Pym looked at the pitch-black cave entrance and abandoned the idea of going in to investigate. He looked at the great river nearby, where the roaring water carried a faint rumble.
"But Dr. Dean was murdered in New York. How could the killer be here? Unless it knows magic too."
"No, my friend, it isn't as simple as you think." Su Ming shook his head and pointed at the blob of black sludge that was still flowing. "What we're looking for is a group of 'killers.' You know ants, so let me put it this way: the one who killed Dr. Dean was a soldier ant, belonging to a vast colony. What we've found now is a worker ant, and through it, we've uncovered clues to the ant nest."
Pym took a deep breath, as though he intended to inhale the stench from the cave, then suddenly understood. "So if we want revenge, what we really need is to find the colony's queen ant. That's the only way to solve the problem completely."
Su Ming pointed at him, as though Uncle Sam were calling him to enlist. "Exactly. In a swarm structure, the basic units have no minds of their own. They are merely the queen's tools. So now I'll take you to raid the ant nest. Any other questions?"
Janet and Pym exchanged a glance and both shook their heads. Their hearts were filled with the desire for revenge, and they did not even realize that Su Ming had switched the concepts around.
The mucus left behind after a Symbiote died did indeed resemble a slug somewhat, but that was only when viewed with the naked eye in the wild. In a laboratory, give Pym a microscope and he could easily distinguish the differences between the enemies they had