Chapter 8 – Mosquito Squadron
Part 1
Stifling a yawn and trying to force herself fully awake, Laurel hit the End Call icon on her phone and crawled out of bed. Training with Nyssa had been one of the things that had helped her get through the hard months immediately following Sara's death. Then one day the professional assassin had just disappeared from her life. No goodbye, no nothing. She had been almost heartbroken at the loss of yet another friend. But there had been nothing she could do. The only possible source of information on Nyssa's whereabouts was Malcolm Merlyn, the man responsible for the deaths of both her boyfriend, Tommy, and her sister, Sara. She would never willingly go to him for help.
Suddenly, out of the blue, over a year and a half later Nyssa calls her and says it is urgent that they meet and almost commanded her to be at Sara's gravesite out in Oakwood Cemetery in under an hour. It wasn't that she didn't want to see Nyssa, she did, but God, she was so, so tired. It was three in the morning and she had been asleep for barely an hour.
As she stumbled towards the bathroom to splash some water on her face before seriously thinking about getting ready, she once again found herself envying Oliver and Thea. For them, the job was done when they took down the bad guys. But for her, that was almost the easy part. The hard part was shepherding the criminals successfully through the entire legal process - making sure every I was dotted and every T crossed - so they would end up in Iron Heights, where they belonged.
It had been almost ten the previous evening when she had left Team Arrow's secret lair after patching Thea up. Then she had returned to her office and spent nearly four hours preparing for today's court appearance by a pair of criminals she had helped to take down the previous week. Now, she had to rush out to the cemetery. Even if whatever Nyssa wanted took less than an hour, she would still be rushing to make it back to her office in time to finish preparations for the nine o'clock court date. And she had promised to meet Barbara Gordon for a breakfast meeting, too. Definitely, if whatever Nyssa wanted took very long, she was going to have to push the meeting with Barbara to dinner, although from what she remembered, Barbara had a late afternoon flight back to Gotham, so that might not work either. Damn, like so many other times recently, she wished the day was at least six hours longer.
Since Nyssa hadn't said anything about coming ready for a battle, after a fast shower and a quick dash of makeup, Laurel slipped into one of her gray power suits for the court appearance, assuming she might not get a chance to change again, only compromising with a set of sneakers in place of her heels for the potential trek through the cemetery. Still, since joining Team Arrow, she had become a master at the art of getting ready fast. Exactly sixteen minutes after her feet first touched the floor beside the bed, she was out the door juggling a coffee cup and a bagel in one hand, her briefcase and heels in the other, and with her oversized purse containing a few emergency weapons over her shoulder.
At three-thirty in the morning the traffic was light, reducing the travel time to the cemetery to a quick twenty minutes. Deciding she shouldn't be the only one up at this ungodly hour, she called her assistant to get her started on some of the tasks that still needed to be accomplished before the court appearance. In the old days, waking Carrie this early would have bothered her. But ever since she had been bumped from assistant D.A. to chief D.A. four months earlier with the death of D.A. John Sullivan, she had had to dump more and more of her tasks on Carrie. So far, the girl, who was barely six months out of law school and still studying for the Bar, was holding up well. She hoped that continued to be the case, as she definitely didn't have time to be breaking in a new assistant.
Besides, she needed something to distract herself from thoughts of the upcoming meeting with Nyssa. The assassin hadn't given a single clue about what she wanted and why they had to meet way out at the cemetery. But that was typical Nyssa; she always held her cards tight to the vest.
Thinking back, their last conversation before Nyssa had disappeared had been about Nyssa's nascent plan to take out Merlyn. Nyssa hated the man for both killing Sara and supplanting what she thought was her rightful place at the head of the League. God, Laurel hoped Nyssa wasn't here seeking her help in some move against Merlyn. She still hated Merlyn for what he had done to Tommy and Sara, but she had finally accepted they were gone and that going up against Merlyn wasn't going to bring either of them back and would probably just get her killed as well. However if Nyssa was looking for help she knew the assassin would never get it from Oliver. Merlyn was Thea's father and ensuring Thea's happiness was more important to Oliver than seeking revenge for things in the past. And with the ongoing situation with H.I.V.E., none of them needed to get drawn into a new confrontation with the League.
Laurel had just ended the call with Carrie when the main entrance to the cemetery came into view. Turning in, Laurel followed the familiar set of paths that led to Sara's gravesite tucked away in one of the further corners of the sprawling cemetery.
In the early days, when the headstone was first placed after they had believed Sara had gone down with the Queen's Gambit, Laurel hadn't come out here often, usually only when forced to accompany one or both of her parents. But after Sara's real death, Laurel had been out here often. Well, in the beginning it had been almost once a week, but slowly over time the frequency of her visits had dropped. She now realized it had been almost two months since the last time and it left her feeling more than a little guilty.
