Red and blue emergency lights painted the shattered asphalt outside the Baxter Building.
Thanks to Amadeus Cho's frantic, building-wide broadcast, the Avengers had managed to establish a hard quarantine perimeter in record time. Dozens of silver Ultron drones flew in and out of the lower-level windows, ferrying terrified scientists and interns to safety.
But the rescue operation had a cascading effect. Realizing their food supply was rapidly depleting, the undead Fantastic Four shifted their tactics. Instead of simply eating the stragglers, they began indiscriminately biting and infecting the remaining security personnel to bolster their numbers. Screams echoed from the dark, shattered lobby.
High above the street, the reinforced glass of a fiftieth-floor window exploded outward.
A massive figure plummeted toward the pavement, moving entirely too fast to survive the drop. He hit the ground with the force of a meteor, cracking the concrete in a wide spiderweb radius and kicking up a thick cloud of dust.
As the debris cleared, Thor Odinson lowered Mjolnir, his eyes widening in genuine shock.
Standing in the center of the crater was a mountain of a man, bare-chested, heavily bearded, and hefting a golden warhammer over his shoulder. Tucked firmly under his massive left arm like a football was a very pale, heavily panting Amadeus Cho.
"Hercules?" Thor demanded, stepping forward. "You have come to Midgard as well?"
Hercules casually set Amadeus down on his feet. He clapped a hand on Amadeus's shoulder, nearly buckling the teenager's knees, before marching over to pull Thor into a bone-crushing embrace.
"The major pantheons have already begun to stir from their slumber, Odinson! Did you not know?" Hercules boomed, his voice echoing off the surrounding skyscrapers. "You are not the only god who feels the pull of the mortal realm."
Tony Stark landed, his Silver Centurion faceplate retracting with a sharp hiss. "Okay, Point Break, you can catch up with your mythological frat brother later. Right now, we need a plan to deal with the zombie Fantastic Four before they break containment and—"
The air in front of Tony warped. A localized drop in barometric pressure popped Peter's ears, followed by the violent tearing sound of spatial fabric giving way.
It wasn't the sparkling, golden-orange geometry of Doctor Strange's sling rings. This portal burned with a sickly, luminescent emerald energy, smelling of ozone and ancient sulfur.
A heavy, steel-plated boot stepped out onto the asphalt.
He wore highly advanced, silver-gray armor draped in a heavy, forest-green cloak held by twin circular clasps. A cold, unreadable iron mask stared out at the assembled heroes.
"Doctor Doom?" Tony took a half-step back, his repulsors automatically whining to a high pitch. "What the hell are you doing here?"
Victor Von Doom did not look at Stark. His gaze was fixed entirely on the Baxter Building. "Reed Richards has made a mess. Doom is here to clean it. Doom have no interest in participating in your circus, Stark."
Without another word, Doom strode forward. He paused only to snatch the plastic Baxter Building intern badge directly off Amadeus Cho's collar, snapping the lanyard. Then, he walked straight past the Avengers and into the darkened lobby.
Hanging upside down from a web-line attached to a streetlight, Peter lifted his mask slightly to scratch his chin. "Are we seriously just letting the guy dressed like a medieval supervillain stroll right in?"
"What else do you suggest?" Tony asked, not lowering his gauntlets. "We don't know if the Richards in there is our Reed infected by some localized virus, or if they crossed over from a dying parallel universe. If one of us goes in and gets bitten, we've got an Avengers-level zombie problem." Tony watched the green cloak disappear into the shadows. "Since he's Reed's oldest rival, let him go in and test the waters."
Inside the lobby, the air was thick with the copper stench of blood and the distinct scent of rotting meat. The marble floor was littered with the torn, sparking remains of Ultron drones and the mutilated bodies of security guards.
Several of the guards twitched. Their heads snapped toward Doom, their jaws hanging loose, milky eyes locked onto the fresh meat.
Upstairs, Zombie Reed Richards felt the shift in the building's atmosphere. A grotesque, decaying smile stretched across his gray face. "Oh, it's the Doom of this universe. I'm suddenly very curious... I wonder what Victor's flesh tastes like."
In the lobby, Doctor Doom didn't even break his stride.
As the infected guards charged him, Doom simply raised his right gauntlet. He didn't use repulsors or lasers. He muttered a single, guttural syllable in a forgotten language.
A thick, undulating black cloud poured from his fingertips. Countless mystical scarabs swarmed the zombies, burrowing into their rotting flesh and devouring the dead tissue at a terrifying speed. Within seconds, the infected guards collapsed into piles of clean, dry bones.
Doom stepped over them, entering the private elevator and overriding the biometrics with a surge of green electricity.
He rode the car directly to the upper-level vacuum laboratory. Amadeus's stolen intern badge granted him access to the main console. Doom calmly typed in the sequence to repressurize the containment cell holding the undead Human Torch.
As the heavy air hissed back into the chamber, Zombie Johnny Storm gasped, necrotic flames immediately roaring back to life across his charred skeleton.
"Well, buddy," Zombie Johnny cackled, pressing his burning hands against the glass as it slid open. "You're really thoughtful for a guy in a metal can."
The Torch lunged forward, a stream of sickly orange fire trailing behind him. "I'll give you a quick death, old friend!"
