The Unstoppable Wasp

by Sam Maggs

  Margaret caught herself on her wings in midair and fired off two Stings toward Nadia, who easily danced away from them both. “I need you, Nadia,” Margaret repeated. “I need you to understand.”

  “I understand you stole my work and you’re brainwashing people!” Nadia was livid, and time was running out. She hoped Ying and Priya were well on their way to the server room by now. Dodging another Sting, Nadia zoomed down in size, ducking behind a chair to hide.

  Here she was, staring down a giant piece of chewed gum, trying to figure out how her mentor could possibly be responsible for turning her AI evil.

  Nadia launched herself into the air and up toward the ceiling. She came to perch on the edge of the planetarium’s dome, slowly moving toward the floor. Nadia wanted to take Margaret out. To launch herself across the room and down and place a punch right at the base of her neck and leave her to S.H.I.E.L.D.

  But even more than that, she wanted to understand. Nadia wanted to see the best in people, always. But she wasn’t a fool. She couldn’t believe that she’d been so wrong about this woman. She didn’t want to believe it. She—

  “Nadia, wait.” She had forgotten that Margaret could also shrink, thereby eliminating her slow-down-time advantage entirely. From the air, Margaret landed gently on the dome with her hands raised. “I want to explain.”

  Nadia raised a fist, ready to blast Margaret with a Sting. Margaret raised her fist, too. A giant vine slid up across the dome and between the two of them.

  She was overpowered. And, more than that, she wanted to know.

  Nadia dropped her hand. “Fine. Tell me.”

  “You know VERA has the potential to change the world. You know—”

  “Spare me the marketing.” Nadia crossed her arms.

  “Fine,” Margaret said bluntly. She dropped her fist. “HoffTech was running out of money. I had the vision for VERA; I knew how important she was. But my father cut me off. He didn’t see the potential. First Hank; then my own father. I turned to venture capital, but they started making demands—demands I wasn’t comfortable with. I had to find a way to keep this place afloat. It was my life.”

  Nadia counted the exits around her. The vines blocked her escape to the right, but to the left she was free. She could be out of here on her wings in moments. She shifted her stance and continued to listen.

  Margaret stepped toward the vine, resting her palms on it and leaning toward Nadia. She spoke quieter. “We had advertisers. Sponsors. The more people buy their products, the more kickback we get. A few small…suggestions…never hurt. Subliminal messaging really only works on people who are already thinking about doing the thing in the message. Didn’t you love your white tennis shoes?”

  Nadia gritted her teeth. She did love those shoes. They looked so fresh.

  “Free will is not a toy,” Nadia said through her teeth. “You don’t get to mess with people’s brains because you need money.”

  “It was harmless!” Margaret pushed back off the vine, throwing her hands in the air. “No one was hurt.”

  “And Crédit France?”

  “A glitch.” Margaret shook her head, pacing back and forth behind the vine. “Not our code.”

  “And Times Square?”

  “A bug!”

  “And the countdown?”

  Margaret froze. “What countdown?”

  Nadia squinted. Was Margaret being obtuse on purpose? Was this part of her trick? “The countdown. Embedded in VERA’s subliminal code. Terminating at midnight. Tonight?” Every time Nadia added a statement, she expected to see recognition dawn on Margaret’s face. But it never came.

  Instead, Margaret sat down on her vine.

  “That’s the bug. The same bug we saw before Crédit France, and before Times Square.” Margaret looked up at Nadia. “And it’s happening again? Tonight?”

  “System-wide,” Nadia confirmed. “We assumed it was VERA herself. Or you.”

  Margaret shook her head. “VERA’s incapable of that, even after you added the CodePhage in our office. We made certain of it. We’re not trying to be Ultron.”

  Nadia stepped forward, cautiously. “Can you shut VERA down while we figure this out?”

  “No!” Margaret leapt up again, and the vine vibrated. “No. We can’t. We’ll lose millions if we shut our network down, even for an hour.”

