A Beautiful Day for a Rocket Launch

It was a beautiful day for a rocket launch. 

This was good, because Doctor Reed Richards had been waiting for this particular rocket launch since the moment he was born. About 300 miles above him, a space station of his own design circled the Earth. In just a few short hours, he would be on it. 

His story is one you’ve probably heard before. Boy genius gets his first Ph.D. by thirteen and starts a revolutionary company in his early twenties, only to toil away at a dream that most people thought impossible before finally succeeding. Of course, this wunderkind’s dream was nothing so pedestrian as an electric car or a voice-recognition AI. No. Reed wanted to go to space.

As any engineer or astrophysicist will tell you, this is no simple task. In over two hundred thousand years of existence, humanity had only managed to get a handful of people past the stratosphere and never for very long. To be honest, even to a genius’s genius like Reed, it is a Herculean task. All alone, it probably would have taken everything he had to get a single rocket up, and all his work would have ended up being just another brick in the road to interstellar travel. 

But he wasn’t alone. It wasn’t just his story. It wouldn’t be a very good one if it was. 

“Ain’t she a beaut?” Reed’s best friend Benjamin Grimm asked as he came to stand beside him. Reed had known Ben since they were toddlers. His first and, for the entirety of his childhood, only friend. 

“Ben!” Reed cried as he wrapped him in a hug. “It’s so good to see you!” While Reed had dedicated his life to science, Ben had dedicated his to protecting others. He had been the US Air Force’s best test pilot for three years before becoming one of the less than one hundred Air Force Academy graduates to join NASA as an astronaut. His trip up today as the official military liaison to Baxter Solutions would be his fifth. 

“You too, Stretch,” Ben said warmly. As he released Reed, he did a quick scan of the room. 

“Where’s your creepier half?” Ben asked. 

“He’s waiting outside for Sue. And he’s not creepy.” 

“Uh-huh. He still trying to summon demons in his bedroom?” 

“Extra-dimensional beings,” Reed corrected. “And no. We have a lab for that now.” 

“A lab for that now ,” Ben chuckled. “Of course you do. I keep telling ya, you want a fixer-upper, my cousin’s got a coupla houses on Long Island Sound you could look at.” 

“I’ll take the super-genius over a money pit, thanks,” Reed said dryly. 

Victor Von Doom: Reed’s almost-college roommate, current business and romantic partner. He and Ben had never really gotten along. Victor was a bit of an acquired taste. For the first two years they knew each other, Victor hated Reed. It wasn’t until Victor’s accident that they really became friends.

It had been pouring all day; Reed had decided to take the long way through the connected dorm buildings to his own room rather than trudge through the rain. As a result, he was only doors down when the fire started. He managed to drag Victor’s unconscious body to safety through sheer adrenaline. When Victor got out of the hospital (only a few days later, the firemen said if Reed had been even a second slower, it would have been weeks ), Victor demanded to know what he wanted in return. Reed asked to look over some designs he had been working on; the rest, as they say, is history. 

“Hey, why’s he waiting for Sue? Didn’t the three of you fly in together?” Ben asked, breaking Reed out of his reverie.

“She and Johnny drove down. She has to drop him off at Disneyworld.” 

Ben looked at Reed askance. “She’s letting him go to Disney? Alone ? He’s gonna start a riot!” 

“My money’s on him detaching a bumper car and driving it into a crowd,” Reed replied. “Don’t tell Sue I said that.” He added quickly. 

“Too late,” Sue said as she walked up to them, Victor at her side. 

Sue had been Ben’s friend before she was Reed’s. She was just as much a genius as Victor of himself--she graduated med school before she was even out of high school--but had neither Reed’s money nor Victor’s scholarships. When her father died, she had to give up any dream of continuing her education to support her little brother. She met Ben when he came into a free clinic she was moonlighting at for extra money. Ben introduced them a couple months later in an effort to get Reed’s mind off of Victor, to no avail. Instead of a girlfriend, Reed got a very dear regular friend. 

She was Reed’s first choice for biomedical specialist when he and Victor started Baxter Solutions. Since then, Sue had gotten the two doctorates she had earned long before she enrolled in classes, not to mention her name on several thousand new medical innovations. 

“You took the kid to Disney?” Ben asked Sue. 

“Wonderful greeting to two people you haven’t seen in months. Were you raised in a barn?” Victor asked. 

Ben resisted the urge to punch him in front of Reed “Hi Sue.” He grunted before continuing on. “Didn’t he catfish his principal last month?”

“ No, ” Sue said emphatically. “He catfished the principal’s son.” She finished in a mumble. 

"Sue.” 

She groaned guiltily. “What was I supposed to do? We’re about to go to space with engines he helped design, and he can’t come! I was debating whether or not to buy him a pony.”

“He can’t come because he’s sixteen. He’s not banned from space . He’s just gonna miss this one.”

Sue glowered at him. “You try explaining that to a teenager.” 

Johnny Storm was a bit of an enigma to Reed. He was genuinely brilliant; Sue wasn’t overstating his role in developing the Marvel 13's rocket engines. Nevertheless, he took every opportunity to dissuade people of that fact. If Reed had a penny for every time Sue had to call out of work and drive down to Glenville to deal with the fallout from his behavior-- Well, safe to say if the dollar underwent significant deflation, it would be a sum with substantial buying power. 

Ben sighed: he didn’t want to start this trip with bad feelings. “Aw, ignore me. I sound like my old man. How the hell are ya, Suzie?” 

Sue grinned, “I’m about to go to space . What do you think?” 

Reed nodded enthusiastically, “I know. The things we’re going to see, to discover --” 

Victor forced down a smile at Reed’s excitement. “My dear, don’t get ahead of yourself. Half the equipment isn’t due until next week.” By then, their exploratory/celebratory crew of four would be back on Earth, and the team of astronauts handpicked by Reed and himself would begin their six-month expedition.  

“The imaging equipment’s there. By this time tomorrow we could have the clearest pictures of Orion Nebula ever taken by human hands!” Countered Reed. 

“All hands for Marvel-13 launch, please proceed to the ascent capsule for boarding!” A cheery voice said over the intercom. 

“I suppose we’ll find out.” Victor said. 

Reed did his best not to sprint to the ascent capsule, practically vibrating, Ben right on his heels. 

Victor moved to follow them, but Sue stopped him with a hand on his arm. 

“Wait! Are you--” she lowered her voice. “Are you good to go?” 

Victor didn’t know whether to be flattered or insulted by her worry. 

“Yes.” He said, leaning towards insulted. 

“You got the ring? And your speech?”

Victor groaned. “Yes. I should have left you outside.” In the flurry of preparation for the launch and trying to get Johnny packed, Sue had lost her Baxter Solutions access badge. It was almost certainly on her nightstand back home, not that explaining that to the security guards helped. She would undoubtedly have missed the launch if Victor hadn’t been waiting for her. 

“My best friend is getting engaged! I’m allowed to be excited!” She whisper-yelled. 

“No one will be doing anything if we don’t get moving,” Victor hissed. “It’s a miracle Reed didn’t notice this sidebar as it is!”

Susan’s face fell. “Right.” She let out a deep breath and calmed herself in the space of an exhale.

“Let us be on, then,” Victor said as he marched forward. 

Sue walked in step with him for a moment before jumping in front of him and turning back around. “ Mr. Richards !” She whispered excitedly. 

“I’m not taking his name.” Victor retorted as he followed her. 

Anything, Everything

“DOCKING SUCCESSFUL. WELCOME ABOARD THE ARGO!” The station’s AI chirped. 

Reed let out a breath he hadn’t known he was holding as he kicked out of the shuttle. 

He knew the path by heart-- he had built it himself. Left, left, right, straight.

It was a tad engineeringly and more than a tad financially unwieldy, but Reed had insisted on a section of the Argo be made of eighty percent transparent material. He had justified it as relief for psychological distress caused by being in a confined, windowless space for months on end; that was just an added benefit. It was for him. For this moment. To finally see the universe as it was meant to be seen.

“Activating artificial gravity!” Ben called out from somewhere. Reed fell to the ground in a heap, struggling back to his feet, but not once did he turn his gaze away. 

“Beautiful,” Victor sighed as he came to stand beside him. 

“We did it, Victor,” Reed said, grinning from ear to ear as he looked out the massive quartz window. 

“You did it,” Victor told him. “You would never have been able to do it without me, of course,” Reed chuckled at that. “but it was your mad dream that made us look up to the stars.”

They both stood there for a while, basking in the silence. Earth, miles below them, continued spinning gently on its axis. 

