::Redone::
"bla"talking
/bla/thoughts
Beta: Silver Dog Demon.
Disclaimer: don't own, don't sue
Enjoy!
Baxter Building
Reed put Luna and Johnny in his lab. It was a large room that had a ton of equipment and sophisticated-looking computers. It also had a lot of windows and two glass doors on one wall that led to a balcony. The far wall, opposite the balcony, looked to have what was a long rectangular mirror, but was actually a one-way window for observation. After putting them in his lab, Reed went to tell the rest of his team what he'd found out about Johnny and the mysterious girl.
"I'm going to kill them" Sue seethed, pacing in the lobby, shimmering in and out of invisibility. Ben was trying really hard to blend in with the corner of the room. He'd never seen Sue this . . . angry before.
"When I find them, they will die. Slow, painful deaths . . ."
Reed walked into the room and cleared his throat, "I have the preliminary test results . . ." he said.
Sue rushed over to him and grabbed the papers out of his hand, scanning them, "What did they do to him?" she asked, flipping through the files, dropping some in her haste to find out what happened to her brother,
"What did they do?!"
Reed took a deep breath and grabbed his PDA, "It seems like they grafted nanites to every cell in his body. I've never seen this type of molecular nanotechnology used on a human before."
"Who did this!?" Sue growled, losing patience. There was definitely no question as to what she intended to do once she got the information. As it turned out, force fields were quite painful.
"I don't know yet, Sue," Reed said, giving her a sympathetic look, he wanted to do the very same things to those people. "There are very few people in the world who can graft nanites to anything, let alone organic tissue. I'll have to use invasive methods if I wanted to look for a signature, or anything. I've taken blood samples, but for now, all we can do is wait, and watch."
"Right . . ." Ben said, coming out of the corner, slowly, "now,
what is a nanite?"
"Microscopic supercomputers," Reed said, looking down at his PDA as a small beep went off, "the samples are ready, I have to go."
"I'm coming with you," Sue said, following him to the lab.
"I'll be. . . "Ben trailed off, "in the kitchen!" he finished, smiling. With Johnny still under wraps, he could make a decent sandwich, and not worry about someone stealing his juice.
With Luna and Johnny
-I don't trust them-
"Well I do!" Johnny snapped, "And would you talk, that is-"
-Is what?- Luna snarled.
"Not necessary . . ." Johnny said, walking over to the nearest window, looking out at the beautiful city.
"Can you believe I lived here?"
"No" Luna said, "this seems too Larger-Than-Life for you."
"You mean, for the me I am now . . ." Johnny said quietly, looking back at her, "what about the me we don't know?"
Luna rolled her eyes and sat down on the table nearby. This was the fourth time she'd heard this argument, and it was old the first time. Fed up, she slammed her fist down on the table, "God damnit Johnny!" she yelled, "How can we trust these people? Sure they took us off that island, but they stuck us back inside a lab, back in a cage, Johnny!" She shook her head, "I can't live with this . . ."
Johnny walked over and hugged her, "Try, please, just for a little while?" he asked, pulling back, looking her in the eye, "That's all I ask, alright?"
Luna looked into his eyes, and she saw the plead for her to try. She sighed and gave in.
-Alright-
Sue had been watching the exchange from the observation window, and she was thoroughly confused. It seemed Johnny had been talking to himself for some parts of the previous conversation, which was why Sue was confused, because Johnny never talked to himself before. But then again, he's never shape shifted before either, so. . . Sue really had no idea what to expect. She could also see that something had definitely changed in him "You mean, for the me I am now . . . What about the me we don't know?" She didn't know whether to be happy or sad that Johnny wasn't his old self – the brash, cocky, ladies man. While Sue got irritated with him at times, she wanted him to grow up on his own, not have his memory completely erased and be forced to start over . . . Not knowing who you were could be both blessing and curse. Besides, he may have been brash or cocky but that's not all there was to him, he was her baby brother and he did have his moments, rare as they were. She wanted her baby brother back . . .
"Sue?" Reed called, she snapped out of her reverie and looked at him, "you should come have a look at this." She looked over to where her husband was, which was in front of a microscope. She nodded and went over to him.
"What's up?" She asked when she got next to him.
"Take a look," he motioned to the scope and moved out of the way,
"Did they say anything?" he nodded to the other room.
"Luna doesn't trust us. Johnny does," She said, looking through
the scope, what she saw shocked her and she looked at Reed, "Oh, my God!" she whispered.
Reed nodded sagely, "those are blood samples from both of them. Do you see the metallic like substance on the cells? Those are the nanites. I was right in assuming they've been grafted to every cell in his body. Skin cells, blood cells, red and white. Muscle cells, everything."
"Wh-what do they do?" Sue stuttered, looking up at Reed, "Why did they do this?"
Reed sighed and hugged her, "I'm not sure what they do, I'm going to start running tests right now," he took another deep breath, "I'm not sure why they did it, either. I'm sorry Sue."
She relaxed into her husbands embrace, "I understand," she whispered, then suddenly laughed bitterly, "I think I know how Ben felt, now. Waiting for you to fix him."
