by Alex Irvine
“You dare to gamble for power,” Doom said. “Few have the courage to make that choice. I salute you—but you must crave it! You must seize the power that will shortly infuse your bodies!”
He rocked back a lever, and conduits leading down from the ceiling into the pillars began to glow. When the lever was all the way down and the energy channel fully open, Doom triggered a DNA scan. He had already conducted a preliminary scan to search out useful imperfections in the women’s genomes and analyze the best way to imbue each with new powers. This scan was targeted more minutely. It would pick out which parts of each woman’s genome were responding to the increased energy. The instruments would do the rest. Doom had programmed certain parameters into their potential transformations and consulted with each woman about what the best result would be.
Now to see whether the instruments would perform as intended.
“Welcome it!” he called over the rising hum and crackle of the energy. “Open yourselves to it despite the pain!”
The interiors of the capsules glowed, silhouetting Marsha and Skeeter. “Embrace it!” Doom cried. “If you do not, it will destroy you!”
He was testing the limits of how much power a normal human could withstand. He did not know whether this first attempt would succeed. If it did not, a return trip to Denver would be in order. Deep inside each of the silhouettes, a red sparkle appeared. It flowed in chaotic swirls, growing brighter as Doom threw the final switch that would direct the full energy of the storm into the capsules.
Neither woman made a sound; neither moved. The hum of energy in the room was nearly tectonic, thrumming in Doom’s bones and inside his armor. He watched monitors and saw that the analysis of their genomes was complete. The energy infusion had reached its optimal state. More would do damage—and perhaps damage had already been done.
He cut the power.
The crackle inside the capsules dissipated, bleeding away into nothingness like the last dying tendrils of electricity in a Van de Graaff generator when it was depowered. For a moment, there was utter silence.
Doom opened the capsules.
Skeeter MacPherran emerged first. She was half a meter taller, carrying three times as much muscle as before. An Amazonian specimen, fit for the Olympics—or for the much more serious work of crushing Doom’s enemies. The genome analysis had revealed latent potential for enhanced strength—and from her new appearance, Doom suspected that potential was greater than he had guessed. So much the better.
She looked down at herself in wonder. “I don’t ever want to change back,” was the first thing she said. “This is what it’s like to be strong. I can feel it.” She clenched her fists. “All my life I’ve dreamed of this!”
Ah, Doom thought. Just as the Beyonder said—and as Doom had said to her.
Skeeter looked up at Doom. “Where’re the clothes I designed?”
He was only too happy to oblige her. “Here, Miss MacPherran.”
“No,” she said. “I’m not Skeeter MacPherran anymore. I want a new name. Something flashy. Something that’ll show me off a little. Nobody’s ever been impressed by me in my life, and that’s going to change.”
“Names can wait,” Doom said. “First, see your companion.”
Marsha Rosenberg emerged from her capsule utterly transformed. Her silhouette was black, but fires burned in a nimbus around her body. “You were right, Doctor! I did it!” she exulted. “I can feel that power in me now…so strange.” She paused. “I can change back, can’t I? You said I’d be able to!”
“You can,” Doom said. He believed it to be true from the profile returned by the genomic scan during the transformation. She would have to find out on her own. “If I had not arranged for you to reassume a normal human form, you would have been unable to eat or sleep. Your useful life would have been quite short.”
Unless, he mused, he could create a new Molecule Man—but that was an experiment for another time. He had here two very interesting results, and it was time to explore them.
“Your body is composed of an ionized plasma, like the core of a star,” he explained. “You can radiate thermal energy from your skin and direct it as you wish. Do so! Now!”
With that command, Doom pointed at a small-wheeled vehicle he had used to transport equipment to this room. Marsha thrust both hands at it, and it flashed into glowing molten slag. Its nonmetallic parts burned away instantly in a boil of acrid smoke. “I can feel it,” she said, just as Skeeter had. “I can feel the heat inside me. So much… it’s hard to believe I can contain it.”