Victor cleared his throat. “Reed.” 

“Yes?” Reed replied. 

“You, um.” Victor began before swallowing and starting over. “You may remember that five years ago, I nearly returned to Latveria for good.” 

“Of course I remember, Victor. I took you to the airport.” Reed said, confused. 

Victor nodded. “Returning to the place of my birth had always been the plan. I thought that there was nowhere else in the world that I could ever call home. But as you will recall, after leaving, I returned almost immediately to the United States.”

“And then we spent the next three days in bed,” Reed finished the memory. The dots connecting, he smiled slyly. “Victor, are you propositioning me? In space? ” 

“No!” Victor yelped angrily. He had spent weeks on this speech.

“Then I’m not sure why you’re bringing up our near-breakup on our new space station,” Reed said. 

“I’m not --” Victor sighed. He had foolishly not accounted for Reed’s cluelessness when writing out his proposal. With a heavy heart, Victor mentally threw out the vast majority of his speech. He turned from the window to face Reed, taking both his hands in his own. 

“I realized as soon as I stepped back onto Latverian soil, ” Victor paused, looking into Reed’s eyes. “That y ou are my home.”

“Victor,” Reed said, touched. 

“There’s something I have wanted to ask you since I got off that plane, but until recently, I had no legal recourse to do so.” Victor got down on one knee, moving both of Reed’s hands to his right so he could grab the ring box in his pocket with the left. “Reed Richards, would you do me the honor of joining me in marriage?” He flipped the lid on the box to reveal his father’s wedding ring. 

Reed stood there, looking at the ring and Victor and back again for a minute before his stunned expression broke into a huge smile. But as he opened his mouth to answer, the grate fell off the heating vent to their left, and a boy in a Liquid Cooling and Ventilation Garment tumbled out after it. 

“ Johnny?” Reed and Victor said in unison. 

Johnny waved from where he was groaning on the floor. He looked over at them, Victor still down on one knee. “Holy shit, are you proposing?” 

“ Yes,” Victor gritted out. 

“That’s awesome!” Johnny pulled himself up with a hand on the wall. “We should definitely lead with that when we tell Sue I’m here.”

“You’re supposed to be at Disneyworld!” said Reed. 

“Oh yeah, because I was gonna spend a weekend at the world’s most overpriced carnival while you guys kicked it in space .” Johnny scoffed. “ I hotwired a car as soon as Sue was out of the parking lot.” 

“How did you get onto the --” Victor realized how. “You stole Susan’s keycard.” 

Johnny grinned and shrugged. “Although, in all seriousness, you guys should probably get better rent-a-cops. I just swiped the thing, and they let me go wherever. Like, it said ‘Susan Storm’ on the badge and I was very clearly not her. No questions. That’s a 9/11 waiting to happen.”  

Reed tucked that security concern away for later. “She’s going to kill you. You know that, right?” 

“Not if I do it first,” Victor growled as he stood up and put the ring back into his pocket. 

It was in that moment that it happened. Victor had gotten to his feet but had yet to begin his incredibly justified dressing-down of Johnny Storm and his complete inability to think even a second ahead to possible consequences: a few miles to the starboard side of the Argo, the fabric of the universe was thinning. 

This was, by itself, not so uncommon. Friction between different realities and dimensions was a normal occurrence in a multiverse. Holes occasionally form between them and heal over time. However, with the universe being as infinite as it is, and organic life being so rare, it is not very often that something sentient finds itself directly in the path of the disturbance. 

As the incursion reached critical mass, a wave of energy emanated from it. It was the backwash of creation, one of God’s building blocks strewn carelessly across the solar system. It latched onto the first thing it found in this universe -- the Argo and her crew. It clawed its way into them, spinning between electrons in their dizzy orbits, settling down with the protons and neutrons as if it was meant to be there. 

“Anything, anything,” It whispered to the atoms and the molecules, to the cells and tissues and organs it found. “ What would you be?”  

The change began then, although the owners of those many molecules did not know it yet. To them, a massive shockwave had just hit the ship, shaking it like a soda can and shorting hundreds of circuits and their thousands of backup circuits across the Argo. 

“What was that?” Johnny Storm, brand-new landlord to a mass of cosmic radiation, asked his compatriots. 

Above them, the lights flickered. 

All SYSTEMS ABNORMAL

Reed and Victor glanced at each other. They were both profoundly aware of how many things would have to go wrong for the electrical systems to stutter. Without saying a word, the pair began sprinting toward the control room. 

“HEY!” Johnny said, running after them. 

The control room was a mess of bright-red alarms and bolded WARNING signs.

Reed stopped in front of the massive master console while Victor took over the sensor array. 

“There’s been a radiation spike. Half of the systems across the station are down.” Victor read off the array. 

“I see it: activating backup battery,” Reed responded. 

Below them, the ship shuddered. 

“FUCK!” Reed said, slamming his hand against the controls. 

Johnny had never heard Reed swear before. “What’s happening?”

“CRITICAL BATTERY LEVEL DETECTED,” A robotic voice called from the speaker on the ceiling. 

Victor ran to the master console and began pressing buttons. “We need to start the SOS and emergency egress protocol --”

“No!” Reed shoved the invading hands away from his controls. “We can still save it! If we detach from the experimental modules, the inertia --”

“Then we’ll be dead up here instead of down there ! ” 

“WHAT IS HAPPENING?” Johnny was starting to panic. 

“We have about five minutes of air left; that’s what’s happening. We need to get to an escape capsule now!” Said Victor.

“Just give me a second --” 

“ We do not have a second!” Victor yelled. 

“I have to try , Victor! This station is -- It’s everything!” Reed yelled back. 

“It’s not worth your life, goddamn it!” Victor grabbed Reed’s hands to still them. “The station is dead , Reed. There’s nothing left for us here!” 

Reed stared at him uncomprehendingly, horror and disbelief warring in his eyes, before he pulled his hands back and returned to trying to save the station. 

An unbelievable idiot, rewiring circuits on the Titanic as it sank. Victor loved him very much. 

Victor placed his hands on either side of Reed’s head, turning it to face him. 

“There is nothing left for us here. I know you know that!” Victor shouted.

Reed did know that: the rational part of his brain was screaming it at him. But he couldn’t stop. 

“This is my life’s work.” He said as he fought the urge to sob.

“I know,” Victor replied quietly, his voice pitched low enough that only Reed could hear him. “I’m so sorry, my heart.” More than he could possibly say. Victor could still recall so clearly the destruction of his machine in college, the desperation and self-hatred he felt as his dorm room burned. Reed had pulled him out. Of the fire, of the guilt. Of the madness he could feel rising within him like the tide. It was the first of many debts Victor owed the man he loved. He intended to repay them all. 

Victor grabbed Reed by the chin, forcing him to stare into his eyes. “Either you walk out now of your own free will, or I will drag you to the escape capsule by your hair.” He said loudly and fiercely. It was no idle threat, and Reed knew it. 

He turned back to the console and activated the emergency escape systems. 

“CRITICAL FAILURE DETECTED. ALL HANDS, PLEASE MOVE TO THE CLOSEST ESCAPE CAPSULE. LIFE SUPPORT SYSTEMS WILL CEASE IN FOUR MINUTES.” The voice in the ceiling said. 

“Thank you,” Victor told him softly before turning to Johnny. “Follow us, and don’t fall behind.” 

Victor and Reed sprinted out of the control room even faster than they had come in. 

“STOP DOING THAT!” Johnny yelled as he ran after them.

Without slowing down, Reed pressed the ‘talk’ button on his earpiece. “Sue, I have bad news.” 

“ Yeah, no shit! I heard the announcement!” Sue’s staticky voice yelled from the earpiece. 

“Good, then I don’t need to explain. You and Ben get to Corridor B as fast as possible.” 

“ Reed, we can chat when we’re back on solid ground! We need to get to an escape capsule!” 

“That’s the issue, actually. The station only has the one, and it’s in Corridor B. But it’s big enough for all of us.” 

“WHAT? Why would you design -- whatever! We’re not far, don’t go without us!”

“The capsules are constructed from the ascent module of the rocket we rode up in. They’re directly proportional to the number of people present on a craft at any given time. This is standard practice, Susan.” Victor explained, defensive. 

Reed and Victor stopped unceremoniously once they reached Corridor B, leading Johnny to crash into Victor’s back. Corridor B was a wide, windowless tunnel connecting the control and habitation sections of the Argo to the experimental modules. In the dead middle on the right-hand side was a sealed, circular doorway. Victor pressed some buttons next to the door, and the metal wall sealing it released with a swooshing sound. 

