by Alex Irvine
“This will be a somewhat novel sensation,” he said. He was flying high, ready to conduct the experiment of his professional lifetime. Bruce seemed calm. Betty was nervous—scared, in fact—but trying to keep a cool demeanor.
Dr. Sterns pressed the switch and said, “We have begun. The dialysis machine will mix the antidote with your blood, except the antidote will only take hold once we’ve achieved a full reaction.”
The IV tubes filled with a swirling mixture of Bruce’s blood and the bluish antidote fluid.
“Just relax,” Betty said. Bruce was breathing hard, but she couldn’t tell exactly what he was feeling.
“Okay, we are comprehensive,” Dr. Sterns said. He handed Betty a bite guard, and she put it in Bruce’s mouth. Then Dr. Sterns positioned himself at Bruce’s head with a set of shock pads.
“All right,” he said. “We set to pop?”
Bruce looked at Betty. Sterns noticed they were holding hands and said to Betty, “I’d take your hands off him.”
She did.
Bruce was jolted with electricity. His body bucked with uncontrollable spasms, his muscles straining against the straps, his eyes clenched shut.
Then Bruce’s eyes snapped open, glowing with an intense green light.
The pulse of vibrant green flashed in the base of Bruce’s skull, and green gamma energy coursed through his body as his skin flooded with color.
“My goodness!” Dr. Sterns blurted. He started to shut the procedure down, thinking it was complete.
“Wait, wait! There’s more,” Betty warned.
Bruce writhed as the full force of the transformation hit him, and his muscles swelled, stretched, and hardened. His bones cracked as they adjusted to his new shape.
Betty winced as Bruce howled with pain. Sterns covered his mouth, staggered by the changes. He stepped closer.
The restraints popped, like rubber bands, around Bruce’s thickening wrists. One strap slapped Dr. Sterns in the face, knocking him back as the Hulk appeared on the table, still shuddering with pain.
“Now!” Betty yelled. “Do it!”
The lab table buckled under the giant’s weight. He raised his head, growling, his eyes filled with rage.
Betty jumped up onto the table and leaned against the creature’s torso, staring directly into his furious green eyes. “Bruce. Bruce, look at me. Stay with me!” Betty said.
He just roared.
“The antidote—now! Sterns, do it now!” Betty screamed.
Sterns turned back to the monitors controlling the experiment. “Bruce, look in my eyes,” Betty said, trying to soothe him.
“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me,” Sterns said. He ran and kicked the machine holding the canister of antidote fluid. With a whine, it started up, and the antidote started to flow down the tubes.
For a long moment, it seemed to have no effect. But then, miraculously, the process started to reverse itself! The antidote flowed through the giant’s veins, calming the radiation fire in his blood. The Hulk dwindled, and eventually he was gone; all that remained was a shivering, tired Bruce.
Still kneeling above him, Betty stroked Bruce’s forehead. “Bruce, can you hear me?” she whispered. She said his name again. He was drenched with sweat. “It’s okay,” Betty whispered. “You’re okay. You did it.”
“He’s fine,” Dr. Sterns said, amazed at what he was seeing on the monitors. “This is fantastic.”
“It’s over,” Betty said.
Bruce got his eyes focused on her. “Hi,” he said.
She smiled. “Hi.”
After Bruce felt well enough to discuss the experiment, Dr. Sterns gave his take on how it had gone. He was even more animated than he had been before they’d started. “That was the most extraordinary thing I have seen in my entire life!”
“Okay, you know what? Stop, please,” Betty cut in. “We need to go back and talk about what just happened in there.”
“Absolutely. Okay. The gamma pulse came from the amygdala,” Dr. Sterns said, hammering out combinations of keystrokes at a nearby terminal. “I think Dr. Ross’s primer lets the cells absorb the energy temporarily, and then it abates.” Looking at Bruce, he added, “That’s why you didn’t die of radiation sickness years ago. Now maybe we’ve neutralized those cells permanently or maybe we just suppressed that event,” Sterns said rapidly. “I’m inclined to think the latter, but it’s hard to know because none of our test subjects survived.… Of course, they weren’t getting the primer!”
