It’s kinda funny, I s’pose. Me bein’ the one keepin’ this record and all. Never had much in the way of a hankerin’ to be a writer or anything like that. Hell, I barely was able to keep up with my schoolwork when I was a student. I was the guy who had to run twice as fast just to be even with the other kids. I got better at schoolwork when I started attendin’ Professor Xavier’s school, though. I guess that’s because Professor Xavier was a different kinda teacher. He didn’t think much of poundin’ dates and facts into your head. Professor Xavier taught you HOW to think.

But that isn’t what this journal is supposed to be about. The others all suggested I keep one so that there will be some record just in case we all don’t make it. I thought that Iron Man or Warbird would be better at this. They’re both way smarter than me and used to writin’ reports an’ such. But Iron Man said that what folks readin’ this in the future didn’t need was a report. They needed to read how the person writin’ it FELT. He said I was the perfect one to write the journal. But my reasons for writin’ it are simpler than that If we fail, if we fall in battle then SOMEBODY has got to take up our fight and put the world back the way it was. So they got to know about the outrage we have. So maybe this journal will do that. If it gets a fire started in whoever reads it then that’s somethin’, I guess. And whoever comes after us, well…maybe by knowing what we did wrong will ensure that they don’t make the same mistakes we made. And maybe they’ll succeed where we failed…

…because I think we’re losing.

This journal is the only place I’d admit something like this. And it’s the only place I’ll ever allow myself a thought like that. I’m not giving up. I’m going to fight with the last ounce of life in my body to set things aright. Because this world isn’t supposed to be like this. There are too many good people dead who shouldn’t be.

And God forgive me…but there are too many walking around now who badly need killing. That’s not a thought Cap would want me to have and I’d cut off my left arm before I ever let him knew that things had gotten to this point with me. But I can’t help it. That’s the way I feel right now. I’ve seen too much since we came to this hellhole.

We still don’t know exactly how the world was changed. We’ve got our theories. Especially considering that The Red Skull is behind this. And if The Red Skull is involved, chances are there’s a Cosmic Cube stuck in his hip pocket. The Skull’s made something of a career out of pursuing The Cosmic Cube and using it to change reality. And it looks like he’s finally done it.

But we’re going to take back the world. Or die trying.

But before I die I’m going to personally make sure that The Red Skull can never do anything like this again.

FOURTH REICH

Part I: Waking Nightmares

By Derrick Ferguson and Dino Pollard

One Month Earlier

“Oh, my achin’ back!”

Cannonball rolled over and looked up at the bright blue sky above. He sat up carefully. He was still sore all over but he was still alive. He slowly and carefully got to his feet, testing and flexing his limbs. Checking himself all over as Captain America had taught him to do, looking for signs of injuries, bleeding, broken bones. He appeared to be fine. Okay. He was in good shape. Time to take stock of his surroundings, figure out where he was and find his teammates. Okay, the last thing he clearly remembered was Captain Marvel shouting something about how Doom wasn’t the threat. And then there was this big bright burst of white light and then…NOTHING.

Until now. He was standing on a huge rolling plain of beautiful, lush grass. But they had been in Latveria. In Castle Doom to be exact. Had they been transported to another part of that country or-

Hearing the familiar sound of Iron Man’s boot jets, Cannonball turned and his thin face broke into a delightedly relived grin as he saw his fellow Avengers flying towards him. Warbird, Iron Man, The Sub-Mariner and the apparently recovered Vision were approaching him from the east. They landed next to their teammate and it was Namor who gripped the younger man by the shoulder in welcome. Warbird was carrying an unconscious Captain Marvel who she tenderly placed on the ground.

“Thank Father Neptune you are well. We’ve been searching for you and the others for the past hour.”

Cannonball was actually surprised. There was genuine concern in The Sub-Mariner’s regal tones. From the way Namor had spoken to him in the past, Cannonball had taken it as a given that The Prince of Atlantis simply tolerated his presence on the team. But Captain America had told Cannonball on more than one occasion that Namor was a complicated man. Cannonball was only just recently beginning to appreciate exactly how complicated.

“Genis is still outta it, huh?” Cannonball gestured at the unconscious man on the ground.

“Our best guess is that he’s in shock from having his Cosmic Awareness ripped right out of him by Doom.” Warbird replied. “His vitals are all there but he’s in a deep coma. We’ve got to get him some proper medical care right away.”

