THE EMBASSY OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA WAS situated at the London Chancery Building in Grosvenor Square. The sprawling, rectangular building was nine stories high and dug three stories into the ground. A large gilded aluminum bald eagle with a wingspan of over thirty-five feet sat stoically on the roof of the chancery building, making it an instantly recognizable landmark in a city already crowded with stately architecture and breathtaking buildings. One of the largest United States diplomatic buildings in the world, its white facade and surrounding gardens gave the severe architecture an almost calm and peaceful aura.

Inside the building, it was an entirely different matter.

“What the hell was that?” General Hager’s booming voice was more brusque than usual, and Reed couldn’t blame him. The silver alien not only managed to escape their grasp but also dried up the Thames River, hurt numerous bystanders with its attack on the Millennium Wheel, and left a large crater in the middle of the now empty riverbed. According to Captain Raye, who’d spoken to them before Hager came into the room, the White House wasn’t pleased, Downing Street wasn’t pleased, and General Hager, the man responsible for the botched mission, was certainly not pleased.

Reed tried to console the irate general. “We’ll make adjustments,” he said. “Next time, we’ll be ready.” Despite his brave words, his confidence was shaken. Their second encounter with the Silver Surfer had been worse than the first. The strain of saving the wheel had pushed Sue to her limits and almost killed her. Johnny’s unpredictability was greatly compounded by his unstable molecular structure, which caused him to switch powers with any member of the group he came into physical contact with. And Ben? His strength was matched only by the intensity of the cold shoulder he was currently giving Reed. Reed hated to admit it, but he knew this wasn’t the Fantastic Four’s finest hour.

Hager’s gruff voice interrupted his thoughts. “Next time?! There is no next time. You can’t handle this alone. That’s why I brought in some help.” He motioned to a guard, who left the room.

Reed began to protest. “General, bringing in more soldiers and weaponry is only going to put innocent people in danger.”

A disembodied voice answered Reed’s statement. “More than you already have?”

The source of the voice was unmistakable. After all, each of the Four had heard it, at some point, in their nightmares. Since the cosmic storm. Since the attempts on their lives. Since the fight that left him dead, burned and frozen in his own metallic skin.

Reed and the others turned in the direction of the voice and were stunned into silence. Standing in front of them, alive and able, was Victor Von Doom, back from the dead. Only Reed, after a few moments, managed to find his voice: “Victor?”

“What’s the matter?” Victor asked, a smile twisting his mangled, damaged face. “Afraid of ghosts?”

The shocked inaction of the Fantastic Four lasted only a moment. They sprung into motion, once again ready to face their sworn enemy. Johnny clenched his fists and turned them to flame, ready to hurl fireballs at the man who had once tried to kill almost everyone in the room. Ben acted more boldly, leaping toward Victor. He threw Von Doom hard against the wall, his massive hand clutching Victor’s silver throat.

“If you’re a ghost,” Ben said through clenched teeth, “then you won’t mind if I break your scrawny neck.” Ben tightened his grip on Victor. Reed gave a momentary shudder as he recalled the severity of their last battle. They had torn through several buildings and an entire block in Manhattan before bringing him down.

General Hager’s voice rang out across the room. “Let him go!”

“Do you know who this is?” Johnny asked incredulously.

Hager looked at Johnny and said, “He’s Victor Von Doom, and he is here on my orders. Guards!”

A dozen heavy machine guns were suddenly cocked and pointed squarely at Ben. The thick, metal-tipped bullets might not pierce Ben’s hide, but Reed didn’t want to take that chance. “Ben,” Reed said calmly. “Let him go.”

Reed could see the thought processes running through Ben’s rocky head. Everything in Ben wanted to squash Victor’s neck like a grape. But slowly, digit by digit, he released his grip on Von Doom. Victor collapsed to the floor, coughing and gasping for breath.

Reed walked over to his former classmate, who looked terrible. But he was alive. “How is this possible?” Reed asked, his voice low and dark. “How can you be alive?”

Victor stood up, brushing dust from his coat. “No thanks to you four, that’s for certain.” Victor’s eyes wandered across the room until they fell on Sue. She returned his gaze, no doubt as shocked to see him alive as they all were, before Johnny closed in next to her in a protective gesture.

General Hager walked over to Victor as if asserting his own protective stance. “Victor Von Doom has made contact with the alien. He’s got valuable information.”