On the other side was the escape capsule, although to Johnny, it looked more like a cell at an insane asylum. Every inch of the thing was covered in thick, white padding with six little indents with built-in harnesses for seats, evenly spaced around a glassy table-looking thing that took up pretty much all of the leg room. 

“Get in,” Victor commanded Johnny as he and Reed crawled to the back. 

“In movies, the escape pods have cupholders,” Johnny grumbled as he struggled in. 

“CRITICAL FAILURE DETECTED. ALL HANDS, PLEASE MOVE TO THE CLOSEST ESCAPE CAPSULE. LIFE SUPPORT SYSTEMS WILL CEASE IN TWO MINUTES.” The ceiling voice called out. 

“Susan,” Victor began into his earpiece. 

“I KNOW! We’re almost there, hold on!” She yelled back. 

A sickening minute later, the trio heard two sets of frantic footsteps in the corridor. 

Ben was first to the escape capsule. He was in an LCVG, same as Johnny, but his looked like it had been to hell and back. There were holes in some places and what looked like scorch marks in others. Ben the person wasn’t looking too good either. His face was drenched in sweat and he looked like he wanted to hurl. 

“What the hell happened to you?” Johnny asked. 

“Was on a spacewalk when the…thingy hit,” Ben grunted out as he got situated in the spot next to Johnny. When he looked up from the straps to his seatmate, he did a double take. “Does everybody else see him?” He asked. 

“JOHNATHAN SPENCER STORM!” Sue roared. 

Ben breathed a sigh of relief. “Oh good, I’m not hallucinating.” 

“CRITICAL FAILURE DETECTED. ALL HANDS, PLEASE MOVE TO THE CLOSEST ESCAPE CAPSULE. LIFE SUPPORT SYSTEMS WILL CEASE IN SIXTY SECONDS.” The entire station was shaking. 

“We don’t have time for this! Susan, get in!” Victor yelled. 

“This isn’t over!” Sue told Johnny as she jumped into the seat next to Ben

“Initiating launch!” Reed said as he hit some buttons on the table thingy. 

With a ‘shunk’ noise, the door to the capsule closed. The entire thing started shaking, and after a few seconds, they began to fall. 

For about sixty seconds, things went as they were supposed to. The shields kept them protected from the deadly heat outside. The padding insulated the passengers from the shuddering and jerks as atmospheric drag tried to crush them to nothing. They passed the Karman Line with ease. It was a little more than a minute in: they were about six miles above the earth when it all went wrong. 

“PROXIMITY ALERT: PLEASE --” The capsule’s computer began, but it was too late. Something punched through the capsule, ripping the solid metal walls like tissue paper. 

All of a sudden, it was bright. It was cold. 

Somebody started talking. Johnny didn’t know who or how: he was fighting just to get air in his lungs, but before he lost consciousness, he heard them. 

“Anything, anything.” 

…

Two thousand miles away, the supposedly unused bunker no. 17 underneath the Pentagon was a hive of activity. 

A wall of monitors showed a wealth of information about the Argo . Design specs, pictures of the modules during construction, and detailed profiles of the five people who had been stupid enough to go up. Taking up most of the screens, however, was a map of the continental United States, with a growing red line representing the station’s trajectory back down to Earth, and a black one representing the trajectory of the ICBM they had just launched.

“Confirmed hit,” A woman announced as the red and black lines met. “They’re down.” The room broke out into cheers. 

Her superior, a career soldier, stayed silent. He had never been one for relishing in the deaths of others, no matter how necessary they were. His grandson was a big fan of Baxter Solutions, like millions of other people. The things they made were revolutionary. Too revolutionary, in this case. 

There would be a public period of mourning like there always was. Richards would probably have some park named after him. But after the dust had settled and the tears had been shed, the American people would be unanimous in their decision to outlaw new private space expeditions. Their representatives in D.C. would be all too happy to fulfill their request.

On the wall, a red x came to cover the pictures on the profiles. Deceased . He would light a candle for them, as he has done for every person whose death warrant he’s signed in the last 40 years. 

“Do we have a location for the remains?” He asked after the uproar had quieted down. 

“They went down over the Rockies, that’s all we can say right now. ” Another agent, a man, replied. “With some time….”

“How much time?” The soldier asked harshly. “We need every last piece of that station in a black site before the morning news.”

The man swallowed. “A few hours, sir. No more than ten.”

“I want it done in five.” With that, the soldier walked out of the bunker. He had candles to light.  

A CRASH 

Sue woke up and immediately wished that she hadn’t. Every part of her body ached in a way it hadn't since she stopped picking up twelve-hour shifts at the free clinic on her days off from residency. She opened her eyes slowly, the pain making a simple movement an agonizing trial. She quickly realized, to her great consternation, that she might as well have kept them closed. The air around her was glutted with smoke and grime. 

They had crashed. 

Her heartbeat thundered in her stomach as the memories of the last few hours of her life ran through her brain. Something took out the station, and then- something hit them. 

She turned over onto her back and looked down, attempting to catalog any injuries she had sustained during the crash. 

Her carbon-fiber jumpsuit was in tatters; the flesh below it was covered in deep abrasions. She must have slid across the ground after landing, the friction tearing away her suit and skin. Blood was flowing freely from the open wounds. If it didn’t stop, she would need a transfusion and soon .

She should lie back down; stay as still as possible to slow the bleeding. She knew that. But it wasn’t just about her. It hadn’t been since she was eleven years old. The others were out there. Johnny was out there. She was the only one with any medical expertise-- She was the only one who could help them, at least until the paramedics arrived. 

Fighting common sense and intense pain, Sue struggled to her feet. She had to find them.

She had to get her bearings first. She turned around in a slow circle, blinking away ash as she took in what she could of the crash site. 

It was sundown. Beyond the smoke, the sky was streaked in bright orange and purple. She also quickly discovered the source of the smoke: on the horizon, no matter what direction she turned, a blazing fire was raging. They were supposed to land in California at the secondary launch site; the explosion must have thrown them off course. God only knew where they ended up. How far away from civilization were they? Would anyone even come? She didn’t have long until the blood loss alone -- The ground around her was sloped with a steep incline. Sharp walls of dirt, taller than she was and impossible to climb, penned her in. 

Outer-space bodies hitting solid ground cause craters. Reed’s voice rang through her head. 

Looking down the slope, she realized there was a faint glow coming from the center of the crater.

The escape capsule. The fading sun was hitting the chrome plating. The others had to be there. She didn’t know why she wasn’t there. Taking a deep breath, she began walking toward the capsule. 

Time moved oddly as she marched along. Sometimes raising her foot seemed to take hours. Sometimes seconds passed and she would look up to see she was steps away from the last place she remembered. 

She found Reed first. 

“Oh no.” She said, “Please, no.”

She stopped. The body lay flat on a small shelf on the slope. She couldn’t tell who it was, not at first. 

The doctor in her quietly tallied up the injuries that she could see. The limbs went beyond hyperextension. The arms were twisted backward, pulled out of the shoulder joint, and hanging horribly off the sides of the torso. The head was on the wrong way. Lying on its stomach but staring directly at her, battered beyond recognition. The corpse must have been thrown around like a rag doll on the ride down. 

Printed neatly across the back of the corpse’s jumpsuit, in block letters that they had to have three separate meetings to decide the font of, was ‘RICHARDS.’

She let out a sob, legs shaking. She wanted to run, to climb out of this crater and never stop. 

But she had to stay: she couldn't leave him. He was her best friend. She had to bury him, she thought hysterically. Reed was a good person; he didn’t deserve to be left out like roadkill. And there was no way she could let Victor see him like this --

Victor was going to propose to Reed today. 

“Susan, I require your assistance on a sensitive matter.” He had said, months ago, nonchalance betrayed by the way he was wringing his hands. She had a bottle of champagne added to the manifest the next morning. 

She had to find Victor. And Ben and Johnny. She couldn’t let them wander onto Reed as she did. Shoving all of her grief into a box in the back of her mind, Sue trudged onward a little faster than before, the disgust at Reed’s mangled corpse giving her a second wind. 

The temperature rose the closer she got to the center of the crater. She began to sweat, and staying on her feet became even more of a losing battle as the ground was increasingly littered with hunks of rock and scrap from the ship. A while later, long enough at least that the sun had gone completely down, she tripped on a half-melted transistor she hadn’t seen and fell. Between the sharp slope and the weakness in her extremities, Sue found herself rolling the rest of the way down. All the way to Victor. 

