Chapter 50: The Doctor Will See You Now

"Victor?" Reed's voice cracked like a teenager's as he stared at the armored figure. "Victor Von Doom? What in God's name are you doing here?"

"Hold up, hold up," Tony interrupted, his HUD already running analysis on the intruder's tech. "More importantly, where'd you get my arc reactor designs? Because that power signature is way too close to my proprietary work for my liking."

The figure's eyes blazed through his metal mask like twin furnaces. When he spoke, every word dripped with royal disdain. "STOLE? You dare—YOU DARE—accuse DOOM of common thievery? Fool! DOOM has no need of your crude machinations! Any simpleton with half a functioning brain could construct such pedestrian armor. Trinkets such as yours, DOOM has fashioned and discarded as inadequate prototypes years past!"

He turned that terrible gaze upon Reed, and his voice dropped to something far more dangerous—the quiet before the storm.

"But you, Richards... you took what was MINE. MY capital funded your pathetic venture into the cosmos. When your incompetence led to that catastrophic failure, it damaged Latveria's standing among the nations. Yet when you emerged from that cosmic storm with abilities beyond mortal ken..." His voice began to rise like a symphony of fury. "Did you answer DOOM's summons? Did you share the secrets of your transformation with the one whose wealth made it possible?"

Reed's jaw worked silently for a moment. "Victor, we were new at—"

"SILENCE!" Doom's gauntlet struck a control console, showering the lab in sparks. "Official diplomatic entreaties from the sovereign ruler of Latveria! Formal demands for audience! ALL IGNORED! You made DOOM appear weak before his subjects!"

His masked visage turned toward Sue, and something infinitely darker entered his tone. "You stole my investment, my prestige, my rightful inheritance of power... and the one treasure that should have graced DOOM's throne."

Sue stepped forward, her blue eyes blazing with equal parts concern and growing fury. "Victor, what happened to you? This isn't who you were at Empire State!"

"Have you learned nothing from my words, woman?" Doom's voice carried the chill of Latverian winters. "You have all betrayed DOOM. Most grievously you, Susan Storm. I would have elevated you to royalty—made you a queen among nations. Instead, you play at heroics in these colorfull costumes."

"That's enough, scrap-heap!" Johnny's flames roared to life, bathing the lab in hellish orange radiance. "Nobody talks to my sister like that! FLAME ON!"

He unleashed everything he had—a red-hot inferno that could melt steel girders. But Doom merely stood there, unmoved, as a perfect sphere of energy materialized around him. The flames washed over it like water off a duck's back.

"Parlor tricks," Doom said with bored contempt.

Rogue and Domino saw their chance and bolted toward Jay's chamber, but Doom casually raised his gauntlet. Twin energy beams lanced out, forcing both women to dive behind overturned equipment.

"Get down!" Steve's shield sliced through the air, intercepting the blasts, but the impact launched him backward into a reinforced wall hard enough to crack the concrete.

"Okay, that's it!" Tony's suit systems screamed to full combat readiness. "I don't care if you're from some backwater European principality—nobody messes with an American on American soil on my watch!"

Iron Man and the Human Torch attacked in perfect synchronization—repulsors and superheated plasma creating a light show. But Doom's barrier absorbed it all without so much as a flicker.

Reed was already moving, stretching across the chaos toward where Ben was shaking off from Doom's initial blast. "Ben! You all right?"

"Been better, Stretch," the Thing rumbled, rolling his massive shoulders. "But I ain't down for the count yet."

Meanwhile, Hank's blue-furred fingers flew over the cosmic radiation controls, sweat beading on his feline features. "The containment field is fluctuating!" he called out over the mayhem. "If the radiation levels destabilize much more—"

"Johnny!" Sue shouted, her tactical mind already planning. "Sustained burn on his barrier & don't let up!"

Understanding immediately, Johnny poured his flames into a concentrated stream while Sue began weaving her force fields around both the fire and Doom's armor. Not a barrier this time—a cage. The heat had nowhere to go but inward.

Doom's armor began to glow cherry-red as the temperature spiked beyond the tolerances of even advanced metallurgy. "Ingenious, Susan," he acknowledged with grudging respect. "But ultimately futile."

He spread his arms wide, energy crackling between his gauntlets like lightning. "DOOM SHALL NOT BE CONFINED!"

The explosion shattered Sue's construct and sent her tumbling across the lab like a rag doll. But the effort had cost him, low energy and integrity warning lights flickered across his armor's systems.

That's when Reed struck like an octopus, his malleable form flowing around Doom from six different angles simultaneously. "Now! Everyone, now!"

"It's clobberin' time!" Ben charged forward with a war cry.

His granite fist connected with Doom's chest plate just as Steve's shield ricocheted off the back of his helmet in a perfect bank shot. Tony's repulsors fired at point-blank range, the combined assault driving the armored dictator to one knee.

"This ends here, Victor," Reed said through clenched teeth, his elastic limbs constricting like anacondas. "Surrender now, and maybe we can help you."

Doom's response was laughter—cold, bitter, and absolutely terrifying.

"You never did comprehend the depth of your inadequacy, Richards. DOOM always has... contingencies."

Unappealingly, Green energy erupted from every surface of his armor—an omnidirectional shockwave that hit like a telekinetic train. Reed's grip was shattered, Ben went tumbling head over heels, and even Tony's two-ton suit was swatted aside.

As his enemies struggled to regain their footing, Doom produced a device no bigger than a watch from his gauntlet and placed it on Iron Man suit. The EMP pulse it generated turned Tony's suit into very expensive deadweight in seconds.

"Fascinating technology, Stark," Doom observed as Tony's arc reactor flickered and died. "Regrettably vulnerable to electromagnetic interference."

