The Unstoppable Wasp Read online

  © 2020 MARVEL

  All rights reserved. Published by Marvel Press, an imprint of Buena Vista Books, Inc. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher.

  For information address Marvel Press, 125 West End Avenue, New York, New York 10023.

  Designed by Kurt Hartman

  Illustrations by Laura Bifano

  Cover art by Laura Bifano

  Cover design by Kurt Hartman

  ISBN 978-1-368-05660-1

  Visit www.DisneyBooks.com

  and www.Marvel.com

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter 1: Nadia Means “Hope”

  Chapter 2: That’s Called “Tempting Fate”

  Chapter 3: Oh, Like You’d Have Left It There?

  Chapter 4: Everything She Wanted and More

  Chapter 5: Who? What? Where? How? Why?

  Chapter 6: Time to Get to Work

  Chapter 7: Time Flies When You Also Can Fly

  Chapter 8: What If You Just Did Less?

  Chapter 9: Goals

  Chapter 10: Ominous!

  Chapter 11: Well, What Did You Expect?

  Chapter 12: At Least It Wasn’t a Death Ray

  Chapter 13: Do Less, Experience More

  Chapter 14: Don’t Get Caught in the Weeds

  Chapter 15: And This, Too

  Chapter 16: That’s Probably Not a Good Sign

  Chapter 17: Science’d

  Chapter 18: Can’t We All Just Not Be Evil

  Chapter 19: Punch Up

  Chapter 20: Think Small

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  To all the girls sick of waiting for a seat at the table.

  We’re making our own tables from here on out.

  She was going to force Nadia to hurt her, and Nadia hated when people forced her to hurt them.

  Nadia didn’t like hurting people. Nadia liked science and her friends and her stepmom and those amazing sambusas from that Ethiopian place in the West Village that Shay ordered from for dinner every day for almost three months straight.

  She liked Dazzler’s second album and podcasts about history and the way her brain felt when she finally cracked a problem she’d been trying to solve for months. She even liked her driving instructor. Really, there were very few things in the world that Nadia didn’t like.

  It was kind of her thing.

  But hurting people? That would never sit right with Nadia, no matter how many times she had to do it.

  And as an Avenger, it turns out you actually have to do it a whole lot.

  Nadia took a moment to assess her current situation. She was about fifty feet in the air, her biosynthetic wings beating fast enough to keep her aloft. She had made some adjustments to her father’s original designs—after lengthy experimentation involving several online mattress orders (did you know people will just bring mattresses to your door in a box? Amazing), Nadia had come to the conclusion that the ideal number of beats per second for her wings was one hundred and twenty-five.

  The ideal number of times to land on an internet mattress after jumping off your own roof? Still zero.

  Below her, a large and terrifying tower sprouted from the middle of a previously sleepy Brooklyn street. It looked kind of like a regular electrical transmission tower, except this one had what appeared to be a UFO on top of it, and it was bursting through the pavement in front of a Korean place that made top-notch kimchi aioli and definitely deserved way better. Huge arcs of electricity streaked from the top of the tower, striking at random as the ominous crackle of uncontrolled energy tore through the air. Nadia knew exactly what she was looking at, and she had to be careful to stay out of its danger zone as she determined her next move.

  “Monica,” Nadia called out from behind her mask, “I liked the death ray much better when it was just a theory!”

  “You know it’s called a Teleforce!” Monica Rappaccini shouted back from the base of the tower. Monica wasn’t a particularly flashy Super Villain, but she was familiar. Nadia had run into her a few times, and the encounters were never pleasant. A genius who had an unfortunate predilection for evil, Monica made up for a lack of super-powers with a bevy of truly horrific technological creations.

  Nadia sighed. Clearly Monica had been busy since escaping S.H.I.E.L.D. custody. A death ray wasn’t exactly a one-day project.

