Disclaimer: I don't own the Fantastic Four—Marvel Comics, Stan Lee, 20th Century Fox, and probably a bunch of other people do. However, if the aforementioned parties feel like loaning out the guys, put me at the top of the borrower's list. Also, I'm not making a penny off of this. I am banned from reading other F4 fan fictions until this is finished, so any similarities to other stories are entirely coincidental. Typos are mine. If you haven't done so, you really need to read 'Oxygen' before this story.
6
Reed couldn't prevent Johnny from taking his shot, but maybe he could buy the innocent people trapped with him a few more seconds of life. He tested what he'd observed only minutes ago, appealing to the human inferno: "Johnny, you don't want to kill us, son. Doom wants you to."
There it was again! There was no mistaking the lapse as Johnny's will over-powered Sater's programming and momentarily made him stay his teammates' executions.
It was during that instant of hesitation that Sue Storm rejoined the fight. He'd dropped the box and the tracker Doom had supplied when the fight began. She had come up from behind him without warning, and her psychic-shield energy took her brother by surprise. It knocked him away from the tank, taking his attention off Reed and Ben, and contained him and his fire within her force field. Reed took the opportunity to use the river water to douse the ring of flames Johnny had created, giving the bystanders one more chance to get away.
Sue's concentration was on her brother. This was the moment she'd been anticipating and dreading for five days, but, even though her heart was pounding painfully, she kept in check the emotions that had plagued her since the instant Doom had trapped Johnny in that box. She did not think of every awful moment that had happened since then, and she didn't think about what she was going to have to do after this fight, if she survived (and she had to survive). She couldn't afford such distractions right now.
Johnny barely stumbled as her shield struck him. She had held back her powers, wanting only to drive him away from the tank, not to hurt him. He regained his balance without falling and faced Sue with an expression devoid of any trace of familiarity or affection. The malevolence of his stare made gooseflesh rise on her skin.
"You know, sis, somehow I'm sensing that you all aren't on board with my change of careers," Johnny joked without a whit of humor in his tone. As he spoke, his flames burned hotter.
Sue increased the strength of the shield in response. "You're not evil, Johnny. You don't understand what's happened to you---you're Victor's prisoner and you don't know it. You have to come back with us, please. Let us help you."
"Still playing mom, big sister? 'Cause it's getting old."
The intensity of his fire was increasing with each passing second, building to a supernova. Sue strained and felt the dripping of blood on her lip. It was a dangerous game of chicken, testing whether Johnny could survive his own nova powers long enough to break Sue's concentration or if she would lose her grip (or give herself a seizure trying to hold him). Neither sibling would back down.
"I'm---worried about---you, Johnny," Sue grunted out the words as she struggled against the onslaught of the heat and energy he generated.
"That's crap, Susie. So 'worried' you let me leave without coming after me? No calls? No e-mails? No text messages? If you were so worried, why the freeze out? And by the way, who the hell shut down my fan club!"
"That's not true, Johnny. We've been trying to find you since you disappeared! I would never---"
Johnny's flames grew impossibly hotter as his fury burned just as white-hot. Pain lanced through his body in protest of the abuse, but he ignored the pain.
Sue did not back down, despite the pain searing through her skull like a knife. She gritted her teeth and held fast. "I'm not---letting you go---you---need us."
"I don't need any of you."
She knew the words came from Victor and Sater's manipulations, not from her brother, but still that simple statement stung her. She closed her mind and her emotions to the cutting words, to the pain of maintaining her force field, to everything except keeping Johnny there. She knew she wasn't going to be able to hold him long enough to reach the plane and the titanium box waiting inside. Reed, Ben, what's taking so long? Where are you?
From his vantage point, stretched above the tank to divert the water, Reed saw Sue grappling with Johnny, whose flames were so intense they were almost white. The first workers to escape from the tank had returned with large wrenches and set to work to manually close the broken pipes. He could not move until they were finished with their task, but he wracked his brain for a way to help Sue. The river water was useless, he already knew that much. The pack with the gel retardant lay beneath the water at the bottom of the tank, where it had fallen when Reed stretched over the railing and the gel would be evaporated just as quickly now that Johnny had flamed. He could have reached the other syringe, but it would be just as ineffective. Worse, he could see that Sue was tiring rapidly in the onslaught.
"Sue—the river!" he shouted to her.
In answer, she pushed with her mind, with her last ounce of strength, and the shield surrounding Johnny lifted him into the air and catapulted the Human Torch back into the cold waters of the Hudson. She did not remove her shield until he was underwater. When she did, the water around him flash-boiled, sending a massive cloud of steam into the air.
