Chapter 1

Four Years Later...

ELIJAH

Half the earth's population had disappeared, and in the four years that had passed since then, the world had changed. With half of the world's leaders snapped away, civil wars had sprung all over the world. Countries plunged into chaos. Parents lost children. Children lost parents.

Elijah Bradley was an orphan. His mom had been there one second. Gone the next. Reduced to ash. Twelve years old when it happened, sixteen now, he tried his best to take care of his disabled grandfather, but money was tight and help was nowhere to be found. Everyone else had their own problem to worry about. The only silver lining was that his landlord had been snapped away, and no one had come by to collect the rent in months.

Eli's grip on the phone tightened. "He's going to die."

"Eli, you have to understand," Eli's uncle Josiah said through the phone, "it's bad out here. I'm sending all the money I can, but I'm barely holding myself together."

"I can't just let him die. If I don't take care of him no one will."

The line was silent for a moment. "Fine, he can come too. But I want you to come live with me. I can protect you. Your sisters miss you too."

Like his father Isaiah before him, Josiah was a superhero. Josiah and his father, Isaiah, Eli's grandfather had a strained relationship. Josiah didn't come from a natural birth—scientists tortured Isaiah and, to recreate his powers, extracted Isaiah's semen and artificially inseminated a Josiah's mother. When a teenaged Josiah finally found his father, Isaiah was reluctant to accept Josiah. Eli's mom, Sarah, was sympathetic toward him and integrated her brother into her family, introducing him to his nephews and nieces.

Eli wasn't sure what led to Isaiah's rejection of Uncle Josiah but had his suspicions. Isaiah had already had issues. The government had kidnapped Isaiah and other young African American men to experiment on them to recreate the Super Soldier serum. The mental deterioration that had now left Isaiah wheelchair-bound and catatonic traced back to those experiments, and had possibly already been affecting Isaiah psychologically.

In Eli's lowest moments, he would wonder why so many healthy people died in the snap while Isaiah lived to suffer even more.

After the snap, Eli's two remaining siblings moved in with Josiah, but Eli stayed behind to take care of Isaiah. He hated to admit it, but he felt relieved when his sisters left. Stephanie and Dalia reminded him too much of their other two now-disintegrated siblings.

Isaiah stared into nothingness as Eli shoved their belongings into suitcases. The suitcases packed, Eli wheeled Isaiah's wheelchair into the kitchen and began preparing spaghetti. The water was just about boiling when a flash of blinding light filled the room. He shielded his eyes with his arms, and then sprang into action, dashing in front of his grandfather. The light died down, and in its place stood what looked to Eli to be a slimmed down Iron Man with a slightly off color scheme.

"Iron...teen?" he guessed, although the idea seemed absurd.

"Iron Lad," the visitor corrected. "I am from the future, but I seem to have miscalculated my arrival. I was looking for the Avengers, but they are no more."

With superheroes in the family, Eli had a relatively high tolerance for strange occurrences, but even he had to admit that this was bizarre. He chose to ignore the future part for now and focus on the Avengers part.

"There are some heroes left. Iron Man," Eli began listing, thinking that an oddball named Iron Lad would obviously be looking for Iron Man. However, Iron Lad didn't not react to that, although it was difficult to tell with the full metal mask. Eli continued, "Captain America, Black Widow."

From what had been publicized, Eli knew that Captain Marvel had led a significant group of the heavy hitters into space on some mystery mission—Thor, War Machine, Hulk, and Nova were all off planet at the moment. But while the already reduced number of superheroes had gone down even more with that mission, there were still some heroes left, including several Avengers as well as Eli's Uncle Josiah.

"Yes," Iron Lad said, "but I need a team. That's why I need you, Josiah."

Eli froze in place, unsure whether Iron Lad was being racist or just severely mistaken.

CASSIE

Cassie Lang swung her legs off the side of the lab table. Bill Foster's lab reminded her of the Pyms' but smaller, but not in the microscopic sense.

"I'm telling you, Cassie, and I know you I tell you this every time, but I have a feeling this is going to be the time. You know, the time," Luis said.

He placed the action figure in the observation chamber as Dr. Foster readied the monitoring equipment. Dr. Foster adjusted the dials, and then pressed the button that would shrink the action figure even smaller than it already was. He pressed the button, and the action figure immediately imploded.

"Again," Dr. Foster said, sighing.

Luis place a new action figure in the chamber, and Dr. Foster adjusted the dials to the opposite direction. He pressed the button, and the action figure began expanding. It grew in size until it was as tall as Luis, and Dr. Foster pressed the button again, stopping the growth.

"Oh my god," Dr. Foster breathed out.

"We did it!" Luis shouted.

Cassie was unimpressed. "What good is it going to do to grow something if you can't shrink it back down to normal size after?"

Luis and Dr. Foster exchanged glances, and Cassie suddenly felt more out of the loop than ever.

"This is just a theory, but..." Dr. Foster started, before Luis cut him off.

"Keep this on the down low, but Doc here was thinking that some cosmic rays or something show that maybe your dad isn't snapped but is actually shrunk down to micro Ant-Man size. And I was saying, man I was thinking that the whole time. We did only find three piles of ashes by the van lab, after all."

The lab in question was currently parked next to the refrigerator in Dr. Foster's lab.

"I think that I can calibrate the device to target human DNA, so that we can bring him back from the Quantum Realm without needing to access the realm." Dr. Foster paused. "Basically, we don't need to be able to shrink anyone back down because we're only trying to restore someone to normal size from a microscopic state."

Cassie nodded thoughtfully. "But..."

Dr. Foster held up his hand. "Not to worry. I won't stop trying to perfect the shrinking technology. It's best to approach this problem from multiple angles."

"I'm also using my thieving skills to try to track down what happened to Pym and Hope's superpower suits. Were they wearing them? Can clothes be snapped? It seems like that can be snapped when they are wearing them, but what if they're not? And you just know he had extras."

"If only I could refine my Goliath technology. It allows the user to increase in size and decrease back to normal size, but I can't seem to get it past the roadblock of decreasing below normal size. I think it has something to do with natural mental blocks against size reduction resulting in microversal approaches to the Quantum Realm." Dr. Foster paced to the other side of the room and retrieved a retro-looking belt, which he then placed on the lab table next to Cassie. "Young lady, could you please refrain from sitting on any furniture not intended to be a seat?"

Groaning, Cassie slid off of the lab table and walked up next to Luis.

She waited until Dr. Foster moves back to the switch board and his back was facing away before whispering into Luis's ear. "You thinking what I'm thinking?" She inclined her head at the belt on the table.

Luis grinned. "Sounds like a heist."

It wasn't much of a heist. Cassie strolled over to the lab table, slid the Goliath belt into her backpack, and Dr. Foster didn't even notice.