Shutting down the engine, Laurel just sat there for a minute gripping the steering wheel as the memories of that horrific night returned, feeling as fresh as they had the first time. She had been in the alley when Sara's body had tumbled from the darkness above. It had landed bare feet in front of her with a sickening squelch. Even in the near total darkness, she had clearly seen the arrows protruding from Sara's chest and the blank, glassy stare of her vacant eyes. She had instantly known her sister was dead, but that reality had been nearly impossible to accept. She had spent long minutes just hugging her until Sara's body had started to turn cold. Finally, she had realized she had to do something. She couldn't just leave Sara's body in the alley unattended and she couldn't call 911 because the world at large thought Sara had been dead for years. If she was discovered freshly dead now it would have raised impossible questions.
She hadn't been able to think of anything to do but take her sister's body back to the Lair. Getting it into the car and then through the club and down the long, steep stairs had been one of the hardest things she had ever done. Or so it had seemed until they had had to take Sara's body out to the cemetery and dig a fresh hole in front of the old headstone and lower her sheet-wrapped body into the ground.
Laurel was still sitting in her car, lost in the horrors of that night, when another car pulled up behind hers. Quickly, as the other car's headlights flickered off, she grabbed a tissue and dabbed at her face. Doubtlessly, it would be Nyssa and she didn't need the other girl seeing her like this. It had been almost two years since they had lost Sara and she shouldn't still be letting herself get so emotional.
With one final swipe at her eyes, Laurel unlatched the car door and pushed it open. Climbing out, she was startled when a familiar voice accosted her.
"Laurel?"
"Dad? What are you doing here?"
"I'm guessing we both got calls from Nyssa. Do you have any idea what she wants or why she chose this meeting place?"
Laurel shook her head and then glanced in the direction of Sara's grave, but a small group of evergreens blocked the view from the road. She leaned back into her car and grabbed her purse. From it, she extracted a small flashlight. She had been out here at night before, although it had been a long time, and she knew the decorative lantern-style lights lining the roadway weren't bright enough to reach the secluded location of Sara's grave.
No other cars were visible, but that didn't mean Nyssa wasn't already here; the assassin's car would doubtlessly be located somewhere else for a stealthy departure in case of an emergency.
"Come on, Dad. If she's here, she will doubtlessly be waiting by the grave," said Laurel, just barely avoiding stumbling over the last word.
As they walked, Laurel glanced over at her father. Like her, he was already dressed in his uniform so he could segue straight from the cemetery to the rest of his day. The changes from his old captain's uniform were subtle, only a little more braid here and there. Like her, he had also been recently promoted – he to Chief of Police. After the personal and career ups and downs they had both experienced, it was almost hard to believe they were now the two highest ranking members of Starling's Law Enforcement Divisions.
Rounding the trees, Laurel's eyes darted straight to Sara's tombstone located right by the cemetery's high back wall. Lit by the pale moonlight, she immediately spotted the white clad figure standing in front of the marker staring down at it. In the middle of the night, deep in the confines of a cemetery, the first thing that popped into Laurel's head was that she was seeing a ghost, as the silhouette seemed a perfect match for her dead sister's. She knew ghosts weren't real, but after all the other strange, bizarre, and impossible things she had seen in the last few years, finding the ghost of her sister standing by her grave didn't seem an impossible leap.
"Sara," whispered her father from beside her. He, too, must have seen the resemblance.
Suddenly, Laurel found herself running forward; glad she was wearing slacks instead of a tight skirt.
It seemed to take only moments to cover the hundred feet from the trees to the grave, yet in the end both she and her father paused ten feet short of the woman still standing with her back towards them and her face turned down towards the marker. From ten feet, it was obvious the person before them was real, not a ghost, and yet the silhouette still impossibly reminded Laurel of her sister.
The girl must have finally sensed their arrival as she abruptly turned around. The flashlight Laurel still held loosely in one hand played directly on the girl's face lighting it and her blonde hair so that she looked more angel than human.
"Sara?" whispered Laurel's father again, his strangled voice filled with impossible incredulity.
"Yes, Dad, Laurel. It is really me. I'm back."
Part 2
"Are you ready?" asked Hunter.
Thea nodded and then glanced once again at her new teammates.
They were standing in front of the open doorway or portal or whatever you wanted to call the time displacement device that dominated one end of Hunter's main 31st century laboratory. Thea had passed through the doorway once before to reach the lab from the Starling City of her own time. Hunter had recruited her to help with another of his small projects and had said she would be back home before dawn. Of course, what she hadn't fully grasped was that a lot longer than a few hours could pass at the other end of a time jump.