He was face-up, sightlessly staring at Ben, who had landed only a few feet away from him, lying on his stomach. His arm was extended towards him. 

Ben was on leave in New York a few years ago, and they went out drinking to celebrate. About three bars deep, Ben and Victor passed out in a booth with Victor’s head on Ben’s massive shoulder. She took a picture of them all snuggled up; they were both livid when she showed it to them the next day. They refused to admit they were friends, even after nine years. Some weird guy hang-up. They would have hated to have died like this. 

And they were dead, without question. Ben’s back was impaled twenty times over with red-hot metal shards. A massive gash on his side tore Victor almost in two. Sue gasped, frantically rolling away from the dead bodies of her friends. She pushed herself to her feet as fast as she could.

At least she wouldn’t have to tell Victor about Reed, a terrible little voice in her head said. 

She took another deep breath. And another, and then another, until she realized that the breaths were no longer deep and that she was, in fact, hyperventilating. 

It was only her and Johnny now. 

You have to promise me that you’ll take care of Johnny, Sue. Her father had told her. It was the first and only visit she ever paid him in prison. I failed you, but you don’t have to fail him. 

The capsule. He had to still be in the capsule. The capsule was safe. It was designed by the smartest people she knew ( had known) to survive a crash from orbit. Reed, Ben, Victor, they had all fallen out. That’s why they were dead. That’s why she was -- 

She broke into a run, summoning every last shred of strength in a mad dash toward the capsule. 

They had fallen to Earth bottom side up, it seemed. What little of the serial number on the side, what little she could make out through the smoke and the thousands of holes in the battered hull, was clearly upside down. 

“Johnny?” She cried out, voice scratchy from the exercise and smoke as she approached one of the larger tears in the capsule’s wall. The heat was almost unbearable. Pushing through the searing pain, she shuffled closer inch by inch until she could see past the heat haze into the capsule. Hanging from the couch with the straps keeping him in place was Johnny Storm: a charred corpse still smoking. 

Sue vomited, falling to her knees despite the burning pain, cherry-red blood streaking through the fluid. 

She was dying. She had known it since she first looked down, as hard as she tried to pretend she didn’t. She had hoped that with what little time she had left, she could have helped the others. Not that she ever could have. They were dead before she even opened her eyes. She should have let herself bleed out where she woke up: saved herself the trouble and the tears. 

But even if she had known from that first moment that they were all dead, she knew in her heart she would still have made the trip. 

After their mom died, Johnny developed a horrible fear of the dark. He stayed up for three days straight after the funeral. Their sad excuse of a father didn’t do anything to help him: he was too focused on the bottom of his bottle. That was the first time Sue ever stepped up. She would lay with him in his creaky twin bed until his breathing evened out, warding off the monsters in the shadows.

She couldn’t leave him all alone in that capsule. Who would keep away the monsters?

“'M sorry,” She wheezed to no one and so many people all at once. 

“ Anything, anything,” A voice from deep inside whispered as the world went dark. 

RESPAWN

There was a lot of beeping in heaven, Sue thought. The steady high-pitched noise was enough to wake her up out of a quite literally dead sleep. 

She opened her eyes to brightness. Which made sense, considering the locale, but was still painful. Sue groaned, shielding her eyes with her hand as she tried again. 

She was in a room, a happy change from waking up in the dirt. The room seemed designed for maximum blandness: the painted walls and tile floors seemed to glide off the eyeball. A few feet in front of her was a plain brown door opening into another boring-looking hallway. A lamp was placed in the corner, the source of the blinding light. Besides a cabinet and a sink next to the door, the room was completely empty.

Heaven looked a lot like a hospital. 

It wasn’t possible. She had been dying, really dying. If-she-had-seen-herself-as-a-patient-she-wouldn’t-have-even-bothered-checking-vitals dying.   Unless the paramedics had been three feet behind her the entire time, and even then, with her injuries -- Maybe they landed in the parking lot of a hospital? 

Only one way to find out. 

Fighting rising bile, Sue looked down at herself. She was lying on a gurney, a bright-blue hospital gown covering most of her body. The little that wasn’t, her forearms and legs, were covered in chunky black scabs. 

People didn’t stay hurt in heaven. 

“‘Ello?” She called out to the hallway with some effort. It felt like she had been gargling cotton balls. “Nurse?”

Sue frantically looked around for a call button. Before she could find it, a young man in scrubs came in. 

“You’re awake!” He said brightly.  

“Water, please,” She rasped. With a nod, the man grabbed a cup and filled it up from the sink by her gurney, handing it to her when it was full. She downed it in one gulp before handing it back to him to refill. 

“How are you feeling, Miss Storm?” He asked as he turned the faucet back on. 

“Doctor, “ She corrected him. “And I need a mirror.” She had to see the abrasions on her chest. Her skin had been worn practically to the fatty layer: how the hell was she still breathing?

He sighed. “I don’t know if you want to do that. Ma’am. The doctors did the best they could, but the damage was severe --”

“I’m a big girl, I can handle it. Mirror, please.” She said as she jumped off the gurney to stand up. 

With a look on his face like a kicked puppy, the man pulled open a drawer from the cabinet next to the sink and pulled out a hand mirror. 

Sue took it gingerly before bunching up her hospital gown at her sternum and holding the mirror up to her torso. 

“ Miss,” The man said. 

“Doctor,” Sue reminded him absentmindedly. Most of her brain power was focused on her injuries. Or perhaps more accurately, the lack of them. Where once inches-deep gashes covered her stomach, weeping blood, there were now thick bands of bruises and thin ribbons of stitches.

Sue’s heart dropped into her stomach.

“How long have I been out?” She asked, yanking her dress back down. 

“Just a couple of hours! I thought you were gonna look at your face! ” The man said, covering his eyes with his hands. 

“That’s impossible.” She replied. For her to have healed this much in weeks , forget hours, was unheard of. 

“That the first thing you’d want to look at would be your face?” The man yelled. 

“No, I --” She didn’t know why she was bothering trying to calm the man down. “How long have I been here? Don’t lie to me.” 

“Two hours ago, I swear! With the rest of the meteor survivors!” He replied. 

“The rest,” Meteor? “there were other survivors?” She asked, rising hope fighting dread in her gut. They were dead. She knew they were dead. Why would she ask and have to remember all over again?

The man nodded, still not looking at her. “They found five people in the crater. One was you, one’s still being treated, and the others were released an hour ago!”

Her pulse thundered in her head as she asked, “The ones who got released. Where are they right now?”

“They’re in the waiting room, I think --” Sue bolted. 

“MISS!” The man yelled after her. But she was already gone, following the brightly colored signs on the walls to the waiting room.  

Pushing the double doors open wide, Sue skidded to a stop as she took in the scene. 

Sitting in uncomfortable-looking plastic chairs were Reed, Johnny, and Victor, back from the dead. They were in different clothes. Sweatshirts and loose pants and crocs , all of them. And while they were decidedly better than dead, they all looked worse for wear. Johnny had gauze wrapped around his head and left hand; he was pressing a wet towel to them with his right. Reed had two black eyes, and his right arm was in a sling. Victor's sweatshirt was distended by the length of bandages circling his abdomen.

Reed was scribbling something on a brochure. Victor sat beside him, his head on Reed’s shoulder as he talked and gestured at something Reed had written. Only Johnny, who had been listlessly watching the ER door swing back and forth, saw Sue come in. 

“Sue!” He said, jumping up from his seat.   

She ran to him and crushed him against her. “Johnny,” She choked out.

“I think you’re suffocating me,” Johnny said breathlessly. She only squeezed tighter. 

“Sue, thank god you’re okay!” Reed said somewhere beside her. 

She let go of Johnny to hug Reed. “Your head’s on the right way!” She told him as she let go, drunk on relief.

“Thanks?” Reed rubbed his neck self-consciously. 

She turned to look at Victor, standing with an arm wrapped around Reed for balance, before wrapping him in a hug too. 

“MA’AM!” The nurse panted as he finally caught up to Sue. “You can’t just do that!”

“Woah, did you break out?” Johnny asked excitedly. 

“No,” Sue said at the same time the nurse said, “ Yes!” 

Sue shot the nurse a dirty look. “Don’t listen to him. What happened?” 

“We’re still not quite sure, to be honest.” Reed began. “I’m reasonably certain of the how: the station was exposed to a huge amount of radiation. Subsequently, the electrical systems shorted out and the batteries powering the ship exploded. But the why seems to defy explanation. Victor and I have been throwing some ideas around --”

“My dear, I believe she meant what happened to us. While she was unconscious.” Victor cut off at the pass what almost certainly would have turned into a lecture. 

