Bruce was sat up in his hospital bed, with sheets of medical reports laid out in front of him. The patient to his right was coughing loudly. Bruce thought he'd heard the patient referred to as Kent – the name of a canteen worker – but the burns and boils on his face made him impossible to recognise. Almost without break, he was violently coughing, many times forcing blood upwards.
The radiation burns were predictable and explainable, but the muscular growth, skin discoloration, and fatal dose of hormones, were not.
Some had become green, others red, a handful grey. And why was Kent more harshly affected than himself, when he had been right at the centre of the explosion?
He owed it to the dead and dying to try and figure out what was happening – perhaps even to reverse the damage that the subatomic energy had done.
Doctor Sterns placed another file on Banner's bed. He was clearly on edge, looking around with a mild sense of paranoia.
"I really shouldn't be sharing all this with you, Bruce."
"I realise that. But I need to know if the hormonal surge is natural. If we've got a murderer on base –"
"I know. But you need to rest. Your burns are healing pretty quickly, but we don't know what level of skin transplant you'll need. I don't want you exhausting yourself."
Bruce looked at his friend – he was clearly tired, and lacked his normal sarcastic spark.
"You don't look great yourself, Sam."
Sterns smiled.
"Just overwork. There are only four doctors on staff. We've been working twelve hour days ever since you decided to see what'd happen if you dosed us with gamma radiation."
Bruce smiled – he knew the insult was meant as a slightly tasteless joke.
The sly smile melted from Sterns' face, to be replaced with a more honest expression.
"I'm exhausted, and I've got the worst migraine. It feels like my brain's trying to force its way through my skull."
Bruce smiled, sympathetically.
"Hopefully it won't get too much worse."
"It's easy for you to say that – lounging around in your bed all day."
Bruce laughed loudly. As much as he enjoyed Betty's company, it was tinged with guilt over what he was putting her through. Sam's bedside manner – while unorthodox – really made him feel better.
After a pause, clearly hesitating over whether to speak, Sterns asked a question:
"Bruce, I've got an idea. It might be crazy, let me know what you think."
Banner was intrigued.
"Go on."
"I was thinking about the crew of Libra One. The crew who were exposed to cosmic radiation."
"You mean the Fantastic Four?"
"Yeah."
He only spoke one syllable, but the contempt Sterns felt for that name was clear. He'd never seemed the type for the slightly melodramatic – he was downbeat and sarcastic person at almost all times.
"Last night, I finally read that book you've been recommending."
It was a pop science book – The Rise of the Fantastic Four – written with the intent of explaining one of the century's greatest scientific mysteries to a lay audience. It was widely acknowledged that Reed Richards, while a brilliant scientist, was a lousy writer.
"I was thinking, could the subatomic energy have the same effects? The discoloration of the skin, and increased muscle mass, it could be slightly similar to what happened to Ben Grimm."
Banner took in Sterns' suggestion. The emergence of the Fantastic Four, and the science behind their changes, had fascinated him as a teenager. He'd tried to work out why they'd changed, but ultimately there wasn't enough data on the wave of 'cosmic radiation' for even Reed Richards to explain it.
It was definitely a new approach, one that wouldn't have occurred to Banner.
"It's an interesting idea. I'll give it some thought."
Sam left, leaving Bruce alone with an exciting new idea, and James Kent's aggressive coughing.