Victor nodded his head. “Information that might just save the planet,” he said in a mockingly heroic voice. He made eye contact with Sue once again, but she looked away, disgusted at the sight of him despite the fact that there was a time when Victor would have given her the world.

Victor turned back to the group. “Now let’s be clear about this. I hate you. All of you. But the world’s at stake. We need to work together to survive.”

Reed was not oblivious to Victor’s longing glances at Sue. The mere fact that Victor was alive triggered a plethora of feelings within him, feelings he’d rather leave buried. “General,” he said, “we know firsthand that if you trust Victor, you’re going to regret it.”

General Hager looked Reed squarely in the eye so there would be no confusion. “So far the only one I’ve regretted trusting here is you, Richards.” He spit Reed’s name out like a curse.

Reed met the general’s hard gaze with equal fervor. The fact that Reed was flexible didn’t mean he was weak. He was getting more than tired of answering to the barking general, who constantly seemed to need Reed’s help and to hate him for it. As he considered all his options, Reed exchanged looks with Sue. She was still a bit weak from their battle at the river, and that might account for her silence. Victor’s reappearance surely didn’t help. He wanted to tell her once again that it was right thing to do, for them to leave the Four — and a normal life was sounding pretty good to him right then.

Those thoughts were pushed out of his head by Ben’s deep voice saying, “Reed, don’t agree to this.” But this crisis was larger than any feud between rivals, any sparks from flashing egos. Life on Earth was in peril. Finding and stopping the Surfer had to be their first priority. Everything else, once again, would have to wait.

“Let’s see what he’s got.” Reed said finally. He didn’t have to look at Ben, he could feel the waves of disappointment coming from him.

Victor walked over to a large flat-screen monitor near a computer set into the wall. He loaded a small silver disc into the machine while the rest of the group looked on in silence. The only sound in the room was the mechanical whir and click of the computer loading Victor’s data. “I made a detailed recording of my little encounter with him,” Victor said, pulling up the information onto the large screen in front of them, which began playing a video of Victor’s meeting with the Surfer. The four watched intently as Victor fought with the alien, unleashing his powerful torrents of electricity upon the silver entity to no effect.

Reed made special note of the fact that Victor still appeared as powerful as ever. His time missing in action hadn’t quelled any of his extraordinary abilities; Victor could still manipulate electricity to his whim. Reed tried to sound uninterested when he asked, “How did you find him?”

A wry smile spread over Victor’s wrecked face. “Catalan number system. I’m surprised it took you so long to figure out.” Victor turned back to the video playing on the computer screen and froze the action the moment after the Surfer blasted him. “Well?”

Ben was the first to speak up. “I liked the part when he knocked you on your ass.”

Victor dismissed Ben with a wave of his hand. He motioned to the bottom of the computer screen, where a graphic monitored and measured the expenditure of energy. “Look where the energy levels surge when he attacks me. We see a peak in his board.” Victor ran the video again slowly, keeping a close eye on the measuring instrument. It suddenly spiked in number and intensity. “There,” Victor said. “You see what happened?”

Reed was catching on, his eyes glued to the screen. “The energy was channeled through him, but it originated from the board.”

Sue stepped closer to the monitor, trying to keep a safe distance from Victor. “So his board isn’t just a means of transportation for him. It’s actually the source of his power.”

Victor nodded. “If we could separate him from it, we could cut off his power completely.”

“Then that’s what we have to do.” General Hager stared hard at Victor, feeling his faith was well placed.

“How?” Johnny asked.

Victor looked at the young man. “If I knew that,” he said dismissively, “I wouldn’t need you people, would I?”

Reed ignored Victor’s tone, instead focusing his attention on the computer screen. His mind was already racing in many different directions, thinking of possible scenarios and formulas that might be useful to them. Reed was sure that separating the Surfer from his power source was the key to defeating him. “It’s almost like he has a symbiotic relationship with it. We need to find out exactly what that link is so we can break it.”

General Hager had apparently heard enough. “You two should get to work,” he barked. Hager barely looked at the others as he left the room.

Victor walked over to Reed, placing his hand firmly on Reed’s shoulder. Reed chilled at the metallic touch. “I’m so glad we have this chance to collaborate again,” Victor said coolly. “I’ll try to talk slowly so you can keep up.”

