Summary: Stark Industries has developed a very specific type of security.
Word Count: 3674
Chapter 1: The First Level
Perspective: Bruce Banner
Bruce sat in a coffee shop munching on a sandwich, as Harry Nilsson's Everybody's Talkin' played softly through the building's speakers. The lettuce was crisp, the tomatoes were almost sweet, and his teeth slipped right on through. It was a relatively good sandwich. Painless. For the life of him, he couldn't figure out why that adjective came to mind though.
As he munched, Betty sat down beside him with a sandwich of her own, smiling prettily.
"How is it?"
"Betty!" he breathed and grasped at her wrist.
"That would be me," Betty spoke slowly, her expression turning quizzical, as she looked down at his hand and back up at him. "What's wrong?"
"I… you're here," he managed.
His mind flooded with concerns, questions, and scenarios. In his rush of thought something cracked and the world seemed to twist in on itself. Fuzzy colors and discordant music brushed past Bruce's senses and he distantly heard the sound of deep, monstrous roar before Betty's voice overrode it all.
"I promised I'd meet you here at two, so I'm here. I wouldn't miss a date with my boyfriend," she assured him, as she removed his grip from her wrist and softly enfolded their hands together. "Is the stress getting to you?"
"I don't… we're… boyfriend?"
Betty smiled a little. "I guess the boyfriend-girlfriend classification is little bit of an understatement, considering how long we've been together. What would you call us?"
"Estranged," Bruce answered immediately, his voice vibrating with as much tension as a taunt violin string.
Betty's smile faded. She looked like she was trying to make sense of a puzzle that was lacking some essential pieces. She frowned.
"Bruce, is there something you're not telling me?"
"I could ask you the same thing," Bruce replied, setting down his sandwich and turning his full attention to Betty. "Has it conveniently slipped your mind that I turn into a giant green rage monster when provoked? That your father is dead set on hunting me down? There has been no 'us' for years, and…" he paused and swallowed, "that I think it's better for you that way."
Looking at him with a mixture of concern and anger, like she couldn't quite believe those words had come out of his mouth, Betty snapped, "Alright, let's set that ridiculous giant green rage monster comment aside for now and focus on what you said about my father. 'Dead set on hunting you down'? What the hell, Bruce? He's been looking for you for weeks, but not in the ominous sort of way you're insinuating. He wanted to break the good news to you himself, but, seeing as how you're acting like a crazy, paranoid whack job, I'll tell you right here."
There was a strange buzzing in his ears as he listened.
"Bruce," she began, squeezing his hand tightly, "you're getting the Nobel Prize in Medicine."
"I… what?"
"My father has a friend on the committee, so he got to know a little early, and he wanted to be the first one to tell you. So you'd better do a class-act job seeming surprised once he actually 'hunts you down.' Got that? You have to stop running," she pleaded forcefully.
Suddenly feeling immensely claustrophobic, Bruce disentangled himself from Betty and stood, backing away a few steps from the table.
"Is this some kind of sick joke?" he demanded.
"How could you even say that?" Betty asked, standing up and approaching his retreating figure with a furious intensity. "The progress you've made for treatments of radiation poisoning has saved countless lives. You have done so much good for the world, and it hurts to hear you say these things about yourself!"
"Just stop it, alright? The experiments I conducted for radiation treatment failed," Bruce yelled, his careful control over his temper fraying. "You know that better than anyone! That's why I became that… that monster!"
There was a fissure somewhere that was ripping at him. There was painful throbbing in his temples, and the more he tried to decipher this ridiculous situation, the more painful it got.
It was right about then that he noticed that all eyes in the café had focused in upon their fight. Even some pedestrians standing outside were staring in the window at the two of them. Wait, that wasn't quite right. They weren't staring at the both of them; they were just staring at Betty. And they looked angry. It was unsettling, but Bruce only had a moment to consider the situation before Betty once again spoke, apparently able to ignore the multitudes of daggers digging into her back.
"Your experiments were a success, Bruce. If the personal thanks of the Prime Minster of Japan for the aid you provided the victims of the Fukushima nuclear meltdown wasn't enough to confirm that in your mind, maybe this Nobel will," Betty asserted, staring firmly into his eyes, not appearing even to blink as she finally asked, "And what monster? I don't know what you're talking about.'"
All of a sudden, he understood. If what Betty was saying was true, this was supposed to be a world where he had never met the Other Guy. This was supposed to be a world where he was still together with Betty and on the road to winning the Nobel Prize. This was supposed to be a world where he had succeeded.
