Hulk

  He’s asking for you.

  The four words rang repeatedly in her head as she sprinted down the hallway. She still couldn’t believe that Bruce was in the lab’s infirmary. Radiation poisoning in the infirmary? They weren’t remotely prepared to deal with an injury of this magnitude. It was like sending a child gushing blood from the stump of a severed arm to the school nurse so she could make him some hot cocoa.

  Betty almost skidded past the infirmary in her haste, then stopped, took a deep breath, and prepared herself for the worst. She hoped she would keep it together. The last thing Bruce needed was for her to come utterly unglued or get overemotional. For all she knew, this was the last time they were going to see each other, and she simply had to maintain control. She glanced at her reflection in the glass of the door, hoped that the redness in her eyes wasn’t too evident, and then walked into the infirmary, prepared to see Hazmat teams and Geiger counters clicking off the scale.

  Instead she saw Bruce sitting on the edge of a bed, shirtless. A nurse was removing the blood pressure gauge from his arm while a tall, businesslike woman doctor wearing a name tag that said “Chandler” made some marks on her chart.

  Betty gasped in astonishment, and Bruce heard her and turned in response. He seemed energetic, almost . . . happy.

  “Bruce,” Betty said, and it was more of a question than a salutation.

  He nodded and smiled broadly. Betty wasn’t sure which was more bizarre: that Bruce was alive and well, or that he was smiling, since he didn’t smile all that much even on his best days.

  “I’m going to be okay,” he informed her cheerily as he stood. “Really. Barely enough for a slight tan.” Then, abruptly, he sat back down, looking a little faint. “Oh,” he said, sounding puzzled, as if surprised that his legs were reluctant to support his weight.

  Betty looked over at the nurse. The doctor held up the developed film from Bruce’s radiation detector and raised an eyebrow.

  “We’re double checking,” said Dr. Chandler. “According to the dosimeter badge he was wearing, your friend should be the consistency of burnt toast right now. But I can’t find much of anything.”

  She stared closely at Bruce, indulging in a flight of fancy for a moment and wondering whether Bruce might possibly have been taken over by, or even replaced by, aliens. Yes. Yes, that made perfect sense. Far more than that a human being could smother a leak of pure gamma radiation with his body and come away from it looking better than he did in the morning.

  It was impossible, just impossible. It wasn’t as if his body could have just healed it . . .

  . . . self . . .

  She stopped dead, unable to believe that it had taken this long for the thought to occur to her. She had been so filled with mental pictures of Bruce dead, the image of him splayed across the gamma cannon vivid in her mind, that the events directly preceding his exposure to the gamma radiation had been a blur to her. Only now were the full implications of what had occurred becoming clear to her, and her disbelief was gradually being replaced with growing excitement.

  “Could you excuse us . . . just for a sec?” Betty asked.

  “Sure,” said the doctor.

  She moved away, gesturing for the nurse to follow so that Betty could have some privacy with Bruce. Very slowly, Betty approached Bruce, not shifting her gaze in the slightest. Bruce saw the way she was staring at him and laughed.

  Laughed. Yes, suddenly the whole alien theory was looking more and more promising.

  “What?” he demanded when she said nothing at first. “Come on. That badge was probably exposed at the factory before I ever put it on.”

  He was in some sort of denial. That was why he was so calm, almost jovial. He clearly didn’t understand what the fuss was all about, why the fact that he was still alive was nothing short of miraculous.

  “You saved Harper’s life,” said Betty, “and all of ours.”

  “Don’t be silly,” Bruce said dismissively. “It was obviously a malfunction. I probably took a dose nothing more than a fluorescent light.”

  “No, the radiation was bad enough. What I’m talking about is the nanomeds. How else could you have survived it?” asked Betty.

  Bruce started to laugh again, then stopped as the full weight of her observations dawned on him. “Wait, you’re saying I was exposed to the radiation, but that the nanomeds repaired me? Come on, Betty,” he said.

