The Ultimates: Against All Enemies by Alex Irvine

into something like that," Greg went on.
    "Wonder who's keeping his name off it."
    "Me, too," Hank said. The fact that Greg's thoughts were moving along the same lines as his made him feel a little less paranoid. Maybe he could call Tony again, although he couldn't go to that well very often. The next time he'd have to have something concrete. Tony Stark was the only real human being in the whole damn Triskelion; he'd done Hank a huge favor giving him the Chitauri sample, and Hank would pay him back for it. Starting today, with any luck.
    "If it was me, I'd just train dogs," Greg said. "Nothing beats Fido when it comes to sniffing."
    "Except what we've got here," Hank said. "These little guys put dogs to shame. Nothing against dogs, but they work one at a time. What I've got here is the equivalent of a million dogs who can communicate almost instantly by chemical signals, and don't need to be housebroken." Greg laughed and went back to his microscope. "There's your proposal, Hank. Write it up and send it out."
    Hank got up and started running the checklist on the new headset he'd designed to test a little screening process of his own. It all seemed to be in order, so he went to the farm closet, where he kept something like fifty million ants of twenty-seven species that he'd found best suited to the kind of work he wanted them to do. Once he'd had them move boxes and make coffee; now he was going to put his little myrmidons to work protecting the people who crushed them on sidewalks and fried them with magnifying glasses. Good thing they weren't sentient enough to bear a grudge or note the irony, he thought.
    "Paraponera clavata , come on down," he said, rolling one of die farm boxes out of die closet. He didn't have too many of these, maybe ten thousand, but it was plenty for a test run. The inside of P. clavata's farm mimicked a system of tree roots, reflecting their preferred habitat on the South American Atlantic coast. They were big, about an inch long, and mean as hell.
    "What have you got there?" Greg said, coming over from his workstation.
    "Bullet ants. Most toxic insect in the world except for my soon-to-be-ex wife." Greg chuckled. "Scientific objectivity."
    Hank grinned along with Greg, but he hated himself for making the joke. "You know why they're called bullet ants? People who are lucky enough to have been both shot by a bullet and stung by one of these ants say that the experiences hurt about the same. Fierce little bastards, aren't they?"
    "Keep 'em in the box. Jesus," Greg said.
    Back at his terminal, Hank ran through the broadcast sequence he'd written. With any luck, it would provoke P. clavata to swarm and bite the Chitauri tissue sample he'd hidden in one of the lab wastebaskets. Then Hank would switch off that signal, send them back to the farm, and call Nick Fury with the test results. Presto! New reputation, big welcome back into the great stew of mutual exploitation that was SHIELD. If Fury could keep using Banner as a researcher after what happened in Manhattan, there was no reason for him not to take Hank back.
    Also, maybe Janet would start returning his calls.
    He finished the pretest check and went back to the farm. "Okay, fellas," he said. "Showtime." Hank leaned a four-foot two-by-four against the edge of the farm's top, and then slid back part of the lid.
    "Putting them through their paces?" Greg asked from his workstation.
    "Yeah. If any of them look like they're coming after you, go ahead and step on them. There's plenty." Greg looked nervous. "Are you saying they might come after me?" Only if you're a shape-shifting alien, Hank thought. "No," he said. "They have a very specific assignment. I want them to find something in the trash. So stay clear of your trash can and you shouldn't have any problem." Greg didn't look any happier, so Hank decided to cut him a break. "Look, if you want to leave until this is over, go ahead."
    "No, I guess I'm okay. It's just that what you said about their