Sue moved towards the river, but stumbled and sagged to her knees, exhausted, wiping at the blood on her face. Her head felt split in half from the mental exertion.
Not far away, the crew finally wrestled shut the pipe's emergency valve, stemming the flow of water. Reed gratefully reached down and took Ben's bulky form from the men who had labored to keep the Thing from drowning during the fight and set him back on the paved walkway near Susan. Mr. Fantastic nodded his gratitude to the crewmen, and they clapped in thanks as they climbed out of the tank.
Keeping one eye on the river, Reed hurried to Sue and helped her to her feet. "Are you all right?" he asked her.
Drained, frustrated, she leaned on him for support until she caught her breath. Her strength was returning quickly. She blinked at the pale-orange lump lying nearby. "Is Ben all right? What did Johnny do to him?" Sue moved kneel beside her friend, checking to be sure he was breathing still.
Reed crouched beside Ben, also checking his condition. "I think Johnny absorbed Ben's body heat. It caused hypothermia. A little colder and he could have sent Ben into hypothermic shock…or stopped his heart." It was hard to imagine that a man formed almost entirely of cold, unyielding stone still had warm blood coursing through his stone veins. Ben needed some body heat to survive just the same as any other human. Reed frowned, "Victor's been teaching Johnny some nasty tricks."
On cue, the Human Torch once again made his presence known. Fast as streaks of lightning, twin trails of fire snaked up the riverbank, across the pavement, and encircled Reed, Sue, and the unconscious Ben. Sue put a dome of energy over them as the two trails erupted into a solid wall of flames that surrounded and trapped the trio.
"Reed?" Sue asked for a suggestion as she fought to hold back the whirlwind of fire around them.
Reed already had an idea. He only hoped the frozen Ben would forgive the indignity he was about to suffer in the name of saving their lives. Reed stretched his arms, hefting the Thing like a giant hammer, and battered at the concrete beneath their feet. As it began to crack and buckle, Reed found what he'd hoped for---one of the many access tunnels that snaked beneath the Selva-Uitti facility. He dropped Ben into the tunnel and followed him down while Sue kept her shield in place to cover their escape. Once inside the meager safety of the concrete tunnel, Reed shouted for Sue to follow.
The Invisible Woman had other plans. She glanced down at Reed and her eyes expressed her intentions even before she said: "I'm not finished yet."
Before he could react, a second shield—a disk of psychic energy---formed beneath Sue's feet. It covered the hole in the pavement that Reed had created, keeping him at bay as it lifted her slowly into the air. There was no time to stop her; Reed had to hurry to move himself and the immobile Ben deeper into the tunnels as the barrier holding back the flames disappeared upon Sue's departure. The shimmering shield pushed dirt and broken concrete to cover the hole and temporarily protect the two men in the tunnel from the flames, and then Sue was gone.
Damn, she could be as stubborn as her brother when she wanted to be, Reed swore silently.
Sue ignored Reed's muffled shouts. Her attention was on the fiery figure below. She went invisible while the psychic disk lifted her like a phoenix from the firestorm. Johnny, however, had seen the parting of the flames as she rose out of the inferno and knew what his sister was up to. Sue was flying! Johnny marveled for just a moment. So, she'd learned some new tricks of her own since he'd left the team. Pretty slick move there, Sis.
But not good enough.
Johnny sent a steady stream of fire her way. The flames wrapped around her shields, perfectly tracking her movements despite her invisibility. The exertion was taxing both siblings; neither could keep up this level of power for much longer and neither was prepared to back down. Sue came right at Johnny, and he leaped into the sky, sailing upwards before she could put another force field around him.
He circled around, gaining speed, and met her head-on, unleashing a barrage of fire as he approached. With every bit of concentration she possessed, Sue managed to keep herself aloft while deflecting his shots. Closing the gap between them in the blink of an eye, Johnny slammed into her shield with all the strength and speed he possessed. The violent collision shattered Sue's concentration and knocked both super-humans out of the sky. Johnny's flames died as the crash stunned him for a few seconds.
Every muscle in her body ached and her head was spinning, but Sue forced herself to climb on to her hands and knees, to concentrate. Containing Johnny wasn't going to work, and he was already recovering from the fall. She had to knock him out. Syringe. She had hidden one in her right boot, an emergency backup if Reed's plan didn't work. She hurriedly fumbled for the small box and the vile inside…but Johnny was on her too fast. He caught Sue in a tackle from behind and they rolled, grappling, until Johnny hooked his arm around her neck.
