The Unknown
Sam was tinkering with his computer and if anyone asked what he was fixing, it would take him way too long to explain what it was and why they needed it.
The room he was in was absolutely shining, as if the whole thing was part of a single machine and its wires passed through its walls.
“You done?” asked a robotic voice and, weirdly enough, Sam wasn’t startled by the fact that it was so close to him.
As he nodded and took his hand off the keyboard, the device hovered away to the other side of the room, quickly latching onto the back of Machine Man, who absorbed it without looking away from his own task.
Tony walked into the room with a martini in his hand very calmly, partially because of how mundane that environment was for him but also because of all the drinks that preceded the one he held now.
On top of being tipsy, he seemed somewhat disappointed as he asked: “How is the teleporter faring?”
“All good. And I’m assuming that you won’t be much help operating it.”
“Come on, Sam. It doesn’t feel right being relegated to a chair.” he replied.
Another voice replied just as three people entered the room: “Sorry if we wanted to do this ourselves, for old time’s sake.”
Ben was wearing a white suit he had already seen once, the exact opposite of Sue’s overcomplicated purple and blue uniform. Johnny had also been given a new look and he seemed to have a hard time getting used to it.
“Can I just ask why yellow?” he wondered.
“Since our suits don’t match, we thought we should stay consistent and give you a new one.” Sue replied, perhaps a little too concerned with such a small detail.
“But I liked the matching uniforms, it was old school cool.”
“You know what else is cool?” a voice interjected “A brand new Iron Tech armour for outer space travel.”
Sue just sighed and replied: “It’s just for today, Tony. It’s not every day that Johnny wants to join us.”
“Not like I have much else to do these days…” Johnny pointed out, though everyone tried to forget he said that.
Machine Man walked some major disjointed steps over to the group as he announced that the portal was ready and that: “You should put on your helmets.”
Johnny looked at the round helmet, just as shiny as the man that handed it to him and groaned: “As if we didn’t already look like Power Rangers.”
Afterwards, the trio shushed and walked to another room with a seemingly useless wall. Sam gave a careful countdown before a bright purple light appeared on that wall, confined from the rest of the world by pink sparkles.
“The memories, uh?”
When Ben said that, Sue thought he meant good memories and she couldn’t help but think, as they walked through the portal, that there was someone missing.
—-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
When they travelled to the N-Zone, years ago, they had managed to see some fantastic things, even in a universe that was on the brink of collapse.
They found relics of foregone life along with the small remnants of a persistent civilization and although they were dim and tired, there were still some stars.
This cold place they were in didn’t even have that, not a single orb to shine some light but then again there wasn’t any need for that.
Staring at the great abyss, like a blank gap between one edge and the other, Johnny felt like a kid staring at the night in a town where the pollution hid all the stars away. He felt like he was about to fall in the void.
Despite their communication devices, everything was quiet as Sue just stared in the same direction but with more purpose, until she asked: “Do you feel that?”
Ben rightfully wondered: “Feel what?”
“It’s like that space– well, we shouldn’t really call it that but, it’s like it’s not empty. Like there’s something moving.”
“Like a person? I don’t read any signs of life.”
“No, like a substance.” she only got silence for saying that. “You mean you really don’t see it?... Then again, you can’t see my fields either.”
Ben started thinking about it and asked: “So, let’s say that there’s an invisible substance here, you tryna say that it’s between universes like molecules between cells?”
“Well, sure. I always liked to think of the universe as a big cell.”
And he replied, flabbergasted: “What– No! I had to point out that it was nuts!”
“Nuttier than us having superpowers?”
“You can’t use that excuse everytime we find something insane!”
“Why not?” she shrugged but in the meantime Johnny turned someplace else and the other two didn’t notice.
“Cause I didn’t work my brains off to become a pilot just for the laws of physics to go down the turlet! There ain’t no space liquid or… whatchamacallit.”
“This isn’t space, though. It’s something beyond.” That seemed to shut him off for good, then she realised that he only got quiet because of something behind her.
As Ben said, he didn’t appear on the interface but he was there and he couldn’t have possibly been a native. At bare minimum you need a piece of land to have a home and since there was nothing there, he must have been either an explorer like them or something more.
Johnny still remembered their adventures fondly and among other things, he missed the creatures they met. Sure they were scary but if they had creators he would have to compliment them for their creativity.
The guy in front of him was like a walking stereotype, barren of colours and just so utterly… lame.
Sue didn’t know how to talk to him until he solved that issue first through his mind.
‘Where are you from?’
Sue seemed a little unsure but still replied: ‘I was wondering the same thing.’
