“I understand,” he said, and he truly did. The problem was she didn’t. But she would.
Eventually she would, if it was the last thing she did.
instinct
David Banner was just checking the readings on the latest cyclotron experiment when he saw General Thunderbolt Ross barreling toward him. Banner took a deep breath to calm himself and forced a smile, even though his immediate instinct was to head the other way.
Instead, he said, with a joviality he didn’t feel, “Why, hello, General. The new rank sits well on you, I have to say.”
“In my office, Banner,” Ross said without preamble.
Banner rose from his workstation, and pointed at the cyclotron. “This might not be a good time, General. We’re right in the middle of accelerating the atomic nuclei of gamma part—”
“Do I appear to care, Banner?” He took a step closer, his mustache bristling. He was a barrel-chested man with graying hair cut to regulation army shortness, and the brusque manner of one who has nothing but distaste for civilians, since they didn’t take well to orders. “It will keep. Now get over to my office, on the double.”
“Very well,” said Banner coolly after a moment’s consideration. “Lead the way.”
“Get out of the way.”
Bruce Banner was playing in the street with his friend Davy when suddenly a bigger boy, whom Bruce had seen around from time to time, blocked their path. His name was Jack, as Bruce recalled, and although to an adult he would have looked like a child, to a child he looked like a giant.
Bruce knew that he was no danger to the boy. Jack was far wider than Bruce, and taller, and Bruce was a skinny and unthreatening four-year-old even under the best of circumstances. He did precisely as he was ordered.
The bigger boy smiled lopsidedly, and said, “Thanks, runt,” and suddenly Bruce knew that something bad was going to happen, because he always had a sense of these things. Sure enough, Jack had a large stick in his hand, a twisted branch he’d snapped off a tree somewhere. He swung it and struck Bruce on the side of the face, leaving a line of blood where it had hit.
Davy let out a yelp of anger on his friend’s behalf, but Jack ignored him, shoving him aside, and aimed the stick again at Bruce. He swung for the same spot, and hit Bruce again. Bruce staggered from the impact, but didn’t fall.
Nor did he cry. His face remained utterly impassive, even though one side of it was running with blood.
“C’mon! Aren’t you gonna try to hit back?” Jack challenged.
Bruce made no move.
Jack threw the stick down and poised there, fists cocked, and bellowed, “See? Got no stick! C’mon! C’mon!”
Bruce began to tremble, and at first Davy thought he was trying to avoid sobbing, but that wasn’t the case. Instead he was shaking with suppressed anger. No cry escaped his lips. He just stared and stared, and finally Jack lowered his fists in disgust. “Baby! Chicken baby!” he snarled and turned away.
And still Bruce just stood there . . . and said nothing.
David Banner stood in front of Ross, trembling with such fury that he couldn’t manage any words. Ross was leaning against his desk, holding up lab reports. “The samples we found in your lab, they were human blood,” Ross said with the satisfaction of someone who has just had a suspicion, long denied, finally confirmed. “You’ve ignored protocol.”
“You had no right snooping around in my lab. That’s my business,” said David.
“Wrong, Banner,” said Ross. “It’s government business, and you’re off the project.”
And David Banner screamed with rage. He cursed at Ross, he bellowed about the army’s ingratitude and shortsightedness. He questioned Ross’s parentage and, for good measure, almost took a swing at him before good sense made him realize that Ross could probably kill him.
“Shut down whatever you’re working on, Banner,” Ross said icily, never once coming close to losing his temper despite Banner’s extended rant. “You’re off the project and off this base.”
Realizing there was nothing to be said but something to be done, David Banner exited the office and headed off to carry out General Ross’s last order to him.
“You want it shut down,” he snarled, “you got it shut down.” And as he stormed away, the same angry, unreasoning, infuriated thought kept going through his mind:
It was all Bruce’s fault.
If Bruce hadn’t been born, he wouldn’t have been using the boy’s blood in experiments and, consequently, been found out. If Bruce hadn’t been born, he wouldn’t have had Edith yammering at him about finding a cure for his condition. If Bruce hadn’t been born, David could have experimented at his own pace, on his own schedule, and in his own way. But the arrival of Bruce, and the freak way in which the mutagens in his blood had reacted, had thrown everything off.
David Banner had been working nonstop for week upon week, and it had taken its toll on his already fragile psyche.
He headed down to the cyclotron to do what needed to be done there. After that, he’d head home and attend to the monster who had ruined his life.
“Bruce, you’re hurt,” said an alarmed Edith Banner.
She’d been sitting and having a quiet afternoon coffee with her friend Kathleen from next door when Bruce was hauled into the kitchen by Kathleen’s son, Davy. Davy’s words spilled out: “Jack hit him with a stick, but Bruce wouldn’t even hit him back. He just stood there shaking, and—”
And then she saw it. Just for a moment, she saw Bruce beginning to tremble just from the recounting of the incident, and there was a telltale bubbling of his skin. Kathleen and Davy were too distracted by the blood on his face to notice the odd distortions of his arm, and then, just like that, they were gone. Bruce let a relieved breath hiss through his front teeth—an
