Lock had a curved plan—an elegant, indirect counter to a threat that refused to be solved head-on.
Ava's phase-change suit let her slip between reality and the quantum plane at will. If someone could force her into the real state long enough to open the suit and rewire its interior circuitry, she could be held there, at least temporarily. It wouldn't be permanent, but it only needed to last long enough for Scott and Hope to crawl inside and sabotage the suit's quantum interface.
That was the second piece of intelligence Lock had asked Fury to dig up: the schematics for Ava's phase-change suit. Lock couldn't solder tiny circuits or shrink himself to insect-size and work inside the suit; only the pair of Pym trainees could do that. Scott and Hope would have to slip in, make the change, and get out before Ava phased back.
Lock would be bait.
What none of them had expected was that cutting Ava's hand would be an accident born of forceful ingenuity.
Quantum states behaved like riddles; Ava had once slipped her hand into Lock's chest and, by rights, should have been unable to harm him — her hand in a superposition that ignored bones and muscle. But when Scott and Hope forced the suit's circuit into a real state, reality snapped. The wrist that had been phasing through muscle was suddenly solid, and the seam where quantum met flesh pinched.
There was a sick, metallic sound as flesh and phase interface resisted each other. Lock's chest muscles twitched; he spat the severed limb free. For a heartbeat, the room hung on that grotesque edge.
Then Lock moved with a calm that made people forget the horror of the moment: he took the severed hand, and with a motion that belonged to someone used to patching wounds others would call impossible, he set it against the torn wrist.
"No—Don, that's not—" Scott blurted, helpless and nauseous.
Professor Bill snatched at them, outrage overtaking his academic composure. "Are you insane? You need a surgeon! Get her to a hospital—call a medical team—"
Lock held up a hand. "Quiet." He reached into his coat and produced a small vial of shimmering green liquid. Without preamble, he opened Ava's mouth and tipped a sliver down her throat.
A green flash raced along the torn flesh. Bone knit, sinew reconnected, skin smoothed. The hand was wreathed in steam for a breath, then lay limber and whole as if nothing had happened. The phase-change suit still bore the bloodstains and the jagged tear, but Ava's palm moved, flexed, and curled into a fist.
Everyone fell silent. Even Hope, always fierce, felt the gravity of the moment.
Ava tried to jerk back—instinct screaming to escape—but Lock's fingers closed on her other wrist before she could. "You said you'd follow me forever," he murmured, an odd, dry amusement in his voice. "Why the rush?"
Anger flared across Ava's face. She hit him with the other hand, a strike meant to tear flesh from flesh. Lock used the contact to bind them both; his palm seized her wrist and held, confident and immovable.
She kicked, dug heels into the floor, tried to wrench free—useless. The blows couldn't even bruise him. Lock's body, tempered by rigors no one here understood, shrugged off the violence like wind.
"Scott," Lock said, directing the command with the authority of someone used to giving orders, "get a rope. Tie her up."
They did. Someone fetched cables; someone else hauled over a restraint system. Ava's limbs were bound; she slumped, exhausted and furious. Lock's earlier warning echoed through the room: the rewire would only force the suit to stay in reality temporarily. Excess movement, too much strain, and the suit's integrity would collapse—Ava would blink back to ghost and vanish.
"So?" Ava spat. "If I go ghost again, I don't have long anyway."
Lock's expression didn't change. He knew the stakes. Ava's power was a singular danger—one that could slip through any defense and end lives with a touch. Letting her go was unacceptable. Making sure she couldn't leave, even briefly, was their only shot at stopping a catastrophe.
As Ava was secured, a small shadow darted through the ceiling hole and flickered into view: Cross. He had tried to escape earlier, only to find an invisible barrier—Lock's handiwork—closing the exits like a trap. With no way out, he'd returned, defeated but not quite broken.
Hope's tone was sharp. "Cross—stop. You can still walk away. Don't sell this."
Cross's hand smoothed an open palm over the vast cylinder of crimson liquid—the Pym particles—like a captain revering a ship. He laughed, but it was a brittle sound. "I lived in the shadow of your mentor, meant to be his footnote," he told them. "I built my life to be more than Hank's ghost. If I can finally wield this, if I can make what's been stolen as mine… I'll never be under his thumb again."
Scott scoffed. "What's wrong with living in his shadow? It's warm under a big tree. Ten billion people live under his shadow and call it safety."
Ava muttered—just barely audible—"Flattery."
Cross's face hardened. "Hope, you'll never convince me. Father and daughter may feud, but you'll always be his daughter. I made a breakthrough years ago—an incomplete Pym particle. It can change matter at scale, but not living tissue. Then I found the quantum channel. That's why I partnered with Bill and Ava. We had a way forward."
He stopped, eyes glittering. "If I can't flee today, then I'll test it here—with King Lock as my guinea pig." The grin he twisted was fierce. "Let's see whether he can stop me."
The room went still. Everyone watched, incredulous and terrified.
Cross tapped something on his suit. In an instant, he triggered a growth protocol. The Wasp armor around him drank Pym energy and expanded. Cross swelled, limbs lengthening, body rising taller than the vessel of crimson fluid itself. Where he'd relied on stealth before, now he embraced spectacle.
Tentacle-like articulations unfurled from the suit—spider-leg appendages that snapped around the Pym tank, anchoring it to Cross's back. The crimson glow pooled around his bulk like a living lantern. For all its absurdity—Cross, hulking in a Wasp frame—there was a raw, dangerous confidence in the act.
"Up," Cross barked. "This underground laboratory is too small. Let's fight aboveground, Lock!"
He laughed, certain of victory, or absolutely mad.
Lock considered the scene the way a chess player watches a single brash move: with the interest of someone who had already counted the consequences. Cross's gambit was reckless, but if it worked—if Cross could upload Pym energy into a field large enough—he could change the rules of combat on a scale no one had authorized.
Lock didn't move in haste. He observed, catalogued, and then acted. If Cross's pride had become a weapon, he would turn that weapon back on Cross.
"Bring it," Lock said finally, composure like a blade. The room braced. The fight that followed would decide more than a personal vendetta; it might decide whether Pym's science became a new plague in the wrong hands.
Cross surged upward into the shaft of light, his massive form framed by red luminescence. Lock stepped forward, every muscle ready, while Hope and Scott flanked him—trained, dangerous, and small in different ways.
The lab held its breath. Outside, the world might not yet realize the tipping point they faced. Inside, amidst the hum of machines and the smell of ozone and the bitter tang of panic, Lock moved to meet Cross's madness head-on.
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