The Unstoppable Wasp

by Sam Maggs

  But now, lying here next to Margaret and checking off the box next to the stars, she felt different. Excited. She felt more refreshed than she had in ages. Days—weeks, even.

  And it was all thanks to VERA.

  VERA, and Margaret.

  Nadia took a deep breath. “Margaret, I—”

  “Ms. Hoff, you are needed urgently in the finances meeting,” VERA’s voice boomed suddenly through the dome, her blue pixels rapidly replacing the stars in the sky. Nadia squeezed her eyes shut and opened them again.

  Right. She was inside. She was inside HoffTech. And it was the middle of the day.

  Margaret let out a noise of great frustration and pushed herself up to sitting. “Fine. Tell them I’m on my way.”

  “They are becoming…impatient,” VERA added.

  Margaret rolled her eyes and made a face at Nadia. She laughed. “Do you have to do this for G.I.R.L.?”

  Nadia stood, brushing off the back of her pants and offering Margaret her hand. “No, that’s all Janet,” she said, helping the older woman up off the floor with ease.

  “Daaang,” Margaret said, hopping up to her feet. “Biceps of steel. Pilates?”

  Nadia walked with Margaret toward the spiral staircase that would take them out of the beautiful night and back into reality. “Ballet,” she offered. Nadia left out the part about her super-powers.

  That was more of a (twenty-)second friend-date sort of conversation.

  As they reached the bottom of the second staircase, Margaret was rushed by several people in jeans and hoodies, all inquiring about where she had been and why she was late and other things that made Nadia briefly change her mind about running a business at all. One of them touched Margaret’s lower back and began escorting her into a nearby glass boardroom, this one at least three times the size of the one in which Nadia had solved VERA’s bug problem.

  “I’ll e-mail you, Nadia! Save the Insectarium for me,” Margaret said over her shoulder, before the glass door closed behind her and her coworkers.

  Nadia peered into the room with curiosity after her new friend. Margaret walked straight to the head of the table and shook hands with a very dour middle-aged white man with a well-manicured beard and a shock of hair so black it was nearly blue.

  He looked aside to see Nadia staring through the door. His brows knit. Margaret followed his glance and uttered something Nadia couldn’t hear through the glass—which instantly turned opaque. She was shut out.

  Which was for the best. Finance meetings were definitely not one of Nadia’s things.

  With a lightness in her step—she’d completed another item on Maria’s list! She didn’t feel empty inside afterward!—Nadia found her way back down to the lobby, which actually now looked a lot more STEM-chic than dentist office, now that she was seeing it for a second time. It really was quite classy, Nadia thought. Very aspirational. Also, she didn’t have a single pair of white tennis shoes. Why was that? She should absolutely get herself a pair of white tennis shoes. It would really complete her look. She would have to ask Janet.

  Bzzz bzzz.

  Phone. Fumbling for a second, Nadia fished her phone out from the front pocket in her sweatshirt. Must get back to pocket-dimension idea, she thought hurriedly, as she unlocked her phone.

  It was a S.H.I.E.L.D. notification. Technically they didn’t send Nadia notifications, but she still got the notifications. Because she had cloned Janet’s S.H.I.E.L.D. phone and mirrored the notifications she got from the agency.

  She just liked to be informed about what was going on. She didn’t always jump into action the second she saw something come in from S.H.I.E.L.D. After all, sometimes they had nothing to do with her. Sometimes they were about things happening in Wakanda or Sokovia or on the Helicarrier or Spider-Man had gotten into trouble again and could Tony Stark please come bail him out (the number of tangled webs he seemed to weave, it was unbelievable).

  This time, though. This time the alert wasn’t far. Or, at least, “not far” if you could fly—Midtown, right by Madison Square Park. It would frankly be irresponsible of Nadia not to go check it out. Especially since she was already so far from Cresskill and really it would only be a short detour on her way home.

  So…she had to go.

  Plus, she’d just checked off another item on Maria’s list. She was on a roll!

