Disclaimer: See Chapter One.

A/N: Sorry for the wait, but I did warn you what might happen if my interest started to wane. Don't worry, I watched the first FF again Saturday and saw the second again last night, so I got a little boost, but reviews feed my muse!

Crash and Freeze

Chapter Six

When Johnny walked out of his room the next day and into the living room, his teammates dropped whatever they had been talking about and looked at him. Instantly, he began to panic. 'Oh, God, they know! What do I do?' However, he banished those thoughts from his head, knowing how stupid he was being. They knew nothing of the mysterious phone call. They couldn't.

"Hey! Look who finally decided to come out to play!" Ben teased, looking at Johnny with a knowing look which made him fear once again that they somehow knew what the woman had said.

"Johnny, are you alright?" Sue asked, standing up and putting a hand on his cheek. "You don't look so good. Are your powers still acting up?"

Reed frowned. "We can still go to the lab and run some tests if you'd like," he offered, starting to get up.

"No!" he said forcefully, taking them all aback. "I mean, I'm fine. Just a little hungry, ya know?" he assured them nervously.

Sue smiled. "Of course you are! You haven't eaten since yesterday morning! You sit down and I will whip you up something!"

Johnny smiled back and sat down, hating himself for lying to his sister. She had always been there for him, always taken care of him. It would be so easy to figure out a way to communicate to her what was going on, no matter how much surveillance he was under. However, Sue would instantly slip into her protective role, alerting whoever was watching that something was wrong. And if that happened, things would all go up in flames, literally.

"You sure you're okay, kid?"

"Hm," he said, Ben's voice startling out of his reverie. "Yeah, big guy, I'm fine."

OoooOoooOoooO

"Ow!" Reed cried after banging his head on the metal casing surrounding the wires. The phone just kept ringing though, undeterred by the pain it had caused to its owner. He stretched his arm to grab it from his desk and put it to his ear.

"Hello?" he said, continuing to look over the wires of the security system, still puzzled over what the problem could be.

"Hello, Reed," a feminine voice greeted.

"Ally!" he cried in surprise, banging his head again. "To what do I owe the pleasure?"

She giggled slightly, a far cry from the Dr. McKall Johnny had come to know from his doctor visits. "I just thought it would be fun to call you. You know, to catch up. It's been a long time since the last time we saw each other, not counting the accident and your brother-in-law's subsequent ordeal. How about meeting me for a cup of coffee?"

"Well, I don't know," Reed said, thinking about what Sue was would say about him having coffee with an "old friend" who happened to be a female Nobel Prize winner.

"Of course, your wife is invited," Ally went on. "Come on, Reed. I promise to make sure I don't mention any awkward high school incidents that you might not want your wife to know about."

Reed smiled at that. "Well, I guess that if you are willing to make that kind of sacrifice..."

"Great! I'll meet you at four at the Starbucks on the corner of your street. I would hate for you to be far from home if there were an emergency."

OoooOoooOoooO

Ben watched Johnny out of the corner of his eye as they both sat in the living room watching television. The kid was tense. What was going on with him? At first, Ben had just dismissed it as his way of dealing with what had happened at the fire, but after a while, he realized that there was something else going on. It was like he was waiting for the other shoe to drop.

The ring of Johnny's cell phone interrupted both Ben's thoughts and Johnny's focus on the television.

"Hello?" Johnny said. The apprehension in his tone caught Ben's attention, as did his extremely stiff posture. "I understand," he replied to whatever was said on the other end. His casual attitude sounded forced to Ben, causing him to grow even more concerned for the kid. Johnny's eyes suddenly grew wild with panic for a split second before quickly suppressing it. "I won't... No, fine, I'll be there..."

Johnny hung up the phone and put his head in his hands.

"Johnny?"

"Please, Ben, don't ask," he said, looking up and looking at the Thing imploringly. "I'll be fine. I just have to go meet someone about a car," Johnny explained, getting up and walking towards the elevator.

"If you say so kid..." he replied, still clearly unconvinced.

"I do," Johnny said, stepping into the elevator. "See ya later, Pebbles."

OoooOoooOoooO

"He didn't!" Sue exclaimed before letting laughter overtake her.

"He did!" Ally replied, barely containing the laughter herself. "He felt like kicking himself once he thought about what he said. He turned so red that he looked like a tomato!"

Both girls laughed while Reed turned a little pink. "I thought we agreed on no embarrassing stories," Reed stated helplessly.

"From high school. This happened in college, if you don't recall," Ally laughed.

"Forget neurosurgeon, Ally, you should have been a lawyer," Reed groaned, dropping his head in defeat.

His female companions just laughed.

OoooOoooOoooO

Johnny waited nervously in the abandoned warehouse. Only, it looked nothing like an abandoned warehouse. It had been completely sterilized, with all kinds of medical-looking equipment set up around the obviously newly made lab. The equipment made him especially uneasy, as the woman on the phone had clearly stated that she wanted him for experiments. His mind had come up with various painful scenarios to go with that statement, but he quickly put those out of his mind. He had to do this. His family depended on him.

"I'm sorry to keep you waiting, Mr. Storm," a voice called from behind him.

He spun around to face his antagonizer and gasped. "You!"

tbc...