Already, she had been here for over a week. Hunter had said it was necessary that they all get to know each other if they were going to be able to work as a cohesive team, however she suspected part of it might have been to give her time for her injuries to heal from her encounters with the Mirakuru-enhanced men. Definitely, if she was going to spend some time recuperating, this was the place. Hunter had medical technology far beyond anything they had back home. Not only were her injuries healed, but all the accumulated scars from the last couple of years were gone, too. Perhaps little low-cut, backless dresses could once more be in her future. And she felt stronger, faster, and sharper than she had ever felt before, too.
But all the time hadn't been spent on healing. They had done several day-long exercises in Hunter's cool holo-simulator battling impossible seeming monsters. It definitely had given their small team time to bond.
And she had needed it. The only person she had known before was Cisco. Now, he stood next to her with a backpack filled with tools, spare parts, and an assortment of gadgets they might need.
Standing next to Cisco was Kendra Saunders in all her flightworthy glory. Cisco liked to give everyone nicknames when they were in their hero guises and had dubbed Kendra, Hawkgirl. The term seemed to fit her, particularly since the black metallic mask/headpiece she wore did look reminiscent of some bird of prey.
Thea had been surprised to learn Hunter had recruited Kendra from 1943 barely eighteen hours before they had arrived in Starling to save her and Oliver's butts. And talking to the girl, it had quickly become obvious she was from a different time. It had almost been like meeting someone from an old movie; Kendra was so shy and deferential. However once they started doing the combat simulations and Kendra donned her cowl and wings; it was like the girl morphed into someone completely different – a person brimming with self-confidence and insane fighting abilities.
Besides Hunter, that only left Fah, the fifth and final member of their small team. When Thea had first seen the giant sphinx back in the abandoned factory in Starling, she hadn't been able to believe her eyes. A creature like that shouldn't even exist. But that hadn't been half as shocking as discovering Fah was more than just a monstrous creature, but an actual girl with many of the same interests as her. Well, since she didn't have human-style arms, she had to do without many of the normal grooming aspects of being a girl and with a lion's body clothing wasn't an option, but Thea found they had a common interest in music or at least once she introduced Fah to late twentieth century and early twenty-first century styles. Of course, the topic of music had helped to draw Kendra into the group as well and she had introduced Thea and Fah to Big Band music of the 1940s. When Cisco had been creating custom communication gear for Kendra and Fah that was compatible with the gear Team Arrow was already using, it hadn't been too hard to convince Cisco to add voice-controlled music capabilities.
Hunter started moving through the time-displacement doorway and Thea had to force her wandering thoughts back to the current situation. Passing through the time barrier was an eerie experience. To the naked eye, it was nearly invisible, but to the other senses it felt like you were passing through a two foot thick barrier consisting of transparent molasses. You had to push and shove your way through and the first time she had used it, Thea had thought she was going to be trapped halfway and suffocate. She couldn't imagine what the experience would be like to someone who suffered from severe claustrophobia.
While Hunter's lab was well-lit, the destination on the other side had turned out to be as dark as night. This hadn't been obvious as the time displacement device didn't let you see through. From the lab side, the interface surface looked like a light yellow stretch of wall just like the adjoining areas. And from the down-time side, it had a nearly black surface in keeping with the surrounding nighttime outdoor environment.
As she had learned over the preceding week, Hunter was always extremely sparing with the details of the mission, claiming knowing too much about the future, or in this case the past, was dangerous. Therefore all he had said was that they were going to rescue Ray Palmer.
Thea had only met the billionaire a couple of times. First, when he had ended up officiating at Digg and Lyla's wedding and then a couple of times after they had both been sucked into the secret world of Team Arrow. Ray had seemed like a pleasant enough guy although geeky to the extreme. In fact, he reminded her more of Cisco than the marginally geeky Felicity. Well, like the person Cisco would be if he had billions of dollars in the bank with no constraint on how he could use it. Who else would buy an entire chain of electronic stores just to get one employee to work for him?
Ray had disappeared roughly eighteen months earlier, shortly after the old Ra's al Ghul had been killed and her father had taken his place as the head of the League. A large explosion had occurred late one night in the Palmer Technologies Tower in downtown Starling, the building that once had been the headquarters of Queen Consolidated. Security records showed Palmer entering the forty-eighth floor lab two hours before the explosion but showed no record of him leaving. No forensic evidence had been found to place him in the building at the time of the explosion, but with all the chemicals housed in the lab, the fire had been extremely hot and could explain the lack of remains. The police and other investigators knew nothing of Ray's secret flying suit or that the security cameras on the roof had been switched off, so it was possible Ray had flown away before the explosion, but if that was the case, it seemed like he would have gotten word to someone – Felicity, if no one else. But there hadn't been a single hint that the billionaire had survived.
