3541/A Race Against Time

A Race Against Time
Date of Scene:	24 September 2020
Location:	Red Room Facility, Deep Below the Siberian Tundra
Synopsis:	The signal comes and Janet escapes! Escapes deeper into the facility where she manages to reunite with Nadia and a gravity bomb later they are ready to start fighting their way out. Will the reinforcements in the Strike Team make it in time? Find out next time!
Cast of Characters:	Nadia Pym-van Dyne, Janet van Dyne

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Nadia Pym-van Dyne has posed:
The lights are currently on, which is what passes for day in the underground prison cell Janet has spent the past nearly two weeks in. Time has long since lost all meaning without any way to keep it, there is light and there is dark, sleep and wake, eating and waiting.

A small hole opens in the base of the door and a tray slides through with what passes for food on it. Apparently it is now time for eating. Today's Red Room cuisine is the same as every other day, Mother's finest Soviet gruel. Today's gruel however is a bit different, Janet is probably one of the few people who would readily recognize the taste of amphetamines.

Janet van Dyne has posed:
Janet is ready. Waiting. Patience is not one her strengths; impulsive and reactive behaviour, sure, but not the deliberation of a hunter.

Then again, though, there's not a whole lot else to do in prison except stare at the walls and think. So when the slot opens, Janet slips a strip of cloth under it. It's nothing, a little balled up bundle of what almost looks like lint. But it's enough to keep the door from fully closing, even if the gap is barely enough for a dollar bill.

The food's eaten quickly, as fast as she dares without giving herself indigestion. The fashionista reaches to inside her thigh, where she banded the two syringes to her bare leg, and as discreetly as she can injects the autosyringe into her hip.

"I'm coming, kid," Janet mutters, and closes her eyes. Shivering sensations work over her body as her lymphatic system relaxes and starts distributing the Pym particles she naturally produces. A heady rush of strong drugs and liberating energy makes Janet shiver.

The socialite takes a deep breath and closes her eyes. Abruptly she vanishes from view-- flitting along the floor as fast as she can, wings buzzing, and curdling bioplasma in her hands.

Up she goes once she's free, and zips for the ear of one of the guards who is reaching for his radio. A flash of green energy near his temple drops the guard like a rock; before his partner can react, Janet reappears at full size and grabs his arm. Some judo throws are meant to momentarily disable; Janet dislocates the guard's arm and slams his forehead into the console.

Down both go, without an alarm.

"Okay Ying, so far, so good," Janet mutters, and looks at the building map on the wall. "Now, if I was a Nadia, where would I be imprisoned...?"

Nadia Pym-van Dyne has posed:
Mere moments after Janet has finished dispatching the guards a Russian voice comes over the intercom system. <<Fire suppression team to Level 3, Elevator R7. An electrical fire has been detected. Repeat fire suppression team to Level 3, Elevator R7>>

Moments later down the hall there is a thudding of boots as several individuals dressed in hastily donned fire suppression gear go running through a nearby T-junction on their way to somewhere...

Janet van Dyne has posed:
"...okay, that answers that," Janet mutters.

The Wasp nudges open the door and flits after the fire suppression crew. On her gossamer dragonfly wings she's easily faster than most humans can sprint, and driven by a human's sure focus. The Avenger lands on the rearguard's shoulder and crawls under the collar of his heavy jacket, working around to where she can get a good view of the action. For the moment she stays low, waiting for them to get to the 'incident'.

Nadia Pym-van Dyne has posed:
It is a winding twisting journey through the corridors of the underground complex and not exactly a short one either, designed as they are to be difficult to memorize and foil infiltration.

The route leads through an area painfully familiar to Janet, the throne room like space where Nadia was first brought before the android duplicate formerly known as Maria Trovaya as well as the head of the Red Room, 'Mother'. The layout seems designed to funnel through here in order to get to more secure areas where the fire suppression team seems to be going.