Doom did not flinch. His armored hands erupted in a brilliant aura of emerald magic. He sidestepped the initial blast, reached directly into the corrupted flames, and seized the zombie Human Torch by the throat. The fire washed over Doom's armor, completely failing to heat the enchanted metal.
With his free hand, Doom tore open another green portal, dragging the thrashing, burning zombie through it and stepping out onto the cold, windy rooftop of the Baxter Building.
Zombie Reed Richards was already waiting for him.
"Alright, Victor," Zombie Reed said, his voice a wet rasp. "What are you doing here? Did you come to turn the tide, or just to prove you're stronger than me?"
Reed smiled. He appeared to be standing still, but in the darkness, his elongated, elastic torso had already snaked around the ventilation units, forming a massive, tightening loop behind Doom.
"You can't cover every blind spot, Victor!" Reed shouted, his neck stretching forward like a striking snake. "I'll pry that armor open like a tin can and eat your liver!"
Doom simply stared at the incoming undead genius with cold, absolute disdain.
He tightened his grip on Johnny's throat. Channeling his own magical reserves directly into the Torch's necrotic core, Doom forcefully overcharged the zombie's remaining energy. The Torch's body began to glow with a blinding, unstable white light.
Down on the street, Tony and Peter shielded their eyes as a deafening, localized thermonuclear explosion rocked the top floor of the Baxter Building. The shockwave rattled the glass of every skyscraper in a three-block radius.
"What the hell did he just do?!" Tony yelled over the ringing in his ears.
On the roof, the smoke cleared. Doom stood completely unharmed, his personal forcefield shimmering faintly. He casually tossed the blackened, permanently extinguished remains of Johnny Storm aside.
At his feet, Zombie Reed Richards had been flash-melted into a bubbling, unrecognizable puddle of necrotic liquid.
Doom turned, his heavy boots crunching on the scorched concrete. Zombie Susan Storm stood near the edge of the roof, her hands raised, projecting a thick, invisible forcefield around herself.
She was trembling. Despite her rotting features, the fear in her eyes was entirely human. "Don't kill me, Victor. You... you won't kill me, right?"
Doom stopped a few feet away. "...Indeed not."
Seeing him lower his gauntlets, Zombie Susan breathed a heavy sigh of relief. She instantly dropped her protective shield, thrusting both hands forward. "You killed my husband!" she shrieked, wrapping her telekinesis around Doom's head and clenching her fists.
The metal mask crumpled. The head flattened with a sickening crunch.
But there was no blood. Only a shower of blue electrical sparks and grinding gears.
"Because I needed an intact biological sample to locate the resonant frequency of your universe," a cold voice echoed from the shadows behind her.
Zombie Susan spun around just as the real Doctor Von Doom completed his incantation.
He didn't give her a fraction of a second to react. Massive, thorny, mystical vines erupted violently from the concrete beneath her, piercing straight through her rotting flesh. The vines expanded rapidly, tearing her entirely apart from the inside out and pinning the pieces to the rooftop.
Doom snapped his fingers. A wave of intense, emerald hellfire swept across the roof, instantly reducing the remains of Reed, Susan, and Johnny to fine gray ash. A secondary pulse rippled downward through the building's structure, tracking the biometric signature of the undead Thing on the lower floors and incinerating him where he stood.
The infestation was eradicated.
Doom turned his back on the ashes and walked down the stairwell to Reed's primary laboratory. He ignored the shattered remains of H.E.R.B.I.E. on the floor and accessed the central mainframe.
Using the residual dimensional frequency he had extracted from the zombies, Doom quickly located the decaying universe where the original Fantastic Four were currently trapped. He pulled up the telemetry for the multiverse bridge Reed had built.
Doom narrowed his eyes behind his iron mask. Useless.
The parameters were flawed. Or rather, the localized reality barrier of Earth-616 was far too thick for standard mechanical transit. Doom had run these calculations himself years ago; tearing a physical hole in this specific universe's fabric required a power source beyond conventional physics.
So how had Richards bypassed a problem that even Doom couldn't solve?
His fingers flew across the keyboard, searching the hidden directories. The Cosmic Cube? An interesting artifact, but insufficient for stable biological transport across the Web.
Then, a file opened. It wasn't a machine. It was a person. A physical entity biologically anchored to the Web of Fate itself.
Doom stared at the high-resolution image of Spider-Man on the monitor.
A moment later, a green portal opened on the street level, right in front of the Avengers' barricade. Doom stepped out, the portal snapping shut behind him.
"The pestilence has been cleansed," Doom announced, his voice carrying over the hum of the Ultron drones. "The trouble Richards invited from the zombie universe is resolved. However, Richards and his team are currently trapped on the other side. If you intend to retrieve them, you will hand Spider-Man over to me."
Tony Stark blinked, his faceplate sliding up. "Wait. You're saying the real Reed and the others are still alive? They went to the zombie universe?"
Tony looked at Peter, then back at Doom. His expression hardened. "No. The Avengers will handle the extraction. We'll send an army of Ultron drones through the breach to pull them out. I don't trust you, Doom."
Doom scoffed, a harsh, metallic sound. "Your crude, mass-produced toys are inferior Stark. They will not survive the transit."
Doom turned his piercing gaze directly onto Peter.
Peter didn't flinch. He slowly reached into the hidden pocket of his utility belt and pulled out his cheap, flea-market flip phone.
"Well," Peter said, flipping the plastic device open with his thumb. "Then shall I make a call first?"