The Unstoppable Wasp

by Sam Maggs

  “You’re sure everything’s fine?”

  “Yes, yes.” Nadia was in a rush. She paced back and forth in front of the restaurant with her phone up to her ear. Inside, she could see Margaret chowing down. Nadia hated being rude on her phone like this, but she always picked up for Janet.

  “It’s just…” Janet trailed off, and Nadia bobbed up and down on her feet with impatience. “We haven’t had a good chat in a while, and I wanted to see what you were up to, see if you needed any help with Like Minds, or anything else you might be working on.…”

  “I appreciate it, Machekha.” Nadia did appreciate it. She did! But the things she was doing right now were really more Margaret things than Janet things. Especially since she still hadn’t told Janet about Maria’s list. Or Margaret. Or…anything, really.

  It just seemed like getting into it was more complicated than keeping it to herself. She tried not to think about how it was falling further into the “lying by omission” category every day.

  Telling Janet about any of this would just open another can of worms Nadia wasn’t sure she wanted to deal with right now. She knew how Janet felt about Hank, and rightfully so. Nadia just wanted to get to know her mother in the best way that she could without hurting anyone. On her own terms. Involving Janet was just asking for confusion, and it would mean opening Janet up to a painful part of her past, too.

  Nadia was confused enough as it was. She was having an amazing time getting to know Margaret. And she really had been enjoying Star Wars, while Ying was still around. But every time she crossed off a list item, she just felt like she learned something more about herself, and not about her mother. Like that she didn’t enjoy Attack of the Clones. Maria had never even seen Attack of the Clones. So did it even really count as an item on the list? It certainly didn’t feel like it was bringing her any closer to her mother.

  Nadia shook her head. “I’m fine, Janet, really. Is Dedushka worrying about me again?”

  “Tell her I am not worrying about her!” Nadia heard Jarvis yell from the other end of the phone.

  “Jarvis says—”

  “Tell him he’s not very convincing,” said Nadia, laughing. “I’m sorry, Janet, I’ve just been busy. Let’s make a plan to do something soon? After Like Minds?”

  Nadia could almost hear Janet’s relief through the phone. “Okay. After Like Minds.”

  “Sounds good. I’ve got to go, though,” Nadia said. And she almost hung up before she said it, but caught herself at the last second. “I love you,” Nadia said.

  “Love you, too,” Janet said. Nadia hung up and rushed back into the restaurant.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said, sliding back into the booth she was sharing with Margaret.

  Margaret waved off her apology with her fork. “So tell me about it,” said Margaret, her mouth half-full. “You’ve been working with VERA?”

  Nadia bobbed her head in agreement, too busy chewing to answer at the moment. She and Margaret were out in the Ukrainian Village in Manhattan’s East Village, chowing down on the food of Nadia’s people. Or of Maria’s people, at least. Nadia had been raised on poorly cooked Russian food…if you could even call it “food” in good conscience. It was mostly what Americans assumed food would be like in a gulag. Nadia hated to give credence to Americans’ weirdly closed-minded ideas about Russian culture, but also…the food in the Krasnaya Komnata really was bad.

  Just…so, so bad.

  It was part of the reason why Nadia was so eager to try as much new cuisine as she could now that she was in New York City, the greatest melting pot in the world. If there just happened to be many literal pots of melting deliciousness around, well, she was going to take advantage. And there was no better place to discover what you liked than in Manhattan. You could try anything.

  And Nadia had.

  She wondered if Maria would have liked Ethiopian food.

  “Well.” Nadia paused to pop another potato-stuffed pyrohy* into her mouth whole. “I actually got the idea when I was sitting in that human fishbowl office after you had to step away.”

  Margaret laughed, cutting up her holubets,† carefully attempting to keep the stuffing inside the cabbage roll. “I love that fishbowl, but go on.”

  “I kept thinking about it when I got back to my lab,” Nadia continued, increasing in speed as she became increasingly more passionate. “And more and more ideas just kept coming to me and it was like…a moment of inspiration. Finally!”

  “Those are rare,” Margaret sympathized. She lifted a fork overfilled with stuffed cabbage. “Think I can get this all in my mouth in one go?”