  In another universe, one where Monica wasn’t totally evil, Nadia might’ve wanted to meet Monica and maybe become friends, and then after that maybe even ask her to join G.I.R.L. (that’s Genius In action Research Labs), the all-girls science lab Nadia ran out of Pym Laboratories to try to get S.H.I.E.L.D. (Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement, and Logistics Division) to invest in more up-and-coming women in science.

  But nooooooooo. Instead, Monica had to go and join A.I.M. (that’s Advanced Idea Mechanics)—a group that also did science, but to overthrow governments and for various other nefarious purposes.

  Nadia hated when people used science for evil. Science is inherently morally neutral; it just is. It’s people who choose whether to use science for good or for evil. Nadia was raised by people who chose the latter. She, personally, chose the former.

  And Monica was alone, here. Nadia wasn’t.

  “Sit rep?” Nadia asked. The headset in her helmet picked up her query and transmitted it back to G.I.R.L.

  “No other A.I.M. agents on the scene,” reported Taina. “Kind of hilarious, actually.”

  “Teleporter set for your quick exit, and it’s not even malfunctioning today!” added Shay.

  Nadia was always happy to hear that. “Backup?”

  “Ready and extremely cute,” joked Priya.

  “In position,” Ying clarified. She wasn’t much of a talker, but that was all Nadia needed to hear. Her team had her back, and when they were working together, Nadia felt invincible.

  She turned her focus back to Monica. “Why are you doing this?” Nadia yelled at the woman, zipping to the other side of the tower. “I’m pretty sure this isn’t what Tesla had in mind!”

  Monica was right; the death ray was, in fact, more properly called a Teleforce. It had come from the mind of Nikola Tesla, an electrical engineer in the early twentieth century who we mostly have to thank for modern electricity in our walls (big win for humanity). Nadia liked Tesla because he was a Serbian American scientist and she was a Hungarian-and-kind-of-Russian American scientist and that, she felt, made them kind of similar, in a way.

  Tesla also, in the 1930s, invented a death ray (less of a win for humanity).

  Or, sorry, the Teleforce. Tesla never actually built one (or if he did, no one ever saw it), but he did describe his plans for a charged particle-beam superweapon in great detail in a treatise called The New Art of Projecting Concentrated Non-Dispersive Energy through Natural Media, which is a very scientist way of saying I Figured Out How to Make a Death Ray.

  It was designed to exude a massive electrical force that could shoot out microscopic particles at high speed. Kind of like a giant death flashlight–slash–Van de Graaff generator,* except if you touched this one, instead of making your hair stand on end, it would probably explode your hair out of your scalp with the force of ten thousand suns. When focused into a beam, that force could disrupt the very atoms of whatever creature or machine had the misfortune of being on the receiving end of the death ray.

  Teleforce.

  No matter what you called it, it was a real day-ruiner, even for someone with as generally sunny a disposition as Nadia.
<
br />   Still waiting for Monica’s response, Nadia scrutinized the tower. It was definitely not a true Teleforce. There was probably no way to make one of those for real, though she wouldn’t put it past Tony Stark to try. But it definitely was a huge and dangerous electrical generator.

  So still a big problem for the people just trying to enjoy their bibimbap.

  “Why am I doing this?!” Monica parroted back at Nadia. She was manipulating a control panel at the tower’s base—probably Nadia’s best bet at disrupting the circuitry powering the generator. “Why wouldn’t I do this?!”

  “Isn’t that what I asked?” English wasn’t Nadia’s first language, but she was pretty sure she’d been crystal clear there. Nadia tucked her arms into her sides and sped down toward Monica—and the control panel. She landed an arm’s length away from her onetime-potential-future-friend-and-lab-partner-now-evil-scientist.

  “Don’t come any closer,” Monica warned. “I can focus these rays right on you.”

  “Okay,” Nadia said agreeably, raising her hands in the air. “I’ll stay right here. But only if you turn off the Teleforce. This isn’t going to do A.I.M. any good.”

  Monica shook her head and continued to manipulate the controls. “This isn’t for A.I.M. This is for…” She paused. “This is…for me. Because…I want to.”

