Bella hadn't wanted to come. As a sorceress, she genuinely couldn't make heads or tails of what cosmic rays actually were.
The radiation appeared harmless on the surface, and it had even gifted the Fantastic Four a full suite of superpowers. The four of them went on to live together happily ever after. Even Victor Von Doom had gained abilities, and in time would develop the capacity to fuel magic with those very powers.
The ending was beautiful. The process, though, was anything but reassuring.
Energy of that magnitude slamming directly into a human body, tearing apart the entire genetic structure and rebuilding it from scratch—how could anyone call that safe?
Reed Richards had seemed perfectly normal before the transformation. After becoming Mr. Fantastic, his inventions went careening toward the "world destruction" end of the spectrum and never looked back.
Susan Storm had been a perfectly ordinary researcher before the station—cosmetics, snacks, parties, the complete package of an everyday American girl. But the moment she became the Invisible Woman, she took on this perpetual look of saintly compassion. Love for the nation, love for the people, love for the world.
Johnny Storm and Ben Grimm underwent equally dramatic shifts. After becoming the Human Torch and the Thing, one turned volatile as wildfire and the other devolved into a bull-headed brute.
Before the transformation, Ben Grimm had been a shuttle pilot—a position with exacting requirements for education and personal aptitude. No country on Earth would hire a thick-skulled lunkhead to fly a space shuttle.
Victor Von Doom's transformation was the most extreme of all. His arrogance had been within comprehensible bounds beforehand. After the cosmic rays, his paranoia, cunning, and brooding intensity went completely off the charts.
Bella was convinced the rays had altered their personalities, and the magnitude of the change was enormous.
Measured against the many theories taught at Kamar-Taj, she had developed an even bolder hypothesis: perhaps the original versions of Reed, Victor, and Susan in this timeline had simply ceased to exist the instant the cosmic rays struck. The high-energy bombardment had punched through dimensional barriers and swapped in their counterparts from parallel realities.
Bella watched the shuttle prepare for launch on the monitors. "Honestly, you've stumped me. Cosmic rays, genetic mapping—I really don't understand any of it. All I know is their odds of success are extremely low... Weyland's business won't be affected."
She figured that if 006 had been aboard, there was a fair chance he could have soaked up some cosmic radiation too. Give him a source of magical energy, add in the memories he carried from Zeus, and Comrade 006's dream of becoming a sorcerer wouldn't be far off.
Then again, the odds of being blasted to atoms were considerably higher.
The shuttle launch went smoothly, and the docking with the station was textbook-perfect.
Back on Earth, legions of scientists watched in breathless anticipation—though if pressed, most of them couldn't have said exactly what they were anticipating.
Less than two hours after docking, one of Weyland's scientists inside the planetarium leapt to his feet.
"Oh God! Their calculations were off! The storm is almost here!"
Bella exchanged a glance with the Brotherhood assassin beside her. Within moments, Weyland's orbital telescope swiveled to train on the station.
"Your intuition was right. They failed." Watching the telescope feed fill with a roiling orange energy storm, 006 developed an entirely new appreciation for Bella's talent as a jinx.
I don't bow to anyone—except you.
The cosmic storm, originally projected to pass through the solar system nine hours later, had arrived early. By the time the planetarium's instruments detected it, they were already more than a minute behind. Before anyone on the ground could formulate a response, the ten-billion-dollar station took a direct hit. The energy inside the storm was overwhelming. Communications with the ground severed instantly.
Through every available observation channel, ground teams could see only that the station was engulfed in a maelstrom of blazing high-energy particles. Even Weyland's orbital telescope couldn't resolve anything meaningful through the chaos. The storm came fast and left faster—like a gust of wind, it blew through the solar system and was gone.
From entry to exit, the entire event lasted less than nine minutes.
The ravaged station drifted like discarded wreckage, caught by gravity and falling toward Earth's atmosphere.
"What a shame. Looks like President Sawyer won't be getting that second term after all..." On the surface, 006 was lamenting the president's fate; in reality, he was needling Bella's father.
Bella sighed. "The Nanomite experiment drew condemnation from every country on the planet, and now the cosmic-ray experiment has apparently failed too. All that money spent for two disasters in a row... Still, maybe it's for the best. The next presidential term won't be a peaceful one. The great era is coming."
006 listened carefully, not letting a single word slip past—especially when she said the great era. A contemplative expression settled over his features.
"This is only the beginning?" he couldn't help asking. Things were already this bad, and it was only the beginning?
Bella glanced at him. "Beginning? The prologue hasn't even started yet. But... it's close."
The station's crash triggered a fresh wave of criticism against the government and President Sawyer. More than a dozen investment banks that had been talked into funding the station went bankrupt outright. The remaining banks suffered devastating losses.
Von Doom Industries' stock price cratered to something barely distinguishable from wastepaper.
With only three months to the election, President Sawyer was tempted to resign. The pressure from every direction was simply unbearable.
While politicians and businessmen wallowed in despair, the public's attention stayed fixed on the people. To everyone's surprise, all five who had gone up to the station survived. Reed Richards, Susan Storm, Johnny Storm, and Ben Grimm had actually come out of the disaster with superpowers that made the rest of the world green with envy.
Their control over those powers was abysmal. Through a chain of accidents, the four of them ended up working together to rescue a fire truck and several firefighters on the Brooklyn Bridge. Granted, the traffic pileup had been their fault in the first place, but the public didn't have a god's-eye view of the sequence of events. All they saw were four extraordinary people performing extraordinary heroics.
The rescue earned them universal praise. An enthusiastic citizen even coined a nickname for the group: the Fantastic Four.
Mr. Fantastic, Reed Richards. The Invisible Woman, Susan Storm. The Human Torch, Johnny Storm. And the Thing, Ben Grimm.
Ready or not, the four of them had become the superheroes of a new age. The last superhero the public had known by name was Captain America.
Fans treated the four with the fervor of celebrity worship. The media pounced, and a flood of articles analyzing each member's abilities and team role hit the papers.
Pride. Superheroes living in their city. New Yorkers felt as if they'd become superheroes themselves.