Chapter Two - Driven By An Unknown Force

A preternaturally smug voice spoke with pronounced impatience to Al Calavicci.

"Admiral, our visitor took out some portion of my electronic eyes and ears around the project. A full report on what has happened, then and after would be appreciated. Now!"

If some at the project were in awe of the hybrid supercomputer and its capabilities, Al was not among them.

"Well, well. You mean to say that the *being* who once shut us down in a snit over being held accountable needs a primate like me? Ziggy, we are trying our best. You know damned well hooking your sensors and such back up doesn't just mean new equipment. It means deep programming skills. Gooshie and Tina are going all-out, and so are their assistants. Give it time. Give it time, because for once, you don't have any choice in the matter."

There was a short tense silence, but no new shutdowns occurred. Al knew how to stare down just about anyone, even if they didn't technically have eyeballs.

"There is no need to threaten me, Admiral. But I am a computer, and no computer or sentient individual can operate without necessary information."

"I gotcha, Zig. But this guy took us completely by surprise. He broke past all the precautions we set up, like they were nothing. So until we get our sea legs back, let's go with what you do have. Did you scan this loony before he damaged some of your replaceable sensors?"

"Of course, Admiral. The results of those scans were very odd."

Al looked over at Gooshie. A frown on his face told Calavicci that the repair and recovery work was far from over.

"Oh? I would have thought they'd be standard for somebody that far off their kilter."

A sound of crunching glass being swept up nearly made Al jump before Ziggy made its reply.

"His adrenal glands were operating at levels massively toxic to most humans, Admiral. Yet that, in and of itself, is not remarkable for one in an enhanced frenzy or psychotic state. No, the anomaly I speak of comes from our attacker's apparent size shift."

Al tried to reason this one out, but could not.

"Well, when he appeared to be Sam, he was looking a bit taller. I still have no clue as to how Banner changed so that everyone, not just me, can see him as himself. Ziggy, how does a difference of an inch or three in height grab your attention?"

"Admiral, even damaged, my scanners and sensor arrays see far more than any set of human eyes ever could. In short, I saw beyond the attacker's temporal appearance as Doctor Beckett."

Al decided that he did not like where this was headed, even if he had only the vaguest idea of where that was.

"You're saying that even before he changed from Sam to Banner, he had a third form?"

"Very astute, Admiral. In fact, my heat-scans of Doctor Banner as he emerged speak of a man not nearly six feet in height, but over seven. Also, his weight at that time was not the roughly two-hundred pounds it is at present, but at least two times that amount."

"Geez. Guess I'd be upset too, if I were that chubby."

"No, Admiral. The form I scanned was of proper frame for a man of only two-hundred-fifty pounds. I must surmise that the extra weight resided in his musculature and skeletal structure."

Al had some scientific training, and had picked up more by osmosis over the years. None of it helped him right then.

"So when he went on a tear, Banner had the density of a steel block, but in the frame of a decent bodybuilder. But he doesn't weigh a quarter ton right now. The guards moved him with no sweat. Ziggy, mass like that doesn't just vanish."

Had he not been so upset by the attack, Al would have noticed how this was the very best he and the computer had ever gotten along.

"I have any number of working theories, Admiral. Perhaps that mass is extra-dimensionally stored. Perhaps an unknown bodily fluid is released during the transformation, containing the genetic programming necessary for the mass to emerge. Yet none of that helps us in our greatest dilemma."

"Give it to me straight, Zig. Cause it can't be any worse than what we just faced."

"You are wrong, Admiral. My dilemma is a hideous one, for I can at present calculate no reason for this leap to have occurred."

Al had that queasy feeling again.

"You mean you haven't nailed it down. You mean you're running through the maybes, the what-ifs and the could-have-beens. Right?"

Ziggy's silence kept on for fifteen minutes, prompting Al to quote his very best friend.

"Oh, Boy."

After Al had finally entered the imaging chamber, Donna took an enormous chance. The guards were firmly told to go away. Doctor Beeks moved to revive the freed sleeper. He looked about him, almost lemur-like in his furtiveness.

"Where am I?"

"Are you David Banner?"

The revived man seemed to be mentally ticking off alternatives to what he finally yielded.

"Yes. Now where am I?"

"David, do you recognize me?"

A small smile emerged on his face.

"Donna Eleece? Donna, my God! Is Sam here?"

Donna pointed out at the wreckage David's creature had caused.

"I'll gladly explain where Sam is, David. He's why you're here, and right now, he needs your help as much as you need his."

David didn't outwardly wince, to see what the Hulk had done. It had happened too often. It was one of a sequence of events that now seemed all too familiar. As did what followed next.

"Donna, put me to work."

--------

August, 1991

"I've got to fight it. Damn you, David. It feels like I've been fighting your rage my entire life."

Stallion's Gate was closer, though exactly how close Sam Beckett could not say. For then and there, though, he unsuccessfully wrestled with the urge to dwell on those leaps he could recall that had been very close and sometimes very harsh. Having learned from dealing with the unseen Al not to be seen talking to himself, even in an isolated place, he resumed his internal monologue.

"I've had bad leaps. I've watched a rapist walk out of court, laughing. I saw a bitter ex-girlfriend set up a war bride to be slaughtered by an insane pitcher. I've heard the uncaring voice of a rural, sweet-talking drug dealer as she pulled a gun on an innocent child as though he were a bug to be squashed. I've felt the cold touch of the void as my best friend was reduced to a memory that only a cigar wrapping could save from total oblivion. And to top it all off, I have this odd feeling about my old girlfriend, Donna Eleese. I know I helped her reconcile with her father. So why do I feel this massive dread that somehow I have repeatedly betrayed her? I need my lifeline. I need Al, to come here and tell me why my life and David's have intersected yet again. But where is he?"

"Sam."

Sam turned and saw Al, preparing to buzz him with the questions that always came when a leap was new. But both men looked puzzled and dumbstruck as Al's image began to fade.

"Sam! Sam, hang on..."

Sam was nearly all alone again, and felt mental steel clamp down on the anger and the rage, both that which was his own and that which was like a foreign barbarian invading his very heart. A desperate option left his mouth.

"Al, I can't hang on much longer. Talk to David, and tell him everything. He can help, if you just let him."

Al's face looked absolutely thunderstruck, both by his situation and by the suggestion Sam made about Banner. But before he could object, he was in the projection chamber, and Sam was gone. He cried out.

-----

THE PROJECT

"Gooshie! Just what the hell happened there?"

The nervous man raised his arms to calm the project observer.

"Admiral, we have good news and we have bad news. The good news is, David's attack didn't damage any components containing Ziggy's main program."

Al noticed the 'David' right away, but let it go for the moment.

"The bad news?"

"We speculate that, because of his current mutation, Doctor Beckett's brain-waves are moving out of the sync you and he have established over the past four years. Very soon, you may not be able to use the chamber to communicate with him ever again."

Al bit down.

"You mean until this leap is over, right?"

Gooshie shrugged.

"We're working on finding that out."

Al walked off as he finished their short talk.

"Work harder."

Al proceeded to the waiting area, and nearly fell over when he did not see a sedated David Banner under guard. Marching out, he instead saw Banner typing busily away at a terminal in the cubicle island used by the project's keypunchers and line-writers. Sam's instructions fell out of his memory, and Al drew his gun, close enough to both gain Banner's notice and to take him out before any mutation could take hold.

"What's the matter, you haven't done enough damage? Now, step away from the terminal, and don't change a hair for me."

Al cocked the pistol.

"Not if you care for me."

David Banner did not flinch. Over the years, he had replayed this scenario an absurd amount of times. He spoke two words.

"Don't miss."