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Victor and Reed jointly owned half of the thirty-fourth floor of the Baxter Building as well as the entirety of the thirty-fifth, a purchase that Reed had inherited from his father after he died. 

While most people would agree that opening a laboratory on the top story of a Manhattan skyscraper was a very bad idea, it was significantly less of a bad idea in 1987 when Nathaniel Richards bought the place. New York City was such a shithole at the time that it was cheaper to buy an old industrial space in the heart of town and convert it than to build one somewhere else. Add to thatthe easy access to the harbor and neighbors who didn’t ask questions and it was almost perfect.

Except for the commute. 

It wasn’t like Nathaniel lived that far out -- he had a mansion upstate only an hour’s drive away. But he quickly realized that making the drive back home in his Mercedes at the usual time he got off work (around midnight) was a very bad idea.Three carjackings, four robberies, and one almost stabbing later, Nathaniel decided that it would be best to buy one of the apartments on the floor below as a place to stay until the sun rose and the streets got a little safer. And a few years later when he moved to the city permanently, a place to bring special friends without having to risk them meeting his son. 

After Modern Solutions was burgled in 2008, Reed and Victor moved operations to Nathaniel’s old lab. And unlike Nathaniel, they decided to move into the apartment below less out of fear of getting murdered and more of Manhattan real estate prices. Unfortunately for them, the elder Richards had never been one for cleaning, and was too paranoid to hire a maid. Pair with a decade of being essentially abandoned after Nathaniel died, and what you got was something out of a disaster movie: trash was literally piled up to the ceiling. 

This didn’t bother Reed much as he saw the apartment, as he saw all apartments, as a place to sleep and eat without disturbing his experiments. It did bother Victor. He had promised himself years ago that as long as he could help it, he never live in squalor again.

It took him four months and the services of a company that usually did crime scene clean-up, but Victor managed to unearth the living space underneath the grime. Only to discover that besides cleaning, Nathaniel also hadn’t bothered to update the apartment since he got it. Bright purple shag carpet and asbestos abounded: Victor genuinely couldn’t decide which was worse. 

At this point in time, Baxter Solutions was starting to catch on. Suddenly Victor had more money than Bill Gates; more political power than most senators. He was a king.

And every king needs a castle. 

He bought out the apartments to either side of them and began creating what Reed would lovingly dub his ‘Magnum Opus.’ He gutted all three and replaced their aging insides with, among other things: top-of-line appliances, a brand-new plumbing and heating system he designed himself, and artisan furniture, often antique, chosen for maximum comfort and aesthetic quality. And a security system that would make even the most deranged of Russian oligarchs weep with jealousy, but that went without saying. 

“Wow,” Johnny said as he entered. 

The first thing he saw was one of those rich-people mudrooms that just has like, flowers and shit on a fancy little table. Past that, through a huge archway, was a living room that was just a little smaller than Johnny’s whole house. 

Sue moved to put her suitcase down by the door. 

“Oh,” She said, noticing the oil painting adorning the wall in front of her as she straightened up. “Is this new?” 

Having been an unwitting witness to most of the Magnum Opus’ design (and occasionally a very witting one whenever Victor needed a second opinion at fancy art auctions with free shrimp), she knew Reed and Victor’s apartment pretty well. But she couldn’t remember seeing this one before.

It was a portrait of a dark-haired woman in an old-fashioned dress and apron.She was rendered so perfectly, from the yellowed callouses that spanned her worn hands to the flecks of green and gold that dotted her laughing brown eyes, that Sue was half-afraid the woman was going to turn in her frame to ask her what she was looking at. 

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Victor said proudly. He pointed to the painting that had caught her eye. “My great-great-great grandmother, Delata von Doom.” 

In the early nineteenth century, a Zefiro painter rose to some prominence in the European art scene. Now famous for being one of the earliest proponents of impressionism, his portfolio was a mix of touching everyday scenes from the life of the clan and painstaking recreations of the myriad blunders of the Latverian monarchy. 

While his Pig on His Throne, The Cuckold of Hassenstadt, and A Fool’s Feast certainly didn’t win him any favors, it was The Enslavement of the Roma that was his downfall.  Latveria prided itself on its abolition of slavery in 1600, the earliest of any of the nearby principalities; evidence that it was still alive and well in 1839 simply couldnot be tolerated.  

After his “accident,” the monarchy confiscated all the paintings they could find for permanent internment in the royal contraband vault. That was until 1985 when the newly-established Latverian People’s Museum of Art needed material, and the more pastoral works were “relocated” and put on display. The Zefiro had been trying to get their ancestor’s work back for two hundred years; the lawyers Victor hired last month managed to get it done in a week. 

