CHAPTER 15

Scott had sort of thought Pym would admire his guts, but when he got back to San Francisco, he found out just the opposite. “That was completely irresponsible and dangerous!” Pym raged as soon as Scott had gotten back to his house and made it into the kitchen. “You jeopardized everything!”

Scott didn’t say a word. He just reached into his back pocket and got the signal device, putting it down on the butcher block table like he was laying down a winning poker hand.

“You got it,” Hope said.

Pym, looking amazed, said, “Well done.”

“Wait a minute,” Scott said. “Did you just compliment me?” He turned to Hope. “He did, didn’t he?”

“Kinda sounded like he did,” she agreed with a grin.

Pym was examining the signal device, admiring its design. “I was good, wasn’t I?” he asked. They all knew it was a rhetorical question.

“Hey, how about the fact that I fought an Avenger and didn’t die?” Scott said. He felt like that hadn’t been acknowledged quite enough.

“Now let’s not dwell on the past,” said Hank Pym, who had just been doing exactly that. “We have to finish our planning.” He headed for the lab.

“Don’t mind him,” Hope said. “You did good.”

Scott was starting to like her.

Hank Pym opened the door to the living room and stopped short when he saw Darren Cross standing there. “Darren!” he said, making sure Scott and Hope heard him. “How did you get in here?”

“You left the front door open, Hank,” Cross said with a grin. “It’s official. You’re old.”

In the kitchen, Hope leaned close to Scott. “The plans!” she whispered. “He will kill him.”

The plans for the Pym Tech Futures Lab were lying open on the coffee table. If Cross had seen them… well, Hope was probably right.

But maybe he hadn’t seen them yet. Scott got the earpiece in and slipped up to the edge of the door frame.

“Well, to what do I owe this pleasure?”

“I have good news,” Cross said, approaching Pym.

“Really? What’s that?”

“Pym Tech, the company you created, is about to become one of the most profitable operations in the world. We’re anticipating fifteen billion in sales tomorrow alone.” While Cross spoke, a group of ants quietly rolled up the plans so all that showed was blank paper. They could have been any set of drawings. Nothing about them would draw attention… unless Cross had already noticed them.

Pym was so focused on the ants for a moment that what Cross had said didn’t register right away. Cross looked a little nonplussed when Pym didn’t say anything. He glanced over at the rolled-up plans as the ants accidentally bumped them into a candlestick, but then he turned his attention back to Pym.

“You’re welcome,” he said. “I know this is odd, but I’d like you to be there. This is my moment; I want you to see it.”

“Sure, Darren,” Hank said. “Yeah, sure. I’ll be there.”

Cross nodded, satisfied. Then something else occurred to him. “What did you see in me?” he asked.

“I don’t know what you mean,” Hank said.

“All those years ago, you picked me. What did you see?”

“I saw myself,” Hank said. It was true. Darren Cross had been brash, headstrong, arrogant, and brilliant… just like the young Hank Pym.

“Then why did you push me away?” Cross asked, his voice thick with emotion.

Holding his gaze, Hank Pym delivered the hard truth. “Because I saw too much of myself.”

Cross turned and left without another word.

Hope was convinced Cross had seen the plans and was plotting something. “He knows!” she said as soon as Hank came back into the kitchen. “He’s baiting you. We have to call it off.”

“We’re all taking risks,” Pym said.

“What if he saw me here?” she asked. Then he would know for sure that she was feeding Hank inside information about the Futures project.

“He didn’t,” Pym said. “There’s no way.” Cross hadn’t looked into the kitchen. He was sure of it.

“How do you know that?” Hope’s phone rang. It was Darren Cross. She gave them all a look as she answered. “Darren, hi.”

“Hope.” He was in his car, driving. “Where are you right now?”

“I’m at home. Why?”

“I just saw Hank. I still get nothing but contempt from him,” Cross said, furious.

“Don’t let him rile you up,” Hope said. “He’s just… he’s a senile old man.” Scott and Hank exchanged a look at this.

“We need to start everyone working around the clock, get the assembly line up and running. And I’m tripling security. Full sensors at all entrances, and exterior air vents fitted with steel micro-mesh.” Cross was edging toward the kind of mania he got when he was close to achieving a goal. Hope had seen it before. She knew her father had, too.

“Great,” she said. “Good idea.”

“Thank you, Hope. I’m so lucky to have you on my team.”

When Darren hung up, she turned back to Scott and her father. “He’s tripling security, he’s lost his mind, and he’s on to you.”

“But he’s not on to you,” Hank said.

She couldn’t believe he was being so stubborn when the operation was clearly blown. “He’s adding full-body scanners to all entrances and closing exterior vents. How are we going to get Scott inside?”

Buildings needed air, electricity… and water. Those were what connected them to the outside world. Electricity was no help, and if the air vents were blocked, that left… “The water main,” Scott said. “You can’t add security to a water main. The pressure is too strong, but if we can decrease it, that’s how I get in.”

Thinking hard, Hope said, “Somebody would have to reach the building’s control center to change the water pressure. I mean, Hank and I will be beside Cross. How are we supposed to do that?”

“So we expand our team. What do we need? A fake security guard on the inside to depressurize the water system, somebody else to hack into the power supply and kill the laser grid, and a getaway guy.” Three extra guys. Scott thought he knew where he might be able to find them.

Clearly, so did Hank Pym. “No, no, no,” he said. “Not those three wombats. No way.”