Back to GatefoldIssue #5 by A. Crute
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"The Animal Kingdom - Part Two"
Hank Pym’s apartment
Hank Pym breathed through the filter on his Ant-Man helmet. It was a newer designed one which covered the lower half of his face too and made for the perfect air filtration method…which was needed for one reason only: his current patients.
They lay on the center of his lab on four surgical tables which he had enlarged from his Pym particle-dosed supplies. They were the Ani-Men and, if what they claimed was true, they were the source of all the insanity which was currently raging throughout the city.
“I need to get out there, Hank,” said Jan. She was standing by the table which had Cat-Man lying sedated on it, his breathing was shallow. Jan looked at him with some concern and then back to Hank.
“I don’t really want you to go Jan,” he shook his head. His helmet hid the look of concern on his face. He loved his ex-wife and current girlfriend, but he wasn’t going to fight her. He had known her for long enough to know that he wouldn’t make her change her mind if she didn’t want to. She was an Avenger the same as him, one of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, and that was the reason she had to be out there.
“I’m going to go anyway. People out there need me…”
“I know,” he nodded and looked up at her. “Take one of the other prototype helmets, you’ll need protection….unless we’re already infected.”
There was a virus loose in the city. It was transforming the citizens of Manhattan and the Super-Heroes who usually protect it into bizarre half-man/half-animal hybrids. It had already taken the Fantastic Four and who knows how many others. They could hear the screams, howls and other assorted noises of terror and animalistic rage from Hank’s apartment.
It wasn’t long after they found out about this that the Ani-Men had come bursting through the window of his apartment and promptly collapsed onto the floor. Just before they lapsed into unconsciousness, Dragonfly informed them that they were the carriers…the Patients Zero for this infection.
Jan kissed Hank on the bridge of his helmet and grabbed one of the tiny copies he held up to her. She began to enlarge it in her hands. “What are we going to do about Cassie?”
“She’s safer here,” Hank said with confidence. He cast a skeptical view over the mutated villains who lay stretched out in his Lab and doubted himself for a second. He’d given her a helmet instantly so hopefully she would be clean from the infection…though he had his doubt for all three of them. But at least in his apartment she wouldn’t be attacked by some roving chimera.
Jan began to beat her wings and took to the air. She zipped out of the opening lab window and out into the city.
Hank turned his attention back to the tests he was conducting. He was without a doubt the world’s foremost bio-chemist. If anyone could figure out a cure for this particular pathogen it was him…which had been exactly why Reed Richards had sent the Ani-Men to him.
He was hoping he could do it. The people of the city, if not the entire world, were relying on him. He was the only one who could do this. His eyes watched the test tube and the computer screen carefully. He was watching for the change…he swore loudly.
The liquid in the test tube went blue instead of purple like he had hoped and the computer screen testified to the same result in the form of numbers. He was hoping that would have worked.
“Solution 13, negative,” he said to the recording device which was on one of the lab benches. He crossed the room quickly and grabbed another set of blood that he had drawn and some more readouts from one of the tests he had set away running.
“Uncle Hank, can I sit in here?” Cassie asked sheepishly from the door. Her voice sounded muffled by the helmet she was wearing.
“Cassie, I’m really busy, can’t you go and watch TV or read or…”
“There’s nothing on the TV but footage…when I turn the TV off all I can hear is the noise,” Cassie’s body held itself, her head turned away slightly. She was showing signs of embarrassment. She was scared by what was going on around her and that fear was making her ashamed. “I can’t just sit around and do nothing…I could help you.”
Hank smiled under his helmet. She wasn’t scared at all. Like him, like Jan and like her father, she wanted to help people. It was being unable to do anything which was making her uncomfortable.
“Come in, then,” he nodded. “You can watch some of the tests for me…I could do with someone to talk to too.”
Cassie fired him a massive smile which was completely missed by her uncle. She moved into the room and watched some of the computer read outs. She was well aware that she was here doing busy work but it felt better than doing nothing. She could also be a vital sounding board to her uncle.
“So…” he began “are there any boys at school who are trying to get your attention?” Hank asked in an almost offhand manner.
“Uncle Hank!” Cassie yelled in embarrassment.
“Sorry,” he muttered. “Your Dad asked me to drop it into the conversation. We were going to swarm their house with ants if there was…I should’ve tried harder on the casualness.”
He mixed the contents of two tubes together and then poured it into a small receiver on a spectral analyzer. He moved to the bodies of the Ani-Men and one by one checked their vitals.
This entire process was made 1000 times harder by their nature. The Ani-Men had been mutated by Count Nefaria and trying to isolate whatever pathogen was causing this was affecting them differently. He was trying to extrapolate symptoms 1, 2 & 3 in group A (mutant humans) to symptoms 4,5 & 6 in group B (normal humans). It was like literally trying to compare apples and oranges.
There was a beep from the computer and he crossed over to it. Cassie watched as he clicked a few keys and then dropped his hands to his side. She guessed it had been negative again. This was not going well. Her stomach churned. Then her head twisted to the side, it was hard to tell in the helmet but she was sure she could hear something.
“Uncle Hank? Can you hear….Look out!” She jabbed her hand at the window.
Hank turned quickly to look at the figure which crouched on the windowsill. Its silvery wings stopped beating for a few seconds as it peered into the room with its large compound eyes. The mandibles which were currently tearing through the human flesh of the face clicked together.
Hank recognized the costume on her rapidly mutating body instantly. It was Jan. He mentally cursed himself. Why didn’t he think of this before? Jan had always had as part of her power a wasp’s genetic cells transplanted into her; it was what made her wings and antenna grow. Unfortunately, it had caused the transformation to occur much quicker than in other cases.
