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CHAPTER FIVE Phantom Pains
WARNING: This chapter contains child abuse. Please read with caution.
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BY THE TIME CECELIA ARRIVED at the dilapidated bridge that was her given location, the deal had already begun. This was obvious, given that the moment she skidded to a stop, clutching a stitch in her side, there was a blast of energy. It collided right into an old car, one that had evidently been dredged out of a junkyard, and caused it to explode in a haze of blue. The streetlight above it flickered out, and Jackson Brice—or, as he was here, the Shocker—let out a loud whoop.
There was a man beside him, but he wasn't Herman Schultz, who must have been in the van they'd brought along. This was the buyer, dark-skinned and bearded, wearing a simple T-shirt. He looked more like someone's uncle than a guy who wanted to purchase deadly weapons, but appearances could be deceiving. Cecelia was living proof of that.
"Oh, you're here." Brice lowered his weapon as Cecelia approached. "You weren't thinking of skipping out on this deal, huh?"
"No," Cecelia responded, doubled over and heaving for air. She actually had ended up taking an Uber over, but she'd had the driver park a block away, at a random house, so things wouldn't be suspicious. She'd ended up changing behind a tree and sprinting the rest of the way here. "I was coming."
"Who the hell is she?" The buyer asked, eyes darting to Brice and back to Cecelia. Under her mask—which was fitted over the lower half of her face, curving over her nose and stopping right below her eyes—she grimaced. "Why's she wearing all that? I hate to break it to you, but Halloween isn't for a few weeks."
"Just call me Phantom," Cecelia responded, folding her arms. "I'm here to make sure nothing goes wrong. Shocker, continue."
Brice blasted the car a second time, the kickback of which Cecelia swore she felt in her teeth. The buyer shrank back, shielding his face. Brice laughed again.
"Now, this is crafted from a reclaimed sub-Ultron arm straight from Sokovia," he explained, letting the prongs over the weapon's muzzle fold back in. He passed it over. "Here. You try."
The buyer took it with some apprehension. "Man, I wanted something low-key. Like, why are you trying to upsell me, man?"
"That's not all we have," Cecelia pointed out. She adjusted the hood over her face, casting a shadow over her eyes, and gestured to the trunk of the van. "We've got, like, fifty different options. Forty of which I played a part in creating. So I can answer any questions you have about them."
"Yeah, okay, okay, okay. We got what you need, all right?" Brice added. "We got tons of great stuff here. One sec."
He took the weapon back from the buyer and placed it into the van. As he rummaged through his contents, he gave their titles to the buyer. "Okay, we got, uh, black-hole grenades—"
