Sue Storm Recovers Miraculously Quickly

"The servants will see you to your rooms," Doctor Doom told Franklin and Valeria. "Your mother needs immediate medical attention."

"No!" Franklin said.

Doom paused. He looked down at the young boy.

"You swore to obey me," Doom said. "You have trusted me this far. Trust me a little further. I will heal her."

Reluctantly, Franklin lowered his head. His hand caught his sister's, and loyal Boris guided them away to the rooms that had already been prepared for them.

Doom's business lay below. Not in his medical laboratories, but in the caverns beneath Doomstadt's lowest dungeon. In the sanctum sanctorum where Doom pursued very different studies. Sue Storm did not stir as he descended the stone steps cut in the living rock, past niches where inhuman skeletons were chained, to rattle weakly as the monarch of Latveria passed.

At a certain stretch of rock, no different from any other, Doom made a sign...and a section of the wall disappeared, and a door bound with adamantium and uru opened on silent hinges. Within the apparently natural cavern it opened into, torches set in the wall lit themselves with blue flame...and Doom laid Sue Storm on the floor, in the middle of a pentagram and circle inscribed in blood and chalk for this purpose.

A lectern lay at the foot of the pentagram, and a book lay upon it. Compiled from a thousand imperfect copies, warded with subtle spells and subtler technological defenses. Doctor Doom found the black ribbon that marked the place of the spell he had chosen, and opened his own personal copy of the Darkhold to it. His eyes fell on the words, though he had already memorized them long ago. Over and over in his head he ran through the subtle gestures, the words, and more importantly the powers from other dimensions he would channel for this feat.

Sue Storm's breath was ragged. Dark matter stained the sheet he had wrapped her in. Porkum's DNA had infected her, and Doom's nanites had, in scouring the infection from her cells, done a considerable amount of subtle damage. It would take months of advanced medicine for Sue Storm to recover normally...but Doom had other plans.

"CHTHON..."

On the ceiling of the cavern, mists formesd in a slow swirl. Sue Storm's limp body rose from the floor. Her arms and legs stretched out, to align with the points of the pentagram, golden hair loose. The white sheet slipped from her body, and for the first time Doom was confronted with the truth of Porkum's weeks of deprivations. His soul was hardened, and he did not flinch when he saw the fresh bruises over the old ones, the scratches from his nails, focused as they were on her most intimate parts, most easily hidden from view. Yet now, exposed, he could see the prolapsed womb dangle from between her thighs, the caked blood on her leg where the wound Porkum had given her had reopened.

Doom did not regret Porkum's ****. Yet he regretted it had been swift and painless.

As the sorcerer chanted, the mist swirled, thicker and thicker. A black rain fell from the cloud. Where it touched the pentacle, the chalk and blood smoked. Where it struck the naked, floating form of Sue Storm, the Invisible Woman's body soaked it up like a sponge. As it did, a rapid recovery became apparent. Bruises faded. Scars whitened, then disappeared. Slowly, almost tortuously, the displaced flesh drew itself back inside of her. Doom continued the chant, felt the forces that he had invoked work through him.

There would be a price for such things later. Doom would pay that price.

With his armor's sensors, he saw the subtler damage within Sue Storm's body mend. Brain tissue regrew. Damaged DNA repaired itself. Cancerous cells consumed each other until there was nothing left. Arterial plaque was swept away, old injuries reset. As Doom finished the spell, the mist began to dissipate. The Invisible Woman settled to the floor, healthier now than she had been when Doom had first conceived this plot.

At last, the spell ended. Doom shut the book, and made the passes in the air that would exorcise the remaining energies in this place. Then he doffed his own cloak and laid it upon the nude form. At the touch of his cold metal gauntlets, her eyes snapped open.

"Doom!" she said.

Then she took in the setting, her nakedness, the green cloak on her body.

Quickly, Doctor Doom stepped back. His bearing regal as he crossed his arms in front of his chest.

"You are deep beneath Doomstadt," Doom said to her unspoken question. "Your children requested I aid you, after you had fallen under the influence of a villain. I have just finished healing you. How do you feel?"

Sue Storm blinked. She touched her head...then her leg. Her hand delved beneath the cloak, and Doom said nothing. Then she stood, and her body below the shoulders turned invisible as she placed the cloak around her.