8

“You are my bestest friend!” the weird rabbit said over and over again as Cassie snuggled down with it into bed.

Maggie sat on the side of her bed and finished tucking Cassie in. “Are you sure you don’t want a different toy?”

“No,” she said firmly. “I love this one.”

“Okay.” She didn’t have much else from her father, Maggie thought. No wonder she clings to this. “Well, get some sleep, then. I love you.”

“Mommy,” Cassie said before Maggie got up from the bed.

“Hm?”

“Is Daddy a bad man? I heard some grown-ups say he’s bad.”

How did you explain Scott Lang to a little girl, Maggie wondered. He was complicated. Too complicated to stay married to, good-hearted but prone to doing dumb things. But bad? “No,” Maggie said gently. “Daddy just gets confused sometimes, you know?”

Scott was sitting in his cell and wondering how much of the rest of his life he would spend counting cinder blocks and seeing patterns in chipped paint. He’d really made a mess of this job, and it was killing him that he’d gone and tried to take the stupid suit back. Why not just throw it out? Go downtown somewhere, find a Dumpster when nobody was looking, forget about the whole thing. But no—he’d gotten scared and wanted that thing away from him.

Truth was he’d also been scared that anyone who had a suit like that might be able to find him. Either way, trying to give it back had turned out to be the dumbest thing he’d ever done.

He looked down at the floor for a change of scenery from the wall and saw something moving. Great , he thought. Jailhouse roaches.

But they weren’t roaches. They were ants.

Carrying a tiny, tiny version of the suit.

No way , Scott thought—and with a whoosh the suit expanded to full-size.

The old man had come through.

Now the ants were forming numbers on the floor. 10...9...8...

A message. A countdown. Now or never, Scott thought—and he got the suit on just as the cop who had processed him came down the hall. Scott hit the button and bam —he was a one-quarter inch tall and running as fast as he could under the bars, past the cop, and toward the door.

“Smart choice,” the old man said in his ear. “You actually listened for once. Under the door.”

Behind him, Scott heard the cops shouting at each other to set up a perimeter and start the search. He heard Paxton’s voice among them. Scott ran under the door and out into the parking lot. It was full of police cars. “Okay. Where to now?”

“Hang tight,” the old man said.

Ants appeared all around Scott, ringing him in and getting closer. He started shouting at them. “Get back, get back, get back!”

“Scott,” the old man said. “These are my associates.”

The lead ant had a camera attached to its thorax. “Huh? You got a camera on an ant?” Then Scott realized he was saying this while inside a suit that could change size. “Yeah, sure, why not? Where’s the car?”

“No car. We’ve got wings,” the old man said. “Incoming.”

A huge flying ant swooped over Scott’s head and landed next to him on the pavement. The beat of its wings sounded like a helicopter’s rotors. “Put your foot on the central node and not the thorax,” the old man said.

“Are you kidding? How safe is—”

“Get on the ant, Scott.”

He did, and a few seconds later found himself hitching a ride on the back of a flying ant...that was hitching a ride on a police car that roared down the street with lights and sirens at full blast.

“Why am I on a police car?” Scott shouted. “Shouldn’t I not be on a police car?”

“So they can give you a lift past their five-block perimeter,” the old man said.

That made sense, or at least as much sense as anything else right now. “All right. Now, what’s the next move?”

“Hang on tight.”

The ant crawled across the cop car’s roof toward the rack holding its lights. “Oh, this is easy,” Scott said. “I’m getting the hang of this. Yank up to go up. It’s like a horse.”

“You’re throwing 247 off balance,” the old man warned as the ant tipped to one side.

“Wait, his name is 247?”

“He doesn’t have a name. He has a number, Scott. Do you have any idea how many ants there are?”

“Whoa!” Scott cried out as the ant took off from the car in a sudden rush of wind, landing on one of the car’s side mirrors. Also upside down.

“Maybe it’s 248?” the old man wondered.

Scott was completely disoriented by seeing the world going backward and upside down. “No, no, no, no, no! Vertigo, vertigo!”

“No, I think it’s 247. Hang on,” the old man said. The ant took off from the car and skillfully rode the airstream from a passing motorcycle.

Scott kept pulling on the lines attached to the harness on its back. “I think I’m getting the hang of this,” Scott said. The ant seemed to be going where he wanted it to.

“I’m controlling 247. He is not listening to you.”

“What?” The ant buzzed into and through one of San Francisco’s famous streetcars, getting briefly tangled in a woman’s hair. She twitched and flicked it away. “Can I make one little request?”

“No.”

“Stop, 247,” Scott pleaded. “Time-out, time-out.” 247 skittered across a newspaper and out the back of the streetcar. “Just wait. Whoa!” The updraft from a manhole cover lifted them abruptly. “What happens if I throw up in this helmet?”

“It’s my helmet, Scott. Do not throw up.”

“Just set ’er down, all right? I’m getting light-headed.” Ahead of them was the Coit Tower. They were flying to the old man’s house, Scott thought. He didn’t feel like he was going to throw up anymore, but something was...he was getting dizzy, having trouble hanging on to the ant.

“Hang on, Scott,” the old man warned.

“Yeah, I’m getting a little light...it’s funny...” Scott tried to say something else, but his head was spinning, and in the next moment he felt himself start to fall.