Emil was on the ground, chunks of tile and plaster falling on his head. The column buckled a bit and then something in the roof began to sag. Emil stood up slowly as Bruce moved toward him, and all of the sudden he was a performer, wiping plaster off himself in a dramatic gesture. He curtsied and spoke slowly. “Haven’t you learned yet?” The Abomination stepped to the side, looking around. ‘I am an Abomination.”
The Hulk saw what Emil was about to do and shouted, !No!” at the same time that Emil reared his arm, stepping back further, and howled. Bruce watched the dark green arm drive through the column, taking out a four-foot chunk of girded concrete and tile. He threw the chunk at the Hulk and Bruce felt it collide with his face as he flipped backwards with the force, flying through one of the fast-food counters. He blinked and found himself buried in the ruins of a shiny metal kitchen, steel counters and trays and grills wrapped around him.
The Hulk heard a new sound, a terrible whine, and he looked up and saw plaster falling. Oh no. He roared and threw the stove to the other side, desperately hoping the proprietors were nowhere near, much less healthily insured. He felt something like rain, concrete and plaster rain, and he stood up and saw pieces of the roof falling, playing the tabletops like a xylophone.
Bruce looked over the ruined counter and saw Emil at another column. He was tearing it loose, and already the roof was sagging. “No!” Bruce jumped over the counter and felt the wind of the next meter-long piece of column fly past him. “Please, it won’t hold, these people...” They were falling all over themselves at the staircase, a bunch of them pushing into a doorway next to the restrooms where a sign blazed hre exit. Too many. They were jammed in. The lights began to fail, blinking like an oddly-timed strobe.
Emil brushed his hands, wiping off the plaster. He went over to one of the tables and looked under it to see a man in a suit cowering there. The man had brown hair and was wearing the remnants of his salad. The Hulk stopped moving when Emil grabbed the man by the arm and hauled him out, picking him up and holding him aloft by the collar.
“Emil!” Bruce looked around, running to one of the columns. The space where the chunk had been tom out was getting smaller. There had to be a lobby, an entire office building above them. This place was going to flatten. “Please!”.'
Emil held the man aloft and took the man’s arm, and the man howled in desperation. “Hush,1' Emil spat. Then, he looked at the man’s watch. And dropped him F.mil looked at the Hulk. “I have to go.”
“The roof!” All the people. The people above.
“Handle it,” said Emil. “You can do that, can’t you?” The suited man surveyed his arm presumably to assure himself it was still attached, and joined the pack at the exit. The group was moving, but slowly.
Emil leapt into the air, a green streak, and he tore through the ceiling and was gone. Chunks of plaster and more concrete flew as he passed through.
The Hulk grunted, holding the column, staring at the other one Emil had destroyed. “People! This roof won’t hold!” The lights blinked off and on again, more rapidly, and some of them gave, sparks flying. “Take the main' exit! Go!” In the distance he heard the sound of sirens. He waited, holding the column. Tons of material pressed down on the incredible Hulk as he wrapped his hands underneath the column and stood, watching the people scrambling out.
The lights went olack and a system of red lights sparkled and whined into prominence. The roof groaned again, and the Hulk saw with horror that the two parts of the other broken column were just beginning to touch now under the weight. Go ahead and admit it, this one’s coming down, too.
No more screams. The people were gone. Sirens howled far out of the tunnel and the court was empty and. he hoped, so was the lobby above. He looked around, preparing to let go, to burst out, try to find the way that would do the least damage. He breathed once, plaster fog filling his lungs, and began to relax his fingers. Then he heard the cry.
The Hulk felt his neck muscles straining, felt as if green blood vessels were about to burst through his skin. He blinked the sweat and plaster from his eyes and looked in the direction of the human sound.
There was a child, a boy, about nine. He was lying at the bottom of the stairs, one blue-jeaned leg horridly twisted and swelled. He was grasping at the stairs, trying to haul himself to the next step.