  Nadia launched herself into the air, Margaret a moment behind her, ready to fire a Wasp Sting. “There won’t be anything left to lose if we don’t stop it whatever this is. There’s no user base if they’re all hurt.” Nadia zoomed toward Margaret, grabbing her by the arms before she had any idea what was going on. The two tumbled to the floor. Nadia hit the button on both of their suits—same place on each, Margaret hadn’t bothered to redesign—and they hit the floor hard, full-size.

  Both of them sat up gingerly, rubbing their spines where they’d slammed against the hard floor of the planetarium.

  “If it’s not you,” Nadia said, wincing, “and it’s not VERA…then who?”

  Margaret looked…devastated. “I told you, we were forced to take venture capital.” It was more of a statement than a question. Nadia bobbed her head. “There was one firm that offered more than the rest. Substantially more. Enough to keep us going for the rest of the year, at least. But they asked for access to our code. And our servers.”

  Nadia slid back from Margaret. She knew what was coming—and she didn’t want to believe it.

  “Thanks for that, by the way,” came a man’s voice from behind them.

  They both turned to find a man in a nondescript gray suit walking toward them. The remains of Priya’s plant blockade hung from the top of the stairwell. Nadia squinted, and realized she recognized him; it was the same dour, middle-aged white man from Margaret’s finance meeting, the first day they’d met. The one with the hair and beard so black it shone almost blue in the light.

  And behind him trailed Monica Rappaccini, her pupils so wide Nadia could no longer tell the color of her eyes.

  “Roger Bain,” Margaret spat, standing up. “What are you doing here?”

  “A.I.M. has come to collect on its investment,” the man said. He offered Nadia a hand. “Nice suit.”

  Nadia stood up without taking the assist, piecing it together. “You’ve been altering people’s brains using Margaret’s subliminal code.”

  The man Margaret called Bain shrugged and dropped his hand. “She’s a genius, isn’t she?” Three more A.I.M. lackeys in their black hazmat suits filed up the staircase.

  The Goth Devo reunion no one asked for, Nadia thought bitterly.

  “We barely had to touch VERA’s systems at all,” said Bain. “She was already in thousands of homes; after tonight, we’ll be able to make people do whatever we ask of them.”

  “Like fight your wars,” Nadia said disdainfully. To her shock, Bain laughed in her face.

  “No, my little bug.” Bain looked at her the way a father looks at a child he thinks is incompetent. Pitying and condescending. Nadia’s least-favorite combination. “We don’t need a zombie army. We’re not in a movie. We play to people’s strengths. We need money, we have the employees at a credit union give us money. We need power, we have Monica here build us a test Teleforce.”

  “Death ray,” Nadia said under her breath.

  “We need access to the quantum realm,” he continued calmly, “we enlist the folks at Pym Labs. It’s that simple.”

  “You do seem simple,” Nadia shot back.

  Bain tutted. “Too bad. You would have been good little agents. Monica?” He waved to the woman, and passed his men on the way down the staircase. “I’m going to make sure this is finished. HoffTech and VERA are ours.” Margaret seethed.

  “Nice to see you again, Nadia,” Monica said, stepping in front of the two women with wings.

  “Wish I could say the same,” replied Nadia. And she really did. But unfortunately, Monica was still evil. Now more evil than usual. Double evil! The worst kind.

  “
Are you getting this?” Nadia said, seemingly at random.

  “Yeah, I’m getting it,” Margaret answered next to her.

  “Oh, you bet,” Taina said in Nadia’s ear at the exact same time. “Priya and Ying are hitting A.I.M. agents near the servers, Shay’s reporting more outside. They’re gonna need an assist.”

  “Then let’s do this,” Nadia said, balling her hands into fists. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Margaret do the same. In perfect sync, they leapt from the ground—and disappeared.

  “You allowed them to do this!” Nadia shouted as she and Margaret pushed an A.I.M agent down the spiral staircase together. He toppled backward, his idiotic bucket hat popping off as it hit the ground. Pretty useless as a helmet, then, huh?

  “I didn’t know they were going to brainwash my entire client base!” Margaret waved her hands and vines shot through the air, wrapping the other two A.I.M. agents up and tossing them out of the girls’ way. Nadia and Margaret leapt down the center of the staircase, using their wings to slow their fall.

