Hulk secrets and spycraft
After Hulk vanishes (after age of ultron)
Steve Rogers sat in his office and wondered how it had come to this. He had a swivel chair at a futuristic looking steel and glass desk with a state of the art computer on it, shelves of books and personal effects, a personal armoury with a rack of guns and unusual weapons, pride of place was a special stand for his shield. He even had a view, down over the training fields to the obstacle course and the woods.
This is not how he thought he'd end up.
He'd been thrown seventy years into the future, fought Gods and Monsters and Aliens and things he'd never dreamed of, and now he had an office job.
But it was just a breathing space between actions, so he used it as a chance to read up on things he'd missed, advances in technology and reports on people who may be threats.
Though he often found himself looking out of the window, watching Wanda throwing sandbags about with that mystic red glow of hers. The kid had a good heart, that's for sure. She'd started from a place of real darkness but when she had to choose between revenge and protecting people, she'd made the right choice.
She made an odd couple with the Vision, but the android was the ideal partner for her while she trained, as her powers seem to have been granted by the mind stone that now powered Vision so she probably couldn't hurt him by mistake.
Once she could throw those bags reliably without ripping them they'd start work on practising safely moving people.
His office door was open, as always, but there was a knock anyway. He looked up and the Black Widow was standing in the doorway.
"Hi Nat, come on in" he looked at a report on his desk. "If it's about your idea for testing Wanda under stress I really don't think she's ready for live ammo yet, but the baseball pitching machine is a good idea. If she can shield against those or even catch or deflect them that could be a valuable skill."
She padded softly across the room, ignoring the spare chair and perching on the edge of his desk instead.
"No, it's not that." She seemed uneasy, almost nervous. Which was unusual for her.
Steve sat up and took notice, something was wrong.
"Steve, I… I need to tell you something. About me and Bruce"
"Ah, Bruce. I'm sorry. I was hoping you two would work it out, you did look good together. But he's still missing?"
She nods "No one knows where he went. Fury had a few possible leads but nothing checked out. He's just vanished, even to my network. I've no idea how he was even flying that Quinjet as the Hulk."
She can't look him in the eye.
"Now, I need to be honest with you, as I feel wrong lying to you. It's not really in my nature so go easy on me, ok? When Fury asked me to recruit Bruce to the Avengers he told me a few secrets I think you should know."
"About the Hulk? Was he really a super serum experiment gone wrong?"
"It didn't go wrong. When you had your serum you were bathed in Vita rays which fuelled your rapid tissue growth and you grew to a perfect optimal human." She looks him over; he's in his casual uniform but still obviously an impressive physical specimen.
"Bruce was exposed to a massive dose of high energy gamma rays and so the serum changed him to survive that – he grew to a form that was all but immune to gamma radiation. The rage and strength are just an extreme defensive reflex."
"So if they'd used Vita rays he'd have been alright?"
"They think so. But the Hulk program was looking into making soldiers who could survive and fight during a nuclear war, which is why they were using things like nuclear radiation."
Steve frowns, remembering the earnest concerns of Dr Erskine "That's not what the serum was made for!"
"I know, we're lucky it didn't work like they hoped."
She sighs, kicking her heels.
"Fury told me that there is a group of really high level thinkers that look out for extreme threats to Earth, proper extinction level things. They noticed something unsettling about the Hulk. His physiology changes when he gets angry, he gets bigger, stronger, heavier. He heals insanely fast, he doesn't need to breathe or sleep or even rest. All That mass and energy has to come from somewhere. Their scientists don't know how he does it, but they do know he somehow generates a lot of power with no apparent source. And it gets more powerful the angrier he gets. The danger is that his growth and healing allow him to adapt and evolve insanely fast. Every time he changes form the Hulk is different, he grows and adapts to the threats around him."
"It's not the same Hulk?" Steve pauses, thinking "He does seem to be bigger sometimes, I thought it was just he was angrier…"
"It varies subtly but it's there. What scared them is that several times when he's been alone and surrounded by enemies he's actually given off Gamma radiation. Low level pulses at first, but still enough to be noticeable and dangerous."
"He gets radioactive?"