Eventually they come upon the electrical fire in question. A panel has blown out from one of the walls and the flames have spilled into the corridor. Without wasting any time the fire suppression team goes right to work spraying the blaze with chemical suppressants from their packs.

Just up ahead is elevator R7, though it is flanked by guards. The guards however are currently recoiling from the fire in the hallway. But there also seems to be some very complicated biometric locks and a keycard or some sort required for access.

Janet van Dyne has posed:
A little sabotage is the easiest thing in the world to do, really. And while some Avengers make their mark with big, flashy moves, it's a signature Wasp style to sow the field with hazards before taking on the enemy directly.

A targeted, miniscule blast from Janet's fingertip digs a pinhole sized break in one suppression pack. When the pressure activates, the line ruptures and sprays coolant all over the place. Compromising the oxygen line for one of the other firefighters takes no more effort.

The real coup, of course, comes when the firefighters activate the fuel bypass to stop the spread of the fire-- and Janet undoes their work behind their back.

With the guards thus distracted, the Wasp flits towards the elevator and wriggles through a pea-sized gap in the old bunker concrete, following service pipe access down into the bowels of the facility.

Nadia Pym-van Dyne has posed:
Down down down into the bowels of the Earth, the Soviets were certainly a fan of digging deep, whatever lies at the bottom of this shaft is probably never intended to see the light of day again.

As Janet flies down there is a sudden displacement of air from below as it seems the elevator is coming back up from the depths. It's a narrow miss, but nothing the winsome Wasp cannot avoid!

The doors at the bottom of the shaft aren't in much better condition than the top, it's really quite hard to make everything airtight in a facility like this, the other side of those doors is something else altogether though.

Janet emerges in a square antechamber whose only exits are the elevator doors she came from and what looks like a massive high tech vault door. Whatever or whoever is inside, they don't seem to want them leaving... ever. The room also seems to be full of cameras and a myriad of other monitoring devices.

Seated off to one side manning what could be called a security desk is a woman in her early 20's dressed from head to toe in a black combat bodysuit, the sort Black Widow operatives have been known to wear when engaging in combat operations rather than infiltrations. She's familiar, too. The one called 'Katerina' who brought Nadia into the audience hall that day and lead her out again.

Janet van Dyne has posed:
Thor or Steve might offer the Widow a fair fight, but Janet's not party to any such scruples. 'Win or lose under any circumstances' is her mantra. She sweeps her gaze around, searching for backup nearby. A weapons locker catches her eye-- the Wasp flits over to it, barely the size of an insect, and slips into the container. It's held shut with a card scanner, just about the easiest thing in the world to disarm with a little surgical application of her bioplasma.

Janet flits around near the ceiling as best she can, circling the Widow below. Not an easy fight under the best of circumstances, but Janet's bloodstream is pumping full of adrenaline and chemical stimulants to offset the fatigue and lack of nourishment.

Seeing no better approach than going full-out, the Wasp tucks her wings and divebombs the Widow near-silently. At the last possible second she expands to full size with a palm extended and bioplasma curdling in her fingers, and aims a fatal blast at the back of the Widow's neck.

Nadia Pym-van Dyne has posed:
Black Widows operatives are some of the world's most supremely dangerous combatants in a fight and are not the easiest foes to take down under the best of circumstances, however, getting a sudden fistful of bioplasma straight to the back of the neck is enough to take even a super soldier serum enhanced head clean off. There isn't even time for her to yelp before Janet's surprise attack leaves her form crumpling to the ground in a heap.

With Nadia's captor on the floor all that stands in Janet's way is that vault door. There is no clear way to open it and it seems pressurized and airtight. For a few moments doubt begins to creep in, if that elevator comes back this room is basically a deathtrap, was it all a setup all along? Was this just Ying's genius plan to remove Janet from the equation?

Then everything goes black. The darkness lasts for perhaps a minute before emergency lightning flickers on and an automated announcement blares in Russian <<Main Reactor Compromised, Activating Emergency Generators.>> In that time there is a hiss of air as the vault door's pressure seals depressurize leaving just the tiniest crack before the seals reactivate when the emergency power comes back on.