“It’s amazing,” Sue agreed.

“Uh, try beyond amazing,” Johnny said, rushing past all of them to go poke around the kitchen, just past the living room. There was a whole cabinet of just spices. And not even the shitty Walmart-brand stuff, the nice kind you had to buy at the specialty store. “What’s beyond amazing? Awesome? Awe-mazing?” 

“Incredible? Phenomenal?” Reed offered. 

It was the kind of thing Reed never could have done, never would have even thought of doing, and it was incredible. It was elegant (everything Victor made was elegant), artistic, and of course a technological marvel— Victor had retrofitted the support structures of the building with a carbon-steel derivative that allowed it to take a direct hit from a missile up to 150 kilotons in yield without sustaining a scratch! But honestly, that was just icing on the cake. 

Because more than anything else, the Magnum Opus was a home for him.

The lightbulbs didn’t hum. Not a single color, from the walls to the furniture, be it accent or primary, hurt his eyes.The entire place was fully soundproofed, and he genuinely had no idea how Victor managed to do that to a New York skyscraper.  

Do you like it? Victor had asked him when it was finally finished, fear underpinning his practiced neutrality. 

I love it, Reed had answered. Ingenious, innovative, thoughtful, and so, so, quietly kind— Their apartment was Victor. Victor as he truly was, behind the mask circumstances had forced him to wear. How could he do anything but love it? 

Johnny ducked into the living room and inspected their couch.“Wait, Ralph Lauren makes furniture?” 

“DOCTOR RICHARDS!” A voice screeched from deeper inside the apartment before Reed could answer. 

A few seconds, and a painful-sounding thump later, HERBIE careened through the foyer and into Reed’s arms.

HERBIE wrapped his own arms around his creator twice over in a hug for the ages. “I missed you so much! Never leave again!” 

“I missed you too,” Reed wheezed, patting HERBIE’s back awkwardly. 

Victor stepped in without missing a beat. “HERBIE, our guests need to put their bags away.” 

HERBIE let go of Reed to fully process the query,  glancing around at the others as he did so. “Oh! You’re guests!”

HERBIEgave a full-body wiggle of excitement. 

“How wonderful! How new! I have so much to show you! Fun fact: the Baxter Building, originally built in 1949 by the Leland Baxter Paper Company, has gone through not one, not two, but three reconstructions—“

“HERBIE,” Victor warned. 

“Right!” HERBIE jumped to attention. “Follow me, most wonderful guests!” 

And with that, he was off. ‘Off,’ in this case, meaning completely and utterly gone. HERBIE had been so excited to show Johnny and Sue the guest room he forgot to make sure they were actually behind him.

Victor gave the robot a generous fifteen seconds to realize his mistake before turning to Susan. He pointed to the hallway to the left of the living room that opened to the western wing of the house. 

“The fourth door on the right.” 

“Thanks,” Sue picked up her bags and started walking, 

“Wait, door? Like, one door?” Johnny asked, trailing after his sister. “We aren’t gonna have to share, right?” 

Reed and Victor looked at each other.

“Lab?” Reed asked. 

“Obviously.” 

“While you’re in the closet, could you grab my good sweatshirt?”

Reed’s “good” sweatshirt, despite the name, had never been used for physical exercise. It was a gag gift from Grimm when they both got into Empire State University. It read “THE MOON LANDING WAS STAGED” and, below it, showed the blueprints of the various stages of construction of the Apollo 11 orbital rocket. Ha ha. 

It was made of some kind of sweat-wicking material that Reed insisted allowed it to be worn for days on end without producing a stench, which is why it was his clothing article of choice when so deep into an experiment that he couldn’t bring himself to leave the lab to shower. And while it may have possessed the scent-nullifying properties Reed espoused at some point, by the time he and Victor moved in together it had been through about fifteen week-long experiments too many. 

Victor had been trying to get rid of it for five years now, but Reed always managed to find it before he could smuggle it to the garbage chute. His attempts to discretely destroy it had ended similarly. The unholy coupling of half a decade’s worth of sweat and industrial-grade nylon made it virtually fireproof--

Wait a minute. 

“Why would I be going to the closet?” Victor asked. 

Reed gave him a perplexed look. “You’re not getting changed first? You hate polyester.”  

“It chafes,” Victor retorted automatically. 

For the past five days, Victor had been forced into garb made entirely of grating synthetic fiber. But of all the trials he had been made to endure, the abrading grip of polyester had not been one of them. He had been encased head-to-toe in the offending material for almost a week and yet he couldn’t feel its bite. 