Her wings began to beat again as she took to the air and moved into the room. He watched the poison dripping from her stinger carefully and prepared for her strike.
“Cassie, get in the other room!” he commanded loudly and began to grow in size.
Jan lunged at him stinger first. He blocked her emerging abdomen section with a large left forearm. Her hooked hands began to claw at his face but it was luckily protected by his helmet. His neck, shoulders and chest were not so lucky.
The pain arched through his body. He was, however, keeping his eyes on the stinger, that was the truly dangerous part of her anatomy. Given the poison dose she could probably give out at this size he would be dead in seconds. “Jan, can you hear me? Is there any of you still conscious in there?”
Her antenna moved over the surface of his head and shoulders as she continued to lash out at him. Her feet pressed against him and re-angled her body to give the sting another shot. It fired out and Hank twisted his body letting the sting move between his side and his arm narrowly missing the fatal blow.
“I’m sorry about this my love!” he grew in size a little more and tossed her backwards with a quick lash from his arm.
He focused on his hand and felt the weapon he wanted materialize there thanks to the neural link he had installed. His bio-blaster took form and began to grow until it fit his giant hand, about the size of a small cannon.
He unleashed the blast, which sounded like a massive sudden shock. It hit Jan square in the thorax and she fell to the floor sharply twitching and making an inhuman noise which could only be described as ‘chittering’.
Hank rushed to her side, decreasing his size as he went and began to check her vitals. He wasn’t sure what the vitals on a mutant Wasp-woman should be but she was alive and that was enough for him at the minute. He sized up a status disc from his pocket, one of his devices which were keeping the Ani-Men sedated and stable, and attached it to her. It worked on a cellular level and he was just waiting for the final outside testing before he would offer it up to the medical world. She instantly stopped twisting and relaxed.
“Cassie its okay to come in now,” Hank called. He watched the door as Cassie sheepishly peered around. He lifted Jan onto a growing gurney and then took a step back and crossed the room. “You okay?”
She nodded up to him and then looked nervously at Jan. “She’s going to be okay…I swear I won’t let anything happen to her.” Cassie wondered how much of that was meant to comfort her and how much was meant to comfort him.
He moved away from her and towards the bodies in the center of the room. “Cassie, I’m going to have to do something I wasn’t wanting to do. I’m going to have to shrink down and go inside one of the infected.”
“Why didn’t you want to do that?”
“I have no idea what this pathogen is. If I’m right in my thinking it’s been created by some genius, so who knows what pitfalls he could have engineered for me. I could literally be digested if the bacteria or virus is too strong and my defenses don’t do anything.”
“Then why do it?” the worry in her voice was palpable.
“I don’t have a choice any longer. Thousands have been infected and now so has Jan at an advanced speed. If I don’t go now I don’t know if I can reverse this,” he trailed off. There was another worry in his mind that he didn’t want to voice to her. Thankfully due to the helmet this fact was hidden from the very perceptive teenager. He was afraid that if he had been exposed then he could mutate at any minute and never find the cure.
“What should I do?”
“I just need you to stay here and keep an eye on the patients…we can keep in contact via the helmets if you run into any problems….oh, and I’ll be in Ape-Man, he’s the one who will have the most similar bio-chemistry to a human. Keep an especially close eye on him and wish me luck!”
Hank had begun to shrink before Cassie could even get her words out, he then vanished from sight leaving the teenager alone with several unconscious chimeras. It was a strange situation even for her. She waited there all alone…or so she thought unaware she was being watched, being watched as prey is by the predator before they choose the moment to strike.
# # # # #
Inside Ape-Man
Hank entered the large gorilla shaped man through the nasal cavity and made his way up into the area above the pallet.
Four tiny thrusters which extended from his back like the legs of an insect guided his maneuvering through the man’s body. He was searching for a thick bundle of capillaries which he could squeeze through.
He found them and began to shrink down further. His plan was to make an incision so small that even red blood cells could not fit through which would stop the ape from bleeding out whilst he was inside of his body.
The top right thruster rotated and with a movement of his hand Hank turned the thrust into a thinly aimed laser which moved across the surface of a capillary. “I’ve made the incision, it should heal fairly quickly,” Hank spoke into his communicator.
“That’s good,” said Cassie. Hank smiled at the sound in Cassie’s voice. He was planning to keep in touch with her all the way through this maneuver to keep her calm whilst she was all alone.
“I’m entering his blood flow, it’s going to be fairly low pressure in the capillaries but given my current size I’ll be swept along like a water slide…I promise not to yell in your ear too much,” he smiled as he connected the breathing apparatus to his mask and slipped through the gap.
The top two arms began to illuminate tunnels of the body which transported the oxygen. “Cassie I really wish you could see this, it’s something special.”
“Maybe you could take me one day.”
“Cassie…it’s never going to happen, your Dad doesn’t want you exposed to Pym Particles. We both know that, just let it drop.”
“Fine,” Cassie sighed. “How are you going to get to the infection?”
“Well I’m hoping that since they’re quite badly infected, they will probably be teaming with the pathogen. All I have to do is get to one of the major circulatory routes and I’ll be heading right for it….so you know when I promised not to shout?”
“Yeah?”
“I lied…” Hank decreased his size slightly and cut out his stabilizers “WahoooooO!!!!”
The tiny man was pushed along down the capillary into a vein rapidly. He was just at the right size to allow the red blood cells bounce off him like balloons if he was at his normal size.
