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Hello everyone, 👋👋
So, I was researching on the Marvel Comics lore during Ww2 and stumbled upon this character which was according to my research, the Original version of the Human Torch, before the retconned version of Johnny Storm.
I initially didn't want to introduce the character in this story, but later decided to go on with it as I had to introduce Mr Sinister to the story at some point anyways, so I tweaked around the original story and connected it with Mr Sinister so that I could later use it as a plot point.
Hope you all don't mind this tiny tweak.
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- A Few Months ago…
- Essex Corp Secret Facility, Somewhere in USA -
- July 5, 1939 -
The laboratory was alive with its usual hum of cruelty. Rows of cold steel tables, glass tubes filled with strange fluids, and the faint scent of antiseptic mixed with something darker — burnt flesh, old blood, the quiet suffering of those who could not fight back.
Essex Corp wore the mask of an institution, a legitimate research body on paper, but inside these hidden walls, it was nothing more than a factory of torment.
Nathaniel Essex himself rarely came here anymore. The grander projects held his attention, the ones worthy of his twisted genius. These "lesser" mutants — the ones too weak, too flawed, or too common for his liking — were left behind. To Essex, they were broken toys, nothing more. But to the junior researchers who still wanted to impress their master, these "toys" were opportunities.
In one corner of the sprawling lab, a fireproof chamber flickered with restless light. Inside, chained at wrists and ankles, a young man trembled. His skin carried burns both old and fresh. His eyes were hollow, but behind them, a spark refused to die.
He had once only been able to conjure fire — wild, uncontrolled, often burning him as much as anything else. But the endless torment here, the needles and restraints and shocks that tore him apart daily, had forced something new from his body.
A second mutation.
Now, when he burned, he healed. The flames that should have consumed him instead stitched him back together. It still hurt — gods, it hurt — but it meant he could survive what should have killed him. His body had changed too: feathers of flame crawled across his skin at will, and when fully transformed, he looked like a humanoid phoenix, glowing and terrible.
It should ha'e been his salvation. Instead, weakened by starvation and beatings, he had been subdued, dragged down, and locked away in this suffocating cage.
Today, his misery drew new eyes.
The heavy door opened, and in walked Professor Phineas Horton, white coat pristine, eyes gleaming with restless ambition. Around him, junior staff trailed like nervous shadows, scribbling notes and adjusting their spectacles. Horton was not like them. He wasn't here to learn or beg for Essex's scraps. He was here with his own dream.
For years, Horton had obsessed over the idea of creating life. Not in the crude way Essex did, splicing genes and twisting evolution, but with something purer. Synthetic life. A man made not from flesh but from science. His work on the so-called Horton Cells had consumed his life, cells designed to imitate and surpass human biology. But they were unstable, always failing, always rotting before his eyes.
His funding was running thin. Essex had grown bored of his promises. Horton needed a breakthrough — something to stabilize the dream before it collapsed.
And then he heard of the phoenix-boy.
Horton stepped closer, watching the chained mutant flare faintly with fire as he tried, pitifully, to resist. The flames healed his cracked lips and burned skin, but the chains glowed red-hot, cruelly sapping his strength.
"How fascinating," Horton murmured, almost kindly. "Regeneration through flame. Life through destruction. You may be the answer I've been waiting for."
The boy's eyes, bloodshot and tired, snapped up to meet his. There was anger there, a desperate cry to be seen as more than a tool, but Horton didn't waver. To him, this wasn't a person. It was data. A stepping stone.
"Extract the spinal fluid. Collect genetic material. Full sequencing," Horton ordered briskly.
The assistants hesitated. They all knew what that meant. The process was brutal. Lethal. But they nodded anyway — no one defied Essex Corp, and Horton's place in the hierarchy gave his words weight.