The faintest echoes of what must be chaos up above echo down the elevator shaft as the entire base tries to figure out what is going on.

Janet van Dyne has posed:
"Eat it, bitch," Janet mutters, and tosses the corpse aside. One less Red Room operative in the world. More precise bolts of plasma disable the cameras-- hopefully, no one's looking at them the exact minute an ace operative got decapitated. The vault is a far more impenetrable obstacles, and none of the controls seem to indicate how to open it.

The snap-hiss of depressurization catches Janet's attention, along with a flickering of illumination from inside the vault itself. It'll be enough-- it has to be. She dives into motion and in midair shrinks to her best flying size. The Wasp hits the vault sidewall and scrambles into a hair-thin gap in the seal. Repressurizing air starts to refill the seal and she runs even faster, shrinking as necessary to keep ahead of it.

With a comparatively inaudible shout, Janet leaps clear of the sealant gasket just before she's nearly crushed!

Nadia Pym-van Dyne has posed:
Beyond the door is a surreal space. Flickering emergency lighting illuminates a space that was likely until recently an ultra-secure storage vault. It seems to have since been remodeled into an ultra-secure Nadia vault. An unescapable prison deep within the Earth from which she is never meant to escape again.

The entire space is divided into two distinct region, half of it seems to be an overly stylized very pink and frilly girl's bedroom. Nadia was clearly not consulted on the furnishings but if nothing else it is functional. The remaining area is taken up by a laboratory space where she is clearly meant to work on projects for the Red Room. The lab is outfitted with an incredible array of equipment, likely stolen from none but the best cutting edge facilities around the world, to allow her to do whatever super science they might need. And of course cameras, a creepy amount of cameras meant to monitor her every move.

Amidst this setting sits a drone-like Nadia on a stool in the lab going through the motions of Science with none of the passion or exuberance it would normally draw out of her, like a flower wilting away from the sunlight of human contact.

Janet van Dyne has posed:
Janet eyes Nadia. This is an all-too familiar sight, and inwardly a little part of her heart breaks at the sight of the girl and her crushed spirit flinging itself into the only thing it knows how to do. A scientist in the midst of a deep depressive slump? Far, far too familiar.

Perhaps a therapist would recommend a more convivial or gentle approach to ease them out of it, but Janet's experience (and need for haste) prompts a more direct one. A hand extends to a centrifuge nearby and she blasts a six-inch hole in the side of it with a spray of green bioplasma. "Nadia!" she shouts. Her voice is sharp and piercing, inappropriate for the sepulchural setting. "Get off your ass, honey! We've got things to do!"

Nadia Pym-van Dyne has posed:
Nadia startles to the point she falls off of her seat, there is no nearly about it it. She sits there on the floor in her grey jumpsuit, apparently fashion isn't allowed in the Red Room, blinking up at Janet as her mind plays catchup, "Wait, what? Janet? How?!" Her mind races as its first instinct is to try and figure out how this is possible because while she readily acknowledges that Janet is pretty darned amazing based on everything she knows of Red Room procedures, methods, and techniques, not to mention Janet's value in ensuring her own compliance, it seems like it should be impossible.

And that's when she freezes up for a moment, a moment of doubt, because everything in the Red Room is lies. In that moment of doubt she is left to wonder which Black Widow operative is standing in front of her. That is until the logical meticulously analytical part of her brain seizes on the bio-plasma and suit-less use of Pym particles.

"Janet!" Nadia is suddenly off the ground in a flash and wrapping her arms around Janet. "Janet! Janet! Janet! I'm so sorry, you said to fight but I couldn't stand them hurting you, I'm sorry, I just wanted them to stop!! How are you here?! What's going on?!" It all comes pouring out at once as she cries into Janet's shoulder.

Janet van Dyne has posed:
Janet hugs Nadia tight as she can for a long four-count. It's perhaps not as long as the terrified teen would like, but they're on a deadline.