  She sounds unsure about that. Nadia sighed. That seemed like a bad sign. Why were evil scientists always so confusing?

  Probably all the evil.

  Monica stabbed frantically at the control panel. As she did, a red number display began counting down. “When I’m done here, the entire world will know my name.”

  Two minutes. Not good.

  The power coming off the Teleforce began to increase in intensity.

  “Sure, name recognition. Good reason for evil,” Nadia mumbled, keeping to herself that in her opinion, as far as Super Villain names went, “Monica Rappaccini” wasn’t going to be making any best-of lists anytime soon. It was kind of long, which made snappy banter during fights hard, and only really villainous weirdos used their full names. Even other A.I.M. members had monikers, however underwhelming (Amber Silverstein’s “Seeker”? Really?). “There are innocent people in this neighborhood.” Nadia took a step forward with a hand outstretched. A gesture of peace. “If you want to attempt dangerous experimental science, there’s a better—”

  “I said get back!” In an instant, Monica was off the controls and lunging at Nadia.

  Fortunately, an instant was all Nadia ever needed.

  Nadia saw these things like they were happening in slow motion. Which, thanks to physics, they kind of were. As Monica’s momentum propelled her toward Nadia’s position, Nadia leapt into the air. Held momentarily aloft by her wings, Nadia pressed a small button on her right glove, reachable in an instant but not so clumsily placed that she ever hit it accidentally (well…not often, anyway). The button activated Nadia’s supply of Pym Particles.

  NADIA’S NEAT SCIENCE FACTS!!!

  My father, Hank Pym, discovered and isolated the subatomic particle he would go on to name for himself, as men do. Proper deployment of the particles allows a subject to change their size and mass, either shrinking to incredibly small sizes or growing to epically large proportions.

  The particles bypass many of the usual laws of particle physics, which I found extremely frustrating when I first attempted to re-create his research. As the human body shrinks with the Pym Particles, it becomes much more dense; all that energy is compressed into a tiny ball just waiting to explode. And when it does, it’s ultra-powerful, able to damage even the toughest Super Villains. The body’s excess mass is temporarily transported to an alternate dimension, where it waits to be needed again.

  For the record, I would call them Subatomic Human RearraNgement Kernels (that’s S.H.R.I.N.K.!). But then again, I like acronyms. I think I am in good company there.

  The neat science explained how Pym Particles work, but what using Pym Particles felt like was an entirely different story.

  Nadia liked a lot of things. Most things, really. Even kimchi aioli (especially kimchi aioli?). But this was Nadia’s favorite feeling in the entire world.

  In a millisecond, Nadia went from being just over five feet tall to being barely a centimeter tall. She could feel the energy in her body buzz like an archer’s string pulled taut; in the same instant, she felt the rest of her mass slipping away entirely. It was like falling too fast in an elevator, only if you were the elevator and also if the elevator was really super small now. It was freeing. And that was coming from a girl who already knew how to fly.

  From her new vantage point, Nadia looked up and saw Monica’s gloved hand soaring toward the space Nadia had occupied just a moment ago. The glove looked as if it were moving in slow motion.

  It wasn’t, of course. Moving in slow motion, that is. But Nadia was very, very small, which meant she could now move very, very quickly, which made all other humans seem positively lethargic by comparison. The perfect moment to act.

  Nadia narrowed her eyes and jetted upward. Maybe she could get away with hurting Monica just a little. She was going to have to hurt the almost-Teleforce quite a bit, though.

  She landed on Monica’s fist while it was still moving forward, running at full speed up the length of her could-have-been-friend’s forearm. The fabric below Nadia’s feet was rubbery—she wasn’t sure what her super suit was made of, but it likely kept Monica safe from the electricity sparking off the tower. Some kind of vulcanized rubber, maybe. Clever. She’d made some modifications to her old suit in her spare time post–S.H.I.E.LD. custody jailbreak. Nadia approached Monica’s elbow, hoping this might be easier than she’d thought. Because she was running out of time.

