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 closed 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.