She pivoted to face Doom again. “I want a new name, too. Something that sounds powerful, something hot.” An idea occurred to her, and she smiled. The effect was quite strange on a face composed of million-degree ionized plasma.
“I want to be called Volcana,” she said.
“Then so shall you be called,” Doom said.
“And you can call me Titania,” came the former Skeeter MacPherran’s voice. Doom turned to see that she had changed into her chosen ensemble of red, with high boots and lines selected to accent the power of her form. “Let me clear away that slag for you, Doom,” she said.
He warned her it was still hot, but she picked it up over her head and laughed. “I feel like nothing can hurt me now!” she said, and flung the tons of cooling slag out through the window with a crash. Steam spat and crackled away from it, and lightning struck it as it fell away into the howling storm.
“You are relishing your new strength, as you should be,” Doom said. “But take heed. Soon you will be tested in combat, and you will meet opponents much the same as yourselves. You can be hurt… though not easily.”
He turned and led them away to meet the others. The procedure had been a complete success. Richards had a surprise in store when next they met.
First, though, Doom introduced the new members to his alliance. “I have summoned you here to meet our new recruits: Titania and Volcana!” he proclaimed when they were all gathered in a greenhouse space on the leeward side of Doombase. “Ladies, you will learn more about your comrades in due time, but let there be introductions.” Pointing at each in turn, he said, “The robot Ultron. Indestructible, immensely powerful…and my bodyguard. The others, in order: The Wrecker. Doctor Octopus. The Absorbing Man. Molecule Man.”
“Where’d they come from?” the Wrecker demanded. “I thought we was the only ones on this planet except for the Avengers and their pals.”
“Doom probably built ’em from scratch,” cracked Creel.
Titania walked over to where the Absorbing Man lay on a couch. Doom watched with interest. It was always curious to see how ordinary humans established their pecking orders. “I’m from Denver, pal,” she said. “You think you’re the toughest one here? Get up!”
As she spoke, she smashed a huge stone statue with an effortless backhand.
Unimpressed—or at least managing to look that way—Creel said, “Whatcha got in mind?”
“Whatever I want,” Titania said. “For the first time in my life, I’m not the one on the receiving end. Get up.”
“Nah,” Creel said.
“You’re backing down? You scared to face me?”
“Kid, if you got something to prove, prove it tomorrow against the Avengers. I’m not getting up.” The Absorbing Man grinned at her. “Unless you can inspire me a little.”
Furious and frustrated, Titania spun on her heel and left a trail of wreckage on her way out of the room. Doom was impressed with her physical strength—less so with her self-control.
“Octopus! Ultron!” he commanded. “Go to the hangar deck and prepare assault vehicles. This storm will clear by dawn. When it does, we will strike!”
As he strode away, Doom noticed Volcana and Molecule Man speaking. This is worth staying to observe, he thought. Owen Reece was in all likelihood the key to what would happen when Doom and the Beyonder at last met. Doom intended to know as much about him as could be known—before he had to depend on him.
&nb
sp; “I hate all that smashing around,” Reece was saying. “Trying to pick fights. All that. I can’t stand it.”
“Really?” Volcana said. “You? The infamous Molecule Man? I always wanted to meet you, you know. You’re different than I thought you’d be.”
“Yeah, I know. Shorter, right?” he joked.
“No,” she said, transforming from her plasma state to her regular old Marsha Rosenberg form. Interesting, Doom thought. Apparently the transformation was quite easy for her to manage. “More…sensitive.”
To Doom, that word was a nail on a chalkboard—but Molecule Man behaved as though she had bestowed on him a great compliment. “You really think so?” he asked. “That’s what my therapist says, too. I’ve been seeing one since I almost destroyed the Earth.”
They both looked out of one of the greenhouse’s great windows at the storm’s fury. “It’s something, isn’t it?” Volcana said. Doom could see her interest in him, her pathetic attempts to keep the conversation going. Appalling sentimentality, he thought. He had expected more of Volcana.