Something above Bruce cracked and howled. The boy yelped as a piece of plaster smacked him on the shoulder and he shook his head, determined, fighting, and crying all at once.
You and me, then, the Hulk realized. You and me.
He leapt. The column gave. The Hulk landed over the boy, a human tent, and curled, his back stiff and high like a cat. He brought his head and knees close and felt the boy curled within him, felt the small heart beating against his knee. He opened his eyes and saw the child, silent, staring into his eyes.
And in one cacophonous howl, the roof collapsed.
Morgan leaned-against his desk and sighed. This was turning into the worst week of his life. ‘What the hell went on out there, Jo?’ ’
“He downed a plane,” said Jo. She shook her head as if she couldn’t believe it.
“Mhm,” he nodded. He looked up at the screen across from the desk, which showed the Hulk jumping into the air. ‘ ‘He gets past Gamma Team, without, I might add, too much difficulty. He jumps for the plane. It’s fuzzy there. ’ Morgan noted. The video was grainy, but Morgan could see Banner leaping up, arm outstretched. The angle of the shot was such that he disappeared behind the nose of the plane. Then the explosion.
“That’s not right, ’ said Morgan, shaking his head.
“Sir. S’ " ~
“I can’t tell if he even touched it,” Morgan snapped.
“What else can we believe?”
Morgan turned around and circled his desk, and sat down. He picked uj his coffee cup and studied it. “Jo, you’ve been trained lo follow gamma threats and study them and catch them. If the Hulk were going to down a plane, is this what it would look like?”
She stared at him, then back at the video. Jo picked up a remote and ran the video back and froze it at the blast. The plane sat in midair, the >iose flying apart. “An explosive?”
“That’s what I’m asking, shouldn’t we be seeing the Hulk tearing through the fuselage or an engine or something?”
“Maybe he’s not that predictable.”
Morgan stared at his desk. “No, he’s not. Becausc an hour later he crawls out of an evacuated building with a nine-year-old in his arms and hands him over to the po-
lice. And the Abomination was there. Witnesses say Blonsky tore the place down and the Hulk was there to help stop him.”
“Others are saying it was the other way around.” pii'And how much sense does that make?” Morgan snarled. “He’s supposed to be working with us. This is a mess.”
Jo cleared her throat. “What are you going to tell the President?’ ’
Don’t even ask.” He studied her for a moment, running through the events in his mind. She was watching him. She looked wary, afraid he was going to demote her, most likely. He just might. SAFE hadn’t been around very long, but they’d accomplished the few missions they’d had so far. They couldn’t afford this kind of screwup this early in their operational life. “I think Gamma Team needs an overhaul.”
Jo shriveled a bit. “I understand,” she said. “I can move to—”
“Not you,” he said. “I want your peopie to go over everything we know and go over it again. Learn to use those weapons. Friend or foe, the Hulk should have been stopped. ’
“With all due respect, sir, that’s a tall order.’’
He nodded. After a moment he said, “What happened with the call, Jo?”
“The call?”
“Banner called you,” Morgan said. ‘And Tom said half the world heard the conversation. Tell me about that.”
She shrugged. “I received a phone call from Dr. Banner. He made a reference to Senator Hill’s plane and then clicked off.�
��
“Clicked off.” He glared at her.
“Yes, sir.”
‘And you perceived that as a direat?” He stood up,
came around beside her in a fluid motion, hovering over her shoulder.
“Sir,” she said, “if you get a call from a one-ton gamma-augmented creature who’s a known security threat and he tells you to go tcf the airport because a plane is about to have trouble, you go.”
' He folded his arms. “All right. But what about the media, monitoring the call?”
She looked at him, her dark eyes searching for an answer that would satisfy him. ‘-:A security breach of enormous proportions.”
He rubbed his. eyes and breathed into his hands. He felt as bad as he was sure he looked. “I want the communications system gone over with a fine-tooth comb. I want every log-in checked. Someone’s taking us for a ride, and I want that ride to end. Now.”
“I was thinking the same thing, she said.
