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| Issue #8 March 2009 |
"Terminal Patient" Written By David Golightly |
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PREVIOUSLY IN FANTASTIC FOUR:
After discovering that a rampaging monstrosity was based upon the same technology of Aaron Stack, the incredible Machine Man, the Fantastic Four have arrived at the Vault where X-51 is being kept. Now a deeper secret has been uncovered: the villainous extraterrestrial creature called Terminus, thought destroyed, lives on inside Machine Man!
“Reed, this doesn’t make any sense!” Susan Storm, the Invisible Woman, said. “We were there when Terminus was destroyed!”
“Yeah, I remember it pretty well,” Ben Grimm, the blue-eyed Thing, added. “He collapsed into a black hole. Quasar ripped that big lance off of him and that was the end of it after Thor tuned his hammer on the thing’s butt.”
Reed Richards rubbed his chin in concentration. The Fantastic Four, having gone to the supervillain detention center known as The Vault, surrounded the prone and offline body of Machine Man. All reason told him that what the small camera he had fed into the android’s inner workings was showing him was a lie. Terminus had been destroyed, and yet, a small insect-like creature was latched onto Machine Man’s central cabling.
“We’ve seen stranger things,” Johnny said. “Remember when the Mole Man turned purple and it was because he had been poisoned by that super model who actually turned out be a Kree secret agent? That was pretty strange.”
“Could it be a clone?” Sue asked.
“I suppose it’s possible,” Reed replied. “It’s certainly not outside the realm of possibility that someone managed to duplicate Terminus’ technology. But why infect Machine Man?”
“Whatever the reason, we need to get that thing out of him before something bad happens,” the Thing said.
“No problem!” Johnny stuck a finger out and made it burst into flame. “I’ll just burn the little guy out like a tick.”
“No, we can’t,” Reed said with a look of horror. “That would damage X-51’s systems beyond repair! Regardless of the crimes he committed we owe it to him to find a way to remove the infection without doing permanent harm. It’s the humane thing to do.”
“Humane? But he’s a robot. Can’t you just…I don’t know, reboot him or something in case I singe off a few electrodes?”
“I only know the basic operations of Abel Stack’s creations. I recognized the design but I have no idea what most of his functions are. We would run the risk of destroying a sentient creature, Johnny. I’m sorry, but we need to be much more delicate than that.”
“So what do you propose we do?” Sue asked.
“Luckily, as fate would have it, the answer was delivered into our hands just a few hours ago.”
---- 4 ----
INTERLUDE
A cool night breeze washed over the balcony atop a castle that had been rebuilt several times since the original foundations had been dug into the ground. The breeze lifted a green cloak off the back of the castle’s owner, flapping it wildly behind him. Not that he could feel the wind. He had sealed himself off from the world years ago. His skin hadn’t been openly exposed to the elements unless his armor had been ripped forcefully away.
Behind his metal mask he looked down into the courtyard, assessing his latest experiment. It was a keen mind that could develop such an impressive device. Standing two dozen feet tall, the monument to his genius had very nearly broken the laws of physics. He scoffed, thinking how childish a thing like that was. As if the laws that most men obeyed were subject to him.
His research into cosmic radiation over the years had yielded breakthroughs in other fields. No other person on Earth, save one, could hope to understand what he had pieced together from nothing. That one man, Richards, could probably conceive of how the device operated, but he doubted that the thought to do so had even crossed his arrogant mind.
A nearly silent hum caught his attention and he turned away from the edge of the balcony to see one of his servant robots approaching. “What is it?” he said.
“Our preparations are nearly complete for the next assault, master,” it replied in a tinged robotic voice. The robot bowed and slipped away back into the castle.
Beneath his mask, Doom smiled. Victor Von Doom was fully aware of how vain a man he was. Despite that vanity he had to admit that even Reed Richards, a man he had sworn to humiliate and make grovel before him, could appreciate his device.
All of his defeats at the hands of the Fantastic Four had not been for nothing. Doom had learned from them. He knew with each defeat that he was then one step closer to dealing the final blow. The killing stroke.
But simply ending their lives was not enough. No, first he had to strip away the very thing that made them unique. He had to destroy what their lives had become. And to do that, he had to discover a way to succeed where Reed Richards had failed.