  Nadia ran into the HoffTech bathrooms, already pulling her Wasp charm off her phone.

  Please don’t be another death ray.

  Nadia started to think that using “better or worse than a death ray” as a way to judge the overall success of her day was not the best idea. It set a disappointingly low bar for a “good day.”

  Then again, the way things had been going in Nadia’s life lately, “better than a death ray” really did seem like an impossible threshold.

  Take today. This morning? Extremely good. Playing in the rain and watching the stars (two whole items off Maria’s list!), complete. Time with Taina, always lovely (even when she was being obtuse about Nadia’s priorities). Opening VERA, essential. Meeting Margaret, life highlight.

  But now?

  Now Nadia was inside some guy’s button-down—a place she could safely say she never wanted to be again—racing through his sparse chest hair and trying to ignore the cloying scent of his deodorant. Nadia was certain it was probably named something like “Wolfclaw” or “Bearcano.”

  Worse than a death ray?

  Not quite. But approaching.

  Nadia had avoided rush hour transit by shrinking and flying straight from HoffTech to Midtown, arriving just as the financial sector was starting to empty out for the day. The streets were filled with business boys all dressed the same—button-down, slacks, dress shoes, maybe a down sleeveless vest to top the look off. It made Nadia feel like she was in a horror movie. She couldn’t quite put her finger on why, but she found them all kind of disturbing.

  Like if the zombies in Army of Darkness (which Ying loved and made all the G.I.R.L.s watch last summer) were all rich boys who only talked about sailing, or women like they were objects, or what it was like to all be named Brian or Ryan. Disturbing.

  But there was something more disturbing than usual going on when Nadia pulled up outside Crédit France, the financial services HQ where the S.H.I.E.L.D. notification had sent her. She could immediately tell that there was a problem; police cars lit up the streets around the building, blockading it from the usual end-of-day traffic.

  The cops were assisting building security, walking finance guys out in droves with their hands behind their backs. More than fifty of the gingham-shirted men knelt on the sidewalk outside their office, hands secured behind their backs, and more were still exiting the building, escorted by law enforcement.

  This looked like a big problem; Nadia didn’t want to dive in without letting someone know first. She put her hand to her ear and put out the call.

  “G.I.R.L.s, assistance required at Crédit France in Midtown, anyone available?”

  Taina’s voice responded almost immediately. “Yeah—at the Labs, so I can’t make it to you, but I can help from here. Let me see what people are saying online.”

  “Thanks, Tai—”

  “I’ll try.” Priya’s voice cut Nadia off, surprising her. “I’m at the store but my uncle’s here—heading your way.”

  Emotion welled in Nadia’s chest. She might not have seen much of her friends in the last few weeks, but they were still there when she needed them. When she called, they showed up.

  “Great! Ying? Shay?”

  Nadia waited. There was no response. They must not have their phones on. Or something.

  Knowing at least some help was on its way, Nadia went quiet and zoomed down, landing on a cop’s shoulder. She dropped to her knees; long-distance flying took it out of her after a while. It took a lot of muscle to keep her stable and stay aloft, even with her biosynthetic wings. She was working on her core strength, but it didn’t happen overnight, you know.

  “Still a
t it?” A voice crackled over the cop’s radio. Nadia was jostled slightly as he grabbed for it to respond.

  “Yup,” the cop answered gruffly. “Probably a hundred of these guys, all goin’ away. White-collar, but still.”

  “Embezzlin’?” came the voice over the radio.

  “Nah.” The cop shook his head. Nadia felt a breeze from the movement. “Breakin’ NDA in the worst way. All of ’em, blasting client information out to the world for anyone to grab. Security tried to stop one of ’em, another one would step in. Got pretty violent. Can’t imagine why.”

  “Don’t try to understand finance guys,” the radio cracked.

  “Ten-four,” the cop snorted. “I’m goin’ back in.”

  Nadia narrowed her eyes. Mass data breach? Not what she had been expecting at all.

