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PART ONE
Dr. Bruce Banner watched on a sixty-inch monitor as human cells (dyed pink for visibility) were flooded with synthetic epinephrine (dyed blue for contrast). When the hormone penetrated membrane boundaries, purple plumes appeared inside the cells. This was expected. The cells themselves lurched, turned green (without benefit of tincture), doubled in size, and seemed to vibrate in place. This was also expected.
He collected his tissue samples himself months before, on a balmy summer day in Antarctica's barren McMurdo Dry Valleys. (Sunny, twelve degrees Fahrenheit, a relatively gentle breeze of forty knots...) Alone in a concrete bunker on a northern foothill of Mount Hercules he took his own blood, skin, lipids, muscle fiber, even bone marrow. Some samples required custom automated gadgets (and some very high-quality pain medication) provided by Dr. Helen Cho. Bruce also carried more than enough medical, chemical, and radiological supplies to conduct extensive tests on all of the expected samples. Everything went into an armored box which was ultimately whisked down a chute to Stark Industries' extreme location research facility for biosafety level five containment, a mile below sea level. The chute was then flooded with superheated gas and filled with caustic foam that hardened to granite solidity within hours.
The box went to Lab 17, one of twenty-four completely automated, completely isolated research facilities for the most dangerous microorganisms and bioreagents known to humanity. Three strains of genetically engineered virus hybrids, two strains of Z-DNA bacteria, Kala virus, simian flu, Tunguska spores, the Red Death, VX-5 nerve toxin, meteorite 1976-Vega, the St. Charles seedling, four human genomes with unique characteristics in common, and (now) gamma-irradiated human cells – all stored, studied, or simply buried beneath tons of permafrost, tundra, and stone. Robotic manipulators (state of the art when the facilities were built twenty years prior) conducted all work, directed remotely by qualified, authorized researchers from anywhere else on the planet. When all testing was done (or the supplies ran out) each lab could be sterilized in the same manner as the chutes.
On the screen (and almost ninety-five hundred miles away) purple blobs spread and contracted, darkened and faded, waxed and waned, again and again and again, in every green glowing cell. A gamma dosimeter reading for the sterile field containing the cell sample increased slightly. Readings for individual cellular interiors quickly increased to alarming levels, where they stabilized. This was not un-expected. Not since that morning, anyway, when Bruce started his experiment. Not after that day, spent verifying the initial results with every cell type available at Lab 17. Not that night, when he finally understood one more small aspect of the biophysics involved in the transformation from guy to other guy.
He looked at his smartphone on a nearby counter. Nine o'clock. I forgot about dinner. Again. Did I eat lunch? Bruce thought he remembered a sandwich, but he couldn't say what kind or where it came from. He sighed, shrugged, headed out of the lab. Based on earlier samples' performance, the cells on the screen would remain in their... enhanced state... for a few hours. Time to stretch his legs, get something from the break room, maybe check his messages.
He was surprised to find lights on in one of the unassigned research rooms. I thought I was the only one pulling a late night at work. A quick glance through the glass wall of the small room made him pause, then step through the open door.
Bruce recognized three of his own published papers displayed on two wall mounted screens. On another, Dr. Susan Storm's recent article in the American Medical Association's Journal of Medicine about nutrient absorption, conversion, and consumption rates under cellular stress. A printed paper copy of Reed Richards' treatise on gamma radiation's effects on organic chemical compounds lay on the desk, festooned with adhesive tabs.
Two whiteboards were covered in chemical formulae and physics equations, some finished, some incomplete with unknown factors noted in red. Bruce quickly ascertained all of the work was color coded according to discipline – general physics in black, general chemistry in blue, organic processes in purple, gamma effects in green. It was messy, and half of it seemed to indicate the researcher got sidetracked fairly easily. The relevant portions were correct, as far as they went, but someone clearly didn't have a solid background in organic chemistry.
"What's all this?" he wondered aloud, then startled slightly when a response came from behind him.