Of course, for Doom, that would not be a difficult task. He knew Richards as a frail scientific mind, unable to risk what needed to be risked in the name of science. All he had to do to succeed ahead of Richards was take certain avenues of research that he wouldn’t dare traverse.
The dark side of science. The lesser traveled road. The macabre and, to some extent, evil.
---- 4 ----
“We really appreciate this, Scott.”
Scott Lang, the recently returned Ant-Man, shrugged as he shook Reed Richards’ hand. “Whatever I can do to help,” he replied. “You brought me back to my baby girl. I owe you. Even if this is possibly the quickest favor ever called in.”
Ant-Man, part of the stranded crew of the lost Infinity shuttle, a ship that Reed had designed, had just been transported back to Earth via a connection established by Franklin Richards mere hours ago.* The Fantastic Four had left him in the Baxter Building with his daughter, Cassie, before calling in SHIELD to effectively learn more about the exact whereabouts of the lost starship. Reed had already sent his data to the Avengers in an effort to expedite the search.
* (Read about that little adventure in Fantastic Four #6 – D)
“We’ll have you back to Cassie in no time,” Sue said as she ushered Scott into the closed room where they had Machine Man spread out. “We really wouldn’t ask…but, it’s a little uncanny that these circumstances have unfolded the way they have.”
“So, unless I misheard you on the way in, Reed,” Scott said, “you need me to shrink you down to go inside Machine Man and disconnect the Terminus bug.”
The Thing pretended to shoot Scott with his bulky, orange finger. “Bingo,” he said.
“We’ve been all up and down the microverse a handful of times,” Johnny added. “A walk in the park for us. We just need you to take the point.”
“Not a problem. We ready here?”
Reed looked around the room, double-checking the monitoring equipment he had set up. He nodded to the watching Guardsmen, the loyal overseers of the Vault, who would be waiting to signal for help if there was trouble. “Looks like,” Mr. Fantastic answered.
“This is going to feel a little…strange,” Ant-Man said as he donned his helmet.
At first nothing happened. But after a few heartbeats, the Pym Particles that Scott Lang spread over the Fantastic Four started to take affect. Through his special helmet, Ant-Man monitored their rate of change and ensured that they wouldn’t shrink too far down. Within a few seconds the five of them had completely shrunken down to no taller than a single centimeter.
They hovered in midair, thanks to the invisible bubble conjured by Sue. “Are you under any strain, Scott?” she asked.
“I just need to pay attention. We should be okay. Let’s not make this longer than it has to be, though, alright?”
“The faster we get you back to your baby girl, the better,” Ben replied.
Sue commanded the tiny bubble holding them aloft to float into the open area of Machine Man’s body that Reed had slipped his miniature camera into. The fiber optic cable he had fed into the body was still there, helping to hold the space open. The quintet slipped by the purple padding of Machine Man’s outer layer of ‘skin’ and entered his body near the hip.
“Where do I go from here?” Sue asked.
“Just follow the cable,” Reed answered. “It will lead us right to the Terminus infestation. And hopefully to some answers.”
By using her extraordinary mastery over solidified light particles, the Invisible Woman guided the small contingent of adventurers up through the artificial veins of X-51. Their experience told them to be weary of their surroundings, as they had been in this situation before and it had rarely come out well.
The black cable Reed had fed through Machine Man stood out against the purple, orange, and gray color scheme of the android’s system. They moved quickly, although their progress was hampered by the intricacy of Machine Man’s workings.
“These are all primarily power routers,” Reed explained as they traveled, pointing to various groupings of wiring. “There should be a steady flow of power moving through these, even when he’s shutdown. But instead my instruments are showing pulsations. The Terminus bug is affecting distribution somehow.”
“You sayin’ its manipulating him, Stretch?” Ben asked.
“It certainly looks that way.”
Johnny sighed, but it went unnoticed by his friends. He knew all about being manipulated. His feelings, his general character, and even his perception on reality had all been distorted by a Skrull infiltrator named Courni.* The woman had tricked him into thinking that he loved her. He remembered how he felt, how he would have done anything for her, even given his own life. It had almost come to that, as she had turned against them, and specifically Johnny. She was locked away now, but the burns she had left behind on the Human Torch hadn’t yet healed.
* (That reveal happened in Fantastic Four #5 – D)
“I can see the central…Sue? Are you okay?” Reed stopped looking at his instruments and looked at his wife. She was beginning to perspire, alluding to the fact that she was exerting herself to much.
