Disclaimer: I don’t own the characters. 20^th Century Fox, Marvel Comics, Stan Lee, and probably some other people do. Wish I did. Especially the guys. Typos as always are my fault.

Rating: T to be safe. This one doesn’t have my usual amount of action, only some adult themes and mild language. See part one for author’s notes.

4

It was a secluded castle, deep in the mountains of the country of Latveria.

For seven months each year, the countryside around the castle was surrounded with snow, which covered the few dirt mountain roads leading to the hideaway, giving it a further sense of isolation. This, of course, suited the castle’s current master just fine. If there were too many prying eyes around, too many visitors, they might have discovered that there was much more to the place than just the ghosts of its past. The oil lamps and torches that lined its hallways, the rustic antiques that adorned its chambers, it was all a shell hiding what lay beneath the palace. Beneath its façade, there was an elaborate network of corridors and hidden chambers that housed the finest, most advanced technology from around the world---and quite a few inventions created by the master of the house.

From the exterior, it might have been a charming monument to days past, the sort of place for which rich Western tourists paid a month’s salary to spend a weekend. It might have seemed less charming if they had known its history. The most corrupt officials and provincial governors---thieves, dictators, and murderers---had inhabited this castle in days gone by. The expensive furnishings had been paid for in suffering, the stones had been erected on the graves of the oppressed. This was the precise reason Victor Von Doom---now simply ‘Dr. Doom’---had purchased it long ago, following the mysterious and unsolved murder of its owner, General Kubeka. He wanted a hideaway that projected the image of power and inspired fear and awe among the farmers and laborers of the Third World country…and he wanted his privacy.

His private study lay deep in the heart of the castle. It was his sanctuary, the place to which he retreated for meditation, reflection, and planning. Rarely did the staff of the castle dare disturb him when he was in this room. Today was an exception. Today had been a particularly good day and Victor was in the mood to share his triumph with at least one or two visitors. His ever-present assistant Leonard stood nearby, keeping himself handy if Dr. Doom should need him. Doom’s other guest sat in the plush, leather wing chair directly across from him. The doctor and his other guest divided their attention between the chess board between them, decked out in pieces made of pure silver and pure gold, and images being fed to the room’s large television by Doom’s satellite.

A reporter stood in front of the building that had been Victor’s corporate offices, tipped by an anonymous call that the images of the Fantastic Four that had held the world riveted that afternoon originated from that location. “…amazing, extraordinary events of the day, but it looks like the Fantastic Four did succeed in that respect. As we saw before the transmission was cut off, it appears that the Human Torch did survive the incident although we don’t have any further word about his condition…” The female reporter, the shining example of overdressed, overly made-up Western style, was absorbed in her broadcast that she failed completely to notice the subtle, telltale shimmer and distortion that Victor knew was the only indication of the Invisible Woman and her shields as it passed the mob of t.v. journalists and cameras.

Doom turned away from these images to the woman in the chair opposite him. “How many cycles were completed before the box shut down, Doctor?”

Dr. Nora Sater, a Latverian native educated in the United States, fresh from her trip to New York that morning where she had played the roll of a substitute dentist, consulted her notebook computer. “Thirty complete cycles.” She was satisfied with that, but hers was not the opinion that mattered. “Twenty was the minimum required. Forty would have been preferable,” she admitted.

Mercifully, Doom only inclined his head graciously. “Thirty is more than enough.” He moved the gold Bishop on the chessboard. “That is, if the machine worked as you said it would.”

Dr. Sater swallowed nervously, well aware of what would happen if the device hadn’t worked as she’d promised.

Beneath his mask, Victor would have smiled if he’d still had a mouth made of flesh. The steel alloy that was his skin prevented such emotional expressions. He liked to keep his employees off balance, on edge---fear was a good motivator. However, even if the box should fail, he planned on keeping Dr. Sater around for the time being. Her research, her education, and her inventiveness were too valuable to be discarded lightly. She was the best in her field, and, as Doom had reminded one of his enemies that afternoon, he only picked the best to serve him. “We’ll know soon enough. Nice work, Doctor,” he added.

“And you as well, Doctor,” Nora returned the compliment nervously.