Sue could have pried him away with her force field, at the risk of hurting him, but instead she called on her last ounces of strength and trapped both of them within a bubble of psychic energy. She was trying to keep Johnny there, buy time for Reed to catch up, or time to use the syringe still clutched in her hand---to do anything. It was getting harder to think with Johnny almost cutting off her air supply with the chokehold he had on her. The heat and loss of air was stifling, and Sue wondered if this was how Johnny had felt during those last few minutes in Doom's box.
As soon as he saw the shield form around him, trapping him, Johnny's body began to heat up. He hung on to Sue with one arm; his free hand flared, the fire burning off the oxygen inside the small bubble of energy. The rage he felt exhorted him to kill her now and be done with it. Just flaming on would get the job done.
"I want you and Susie to look out for each other until I come home."
"Love is an impurity…""If you don't master it, love will get you killed."
Johnny had the urge to scream aloud. He might even have done so; he couldn't be sure with the voices in his head and din of his suddenly thundering heartbeat deafening him. He raised his hands, and the flames flickered inches from Sue's face. "I'm fire-proof, Sue. You're not," he warned her. "One way or another, I'm getting out of this shield. Get the picture?"
They were awful words to hear from her own brother. She was glad he couldn't see her eyes at that moment, couldn't see how the words had hit their mark. She was almost willing to burn or suffocate before giving up…especially if her brother was so irretrievably lost to Doom's control that he could burn her alive. She didn't believe Johnny would do it. He'd already faltered when he could have killed them. But, she had to know for sure. "One way or another," she choked out, "I'm getting my brother back---get the picture?"
Ever so slowly, Sue inched the syringe towards Johnny's leg and prayed he didn't notice what she was doing.
"You're my brother. None of those creeps mattered more than you."
"Love you, too, Susie."
"Doom's a murderer."
"He'll make you become one, too."
Seconds ticked by, an eternity during which Sue held her breath (not entirely of her own volition) while waiting to see what Johnny would do, and Johnny still considered carrying out his threat. The impulse to kill was almost too powerful to resist.
"Take care of your sister for me, son."
"Mom and Dad are gone, Johnny. We have to watch out for each other now. No one's splitting us up, I promise."
Then, Johnny spied the needle half-hidden by Sue's hand…only an instant before she could jam it into his leg. He snatched at her wrist. She flinched in anticipation of the inevitable burn, but Johnny doused his hand at the last possible second. He bent her arm downward, forcing the needle into Sue's thigh.
Darkness came upon Sue so quickly that she had no time to wonder if Johnny would kill her while she was unconscious. She felt despair at failing after all the agonizing days of uncertainty and searching and preparation. Then, she felt nothing.
After the Invisible Woman lost consciousness, her shield dissipated, setting Johnny free. He released Sue and stared at his unconscious sister for a long while. The need, like a voice in his head, was still burning within him to kill her, to see if Reed and Ben had survived the inferno and, if so, to kill them too.
"You're a prisoner and you don't know it."
"Sater called herself 'Dr. Reinhardt'."
"Victor's programmed you to think he's some benevolent mentor."
"Sue needs her brother, therefore she puts his welfare ahead of her own welfare. Need is an impurity, a vulnerability. "
"I hired you, Johnny, because I saw the possibilities of all that you could be."
"Let go of the past and the emotional frailties it crippled you with and re-forge yourself."
Johnny closed his eyes and clamped his hands over his ears as if that could quell the confusion, the rage, and the voices assaulting him with conflicting impulses.
When the urges abated and the railing voices fell silent, he became aware of an odd sound. The noise was like white noise, and it was coming from the titanium box he'd discarded during the fight, the box with the precious items he'd been sent to retrieve. Johnny slowly backed away from Sue and went to recover the box.
The tracker was buzzing for his attention. As soon as Johnny opened the container and picked up the device, a pulse of light from its screen blinded him. The light and crackle of white noise, and the subliminal commands they carried, filled his senses and drowned out the rest of the world.
Doom's voice came from somewhere within the cacophony of light and sound: "That's enough, Johnny. You're too valuable to lose. Come back. Now."
Automatically, the Human Torch obeyed. Johnny didn't wonder how Doom had known. Had he been in the condition to wonder, he would have realized that the few reporters who had not fled were still pointing their cameras in his direction, obviously broadcasting the entire fight live to the world. He would have known it was being televised by satellite and that Doom had patched in to watch.