  “If you do not, I’ll be disappointed,” Nadia said with grave seriousness. She laughed as Margaret shoved the whole thing right into her mouth. She was a true inspiration, after all. “I knew you wouldn’t let me down!”

  “Mmmff.” Margaret gave a humble shrug around a mouthful of cabbage.

  “You had VERA bring up my mother’s list—with my permission,” Nadia continued. “Do you remember that?”

  Margaret swallowed. “Sure. I have admin privileges that allow me to access off-site VERAs, but only with permission from their primary user.”

  “Okay,” said Nadia. “But what if we eliminated those barriers to access?”

  The CEO squinted. “In what way?”

  “If every person had a VERA, and if those VERAs had access to each other, the potential human connectivity could increase utility exponentially.” Nadia speared another pyrohy in her excitement. “There would be privacy settings and opt-outs and everything necessary for people’s safety, but think about it. If your VERA knew what my VERA knew, they could have connected us much earlier.” Nadia was waving her pyrohy fork around like a conductor’s baton. “You could have helped me without even knowing me.”

  “So…” Margaret’s fork was frozen halfway over her plate. Nadia watched the holubets fall back to the plate. Margaret was so deep in thought she didn’t even notice. “It’s like the self-repairing software. VERA could search its own networks for solutions to user problems.”

  “Yes!” Nadia said. Her own pyrohy was still zipping through the air over the table. Nadia was a big gesticulator; she couldn’t help it. “A babysitter with a free afternoon on her schedule could instantly be connected with a parent looking for last-minute child care. Someone who needs repair work done, scheduled. A student struggling with a subject instantly meets a tutor. There are exploits we’d have to anticipate, but we could work on it!” Nadia finally waved her fork so forcefully her pyrohy landed in the lap of the older lady one table over. “Sorry!” Nadia said with another wave of her fork, not embarrassed in the least. She was being passionate! The lady had a salfétka* on her lap; she was fine.

  The flying pyrohy seemed to shake Margaret out of her reverie. She flagged the waitress over to pay their bill while talking through the potential flaws in Nadia’s plan. Nadia had a response for all of them; these were still early plans and not meant to be put in motion tomorrow, after all. All software had bugs and security measures and privacy concerns. She could solve it. With time, she could solve them all.

  Nadia and Margaret left the restaurant, full of food and inspiration. Just the way Nadia liked it.

  “Do you have time, still?” Nadia asked Margaret, as they wandered out into the East Village.

  “Yeah, why?” Margaret nudged her. “Want to check another thing off your mom’s list?”

  Nadia felt an unfamiliar pang when Margaret referred to Maria as her “mom.” She’d only ever thought of Janet as her substitute mother; Maria was a sort of a faraway concept that vaguely held the shape of “mother,” but didn’t really fit the mold. Like, if you’d never heard the word “awry” said out loud before, you had an idea of what the word should sound like, but when you actually heard someone say it in English* it actually sounded completely different than the way you thought it should.

  She supposed Maria was her “mom,” technically. But holding the concepts of Maria and
mom in her head at the same time felt slippery. Like she was trying to make a gas stay inside a wire-frame cage. It was impossible; gas fills the volume of the space it is in. You can’t make it conform to any one shape without the proper boundaries in place.

  Nadia had no boundaries when it came to Maria. No proper shape. Just a wire frame, bent together with lists and ideas and hopes and concerns. Every time she finished another list item, there was more wire, but Nadia chose where to place it and in what shape. It conformed to Nadia’s imagination. It wasn’t attached to anything real.

  She shook her head in response to Margaret’s question. “No, not another list thing. There’s actually someone I want you to meet.” Nadia dodged out of a hurrying pedestrian’s way; she narrowly avoided colliding with a familiar street-meat stand. “Actually, I think my driving instructor lives around here.”

  “You want me to meet your driving instructor?” Margaret frowned.

  “No!” Nadia shook her head emphatically. “Absolutely not. She is too scary for you.”

  “You’d be surprised.” Margaret winked at Nadia, following her down into the Eighth Street subway station. “Oh hey, nice shoes!”