He held his arms down at his side to increase his aerodynamics and shoot through the veins.
There was a sudden shift in speed as he entered a vein from the capillaries and the pressure picked up. He increased his size slightly to deal with it, if he went too quickly at the wrong size he would tear through the fragile material that the body was made of.
“Uncle Hank, are you okay in there?!”
“Yes, Cassie, I’m just working out where I am…I’m in one of the veins which lead to the muscles. If my thoughts are right, I should be seeing examples of the pathogen any…ah ha! It’s here and wow is it beautiful!”
Hank stopped as he put his thruster’s to work. The flow of blood around him pressed down on him but he simply increased his size a little so it was not oppressive. He looked at the sight which was in front of him.
It was a large single celled organism. It was currently being swarmed by Killer T white blood cells. “The immune system is currently fighting it but it doesn’t seem to be really having much effect.”
Hank watched for a few more seconds. A strand of the cell membrane of the creature suddenly shifted and shot out rending a killer T in two. Similar protrusions began to occur across the surface of the cell.
They slashed at the Killer-T cells, hacking them to pieces before letting the small parts of the white blood cells drift off uselessly in the blood until it was completely clear. “Cassie have I ever explained to you that, despite being a genius, your Uncle Hank is one of the biggest idiots on the planet?”
“huh?”
“This pathogen is stationary, it’s just hovering in the blood flow. I’ve got my jets on 90% and am barely keeping still whereas it’s not moving in the slightest. Pathogens normally get swept along with the blood,” Hank was talking quickly as he did whenever he was getting a brain wave.
“Um…okay,” Cassie said on the other end unsure of what she was suppose to say “I guess it’s an easy mistake to make. You shouldn’t feel bad.”
Hank narrowed his eyes at the foreign cell and swore as he realized it was coming towards him. It fired out it’s membrane like the blade it used against the immune system. He spiraled sideways letting it swish through clear space.
A second blade lunged at where he was. The single celled organism certainly had the upper hand here. It didn’t have a central sensory location as Hank did, it didn’t need to be facing a certain way to be dangerous. It was a giant single cell where any part of it could sense what was going on and attack or that’s certainly what it seemed like to Hank in the least.
“This is fairly impossible,” he informed Cassie “This cell seems to be sentient.”
The cell, as if to prove his point, lunged at him. He rocked back, pressing his foot into it and trying to grab it’s membrane in some semblance of a Judo maneuver. He instantly cursed himself as both his boot and fingers slipped inside of it. The pain launched through his body instantly.
He fired his rockets and moved away from it. He continued to power himself away up the blood stream, the bacteria followed. Hank summoned his blaster and began to fire at it. It responded by throwing portions of itself at him.
“I really can’t believe this,” he laughed “I’m in a dogfight with a bacteria inside a mutant Gorilla Man. My Dad always told me being a research scientist would be dull.”
# # # # #
Hank’s apartment
Cassie stood against the wall of Hank’s lab watching the bodies on the tables. She wanted to keep a safe distance from them…something about unconscious people made her nervous. This was especially true when it was the mutated insect form of her aunt.
She was watching their vitals for her Uncle Hank but really she was just watching them for movement, for signs of twitching that they were coming round and might attack her.
Her heart skipped a beat as she saw a twitch. Her eyes inside the helmet went wide as she carefully watched the shoulder of Cat-Man. She thought she might have imagined it but then it jerked upwards again.
“Uncle Hank, I think Cat-Man is waking up!” she called as she kept her back to the wall.
“Okay Cassie,” he said as calmly as he could, considering he was still locked in mortal combat with a giant cell. He had now summoned his energy blade which he was hoping would slice through the cell membrane easily which it did but sadly it allowed the bacteria to rejoin together. “Move next to him and turn the dial on his neck to the right, like turning the volume up on your I-Pod”
“Uh-okay,” Cassie nodded and inched forward slightly. She quietly began to walk forward slowly. Her hand stretched out in front of her.
Her eyes suddenly flicked up to the lights above the table. They shunted sideways. The table moved and creaked slightly but the Cat-Man remained still. The table next to him moved ever so slightly next.
Cassie remained still and then spoke in an almost whisper. “Uncle Hank I don’t think it’s Cat-Man…I think there’s something in here with us. It’s big and it’s invisible.”
“Cassie, I need you to listen to me,” said Hank. His voice was incredibly serious: he let out an exhale of air and a grunt as he was struck with a sledgehammer blow from the cell. “I think it’s Sue…the Invisible Woman. She’s mutated like the others and is invisible…I need you to slowly back away and get out of the lab.”
Cassie didn’t need telling twice. She took two very tentative steps back slowly. The table containing Dragonfly suddenly swept aside and there was a deep snarl. Cassie heard the pads of the feet pound onto the floor. She threw caution to the wind, turned and fled.
The Invisible Woman-creature roared like a lion and bounded after her. Cassie screamed out of the lab not believing she could run as fast as she was…it seemed having an invisible big cat bounding after you made you do that. “She’s chasing me!”
“Cassie get to Lab 2! Keep moving and don’t stop…the safe code is your Aunt Jan’s Birthday. Take the red tablet! I’ll be there in a minute.”
Hank fired his blaster at the cell and swung at it with his sword. He shifted his grip a second before the blade connected and the energy beam instead of slicing wrapped around the cell body. He had turned the blade into a whip. He quickly yanked his hands together connecting the blaster and the handle of his blade and then squeezed the trigger with more pressure than he had ever done before.
He charged all of the energy through the whip. There was no chance in hell that the creature was surviving this but he could still get more. There was only one Cassie and he wasn’t wasting any time.
