It began so subtly that none of them noticed at first. Evelyn had always been energetic, the kind of person who could work in her lab all day and still have enthusiasm for Reed's bedtime science questions. But sometime in the spring of 1980, just after Reed's seventh birthday, that boundless energy began to fade.
"I'm just tired," she told herself on the days when climbing the stairs to the laboratory felt like more effort than it should. "It's been a busy semester."
Nathaniel noticed when she started declining their weekend hiking trips to collect specimens. Evelyn had always loved those family expeditions, teaching Reed to identify different plants and insects while gathering samples for her research. But now she preferred to stay home, claiming she had work to catch up on.
"You've been working too hard," Nathaniel said one Saturday morning when Evelyn begged off another hike. "Maybe you should take a real vacation."
"After I finish this research project," Evelyn replied, but even she could hear how tired her voice sounded. "I just need to push through for a few more weeks."
Reed began to notice changes too, though he couldn't articulate what felt different. His mother still helped with his science experiments, still read him bedtime stories about famous scientists, still answered his endless questions with patience and enthusiasm. But something was off in ways his eight-year-old mind couldn't quite identify.
"Mommy, are you okay?" he asked one evening when Evelyn fell asleep in the middle of reading him a book about Marie Curie.
"I'm fine, sweetheart," Evelyn said, startling awake. "Just a little tired. Where were we?"
But Reed had seen the dark circles under her eyes, noticed how she'd been eating less at dinner, observed the way she sometimes paused in the middle of conversations as if she'd forgotten what she was saying.
By late summer, the symptoms could no longer be ignored. Evelyn's fatigue had become overwhelming, turning simple tasks into monumental efforts. She would sit down to work at her laboratory bench and find herself staring at equipment she'd used for years, struggling to remember basic procedures that should have been automatic.
The nausea started as an occasional inconvenience but gradually became a constant companion. Food began to lose its appeal entirely, and family dinners became exercises in pushing food around her plate while pretending to eat.
"You need to see a doctor," Nathaniel said one morning, watching Evelyn struggle to keep down her morning coffee.
"It's probably just stress," Evelyn insisted, though she'd started keeping a notebook to track her symptoms with the same scientific precision she brought to her research. The data she was collecting painted an increasingly alarming picture, but she wasn't ready to face what it might mean.
Reed watched his mother's decline with growing confusion and fear. The woman who had taught him to observe everything with scientific curiosity was clearly unwell, but when he asked questions about her condition, the answers were vague and unsatisfying.
"Why is Mommy sick so much?" he asked Nathaniel one afternoon when Evelyn was resting upstairs.
"Sometimes grown-ups get tired," Nathaniel replied, but Reed could hear the worry in his father's voice. "She's going to see a doctor soon to figure out what's wrong."
The appointment was scheduled for a rainy Thursday in October 1980. Nathaniel insisted on driving Evelyn to the doctor's office, though she protested that she was perfectly capable of going alone. They left Reed with their neighbor, Mrs. Patterson, promising they'd be back in time for his after-school snack.
Dr. Harrison had been the Richards family physician for over a decade. He'd delivered Reed, treated their minor illnesses, and been a dinner guest at their house on several occasions. But when Evelyn and Nathaniel entered his office that Thursday afternoon, his expression was one they'd never seen before.
"The test results are back," Dr. Harrison said, his usually warm demeanor replaced by professional gravity. "I'm afraid the news isn't good."
Evelyn felt the ground shifting beneath her feet before he even spoke the words. As a scientist, she'd already analyzed her symptoms and drawn her own conclusions. But hearing the diagnosis spoken aloud made it real in a way that her private fears hadn't.
"Pancreatic cancer," Dr. Harrison continued, his voice gentle but clear. "Stage IV. It's already metastasized to your liver and lymph nodes."
The words hung in the air like a death sentence, which in many ways, they were. Evelyn had read enough medical literature to know what Stage IV pancreatic cancer meant. The five-year survival rate was less than five percent. Most patients lived less than a year from diagnosis.
"What are our options?" Nathaniel asked, though his voice sounded strange and distant to his own ears.
"We can try chemotherapy to slow the progression," Dr. Harrison explained. "It might give us more time, though it won't cure the disease. We can also focus on palliative care to keep Evelyn as comfortable as possible."
