If not for his years of experience and honed reflexes, he'd be dead already.

The attack had come suddenly—far too suddenly. One moment he was swinging onto a building, and the next a dagger had grazed his cheek. An intense burning sensation overtook him, the entire left side of his face alight with agonizing pain. Poison, he knew. And no ordinary poison, either.

He ducked and dodged, avoiding the onslaught of arrows and thrown knives. He tried to leap to another rooftop, but his limbs were growing heavy and unresponsive. Damn it. Sweat was rolling down his forehead, his heart pounding. Every nerve felt as though it were on fire.

"Oracle, I need backup," he groaned into comms. "Oracle, come in. Oracle?"

Static. No response.

"Sh*t," he muttered under his breath, ducking behind an air conditioning unit to avoid another round of arrows. It was then he noticed his hands were trembling, his fingers starting to go numb. This wasn't good. If he lost the use of his hands, he was a dead man. He needed a plan. Something. Anything.

The attacker was perched atop a nearby water tower, but seemed to have lost sight of him. Good. That was something. If he could sneak up on the assassin, he'd have a chance. And there had to be an antidote on the attacker too; no one would use a poison this deadly without a failsafe for themselves.

His muscles were screaming, his limbs heavy and numb. With no time to hesitate, he stuck to the shadows, leaping from roof to roof until he reached the water tower. The attacker was looking the other way, and hadn't heard him. He lunged, tackling the assassin off the edge.

The two dropped harshly to the rooftop below, and he only barely managed to keep the attacker in a chokehold. He knew that uniform. A Talon. Had the Court finally given up on recruiting him and decided to kill him instead?

"The antidote," he said, keeping his voice as steady as he could muster as he pressed his escrima to the Talon's throat. "Give it to me. Now."