"Oh! Dr. Banner... Hey there." It was Tony's... protege?... from the happy hour gathering a couple of weeks before, holding a half-finished pizza bagel. "Umm... Mr. Stark said you were in the building, but I shouldn't bother you, but I was really curious, so I asked FRIDAY what you were working on, and FRIDAY said you were studying how Hul–... how, um, transformed cells process energy, which is super interesting!"
Seriously? Is theoretical biophysics 'cool' now?
"I mean, obviously, duh..."
Okay, starting to get why Tony likes having him around.
"Naturally I was curious, but I didn't want to bother you, and Mr. Stark already said not to, so I started looking stuff up, and, well... I think I've hit a wall."
Bruce nodded. A lot of people hit a wall when they get to Richards. "What's the problem?"
"I think I understand the cycle of how catecholamines are altered by gamma radiation, if gamma radiation affects cell receptors..." Bruce's eyebrows lifted slightly in surprise. He gestured for Peter to continue. "And I have a general idea how the altered hormones might unlock the gamma radiation stored in cells, but I can't figure out how you –"
"The other guy," Bruce corrected, so automatically he barely noticed himself.
"– don't pass out in five minutes without eating your own bodyweight in... say, ravioli."
"Ravioli?"
Peter shrugged. "For example."
"That's an excellent question, and one I only just figured out. Do you want to see?" Peter nodded enthusiastically. Bruce stepped back into the hallway, motioning for him to follow. "Come with me. I'll show you what I've been working on." His impromptu student hurried after him, the last of the pizza bagel abandoned on top of Dr. Richards' printed article. "You should read Michael Morbius' work on nutrient transfer through cell membranes. And Richards' second paper on how mitosis redistributes radiation load when cells divide. Those will give you just enough foundational knowledge to understand –"
—
Peter sat cross-legged on a table (one not cluttered with encrypted Stark data pads or pages of written notes) in Doctor Bruce freaking Banner's personal laboratory space, discussing the mechanics of gamma induced cellular transformation. Hours flew by unnoticed as one of the world's foremost authorities on radiation and biophysics talked to him like a real scientist – well, a real science student, anyway – about real science, with real-world effects and real-world impact. "So when the cells are still at baseline they convert raw nutrients and calories into adenosine triphosphate just like any non-irradiated cells."
Bruce nodded. "Yes! But when the cells transform," he pointed to a section of equations on a nearby whiteboard, "they induce gamma decay in raw nutrients as they pass through the cell membrane."
Peter shook his head. "Wait, what? That's impossible... Isn't it?"
Bruce threw his hands up. "Should be. But there it is." He gestured expansively at all the screens in the room, full of green cells with pulsing splashes of purple in them, replays of the day's efforts. "The altered noradrenaline somehow reverses ADT hydrolysis, making it act like an energy catalyst instead of a single-use transient molecule in the conversion process."
Peter was amazed. "That's crazy!"
Bruce fell back into professor mode. "Gamma decay increases energy available to the cells by...?"
Peter fell back into student mode. The calculations, mostly solved on the whiteboard already, took less than ten seconds to finish in his head. "Several orders of magnitude?!"
"And there you have it." Bruce leaned back against the counter behind him, crossed his arms. "Hulk cells are powered by gamma radiation."
"But not the same dose of gamma radiation that originally changed you. Them," Peter noted.
They both continued, speaking over each other but each paying attention to what the other said.
"Which is why –"
"Which is how –"
"– transformed cells –"
"– neither of you –"
"– don't just deplete –"
"– starves to death –"
"– the original gamma –"
"– from the change."
"– when they change."
At that moment, both of their stomachs growled. Loudly. Tony Stark, leaning on the door frame, chuckled.
Peter's head spun toward his mentor, a smile already forming. "Hi Mr. Stark!"
Bruce was surprised to see Tony until he remembered Pepper Potts was out of town for a week. While Tony usually kept a fairly typical work-play-sleep schedule to better match hers, after a couple of days alone he reverted to old patterns. (But not old habits, thank goodness.) "Tony. How long have you been here?"