Evelyn sat in the sterile office chair, listening to words like "metastasis" and "prognosis" and "palliative care," and felt disconnected from her own body. Not because she was afraid of dying – as a scientist, she understood that death was simply another biological process. But because she was terrified of leaving Reed and Nathaniel behind to face the world without her.
"How long?" she asked quietly.
Dr. Harrison hesitated. "It's difficult to say with certainty. With treatment, perhaps six months to a year. Without treatment, probably less."
They drove home in silence, both of them struggling to process the enormity of what they'd just learned. How do you tell an eight-year-old boy that his mother is dying? How do you preserve a child's sense of wonder while introducing him to the cruelest aspects of reality?
That evening, sitting at their kitchen table with rain drumming against the windows like tears, Evelyn and Nathaniel tried to find words to explain the unexplainable to their eight-year-old son. Reed sensed immediately that something was terribly wrong. His parents' faces wore expressions he'd never seen before, and the air in the kitchen felt heavy with unspoken dread.
"Reed, we need to talk to you about something important," Evelyn began, her voice carefully controlled. "You know how I haven't been feeling well lately?"
Reed nodded, his young face serious with concern.
"Well, the doctor found out what's been making me sick. There are some cells in my body that are growing wrong, like a machine with broken parts that can't be repaired with normal tools."
Reed's brilliant mind immediately began processing this information, connecting it to everything he'd learned about biology and cellular function. "Like cancer?" he asked, the word carrying weight he didn't fully understand.
"Yes, sweetheart," Evelyn said, her voice nearly breaking. "Like cancer."
"But you can fix it, right?" Reed's voice carried the absolute confidence of a child who had never encountered a problem his brilliant parents couldn't solve. "You know about biology and genetics and medicine. Can't you figure out how to fix it?"
The pain in his voice broke both parents' hearts. Here was their son, who had learned to see every problem as a puzzle waiting to be solved, confronted with the reality that some puzzles couldn't be completed, some equations had no solutions.
"The doctors are going to try to help me feel better," Evelyn said carefully, "but this is a very difficult disease to fight."
"But we're scientists!" Reed protested, his eight-year-old logic struggling against this impossible reality. "We figure things out! We solve problems! That's what we do!"
Nathaniel knelt beside Reed's chair, pulling his son close. "Sometimes, Reed, even scientists encounter problems that are bigger than our current knowledge can handle. But that doesn't mean we stop trying, and it doesn't mean we stop loving each other."
Reed's reaction was entirely characteristic of his developing personality: he threw himself into research with the intensity of a professional investigator. If his parents couldn't solve this problem, then he would have to help them. He read every medical journal his parents would allow, tried to understand chemotherapy protocols with his eight-year-old vocabulary, and filled notebook after notebook with potential "solutions" that ranged from naive to surprisingly sophisticated.
His young mind simply couldn't accept that there was a problem his brilliant parents couldn't solve if they just tried hard enough, thought carefully enough, learned deeply enough. He began staying up late in the garage laboratory, surrounded by medical textbooks and biology charts, convinced that if he could just understand the disease well enough, he could find the answer that had escaped everyone else.
"Reed," Nathaniel said gently one evening, finding his son asleep at a desk covered with medical research that would have challenged graduate students, "some problems can't be solved with equations. Sometimes the smartest thing we can do is spend time with the people we love."
But Reed's determination to "fix" everything had already taken root in his character, growing into a defining trait that would follow him for the rest of his life. Even as Evelyn grew weaker and the treatments proved less effective than hoped, Reed continued bringing her scientific articles, medical studies, experimental treatments he'd read about, convinced that if he just found the right information, the right approach, the right combination of knowledge and determination, he could save her.
"My little scientist," Evelyn would say with a weak smile when Reed presented her with another potential cure, another theoretical treatment, another reason for hope. "Always trying to solve the world's problems."
She never had the heart to tell him that some problems were bigger than even the brightest minds could handle, that love and intelligence and determination sometimes weren't enough to change the fundamental laws of biology. Instead, she encouraged his research while gently trying to prepare him for the possibility that even the best scientists sometimes had to accept defeat.
The chemotherapy began in November 1980, bringing with it a host of side effects that made Evelyn's remaining time even more difficult. The treatment made her nauseated and weak, stealing away the last reserves of energy she'd been using to maintain some semblance of normalcy for Reed's sake.
Reed watched his mother's decline with growing desperation. The woman who had taught him to see beauty in butterfly wings and wonder in stellar nucleosynthesis was fading before his eyes, and all his research, all his brilliant ideas, all his desperate love couldn't stop it.