The bacteria let out a scream of pain and then to Hank’s shock before it dissolved into nothingness let out a final gasp “For Wundagore!”
He wasted no time in waiting. All four rockets responded to his motions and fired off at top thrust. “Cassie, I’m coming, talk to me!”
Cassie screamed down the communicator. Hank could hear a commotion behind her. The roar of an animal. Then a door slammed.
“I’m in your bedroom,” she breathed heavily. Her voice was clearly breaking as she fought back panic. “I couldn’t make it to the Lab.” She let out another scream as the sound of the creature slamming against the door bounced down the communicator to Hank.
He hurtled through the blood stream at his top speed. He listened carefully to Cassie, there was a hiss in the background.
“Cassie, is Tabby on my bed?” Hank asked hurriedly.
Cassie turned to look at the cat which was making itself as big as possible and hissing at the door. “Yeah she’s here.”
“Cassie, do you trust me?”
“Yes,” she gasped. She really meant it, Hank felt a churn in his stomach.
“Take Tabby’s collar off and then open the door and stay behind it! I’m entering the respiratory system, I’ll be there soon!”
“The door?!” Cassie said, she had already begun moving towards the cat.
“Do it!” Hank screamed. He could hear the door buckling in the background.
Cassie clicked on the little switch on the collar and then pulled it clear. She dashed to the door, turned the handle and leapt backwards taking the door with her.
Tabby roared like a lion. Cassie’s eyes were half closed but she saw the giant black mass streak from the bed.
Tabby had been exposed to Pym Particles accidentally and on purpose several times over the years. It seemed that the collar was a device Hank had created to stop her from changing size as she willed.
Cassie watched as tabby clashed with the invisible creature. She clawed and bit at invisible air, causing splashes of blood to pepper across the floor. Her flesh and fur was also being torn apart by the animal.
“Cassie, I need you to get passed them and get to the Lab! I’m nearly there but I need you to do this!”
“Tabby is fighting her. I think she’ll…” Cassie’s voice was shaky.
“Cassie, move! Tabby is an animal: we anthropomorphize them but she doesn’t love you, she doesn’t care. She’s fighting because it’s her instinct and, as soon as she thinks this is a fight she can’t win, she’ll shrink down and slink away. Then there will be nothing to stop Sue! Move!”
Cassie let out a small squeal and launched herself into the corridor. Tabby was on-top of Sue and was clawing at her. The two rolled towards Cassie making her burst into a run.
She could hear the beasts snarling behind her as they clashed. She rounded the final corner to the lab and turned to look behind her.
There, a normal sized Tabby lay whimpering in the hall. She was badly wounded. Streaks of blood moved towards her. Cassie continued to run.
Hank exploded from the mouth of Ape-Man in Lab 1. He was normal sized and running in a second, plowing into the main living area and leapt up the small step which separated two areas of the room.
He turned a hard left and exploded into the corridor. His eyes briefly flicked down to Tabby who lay whimpering in a pool of her own blood.
He pounded down the corridor watching the blood splashes. “Cassie!”
Hank was forced to let out a shout and leap backwards as the wall just in front of him exploded, sending debris across his apartment.
A giant leapt through the wall and slammed something invisible up against the opposite one. Cassie was scratched across the face and more were appearing on her bare arms. She swung a massive right fist against Sue, making her shriek in animalistic pain.
Cassie shifted her position and raised her foot before sharply kicking out.
Sue screamed before the window at the end of the hallway exploded outwards into the city. Cassie stood breathing heavily for a few seconds before shrinking slightly and dropping to her knees.
Hank was there in a second enlarging a lab coat from his pocket to cover her. “Shhh, you’re okay. I’ve got you.”
He held her for a couple of minutes in silence. He was waiting for her to start sobbing but she didn’t. He quickly and quietly began to check her, removing her helmet first of all. It was now Cassie noticed he still wore his. “It’s possible you’re in shock…and no one would blame you but you seem okay at the minute.”
He did some final checks. “You were astounding, Cassie,” he nodded and smiled at her. “When you turn 18 and insist on being a superhero, I will back you against your dad all the way.”
“My Dad’s going to kill me,” Cassie said with a slight nod.
“I’m sure he’ll understand on this one off very special occasion that you needed to use your powers.” He held up a small hypo-spray which he sized up from his pocket “Speaking of which, it’s time to flush your system.” He pressed it against her neck and with a little pin prick her powers were gone.
“Oh my God…I just flung Aunt Sue out of a window. Were on like the fifth floor,” Cassie leapt to her feet and rushed to the broken window. “She’s invisible how do we know she’s there or not?”
Hank looked out of the window. “She’s not there. A fall from this height would have caused her to bleed out. My guess is she managed to throw up a forcefield….yes there!” he jabbed a finger out as a car across the street buckled under weight as did the next one as she leapt to it moving away from the apartment.
“Should we go after her?” Cassie asked.
“No, no, I don’t have time. I need to solve this epidemic. Hopefully she’ll have healed up before then. Cassie I need you to sit with Tabby and keep her comfortable while I’m gone. A drug disc should do most of the work but she did well today and she needs someone.”
Cassie nodded up at Hank. “Where are you going?”
“I’m going to face one of the only men I have ever met who can make Reed Richards feel dumb. I believe this disease begun at Wundagore in the labs of the High Evolutionary! My only hope is to beat him, given that he’s thrown most of the superheroes on Earth around without a second thought, all of us at one time once…chances aren’t good. Wish me luck.”