"At the moment, no. but predictions show that if he kept growing and using that power in six months he'd be a threat to all life on Earth. He'd irradiate the area around him and his attacks would conceivably cause nuclear explosions in the kiloton range, energy that he'd absorb and release as bigger and bigger explosions."
"Until…" She hugs her arms around herself. "Until he becomes a living chain reaction that is strong enough to destroy the world. Not just made it uninhabitable with the radiation and nuclear winter, but actually burned the atmosphere off and cracked the planetary mantle, literally rip the planet apart."
"That's terrifying. But he's not done anything like that with us?"
"They think that only happens if he doesn't care about the people round him. If he becomes so lost he starts to hate humanity. We couldn't allow that to happen."
Steve looks at her face. This was the side of the Spy Game he never could stomach, lying to peoples nad manipulating them, even if it was for the greater good.
"So Fury asked me to get close to Bruce. Open up to him emotionally, connect to him. Give him something to live for. And honestly, He scared me. Really scared me. and, well, you know I find that kind of exciting."
Steve sits forward, a concerned frown on his face
"But if he finds out you're faking it to manipulate him, he'll go berserk."
"That's why it's not faked, Steve. Bruce is a smart guy, he'd know. But Nick knew that under all this spy reserve I'm just a hopeless romantic at heart. I'm Russian; we love a good doomed romance. I just have to keep it under lock and key most of the time."
That's an understatement, Steve thinks
"So while I intellectually know what I'm doing has ulterior motives, emotionally I really do like him, he's a good man trapped in a terrible situation and i do honestly want to help him."
"That's another level of subterfuge; you've weaponised honesty to manipulate someone"
She shrugs. "The truth is powerful, you just have to apply it carefully"
"Fury ordered you to let yourself fall in love with a man capable of becoming living radioactive Armageddon device?"
"He didn't order me, Steve. He just told me the facts and what needed to be done, I made my own choices. My life for the safety of the world seemed a fair trade. Like you used to say, making the sacrifice play. And it's worked."
She stands up and faces him "But now it's time to put little lovesick Romanov back in her box, her jobs done and she can rest. I can do spying, training, being mom to the new guys but I need some Widow time. Find bad guys, hurt them, break things. Understand?"
Steve nods and passes her a file with a little smile. "Here, these people definitely need hunting down"
She gives him a feral grin
"I'm on it, Sir"
And she left his office with an almost indecent swing in her hips and a spring in her step
Steve watched her go and shook his head ruefully. He almost pitied the people in that file.
She left that afternoon and just vanished for a week. If it wasn't for the daily winky face emoji she'd chosen as her check in he'd be worried.
Then the police reports started to come in, tagged with the case reference number. Arrests in Turkey and Spain, Armenian sex traffickers busted, smuggled shipments of weapons and illegal drugs seized.
But other random news stories were being tagged. A luxury yacht sinking in Monaco. An Italian cardinal committing suicide. Gang wars and shoot outs across Europe.
Some were just odd, like a giraffe being stolen from a zoo, or an actual Nigerian prince being arrested trying to smuggle gold bars bought with stolen aid money.
But some were truly disturbing. A gang of hardened criminals surrendering to Interpol because someone skinned a rival gang alive. A whole warehouse of smugglers found screaming, blinded by an unknown toxic nerve gas in a shipment they were trying to move.
Out on the practise field Steve took a few steps back. He was suited up in his armour and had his shield ready.
In front of him, Wanda was concentrating next to a forty foot tall wall. Overhead the Vision hovered, observing impassively.
Steve stretched and got ready "Ok, nice and easy. I'll run at the wall and jump, you try and pick me up and throw me over. Ok?"
Wanda nodded, a red glow already swirling around her hands
Steve started his run, sprinting hard then jumping, tucking himself into a ball behind the shield. He felt an invisible force under and around him and a powerful, even push then he was flying up, over the wall, over the crash mats and in a low arc towards the ground. He landed in an easy roll, letting the shield absorb his momentum and coming to a stop in a ready crouch.
Grinning, he turned and gave Wanda an approving thumbs up "That was great! Push was nice and even, no pulls or sharp edges"
The young Sarkovian grinned back, flushed with pride.
From the side of the field, Natasha started to applaud "well done!" She was casually dressed in tight black jeans and a red matador style leather jacket over a black vest top.
