Chapter 11.

Bruce grasped at consciousness, stirring and sleeping in cycles. He had strange dreams, featureless forests, empty skies. Sometimes he saw the New York City skyline, felt himself soaring above it, saw flashes of green on the edges of his vision. And sometimes he was standing in the ruins of his childhood home, talking to someone he never saw, thinking about something sad.

He finally woke to the sound of wheels clicking beside him.

Tony was leaning over him, snapping his fingers, "Wakey, wakey."

Bruce recoiled at the harsh sound, eyes darting around a bright, blurry room. He was lying in a bed, a warm pressure on his body, scratchy sheets brushing his arms. "W-What…?"

Tony moved his finger back and forth, staring intently at Bruce. "You were attacked. Nat found you unconscious in a wrecked house. Care to explain why you were out gallivanting while I was suffering in a herd of crusty old guys?"

He was speaking too quickly to process. Bruce tracked his finger with both eyes – and his head, until it started spinning – and latched onto the only information he registered. "A house…?"

When his friend leaned away, the room began to clear up. Bruce was in a hospital, of sorts. He had been here before. It took him several seconds of dumbfounded staring to remember – it was in the tower. Tony had built it, said they might need it one day. Bruce had wandered around in here only a few days ago, sipping warm tea, poking various dormant monitors on his way through the dark halls. Everything was awake now, and people walked past a large window on the wall. He was lying in a bed at the end of a row of four, in one of the rooms that ringed a larger, central area. He was the patient.

"Focus," Tony said, recapturing his eyes as he leaned back into view. He turned a computer screen toward Bruce, sliding it as close as he could to the edge of the bed. "This is the gas that was used to attack us. Thoughts?"

Bruce was having a hard time processing language. "Attack… you? Is everyone okay?"

He was clearly grabbing the wrong information from this conversation.

Tony groaned. "Come on. Get the hamsters up and running."

Natasha appeared beside Tony. "Bruce, the party was attacked by a team of mercenaries using some kind of gas. It took Cap and Thor down. You're the one most qualified to identify it. But if you need a minute to acclimate, that's fine."

She looked exhausted. They both did.

"We don't have time for this," Tony said.

Bruce pulled himself into a sitting position, feeling strangely light, empty. He cradled his head, getting the impression that it might detach and roll away any second. "How long was I out?"

"Since yesterday," Nat said.

Bruce looked to his left, finding Steve and Thor watching him from the other beds.

"I think-" he began.

And then he looked back, dumbstruck.

"What the… hell?"

It was like looking in a funhouse mirror. Steve was tiny, diminutive, sick-looking. A shell of his former self, too small even for the bed he was lying in. Thor was pale, the luster gone his hair. His eyes were dim, sorrowful.

Bruce kept blinking, rubbing his eyes, trying to force his brain to acclimate to a startling reality.

"It was the gas," Steve said, in his same old calm, strong voice.

Bruce clawed at rational thoughts. "Oh, god. I don't know…" He looked back at the computer screen. Formulas. Numbers. His mind could grasp these things, place them in reality. He tugged the screen closer, absorbing everything he could. "I need anything you have on the gas. Anything."

"Coming right up," Tony said, bringing another man into view. "And I phoned a friend."

Bruce recognized him, holding his hand out immediately, forgetting the crisis, "Dr. Gregory Bloom? You wrote that paper on artificial intelligence and prosthetics, didn't you?"

Dr. Bloom looked remarkably like a blonde-haired, blue-eyed version of Tony.

"I did," Bloom said, smiling. "It's an honor to meet you, Dr. Banner." He tapped the computer screen, bringing up a new dimension of information. "I compiled this for you, but the science is out of my scope."

Bruce swung his legs over the side of the bed, regretting it immediately. He tipped forward. Tony caught him before he could go headlong into the floor, easing him back. "How about we keep both glutes on the mattress?"

"Thanks," Bruce said, though the words sounded muffled in his own ears.

