Sue Storm Goes With The Discreet Option

Sue Storm dressed. In one of her regular costumes, with a trench coat and sunglasses on top of that. They left, not through the front door, but through the loading bay. Crossed a street into an alley. Georgia Jenkins seemed to know where she was going, and they ended up on the subway. Rode for what felt like hours. The Night Nurse wouldn't tell her where they were going, and Sue trusted her enough not to ask as people came on and off, off and on.

Until finally, near midnight, her patience wore out.

"Where are we going?" she asked.

The Night Nurse, who had been looking at her phone, looked up.

"We're not going anywhere," she said. "We're waiting."

"For—"

"Us," a man in a trenchcoat sat down next to Sue Storm. She looked at him. Tall, well-built, brown hair. A rugged but otherwise forgettable face. He had dark glasses on that—

No. Those weren't glasses. The metallic lenses went directly into the skin above and below his eyesockets, no ear pieces or nose bridge. He looked at her.

"Hello, Mrs. Richards. I'm Aaron Stack—"

"The Machine Man," Sue Storm said. "I think we've met. But you looked—different."

"Upgrades," he said. Then he tilted his head. "You have a fairly serious nanite infection."

"You can tell?" she asked. Then she sighed. "Of course you can."

Another trenchcoated figure sat down on the other side of Sue. She turned and saw the silver smile of Jocasta, one of Hank Pym's gynoids. They looked ridiculous, the three of them in their trenchcoats all in a row, but the car was mostly empty, except for the four of them. Slowly, Sue told her story. The robots listened, calmly, sometimes asking for a little more detail, but never the salacious bits.

"The nanite infection is pernicious," Jocasta said. "It is resisting my efforts to hack them wirelessly. We need more computing power."

"Or to access the command system," Machine Man replied. "The encrypted datastream is clear. They're reporting back to someone. A controller."

"Porkum?" Sue asked.

Aaron nodded. "Or his unseen partner."

"So we do have to confront him," Sue Storm said quietly.

"In a way," Jocasta said. "But going into his lair is inadvisable. That is what he wants."

"We need to draw him out," Machine Man said.

"How?" Sue asked. Then she got it. "Me. I'll be the bait."

"Yes," Jocasta said. "We have already been making our attempts to hack the nanites clear. Porkum knows someone is trying to interfere with his project. He knows where you are. He will come for you—and his pheromones will not affect us."

Sue Storm's mind raced. She was tired. She could almost feel the nanites extend the tattoos. Soon, they'd be crawling over her shoulders, along her ribs, down her taint and over her crotch, up her neck. The Invisible Woman, who had spent her career being unseen, now felt acutely visible.