CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT

Once it had begun, it only took a few more seconds for the transformation from human being to reptilian monstrosity to complete. Gone were both the form and intelligence of Dr. Curt Connors. They had been replaced by the scaly green body and feral mind of the Lizard. The creature let out a snarl and gnashed its jagged teeth.

"Did you know he was gonna turn into that?" Cyborg cried.

"Yeah, he does this from time to time," Spider-Man answered.

"Man, you hang out with some really weird-" Cyborg did not get a chance to finish his sentence as the Lizard lunged at him, snapping his powerful jaws and lashing out with his razor-sharp claws.

Spider-Man's spider sense kicked in just in time. He leapt to Cyborg's aid, shoving him out of the way and knocking him to the floor. The Lizard dove right over them, and, in his rage, grabbed the nearest body he could find instead.

Unfortunately, that body turned out to be that of the android known as the Vision. The Lizard dug his claws into the Vision's back, then threw his head back and roared.

"Oh dear," the Vision muttered.

The Lizard chomped his powerful teeth down on the Vision's head, then ripped it right off of the android's body and shook it back and forth savagely.

"No!" Spider-Man jumped to his feet and ran to the Vision, but it was too late. Wires hung limply from his neck like arteries, shooting out sparks like spurts of blood. The Lizard spat out the Vision's head out like a pit, and the dented and damaged head clank-clank-clanked across the floor.

Spider-Man tackled the Lizard and knocked him to the ground. The Vision's headless body swayed back and forth a few times before ultimately crashing to the floor as well.

Cyborg quickly got to his feet as well. He ran to where Spider-Man was trying desperately to hold the Lizard down, but the creature was thrashing and snapping his teeth wildly. Spider-Man would not be able to restrain him for long.

"What can I do?" Cyborg asked frantically.

"Connors' cell is just back around that corner," Spider-Man grunted, trying to keep the Lizard's arms pinned down. "He was hooked up to an IV that was keeping the transformation repressed. See if you can go grab some of whatever they were pumping into him!"

"Right!" Cyborg said. He started running down the hall.

He stopped in his tracks as the ground beneath him began to pull away from the wall. There was a loud mechanical hum as the walls raised up, pulled away, and then re-assembled themselves.

"Oh no..." Spider-Man gasped. "Oh no oh no oh no!"

Cyborg turned and stared back at Spider-Man. "What just happened?!"

"The prison just reconfigured itself," Spider-Man moaned. "Now we have no clue where Dr. Connors' cell is, or where the teleporter is." He turned and looked at the lifeless body of the Vision. "And we just lost our tour guide!"

Elsewhere inside the prison. Adrian Toomes, also known as the Vulture, walked slowly and with great determination down one of the many corridors inside the maze-like prison. To his right was Samuel Sterns, a man with a mind mutated by gamma radiation who liked to be called The Leader. To his left was Waylon Jones, a brute of a man whose skin condition and vicious attitude had earned him the moniker Killer Croc.

"I thought they only locked guys up in here who was too dangerous to put in regular jail," Croc sneered. "So why would they put a guy with a giant head and a smelly old man in here?"

Toomes scowled. "Do you have any idea who I am, you moron?" he snapped. "I'm the Vulture!"

"Big whoop," Croc replied. "You look about as dangerous as Larry David."

"And I, you neanderthal, am the Leader," Sterns chimed in. "And my superhuman mental acumen, enhanced by gamma-irradiated blood, is what gives me total intellectual superiority."

"Uhhh?" Killer Croc did not know how to respond.

"For instance, Mr. Croc," the Leader continued. "A lesser mind would assume that the constant reconfigurations of the prison maze are completely random, and that it is impossible to know our exact location at this moment. However, that is simply not so. Mr. Stark and Mr. Richards only programmed in a mere 2,016 different layouts to the maze. Given that the reconfiguration occurs every 20 minutes, that means that every 28 days the cycle begins anew. It is currently June 8th, 12:54 a.m. We are in configuration 963. And the armory, my dear friends, will be coming up on our next left."

"Armory?" Killer Croc said in surprise. "You mean you're not taking us to the exit?"

"No, you simpleton," Toomes answered. "The armory is where they locked up my wings and my talons. Talons that I forged using secrets that I unlocked from the Tablet of Time itself. With those talons I will suck the youth from Spider-Man's bones, making myself young again and turning Spider-Man into a decaying, degenerate old man."

"The esteemed Mr. Toomes promised me $10,000,000 if I led him to the armory, Mr. Croc," the Leader explained. "As soon as we acquire his talons and flight suit we will proceed to the egress, post haste."

Croc grumbled and mumbled to himself. "Fancy shmancy talk... think you're so smart..." He happened to cast a glance back over his shoulder. He stopped, and pointed. "Hey, you sure the armory isn't back that-a-way? It looks like that guy found it already."