Leonard was out of the loop. He’d learned never to pry into the plans of his employer unless it was absolutely necessary. Doom would tell him what he thought his assistant needed to know, would give him orders suited to Leonard’s abilities. The ‘whys’ of what Doom did was not need-to-know information. But, that evening, curiosity was getting the better of Doom’s long-time aide. “I still don’t understand, Sir. Why all this trouble just for a mere concession?”

Why all this trouble just for a concession?

Reed Richards was tired, but he could not sleep. It was the middle of the night and he should be in bed, but he simply found it very difficult—if not impossible—to rest his body when his mind would not quiet itself. And, when presented with a mystery, his mind seldom rested until he solved it. He’d retreated to the sanctuary of his lab to work so that he wouldn’t disturb the other occupants in the Baxter Building. After the trying events of the day, they needed their rest.

The doctors had released Johnny a couple hours earlier, against their wishes. Besides his memory loss, which they attributed to post-traumatic stress, they simply could find nothing physically wrong with him as a consequence of his time in that cell. They had wanted to keep the Human Torch overnight for observation, but Johnny flatly refused to stay at the hospital. No amount of threats or pleas from the rest of the team would change his mind, he was adamant about wanting to return to the Baxter Building. It owed, Reed supposed, the need to return to the safety of home after the torture of that box. The doctors couldn’t very well keep Johnny against his will (how could they force a man who could burn off restraints and fly out the window to stay if he didn’t want to?), so they’d released him to the care of his team with orders for bed rest. Sue and Ben had made it their mission to enforce those orders.

So, while they took turns camping on the couch Ben had dragged into the Torch’s room, Reed was alone with his mystery. The doctors had removed Johnny’s earpiece without any real difficulty. Reed had taken the translator chip from the unit and patched it into one of his computers. Johnny’s communicator had been demolished---anyone who wasn’t fireproof would have been seriously injured when the device self-destructed---but, before that, it had managed to record some of Doom’s transmissions to his prisoner. Reed downloaded the recorded signal into the computer and ran the broadcast through the translator circuits.

The translation had left him only more confused.

Victor’s messages sounded like incoherent rants. He’d dredged up some of Johnny’s most painful memories---Reed had already guessed that from Johnny’s words and reactions while he was still trapped in that prison---and rambled about ‘emotional impurities’, but what was the purpose of it? If Victor had made a point, it had to have happened after Johnny’s communicator was destroyed. Johnny had said several things that bothered Mr. Fantastic while he was imprisoned. He’d said that Doom had ‘picked him’. He’d said ‘can’t be like him’. Like who? Doom? Who picked him? Doom? Since Johnny had no memory of the box and couldn’t very well elaborate on his words, Reed had reviewed---very unhappily---the digital recordings of Victor’s broadcast, paying careful attention to hints Johnny had provided.

Some words stood out. Foremost among them: “Picked me”. Assuming Johnny was trying to say Doom had picked him, what did that mean? Picked Johnny for what?

“Not a ‘mere concession’, Leonard,” Doom corrected sternly but patiently. “The Fantastic Four are no longer undefeatable in the eyes of the world. The ‘gods’ have shown their mortal shortcomings, their human frailties. Never underestimate the value of that.” Doom ordinarily wouldn’t have indulged his right hand man with a full explanation of the reasons for his actions, but he was feeling especially pleased with himself that evening. “But, you’re right, I was after more than a simple concession from them. I’d never go to such efforts for something that insubstantial.”

Doom interrupted his match with Dr. Sater by gathering up four of her silver chess pieces and placing them side-by-side on the board: King, queen, bishop, and pawn. He covered the silver pawn with an up-ended square pencil box. “Dr. Sater constructed a brilliant, elegant, simple machine for my game. The box is a weapon in my arsenal, just like these pieces on this chessboard. A good weapon, Leonard, has more than one purpose. But, victory on the chessboard depends on more than the weapons at your disposal. It depends on subterfuge and misdirection---those are the keys to keeping your true intentions hidden from your opponents. Misdirection---focus their attention on the larger problem, like their comrade being trapped in an airtight box, and they’ll ignore the little things like blinking lights and static on an earphone. Focus them on getting the pawn out of the box in less than thirty minutes as the key to their victory, and it doesn’t occur to them until too late than keeping the pawn inside the box for twenty minutes was the key to your victory.”