A monomolecular blade extended from his wrist gauntlet. When Reed stretched toward him again, the edge sliced through his extended arm like it was made of butter.

Reed's scream of agony echoed through the lab, leaving him clutching the wound and trying not to pass out from shock.

"REED!" Sue's voice cracked with terror and rage.

But Doom was already at the cosmic ray apparatus, his armored hand closing around the primary control.

"If DOOM cannot possess these gifts," he declared with the finality of a death sentence, "then none shall benefit from them!"

The dial spun to maximum output.

Jay's chamber erupted in blinding radiance as cosmic energy poured forth in levels that dwarfed the original levels. The unconscious man convulsed as raw power cascaded over his prone form.

"Sweet mother of Darwin, NO!" Hank roared from his backup console. "Those radiation levels—at that intensity, with his existing injuries—it's going to kill him! Or worse—transform him into something that should never exist!"

Domino didn't hesitate. She threw herself toward the deadly beam, hoping against hope that her body could somehow shield Jay from the worst of it.

But probability had other plans. The floor beneath her feet—weakened by the earlier explosions—chose that precise moment to collapse. She plummeted into darkness with a string of profanity.

"Son of a bitch!" her voice echoed from somewhere below. "I couldn't even save him!"

Rogue watched in horror as Jay's body jerked and spasmed in the tanks, the metal shard still stuck in his abdomen and bleeding. Her friends were down, the bad guy was winning, and someone she'd come to care about was dying right in front of her eyes.

"Forgive me, sugar," she whispered, pulling off her gloves with trembling fingers.

Her bare palm touched Ben's rocky shoulder first. Strength, durability, and fighting experience flooded into her as her skin took on his granite texture. Sue came next—invisible force fields shimmering around her body like mirages. Then Johnny, flames erupting from her arms in infernos. Finally, Reed, her left arm stretching like taffy.

She was all of them now, their powers layered through her nervous system. The agony was indescribable—every cell screaming in protest as conflicting energies tried to tear her apart from within.

"VICTOR!" Her voice was a chorus now, harmonized fury given sound. "This ends NOW!"

What followed was less a fight than a force of nature unleashed. Rogue moved like living lightning—stretching invisible, flaming limbs that struck from impossible angles while force fields contained the destruction. She fought with Ben's brawling instincts, Sue's tactical precision, Johnny's reckless courage, and Reed's calculated approach all at once.

She became a human dome, bending around Doom's energy blasts and striking back with flame-wreathed invisible fists that left dents in his armor. When he tried to fly, she wrapped elastic arms around his legs and yanked him earthward. When he fired missiles, she turned invisible and let them pass through force field decoys.

But Doom was no common enemy. Even with failing systems, he adapted to her multi-faceted assault, using the lab itself as a weapon—turning tables into projectiles, overloading power conduits to create electrical traps, even collapsing sections of the ceiling to limit her mobility.

"You are impressive," he admitted as his armor sparked from accumulated damage. "But you lack DOOM's gift! His Intelligence!"

Through it all, Jay continued to convulse in the bath. Steve was unconscious against the wall. Tony's suit was expensive scrap metal. The Fantastic Four were down for the count. Hank was desperately trying to reach Professor Xavier while maintaining what little control he still had over the radiation output. Domino was somewhere in the building's lower levels, probably injured.

Rogue's borrowed powers were literally cooking her from the inside. But before her body gave out completely, she managed one final act of defiance. Moving with Johnny's speed, backed by Sue's force fields, powered by Ben's strength, and guided by Reed's flexibility, she drove her fist through Doom's face plate and chest armor like they were made of tissue paper.

Then she collapsed, her skin fading back to its natural pale color as the stolen abilities drained away, leaving her gasping on the debris-strewn floor.

Doom stood amidst the wreckage, his armor sparking and failing. Blood ran from behind his shattered mask, but his voice carried the satisfaction of victory. "At last, DOOM claims what was always rightfully—"

THWACK

Something struck his exposed face with the velocity of a sniper's bullet. A quarter—nothing but twenty-five cents of American currency—but moving so fast it punched through flesh and cartilage like an armor-piercing round. Blood sprayed as his nose shattered, sending him staggering backward in blind agony.

And in that moment of pain-induced disorientation, he stumbled directly into the path of the cosmic radiation beam.

The raw energy hit him with the force of a solar flare. His scream could have shattered glass as cosmic fire began remaking his cellular structure. Only a fraction of the radiation continued through to Jay's chamber—but Doom was absorbing the rest with his own unwilling flesh.

Hank saw his chance and took it. If the madman wanted cosmic radiation, the Beast would give him everything they had. Every dial spun to maximum. Every safety protocol disabled. The laboratory's entire reserve of cosmic energy poured into the monster who had threatened their friend.

When the terrible light finally faded and their cosmic fuel was exhausted, the heroes slowly regained consciousness. What greeted them would fuel nightmares for the rest of their lives.

Victor Von Doom still stood, but he was no longer recognizably human. His once-magnificent armor hung in melted, twisted rags. Where his face had been was now a landscape of scar tissue, exposed bones, and burn marks.

He was alive, but transformed into darkest nightmares.

But it was Jay who commanded their attention now. The young man lay absolutely motionless in his chamber, terribly quiet.

Reed crawled to the chamber on hands and knees, his wounded arm leaving a crimson trail across the floor. "Jay?" he whispered hoarsely. "Jay, please... respond if you can hear me."

The silence stretched on like a held breath.

No movement.

In the distance, sirens wailed as emergency responders finally reached the devastated Baxter Building.

But in that moment, all that mattered was the question that none of them dared to voice aloud:

Was he even still alive?