B L A C K A N T
B L A C K A N T
If there was one thing that Eric O’Grady was good at, it was making the wrong decision. His life had been full of such occurrences, from deciding to order burritos the night before his childhood friend’s Bar Mitzvah, to stealing a prototype Ant-Man suit, and to agreeing to sign up with the Avengers. The former had meant he had missed the big event, leading to Chris McCarthy getting with his teenage crush, Veronica King, before he had even gotten the chance to ask her out himself. The latter had resulted in his untimely death as his body was brutally pummeled. Both events were equally impactful to Eric’s life, and where the robotic copy of his mind drifted to whenever he found himself contemplating his choices.
It was where the mind of the Life Model Decoy of Eric drifted to now as he found himself shrunk down inside the wiring of this apartment’s security system. This current job was probably one of the riskiest he had undertaken since donning the Ant-Man suit all those years ago. And honestly, he wasn’t entirely sure if it was worth it.
He moved quickly, yanking wire after wire from where they found themselves soldered. The creator of his suit would probably have controlled a swarm of crazy ants to do this job for him – also known as Paratrechina longicornis apparently, according to the Wikipedia entry Eric had glanced at a long time ago - however, despite having ‘Ant’ in his name, Eric was never a fan of using the critters. The bastards creeped him out. Besides, the helmet needed to send out his brainwaves to work and given that Eric was now a walking tin can in a skin suit, brainwaves were rather hard to come by. On the bright side, the walking tin can aspect of his new “life” did come in handy every now and then, with Eric having downloaded the schematics of the security system into his mind a few hours prior.
With a solitary beep, the green LED lights of the security system's control panel flashed red momentarily, before fading. He was in.
A smile forming beneath his mask, the Black Ant squeezed his way out of the cheap plastic coating and out into the apartment proper, looking down upon the monstrous room now at his disposal.
Well, monstrous for his currently reduced size. It was actually a fairly mediocre room, with a small kitchenette spreading around one half, whilst the other was filled with a dingey couch opposite a flatscreen TV. The couch was currently occupied by a middle-aged man, who, given the snores, was currently fast asleep.
Pot-bellied and balding, Billy Koenig, was an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. He had been one of Eric’s supervisors during his time at the organization. A stickler for the rules, and a massive pain in Eric’s ass. From what he had been told, since his departure, Koenig had risen through the ranks, now finding himself working directly under the Director himself. It was a decent role, but if an apartment like this was the reward for years of service at one of the most important intelligence companies in the world, Eric was glad he had dipped from that life.
That was one good decision at least.
Leaping down into the room, the Black Ant shifted back to his full size, his eyes fixated on his former boss through the lenses of his visor, as his hand moved to one of the pouches on his utility belt.
He wasn’t here to kill the man, not that Eric would’ve been against such a job. No, instead he was here to rob him. Well, rob parts of him, to be precise.
Removing a small metal device from one of his pouches, he leaned over the sleeping man, his body moving as silently as he could will it to. Steadying his hand, he moved it to Koenig’s face, where as carefully as he could, he lifted one of his eyelids. Ignoring the disturbing nature of the blank pupil before him, he clicked a button on the device in his other hand, spurring it into life. The tip of it spun, as the numerous cameras within each of its stems began to flicker.
Scanning Koenig’s optical biometrics took longer than Eric would’ve liked, with the mercenary expecting the man to wake from his slumber at any second. Finally, however, he was done, with the device shutting down as quickly as it had started, with Eric let the eyelid close.
Now all he needed was the Agent’s fingerprints and he could leave the way he came.
He reached back into his pouches, where he began to rummage for the fingerprint reader he had bought. His hands moved back and forth within the pocket, before quickly moving to the next, and the next, with each search becoming more and more frantic. That was when the realization hit him.
He had forgotten it.
“
Shit.” He mouthed the word silently under his helmet as the Black Ant stood back in disbelief.
How could he be so stupid? Why hadn’t he doubled checked his equipment? He shook his head disappointedly as he racked his brain for an idea, or even for just an excuse for when he returned to base empty-handed.
Landing his eyes on Koenig’s knife block on the kitchen counter, Eric O’Grady let out a sigh, before stepping towards them.
Another item to the list of bad decisions.