Cassie looked at him with wonder and astonishment on her face. “Uh…good luck…”
Hank Pym breathed through the filter on his Ant-Man helmet. It was a newer designed one which covered the lower half of his face too and made for the perfect air filtration method…which was needed for one reason only: his current patients.
They lay on the center of his lab on four surgical tables which he had enlarged from his Pym particle-dosed supplies. They were the Ani-Men and, if what they claimed was true, they were the source of all the insanity which was currently raging throughout the city.
“I need to get out there, Hank,” said Jan. She was standing by the table which had Cat-Man lying sedated on it, his breathing was shallow. Jan looked at him with some concern and then back to Hank.
“I don’t really want you to go Jan,” he shook his head. His helmet hid the look of concern on his face. He loved his ex-wife and current girlfriend, but he wasn’t going to fight her. He had known her for long enough to know that he wouldn’t make her change her mind if she didn’t want to. She was an Avenger the same as him, one of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, and that was the reason she had to be out there.
“I’m going to go anyway. People out there need me…”
“I know,” he nodded and looked up at her. “Take one of the other prototype helmets, you’ll need protection….unless we’re already infected.”
There was a virus loose in the city. It was transforming the citizens of Manhattan and the Super-Heroes who usually protect it into bizarre half-man/half-animal hybrids. It had already taken the Fantastic Four and who knows how many others. They could hear the screams, howls and other assorted noises of terror and animalistic rage from Hank’s apartment.
It wasn’t long after they found out about this that the Ani-Men had come bursting through the window of his apartment and promptly collapsed onto the floor. Just before they lapsed into unconsciousness, Dragonfly informed them that they were the carriers…the Patients Zero for this infection.
Jan kissed Hank on the bridge of his helmet and grabbed one of the tiny copies he held up to her. She began to enlarge it in her hands. “What are we going to do about Cassie?”
“She’s safer here,” Hank said with confidence. He cast a skeptical view over the mutated villains who lay stretched out in his Lab and doubted himself for a second. He’d given her a helmet instantly so hopefully she would be clean from the infection…though he had his doubt for all three of them. But at least in his apartment she wouldn’t be attacked by some roving chimera.
Jan began to beat her wings and took to the air. She zipped out of the opening lab window and out into the city.
Hank turned his attention back to the tests he was conducting. He was without a doubt the world’s foremost bio-chemist. If anyone could figure out a cure for this particular pathogen it was him…which had been exactly why Reed Richards had sent the Ani-Men to him.
He was hoping he could do it. The people of the city, if not the entire world, were relying on him. He was the only one who could do this. His eyes watched the test tube and the computer screen carefully. He was watching for the change…he swore loudly.
The liquid in the test tube went blue instead of purple like he had hoped and the computer screen testified to the same result in the form of numbers. He was hoping that would have worked.
“Solution 13, negative,” he said to the recording device which was on one of the lab benches. He crossed the room quickly and grabbed another set of blood that he had drawn and some more readouts from one of the tests he had set away running.
“Uncle Hank, can I sit in here?” Cassie asked sheepishly from the door. Her voice sounded muffled by the helmet she was wearing.
“Cassie, I’m really busy, can’t you go and watch TV or read or…”
“There’s nothing on the TV but footage…when I turn the TV off all I can hear is the noise,” Cassie’s body held itself, her head turned away slightly. She was showing signs of embarrassment. She was scared by what was going on around her and that fear was making her ashamed. “I can’t just sit around and do nothing…I could help you.”
Hank smiled under his helmet. She wasn’t scared at all. Like him, like Jan and like her father, she wanted to help people. It was being unable to do anything which was making her uncomfortable.
“Come in, then,” he nodded. “You can watch some of the tests for me…I could do with someone to talk to too.”
Cassie fired him a massive smile which was completely missed by her uncle. She moved into the room and watched some of the computer read outs. She was well aware that she was here doing busy work but it felt better than doing nothing. She could also be a vital sounding board to her uncle.
“So…” he began “are there any boys at school who are trying to get your attention?” Hank asked in an almost offhand manner.
“Uncle Hank!” Cassie yelled in embarrassment.
“Sorry,” he muttered. “Your Dad asked me to drop it into the conversation. We were going to swarm their house with ants if there was…I should’ve tried harder on the casualness.”
He mixed the contents of two tubes together and then poured it into a small receiver on a spectral analyzer. He moved to the bodies of the Ani-Men and one by one checked their vitals.
This entire process was made 1000 times harder by their nature. The Ani-Men had been mutated by Count Nefaria and trying to isolate whatever pathogen was causing this was affecting them differently. He was trying to extrapolate symptoms 1, 2 & 3 in group A (mutant humans) to symptoms 4,5 & 6 in group B (normal humans). It was like literally trying to compare apples and oranges.
There was a beep from the computer and he crossed over to it. Cassie watched as he clicked a few keys and then dropped his hands to his side. She guessed it had been negative again. This was not going well. Her stomach churned. Then her head twisted to the side, it was hard to tell in the helmet but she was sure she could hear something.
“Uncle Hank? Can you hear….Look out!” She jabbed her hand at the window.
Hank turned quickly to look at the figure which crouched on the windowsill. Its silvery wings stopped beating for a few seconds as it peered into the room with its large compound eyes. The mandibles which were currently tearing through the human flesh of the face clicked together.
Hank recognized the costume on her rapidly mutating body instantly. It was Jan. He mentally cursed himself. Why didn’t he think of this before? Jan had always had as part of her power a wasp’s genetic cells transplanted into her; it was what made her wings and antenna grow. Unfortunately, it had caused the transformation to occur much quicker than in other cases.
