Honestly, it's so much not like Reed to not turn up in person or at least send a better representative than a poorly-programmed HERBIE, it makes me wonder if there's something going on at his end. We're told that this dodgy black hole project is a Stark-Richards joint venture but we haven't seen even a brief TV screen cameo of either of them promoting it, so now I'm questioning whether the whole thing's somehow part of the sham to get at Doom. Also interesting that the other two escorts are both people with fairly good past relationships with Doom. Did they volunteer out of curiosity about what's going on with this surrender, like you would have expected Reed to? Is he being set up to have an easy escape to make him look worse and stop the truth coming out? Still lots of possibilities at this point.