The screen behind the desk crackled and Morgan turned around. I fizzed white for a few moments before coming alive. There, over the desk, in a nice mahogany frame where Morgan alternated a series of favorite works of art, was the face of the President of the United States. And the saints come marching in. “Mr. President.” “Sean.” The man in the screen was sitting behind his desk. He was wearing a polo shirt and appeared just this side of livid. “So we’re working with assassins, now, is that it?”
I don’t have a confirm on that yet, sir.”
“Looks pretty confirmed on the ten o’clock news,” said the President, scowling. “Do I need to remind you that SAFE is still a fairly unwelcome pet project in some circles? Your budget is as expendable as it is limited, and this Hulk thing ..The man paused, swiping his hand across his desk. “This really looks bad. ’
“Mr. President,” said Sean, “I’m not sure he did it.” “Come again?” The chief executive officer looked
bewildered, “I’ve seen the films myself. He jumped up there and—”
“And it blew up.” Morgan closed his eyes. “And I myself have been aware of similar public occurrences that were complete ruses. ’ Planned a few, too.
['■‘Yeah, I’ll bet.” .
“Sir—”
“I want the Hulk and SAFE as far apart as possible.” Morgan was ready for that. Jo had her arms folded, head straight, but she was watching Morgan as if she had been personally wounded. “We need him for this one,”
‘ ‘The Abomination thing?’ ’
“Yes, sir, the Abomination thing.” Blonsky is slaughtering people and the President calls it a “thing.’’ Everything always came down to perspective.
“I just got off the horn with S.H.I.E.L.D., and they think—”
• “This is a SAFE operation, sir. Domestic. It’s off S.H.LE.L.D.’s turf.”
The President went on as if Morgan hadn’t spoken. “They don’t trust the Hulk, for obvious reasons.”
“Sir, the public hardly knows SAFE exists.”
“And this is a terrible way to introduce yourselves.” “I think something big is happening. And I think the Hulk is important to us in solving it. He tore through us like papier-mache, sir. The Abomination can do the same. But I think Banner is still on our side, the same way he was during that mess with Spiaer-Man, Hydra, and A.I.M., and I want his help.” .
The President nodded, but not in agreement. “Sean, the public perception at this hour is that the Hulk just killed a national figure for no reason.”
“And I think it’s wrong. ’
“And I’m telling you,” said the man behind the desk, “that on my side of the fence perception is not just reality, it’s everything.”
Morgan looked at Jo. Amazing. All those stiletto-wielding years and his true talents were being tested in a game of politics. ‘Mr. President.” Morgan waited a second. “The Abomination is our main concern right now. I’ve got weird things happening and the Abomination doing increasingly dangerous things. I think, somehow, he may have been involved in the assassination. And if I need the Hulk—’ ’
“Use him,’ the President interrupted.
“Sorry?"
“I said use him. But it’s your head.” The man looked down at his desk and looked at his watch. He reached toward an intercom and said, ‘This conversation never happened.”
The screen blinked off abruptly. Morgan shook his head.
He turned to Jo, stabbing at her with a finger. “Let’s get on the ball,” said Morgan. "“I want all systems go.'!
“He’s completely insane,’ Betty said. She ran a towel through Bruce’s hair, and he leaned his head back against her chest as she did so. Bruce’s study was dark, lit only by the constant glow from the screen. Betty brought the white towel away and inspected it. “Finally,” she said. “I think the third wash finally got all the gunk out.”
“Sorry,” he mumbled. He scratched his chin and jerked his head sideways while she knuckled at his ear with the towel. Bruce sat facing the computer, like Betty, still dripping wet, wearing only a towel. (Actually, it was a terrydoth blanket, formerly a robe. Life with the Banners was a constant juryrig.)
