Only Sue Storm Knows

"Pregnant?" Ben Grimm said.

Reed Richards nodded. His face was almost as stony as his friends'. They watched through the monitor as Sue Storm slept in a hospital bed in the Baxter Building's clinic. Earlier, Mister Fantastic had told the children their mother had been attacked by a villain, that she was hurt but receiving treatment.

Which was partially true. IVs fed fluids into her system. She was seriously dehydrated. Her captivity had left her deficient in several vitamins. The brutal **** had resulted in numerous bruises, scratches, even stress fractures on her hip bones.

And very, very pregnant.

"Multiple ovulation," Reed said. "And possibly some post-fertilization splitting. She's carrying eight zygotes right now."

"Plan B?" Johnny Storm said.

"I'm holding off on that for now," Reed said.

The Thing ground his teeth. Beside him, Alica Masters put a hand on his shoulder.

"I know it's her body, her choice, Stretch," Alicia said. "But she was ****—and eight! She had enough difficulty with her previous pregnancies. Octuplets could kill her!"

"It's not that," Mr. Fantastic said, his voice that dangerous sort of calm that suggested he had built a doomsday device on purpose, and not just as an academic exercise. "Watch."

On the bed, in her sleep, Sue Storm moaned. Her hands moved beneath the covers, to cup her breasts and plunge between her legs. They saw her kick off the blanket, the monitors attached to her beeping wildly as she licked her lips and plunged three fingers into her still-healing cunt.

Reed tapped a button on the monitor. The image shifted through several spectrums of light not normally visible, and then rendered certain energy signatures normally associated with psychic activity.

There was a pulsing glow in Sue Storm's brain. And another, fainter, cluster of light in her abdomen.

"We can't find Porkum," Reed Richards said flatly. "He is one step ahead of us, using advanced technology, avoiding what I considered logical leaps. We're dealing with someone who knows me well enough to guess my next rational move. So I'm going to do something irrational."

Sue Storm's heart rate spiked. She pulled herself free of the IVs and the monitors. The cameras followed her as she slipped, invisible to normal eyes, through the halls of the Baxter Building.

"She knows where Porkum is," Mister Fantastic said. "And she is going to lead us right to him."