  “I don’t have any other explanation.” It wasn’t an admission Betty made lightly or willingly. She was the type of person who liked to have three or four explanations for any given phenomenon, and then spend time trying to narrow them down so she could be sure. Perceiving only one possibility just didn’t seem . . . scientific somehow. It was almost like cheating.

  Bruce lowered his feet off the bed again and leaned against it, looking stunned.

  “But . . . if it’s true, then . . . they worked. They actually worked.”

  She almost wanted to laugh. After all, the entire purpose of the nanomed project was to make them work, yet Bruce appeared amazed that it had been accomplished. Still, as pleased as she was on his behalf—on both their behalves—she knew that she had to be the voice of reason before things went too far.

  “No,” she said, and when he looked at her quizzically, she continued pointing out the downside. “We haven’t come close to controlling them. You know it. It’s . . . you.” When Bruce tried to dismiss the theory out of hand, Betty continued forcefully because she knew she was right. “They would have killed anyone else. Bruce, there’s something—different—in you.”

  She could see it in his eyes: He wasn’t accepting the notion. He started shaking his head and said firmly, “We’ve got to start checking, doing studies, analyzing genetic makeup. Obviously we have to try and replicate—”

  “Replicate!”

  “We have to try the experiment again,” he said matter-of-factly. “No scientific result is worth a damn if it can’t be replicated. You know that, Betty. Now we have to get right on—”

  But apparently Dr. Chandler had remained within hearing distance, and now she reentered the room. “‘We’ aren’t doing anything right now, Dr. Krenzler, except getting back in bed where we can observe you. I bent the rules to allow Dr. Ross to see you, but enough is enough. You’re not going anywhere, Dr. Krenzler, and if you endeavor to do so, I will have to have you restrained. I’d rather you didn’t put me in that position.”

  “I’d rather you weren’t in it either.” He looked at Betty apologetically. “Sorry. I guess we’ll have to delay our research.”

  “Don’t worry about it.” She took his hand and squeezed it affectionately. “I’m just thrilled you’re still alive so I can do the research with you.”

  His hand felt cold. Cold as ice, and a stark contrast to the ruddy complexion and air of health he had about him. Delicately she released his hand.

  God . . . what’s happened to him? Betty wondered. But the individual to whom she had addressed the question seemed rather silent on the subject.

  Night had fallen. A nurse was asleep at her desk.

  Bruce sat up in his bed, hooked to various monitors that showed nothing abnormal. He was going mad with boredom. It was bad enough when he was at home, unable to sleep and compelled by insomnia to pick up pencil and paper and start working. But here he was in the infirmary, and they were keeping a wary eye on him. It seemed as if, every fifteen minutes or so, someone else came in urging him to go to sleep. He was starting to feel as if he were a child, or at the very least was being treated like one.

  He leaned back, his mind wandering over the things that had happened over the past few days. The events, the memories. He tried to force himself back into the moment when he’d been struck by the gamma radiation, and what had been going through his mind at the time. It hadn’t been words so much as crazed thoughts and images tumbling pell-mell one over the other, and some seemed familiar, but others didn’t. Instead they were like the recollections of events that had happened to so
meone else . . .

  Someone else . . .

  For a very long time, it had disturbed Bruce that his early years were a blur to him. Everyone had fragments of memories, moments that were mental snapshots, and these snapshots could always be put into some sort of framework or context. That had never been the case with him. On rare occasions he would speak of them to his mother, but she never seemed to be of much help. She would just smile and shrug and offer him some freshly baked cookies. Before long he stopped mentioning those memory shards because he was beginning to worry that he’d get fat from the cookies. It seemed easier not to worry about it, and he hadn’t thought of it in quite some time.

  But in those final moments before he’d interposed himself between the gamma cannon and the others, his life had flashed before his eyes. Not unusual. Imminent death triggers that rush of memories, the computer of one’s brain dumping all the memories like one great final purging of the hard drive. As it so happened he hadn’t died, but the memories had been shaken up for the first time in ages. They floated in the river of his memory like disturbed silt . . . and also for the first time, there was a hint of . . . of familiarity. Familiarity from a most unexpected source.