  “What did you expect from A.I.M.?!” Nadia shouted up at her former mentor. “They literally want to overthrow all governments!”

  “Most governments are terrible!” Margaret landed next to Nadia and began sprinting through the office. “Servers this way!”

  “More agents incoming,” Shay’s voice warned Nadia.

  “Monica’s on the comms, searching for you,” added Taina.

  “Got it,” she confirmed. Nadia sprinted after the older woman. “That still doesn’t mean you should take money from techno-anarchists, Margaret!” They were running through Margaret’s aesthetically bland white-and-birch cubicles, right toward another wall of A.I.M. agents.

  “I know!” Margaret’s voice cut off as she shrank. “I know,” she said again, popping back to full size and using her momentum to clothesline two of the agents. They dropped like bricks. “As soon as we started working together—talking about your lists and Hank and your dreams—I knew I’d made a mistake!”

  Nadia hit her button and shrank. She waited a moment and Margaret appeared next to her. Nadia grasped Margaret’s hands in hers and used her wings to spin the two of them in a circle, faster and faster and faster, until—

  “Now!” she yelled over the rushing air. Both Nadia and Margaret hit their buttons and sprang back to full size, a devastating pas de deux whirlwind in the middle of the office. Plants went flying. Files and phones were upended. A.I.M. agents went crashing through floor-to-ceiling windows. Not too bad, if Nadia did say so herself.

  “Down one more floor!” Margaret yelled, bolting for the emergency exit. Nadia followed, and Margaret sealed the door behind them with plants—just like Priya.

  She stopped inside the door and grabbed Nadia by the shoulder. Nadia stopped to look Margaret in the eye, through their helmets. “I’m sorry, Nadia,” Margaret said. She sounded sincere. “I tried to get too big too fast and do too much at once, and I think you know how that feels.”

  Nadia didn’t move. She didn’t want to admit it, even though they both knew it was true. “You were still using VERA to trick people into buying things they didn’t need. You still partnered with A.I.M.” Nadia shrugged off Margaret’s hand.

  “I know.” Margaret retracted her helmet. “I left the door wide open for Bain.” Someone started pounding on the emergency exit behind them, but Margaret’s plants held true. “I just wanted to tell you that I know I screwed up.”

  Nadia looked at the straining plants and back at Margaret. The truth was that she wasn’t entirely certain that Margaret was apologizing for the right reasons. Sure, Margaret was obviously upset that A.I.M. used an exploit in her own code to gain access to her system. But she didn’t seem that remorseful about including the subliminal messaging in the first place. VERA could do a lot of good, it was true; but nothing was worth robbing people of their free will. Nothing.

  Nadia grew up in a place where freedom was a joke, a story Americans told themselves so they could sleep at night. And she knew this country wasn’t perfect. But the people here had provided her with a second chance. No matter how much she wanted to change the world, she would never ever ever sacrifice her values or the free will of those around her in order to effect that change. That would make her just as bad as A.I.M.

  Or the Krasnaya Komnata.

  Margaret wanted so badly to prove to Hank, and to her father, and even to Robert Bain that she knew what she was doing. That she didn’t need their approval. That she was going to change the world. But, for once, it looked like Hank’s instincts were right. Margaret’s motives were suspect. You couldn’t prove anything to the people who’d doubted you in your past; they would never be able to give you the validation you were searching for. You could never know how someone long-gone would feel about Attack of the Clones.

  And it didn’t really matter. Your past was your past. The only thing you could control was how you reacted to it, and what you did next. But Margaret hadn’t realized that; she had been so focused on the big picture that she’d lost sight of the people she was going to have to step on in order to make it. She had been willing to hurt people on her way to the top. And that was unacceptable.

  The slamming was getting louder. They had to go. Now.

  “You did screw up,” Nadia agreed. “You can start making up for it now, by destroying VERA’s servers and helping me save my friends.”

  Margaret was already running down the stairs.

  “Next left!” shouted Margaret, taking the corner at breakneck speed. She and Nadia were almost at the server room—almost able to shut VERA down once and for all. They were running out of time; only fifteen minutes stood between them and A.I.M.’s brainwashing signal. It was now or never.

