The Unstoppable Wasp

“Good.” Margaret rushed back to the spiral staircase. “And nice plants!” she yelled back over her shoulder. Priya squeezed her pots closer.

Nadia felt more relieved than she had since this whole thing started. Margaret wasn’t responsible for any of this. She couldn’t be. She seemed just as shocked as Nadia and her friends. They were going to be able to fix this, together. And then they’d find whoever was responsible for this.

Together.

“I’m still not convinced.” Ying bent into a stretch, determined to stay limber, just in case.

“Nothing out here,” reported Shay.

“And no chatter online,” came Taina’s voice. “No one has any idea the VERAs are about to go nuclear. You’ve got just under two hours to fix them.”

Priya sat cross-legged against one wall, setting her plants next to her. The planetarium, like the rest of HoffTech, also had plants and vines lining the walls. Priya closed her eyes.

Nadia bounced up and down on her toes and wished she had some music to listen to; anything to distract her from the next couple hours of work ahead of her. It wasn’t going to be easy—especially not if VERA knew what they were about to do—but she was certain they could do it.

She tilted her head up and looked into the heavens (such as they were). The dome overhead rotated, the constellations spinning slowly but determinedly through the sky. It was Thanksgiving at the end of this week; the fall night sky was crisp and beautiful. Even when it was fake.

And then it all went dark.

“Argh.” Margaret’s voice floated up from the spiral staircase. “Nadia, can you help me with these?”

Nadia squinted in the darkness. She didn’t want to put on her helmet for her night vision; it would bring up too many questions with Margaret. Instead, she carefully made her way over to the top of the spiral staircase. The light from below was so bright it was almost blinding.

Something was pressed into her hands—the laptops. Nadia grabbed them—but Margaret continued to hold on.

“I’ve got them,” Nadia assured her. “You can let go.”

“I’m sorry, Nadia,” Margaret said. Nadia squinted. She couldn’t see Margaret; the backlight was too bright. “You’ve been a good friend. But I can’t let you ruin this.”

Margaret shoved the laptops into Nadia, hard, and Nadia stumbled backward. Something burst from the top of the spiral staircase. Nadia fumbled for the release on her helmet underneath her trench coat, but she didn’t need it. The lights flipped on, the planetarium whirring back to life.

And in front of Nadia stood Margaret.

Dressed exactly like the Wasp.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” called Nadia from her hiding spot behind one of the planetarium’s seats. “You can stop this!”

Margaret shot a Wasp’s Sting so powerful it blasted clean through the chair on Nadia’s left. She turned her face away from the blast just in time.

“I can’t,” Margaret yelled back. “You don’t understand!”

Nadia took a deep breath and knew she had to do what she did best in these situations: map out her surroundings, consider her entire situation, and then take decisive action. She was going to need to buy herself some time.

She hit the button near her thumb and immediately was less than a centimeter tall. She ran under the chair, pressed her back up against one of the struts—Ugh, is that gum? It’s always gum—and tried to figure out what to do next. Quickly.

When Margaret had emerged from the stairs Nadia hadn’t known whether to laugh or to scream. The idea that Taina and Bobbi and everyone else had been right about Margaret all along—it was too much for Nadia on a day like today. She couldn’t reconcile the Margaret in her head, the Margaret she thought she knew, with the woman in front of her. It was cognitive dissonance. It was going to be at least four weeks of therapy. She hoped Dr. Sinclair was ready.

Nadia had tried to salvage the situation, even as Ying and Priya sprang into defensive positions. “Nice suit,” she said, as casually as she could given the circumstances, which were that she was looking directly at Margaret Hoff in a full black-and-green Wasp suit. “From Hank?”

Margaret barked a laugh. “Hank?! Please. You know what he was like. Hank tried to have me fired. ‘Too driven.’ Like he ever told the male interns they were ‘too driven.’”

“He had some i

ssues,” agreed Nadia. “So, Winners, then? T.J. Maxx?”

“You.” Margaret stepped closer to Nadia, who stood stock-still. “Our VERAs were connected. I had access to your entire database. Hank never allowed me access to his secrets; this is what I was owed for having to start my career from scratch after that. I made a few modifications after Times Square, though,” she said, nodding at Priya. “You have some very interesting friends. And I saw your suit under your clothes. Sloppier than I expected from you, Nadia.”

“You were in our research?” Priya spat. A wall of vines was beginning to form behind her.