Despite the immediate danger, the scientist within him came to the fore, and he found himself in observational mode, intrigued to see what the old man would say or do next. Meantime, the old man continued to rant, clearly in his own world.
“The experiments, the accident, they were top secret. They put me away, thirty years—away from you, away from our work—but they couldn’t keep me forever. After all, I’m sane. They had to admit it.”
The dogs were starting to get fidgety. The pit bull looked in Bruce’s direction and started to growl, and this was more than enough to get Bruce’s hand to stray toward the call button. But then the old man raised his arm and the dogs came to attention. Bruce let the call button be, and continued to watch the old man, who had refocused his energies back on Bruce. The intruder was speaking louder, his voice growing in both volume and intensity. He sounded like the classic mad scientist from some old black-and-white horror film, exhorting whatever unseen gods were looking down on him and encouraging him in his demented endeavors. Bruce started to wonder whether this wasn’t a dream after all, for the only thing the moment lacked was lightning bolts and rolling thunder as the old man declared, “You see, everything your extraordinary mind has been seeking all these years—it’s been inside of you—and now we will understand it, harness it—”
The phone rang, a mundane sound that seemed out of place in a moment of such Grand Guignol. Bruce looked over at it, but the old man stepped quickly toward him, his voice growing softer but still at full force in its demented drive. “Miss Ross again. Don’t answer! There’s something you need to know about her, Bruce. Something troublesome, but I can protect you from her.”
And that was, abruptly, all Bruce could take.
Starting to tremble, he fairly shouted, “You’re crazy! Get out!”
A look of menacing hatred passed over his father’s face. As if responding to the mood of their master, the dogs crouched for an attack.
But Bruce, furious over the old man’s aspersions of Betty, didn’t back down. At that moment he didn’t care if the damned animals leapt at him and tried to tear him apart. His only concern was telling this lunatic to vacate the room instantly.
“Get. Out.”
And, astoundingly, a look of satisfaction passed over the old man’s face. One might have thought that he was genuinely glad to see a flash of temper. “Heel,” the father ordered the dogs, and the daunting canines promptly backed off.
There was a long moment wherein the old man appeared to be sizing Bruce up, and then he said in a mildly mocking voice, “We’re going to have to watch that temper of yours.” From the way he said it, it was impossible to tell whether he meant it as an advisory against the dangers of giving in to anger . . . or whether he intended to keep Bruce’s anger under careful observation. Nor did Bruce have the opportunity to get him to clarify, for the old man promptly departed, the dogs obediently following him with their long toenails click-clacking on the polished floor.
The phone kept ringing, but Bruce didn’t notice it. He wasn’t even staring in the direction that the man had gone; instead, he was fixed upon the point in the room that the man had occupied moments before. It was as if he were concerned that the man might somehow reappear from thin air, like a phantasm or recurring hallucination.
Then the phone stopped ringing, and the abrupt cessation snapped Bruce back to reality. He snatched the IV out of his arm, pulled the leads from his various monitors, and rolled off the bed. He sagged for a moment, his legs not completely ready to accept his weight, but he braced himself and forced himself forward. He stumbled once, but then righted himself and made it out into the hall. His sudden arrival in front of the nurse’s station startled the nurse awake. She looked astounded to see him standing there.
“Where did he go?” demanded Bruce.
The nurse stared at him a little fearfully. “Who?” she asked uncertainly.
Bruce looked up and down the corridor.
Empty.
“Maybe it was a dream at that,” he said softly. Without another word to the nurse, or even an attempt at an explanation, he shuffled back into his room. The nurse followed him and didn’t say a word as she hooked him back up to the various monitoring devices. He simply lay there, staring at the ceiling, his mind far, far away. When sleep finally came for him—a total, deep sleep—he welcomed it with a sense of swelling relief.
And as he slept . . . there was pain and hurt and a bubbling, brooding anger long repressed against anyone and everyone who had ever done harm to him or laughed at him or tried to hurt him, and a sea of faces swam before him, sneering, chuckling, and the world around him was tinted green and in the darkness of his innermost fears . . . he awoke to discover that his bed was bent right along the frame, and the IV tube and monitoring devices had been ripped free in his thrashing.
He staggered to his feet, stumbling about in the darkness. He tried to call out to the nurse, but his throat was constricted. The idiot woman must have been away from her station, or perhaps had fallen asleep again. . . . Useless, just useless woman. He should smash her, should . . .
He forced the thoughts away as he lurched toward the bathroom. He knocked over a lamp in the darkness and barely registered the sound of its crashing to the floor. He made it to the bathroom with a supreme effort and clicked on the light, squinting against the sudden brightness. He stared at his face, looking for . . . well, he wasn’t certain. For something. But there was nothing there.
Nothing.
He looked down at his clothes. The stitching on his T-shirt and pajama legs had ripped at the seams.
That wasn’t nothing.
That was something . . . something confusing, something horrifying, something that he couldn’t begin to cope with.