He spent several minutes looking through the data, carefully committing every piece to memory, arranging the puzzle in his head. When he was a kid, he met every challenge this way. Contemplating. Reasoning. It gave him a stutter, because his mouth was often behind his brain. And it led to him spending long spans of time staring at random objects. He was once three-fourths of the way through unraveling the science behind a small bridge near his home when three other boys showed up and pelted him with rocks until he ran off. He was six.

Like it so often does, the thing that made him different as a child was an asset now that he was an adult. It was one of the things that connected him and Tony – though their interests were ultimately different, they had the same talent for solving problems entirely in their heads.

Bruce worked dutifully through the last few diagrams that Bloom had compiled, but he already had the full picture in his mind. He just didn't want to see it.

He pushed the computer away from himself, now solidly awake, aware, and he met the waiting eyes of his team, their guest.

"I know what it is."

Tony clapped his hands. "Excellent. Break it down for us. Might want to take it down to third-grade for Thor, no offense."

Bruce did not manage a smile.

And so the room stayed very quiet.

He said, "I… was working with a scientist."

"We know. Dr. Freeman," Nat said.

Bruce nodded, not bothering to ask how they knew that. Tony said he found him in a demolished house. Freeman was the last thing Bruce remembered before he fell unconscious.

"We were searching for a cure to the Hulk. He was using samples of my blood to study the genetic basis for my… abilities." Bruce took a deep breath, realizing now the scope of what he had done. "I gave him the formulas I used for my Gamma research and… I also gave him a sample of your blood, Steve."

Steve gave almost no reaction, just spoke quietly, "I didn't give you any of my blood."

"I took it while you were in the hospital."

A pinch of surprise, some frustration, and then Steve shut his feelings down. He said, "What else did you give him?"

Bruce said, "Nothing. Freeman discovered a common thread between our blood and the blood of other Enhanced humans around the world – a new base in our DNA. Or that was what it looked like. Now… I'm not sure about anything anymore."

Tony realized the implications immediately. "No way."

Bruce looked back at the molecule, gesturing weakly. "And that looks like the models he showed me, just modified. It looks like he added some things, but the framework is identical."

Natasha said, "Are the effects reversible?"

"I-I-I don't know. I need to study it. It could function in one of two ways – either by destroying the parts of the genetic code that don't match 'normal' humans, or by suppressing the extra base pair and forcing our genes to express normalcy. Honestly I don't see how either of those would be survivable."

Thor was agitated. "I am not human," he ground out.

"You're close enough to have similar genetic material, apparently," Bruce said.

Thor left his bed, charging across the room. "You will fix this!"

Natasha stepped in front of him, and Thor made the mistake of trying to go through her. She ducked back, swept his legs out from under him, and ended up with her knee on his chest, twisting his arm almost to the point of breaking it. Thor huffed, glared at her, but made no effort to fight back.

"You done?" she asked.

He looked away.

Nat let him go.

Bruce looked on, shame and guilt running rampant. "I'll find a way to fix it." He started feeling dizzy, disoriented. He sunk backwards.

Tony was beside him suddenly, steering him down into bed. "Easy. I'll bring the tech to you for now." He gestured around the room, "Can we get these guys some food?"

Bruce grabbed Tony's arm, desperate for someone to believe him. "It can't be Freeman. He's a good man. He just wanted to help me. He doesn't even have the resources to hire people to attack you guys. He wouldn't hurt anyone."

Tony lingered, suddenly mercifully patient. "How do you know him, exactly?"

"We met years ago, when I was critiquing a bioengineering paper. We started swapping theories. He knew about the Hulk and he wanted to help me."

"Is there anything you know that might help us find him?"

"Tony…"

"Hey, guilty or not, the guy is missing." Tony was uncharacteristically sincere. His dark eyes were intense. "Can you think of anything?"

Bruce struggled through the fog that was filling his head. "He used to have a wife, I think."

"Jarvis, run a search on Dr. Freeman, look for a wife."

Jarvis only took a moment. "Nicholas R. Freeman was previously married to Janet Freeman, an Oregon native, and they lived together in Virginia for several years before moving to upstate New York, where Dr. Freeman began working freelance for various government agencies."

"Status on the wife," Tony said.