"Long story, dumb story, not important now," Janet says, breathlessly. She's shivering with the rush of adrenaline and her eyes are almost fully dilated. Perspiration and ruddy skin makes her look like she's been running in the sun for a while. She holds up the auto-syringe. "Gift from Ying. Neutralizes the thingy that's blocking the Pym particles," she says, and presses it into Nadia's hand. "Rescue party is en route." She squeezes Nadia's arm and starts poking around for a cafeteria tray. "Apple, sandwich..." Janet cracks the juice, sips it, and hands it to Nadia. "Your dad's gonna kill me, but if you're as burned out as I am, you'll need the boost. Ying whipped up a couple of pick-me ups with some recipes from yours truly."

The Wasp gestures at the large vault door. "So. I assume you've already figured out how you're gonna bypass this? Because I kinda didn't see a way to unlock it on the way in."

Nadia Pym-van Dyne has posed:
It perhaps did not seem possible for Nadia to be any more shocked that she already was, "Wait WHAT?! YING is here?! And she /helped/ you?!" This is apparently /quite/ the news to Nadia. Ss far as she knows, since they were seperated years ago, Ying is still a Red Room Scientist. "That's great!" She finally concludes. Nadia's expression is one of relief that her faith in friend wasn't misplaced in the end.

The auto-injector is accepted from Janet. Nadia looks down at it, she's realing a bit still processing Janet's apparent escape and the revelation that Ying is not only here but helping. The auto-injector is jammed into her carotid artery as she takes a drink of Janet's 'juice' and her eyes go even wider as the amphetamines hit her system.

"Oh the door? Yeah no problem? We can be out of her real fast. It was never to keep me in, more to keep others out. The thing keeping me in was you and now you're here so we can go out. Yes. There's no way they could have me do super science weapons development without giving me to tools to bust down that door. Super easy." She is practically vibrating with the amphetamines in her system, "What was that thing they were asking me to work on... Oh right!" she skips off into another corner of the lab and comes back a minute later with a strange looking sphere. "Janet look at this, it seems like just a dumb sphere, but it's not it's way more than that, it links to the Microverse using principles of Quantum Gravity to create a brief super intense micro singularity! Isn't it neat?!" A pause, "Oh right the door. You might want to get back," she clicks a button on the side of the sphere and unceremoniously hucks it at the vault door.

The sphere seems to untangle itself in mid-flight to resemble more of a latticed cage around a slowly growing black dot. By the time the containment cage reaches the vault door the black dot within has become the size of a marble. Upon impact the cage falls away and in an instant all of the matter within a ten foot sphere around the black dot is sucked in and hyper-condensed down until it is no bigger than the black dot was before the phenomenon exhausts itself leaving new hyper-dense metal marble that used to be the vault door embedded in the floor where it fell.

Nadia gestures to the now ten foot wide gaping hole where the vault door was, "Easy peesy, let's go!"

Janet van Dyne has posed:
Janet steps back a few prudent paces, and lifts a hand to guard her eyes when the microsingularity detonates. There's a lurch of localized gravity tugging at her center of mass but it's gone before she can fall over.

"Holy shit," Janet mutters. "That is awesome. Terrifying that you just threw a black hole at something, but-- awesome."

They head back out into the security room. "Not a hundred percent on where the rescue team's coming from. Get on that security terminal. Steal whatever data you can, I'm sure Natasha will appreciate it. Figure out a game plan for us, then trash it and blind them as best you can."

The Wasp disappears into the weapons locker while Nadia does that, and by the time the girl is done, the door swings open and Janet emerges at full-size.

"I see a bunch of guns and stuff, but what're the odds our gear is in here?" She digs through the locker, muttering. "Isn't that a standard bad guy thing?"

Nadia Pym-van Dyne has posed:
Nadia grins at her handiwork, "It was a super neat idea, I think the original schematic was from A.I.M. but they were doing it all wrong, it was never going to work their way. Or well it might have worked but the entire facility would have wound up like the marble their way." She makes an overly exagerrated shrugging gesture and proceeds to buzz over to the security station. It is not the buzz of her wings. which she currently does not have, but the buzz of amphetamines which have left her like a quivering mass of barely contained energy.

