"Get out now," Mark instructed them, a stern expresssion on his face, "Can you help your father?" He asked the boy, to which the boy nodded resolutely by grabbing his arm for support, "Alright get going."
"I can shut it off if I have a minute to study it," the girl said with resolutely, "I know the basics, Reed showed me how it worked," she added.
"No Sue it's too dangerous," her father said while shaking his head, "We need to run now while we still can," he insisted.
"If we don't stop it Dad then who knows what might happen? It could level the block!" she argued.
Mark hesitated as he looked at the cracks and felt the energy buzz louder, then nodded, "Okay let's go," before picking her up and telling her, "Hold on tight." He flew across the room and through a floor hole where debris fell around them, a chunk missing his head by inches and another grazing his arm, into the basement where the air shook and vibrated with static energy.
Two people were there: a skinny guy with glasses trapped under rubble, passed out, and a larger man heaving at the rubble with all his might though sweat poured down his face from the effort without success.
Mark set her down, "Get started on the device," he told her to which she nodded and ran to it.
Mark zoomed to the man who was murmuring, "Come on, Reed, buddy, you can't do this now; wake up!" under his breath in worry.
The man startled at Mark's touch, "Whoa! who are you?" He shouted in fright.
"Don't worry, I'll get him out," Mark said before lifting the rubble with ease, "Take your friend and get out—fast." He told the man who quickly worked to get his friend out.
"Thanks, man," the larger one said gratefully as he hoisted Reed over his shoulder with a grunt, "Come on, we gotta get you out, hang in there."
Mark joined the girl at the device where she pressed buttons on the console with rapid keystrokes that danced across the flickering screens. Mark scanned it, tracing the energy flows, stabilizers, and anchors, realizing this was a trans-dimensional teleportation device. "Shit if this does blow up the whole city is going to be irradiated with cosmic radiation," Mark commented as he watched her work.
"How did you know that?" she asked in shock while glancing up. She didn't expect the big buff hero in front of her to be a geeky science nerd type.
"It's a trans dimensional teleporter, you can tell from the way the generated energy is trying to bend space," Mark replied, as he pointed at the screen.
"That's exactly it," she replied, the shock still apparent on her face. "It's a prototype for jumps between dimensions."
The larger man chuckled, "Think he's just a big dumb brute? Guy's got brains under the mask." or at least what used to be his mask. 'There goes my secret identity...' he thought to himself.
The woman turned back to the screen and refocused on trying to get everything under control and shut down the device; but she struggled as error codes kept flashing red and the energy surged in erratic pulses that shook the walls, causing more debris to fall while, "It's not responding, damn it!" She said hitting the console.
"What can I di to help?" Mark asked.
"Those pylons, I can't control them remotely; I need access but they need to be done one by one, in sequence," she explained, as she pointed to each one of the pylons that surrounded the building energy in the middle.
"Easy. I'll get right on it," Mark said. "Just give me the signal."
"Now! Northwest!" she shouted abruptly.
Mark rocketed across the basement, weaving between cracked pillars and hanging cables. He reached the first pylon. He gripped the maintenance rail, slid back the panel, and exposed the control lattice. His fingers flew across the interface. With a press, twist, and a quick bypass, the pylon pulsed, a blue ring formed around its top.
"Eastern pair!" she called.
Mark took off, flying low under a collapsed support beam. He skidded to a stop before the next two pylons, positioned side by side. The left one sparked intermittently. He knelt, accessed the primary node beneath the casing, and rotated the calibration dial until the current aligned with the system's magnetic field. It locked with a click. The right one required a more hands on bypass. He extended his finger and jammed it into the conduit. The lights blinked twice, and the energy field wrapped neatly around both pylons as they synced.
"Southern, then central relay!" she barked.
The core in the center of the room roared louder, shedding arcs of plasma. The walls groaned under the pressure, and the concrete floor split down the middle. Mark blitzed to the southern pylon. Smoke veiled its base, and a loose cable snapped toward him like a whip. He dodged it, slammed his palm against the access pad and tore it off. When it opened he rotated the inner core chamber manually, aligning the internal rings with the main hub. The pylon surged into harmony with the rest.
One left.
He shot upward,, and flew toward the central relay. Sparks showered the room as the core's charge intensified. He landed in a crouch, slid the locking bracket open, and triggered the last override using a short-range pulse from its own power cell. The central relay lit up in sequence with the rest.
All five pylons stabilized. The energy field around the core locked into perfect balance.
Then, without warning, the core flared. A sudden spike of power burst outward in a flood of blinding blue light, so bright it swallowed the room in an instant and left everything shaking. The ground lurched as if something massive had just slammed into the foundation from below, and the walls cracked louder than before, lines spreading fast across the concrete like glass under pressure.
