Hulk (34 page)

Bruce Banner looked at Betty with an exhausted half smile. “You found me,” he said.

Betty took a quick glance around. “You weren’t that hard to find,” she said, seeing morbid amusement in the moment.

“Yes,” said Bruce, “I was.” And Betty knew that he was referring to something else completely, and she began to cry.

“Hey,” Bruce continued softly, and now he was the one who was comforting her. “I’m just grateful we got the chance . . . to say good-bye.”

And they clung to each other then, two people surrounded by the physical wreckage left in the wake of the Hulk, a symbol of the emotional wreckage of the couple themselves.

Several hundred miles away, Monica Krenzler watched CNN’s footage of an as-yet-unidentified, dark-haired man clinging to a young woman, sobbing piteously in the midst of the real-life horror show his life had become. Monica’s tears as she watched were more copious than his.

In his cell at the Joint Tactical Force West brig, David Banner sat upright on his cot and smiled.

“Soon,” he whispered. “Very, very soon.”

Soon he knew they would come for him. Soon he knew that he would be brought to see his son. Soon he would be invincible.

“Can I get a pizza in here?” he called to the guard. No answer was forthcoming. He reminded himself to kill the guard as soon as he was the greatest power on earth.

sins of the father

In a grudging, almost perverse way, Bruce Banner had to admire the ingenuity of the scientists at the base. They’d come up with a rather clever way of keeping him immobilized, having rigged up the entire thing in an otherwise empty airplane hangar.

Essentially, he was positioned on a large platform between two huge electromagnetic arrays. The entire area was illuminated by immense klieg lights, making it that much easier to see Bruce—not that he was doing much of anything interesting. He just sat on a cot, staring at one of the arrays with vague curiosity.

He had every reason to be interested. The arrays were large enough and powerful enough that, although they likely wouldn’t have much effect on the Hulk other than to annoy him further, they would be able to incinerate Bruce Banner in a matter of seconds. He would be the most powerful pile of ashes in California.

It didn’t matter to Bruce. None of it did. He had examined the situation, turned it over and over in his mind. With all that, he hadn’t come to a conclusion that was substantially any different from what he’d already intuited back in San Francisco. He’d clambered back to reality and found Betty, like a drowning man surfacing and gasping in lungsful of air. But even in that moment of joy and salvation, he had known instantly that it was going to be temporary.

He was, quite simply, too dangerous to live.

Betty Ross had come to much the same conclusion as Bruce. The only difference was she was far more unwilling to accept it.

She was at the far end of the hangar, watching him on monitors that had been rigged up near a communications truck. Thunderbolt Ross was addressing her and several other scientists and high-ranking officers who she didn’t recognize.

“Here’s the deal,” said Ross. “He stays on the base here until we get final word from C Three on how to dispose of him. The slightest hint he’s putting on weight, or he starts curling his lip a little too meanly, or he starts looking like an avocado, we turn up the juice and he’s incinerated immediately.” He hadn’t been looking right at Betty as he spoke, but now he did. His expression softened slightly, but only slightly. This wasn’t a situation where he was going to try to sugarcoat it for her. “Betty, you’d better prepare yourself for the orders we’re going to get.”

“We’ve established a two-hundred-yard perimeter, sir,” said a colonel whose nametag identified him as Thomas. “If we deploy the electromagnetic array, there should be no collateral damage.”

“It’ll be a hell of a show, though,” said Ross. Betty shuddered when he said that, and he looked as if he immediately regretted having made the comment. But he’d said it, and, frankly, he was probably right. The electromagnets would unleash a light display that would look like the Big Bang, except the intention would be to destroy, rather than create.

Betty looked around at the soldiers who were stationed at the controls. They looked to be on hair triggers, tense and waiting for the slightest sign that the lethal device should be activated. Hell, they were so keyed up that if Bruce chose that moment to sneeze, they’d probably fry him, and get a medal and commendation into the bargain.

God, what had she done? Because of her, Bruce was now helpless. But what other options had been open to her? Do nothing and let him destroy San Francisco?
Well, if he’d leveled it, no more worrying about climbing those damned hills.
She wanted to laugh and cry at the thought, and managed to keep herself from doing either through an impressive display of self-control.

