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CHAPTER NINETEEN Surface Pressure
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WHEN THE DUST CLEARED, Cecelia found herself kneeling on the ground with part of a support beam jutting from her chest. It pierced through her skin with none of the gore that would be expected from this kind of injury—no puddles of blood, no ravaged flesh, no broken spine. There was no pain, either; in fact, the only parts of her body that hurt were her face, still smarting from Uncle's blow, and her shoulder, which must have been clipped before she'd gone fully intangible. Her ears were ringing, and her eyes burned from the cloud of dust that had crawled its way in, but she could still stand, albeit on shaking legs. She moved out of the support beam, which had the first glimmers of fire forming on its end, and became solid again.
When she inhaled, in came another clump of dust. She coughed violently, attempting to dispel it from her lungs, tears streaming from her face. Her blurry gaze flickered down to her shoulder, noticing the blood that leaked sluggishly from a shallow laceration. She put a hand against it, and her palm got soaked within seconds.
It was only then that the shock wore off.
The warehouse had completely crumbled to the ground. What had used to be a standing building—a building Cecelia had spent a large portion of these past five years in—was now nothing but rubble. It had been broken down to its fundamentals: support beams, concrete, pipes. The things that had made up its interior, the things that had turned it into what it was, were gone. Everything that Cecelia had worked on for the past five years (well, everything that hadn't circulated elsewhere, anyway) was now destroyed. Crushed. Nothing but memories now.
Fires bloomed like flowers, unfurling their petals. The smoke lay heavily in the air, blocking out the already dark night. The air smelled like ash, burning Cecelia's nostrils. Glass crunched under her feet.
But she was alive. Of course, she was. Uncle and Toomes had tried to bring the building down on her head, but her powers had yet again saved her life. What made her a freak of nature, what made her both useful and useless in the eyes of her uncle had ensured that she kept breathing for another day.
They must have known that she would survive. They must have. They couldn't have really been trying to kill her, right? Even though she'd finally broken free from Uncle, even though she'd finally put her foot down and said no, he wouldn't have wanted her dead. He wouldn't have. And neither would Toomes.
It was only then that she realized they might not have done it because of her.
Peter.
Cecelia sprung around, squinting through the haze of smoke. In the chaos of everything, she'd almost forgotten about him. Almost forgotten that he'd been beside her, in his stupid homemade Spider-Man costume, right when everything went south. Right when the final support beam was cut and it all came crashing down.