"What's happening?" Mark shouted, throwing up an arm to shield his eyes as the light grew harsher, stepping in front of her to block the wild bursts of energy that cracked through the air.
"I don't know!" she said, panic etched into her voice as her fingers flew across the keys, the glow of the screen flickering with error after error. Her eyes darted over the diagnostics, scanning lines of code that kept rewriting themselves, until the truth hit her like a punch to the chest and she froze, "It's been sabotaged! The whole system's locked, there's no override!" She cried out as she looked at Mark hopelessly.
Mark cursed under his breath before shooting to the main console in a blur, his narrowing as he scanned the cascade of red error codes flooding the screen, his hands started moving in sync with his thoughts as he began parsing the corrupted data.
She stood frozen for a second, face pale with horror as the energy pulsing from the core turned violent, surging outward in rapid bursts that jumped between the pylons like chained lightning, the arcs thickening with each pulse until they began to carve scars into the concrete and metal, the air filling with a crackling roar that seemed to shake the air itself, promising a catastrophic chain reaction that would tear the building apart and take the city with it.
"It's not over," Mark said with a calm voice and a smile as he looked at the woman, while rerouting the power into the auxiliary conduits buried beneath the foundation, locking in commands to amplify the magnetic containment fields and force the unstable anomaly inward instead of letting it expand, building toward a self-sustaining implosion that would fold the entire breach back onto itself.
"What's your name?" He asked the woman trying to keep her calm. "I'm Mark, its good to meet you, tho you I could think of better circumstances."
The woman found herself laughing despite herself. "I'm Susan, but my friends call me Sue," she replied.
"Then don't worry Sue, everything is going to be fine," Mark said with a grin, before getting back to work.
She moved to his side, watching the paths he created on the display as the energy matrix shifted from spiraling chaos into a loop of folded fields, her skepticism faded fast as she saw him reinforcing the magnetic lattice, building containment in multiple layers, feeding the energy back into the system until it passed the threshold and began pulling inward, the external surge now collapsing toward its own center.
Her mind raced as she ran the math, visualizing exponential energy decay curves and compression thresholds, calculating the radius of the implosion and realizing with a sharp intake of breath that it would consume the building in radiation but collapse with enough control to prevent a full-scale detonation, allowing the radiation to be absorbed and redirected as raw force back into the grid with minimal external fallout. "That's genius..." she couldn't help but mutter.
Mark confirmed the sequence with one final keystroke, locking in the override and sealing the containment protocol as the timer ticked down in red, and without a word he scooped her up into a secure hold, his arms locked around her as he launched them both down the corridor with a shockwave already building behind them, the roar of it shaking the foundations as the core began its collapse.
He moved as fast as he could, threading between steel supports that cracked and snapped under the pressure, diving through walls that had already begun to give way, energy tendrils lashing out from behind like whips made of raw plasma that tore through concrete and air alike. Bursting through the basement ceiling, he broke into the main lobby where the others stood waiting in a cluster, still having not gotten out yet, the old man gripping the boy's hand while the two men looked toward the stairs with wide eyes, the walls already groaning as the force of the collapse reached upward through the building.
Mark set her down beside them, barely touching the ground before turning again, as he prepared to launch back toward the breach, but her voice stopped him. lWhat are you doing?" she shouted as the walls cracked deeper and the lights above shattered in sparks.
"I can't leave them," Mark said without looking back, then he vanished into the collapsing hallwa, flying through smoke and falling debris as he swept through the rubble, collecting the unconscious mutants left behind in the blast zone, lifting them over his shoulders, their bodies limp as the walls began to fall around him.
'Shit,' he thought as the floor behind him gave way and a wave of plasma erupted upward through the breach, flooding the space with a surge of energy that lit the air in blue-white flame, burning with a intense fire that passed through every layer of matter.
He exploded through the lobby again, flying under beams that fell like guillotines, avoiding deadly rainfalls of steel and stone as he shouted to the others, voice echoing through the chamber, "Get out, now!"
The detonation wave was right behind him now, pulsing with force that twisted the air into shimmering sheets of distorted light, and with no time to hesitate he threw the unconscious mutants through the shattered entrance, their bodies tumbling to safety as the explosion neared critical mass. Turning, he lunged for the others, arms stretching to gather them in one final desperate sweep, but the wave caught him first, slamming into them all with a surge of energy that passed through flesh and bone like lightning through water, burning and freezing at once, every nerve ending alight as their cells drank in the foreign radiation and began to shift.
The world vanished in a white blaze.
(AN: A bit of a weird origin for fantastic 4 but it works. Plus now Mark has met Sue. Nice. Also they were all hit with cosmic rays. Wowowoweowow. Anyway hope you enjoyed it all.)
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