  “That’s not what they’re telling the press.” Tai’s voice reappeared in Nadia’s headset. “Carbon monoxide leak. Don’t know why they’d be arresting anyone over that, so it’s a pretty garbage cover story, but still.”

  “So definitely something sinister,” confirmed Nadia. “Priya, what’s your location?”

  “Just heading into the subway,” Priya responded, short of breath. “Might not make it.”

  Nadia sucked in her bottom lip. She didn’t know if she had time to wait. And where were Shay and Ying? If they’d all been together at the lab…or if they’d all come to HoffTech with her…or if any of them besides Tai even knew about HoffTech…

  Nadia let out a frustrated sigh. “Keep your ears open, Tai. Priya, let me know when you’re here. And if either of you hear from Shay and Ying, let me know.”

  Feeling a little more energized than she had been a moment ago, Nadia pressed her hands into the fabric under her and launched herself from the cop’s shoulder. She zoomed toward the line of button-downs on the sidewalk. They were all struggling to escape the zip ties around their hands and ankles—unsuccessfully. Financial-office paraphernalia littered the sidewalk, things they must have wielded to use as weapons before they were subdued: pencils (sharp, good for stabbing), ledgers (large, good for bludgeoning), even a few VERAs (small but heavy; good for throwing).

  She stopped just short of one of their faces. Nadia tilted her head as he fought against his zip ties. What would possess them all to do this? Poor working conditions? Not enough foosball tables in the office? Bad returns on their retirement plans? Finally learning the definition of “work-life balance”?

  Suddenly, the man looked up, directly at Nadia. And there was something wrong with his eyes. His pupils—the black part in the middle—took up almost his entire iris. She could barely make out a rim of the blue that his eyes would have been normally; the black had expanded so far that it eclipsed everything else. A strong tide over the ocean. A pull that didn’t make sense.

  NADIA’S NEAT SCIENCE FACTS!!!

  Human eyes are disgusting, which also makes them excellent. There’s the white bit; that is the sclera. It is mostly collagen. Then there’s the color bit, the iris; and inside that, the black bit, the pupil. The iris is designed to grow or contract depending on how big the pupil needs to be at any given moment, like the aperture on a camera. The bigger the iris, the more light reaches your retina, which creates a two-dimensional picture of the world that your brain receives. When you’re in very bright light, your iris contracts and your pupil is teeny-tiny; that protects your retina from being like oh my gosh no stop it’s too much light I can’t see!!! But when you’re in darkness, your iris opens and your pupil gets huge (or “dilates”) so that you can take in as much light as possible to not bump into your desk next to your bed when you get up to go to the bathroom in the night.

  Or, at least, that’s how things mostly work. Other things can cause a “mydriatic,” or unusually dilated, pupil. Your optometrist might put drops in your eyes that retract your iris, so that she can take a better look at the health of your retina. If you’re concentrating really hard on something, your pupil might expand. But the iris dilator can also be contracted by stimulation of your adrenergic receptors—basically, if your adrenaline is going, so are your pupils. So a blown pupil could mean that you are excited, or scared…or it could mean that you’re on amphetamines, cocaine, or any number of other drugs that you should not be messing with.

  So, these guys. Scared out of their minds? Excited to be here? Or just really, really high?

  “Get down!” There was a commotion behind Nadia, pulling her away from the man’s dark stare. She turned her head—three of the men coming out of the building had overpowered their guards and were charging them. The cops already had their weapons drawn. S.H.I.E.L.D. was nowhere to be found.

  Nadia guessed she had only seconds before the police started firing. She didn’t have time to wait for Priya; she still didn’t know if she was going to hear from Shay or Ying at all; and there was only so much Tai could do from the lab. Nadia didn’t want anyone to get killed on the street today, not before she could find out exactly what these men were on or who was causing them to act like this. Blown-out pupils were a sure sign of adrenaline overload, for one reason or another. She would have to be careful in how she approached, but she would have to act quickly. She was running out of time—and she was on her own.