“Oh!” Reed switched gears. “I’m fine. Just dislocated my shoulder.”

“He threw up when they put it back in.” Johnny stage-whispered. 

“The doctor said that was a completely normal reaction!” Reed said, heat rising to his face.

“And you two?” Sue asked.

“ Thank you for asking--” Johnny started. 

“Some shrapnel lightly pierced my side: the surgeon was able to remove it without incident. Johnny has some first and second-degree burns across his body,” Victor talked over Johnny. 

“Rude,” Johnny said. 

“And Ben?” Sue asked, a little afraid of the answer. 

“He had quite a lot of shrapnel under his skin, but none of it hit anything important,” Victor assured her. “They were finishing his stitches when the three of us left for the waiting room.” 

Sue let out a deep breath. “So, you’re all….” She hesitated, trying to find a word that encapsulated ‘obviously very hurt but not dead, which dramatically exceeded my expectations.'

“Good?” She settled on. 

“ You’re the one we were worried about. The doctors said you had the worst friction burns they’d ever seen!” Reed told her. 

Before she could ask any of them to expand on their miraculous diagnoses, a strong voice called out, “SUZIE!” 

“Ben!” Sue called back as he swept her up in a hug that lifted her off the floor. 

“You’re ok?” Sue asked when he set her down. 

He chuckled. “Better than ever. I’m the one who should ask you that, Suze. The last time I saw you, you had more MDs on ya than a stethoscope sale!” 

“As charming as ever, Grimm,” Victor said sarcastically before turning to the group. “Now that we’re all up, we should start making our way to the airport.”

“Slow your roll. I’m not leaving ‘til I get pants,” Ben said. 

“I second that,” Sue nodded, tightening the ties on the back of her hospital gown. 

“And it’s not like you could actually go anywhere,” The nurse added. All five of them stopped to stare: questions about his statement or, in Victor’s case, his impudence in joining their conversation, clear in their expressions. 

The nurse swallowed. “All the flights have been grounded. You know, because of the fire. And the smoke. Probably more the smoke, I guess, with planes.” 

“ Great, ” Ben grumbled. 

“The planes can’t fly through moderate smoke?” Reed asked incredulously. 

“They’re not very big planes. It’s a public airport.” The nurse explained. 

Ben groaned. “ Double great, ” Now they’d have to bum a ride from some rich schmuck who didn’t know two shits about flying to get home.

“Maybe we can drive,” Reed said, turning to face the nurse. “Where exactly are we?”

“Salida, Colorado.” He replied. 

At that, all of them but Johnny let out a noise of disgust. “Oh yeah, road trip!”

“I refuse to drive back to New York with you. Going to hell once was enough.” Victor told Johnny. 

“We’ll just wait until the smoke clears,” Sue decided. “Is there anywhere that we can stay?” 

The nurse thought for a second. “I’m not totally sure. We’re a big ski town, you see, don’t get much business during this time of year. The Big Baldy Hostel is open year-round --”

“ Awesome ,” Johnny cut him off. “Can we walk there, and do they take cards?” He pulled out three separate platinum or above-level credit cards. 

“Where did you get those?” Sue asked. 

“I brought them with me when we blasted off! Never leave home without at least one . How did you think I got us all these barely-better-than-an-ass-gown threads?” He gestured to his outfit. 

“There are taxis in front of the hospital,” Reed said, looking out the waiting room window to the parking lot. 

“We can use Johnny’s cards to pay. To the hostel we go, then,” Victor said. 

Ben bristled. “Not before we get me some pants!”

“I wouldn’t be averse to also getting something to eat,” Reed mused. “I read about this restaurant in the town brochure that’s open all year.” He held up the glossy pamphlet he’d been writing on. Ben and Johnny nodded in agreement. 

“So clothes for you two, then food, then hostel.” Victor summed up. “Let’s get out of here.” 

A VERY BAD RESTAURANT EXPERIENCE 

Between the off-season and the fire, the aptly-named Main Street was all but abandoned. Sandwiched between a closed-for-the-summer boutique and ski supply store stood the only restaurant still open: Tony’s Bar and Grill. 

“Oh, good. It’s New York-themed.” Ben groaned as their motley crew passed the threshold. “Because becoming a human pincushion wasn’t enough.”

“The town brochure said that it was mob-themed,” Reed said feebly, looking around at the hanging Tommy guns and vintage shots of Brooklyn Bridge. As soon as Reed finished his sentence, the restaurant’s speakers began playing “New York, New York.”

“ New York City mob themed.” Victor amended. He patted Ben in sympathy. Having your culture mutilated for cash was not new to him. Mercifully, besides a few patrons at the bar, the place was empty.

Johnny, who had been lost in thought about the very unsightly burns that crisscrossed his body and, more importantly, his face, brightened. “Oh, kickass. Do you think they got gin? I’ve never had gin.” 

“ Johnny!” Sue said angrily.

“What? Isn’t the drinking age like 14 out here in the boonies?” Johnny said. 

“You’re thinking of Europe,” Reed said. 

“It doesn’t matter!” Sue exclaimed, turning to face her brother. The relief that he was still alive was fading, and rage was quickly taking its place. “Starting now, you are on lockdown. You do not leave my sight. No more black cards,” She yanked the credit cards out of Johnny’s hand where he had been fiddling with them. “No more cars, no more phones, you are going to school and coming home and that’s it!” 

Johnny let out a noise of disbelief. “ Come on ! Nothing even happened!”

 Sue’s face began turning red. 

“You know, they got a program for troubled kids at my Aunt’s temple. They clean up old people’s apartments and stuff.” Ben told Sue, who gave him a sharp nod before turning back to Johnny. 

“Scratch that: you’re gonna do Ben’s thing and every other public service volunteer opportunity I can find. You will be picking up trash off the interstate every weekend for the next two years, and with a little luck, you’ll also pick up some sense!” 

Before Johnny could respond, or more likely dig himself into an even deeper hole, the hostess returned from her smoke break. 

“Welcome to Tony’s. If you can eat here, you can eat anywhere. How many in your party?” She said, seemingly unfazed by the visibly injured, crocs-and-bad-pun-shirt-wearing quintet in front of her.

“ Hi, ” Johnny responded brightly, happy to change the subject. “Table for five, please?” 

“Please follow me to your table.” The hostess replied boredly. She grabbed five laminated menus from the pile next to a signed photo of Rudy Giuliani and walked into the dining room, not bothering to check if they were following. 

“What can I get you to drink?” The hostess readied a pen and notepad from her apron as they sat down.

“Could we order our food first? We’ve had a long day.” Sue asked

“Sure. Would you like to know the specials?” She replied. 

Ben grimaced. “Three pizzas: sausage and olive. And water.” 

“Well, hold on, Ben. I kinda wanna hear what the specials are,” Johnny interjected. 

“Kid, you've already got one whooping in your future-- you don’t need another,” Ben responded darkly, but it was too late. It had already begun. 

“Today, we have NYPD pork medallions of honor, the Swimming With the Fishes carp sandwich, and for dessert, we got Big Apple fritters.” The hostess rattled off. 

“Oh, fun,” Johnny said. 

“I hate you,” Ben told Johnny before returning to face the hostess. “Pizza and water please,” He looked down at her name tag, “Barb.” 

She turned to face the others. “Pizza good with all of you?” Sue, Johnny, and Ben nodded, while Victor and Reed simply sounded off in approval, bent over a napkin with the pen Reed filched from the hospital.

“Great. I’ll be back with the water.” Barb scribbled something on her notepad and was off. 

“No, that’s impossible. The coronagraphs showed no signs of a solar flare. The radiation wasn’t coming from the sun.” Victor said, taking the pen from Reed and crossing out an equation. 

“At that intensity, if they had, the surface would have been ashes by the time we got back,” Reed agreed. “But how else could we have been exposed to that much radiation? It was nuclear-reactor level.” Reed straightened in his chair. “What about the CNSA? We know they’ve been working on nuclear thermal propulsion. If we hit an unregistered craft --”

Victor shook his head. “They would have had to crack cold fusion and how to hide from our sensor array. I sincerely doubt they could do both.” 

“So a massive energy source that was not man-made seemingly appeared out of nowhere, destroyed the Argo by mere proximity, but has somehow not affected the Earth in any way.” Reed summed their problem up. 

“More or less.” 

Reed groaned, choosing to lie facedown on the table with his good arm covering his head rather than continue to probe the cruel, life-ruining mysteries of astrophysics. 

