The bullet was faster than Daredevil's senses. Frank had aimed for his leg. He only wanted to put the vigilante out of action, not kill him. The man would go on saving lives, and Frank had no intention of preventing that.
Frank frowned. Usually, Daredevil could dodge bullets, or at least react to them. And his suit wasn't just cloth. It could stop bullets. But this round had gone straight through.
It was disappointing, but Frank wasn't going to complain. The rifle he'd bought from Sebastian for five thousand dollars had done exactly what he'd wanted. Frank wouldn't have minded paying a little more.
He'd shot Daredevil before. Sometimes he'd even managed to hit him, but the bullets had never penetrated.
'I'll come back for those sons of bitches later,' Frank thought.
If he stayed, Daredevil would keep getting in his way, wounded or not. The guy was a pain in the ass Frank didn't feel like dealing with right now. He climbed into his van, grabbed a bandage, and tossed it at Daredevil's head.
'I barely noticed it before it was gone,' Matt thought.
Matt knew how fast a bullet could travel. It wasn't as though he could always dodge a projectile moving at more than nine hundred meters per second, but he could at least give himself a chance.
Not this time. The bullet had traveled at least twice that fast and ripped through his armor. Melvin Potter had designed it. The suit might not completely stop a rifle round of that caliber, but an ordinary bullet shouldn't have passed through so cleanly.
'Where the hell did he get that thing?'
Matt turned his attention to the street, now littered with corpses. He approached the gang's vehicles and clenched his teeth. Those men should have been judged by the courts. Frank Castle had no right to appoint himself their executioner.
Examining the cars, Matt realized the bullets had passed straight through their bodies. And these weren't ordinary cars. They were armored.
He'd encountered that kind of protection before. Level IV vehicle armor, intended to withstand fire from many types of rifles. Yet an M16 had punched through it with astonishing ease.
Matt had recognized the shape of the weapon immediately, but it hadn't sounded right. It vibrated differently. That had thrown him off. When Frank fired, the rifle had barely moved or vibrated at all, making Matt think the shot hadn't even gone off. Combined with the projectile's impossible speed, that had left him no time to react.
'I need to get out of here.'
Matt wrapped the bandage Frank had thrown him around his leg and limped away. Luckily, the bullet hadn't struck anything vital. At least it had passed all the way through. That saved him the trouble of having it removed.
Fury stared at the enormous catalog of weapons.
When he'd first approached Sebastian, he'd expected advanced firearms. Sure, he figured they'd be better than conventional weapons, built with superior technology. But what the fuck was this?
"Ray Gun. Wunderwaffe DG-2. Spartan Laser," Fury read aloud. Then he looked at the prices printed beside them. Four hundred thousand dollars. Six hundred thousand. One million three hundred thousand. "Ammunition sold separately," he read at the end of each description.
These weren't the weapons he'd expected. They looked like something straight out of a video game. He wondered whether Tony Stark could build anything like them. With Stark still missing somewhere in the Middle East, though, he couldn't exactly ask.
Fury kept turning the pages. He was beginning to sweat without realizing it. He thought back to the moment he'd pulled his gun and fired at Sebastian. He wouldn't apologize for that. He didn't negotiate with terrorists. S.H.I.E.L.D. existed to protect the world from the shadows, even when that meant getting its hands dirty.
But now that he'd failed, he wondered what might have happened if he hadn't agreed to pay five times the normal price for each weapon. These things might have ended up in the hands of criminals.
'Maybe it's all a joke,' he thought. Read this novel at g.com for the best experience.
"Hill," he called to the woman beside him.
She looked worried too, probably wondering whether the weapons described in the catalog could possibly be real.
"Yes, sir?"
"I think he's an alien," Fury said at last. "Call Talos."
Hill nodded and left immediately.
Talos was a Skrull, a member of an alien species that had arrived on Earth decades earlier. If Sebastian really was an extraterrestrial, Talos might know something about him.