Molecule Man shrugged. “Just molecules. I could stop it all if I wanted to. But my therapist says I should let things take their course, so…you know. Unless Doom asked me to. Now that’s an impressive guy.”
“I know,” she said. “Incredible charisma.”
“I don’t like what he’s doing, I don’t think,” Molecule Man said. “But I can’t help believing in him, and I sure don’t trust the Avengers. They’re not going to try to get us back to Earth. Doom’s got big plans. He knows what he’s doing. I don’t like it when he orders me around, but I’ll do what I have to if it means getting home. Even if I have to rip this planet apart.”
Good to know, thought Doom. He continued on his way to make preparations for the next day.
BRUCE BANNER
He was losing his mind.
Not all at once. In dribs and drabs, bits and bytes, thought by thought. Things he had been able to do in his sleep when he was fourteen were now so hard that trying to do them kept him from sleeping. Equations fluttered across his forebrain and slipped away. Ideas teased him and would not coalesce.
On top of that, he was afraid to tell any of the others. He couldn’t stand the thought of once again becoming a dumb, rage-filled beast— of losing his ability to speak, to reason, to be human—even though he was eight feet tall, weighed half a ton, and could lift a 747 without grunting out loud. For years, Banner and the Hulk had been at war. Now the war was over.
Or so he had thought. He had believed that the brain of Banner could exist in the body of the Hulk—but now, on the far edge of an annihilated galaxy, Banner’s mind was decaying. And worse, he did not know whether the Beyonder had done it, or whether it had been inevitable.
If Battleworld was about realizing your fondest desire, it sure wasn’t working out for Bruce Banner. He was sitting sentry duty and spending a little too much time in the (slowly rotting, Algernon-style) interior of his own head.
Outside, the storm was starting to pass. Inside, Bruce was pretty sure he hadn’t seen the worst of it yet.
He threw himself into the problems he’d been trying to solve for hours, and he noticed nothing else until after the sun was up.
EIGHTEEN
IN THE depths of the night, as the storm blew itself out, Thor made a decision. He told no one. It was his prerogative to make decisions— he was the son of Odin.
He had witnessed the Beyonder’s power, and knew it to be far in excess of anything he—or anyone, immortal or otherwise—could muster. They would have to consider their alliances carefully and cast aside old rivalries, old grievances, if they were to survive what was to come.
And so Thor Odinson now stood in the lower level of the headquarters, where they were keeping the prisoners. Piledriver, Thunderball, Bulldozer, and Kang hung in stasis chambers. A little apart from them lay Amora the Enchantress, held in a separate regenerative healing capsule. She-Hulk had beaten her quite severely, and Reed Richards had made the decision to heal her—despite the near-certainty that she would turn against them the moment she regained her strength. A certainty Thor considered again, hesitating before placing a hand on the capsule.
“Awake, sorceress,” Thor said, touching a button that deactivated the stasis field holding her. “We must speak.” Amora’s green eyes fluttered open; she sat up slowly, her long blonde hair unfolding along her back. Thor tried to ignore her beauty.
“Thor!” she exclaimed. “Have you come to gloat at my humiliation? I, a goddess, battered into the dust by a green-skinned mortal woman?”
“Nay,” he said. “You and I are the only immortals on this world… or at any rate, the only Asgardians. There are matters of which only we can speak to each other.”
“Very well,” she said with an alluring smile. “But in a place of my choosing. I’ll endure this dungeon no longer.”
“Aye…but here or elsewhere, you are still my prisoner,” Thor warned. Amora had loved him for millennia. Thor knew that, just as she knew he did not share her feelings. She would beguile him in a moment if he did not remain on guard.
Her smile broadened ever so slightly. “Perhaps. Come, thunder god.”
She opened a portal of strange light, and guided him through.
*
He did not know the place where she brought him. It was pleasant enough, though unusual. The plants bore flowers that gave off unfamiliar scents, and the insects in the air around them had the wrong number of legs and wings. Thor put all that out of his mind. There was a pressing issue that could be resolved only by speaking to another Asgardian.