Thea finally finished forcing her way through the time barrier and had a chance to look around. She immediately recognized that they were standing near the edge of the large grassy plaza in front of the old Queen Consolidated building in downtown Starling, but something instantly felt wrong about everything. She looked up at the familiar skyscraper, and while she rarely came down here at night to see it from this angle or in this light, it seemed to stretch much, much further into the sky than it should and not by a mere few extra stories. No, the building suddenly felt at least a hundred, maybe a thousand times taller than it should. She could barely even make out the large Palmer Technologies logo, it seemed so far away.
"Hunter, what's going on?" Thea asked.
"Wait for it," he replied, his gaze fixed on some spot high on the side of the skyscraper.
Just then, a massive explosion ripped out through the side of the building far, far above. The ground shook like there had been an earthquake and both Fah and Hawkgirl temporarily lifted slightly into the air.
"Cisco, are you picking up Palmer's suit?" asked Hunter urgently.
Thea turned and saw Cisco was holding another of the many gadgets she had seen him use over the last couple of years. She had been a big fan of MacGyver when she had been a kid, mostly because the young Richard Dean Anderson had been so hot. Where he had seemed able to build almost any kind of mechanical device given a few pieces of metal, plastic, and the ever present duct tape, Cisco seemed able to do the same for electronic devices given a bin full of old capacitors, resistors, and used circuit boards. Now, he was holding something with the screen from an old iphone on the front and several small twirling antennas sticking out of the top.
"Yes. It just landed somewhere in the field in front of us. Although I don't understand why I'm getting a distance reading of five kilometers, as that would put it way across town."
"Okay, boys and girls," began Hunter. "My historical records indicate Palmer was experimenting with some new capabilities he had just added to his suit. He had come up with a revolutionary way to cause the suit and its wearer to shrink in size, and not just a little. With this first generation prototype, he could have reached a size where he would be roughly one millimeter tall."
"Holy shit," whispered Cisco.
"Ah, what is that in English, please?" asked Thea.
"He would be able to dance on the head of a pin like a proverbial angel," said Cisco with a frown, as his gaze suddenly swept around.
"Ah, Hunter . . ." began Cisco with a now worried expression on his face.
"As Cisco is beginning to suspect, my time-displacement equipment can optionally change the size of anyone who passes through it. It uses a different approach than Palmer's; it's based on the technology Brainiac used to shrink Kandor and the other cities he stole from across the galaxy, but perhaps that is a tale for another time. Suffice it to say, we have all been reduced by a similar factor. If Palmer's suit protected him and he was blown clear of the building and if he had stayed full-sized, he would have been discovered within minutes.
"Since he was never found he must have successfully reduced himself in size," continued Hunter. "The only way we were going to be able to find him, and treat any injuries, was if we are on the same scale."
"You . . . you shrank us?" asked Thea, as her eyes darted wildly about. Things she was seeing now were making a sickening sort of sense. "No one is going to see or notice us if we are the size of a pinhead. What if they step on us?"
"If we are stepped on, we will be dead. So we need to move fast and make sure that doesn't happen. Now, the first responders to the fire will be here in three minutes forty-five seconds," replied Hunter, as he moved over and started climbing onto Fah's back. "Cisco and Thea, you are going to have to join me. The only way we can reach Palmer in a reasonable amount of time is by flying."
In seconds, Cisco and Thea had joined him and they were zooming forward. Cisco was sitting in the front, feeding Fah and Hawkgirl directions thru their earpieces. He had bestowed the giant creature with the title, The Sphinx, yet he was careful to call her by her real name. Of course, Thea had been present the one and only time Cisco had called her The Sphinx and Fah's eight inch claws had come out and dug deep furrows into the floor. That had been enough to convince them all to never screw with her.
They probably weren't flying more than a few inches above the grass, but at their present size it felt like they were flying at a height of at least several thousand feet. Thea didn't think she had a fear of flying, but then she had never flown on the back of a winged creature until the last few days and then they had never climbed to more than thirty feet above the ground. Now, she couldn't help but tighten her grip as she used Fah's fur to maintain what suddenly seemed like a very precarious position.
After a minute, Thea started to notice a high pitched buzzing sound that didn't seem to be caused by the wind whipping by her face. Rapidly, it got louder.
"Ah, guys, what's that noise?"
"Oh, my God," exclaimed Kendra from where she was maintaining position slightly above and to the left of the sphinx. "It is some kind of giant winged creature. And it's heading this way."
Thea suddenly saw it, too, through her light enhancing goggles. It was like something straight from a nightmare. Compared to their sudden diminutive state, it looked almost the size of a jetfighter, but it was definitely some kind of monster insect with rapidly beating wings, a three segmented body, six dangling legs, and a long sharp tube where a mouth should be in its horror of a face.
"It's a mosquito," stated Hunter, the perpetual calm he always seemed to convene now gone. "Fah, you have to get us down into the grass."