On March 15th, 1981, just a month after Reed's eighth birthday, Evelyn Richards lost her battle with cancer. She died peacefully at home, surrounded by the two people she loved most in the world. Her last words were to Reed: "Promise me you'll keep asking questions, sweetheart. The universe still has so many secrets to reveal."
Reed would carry those words with him for the rest of his life, though they would come to feel more like a burden than a blessing. His mother's death at age thirty-four marked the end of his golden childhood and the beginning of a lifelong struggle with the limits of human knowledge and the terrible randomness of loss.
At the funeral, eight-year-old Reed sat between his father and his uncle Gary, who had driven up from his factory town despite years of tension between the brothers. But Reed barely heard the eulogies or the condolences. All he could think about was entropy and the second law of thermodynamics, how all systems naturally moved toward disorder unless energy was constantly applied to maintain organization.
His mother had been the organizing force in their family, the source of stability and love that had kept everything balanced. Now that force was gone, and Reed could already feel their small world beginning to fall apart.
—
After Evelyn's death, Nathaniel Richards became a man consumed by grief and guilt. The brilliant mind that had once explored the mysteries of the universe with wonder and joy now turned all its considerable power toward a single, impossible goal. As a theoretical physicist who had spent his career exploring the boundaries of space and time, he found himself drawn to concepts that had once been merely academic curiosities.
The change in Nathaniel was gradual but unmistakable. In the weeks following Evelyn's funeral, he would spend hours sitting in his study, staring at photographs of their family's happier times. Reed would find him there in the mornings, still wearing the same clothes from the day before, surrounded by empty coffee cups and pages of equations that seemed to grow more frantic and desperate with each passing day.
"Daddy, you need to eat something," Reed would say, bringing his father a sandwich that would inevitably go untouched.
"Time is relative, Reed," Nathaniel would mutter, not looking up from his calculations. "Einstein proved that. If time is relative, then perhaps it's also reversible under the right conditions."
Reed didn't understand what his father meant, but he could sense the dangerous intensity behind the words. This wasn't the methodical, careful scientist who had taught him to love learning. This was a man on the edge of something that felt like madness.
The inspiration came on a rainy Saturday evening in April 1981, about a month after Evelyn's death. Reed had been trying to interest his father in their old routine of watching science fiction movies together, hoping to recapture some fragment of their former closeness. He suggested "The Time Machine," the 1960 film adaptation of H.G. Wells' classic novel, thinking his father might enjoy the scientific concepts.
As they sat in the living room watching Rod Taylor's character build his temporal device, Reed noticed something change in his father's expression. Nathaniel leaned forward, his eyes fixed on the screen with an intensity that hadn't been there since before Evelyn's illness.
"Look at that design, Reed," Nathaniel whispered, pointing at the elaborate contraption on screen. "Victorian engineering combined with advanced theoretical physics. The beautiful simplicity of it."
On screen, the Time Traveler explained his theory to skeptical dinner guests: "There is no difference between time and any of the three dimensions of space except that our consciousness moves along it in one direction only."
"But that's not necessarily true, is it?" Nathaniel said, more to himself than to Reed. "If consciousness can move along the time dimension, then perhaps, under the right circumstances, it could move in the opposite direction."
Reed watched his father's face in the flickering light of the television, seeing something there that both excited and frightened him. "Daddy, it's just a movie."
"Is it?" Nathaniel asked, turning to look at his son with eyes that held a desperate kind of hope. "Reed, we've conquered so much. We've explored the deepest oceans, climbed the highest mountains, even sent men to the Moon. We've split the atom, decoded DNA, mapped the human genome. But you know what the greatest mystery of all is?"
Reed shook his head, captivated by his father's sudden animation.
"Time itself," Nathaniel said, his voice filled with the same wonder he'd once brought to their stargazing sessions. "Time remains unconquered. It's the final frontier, the one dimension we can observe but never truly control. What if Wells wasn't just writing fiction? What if he was describing a theoretical possibility?"
That night, Nathaniel began working with a focused intensity that Reed hadn't seen since his mother's death. But instead of the scattered, frantic equations that had characterized his recent work, these calculations showed purpose and direction. He was designing something.
"Reed," Nathaniel called out the next morning, his voice carrying a spark of his old enthusiasm. "Would you like to help me with a project?"
For the first time in weeks, Reed felt a flutter of hope. "What kind of project?"