The recordings of the broadcast weren’t providing much more information. Reed had hoped he’d just missed something Johnny had said, since he’d been preoccupied with finding the receiver and trying to trigger the lock at the time, but the Torch hadn’t made any comments on the tape that shed any more light on what Victor had told him.

Then Reed had accidentally keyed the images into high-speed rewind and a peculiarity struck him like a physical blow between the eyes.

The lights.

He’d wondered why they were blinking all along. There was no apparent reason for it. If it was meant to confuse, distract, or further torment Johnny, a strobe light would have been more effective than the slower flashes from those three lamps. It wasn’t until the images were played back at rapid speed that Reed began to see that the blinks and flashes were not random…they blinked in a repetitive pattern of long and short flashes not unlike when submarines used lamps to flash coded messages to each other at periscope depth (Ben made them watch Hunt For Red October at least once a month). The pattern was like Morris Code.

Morris Code.

There had been a researcher who studied using patterns of light to communicate hidden messages, Reed recalled. What was that doctor’s name?

“Subterfuge---focus your enemy’s attention on the discomfort of flashing lights and background noise, and they fail to discern patterns to the lights and the static. As you already knew, Leonard, Dr. Nora Sater is the foremost authority on the effectiveness of using messages embedded in light and sound on…suggestibility,” Doom added. “So, put them together, Leonard. If I trap the pawn in a box so he can’t escape, if I bombard the pawn with messages buried within innocuous blinking lights and irritating static and background noise from which he cannot escape, then the box isn’t truly a prison, is it? Its purpose is no longer to contain, its purpose is to…transform.”

Doom lifted the square cup to reveal not Sater’s silver pawn, but his own gold knight.

“A chrysalis,” Leonard repeated Doom’s description.

“Precisely.”

Dr. Nora Sater, that was the researcher’s name, Reed finally remembered. When he Googled her name, it took only a minute to find her numerous articles, and the subject matter was the same in each one: Her work centered on the use of light and sound to convey subliminal messages to test subjects to render them extremely suggestible without their being aware that they were in a suggestible state. It was an advanced form of involuntary hypnosis. Brainwashing. Reed found the notion disgusting at best. The side effect, as with hypnosis, was memory loss. The preferred methodology was---

---blinking lights and background static!

“Oh my God.”

Reed was on his feet and running for the bedrooms, finally understanding. Victor hadn’t been trying to kill Johnny at all or keep the rest of the team out of the box. He’d been trying to keep Johnny inside the box so that he’d be repeatedly bombarded with flashing lights that were hypnotizing him without his knowing it. He’d known, with the loss of air endanger Johnny, the rest of the team would concentrate on freeing him from the box---and they’d do everything in their power to keep him awake, to keep his eyes open so that he’d keep seeing that light. Doom had meant to keep that earpiece in place so that Johnny would hear the subliminal messages encoded into the static while Victor distracted him with ranting and rambling. He’d known Reed would want to trace the signal Victor was sending to that earphone to Doom’s hideaway, that Reed would ask Johnny to keep Victor talking even if it meant keeping that wretched earpiece in place.

Doom had ‘picked Johnny’ to use as a weapon against the rest of the team…

…or worse, against the rest of the world.

“I understand all that, Sir,” Leonard said, picking up the gold knight and studying it for a moment. “What I don’t understand is, why Johnny Storm?”

Doom chuckled at that. “I’m no liar, Leonard. I meant what I said before---he really is a boy after my own heart. The son I always wanted and never had. When I see potential, I’m not one to let it go unfulfilled.” Victor mulled this for a minute. “Reed can create great machines. Sue could possibly shield an entire city if she put her mind to it. Ben…well, there’s something to be said for physical strength. But Johnny? I don’t think even Johnny Storm knows the full implications of his abilities…how truly powerful he is. How many superheroes have the power to annihilate an entire planet with a wave of their hand? What he needs is a mentor to show him the way.”

Leonard pursed his lips, skeptical but unwilling to question his master. “And you believe this chrysalis of yours will work?”

“We’ll find out soon enough.” Doom reached for a remote control and the mewings of the mass of reporters on the television was replaced by images of the exterior of the Baxter Building, provided by security cameras from neighboring skyscrapers, cameras easy enough to patch into when you had the technology at Doom’s disposal.