  As usual, lately.

  Because of her size, she moved faster than the men did, at least. Nadia did a backflip and sped toward the three men rushing the cops. She would have to be surgical in her precision if she wanted to bring the three of them down as quickly and painlessly as possible.

  First, a foot to the trachea. Nadia laid herself out vertically and blasted directly into the first man’s throat. She didn’t have the time to watch, but she knew he would collapse to the ground in an attempt to catch his breath.

  Fixable. Effective.

  She kept her momentum going with a steep dive. She watched as the second man whipped a pair of standard office-supply scissors out like a throwing knife. She used her current force to twirl herself upward, aiming straight for the makeshift weapon. Nadia watched the scissors spin end-over-end in slow motion as she sped toward them. She would have to time this just right.

  The scissor blades arced up and toward Nadia and she alighted onto them, running up the narrow edge toward the handle. Launching herself into the air, Nadia kicked down as hard as she could, changing the scissors’ trajectory and minimizing the potential threat. The kick served to fling her forward, and Nadia stretched her hands out in front of her, aiming directly for the second man’s solar plexus. Her palms connected and she felt the wind knock out of him with just a single blow. Nadia slipped to one side as the man doubled over and sped around him. She kicked off his back to launch herself forward again. The speed and pressure from her kickoff tipped the man forward, sending him to the ground next to his friend.

  One left. Nadia zoomed upward, planning on attacking his trachea in the same way—but she wasn’t anticipating his fall. He tripped over the two men in front of him, sending him careening directly toward Nadia. At her current velocity she couldn’t make the proper adjustment and instead she went flying directly into the open V of his button-down as he fell forward.

  So here she was. Down some drugged-up finance boy’s shirt, accosted by what was probably “Preposterone”-scented antiperspirant, trying to quickly come up with a way to stop this man from getting back up again and probably getting himself shot in the process.

  Nadia recognized that this was her own fault. She could have just gone straight home. Just gotten right on the bus to the E and then another bus and she would have been home. She could have finished an episode of a podcast. Maybe two episodes!

  But instead, she was staring at a guy’s gigantic hairy nipple.

  Moderate-to-medium on the death ray scale. For sure.

  Nadia grabbed a fistful of chest hair and used it to lever herself up and out of the offensively-scented button-down. She sped toward the ground, hitting the sidewalk the same second her target did. Nadia looked around quickly for somethi
ng she could use, and—

  There. A tangle of long USB cables. Perfect.

  Nadia alighted, skimming close to the ground and grabbing one end of the cable as she flew. She could see the man already trying to get back up and knew she was running out of time. She flew straight at his ankles, slamming a USB connector down into the back of his brown loafer. Letting the rest of the cable slip through her hands as she flew, Nadia zoomed in figure eights back and forth between the man’s feet, over and over and over again until she was finally out of cable. She wrapped the free end around the center of the complex knot and rushed to the side, just as he faceplanted right on top of his other two downed friends.

  Nadia looked up. The cops were lowering their weapons.

  She smiled. Crisis averted. And she’d done it all in a matter of moments.

  And then Nadia lay down on the ground next to the three unconscious business bros, and caught her own breath.

  “Okay, impressive. But…” Tai raised an eyebrow. “Did you do it?”

  “Tell me you did it,” Bobbi added, grinning.

  Nadia was going to disappoint them both. She shook her head, and both of her friends threw their hands in the air in exasperation.

  “What is even the point of being tiny and super-strong if you can’t give some estúpido the world’s worst purple nurple?” Taina sounded exasperated.

  “Don’t ever tell me what any of that means!” Nadia suggested cheerfully.

  “Fine, fine,” Taina acquiesced.

  “I did hit him in the nipple with a Sting, though,” Nadia offered. The gauntlets in her Wasp suit collected Nadia’s natural bioelectricity and she could harness the reserves with a well-aimed shot. With a Sting, Nadia could zap her target with an electric shock strong enough to knock a grown man to his knees.