  Bruce’s gaze wandered over to the phone on the nightstand next to him. He wondered if the thing was hooked up. Experimentally he picked up the receiver and was rewarded with a dial tone. His first attempt at dialing, however, was met with a rapid busy signal. Then he remembered he had to dial 9 to get out. Would that getting out of any situation was as easy as dialing 9, he thought as he dialed the phone number of the one person he felt he could talk to.

  He hoped she was in. Not just that, but he hoped she wasn’t out . . . and, more to the point, he hoped she wasn’t out with him.

  The phone rang two, three times, and there was a click. Then came Betty’s voice, “Hello,” and Bruce paused a moment, waiting to see if it would be followed by an answering machine message. No. Just silence. A slightly puzzled Betty repeated, “Hello?” and Bruce realized that he had never been so glad to hear another person’s voice in his entire life. He felt pure, raw emotion choking up in his breast, and just as quickly quieted it.

  “Hey,” said Bruce.

  “Hey!” Betty replied, sounding cheered, even a bit relieved. “How are you?”

  “I’m fine.”

  She paused, as if worried that he wasn’t telling her something. “You sure?”

  “Yeah.”

  He heard a small exhale of breath. She was sighing in relief. How nice. He could see her clearly in his mind’s eye: her smile, the luster of her hair, that way she had of making him feel alive just by looking at him. Just hearing her voice gave him—what was the phrase?—a rush.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “I was just sitting here,” Bruce said, “thinking about you, about your dream.”

  “What dream?” asked Betty.

  “The one of the desert.”

  There was another pause, this time a bit more uncomfortable. Finally she said guardedly, “And what were you thinking about?”

  “I don’t know,” he admitted. He didn’t want to say, “I thought I was about to die and while that was happening—” because she already seemed skittish and tentative enough with the entire situation. Why risk getting her worked up? So, choosing his words carefully, he said, “Sometimes, when I’m not really thinking about much of anything, I remember images from it. Did I ever tell you that?”

  “No.”

  “It’s as if—” He didn’t know how else to say it. “—I dreamed it myself.”

  There was a soft laugh on the other end. He could tell she thought he was just being sweet, that he was trying to show just how much he shared her feelings and concerns.

  Women, he sighed mentally.

  “What’s the number there?” she asked. “In case I’m seized with a sudden urge to hear your voice.” He told her, reading it off the dial where it was printed. She repeated it, and then said softly, “You should get some sleep. Have some sweet dreams of your own.”

  “Yeah,” said Bruce, “you, too.”

  He kept the phone to his ear long after Betty had hung up, hoping that he could somehow cause her to materialize in front of him through sheer force of will. After a while, though, when the dial tone changed to an irritating buzz, he hung up and settled back on the bed. The buzz remained in his head, however, fatiguing his mind. He didn’t resist it. Hell, he welcomed it. It was pretty depressing to think that the only way he was able to get some sleep was to have a near-death accident and wind up in the infirmary for overnight observation.

  The world blurred around him, and he released his conscious mind, enjoying the peace that slumber would most assuredly bring him.

  He had no idea how much time passed. All he knew was that, from somewhere very far away, he heard a whimpering and growling. It took him long moments to sort out the reality of the noise from his state of reverie, and then slowly he forced his eyes open. The lamp light from the parking lot spilled in through the window. It was as if his dream world had somehow leaked over into the waking world.

  Sitting across the room from him was the man who had been standing outside his window the other night, the man whom Bruce had dismissed as being any sort of threat. Yet here he was, big as life, and Bruce couldn’t tell whether he was dreaming up his worst fears, or whether his “paranoia” had been based in fact. And there were the dogs as well, the three of them, including that weird poodle. Seeing it close-up now, Bruce knew it was definitely the same one that he had confronted the other night.

