Somewhere and somewhen in the Negative Zone.
It seemed like an hour ago when Ben and John safely escaped the Negative Zone, while Namor the Sub-Mariner remained behind to face an almost certain doom. He stood on a chunk of rock in orbit around an anomolous, planet-sized energy field that exerted its own powerful gravity. Namor only stood there for a moment before he leaped with his powerful legs to another small satelite. The smaller satelites were no more than a few feet apart, but what Namor desperately sought were the larger satelites -- tiny moons, barren and cratered, less than a mile in diameter, but to which air somehow clung. Always at his winged heels were the misshapen, alien monsters -- the monsters that served Annihilus.
Never did Namor feel he was fleeing, but only making tactical withdrawals. When he reached air again, he turned on his pursuers and gave much worse than he got. A pair of shaggy, horned brutes with wing flaps like giant flying squirrels had caught up to Namor first and were rewarded by a bone-crushing punch to the face to the first one, followed by the second being grappled and thrown into the first. And while Namor beat them back he shouted to the other monsters approaching, "Come and face me! Fight, or run and tell your master, Annihilus, that the Avenging Son of Atlantis waits for him!"
It felt like two hours ago when Ben, John, and Namor pursued the scientist Janus into the Negative Zone. Janus had sabotaged the Negative Zone portal to prevent pursuit, but the three heroes had been able to pursue with the aid of Reed's Astronavicycle. Janus had come seeking power and had found it -- but had also found death within the gravity well of the energy anomoly. Worse, his presence here had attracted the attention of Annihilus. Annihilus, the Living Death that Walked, could not be allowed to find his way to Earth, so Namor had sent Ben and John back, lying to them that he could follow them with a SONAR-like power, but fully intending to sacrifice himself to lure Annihilus and his minions away so Ben and John could pierce the barrier back to Earth unseen. Now, while five more monsters prepared to re-join the running combat, Namor looked about for Annihilus among his minions and still did not see him. More than the end Janus had met, Namor feared that his sacrifice had been in vain.
Namor could not know that Annihilus was still relatively nearby, but lurking on the far side of a distant satelite and watching the battle unfold. With its scalloped wings wrapped around it, Annihilus stood on a pillar of rock that jutted from the face of the satelite from which he watched Namor's battle. A weird, alien voice reverberated in the metal mask Annihilus wore as it said, "The greater the struggle, the greater will be my victory! And the longer it takes, the greater the chance of others coming to save him. And that is what I most desire! For above all, I long to find the pathway to Earth...and one of them will surely lead me there!" A metallic laugh rang out as Annihilus reveled in the violence before him.
Far away, Namor had defeated the last of five monsters with saggy, rhinocerous-like hides and was waiting for the next wave of monsters with ridges all over their faces to advance. As he stood poised to launch himself into their midst, he remembered his
queen, Dorma, and their children waiting at home in Atlantis. Namor thought of the rapturous feel of the ocean and longed for the rush of saltwater past his gills. He felt dry and dehydrated and knew his condition sapped his strength, so that when he did strike the next wave of monsters, not a one was bowled off their feet by the force of his charge. "For Dorma I fight!" Namor cried, and the effort seemed to rally his own strength so that his next punch broke bone, or whatever passed for such in the body of these aliens.
Baxter Building, New York City. May 1971.
"Ben! Don't just sit there!" John cried in frustration. "There must be something we can do!"
John Storm and Alicia Grimm were standing next to a seated Ben Grimm in the small laboratory that housed the Negative Zone portal.
"Ferget it!" Ben said, puffing on a cigar to calm his nerves. "Reed's flyin' here from California, but even in his private plane he's not gettin' here anytime soon. "Sides, Namor knew the risk, but him -- he hadda be a hero!"
"Ben!" Alicia chided her husband. "You know you admire Namor for what he did and you're only upset you didn't think of it yourself."