A full minute passed; Victor did not move. 

“Victor?” Reed asked. 

“I— right. Of course.” Victor answered, mind elsewhere. “I’ll meet you upstairs.” 

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

Across the house, Johnny had managed to find Reed and Victor’s guest bedroom.

It was as tastefully but somehow still in-your-face-a-super-rich-person-lives-here decorated as the rest of the house, besides the quilt on the bed. It matched the color scheme and everything, but the pattern was so complicated, and so clearly handmade that it was either worth 100 grand or ten bucks. 

He poked his head into the bathroom. It was all black marble, with a shower on one end and one of those gigantic claw-foot-tubs-without-the-claw-feet on the other. There were fresh flowers on the counter. Did HERBIE just put them out every day? 

Trailing behind him, Sue groaned. 

Johnny turned to look where she was looking. Oh, duh. One bed. 

Well, Johnny was a couple years too old to cuddle with his sister. He looked over at her.

“Rock paper scissors for it?” 

She stared at him for a moment. “You’re kidding,” 

She sat her bags down on the bed.  

“Noo,” Johnny elongated the vowel as he pushed her bags onto the floor and replaced them with his backpack. 

“Johnny.” She said, in her I’m-not-messing-around voice. “I’m taking the bed. You can sleep on the couch.” 

The couch? The super flammable, probably insanely expensive, no-water-source-in-sight couch? Oh yeah, he can’t wake up tomorrow to the smell of piping hot leather jerky and Victor about to strangle him to death. 

“No, I’m taking the bed,” Johnny insisted. 

Sue knocked Johnny’s backpack off the bed. “I am.” 

“I’m not sleeping on the couch!” 

…………………………………..

Victor arrived in America ten years ago. In those ten years, he had met his soulmate, gained power and wealth beyond his wildest dreams, and built his people into a force to be reckoned with. But of all of the wonders he had found in the New World, there was one that outshined them all: his closet. 

Ethically-sourced mahogany cabinets, lit to perfection by a Swarovski crystal chandelier, lined the walls. Row after row, shelf after shelf, a veritable cornucopia of couture, designed and hand-sewed by a fashion house in Milan kept on personal retainer.

When he was a child, the entirety of his worldly possessions were limited to what could fit in his knapsack. He would never forget having to tearfully choose between a pair of only secondhand snow boots, and a quantum physics compendium. 

Now? He had an entire room dedicated to each. 

Victor caught a glance of himself in one of the standing mirrors. “Faszom geci,” 

The SWORD loungewear did its job too well. His figure was engulfed by the excess fabric, while the dye, scaldingly white in some areas, pathetically grey in others, did nothing to camouflage the detritus his oversized sleeves had managed to pick up in a week. He looked like a raccoon who had gotten stuck in a bedsheet before darting back to the underbrush.

His hands automatically rose to banish the plastic monstrosity to the bin, but reason froze them before they could make contact. 

Victor had not disrobedin the entire time he had been held captive; the thought of what he would find underneath was too horrifying, especially in such close quarters. When he had to relieve himself, he turned the lights off to prevent even the briefest glimpse.

That was then. 

It must be said that the life of Victor von Doom had not been one with many innate advantages. In fact, if he somehow stole away to that great chamber where God tallies up his hapless creations’ lives, Victor would not be surprised to find if he had been given only one: Victor von Doom was beautiful. It ran in the family. His mother had been beautiful, and his grandfather before her, and his great-grandmother before him; as far back as the Zefiro could remember, their chieftains had always been a feast for the eyes. The gadjos used to say that the von Dooms made a deal with the devil, trading their souls for the faces of Satan’s incubi. This was, of course, patently false, nothing more than closed minds trying to justify their attraction to the “other.”

To attempt to describe it in words, especially in a language as pathetically caustic as English, would be an insult not only to himself but the reader. His was themanner that poets opined about, the manner the old masters would have killed to paint. 

Victor wasn’t arrogant enough to think his meteoric rise was not partially rooted in his transcendent beauty; it was certainly the reason he was able to study in America. Four hundred thousand students applied for the Doctor Richard Janus Grant For the Underprivileged in the Former Soviet Union. Two received it: Victor, and a girl from Bulgaria who juggled her college career with another in modeling. Bright young people in stagnant countries were nothing if not overabundant. But handsome ones? Downtrodden and stunning were a heady combination for the movers and shakers of this world. 

