But it had been something of a letdown, and he’d become convinced that the concept of a “ghost town” was charming, but no more based in reality than any other mythic notion.
It turned out he was wrong. As he and Betty walked through what had once been the bustling commercial district outside Desert Base, he knew that he was in a genuine ghost town. In his imagination, he could actually see and hear people long gone walking around and chatting and enjoying life, linked by the army family they all shared.
That was no longer the case. The base had been rebuilt over the years, but things were different now. Everything was kept low key and under cover, so as not to alarm the skittish residents of nearby cities who dreaded the thought of research at the base. At least, that was how it was explained to Bruce.
Their first moments together, once Bruce had fully recovered his ability to communicate, had been awkward. “I’m sorry,” she had started to say to him.
But he had cut her off almost immediately. “No. You’re not,” he had said flatly. “You knew what you were doing, calling in your father and his people. And given the exact same circumstances, you would do exactly the same thing again, wouldn’t you?”
She had begun to protest . . . then looked down, unable and unwilling to respond. That alone had told him that she knew he was right. And then, to Betty’s surprise—and, to some extent, his own—he had reached a finger under her chin and tilted her head up to look him in the eyes.
“All this time you’ve been telling me that I’m too rational, that I don’t let my emotions just take me,” he had said to her. “If I gave in now, let myself feel anger, betrayal, hurt, what purpose would it serve? What’s done is done. The fact is you did what you felt you had to do. I may not be thrilled by it. I may have been the victim of it. But I can respect your decision. So you see, Betty, that aspect of me, which you felt was detrimental to our relationship, makes it that much easier to get past being shot with a tranq gun and carted away. Double-edged sword and all that, I suppose.”
“So, we’re okay?” she had said.
“Betty,” and he had actually laughed, but it had an ironic sound to it, “when were we ever okay?”
He had seen her flinch a bit from that, but it was the truth and she had known it.
Now they were walking through one of the deserted, ramshackle streets. At a not-too-discreet distance, troops armed with various high-tech containment weapons and lightweight attack vehicles moved slowly behind them. Bruce got a mental picture of what they must look like viewed from overhead. Just a guy, a girl, and the troops. The ludicrousness of the situation caused him to laugh again, this time to himself.
“It used to be so full of life here,” Betty said from beside him. Then she noticed he was laughing, and obviously couldn’t quite understand what was so funny about her last statement. “What?” asked Betty.
“Nothing,” he said, gesturing toward the troops shadowing them. “Just what do you think those boys would do if I leaned over and gave you a kiss?”
“I’m not sure either of us would survive,” said Betty smiling.
They stopped, faces close, but Bruce hesitated and then pulled back. Betty looked slightly disappointed, but didn’t press the matter. Bruce sighed. “I must have seen you or known you,” he said. “If only I could remember.”
“You will,” Betty assured him. “It’ll be painful, but you will.”
His face darkened. “I bet it remembers,” he said, and there was obviously no doubt in Betty’s mind as to just who “it” was. “It must have been a child here, too, inside of me.” He started rubbing his temples. Although he wasn’t intending to, he looked like a mentalist trying to get in contact with the dead. “I feel him now, watching me. Hating me.”
“Hating you?” Betty asked. “Why?”
He lowered his hands and leveled his gaze on her. “Because he knows, one way or another, that we’re going to destroy him,” said Bruce. He sounded determined. He also sounded a bit afraid.
Betty shook her head. “We’re going to understand him.”
“It’s the same thing, isn’t it?” asked Bruce.
Clearly she didn’t comprehend, but Bruce did . . . all too well. The creature drew its strength from rage, and rage came not from what one had, but from what one didn’t have. Rage was the lack of control, of compassion, of love, of understanding. Any of the softer emotions, anything that sought to incorporate the creature into the minds and hearts of humanity, was anathema to it, a crucifix to a vampire. Love drained it of hate, compassion drained it of rage, and without those, it was literally nothing. It was a gamma-irradiated genie released from its lamp, and all the Aladdins in the world weren’t about to stuff it back in. Not if the Hulk could help it.
Banner walked a few steps away, falling into a reverie. Betty continued to follow, but at a distance. Perhaps she was respecting his need for space, or perhaps she was just afraid of him. Well, why not? He was afraid of him.
They wandered among the broken down, deserted houses, the wind stirring up dust and bits of detritus, and carrying with it an almost mournful sound. The image of the ghost town came to his mind again, and then he heard something that triggered a recollection, something just beyond his ability to grasp, so close he thought he could touch it. It was a steady, rhythmic squeaking, and he turned to see that Betty was sitting on an abandoned swing set, absentmindedly swinging.
He noticed a particular house nearby and paused. Deep in the recesses of his mind, there were long shadows that suddenly seemed to have faint light cast upon them, all from the sight of this ramshackle house. He started to walk toward it. He heard the squeaking behind him stop, Betty’s feet treading again on the gravel walk. She was following him, although she likely had no idea why. The blind leading the blind. It didn’t get more ironic than that.
Banner entered the old house, paused, and looked around. Betty entered behind him and Banner froze.