Reed smiled a little, then disentangled himself from Sue and walked back into the room where Luna and Johnny were.
"Hey, Mr. Ri-. . . I mean, Reed." Johnny said, trying to remember to call the scientist Reed, like he'd asked, "What's up?"
"I'm going to run some non-invasive test on you two, or at least I would like to," he corrected himself, looking at the frown on Luna's face, "if you'd let me."
"Will it hurt?" She asked, looking over at Johnny, worried.
"It shouldn't" Reed said, smiling at her, "If we could continue?"
"I don't like that you just said 'Shouldn't" Johnny said, slowly, "Is that just me?"
Reed ignored him and dragged two chairs over to where they were. He had Johnny and Luna sit in them. Taking out a reflex hammer, he tapped Luna's left knee. Johnny kicked out his left leg. Reed blinked at him. He repeated the process with Luna's other knee and it had the same result.
"Johnny?" Reed asked, looking over at him, "why are you doing that?"
"Yeah, um" Johnny said, "I don't know?"
Reed looked at him, then took the reflex hammer, and tapped Johnny's knee. Johnny kicked out.
Johnny took a deep breath, turned to Luna, and opened his mouth to talk, but instead just sighed and shook his head. Reed tapped his other knee, and Johnny kicked again. "You know," he said, rubbing his knees, "somehow, this just doesn't seem fair."
"Cry about it, Beta" Luna muttered, and then turned to Reed, "Was that it?"
Reed wrote something on a note pad, "No, I still have a few more to run."
He looked up at the two of them, "would you please take off your shirts?"
Johnny complied instantly, but Luna just blinked at him.
-Pervert-
-Just do it. You want to find out what happened right?-
Reed could tell by their body language that Johnny and Luna were communicating in some way, but they weren't actually saying anything. He cleared his throat, "is something wrong?"
"No" Johnny said quickly, "Luna, please just do what he asked?"
She rolled her eyes, and turned around, taking her shirt off. Reed let out a low whistle when she did. There was a ragged scar on her back, following along her spine; it seemed to be the only mark on her body.
"Johnny, turn around please," Reed said. He winced when he saw an identical scar on Johnny's back. Taking a deep breath, he forced himself to continue, "I'm going to need to do some X-rays, alright? So please lie down on those two tables," he gestured behind him, to a large machine that neither Johnny nor
Luna even noticed was there.
While putting her shirt back on, Luna glared at Johnny, who shrugged, and walked over to the machine after putting his own shirt back on.
-Told you he was a pervert-
-Behave-
They lay down on the sliding tables that were part of the machine, and waited. Luna kept looking behind her, at Reed, while Johnny stared straight ahead.
-What if I fail? I've never been good under pressure, I think-
-You can't fail this test-
-lucky me-
"This will only take a second" Reed said, pushing the two tables in and closing the doors. He was getting the feeling that they were communicating again. He walked over to the main computer on the machine, and started typing. Reed pressed the start button, and watched the screen. Inside the machine, the lights that encompassed Luna and Johnny turned on and off, first one on, then three on then five on then all of them went off, over and over. Outside the machine, Reed was on the verge of a break down. He had never seen anything like it!
"Ben?" He called, his wide eyes glued to the screen, "come here?"
When The Thing walked into the room, and saw the condition the scientist was in, he knew something was wrong.
"What is it, egghead?" He asked, lumbering over to Reed, "What's wrong with the match stick?"
Reed swallowed, and opened his mouth to say something, but was interrupted by Sue.
"What's wrong now Reed?" She asked, her voice higher than usual, "Tell me what's wrong!"
Reed tore his eyes away from the screen to look back at his wife and best friend. "I've never seen this before," he whispered, "never even heard of this," he looked back at the screen, "The girl, Luna, her skeleton has been completely reconstructed, with some metallic alloy, what it is, I don't know"
"What about Johnny?" Sue whispered, trying to see the screen, "What about my brother?"
Reed gulped and looked at her, "There is something on Johnny's skeleton, I just don't know what. I'd have to perform a type of biopsy, to get a useable culture of the substance, to analyze it."
"Is their anything else?" Sue asked, as Reed shut the machine down and went about opening the doors.
"They're communicating telepathically," Reed said, "and Johnny feels and reacts to whatever Luna feels, I did a reflex test on her, and Johnny reacted, but when I did one on Johnny, Luna didn't react."
"What do you think that means?" Ben asked, worried.
"I don't know" Reed said, starting to open the doors to let
Johnny and Luna out, "I really don't know . . ."
Island Lab
"Give me a Damage analysis," A man wearing all black commanded, walking into the dead Sergeant's office.
"They cut the electricity off to the entire north and west wing. We lost the cameras, and the two experiments in the west sector." a scientist said, reading off of a chart, "We have no idea where they went, or how they left."
The other man rolled his eyes, "The ineptness of you so called geniuses, never ceases to astound me," He glared back to the other man, "Experiments five and six, are they still running?"
"Yes, sir." the scientist said, "The power outage didn't reach the south wing. They're right on schedule, due to be complete in a few days."
"Excellent."
R&R please