All of this is to say, if you took away the designer clothes, the products, Victor would still be beautiful. The trappings he employed were nothing but focuses; lenses, if you will, to ensure that his body communicated the message best suited for any given situation. His body was, in many ways, the first weapon he ever wielded. A birthright, a tool and a talent, all at once-- Victor von Doom’s beauty was as constant as the sunrise, as indisputable as the passage of time. 

Hands shaking, Victor removed his hood. 

“Oh,” The noise came unbidden, the sheer force of the air leaving his lungs and entreating his vocal cords to stir.

In certain senses, it was better than Victor had expected. His features were unchanged, unlike Grimm. His eyes were still his eyes, his lips still his lips. To disturb the balance of a countenance like Victor’s was a crime too great for even the universe itself to fathom. 

In others, it was much worse. In the few moments he had let himself linger on such thoughts, he had assumed his new form to be like something like marble. Darker, perhaps, than marble, but uniform. Still. What lay beneath was nothing like marble. 

Victor’s traitorous legs stumble backwards, undirected and unbidden, away from the sight. 

The skin was quite literally crawling. The metal, his skin, whatever profane combination of the two now rested upon his tissue, was— it had the appearance of a liquid. The white light of the chandelier refracted off it like a glass of water, the entire surface glittering under the LEDs. Thousands of greyscale particles, some as large as his thumb, some no smaller than a pinprick, darted in and out of view. 

There was no reprieve below his neck. The slurry had engulfed the entirety of his person. His legs, his chest, his manhood— he was bald, now, entirely. Hairless from toe to scalp. 

Victor raised a trembling hand to his cheek: not a millimeter of give.

There was something wrong with the room. It was spinning. Getting smaller and tighter—the snow piling ever higher-- 

Victor von Doom was beautiful. 

The blurry figure staring back at him was anything but beautiful. It was a rotted statue, decades past its prime. His first lopsided attempt at an automaton, sired from last-rate discount ore, left too long in the dust and dark-- 

Victor von Doom was beautiful. 

“NO!” He screamed.

Victor sent his fist through the harbinger of his despair, shattering it into a thousand pieces.

……………………………………………………………………………….

The anger that Sue had been valiantly pushing down since they left Marygay’s house was starting to bubble up. 

“You want to be treated like an adult?” She asked, trying a different tack. “The adult thing is to give the person who’s about to spend--” She paused, only for a second, but long enough that she knew Johnny would pick up on it. She had no clue how long they were going to be here. 

“Uh, the person who's about to be saving your life the good bed!” She tried to salvage it.

In response, Johnny blew a strawberry at her. “Uh, you save people every day!” 

“Why--” There were so many ways she could end that sentence. Why are you like this?What happened to make you this way? 

Was it me? 

“Why is this so important to you?” She asked. Better. Good, even. Open communication, ask questions. That’s what you’re supposed to do with teenagers. 

From the comfort of his own head, Johnny answers her: I’m not sleeping more than ten feet from a water source. 

Out loud, he replied, “I have needs, and an en-suite bathroom is one of them. Do you think I just wake up like this?” 

He gestured to his face and body. 

And it shouldn’t sting, to hear him say that, but it does. 

Above them, the lights flicker. 

“Did you—“ Johnny begins, after a moment. 

“Did you?” Sue shoots back before she can think better of it. 

HERBIE swerves into the room. 

“THERE YOU ARE!” He squealed excitedly. A digital drop of sweat dripped down his face-screen, “Legs are so fast!”

HERBIE glanced between them; confused as to why the pair weren’t talking, just staring at each other. Unfortunately, his stimuli sensors didn’t have a ‘tension’ setting. 

“Well,” HERBIE said, deciding to just move past it. “Welcome to the master guest bedroom!” 

Johnny perked up. “Master? As in, multiple?” 

HERBIE bobbed down in his version of a nod.

“Every room in this house can function as a bedroom in case of a guest or party emergency, thanks to Doctor von Doom’s genius Instant Bed technology!  With it, any piece of furniture can contain anywhere from a twin to full king-sized mattress. However, this is the only room whose sole purpose is to house guests!”

HERBIE flew over to the bed, positioning himself like a prize girl for Price is Right, and Sue and Johnny had just won their very own bedroom set.

“Note the Egyptian cotton sheets and silk coverlet, both handmade especially for this house! The unique coloring and style is based on the designs of some of von Doom family’s heirloom quilts, currently in the possession of the Zefiro people of Latveria!” 

“Perfect!” Johnny declares. “HERBIE, go flip a cabinet into sleep mode somewhere or whatever,”  

He grabs Sue’s old rolly-bag from med school, raising it to the level of his waist. “Oh, take these while you’re at it!” 

