by Alex Irvine
“Kurt?”
“Eyes in the sky.”
“Luis?”
“Aw, man, you know it. You know what, I get to wear a uniform, that’s what’s up.”
This really wasn’t the time for Luis to be a goofball, Scott thought. “Luis,” he said again.
Luis looked embarrassed. “I’m sorry, I mean, I’m good, I’m good. I’m just excited, and plus your girlfriend’s really hot, so you know that makes me nervous, too, and you are very beautiful, ma’am.”
“Oh my lord,” Pym said.
“She’s not my—” Scott started to say, but he gave up, because once Luis got started there was no stopping him.
“Hey, you know what, I was thinking of a tactic, like when I go undercover, like a whistling, y’know, I’m saying, to like, blend in.” Luis looked pleased with himself.
“No,” Scott said. “Don’t whistle. No whistling, it’s not the Andy Griffith Show. No whistling.”
Luis looked crestfallen, but hey, this was serious business.
That night, the first thing the group did was get Dave and Kurt set up in the van. They disguised it as a utility worker’s vehicle, parked it down the street, and put construction cones around it like it was a job site. The reception where Darren Cross planned to announce the Yellowjacket project was crawling with two things: rich people in suits and armed security guards. One of them was Luis, who cleared security, got his badge and gun back, and headed to his position. As soon as Kurt got confirmation of this, he turned to Scott. “We’re set.”
Scott nodded. “Wish me luck,” he said. Then he opened the van’s sliding door and as he stepped out over the storm drain, he shrank and fell through the grate.
Luis, whistling a children’s tune, swiped his badge and went into the utility control room, keeping himself super casual. But he hadn’t expected anyone else to be in there.
“Hey,” another guard said, turning away from one of the control panels. “What are you doing?”
“Uh, boss man said to secure the area, so I’m securing,” Luis said while he tried to think of what to do next.
The man stepped up on him. “I’m the boss.”
“Oh!” That put a little different spin on things, Luis thought.
The guard got out a walkie-talkie. “Utilities workroom three,” he said, but he didn’t get any further than that, because Luis knocked him out with one punch.
When he’d told Scott he was the only guy ever to knock Peachy out, he wasn’t kidding.
With the guard down, Luis got to work. He was part of a team that was saving the world, man, and he had to act like it. Remembering the layout the old guy had shown him, he found the valve controlling the flow in the water main that fed the building and started cranking it.
“Water level is dropping,” Kurt said in Scott’s ear, but Scott already knew that because he was riding a raft of fire ants through the water main toward the building, and he had more head room than when he’d started. Ant-thony rode next to him.
“Whoa!” he said as the pipe turned straight down before leveling out again. Just as he got his balance again, Kurt said, “Coming up on extraction pipe.”
“I see it! All right, come on, I gotta get up there.” The fire ants reconfigured themselves into a kind of ladder and hoisted him up—and other ants in the extraction pipe formed a chain reaching down. They had to time it perfectly or the water would carry them past the extraction pipe, and there was no way Scott could get back upstream. “That’s it! That’s it, guys, yeah!” Scott encouraged them.
When the two columns of ants met, he swung up into the mouth of the pipe. “Yes! You got it! Come on!” He climbed the fire ant ladder up into Pym Tech’s interior plumbing, Ant-thony right behind him. A minute later he popped out in a sink.
“All right, let’s fly, Ant-thony,” he said. All the carpenter ants moved out, heading for an air vent.
“The Ant-Man is in the building,” Kurt reported.
Dave nodded. “Pym’s pulling up, right on time.” He watched Pym’s car… and then noticed another car that had parked nearby when he wasn’t watching. He sucked in a breath. “Got a Crown Vic right outside of here.”
“This is problem?” Kurt asked.
“Considering the Crown Vic’s the most commonly used car for undercover cops, man, yes, this is a problem.”
Dave watched as two cops jumped out of the car and headed after Pym. “Oh no,” he said. This was a complication they did not need.
