"Okay—if luck's on our side, in twenty minutes we'll have about a hundred milliliters of growth-tuned Pym Particles."
The Craftsman pulled off his round goggles and exhaled.
In front of him sat something the size of a car tire, a transparent contraption that looked half like a distiller and half like something Hank Pym would've built on a grumpy weekend. On the top was the canister full of the giant's blood, bubbling away.
A thin tube—looked almost like a plastic straw—ran from the lower chamber into a small glass beaker.
"And if luck's not on our side? We only get fifty?" White Night stepped in from the doorway, tossing a casual wave toward Speedball in the holding cell.
"Not on our side?"
The Craftsman scratched his head, then turned with a mischievous grin. "Then we get shrunk by, oh, ten to the tenth power? Roughly?"
"…I'm going to assume that's a joke." White Night's mouth twitched. He watched in silence as the red liquid slowly dripped from the distiller into the beaker.
Why didn't the beaker grow or shrink?
Because Pym Particles, though engineered, weren't just tech. Their essence was tied to extradimensional space and worked on rules that were, frankly, half science, half "because Hank said so."
Ten-odd minutes later, White Night took the beaker of red liquid out to a stretch of open ground a few kilometers from the Craftsman's shelter. Far enough that no one would ask questions if things suddenly got…building-sized.
He pulled out the silver Ant-Man helmet and set it carefully on a flat patch of earth.
A few dozen meters away, a desert lizard tilted its head, tongue flicking, curious about what this human was doing.
White Night lifted off lightly in his armor. He'd rigged a simple spray-spout over the beaker to control the output.
At about 30–40 meters up, he tapped the spout. A few drops of growth Pym Particles fell like lazy rain and splashed over the Ant-Man helmet.
The moment they hit, the helmet boomed—then swelled at a speed visible to the naked eye, ballooning like something out of a Kaiju movie.
In seconds it was hundreds of times bigger, like a titanic lid dropped over the earth. The unlucky lizard under it was flattened instantly.
White Night didn't even blink. He stepped into the now-gigantic helmet. It was pitch-black inside, like walking into a cavern.
He flicked on the mech's floodlights. White light swept across the interior.
The "walls" were covered in intricate circuitry and micro-tech, faint red glows pulsing through the lines.
"Scan the interior. Look for any hidden hatches, locks, maintenance doors—anything."
His voice echoed inside the Hulkbuster's helmet. HUD panels lit up, mapping the internal structure of the enlarged helmet.
After a moment, one area pinged.
White Night moved toward it.
(…Removed junk ad injection…)
Up close, he found a shallow recess. He slid his hand in and felt around—there. A tiny button, almost seamless with the inner shell.
He hovered his finger for a second, then pressed.
A soft click.
A hairline crack spread from the button, widening, unfolding into a narrow passage. White Night watched it expand, patient. A few seconds later, a full hidden door resolved in front of him.
He stepped through. Dust crunched under his boots.
Sensors in the secret room woke at once. Dim, dust-muffled lights flickered on, pushing back the darkness.
This lab hadn't seen a human in a long time.
Aged instruments sat in the corners, blanketed in gray. Benches were piled with abandoned folders and notebooks, pages yellowed and faded. On the shelves, chemical vials had long since clouded over. In the center, a long worktable held microscopes, magnifiers, half-finished rigs—classic Pym work: practical, elegant, a little paranoid.
A small tablet on the table blinked to life, casting a weak glow. White Night stepped closer.
Onscreen appeared a man in a red bodysuit with those unmistakable antennae on his cowl.
Hank Pym. First Ant-Man. Sometimes Giant-Man. Chin exposed, just like in the old days.
"If you're seeing this," the recording said, echoing through the lab, "then my hunch was right. I, Hank Pym—Ant-Man. Or Giant-Man, depending on the day—am dead."
White Night rubbed his chin. In this universe, Hank had fought to the very end… and died in a pretty ironic way—torn apart by those subterranean creatures, the same type that had shown up at the Baxter Building earlier. They'd swarmed him like ants—killed him, then ate him, leaving a hundred-meter-long skeleton bleaching in the wild.
"My life's work—my tech, my inventions—there are backups of all of it here. …Obviously not Ultron." Hank went on, gesturing at the lab.
"If you found this, I don't know if you're Janet, or one of the later Ant-Men… God, please don't let it be S.H.I.E.L.D. If it is, that means Fury really did put three cameras in my house."
"Can't a man have any privacy?" Hank pinched the bridge of his nose.
He calmed a moment later. "If you're family, you know what to do with the helmet. If you're not, and you don't understand Pym Particles, press the third button on the side of the tablet."
"It'll return the helmet to normal size in one minute. Hopefully you remembered to carry out everything you needed first."
Beep. The screen went dark.
White Night thought for a second.
Then he started packing up everything in the lab.
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