Scott Lang's Arc

Chapter 3 of 5

Scott pressed flat against the wall. The footsteps grew louder. The floor shook under each boot. He could not see the thing coming. He only felt the air it pushed ahead of it, warm and heavy. At beetle-size, he had no weapon that mattered and no room to run. He needed to know what hunted him before it found him. He pulled the fan from his pack and braced it against the stone. Its curved frame glowed faint in the orange heat. He aimed it high, where a huge face would be, and switched it on full. The blades screamed. A hard jet of air shot into the dark. The air struck something. It broke and curled back. Scott read the shape the way he had read the fortress wall buried under sand. Two legs. A wide torso. And one arm swinging low, holding something long and jagged that split the airflow into sharp forks. A blade. Bigger than Scott's whole body many times over. The figure stopped. A boy's voice came down through the dark, cracked and tired. "Who's there? Show yourself." Scott knew that voice. He had carried the cure in a small form while this same boy ran through the sandstorm. The father's son. The one who waited in the shelter hut along the route. Wally West, blade in hand, inside the fortress. "It's me," Scott called up. His beetle-voice was a whisper, nearly lost. "Lang. Down here. By your boot." Wally froze. He crouched slow. The jagged sword dipped toward the floor, its edge crackling with pale blue light that hissed against the stone. In that light Scott finally saw the boy's face, streaked with grit, eyes hollow. "They took my dad," Wally said. "Dragged him down here after the settlement. I came to get him out." His hand shook around the grip. "I didn't know it was you. I almost swung." Scott grew. He rose from beetle to full size in one quick surge, the corridor shrinking around him. He steadied the boy's shaking arm. "Then we go together," he said. "The artifact's close. I can feel the heat of it." Wally shook his head. "Guards everywhere below. Dozens. That sword lights up the second I draw it. They'll know where I am." He looked at the humming fan still in Scott's hand. "You got small and they never saw you." Scott understood then. He had come to steal an artifact alone. Now he had a partner who could not hide, a father held somewhere deeper, and a blade that would call every guard the moment it struck. The thing in the dark had been a friend. But the friend turned a quiet theft into a rescue, and a rescue meant noise. "Put the sword away," Scott said. "We find your father first. Quiet. Then the artifact." Wally sheathed the blade. The light died. The corridor went black, and the two of them started down.