Pain, that's all he felt. His body ached, his muscles felt like they were being liquified and stretched. All those years planning and designing to prevent the portal from blowing up on his face, he realized, meant little against the seemingly all encompassing 'canon event'
"Reed, can you hear me?" he heard a familiar voice of Franklin Storm ask, panic evident in his voice. "Talk to me son!"
"I hear you, he groaned," why did getting powers have to be painful? "What happened?"
"We don't know the portal imploded, a power surge, faulty wiring. We don't know."
"Figures. I told you I should've done the final check."
Of course they'd trusted Victor von Doom of all people. The man had already blown one portal up in his face. God knows he had tried being his friend, but that man ego incarnate.
Portal Explosion: 2. Doom: 0.
"Are the others safe Franklin? Sue, Ben, Johnny."
"They're alive, but something's going on we don't understand it."
He smacked his head, as his vision cleared, damn cosmic rays. He blinked as the sterilized white hospital room nearly blinded him.
"Hey, don't push yourself," Franklin placed a hand on his shoulder, "We honestly didn't expect you up so soon. It's miracle you are still alive."
"Loving the faith you have in me doc," he smirked, as he tried to get up. Only for his body to stretch and hit the ceiling.
"Okay... that's unpleasant," he muttered, trying to blink past the whiplash of suddenly being a living body horror.
Franklin Storm let out a startled, "What the hell?!" and instinctively jumped back.
Reed looked down-or tried to. His neck and body elongated like taffy started sliding back down toward the bed like a slinky made of skin.
"Oh God," he groaned, flopping back into a more compact human shape.
Franklin rushed forward, his hands hovering like he wanted to help but unsure, clearly worried touching him might cause him to flop around like a bobble head.
"Don't move. I mean it this time," he said, face pale. "You need rest."
"No, I need to figure out the damage."
The door opened with a hiss and in walked Sue. She looked okay, if a little shaken. Well as okay as having half your torso missing. Her form flickered—there one second, gone the next. He could see the outline of her organs and spine for a flicker of a heartbeat before the rest of her phased back in like a broken hologram.
"Oh god, you're okay," her voice quivered, relief evident, "Something's happening Reed, we're all changing"
On cue parts of her body flicked in and out of existence.
"Hey, calm down Sue," he hugged her, "I will fix this."
"Okay," she breathed out, "God it's awful, Johnny's on fire, literally, he managed to burn through two hospital beds before they finally sedated him. And Ben, God there's things growing out of his skin, like rocks-"
"And Victor?" he couldn't help but ask.
Sue hesitated. Of course it was never simple with von Doom.
"He... didn't go to the ER," she said finally, voice hushed. "He just walked out. Said he felt fine."
Of course he did.
Reed pinched the bridge of your nose, as his fingers stretched slightly and bent backwards. No use worrying over him.
"Right, I need a lab, full scans on me, on Sue, on all of us. If this is radiation-induced, the particles might still be active. I can't study it from a hospital bed." He looked at Franklin, "I'm going to the Baxter Building."
That was the original 'Reed' part of him, the transmigrated part knew it would probably turn out fine, but it never hurt to be sure.
Franklin didn't look convinced. He looked like he wanted to protest but before he could answer the door opened again.
A man in a suit walked, flanked by two others also in suits wearing sunglasses, clearly government agents. Reed knew who the man without sunglasses was.
"Good to see you're up and about Dr Richards. I'm Phil Coulson with the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division," He introduced himself.
"That's a mouthful," he couldn't help but say.
"We get that a lot," Phil smiled. "I'm sorry we can't let you leave before we brief you. I hope you understand, we did the same with Miss Storm."
He figured SHIELD would get involved. At least it wasn't the military, Reed didn't think they'd be very happy with the portal imploding their billions. Old Thunderbolt Ross might finally leave Bruce Banner for them now.
"Sure, let's get this over with. Between you and me I really think me figuring out what's going on might be beneficial for all of us."
"Of course, Dr Richards."
-4-
They questioned him there for hours, or at least it felt like hours.
"Thank you for your time, Dr Richards." Phil said as he left, "Oh but before I go, we had the Baxter Building quarantined, I'm sorry it's protocol. We would also like to let you know that we've arranged accommodations for you here."
"But my equipment-"
"Has already been transported. Furthermore, any and all tests and information regarding your affliction, will naturally have to be shared with us."
Reed scoffed, of course there was a catch. HYDRA was waiting to lap up
He stared at his brand-new workspace. They were nice enough to at least arrange the clutter like his lab but that's where the similarities ended. Sterile walls. Surveillance cameras he could all but hear buzzing. Temperature two degrees above optimal. His lab was here... in name only. Sure, they'd brought his equipment, deconstructed, inspected, and reassembled wrong. Idiots. All of them.
They let him wear a white coat, though. Probably to make him feel better. It didn't.