Sue scoffed. “Don’t bother.”

She grips the rolly-bag’s handle and yanks it out of Johnny’s arms, slings her other bag over her shoulder, and leaves

………………………………………………………….

Panting, Victor squeezed his eyes shut.

Victor von Doom was beautiful, but he was also a genius. The kind born once in a generation, in a century. From the moment he was born, he knew the path that he would follow. He would grow, and learn, and master, master everything. Then he would save his people. After that, the world and, if he had time, perhaps the universe. 

Greatness awaited him; it always had. But Greatness is a jealous mistress. Her favorites walk a step out of time with the rest of mankind. Always ahead, always faster. Victor had consigned himself to this fate. 

But nine years ago, the strangest thing had happened. 

At first, Victor had spat on the ground Reed Richards walked on, treating each shared class as a special kind of torture. Back then, Victor had sworn he would hate Reed until the end of his days; as few as those days may have been without Reed’s intervention. But of course, Reed intervened. Would he have bothered, if Victor was anything less than beautiful? 

Victor didn’t like to think about it. And until now, there was no reason to, besides his own fetish for self-flagellation. 

Victor von Doom was a genius, but he wasn’t easy. He was— cold.  And, as Grimm had so recently reminded him, Reed could have anyone. In the qualitative calculus that was Reed’s continued decision to stay, to love him, where did his appearance factor in?

How would this change the equation? 

Victor’s mind, so swift, so clever, spun itself into a whirlwind against his will. Waking each morning just to wrap himself like a leper. A wedding night, where Victor reveals a limp, tinny member to his waiting husband. Packing his belongings from the home he had built, a monument to a love that had died with his skin cells; selling what he could not carry and finally returning to Latveria-- would the Zefiro take him, he wondered? Or would he wander the countryside alone? The petty ennui of his childhood would be an unpleasant daydream compared to the nightmare awaited him there. As those born blind cannot miss sight, how could he have known what it meant to be alone, when he had never known what it meant to be not to be alone? But now-- a near-decade spent in as perfect a companionship that ever was, how could he return?

Victor was pulling his hand back from the drywall when an unfamiliarcoruscationcaught his attention. The culprit was easily found, it was attached to him. 

His right hand, the metal, it had changed, somehow. Uniform steel-grey plates now adorned his wrist, one pressing against another in a simulacrum of articulation hinges. Razor-edged talons protruded from the knuckles, stretching far beyond the tips of his fingers. And before his eyes,the ridges and protrusions meltedinto nothingness, swallowed up by a silvery sludge that seemed to well up from his very soul. 

This has happened before, hasn’t it? Back at the prison. His usually impeccable memory was blurred by sleep deprivation and adrenaline. But he had made-- he had turned himself into engines, and lasers. He had thrown Grimm across the room like he was made of seafoam. 

The gadjos had done more to his family than decry their good looks. He heard the words hissed behind gloved hands as the Zefiro trudged out of town after town, forever unwanted, forever dangerous. Victor could hear it even now:

Alchemy. Black magic. 

This casting that suffocated him was an abomination. Every cell in his body shuddered in revulsion. Except-- 

Except. 

There was a voice in Victor’s head, had been there for years. Still shivering against the chill of the Carpathians, forever hungry, forever weak. 

Against this— this abomination, it did not cower. 

This, the voice whispered. This is power. 

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

Triumphant, Johnny flopped onto the bed, luxuriating in the prickly feeling of the embroidering against his skin. 

Instant-bed technology, what a lame name. He couldn’t believe that Victor von Doom, Forbes 30 under 30 four years in a row, hadturned all his furniture into fold-out couches. And put Gam-Gam’s needlepoint on the guest bed-- god, what a dork!

Handmade especially for this house! HERBIE’s voice echoed in his ears. The unique coloring and style is based on the designs of some of von Doom family’s heirloom quilts!

Johnny slid off the bed like a dead fish. 

…………………………………………………

In the lab, Reed had decided it would be in everyone’s best interest to get everything out on the table, scientifically speaking.

In a crisis situation, yes, withholding information that couldn’t be properly explained was a necessary evil. But they were home now, and he wanted Ben and Johnny to know what was happening with their bodies, and, perhaps more importantly, that they were in good hands. 

There was also, of course, the unavoidable requirement of informed consent if they were going to continue taking samples from them. But Reed would like to think that he was a little more accessible than a bunch of legalese. 