“Good to see that you’re up and around, Vision,” Cannonball said, offering his hand to The Android Avenger. The Vision gripped the younger man’s hand and shook it with real feeling.

“It’s good to see you as well, Sam.”

“You feelin’ okay?”

“My self-repairing systems appear to have performed their function admirably. I am restored to full operational status.”

Namor pushed his way past The Vision and said urgently to Cannonball; “Have you seen Captain America? Or Susan Richards and the rest of The Fantastic Four?”

Cannonball looked at the anxious faces on his teammates. “Cap? No… I ain’t seen him. I woke up just now. I was wonderin’ where I was and where the rest of you were. Then you came flyin’ in. You mean…Cap’s not with you?”

“Not only is Cap missing, but Rage, Nick Fury, Lockjaw and Jarvis as well as Reed, Sue, Franklin and Johnny. They’re nowhere in the vicinity.” Iron Man said. He flipped up the faceplate of his helmet to reveal the tired, worn face of Anthony Stark. “According to my biosensors, we’re the only things living for ten miles around.”

“Can’t you uplink up to your satellites to boost the range of your sensors, Tony?” Warbird asked.

“In the past years my companies have put up at least half a dozen satellites in orbit above The Earth. But my armor hasn’t been able to locate a single one. It’s almost as if they’re all gone.”

“But that’s impossible!” Cannonball said. “I mean…isn’t it?”

“Maybe Doom knocked them down?” Warbird said. “To prevent you from getting information?”

“Not Doom’s style,” Tony said. “And anyway, he’s got Captain Marvel’s Cosmic Awareness and Franklin Richards’ reality altering powers. I hardly think that he would care about my being able to lock in on my satellites. No. The satellites are gone. And there’s something else that worries me even more.”

“Out with it!” Namor demanded.

Tony turned slightly and from the round Uni-Beam projector on his chest a holographic image of The United States emerged. “Take a look. According to my onboard GPS we’re standing in the middle of St. Louis, Missouri.”

Cannonball’s long arms swept out to indicate the vast green plain stretching for miles in all directions. “Man, there’s got to be something wrong with your armor! There’s nothing here.”

“I’ve triple checked the co-ordinates and I’ve run two self-diagnostics. My armor’s working just fine. And it’s telling me that the St. Louis Art Museum should be one mile north of us.” Tony gestured. “But it’s not. It’s gone. As is the rest of the city.”

“I still don’t buy it. There’s gotta be somethin’ wonky with your armor.” Cannonball insisted. “But we can argue about that later. Shouldn’t we be tryin’ to find Cap and the others?”

“The most logical course of action would be to fly to The West Coast.” The Vision said quietly. “And secure the assistance of our teammates there and resolve all outstanding issues.”

“Are we still not hunted fugitives?” The Sub-Mariner growled. “Will we not have to battle The United States Army again if we go to the West Coast headquarters?”

“We can’t go back to New York. Avengers Mansion is completely destroyed. And if The Fantastic Four as well as Nick Fury are gone, we’ve got nobody to back us up and keep the government off our necks until we have a chance to find out what’s happened.”

“Not to mention that teaming up with Doom certainly hasn’t made us any new friends, either.” Tony folded his gleaming golden arms. “We don’t have any choice. We’ve got to go to the West Coast. There’s something very wrong here. And Doom’s in back of it. I knew it was a mistake to trust that son of a bitch.”

But Iron Man was wrong. I don’t think he’s still gotten over just how wrong he was. But he wasn’t the only one. Alla us figured that whatever had happened, Doom was the cause. Hell, hadn’t he manipulated us into fightin’ The Fantastic Four? Didn’t he capture Genis and Franklin just to swipe their powers?

Doom played us all for fools an’ we let him.

It’s somethin’ we’ll be a long, long time livin’ down. But that can wait. We’ve got a whole lot of other pots boilin’ on the stove right now. And the lids on them pots ain’t too steady…especially when you take into account who the guy who’s hands we discovered were REALLY on the stove’s knob and controllin’ the flames under all those pots…

“This just isn’t right,” Warbird muttered. “What in God’s name has happened?”

The Avengers had flown hard and fast for two hours nonstop to get from where St. Louis was supposed to be to Los Angeles. But this was a radically different Los Angeles from what they expected.