“There’s some kind of pressure up ahead,” she replied with strain in her voice. “Like an energy field. Reed, I think that Terminus knows we’re here.”
An energy blast suddenly ruptured against the side of the force bubble, rocking the group back and forth. Sue cried out and fell, caught by Reed’s outstretched arms. The bubble holding them burst, dropping the group directly onto a thick conduit cable that was luckily large enough to support then, even at their tiny stature.
“He’s knows we’re here alright,” the Thing said. “And he told his buddies.”
Climbing up from underneath the cable, a dozen Terminus insectoid creatures surrounded the Fantastic Four and Ant-Man. Their eyes flashed in unison. The Thing was the first to attack, not waiting for the aggressive Terminus creatures to get the first hit.
“It’s clobberin’ time!”
“One of these days I’ll have a cooler catchphrase than you,” the Human Torch said as he ignited his own body and joined the fight.
“Reed, look out!” Ant-Man exclaimed. He brushed by Mr. Fantastic and the fallen Invisible Woman, firing the bio-electric blasts in his gauntlets at an approaching Terminus insectoid. The shocking attack blasted the miniscule robot apart with ease.
“Thanks for the assist,” Reed said. “Sue, can you stand?”
She shook her head, clearing the cobwebs from her thoughts. “Yes. Damn it, that’s the second time that’s happened today!”
“Second time?”
“Never mind. I’m fine. And I’m pissed off.”
An insectoid went flying in front of them, rocketed into the air by Ben Grimm’s superior strength. The Terminus creations had been spawned before, or variations thereof. As part of the last crisis involving the extraterrestrial force of nature, the Fantastic Four had their fair share of destroying rampant Terminus constructs.
“It’s like riding a bike!” Ben said.
“Sure, if that bike is a vicious robo-bug that wants to eat the meat off your bones,” Johnny replied. “It’ just like that, rock-head.”
The Torch’s flame melted through several of the insectoids, burning holes through their metallic shells and reducing them to molten slag. He carved a path through to where the original Terminus bug that Reed had discovered was, but he was shot out of the air by an energy beam from one of the insectoids before he could launch pursuit.
“My readings show a significant power source up ahead,” Reed said. “And it doesn’t the readings for X-51. It’s definitely Terminus, and oddly enough, it looks like he’s broadcasting a signal. Ben! We need to stop that signal, whatever its for!”
“You got it, Stretch.”
The Thing palmed another insectoid and tossed it off the cable they were fighting on. He stomped his way in the same direction Johnny had gone, who was now reigniting his flames and burning through several more insectoids. Ben paused, placing his hands against an invisible barrier that sparked yellow as he pressed against it.
“This must be the pressure that Suzie felt,” Ben said. “Looks like we got a problem, Stretch! We’re cut off from the big kahuna.”
“Move out of the way, Ben!” Sue hollered.
The Invisible Woman barreled through the air, raising force fields to block stray insectoid energy blasts. She ground her teeth as her own force bubble mashed against the yellow one formed from Terminus. More sparks dribbled down as the powers collided, but after a few moments, the Invisible Woman overpowered the opposition and pushed through.
“Whoa,” Ant-Man said. “Is she always so gung-ho?”
Up ahead she could see the central power coupling that the Terminus infection had bored into, along with a glowing wire that extruded out and into a puffy, yet metallic, creature. The creature throbbed with each charge of power that Sue could see push through into the coupling.
With a slash of her hand, she used an invisible force field to sever the wire. The puffy Terminus cried in agony and rolled over on its side, the wire flipping back and forth randomly.
“Sue!” Reed called out as he and the other ran up to her. “Are you all…what happened?”
“Is the transmission still broadcasting?” she replied.
“No. No, you must have disconnected its ability to establish an outside connection.” Reed bent over the throbbing parasitic Terminus, rubbing his chin. “This is a very different configuration from what we’ve encountered before. It almost looks like—”
“It looks like it had amalgamated Machine Man’s technology,” Ant-Man cut in. “My helmet picked up the gist of that transmission. It was calling out to activate the other Terminus components left around the world for help.”
“Help?” Johnny asked.
“It seems that this was just a remnant left over from Terminus’ first invasion,” Ant-Man said. “It was trying to locate any others. It must have been in Machine Man all this time.”