"About a minute." He made a show of looking at his copper and bronze wristwatch, something the Avengers (and some friends) gifted him on his last birthday. In its component pieces. He enjoyed putting it together (without instructions, thank you very much) and he appreciated the oh-so-subtle Einstein reference. So much, he had DUM-E engrave the famous quote on the back plate when he was done. "Or, since one-thirty in the morning, if you want to get technical."
Bruce paled. "Oh... my. Peter, I'm sorry. I had no idea it was this late."
Peter buried his face in his hands. "I am in so much trouble..." His hands slid away from his face and his eyes widened. "I gotta get home!"
Tony took his weight off the door frame, held his hands up in a placating gesture. "Relax. I texted Aunt Hottie a few hours ago. You can stay here tonight."
"Oh, thank goodness!" Peter's relief was palpable, almost comical. Then his brow furrowed. "Wait, do you call her that?"
"I told her you were doing mad science with Dr. Banner," Tony grinned.
Bruce looked slightly annoyed. And slightly less slightly betrayed. "Nice. Blame me, why don't you?"
Tony was completely unapologetic. "She says don't do anything that violates the laws of nature." He wagged a finger at Bruce, then focused on Peter. "And she wants you home for dinner tomorrow." At the mention of a meal, Peter's stomach growled again. Tony tried to keep a straight face as he stepped into the room. "Okay, I'm calling it. Tools down. There's an all-night diner a block west." He gave Peter an appraising look. "Let's go get two double-decker cheeseburgers and triple fries for you..." Peter's eyes lit up. Tony turned the look on Bruce. "Vegan blueberry waffles for you..." Bruce was reasonably pleased by the suggestion. "And...an avocado mushroom omelet for me."
Peter looked at Bruce, his expression hopeful.
Bruce demurred. "You two go, I've still got a lot–"
"I'm buying."
Bruce recognized how Tony said please in his own emotionally limited way. Which was, sadly, personal growth since the two first met. "Just let me lock down the lab."
"I'll get my backpack!" Peter rolled backward over the table he was sitting on, landed on his feet, bolted past Tony through the door.
Bruce accessed the interface with Lab 17 in Antarctica. He returned all samples and supplies to their places; powered down the robotics; checked the bio-detection sensors for contamination; activated the automated sterilization sequences; then ran a quick systems check before he put the entire lab on indefinite standby and logged out.
Tony walked around the room, turned off electrical and electronic devices as he went. "See what I mean?"
"About..." Bruce looked at Tony. "The kid?" He glanced through the glass wall into the hallway. "Yeah. He's something else." He shrugged a bit. "Not really a bio physics kind of guy –"
"Give him time," Tony suggested.
"– but he picked up about half a semester's worth of organic chemistry in a couple of hours. All the way through." He scooped up paper printouts, handwritten notes, data pads, put them all in a file drawer, locked it. "He understands almost as well as I do why I can't be cured." Bruce said it easily. Almost casually. Without the usual tone of regret and resignation.
Still, Tony put what he hoped was a comforting hand on his friend's shoulder, gave it what he hoped was a reassuring squeeze.
"Give him time."
—
PART TWO
Dr. Bruce Banner loosened his knit tie and opened his button-down collar as he stepped out of a concrete and glass building in Queens' trendy Long Island City. Traffic was light, both in the street and on the sidewalk. It was the morning lull between the last wave of late arrivals to work and the first wave of early lunch-goers. A good time to avoid as much of New York City's standard hustle and bustle as possible. He could easily return to the tower before the streets and the buses became too crowded to be safe for him. Too crowded to be safe from the other guy.
Bruce had business in the upscale neighborhood. A rare opportunity to find new research on the effects of gamma radiation on human biology. New to him, anyway. Decades ago a Dr. Jeffery Clive of Vissaria, California conducted an independent study of gamma radiation treatment for blood disorders. While the study was never actually completed, some preliminary results were printed in an obscure science publication, one only recently transferred to digital media from paper. FRIDAY was able to establish Dr. Clive passed away before he could finish his work, but a lab assistant named Dell Frye was currently employed at a radiological research center in Queens.
