CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR— October 2039
To the Negative Zone, they were not the Fantastic Four but rather the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
Reed Richards and his group's breach to Planet Zero began the collapse of his dimension three decades earlier, and the five who tipped the balances of power never bothered to fix the problem they created.
Darkness came. Trillions were unable to evacuate in time.
Sector 17A, along with his homeworld of Arthros was lost two years into the Great Spread, and in his grief and passion for revenge, Annihilus seized the role of Lord of the Negative Zone, striking a deal with Thanos for safe harbor in this dimension.
He had hitched his hopes, the hopes of his dying dimension, to the wrong horse.
Before Annihilus killed him, Richards claimed what solution existed endangered too many in his dimension to attempt.
Such concern for the fans of Mr. Fantastic. None for those he'd condemned.
To divert as much energy as possible to the Quantum Gate, the flagship Bounty—translated from a language which has no written alphabet—ran several degrees colder, conveniently masking the stench of too many living aboard. Annihilus did not notice the chill; his exoskeleton and general physiology made such a change inconsequential. His heightened sense of smell, however, soured his already tense mood.
Energy was the enemy. Transporting five people, just five souls, required the power output equivalent to a densely populated city on a developed planet. Nidavellir was proving an excellent energy source, cutting a round trip from the average three hours to fifty minutes.
One hundredth of one percent, less than four hundred thousand Zoners had been transported to safety in this dimension, while the remaining six billion refugees in Sector 42H awaited their turn in the Gate Lottery, or more likely, death. The inhabitants referred to it as "Prison 42."
Luckily, patience was Annihilus's strongest virtue.
The electricity dissipated from the air after the Gate appeared in the chamber beneath him. He looked down at the new arrivals, delicately led away to allow the capsule to recharge for its return journey.
A creaking in the scaffold behind him alerted Annihilus to company, and the broad, scantly clad form of Blastaar bowed his lionhead reluctantly. "My Lord, the Terra system," his second in command grunted, followed by half a dozen officials. "The signal has come through relay at last."
Annihilus waived a thin, leathery arm. A guttural growl and ticking noise followed. Though his translator collar was damaged in battle with the Four, he insisted the ships engineers focus on the Quantum Gate operating at max capacity. Lives were far more important than words.
The vapor projector was placed at his feet, burping out an acidic yellow mist that coalesced in the form of Victor Von Doom, the fifth horseman, the only one who proved useful so far.
Blastaar spoke first. "We have been waiting."
"Look," Victor's cocky bark sounded, "I told you this planet has its share of troublesome characters…"
Annihilus hissed in annoyance.
"I already sent you Richards and his little gang, and you failed to convert them. You want an arsenal? You'll have to settle for whatever second string force I can come up with."
His question leaked out of his pincers like syrupy clicks.
"When will it be done," Blastaar translated.
No emotion crossed the stiff metal of Doom's face. "Success rate is decent. Some are more powerful than others…"
A moaning snarl rolled into a triple click.
"How long?"
"For what you want?" Doom rolled a creaky shoulder. "I'll have it in months—"
Annihilus's piercing shriek crumpled his own men to one knee, but not his second.
"You said that months ago," Blastaar fumed, snorting in alarm as the windows went dark all around. A form of power conservation.
For a moment the yellow glow of Doom was all that was left. "Yes, well, I have my own enemies."
What Annihilus dreaded had arrived: the death of Nidavellir. Accustomed to the bright star outside, eyes strained in the weak ship lights.
On to the next source. A proud race reduced to leeching off this universe.
One lieutenant spoke up. "My Lord, do not despair," he assured, "there is a volcanic activity system on the way. We won't lose many cycles." He turning to the sickly figure. "Ships are coming, Doom. Be ready or die alongside your failures."
Blastaar snorted again, kicking off the projection, deepening the darkness. "Von Doom knows the arrangement is only valid if he succeeds. Our people must have this protection. He gives us the arsenal or forfeits his world, and his life."
A recognizable sigh escaped Annihilus. He flexed the panels of his exoskeleton, feeling a brief puff of cool air seep between the joints.
He could not fail.
A sloppy click chastised the lieutenant. With the Gate out of commission during travel, work on his collars could resume.
His officers bowed deeply. "Right away, my Lord."
The air was crisp and fresh by the lake, yet Tony felt more restless with every deep breath.
This is it. This is what normal people do. They retire and move to the middle of nowhere…and pray a space bug doesn't enslave the planet before the herbs take in the backyard.
