File:Marvel Team-Up Vol 1 60 001.jpg

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Jean DeWolff and Rafael Scarfe arrive on the scene just as Equinox is gloating of his triumph over Yellowjacket. Jean tells the Wasp that a special weapons team is moving into position, but the Wasp angrily spurns the police captain, leaps over a barricade, and starts to blast Equinox with her Stings. A minor head wound has left her unable to concentrate to reduce to insect size, but her Stingers should still retain their potency, she thinks. However, this only irritates Equinox, who picks up a chunk of the exploded fuel truck to throw at her. Spider-Man realizes that at her normal size she is a sitting duck, and he shoves her out of the way. After she calms down, she apologizes for losing her head. A few seconds later, she finds herself able to shift to wasp size, and she and Spider-Man return to the bridge to consult with Margay Sorenson. Equinox's mother explains that her son is not well. The constant strain of his thermic changes is affecting his mind, she says, and he is not responsible for his actions. The Wasp angrily replies that Equinox is a killer and promises him the same mercy he showed to her husband. Spider-Man tells the Wasp that Mrs. Sorenson is in as much agony over what has happened as she is, and she needs a chance to help. But before the conversation can continue, Equinox advances toward them, shoving aside the cars on the bridge. His mother tells Spider-Man and the Wasp that the device she is carrying will stabilize her son's thermic transitions and neutralize his powers. But when she uses it, it has no effect, and he continues toward them. He does not need help, he says arrogantly. He is beginning to enjoy being the way he is. Then Spider-Man web-swings off the bridge with Mrs. Sorenson. The Wasp says there is no one at the Avengers Mansion, so the best place to regroup is at the Baxter Building. She hopes her Avengers identification can get them inside. As they head toward the Fantastic Four's headquarters, Equinox's mother tells them how her son received his powers. She is the head of the Natural Science Division of Bard College, she begins. Her late husband, Dr. David Sorenson, was a physicist specializing in thermodynamics. They had one child, Terry, and at first they were a happy family. But as the years passed, she gained personal fame, while her husband remained obscure. He was a brilliant man, but his theories were too radical to be accepted by the scientific community, and he began to take out his frustration on her. She stood it for her son's sake, but eventually she was compelled to leave him. He drank a lot at the laboratory, and one night as she drove by, there was a powerful explosion that turned the lab into an inferno. She and her son raced inside and found him pinned beneath beams with his leg broken. Terry tried to rescue his father, but the shattered machines suddenly bathed her son in energy beams. David Sorenson died instantly, but Terry Sorenson turned into the hot-and-cold being they know as Equinox. He begged her to cure him, so she took a leave of absence from her post to study her husband's notes, but the task of learning an entirety new scientific discipline proved beyond her. He even started stealing equipment that she needed. With each failure to return him to normal, he grew more bitter, while his thermic transitions began to drive him insane. Then, she says as they approach the Baxter Building, earlier this evening he ran away as she completed work on the thermic stabilizer—which has proved to be yet another failure. When they land on the roof, an automated security laser interrogates them, and the Wasp flashes her identification. This is an Avengers Code Omega situation, Priority Red-One, she says. The machine confirms her identity and explains that none of the Fantastic Four is currently in residence, but she has nevertheless been granted access to the laboratory. As the Wasp buzzes down the stairs, she explains that Code Omega denotes an end-of-the-world circumstance—and for her, anyway, it is. Uptown from the Baxter Building, the police desperately try to contain Equinox, but his power continues to increase. Their bullets prove totally ineffective, either bouncing off when his body is icy or melting when it is aflame. Equinox bathes the police cars with a fire-bolt that melts them all, and then the bolt penetrates the wall of the Consolidated Edison Mid-Town Sub Station, irradiates the generating equipment, and causes a half-million-volt power surge. This blacks out all of Manhattan, including the interior of the Baxter Building. But when the building's emergency generators cut in, the auxiliary computers at the Fantastic Four headquarters fall to recognize Spider-Man, the Wasp, and Dr. Sorenson and start taking defensive measures against them as if they were intruders. It was the main computer that let them enter, says Spider-Man, but until it is re-activated, if it ever is, they are going to be dodging laser beams. Spider-Man and Dr. Sorenson race into Reed Richards's main lab, where there are no lasers, but before the Wasp can follow them inside, a pair of massive steel doors slam shut in her face. Now, says Spider-Man, they are trapped by doors that