12 Ant-Man Natural Enemy

by Jason Starr

  “Ah, there you are,” she said.

  Dazed, but uninjured from the fall, Scott saw the gigantic Monica crouching in front of him.

  “Silly, Scott,” she said. “You really thought you could come in here and stop me all by your little ant self, with no help from your super-hero friends? Do you have any idea who you’re dealing with?

  She picked him up and squeezed him between her thumb and forefinger.

  “Wow, Dr. Pym certainly knows what he’s doing.” She moved in closer. “Look how tiny your head is. And your eyes! I wish I could keep you as my pet. Just walk around with you in my pocket.”

  Scott had always been cool in a crisis, even during his time as a criminal. He needed to buy time to figure out his next move—if he had a next move. He said, “How do you know Dr. Pym?”

  “I don’t know him personally,” Monica said. “I was a tech geek growing up. I was a fan of his work, but my hero was Einstein. I wanted to create the next super-weapon. But I knew about the so-called Ant-Man, and that he chose someone to follow in his legacy. So it has been you all along. I can’t believe it—I’m holding Ant-Man right in my hand. How powerful do you feel now, Scott? I’m guessing not so much.”

  Scott figured it would be a good idea to placate her, seeing as he couldn’t move and he was one-thousandth her size. “Yep, at the moment I feel pretty…um…small.”

  “Small?” She laughed. “Yes, you are small. You’re also weak, and powerless. And you’re about to be dead.”

  Scott remembered how much he’d liked Monica—Jennifer, then—when he’d first met her. He really knew how to pick ’em.

  “So you were at the house upstate?” Scott asked, trying to buy time.

  “Yes, it was moi,” she said. “And yes, I killed those three imbeciles.”

  “How did you hook up with Willie Dugan?” Scott asked.

  “Please,” she said. “Don’t use the term ‘hook up.’ I met Willie—or Will, as I called him—years ago. We stayed in touch over the years, and he contacted me last week. He was planning to kill you and wanted my help getting out of the country afterwards. I have a lot of connections.” She laughed. “It’s kind of funny: If I hadn’t agreed to help him, you’d already be dead. I guess I bought you another week of life.”

  “How did he think he’d kill me when I was under protection?”

  “He killed those other guys, including that judge,” she said. “Trust me, you were next on his list—and he was planning to kill your ex and your daughter, too. He had a big plan in the works, and he would’ve figured out how to pull it off. But then he told me a story about how you’d once saved his life in a fire. He thought you might be Ant-Man. That’s when I made a new deal with him, a deal to get us a ton of money. All I had to do was confirm that you were Ant-Man—and you made that so easy for me at the diner with all that ant talk.”

  “Okay, so what’s your big plan?” Scott said. “Might as well tell me.”

  Monica was walking around the room now, getting off on the power of holding the tiny, immobilized Scott in the palm of her hand.

  “This is nice,” she said. “I like this. Much more intimate than our first date at the diner. But it was cute how obviously infatuated you were with me. In another lifetime, we could have been so happy.”

  “Nah, I don’t think so,” Scott said. “In a lifetime I would’ve caught on that you were a worthless psycho and brought you to justice.”

  She smiled. “Maybe I am worthless. But trust me—you’re worth a lot. You would die before I had a chance to kill you, if you heard how much A.I.M. offered to pay me for your ant-communication technology.”

  “What do they want the technology for?”

  “You would have to see it to believe it. It was a brilliant plan, but we had to figure out how to get you to show up somewhere as Ant-Man. Part one was using your smart-ass daughter as bait to lure you upstate as Ant-Man. After I got rid of the dead weight, all I had to do was wait for you to show up. That turned out to be super-easy. First I paralyzed you—then I replicated you.”

  “Replicated? What do you mean, replicated?”

  “I invented a device that can duplicate certain types of technology. Dr. Pym would be proud.”

  “You replicated my whole suit?”