His gaze swiveled back to the mirror, and suddenly there was a gray haze enveloping him. He wanted to push it away, but he lacked the will, and as he tottered toward the mirror, he thought he saw a faint hint of green reflected in his eyes. Then the gray haze overwhelmed him and sent him spiraling away into blackness.
connections
Betty Ross, moonlight filtering through the shades of her bedroom, put down the phone and stared at it long after she had hung up.
To a certain degree, she was relieved that Bruce hadn’t picked it up. After all, what would she have said to him? “Hi, Bruce. Betty. Look, I had a dream that you might be in some sort of great danger, so I thought I’d call and say, ‘Hi.’ How’s the food?” Oh, yes, that would have worked. It would have gone a far piece toward hastening him to a full recovery.
Nor could she put a face to the danger. She just had images of Bruce, and he was crying out and cringing, and, oddly enough, sometimes he looked like a little boy in her dreams. Still, Betty was a rationalist, and didn’t for a moment think she was having dreams that somehow foretold the future. The explanations for the symbolism were all too readily apparent. The danger element came from the accident that Bruce had been in. The visions of him as a child stemmed from an almost maternal concern about his welfare. After all, didn’t every woman sometimes mother the man she loved?
She leaned forward, her chin almost touching her knees. The man she loved. She still thought of him that way, even though he had made it clear that his own emotional stuntedness made it impossible for him to reciprocate in the way she wanted and needed. But almost losing Bruce had brought some new elements into play for her. Look what he had done: He had risked his life for others. Not just risked his life; he had actually thrown himself into what he must have believed was certain death. The fact that he had survived was pure happenstance, a freak chance, a one-in-a-million shot. The incident said something huge about the man with whom she had broken off a romantic relationship because . . . why? He wasn’t good enough for her? He didn’t smile enough or laugh enough or share his feelings?
She had felt isolated and distant from him, but how much of that was her, as opposed to him? If Bruce were restricted to a wheelchair, would she be angry with him becau
se he was unable to walk? Of course not. So if he was simply psychologically unable to relate to her in the emotional manner she thought she needed, was she being equally unreasonable expecting him to do so?
Betty ran her fingers through her hair in exasperation. She couldn’t get out of her head the image of Bruce splayed across the gamma cannon. Was she some sort of ingrate for even thinking that perhaps he—
The phone rang.
The ring broke the stillness and she gasped, startled. She reached over for it too hastily and grabbed the receiver up. “Bruce?” she said.
There was a pause. “Noooo. It’s not Bruce. Is that acceptable?”
She sat there, confused, wondering who in the world it was. The voice was deep and resonant, and for a moment she thought it might be an obscene phone caller.
And then, abruptly, she realized who it was, and her face flushed as the notion that her father had been making lewd phone calls became not only ludicrous but downright embarrassing.
“Dad?” she said tentatively.
“Yes.”
“Oh. Hi. I, uh . . . well. Heh.” She felt flummoxed. “This is unexpected. I haven’t heard from you in a while.”
“I didn’t have your number.”
“Oh. Right.”
“And it’s unlisted.”
“That’s . . . that’s also right. How did you get it?”
“I ordered my aide to get it.”
“I see. And . . . how did he get it?”
Thunderbolt Ross paused on the other end. “The how doesn’t matter. I told him to get it; he got it. Beyond that, it’s unimportant.”
She laughed humorlessly. “Nice to see you haven’t changed, Dad.” Then she closed her eyes and took a deep breath, because this wasn’t the time to start mouthing off to her father. She hadn’t forgotten her promise to Bruce, that she would get in touch with Ross and try to do something about reining in Talbot. So now, by happenstance, her father had called. This wasn’t the time to be giving him lip.
“It’s . . . good to hear from you, Dad. It’s been . . . too long, really.”
“Yes. Yes, it has.” His voice sounded surprisingly soft, even concerned. “Betty, I was thinking perhaps we might want to get together. Have dinner. Are you available?”
She was caught off guard. What’s wrong? Is he dying? Am I dying? She made sure to keep a smile on her face, though—not that he could see it, of course, but at least that way her voice would continue to sound upbeat.
“Sure, Dad! Always. When did you have in mind? Should I come there?”
“No. No, I’ll come to you. I’ll have my aide finalize the details and you’ll hear back shortly.”
She glanced at the clock. It was close to midnight. Did the man ever sleep? Probably not. And his aide, whoever that poor nameless devil was, probably didn’t either, although that was likely not by choice. “Okay, that’d be fine.”
“Good.” Another pause. “You . . . sound healthy, Betty.”
“Thanks. I’ve been working out.”
“That’s good to hear.”
And the line went dead. With anyone else, Betty would think they’d been disconnected. But that wasn’t the case here. Thunderbolt Ross had never developed any technique for saying, “Good-bye.” To him, when a conversation was over, there was no reason to prolong it with pointless niceties.
“Why can’t I have a nice, normal father?” she wondered aloud.
In the darkened home of Bruce Banner’s father, the three dogs circled, silent and nervous. Containers of various sizes, marked with assorted warning stickers—all of them stolen from the lab of Dr. Bruce Krenzler—littered the room. David Banner picked up a cage from under a table. There was high-pitched squeaking as the large gray rat within the cage objected to being handled.
