A Photo of Porkum's Balls Dipped In Chocolate

"Mrs. Richards. Another box of chocolates has arrived from Porkum," H.E.R.B.I.E. announced.

Sue Storm leaned against the wall, as her stomach growled. She closed her eyes and **** herself to breathe. To focus. Despite the sudden, inexplicable hunger that flooded her mouth with saliva and made her nipples go stiff. The same hunger that had her digging through the trash in the middle of the night.

"Good," she said, as she swallowed the excess saliva. "Move it into the lab. Full quarantine protocols. I'll be along to oversee the analysis personally."

No one maintains a model-perfect body after two kids without a little help. Sue Storm made a detour to her bathroom to take an appetite suppressant, which she hoped would mollify some of the symptoms of whatever was affecting her. The Invisible Woman's forehead was still beaded with sweat when she limped into the laboratory, the wound on her left leg throbbing. Her eyes felt oddly hot in their sockets as she approached the clear chamber where H.E.R.B.I.E. was carefully dismantling the pink box Porkum had sent.

She stayed on the other side of the barrier. The air on the other side was perfectly filtered; nothing from that side could get to this side. It should have been reassuring. Instead, it was like an itch she couldn't scratch.

H.E.R.B.I.E.'s small metal hands lifted the top of the box. There was a pink envelope atop the two dozen small chocolates. Sue frowned. With a thought, an invisible hand picked up the envelope and opened it.

It took Sue Storm a moment to understand what she was walking. For a moment, it looked like an instant film shot of a pair of oversized bonbons. Then she turned it upside down, noticed the pink root, the texture of the skin, the saggy flap at the base of the scrotum. Her stomach lurched—not in nausea, but a sudden, poignant need that nearly overwhelmed her.

"Mrs. Richards," H.E.R.B.I.E.'s voice came over the speakers. "Initial samples of bonbon #1 have been taken."

"Put it under the microscope," Sue said as she pulled herself away.

The microscope was another of Reed's little security measures. The eyepiece remained on this side of the quarantine, but the sample was on the other side. Sue took a deep breath, her whole body trembling. She had training in biology, chemistry. Not at the level of Reed Richards, but enough that she knew what she was looking at as she adjusted the focus and the structures in the sample came into view.

They were sperm. Wiggling. Aggressive. Still alive.

"Cum," Sue whispered to herself, and her hands shook as she adjusted the sample. "But not...normal. The shape of the head, the twin-tails. It looks like human sperm, but there are a number of mutations."

The thought of "mutations" triggered something in Sue Storm's mind. She licked her lips.

"H.E.R.B.I.E., run a genetic analysis. And...let me know if there's any evidence of the X-gene in the sample."

"Of course, Mrs. Richards," H.E.R.B.I.E. said. "What shall I do with the remainder of the bonbons."

Sue Storm swallowed hard. Strange, terrible need warred with her rational mind.

"Put them in the quarantine fridge," she said, and **** herself to limp away as the small robot did as they were told.

It was a long afternoon. Sue Storm tried to keep herself busy. Video calls with her children, and with the doctor, who prescribed an antibiotic based on her fever. A light dinner, the steamed tilapia and asparagus not assuaging the strange desire that gripped her. Sue remembered the odd cravings she'd had during pregnancy, but this felt different. More raw. She wondered if this is what addicts felt like.

Yet even with Reed Richard's advanced computers, it could take all night to sequence the genetic code of the semen in the bonbon sample. Semen that Sue was convinced had come from Porkum himself. She couldn't get that image on the photo out of her head. Taunting her with what his 'gifts' were. What she herself had so willingly consumed.

And which, God help her, she still wanted, even knowing what they were now.