“You guys seem like you’re having fun,” Ben said. 

“Yes, Grimm. Doing post-mortems on our five-billion dollar space station that exploded out of nowhere, three hours post-crash following an escape pod malfunction on a cheap napkin in the middle of fucking nowhere is my favorite pass-time. Second only to shooting myself in the foot and backing onto a rake.” Victor responded. 

“Victor,” Reed said disapprovingly from his arm tent. 

“The company is done now. I hope you’re all aware. There are going to be lawsuits, hearings. We will be lucky if we don’t see jail time.” Victor continued, unabashed. 

“How’s that? We followed every safety precaution known to man,” Upon seeing the look on his tablemates' faces, Johnny amended, “Well, you guys did. And the only people up there were us, and we’re all fine. How could we possibly get sued?” 

“It doesn’t matter how many rules we followed: it failed. Half of our funding came from the US government. They will not let that much money go down the drain without consequences. Not to mention the response from the private sector. Congratulations, everyone: we have handed the commercial space industry to Elon Musk on a silver platter.” 

Everyone groaned.

“Don’t say that, I’ll throw up again,” Reed said miserably. 

“There’s a bucket full of sawdust by the Bugsy Siegel painting. They’re ready for you.” Johnny said. 

The hostess returned with their drinks, setting down five glasses printed with the logos of various New York City sports teams and a pitcher full of water and ice. 

“Food will be out soon.” She informed the group before walking away. 

Victor sighed as he poured himself a big glass. “That’s not even considering that disaster of a reentry.” 

“Yeah, what was up with that? Also, can somebody pass me the sugar packets? I wanna DIY some soda,” Johnny agreed as he followed suit. 

Ben picked up the entire spice caddy and threw it across the room. “Whoops.” 

“I don’t even want to think about that right now,” Reed said under his arm. “I am full up on inexplicable disasters.”

“At least we’re all still alive.” Victor placed a full glass of water next to Reed. At this, Sue paled considerably. “I have no doubt in Reed’s and my own ability to rebuild.” 

“Yeah.” She muttered. 

“Something wrong, Suze?” Ben picked up on her sudden change in demeanor immediately. 

“No, I’m sorry. It’s just...” Sue sighed. “I was awake for a couple minutes. In the crater. I could’ve sworn all of you dead. I thought I was a couple of seconds away from joining you.”

Sue let out a shaky breath. “We should be dead,” She whispered quickly: as if she was trying to keep the powers-that-be from finding out. 

“I keep thinking of ways that it all could have happened, and in every one, we all die. The radiation alone should have killed us on the station.” 

Nobody spoke for a moment, taking that in. The rest of them couldn’t remember anything from the crash besides a vague sense of panic and pain. Sue was absolutely right, of course. It was without question a miracle that they were all still standing. But they were scientists. They didn’t deal in miracles. Each of them was intimately familiar with the fragility of the human condition. On every mind at that table in Tony’s Bar and Grill was the same question. Why now? Why us ?  

Ben broke the silence, wrapping an arm tightly around Sue and squeezing her. “Hey. We’re all here, right? So there has to be a way. I know this is gonna sound crazy to you brains,” He nodded at Sue, Victor, and Reed. “But sometimes things just work out. It doesn’t have to be anything more than that.”

Sue smiled wanly at him, clearly unconvinced.  

Victor held his cup aloft. “To being alive.” 

“To being alive,” Ben echoed, grabbing an empty glass and clinking it against Victor’s. Johnny and Reed hastily followed suit. 

“And hey, to Reed and Victor! Congratulations!” Johnny as he raised his glass.

“Oh god,” Victor said.  

“May your marriage be as nerdy as your courtship,” Johnny said, doing his best impression of a priest.

“Don’t -- I -- He hasn’t said yes yet!” Victor sputtered. 

“He didn’t?” Johnny asked incredulously. He turned to face Reed, “You didn’t? He proposed to you in space . You love space! That’s like somebody proposing to me at Coachella on a Maserati!” 

“I couldn’t!” Reed interjected. “You popped out of the vent before I could say anything, and then the station started exploding! We tabled the discussion!” 

“ What,” Sue and Ben said in disturbing synchrony. 

“Romantic,” Victor said self-deprecatingly. The perfect proposal, all but completely ruined by idiotic teenagers and inexplicable outer space phenomena. 

“It was!” Reed grabbed Victor’s hand where he had begun rubbing his temple. “It was. I loved it. And now that we’re not in life-threatening danger: Victor, nothing would make me happier --” Victor clapped his other hand over Reed’s mouth. 

“ No. We are not getting engaged here , of all places. When we get back to New York, I’ll make reservations at Le Bernardin.” Victor said quickly, letting go and taking a big swig from his glass. “God, I wish this was alcoholic.” He muttered. Reed squeezed his wrist in sympathy. 

“You crawled through the vents? ” Sue growled. 

“Well yeah. The door to the cargo hold wouldn’t open from the inside. How else was I supposed to get to the rest of the ship?” Johnny replied. 

“YOU SNUCK ABOARD THE CARGO HOLD?” Sue screeched.

“We didn’t have life support in there during launch. How the hell are you alive right now?” Ben asked incredulously. 

“Powered up one of the EVA suits, duh,” Johnny said with a grin.

Ben laughed in disbelief. “Good grief kid, you’re even stupider than I thought.” 

“Hey,” Johnny said, wounded. “How is that stupider than any of the stuff you do in the air force? You told me once you jumped into the cockpit of a plane from another plane mid-flight !”

“Well, for one thing, I had years of training before I did that. I also wasn’t in fucking space!” Ben explained. 

“What would you have done if we had to jettison the cargo? What if the vents had been blocked?” Sue began.

“I had a plan! I’ve been staring at the blueprints for the last three years! I could have found my way around blindfolded.” 

“We had a plan too, and look where we are,” Sue responded gravely. “Jesus, Johnny. If Reed and Victor hadn’t found you in time --”

“I found them, ” Johnny said, voice rising. 

“If they hadn’t found you , you would still be up there! Oh my god, you’d still be up there.” Sue gasped, tears welling up in her eyes. 

“Suzie,” Ben said consolingly. 

“It was a phenomenally bad plan, Johnny.” Victor concurred. 

Johnny took a second to look at everyone, then scoffed. “Are you kidding me? I wasn’t some baby wandering around a construction site. I may not be as smart as the rest of you, but I’m still pretty fucking smart! It was my engines that got us up there. Half of the patents in that stupid can had my name on them!”

“Knowledge and wisdom are separate things, Johnny.” Reed tried. “I know it’s hard to understand at your age --”

“It never would have gotten off the ground without me, and you guys didn’t even think to invite me to the launch,” Johnny kept going. “And then Sue tries to buy me off with a trip to Disneyland ? I’m SIXTEEN!”

“We were trying to avoid this exact situation ! You are a minor!” Victor snapped.

“I wasn’t minor when you guys were designing it, was I? The Argo was just as much mine as it was yours, AND I SHOULD HAVE BEEN ON THE ROCKET IN THE FIRST PLACE!” He said, his voice rising with each syllable. 

Ben stood up from his chair, looking down at Johnny. 

“You are sixteen. The only thing you should have been doing is your homework.” Ben growled. 

Johnny’s face curled into a scowl, and he swung his arm across their table, sending their glasses flying. “STOP TREATING ME LIKE I’M A KID!” He yelled. 

“You sonuvah --” Ben began, accent getting thicker as he walked up to Johnny, intent clear in his scowl. Johnny, rage making him brave, stood up from the table. His eyes never left Ben’s as he raised his fists. 

“ Guys !” Reed yelled, breaking the growing tension. He heaved in a deep breath. “We almost died today. We’re all tired, scared, and not in the best frames of mind right now. Can we please take a time out? Just until we get back home?”

Ben and Johnny looked at each other for one heavy moment before they both returned to their seats.

Nobody bothered to restart the conversation. A painful ten minutes later, Barb the hostess returned with the pizzas. She took one look at the mess of broken glass and water and said, “That’s gonna cost extra,” before putting the platter down on the now-empty table and walking off to find a broom. 

…

On the other side of the city, Salida Police Sergeant Garry White, the only policeman left at the scene of the “meteor” crash, was having a quick power bar in his car as he looked over the crater. 

It was about half the length of a football field and 15 feet deep, filled with freshly turned dirt and the black-ash remains of trees that had the misfortune to grow there before the meteor crashed. Overhead, fire department helicopters from across the state of Colorado were spraying water on the wildfire. 

For many people, this would be a very disheartening scene to witness. For Sergeant White, it was the best thing that had ever happened to him. 