He turned to see Samantha scribbling away in her notebook, as she had the whole ride out, sitting on the wooden steps to the porch of a log cabin.
Gonna need a few upgrades. Like a garage for sure.
"Nice, huh?" Tony's steps crunched up the needlessly winding gravel path.
Sam squinted up towards the house. "Best outdoor space. Fewest bedrooms. Biggest kitchen. No garage. You collecting houses instead of cars now?" She returned to her writing without waiting for his reply.
"If you don't get a license…" He didn't think she paid that much attention this week.
"I can fly," she mumbled back.
Tony pushed up his sunglasses, still looking around. "Same, but I have over ten million dollars worth of cars. You don't even want to take a crack at it?"
Sam shrugged, angrily flipping to a clean page before numbering the corners. She'd been grunting and huffing for days, glued to work Banner did not assign. She had no assignments anymore.
"I was thinking of living here," Tony offered.
"You'll be bored," Sam groaned, rubbing a temple.
True, Tony thought, but it's better than the alternative.
The moment he had hung up with Barnes last week, he knew the kind of trouble brewing for Sam.
Pepper once described Lily Vox as a bottom-feeder that even Tony would not—cough—touch; to have that woman sniffing around was dangerous. Vox's particular brand of journalist left little room for fact-checking or corroboration. She wouldn't bother to discover Marshall or Dorcas's responsibility before splashing his daughter's face over her weekly rag. Sam would be labeled a murderer, and as his daughter, the media hysteria might outshine any of Tony's previous mistakes.
Senator Cushing, apolitical bottom-feeder, had insinuated Sam was under investigation by the SAEC—they're definitely sacks of something—for her involuntary actions in Wakanda. She didn't know what she was doing. If anything, he blamed Barnes for defying Shuri, or Tigershark for provoking Namor, or…his daughter for aiding Dorcas in making Tigershark, or Dorcas for pointing a gun at her.
As always, there was plenty of blame to spread around.
The Senator's desperation to look good and powerful, however, left Tony a small window of opportunity.
Tony had offered removal of the scrambling program from all satellites in exchange for dropping the case and killing Vox's article. Cushing wanted a two-pronged reward for this two-pronged problem: satellite restoration and both Starks' detachment from all Avengers projects and activities.
Admittedly, Tony hesitated before agreeing. Losing the ability to correct Cushing's inevitable missteps irked him, like the useless curves in the gravel path, but once the deal was struck and control was signed over to Bruce Banner and Maria Hill, he felt surprisingly light.
Under the guise of retirement, Tony maintained only his domestic-command control of F.R.I.D.A.Y., a helper he needed to live in a backwoods, lo-tech, wooden home.
Samantha flicked at the paper in concentration. She glanced out at the water, squinting more.
Tony swiped his sunglasses off as he sat on the higher step. "Here, kiddo. Take 'em."
Sam went bug-eyed, tensing as if he offered her a venomous serpent. He was reminded of how she would reach for them when she was little, until the fateful day he swatted her away.
Timidly, Sam dragged them from his palm and placed them over her ears. She pressed her lips together, adjusting the nose piece.
Pepper used to do that, press her lipstick into place.
Every day this week, he and Sam drove away from campus to look at a property, and every day she spent furiously writing and complaining that she wasn't on campus in the lab. Tony didn't have the heart to tell her she was not going back, at least not to work.
She looked over the shimmering lake, surprised. "Huh" was all he got in response, and within a blink, she was back to scribbling. Her handwriting's worse than Dad's, Tony noticed before spotting something odd.
The left corner read 41.3.
Forty-first notebook? But that's not the third page…Forty-first idea maybe? Third attempt at solving. When he shifted his weight away, he peeked at the opposite corner: 428.
Sam grunted and scratched through a few lines, oblivious to Tony.
He wrung his hands, convinced he'd swallowed a few sharp gravel pebbles. So she is deteriorating.
Banner had observed no cognitive decline after Wilson's initial recovery, but that was a temporary dose, like a vaccine for brain damage. The eight-time PhD warned that Sam was now considered the longest-living Extremis patient ever. They were in uncharted waters for prolonged effects.
Sam pulled away from her page, mumbling corrections under her breath. "That's not right…"
The lump in his stomach gained mass. "I think you need a break." He felt nervous about retirement, wary of approaching ships, and annoyed by how long upgrades to this, or any, property would take. Exactly who needed the break was a mystery.