Inside, Scott moved to help out Luis. “I’m employing the bullet ants,” Scott said, knowing that Luis and Hope would be in position. “Hapanera-clamda-mana-merna. I don’t remember what it’s called, but I feel bad for this guy.”
The bullet ants dropped out of the air vent onto the shoulders of the guard manning the entrance to the lab. As Luis strolled in the guard’s direction, the ants attacked and he started to jump around, yelling in pain. Luis took a big step forward and decked him. One punch and out, just like the plan.
“See, that’s what I’m talkin’ ’bout, that’s what I call it, an unfortunate casualty, in a very serious operation,” he said as Hope walked by him and swiped her way into the lab.
She didn’t waste any time. Walking purposefully right to the server rack, she inserted the signal device into the rack and slid it shut. Meanwhile Luis dragged the unconscious guard into the server space where nobody would see him.
“Signal decoy in place,” Kurt reported as he saw it come online. “Mean pretty lady did good, Scott.”
Dave peered through binoculars at the cops who had stopped Pym before he could go inside the building. “Looks like Pym’s getting arrested,” he said.
“Scott, we have problem,” Kurt called out.
“Problem? What’s the problem?”
Before Kurt could answer, Dave opened the door and headed across the street. “Dave! Dave, that’s not part of plan!” Kurt yelled after him, but Dave was on a mission.
“Listen to me,” Hank said to the two cops. “If I don’t get into this building people will die.”
“That’s awfully dramatic,” Gale said. He didn’t believe a word of it. They had some questions for Pym, and they didn’t care about his reception.
Their questions were interrupted in the nick of time for Hank, when Dave hopped into the Crown Vic, turned on the lights and sirens, and squealed away.
“Are you kidding me?” Paxton couldn’t believe it. He and Gale took off after their car, while Pym took advantage of the diversion and got himself inside.
Observing from the van, Kurt said, “Problem solved.”
CHAPTER 18
Hope came out of the lab with Luis close behind her—only now he was wearing the unconscious guard’s uniform so he could be in the lab without drawing notice. As they came out, they saw Darren Cross standing in the hallway like he’d been waiting for them. “Well,” he said.
Hope had an anxious moment. How much had he seen? If he found out about the plan now, people were going to die.
But after a long pause, all Darren said was, “How do I look?”
She tried not to show how relieved she was as Darren walked her out to the lobby, where Hank was just coming through security. “There he is, just in time,” Darren said. “Come on.”
He led them to the lab, to the chamber containing the Yellowjacket pod. It was protected by a retinal scanner. “Twelve-point verification,” the scanner said after Cross put his eye up to the screen. “Confirming authorization.”
“Little over the top, don’t you think, Darren?” Hank said.
Darren didn’t seem offended. “No, you can never be too safe,” he said.
The computer voice in the scanner said, “Access granted,” and the door opened. Cross, Pym, and Hope walked in, with Cross’s bodyguards behind them.
“I want to hand it to you, Darren; you really did it,” Hank said. The Yellowjacket project really was impressive.
“And you only know the half of it, Hank.”
The door clo
sed behind them.
“Arriving at second position,” Scott said. “All right, top speed, Ant-thony. Let’s go. Proceeding to command position.”
Thousands of crazy ants were flooding over the servers that held all of Pym Tech’s backup information. It had to be destroyed or even if they got the Yellowjacket suit, Cross could just build another one. Also they had to knock the power out for a few seconds, and the crazy ants would do that, too… if it worked. Time to find out, Scott thought.
“I’ll be right back, Ant-thony,” he said, hopping off the ant onto the top of one of the frames holding the delicate electronics. “All right, guys, I’m in position. I’m going to signal the ants.”
Outside, Paxton and Gale were looking at their crashed car while Dave threw himself back into the van, laughing. “Did you see that?”
Then he accidentally hit the horn, and over by the wrecked Crown Vic, Paxton looked up. He remembered that horn.