Closing his eyes, breathing deeply and rhythmically, Bruce dug around in his consciousness for his alter ego, but came up empty. He was angry and stressed and strained, but there was no destructive, hungry monster on the other side of those emotions. His mind was his own.
He felt sick.
"I…" he began, tugging at the neckline of his shirt in a subconscious attempt to grasp onto anything of tangible, real essence. "I have to go."
"Bruce! Wait!"
He didn't. He was out the store and running through the streets before he really had time to consider his decision – running past crowds of people, buildings, and a billboard with him and a sickly child that he didn't take the time read.
There was something tugging at him in the back of his mind – throwing away any eagerness Bruce might have initially been inclined to show at the sudden disappearance of the Other Guy. There were so many strange and knotted issues that had been all but thrust upon him and he needed to get away to think. He felt horrible for how he had treated Betty, but at the same time his instincts were pleading for distance. Bruce didn't trust her, and he needed to make sense of why.
Suddenly, he heard two pairs of footsteps take the chase after him. He quickly looked back to see not Betty, but a pair of large, formidable looking soldiers. They didn't exactly look ready to take him to a Nobel surprise party. In a world where he was no longer the Other Guy's alter ego what reason would there be for the army to be after him? Bruce's suspicions deepened considerably. This didn't make sense.
The sounds of a fight broke out behind him. He glanced back a second time to see what looked to be ordinary pedestrians ganging up on the pair of soldiers.
One of the soldiers quickly shouted into a walkie-talkie: "His subconscious is rejecting us. The occupants are attacking. Code 18. I repeat; we have a Code 18!"
Taking his chance while he had it, while he didn't quite understand what caused it to occur, Bruce ran quickly away from the commotion. A few blocks down, he hid on the second story of an abandoned building, catching his breath and gathering what wits he had left about him.
Bruce idly watched as a pair of spiders skittered away from his shoes and disappeared into the dust. Distantly, he wondered just when he'd become used to running, being chased, being simultaneously suspicious and under suspicion, even by those he cared for most.
Considering the setup Bruce had just witnessed, it was hard not to suspect that perhaps Betty had been collaborating with the soldiers. Her words in the café could easily be transformed into a convincing argument for Bruce's docile surrender. It hurt to even consider this, because Betty had always been the one person fighting for him. Selfishly enough, if a world without the Other Guy was a world where he couldn't believe in Betty, he wasn't sure he wanted it. He was feeling more isolated and alone than he had in a long time.
A sharp, low voice ripped through Bruce's contemplative silence and he crouched down lower into a corner, instinctively. "-no idea that this technology even exists!"
"Yet, he'll maintain the consistent skeptical mindset of a professional scientist. He doesn't have to understand the system to respond to the stimulus it provides in a rational manner," another voice chimed in – this one quite familiar. It sounded like Tony Stark.
"Plain English, Stark."
Well, there was Bruce's confirmation.
"He's not going to believe the cat's dead just because you tell him it is, Goober. He needs solid evidence. He needs to take that cat's pulse."
"The sedative-"
"Means he can't get to the big guy now, but doesn't have to mean he never could or never will again. He has one data point and a poor actor's word for it. There's a reason soldiers don't go on SNL."
There were talking about him. They had to be. Who else had an alter ego that could be controlled by a sedative that was of large concern to multitudes of determined soldiers? This had General Ross written all over it. Did that mean Betty and Tony were…?
Bruce cut himself off mid-thought and peered cautiously out the nearby window. He indeed saw a figure he knew. Tony walked swiftly down the sidewalk in the direction Bruce had just run away from alongside an aggravated soldier, who was peering sharply in all directions. This wasn't the same soldier that had chased him just before. This one had silver hair and a square, harsher jaw. Bruce wasn't all too eager to get caught by this one either.
"Since you know so much about him, why don't you tell me where he is?" the man demanded of Tony, tone dangerous and low.
"How would I know? Last time I checked my orders were to 'not engage with the target,'" Tony replied lightly, emphasizing his words with finger quotes.
"You understand what happens if you sabotage our efforts in any way, shape, or form, Mr. Stark," the soldier growled.
"Yes, yes, that's what you're here for, Goober," Tony patted the man on the shoulder in patronizing reassurance. "But you can't punish me for being a good boy, and that's all I've been today."
The soldier – Goober? – moved faster than Bruce could follow, and Tony's grunt of pain was the first hint he got that the man had just punched his friend sharply in the stomach. Tony wheezed, falling to his knees and coughing.