The stranger’s mood didn’t seem to change as he answered: ‘I am from beyond. And yet I don’t think I’ve seen you before…’ Even before Sue’s confused consciousness could form a coherent thought he said: ‘And I don’t mean versions of you… no, there are quite too many of them… I mean you.’
‘We just came here to see what’s wrong…’ she then thought about his choice of words, about there being too many of them and she added: ‘Everything’s falling down.’
‘Time’s running out, yes. And, before you ask, yes you’re right.’
Johnny just wondered about what and Sue asked: ‘... you did this?’
He just seemed so nonchalant admitting that, going straight to the point without embellishing the facts as if he didn’t really care. ‘Yes, my people and I’
Sue imagined everything around them crashing down and cells crashing towards each other, splitting open their walls. ‘Why?! What will be left after that?’
‘We don’t know but I guess that’s part of the experiment. We’re not so different. After all, don't you also do experiments the whole time?’
Ben understood then and there that this thing from beyond saw them as rats. In his black eyes he saw the desire to kill them like rats.
'Won’t you try to stop our experiment when you get back home?'
Without a moment of hesitation he went in for the kill. None of the villains they had faced before moved with such resolution but that was because, to the Beyonder, this wasn’t killing: it was pest control.
But the “pests” fought back. Sue put up a shield and realised that she wasn’t just stronger than a pest was to a woman, she was even stronger than her usual self.
Her fields never were so strong and yet there they were holding that thing back as she tried to call Sam on her device.
No one answered, the portals didn’t open and through the transparent wall she put against the stranger she noticed that he was aware.
He then crushed through Sue’s bubble only to find Ben standing in the way. He was pushed back, strongly but with no lasting effect.
Going in again a second time, Ben realised a horrible truth: that he was too slow, that the enemy was going straight for his loved one before he could do anything.
When the Beyonder arrived a foot away from his prey, they heard Johnny screaming his sister’s name.
He burned bright, right through his suit, and with a jet of light from his entire body he pushed that thing away from his sister.
The Beyonder took more time than before to recover from that heat burst and as he stood back up he commented: “Star level… what difference will a single star make?”
The one from beyond flew upwards, then towards the united trio, not aware of how unprepared they were until they noticed that they were no longer in the void.
They were back in the room with Falcon and Machine Man, not even the room equipped with the teleporter. Sue remembered that their comms had been severed and noticed that even Sam seemed confused.
“What the hell happened?” she expectedly asked, taking her helmet off.
“I saved you all, that’s what happened.” a familiar voice unexpectedly answered.
Ben was the first to turn around towards his old friend, who had replaced the number four on his old suit with just an initial. Sue couldn’t forget the colour of his eyes whereas Johnny was still proud of making sure it could only be seen in his left eye.
Sue was entirely furious, almost forgetting what she had seen earlier, but Sam still started interrogating first. “What are you doing here, Reed?” he enquired.
“I already told you and you should know I don’t like repeating myself.”
But Sue didn’t accept that answer in the slightest, she demanded: “Why are you here?!”
“I thought you wanted to see me.” he sacefully pointed out. “How come you change your mind every day?!”
“That’s not the same thing. At all!” she promptly retorted, “I invited you at the Baxter, not here!”
“Well, when I heard you three were going over to certain doom, I knew I had to intervene.”
“And how did you know that, stretcho?” Ben asked, making Reed uncross his arms. “Not only did you know we were here, you also knew what we would find on the other side.”
Reed seemed much less confident as he looked at his old friend and said: “There’s a lot we have to talk about.”
“Damn right–”
Ben’s last sentence was interrupted by a sound from the center of the room. It seemed like a rapture and they saw the air fracture and the unbelievable walking through as if he made a door out of nothing.
He knew where they tried to escape and now many more had to face him. Sam and Reed grabbed the closest things they could find, the latter much more afraid than the former.
“You cannot escape from the Beyonders…”
After saying that, though, he seemed to slow down. As the single Beyonder keeled over, Reed noticed that no other portals were opening. He was alone, perhaps because the others knew they weren’t meant to be there.
Sue had just started to catch on to what Reed already figured out but before anyone else could understand what was happening a beam the width of Ben’s armspan crossed the room.
The weakened Beyonder was on the floor, finally unconscious, and everyone turned around to discover Iron Man with a huge smoking cannon mounted on his shoulder and his thick metal finger on the trigger.
It was obvious, despite his robotic voice modulator, that he was drunk as he uttered: “I’m still cool…”
Reed would have normally scolded him for his barbaric use of technology but this time he didn’t. He just took a deep breath, stretching his diaphragm way above normal capacity and sat down.
He told Sue: “There’s a lot we need to talk about.”