New Star In Marvel

Chapter 200 200: The End of Will’s Torture, Scranton Reality Anchor! James opened

the fourth segment and the timer read [Five years, ten months, ten days], and Dr. Robert Scranton's voice came thin but urgent: he told the blinking control panel he called Red that it felt "solid," that it was "real," and that only when he touched it could he remember he was real too—but touching Red now hurt so much he thought he might fall apart. Inside S.H.I.E.L.D., Natasha looked to the physics expert, who explained in plain terms that the LSS panel (the reality-stabilizer console) was built better than any human body and had a built-in field device, so it resisted the void longer; as reality began to seep back in waves around Red, the normal laws of physics were re-attaching to Scranton's shattered body, and every second of that re-attachment felt like knives. Fury suddenly asked the only question that mattered: if reality kept returning like this, what would happen to a man who was almost only a lace of Hume threads and memory? The expert said nothing, and that silence was the answer. Scranton counted distances he could barely feel: "the radius is about three kilometers," shrinking fast, then two, and he begged the unknown force to stop, shouting that the closure would crush him—then he paused, and in a flicker of the old scientist, he realized it was not a wall closing but a "wave," not a "wall" but a "window" being opened. At Stark Tower, Tony swore and explained it to Rhodes with an image: imagine water and a drop; play the splash backward—when ripples close, the drop can leap out—if Scranton rides the closing ripples, he might escape. Later, Scranton tried to make it simple for Anna as if she could hear him: two layers of reality, like two sheets of paper, pressed together, and between them a tiny, wrong third layer—this dead end he had fallen into. He said a C-type "broken entrance" wormhole, the faulty kind with holes, had dumped him into this null middle that led to no universe at all; the waves were coming from a parallel reality pushing or pulling toward Red and toward him, because Red and Scranton still had some reality left, and those pushes were shaping a new wormhole "home." The word home ripped through everyone listening. People whispered that he could finally go home; others went quiet because reality returning now was three years too late, and they knew what it would do to a man made of almost nothing. Then Scranton gagged: blood; he heaved and described the smell, the taste, the tick-tick-tick of wet drips—physics had reattached to his organs and now his body tried to vomit with a body that barely existed. The expert said softly this meant more time had passed in torture once his Hume level fell too low to hold shape, then asked the room what Scranton had left; no one would answer but Fury: either die screaming or go back to the dark—those were his two doors. Scranton whispered to Red, asking if Red could hear the low hum, the soft pulses tearing through the void, and he began to cry because the pain grew with every pulse; still, he did not die, because in a place with almost no reality death cannot happen, and the returning field lifted his Hume level just enough to keep him as he was—alive, broken, and aware. Over the next five days, the panel logged pulses rising, mixing with screams and sobs and muttering, until [Five years, eleven months, nine days], when Scranton struck the panel and begged, "Help me," his voice nearly gone. The hum rose from twenty pulses per minute to thirty, then there were loud claps and a muffled voice that could barely form words. He asked Anna for eyes so he could see her again, lips so he could kiss her again, a tongue because he was "hungry"—and the strange clicking sounds on the tape made people shiver not from fear but grief, because it was only a man trying to stitch a body out of memory. Even then, he tried to steady her if she ever heard this: it's okay, baby, it's okay, I will find another way out; I still have enough parts; five more years—five years are enough to figure it out—and the laugh shook into sobs and then into silence. The expert said he was re-stabilizing; he would not die—at least for five years more, and the room sagged at that answer because it meant five more years alone in unlit space. Scranton knew Red needed to go—that the LSS had to ride the forming wormhole back to test range—but if Red left, there would be no light at all. Fury finished the thought: that would leave him truly alone, and the sadness wrapped the room like cold air. Red still left. Scranton said, "I love you, Red. I love you, Anna," and the panel showed [Five years, eleven months, twenty days] as the pulse rate reached 60 per minute—it was coming. He sobbed quietly and said Anna's name; his voice sounded almost normal again for a moment; a loud metallic blast rolled over the recording, then crackles, then a final tag: [Five years, eleven months, eleven days]—and the field log cut out. People stared, emptied. They knew now a soul was still wandering a near-universe with almost no reality, whispering to a vanished light and to a wife with green eyes, and the only words he had left were I love you, Red. I love you, Anna. James scrolled to the last page, and a new voice, not Scranton's, filled the sound: on December 23, 2005, the LSS control panel spontaneously returned to Site-120's Reality Lab A. Technicians rattled off data: "Anchor initial Hume reading stable, output 2.3, fluctuation 0.001%"—they were testing a reality anchor, using controlled distortion to prove it could hold the world in place. "Okay, Skinner, I hope it works this time," a woman said—calm, brisk, professional—and then someone cried, "Wait, what is this? Something appeared in the test area!" Orders tangled: cut power? call security? Voices tripped over each other. "Skinner, where the—oh my God, where did this come from?" "I don't know, ma'am, it just appeared. It looks like—what the—the smell—" They coughed and gagged: "dead body… vomit… blood…" and all across the Marvel world watchers began to cry because they understood who the woman must be and what the thing was that fell through the window with Red—the LSS had returned, but so had the pieces of a man who rode a closing ripple until it threw him through. In the labs, S.H.I.E.L.D. experts explained what the Foundation would confirm: those pulses and waves had pressed two realities together until a "window" formed, the LSS—stubborn and real—had shaped the returning channel, and Scranton's last "I love you" was the push that let Red go home; the panel's field design—tested to survive what he suffered—became the blueprint for the standard device now famous as the Scranton Reality Anchor. Important events rushed together: the shrinking bubble of null-space, the "window not wall" insight, the pain of physics re-attaching, the low-frequency pulse build to 60/min, Red's departure, the last declaration of love, and then the LSS reappearing on December 23, 2005 bearing the proof of what he paid. Out in the control room, someone whispered a summary that would be written into procedure: the anchor works by driving the local Hume index upward, forcing reality to re-assert, resisting collapse, and denying unfriendly distortions—a device perfected by a man who mapped a dead end until it turned into a doorway. People asked the obvious last question: did Robert come back? The facts were too soft to hold; what fell through smelled like blood and bile and ruin, and even if he had crossed whole, the higher Hume world would have blown him apart like red ink dropped into water. That was the cruel math: he could open the window but not pass through it and live. And yet, his notes, his timing, his field readings, and his last act made the anchor that bears his name; the Scranton Reality Anchor would hold doors closed that should never open and keep worlds from tearing, and every time a lab flicked one on and the meters steadied and the air felt heavier, they were borrowing his will. By then, the lab microphones had gone quiet but for shouts and alarms and the wheeze of ventilation; you could almost imagine a woman with green eyes pushing past the glass to the edge of the test floor, asking what the smell was, asking what had appeared with her team's machine, not yet knowing the shape that had crossed with it was the last remainder of the man who loved her, and that the machine she built with him would take his name into every place where the world needed saving. Bold truths remained: the window opened, Red returned, the anchor stabilized, and the cost was a life measured in pulses, not minutes; SRA field strength 2.3 with 0.001% drift made engineers cheer, but some people cried, because for them the number was not a number—it was Robert's last measurement of the dark. And so the chapter closed: the end of will's torture was not escape but purpose; the device born of a void became the Scranton Reality Anchor, and in every future breach report where "SRA deployed—Hume restored" appears, hidden between the lines are the same two sentences he sent through the window with Red: I love you, Red. I love you, Anna.

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