However, Johnny was not programmed to wonder about such things. By the time the glare from the screen and the static noises had faded away, any questions that Reed or Sue had placed in his mind about Victor Von Doom or Nora Sater (or Dr. Reinhardt or whatever she had called herself), any confusion, psychological conflicts, or notions of brainwashing had died with the light and sound.
He closed the box that held his employer's property, clutched it in one hand, and summoned his flames. Swiftly, before Reed or Ben appeared to try to stop him again, Johnny glided into the sky and headed back to the airport and the jet waiting to carry him back to Latveria.
Not far away, waiting in the empty lot where Ben had landed the plane, the Warbird's computers detected the heat signature of the Human Torch. It locked onto the energy pattern and carefully tracked its movements long after the private jet carrying Johnny Storm had lifted off and set itself on a course for Latveria.
Sue was wretched from the blackness of unconsciousness to the hum and vibration of engines. She knew the sound: Airplane engines. What happened? Where was she? Then it came back to her—Selva-Uitti, the fights, and fire. Her leg felt bruised where Johnny had driven the needle into her thigh. Johnny, where was he?
An arm was beneath her shoulders, helping her as she groggily pushed herself into a sitting position and supporting her when the abrupt motion made her head spin from dizziness. She had been lying on a thinly padded fold-down cot. That vile titanium box was secured in the cargo bay close by. Bunks. Vibration. Engine noises. That box. She was back on the Warbird.
"Sue, you're all right." Reed's voice lacked the conviction of his reassuring words. He'd nearly had a heart attack after he'd climbed out of the tunnels and found her lying motionless on the scorched earth of the riverbank. Even finding her pulse and seeing the used syringe of anesthetic hadn't released Reed's racing heart from its cold grip of fear at seeing her looking so pale, almost pale as death.
This had gone too far. Sue had almost died. Ben had almost died. Reed had to remind himself that their brush with death at the hands of their own teammate, their family, was not his fault---nor was it Johnny's fault---it was Victor who had caused this horrible mess. If he had lost Sue… "Don't get up too fast. You're blood pressure is still low. Give that drug time to wear off," he cautioned her.
"Reed--?" she croaked out the words. Sue gazed blearily at him. She tried to answer, but her throat was dry and her mouth cottony and her head throbbed painfully. It felt like she had the world's worst hangover. Reed handed her a bottle of water, which she gratefully accepted. It helped with the dry throat at least. "Where's Ben? What happened to Johnny--?"
She finally spotted Ben. Reed had laid him on another fold-down bunk and buried him beneath heating blankets.
"He'll be fine," Reed promised. There wasn't much else Reed could do for his friend besides pile on the blankets and let Ben's body heal itself of the hypothermia. To Reed's relief, Ben's temperature had markedly improved in the past hour. He would probably wake before they reached Latveria. "The computer got a lock on Johnny's energy pattern. We can follow him back to wherever Doom's been hiding him in Latveria. We were lucky Dr. Sater's programming was flawed or Johnny would have kept fighting until he killed us."
Why had Doom sent Johnny to Selva-Uitti in the first place? The question bothered Reed. Doom had to know that they would see Johnny there and that they would come after him. It couldn't have only been a trap, with Johnny luring them in order to kill them. Johnny had taken something from the laboratory. He'd contacted Selva-Uitti from the Warbird while waiting for Sue and Ben to regain consciousness. After getting the runaround from some of the company bureaucrats, a helpful soul had finally tracked down the missing items as meteorites. Meteorites mined from Latveria and formerly the property of Von Doom Industries. Why were space rocks important that Doom would risk sending Johnny to fetch them back?
Sue was shaking her head at Reed's remark. "Johnny probably thought you and Ben were incinerated in that last attack. He couldn't have seen you get into the tunnels through that wall of flames." Busy fighting Sue, he wouldn't have noticed the pile of broken cement and dirt she'd used to hide their escape. "Just like he thought he killed us with that explosion at the Baxter Building. Dr. Sater's program is working just fine." This was how it would be every time they tried to rescue Johnny---a fight to the death, courtesy of Sater's post-hypnotic commands---until that witch reversed her spell.
"Then why didn't he kill you when he had the chance?" Reed held on to the hope that somehow, something had corrupted Sater's programming, just a little bit perhaps. Something had caused Johnny to hold back for those nanoseconds during the battle. Reed had seen him hesitate. Something had made him spare Sue (thank God).
If there was no hope that there was some flaw in the program, a weakness Reed could exploit to counter its effect, then their only chance of getting Johnny back was to gain Dr. Sater's help. As soon as they reached Latveria, Reed's first order of business was to make damn sure he got that help from her.