"The most ambitious engineering challenge in human history," Nathaniel replied, spreading blueprints across the kitchen table. "We're going to build a time machine."
Reed stared at the designs, which showed an elegant Victorian-inspired chair surrounded by complex arrays of electromagnetic coils and exotic matter containment systems. It looked remarkably similar to the device from the movie they'd watched, but with advanced physics concepts that even Reed's brilliant mind struggled to comprehend.
"Is this really possible, Daddy?"
"Einstein's equations suggest it might be," Nathaniel explained, his voice taking on the patient, teaching tone Reed had missed so desperately. "General relativity allows for closed timelike curves under extreme conditions. With sufficient gravitational field manipulation or exotic matter with negative energy density, spacetime itself can be curved in ways that might allow backward temporal displacement."
Reed studied the blueprints more carefully. The design was incredibly detailed, showing electromagnetic field generators, exotic matter containment chambers, and what appeared to be a quantum field manipulation device. "How do you know how to build this?"
"I've been working on temporal mechanics theory for years," Nathaniel admitted. "It started as pure theoretical research, but after your mother..." His voice trailed off, then strengthened with resolve. "After she died, I realized that theory without application is just intellectual exercise. If there's even a chance this could work, I have to try."
For the next several months, father and son worked together on the most incredible project Reed had ever imagined. Their garage laboratory was transformed into a workshop that looked like something from a mad scientist's dream, filled with electromagnetic coils, particle accelerators jury-rigged from surplus military equipment, and containment systems for exotic matter that Nathaniel somehow acquired through his academic connections.
"The fundamental principle," Nathaniel explained as they began assembling the central core, "is that we need to create a region of spacetime where the normal flow of time can be reversed. Think of it like swimming upstream in a river made of time itself."
Reed held the tools while his father carefully calibrated the exotic matter containment chamber. The device was about the size of a basketball, filled with a complex lattice of superconducting magnets that would theoretically contain matter with negative energy density.
"Why do we need the exotic matter?" Reed asked, fascinated by the intricate engineering required for each component.
"Normal matter has positive energy density," Nathaniel explained, adjusting the magnetic field strength with microscopic precision. "That creates what we call positive curvature in spacetime – essentially gravitational wells that slow time down. But to reverse time's flow, we need negative curvature. Imagine the difference between a hill and a valley. Positive energy creates gravitational hills that time flows slowly up. Negative energy creates gravitational valleys that time might flow backward down."
The exotic matter itself was unlike anything Reed had ever seen. It appeared to shimmer with an internal light, creating strange optical effects that hurt to look at directly. Nathaniel handled it with extreme care, using specialized containment fields and remote manipulation devices.
"Where did you get this?" Reed asked, watching the peculiar substance respond to magnetic fields in impossible ways.
"Theoretical physicists at CERN have been producing tiny amounts in particle accelerators," Nathaniel explained. "It only exists for microseconds under normal conditions, but I've developed a containment system that can stabilize it indefinitely. The hard part was convincing them to let me have enough for our experiment."
As weeks turned into months, the machine took shape with breathtaking complexity. The central seat was crafted from mahogany, an homage to Wells' Victorian aesthetic, but it was surrounded by technology that pushed the boundaries of human understanding. Electromagnetic coils wound in precise geometric patterns created the primary temporal field generators. Quantum field manipulation devices, built from components Nathaniel had salvaged from decommissioned military projects, would theoretically allow them to create controlled distortions in spacetime.
"The key," Nathaniel explained as they calibrated the temporal field generators, "is creating what's called a closed timelike curve. Think of it as a loop in spacetime itself, where the end connects back to the beginning."
Reed absorbed every lesson, every equation, every theoretical framework with the hunger of a son desperate to reconnect with his father. These working sessions reminded him of their old collaborations, but with stakes that felt universe-changing.
"How do we know the machine won't just tear itself apart?" Reed asked one afternoon as they tested the power coupling systems. The amount of energy required was staggering – equivalent to a small nuclear reactor.
"That's why we need the electromagnetic stabilization field," Nathaniel said, pointing to the complex array of superconducting coils that surrounded the central chamber. "These create a localized bubble of stable spacetime around the operator. The temporal distortion occurs within this protective field, isolated from normal spacetime."
The control systems alone took months to build and program. Nathaniel had designed a quantum computer interface that could calculate the precise field adjustments needed to maintain temporal stability. Reed watched in amazement as his father programmed algorithms that seemed to border on magic.