Her wings began to beat again as she took to the air and moved into the room. He watched the poison dripping from her stinger carefully and prepared for her strike.
“Cassie, get in the other room!” he commanded loudly and began to grow in size.
Jan lunged at him stinger first. He blocked her emerging abdomen section with a large left forearm. Her hooked hands began to claw at his face but it was luckily protected by his helmet. His neck, shoulders and chest were not so lucky.
The pain arched through his body. He was, however, keeping his eyes on the stinger, that was the truly dangerous part of her anatomy. Given the poison dose she could probably give out at this size he would be dead in seconds. “Jan, can you hear me? Is there any of you still conscious in there?”
Her antenna moved over the surface of his head and shoulders as she continued to lash out at him. Her feet pressed against him and re-angled her body to give the sting another shot. It fired out and Hank twisted his body letting the sting move between his side and his arm narrowly missing the fatal blow.
“I’m sorry about this my love!” he grew in size a little more and tossed her backwards with a quick lash from his arm.
He focused on his hand and felt the weapon he wanted materialize there thanks to the neural link he had installed. His bio-blaster took form and began to grow until it fit his giant hand, about the size of a small cannon.
He unleashed the blast, which sounded like a massive sudden shock. It hit Jan square in the thorax and she fell to the floor sharply twitching and making an inhuman noise which could only be described as ‘chittering’.
Hank rushed to her side, decreasing his size as he went and began to check her vitals. He wasn’t sure what the vitals on a mutant Wasp-woman should be but she was alive and that was enough for him at the minute. He sized up a status disc from his pocket, one of his devices which were keeping the Ani-Men sedated and stable, and attached it to her. It worked on a cellular level and he was just waiting for the final outside testing before he would offer it up to the medical world. She instantly stopped twisting and relaxed.
“Cassie its okay to come in now,” Hank called. He watched the door as Cassie sheepishly peered around. He lifted Jan onto a growing gurney and then took a step back and crossed the room. “You okay?”
She nodded up to him and then looked nervously at Jan. “She’s going to be okay…I swear I won’t let anything happen to her.” Cassie wondered how much of that was meant to comfort her and how much was meant to comfort him.
He moved away from her and towards the bodies in the center of the room. “Cassie, I’m going to have to do something I wasn’t wanting to do. I’m going to have to shrink down and go inside one of the infected.”
“Why didn’t you want to do that?”
“I have no idea what this pathogen is. If I’m right in my thinking it’s been created by some genius, so who knows what pitfalls he could have engineered for me. I could literally be digested if the bacteria or virus is too strong and my defenses don’t do anything.”
“Then why do it?” the worry in her voice was palpable.
“I don’t have a choice any longer. Thousands have been infected and now so has Jan at an advanced speed. If I don’t go now I don’t know if I can reverse this,” he trailed off. There was another worry in his mind that he didn’t want to voice to her. Thankfully due to the helmet this fact was hidden from the very perceptive teenager. He was afraid that if he had been exposed then he could mutate at any minute and never find the cure.
“What should I do?”
“I just need you to stay here and keep an eye on the patients…we can keep in contact via the helmets if you run into any problems….oh, and I’ll be in Ape-Man, he’s the one who will have the most similar bio-chemistry to a human. Keep an especially close eye on him and wish me luck!”
Hank had begun to shrink before Cassie could even get her words out, he then vanished from sight leaving the teenager alone with several unconscious chimeras. It was a strange situation even for her. She waited there all alone…or so she thought unaware she was being watched, being watched as prey is by the predator before they choose the moment to strike.
# # # # #
Inside Ape-Man
Hank entered the large gorilla shaped man through the nasal cavity and made his way up into the area above the pallet.
Four tiny thrusters which extended from his back like the legs of an insect guided his maneuvering through the man’s body. He was searching for a thick bundle of capillaries which he could squeeze through.
He found them and began to shrink down further. His plan was to make an incision so small that even red blood cells could not fit through which would stop the ape from bleeding out whilst he was inside of his body.
The top right thruster rotated and with a movement of his hand Hank turned the thrust into a thinly aimed laser which moved across the surface of a capillary. “I’ve made the incision, it should heal fairly quickly,” Hank spoke into his communicator.
“That’s good,” said Cassie. Hank smiled at the sound in Cassie’s voice. He was planning to keep in touch with her all the way through this maneuver to keep her calm whilst she was all alone.
“I’m entering his blood flow, it’s going to be fairly low pressure in the capillaries but given my current size I’ll be swept along like a water slide…I promise not to yell in your ear too much,” he smiled as he connected the breathing apparatus to his mask and slipped through the gap.
The top two arms began to illuminate tunnels of the body which transported the oxygen. “Cassie I really wish you could see this, it’s something special.”
“Maybe you could take me one day.”
“Cassie…it’s never going to happen, your Dad doesn’t want you exposed to Pym Particles. We both know that, just let it drop.”
“Fine,” Cassie sighed. “How are you going to get to the infection?”
“Well I’m hoping that since they’re quite badly infected, they will probably be teaming with the pathogen. All I have to do is get to one of the major circulatory routes and I’ll be heading right for it….so you know when I promised not to shout?”
“Yeah?”
“I lied…” Hank decreased his size slightly and cut out his stabilizers “WahoooooO!!!!”
The tiny man was pushed along down the capillary into a vein rapidly. He was just at the right size to allow the red blood cells bounce off him like balloons if he was at his normal size.
He held his arms down at his side to increase his aerodynamics and shoot through the veins.