“What is it?” she asked very quietly, as if worried that a loud voice might disturb the long-gone occupants.
Pictures . . . images . . . running . . . screams and hatred and a pounding . . .
He turned to face her, pushing the mental images violently away. “Why did you bring me here?” he asked, suddenly angry. “What’s the point of it? You saw what I am. You know as well as I do it’s no use.” His voice was filled with loathing and self-pity.
“That’s not true,” said Betty.
“It is true,” he fired back. He paced the front hall of the house, stepping over some debris, moving quickly, as if he could outrun the thoughts in his head. He spoke in a voice dripping with sarcasm. “Come on. I’m supposed to have some sort of emotional breakthrough now? Reconnect to my inner child, exorcise my inner demons, find my true self, and everything will be just fine and dandy? Don’t kid yourself.”
“And don’t you kid yourself!” Betty replied. If he’d thought that she was some sort of shrinking violet, that she was in some way intimidated or reluctant to stand up to him, then clearly he was mistaken. She was willing to be sympathetic, patient, loving, but she obviously wasn’t going to be pushed around. “We don’t have any options, remember? At least here we have a chance—”
“A chance to what?” Bruce demanded in exasperation. He felt like pain incarnate. “Don’t you understand? Whatever it is you want me to remember, there’s a good reason I can’t. It . . . might just kill me,” he said, and he refrained from adding, or you.
For that was really his greatest fear. As much as he was capable of understanding Betty’s actions, of forgiving her, he was also certain that the hulking beast within him was equally incapable of doing so. What she was showing him now was stirring up not just memories, but the monster within. It was scrambling forward on its knuckles toward the uppermost regions of his mind like the rough beast, its hour come at last, slouching toward Bethlehem to be born, as Yeats had written in “The Second Coming.” If it got loose again, if it did, it might kill her.
“The cen
tre cannot hold; . . . The blood-dimmed tide is loosed . . .”
It couldn’t know, of course, that to kill Betty was to kill itself, because if it harmed Betty, then Bruce would undoubtedly take his own life the moment he was back in control, rather than live with the knowledge of what he’d done. That, of course, would be the ultimate way to stop the monster.
He just hoped it didn’t come to that, for all their sakes.
He kept looking away from Betty, but she wouldn’t permit it. “It might just kill you,” she repeated his words, and then added, “or save you.”
“And what if I don’t want to be saved,” he said darkly.
“You don’t have to try. You can choose, Bruce. But me, I don’t have a choice,” she said sadly.
He was genuinely puzzled by her response. “Why?”
“Because I love you,” said Betty.
The truth was he was surprised to hear that. With all that had happened, he hadn’t even thought that a possibility anymore. He couldn’t help but wonder how much of what she was feeling was genuine, and how much of it was wishful thinking, that she was trying to make herself believe she was in love with him because, considering the circumstances, the notion that it had developed naturally just seemed absurd.
“How is that possible?” he finally asked, giving voice to the doubts he harbored. “You—neither of us—we don’t even know who I am.” There was a pause and he turned away, kicking through the rubble. He was beginning to think he had no clue what love was anymore, or what the purpose of it was—and certainly he didn’t know whether he was worthy of it or not. He didn’t even feel like a man. More like a half-man, his psyche splintered into so many pieces that just having someone look at him made him feel unclean.
She went to the broken window and stared out at the desert.
“We’d better go back,” Bruce said finally.
“Yeah,” was all she said in reply.
Their journey back was remarkably silent. On the trip out, Bruce had studied the ways in which the army kept the facility hidden, finding them to be a fascinating distraction. Coming back, however, he couldn’t dwell on anything but the empty feeling he had inside. She loved him. He wanted that to mean something. He wanted to love her. He thought he did, but he’d always thought that in the past and it hadn’t been enough. Was it enough now, particularly considering what it was he had to overcome?
An armed escort led Banner and Betty down the hall. At the door to his containment cell, they paused. Betty turned to Banner. “I’ll see you,” was all she said. Hardly a deathless protestation of impassioned love. What the hell do you want from her, part of him scolded. He had no answer. He was starting to wonder if there was a damned thing in the world he did know. She gave him a little wave as she left, like a chum from school dropping him off at his house at the end of a busy day learning readin’ and writin’ and ’rithmetic.
The door to the containment unit slid shut behind him. Just before it closed completely, he turned and watched Betty vanish from sight on the opposite side of the door. She wasn’t looking over her shoulder at him. That was smart. Never look behind you. It was pointless to dwell on what was past, and it left you less prepared for whatever might be heading your way.
Betty walked briskly down a corridor toward the central control room, convinced that Bruce thought she didn’t love him despite her protests to the contrary. And she was reasonably sure he didn’t love her. That alone was enough to make her heart sink to somewhere in her gut, but that wasn’t the biggest problem.
Her biggest problem was that her attempts to get through to Bruce, to help him reconnect with the world, had so far failed miserably.
She was certain that the main reason Bruce changed into the Hulk was his feelings of isolation. Everything—from the kids who had made fun of him as a child, to Talbot and his frankly abominable actions of a couple of days ago—served to feed into the Hulk’s perception that the world was a battleground and he was but a piece moving through it, a piece that was hated and despised by everyone else.