Bruce sat up. “Wait, wait. What did you just say?”
“They weren’t getting the myostatin primer,” Sterns said.
“No, no, no. Test subjects?” This was the first Bruce had ever heard of this. “What test subjects?”
Dr. Sterns jumped up and said, “Come with me.”
Flanked by New York Police Department cars, Ross’s team arrived at the perimeter of the Grayburn College campus and deployed.
Sniper teams took roof positions around the Grayburn College lab building. Each team consisted of one shooter and one spotter with a thermal scanner.
In the command van nearby, Ross and Sparr watched as their monitors lit up with readouts from those scanners—thermal images of Betty, Bruce, and Sterns moving through the lab.
“Target is the tallest,” Sparr told the snipers. “Standing in the middle.”
Downstairs in the Grayburn science building, a NYPD SWAT officer hustled a chunky security guard out of the lobby, and Blonsky and his team marched into position by the elevators.
“We still don’t know which was more toxic, the gamma or your blood,” Sterns was saying as he led them into a different room next to his lab. It was lined floor to ceiling with glass shelves holding refrigerated blood samples.
“What do you mean, my blood?” Bruce asked.
Sterns stopped and looked back at him. “Bruce, this is all you. You didn’t send me much to work with, so I had to concentrate it and make more. With a little more trial and error, there’s no end to what we can do! This gamma technology has limitless applications.” He led them through the lab, filled with thousands of samples of Bruce’s blood, cloned using technology Bruce had never seen. “This is potentially Olympian!” Sterns crowed. “We’ll unlock hundreds of cures. We will make humans impervious to disease!”
Pure horror darkened Bruce’s face—this was his worst nightmare coming true! The Hulk in his blood was now loose in these test tubes. “No, no. We’ve got to destroy it,” Bruce broke in.
“Wait, what—what—?” Dr. Sterns sputtered.
“All of it,” Bruce insisted. “Tonight. We’re going to incinerate it. Is this the whole supply?”
Dr. Sterns gulped, and his cheerful expression vanished. “But…” he whined. “We could get the Nobel Prize for this!”
Bruce shook his head firmly. “You don’t understand the power of this thing. It is too dangerous. It cannot be controlled.”
“But we’ve got the antidote now!” Dr. Sterns argued. “This is Promethean fire!”
From the rooftop nearby, the snipers watched Bruce move in front of the window. They raised their rifles in anticipation. Then Betty shifted in front of Bruce, blocking the clean shot.
“At your discretion, shooter,” Sparr told the snipers. She was listening in to Dr. Sterns’s raving and thought the best thing to do would be take them all out. But she had her orders.
“Almost…” one sniper reported over the radio. “No, no shot.”
Downstairs, Blonsky lost his patience and bolted into a stairwell.
Sparr saw him on one of the other soldiers’ cameras. She turned to General Ross. “Blonsky’s going in!”
“Blonsky, stand down!” Ross ordered. “My daughter’s in there!”
But Blonsky was jumping up the stairs with astounding leaps, running up eight flights in seconds. He jumped up whole floors from railing to railing, moving so fast Sparr had a hard time tracking his progress.
Back in the lab, Sterns was trying to co
nvince Bruce that everything was under control. “We have the antidote now!” Sterns protested.
“They don’t want the antidote!” Bruce yelled at Dr. Sterns. “They want to make it a weapon. And if we let it go, we will never get it back. You don’t have any idea how powerful this thing is.”
Dr. Sterns waved his hands, dismissing Bruce’s concerns. “Oh, I hate the government just as much as anyone,” he said, “but you’re being a little paranoid, don’t you think?”
Bam! A hole appeared in the windowpane behind Bruce.
Bruce’s eyes suddenly glazed over. He turned to reveal a tranquilizer dart sticking out the back of his neck.
Dr. Sterns screamed.
CHAPTER 21
Bruce’s knees buckled, but Betty caught him before he fell. Then Blonsky burst through the lab door.
“No!” Betty screamed. She jumped in front of Bruce.