  “No, only what was most valuable,” she said. “The ability to communicate with ants. To me, that was Dr. Pym’s most impressive invention—only I don’t think he took it far enough. If you can control ants, why not other insects? And if you can control other insects, why not animals? And if animals, why not humans?” She was pacing faster, becoming more maniacal. “Think about it. A single person could control an entire army, or force a country to submit without firing a single shot.”

  “That sounds like a great goal,” Scott said sarcastically.

  “It is a great goal,” she said, missing—or ignoring—the sarcasm.

  “And you say you were a fan of Dr. Pym’s?” Scott said. “Well, I know Pym personally, and he absolutely wanted the technology to be used for good, not evil.”

  “Who cares about good and evil?” Monica said. “I’m not using the tech, I’m selling it to A.I.M. for…wait for it…twenty million dollars. Whoops, did I let that slip?”

  “That’s nice,” Scott said. “Well, in case you’ve been living under a rock for the past twenty-four hours, your grand plan has had a grand side effect. Your replicator seems to have caused a fungus mutation that’s killing off ants all over the Northeast, maybe beyond.”

  She stopped pacing, moved her face close to Scott—she was only about an inch away—and said, “Oh, Scott, don’t you get it? I don’t care about ants. I care about money.”

  “I don’t think you get it,” Scott said. “If the ants die, everything dies. Well, most things. It won’t be a world you’ll want to live in.”

  “I’ll have my own island by then,” she said.

  “Yeah,” Scott said, “and you’ll be starving to death on it.”

  “If anybody will be able to afford food, it’ll be me.”

  There was no reasoning with her.

  “Is Lawson here?” Scott asked. “Is he in on this, too?”

  “Oh, he had an unfortunate accident last week: body hasn’t been discovered yet. I’m coming into a lot of money soon, and—if you haven’t figured it out yet—I don’t play well with others. It’s been that way for a long time, since I was a kid. I was the loner type—and, yes, I killed animals. So cliché, I know. But if I could kill all the cats in my neighborhood, you think I care about what’s going on with some stupid little ants?”

  The ants insult, in particular, made Scott seethe. But he reined it in.

  “Well, I have things to do,” she said. “It’s been nice chatting with you.”

  She carried him into a small bathroom. Monica lifted the lid to the toilet and, between her thumb and forefinger, held him over the bowl. It looked like he was about to be dropped into a very large, ovular swimming pool.

  “Wait—before you kill me,” Scott said, “promise me you’ll try to reverse what you did. You don’t want this ant fungus to spread. It doesn’t get you anything.”

  “It gives me leverage,” she said. “Power.”

  “It’s senseless,” Scott said, but she wasn’t listening.

  “Sayonara, Ant-Man.”

  She dropped him into the bowl.

  He landed with what seemed like a big splash and sunk partway into the water. Then there was a tremendous roar, and the water began to swirl. Being flushed down a toilet alive was not an experience Scott had ever expected to have, and it wasn’t exactly pleasant. The water churned around, faster and faster. With seemingly incredible force, like the water from a tsunami getting sucked out to sea before the big wave strikes, Scott was sucked down the drain into total darkness.

  It felt like being on a roller coaster—a water-ride version of Space Mountain—minus all the fun. The positive was that the water would temporarily disable the suit, reverting him back to his
normal size; he just hoped that happened after he reached the sewer, because he wasn’t sure what would happen if he suddenly got hundreds of times bigger while he was inside a narrow pipe.

  In an ultimate example of careful what you wish for, Scott landed with a splash, or a thump, in the city sewer—in an experience he intended to block out from his memory for the rest of his life.

  One piece of good news—the paralysis was gone. The Pym gas activated, returning him to human size. Still, he was trapped in a sewer, in total darkness. He felt around, trying to find some way out. Finally, he was able to grab onto something slimy and climb up the concrete ledges along the sewer wall, heading toward faint light. It turned out to be a manhole cover. He managed to unlock it and climbed out of the sewer, up to the middle of the street in front of Monica’s house.

