The wind outside howled faintly, dragging dust across the footpath and rattling the lanterns strung above the medical hall's entrance.
It was quiet… very quiet for a building surrounded by hidden HYDRA agents posing as civilians, construction workers, and even beggars.
They lingered, like parasites, waiting for a command they didn't fully understand.
Soren didn't know it.
Yet.
He stood behind a counter casually sipping tea.
The usual flow of patients had passed coughs, fractures, minor illnesses. Nothing strange.
Until the door creaked open with a sound like bending metal.
Footsteps. Heavy. Each one landed like a sledgehammer.
Soren looked up, and for a heartbeat, his fingers stopped moving.
The man was a mountain.
Or what was once a man.
He ducked beneath the wooden frame, shoulders brushing both sides.
His body was a mosaic of jagged granite plates, fitted like the armor of a forgotten titan. Deep-set blue eyes peered out from beneath a brow of stone.
Soren's system pinged immediately.
[Analyzing target…]
[Subject: Benjamin Grimm, a.k.a. The Thing]
[Class: World Leve B]
[Abilities: Petrochemical Defense Lv 9 | Augmented Strength Lv 7 | Radiation Research Lv 7]
[Genetic Instability Detected]
"Nice place you've got." Ben said.
The chair groaned beneath him as he sat, reinforced oak, ancient and lacquered, straining under tons of weight. Soren, half-focused, raised a hand.
Runes flickered invisibly across the chair's joints, strengthening it just in time.
"I assume you're not here for cough syrup." Soren said dryly.
Ben chuckled once, a short, bitter sound.
"No. I'm here for something harder. Maybe impossible."
Soren leaned forward, scanning him. "You want to be human again."
Ben's rocky shoulders sagged.
"I want to not look like a damn walking boulder, yeah."
"You don't know what it's like having kids cry when you pass by. Strangers crossing the street. Photographers flashing your face like you're some freakshow."
His fists clenched a sound like boulders grinding.
"I didn't ask for this."
"We were scientists. Adventurers. One bad mission, and now look at me. Reed and Sue still look human. Johnny? Still gets women. Me? My wife left."
"She said she couldn't look at me anymore. Can't even blame her."
Soren was quiet for a beat.
"You tried to fix it before?" He asked, though he already knew the answer.
Ben nodded slowly.
"Dozens of times. Top minds! Even some dark tech types. Nothing stuck. They either couldn't rewrite the mutation… or were scared to try."
"They all said the same thing, my body is the mutation now."
Soren tapped the vial with one finger, thinking.
He didn't say it out loud, but this was a rare opportunity.
The gene stability, the blend of solar radiation and biochemical transformation… Ben Grimm was a walking mystery.
If Soren could crack this, it would be a breakthrough in reconstructive gene alignment.
"I can't promise anything."
"But I can start."
He raised his hand again. A blade of light hummed into being between his fingers, impossibly thin. Before Ben could flinch, Soren leaned in and delicately scraped a sliver of mineral off the man's forearm.
The sample hovered midair, suspended by unseen force.
Ben blinked.
"Didn't feel a thing."
"That's the point." Soren muttered, eyes already scanning the powder as he placed it into a containment capsule.
"Stone or not, pain matters. You've had enough of it."
Ben exhaled shakily.
"Doc… I don't know why, but something about this place feels… different. You're not like the others...?"
Soren glanced over his shoulder.
"I'm not."
"Wait here."
He turned toward the inner lab, the door sliding open with a hiss of old machinery.
"Wait here. I'll be back once I've had a look."
Ben nodded, almost imperceptibly.
And as the door closed behind Soren, he sat in the quiet room, the faint smell of herbs and wood surrounding him, and for the time, he let himself believe he might not be a monster forever.
The lab hummed softly, cloaked in shadows and light from hundreds of floating glyphs etched into air.
Soren's fingertips as he waved the petrified cells across a circular analysis plate.
The system flickered with cryptic text, alien strands of genetic code spiraling across invisible screens.
Soren frowned, then smiled faintly.
"Dense molecular structure. Reinforced at the mitochondrial level… borderline unbreakable."
He paused, tapping a finger against the console as data flowed.
"But flawed."
Despite the armor-like nature of the Stone Man's body, Soren saw the deeper truth, a cellular overcompensation.
The body wasn't choosing to be stone; it was trapped, perpetually activating a defense mechanism due to unstable radiation-borne gene expressions.
"A curse of survival."
With practiced ease, he began mixing extracts.
No flashy lights or techno-machinery.
Quiet ritual: powdered starlily root, crushed stygian bark, one drop of liquefied ethereal blood and a tiny fragment of Ben's stone essence.
Each step exact.
The final mixture shimmered clear and thin, no different from water.
[Formula complete: Cellular Suppression Agent]
[Effect: Temporarily inhibits mutated dermal calcification response. Duration: 72 hours]
He regarded the vial.
"Power like this… most would kill to keep it."
"But not him."
With the medicine in hand, Soren turned, his long coat fluttering as he exited the lab.
Ben sat still in the chair, fingers loosely interlocked, staring at the floor. The weight of his hands alone had cracked two floor tiles, though he hadn't noticed.
When Soren emerged, Ben looked up.
"You took your time."
"Good sign or bad?"
Soren lifted the vial. "Depends on whether you want to stay a rock or not."
"Try me." Ben half-laughed.
He took the glass carefully, as if it might break, ironic, considering his granite fingers had crushed steel in the past.
Soren watched him.
"Just drink."
Ben raised the vial to his lips. It tasted like nothing. Like… clean air. For one terrifying moment, he thought it was a trick.
Pain came, radiating from his bones like a low earthquake. He gritted his teeth. The stone plates began to shiver, flaking at the edges, and then~
Crack.
A spiderweb of fractures burst across his shoulder.
His skin rippled… not stone anymore, but skin. Pink, pulsing, alive. With each second, the transformation accelerated.
Arms shrank. Muscle compressed. Chest narrowed. The mass peeled away like dried earth.
He slumped forward, gasping, sweat soaking the now-loose clothes. When he looked up~~
His face was human again.
Ben Grimm… before the cosmos warped him.
He touched his cheek, then his mouth. "Holy sh—"
"You're alive." Soren said quietly, almost amused. "No more stone."
Ben stood, wobbling slightly. He looked at his hands like they were alien. "I'm… back."
Soren's gaze was level. "Not permanently. It's a suppression agent."
"Three days, maybe four, if you stay calm."
Ben blinked. "Wait. You mean?"
"Your body's still built for war, Ben. You take a hit, lift a car, or so much as think about a street fight?"
"The mutation will snap back like a coiled spring."
Ben's face clouded. "So… I can be normal. But only if I live like glass."
"Life's about trade-offs. You want peace? You get fragility." Soren shrugged.
"You want strength? Wear the stone."
Ben looked down, fingers curling. For a moment, the temptation was there, to clench, to break the table, to test the boundary.
But he didn't.
Instead, he let out a long, shaking breath.
"I'll take it."
"Even a few days feeling the sun on my skin, without scaring kids, it's worth it."
"How much do I owe you?"
Soren waved a hand dismissively. "Nothing."
"Nothing?"
The doctor turned his back, returning to his shelves. "I don't heal for money."
"I do it because I want to."
"Huh. Weird, coming from a guy with a place fancier than Susan's kitchen."
"When you reach a certain point, Ben… money becomes the most boring thing in the universe."
꧁𓊈𒆜༺⚜༻𒆜𓊉꧂
PhantomDream