There was a sudden shift in speed as he entered a vein from the capillaries and the pressure picked up. He increased his size slightly to deal with it, if he went too quickly at the wrong size he would tear through the fragile material that the body was made of.
“Uncle Hank, are you okay in there?!”
“Yes, Cassie, I’m just working out where I am…I’m in one of the veins which lead to the muscles. If my thoughts are right, I should be seeing examples of the pathogen any…ah ha! It’s here and wow is it beautiful!”
Hank stopped as he put his thruster’s to work. The flow of blood around him pressed down on him but he simply increased his size a little so it was not oppressive. He looked at the sight which was in front of him.
It was a large single celled organism. It was currently being swarmed by Killer T white blood cells. “The immune system is currently fighting it but it doesn’t seem to be really having much effect.”
Hank watched for a few more seconds. A strand of the cell membrane of the creature suddenly shifted and shot out rending a killer T in two. Similar protrusions began to occur across the surface of the cell.
They slashed at the Killer-T cells, hacking them to pieces before letting the small parts of the white blood cells drift off uselessly in the blood until it was completely clear. “Cassie have I ever explained to you that, despite being a genius, your Uncle Hank is one of the biggest idiots on the planet?”
“huh?”
“This pathogen is stationary, it’s just hovering in the blood flow. I’ve got my jets on 90% and am barely keeping still whereas it’s not moving in the slightest. Pathogens normally get swept along with the blood,” Hank was talking quickly as he did whenever he was getting a brain wave.
“Um…okay,” Cassie said on the other end unsure of what she was suppose to say “I guess it’s an easy mistake to make. You shouldn’t feel bad.”
Hank narrowed his eyes at the foreign cell and swore as he realized it was coming towards him. It fired out it’s membrane like the blade it used against the immune system. He spiraled sideways letting it swish through clear space.
A second blade lunged at where he was. The single celled organism certainly had the upper hand here. It didn’t have a central sensory location as Hank did, it didn’t need to be facing a certain way to be dangerous. It was a giant single cell where any part of it could sense what was going on and attack or that’s certainly what it seemed like to Hank in the least.
“This is fairly impossible,” he informed Cassie “This cell seems to be sentient.”
The cell, as if to prove his point, lunged at him. He rocked back, pressing his foot into it and trying to grab it’s membrane in some semblance of a Judo maneuver. He instantly cursed himself as both his boot and fingers slipped inside of it. The pain launched through his body instantly.
He fired his rockets and moved away from it. He continued to power himself away up the blood stream, the bacteria followed. Hank summoned his blaster and began to fire at it. It responded by throwing portions of itself at him.
“I really can’t believe this,” he laughed “I’m in a dogfight with a bacteria inside a mutant Gorilla Man. My Dad always told me being a research scientist would be dull.”
# # # # #
Hank’s apartment
Cassie stood against the wall of Hank’s lab watching the bodies on the tables. She wanted to keep a safe distance from them…something about unconscious people made her nervous. This was especially true when it was the mutated insect form of her aunt.
She was watching their vitals for her Uncle Hank but really she was just watching them for movement, for signs of twitching that they were coming round and might attack her.
Her heart skipped a beat as she saw a twitch. Her eyes inside the helmet went wide as she carefully watched the shoulder of Cat-Man. She thought she might have imagined it but then it jerked upwards again.
“Uncle Hank, I think Cat-Man is waking up!” she called as she kept her back to the wall.
“Okay Cassie,” he said as calmly as he could, considering he was still locked in mortal combat with a giant cell. He had now summoned his energy blade which he was hoping would slice through the cell membrane easily which it did but sadly it allowed the bacteria to rejoin together. “Move next to him and turn the dial on his neck to the right, like turning the volume up on your I-Pod”
“Uh-okay,” Cassie nodded and inched forward slightly. She quietly began to walk forward slowly. Her hand stretched out in front of her.
Her eyes suddenly flicked up to the lights above the table. They shunted sideways. The table moved and creaked slightly but the Cat-Man remained still. The table next to him moved ever so slightly next.
Cassie remained still and then spoke in an almost whisper. “Uncle Hank I don’t think it’s Cat-Man…I think there’s something in here with us. It’s big and it’s invisible.”
“Cassie, I need you to listen to me,” said Hank. His voice was incredibly serious: he let out an exhale of air and a grunt as he was struck with a sledgehammer blow from the cell. “I think it’s Sue…the Invisible Woman. She’s mutated like the others and is invisible…I need you to slowly back away and get out of the lab.”
Cassie didn’t need telling twice. She took two very tentative steps back slowly. The table containing Dragonfly suddenly swept aside and there was a deep snarl. Cassie heard the pads of the feet pound onto the floor. She threw caution to the wind, turned and fled.
The Invisible Woman-creature roared like a lion and bounded after her. Cassie screamed out of the lab not believing she could run as fast as she was…it seemed having an invisible big cat bounding after you made you do that. “She’s chasing me!”
“Cassie get to Lab 2! Keep moving and don’t stop…the safe code is your Aunt Jan’s Birthday. Take the red tablet! I’ll be there in a minute.”
Hank fired his blaster at the cell and swung at it with his sword. He shifted his grip a second before the blade connected and the energy beam instead of slicing wrapped around the cell body. He had turned the blade into a whip. He quickly yanked his hands together connecting the blaster and the handle of his blade and then squeezed the trigger with more pressure than he had ever done before.
He charged all of the energy through the whip. There was no chance in hell that the creature was surviving this but he could still get more. There was only one Cassie and he wasn’t wasting any time.