  Then he realized that a couple of kids on their bikes were watching him in awe. Or maybe shock. It wasn’t every day that you saw a super hero emerge from a city sewer.

  “Go home,” Scott said. “Pretend you never saw this.”

  Yeah, right, like there was a chance of that. One kid took out his phone and aimed it at Scott for several seconds. Then the kids took off in unison, speeding away up the block. Scott knew it wouldn’t be long until that shot was online, if it wasn’t already.

  Scott approached Monica’s house, still drenched and smelling awful. The Ant-Man suit was functioning again, though. He activated the Pym gas, shrunk, and slipped under the door.

  He didn’t see Monica in the living room—maybe she was upstairs. As he headed toward the living room, a large fly swooped down and slammed into him. That was weird—other bugs usually avoided him, not knowing what to make of a tiny human. Then another fly was soaring right toward him—its big greenish eyes and long wingspan growing larger and larger until, at the last moment, Scott ducked out of the way.

  But more flies were coming from under the door and through a space in the window, and they all zeroed in on Scott, attacking him. He was able to fight them off, of course—he was much stronger than a single fly—but there were so many, already dozens, poking at him, gnawing on him. He swatted them away, but there were too many of them, and it was impossible to get the upper hand. Were they attracted to him because of his sewer odor, the way flies swarmed dog poop on the street? It didn’t seem that way—they were unusually aggressive, as if they wanted to kill him.

  “Scott, welcome back.”

  Monica was in front of him, near the kitchen—she must’ve come up from the basement. She was human-sized, but wearing a helmet that looked very similar, if not identical, to Scott’s.

  “Looks like you might be like one of the cats I killed as a kid,” she said. “I mean, with nine lives. Well, doesn’t matter how many lives you’ve had, you’re down to your last one now.”

  More flies were swarming Scott now, making it difficult for him to see. He tried to activate the Pym gas, to grow big again, but the flies were blocking his hands.

  “Oh my god, this works—even better than I hoped!” Monica said. “Wait till I use it on humans! Okay, let’s try this….”

  Several flies bit into Scott’s suit, catching hold with a grip strong enough to lift him off the ground. They flew him around the room, zipping toward the window, then cutting back through the kitchen, and then back toward the dining room. Finally they brought him back into the hallway, hovering in front of Monica.

  “This is like the ultimate video game,” Monica said. “But it’s even better because there’s no need for a controller—it’s in my mind.”

  Then Scott heard Cassie’s voice: “Daddy!”

  Was he imagining her voice? It was hard to see with all the flies blocking his eyes. Every fly in the neighborhood had to be storming into the house.

  “Well, this is an unexpected surprise,” Monica said. “My favorite kidnapping victim is here to join the party. Welcome, Miss Lang!”

  “Daddy, are you here?”

  Monica looked back at Cassie, distracted for a moment, and the flies let up. Yes, Cassie was here—man, Tony had done a great job babysitting.

  Monica grabbed Cassie and held a gun to her head. Cassie had panic in her eyes, but managed to stay calm.

  “Looks like you should’ve stayed in the sewer where you belong,” Monica said.

  She didn’t realize that the flies had let go. Scott was already charging toward her, still at his ant size. He leapt into the air and easily swatted the gun out of her hand.

  “You can’t stop me now,” Monica said. “I’m more powerful than you are.”

  “Oh, really?” Scott punched Monica in the face, sending her tumbling backwards. “Could’ve fooled me.”

  The flies were attacking Scott again, trying to latch on to him.

  “Air power always wins a war,” Monica said.

  The flies lifted Scott up again, and swirled him around the room. The buzzing was so loud and furious it didn’t even sound insect-like anymore.

  Then Scott heard Cassie screaming for help. He remembered his promise to her, that everything would be okay. He gathered the strength to fight off a few of the flies, and he activated the HUD.

  He had experimented at times with altering the suit’s technology to communicate with insects other than ants. One time he’d actually successfully communicated with flies. It required altering the frequency of the command-probe sensor—a difficult task when he was alone, calm in a room. There was no way he could do it while he was being carried around the house by a swarm of flies.