Even as Fah dove straight down, Thea couldn't get the image of the stinger-like tube out of her mind. Like everyone, she had been bitten by mosquitoes countless times growing up. But this monster was so big, its feeding tube had to be half the diameter of Thea's abdomen. If it managed to get the feeding tube into any of them, it would suck out all their internal organs in a second. What the hell had Hunter gotten them into?
Fah and Hawkgirl reached the grass still ahead of the mosquito and quickly started on a darting, weaving course heading in the general direction Cisco was still calling out. The individual blades of grass seemed almost the size of sequoias. And doubtlessly if Fah screwed up and hit one of the blades it would be just as bad as flying into one of the massive trees.
"The mosquito is still closing," shouted Hunter. "Thea, you are going to have to shoot it with one of your arrows."
Thea was more afraid than she had ever been, even compared to when she and Oliver had been facing the dozen Mirakuru-enhanced men and they had been out of arrows. But if she didn't pull it together and do something, they might all die.
Tightening the grip her legs were maintaining on Fah's back, she let go from where her hands had been gripping the giant sphinx's fur. Quickly, she pulled her bow from her back and grabbed an arrow from her quiver. Suddenly, she understood why Hunter had told her to go extremely heavy on the explosive arrows and why Fah had been fitted with a harness containing an additional dozen quivers of explosive arrows. He had known, or at least suspected what they might run into. Damn him, why had he chosen her for this mission? Both Nyssa and Oliver were equally good with the bow.
Forcing herself to think in a scale she could grasp, the giant mosquito had closed to within what felt like thirty feet – close enough to see its multifaceted eyes through her light-enhancing goggles. And the buzzing from its wings was now a deafening roar.
Quickly, Thea pulled back on the bow string and loosed.
It should have been impossible to miss a giant target from that range, but she had. Right as she fired, Fah had jinked in one direction and the mosquito in another. She suddenly realized hitting a flying target from the back of another flying creature was going to be harder than anything she had ever tried when chasing bad guys around the city.
All those thoughts raced through her mind in a fraction of a second. A second arrow and then a third were already in the air before the first arrow impacted somewhere far below and behind them and exploded in a blast of light and fire.
The second arrow was another miss, but the third arrow took the mosquito through the right eye. When it exploded, it blew half of the head away. Immediately, the mosquito crumpled in midair and then slammed into a blade of grass. In seconds, it was lost from sight.
Thea was just starting to breathe a sigh of relief when Kendra shouted through her headset.
"The explosion or the flash of light or something has attracted others. We have a whole swarm of mosquitos incoming."
"Cisco, how far are we from Palmer?" demanded Hunter.
"If we can maintain a straight course, two minutes," Cisco said. All the normal traces of levity were gone and Thea could hear the panic in his voice. She felt a rising panic, too.
"I don't think I can stop a whole swarm," stated Thea trying to sound calm while her goggles were already showing at least four more of the flying monsters closing to within one hundred feet. "Cisco, you need to pull something out of your bag of tricks. A giant bug zapper would be a good place to start."
"Right, let me think. Bugs . . . insects . . . bug zappers . . . ultrasonics. If I can project the right frequency, I should be able to drive them back."
"Hurry, Cisco," said Thea, as she started firing arrows as fast as she could at the closest bugs as well as at the nearest blades of grass. She quickly hit two mosquitos and exploding, falling blades of grass took out another pair. That only left about seventy-five more closing on them from the rear and both sides.
She could hear Cisco and Hunter moving around and talking as they worked on creating some new device, but she didn't have time to even listen. All she could do was try to fire as fast as she could.
Kendra had shifted to Fah's right as soon as it became apparent that from her seated position Thea could only cover targets coming in from the rear and the left sides. Thea didn't have time to spare Kendra more than the occasional glance, but saw that her most frequent weapon, the mace, had morphed into a long metallic whip. The mosquitoes were the scariest thing Thea could imagine, far more scary than the monsters in Hunter's holo-simulation back in his lab, but at least they were extremely fragile. A hit by an explosive arrow anywhere on the head or body or wings was enough to take them down. And a crack of Kendra's whip was equally effective, but its relatively short range meant Kendra had to get scarily close to her targets.
The running battle had to have lasted at least a minute and Thea had to have fired at least sixty arrows before the mosquitoes abruptly stopped, hovered in midair, and then started to fall back.
Thea let her bow droop to Fah's back as she fought to catch her breath. And now that the fighting was over for the moment, she started shaking like a leaf. Her hands were shaking so bad she probably couldn't hit the side of a barn from ten paces let alone a flying monster insect while she herself was airborne.
"Hunter, why did you bring me and not Oliver?" asked Thea. Nothing rattled her brother. Well, maybe these mosquitoes would rattle even him just a little.