Ben sighed. "I can't hide anythin' from you, baby. Okay, so I want ta get Subby out of there as bad as you two, but we ain't got a chance! There's some kinda chronol distortion goin' on in there and we can't calibrate the Astronavicycle to compensate after Janus wrecked the controls that would'a done it. We'd either get there too early or too late to help 'em."
"What if you were too early...?" Alicia began to ask.
"We could wind up in the Negative Zone before we left," Johnny answered, "and we're not sure what would happen if we were in two places at the same time in the Negative Zone. We either go poof or maybe get shunted to a parallel timeline in the Negative Zone where Namor might not even--"
"Talk, talk, talk! I can't stomach any more!" Ben said and he rose out of the reinforced seat he had been using so roughly that he twisted it out of shape and then left the lab without a look back.
"Ben is not himself," Alicia observed.
"He's just upset," John said.
"No," Alicia argued. "There is more to it than that. I'm sure of it. Whatever it is, he's trying to keep it from me."
Ben walked through the corridors at an idle pace, but seeking out something in particular. He ranted out loud as he walked, though, saying, "Namor couldn't of figured on livin' forever! So he's cashin' in? Okay. That's what he gets for actin' like he's our leader when everyone knows I should be leader." At last, Ben's search took him to a room with a mirror in it. After all these transformations, he still wanted to watch. There was a time when Reed thought that Ben would never be cured of being a Thing. Then remedies began taking for a few hours at a time. Now Ben could will himself to revert back from a rocky orange shell to flesh and keep his old appearance for most of each day. Reed had said not to try holding his old form for more than eight hours a day. "But Reed ain't here now," Ben said out loud in answer to his own thoughts. Reed and Sue were retired from the superhero business already, living the good life in California. Alicia would have liked that too, he knew, but Ben saw no reason to retire to a quaint suburban life while still even partially trapped in the body of a Thing. So he pushed and pushed, holding back the transformation into the Thing as long as he could each day, now well past the eight hours Reed had prescribed. "He just don't know what it's like," Ben said out loud to himself again. "The pain." He knew the pain well from a hundred transformations where his body stretched and calloused into a rock-like substance, while his body bloated with two hundred pounds of muscle tissue. To avoid the pain alone he would resist turning back into the Thing, even if it weren't for Alicia.
The last pounds of armored mass seemed to melt off of Ben as he finished willing his transformation back. He admired his own features. He looked to be in fantastic shape for a man who was 50 years old. "Subby will have'ta save himself, 'cuz I'm not turnin' back into the Thing again to do it for 'em." No sooner had he said it to himself, though, then he was aware that someone was watching him. He looked around, but he knew who it was before he looked. "What'cha need, hon?" he asked.
"I need you to start acting like yourself again," Alicia answered. "I need you to be the Ben Grimm who wouldn't walk away when his friend was in danger and needed your help."
"Aw, what do I owe ol' Subby after all tha lumps he's given me?" Ben asked as he turned to face her.
"What do you owe him? He's been a substitute member of the team for the last five years. If I didn't know better, I'd say you're suffering from amnesia or being impersonated by a skrull."
"What makes you so sure I ain't?"
Alicia answered by smacking Ben in the face, her open hand finding his cheek by the sound of his voice. "Oh, you're Ben Grimm all right, I'm very sorry to say," she said, her voice shaking with anger. "And you're also being a coward, hiding behind that gruff act you always do to avoid dealing with whatever bothers or frightens you. Only this time you're going too far, or you're too scared."
"I ain't scared--" Ben said, but was interrupted by another slap. He saw it coming, but didn't raise a hand to stop her.
"Stop lying to me! You think I don't know you, inside and out?"
Now Ben's cheeks burned hot where she had slapped him and he felt his anger well out of control. He stood still, not lifting a hand against her, but channeled his rage into transforming back into the Thing. All of his body tissue increased in density and his features transformed. His hands and feet swelled in size while his smallest fingers and toes melded together. His body hair was reabsorbed and quickly covered with familiar orange, rocky growths. The process only took seconds, but they were long painful seconds. When they were over, Ben knew, nothing would be able to harm him. Not Alicia. Not anybody. He leaned in close to Alicia, his giant hands on other side of her. If he squeezed her too hard now, she'd be crushed like a grape.