A few emails later Bruce had an appointment at ABG Radiotherapy Innovations. Although Mr. Frye was not a scientist himself, he said he still had all of Dr. Clive's research notes. Not only those, but some of the original equipment as well, designed and assembled by the doctor himself. The older man seemed eager to continue his old mentor's work. He expressed disappointment his current employer didn't see fit to do so, despite repeated efforts to stir their interest.
They arranged to meet again the following week, but Bruce could not help but feel a vague sense of unease about Frye. His eagerness carried just a hint of mania. His disappointment verged on bitterness. His insistence on helping...
Bruce abandoned his train of thought when he noticed not-so-distant sirens became significantly the end of the block an armored truck emerged from a side street at high speed, made a wide left turn, jumped the curb, ended up driving on the sidewalk between the building Bruce just left and the line of empty cars along the curb. A few midmorning pedestrians scrambled off the sidewalk between (and over) parked cars. Desperate to avoid being smashed by the bumper and grill, or crushed beneath the tires, they took questionable refuge in the bike lane. Three police cruisers chased the armored truck from the side street but remained on blacktop. Two more turned in behind them from the opposite side of the intersection. Flashing lights and wailing sirens took over the street, their quarry claimed the sidewalk.
Bruce assessed the situation dispassionately, barely flexing a mental muscle. Assuming each of the curbside parking spaces was twenty feet long, fifteen spaces between him and at least twelve tons of rolling steel, the armored truck was three hundred feet away and closing fast. He estimated it would reach him in five seconds. Which put the vehicle's speed just over forty miles per hour, more than double the local posted limit. Bruce could simply get out of the way. He had plenty of time. But the armored truck would continue on, possibly injure or kill someone as the chase continued. If he let the other guy out when the truck was too far off, he might simply get out of the way, with the same potential result. Bruce needed to make sure the other guy stopped the truck.
Which meant letting it hit him. Them? Whatever.
Bruce's head dropped, his shoulders sagged. "I hate this part."
That was when Spider-Man streaked past his shoulder, close enough to ruffle his hair, almost a blue and red blur at the end of a polymer strand anchored somewhere above. He landed on top of the armored truck behind the driver's side door facing the street, feet planted firmly at the edge of the flat roof. Both arms extended forward and down, hands inverted and pulled back, fingers approximating I love you hand signs. Webs sprayed from his flexed wrists in a wide fan. The synthetic adhesive fibers immediately caught on the steel side of the boxy truck and the parked vehicles as it passed them, as well as a few signposts, some newspaper racks, a light pole, and the curb itself. Sheer momentum pulled the cars along with it, uprooted the signposts, whisked away the racks, snapped the light pole off at the base, and tore chunks of concrete from the curb. The armored truck decelerated suddenly but continued forward – Bruce could hear the engine rev when the driver tried to compensate for increasing drag with more gas. Spider-Man continued to spin his web, catching more parked cars and assorted curbside clutter. The webbed vehicles collided with each other, clashed and churned and tumbled until they quickly packed together in a compressed mass larger than the armored vehicle itself and still growing. Bruce could see the getaway driver's panicked face, see him fighting for control, the truck pulling hard to the left, the driver pulling hard to the right.
It was high time he got out of the way. Bruce backed up the steps to the door, just in time to block a small group of people from walking into the turmoil on the sidewalk. The armored truck sped past the main entrance to ABG Radiological Innovations before the driver finally lost his struggle with the steering wheel. The armored truck veered toward the curb, slammed into the rear fender of a red Toyota RAV4. The crossover SUV's front end hit a white Honda Accord, its back end slewed across an empty section of bike lane into the street. The armored truck shuddered to a halt when the front wheels met the body and right rear tire of the newly totaled Toyota. Spider-Man rocked forward and back but kept his balance easily, then leaped from the truck's roof to the sidewalk in front of the steps Bruce stood on.
Five police cruisers skidded to a halt in the street, barely settled on their suspensions when the front doors opened on either side. The drivers took cover behind the hoods of their cars, sidearms drawn to provide cover and response in case of resistance. Their partners ran to the armored truck, pistols held ready in front of them. Two took positions near the cab doors in front, three stood outside the vault doors in the rear. One of the officers back at a cruiser spoke into his shoulder mic, his voice boomed from a speaker hidden in his vehicle.