“Assume formation,” Scott said. The crazy ants lined themselves up, spread all the way across the huge server farm. Each of them had a small conducting amplifier on its back, to enhance their natural ability to conduct electricity without harming themselves. “All right, you cute little crazies,” Scott said. “Let’s fry these servers.”
Electricity crackled across the room and thousands of miniature lightning bolts shot from server to server, scrambling the magnetic patterns holding the data. Scott whooped. It was working!
“Let’s go get it, buddy!” he shouted, and Ant-thony was there to carry him off to the next objective.
“Servers are fried,” Kurt reported from the van. “Data backup completely erased.”
Right on, Scott thought. “Headed to the particle chamber,” he answered.
Now it was really showtime.
Pym got a cold feeling in the pit of his stomach when he saw Mitchell Carson and his retinue enter the Yellowjacket chamber. Carson glanced at Pym and then shook hands with Darren. “Hello, Dr. Cross. My associates agree to your terms.”
“Wonderful,” Cross said. Seeing the expression on Hank’s face, he got a smug grin on his own. “Mr. Carson introduced me to these fine gentlemen here. They’re representatives of Hydra.” Knowing Hank’s history with S.H.I.E.L.D., mortal enemy of Hydra, he explained a little more. “They’re not what they were. They’re doing some interesting work. And I’m enjoying myself.”
Cross stepped to Hank and now he really started to gloat. This was why he had wanted Hank here. Not to celebrate, but so Cross could rub Hank’s face in what Cross was about to do. “You tried to hide your technology from me,” he said, “and now it’s going to blow up in your face.”
Hank hauled off and punched him. Cross flinched back and bent over, one hand on the side of his jaw, but when he stood up again, he didn’t look angry at all. “Wow,” he said, and gave Hank an admiring nod. “Wow! I mean, I saw the punch coming a mile away, but I just figured it’d be all pathetic and weak.”
“Well, you figured wrong,” Pym said. And in the next couple of minutes, they would all find out whether Scott Lang had figured wrong, too.
Paxton nodded as he walked to the van. “I know this van.” Lang had been driving it at Cassie’s birthday party. What the hell was going on? He pounded on the door. “Anybody home?”
Inside, Kurt and Dave huddled, hoping the cops would give up and go away before Scott needed them again.
“All right, guys, I’m here,” Scott said from inside the particle chamber. “Setting the charges.” Several dozen fire ants carrying miniature explosive charges touched buttons that returned the charges to regular size. This chamber contained all the reserves of the miniaturization fluid that gave the Yellowjacket suit its powers. Like the backup data, it had to be destroyed to put a permanent end to Cross’s project. The timers on each charge read 15:00… 14:59…
“Great job, guys,” Scott said. “I’ll take it from here.” Carpenter ants picked up loads of the smaller fire ants and crazy ants, swooping away to return home. Now all Scott had left were the few bullet ants and carpenter ants he would need for the last phase of the operation. He stood at the top of the tiny injection pipe that led down into the Yellowjacket pod.
“Final position,” he said, and dropped a miniaturized screw down the pipe as a test. It pinged off the side and then was vaporized at the bottom. The laser defenses were still intact, which meant Kurt hadn’t gotten the power down yet. “Guys? How we lookin’ on that laser grid?”
“Almost!” Kurt said.
Dave shook his head. “No, you’re not.”
“I’m getting close!”
“No, you’re not.”
“San Francisco PD!” a cop shouted from outside. They were banging on the doors still. “Man in the van! I know you’re in there!”
“Make it go faster,” Dave hissed.
“Dude,” Kurt hissed back. “Seriously.”
Scott had himself harnessed to a line at the top of the injection tube. “Ready to jump,” he said. “Do you read, Kurt?” He really couldn’t wait any longer.
“So close…” Kurt couldn’t take his eyes off the status bar. Ninety percent there… the laser grid would go out any second.
The cops yanked the back doors of the van open, guns drawn. “Freeze!” they shouted.
Dave started talking to delay them. “Okay! Wait a minute, wait a minute! There was a guy that looked exactly like me who attacked us and put us in the back of this disgusting van.”