“Approximately one hundred and fifteen hours ago,” He began. “all of us were exposed to roughly five thousand roentgens of so-called ‘cosmic radiation.’ Humans usually die after exposure to five hundred roentgens, but so far none of us have shown any signs of radiation sickness, ” 

Reed turned back to face the empty armchairs he had set up in front of his office chalkboard. “You’re probably both wondering how that’s possible.”

The chairs remain silent. 

Reed coughed nervously into his hand. 

For all of his good intentions, presenting had never been his strong suit. Victor, on the other hand-- If he wasn’t the smartest man on the planet, he would have an excellent fallback career in acting, or speech writing.

He doubted Victor would want to take this on, though. He could hear him now:

There is more important work to be doing than educating the analphabetic in the basics of particle physics! 

Yes, in another life,  Victor von Doom was an excellent actor. A medical doctor? Not so much. 

Shaking away his idle thoughts, Reed continued,  “Usually, any electromagnetic wave with a wavelength of less than 100 nanometers ionizes any matter it comes into contact with: it literally knocks electrons out of orbit. This is obviously a massive issue for anything composed of molecules--” 

A loud bang rattled through the office. Which was concerning on a variety of levels, first and foremost that Victor had specially designed the lab to be completely shock-absorbent. 

Grabbing the fire extinguisher he always kept by the door, Reed rushed out of his office into the hallway. 

The hallway, as well as the lobby and main lab space it connected to, were unbesmirched. The same could not be said for the door to the fire escape. The door’s panic bar had been pushed clean through the solid steel of the door’s body, which was now barely hanging on the side jamb with heavily damaged hinges. 

In front of the mangled metal, a hulk of a man in an overcoat stands, seemingly as stunned by the corse of events as Reed was. 

Ben. Reed wanted to kick himself. That’s Ben. 

“I didn’t mean to-- Sorry.” Ben says. His voice was rough, even rougher than it had been only a few hours ago. Were his symptoms advancing?

Reed gave him a once over. Same approximate height, weight, the overcoat fit around his body about the same--

His shoulders were drooped. 

Reed put the pin back on the fire extinguisher, then it against the wall before walking up to Ben. “You’re-- What happened?” 

Ben opened his right hand, revealing a dented golden ring. 

Reed recognized the band— he had helped Ben pick it out. 

Oh God.

Defensive Advancements Conference (DAC) 2012  

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Simon Utrecht said. 

Too quiet. He’s not announcing the cafeteria’s out of fries; this is going to be his ‘We shall fight on the beaches!’

“Ladies and gentlemen,” He tried.

Too much, sounds like he’s compensating for something.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” He tried again. 

“Simon?” His assistant’s voice cut through the fog of indecision. Simon groaned in frustration. 

“How many times have I told you not to interrupt me when I’m—” He began, spinning around to face her. What he saw stopped him in his tracks. 

“What the fuck are you wearing?” 

Ann Darnell looked down confusedly at her pantsuit. “Clothes?” 

“What happened to the little black dress? The one we agreed on?” 

Ann blushed in embarrassment. “I know, but I thought about it, and it felt a little unprofessional. I mean, I’m Nimrod’s director of genetic research--”

“Jesus Christ, Annie, how many times are we going to have to go over this?” Simon groaned. He raised his hands to frustratedly run them through his hair before remembering he’d just spent a full hour getting it properly tousled. Simon threw his arms back down to his sides with the same speed most people use when they’ve realized they’re about to touch live electric faults. 

“I got fifty crusty old holdovers from the fucking Reagan administration out there!” He shouted. “We need eye candy! Do you want this to fail?”

“Simon--” Ann said pleadingly. 

“Do not ‘Simon’ me right now.” He spoke over her.

He sighed, and placed a hand near (but not over, God forbid he smudge the makeup) his eyes. “I’m gonna close my eyes and count to ten, and when I open them Jessica Rabbit better be standing in front of me.” 

“I--”

“JESSICA. RABBIT.” Simon insisted. “Ten, nine, eight…”

Ann inhaled like she was going to try and fight him on this, but exhaled knowing it was hopeless. She walked out of the green room to get the garment bag from her car. 

Finally, Simon could work in peace. “La-dies and gentle-men—“

“Yo, U-Man!” Jimmy Darnell, Ann’s brother and Simon’s social media guru called out as he sprinted into the green room.

“This better be good,” Simon said in warning.

“Uh, it’s better than good.” Jimmy handed Simon his tablet. “A Raft-ugee just got through SHIELD’s info blackout. Some guy with hand-claws is holding up a fast food place!” 