"Janet Freeman was killed in an armed robbery in 2010. I have discovered an article on the topic. It would appear she was killed by an Enhanced individual capable of manipulating the properties of metal – he referred to himself as Metalhead."

"Metalhead," Tony scoffed. "Origin story is a little on the nose."

Natasha was still nearby, a little out of focus. "If that's true, he might have it out for Enhanced people. I can't think of a better reason to want to take their powers away."

Dr. Bloom said, "No, Tony's right. It sounds too… easy."

"Like someone set it up, right?" Tony was only partially joking. Exhausted as he was, Bruce could recognize the look Tony got when his brain was kicking into gear. "I feel like we're in act 2 of some guy's shitty screenplay."

Nat said, "What is this, a writing workshop?"

Tony said, "Look, maybe that's all true. Maybe he has it out for Enhanced people because of the tragic death of his wife to Metalhead. Either way, we gotta find him." Tony put a hand on Bruce, who was ready to defend his friend again. "Put your face in that computer, pedal to the metal, figure out how to counter this gas. We'll focus on finding Freeman."

"He didn't do this. He wouldn't." Bruce knew his words were useless, but he had to say it.

Tony shrugged. "Do me a favor and don't be as annoyingly dogmatic as Cap. People suck sometimes. Fact of life. Put your big boy pants on and accept it."

XxXxX

It nighttime when Tony returned to see Bruce in the lab.

He was on the fourteenth floor, running samples of the gas through a few specialized machines to try and pick apart the molecules Freeman had used to make it. So far, none of the Stark technology could break the bonds – if there even were bonds. Bruce suspected the gas was hybridized with alien technology, rendering many of his resources useless.

"I brought you some donuts," Tony said, dropping a box on the desk in front of Bruce, sending a stack of papers flying.

Bruce watched the pages flutter to the ground. "I arranged those alphabetically."

"Probably useless." Tony flipped the lid of the box open, hopped on a nearby stool, and propped his head up on his arm. He had deep, deep circles under his eyes. "Any progress?"

Bruce eyed the donuts, but his stomach was too unsettled to eat. "No."

"You helped make this, didn't you? Seems like it would be intuitive to unmake it."

Bruce was stung by his words. Tony said them nonchalantly, clearly meant to make a point. "I didn't help make it. I had no idea he was doing this."

"Some genius you are."

It was late, and Bruce was tired. He gave in to the guilt. "I know. If he did this to us… it was right under my nose. This is my fault."

"Well, I went off the rails and tried to kill everyone a few weeks ago."

"You were attacked. I was… selfish."

Tony took a donut, finishing it in just a few bites. "Rhodey keeps saying I gotta lay off of these, but I found this new shop just down the road. When you go in, all you can smell is chocolate. And Pepper isn't here to make me feel guilty."

Bruce halfheartedly studied a model on his computer.

Tony said, "It's not selfish to want to get rid of the Hulk. You just wanted your life back. I get that. I had shrapnel in my heart, and all it took to get it out was a few hours in surgery and some gnarly scars. Yours is way more complicated. I get it. I do."

Bruce shrugged. "It was still a mistake."

"You let your hope blind you."

"I'm aware."

"I'm not here to rub salt in your wounds." Tony popped his lips, wrung his hands, unsure of what to say next. "Just wanted to check in, see how old Bruce-y is doing."

"You're not good at this, Tony."

"Yeah, I'm no good at the real stuff. Sorry." Tony was staring at him intently, and then he dropped his gaze, fiddled with the edge of the table. "You know, what happened with the Whisperer… all that jazz. Everybody sort of went their own way after that. Pepper needed some time. I can't blame her. And everyone else – I mean, we're all adults here, with our own lives. Crisis averted means it's time to relax, right? But you stuck around. And every day, even when I didn't want it, I had someone to talk to. You definitely could have left – especially after that whole fiasco with the fish launcher – but you stayed. So I guess what I'm trying to say is, you can help at least six more evil scientists before I even think of leaving."

Tony could be sweet when he was really, really trying.

Bruce smiled, "I appreciate that."

"Eat some of those. You look like shit." Tony tapped his shoulder as he left the lab.

And the long, long night went on, with no answers in sight.