"I don't take orders from you," Tony's aggressor intoned darkly before spitting on the floor right beside his thigh. "Now stay put while I clean up this mess. Better pray that I don't find out you made it."
With that, the man ran off down the street, leaving a crumpled version of Tony behind him. After a number of minutes, a recomposed man pulled himself up off the sidewalk with a fragile dignity and walked across the street to what looked like a small restaurant, where he sat himself at an outside table and began to talk with a waitress. In no time, he had a cup of coffee in front of him, which he sipped slowly, deliberately.
Bruce found himself torn between revealing himself and staying put. He had only worked with Tony for three months before disappearing. It wasn't like they knew each other very well. The lab had been nice. Tony and Bruce in the lab had worked out nice, but it probably wasn't that memorable of a partnership where the Stark Industries heir was concerned. Maybe Ross had paid him a lot of… but Bruce couldn't see it. Tony had enough money to pick and choose his clients, so it couldn't have been the money… but what if the military had twisted his arm? What if they had threatened Pepper? If this was a situation where it was either Bruce or Tony's long term girlfriend, he couldn't see there being a contest.
Even so, right up until the day Bruce had made his quiet, unannounced exit, he had never felt unwelcome at Stark Tower – quite the contrary, if he were to be honest. While Tony had never said anything for or against Bruce leaving outright, Bruce had noticed that there always seemed to be a new, exciting, Bruce-specific machine added to R&D whenever he started getting a little antsy. Distracted as he was by the unparalleled research and experimental opportunities, the little cycle of guilty restlessness and subsequent reward had kept him working at Tony's side two and a half months longer than he had intended to, and in that time the engineer and the physicist had learned and discussed a sizeable amount about each other's specialties. Bruce still fondly remembered Tony's late night, slightly tipsy rendition of the 'oily and glorious battle' that was his creation of Dummy.
But maybe he had been a little presumptuous in interpreting these gestures of hospitality. What footing could he hope to be on with Tony Stark in this time and place? Bruce didn't know what he was expecting.
Having made the decision to run from Betty – Betty–, he had to ask himself why he wasn't having that same instinct with Tony, just after he'd seen the man with one of the soldiers that were hunting him, and hearing him give that soldier advice on how to rein Bruce in. The guy may have gotten punched in the stomach in the middle of the whole interaction, but the two men certainly hadn't seemed like they were on opposite sides of the tennis court in this match. Bruce massaged his forehead unsteadily.
That was the word for it: unsteady. There were too many variables fluctuating, uncertain, off-kilter in his mind. Something inside him – around him? – was off balance, and he knew off balance. Those first few weeks after the incident when he was first and brutally introduced to the Other Guy festering on the border between his conscious and unconscious mind were similar. It was like he could never quite maintain mental calm and equilibrium – as if his thoughts weren't assembling and flowing properly. There was an addition or intrusion somewhere beneath the surface like a splinter that was digging and itching and throwing him off.
His mind's response to this splinter had made him run from Betty. It had made him run from the soldiers who had chased him. But it didn't push him to flight from Tony. Rather, it demanded answers from the man that seemed to have them.
Tony hadn't talked like Betty had. He hadn't described impossible worlds and fantasies that were unarguably and eternally out of Bruce's reach - at least not yet he hadn't. Bruce didn't want sugarcoated platitudes; he wanted the truth.
Taking a deep, calming breath, he crept slowly down the flight of stairs. As he opened the door, Tony made eye contact with him almost immediately from across the street. His gaze was appraising and just a bit sad, but mostly appraising. After a few moments, he looked away and resumed sipping his coffee. Bruce walked a few steps forward, Tony ogled a lady who passed by his table, and Bruce stilled again. Seconds passed.
Finally Bruce crossed the street and sat down opposite Tony.
"Nice weather we're having," Tony spoke distantly in greeting.
"I hadn't noticed," Bruce replied softly, and ordered a sandwich from the waitress. He'd left most of his other sandwich untouched at the restaurant with Betty, and he liked to finish the things he started.
Silence fell over the table. Tony appeared lost in thought or just plain avoidant. Bruce found it hard to tell the difference sometimes.
"That punch looked like it hurt," he commented during a mouthful of sandwich. It was a dry sandwich – not nearly as good as his earlier one.
"You would think that," Tony acceded with an inherent magnanimity, not skipping a beat, "but that is only because I am a very good actor. Goober has low self-confidence, so I thought I'd throw the guy a bone."
"I'm sure that's what it was," Bruce agreed with a marked lack of conviction.