"If you're going to hit me," Alicia said coldly, "get it over with."
Ben did nothing but put his hands down. "Ya happy now?" he asked sarcastically. "Ya want me ta go rescue Namor? Maybe get myself killed by Annihilus? No problem. Better than standin' around here bein' complained about!"
As Ben stormed off back to the Negative Zone portal, Alicia put her hands over her face and forced herself not to cry. Then, as Ben had sensed her standing nearby, she sensed another. "Agatha?" she asked.
Agatha Harkness, the old witch, stepped forward from around a corner. "Yes, it's me," Agatha said.
"How did you get in?"
"Why, John let me in, of course," Agatha lied. "I overheard your fight with your husband just now. Anger at a deceptive husband is not uncommon, but I wonder how he has taken the news of my tutoring you?"
"I…I haven't told him yet. I know he suspects you're a witch, but he's mistrustful, maybe even afraid, of magic. How can I tell him that I'm learning it?"
"But you do it to aid him, to make yourself a more useful member of the Fantastic Four. Surely he will understand."
"I don't know if he will! I don't feel like I know him at all anymore!" At that, Alicia could hold back her emotions no longer and she sobbed as the tears flowed. She ran from Agatha Harkness.
"Hmm…" was all Agatha said.
Over the Midwest. Same moment.
Reed Richards was at the largely automatic controls of a private jet. Despite the many exotic or alien air or space craft that Reed had helmed in the past 10 years, this one looked like a fairly mundane Hawker 400A jet, though Reed had tinkered with it until it could now reach supersonic speed. As Reed glanced at the clock and figured how long it had been since John had called him about trouble back in New York, Reed wished he had not settled for Mach 1.
Reed's mind wandered back to when he had first discovered the Negative Zone five years ago. Seemingly a natural phenomenon, it was a dimensional interface between the matter universe around him and another, anti-matter universe. This distortion area held immense quantities of energy that Reed always hoped he could harness into a cheap, reliable power source for Earth. Or that was what he told himself and others. Deep down, it was the irresistible pull of adventure that kept Reed interested in the Negative Zone. And it was times like this that he felt the irresistible pull of adventure was a weakness in his character, when he felt the guilt of bringing his world to the attention of a being like Annihilus. Just the thought of that monster actually sent a shiver down Reed's back. While Reed loved life, Annihilus hated it. While Reed saw the universe as an endless opportunity to explore and learn, Annihilus saw it as only an unending opportunity to spread destruction and ruin. This was no would-be world conqueror, as the Fantastic Four were used to dealing with. Annihilus wanted to find his way to Earth so he could destroy it. If Annihilus could not be kept away, Reed wondered, would he have to shut down the Negative Zone portal and abandon that line of research entirely?
Reed snapped out of his thoughts long enough to check the gages, but then let his mind drift back to Sue and their two-year old son Franklin. Reed had agreed to move out to Disneyland City with Sue and Franklin a year ago in order to give Franklin a chance at a more peaceful life. They had both given up their full-time lives of adventure, were now only reserve members of the Fantastic Four, and Reed had given up or indefinitely put on hold all of his more dangerous science experiments. He only had the jet to putter with because he had convinced Sue they needed a fast means of reaching New York in emergencies. Reed sighed. It was 2,441 miles between Disneyland City and New York City and a three hour trip. Reed still had another hour to go. How long could he deal with the frustration of being isolated in California, when he was still needed so much in New York?
Disneyland City. Same moment.
Franklin Richards was running around the playground, getting nowhere fast on his short legs, but with a big smile on his face that showed he was having a ball getting there. Sue Richards watched from a short distance behind him, eager to give her son room, but mindful that Franklin was liable to run back to the slide at any moment and would need help on the ladder. Luckily, Franklin veered for the swings instead.