Banner placed the cage inside another clear container in the middle of the room, and dropped one of the nanomed canisters inside. It hadn’t been easy obtaining it; it hadn’t been easy getting any of the things he’d stolen. It had taken patience and cunning, but it had been worth it, particularly if it was going to provide him with what he needed.
Stepping away from the cage and the container, Banner went into the hallway, stood around the corner, and flipped a light switch. The room was immediately alive with the hum of radiation from the makeshift and far-smaller-scale gamma cannon that he had created. In terms of potency and sophistication, it was more a gamma water pistol.
Furthermore, there was every chance that Banner himself would receive a dose from free-floating rads, since he didn’t have the tools available to him to create the sort of Plexiglas safe area that such devices usually required. But Banner couldn’t have cared less about some incidental cellular damage. He had issues of far greater import to concern himself with.
The rat’s cage began to spark and, at that moment, the nanomed canister broke open. He could hear it shatter, could hear the rat squealing in alarm, and, possibly, pain. He glanced over at the mirror set up at the far end of the room and saw, reflected in it, a cloud enveloping the rat, and a few more sparks from the metal of the cage. He hadn’t realized there’d be that much discharge. It was a foolish oversight; he could conceivably burn the house down. Not that the house itself was any great shakes, but his research materials were irreplaceable. It was something he was going to have to be more attentive to in future endeavors.
He checked his watch, satisfied himself that the requisite amount of time had passed, and shut down the juice. Gingerly he turned the corner back into the room and looked at the cage.
It was quite a sight to see. There was the rat, covered with open sores and burns and slime, all of which were to be expected from the dose of gamma radiation it had received. But it was also three times as big as it had been before. Whereas there had been plenty of room within the cage, now the infuriated creature was cramped within, tearing at it and shaking it violently.
David Banner grinned. And then he started to laugh, louder and louder, and the fearsome dogs actually cringed away from him.
Then the laughter stopped and he stared with malevolent joy at the canines.
“Hello, boys,” he said, and if the dogs had had any brains at all, they would have run as fast as their legs could take them, or perhaps turned upon their master and torn him to shreds. Instead they nuzzled up against him as he stroked their heads absently while staring at the creature in the cage and smiling broadly.
mutagenic traces . . .
but of what?
Betty Ross and Dr. Chandler walked slowly down the hallway of the infirmary. Chandler was shaking her head, and her puzzlement was quite evident.
“He seems fine now,” she said. “I’m afraid, since I can’t quite find anything else the matter, that I’m going to have to let him discharge himself.”
Betty wasn’t entirely sure how to react. Naturally, that should have been good news. Bruce was going to be okay. Somehow, whether it was nanomeds or luck or a miracle from above, Bruce had dodged a radioactive bullet. The problem was it was too good to be true. And it was part of Betty’s nature to be skeptical of that which seemed too good to be true.
“Well, I have a blood test or two I’d like to run on him, even if he’s being released,” Betty said.
Chandler looked skeptical. “Dr. Krenzler seemed rather adamant about leaving the infirmary as soon as possible, and we really don’t have any standing or reason to keep him against his will or subject him to more tests. I can’t say he’ll want to cooperate.”
“Oh, I think I can say that,” said Betty, and she smiled. “I’m very persuasive.”
Bruce winced slightly as Betty withdrew the hypodermic she’d used to take blood from him. The tube had filled up quickly. “Here,” she said gesturing at his arm. “Press down.” She put a Band-Aid on him, stepped back, and looked him over. “You sure you’re all right?”
“Sure,” said Bruce, trying to look nonchalant about the pain in his arm. “How are you?”
It seemed to Bruce that she w
as hesitant about something. He had intended it as merely a casual question, but it was obvious to look at her that a less-than-casual response was on her mind. “I got a message from my father. He’s coming to see me,” she said finally.
Oh, good! Let’s get him together with my alleged father! I’m sure they’ll get along just great! Maybe they’ll get a house by the sea together and swap stories about how to rear happy, healthy, well-adjusted children!
He kept his face neutral, albeit with effort. “Your father? When?”
“He lands in an hour. Funny thing was”—she frowned, obviously puzzled—“he called me.”
Bruce wasn’t entirely sure why, but he considered that to be somewhat alarming. It might well have been that he was a bit on edge when it came to the advent of fathers and father figures, particularly after last night’s encounter—an experience he still thought might just have been the stuff of dreams. With long practice, though, he kept any hint of alarm or concern from his voice. “You nervous?”
“Yes,” said Betty matter-of-factly.
“You’ll be fine,” said Bruce. He took the vial of blood from her. “And I’m going to do this myself.”
Betty was obviously startled. She’d told Bruce the type of tests she wanted to run on the blood sample, looking for mutagenic traces. He’d readily agreed that such tests should indeed be run . . . but he hadn’t promised that he was going to have her do it. And now that the blood had been drawn, Bruce was thinking that if there was something to be discovered about his biological makeup, then he was the one most entitled to discover it. Nor was he putting the matter up for debate as he held onto the vial firmly even as Betty reached for it.
“Myself,” he repeated.
She looked as if she wanted to argue the point, but finally she just shrugged her slim shoulders. “As long as it gets done,” she said.