Across the room, Sue was pacing. Her body had stopped flickering, but her feet didn't always touch the ground, but she was slowly getting better at control.
"I don't like this," she muttered. "They're watching everything. They even bugged the coffee machine."
"It's the government," Reed replied without looking at her. "I'd be more worried if they didn't bug the coffee machine."
Sue didn't immediately reply.
"Reed. How long are we going to play nice?"
He didn't answer right away. His eyes were fixed on Ben's vitals.
Calcium-carbon buildup. Structural mass increasing. Organic mineralization. It was happening fast.
"Take a look at this," he said, pulling up a 3D scan. "Ben's changes are far more advanced than ours."
Sue drifted in, studying the screen. "Is that... internal calcification?"
"More than that." He tapped the display, bringing up a rotation of Ben's arm. "It's not just hardening. It's restructuring. Symmetrical fractal growths forming a lattice of organic stone. Muscle's being replaced by something denser, stronger."
She flinched. "But... he's still Ben, right?"
Reed looked at the neural data. Slower activity. Distorted patterns.
"We don't know how it'll affect his cognition," he said. "His pain receptors are already shutting down. He may not even realize what's happening."
Sue didn't seem convinced. This was more her field than his—cellular biology was her specialty. But even she was speechless.
She crossed her arms, staring hard at the screen. "Ben's always been tough. Stubborn as hell. But this…" Her voice faltered.
Reed didn't respond. Because he already knew.
He'd seen it play out before—on the page, on screen, in a dozen versions of a story that always ended the same.
Ben begging for a cure. Ben punching walls. Ben wondering if he was still human.
"I'm going to fix this," Reed said quietly. "I swear it."
She didn't say a word. But her jaw tightened. Sue flinched, just slightly. Her body flickered for a moment, then stabilized.
She didn't reply, she just looked at the screen, jaw clenched. Determined. Heartbroken.
As her eyes flickered to Johnny's vitals, her jaw clenched tighter.
Sue leaned in. "That doesn't look promising."
The monitor was filled with thermal maps, molecular acceleration charts, and a very unnerving spike in core temperature. Reed's eyes narrowed as he scrolled through layers of Johnny's vitals.
"His body's producing plasma," he said, voice low. "He's not just generating heat—he's containing it. Sustaining it. His cellular structure has become a living containment field."
He pointed to a readout blinking red. "Core temperature's over 1,500 degrees Celsius."
Sue blinked. "That's—"
"Insane," Reed finished. "His enzymes should've denatured. Organs cooked. But they haven't."
He rotated a full-body 3D model of Johnny, showing flickers of energy surging around his heart, down his limbs.
"His DNA is restructuring to stabilize the plasma. He's evolving into a self-regulating thermal reactor. Thankfully, it's under control for now."
Sue stared at the heat spikes.
"But if that control slips—"
"It won't," Reed said too quickly, then caught himself. "It hasn't yet."
He brought up a timeline chart. Spikes aligned with adrenaline surges. One particularly bad flare during sedation had scorched the walls of the med bay and melted an entire hospital bed frame in under five seconds.
"The sedation helped," Sue murmured, "but not for long."
"He's going to wake up eventually," Reed said. "And when he does—if he panics…"
Sue exhaled sharply. "It'll be like dropping a small sun."
Reed didn't respond.
Instead, he just stared at the screen.
Beside him Sue looked pale. Her idiot brother who liked to crank up his music, joke at the worst times, and pretend he wasn't scared of anything. No matter how much he annoyed her, Sue loved him more than anything.
He turned toward the console, fingers hovering over the encrypted directory. Then, quietly, he opened a new file.
PROJECT: DAMPENER
Just in case.
-4-
Meanwhile somewhere in New York in a dark room, lit only by the soft hum of screens. No windows. No distractions. Just data.
Victor von Doom stood perfectly still in the center of it all.
His eyes—glowing faintly green in the low light—never blinked.
One screen showed footage from inside SHIELD's secure facility. Medical diagnostics. Power readings. Biometric scans.
Reed, the fool, had already begun studying himself. The others. Trying to fix them. That part was expected. Predictable. Boring.
Victor, on the other hand, had no intention of fixing anything.
He had already adapted.
The cosmic energy hadn't twisted him—it had chosen him.
Where Richards had been liquefied and stretched, where the Storms were flickering and combusting, Victor had absorbed the power.
No mutation. No pain.
Only clarity.
He reached out and tapped a control node. The feed switched to Reed's "Project: Dampener" schematics. Reed was preparing to limit Johnny.
Typical. Richards always tried to contain what he couldn't understand.
Victor smirked, just slightly.
A secondary screen showed Ben Grimm's deterioration. The calcium-carbon buildup. Structural mass reconfiguring into a crude, durable shell. Primitive. Unrefined.
Sad.
Victor clicked his tongue.
"He deserves better than that," he muttered.
And he would offer it. Eventually, once Richards failed, they would kneel before Doom.