Johnny Storm opened his eyes.

Only lightly dozing on the couch Ben had moved into the Torch’s room, Susan Storm heard the rustle of the fireproof blankets and came fully awake at once. She’d been staying close by, partially because he’d raised quite a stink about being stuck in bed when they’d brought him home from the hospital, partially because she was still badly shaken. She knew Victor had brought up bad memories, and if her brother should remember any of it---well, she wanted to be close by if his sleep was disturbed by nightmares. When he was a child, he’d had horrible nightmares after their mother’s death and their father’s arrest. She hated Victor more, if possible, for dredging that up.

She saw her brother sitting on the side of the bed, staring at her with a rather blank expression. For a minute, she wondered if, indeed, a nightmare had awakened him. “Johnny? Are you all right?”

He smiled…but it was a rather strange smile. Johnny rose from the bed and crossed the room. He certainly looked better than the agitated state he’d been in when he’d left the hospital, she thought. She met him halfway across the room and wrapped her arms around his neck in a fierce, relieved embrace.

Seconds passed before it dawned on her that her brother was not returning the embrace…not only that, but his body was heating up as if he were about to flame on.

She pulled back in confusion. “Johnny?”

Her only warning was the sudden glow of fire behind his blue eyes. Sue barely raised her shields in time to save herself when Johnny’s body erupted into flames. Fire poured off the Human Torch, and streams of flames formed a barrier between him and the Invisible Woman. Johnny left her standing in the bedroom, fighting the wall of flames he’d created. He paused only to extinguish his right hand so he could pick up the tank of oxygen that had been left beside his bed.

Reed rounded a corner and discovered at once that he was too late. He was face-to-face with the Torch in full flame. Johnny advanced on him with a smile that was pure malice. Reed knew it was futile, but he tried anyway: “Johnny, I know what Doom did. This isn’t you, it’s hyp----”

Johnny had shut off the flame in his right hand, Reed saw almost too late. In that hand was a small oxygen tank. In a swift motion, the Torch pitched the tank in Mr. Fantastic’s direction.

Susan, her shield at full strength, appeared in the hallway behind her brother. “Johnny don’t!” She extended her shield around Reed even as Johnny shot a ball of fire at the oxygen tank. The resulting explosion shook the upper floors of the building, splintering and incinerating furniture and shattering windows.

Johnny didn’t so much as slacken his pace. He heard for the laboratory, sending streams of fire in all directions as he went. Having a human fireball as an occupant, the building had been updated with the best sprinkler and fire suppression equipment there was…but it couldn’t keep up with the onslaught from the Torch.

The explosion, the clatter of fire alarms, the shouts of Susan and Reed, brought Ben running. He entered the laboratory in time to see Johnny incinerating computers and Reed’s inventions one-by-one. Ben didn’t need to be told that this strange turn of events had to do with what happened that afternoon. “What the hell are you doing, Matchstick!?”

Johnny smiled a grin that chilled even a man made of stone and advanced on the Thing.

Ben didn’t want to hurt the kid, but he had to stop him. “C’mon, junior, knock it off! You’re gonna hate yourself in the morning.”

He, in turn, advanced on Johnny---the flames couldn’t hurt Ben’s rocky hide. Johnny raised his arm and sent a stream of fire in the Thing’s direction. He hadn’t, however, been aiming at Ben. Johnny’s flames vaporized the flooring beneath the Thing’s feet, and before Ben knew what had happened, the ground beneath him gave way and sent him into an uncontrolled fall. As he crashed through the stories below those occupied by the quartet, Ben caught a glimpse of the Human Torch as Johnny ran for the balcony and flew away into the night. The fact that he was falling away from their floor saved him when Johnny, as a parting shot, launched one more massive fireball into the Baxter Building.

On the television screen, the cameras Victor controlled captured the image of the upper levels of the Baxter Building engulfed in flames and the small streak of fire that was the Human Torch sailing away into the night.

Victor nodded. “I’d call that a successful test, wouldn’t you, Dr. Sater?” Doom rose from his chair and patted Leonard’s shoulder. “Don’t just stand there, Leonard. Get a suite ready---my prodigal son is on his way home.”

FIN

Author’s note: Okay, show of hands, does anyone out there think I need to do a sequel?

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