ANTHONY HAWKINS, twenty-two years old, in a black ski mask with one wide slit for his eyes, entered the bodega on Third Avenue and 128th Street, took out his piece—a nine-millimeter Glock, same gun he’d used during his entire spree of holdups in the New York City area—aimed it at the old guy behind the counter, and said, “Give it up, yo.”
“Come on, kid,” the guy—Spanish accent, sounding tired—said. “You ain’t gonna get rich off me.”
Anthony noticed the camera, aiming right at him from the corner near the door. He shot at it, missed. He shot again, hit it this time, and the camera shattered.
A woman in the back—he didn’t know anybody else was in the store—screamed.
Anthony, nervous, shouted down the aisle, “Hey, you come out here now!”
The scared, crying Asian lady walked toward the front of the store with her hands up. Then Anthony thought he saw the old man reach for something behind the counter—maybe a gun.
Anthony aimed the Glock at him and yelled, “The register! Clean it out right now, or I’ll kill both of you, I swear I will!”
Then Anthony heard, “Drop the gun, Anthony!”
The voice was loud and clear, but where had it come from? Still aiming the gun at the guy behind the counter, Anthony’s eyes shifted toward the door. He expected to see a cop, but there was nobody there.
“Who said that?” he shouted. Then to the old man, “There somebody else here in the store?”
“No, I swear,” the old man said.
“Well, somebody’s talkin’ to me,” Anthony said. “Somebody who knows my name.”
“Leave them alone, Anthony,” the voice said. “Put the gun down, let the man call the cops, and you won’t get hurt. That’s your best option right now. Actually, that’s your only option.”
The voice sounded closer now, a few feet away, but there was still nobody near him. What the hell? Now Anthony was scared, his gun arm shaking.
“What’s goin’ on, yo?” Anthony asked. “Somebody else in here? You hidin’ someplace?”
“This is the last time I’ll ask you.” The voice was even closer now. “Put the gun down, and you can go back to jail and serve the time you deserve to serve. Don’t put the gun down, and you’re still going back to jail, but you may spend a couple of weeks in the hospital.”
Anthony was thinking, So this is what being crazy’s like? He was hearing voices. What the hell else could be happening? They were gonna lock him up—not in jail this time, in a mental home.
“Shut up!” Anthony screamed, maybe at himself.
The old man and Asian woman were staring at Anthony like he was crazy.
“What you lookin’ at?” Anthony said to them. Then his mask suddenly came off his head, as if somebody had pulled it off—but nobody was there. Anthony, shocked and confused, said, “What the—” as he felt a pain in his face, like he’d just been sucker punched. And then he was tumbling back into the shelf, cans of food falling on his head and to the floor.
He had dropped the gun. When he tried to reach for it, it slid away from his hand, all the way toward the entrance to the store—as if somebody had kicked it. But nobody was there.
So it wasn’t just voices anymore. Now things were moving on their own, and he was imagining getting hit in the face? But if he was just imagining things, how come it hurt so bad? And, damn, why was his nose bleeding?
“Hey, I gave you a chance,” the voice said, “but you wanted to do it the hard way, so you’re getting the hard way.”
“Who—who said that?” Anthony asked, his voice trembling. Then his head jerked to the right, as if somebody had just shot his left cheek with a BB gun at close range.
“Hey, over here,” the voice said. It sounded like it had come from near his stomach.
Anthony looked down, and something hit his chin. His head snapped back into the cans again.
“I mean over here,” the voice said from—it sounded like an inch in front of his face. Then something hit his forehead, and he felt dazed, the whole bodega spinning.
“This was what you asked for,” the voice said.
Anthony wanted to say, “I didn’t ask for nothin’,” but he couldn’t get his lips to move.
Every time Anthony tried to get up, something hit him and he fell back down again. Then he heard sirens, getting louder and louder.
“I’d love to stick around,” the voice said, “but I have another date downtown.”
* * *
LEAVING the bodega, Scott Lang—from his perspective as a half-inch-tall man—saw the police cars pulling up to the curb. As the cops rushed out, Scott darted across the sidewalk, which, from his tiny perspective, was the size of a large plaza. Then he jumped off the curb, which felt like jumping from a second-story window. He landed on his feet and continued, passing between two humongous parked cars.
Scott had promised Hank Pym that he wouldn’t abuse the Ant-Man technology—which meant not using it for trivial reasons, like to beat the evening rush. But once in a while, when he was in a hurry, why not?
When a cab approached, Scott leaped onto its front end and held on with his super-strong hands and feet. Hopping from car to car as Ant-Man was the fastest way to get anywhere. He clung to the roof of the cab until it started to make a right onto 125th Street, and then he leapt onto the windshield of another car—a white SUV. He stared right at the huge, angry face of the driver, who thought a bug had just landed in front of him. It was always dangerous for Scott to remain so close at another person’s eye level for too long—the person might notice that he wasn’t in fact a bug, but a miniature human being in a red-and-gray suit. He heard a loud squeaking noise and turned to see the tremendous blade of the windshield wiper heading right for him. Just before it could reach him, he jumped up and landed on the SUV’s roof.
He rode on the SUV to 116th, and then jumped on a car headed east toward FDR Drive. There was no traffic. The car took him all the way downtown to the East Village. Then, jumping along the tops of cars, trucks, and buses, he made his way to the Starbucks on Astor and Lafayette.
Although he’d made great time, he was still running late. He couldn’t resume normal size in public, so he ran into the coffee shop, dodging the oncoming shoes, sneakers, and boots like a real-life game of Frogger. There was a line for the customers’ bathroom, so he darted under the door of the bathroom labeled “Employees Only.”
He had a set of clothes, pre-shrunk, in a pouch attached to the Ant-Man suit. He put on his jeans, workboots, and flannel shirt, then activated the Pym expanding gas. Soon he was back to human size.
A Starbucks barista—a young Asian woman— entered the bathroom and did a double-take.
“How’d you get in here?” she asked.
“Uh, the door was unlocked,” Scott said.
“Customers can’t use this bathroom,” she said.
“Sorry, won’t happen again,” Scott said.
He rushed out to meet his date.