A treatment as bad as the disease...

Stepping out of the lab with his family in tow, Reed was rubbing the sleep out of his eyes and make himself ready for what he had planned. “HERBIE? Please synthesize enough for six doses for a human subject. I need them ready and loaded in the Fantasticar in 30 minutes… And put director Fury on the phone, he’ll need to hear what I’ve found and what I intend to do.”

“Right away Mr. Fantastic.” Called out the disembodied AI from the living room. The rest of the family sat down waited as Reed managed to get the SHIELD director on the phone in the kitchen and explained his discovery to the man. All the while keeping eye contact with his family and smiling when he got the clear to proceed. “He’s given us the go, and he’s set an appointment for us to begin the experiment.” Seeing the joy on his children’s face and the relief off of Ben and Johnny made the man smile just as he put the phone back on the receiver.

Making his way to his bedroom and closing the door behind him, the man got himself ready. Cleaning himself up and finally realising just how dishevelled he had become. His family waited outside in the living room while the man showered, shaved, and dressed himself into something new, something he had not been wearing for fourteen days straight without changing. Looking at himself in the mirror, he could see the heavy bags under his eyes, the drawn, pale look on his face from trying everything in his power to get his wife back, it now showed in his tired eyes.

“We’re getting you back Susan; I promise you; we’re getting you back.” Wiping his face, Reed turned and exiting the bathroom to join his family. A plan in motion now that he had one. Giving his two kids a hug, the man looked back to Johnny and Ben, just as HERBIE announced over the intercom that the formula was ready. Reed led them to the roof where the Fantasticar was waiting. The supply of the serum already prepped for delivery and being stored in the back by HERBIE’s garage bay mechanical arms. Getting inside, Reed prepped for flight.

“Now, lets head to the Raft.”

*

The Raft.

Sitting in her chair watching the television fixed to the top corner of her cell, Susan Storm watched the local news with mild disinterest. She was bored. Closing her eyes and arching her back in her chair, she fantasized about seducing the news anchor on the screen. Crawling over the desk and lick at his nose while she had his dress tie in her clawed hand, pulling him close into a passion kiss that claimed his lips against hers. She would claim him, ravish him, take what she needed from him, then when he was **** and spent, she would kiss him, plunging her tongue into his mouth… and drive her tongue through his throat and out the back of his skull. The daydream made her shiver with arousal until she was snapped out of her reverie by a sound at the far end of the prison wing.

She opened her eyes when she felt the galvanized doors creak open at the end of the hall, even from her end of the prison wing she was aware of the electrical current flowing to the multi-lock door and the low hum of powerful motors moving the 10 ton metal slab aside. A pursed smile formed on her lips as she stretched her four arms over her head and kicked out her legs to stretch. She had a visitor. Sitting up from her chair to stand on her feet and see who it was, her smile widened when she spotted her husband quickly march his way down the hall towards her cell. Her tail swished behind her in excitement when she also spotted a pair of female SHIELD guards with him, carting a box they dropped to the floor grating next to him as Reed opened a panel to the opposite wall and began working on something she couldn’t see over his shoulder. There was a moment where Reed looked over his shoulder to see her, the instant his eyes lingered on her, he hesitated in his work to stare.

As alien as she was, she was still impossibly beautiful. Tall, lithe, curvaceous, her physical beauty was matched only by her new monstrous nature. Standing on her clawed toes, her legs were long and toned, tapering at flaring hips that led to a narrow waist some models would kill for. Her chest heaved with perfect breasts best compared to ripe cantaloupes, their masses pressed against the glass while she leaned against the window to her cell with her four clawed hands. Her skin was supple and smooth… And a translucent green, even if he didn’t look hard enough, he could almost see through her murky green flesh. Her shoulders, forearms and ankles sported spurs and barbs and even though he couldn’t see it her back was lined with razor sharp spines and a prehensile tail strong enough to break bone or pierce it with its stinger. Looking further up, his eyes fell to her face. She was still beautiful, her face ever angelic the way she smiled back at him. But her eyes were now slit and reptilian, her teeth sharp and fanged and her visage was framed with a pair of fleshy antlers that crowned her brow like a head dress. Behind her flowed her hair, a nest of meter long tentacles that swayed and flowed behind her like a sea anemone in the ocean current. Alien, dangerous, deadly, stunning. Closing his eyes, he turned away.

“Welcome back Reed.” Susan purred, her voice as smooth as honey, tracing a clawed finger around the foot-thick glass of her cell playfully. "I thought I told you not to come back unless it was to let me out… I’d be disappointed if you didn’t.” Her tone was playful and seductive, but with a hint of mocking superiority.