Blonsky smiled and shoved her aside—hard. Betty smashed into one of the lab cases. The glass shattered, and she cried out with pain.
Bruce’s eyes flashed with anger, but they dimmed as he struggled to focus.
With a crazy laugh, Blonsky grabbed the front of Bruce’s shirt and shook him. Blonsky glared into Bruce’s hazy eyes. “Come on!” he shouted. “Where is it?” He smacked Bruce across the face.
When he didn’t get a reaction, Blonsky smacked him again.
Three more soldiers burst into the lab. “Blonsky!” one commando shouted.
“Show it to me!” Blonsky screamed at Bruce, and slapped him one more time. When Bruce didn’t move, Blonsky backhanded him in the head, knocking him out cold.
The alley behind the lab was closed off by police vehicles. The command van backed up to the sidewalk outside the lab, its doors open. Sparr and Ross watched as Bruce, bound by enormous wrist shackles, was rolled out of the building on a gurney. There was a thick cold pack on his head where Blonsky hit him, and amazingly he was awake but groggy. Two soldiers escorted the gurney into the back of the van.
Betty had walked out of the building with the gurney, her wrist in a splint. Lingering to consult with a military medic behind her, she let Bruce go ahead of her.
As the gurney reached Ross, he stopped it and looked down into Bruce’s dizzy eyes. Ross whispered, “If you took it from me, I’ll put you in a hole for the rest of your life.”
When Betty saw her father talking to Bruce, she hurried over, and Ross quickly waved the gurney into the van.
“Betty—” Ross began.
She turned around and said, “I will never forgive what you’ve done to him.”
“He’s a fugitive,” Ross said.
“You made him a fugitive to cover your failures and protect your career,” Betty said, her voice low and angry. “Don’t ever speak to me as your daughter again.”
“It’s only because you’re my daughter that you’re not in handcuffs, too,” Ross said, hiding his feelings as best he could.
Betty turned her back on him strode after the gurney, climbing up into the ambulance. Ross just watched her go.
Sparr was upstairs in the lab questioning Dr. Sterns. “Are you telling me you can make more like him?”
“No, not yet.” Sterns dabbed at the bridge of his nose, which had been cut by flying glass. “I sorted out a few pieces, but it’s not like I can put together the same Humpty Dumpty, if that’s what you’re asking. He was a freak accident! The goal is to do it better!”
Sparr nodded. “So Banner’s the only one we’ve got to worry about—”
She jerked suddenly, her eyes rolling. Then she slumped to the floor.
Blonsky was standing behind her. He’d just slammed her with the handle of his knife.
“Why are you always hitting people?” Dr. Sterns gasped.
Click! Blonsky pulled out a nasty-looking pistol, cocking it in Dr. Sterns’s face.
“Now what could I have possibly done to deserve such aggression?” Sterns said, trying to sound defiant.
“It’s not what you’ve done. It’s what you’re going to do,” Blonsky said. “I want what you got out of Banner. I want that.”
Dr. Sterns peered at Blonsky. His face changed, and he stood up, suddenly unafraid of the gun. “You’ve got something extra in you already, don’t you?”
“I want more,” Blonsky said. “You’ve seen what he becomes, right?”
“I have,” Dr. Sterns replied. “It’s beautiful. Godlike.”
“Well, I want that. I need that. Make me that,” Blonsky said. His face was contorted, like there was something inside of him that he didn’t know how to let out.
Dr. Sterns raised his eyebrows. “I don’t know what you’ve got inside you already. The mix could be… an abomination.”
Blonsky grabbed Dr. Sterns by the front of his shirt and lifted him straight up in the air with one arm. His other hand still held the gun.
“I didn’t say I was unwilling,” Dr. Sterns gasped. “I just need informed consent.”
Blonsky lowered him.
“And you’ve given it,” Dr. Sterns said.
Minutes later, Blonsky was lying on the lab table, and Dr. Sterns had hooked him up to the cell-saturation machine. The professor rapidly attached a “Mr. Green” blood canister to the infusion port, and then slid the gamma machine’s emitter into place.