  Nadia smiled a little sheepishly. They were white tennis shoes, just like the ones she’d seen Margaret and all her friends wearing. She’d ordered a pair online after working on her plans with VERA that night for hours. They made Nadia feel like a real tech CEO. Which, she supposed, technically, she was! Plus, they worked with her favorite crop-top-plus-high-waist-bottom combos. Versatile. Janet laughed at Silicon Valley types (like Margaret) who thought that clothing was a frivolous concern, but Nadia had to admit that she saw the time-saving value in wearing the same thing every single day.

  She would probably need more than one pair of white tennis shoes in that case, though.

  Nadia and Margaret hopped on the W train, still chatting about Nadia’s plan. Margaret was definitely intrigued, though Nadia could tell it was in her nature to question everything at length before getting excited about it. Tai was like that, too. Tai would absolutely hate to learn that she had anything at all in common with Margaret. The thought amused Nadia.

  “This way!” Nadia grabbed Margaret’s hand and pulled her up the stairs at the Times Square station, battling tourists with their maps and their cargo shorts for every step. Technically cargo shorts were a wise fashion decision (they could store so much! So many pockets!) but viscerally Nadia could not not hate them. It was in her fashion-designer blood.

  “I don’t really come to Times Square—” Margaret started, cut off by another tourist brandishing a camera.

  “No one does,” Nadia agreed. “It’s just over here!”

  Nadia pushed through the doors of a small tchotchke shop and suddenly she and Margaret were inside, away from the din of the crowds and the light of the jumbotrons. It was just Nadia, Margaret, many Manhattan magnets, and—

  “Priya!” Nadia waved to her friend behind the counter. Nadia hated fighting with her friends, and she was hoping that she might be able to patch things up with Priya today. She was sure that if Priya met Margaret, she would understand what Nadia had been doing lately, and maybe even want to spend more time in the labs. “Margaret, this is Priya, G.I.R.L.’s chief botanist. She’s a genius and also incredibly cool and pretty.”

  “Nadia!” Priya sounded surprised, and not necessarily good surprised. “Are you okay? What are you doing here?”

  Nadia’s brows knit together slightly. Everyone kept asking if she was okay. It was getting to be a bit much. “Do I need a reason to come see my friend?” she tried. “Regardless, I have one. This is Margaret.” Nadia brandished her newest friend like the cutest tchotchke in the shop. “CEO of HoffTech. She’s helping with Like Minds!”

  “Hi.” Margaret waved, a little awkwardly.

  “Cool; hey,” Priya said, but her heart wasn’t in it. She was clearly distracted by something. The fight?

  Nadia saw Priya subtly shift something under the counter. She wasn’t certain, but it looked vaguely plantlike.

  “Working on your new…project?” Nadia said coyly.

  “Yes,” Priya said. “And it’s not going very well and I was kind of in the middle of something.…Could we do this later, maybe?”

  Nadia was disappointed, but she understood. Things with Priya were clearly patch-up-able, if not at this exact moment. Still, she didn’t even know where Shay and Ying were right now, and she certainly couldn’t bring Margaret back to meet Tai or Bobbi or Janet.…She sighed. Seemed like inducting Margaret into G.I.R.L. would have to wait.

  “Well, it was nice to meet you,” Margaret said with a smile. She slid a business card across the counter to Priya. “Really excited to be working with G.I.R.L.”

  “Thanks. I’ll see you later.” Priya dismissed them. She set the plant back on the counter as Nadia headed for the door.

  Which shattered, glass exploding across the store in a shower of razor-sharp glitter.

  “Nadia!” Margaret threw herself at her new friend, covering her with her body to protect her from the flying glass. On the way down, Margaret slammed her head against the front counter. She slumped to the floor, trapping Nadia’s legs under her body.

  “Margaret!” Nadia slid out from under Margaret, taking care not to jostle her too much for fear of injury. Margaret groaned and turned over, rubbing the front of her head.

  “That’ll leave a mark,” she grumbled.

  “Wait here,” Nadia said. She saw Priya already zooming to the front of the store, her potted plant in hand. “I’m going to see what happened.”