Betty placed her thumb on a biometric reader at the door to Command and Control, also known as C and C. The door remained locked. She tried it again, and still it didn’t respond. She blew air impatiently between her lips, rubbed her thumb against her blouse to try to remove whatever random dirt or oil was causing the picky lock to malfunction, then tried yet again.
Then she looked more closely and saw that there was a red light on the lock. It wasn’t just failing to identify her. It was outright rejecting her thumbprint.
“What the hell?” she murmured, then she heard loud voices from within. The door slid open to reveal her father. She looked at him with a question on her face, and received the answer in the very next second.
Glen Talbot was standing just inside C and C. He looked a bit weary, wearing a dark blue suit and a crisp white shirt with the tie loosened; he had the sort of haggard expression one usually has after having undergone a sustained argument with Thunderbolt Ross. He looked as if he had been roughed up, as well. But he also had, most dangerously, a smug look on his face.
“Hey, Betty,” said Talbot, “I would love to chat, but I’m pressed for time. I’ll let your dad deliver the news.”
She turned and again looked questioningly at Ross. With a quick shake of his head, he said, “Not here,” took her by the shoulder, and guided her down the hallway. With every step they took, a sense of dread rose higher and higher within her.
The last time she could recall Thunderbolt Ross looking this upset was when she was a kid and insisted he take her ice skating. Her father had fallen on the ice so many times that he had point-blank told her if she ever spoke of it to someone else, he would disown her. She’d asked him about it years later, and he’d sworn that he absolutely meant it . . . and that it still held.
When he told her of what had just happened, however, that incident paled in comparison. He dropped into the chair behind his desk and came right to the point. “Your access has been revoked. NSA has decided to hand over study of the . . . the threat . . . to Atheon, and they have explicitly limited my jurisdiction,” said Ross.
“You’re the head of this base!”
“Yes, I’m aware of that. Just as they are aware,” he said sharply, “that I am the father of the chief scientist attached to the situation, who, in turn, is romantically involved with an atomic bomb on two legs. Talbot apparently sold them on the notion that my close relationship to the principal players in this little drama presents a conflict of interest, since obviously I won’t have my priorities in place.”
“But . . . that’s ridiculous! ‘Close relationship’? You and I haven’t spoken for close to a decade, and Bruce told me you threatened his life if he ever came near me again!”
“Well, it’s one of those odd circumstances where my failures as a father aren’t working in my favor. Ironic, I know. Usually my parental shortcomings reflect so well on me.”
“All right, I’m sorry.” She sighed. “I didn’t mean to—”
He waved it off. “Betty, this old skin has developed so much armor plating over the years, you couldn’t get under it with anything short of dynamite. The bottom line is I don’t set policy.” He shook his head, looking as if he’d been personally betrayed, which was probably exactly how he felt. “I had no idea Glen would go around me like this. I—I miscalculated what he was capable of, and I failed you.”
She fixed a look on him as she shook her head, sagging into the chair opposite him. “You didn’t fail me.” She sighed. “I wasn’t counting on you in the first place.” Then she frowned. “You know, believe it or not, that was meant to be consoling, but it didn’t come out that way at all, did it?”
“Not in the least,” he agreed, his mouth twitching into a smile beneath his mustache. “Don’t worry about it, though. You’re likely just out of practice when it comes to me.”
“Very likely, yes. So, what am I supposed to do now?” she asked.
He shrugged one shoul
der. “I would tell you to go and say good-bye to Banner, but I’ve already been informed that’s out of the question.”
She couldn’t believe it. The only reason she had contacted her father—aside from the fact that she’d been scared out of her mind—was that she felt by going through him, she would be able to maintain some control of, and involvement with, the situation. Instead, through Talbot’s duplicity, the one person who might be able to prevent the entire predicament from spiraling out of control was being banished like a dissident Russian to a Gulag.
“All I can tell you, Betty,” Thunderbolt Ross informed her with what he likely thought was reassurance, “is that I’ll be watching every move that Talbot makes. At the slightest hint of a breach, I’ll make the case to pull him out of there.”
“It will be too late,” she said flatly. “Whatever Glen does is going to make matters so much worse, so quickly, this place will be coming down around your ears. You’re going to be busy filling out paperwork requisitioning a new barn door while a herd of horses will already be ten miles away.” She stood. “I’m going to see Bruce. Right now.”
Ross shook his head with a resigned sigh, but she didn’t quite understand the message until she opened the door and saw two burly guards blocking her way.
“Betty, I’m sorry,” said Ross, and he really did sound apologetic. “It’s time for you to go home.”
Barely five minutes later, Betty was looking down from her seat in a chopper at the desolate desert floor as she flew home.
She thought bleakly, This is the last time I’m looking at this while it’s in one piece. They’ll never be able to handle Bruce. Never. Putting Glen Talbot in charge of Bruce Banner is like using a sledgehammer to open a bottle of nitroglycerin.
playing with fire
Bruce was beginning to remember.