  Nadia skidded around the corner and immediately shot two Stings into the ceiling. Drywall rained down around them, clouding the air with dust. It bought Nadia just enough time to hit her trusty button, shrink to Wasp size, and assess the situation. She flew forward through the dust and scanned the area.

  The door to the server room was open in front of her, cold air pouring out of it and chilling the hall. Inside, Monica and her A.I.M. agents were trying desperately to keep the system running, despite interference from Ying and Priya. Vines spilled in tangles over the entire corridor, stemming from Priya’s two pots and backlit by a chorus of blinking red lights that caught the dust and made for a deeply eerie haze. The vines held the door open, pinning several A.I.M. agents to the walls.

  Ying was standing with one foot each on two downed agents, tossing a third into the air and toward a wall as Nadia approached. Nadia zipped through the open door and directly into the cold room, a cacophony of whirring fans and buzzing servers greeting her tiny ears. In the center of the room, Priya was trying to dash around Monica to flip the main circuit breaker.

  This—this is what happened when the G.I.R.L.s worked together. Nothing could stand in their way.

  Nadia flew straight for Monica’s head, catching herself in her hair—Eugh, giant dandruff, eugh—and swinging forward to land on Monica’s nose. Nadia could see Monica’s hand swinging up in slow motion to swat at her.

  Nadia slammed her fist into the bridge of Monica’s nose. Monica went flying back into a bank of servers, sparks and wires flying. Nadia pushed off and flipped backward through the air, landing sideways on one of the server blocks. She ran toward her friends, leaping from server to server, careful to avoid any wiring that could trip her up. As Nadia raced forward, as if in slow motion, she saw something familiar attached to a server on her left—a quantum oscillator. Modeled exactly after the ones she’d been working with Shay to perfect in Pym Labs.

  She’d been frustrated before. Now Nadia was mad.

  Nadia took to the air and kicked her legs out in front of her just as another A.I.M. agent ran through the door, making a beeline for Priya. In an instant, Nadia expanded to her usual size, her feet ramming directly into the agent. Hit by the girl equivalent of a speeding car, the bucket-he
ad slammed into the nearest block of servers and slumped to the floor.

  Nadia looked at Priya—and found herself yanked backward, a gloved arm tight around her neck. She went to shrink, but found her button-pushing hand restrained by the agent’s other arm. Letting out a frustrated yell, Nadia pushed her weight back onto the A.I.M. agent and ran her feet up the wall in front of her, using the momentum to flip over his head, breaking the agent’s grip. She landed behind him and used her fists to punch out the backs of both of his knees. The man hit the ground with a groan. Nadia hit him with a Sting just to be sure he wasn’t getting up again.

  Nadia spun toward the door to see Ying blocking three agents from entering at the same time. She watched Ying jab a man in the throat, and he dropped like a brick—but there were still two to go. Her hand now free, Nadia released her Pym Particles with a press of her thumb and zoomed toward the A.I.M. lackey nearest her. They weren’t wearing their flamethrowers—Monica must have told them not to endanger the servers more than was absolutely necessary.

  That worked very well for Nadia.

  Dodging both bucket-heads, Nadia landed on her friend’s shoulder. “Ying,” Nadia said, using her comms to make up for the sound-wave distortion. “Love Duet?”

  Ying’s dry chuckle came through loud and clear through Nadia’s helmet. “Why the heck not?”

  Nadia grinned. She didn’t like hurting people. But she did love saving the day. “You go left, I’ll go right.” She felt her friend nod.

  In the Red Room, fighting and ballet were two halves of the same whole. They had a lot more in common than one might assume. Ying had told Nadia “dance fighting” was a thing in some movies, which did make sense. But it was a very literal correlation in the Red Room. The Love Duet was always Nadia’s favorite number in Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake. She and Ying had been particularly good at it, especially when she was allowed to be Odette to Ying’s Siegfried. Nadia had always been better at the turns and the leaps; Ying preferred the supporting role, holding Nadia steady as she flew up into the air in lifts and holds.