This was going to be national news! A gigantic meteor crashes into the Rocky Mountains, causing an (initially) uncontrolled wildfire! A city is on the verge of destruction, only to be pulled back from the brink by the tireless labors of the valiant Salida Emergency Services! Sergeant White himself had personally dragged at least five fallen-over trees off of nearby roadways. 

Garry was so caught up in imagining the medals and exclusive interviews in his future that he didn’t notice the fleet of black SUVs roaring down the road he had just cleared. 

Men and women in nondescript gray clothing poured out of the cars, tastefully unmemorable by design. If someone was asked to describe them after an hour-long conversation, they would not be able to give even the most basic description, so forgettable was their legion. Their leader was only recognizable by the gold watch he wore on his left wrist: it was a gift from the President a few administrations ago. This man walked up to Garry’s car with the strut of a predator. He tapped on the window of the patrol car sharply and gestured for it to be rolled down.  

“Can I help you?” Sergeant White asked in his most official-sounding voice. The press here already! “I’m afraid this area is off-limits to civilians right now.” 

The head agent smiled with all his teeth. “That’s no problem. I’m not a civilian.” He held up his badge. 

“I’m not familiar with that agency,” Garry said. 

“We’re new.” The agent responded. “Are you the only officer on duty here?” 

“I’m afraid I am,” Garry straightened up, getting ready to give the speech he had been drafting in his head since he first got to the crater. “The Salida Police Force is severely underfunded. We can only afford to have one officer on the night shift. Usually, it's no big deal. Until something like this happens. We got lucky this time, you know, that this thing crashed where it did. What if it had hit the town? That’s why I’m going to petition the mayor for a higher budget for us boys in blue. I had to drag those trees off the road with this old girl,” He patted the car door. “Barely got them all off. Imagine what I could do with a tank!” 

“Uh-huh,” The agent responded before stabbing him with a syringe. It was filled with a specially-made sedative with enhanced memory-erasing properties, designed for covert cleanup work like this. When the poor bastard woke up, he would hardly be able to remember his own name.

Confident that the man was down for the count, the agent waved one of his subordinates over to drive Garry and his patrol car down the mountain to the nearest bar parking lot. He then turned around to his subordinates, who had begun setting up. Gigantic collapsable storage units were being dragged out of the trunks of the SUVs. Military tents were being set up across the rim of the crater, each with a specific purpose. Communications, decontamination, strategy…

“Alright, everyone! The boss needs this place spotless by dawn! The bodies are first priority; if you find one, do not touch it . God only knows what alien shit those sons of bitches found up there.” A woman in a lab coat yelled. 

“Sir!” An agent clutching papers to her chest sprinted up to the head agent. 

“Yes?” The man in charge replied, slightly worried. His people didn’t get scared, but this woman had run over like the devil was on her heels. 

“We just got the police reports from the first responders. They called in an 11-41!” The woman wheezed. 

“Great , ” He sighed. “Call in a bomb threat to lock down the hospital!” He yelled past the agent. 

“God damnit, we’re gonna have to wipe the whole town at this rate. Who the fuck calls an ambulance for a bunch of stiffs?” 

“They didn’t,” The junior agent said gravely as she pointed to some text on the paper. “That’s the problem. The EMTs said that they found five people in the crater, alive .”

“The crew survived the crash.” He said. The woman nodded. 

“ Fuck! ” The head agent said emphatically. “Somebody get me a tac team!” 

CATALYST

The ride over to the Big Baldy Hostel went by in silence, and once they all had rooms, the five went their separate ways to pass out. Sue and Johnny in bunk beds, Victor and Reed on a queen, and Ben by himself on a twin. 

Except Reed couldn’t pass out. The sheets were too scratchy. The air conditioner’s hum was deafening. His life’s work had also quite literally just blown up in his face, which tends to weigh on a man. So instead of sleeping, he found himself staring at the ceiling in darkness, Victor a warm weight at his side. 

Feelings were a funny thing. Not just from a biochemical or philosophical perspective, the actual daily experience of having emotions was an endless well of possible research topics. For instance, having many at once exactly mimics the effects of having none at all. 

It was beneficial at the moment, he decided. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to smash something or start screaming or get very, very drunk, and none of those were good ideas to attempt in a hostel with very thin walls, the other sides of which currently held his closest friends who he had nearly killed less than twelve hours ago. Also, his fiancé, who was on this side of the thin walls. 

The thought of that --fiancé-- broke through the membrane of numbness to send a jolt of joy through him. Getting married was never really in his life plan. Hell, having anyone in his life besides Ben hadn’t been part of the life plan. Marriage was compromise, the middle path of modern existence that people walked so they didn’t have to be alone when they died. Reed had never wanted to compromise. He wanted a life of experiments, unknown knowledge, and new frontiers. He wanted to go to the stars. He didn’t need somebody dragging him back down to Earth; he had gravity for that. 

The love that fills his life now would have been impossible for a younger Reed to imagine. And not just romantic love. He had friends now, plural! When considering the people in Reed’s life today, the bonds he had with them, and the bonds they had with each other, someone sentimental might round it up to a family. 

And four hours ago, he nearly lost it all.

Reed ran through the numbers again in his head, although he already knew what they would be-- impossible. Between Victor, Johnny, himself, and the league of double-checkers Sue hired for them, every conceivable factor was accounted for in the launch. For anything to have gone wrong at all, much less to the point of a catastrophic system failure, meant there was something that all of them weren’t seeing. That he wasn’t seeing. 

“When you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” He had never been much of a Sherlock fan, not like his Dad had been. He must have fallen asleep to his father reading those books to him a thousand times. 

He heard frantic footsteps in the hallway before the click of a light switch and the slam of a door. Someone going to the bathroom, and not very happily. He had wondered about that pizza. Reed had been feeling a little off himself: his whole body was tingling. Until now, he had assumed it was a psychosomatic symptom of his emotional turmoil. This didn’t bode well for his future. Hopefully whatever it was would wait until they were back home to kick in for him. 

Someone else got up and began pounding on the bathroom door. 

“I NEED IN THERE!” Johnny yelled. 

“TAKE A FUCKING NUMBER!” Ben yelled back. 

“ What’s happening?” Victor mumbled in Latverian, not opening his eyes.  

“Something rotten in the food, I think,” Reed responded in kind. 

Victor moaned in pain. “I believe it got me as well. I can hardly move.” 

“BEN, GET OUT!” Johnny shouted outside.  

“Those dolts are going to get us removed from the premises,” Victor said in English. 

“I got it,” Reed pressed a kiss to Victor’s head before walking out into the hallway, closing the door on his way. Johnny was standing in front of the bathroom, stripped down to his underwear and drenched in sweat. He was covered in fingernail scratches and was scrubbing at his arms like he was getting ready for surgery, minus the water and soap. 

“Reed!” He said. “They put something in my fucking bed, man. I can’t stop itching, I have to get it off, AND BEN WON’T COME OUT OF THE BATHROOM!” He howled at the door. Johnny gave Reed a once-over. “How are you still wearing clothes? It’s like a million degrees in here!”

Inside the bathroom, Ben groaned. 

“Ben? Are you alright?” Reed asked. 

“Reed, call an ambulance, I --” Ben gritted out before he simply began screaming. 

“Ben!” Reed called, pushing Johnny out of the way to try the doorknob. The entire house shook, and a violent shudder threw Johnny and Reed off their feet. The entire bathroom had just fallen to the first floor. 

“BEN!” Reed yelled, trying to get back up and run down to find him. But the tingling had gotten worse: his legs felt like jelly. 

Next to him, Johnny began seizing, fingers digging into his skin hard enough to bleed. Reed tried to inch closer to Johnny with his elbows, but every time he put weight on them, he just sank back to the ground. 

“Johnny, stay calm!” Reed tried. 

I can’t -- it’s too -- I’m so hot, ” Johnny stammered out. 

“SUE!” Reed shouted. “SUE, SOMETHING’S HAPPENING!” She was a doctor-- she would know what to do. 

And then Johnny burst into flames. 

Reed reflexively rolled away, clapping his hands to his ears as the fire alarm went off. All across his body, the tingling feeling intensified. He glanced down at himself and gasped in horror at what he found. He hadn’t rolled away -- not as he should have. Instead of completing a complete turn, his torso had twisted around itself like taffy. 

The door to his and Victor’s room reopened. Victor was slumped in the doorway, holding on to the frame for dear life. His skin was a horrible shade of gray. 

“What…what is happening to me?” He said, the sound more akin to the screech of metal-on-metal than a human voice. 