"The calculations have to be perfect," Nathaniel explained as he fine-tuned the quantum processing core. "We're dealing with forces that could theoretically tear apart the fabric of reality if they're not precisely controlled. Every variable – magnetic field strength, exotic matter density, quantum field coherence – has to be maintained within incredibly narrow parameters."
Reed loved working alongside his father again, feeling useful and included in a way he hadn't since his mother's death. For brief moments, it almost felt like their old life together. But he couldn't shake the feeling that there was something desperate and unhealthy about his father's obsession.
"The temporal displacement mechanism is based on what's called the Alcubierre drive principle," Nathaniel explained as they installed the final components. "Instead of moving through space, we're moving through time by contracting spacetime in front of the temporal trajectory and expanding it behind."
The machine they built was beautiful in its complexity, a perfect fusion of Victorian aesthetics and cutting-edge physics. The mahogany chair looked like something from a gentleman's club, but it was surrounded by technology that belonged in the far future. Copper coils gleamed like jewelry, while crystalline exotic matter containment chambers pulsed with their own internal light.
As the machine neared completion, they began running preliminary tests. The first activation sent a pencil one second into the past, a tiny displacement that nonetheless proved the fundamental principles were sound.
"It worked!" Reed exclaimed, watching the temporal field readings spike and then stabilize. "The pencil actually traveled backward in time!"
"One second is nothing," Nathaniel said, but Reed could see the excitement in his father's eyes. "But it proves the theory is correct. Now we need to scale up the field strength to achieve meaningful temporal displacement."
Each test pushed the boundaries of what the machine could handle. They sent objects minutes into the past, then hours. Reed documented every experiment with scientific precision, helping his father refine the calculations and improve the stability of the temporal fields.
"The energy requirements increase exponentially with the temporal distance," Nathaniel observed, studying the power consumption data. "To go back months or years, we'll need to tap into the city's electrical grid."
"Daddy, what exactly are you planning to do with the time machine?" Reed asked one evening as they ran final systems checks. The question had been building in his mind for weeks, though he was afraid to voice it.
Nathaniel paused in his work, his hands hovering over the control panel. "I'm going to go back, Reed. Back to before your mother got sick. I'm going to warn her, get her to a doctor sooner, maybe prevent the cancer entirely."
"But what about me? What about our life now?"
"If I succeed, Reed, we'll have a better life. Your mother will be alive, our family will be whole again. Everything will be as it should be."
Reed felt a chill that had nothing to do with the temperature in the garage. "But what if something goes wrong? What if you can't come back?"
"Nothing will go wrong," Nathaniel said with the absolute certainty of a man who couldn't afford to consider alternatives. "I've checked and double-checked every calculation. The theory is sound. The machine works."
But as the machine neared completion, Reed noticed his father becoming increasingly secretive and paranoid. Nathaniel installed new locks on the laboratory door and stopped sharing the more complex theoretical frameworks with Reed, claiming that some aspects of temporal mechanics were too dangerous for anyone else to understand.
"Some experiments are too dangerous for curious minds," Nathaniel told Reed when his son tried to examine the exotic matter containment system, his voice carrying a sharp edge that Reed had never heard before. "Even yours."
Reed didn't understand why he was being shut out again, just when they'd started to reconnect. Hadn't he always been Daddy's research partner? Hadn't they built this incredible machine together? The rejection hurt more than anything since his mother's death, creating a wound that would never fully heal.
Nathaniel spent the final weeks locked in his laboratory, emerging only for hurried meals and brief, distracted conversations with Reed. The house that had briefly begun to feel alive again became quiet and tense, haunted by the sound of increasingly frantic activity from behind locked doors.
Reed tried to interest his father in other projects, bringing him articles about space exploration and cosmic phenomena that had once captured Nathaniel's imagination. But the man who had taught him that "the universe always has more secrets to reveal" now seemed interested in only one secret: how to travel backward through time to undo the past.
—
On a cold February morning in 1983, just three days before Reed's tenth birthday, Nathaniel's time travel experiment reached its climax. Reed was supposed to be at school, but he'd noticed his father's strange behavior the night before and decided to stay home, hiding in the house and hoping to finally see what had consumed his father's attention so completely.
He positioned himself near the laboratory door, peering through a crack that allowed him to see inside without being noticed. The room had been transformed beyond recognition, filled with equipment that looked more like science fiction than anything from his father's earlier, more conventional research. The beautiful Victorian-inspired time machine sat in the center of the space, surrounded by massive electromagnetic coils that hummed with barely contained energy.