For now, Fury would leave Sebastian alone. Before seeing this catalog, he'd believed the man's weapons might give S.H.I.E.L.D.'s enemies a significant military advantage. Now he understood that an advantage was the least of his worries. Weapons like these could spell the end of S.H.I.E.L.D.
Talos would take a few days to arrive. He wasn't an agent who spent his time stationed at headquarters. Better to get hold of a few weapons before he showed up, so he'd have something to examine.
"Coulson. My office."
"Welcome. What can I do for you?" Sebastian asked the man who had just entered.
The newcomer had a friendly smile, brown hair, and matching eyes. He wore a gray suit with a blue tie and carried an unmarked black briefcase.
"Phil Coulson." The man introduced himself and extended a hand. Sebastian shook it. "I'm here on behalf of S.H.I.E.L.D."
"Oh, right. The club."
"Excuse me?"
"Nothing important. Do you have an order ready?" Sebastian asked.
"Yes. A rather large one. We'd like to test your arsenal." Coulson opened the briefcase.
He pulled out a thick folder listing every weapon the agency wanted to purchase. It was a massive order. Sebastian's eyes lit up with greed.
"Good, good. Let's go into my office." Sebastian locked the front door, turned the sign to Closed, and led Coulson into the study. He was the second S.H.I.E.L.D. agent to enter that room.
Sebastian turned on his computer. He used the software there to enter each item in the order. It was an inefficient process, sure, but he still had to issue an invoice. He ran a legitimate business, after all.
It took him several minutes to enter the entire list.
"No. We'll trust you."
"All right. The total is eleven million fifty thousand dollars," Sebastian said. The order covered around fifty different weapon models, ranging from basic firearms to top-of-the-line equipment. "With the agreement I made with Fury, that becomes fifty-five million two hundred fifty thousand dollars."
Sebastian smiled at Coulson.
The agent broke into a sweat as he struggled to maintain his polite expression. That was a staggering price for what they'd ordered.
"About the price," Coulson began. "I wanted to ask whether it might be negotiable. We're hoping to establish a long-term partnership."
Sebastian could tell he was a decent guy. Or at least he did a convincing impression of one.
If Coulson had come instead of Fury, Sebastian probably wouldn't have made nearly as much money.
Still, he had another problem to consider. His dealings with Black Cat had exposed a logistical headache. He couldn't put Felicia Hardy's name on an invoice without revealing her secret identity. Frank and Deadpool didn't care much whether their real names appeared on paperwork, but she did.
And what if more superheroes started showing up?
"I can lower the markup to four times the normal price. That would be forty-four million two hundred thousand dollars," Sebastian offered. "In exchange, I want a favor."
"If it's within our capabilities," Coulson agreed.
"More and more masked vigilantes are appearing every day," Sebastian said with a smile. "I intend to sell to them, but when it's time to issue an invoice, I can't exactly put down their real names without exposing them."
"You want S.H.I.E.L.D. to help you with that?"
"Yes. After all, I run a legitimate business."
'Legitimate, my ass. But the system requires the money to be legal, or it won't turn into points. Biggest fucking nuisance.'
"That can be arranged," Coulson said. "Although we'd still like to get a little closer to your original prices."
"Your boss tried to shoot me. I haven't forgotten that. But I'm not unreasonable. If I need something in the future, we can negotiate prices again." Sebastian deliberately left the door open.
"Very well. Let us know if you need anything."
"Excellent. I'll have your order ready in three days. One thing, though, Coulson. That price doesn't include ammunition."
"Add one magazine for every weapon that needs one."
"That'll be another hundred and one thousand dollars," Sebastian said with a grin. "At your new rate, that's four hundred and four thousand. Grand total: forty-four million six hundred and four thousand dollars. I'll need a thirty-percent deposit."
"One moment." Coulson made a call. When someone answered, he read out the total. "It's the best deal I could get," he murmured. "Understood. The transfer should arrive in a few seconds."
"Received," Sebastian's banking app confirmed.
'I thought my account had a million-dollar limit or something, but the deposit went through anyway. Well, I guess that's one of the perks of ripping off S.H.I.E.L.D.'