“Victor,” Reed gasped from the floor. 

“ Reed, ” Victor said in horror.  

One room over, the door opened, seemingly by itself. “What’s the big -- oh my god !” Susan said, but Reed couldn’t see her. 

“Sue?” Reed asked. 

A thick quilt floated out from Sue and Johnny’s room before throwing itself over Johnny. 

“We need to smother the fire!” Sue’s voice said, but she was nowhere to be seen. 

“Susan, where are you?” Victor called out, voice like a car crash.

“What are you talking about? I’m right in front of you!” Sue asked. 

A horrible grinding sound came from the hole where the bathroom used to be. Something began pulling itself up. An amalgamation of rocky-looking lumps piled one on top of the other in a crude simulacrum of a human hand came to grasp at the floor. 

“ Guys… ” A booming voice echoed up from below. Reed would know it anywhere. 

“Ben?” He asked. 

“ Reed, help me…” Ben wailed. 

“Ben, just stay there!” Sue cried from wherever she was. 

The hallway began to strobe red and blue as the sound of sirens joined the chorus started by the fire alarm. Incredible reaction time from the authorities, all things considered. 

“HEY! WE’RE UP HERE!” Sue yelled. 

“WE HAVE THE BUILDING SURROUNDED! COME OUT WITH YOUR HANDS UP!” A masculine voice demanded. 

Before any of them could sneeze , much less exit the hostel, a rock came through the window facing the street. 

It rolled right in front of Reed, where he realized that it wasn’t a rock but a pressurized dispersion device: similar to those used for tear gas. It began spewing a white vapor on impact. 

It wasn’t tear gas, luckily for them. Some kind of aerosolized sedative. Which was less lucky.

As Reed’s misshapen body became heavy and Victor crashed onto the floor beside him, Reed had one final thought: “When you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” Reed supposed he needed to modify his definition of impossible. 

…

“WE HAVE THE BUILDING SURROUNDED! COME OUT WITH YOUR HANDS UP!” The SWAT leader announced. 

“What the shit do you think you’re doing?” The lead agent yelled as he snatched the megaphone out of the other man’s hands. 

The SWAT guy frowned. “We have to give them a chance to surrender.” 

“We have been asked by the President of the United States to keep this quiet.” The agent spit back. He dropped the megaphone to the ground and stomped on it. “And we can’t do that if you announce to every Tom, Dick, and Harry in a five-mile radius that we’re here!” 

The agent walked the short distance to his team, who were clustered around their mobile command center.

“They’re all on the second floor.” A technician watching a thermal scan of the hostel told him as he approached. 

“Fire at will,” He replied. Beside him, an agent with a modified rocket launcher shot a load through the second-story window. 

“Jesus Christ.” SWAT guy muttered. 

The agent checked his gold watch. “Retrieval in three minutes.”

One of the agents next to him coughed in surprise. “Sir, the sedative only takes thirty seconds to work.” Time was precious in their line of work. A second’s pause translated to possibly dozens of witnesses, and hundreds of thousands of dollars in collateral. 

“The people in that building survived a direct hit from an ICBM in the air .” The agent responded harshly. “We’ll let them stew in it.” 

This wasn’t how it was supposed to go -- He was supposed to be scraping meat paste off the ground and putting it in nicely labeled plastic baggies. Instead, he was conducting an on-the-fly covert military operation on United States soil .

If Supervisory Special Agent Paulletz was being completely honest with himself, despite working for a top-secret branch of an already top-secret organization, he was more of a janitor than James Bond. SWORD was created to combat and contain interstellar threats. But there weren’t all that many alien empires chomping at the bit to invade. In fifteen years, Paulletz had never once seen combat. Or an actual living alien -- they had a strange tendency to either die when entering the atmosphere or immediately after leaving their ships. War of the Worlds was more accurate than you’d think. He didn’t fight aliens. He just cleaned up after them, making sure their existence was hidden from the general public. And most of the time, he was happy to do it. The Earth was already completely fucked without adding extraterrestrials to the mix. 

“Get Deems on the horn. Tell him to double whatever he was gonna put in the water supply.” Paulletz told the communications manager before he turned back to the SWAT team leader-- He couldn’t remember his name. Smith or something equally white and boring. 

“Get your men ready.” 

“To do what? You’ve already knocked out everybody in the building.” 

The SWATs weren’t his guys -- there weren’t any close enough. Instead, they got some lunkheads on loan from the FBI. “To get them out of the building and into the transport.” He pointed to the semi-truck they normally used to move evidence. “CUT-LASS PRODUCE” It said on the side. 

Smith looked at it dubiously. “And that takes them to jail?” 

Jesus Christ. 

“Yes, of course.” A gray-haired man said as he approached. “Forgive my associate here-- We’ve been trying to catch these criminals for some time now. He’s a little jumpy.” He held out his hand for Smith to shake. Smith took it, albeit out of convention more than respect. 

“Who are you?” Smith asked. 

The older man chuckled, not letting go of Smith’s hand. “I can always spot a vet. Where’d you serve?” 

“Uh, Iraq,” Smith said, confused by the change in topic. 

“Oh! Hell of a mess over there.” The man shook his head. “I did two tours of Vietnam myself. You got a family, soldier?” 

“Yes, sir.”

“You love your family?” 

“Of course, why --” 

The man pulled Smith in by their enjoined hands. “Then I suggest you stop asking questions and do as you’re told.” He whispered in his ear. “Or God only knows what could happen to Hannah Smyke and little Jenny at 5555 Adobe Court.”

Smith-- Smyke? Turned white as a ghost. 

“Yes, sir.” He replied. 

“Good to hear.” The old man said with a smile. “Get to it, then!” He released Smyke and clapped a fatherly hand on his shoulder. 

Smyke walked away, speaking rapidly into his walkie-talkie. 

As soon as he was out of earshot, the old man turned to Agent Paulletz.

“General Harrison,” The agent greeted. “I didn’t know you would be overseeing this mission on the ground.” 

“Lot of surprises today,” Harrison responded. “Sitrep?”

“We’ve got all five of them in there, just waiting for the tranqs to kick in so we can take them into custody.” 

“You cover your tracks?”

“I was, until fuckhead decided to play good cop. Got people dispatched to drug the water supply. The news will pick up on the food poisoning outbreak, but nobody will remember anything.” 

“How behind are you on cleanup?” 

“Farther than I’d like to be. Probably won’t make dawn.”  

Harrison grunted in consideration. “If you’re putting that much juice in the water, you can swing a noon exfil.”

“Yes, sir.” 

In front of them, the assembled SWAT team, all adorned in gas masks, broke down the front door. 

“We know who did this to them?” Paulletz asked. 

“Who did this to them?” Harrison repeated. 

“Well, we didn’t shoot ‘em down for the hell of it, did we? I assumed they pulled in some kind of bioweapon, Alien style. Who was it, the Kree? Shi’ar?” Paulletz sucked in a breath through his teeth. “Christ, it’s not the Skrulls, is it? Hate those freaks.” 

Harrison barked a laugh. “No, nothing like that.”

“So what is it, then?” 

Harrison thought on his answer for a moment. “You ever make an omelet?” 

“Sometimes. Why?” 

Before Harrison could explain, a piercing scream rang out from the hostel. Seconds later, a SWAT sprinted out the front door of the hostel, gas mask in hand and vomit running down her bulletproof vest.  

Paulletz marched over to where she had fallen to her knees. “What in the fuck are you doing?” He yelled. She didn’t respond, too busy muttering something that sounded like Latin and crossing herself. 

“AGENT!” He shouted. “ANSWER ME!” 

Two more SWAT agents exited the hostel, carrying a stretcher between them. 

Atop the stretcher was a monster. 

It looked like the kid from the end of Willy Wonka, stretched out and around beyond what was humanly possible. The limbs couldn’t even fit on the stretcher-- they were dragging on the ground as the SWATs carried it out. 

“God in heaven,” Paulletz whispered. 

Beside him, Harrison whistled. 

“They all look like that?” Harrison asked the SWATs as they put the monster in the trailer. 

“More or less.” One of the men answered hollowly. 

Harrison whistled again. “ Damn . And it’s still alive?” 

“He’s breathing.” The other replied. 

Harrison grinned from ear to ear. “That works. That definitely works. ” 

Paulletz’s blood ran cold. “What the hell does that mean?” He asked. 

“It means when you want to make an omelet, sometimes you gotta break some eggs,” Harrison replied before looking over to Paulletz’s team. “One of you get me a line to the Raft!”