"Weight limitations, he weighs at least a hundred pounds more than you. If Palmer is incapacitated or his suit is non-functional, Fah is going to have to carry him, in addition to us, back to the time displacement device and the heavier her load the lower her speed and maneuverability. Another hundred pounds might make the difference as to whether we make it or not."
Thea thought to ask why he hadn't chosen Nyssa instead of her, but decided he would still put it down to weight or something else. Nyssa was taller and more solidly built and probably outweighed Thea by twenty-five pounds.
However exactly why he had chosen her over the others really didn't matter. She was here now and there was nothing she could do but see things through.
Therefore she forced her senses to start scanning their surroundings again even as she tried to reach the meditative state her father had taught her to calm her racing heart and shaking hands. She had never considered mosquitoes a serious threat before tonight. They had, at least temporarily, retreated, but this little plot of grass, which probably didn't measure more than twenty by thirty feet back in the real world, could hold more threats to them now than she had ever imagined.
As they flew on, heading on a more direct path towards Palmer's elusive signal, Thea's thoughts wandered to what the other her, the Thea of this time, might be doing at this moment. It was late evening and if she remembered correctly, the explosion had occurred on a Thursday or a Friday, so she would most likely have been at her club. Suddenly, her life back then seemed so simple and easy. Okay, she had been stabbed by Ra's al Ghul and dragged all the way to Nanda Parbat to be cured via the Lazarus Pits. And she had been part of Team Arrow for a few weeks. But she had never dreamed her life would one day involve battling aircraft-sized flying insects.
"I see him," shouted Fah suddenly and so loudly, Thea didn't need her earpiece to hear the giant sphinx.
"Bring us in close, but don't land until we can scope the situation out," commanded Hunter.
The giant sphinx quickly slowed to a hover. Other than a quick glance down, Thea kept her gaze fixed outward. While Hunter and Cisco figured out their next move, someone needed to keep an eye out for other dangers.
"Damn," said Cisco. "He's caught in a spider's web."
"Fah, put us down, but land clear of the web. If it's fresh, I don't want us getting stuck," said Hunter.
The sphinx quickly landed. As the three of them slid off her back, Thea discovered they were standing atop a wide, uneven field of large boulders. It took a moment to realize this was what dirt looked like when you were shrunk to this scale.
The spider's web was vast. To Thea, it seemed to stretch as far as a football field. Each individual strand looked about the thickness of a piece of twine. For some reason, she had expected the strands to be even bigger when she was at this scale.
Fortunately, Palmer's brightly colored suit wasn't more than fifteen feet in from the edge near where Fah had landed and only five or six feet above the boulder covered terrain. Reaching him should be doable, unlike if he had landed much higher on the web.
"Do you have vital signs for him?" asked Hunter towards Cisco.
Even as Hunter spoke, Thea turned her attention to refilling her quiver from the stockpile on Fah's harness. She had used up all the arrows in her quiver and most of those from the closest three quivers on Fah's back. Once her quiver was full, she redistributed the remaining ones in the harness to locations that would be easier to reach. Then she turned her attention to their surroundings. If they all focused on the downed billionaire, something nasty could take them unawares. Even now, she could hear movement in the distance.
"Kendra, don't go too far, but how about making a quick sweep around our perimeter, for any new nasties," suggested Thea into her headset.
"Wilco," responded Kendra, sounding like a pilot from some old World War II movie.
"He's vitals are good," said Cisco in reply to Hunter's question after consulting another of the small devices from his backpack. Then looking up he shouted, "Ray, can you hear me? It's Cisco Ramon. We're here to rescue you."
"Yes," came a feeble shout from Palmer.
"Mr. Palmer," shouted Hunter. "My name is Rip Hunter. If you're not aware, you are caught in a spider's web. Please, don't shout or make any movements that might attract the spider. Give us a minute to see if we can restore communication to your suit and then see if we can figure out how to get you down."
Dropping his voice, he continued in Cisco's direction.
"The radial spokes of the web are of a different kind of silk than the spiral threads," Hunter began, sounding like a teacher giving a classroom lecture rather than someone involved in a life-or-death struggle against giant insects. "The spiral threads are the sticky ones used to ensnare prey. The radial spokes are not sticky and are the ones the spiders use to move around without getting stuck themselves. The radial spokes are very strong and stiff and support the ensnaring threads. They are also the ones that transfer vibrations which allow the spider to know when something has landed on the web."
"Aren't you just the sudden fount of knowledge," replied Cisco even as he typed furiously on a small laptop he had extracted from his backpack. "It might have been nice if you had shared a little of this before we started."
Then, abruptly, his tenor changed slightly as he continued. "Okay, I'm into his suit's electronics. The flight systems and what I assume are the new networks he has installed to change size are all offline and are going to remain offline until I can get the suit into a lab. But I should be able to get communications and basic exoskeleton strength capabilities working in thirty seconds."