They could see the immense, seven hundred foot high wall encircling the city from miles away. Made from immense stone bricks as large as the cab of a 16 wheeler, they were encrusted with what looked like dried blood. The wall wasn’t new, either. It obviously had been constructed years ago. But that had to be flat out impossible. Massive searchlights on turrets slowly rotated, illuminating the countryside for miles around.

“We’ve got to get inside the city,” Iron Man said flatly. “Somehow, Doom’s changed reality. That’s the only explanation for what’s happened. But we can’t go in like this.”

“I will not resort to skulking around like a common criminal!” The Sub-Mariner insisted.

“Namor, take a look around.” Iron Man indicated Warbird, Cannonball, the still unconscious Captain Marvel and The Vision. “We’re in no shape to take on Doom toe-to-toe. We don’t know how much Doom has changed the world. There could be no one left except for us. We need information before we can plan our attack.”

“Which means we send in The Vision,” Warbird grinned.

“It’s the only way,” Iron Man agreed. “The Vision can get in where we can’t and give us a complete report. Vision, you-”

The Android Avenger was already in a state of intangibility that was as near to invisible as he could get. He silently dropped into the ground, his atoms passing through the atoms of The Earth itself until he was gone from sight.

Cannonball, The Sub-Mariner, Warbird and Iron Man all looked up at the forbidding giant wall surrounding Los Angeles and each of them said their own silent prayers.

The Vision had seen many, many terrible things during his time as an Avenger, both on Earth and on other worlds. But even with his perfect memory he was hard pressed to remember when he had seen such totally demoralized people.

Los Angeles was one huge work camp. Men, women and children were laboring at a variety of tasks, all backbreaking. There appeared to be considerable mining going on as well as construction of various machines. From earthmovers and trucks to tanks and machine guns. There were blocks and blocks of nothing but immense factories continually working. The Vision spent two hours just drifing through the factories, taking in the dismaying sights.

Nobody appeared to take a break save for relieving themselves and a thirty minute meal break. Then it was back to work. It was the guards that The Vision found most interesting. They were all dressed in gleaming black uniforms of some metallic cloth that The Vision surmised was not only bulletproof but highly resistant to energy weapons as well. The uniforms were trimmed in red piping but he could identify none of the insignias. They were of no known country on Earth or of any alien race The Avengers had come in contact with.

This made no sense to The Vision. Doctor Doom was a dictator, yes. But in many ways he was a benevolent dictator. In his homeland of Latveria there was no hunger, no one was worked like a dog and none of his subjects were brutalized. Unless it was Doom doing the brutalizing, of course. What The Vision was witnessing here was the cruelest form of slave labor. Something that Doom would never have condoned. The sky over Los Angeles was filling with choking black smoke pumped out by the giant furnaces and forges of the massive factories. The Vision glided invisibly through walls and silently observed, his angular crimson face a seemingly emotionless mask as he watched children beg for food and receive a boot in the face. Women were dragged into darkened alcoves and outraged. Men who protested were thrown into the guts of mighty machines where their bones were ground into powder and their blood greased the ten foot tall gears.

It was the best thing that he had been selected for this reconnaissance, The Vision silently mused. He could turn off that part of him himself that felt pain, sympathy and horror. If Iron Man, Warbird, Cannonball or Namor had been sent in his place they would have long ago been either captured or killed as they would not have been able to contain themselves from trying to do something.

The Vision ceased his scouting of the factories. He would learn nothing more here except for more suffering and he had no wish to see that. It was time to find a governmental or a military center and discover who was behind this. The Vision was satisfied that it wasn’t Doctor Doom. There was a horrifying madness at work here. A delight in seeing human suffering for it’s own sake and nothing more. And that wasn’t Doom. The Lord of Latveria had purpose in everything he did. The Vision flew over the fetid city. He remembered where the downtown L.A. area should be and headed in that direction.

“ATTENTION!” The amplified voice erupted from two story high speakers on the rooftops of the factories.

The Vision halted. From all over the city massive LCD television screens, easily a hundred feet wide were emerging from reinforced bunkers all over the city. The Vision had been through sever of those bunkers and had see no human life in them and so had not given them any special attention. Apparently their only purpose was to house the giant television screens. The Vision hovered in mid-air. He was immune from detection and did not worry about being highlighted in the amazing bright light being thrown off by the screens. At this level of intangibility he was virtually invisible.