  “VERA, call nine-one-one,” Margaret said into the miniature gold rectangle affixed to her wrist by a silicone band. “Nadia, wait—” Margaret reached out to stop her, but Nadia was already out the front door.

  Both Nadia and Priya stopped short. Times Square was wild—more wild than usual. Tourists were breaking windows in every storefront, throwing chairs through windows, devastating storefronts. Overhead, the massive billboard screens—all of them—flashed bright yellow.

  “They’re not stealing anything,” Priya noted, spinning in a circle as she took in the chaos around her. “They’re not. They’re not even going into the stores. They’re just…breaking stuff.”

  “World’s worst flash mob,” Nadia agreed. But they’d been too loud—a couple of the closest chaos-makers turned slowly to face the two girls.

  “I don’t have my suit on,” Nadia said quickly. “Priya, get back in—”

  But it was too late. The two tourists—and they couldn’t be anything but tourists with their dad sneakers and fleece pullovers—ran toward Nadia and Priya. The woman held her massive tote bag in the air like a weapon. The man did the same with his DSLR camera.

  “Get down,” Nadia said, shoving Priya behind her hastily. No suit meant no shrinking, but Nadia was still trained in hand-to-hand combat. Still, these weren’t A.I.M. agents—they were Midwesterners. She would have to be careful.

  Even without her Wasp powers, Nadia was still faster than the average Manhattan fast-walker. She ran forward and feinted around the woman, getting behind her quickly enough to grab hold of the tote bag over her head. Nadia yanked the bag away and quickly threw the handle around the woman’s neck, pulling it tight under her jawline, careful not to constrict her windpipe. The woman struggled, grasping at the strap, but Nadia was strong. It only took moments before the tourist dropped, unconscious—though it wouldn’t last long.

  The man had continued his rush at Priya while Nadia had dealt with the woman. Nadia sped back toward her friend as the man tried to bring the camera down on Priya, but his form was slow and messy—Priya was able to dodge with ease. As Nadia got close, she dropped into a slide, kicking her legs out in front of her. “Sorry!” she yelled, literally sweeping the man off his feet. He hit the ground on his tailbone with a crack—he’d put out a hand to break his fall and it sounded as though he’d shattered his wrist. The man curled up around his broken arm. He wouldn’t
be getting up again. “Sorry! Sorry. Agh.”

  “Thanks,” Priya nodded gratefully.

  Nadia knew she didn’t have much time before things got really out of control in the Square. She grabbed the charm on her phone—her suit. “No problem. I just need a second.”

  Something they never talk about when people talk about Super Heroes is how Super Heroes get into their suits. It’s completely impractical to have your suit on under your clothes all the time. Even if that were possible because you really enjoyed marinating in your own sweat (gross), how would you pee? It was like rompers, only a thousand times worse. And how would you manage to be fashionable? Nadia loved crop tops. But crop tops with a Wasp suit underneath? Instant Super Hero secret-identity giveaway. It was a no-go.

  Nadia hit the button on the Pym Particles hidden in her miniaturized suit. It sprang up to full size. Nadia tucked herself into a corner and began quickly tugging off her jeans. It wasn’t decent, but it was what she had to do sometimes, and evil didn’t wait for decency. Nadia had the suit pulled halfway on when she noticed Priya hadn’t followed her around the corner.

  Nadia peeked out from her half-concealed hiding spot next to the tchotchke shop. The property destruction was still in full swing—but Priya wasn’t a part of it. Instead, Priya was sitting on the ground, cross-legged, holding her plant with both hands. For a moment, Nadia was confused. Priya just looked like a girl who really, really loved her plant.

  Nadia yanked on one of her sleeves in a rush as something changed in the air around Priya. Nadia could see it become almost…heavier. And suddenly, the plant in her friend’s hands began to grow.

  And grow.

  And grow.

  From Priya’s small pot, vines extended in every direction. Down to Priya’s feet, across the sidewalk, over the feet of every inexplicably violent tourist. And then up, up, up their legs and around their arms and tight against their waists until every person in the square was entangled. The place looked like the floor of a jungle, green and lush and covered in new growth. And at its center…