Fingers fly across the keys, "This would be so much easier if I could do this with my mind like Vivian! I should make something that does that! I mean if Dad can make something that talks to Ants I should be able to make something that talks to computers, right?! It'd be suuuuper useful!" After a few minutes of absolutely furious typing she makes a frustrated face, "I'm not sure how much we're going to get out of this terminal, it's mostly for security surveillance stuff. If we could get to the server room though... ugh" It's an inarticulate noise of frustration, "I wish I had my suit!"

She glances over towards Janet, "It's not actually in there is it?"

Unfortunately for Nadia, it's not. Things do not seem to be that easy.

Janet van Dyne has posed:
"Nope, it's a target of opportunity. Not an objective." Janet seems quite in control of herself, taking a few seconds to plan ahead and focus on the mission. "If you can't take it, then we'll trash it."

Janet examines a map on the wall of the office. "I'll have to fly you out of here; we're gonna need to do it in stages. I can't carry you for too long at a stretch." She tosses body armor and some weapons on the table, then moves to the station again. Instead of the security systems, Janet accesses the climate control system. Filters, disengaged, exhaust fans on high, intake fans off, heaters off.

"Your dad's suit has a communicator in it; mine's implanted in my head." She touches the ridge of skull behind her ear. "But really that's for fine-tuning things. It's mostly pheremone activity that brings them in. I've been stewing in my own funk for most of a week and Ying turned the fans on earlier. So we've got a few million creepie-crawlies on standby, and if I know your dad, he's going to send them in ahead of everyone else. Trade shirts with me, so you're scentmarked in case we get separated."

Nadia Pym-van Dyne has posed:
Nadia makes another face at the computer console, before she stands up and begins shimmying out of her jumpsuit, they at least left her with a sports bra and bicycle shorts underneath, very utilitarian. Normally she doesn't wear clothes that show it off much but Nadia really does have an impressive degree of muscle tone, a combination of the serum in her veins and intense childhood training. "So Ying is really here? And she helped you? Where is she?" Nadia asks again as she offers the grey jumpsuit to Janet, still seemingly in disbelief. Probably not so much that Ying would help, more that she's actually here after all these years apart. There is a longing for reunion with her only friend who doesn't seem to be anywhere to be seen.

Her eyes are still darting around the room rapidly as the amphetamines in her system make it almost impossible to concentrate. But she looks back to Janet again curiousity burning in those brown eyes of hers.

Janet van Dyne has posed:
Janet's perhaps a bit curvier with maturity over Nadia, but they're otherwise close enough in size that it's minimal fuss to change. "Yes, yes, and no idea," Janet responds, in order. "I told her that if we survive, she can come with us. I don't know if she will. Guilt's weird. Could go either way. If she doesn't keep up, though, I'm not going to risk your life for hers. We're leaving, either way, right now."

Janet waits for Nadia to get kitted up with whatever gear she needs, then offers her a hand to hold. "Hang on tight, let me do the flying, try not to pull my center of balance off," she tells the Waspette. "We're heading back up the elevator shaft and then we'll head for the strike team's entrance point."

Janet grins, suddenly. "It'll be where all the bugs are, so just... follow the screams?"

Nadia Pym-van Dyne has posed:
"Wait what? We have to help her!" Nadia cries as she finishes changing into Janet's jumpsuit. She seems suddenly frantic, likely a combination of the amphetamines and a sudden strong emotional trigger, "I can't leave her, not again!"

Deep breaths, she grabs an automatic rifle off the table. From the way she handles it various firearms were clearly part of her curriculum. The clip and safety are both checked before it is slung across herback. "We can do it Janet, I know we can save her."

She crosses the intervening distance and wraps her arms around Janet again, holding on tight. "Let's do this!"

TO BE CONTINUED
(In Scene 3431)