The two slipped back into silence, as the words Bruce needed to say bubbled up in him, like a transformation to the Other Guy endeavoring to happen. He felt like a whistling teakettle and he could tell Tony noticed by the way his eyes focused first on Bruce's pupils and then on his tightfisted grip on the side of the table.
"So I'm being hunted again," Bruce finally said, his own voice sounding strangely flat, even to his own ears.
"Seems that way," Tony agreed lightly. "How much did you hear from that little hiding place of yours?"
"Enough," Bruce replied, hesitant to lay all his cards on the table. He was well within reason to be suspicious.
Tony stared at him, waiting, measuring. He took another slow sip of coffee.
"Are you-"
"Am I what?" Tony interrupted him sharply. He raised an eyebrow in challenge, as if daring Bruce to finish that sentence.
That was Tony in a nutshell – expecting people to trust him implicitly even in a situation like this. Bruce breathed heavily into his sandwich.
"Nothing," he finally said.
Tony looked momentarily thoughtful. He then smirked lightly, almost flippantly, at Bruce before averting his gaze to the side, appearing to watch the people pass them by. None of them gave Tony a second glance, which Bruce found a little strange, because there were always at least a few wayward paparazzi whenever Tony was out in public. At least there always had been whenever Bruce had accompanied him around New York. It made him wonder.
"Where are we?" he asked.
"A land far far away," was Tony's vague reply.
"Tell me," Bruce insisted, grabbing ahold of the wrist that held the coffee cup. He was tired of feeling cornered and confused.
His fingers wrapped around Tony's bracelet. It looked similar to the Iron Man bracelets Tony had shown to have had stocked at Stark Tower. The man glanced down and flicked the space between Bruce's fingers roughly so that his fingernail hit the bracelet with a metallic ting that echoed loudly between them.
"Oops. Missed your finger," Tony commented mildly, yet made no move to retry his attack.
Bruce didn't understand that whole exchange one bit, but it seemed to be all he would be getting from an irritatingly enigmatic Stark.
"Sucks when you don't have your suit on, huh," Bruce spoke again tiredly, releasing his grip with a vaguely unsatisfied smile. "You can't just get up and fly away from things that bug you."
Tony's lips twitched upwards in what appeared to be wry amusement.
"I don't need my suit to extricate myself from sticky situations. I'm a genius, remember?" he chided with a hint of good humor. "The thing about geniuses – like you and, of course, me – is that they're smart enough to never end up where they don't want to be."
"How come I never got that memo?" Bruce asked, only half joking.
"Don't blame me," Tony retorted. "I put it on your desk at the lab."
They both fell silent at this. The unsaid accusation rang heavily in Bruce's ears, and he tried to shove his arguments and excuses back down his throat. Tony didn't want to hear it, he knew.
"It's been a while," he spoke, the words slipping awkwardly off his tongue. "Sorry I didn't keep in touch."
"I already have an abundant number of pen pals, thanks," Tony brushed him off, sniffing delicately.
Bruce chuckled at this, letting out a breath he hadn't realized he had been holding in.
"Are they your pen pals or your secretary's pen pals?"
Tony couldn't hide his smirk.
"If they penned Tony after the 'Dear' then they're my pal, regardless," he quipped. He then hesitated slightly before speaking again with a decidedly more calculated air than before: "Somebody will always find you eventually, you know that. With your unique biosignature, it's only a matter of time. And by losing touch with the people that don't mean you harm, you give the people that do a fairer shot. Really, you seem to be acting much more like an idiot than I ever presumed you had the capacity for."
Bruce smiled sadly. He hated wrapping up people in his problems; that's why he had left Stark Tower in the first place. However, there was a small, soft, guilty part of him that was grateful for Tony's presence and potential aid. Bruce was unsteady, and Tony was acting as a sort of anchor – an unruly, unpredictable anchor, which wasn't always the best sort of tether to have in stormy seas, but Bruce was comforted nevertheless. While it was hard to reject comfort, Bruce had gotten good at doing things that were hard for him over the years.
"Thanks," he said. "Really, thank you, Tony, but trust me when I say I know that better than anyone. All of it. That they'll find me; that I'm an idiot for running like I do. But here's the thing. If I disappear, it'll be less likely that people I care about will be around when my house of cards comes tumbling down, and that's the way I like it."
"Well, now you're just being downright selfish," Tony said in a way that was almost uncomfortably understanding.
"I know."
He was still smiling faintly as the needle plunged into his neck from behind and everything went dark.