SHE | Marvel's Avengers [10]

Chapter 14 - The Ant Hill Pt. 1

"Dr....Hank? Hank Pym?" Dr. Banner pushed forward, stepping through a portal as we followed after him, the black fading from my arm. We arrived in some sort of underground facility where a man was waiting. 

"Hank," Dr. Banner greeted.

 "Bruce," Dr. Pym responded. 

"What are you doing out here?" there was tension between the two men, and it was making me uncomfortable.

"Gonna ask you the same thing," the two of them started laughing, giving each other a hug as the tension quickly dispersed. 

"Ah, it's good to see you, man," Dr. Banner said.

 "Good to see you," Dr. Pym responded. 

"Ah, Kamala and Abila, this is Dr. Hank Pym," he sounded a lot happier than he had a few minutes ago. 

"Ant-Man?!" Kamala asked in disbelief.

"That...was another life. Follow me," Dr. Pym said. 

"Ooh--'kay. So this is the heat signature we've been searching for," I stared at the piles of cores, exactly the ones we had been looking for. 

"We've been salvaging weapons, robots, AIM tech...Anything we can to build up our defenses," Dr. Pym admitted. 

"Think you could spare some of these Initiator Cores? You know, help out a Helicarrier in need of some TLC?" he asked. 

"I imagine we can make some arrangements," Dr. Pym assured.

"Thank you very much," the joy in Dr. Banner's voice was a nice change of pace.

 "What is this place?" I asked, looking around.

 "We call it...The Ant Hill," Dr. Pym said.

 "Ooooh--" he started. 

"Not my idea. Think it was one of our anonymous hackers, tiny_dancer," Dr. Pym admitted.

"No way...So, so they're all..." Kamala breathed.

 "Inhumans, yes. Many of them were prisoners at an AIM facility," Dr. Pym said.

 "I guess they were fighting back after all," Dr. Banner whispered to us. 

"Make yourself at home. We've got lots to catch up on," Dr. Pym said.

 "This place is more than I ever imagined," Kamala breathed.

"It is pretty cool," I admitted. "Well, to a point," she sighed and shook her head at my joke. Dr. Pym and Dr. Banner were chatting as the former was tinkering with something. 

"Hey, Abila, come on. I've got a mission for you three," Dr. Pym said, leading us over to a War Table. "Okay, now that we've got some muscle on our side, I think we should hit one of AIM's testing labs. We know they've been experimenting on Inhumans in small, rural communities. I'd like to get my hands on whatever research they've been collecting," Dr. Pym informed us.

"Sounds good. We crashed one of their labs in the Pacific Northwest," Kamala said. 

"Olympia Archive? Impressive. We wondered who was responsible for taking that place down," He admitted.

 "Thanks! We didn't get out with a lot of information. But now maybe we can find out more,"

-

"AIM has been setting up bases in small towns throughout the rural west. We suspect they've been using these as testing labs and capturing the local Inhuman populace for their experiments," Dr. Pym's voice crackled from overhead.

 "I can't believe all this has been happening, right under the government's nose!" Kamala exclaimed.

 "Well, they have a lot of power in Washington--and financial connections to every major cooperation. AIM has had 5 years to set down their roots. Taking them down is not going to be easy," Dr. Pym warned. 

"Well, we have to start somewhere. It's up to us to do the right thing," I said. We were on the quinjet, Dr. Banner in Hulk form, flying towards one of the suspected labs.

"Spoken like another Avenger I once knew,"