“This explains why the robotic construct the two of you encountered at Alicia’s apartment had traces of both Machine Man and Terminus in it. It must have been another remnant.* It appears…it appears as if they actually became self-aware! Fascinating.”
* (Last issue – D)
“Yeah, it’s extraordinary,” Ben said. “The thing is dead. Can we go now?”
“I’ll collect the pieces and you can examine it back at the Baxter Building,” Sue said.
“Sue, are you alright?”
“I’m fine. Let’s go.”
---- 4 ----
“Thanks again for the help, Scott. We really appreciate it. Now tell your daughter hello for us and have fun.”
Reed pressed a button on the headset in his ear, cutting off the phone call to Scott Lang. He admired Scott for coming to aid them, and was further impressed with how much priority he was placing with getting back to his daughter at the SHIELD debriefing. It was something he hoped to do once he finished examining the Terminus remains.
His tests showed that the Terminus bug had indeed grown independent from the original monstrosity. There was no telling how many more bugs like it there were left on Earth, or ever why Terminus had left them behind in the first place. Perhaps it was part of a larger plan that they would never know about.
But one thing was for sure: the bug had been controlling Machine Man for some time. Once these findings were sent to the Vault and later verified by SHIELD, X-51 would no longer be incarcerated.
That just left one more problem to roll around in the back of Reed’s mind: Sue. What had she meant by a ‘second time?’ And what had caused the dramatic personality change, making her more aggressive?
“Reed?” Sue’s voice said through the intercom. “Reed? The kids and I are sitting down for dinner. Are you coming?”
“Yes, yes of course, darling. I’ll be right down.”
Perhaps he was being paranoid. The stress was bound to build up after all these years and his wife was just as subject to a little physical relief as anyone else. Reed removed his headset, reminded himself of his promise to be more like Scott when it came to his children, and exited his lab to go have dinner with his family.
---- 4 ----
“You got my call.”
A fiery tornado of feminine beauty slipped out of the sky with style and grace, landing on the edge of the Baxter Building. Her lithe body was almost sculpted by the cosmic powers of the universe, encased in a form that could burn away the hulls of any starcraft.
“Kind of hard to ignore a call from you, Johnny Storm,” she replied, “Even if I was halfway across the galaxy when it came.”
“How are you doing, Frankie?”
Johnny extended his hand and offered assistance to the lovely Frankie Rayes, also known as Nova, to help her off the edge of the building. She smirked and accepted it, stepping down onto the roof beside him. She crossed her arms and stepped back, matching his gaze.
“You didn’t bring me here to ask how I’m doing,” she said. “I know you, Johnny. You look bummed. What’s wrong?”
Johnny’s eyes shifted, looking left to right with…was it irritation? No, it looked more like he was uncomfortable. Like he had something rehearsed to say but now he was thinking better of it.
Nova placed a hand on his shoulder to comfort him and tilted her head until their eyes met again. “What’s going on, fireball?”
“I…uh, well, it’s like this.” Johnny stepped away from Frankie and let his arms become animated as he talked. “I met this girl, okay, and she—”
“Johnny Storm! You did not call me here to brag about a girl, did you?”
“What? No! No, of course not! Just listen, okay? Here, sit down. Okay…so, you know when you meet someone, and you think that, hey, this is great, and, you know, this is the best it’s going to get? And that maybe this is how you should feel because you like the way you feel with that person, but when things don’t go how you expect, that maybe it wasn’t right from the beginning and you were just being manipulated… I totally lost you, huh?”
Nova nodded. Her eyes were wide open in absolute confusion.
“Right. Sorry. Look, Frankie. I’ll just break it down like this. When we were together it was magic. And I don’t even know why we broke up in the first place.”
“Johnny…”
“And seeing you again I know, I mean I really know, that it could be like that again.”
“Johnny…”
“I know it’s been awhile since we spent some time together, but some recent events have shown me that life isn’t worth living unless you have someone beside you. Like my sister. Her and Reed, they can’t function without each other.”
“Johnny, please don’t…”
“So, Frankie Rayes, my starlight wonder—”
Frankie closed her eyes so she wouldn’t see the Human Torch get down on one knee.
“Will you marry me?”
---- 4 ----
NEXT ISSUE: Are wedding bells soon to be heard? Maybe, maybe not. Before a decision can be made the Fantastic Four are going to be pulled away by an invader that may look familiar to one person in particular.