The screens flared into life all over Los Angeles. The booming voice spoke again. “LOOK UPON THE TROPHIES TAKEN HONORABLY IN BATTLE BY OUR MASTER. HE WHO HAS BROUGHT THE BENEVOLENT ORDER OF RACIAL PURITY AND HARMONY TO THE WORLD. LET NONE SAY THAT OUR MASTER HAS NOT TAKEN WHAT IS RIGHTFULLY HIS. AND NOW, BEHOLD THE MASTER’S SUPREME TROPHY AND BEAR WITNESS TO HIS SUPREME SOVERIGNTY!”

The Vision looked upon what as refrerred to as a ‘trophy’ and his mouth opened in total astonishment. There was an expression that he had heard his fellow Avengers and countless human utter an infinite amount of times when they were afraid, surprised, startled or just did not know what else to say. The Vision had made a detailed study of the expression as he could grasp on an intellectual level why one would say it but he could not grasp the emotional and spiritual root of the expression. Even after years and years where he now had a full and total range of emotional reactions, The Vision had never once felt the need to utter the expression.

Until now.

The Vision’s mouth opened and he said with utter and total conviction: “Dear God In Heaven.”

Iron Man and The Sub-Mariner made The Vision tell us over and over again exactly what he had seen until Warbird told him to stop, that she didn’t need to hear anymore. That none of us did. I know I was sick a’hearing it after the fifth time. An’ The Vision told it the same way every time, without the slightest change. An’ he told it in a voice that wasn’t the same as his usual voice. The Vision has this really weird, hollow voice that sounds as if it’s coming out of an icebox. But when he was tellin’ us what he had seen on that giant TV I could tell that it got to him. And somehow, that was worse than him actually tellin’ it. I just Thank God that it wasn’t me that had been sent on the scoutin’ mission. There’s no tellin’ what I’d’ve done…

The Vision could not believe what he was seeing. The camera’s angle had pulled back until The Vision could identify where the insanely clear high definition pictures were coming from: Washington, DC. To be exact, behind The White House itself.

Except that The White House was no longer white. It was blood red. And the flag that flew over The Red House was not the familiar American flag. Oh, it had stripes, all right. But these stripes were black and white. The blue square in the upper left hand corner was also blood red and the stars were replaced with a white circle. Inside that circle was a black swastika. And at the center of the swastika was a sinister blood red skull.

The camera now dropped toward the rear of The Red House where a concrete pit had been constructed. The camera zoomed in closer and closer until The Vision could see what occupied the pit. The bottom of the pit was covered in what looked to be a foot of filthy offal and muck. Massive black hogs grunted and snorted and moved around restlessly, but avoided the man who sat in one corner of the pit, covered with slime and refuse. The man looked up at the camera and even though The Vision had never once seen him with his mask off, he knew those eyes.

The man in the pit was Doctor Victor Von Doom. But amazingly, his face was not scarred as The Vision had expected. No, this Victor Von Doom was actually extraordinarily handsome. Or he would have been if he were not covered in muck and pig refuse. So whatever had changed the world had also restored Doom’s face to its appearance prior to his horrendous accident. For further humiliation? To heap even more degradation? But how could such a thing have happened to Doom? With Franklin’s ability to reshape reality and with Captain Marvel’s Cosmic Awareness, Doom should have been unbeatable. Who could possibly have humbled Doom in such a manner?

The camera changed scenes, this time focusing on The Oval Office inside The Red House. And when The Vision saw who was sitting at the desk, his synthetic nutrient fluids ran cold.

The Red Skull folded his hands neatly on the polished surface of the desk and spoke: “Once again I show you the fate of all those who oppose my will and my rule. Von Doom lives like the swine he truly is. Such is the fate of all those who seek to rise above their station in life. The Fourth Reich lives and it is the supreme power upon this planet. Let none seek hope. The only hope that you have is to obey my slightest whim. That is your only certainty. Totally blind obedience to the word of The Red Skull and The Fourth Reich!”

…and that wasn’t the worst of it. The Vision had more to tell us. An’ I’ve got more to tell you. But not right now. I’ve got a mission to tend to. Y’see, we’ve got us a regular asskicker of a resistance goin’ on here. And it’s one that pushin’ a mighty big thorn in the side of The Fourth Reich. But I can save that for my next entry. There’s a whole lot of people dependin’ on me right now and I don’t mean to let ‘em down. You pray for us, hear?

Pray hard.