Scott Lang's Arc

Chapter 1 of 5

Scott Lang had two hours of water left and no idea where the fortress stood. The tyrant hid it somewhere in these dunes, and inside it sat the artifact feeding the heatwave. Scott was supposed to shrink down, slip past the guards, and steal it. First he had to find it. The sand had other plans. Every ridge he climbed showed only more ridges. The sun pressed on his red helmet until his thoughts went soft. He dropped to one knee. His boots had sunk twice already. The dunes moved while he watched, erasing his tracks behind him. He could die out here circling a fortress he'd never see. Then he remembered the fan in his pack. He'd grabbed it from the cozy little house at the settlement before he left. It was a sleek wireless thing with a curved frame, meant for a kitchen counter, not a desert. He'd carried it for comfort. Now he turned it over in his gloved hands and thought harder. Solar fans could clear sandstorm air. This one ran on battery, but the sun was brutal and the base had a charge panel. Scott set it on a dune crest and switched it on. The blades spun. Hot grit flew off the slope in a widening cone. For a moment the haze thinned. He saw nothing but more sand. He almost shut it off. Then he shrank. He dropped to the size of a beetle and climbed onto the spinning frame. At that size the moving air became a storm he could read. He watched where the wind broke. Most of it scattered loose and wild. But off to one side, the cleared air bent around something hard and straight. A wall. The grit couldn't pass it. The dunes had buried the fortress, but the wind found its edges. Scott marked the line. The broken air pointed like an arrow across three dunes to a low rise that looked like all the others. It wasn't. Under it stood the tyrant's fortress. He grew back to full size. His head swam from the heat, but he had a direction now. He killed the fan to save what charge remained and pushed it back into his pack. He'd need it again inside. Scott walked toward the buried rise. The closer he came, the more the ground changed. His boots struck something flat under the sand. He brushed it clear and found stone, worn smooth, slanting down. A ramp. The fortress had an entrance, and the heat pouring off the hidden walls was worse here than anywhere in the dunes. That heat told him the artifact was close. It also told him the fortress was awake. Something inside pumped that heat out on purpose, and now Scott stood on its doorstep with two guards' shadows stretching across the sand toward him.