MAGIC TRICKS [PETER PARKER]

THIRTY-FIVE

SCOTT LANG PACED NEEDLESSLY ACROSS THE OPEN SPACE IN THE LIVING AREA.

"Are you okay?" Steve asked him, glancing at Natasha from the corner of his eye. The man looked disheveled, murmuring things to himself, like he struggled to ask a question. "I'm fine..." Scott pressed his lips together. "Have any of you ever studied Quantum Physics?"

Nadia and Steve scoffed at the thought, but Natasha replied, "Only to make conversation."

Scott stared at her for a silent second, then continued on with his ramble. "Alright. So, five years ago, before Thanos, I was in a place called the Quantum Realm. The Quantum Realm is like it's own microscopic universe. To get in there, you have to be incredibly small." His eyes went a little glassy. "Hope... she was my... she's my..." Scott shook his head to clear it. "She was supposed to pull me out. And then Thanos happened and I got stuck there."

Nadia narrowed her eyes. The way he spoke was strange— like all of this had happened yesterday. To her, it sort of had. Everything was still fresh on her brain: everything.

"I'm sorry, that must've been a long five years," Nat said. Scott shook his head, his eyes wild. "That's just it. For me, it was like five hours."

Natasha and Steve shared a bewildered look, but Nadia kept her eyes trained on Scott Lang. What was he getting at?

"See, the rules of the Quantum Realm aren't like they are up here. Everything is unpredictable." He eyed the remainder of Natasha's sandwich. "Is that anybody's sandwich? I'm starving." Without waiting for a response, he picked it up and shoved it inside his mouth.

"Wait, wait..." Nadia shook her head vigorously, as if to shake out any other thoughts, trying to grasp onto what Scott was saying. "What are you talking about?"

"What I'm saying is—" He swallowed the sandwich roughly "Time works differently in the Quantum Realm. The only problem right now is we don't have a way to navigate it... But what if we did?"

Nadia's mind swirled a thousand miles per second. Hope bubbled into her chest and she struggled to push it down. Could this be it? Could the man standing in an oversized t-shirt and ripped up jeans be the solution to their problem?

"I can't stop thinking about it... What if, we could control the chaos, and we could navigate it? What if there was a way to enter the Quantum Realm at a certain point in time but then exit at another point in time? Like... before Thanos." Scott raised an eyebrow, awaiting their reactions.

Nadia stepped forward, her eyes a bright shade of hopeful. "You mean like... like a time machine?"

Scott bit his lip. "No, n-no of course not... It's more like a... Yeah, a time machine." Natasha and Steve shared another look. "I know it's crazy," Scott started, "But I can't stop thinking about it. There's gotta be some way... No? It's crazy..."