  None of them were snarling, though. They were quiet, even content to be in this place with this man. He was absentmindedly petting the head of the mastiff, which was making a soft sound in its throat, almost like a cat’s purr. Bruce felt threatened, but no threat was being offered. Again it was that dreamlike quality of detachment, knowing that there was an imminent threat, but not being worried that the danger provided any long-term consequences. It was the wrong man, and certainly the wrong creatures, in the wrong place at the wrong time, and yet somehow the whole thing felt . . . right. Familiar. Even comforting in a perverse way.

  And then the man spoke. Despite his outwardly frightening appearance, his voice was surprisingly soft, even gentle.

  “Your name is not Krenzler. It’s Banner.”

  Until that moment, Bruce had still half-believed that he was dreaming. But the voice was all too real, and penetrated the haze that was draped around his consciousness. Shaking off the last vestige of sleep, he sat up, fully cognizant for the first time that what he was seeing wasn’t a product of his sleeping imagination. The words, however, made no sense. “What?”

  “Your name. It’s Banner. Bruce Banner.” He hesitated and then spoke again, with an affection that chilled the scientist for no reason he could discern. “Bruce.”

  “How did you get in here?” asked Bruce.

  “I work here now, in the labs,” said the man. “The late shift. It keeps me close to you. You always work late yourself, with your friend, Miss Ross.”

  Bruce could see now the coat the old man was wearing, hanging partly open, and sure enough, he was wearing the clothes of someone on the custodial staff. But the man’s apparel was of secondary importance to Bruce. What caught his attention was the way the old man had said “Miss Ross.” The barely contained anger, even resentment. A warning rang in his head, but it was hard for him to focus on that when there was so much else vying for his attention.

  Bruce started to sit up, but got tangled in the wires from the various monitoring devices, not to mention the IV drip they’d introduced just to make sure he didn’t become dehydrated.

  “No, please,” said the man. “You’re not well.” He went to Bruce, unsorted the jumble of twisted wires as he spoke. “You’ve had an accident,” he said in a soothing singsong, as if cooing to an infant in a cradle. “You’re wondering why you’re still alive, aren’t you? You’re thinking: there’s something insid
e, something different, inexplicable.”

  The old man might have been crazy, but the movements of his fingers amidst the array of wires had been swift and sure. They now hung freely from one another. He stepped back and said, “I can help you understand, if you’ll let me . . . if you’ll forgive me.”

  I’m dealing with a lunatic. He thinks I’m somebody else.

  “Look, mister, I’m sure I have nothing to forgive you for,” Bruce said, keeping his voice calm and level. It wasn’t all that difficult, really, having had years of practice at it. “So, maybe you’d better just go. Please, I’ll be fine.”

  The old man shoved his face toward Bruce’s, and an image leaped unbidden to Bruce’s mind. It was the old man’s face, but younger, much younger, almost like his own, and bigger, so very much bigger, and he was shoving some sort of stuffed toys at Bruce, and the toys looked familiar, all of it looked familiar, and he was shoving a couple of toys into Bruce’s face. . . .

  “You must know,” the old man said insistently, his gravelly voice snapping Bruce back to the present day. “You don’t want to believe it, but I can see it in your eyes”—and he was scrutinizing Bruce’s face—“eyes so much like your mother’s. Of course, you’re my flesh and blood, but then . . .” His voice dropped down even further, and his breath was a foul thing filling Bruce’s nose, so much so that Bruce had to fight the urge to vomit. “. . . you’re something else, too, aren’t you? My physical son, but the child of my mind, too.”

  The old man was between Bruce’s hand and the call button that would summon the nurse from the front desk. “You’re lying,” said Bruce, which probably weren’t the best words he might have chosen, considering he was trying to talk sense to a nutcase. But he was understandably disconcerted by the circumstances. “My parents died when I was a small boy.”

  “That’s what they wanted you to believe,” the old man said intensely. He rose from the bed and started to pace, and Bruce could have gone for the call button at that point. But the old man’s movements, the fervor with which he spoke, were almost hypnotic. In all his years, Bruce had never encountered a personality quite like this one: a true psychotic.