The boy thrashed as needles pierced his skin, as his body was forced to give up the very essence of itself. His exhausted body had already hit the limit. His fire flared desperately, feathers of flame curling from his shoulders, wings half-forming before restraints burned into them. He screamed, not in fear but in rage. Rage at a world that had abandoned him.
But in the end, even rage wasn't enough.
His body slackened, fire dimming, until only smoke lingered in the sterile air. He was gone.
The assistants stepped back, some pale, some expressionless. One muttered a quiet prayer under their breath. None dared to do more.
Horton, meanwhile, looked at the vials of glowing fluid now resting in his gloved hands. His heart raced. At last, something real. Something alive enough to tame the Horton Cells. He didn't care about the corpse cooling on the table. He didn't care about the smell of burnt feathers or the silence that followed the boy's last breath.
"Prepare the samples for integration," he said, voice steady, almost triumphant.
—
- Present Time…
- Essex Corp — Advanced Research Facility -
- November 5, 1939 -
Dr. Phineas Horton stood in his private laboratory, his hands trembling ever so slightly as he stared at the incubation chamber. Months of frustration, sleepless nights, failures stacked upon failures — all of it had brought him here. This was his last chance. The last drops of genetic material he had salvaged from that phoenix-like mutant.
The room around him gleamed with polished instruments, humming machines, and sterile lights. It was nothing like the lower facilities where discarded lives were thrown away. Here, everything smelled of newness and promise. But the atmosphere tonight was thick with judgment.
Around Horton, his colleagues gathered — men and women in white coats, their expressions carefully masked. Some looked on with a glimmer of admiration, others with skepticism sharp enough to cut steel. A few were rivals, waiting eagerly to see him stumble so they could laugh behind their hands. Most of them had tied their careers to Nathaniel Essex's ruthless vision — cloning, gene harvesting, forced evolution. Horton's pursuit of synthetic life had always seemed… eccentric.
But if he succeeded tonight, he would silence them all.
He leaned closer, eyes reflecting the faint glow of the chamber. Inside lay his creation — a man-shaped figure built from his Horton Cells, layered with synthetic muscle and tissues, wrapped around a skeleton of the finest alloys Essex Corp could provide. An android, yes, but one designed to be more than machine. Alive, in every way that mattered.
Horton swallowed hard. "Today," he murmured, voice steadier than he felt, "we witness the birth of an entirely new kind of man."
A rival snorted quietly. "If it doesn't melt first."
Horton ignored him. His fingers hovered over the activation controls. With one deep breath, he pressed the switch.
The chamber hissed. Gears whirred. A low hum filled the lab as the systems flooded the android with synthetic blood and energy. Slowly, with a grinding creak, the hatch began to open.
Everyone leaned in.
The figure inside shifted. Skin pale, veins faintly glowing. Horton's heart leapt. It was moving. It was alive.
And then—
The instant oxygen touched it, the figure erupted.
Flames burst outward, devouring the air with a roar. The android's body blazed like a torch, fire pouring off its skin uncontrollably. Lights shattered, alarms screamed, scientists staggered back in panic. Horton shouted orders, desperately trying to stabilize the systems, his hands flying over the controls.
"Stay with me—!" he cried, as though begging a newborn child to take its first breath. "Open your eyes, please—!"
But the android did not respond. It only burned, consuming everything near it. The proud laboratory that had been his sanctuary quickly turned into a furnace. Metal warped, glass cracked, and the heat pressed down like a hand of judgment.
In the end, containment teams rushed in, and after frantic minutes, the blaze was smothered. The android, still aflame but subdued, was forced into a reinforced vacuum-sealed glass chamber designed to resist fire. The laboratory lay in ruins.
Silence followed.
Then, inevitably, came the laughter.
One rival clapped mockingly. "Congratulations, Horton. You've invented a bonfire."
Another smirked. "Perhaps Essex was right. Your cells are impressive, yes, but your vision… is childish. Synthetic men? Nonsense. Cloning is the future."