The bacteria let out a scream of pain and then to Hank’s shock before it dissolved into nothingness let out a final gasp “For Wundagore!”
He wasted no time in waiting. All four rockets responded to his motions and fired off at top thrust. “Cassie, I’m coming, talk to me!”
Cassie screamed down the communicator. Hank could hear a commotion behind her. The roar of an animal. Then a door slammed.
“I’m in your bedroom,” she breathed heavily. Her voice was clearly breaking as she fought back panic. “I couldn’t make it to the Lab.” She let out another scream as the sound of the creature slamming against the door bounced down the communicator to Hank.
He hurtled through the blood stream at his top speed. He listened carefully to Cassie, there was a hiss in the background.
“Cassie, is Tabby on my bed?” Hank asked hurriedly.
Cassie turned to look at the cat which was making itself as big as possible and hissing at the door. “Yeah she’s here.”
“Cassie, do you trust me?”
“Yes,” she gasped. She really meant it, Hank felt a churn in his stomach.
“Take Tabby’s collar off and then open the door and stay behind it! I’m entering the respiratory system, I’ll be there soon!”
“The door?!” Cassie said, she had already begun moving towards the cat.
“Do it!” Hank screamed. He could hear the door buckling in the background.
Cassie clicked on the little switch on the collar and then pulled it clear. She dashed to the door, turned the handle and leapt backwards taking the door with her.
Tabby roared like a lion. Cassie’s eyes were half closed but she saw the giant black mass streak from the bed.
Tabby had been exposed to Pym Particles accidentally and on purpose several times over the years. It seemed that the collar was a device Hank had created to stop her from changing size as she willed.
Cassie watched as tabby clashed with the invisible creature. She clawed and bit at invisible air, causing splashes of blood to pepper across the floor. Her flesh and fur was also being torn apart by the animal.
“Cassie, I need you to get passed them and get to the Lab! I’m nearly there but I need you to do this!”
“Tabby is fighting her. I think she’ll…” Cassie’s voice was shaky.
“Cassie, move! Tabby is an animal: we anthropomorphize them but she doesn’t love you, she doesn’t care. She’s fighting because it’s her instinct and, as soon as she thinks this is a fight she can’t win, she’ll shrink down and slink away. Then there will be nothing to stop Sue! Move!”
Cassie let out a small squeal and launched herself into the corridor. Tabby was on-top of Sue and was clawing at her. The two rolled towards Cassie making her burst into a run.
She could hear the beasts snarling behind her as they clashed. She rounded the final corner to the lab and turned to look behind her.
There, a normal sized Tabby lay whimpering in the hall. She was badly wounded. Streaks of blood moved towards her. Cassie continued to run.
Hank exploded from the mouth of Ape-Man in Lab 1. He was normal sized and running in a second, plowing into the main living area and leapt up the small step which separated two areas of the room.
He turned a hard left and exploded into the corridor. His eyes briefly flicked down to Tabby who lay whimpering in a pool of her own blood.
He pounded down the corridor watching the blood splashes. “Cassie!”
Hank was forced to let out a shout and leap backwards as the wall just in front of him exploded, sending debris across his apartment.
A giant leapt through the wall and slammed something invisible up against the opposite one. Cassie was scratched across the face and more were appearing on her bare arms. She swung a massive right fist against Sue, making her shriek in animalistic pain.
Cassie shifted her position and raised her foot before sharply kicking out.
Sue screamed before the window at the end of the hallway exploded outwards into the city. Cassie stood breathing heavily for a few seconds before shrinking slightly and dropping to her knees.
Hank was there in a second enlarging a lab coat from his pocket to cover her. “Shhh, you’re okay. I’ve got you.”
He held her for a couple of minutes in silence. He was waiting for her to start sobbing but she didn’t. He quickly and quietly began to check her, removing her helmet first of all. It was now Cassie noticed he still wore his. “It’s possible you’re in shock…and no one would blame you but you seem okay at the minute.”
He did some final checks. “You were astounding, Cassie,” he nodded and smiled at her. “When you turn 18 and insist on being a superhero, I will back you against your dad all the way.”
“My Dad’s going to kill me,” Cassie said with a slight nod.
“I’m sure he’ll understand on this one off very special occasion that you needed to use your powers.” He held up a small hypo-spray which he sized up from his pocket “Speaking of which, it’s time to flush your system.” He pressed it against her neck and with a little pin prick her powers were gone.
“Oh my God…I just flung Aunt Sue out of a window. Were on like the fifth floor,” Cassie leapt to her feet and rushed to the broken window. “She’s invisible how do we know she’s there or not?”
Hank looked out of the window. “She’s not there. A fall from this height would have caused her to bleed out. My guess is she managed to throw up a forcefield….yes there!” he jabbed a finger out as a car across the street buckled under weight as did the next one as she leapt to it moving away from the apartment.
“Should we go after her?” Cassie asked.
“No, no, I don’t have time. I need to solve this epidemic. Hopefully she’ll have healed up before then. Cassie I need you to sit with Tabby and keep her comfortable while I’m gone. A drug disc should do most of the work but she did well today and she needs someone.”
Cassie nodded up at Hank. “Where are you going?”
“I’m going to face one of the only men I have ever met who can make Reed Richards feel dumb. I believe this disease begun at Wundagore in the labs of the High Evolutionary! My only hope is to beat him, given that he’s thrown most of the superheroes on Earth around without a second thought, all of us at one time once…chances aren’t good. Wish me luck.”
Cassie looked at him with wonder and astonishment on her face. “Uh…good luck…”