"PUT YOUR WEAPONS DOWN! KEEP YOUR HANDS IN PLAIN VIEW AT ALL TIMES! EXIT THE VEHICLE SLOWLY AND LAY FACE DOWN ON THE GROUND!"
When it became clear the armored truck hijackers would surrender without violence, Spider-Man straightened from the slight crouch he held when he rose from his acrobatic landing. Bruce recognized the stance. Not as practiced as Clint's, not as natural as Steve's, not as subtle as Natasha's, but someone was definitely paying attention to his instructors.
Spider-Man spoke aloud to himself – or perhaps to no one. "Oh, jeez, I did not think it would take so many cars to stop that thing!"
Bruce moved down two steps. "Should have done the math." Don't say 'kid'.
He made a broad, vague gesture with both arms. "I did! Mass of the truck!" He ticked off points on his fingers. "Carrying capacity! Velocity!" Back to the broad, vague gesture. "Everything!"
"Did you account for the driver flooring it to get away?"
Spider-Man facepalmed. "I am an idiot."
"Hey," Bruce objected, "who do you think you're talking to, here?"
Spider-Man turned to look, finally registered his bystander's identity. "Oh, hey, Doc– I mean, random person I wouldn't recognize because I don't know you. What are you doing here?"
Bruce beamed. "Not turning green!" He put his hands out, displayed them front and back and front, showed off the uninterrupted pastel beige color of his skin. Absently (and silently) noted he really was a very pale man. "Thanks for the save."
The person who was just on top of a speeding truck on a city sidewalk physically cringed. "Wow, that could have been..."
"Catastrophic? I agree." Something occurred to Bruce. "Shouldn't you be in school?"
"Teacher workday." He held up a fist at an angle to bump.
Ah, why not? Bruce obliged him, only a little bit awkwardly. "Nice."
"HEY!" The police, their suspects secured in separate squad cars, were asserting control over the scene. They put up tape, directed traffic past the scene, looked for witnesses to make statements, and spotted the friendly neighborhood "SPIDER-MAN!" Two of New York's finest walked slowly but determinedly toward the vigilante and the scientist.
Spider-Man's head dropped, his shoulders sagged. "Aw, crap."
"WE WANNA TALK TO YOU!"
"I hate this part," he muttered.
Me too, kid, me too. Bruce retrieved a rectangular clamshell case from his inside jacket pocket. "You might want to, you know, skedaddle."
Spider-Man looked at Bruce, then the police. "Really?" he asked, his voice low.
Bruce pulled some cards from the aluminum wallet. "Go. I got this." Bruce closed the card case, tucked it back into his jacket.
The dejected stance changed back to something almost practiced, almost natural, almost subtle. "You're my favorite Avenger, Doc!" Spider-Man suddenly sprang into the air. At the top of his trajectory he reached out with one hand and one foot to touch a third story window, levered himself closer to find purchase on the smooth vertical surface. The thick safety glass held when he put his weight on the pane. He scrambled up four more stories to the roof, then he was out of sight.
"HEY! WHERE DO YOU THINK YOU'RE GOING? GET BACK HERE!" Their pace did not change. Nor did their tone. They did not have weapons in hand, but one cop followed Spider-Man with a cell phone held for video. They were close enough for Bruce to overhear when they stopped shouting. "An-n-nd... he's gone. 'Person of interest departed scene before officers could engage for interview.' Whattaya gonna do?" They shrugged broadly, smiled at the thinly concealed private joke.
"Excuse me, officers." He held up his driver's license and Avengers identification in one hand, business cards for contacts at the Avengers Foundation and Department of Damage Control in the other. "The Avengers will happily cover all damages."
Bruce could not stop smiling. He almost never got involved in the aftermath of a... situation... where the other guy wasn't responsible for extensive property damage and at least a small crowd of injured bystanders. This was a new experience for him.
He liked it.