"I just got in. Mission accomplished, Sir" she gave Steve a cheeky little smile
He turned to Wanda "Carry on with the sandbags, I'll be back out later" then marched over to Nat.
"Debrief, Now" he almost growled, voice low and intense.
"It's ready in your office, Sir" the smirk vanished but her eyes were bright. "I hope you approve"
He almost marched her inside "I need you to tell me the reports aren't true" The intensity of his gaze, anger held in check with will almost pressed her against the wall. He was worried she'd gone too far
She took a breath and said "Don't worry. The worst parts were just psy-ops."
"Psy ops?"
"Psychological Operations. Terror tactics. Guerrilla warfare and Scare stories."
He visibly calmed. "I hoped so, but had to know."
"I'm ruthless not Sadistic, Steve"
"So how do you fake skinning thirty people alive?"
She led him into the briefing room next to his office "simple, it never happened."
"It happened enough to scare the mob to death"
"I just found a corrupt cop and faked the police report, made sure it went across his desk then flagged it as classified, passed it back then deleted it. No records of it. He now thinks it was all a massive cover up"
"That was it? One report?"
"well, it was all timed with a big INTERPOL operation so a lot of people got arrested or went on the run. I just stole a few cars, parked them in a rented warehouse, splattered the scene with a few pints of medical blood, some bleach then gasoline and burned the place down. Put brand new padlocks on an unused meat storage unit. Put that address on morgue transfer paperwork then shredded it. Lots of little things that a paranoid detective would think were clues. He passed it up to his Boss and the panic spread" She grins. "No one suffered except the guilty."
"Good." He sighs. "Sorry, I didn't mean to think bad of you but something Fury said keeps coming back to haunt me."
She goes very still; watching him then very carefully asks "What did he say?"
"It was after the Lumerian Star, I was angry with him about sending you on a side mission, you were stealing intel while Rumlow needed you to guard the hostage extraction. Fury said he didn't trust me to obey orders without question. that he wasn't going to ask me to do anything I wasn't comfortable with. But he said that you were comfortable with everything."
He looks at her with a worried frown "On the way to Jersey, you said that for you the Truth is a matter of circumstances. That's no way to live, having no goals, no roots, nothing apart from what people tell you to do. I heard something similar recently, had to do some research. The Hashishim, the people who the word 'assassin' is taken from had a secret law – "Nothing is true, everything is permitted". That moral-less code let them kill with impunity for hundreds of years, making oaths and breaking them without hesitation. Now? In these insane days they made a computer game out of it. The most dangerous ideology possible is just entertainment to people now."
She lays one hand on his chest.
"These are crazy times. And yes, for a long time I didn't have any morality or free will, you know I was just a weapon wielded by the Red Room. Fully conscious, but without will, without any freedom of choice. Now, I can make my own choices and make my own moral judgements. That's why I joined SHIELD. Why I'm an Avenger"
He fetches a file and a battered paperback from his office "I finished that copy of On Benefits you lent me. Interesting stuff, raises a lot of questions about morality I think I need to find answers for. Part of the Avengers training regime needs to be when to act directly and when to defer to others. The trouble is how to define right and wrong in simple reasonable terms."
"The worlds too complex for a simple set of rules that will always work."
"But I can't get SHIELD to sign off on "The Avengers will just do what we feel is right". It's too vague, it scares them"
Natasha laughs "I can just see Nicks face if you try that"
He opens the file. "Also, I had the lab run a test on my blood to see when it freezes and they were surprised it just got thick down at 21 degrees." He pauses. "that's Minus 6 centigrade. Apparently I have unusual glycoproteins in my blood, they did tests when they defrosted me and they found parallels with the metabolisms of Antarctic cod and these frogs who can freeze solid"
She looks at him and nods slowly "You adapted to survive the ice"
He looks over the papers "So the worries about the Hulk going nuclear seem scarily plausible"
"Good to know. But we don't need to worry about that any more, I hope"
Steve sighs "I hope so. I don't like how this is turning into an office job, sitting and waiting for the next disaster. I'm not cut out for that side of things. I need to be leading from the front."
"Sounds like you need the field time as much as I do – how about a sparring session and then we can plan a field training exercise? I'll think I need to teach you more spy-craft"