Then he looked at the hunched figure of his child, wrapped in another baggy sweatshirt, wearing $400 sunglasses and a bioadaptive suit that cost more than the eight-acre lot they sat on to produce…Tony was terrified for Sam.
By his teen years, he'd developed a thick skin of self-aggrandizement around an ego keen to experience every indulgence known to man. Sam didn't really spend money, didn't surround herself with kindred spirits or celebrity groupies, didn't flaunt her work in the public eye. For all their physical similarities, Tony found Sam hard to connect with.
Usually when someone made him feel this awkward, Tony walked away.
"You should come hang out by the water with me."
"I'm fine. I don't need a walk," Sam garbled over the page.
"I meant…come live here."
Sam looked up at the water, staring away from him, so Tony could not read her face. The pencil in her hand snapped into three pieces. "Is that why we've been doing this?"
"Could be a good change. Takes some pressure off. Keeps you from ending up like Lucas."
"Lucas…Sommerson?" Her shoulders sagged in confusion as she swiveled around. "Why are we talking about Lu—"
"He's a dud. Every hypothesis, every theory, one-hundred percent failure."
"Every one?" Sam furrowed her brow behind the tinted lenses. "That's statistically impossible."
"Improbable, yes, and yet scary similar to—"
Sam jumped up. "Oh, I get it. You're embarrassed! You think I'm going to fail, and it'll make you look bad." Her arms went up in the obvious implication. "I can't do any harm if you stick me in the middle of nowhere, can I?"
Tony stood, too, offering a bowed head. "Not that. Though I think it goes for both of us."
"You weren't even gonna give me a chance?"
"You're going to be scrutinized in every way, all the time, just because of your name, because of me."
"Yes," Sam snapped, "I'm aware. They've heard of you in Iowa. A bow and arrow—" waving her arms at the cabin "—and a farmhouse can't stop rumors. What does that have to do with Lucas?"
"Danielle Wilkes Sommerson."
Sam blinked, lips pursed, shaded eyes demanding an explanation.
"He's a legacy. Great-grandson of the founding physicist of SHIELD. Lucas was always a shoo-in for the fellowship." Tony giggled in the irony. "Jason Wilkes worked with Aunt Peggy and my dad, so we expected great things, because of the name, and it's a bigger deal when—"
"When big names disappoint?" Sam yelled, shaking her notebook at him. "Because I can't instantaneously work out a problem? You've worked out everything the first time, have you?" She backed away from him over the grass.
"Unfortunately, no, and I've used up all the bad press this family can take."
She paced around, mumbling with her eyes closed. He could see a tinge of colorful light start to spread under her skin. "I'm not an idiot," Sam screamed, "you're not gonna put me out to pasture because you've failed." She started hyperventilating, twitching her arms around, straining her neck to look up at the clouds.
"Kid, you're not an idiot—" Tony leaped to catch her hot wrist "—but you have died twice, and we don't know what that's done—what it's doing—to you."
Their brown gazes locked.
"I'm," Sam breathed, "not…broken." Her irises became angry red behind smoky glass.
Tony took a step, closing some distance. "We just need to carefully—"
"Dad, don't."
He froze. She had not called him that for years, and now an eighteen-year-old, a grown woman, with glowing eyes and armored skin begged him to stop being so...so damn Tony Stark.
Instead, she wanted a father. Hell if I know what that means.
He let go. "You deserve a normal life. That's all."
The angry embers died, but Sam's frown deepened. "Too late."
"Let me—" Stop telling her what to do, his mind corrected, Starks don't like that. He took a breath. "How can I help? Anything, kiddo."
She was so prepared to argue forever that he'd knocked her off kilter. Panic flooded her features. Sam's focus skittered across the lawn. She teetered to the stairs before looking back.
"I'm not gonna be a lab rat," Sam insisted.
"Not a lab rat if you never go to the lab." Tony added a tight smile, hoping for the best.
"I want…" Sam ran a hand through her hair, biting her lip. "I want to see my friends."
"Done." He didn't expect that. Easy enough. "I could probably get them transferred."
"No, I wanna go see them. I want to go to Xavier's." She pointed her notebook at him. "For Halloween. Like a real party."
"Party?" Wow. Pure teenager. That's more me. He stifled his excitement. "I'll drive you myself."
Sam returned a judging stare. "Tyrone's not losing his mind. He'll portal me."