Sterns and Toomes stopped. They slowly turned around. The figure that they saw standing at the end of the hallway behind them made their blood run cold.

"Jesus!" Toomes cried, his hands trembling. "That's the Punisher! Run for your lives!"

But it was far too late for that. Frank Castle, known and feared by the criminal underworld as the Punisher, fired the M16. A hail of bullets tore through Sterns, Jones, and Toomes. Adrian's frail old frame was the first to fall, clutching at the wall in vain as he toppled over, his body riddled with bullet holes. Sterns' giant cranium virtually exploded, gamma irradiated brain matter splattering everywhere. Killer Croc fought back the hardest, his beastly physique able to take much more punishment than his two companions. He fell to his knees, bleeding out of a dozen bullet wounds in his chest and abdomen. But still he fought, struggling to stay upright. He steadied himself with one hand against the wall and tried to stand up, even as the room seemed to spin around.

The Punisher casually strode right up to Killer Croc. Croc had one arm clutched tightly to his stomach, trying to hold back the blood that was already pouring forth from his wounds. He tried to blink the blood away from his eyes that was keeping him from seeing clearly. He could make out the form of the Punisher approaching him. He roared, showing his alligator-like fangs in a warning of pure violent rage.

Frank Castle swiftly pulled the handgun from his waistband and fired a single shot directly into Killer Croc's open mouth. The bullet blasted through the back of his skull. The hulking gray form of Killer Croc fell instantly to the floor, dead.

The Punisher calmly slipped the handgun back into the waistband of his pants and continued on his way.

Still elsewhere in the prison. The guard named Jose Delgado had managed to round up the five other guards that were on duty in the prison. He tried desperately to convey to them what he had learned.

"I'm telling you, guys, I heard it directly from Mr. Stark," he insisted. "Well, a hologram of him, at least. He sent Spider-Man in here to release everyone. We're all in danger if we stay inside the prison any longer."

"I'd listen to him if I were you," came a haunting voice from around the corner. The voice sounded jittery, uneven. It was the voice of someone who was not at all in their right mind.

All six guards drew their guns and pointed them in the direction of the voice they'd just heard. Someone was coming toward them. Heavy footsteps that seemed to splat and squish with each step. Footsteps that sounded gooey.

Around the corner came the most frightening thing they had ever seen. At first sight they thought it was a man covered head to toe in blood. Red, gelatinous slime seemed to drip off of him. His eyes were wide and wild. His mouth was pulled back in an unholy, demonic smile.

"Come on, boys," the Joker-Carnage hybrid snarled. "Why so serious?"

They were all in a state of horrified shock. The split second that they hesitated to fire their guns would prove fatal. Joker-Carnage shot six tendrils out of his stomach, each one with a razor-sharp point on the end. The tendrils sliced the guards' guns apart, rendering them useless.

He grabbed the guard nearest to him by the throat and shoved him up against the wall. Another tendril snaked its way out of Joker-Carnage's body and danced menacingly in front of the guard's terrified face.

"Let's put a smile on that face," Joker-Carnage giggled wickedly.

Jose Delgado screamed as the razor-sharp tendril plunged into his face and began to carve his mouth into a ghastly smile.

The Ferry. Iron Man, Green Arrow, Wonder Woman, J'onn J'onzz, Green Lantern, and Colossus were joined by several other heroes. Storm and Iceman had made their way out through the teleporter, and Daredevil had responded to J'onn's earlier psychic summoning. They were all now aiding in the battle against the likes of Tiger Shark, The Shade, Abra Kadabra, Absorbing Man, Mirror Master, Blob, Poison Ivy, and many more.

The brawl was starting to spread out of the lab and into the rest of the Ferry building. The heroes hoped they could at least keep it contained there and not spill out into the streets, but they knew that as more and more villains emerged from the prison that would likely be futile.

Absorbing Man swung his wrecking ball at Daredevil, whose hyper-keen senses allowed him to duck just in time. The ball struck one of the main computers and crushed it, sending sparks flying everywhere.

"Hey!" Iron Man yelled. "You're paying for that!" Then, to JARVIS, he quickly asked, "What did we just lose?"

"That was just one of the stasis field monitoring computers, sir," JARIVS replied. "Its primary functions had already been re-routed to your armor."

"Okay, good," Iron Man said. "Hey, GL!" he called to Green Lantern.

"Yo!" Green Lantern called back.

"I need you to construct a barrier around all this equipment," Iron Man said, gesturing to the main computer banks. "We're running out of room in here and things are going to start getting smashed!"

Green Lantern complied, creating a huge green force field around the computer systems. "For how long?" he asked.

"Until I tell you I don't need you to anymore!"

"Are you kidding? This is a real waste of my power, Tony. As long as I'm generating the force field, I'm not in the fight and kicking ass."