Ben Grimm walked slowly through the damp streets of London with Johnny hot on his tail. Their encounter with the Surfer, and now with Victor, weighed heavily on his mind. Ben himself was growing increasingly concerned about the future not only of the group but of the entire planet. Ben couldn’t even get close to the Surfer, and he had barely been able to hold up the wheel as it was tipping over. He hadn’t felt so useless in a fight in a very long time. And he didn’t like it. He couldn’t even put his hands on Victor without it turning into a government incident.

He ignored Johnny and pulled his overcoat higher toward his face, trying to conceal his appearance as he wandered the unfamiliar London streets. Passersby cut him a wide berth, as they usually did, and he missed the more familiar streets of New York City. But he ignored them, too, since he was on the hunt. One on every corner, Alicia had told him. He intended to prove her right.

Just as Ben rounded the corner a few blocks away from the embassy, he found his mark. The Red Rock Pub sat stately and quiet, nestled into the corner building on a cobblestone street. The bay windows were trimmed in white. He noticed a rocky cliff painted on the door as he walked into the pub with Johnny right behind him. Ben strode up the bar and put one meaty hand down on the counter. The quaint, dimly lit bar suited his mood perfectly. He needed some quiet as much as he needed a drink.

A few rounds later, Ben was feeling better. The pub was becoming increasingly filled with people and noise. Johnny had managed to pull him away from the bar to a corner table near a dartboard. Johnny kept throwing darts between sentences, as if they emphasized his points.

“How can we be working on the same side as Victor?” he asked for the third time.

Ben took a long pull from his pitcher of beer. “You got me, pal. Things were a lot simpler when I could just whale on the guy.”

Johnny drew back to throw another dart, but his anger got the better of him and his fingers ignited, sending the flaming dart right into the center of the board. The entire dartboard soon caught fire. Several nearby patrons turned to look at the small blaze suspended on the wall.

Johnny ran to the board and dumped his pint of lager over it, extinguishing the flames. “Sorry,” he said to the owner of the pub, who was suddenly standing by his side, staring at the ruined board. “I’ll pay for that.” The owner turned away in a huff.

Johnny walked back over to Ben, who continued to sit slouched over his drink. “We wouldn’t even be in this position if I wasn’t such a complete screw-up,” Johnny said, picking up a fresh pint of lager.

Ben looked over at Johnny, who had taken a seat at the table. “Hey, you’re not a complete screw-up. A partial screw-up, maybe.”

“Thanks,” Johnny said weakly.

Ben finished the rest of his pitcher in one long gulp. “Look, there’s nothing you or me can do now. It’s all up to the eggheads.”

A serious look suddenly crossed Johnny’s face. “You think Reed’s right?” he asked Ben. “That this might really be the end of the world?”

Ben nodded his head. “He’s never wrong about stuff like this.”

A silence fell between them as they contemplated the idea that the end might be at hand. Ben had always tried not to think about such a thing, even in the thick of a battle.

“You know,” Johnny began, “I’m not a very deep kinda guy…”

“No?” Ben asked, mocking Johnny’s attempt at a sincere tone.

“I’m just saying,” Johnny continued, lowering his voice, “if we can’t stop this, if it’s really the end of the world…how are you going to spend your last few minutes?”

The question hung in the air between them. Ben stared into his empty pitcher and thought about it. “Part of me would like to go out fighting,” he said finally, resting his rocky hand on the table. “But to tell you the truth, I think I’d like to spend my last few minutes holding on to Alicia.”

“That sounds good to me,” Johnny said absentmindedly, at first not noticing Ben’s jealous glare. When he realized what he’d said, Johnny tried to backtrack. “Not holding on to Alicia, because she’s your girlfriend, not mine,” he stammered. “I have no interest in her whatsoever,” he added, but Ben’s look was getting worse. “Not that she’s not attractive, because she is. So attractive. I mean, who wouldn’t want to…” Johnny watched the glass pitcher shatter in Ben’s hand. The table started to tip and groan. “Actually,” Johnny offered, “going out fighting. That’s what I’d want to do.” He exhaled heavily.

Ben still eyed him warily. “Oh, you’ll go out fighting,” he said. But in his gut, Ben knew the kid had a point. He doubted any of them would be of much use in a fight. The Surfer was too strong, too mysterious. And too powerful. Deep inside, Ben Grimm knew that they were in for the fight of their lives. And unless Reed came up with something soon, Ben knew it was a fight the Fantastic Four were bound to lose.