"Ah, you better hurry guys," interjected Thea. "A giant centipede or millipede or something with about a zillion legs is coming out of the trees, I mean grass blades."
The giant boulder field that was the dirt was almost alive with small creepy, crawly things. But so far they had all been ignoring them, so Thea had been trying in turn to ignore them. But the new monster was impossible to ignore. It looked about the size of two eighteen-wheelers stretched end to end, if semis came equipped with hundreds of legs instead of wheels. The creature was still what felt like several hundred feet away and wasn't headed directly in their direction, but she pulled an arrow just in case. Although, against such a massive creature, she doubted a single explosive arrow would bring it down and might only draw its attention.
"Palmer is stretched across four of the sticky spiral strands, but he isn't directly touching any of the critical radial spokes," said Hunter after lowering a pair of high-tech binoculars he had pulled from his own smaller backpack. "We may be able to cut those strands loose and lower him to the ground without attracting the spider.
"And where is the spider anyway? I don't see it." Hunter continued. "Kendra, this is Hunter. Can you see the spider?"
"It's near the other end of the web and in the process of wrapping up another insect it caught. If you hurry, you may be able to get Palmer free before it's done."
Hunter quickly opened another pack on Fah's back and extracted what looked like a small gas-powered chainsaw and several short sections of aluminum pipe, which attached to the saw to allow him to hold the saw beyond arm's length.
"Come on," he shouted to Cisco and Thea before he moved towards the web, which started barely twenty feet in front of them.
Thea gave the giant centipede one last look before following the others. It had veered off on a different path and now only the last ten feet were visible. It looked like that was one monster they weren't going to have to worry about.
Hunter reached the web first climbing over and around the boulder like grains of dirt. The lowest sticky strand of web wasn't right at the ground and a three foot high gap existed at one location. Hunter slithered under it to reach the other side. Cisco and Thea quickly followed him as he then climbed over the next several boulders until he was directly under Palmer. The billionaire had landed on the other side of the web in a more or less upright position so that his feet were about five feet above the ground and his head about seven feet up. The backs of his legs were caught against two of the sticky threads. A third strand was across the middle of his back and a forth was attached to the back of his helmet.
As soon as he was in position, Hunter fired up the chainsaw. It made an ungodly amount of noise and Thea couldn't help but wonder what new monster the noise would attract. But it did quickly ripped through the lowest strand behind his leg on the left side. Hunter then moved to the same strand on the other side.
In moments, Hunter was through both strands supporting Palmer's legs and the lack of support caused his body to pivot into a fully upright position. And the extra weight on the two remaining strands caused them to stretch until his feet settled onto the large boulder directly under him.
As Hunter moved to the strand behind Palmer's back, the chainsaw sputtered and died.
"Damn. The thread is so sticky it has gummed up the chain," exclaimed Hunter dropping the now useless device in disgust.
"The spider is moving in your direction!" Kendra and Fah both shouted through their headsets at virtually the same time.
Thea pulled her sword from the scabbard on her back and tossed it to Hunter. "Use this. Start on the one on his helmet."
Next she pulled the dagger from her hip and handed it to Cisco. "Work on the one behind is back."
Then she pulled an arrow and shot through the web in the direction of a blade of grass further down the web in the direction where the spider had to be. The resulting explosion and lightshow might distract the spider for a few extra seconds. Deciding it wouldn't hurt; she fired two more arrows for an added distraction. With only fifteen arrows left in her quiver, she held the remainder in reserve in case of a more pressing need before she got back to Fah to replenish her supply.
Even with the extra keen steel of her blades, the tough silk strands were extremely difficult to cut. After thirty seconds with no visible progress, Cisco gave up with the dagger and pulled a miniature cutting torch from his backpack. The extremely hot flame quickly cut through the thread across Palmer's back. Cisco handed it to Hunter who just managed to get through the last strand on the helmet before the torch sputtered out of fuel.
"Hurry guys," shouted Kendra. "The spider is no more than forty feet from you and closing fast."
Thea didn't wait for the others or try to retrieve her now glue covered blades, but charged back the way they had come towards the waiting sphinx. She could see the spider now and it was on the outer side of the web. She couldn't do any good from the backside of the web, but once she was beyond the web she could lay down some cover fire.
She was just crawling under the last sticky strand when the weight of the approaching spider caused the strand to dip just enough to snag the back of her quiver and jacket. For a second, it felt like she was going to be stuck fast, but then she managed to undo the fasteners down the front of her jacket and slip out of it.
That quiver of arrows was now covered with the adhesive and she couldn't risk trying to retrieve it. At least her bow hadn't gotten lost or gummed up, she thought thankfully, as she darted across the uneven boulders towards Fah and the rest of their supply of arrows.
