Chapter 2 - Breaking and Entering - Phantom

The light breeze displaced the closeness of the summer night’s air which was oddly cooling as it licked the folds of his bandages. On the whole Phantom hated summer, the nights were too short, the days too bright and even in the dead of night it was hot. He was leaning against a graffiti plastered wall at the corner of a blind alley, the stench of rotting garbage filling his nostrils which he tried to combat with cigarette smoke, the garbage was winning. He had been stood at this corner for around an hour, the dog ends littering his feet were evidence of this. That was when the sign he had been waiting for revealed itself. A light from the building opposite was extinguished, phantom stirred, crushing the cigarette he was currently entertaining under the sole of his hand made Armani shoes and slowly strolled over to the building in question. And walked straight passed it, cautiously glancing up as he passed by, an innocent gesture from the point of view of anyone watching. He rounded the corner and down a darken alley to the rear of the building, he was sure to pay a group of youth thugs to smash all the street lamps in the alley, to give him the cover of darkness. The stage was set, now for the play itself. Lowering himself to street level he found what he was looking for. A small window barely four foot across by a foot and a half tall, the window to the basement. This was his entry point. Phantom pulled a curious looking blade from his jacket pocket and gently scored along the edges of the glass. Then, after taping a criss-cross pattern across the pane in thick masking tape, he gave the window a sharp blow with his elbow, a spider’s web of cracks etched itself along the glass, a touch thuggish for Phantoms usual methods but the goal was met none-the-less. He silently removed the pane and placed it to his side as he slithered his way into the tiny hole. Grabbing a ceiling beam as he crawled, he pulled his body weight up until his feet were clear and the dropped gingerly onto the balls of his feet, sending a cloud of dust into the air. He was in.