The organ's chords suddenly cut out, as if the world itself had gone silent. Lights dimmed.
The floating drone cams stuttered midair, sparks flashing as their rotors faltered and died. The priest paused mid-sentence.
And then the helicopter above, a press chopper carrying two reporters and a pilot, shuddered.
THWUM-THWUM-THWUM.
The blades slowed. The engine coughed once and went quiet.
For one terrible second, it hung still in the sky.
It dropped.
Screams erupted across the park.
Guests scattered in a wave of color and panic as the helicopter tumbled like a drunk bird, tilting sideways and plunging toward the wedding platform.
Susan instinctively threw up a force field, shielding the nearest guests.
Reed's arms stretched inhumanly to wrap around a collapsing column.
"Johnny!" Reed's voice cracked through the chaos. "Catch him!"
FWOOOSH.
A column of flame rocketed into the sky, twisting through smoke and debris. Johnny Storm, the Human Torch, erupted into the air, a fiery comet slicing toward the fading silver streak overhead.
"Damn it." He hissed through gritted teeth, leaving a trail of embers. "Not today."
The silver blur was already streaking across the clouds.
But this time, it didn't flee. It danced.
It slowed.
It waited.
Johnny narrowed his eyes as he gained ground. Whoever this guy was, he was toying with him, drawing him in like a moth to flame.
The chase streaked across the Atlantic, too fast for any jet to track, streaking over the curvature of the Earth and into the shimmering green of the African jungles.
Then, as suddenly as it began, the Silver Surfer stopped.
There was no deceleration.
Johnny didn't have time to stop.
The figure turned, glinting in the sunlight, sleek, silver, a living mirror on a surfboard that defied gravity. Its eyes were deep pools of silence.
An arm lashed out~
CRACK
Johnny felt fingers of cold steel clamp around his throat.
One moment he was flying free, the next, he was weightless, voiceless, gasping in the vacuum of space.
His flame sputtered.
His lungs clawed for oxygen that wasn't there.
He kicked. Punched. The silver hand didn't move.
"M-My… friend…" He wheezed, his voice already distant, like it came from someone else. "We can… talk…"
There was no answer.
The stars grew brighter.
Then, like a discarded toy, the Surfer let go.
Johnny plummeted.
Tumbling headfirst through the void, airless and frozen, he couldn't even scream. The Earth curved beneath him like a blue jewel. Clouds whipped past.
He was falling too fast.
Flames refused to come.
His body hurtled downward like a meteor, heat building, skin burning, nothing but sky between him and death.
"Ignite. IGNITE!" Tears freezing on his cheeks.
At a hundred meters, a flicker.
FWAM
Flames burst across his body. He twisted his trajectory at the last second, veering sideways, tumbling hard into the desert below.
He crashed through a canvas tent, rolling in a blur of dust, sand, and smoke.
Silence.
Then a low groan from the wreckage.
Johnny stood up, bruised and scorched, but alive.
The tent he destroyed had been empty, some kind of geological survey post. He coughed, flames flickering off his skin, and looked up at the sky.
The Silver Surfer was gone.
Johnny slammed a hand on the table. "He dragged me into orbit and dropped me."
"Just looked at me like I was a bug on his windshield."
General Rawlins frowned, glancing at the screen behind them. It showed Johnny's telemetry during the chase, fluctuating energy signatures, plummeting vitals, a narrow margin of survival.
"He's not here to talk," Reed said quietly, tapping through the satellite data on his tablet. "He's not curious. He's judging us."
"Or testing us." Susan added.
"Either way." He general muttered, folding his arms.
"He's a threat to humanity."
A low hum filled the lab, pulsing in rhythm with the flickering holoprojections floating above the workstations. Reed Richards stood in front of a massive digital globe, blue lines of data swirling around it like ghostly satellites.
Johnny Storm sat nearby, wrapped in a heat-retaining medical blanket, watching him with narrowed eyes.
"Any progress?" Johnny asked, his voice raspier than usual.
Reed didn't look up.
His eyes were locked on the faint silver signature rotating slowly in space, a trail of otherworldly radiation Johnny's body still emitted.
"Yes." Reed said, but there was no triumph in his voice. "More than I wanted to find."
He tapped a few keys. The image shifted, zooming out, sweeping across a star map.
"Every planet the Surfer's energy has touched…" Reed paused, swallowing hard, "...has gone dark."
"Within days. Not just the surface… everything."
"Cores go cold. Moons vanish. Stars dim."
Johnny leaned forward. "You're saying he kills planets?"
"No."
"He seems to scout them. Something else does the killing."
He pressed another key.
The lights dimmed. A new projection emerged, a shape coalescing in the dark above them.
A silhouette that dwarfed stars, flowing like a storm cloud laced with burning galaxies.
"Holy hell." Whispered Johnny.
"It's not hell." Reed muttered. "It's... a galaxy eater."
The projection now filled a darkened briefing hall deep beneath the Pentagon. Military brass and scientists sat around a long, reinforced steel table.
At the head stood Reed, exhausted.
"According to trajectory models based on data from the Hubble and the James Webb telescopes."
"This... entity is accelerating. At current speed, it will enter our solar system in six days."
The General rubbed his temples. "Are you absolutely certain?"
"I've run the numbers a dozen times." Reed replied, eyes haunted. "If anything, the estimate may be generous."
"What does it do?" The general asked.
Reed didn't answer right away. Then, he tapped the console.
On screen: a sequence of planetary images. Lush forests, teeming oceans, alien cities.
Then… emptiness. Cracked husks. Orbiting debris.
"It consumes energy." Reed said.
"All energy. Planetary cores. Stars. Atmospheres. Living matter. Even nuclear fusion… is like candy to it."
A heavy silence fell across the room. One colonel whispered, "Then there's no weapon we can use…"
The general turned sharply. "What about a nuclear countermeasure? Orbital deployment?"
Reed shook his head slowly. "You don't understand. Firing nukes at this would be like tossing wood into a bonfire. It would feed him."
The president stood at the head of the table, eyes hard. Around him sat cabinet officials, the Joint Chiefs, and key members of Congress.
Every face reflected the same truth, fear.
A looping image of the Silver Surfer hovered above the table, projected in eerie blue light.
"Everyone's seen the report." the President said flatly. "Now I need solutions."
Silence.
For several long seconds, no one moved.
Then a gravelly voice broke the quiet.
An older man, silver-haired and sharp-eyed, leaned forward, the President's National Security Adviser.
"Sir, we may have one option."
"The Ark Project."
He raised an eyebrow. "That old contingency file?"
"It's more than a file now. Over the past decade, our aerospace infrastructure's grown. NASA, SpaceX, international collaboration."
"We have the shells. Engines. Orbital life-support systems. Not perfected, but... viable."
"Evacuation!?"
꧁𓊈𒆜༺⚜༻𒆜𓊉꧂
PhantomDream