Betty had been shocked when Bruce had finally made it home in the dead of night. She had seen him on television, the death of the senator so near. Some reports said that he appealed to meet with or pursue another greenskinned creature off the field. She saw the film of her husband emerging from the rubble of the building, the front falling and spewing dense clouds of particles and building materials and glass. And there was Bruce, up from the rubble, his arms wrapped as if in prayer around a child so small he nestled in the groove between Bruce’s iirms. She saw the people back away. She saw her husband set the child down as the people flinched back, and he flinched himself. And then the police started to move and Bruce leapt. Two hours later he was home.
“I saw a mention on the eleven o’clock report about the kid in the cave-in,” Betty said helpfully. He just looked up at her. It was not enough. The plane was bigger news, the strange incident with the collapsing building more like an aberration, hard to reconcile with conventional wisdom and thus bound to be publicly ignored. “I guess we’re lucky we haven’t been raided yet, huh?”
He nodded, looking back at the computer. “I think so,” he said. He looked at her again. “I think we have a guardian angel. Someone is protecting us.” -./'‘Morgan?” Betty asked. When Bruce nodded she said, “Then I guess we gotta catch Emil, huh? Earn our keep.?'-’
The Hulk nodded, taking her by the arm, gently and bringing her around before him. Bruce scrolled down the Proverb as Betty climbed into place on Bruce’s massive right leg, nestled against his torso. “That’s true,” he said. “But more than that, you’re right. Emil is completely insane.” Bruce studied her eyes, then the verse. “He’s just so—so disparate. At one minute he’s sitting in the dark reciting poetry, then he’s blowing up planes by remote control. He’ll be sensitive and even seem almost—” Bruce struggled for a word “—sorrowful, and then he’s throwing columns at me, deliberately endangering the lives of the people in the area.”
“Is this still revenge?” Betty asked.
“I’m not sure,” Bruce mused. “Morgan suggested that maybe Emil is working with someone, someone who could provide him with technology to get a few of his own grudges out of the way. But what next?’ ’
Betty leaned back against him, folding her arms over her chest, above the edge of her towel. The fold slipped and she busied herself loosely refolding it. “So where are we on the list?”
:= E‘He made some progress,” said Bruce. “Eyes, hands, heart, and feet are down. ’
■■All the body parts,” she mused. “Hm. Except the lying tongue.”'r,
“That’s different, though. That’s interior, the others are all extremities. He took care of extremities first. Personal,” Bruce whispered. “Personal! Body parts!” -“I think I understand,” she said, “but go ahead and enlighten me anyway.”
“I think
Emil’s played all the personal cards,’ said Bruce. ‘ And if this is the formula he’s working from, then it’s possible the next moves might not involve him personally at all. Whatever his deal is, it might fit into the next dominoes to fall.”
“Maybe not, though,” said Betty. “Too early to say. He got another one, too. The false witness that uttereth (ies. He created that ‘Abomination’ himself.”
“By setting me up,’ Bruce sighed angrily. “Concentrate on what it means, hon,’ she said. “It means he’s not above making an Abomination if there’s not one around to punish.”
“Maybe,” he said. ‘Or maybe the press was already an Abomination and he just gave them a part to play. And he punished me, not them.”
“So what’s left?”
“Only two. The tongue—”
‘ ‘And the person, ’ she said. The last Abomination is a whole person: ‘He that soweth discord among brethren.’ ”
“God, I wish he’d be consistent,” Bruce sighed. “We can’t know if that’s a sower of discord he’ll punish, or if—”
“Or if Emil will be the sower of discord himself. But
remember what he said. ‘I will be what I am. ”
“And what he is, is an Abomination.” Bruce pulled her back against him, gently, and whispered into her hair. ‘“And what / am is a fool. That’s what he’s helping me
see.”
“No.”
“Yes.” he whispered. “Emil has played me like a violin. You can’t deny that.’-H ‘:‘You do what you have to,” she said, turning around slightly in his lap to look in his eyes, the towels sliding around on damp skin. “Bruce, listen: you’re doing the best you can with Emil. He lures you into situations and he ties your hands behind your back because he knows. He knows that the biggest difference between you two is that he doesn’t care who gets hurt. Emil has divorced himself from the whole world, he may not even consider himself human anymore.”
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