  Nadia had always been better at science than at fighting, but the two weren’t mutually exclusive. In fact, being good at science had always made Nadia a much better fighter.

  The human body is just a machine, after all—a very complex, organic machine that doesn’t always work the way it’s supposed to and is much more challenging to program than a servo, for example, but still a machine. Disrupt even one key joint or mechanism and the whole thing goes down.

  Nadia eyed Monica’s elbow, currently the proportionate size of a massive boulder in her path. Monica’s rubbery suit was thick, but it was no match for Nadia’s knowledge of human anatomy. She pinpointed her destination, pulled her arm back, reached the proper crevice and…

  Jabbed.

  Here’s the thing about the “funny bone.” It is not a bone, and it is certainly not funny.

  NADIA’S NEAT SCIENCE FACTS!!!

  What we think of colloquially as the “funny bone” is actually the ulnar nerve, which runs all the way from your neck to your pinkie finger. Like most nerves in your body, the ulnar nerve is hidden under layers of muscle and bone and other things that are good to have inside you. At the elbow, however, it is not hidden quite so much. In a spot called the cubital tunnel, the ulnar nerve runs parallel to the bone and is covered only by skin and a little bit of ligament. If you hit your elbow in just the right spot…

  Funny!

  Well, for me, anyway. As the person doing the hitting. Externally. In this moment. You understand what I’m getting at.

  Nadia heard Monica howl and pushed off into a backflip, taking to the air again. As Monica grasped her arm and cursed, she was snagged from behind by a tangle of sentient vines flying through the air, courtesy of Priya. Nadia changed course, watching as the vines restrained Monica and she began to struggle. As she zipped directly toward a vent visible at the base of the tower’s control panel, Nadia could see Ying rushing out toward Monica from behind the nearby restaurant.

  Monica was handled. But the Teleforce wasn’t.

  Once Nadia crawled inside, Monica’s obscenities faded to background noise. Nadia was in the cooling vent and had to get to the proper controls to short-circuit the thing before it could hurt any innocent people. The console was big; it was going to take Nadia a
ges to find a path that would lead her to the thing’s servers. She didn’t know exactly how long she had left before the timer hit zero and the Teleforce went full death ray all over Bay Ridge, but it couldn’t be much.

  She was going to have to do some science, and she was going to have to do it fast.

  Luckily, fast science was what Nadia did best.

  “I did not do any fast science, per se.” Nadia shook her head. “I wasn’t sure how long I had on the timer and the panel’s circuitry was a mess. So I just…returned to my normal size. Inside the panel. And shredded the console to pieces in the process, which disabled the Teleforce. Maybe not the most elegant scientific solution, but it worked!”

  Nadia: 1, Death Ray: 0.

  “Ying and Priya had Monica tied up, but she used her Phasing Belt and vanished. Typical. But Tai was right, there was no one else from A.I.M. in the vicinity. And with Shay’s teleporter, we were able to get straight back to Pym Labs.” Nadia paused. “Though I can’t say I always trust the thing, to be honest.”

  “And how did this experience with Monica make you feel?” Dr. Sinclair peered at Nadia over her reading glasses.

  “Well…” Nadia paused, pulling her knees up to her chest and crushing the overstuffed pillow in her lap. She closed her eyes, blocking out the light streaming in through the big bay window behind her. Dr. Sinclair’s office was always so bright and welcoming, which made it easier to come back over and over again.

  Nadia took a deep breath and tried to put herself back in the fight with Monica, emotionally. It wasn’t always easy for her, revisiting the emotional complications of official Avengers business, but she owed it to her therapist—and to herself—to try. “Good,” she finally responded, “that I was saving a neighborhood. But…frustrated, too.”

  “At…?”

  “At Monica, for choosing to be so evil.”

  Dr. Sinclair uncrossed her legs and leaned forward. “Just at Monica?”

  Nadia swallowed and looked down at her shoes. How did Dr. Sinclair always know exactly the right buttons to push?