The Ant's Daughter (An Ant-Man Story)

Fiddle With It

After what seemed like forever, Sarah finally flew through the second-story window of Hank and Hope's house. She grew to normal size as fast as she could, making sure she didn't squash any ants, and went around looking for them.

She found the two of them with a table full of papers and an open laptop that was blinking. The pair looked up and smiled at Sarah. "Glad you found your way here, Sarah," Hank stated with a grin, "How was your trip?"

"Field trip was not very interesting," Sarah answered, "but the ride back was fun!"

Hope laughed and motioned for Sarah to join them. Sarah leaped into the investigation and quickly looked at the papers. Most of them were images from what looked like security cameras, but plenty of them were lines of code ranging, from what Sarah could tell, from Morse code to C++. She picked up a picture and studied it in depth. It was a bit blurry, but she could make out the face of a man with a hood.

Darren Cross.

She held up the picture and asked, "When was this taken?"

"Unfortunately," Hope replied, "about a day ago. With how intent he is on staying hidden, he more than likely moved locations shortly afterwards." Sarah put the picture down in disappointment.

"However," Hank added, "the reason we called you was to talk about the facial recognition." Sarah turned her attention to the computer, which was still blinking. As it turned out, the blinking was from the facial recognition in progress across the entire city. It scanned about two people per second, but they all showed up negative. "We have been at it since the break-in, and we still haven't gotten a ping. We hoped you would be able to help."

Sarah studied it for less than a minute before asking, "How detailed did you make the recognition because too much detail, even when it comes to facial recognition, can be hindering to the program. It's really a simple fix, you know."

Hank gave Sarah a side eye. She thought about it and probably should have reworded it, but she was desperate to find Cassie. "Go ahead and fiddle with it," Hank responded, "we pretty much only know the basics when it comes to facial recognition."

Sarah hid her smirk (thinking about how old Hank must have been to still be saying "fiddle") and got to work. She rerouted the server to a stronger connection, helping to make the computer run faster. She also hooked up their computer to her computer, allowing the A.I. to reconfigure the search to be a) a larger range, and b) a detailed yet fast scan.

In no more than two minutes, Sarah got a ping on three possible whereabouts of Cross. "Got it!" Sarah called out with her eyes never leaving the screen. Hank and Hope crowded around and looked over her shoulder.

All three possible locations were around 25 miles away, a little outside of the city limits, which is probably why Hank and Hope hadn't found anything until this point.

"So," Sarah jumped in, "should we split up and find them or what?"

"Slow down, kid," Hope said cautiously, "this is Darren Cross we are talking about, the man who has evaded all kinds of recognition in the public since your dad shrunk. At least one of these places will more than likely have weapons or guards, enough that one person couldn't go alone."

"Hope's right, Sarah," Hank added, "if only one of us went into each place, there's a chance that none of us would make it out."

Sarah sighed and asked, "Well, which one do we go to first?"

They thought about it before Hank asked, "What can you tell us about the details of the three locations?"

Sarah typed furiously until descriptions and statistics appeared on the screen.

Location #1 had been abandoned the longest, but it had the most foot traffic around it, meaning Darren would more than likely not want people getting curious and getting a peek inside.

Location #2 was the most remote location in the middle of the woods with very little cellular communication. While this may seem like a good place for a hideout, with whatever Darren is doing and how tech-savvy he his, he will at least need some sort of Internet connection.

And finally, Location #3. It had been abandoned for over a decade, but still in good condition. The building was out of visual from the streets, meaning little foot traffic; to add on, it was still in range of a great Internet connection.

"The third location has to be the place," Hope spoke, "it just makes the most logical and industrial sense."

Hank smirked. "All right, then. Let's go catch ourselves a crook."

Cheesy ending, but more interesting stuffff to follow!!

~MarvelRebel27