She reached Fah just as the men were struggling under the last strand that had nearly hung her up. And the spider was now within twenty feet of them, its mandibles clashing audibly. Quickly, she grabbed the nearest quiver and threaded it across her shoulders and then started firing.
The first shot passed over the head of the spider and barely grazed its much taller abdomen. It was enough to trigger the explosive, but it didn't seem to produce any useful effect.
Pausing to take a calming breath, Thea fired again, this time hitting the spider in the right eye, her intended target. The arrow exploded with a satisfying pop and flash of light, but it didn't seem to slow the spider either. The spider was substantially larger than the mosquitoes she had been battling earlier and since it didn't need an extremely light weight to fly, it was of much stouter construction.
The spider had eight legs and Thea shifted her aim to the root of the nearest one. The explosion from the next arrow sheared that leg completely off. But with the redundancy of seven more legs, it didn't stop the monster.
Palmer and Cisco were now clear of the web and running towards the sphinx, but Hunter was still working his way under the web. And the spider's gaping maw was within ten feet of the man.
Thea shifted her aim back to the spider's head, firing as rapidly as she could. She managed to get four arrows into the air before the first one impacted. It blasted off the right mandible. The second blew off the left mandible and the third and fourth struck directly in the gap between the left and right eyes.
With a screech that almost sounded human, the spider reared up on its back four legs, its front legs waving wildly. Thea launched three more explosive arrows into its now exposed soft underbelly. The force knocked the spider over backwards until it landed upside-down on its own web and got stuck in place. Its legs continued to jerk wildly for a few seconds before finally going limp.
Thea allowed herself to sag in relief for only a moment before reaching over and pulling a fresh quiver of arrows from Fah's back. Only six full quivers remained from what had felt like an inexhaustible supply when they had started out.
"Shit, shit, shit!" came a startled exclamation over Thea's headset. It took her a moment to realize it had to be Kendra. "The spider's egg sacks are bursting open. Hundreds, maybe thousands of baby spiders are headed in your direction. And by baby I mean they are only the size of Shetland ponies. They are incredibly fast. You need to get out of there now!"
Fah crouched down and Cisco and Thea scrambled up on her back. Palmer was just staring at the giant sphinx as Hunter continued to scramble over the boulder field in their direction.
"Palmer, how much does your suit weigh?" Shouted Hunter.
"About a hundred twenty pounds."
"Fah can't handle that much extra weight. Ditch as much of it as you quickly can."
Palmer didn't hesitate. He could always build another suit, but he couldn't do that if he was dead. He hit several quick-release latches and bits of metal, plastic and electronics fell away from his body. Quickly, he was left in just his helmet and a stretchy black body suit.
Cisco reached down a hand and helped the billionaire up even as Thea climbed to her feet and stood on Fah's back to get a clear line of fire. Hunter would need several seconds to reach them and the first of the baby spiders were almost to the edge of the web.
She fired into the nearest ones and the explosive arrows blew them apart. But the flood of small spiders was so great; it didn't look like it was going to be enough.
But Kendra suddenly swept in and started flaying her whip around. That and four more arrows from Thea bought Hunter enough time to make a desperate dive forward. Cisco caught one of his hands and Palmer the other.
Instantly, with a hard thrust of her giant wings, Fah lifted them twenty feet straight into the air nearly unbalancing the still standing Thea. Palmer grabbed her with his one free hand, giving her enough time to grab Fah's fur with a hand of her own before the next thrust of Fah's wings. This second mighty thrust had them high enough to be beyond the reach of any of the baby spiders.
Thea quickly got herself back into a seating position and then swept her gaze around, another arrow already notched in her bow. Cisco and Palmer meanwhile pulled Hunter up to safety.
"Kendra, do you see any other nearby hostiles?" asked Thea shakily, as she imagined what might have happened to her if she had fallen back to the ground now crawling with the baby spiders.
"Not at the moment," came the reply from the winged girl who had now taken up position to their right.
"Then let's head for the time displacement device so we can go home," said Hunter. "Fah, I think it is safest if we stay down in the shelter of the grass."
Fah turned and headed in the direction they had come.
Palmer had retained his helmet with its comm systems and overheard their exchange. "Time displacement device?"
"Yeah," said Cisco, some of his normal levity returning now that they were out of immediate danger. "We're headed Back to the Future."
End of Chapter 8
Author's Note
Whew! I wanted to get this chapter done before leaving for the long holiday weekend, so I've been writing up a storm the last couple of days. And I also wanted to get this chapter done before the Antman movie is released since it will probably have some similarities. I assume that movie is going to feature a lot of ants, so I decided I would go with mosquitoes and spiders instead.
I had intended to include another bit from the meeting of Laurel and Sara, but this chapter has already run pretty long, so I'll save it for some future chapter.
Hope everyone enjoyed this chapter,
Duane