Then she heard a personnel transport truck pull up, and she knew, even before the doors were opened, just who it was that was in there. Guards jumped down and opened the back, and David Banner—in chains—was led out of the vehicle, escorted by the troops. He passed Betty and Ross, making eye contact but saying nothing. His escorts pointed him toward the open end of the hangar. Betty watched him approach the hangar, and she didn’t know whether she wanted to kill him or . . .

No. On second thought, she did know.

Bruce Banner, half-blinded by the lights, sat up, and saw the figure of a man approaching him in a slow, shambling manner. Nevertheless, he recognized his father almost instantly. Slowly David Banner traversed the length of the hangar, stepping right up and in between the electromagnets. It was a not-so-subtle message to his son, Bruce realized. If Bruce began to transform into the Hulk, his father would share his fate. Perhaps David thought this was generous, or a show of goodwill on his part. To Bruce it simply qualified as just desserts.

He stood before his son and hung his head.

“I should have killed you,” Bruce whispered with ill-concealed venom.

“As I should have killed you,” his father acknowledged.

“I wish you had,” replied Bruce. He sank down onto the cot, his head in his hands. “I saw her last night. In my mind’s eye. I saw her face. Brown hair, brown eyes. She smiled at me, she leaned down and kissed my cheek. I can almost remember a smell, like desert flowers—”

“Her favorite perfume,” said the father.

“My mother. I don’t even know her name,” said Bruce, starting to cry.

At the other end of the hangar, Betty and her father watched on the monitors. The sound was low, distorted, but they could just make out the conversation. And Betty had to admit something to herself: As messed up as her relationship with Thunderbolt Ross might have been, he was Father of the Year compared to the nut Bruce had gotten stuck with.

David Banner didn’t seem bothered at all by his son’s sobs. “That’s good. Crying will do you good.” He walked toward his son and reached out with manacled hands.

Betty couldn’t help but be appalled. To see this man suddenly trying to act solicitous after the things he’d said, the things he’d done. She was relieved to see Bruce pull back from him.

“No, please don’t touch me,” Bruce said, recoiling. “Maybe, once, you were my father. But you’re not now. You never will be.”

“Is that so?” asked David. His eyes narrowed. All pretense of affection and compassion were evaporating. “Well, I have news for you. I didn’t come here to see you. I came for my son.”

Betty was confused when she heard that, and Bruce was obviously no less so.

David Banner continued, “My
real
son . . . the one inside you. You are merely a superficial shell,” and his voice started to get louder, “a husk of flimsy consciousness surrounding him, ready to be torn off at a moment’s notice.”

“Think whatever you like,” Bruce said tiredly. “I don’t care. Just go now.”

And then the father seemed to look right into the camera, sneering at Betty, before leaning in toward Bruce and murmuring so softly that no one monitoring the conversation could hear him. That was Betty’s first warning that something truly disastrous was going to happen.

Bruce tried to back away, but his father gripped his legs and held him in place. “But Bruce,” he whispered, “I have found a cure—for me.” His tone grew more menacing. “You see, my cells, too, can transform. Absorb enormous amounts of energy, but unlike yours, they’re unstable. Bruce, I need your strength,” he said with growing urgency. “I gave you life, now you must give it back to me—only a million times more radiant, more powerful.”

“Stop,” said Bruce, trying to pull away.

“Think of it,” David said, and he made a gesture that took in the entirety of the hangar. “All those men out there, in their uniforms, barking and swallowing orders, imposing their petty rule over the globe. Think of all the harm they’ve done, to you, to me—and know we can make them and their flags and their anthems and governments disappear in a flash. You . . .
in me
.”

Bruce was aware that his continued existence hinged on keeping absolutely calm, but at that instant he didn’t care.

“I’d rather die,” he said.

“And indeed you shall,” his father assured him, sounding as if he were trying to be accommodating. “And be reborn a hero of the kind that walked the earth long before the pale religions of civilization infected humanity’s soul.”