Worth a shot…
"Obviously, it would take more than a driver's license to impress the great Iron Man anyway," she mumbled, removing the sunglasses. "Ah, sorry—" grimacing at the warped frames "—my bad."
"A good party might do it." He tested the metal with a touch, cringing and dropping them as he felt the burn. "Yikes. Hell, I'll plan you a party…"
"I'm gonna tell Dee I can come," Sam said as she rushed off to the car, "and I'm not living here."
Tony guessed finding a little more in common with his daughter would make up for losing his first choice of house, but he might just build something similar, albeit with a few bells and whistles.
He rubbed the red mark left on the fleshy part of his index finger. Maybe somewhere colder…
The meditation worked, in its own terrible way. The resonance between her emotional power, her physical energy, and their amplification by vibranium became harmonic. To Sam it felt as though ripples ran under her skin, waves, calm and steady, coursing across her body that she could expel or absorb at will. The focus was difficult; tilted one way or the other by thoughts of Bucky or her father, the balancing act faltered, and she had to try again. The butterflies of excitement when she thought of Captain Barnes produced heat from deep within her that stabbed to get out. The fear and irritation brought up by thoughts of Tony caused her skin to constrict, the pressure of which triggered a kind of suffocation that had nothing to do with air.
Once she understood the difference in thoughts, noticed the variations in her own feelings, Sam could predict them, and she even found a use for her inherited ability to deflect discomfort. She found that sarcasm inside her own thoughts was key. Humor seemed to save her the trouble of sorting through the muck of overwhelming feelings. Balance became easier, faster to achieve. For the first time in her life, Sam learned so much by doing almost nothing at all.
Nightmares, however, were different; she couldn't control those. Sam shot up in bed, tangled in a damp sheet with no memory of why she felt ready to explode with anger, her terror growing as she became aware she no longer slept. If she blew up, she blew up for real, here and now.
Sam tossed away the sheets and sat on the cold floor, focused on one tiny spot but distracted by the bright red glow of her feet reflected in the standing mirror wedged in the corner of the room. Think, Sam. You're alright. You were dreaming, and it's over now. It wasn't real. No one is here. You're alone. She thought of Bucky pulling clay pigeons and yelling for her to breathe in unison with her aim. Clint had told her something similar as a child. Breathing was important. Breathing helped.
Think about breezy humor. Think about how Dad struggled in his first weeks building his Mark 1.0, how he jettisoned himself straight upside down into a cement wall, how he crash-landed onto one of his precious cars, and how he shamed that adorably useless robot. Dum-E got his revenge by dousing him in extinguisher foam several times. Maybe I should have Missy program a humor-bot? But at the reminder that her friend was no longer with her, Sam drooped further into tension and loneliness. Well, not entirely lonely.
Sam could still feel Bucky's arm over her shoulder as she watched a video Ty sent of his training at Xavier's. Her eyes followed Bucky's pointing finger on her tablet screen as he explained Tandy and Tyrone's strategies, their moves, their strengths and weaknesses.
Then Sam thought of the sharp look she'd caught Natasha throwing her way, and then her mind jumped to Clint being unable to look her in the eye at the hospital, and then she flashed on Tony refusing to put her forth as a new team member.
She thought of yelling for Bucky to cut her arm beneath a canopy of yellow-green leaves and hurtling down the hall on brittle, weak legs to stop his pain.
She thought of brushing his hair out of his face to hold his attention while desperately trying to stop his pain.
She thought of yelling at her father—
—the snap of her arm—
—the tree rushing towards her face—
—the sound of the bike's engine—
—the whir of water—
—the taste of whisky—
Bucky saying 'thank you.'
Bucky throwing himself against the Hulk.
Bucky cheering on Big Sam's progress.
Bucky handing her coffee.
Everything was complicated. Everything was unfair. Everything was beautiful. Everything was fragile. When Sam thought in cycles, the yin and yang of life, she felt the balance return and her breath steady. She got up off of the floor to sit at her desk with her notebook. If she just kept trying to solve the problem—any problem—then Sam could make them see.
She thought of Tony telling her she couldn't be an Avenger, and it reminded Sam of hearing her mother constantly telling Tony 'no' at the end of recorded workshop sessions: "you are not building our four-year-old a suit," "you are not telling her about aliens," "you are not teaching her ACDC songs to sing to Peter."
Tony hated the word no, too, so he would understand why Sam had to ignore it. She had to make her mark anyway.