CHAPTER 22
Scott couldn’t wait to tell Hank about what had happened to Darren Cross, and as he’d expected, Hank wanted to hear every word. Then he wanted to hear more about the subatomic journey. “Scott, please. You don’t remember anything?”
“Hank, I… I don’t.” He’d already told Hank that he’d heard Cassie’s voice, and something about the discs… but his memory was foggy. Maybe he’d been too small for memories to form or something. He didn’t know.
“There must be something else,” Hank said. But there wasn’t. Scott didn’t have anything else to say to him. Hank sighed. “Well, I suppose the human mind just can’t comprehend the experience, but you made it. You went in and you got out. It’s amazing.”
Scott knew how much this meant to him. If he could go and come back, that meant that maybe there was a chance for Hope’s mother to do the same. Maybe she wasn’t gone forever. But none of them could say that out loud.
“Scott,” Hope said. “I’ll walk you out.” Scott got the message. Hank was still recovering from his gunshot wound. Hope didn’t want him to get too excited.
Scott stood up. “Get some rest,” he said, and followed Hope out.
Hank sat, lost in thought. Was it possible? He gazed at an old picture of Janet, taken when Hope was still a baby. Maybe…
He got up, meaning to go down to the lab and putter around while he thought about these new ideas. When he opened the door, though, he found Hope in the middle of a kiss with Scott. “When did this happen?” he asked. He hadn’t had any idea.
“Nothing’s happening,” Hope said.
“Well, hold on. Something’s kind of happening,” Scott said.
“Well if that’s the case, shoot me again,” Hank said.
Scott played to the occasion. “Yeah, I don’t know what you’re doing grabbing me and kissing me like that. I was a little surprised myself. I have to get somewhere. I’ll see you later, Hank. Really, Hope.” He headed for the stairs, with Hope smiling at him.
“Scott,” Hank called as Scott reached the stairs.
“Yeah.”
“You’re full of it.”
“Oh yeah.”
Then he was gone, and Hank realized that, at some point during the past few days, he’d rediscovered hope. And Hope. They were a family again.
Later that evening, Scott was over at Paxton and Maggie’s house for dinner. They were all making an effort to reconnect. Scott knew he was never going to get together with Maggie again, but he wanted to be part of Cassie’s new family, too. “Well, Scott,” Paxton said when they were finishing up. “I met with my captain today. He wanted a report of the night you got out of jail.” Scott got tense. This was where things might go really wrong. “Something happened with the cameras, and circuits got fried, and…” He shrugged. “But I told him you were processed correctly.”
Scott couldn’t quite believe this. “Really?” This was a huge favor. Escape would have added years to his sentence, even if Hope decided not to press charges on the original crime that had landed him in jail.
“Well, yeah. Can’t be sending Cassie’s dad back to jail on a technical glitch, right?”
Scott was now regretting calling Paxton a butthead a couple of weeks back. He was a decent guy, a standup guy, and he was good for Cassie, too. “Thank you, Paxton. I’m blown away. Thank you for everything you do for Cassie.”
“Oh, well, that’s my pleasure,” Paxton said. “But no, this one… I did it for you.”
For a moment they almost had a kind of emotional connection. Then both of them noticed it and they looked away from each other. “This is awkward,” Scott said.
Cassie chimed in. “Yeah.”
“I mean, what do we even talk about after all that?”
“Oh, I know!” Cassie said.
“What?”
“I did my first cartwheel today.”
“What?”
Maggie nodded. “Yeah. She has been practicing all week, but today was the magic day.”
Paxton reached into his pocket. “I recorded it on my phone. Here.”
Sure enough, on the screen, there was Cassie doing cartwheel after cartwheel. “No, that can’t be Cassie,” Scott said. He turned to her. “That’s not you.”
“Yeah it is,” she said with a gap-toothed grin.
“This is a professional gymnast. There’s no way that’s her,” Scott went on, stringing the joke out. Cassie loved it when he teased her like this.
“Yeah, that’s her,” both Maggie and Paxton said.
Cassie, meanwhile, was feeding the dog-sized ant under the table. It couldn’t stay out in the wild anymore, and it sure was a cool pet to have. “Good boy,” she said.
Scott was still amazed at the cartwheel. “That’s pretty amazing, peanut.” Then his own phone rang. He looked at the screen. “Sorry. It’s work.”
He met Luis in the parking lot of a little strip mall and could tell Luis was dying to start talking. Before he let him get carried away, Scott said, “Just give me the facts. Just the facts, only the facts. Breathe. Focus. Keep it simple.”
“No, no, no. No doubt, no doubt,” Luis said, and then he started in like Scott hadn’t said anything at all.
“Okay, so I’m at this art museum with my cousin Ignacio, right? And there was this, like, abstract expressionism exhibit, and you know me, I’m more like a neo-cubist kind of guy, right? But there was this one Rothko that was sublime, bro, oh my God—”
“Luis.”
“Okay, sorry, I’m just… you know, uh, I just get excited and stuff. But anyway, anyway. Ignacio tells me, ‘Yo, I met this crazy-fine writer chick at the spot last night, like, fine, fine, crazy-stupid fine.’ So this writer chick tells Ignacio, ‘Yo, I’m like a boss in the world of guerrilla journalism, and I got mad connects with the peeps behind the curtains, y’know what I’m sayin’?’ Ignacio’s like, ‘For real?’ And she’s like, ‘Yeah. You know what, I can’t tell you who my contact is, because he works with the Avengers.’”
“Oh no,” Scott said.
“Yeah. Like he comes up to him and he says, y’know, ‘I’m looking for this dude who’s most unseen, who’s flashing this fresh tech, who’s got, like, bomb moves, right? Who you got?’ And she’s like, ‘Well, we got everything nowadays. We got a guy who jumps, we got a guy who swings, we got a guy who crawls up the walls, you gotta be more specific.’
“And he’s like, ‘I’m looking for a guy who shrinks.’
“I got all nervous ’cause I keep mad secrets for you, bro. So I asked Ignacio, ‘Did he tell the stupid-fine writer chick to tell you to tell me because I’m tight with that man that he’s looking for him?’”
“And? What’d he say?”
Luis had never looked so excited. “He said yes.”
The Avengers, Scott thought. No way. The Avengers! Falcon was looking for him. Had to be Falcon. And he was being cool about it. If they’d just wanted to come after Scott for the job he’d pulled in upstate New York, that would have been simple. Like, Iron Man could have been waiting in Paxton’s front yard anytime. But they were keeping it quiet, which meant they really wanted to talk.
Like maybe about Scott Lang being an Avenger.
No, Scott corrected himself.
They wanted Ant-Man.
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