity."
Lobo studied the stone. "An' that thing?"
"Dreamstone. Forged from the Dreaming itself." Death's voice carried the finality of someone explaining a simple mechanism. "Capable of trapping more than dreams. I want you to put his soul into this once you've defeated him."
"So I rough him up, use the rock, an' collect one mil?" Lobo grinned. "Sounds easy."
"You can have all the fun you want getting there. Break him however you like, test whatever new toys you've installed this decade. Then, once his will is broken, you use the Dreamstone. That's non-negotiable." Death's eyes met his with absolute certainty. "His soul needs to be trapped, not destroyed. Not scattered. Trapped. Don't mess that up."
The contract drifted closer. Lobo grabbed it, scanned the terms with eyes that had read enough bounty agreements to spot the loopholes buried in legalese.
The target: The Spider. Current location: Gotham City, Earth. Threat assessment: unpredictable, enhanced, recently bonded to an unidentified symbiotic mass, protected by an unknown entity. Objective: soul extraction via Dreamstone, permanent removal from timeline.
Compensation: One million credits. Guaranteed resurrection privileges (century term). One selection from Death's personal collection. Collateral damage: acceptable within reason.
"What's he done to rate this kind of attention?" Lobo looked up from the contract. "Ya don't usually hire out yer work."
"He's stealing souls from me." Death's expression remained calm, but something shifted in her eyes -- ancient concern bleeding through. "Taking their right to be guided from them."
"Worked out well for me," Lobo said with a grin. "Been cheatin' ya for centuries now, an' I ain't complained once."
Death's expression hardened, almost angry. "It's not the same."
Lobo raised both hands, the grin fading. "Alright, alright. Didn't mean to yank yer chain, babe." He studied her face, reading the genuine anger there -- something rare enough that even he knew to back off. "So why can't ya just show up an' do yer thing."
"All these years and you still don't get it," Death's expression shifted to something gentler. "But why would you understand the rules when you exist to break them."
Lobo read through the contract one more time. Checked the fine print. Made sure there weren't any clauses about property damage or civilian casualties or the usual bureaucratic nonsense.
Clean. Simple. Hunt the Spider, use the Dreamstone, collect one million credits and a cosmic get-out-of-death-free card for a century.
He looked up at Death. Saw patient eternity looking back. Saw someone who'd been doing this job since before the universe learned what time meant. Saw someone who was, if he was being honest with his drunk self late at night, probably the only entity in creation he actually respected.
"Alright," Lobo said. "I'm in."
He signed the contract with his own blood. Because style mattered, even in death.
Death took the contract back. It dissolved into nothing, the agreement sealed somewhere deeper than paper could hold. She extended her hand with the Dreamstone resting in her palm.
Lobo took it. The stone felt warm, alive in a way that made his Czarnian biology twitch with instinctive unease. Power radiated from it -- the kind that could trap gods if applied correctly.
"Try not to destroy too much of Gotham," Death said. Her tone suggested she already knew he would. "The city's had a rough few weeks."
"No promises, babe."
Death's smile carried something fond beneath the cosmic authority. "I know. Good hunting, Lobo."
Reality folded. Lobo felt the pull of resurrection dragging him back toward the living world. Back toward his body that would be regenerating even now, pulled together by Czarnian biology that -- thanks to Death's contract -- would never fail him again.
The last thing he saw before the transition completed was Death's knowing smile transform into a sullen expression.
Then he was gasping awake on blood-soaked floor, the jukebox still playing that sad country song, and the Main Man had a new contract burning in his consciousness.
Time to go hunting.
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Catch the end of Mechanical-Arm Spider as it releases later today.