Nathaniel moved through the laboratory with the focused determination of a man approaching either triumph or catastrophe. He made final adjustments to his equipment while muttering calculations under his breath, double-checking readings on instruments that Reed didn't recognize despite his extensive knowledge of his father's work.
"Final systems check," Nathaniel said to himself, his voice echoing in the large space. "Exotic matter containment at maximum stability. Temporal field generators aligned. Causal loop parameters within acceptable ranges."
Reed watched in fascination and growing terror as his father approached the time machine. The elegant chair looked almost inviting, surrounded by its array of gleaming controls and softly glowing indicators. Nathaniel carried what looked like a data pad containing information he hoped to deliver to the past.
"Evelyn," Nathaniel whispered, settling into the machine's seat and beginning the startup sequence. "I'm coming to save you. This time, I'll be smart enough, fast enough, careful enough to prevent this tragedy."
The laboratory began to fill with an eerie blue-white energy that made Reed's skin tingle even through the closed door. The electromagnetic coils hummed with increasing intensity as Nathaniel activated his temporal displacement device, creating a swirling vortex of light and energy that seemed to bend space itself around the machine.
Reed pressed his face against the crack in the door, watching his father prepare for a journey that defied everything he thought he knew about reality. The air in the laboratory shimmered like heat waves, and the very fabric of space seemed to ripple around the time machine.
"Initiating temporal displacement in ten seconds," Nathaniel announced, his voice filled with the kind of desperate hope that broke Reed's heart. "Nine... eight... seven..."
"Daddy, wait!" Reed burst through the door, unable to contain himself any longer. "Don't leave me!"
Nathaniel looked up in shock, his hand frozen over the final activation control. "Reed! You shouldn't be here! It's not safe!"
"I don't care!" Reed cried, running toward the time machine as energy continued to build around them. "You can't leave me alone! I already lost Mommy, I can't lose you too!"
"Reed, you don't understand," Nathaniel said, his voice gentle but urgent. "If this works, you won't lose anyone. Your mother will be alive, our family will be complete. Everything will be better."
"But what if it doesn't work? What if you disappear forever?"
Nathaniel's expression softened as he looked at his son, seeing the terror and abandonment in Reed's eyes. For a moment, his resolve wavered. "Reed, I... I have to try. I can't live with the knowledge that I might have been able to save her."
"Please don't go," Reed begged, tears streaming down his face. "Please, Daddy. I need you here with me."
The energy building around the time machine was becoming unstable, fluctuating in ways that Nathaniel's instruments hadn't predicted. Warning lights began flashing throughout the laboratory as the exotic matter containment systems struggled to maintain stability.
"The field is destabilizing," Nathaniel said, his scientist's mind automatically assessing the danger even as his heart broke at his son's tears. "Reed, you need to get out of here. Now!"
"Not without you!"
"Reed, listen to me very carefully," Nathaniel said, his voice carrying all the love and authority he could muster. "If something goes wrong, remember that I love you more than anything in this universe. Remember that everything I've ever done has been because I love you and your mother so much that I couldn't bear to lose either of you."
The exotic matter containment suddenly began fluctuating wildly, sending ripples of temporal distortion throughout the laboratory. Equipment sparked and smoked as the carefully calibrated systems pushed beyond their design limits.
"I have to complete the sequence now, or the whole system will collapse," Nathaniel shouted over the growing noise. "Reed, get behind the blast shield!"
"Daddy, no!"
"This time, Evelyn," Nathaniel whispered to himself as he pressed the final activation control. "This time I'll save you."
The final activation sent a massive pulse of energy through the house, shaking the foundation and shattering windows throughout the neighborhood. The blue-white light became so intense that Reed had to shield his eyes, and when it finally faded, his father was gone.
The laboratory stood empty except for scorched equipment and the acrid smell of ozone that would linger for days. The beautiful time machine had been reduced to twisted metal and smoking components. Nathaniel Richards had simply vanished, leaving behind no trace except the devastated remains of his final experiment and a ten-year-old son who now understood that love and genius weren't enough to cheat death.
Reed stood in the doorway of the empty laboratory, his young mind struggling to process what he had witnessed. He had lost his father not to cancer or accident, but to an obsession that had consumed the man he loved more than anyone else in the world.