All the possibilities of the moment went through Bruce’s trained, analytical mind as he looked deep into the eyes of his demented parent. And he suddenly was certain that whatever his father was talking about, it wasn’t just the ravings of a lunatic. He definitely had some sort of plan, and although there was no questioning that he was—as Bruce’s adopted mother used to say—crazy as a soup sandwich, there was also no questioning his brilliance. Bruce was positive that his father had a plan, and the ability to pull it off. And it involved Bruce Banner.

Knowing he was triggering his own destruction, but determined to head off whatever the hell his father was up to, Bruce leaped to his feet and screamed, “Go!”

The shout was directed to those who held his life in their hands. He wanted them to go ahead, to annihilate him right then and there.

Enough already.

Betty
, he thought bleakly, and he wasn’t sure if it was his mind thinking that or another’s, but then he heard the electromagnets powering up and knew it should take no more than a few seconds. He thought he heard Betty cry out in dismay, but she was very, very far away, and it hadn’t been much of a life, but damn, it had been interesting. . . .

And David Banner, thinking that he’d been the subject of the strangled “Go!” snarled, “Stop your bawling, you weak little speck of human debris. I’ll go. Just watch me go!”

With that, displaying a strength that he shouldn’t have possessed, he grabbed one of the thick electrical cables lying on the floor and tore it apart. The live wires sputtered, and then he took them into his mouth, a perversion of a newborn being suckled by its mother. Overhead, the klieg lights in the hangar began to sputter.

“No!”
howled Bruce, and he jumped toward his father but was bounced back by the current. If he’d seen his own reflection as he hit the floor, he would have seen a definite hint of green in his eyes.

“What the hell!” shouted Ross, watching the confrontation between the two Banners spiral out of control. Betty, sensing something was wrong beyond the catastrophes they already had to deal with, tried to stop the soldier from slamming the switch home.

But it was too late as the soldier at the controls, already extremely jumpy, yanked down on the switch. The electromagnetic arrays came to life and a burst of enormous energy surged from them. But instead of radiating out, their energy flowed directly into the outstretched arms of David Banner . . .

. . . and kept on flowing.

The lights on the island, then on the bridges, and then throughout the entire Bay Area, went out.

Bruce watched in horror as his father, his body coursing with electrical energy, crackled and broke open his shackles. The arrays imploded in a flash. David flung out his arms, sending up an electromagnetic field that made the entire hangar sizzle.

The monitors went dark. Even the headlights and the ignition systems of the vehicles sputtered out.

“Hit them again,” shouted Thunderbolt Ross.

“We can’t, sir!” one of the soldiers said desperately, manipulating controls that had gone dead. “There’s no power, some kind of counterelectromagnetic field—”

“Then move in there with everything you’ve got,” said Ross. “Fire at will.”

It won’t do any good
, thought Betty, who was becoming rather tired of being right all the time.

The father, laughing, looked over at where Bruce had been thrown—and was met by a huge green fist which lifted him, in a lightning flash, into the air, through the roof of the hangar, and across the bay. The Hulk, with a roar, leaped after him

. . . smash . . . killer . . . murder . . . smash him, yes, SMASH HIM . . .

and for the first time the minds of the Hulk and Bruce Banner were not split, were not pulling against one another, but instead were acting as one vast engine of destruction, aimed straight at their mutual father.

He collided in midair with his father and the impact carried them miles into the night as a firestorm of electricity crackled around them. They landed by the edge of a distant mountain lake, staggered back, and faced each other. The slightly waning moon stared down at them.

David Banner stood almost as tall as the Hulk, the electricity now drained from his body, laughing. “You see, nothing can stop me, son. I absorb it all, and give it back.”

The Hulk roared at his father, a sound so loud and unique that it registered on one of the monitors at Ross’s command center.

“They’re painted,” said a technician. “Snider Lake.”

“Call up the task force,” Ross ordered.

Unaware of who or what was coming for him, and uncaring as well, the Hulk pounded David Banner with both fists. But not only did it not seem to bother him, but with each blow Banner took he seemed to grow bigger, greener, absorbing the Hulk’s energy, his cellular structure. The Hulk stepped back, regarded him with horrified confusion as the father stood. They were the same height.