On the screen, a reporter (New York 6, LA 4) was standing in front of an NYPD blockade. “Jessica, it’s chaos here in Greenburgas the unknown assailant continues to hold the staff and customers of this Burger King hostage.” Said the reporters, gesturing to the restaurant behind her. 

The BK was almost entirely blocked from view by a couple of mobile command centers, but above it all the orange and yellow sign still stood; a corporate guardian angel. 

The reporter continued, “Five hours ago, an unidentified man entered the Burger King after causing a 27-car pileup on the Long Island Expressway. Witnesses say he became agitated after employees told him that ‘Cupcake Shakes’ were no longer available for purchase—“

“Holy fuck,” Simon said.

“Right?” Jimmy said excitedly. 

“That’s the fucking closer right there. Add that clip to the presentation.” Simon ordered. 

“After the Vietnam stuff?”

“That shit’s old news, throw it out!” Simon barked, shaking the tablet like Moses’ staff. “This is the whole point! God, we’re gonna make those old bastards shit their adult diapers!” 

”You’re gross, man.” Jimmy laughed, then walked back out to the stage, tapping away on his tablet all the while. 

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Simon began again. Were there any ladies in the audience? If there weren’t and he still said it would that fuck up the energy? 

“Utrecht,” A new voice had Simon almost jumping out of his skin. 

Standing in the doorway of his green room (was there any point in having a private green room if nobody respected it?) Stood President Graydon Creed.

“Creed!” Simon said, faking excitement. “My assistant didn’t tell me you’d be coming!” 

Creed was in his face before Simon could offer him a SmartWater. “Who the hell do you think you are?” Creed barked. 

Simon paused for a second, stuck between an insulted pout or an arrogant scoff. “Graydon, baby--”

“I just blew half my political capital making sure Fury stays off your ass, and you can’t be bothered to answer a phone call?” 

“All due respect, Mr. President, I’ve been kinda busy here-- ” 

“Kinda busy?” Creed repeated, incredulous. “I own you. If I want minute-to-minute updates on your bowel movements, you give them to me with a grin on your face and my dick in your mouth!” 

Simon plastered over his fear with a laugh. 

“Mr. President, sir!” Ann began, rushing back into the room. the labs are reporting a 78% success rate with single-celled organisms.” 

With only a split-second glance down at her nonscientific assets, on full display in the dress she was (barely) clad in, Creed’s shoulders relaxed, although his face stayed angry. “You’re testing germs?”

“We don’t have the power for anything larger,” She explained. “Once we get the generators up and running in Nevada, we’re moving straight to humans.” 

“How long’s that going to take?”

“A month, at the most,” She answered. 

Creed exhaled noisily through his nose, considering. “Fine.” He looks between the two of them. “At least one of you knows what you’re doing. Keep it up.”

He turns back to Simon, looming over him. “And keep me in the loop.” 

With that, the President leaves the room. 

As soon as the door closes, Ann sighs in relief. “I saw the motorcade in the parking lot, I ran as fast as I could--” 

It’s Simon’s turn to loom. “Don’t ever go over my head like that again, you hear me?” 

“Sorry,” She answers automatically. “I--”

“I.” Simon cuts her off. “As in, me. I am the face of this company. I deal with investors—“

The door opens again. Simon freezes. 

What is it now, paparazzi? Just what he needs, shots of him screaming at a female subordinate in a titty dress. They’re gonna have to donate another couple mil to the Women’s Earth Alliance. 

Thankfully, the open door doesn’t reveal a bunch of baggy-pantsed potheads staring at him through a canon 35mm, it’s just Mike Steel, his head of security. 

 “Mr. Utrecht, they’re ready for you.” Mike tells him. 

“Thanks,” Simon says, ungratefully. “Hey, where the fuck were you five minutes ago? The President just waltzed in with no heads up!”

“All due respect, sir, you don’t pay me enough to get shot by the Secret Service.” 

“Fuck you,” Is Simon’s reply to that. 

“Yessir,” Mike answered, holding the door open with his body. 

Simon turned back to Ann. “We don’t have time for this-- I forgive you, Annie, okay? Just don’t do it again.” 

Ann nodded, head bobbing up and down rapid-fire. “You got it.” 

Simon took a deep breath. His hands went up to smooth his hair compulsively; he caught it right before he catastrophically fucked up his hair. 

“Showtime!” 

………………………………………………………

Ann opened with a short speech about Nimrod and their developments that year, business stats, stock price, blah blah blah. It was just an appetizer to get mouths watering for him. 

After what felt like hours, she finished. “Please join me in welcoming our CEO, Simon Utrecht, to the stage!” 