Even those who did not laugh only shook their heads. A few placed a hand on Horton's shoulder in quiet sympathy, offering half-hearted encouragement. But their words carried no real faith.
"Your Horton Cells are valuable," one said softly. "But you're wasting them. Turn them toward Essex's work. Cloning, splicing… that's where results are born."
Horton stood in the wreckage, devastated. His dream — a living man built from science, a new spark of life in a cruel world — had crumbled into ash before it could even open its eyes.
That night, defeated, he made his choice.
With his own hands, he ordered the android sealed. Layers of concrete entombed the chamber, burying the failure deep. He could not bring himself to destroy it outright, but neither could he bear to look upon it again.
And as the final slab of stone fell into place, Horton whispered only to himself, voice heavy with sorrow:
"It should have succeeded."
Then he turned away, shoulders bowed, hope extinguished.
But in the silent dark of its prison, the fire within the android still smoldered, waiting.
—
- Two weeks later…
- Outskirts of NYC, USA -
The warehouse was silent, its walls lined with forgotten nightmares. Failed experiments lay in rusted tanks and shattered cages, discarded like broken toys. Dust hung thick in the air. Among the shadows, beneath a coffin of cold concrete, a spark stirred.
For days, the android had been still — neither alive nor dead, suspended in emptiness. Then, faintly, his systems awoke. At first, it was only confusion. His eyes opened to darkness. His body felt heavy, trapped, wrong. He didn't know his name, or even if he was supposed to have one.
There was information in his mind — strings of programming, fragments of knowledge — but it was distant, cold, meaningless. What he felt instead was instinct. A child's instinct. I don't want to be here. I want… out.
The fire answered his desire.
Flames burst from his body, cracking the concrete that bound him. The stone shattered, the warehouse shook, and the failed creations around him burned to ash. Sirens wailed, glass exploded, steel melted. When the fire finally cleared, the android stood amidst the ruins, smoke curling from his skin, his chest heaving as though he had just taken his very first breath.
And perhaps he had.
Stumbling forward, he left the wreckage behind and wandered into the night.
The nearby city was alive with lights and movement, a world utterly strange to him. He didn't understand the roads, the buildings, the faces staring at him in shock. His voice broke as he cried out, words panicked and raw:
"Help me! Please… someone, help me!"
But every time his fear grew, fire flared with it. Cars ignited. Windows shattered. People screamed and ran. He didn't mean it — he didn't want to hurt anyone — but the flames obeyed his terror, not his will.
Alarms echoed through the streets, and he stumbled further, clutching at his head as if he could smother the fire inside by sheer force. Then he saw It — water glinting under the moon. A swimming pool.
Without thinking, he dove in.
The plunge swallowed the fire with a hiss. Steam rose, and for the first time since his awakening, silence followed. The water cooled him, calmed him. He floated there, eyes wide, chest rising and falling slowly. For a moment, it almost felt like peace.
But when he climbed out, dripping and shivering, he wasn't alone.
A group of men had gathered at the pool's edge. Rough-looking, dressed in leather jackets and sneers, their eyes glinted with something between curiosity and greed. A local gang, though the android had no concept of such a thing. To him, they were just people.
He stumbled forward, voice soft, pleading. "Help… me. I don't… I don't know what I am. Please."
The gang members exchanged looks. They had seen the fire earlier. They had seen the chaos he caused. And now here he was, standing before them like some lost child, powerful yet desperate.
The leader stepped closer, a sly grin stretching across his face. He put a hand on the android's shoulder, almost fatherly.
"Of course we'll help you, kid," he said smoothly. "But you'll have to listen to us, alright? Do what we say… and we'll take care of you."
The android blinked, uncertain, but nodded slowly. He didn't understand the world, but he understood this much: he wanted someone to guide him.
And so, in the flickering lights of the city's underbelly, the first synthetic man — born in fire and searching for purpose — placed his trust in the wrong hands.
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