It was a slow journey back to lucidity when David Cain regained consciousness. A buzz moved throughout his brain, wrists were tied down and felt raw. Wherever he was, sunlight slipped through slots in the ceiling and the hum of heavy machinery slipped through the cracks. He jolted and tried to free himself when the stink of gasoline reached him. But his legs were bound as well. At least one of them was as he fearfully remembered what had become of the other.

"Oh good." The soft pat of two hands held in leather gloves welcomed Cain back to the land of the living. "I could have watched you sleep all day, but this is much more exciting."

Cain opened his mouth to respond but slipped into a fit of wheezing before he could. When he regained his composure, he just said, "Vic… where are we?"

"Half-finished construction site I've taken for myself," Lipov said. "Can hardly believe it, but it's supposed to be a church. Paid off the workers before I came to town. Kept the big machines running so it looks like things are happening. At first it was just a convenient place to hide, but I think it's the perfect place to bring your girl so we can end this once and for all."

Even after the decades without words and Lipov's deadly intent, Cain couldn't shake speaking to him as he always had. "Leave her out of this." It wasn't a demand, it wasn't threat. It was just a request.

"Oh no no no." Lipov wagged a finger as he stepped closer. "I can't do that. I've come too far now. I'm going to punish you."

"Then take Shiva," Cain said. "Sandra Wu, she's still alive. Last I heard she was right in this city in Blackgate—"

"Sandra Wu was just a womb you used." Lipov smirked. "You told me that yourself. I don't care about her because you don't."

Cain pushed and rubbed against the ropes that secured his hand to his chair, but they gave no slack. "Nearly two decades, Vic… you couldn't have just tracked me down and put a bullet in my head years ago?"

Lipov, smirk still on his face, shook his head. "My demon wasn't ready. It took years before he finally gave up his soul and years more before he could fight like he does. I'm not content to kill you, old friend. I want to see your whole world smashed to pieces by my hand."

Cain guffawed. "And you took eighteen years to get this far. Ra's was right to tell me to burn you. You can't be relied on to get anything done."

Lipov clenched his fist. For the first time in the exchange, his joy melted away. "Have you been lied to so many times you believe that's the truth?"

Cain grit his teeth in indignation. "Lied to?"

"How many missions did we carry out together?" Lipov stepped up to Cain, opened his hand and slapped him across the face. The strike wasn't powerful, but it was meant to wound his pride. "How many people did we hunt down together?" He delivered a second slap with the back of the same hand. "Did I ever let a single one escape me? Did I ever leave a job undone?"

Upon the third slap, Cain shouted. "I stabilized you! You would've let them all slip through the cracks if it wasn't for me!"

Lipov glared at him for a few seconds before a shred of his smile returned and he patted Cain on one of his redding cheeks. "It's nice to finally have closure on that story. That's what Ra's al Ghul told you then?"

"He tried to send you on assignments while I was away and you were a failure—"

"I suppose when you word it like that, it almost sounds true. But I only ever failed one assignment. Would you like to know what it was?"

David turned his head to speak his indifference without a word.

A glossy look came over Lipov's eyes, as if he was remembering something nostalgic. "I was summoned by the Demon himself one day while you were away in China. Guards with blades in hand stood all around me, mighty fires billowed around his place of honor. Even with the flames, I could barely make out his face, but I'm sure it was him."

"He told me he always knew I was something magnificent. He said it was time I ascended upward. I could be trusted with more advanced missions. I deserved greater compensation. I had taken the first step toward becoming his rightful heir and claiming his fortune, army and beautiful daughter as my prize. He just had a last task for me. Something to prove my devotion to the cause. I had to snuff out a man he feared was planning insurrection."

Cain had only been half listening before he jerked his head upward and stared, wide-eyed, at his old companion. "Insurrection? He couldn't have possibly been talking about me."

"Couldn't he?"

"He knew what I was doing, he gave me the time and resources to do it!"

"You plotted to create the most powerful, most efficient and most untraceable assassin known to man and you believed the business's greatest ruler would just let you? The Demon approved of your idea, but he believed you would raise her to one day topple him. So he called on me to erase you and your spawn."

Lipov paused briefly to admire the way Cain's mouth had slipped open in shock and the way little beads of sweat began to drip down his forehead. "I told him no," Lipov said. "Said I found the whole thing disgusting. Told him you were one of the most loyal of his men and he was only away preparing a gift for the League. There must have been eight bodyguards in that room who all drew their blades and surrounded me a second later. I was sure I was a dead man, but the Demon called on them to stop. Told me it was only a test, that he had no place for warriors who would so readily betray their own allies." He stopped and rubbed his forehead. "I should have known what a weak excuse that was."

Cain tried to speak, but his mouth had gone so dry he needed time to wet it. "He told me—"

"It doesn't matter what he told you!" The fire that had quietly burned within Lipov for years roared to life. "When he told me to kill you, I refused. And when he told you to kill me, you didn't back down." Lipov grabbed ahold of Cain's face and squeezed his cheeks. "Your life, your daughter's life, they both belong to me. I'm just claiming what is rightfully mine."

Cain wheezed again when Lipov released his grip. Many questions lingered in his mind. Some calls for action, others tiny mysteries he couldn't drive from his mind. "That boy… he's your son then?"

"No." Lipov crouched down so he and Cain were at eye level. "He belonged to the family who saved me." He paused as if he expected Cain to respond, but he didn't. "Maybe you really did kill me that day, I don't know how else to explain what happened. The last thing I remembered was tumbling downward, rocks splintering my bones and the world spinning in circles as I descended. I don't remember hitting the ground, I just remember waking up, I don't know how long later, inside little cottage with just one room."

Lipov pushed back to a standing position and began to pace around Cain's chair. "Maybe I'm a revenant obsessed with my unfinished business, I'm not sure." He gazed down at his hand, as if perturbed by something on it. "Pieces of those memories are missing. I don't remember if the mother and the father said anything to me when I awoke. I can't remember any of their features at all. I just remember the first sound I heard was a crying infant in its crib next to the bed. He made these awful little shrieks and screams. I wanted to throttle him, but for some reason, that wasn't good enough for me. I ran into the kitchen nook for a knife." The hand shook a little. "No infant should have been able to survive that cut with nothing but slashed vocal chords to show for it. But my Odmience is no boy. He is a demon."

Lipov turned to face Cain again, the same hand he had just pondered clenched into a fist. "I'm going to break your little angel. The Odmience is going to rip off her wings, shatter her halo and beat her bloody. Only when she wails that there can be no God in a world so cruel will she finally be allowed to die. And you, after I make you watch it all unfold, can join her." Lipov turned and began to walk away.

Lipov made it nearly out of sight into an adjoining corridor when Cain shouted, "Vic!"

He paused at Cain's shout and turned slowly to face him again.

"My kid's made of flesh and blood, just the same as you and me," Cain said. "You put a gun up to her head and pull the trigger, you've got a ninety percent chance it'll be fatal." Cain stopped a moment, took a deep breath and exhaled another short fit of wheezing. When he spoke again, he forced the words through his teeth. "But you will never break her spirit. I don't know what twisted game you have planned, but she'll beat you at it." A tiny sneer slipped past his lips. "And I can't wait to see the look on your face when she does."