Blonsky looked up at his reflection in the silver disk of the emitter and saw white crosshairs moving over his forehead.
When the procedure began, everything started to go wrong right away. The surge of energy from Blonsky’s body sent all the lab machinery into a frenzy of short circuits and blinking lights. The power went out in part of the lab. “This is what I was trying to explain!” Sterns cried out over the noise. “I don’t know what you’ve been ladling into yourself.”
He turned around and was stunned at what he saw. Blonsky was no longer on the table, and… something… was moving in the darkened part of the lab. Sterns could see enough to tell that it was no ordinary human. He could hear the difference, too. This thing growled like he imagined a dragon, or some other mythological beast, might.
“But clearly it worked,” he said, and swallowed. His throat was suddenly dry. “Let’s assume you don’t understand a word I’m saying… but if you’ll just get back on the table, I can fix this.”
The monster that had been Emil Blonsky stepped out of the shadows. It laughed, a sound like rocks grinding together, and swatted Dr. Sterns aside. As it left the lab, there were sounds of gunfire from the soldiers standing guard.
Sterns lay where he had fallen, his eyes glazed from the blow he had taken. Some of the Banner blood dripped onto his head from the cracked canister… and as he lay there, Dr. Samuel Sterns began to change as well.
The helicopter buzzed through the night sky over the Hudson River. Ross sat up front with his intelligence team while Bruce and Betty sat on benches across from each other in the rear, both flanked by soldiers. Betty tapped Bruce’s foot with her own, trying to reassure him without drawing anyone’s attention.
The radio crackled.
“Delta Four to leader!” cried a panicky voice. “They took out two of our guys, repeat two of our guys! Blonsky and the major are still inside!” On the radio, they could all hear the sounds of explosions and chaos.
The radio squawked with an enormous crash and a bone-chilling roar of rage.
“The Hulk is in the street! Repeat, the Hulk is in the street!” the soldier cried into the radio.
Ross glanced down the helicopter interior at Bruce, who stared back at him.
“That’s impossible,” Ross said into the radio. “You get hold of yourself, young man. You get it together. What is your position?”
“One hundred twenty-first Street, headed north on Broadway!” the soldier shouted.
“Turn us around,” Ross ordered.
The helicopter banked sharply.
“We’re going back,” Bruce said. “Why are we going back?”
“Give me eyes down there!” Ross bark
ed.
“Yes, sir!” On Ross’s screen appeared the feed from one of the soldiers’ cameras. It showed a giant figure rampaging through the streets. Like the Hulk… only bigger. Much bigger.
CHAPTER 22
The helicopter swooped toward Harlem, where explosions and commotion could already be seen from the air.
Ross stared at the video monitors as the soldier raced up a street parallel to the creature who was wreaking havoc. He caught a glimpse of the monster’s rear flank, with smashed cars rolling in its wake, but then it disappeared behind a building. It had looked Hulk-like, but the view had been too brief.
“I said get me eyes on that thing!” Ross shouted.
Bruce pushed past the soldier guarding him and joined Ross by the monitors. Betty quickly followed.
On the monitor, the vehicle had reached 125th Street. It slammed on the brakes, and the video picture lurched around. When the image settled, Ross’s, Bruce’s, and Betty’s jaws dropped. They could see a massive, brownish-green creature gleefully causing chaos. Pedestrians fled in panic, and cars skidded, smashing into hydrants.
“Sir, are you seeing this?” the soldier called. “Is that Banner?” he continued, his voice trembling.
“It’s not Banner!” Ross snapped. “Hold position!”
The monster stomped toward the vehicle, and the occupants of the helicopter got their first good look. The creature was at least fourteen feet tall and ridiculously muscled. He was as brawny as the Hulk, but he had strange bone spurs protruding along his ankles and wrists and down his spine.
The camera panned up to his snarling face—a face they all instantly recognized.
“One of yours?” Bruce asked. He knew the answer, but he wanted to hear Thunderbolt Ross say it out loud.
“Oh my God,” Betty said. “What have you done?”