are built to hold the Thing, while the Wasp remains outside, a target for the lasers. Dr. Sorenson, however, does not take as dire a view of the situation as Spider-Man, for in the laboratory is all the equipment she could possibly need to find a cure for her son. Doors seal shut around the Wasp as she buzzes through the rooms trying to get one of the auxiliary computers to accept her identification. She realizes that she has to find a way out fast, before the targeting computers start to compensate for her small size and increase their accuracy. When she sees a laser flash, she puts on a burst of speed and avoids being hit, and she is amazed at the quickness of her reflexes. She reacted faster than the computers can track—something that should be impossible. She must be getting lucky, she says to herself as she hides in an air duct. Inside the duct, she is out of reach of the lasers, and she pauses to think. The ducts honeycomb the entire building, and by following them to the control center, she might be able to disengage the security system. But then she discovers an anti-gas mesh behind the duct's inner grief, as strong as steel and too fine for even her to squeeze through. Gas begins to enter the duct as she ponders what to do, and she realizes that at her size only a couple of whiffs will knock her out for hours. Then she notices a screw missing from the frame that holds the mesh, and she tries to pry the mesh open far enough to get through. Although she thought the effort would be futile, she finds herself bending the grill like putty. And then she notices that she has become faster and stronger than ever. Her husband must somehow be responsible for this, she thinks as she heads for the control center, smashing those defenses that she cannot otherwise avoid. When she arrives at the control center, she sees that the consoles are about to have the entire building flooded with gas. She drops down onto the "off" switch, shutting the system down. But the Baxter Bullding computers were not just reacting to her presence. Rather, the exterior sensors also detected Equinox climbing up the building. Inside the lab, Spider-Man and Dr. Sorenson continue to work, and just as Equinox climbs to their floor, Spider-Man announces that their special harness is ready. Dr. Sorenson's suggestion to cross-circuit the primary coils was on the right track, he says, but she underestimated the amount of power needed. Because the beam's effectiveness decreases geometrically with distance, he continues, the harness will have to be placed in direct contact with Equinox to be most effective. Unfortunately, this could be a very dangerous proposition. Dr. Sorenson volunteers, because Equinox is her son, but before Spider-Man can decline her offer, his spider-sense starts to tingle and the wall to the lab explodes. As Equinox enters, Spider-Man covers his own hands with webbing to protect himself from the heat and the cold. Then he starts throwing punches, but Equinox slams him in the jaw with an ice-hard fist. Spider-Man rips a piece of equipment off a wall to use as a bludgeon, not noticing that by doing so he turns off a stasis safe, from which falls a small, ornately carved wand. When he tries to hit Equinox, his makeshift club simply melts, and Equinox suddenly pins him within an ice-straitjacket. Equinox starts to pummel Spider-Man, but suddenly Yellow-jacket enters the room through the hole in the wall. Equinox cannot believe his eyes, for he thought Henry Pym was dead. Then the Wasp flies in, and her husband tells her not to ask any questions but to hit Equinox with everything she has. Relieved beyond measure that Yellowjacket is still alive, she blasts Equinox with her Stings, and much to her surprise she blows him across the lab. It is a birthday present for her, says Yellowjacket. Then Margay Sorenson hands Yellowjacket the thermic stabilizer harness that she and Spider-Man constructed. Yellowjacket knows her as a colleague, and he is surprised that Equinox is her son. He does as requested, and Equinox screams in pain and drops to the floor unconscious, his thermic changes at least temporarily arrested. The Wasp returns to human size and happily embraces her husband, who explains that when the fuel truck exploded, he shrank to insect size. His much smaller mass allowed him to ride the shock waves safely away from the explosion, he says, and he remained alive. When he regained consciousness, he made his way to the Baxter Building. As for the Wasp's increased powers, he continues, he secretly slipped her a special serum that modified the effects of the original serum he gave her years ago. Now when she shrinks, the energy of her shrinking remains in her system, making her more powerful the smaller she gets. Her Stings tap this extra energy, making them stronger as well. All she needed for the process to be complete was an injection of synthetic adrenalin. But when she thought he died in the explosion, the surge of adrenalin completed the process naturally. Yellowjacket, the Wasp, and Margay Sorenson leave to take Equinox to the police, while Spider-Man remains behind to clean things up. But as he starts picking up the wreckage, he fails to notice the softly glowing wand that had fallen on the floor during the battle.