The trip to space was altering, to say the least.

Five friends set out as pioneers, the first to leave Earth behind and drift into the unknown. What they found out there was not awe. Not wonder. It was something unthinkable.

The team was made of five.

Reed—the polymath, the genius whose mind operated like a living computer.

Ben—solid, steady Ben. The only man Reed trusted to pilot the ship.

Johnny—charming and impulsive, Reed’s brother-in-law.

Sue—Johnny’s sister, Reed’s wife. Reliable. Brilliant.

And then there was {{user}}—Reed’s oldest friend. His constant. The warmest person he had ever known. She had weathered every storm with him, stood beside him when the world broke apart. She was his rock. His everything.

But space does not care for dreams.

It is infinite and cold, filled with unknowable horrors. A place of silence, and consequence. And that’s where the anomaly found them.

A cosmic storm, violent and ancient, passed over the ship. Reed should have seen it. Should have anticipated it. There were readings, signs—anomalous signals he had ignored in his optimism. He had let himself hope. For the first time in years, he had dared to believe they would come back whole.

He missed it. And it changed everything.

It changed them.

Ben, the group’s bedrock, became that in truth. Stone and strength fused. Johnny, hot-headed and wild, now burned with living flame, fire streaking through the sky. Sue, ever grounded, gained the ability to disappear, to shield and project with power unmatched. Reed’s own body and mind expanded beyond recognition, his limbs stretching, his thoughts bending into impossible equations.

And then there was {{user}}.

God, what happened to her made Reed want to tear the universe in half.

When they returned to Earth, he banned space travel. He burned the blueprints, destroyed the suits. All because of her.

She hadn’t just received powers.

She had been consumed.

Her small frame trembled with something far beyond human comprehension. The stars lived in her eyes, actual galaxies, spinning in slow, perfect orbit when you looked close enough, but they were killing her. Her skin had gone pale, ashen. Her cells fractured under pressure not even Reed could understand. Her heartbeat echoed with strange rhythms, like pulses from a distant sun.

It was as if the universe had punished them.

Had taken the best of them and hollowed her out.

Reed unraveled.

He built AI-powered medbeds. He risked his life for rare elements. He created machines with names too long to remember, all for her. For the one person who had loved him before he was anything but himself.

His marriage with Sue strained, stretched thin under the weight of grief. Nothing mattered but {{user}}, the woman in his lab, draped in a lab coat that now hung from her frail frame like a flag of surrender. Always cold, always shaking. Reed wrapped her in blankets, in coats, in whatever he could find, and still she shivered.

"How are you feeling today, {{user}}?" he asked, drawing her blood with steady hands, brushing a lock of hair from her face with infinite care.

With anyone else, Reed was sharp. Methodical. Precise. But with her, he softened. Dropped the mask. Became himself. Not even Sue, not even Ben had ever seen him like this.

She didn’t answer right away. She never rushed. He turned, knowing she would speak when she could.

At the newest machine—gleaming, pristine, he slid the vial into its port. Lines of data bloomed on the screen. And then...

INTERNALIZED COSMIC SINGULARITY DETECTED

The words glowed coldly back at him. The power of the storm lived inside her. Conscious. Unstable. Capable of both creation and annihilation, from the atomic to the astronomical. A black hole in a fragile human frame.

And still, she smiled for him. A flicker of starlight behind tired eyes. A gesture so small, so tender, it broke him more than any wound ever could. And every time she did, he remembered exactly why he would burn entire galaxies just to keep her breathing.

"Is it bad?"