  As Cassie screamed, “No, don’t!” Scott had an idea. He could try to tap into Monica’s device, and use his own helmet as a transmitter. It would be sort of like stealing your neighbor’s Wi-Fi.

  The flies smashed him against the window, and then flew back in the other direction. Scott managed to shut down the communication software of his helmet, but leave it in “active” mode. And sure enough, it worked.

  The flies that were holding him stopped in midair in the middle of the living room. They zeroed in on Monica just as she was about to shoot Cassie in the head. Scott issued his “attack” command, and he and the flies zoomed toward Monica.

  “Incoming!” Scott shouted, startling Monica.

  Monica’s eyes opened wide in shock as Scott grabbed her helmet, yanked it off her head, and tossed it across the room.

  Monica lay on the floor, barely conscious—no longer controlling the flies. They backed off from Scott, swarming near the windows. Scott, still ant-sized, easily flipped Monica around onto her stomach. Then he grabbed a dish towel and tied her hands together firmly behind her back.

  Scott reverted to human size and hugged Cassie.

  “Are you okay?” he said. “What’re you doing here?”

  Cassie was cringing. “Um, Dad, why do you smell so bad?”

  “Long story,” he said. “Why did Tony let you leave? How did you know I was here?”

  “Um,” she said, “that’s a long story, too, but I think I figured out what happened to the ants.”

  She explained that she thought she might have destabilized something in the ant-communication technology, when it tried to function with her brain.

  Scott glanced at Monica—she was on her side, unconscious—then did a scan of the Ant-Man suit’s software, seeing the results appear on a holographic display. Sure enough, there was an abnormality in the communication circuit.

  “Wow, maybe you’re right,” Scott said. “That’s how it happened. Monica had nothing to do with it.”

  “So how do you fix it? I thought maybe you have to keep it open now, like a portal.”

  “No, I think it’s the opposite,” Scott said. “I have to fix the software, then send a new signal.”

  “You sure that’ll work?” Cassie asked.

  “No,” Scott said, “but there’s only one way to find out.”

  Scott shrunk to ant-size, and then summoned the ants in the area. Ants crawled out of the walls; came from under the front door, the back door, and the basemen
t door. Some were healthy; others were clearly infected with the fungus.

  “Cassie, come to the living room with me,” Scott said.

  He took the remote-control device from Monica’s purse. Though he was less than half an inch tall, he easily threw the device over to Cassie.

  She caught it. “What’re you doing?” Cassie asked.

  “You’re going to do it,” Scott said. “If the ants’ brains and immunity were affected by this, then maybe we can jolt them back.”

  “What do I have to do?”

  “Aim that thing at me and activate it.”

  “How do I do that?”

  “There must be a switch or a lever. If you figured out how to use my suit, you can figure this out—”

  Cassie figured it out.

  Scott felt the jolt again, but this time the ant suit wasn’t immobilized. More important, the ants that had appeared to be suffering from the fungus immediately started to show drastic improvement. They walked around normally, not zombie-like.

  “It worked!” Cassie said.

  Scott returned to his normal size.

  Monica was partway out of the kitchen now, squirming on the floor with her arms still tied behind her back.

  “You’re making a mistake, a big mistake,” she said, “using your technology like this. What does it get you? You’re a criminal, you love money. Work with me. We can be partners.”

  Then Scott noticed something strange happening—the flies and the ants were targeting Monica. It was a combined ground and aerial assault: the ants, maybe hundreds of them now, attacked her body, biting her, while flies assaulted her from above. More flies and ants entered the house, targeting Monica, as if they instinctively knew she was their greatest enemy, and they had to fight her off.

  “Looks like there’s been some collateral damage,” Scott said.

  Monica tried to say something, but there were flies and ants all over her face, and she couldn’t speak. Scott put on his street clothes over his Ant-Man suit, and then he and Cassie left the house.

  IT’S TOTALLY viral, Dad.”