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"Ready?"
Hope's voice was steady, but the tightness around her eyes gave her away. With Reed's help the suit was leagues beyond its first generation the no-return-at-atomics problem had been solved on paper and in the field.
Still… this was the Realm. A place none of them truly understood.
Scott Lang snapped his helmet into place. "Totally. Although, if you kissed me for luck, I might get, like… +10 morale?"
Hope shot him a glare then surprised him with a quick, unapologetic kiss. Hank Pym scowled at Scott over her shoulder. This kid could find a way to annoy him at a funeral.
Hank turned to Nolan. "Thank you for going in with him."
Nolan's reply was calm. "It's no trouble."
The array around them thrummed alive. Reed Richards stood at the primary console, eyes flicking between cascading readouts and the shimmering arch that was yawning open like a liquid horizon.
"Begin," Reed said.
The Quantum Shuttle slid forward and vanished, shrinking past dust, past bacteria, past anything a human eye was ever meant to see. Outside the craft, Nolan matched Scott step-for-step, riding a tide of Pym-particle control, shrinking with inhuman precision.
The world unraveled into color. Dust bouldered into continents; bacteria swam like pale leviathans. Then scale lost meaning entirely—space kaleidoscoped, refracting into infinite mirrored corridors of light and motion, until even that geometry broke.
"Arrival," Nolan said.
The universe blinked. They stood in a boundless void threaded with floating "islands," each knotted to the next by luminous tendrils like living circuitry. Color bled through everything—not surface paint, but essence, each structure humming with its own spectral signature.
Scott eased the shuttle to a hover, breath fogging his visor. "So this is it. The quantum void." His voice cracked over comms. "Hank, Hope—I don't see her yet."
A figure stepped from a distant ridge of light, moving like someone who'd learned to let the realm carry her instead of fighting it.
"I'm here," a voice touched Scott's mind gently. Janet van Dyne smiled as he opened the hatch and stumbled out, suddenly sheepish.
"Uh—hi. I'm Scott."
"I know," she said warmly, though her eyes slid past him and locked on Nolan—the only man standing outside a vehicle as if vacuum were optional. "And you are?"
"Pym's boss," Scott blurted, handing her the comm.
Janet quirked a brow. "He didn't mention that the last time I used Scott's body to call him."
"Time was tight," Hank's voice crackled through, equal parts relief and awe. Twenty years collapsing into a single breath.
Nolan nodded. "Nolan. A pleasure, Dr. van Dyne. Scott—take your future mother-in-law home. I'll remain."
Scott blinked. "Remain? Here?"
Janet's smile thinned. "This place isn't a museum, Mr. Nolan. The Realm can fracture minds. And it's not empty. There are natives—and others—whose technology rivals anything topside."
"You mean Kang," Nolan said, almost amused.
The name dropped like lead. Janet's expression chilled. "How do you—"
"Because it's my job to handle him," Nolan replied. "Go."
For a heartbeat Janet held his gaze, weighing everything she didn't say. Then she squeezed Scott's forearm. "Let's get your ride turned around."
The shuttle pivoted, engines whispering. Beyond them, the Realm breathed—islands pulsing, tendrils flexing, distances folding and unfolding like thought.
Nolan watched the light bend. Somewhere ahead lay a man who had learned to weaponize time and probability and a machine that could cut across realities.
He stepped forward, and the Quantum Realm opened to meet him.
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