“What prize would you ask of the Beyonder, Amora? You who are already a goddess? What could he offer you to compel your action?”
“Your love, Odinson,” she replied. “For how many thousands of years have I sought it? How many plots have I hatched, how many lives have I destroyed, all for you?”
“Love cannot be taken,” Thor said. “Only given.”
“Could you ever give yours to me?”
“I—I know not,” Thor said.
“Am I not beautiful?”
“Without, surely. But I have learned much during my sojourn in Midgard. The boy I once was would have answered simply yes. But true beauty lies in spirit and action, in matching physical perfection with divine deeds.”
“Kiss me, Thor…and I will try.”
He might have kissed her then. He had thought about it many times before, but never had he been so tempted. Amora’s beauty was unparalleled in the Nine Realms, and she was Asgardian. Surely something within her held the spark of nobility. And the history between them was old and strong, going back since long before Thor had first sojourned on Midgard. But at that moment the earth shook, and Thor knew that he had committed a grave error. He was far from his friends, and they were under attack.
“We have tarried here too long, Amora. Return us!”
NINETEEN
THE ATTACK came at dawn.
A single ship, wound up to ramming speed, came within a mile from impact before any of them knew it was there. Steve snapped awake at the alarms and ran from his sleeping chamber to the main observatory. “Hulk?!” he shouted, seeing the green giant slumped over a desk. Hulk had been on watch. He should have seen the incoming ship, and Steve knew the mistake might well prove fatal. “It’s dawn—what were you doing? Wake the others!”
Hulk shot Cap a murderous glance, then ran to find the others. Sorry if you’re not used to people talking to you like that, pal, but you just might have gotten us all killed, Steve thought. Good thing I always wake up at first light.
The enemy ship covered the last mile in the time it took Steve to find his boots and get his shield in hand. Cresting the nearest line of hills, it zeroed in on the base and crashed through the central dome, plowing up a huge furrow of wreckage before coming to a stop near the middle of the complex.
Things started off bad and got worse. Over comms came reports that the enemy team had brok
en into smaller groups. Some of them were headed to free the prisoners. Others were in search-and-destroy mode. Cap shouted orders and ran like hell. He heard some kind of battle happening near the Fantastic Four’s quarters, and alerts started screaming near She-Hulk’s room. Fire alarms squealed. Then other reports began coming in: Spectrum had been ambushed and taken out by Doc Ock. Hawkeye was counterattacking, driving Doc Ock away. Iron Man and Spider-Man rallied to prevent the prisoners from escaping, but they came under assault from Ultron and barely survived.
Steve and Hulk caught Doom and Molecule Man still near their ship. Hulk barreled straight at them, and—Steve would never have believed this if he hadn’t been seeing it with his own eyes—Molecule Man laid Hulk flat on his back with a hail of huge stones. Like it was nothing. Then he stopped Steve short with an invisible barrier and pinned him back against the wall. Hulk got up and sidearmed a piece of stone right back at Molecule Man, who turned it to dust with a wave of his hand. Then he smiled and said, “You two stay right there.”
The same invisible barrier that held Steve now forced Hulk back until they were both pinned together. “Keep fighting, and I’ll squeeze until you can’t breathe,” Molecule Man said.
Then all they could do was watch as Doom’s team returned with their rescued companions. “I couldn’t find the Enchantress,” the Wrecker complained. “But we did a number on these guys. How about we finish ’em off?”
“We have other purposes. To the ship,” Doom said. He looked back at Steve and added, “Captain America. You were never going to win this battle. Yet I would not have expected you to fail in quite so ignoble a fashion.”
The ramp lifted up into the belly of Doom’s ship. As it rose through the gaping hole in the dome, the barrier holding Steve and Hulk in place vanished. Hulk bellowed and flung a stone the size of a small car at the ship, striking it near its engines. The ship dipped and swerved, but then continued on.