"We've got enough ass kickers here, Jordan," Iron Man insisted. "If this equipment gets trashed and we lose the teleporter, no one else is coming home. And if we lose the stasis field generator and the prison explodes too early, we lose all of New York. I'm not asking you to protect that equipment for the sake of my pocketbook, I'm asking you to protect it because it's doing a lot of really important stuff, so just do what I'm asking you to do!"

"...Well, gee, when you put it that way...!" Green Lantern agreed, reluctantly.

"Is everything else still operational?" Iron Man asked JARVIS.

"Actually, no. The Vision has gone offline, sir."

"What?" Iron Man spun around and looked at the monitor that had previously been showing the Vision's POV within the prison. It was black. "Great. So our boys are effectively on their own in there."

He looked over at where J'onn and Psimon were locked in what seemed to be a very intense staring contest. In fact, they were engaged in an incomprehensible battle on the mental plane. In their psychic battlefield, J'onn was a humongous dragon and Psimon was monster that looked like a cross between a lion and a tyrannosaurus rex. They had been locked in brutal combat for what felt to them like weeks.

Iron Man waved his hand between J'onn and Psimon. "Hello... anyone home?"

"We... are... in... mental... combat..." J'onn managed to choke out, his voice barely a whisper. "He... is... a... very... powerful..."

Before J'onn could complete the thought, Wonder Woman did a handspring, wrapped her left leg around Psimon's neck, and brought him down violently to the ground. She followed through with a sharp elbow to Psimon's temple, knocking him unconscious.

"Uh... a powerful opponent," J'onn finished, shaking his head. He was snapped back to the physical world instantly. "Thank you, Diana."

"Don't mention it," Wonder Woman replied, standing up, dusting herself off, and diving right back into the fight as she lunged at Silver Banshee.

"I like a lady who knows how to take charge," Iron Man said, admiring Wonder Woman's form. Then he joined back into the fray himself, flying into the air and going after Man-Bat.

J'onn was about to enter the battle again himself when someone grabbed him by the arm.

"J'onn."

He turned to see Bruce Banner standing beside him.

"Dr. Banner!" J'onn exclaimed. "This is no place for you! You must leave immediately."

"No way," Banner replied. "You guys need me. You've got dozens upon dozens of villains pouring out of that thing, and you haven't even gotten to the real heavy hitters yet." He paused. Then added, "Blonsky is in there."

J'onn did not answer.

"After Blonsky and I tore up Harlem, General Ross had him locked up in the N-Zone Prison," Banner continued. "He's as strong as the Hulk and as mean as a junkyard dog. You need me to fight him."

"Bruce, when I forced you to transform back at the fortress, you completely lost control," J'onn objected. "I opened the floodgates too far and the Hulk ended up killing the Parasite."

"I know," Banner said, sadly. "But that's why you're not going to open the floodgates all the way this time. I just want you to open them halfway."

"What are you suggesting?"

"I want you to bring out the monster, but keep the man," Banner said. "Trigger the physical transformation, but leave my mind in control."

"I don't know if I can do that," J'onn said, shaking his head. "That's like asking someone to detonate a bomb but try to contain the blast. The force with which the Hulk emerges is too strong, too powerful. I don't think I can control it to the degree you are asking."

"I'm asking you to try, J'onn," Bruce insisted. "Please. Try. Because otherwise, Blonsky is going to tear this place apart. And I don't want that on my conscience."

J'onn winced. There was already one death weighing on both of their consciences. The Hulk may have been the one to kill the Parasite, but it was J'onn who triggered the out of control transformation by unleashing the Hulk's full rage.

"Okay, my friend," J'onn finally agreed. "I will try."

He closed his eyes. He focused. He reached deep into Bruce Banner's mind. And he attempted to find a very delicate balance that had never been found before.

Banner twitched. He felt his hands begin to tremble. Then, a searing pain like a hot knife under his skin spread all over his body. He gritted his teeth and tried not to scream, but the howl of anger and misery escaped his mouth just the same. He fell to his knees and fought through the pain. His muscles grew, his clothes ripped, his body transformed.

For J'onn it was like trying to hold back a tidal wave. An overwhelming mountain of anger threatened to crush J'onn alive. Trying to hold onto Bruce Banner's intellect amidst the transformation was like trying to hold onto one grain of sand in a sandstorm.

After one long, agonizing minute, Dr. Banner rose to his feet again. The body of Bruce Banner, however, had given way to that of the giant green behemoth known as the Incredible Hulk once again. The Hulk stared down at J'onn J'onzz.

"Doctor Banner...?" J'onn said, uncertain. "Bruce? Did it work...?"

The Hulk smiled. "What was it that Ben Grimm was always so fond of saying?" Hulk asked in a tone that was most certainly Bruce Banner's. "Oh yes, I remember." He cracked his giant green knuckles. "It's Clobberin' Time!"