Simon walked to her side with a picture-perfect wave. “Thank you, Ann.”

He cleared his throat as Ann vacated the podium. “Ladies and gentlemen,” 

There were a couple women in the audience; thank god. He had settled on a middle-of-the-road ‘ladies and gentlemen’: no need to get flashy with it, the presentation was flash enough. 

“The year was nineteen forty-four. World War Two was raging, millions dead and dying—” A sly grin spread across Simon’s face. “Business had never been better.” 

A wave of laughter rippled through the crowd.

The projector behind him turned on, showing the crowd a photograph of a manilla folder bearing three words: 

CLASSIFIED, PROJECT, and REBIRTH. 

“It was in the middle of that great crucible that the United States discovered the greatest weapon of all time— the super-soldier.”

The image switched to a moving collage of Captain Steve Rogers at his most heroic. 

“Sixty miles per hour land speed, twenty-four thousand pounds lift capacity, a healing factor of 5.86 on the Zola Scale, not to mention perfect recall, all with a human’s reasoning and adaptability. The invention of the Super Soldier Serum should have ended the concept of war as we knew it.”

Simon sighed, disappointment apparent in his voice. “Of course, things don’t always go the way they should.” 

Crime scene photos of the murder of Doctor Abraham Erskine filled the screen. Through the smoke, the Good Doctor’s dead, bloodstained hand could be seen clearly in the corner, grasping for something he would never hold again. 

“It was almost a century ago that we lost the original formula, and since then our county has been besieged with false alternatives,” 

The Erskine photos were replaced by artists’ sketches based on survivor’s testimony of the failed 1970 expedition to the Inhumans’ lunar stronghold, Attilan, which were in turn replaced by photos of CIA and FBI archives, ransacked by telepathically influenced agents following mutantkind’s severing of ties with human governments after the Cuban Missile Crisis.

“And cheap knockoffs,”

Semi-tastefully censored photos of the test subjects from the Tuskegee experiments, followed by the excavation of the mass graves the US had found in the Arctic, bent and broken skeletons that weren’t quite human-- all that remained from the Russians’ attempt. 

“But ladies and gentlemen, I am happy to report that seventy years later, the wait is finally over.  Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the future of warfare. I present to you: the cosmic soldier serum!”

The video of von Doom and Major Grimm’s slap-fight, carefully edited to give the appearance of occurring in a training room (and not over a dude, gross) played across the screen. 

“One-hundred percent success rate. One hundred-ton lift capacity, virtual invulnerability, and--”

This was the money shot: the video of Sue Storm holding back the Kitchen Sink played. 

“Telekinesis!” 

The crowd erupted into cheers. Cries of ‘incredible!’ and ‘amazing!’ filled the air. 

“That’s right, we did it!” Simon crowed. 

He waited for the crowd to cool down for a moment, soaking in the adoration like a cactus in a sauna. 

“And with your support, we can do it again.”

Some (heavily censored) blueprints and CAD mockups fills the screen. 

“The Artificial Kinetic Source Inductor,” Simon explained. “Or the AKSI as we call it around the office, is a device of my own invention that will allow cosmic rays to be generated right here on Earth. Entire platoons will be enhanced, all without leaving the continental United States. And folks, this breakthrough could not have come at a better time. Under the ineffectual SHIELD bureaucracy, our nation is now facing a threat greater than any it has seen before. Approximately twelve hours ago, rioting began at the world’s only super-supermax prison, the Raft. Operated solely by SHIELD, the Raft’s entire population, four thousand superhuman prisoners, are now at large in the American northeast. That includes this gentleman.” 

Footage, the sound off, of Jimmy’s “raftugee” begins to play over the projector. 

A blond hulk of a man with, indeed, hand-claws, jumps through the front window of a Dairy Queen in Queens, shattering it. Police officers fire; the man brushes off the bullet wounds like they were bug bites. The man moves forward twenty feet in a single bounding stride to impale one of the officers on his claws. He lifts him up into the air, a man-kebab, before throwing him off his claws into a nearby parked car. 

“Who, as you can see, wasted no time getting back up to old tricks.”

The screen went black. There’s no word right now on the status of that brave officer.” Simon sighed, the perfect balance of I told you so and oh, the humanity of it all! “But there is one thing that I do know, ladies and gentlemen, and that this is just the opening salvo. A reckoning is coming, folks. Let’s make sure we’re the winning side.” 

The screen fills with the Nimrod Industries logo, alongside the specialized Project AKSI logo. Beneath both, the new NI slogan: “Building Better Soldiers” 

The crowd goes wild. .