“Get out,” one of the cops said. He hauled Dave out and threw him facedown on the pavement.
“Take it easy!” Dave protested.
The status bar hit one hundred percent.
“Go! Go now!” Kurt said as he was hauled out of the van behind Dave. But he had to hit the space bar to execute the hack, and the cop had gotten to him before he could. “Wait!”
Scott was already falling down the tube. “What? What do you mean, wait?” he screamed. He fell toward the laser grid, and there was nothing he could do about it—he was about to be vaporized. Cross would sell his tech to someone evil and take over the world. More important, Scott would never see Cassie again.
Kurt fought the cop who was manhandling him out of the van. With a last desperate lunge he got a finger on the space bar and the program executed. With a sigh of relief he let the cop drag him away… and inside the tube, the laser grid flickered out just as Scott fell through the mouth of the tube!
He’d made it into the Yellowjacket pod.
CHAPTER 19
But the Yellowjacket suit wasn’t there! The pod was empty, and a port in the bottom of it was just irising shut. “What? What?” Scott looked around, dangling at the end of the line.
There was a knock at the window. “Hey, little guy,” Darren Cross said. He chuckled and held up a tiny glass case holding the Yellowjacket suit.
“Oh sh—gah!” The laser grid came back on and cut the line. Scott fell to the bottom of the pod chamber with a thump.
Outside, Cross turned away from the pod, reveling in the way he’d outsmarted the mighty Hank Pym.
“I always suspected you had a suit stored away somewhere,” he said, playing to the room. “Which begs the question: Who is the new Ant-Man? Who is the man that my beloved mentor trusted even more than me?”
Screens in the room flickered to life, displaying Scott’s mug shot from when he’d been arrested after the Vista job went wrong. “Scott Lang,” Cross said. “The martyr. He took on the system and paid the price, losing his family and his only daughter in the process. Exactly your kind of guy, Hank.”
The screen now showed a picture of Cassie. Scott scrambled to the window, frantically trying to figure out how he could escape. He threw himself against the glass, but it held.
Cross put the Yellowjacket suit in a secure padded case and continued his story. “He escapes his jail cell without leaving any clue as to how, and then he disappears magically, despite having no money to his name, and now he brings me the Ant-Man suit, the only t
hing that can rival my creation.” Cross had a look on his face like a man who had just won the lottery without even knowing he had entered.
“Darren, don’t do this,” Pym said. “If you sell to these men, it’s going to be chaos.”
“I already have, and for twice the price, thanks to you,” Cross said. “It’s not easy to successfully infiltrate an Avengers facility. Thankfully, word travels fast. Oh, I’ll sell them the Yellowjacket, but I’m keeping the particle to myself.”
Mitchell Carson’s head snapped around. Apparently this was news to him.
“They don’t run on diesel,” Cross said to Carson. “If you want the fuel, you’ll have to come to me.” Cross handed the vial of Yellowjacket fluid to one of his bodyguards, looking back to Pym. “What do you call the only man who can arm the most powerful weapon in the world?”
“The most powerful man in the world,” Hank said, because he knew that’s what Cross wanted to hear. He was trying to keep Cross talking while he figured out some way to stop him.
Cross nodded. “You proud of me yet?”
Hank wasn’t going to give him that satisfaction. “You can stop this, Darren. It’s not too late.”
“It’s been too late for a long time now,” Cross said, and his bodyguards drew their guns.
“Darren!” Hope said. “What are you doing?”
“He wasn’t any more capable of caring for you than he was for me,” Cross said to her. Now he was dead serious.
“This is not who you are,” she said. “It’s the particles altering your brain chemistry.”
He seemed to think about this for a moment. Then he waved his arms. “Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. You’re right.” He held out a hand for one of the bodyguards’ guns. “I have to be the one to do it.”
That was the last straw. As Cross leveled the gun at Hank Pym, Hope snapped an elbow back into the face of the nearest guard and ripped the gun from his hand as he fell. She pointed it at Cross.