“Well… If we’re lucky, that might be today.” He answered back, pulling free a cannister from the open compartment and gestured to the two guards to bring him a replacement from the box they opened. The replacement cannister was filled with a blue fluid Susan did not recognise, but her attention remained on what Reed was doing the entire time. Watching him. When the cannister was installed, there was a hiss of pressure as the fluid was drained and Reed installed the panel back into the wall. Getting up to his feet and brushing his gloved hands clean, Reed looked up and spoke out loud for the command pulpit to hear him. “Alright, its installed, we’re ready to begin.”

“Then let’s begin, we’ll be flooding her cell with the serum Professor Richards.” An intercom blared out Nick Fury’s voice before it quickly cut out.

“Serum? Do you intend to cure me like you promised Reed?” She asked with a coy look, narrowing her reptilian eyes, her tone venomously sweet. “You can’t cure perfection Reed, I’m here to stay!”

“I know Suzie… I know… But maybe… maybe this will help.”

A clarion went off to alert the floor guards that Susan’s cell would be flooded with the mixture, then they stepped back just as a blue tinted mist was sprayed into the enclosure. Looking around herself in mild curiosity, Susan lifted a clawed hand to let the mist cascade down her palm and over her chitinous arm, feeling nothing from it. “Is that it, Reed? You wanted to give me a shower?” Smiling more seductively, Susan posed before her husband, letting her upper pair of hands gracefully comb her fingers through her tentacle hair while her lower arms folded under her perfect breasts to cup at their heft. “If this was meant to hurt me, I’m sorry to disappoint…” Then she felt something, or more accurately, she started to feel nothing. Blinking her eyes in confusion, she looked down at her talons and gasped as she watched her murky green translucent flesh turn a shade of sky blue. Seeping through the pores of her skin and dyeing her flesh. But as it spread, a numbness crept through her. “What is this? ANSWER ME!!!” She hissed, her eye twitching as the pigment soaked into her tentacles and arms.

Stepping back, she swiped her hand down her arm as if to wipe the tint off her, but all it did was make it spread faster, deeper, seeping into her flesh more and more. She could not feel anything, the only thing guiding her to believe she still had arms and legs was a sense of phantom limb syndrome as the blue dye spread into her body and crept up her neck and reach her face. She began to go deaf, then blind; her whole world being cut off from her one bit at a time as her whole body turned blue. “MAKE IT STOP! MAKE IT STOP!!! MAKE… IT…” Clutching her head with all four of her talons, Susan screamed, her cries so loud Reed and the guards clutched at their ears, falling to their knees as the intercom overhead crackled. Then she suddenly stopped, her arms falling to her sides before she collapsed in a heap.

Getting up from the grated floor, Reed moved towards the glass of the prison cell to look down at the now blue skinned creature, prone and ****, but the sight of her chest slowly rising told him she was still breathing, still alive. “Suzie? Can you hear me?”

Watching the woman continue to lay on the floor of her cell, Reed had worried if had done something worse to her in the experiment, but then he noticed her move her arms, folding them around herself as if to hug herself while her tail coiled around her legs. The sea of tentacles she had for hair were bundled in curled around her scalp before they began to unfurl and reach blindly around her back and shoulders. Stirring slowly, and getting up to sit, Susan looked down at her talons, flexing the bladed fingers as if unfamiliar to them before closing her eyes and opening them again to look down at her body and around her cell. Turning her attention to Reed standing on the other end of her prison, she locked eyes with his and immediately he noticed a difference.

The predatory gleam in her eyes was gone, the seductive confidence and allure had been replaced with confusion and worry. And there was a warmth in them now, one he recognised when Susan would give him that look when he’d spend too many hours in the lab, worried for his health. “Reed?”

“Suzie! You’re alright. How do you feel?”

Gently resting her four claws over her antlered crown and the sides of her head, Susan breathed in and exhaled, tears running down her translucent cheeks as she hugged herself again. “I’m free! I don’t feel… I don’t hear the voice anymore… I’m… I’m ME again.” Falling onto her back, Susan began to laugh, wiping tears out of her eyes, squirming as she hugged herself more tightly. Sighing with relief and slowly sliding down to sit on the floor with her, Reed was beside himself with elation, almost chuckling out loud with her until her laughter died to be replaced with sobbing. In short time, she managed to regain control and sniffed, wiping her face clean. “Thank you, Reed… Thank you…”

“I still want to make some tests, some trials to make sure you’re stable and safe, but I think the worst of it is over now, we can go home and…”

“No! No no no no… We’re not safe Reed!” Sitting up quickly and crawling over to meet him at the glass partition, Susan pressed a clawed hand against the glass with a worried look. “I’m not part of the hive anymore, I can’t hear them anymore.”

“Honey, its alright, I’ve brought enough for the others here in the RAFT too, you can all be treated.”

“WE’RE NOT THE ONLY ONES REED! One of my daughters, she escaped before you stopped my swarm! You’re ALL in serious danger!”