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  “N-no,” Bruce stammered out, his lower lip trembling, his eyes like saucers and his skin the color of curdled milk.

  “Yes!” shot back David, advancing on the child, stepping over the prostrate body of the boy’s mother. “Because you yelled! Because you cried! Because you weren’t a big boy!

  “See? See what happens when you get upset? Bad things happen! Very bad things happen when you get upset! Bad things happen to your mommy, and to you! And if you let yourself get upset, even more bad things will happen! Do you understand? Even more bad things!”

  “I’m sorry . . . I’m sorry!” And Bruce’s chest started to convulse as his breathing speeded up. He looked on the verge of apoplexy.

  David stabbed his finger in the boy’s face. “You’re doing it again! You’re getting upset! You’re going to start crying or yelling or shouting! Don’t do it, or more bad things will happen! Maybe your mommy will even die, and it will be all your fault! Do you want that? DO YOU?” And when the boy frantically shook his head, his father continued, “When you start getting angry, you just smash the anger! Do you hear? Smash the anger! Don’t let it take you! Smash it! Understand? Are you going to let the anger get you? Are you?”

  Bruce shook his head even faster, so violently that it looked as if it was going to topple off his neck. He wiped the tears from his face with the backs of his hands.

  Very softly, David knelt down and held the boy’s face between his rough hands. “Good. Very . . . very good boy. Now lie down, go to sleep.”

  “But Mommy . . .”

  “I’ll take care of Mommy. I’ll make sure she’s okay.” He lifted Edith to a sitting position and, a moment later, shifted her weight so he was cradling her in his arms. “Daddy will take care of everything. You go to bed . . . and remember what we discussed.”

  Without another word, young Bruce scrambled into bed. David had already secreted the tube of blood in his pocket, and he clicked off the light. It left Bruce in darkness, except for his night-light on the opposite wall, which was a small, green bulb. David exited the room, carrying Edith, while Bruce stared raptly at the green glow and burned his father’s words into the deepest recesses of his memory.

  When Edith came to, she was lying on her bed, and David was staring down at her.

  “What happened?” she whispered. “What in the world happened? Did you . . . did you see Bruce? And . . . you were taking blood from him . . .”

  She tried to sit up, but his strong hand kept her in place. “David.” She endeavored to shove away his arm. “David! Tell me now! Tell me, or I’ll take him away. I swear I’ll—”

  “If you do, you doom him.”

  She stared at him uncomprehendingly. “What—?”

  He licked his suddenly dry lips, and said, “I’m the only chance he has of being normal. But I have to continue my research. And you”—he pointed at her fiercely—“you have to shut up. You have to keep it to yourself, or they’ll take him away from us, lock him in a room, and dissect him. Me, too, for that matter. If you say you love him . . .”

  “Of course I love him,” Edith said desperately. “He’s my son!”

  “He’s more mine than yours. That much is certain.” He drew in a deep breath and let it out, rising from the edge of the bed and wiping away a coat of sweat from his forehead. “Edith, I had . . . have . . . theories. Things I wanted to work on involving mutations . . . mutagens. Tinkering on a genetic level that would allow the body to heal itself . . .”

  “I don’t understand,” she said. “What does that have to do with anything . . . ?”

  He turned to face her and, his words laden with the heaviness that can only come from a great unburdening, he told her, “They wouldn’t let me use human subjects.”

  She stared for a long moment, her growing disbelief obvious. “You . . .” She couldn’t speak above a whisper. “You . . . experimented on Bruce?”

  He rolled his eyes. “No, of course not.”

  “Then . . . what . . . ?” And then she got it, her hand fluttering to her mouth. “On yourself. Oh, my God, David. You . . . you did something to yourself.”

  “Yes.”

  “Before we conceived Bruce. Conducted experiments on yourself.”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh, my God,” and she looked in the general direction of Bruce’s bedroom. “He . . . you passed it on to him.”

  “Yes,” he said once more.

  Edith turned to him, grabbing at his arms. “Get it out of him! Whatever’s been done to him, cure him! You’ve got to!”

  “And I intend to,” David lied to her.

  “Is it possible?”

  “Yes,” he lied once more. And now it was his turn to take her by the arms and draw her close. “But it stays between us. Otherwise . . .”

  “They’ll take him away. I know. And you’re right. And I’ll trust you, David, to do right by Bruce, because I know you love him. It explains so much . . . so much . . .” And then she looked up at him, her eyes flashing fire. “If you fail him, David—or if you hurt him in any way—I swear to God, I’ll kill you.”

  “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 d
isgust. “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 overstressed engine letting off steam—and his mother sighed in silent relief as well.

  “It’s okay,” Bruce said, as much to himself as to his mother.

  It was the work of but a few minutes to get Bruce’s face cleaned off and a bandage applied. Fortunately the cut wasn’t especially large, nor did it require stitches; it had simply bled a good deal. In no time at all, Bruce and Davy were running back outside. Kathleen, shaking her head, settled back across the table from a wan but smiling Edith.

  “Strange; he hardly made a peep. Any other kid would’ve wailed his head off,” Kathleen observed.

  Not wishing to dwell on it excessively, Edith simply shrugged and said, “That’s Bruce. He’s just like that. He’s just so . . . bottled up.”

  Professor O. T. Wren, a lean man with an occasionally distracted air but incisive mind, had been working with David Banner on and off for the last year. He found Banner to be an aggressive researcher, but somewhat unpredictable. Professor Wren had heard through the grapevine that Banner had had some sort of altercation with General Ross, and strongly suspected it had not gone well for Banner. Deciding that an avuncular approach to the problem might be in order, he sauntered down to Banner’s workstation near the cyclotron to talk with him.

  When he arrived, all of Banner’s material was gone: all the work papers, everything, cleaned out. He stood there scratching his head, puzzled, and then he realized something else.

  The cyclotron was shut down.

  Completely shut down.

  And the second this horrified realization hit him, the alarm bells around the huge particle accelerator began to sound in a unified blast of noise.

  “Oh, my God,” said Professor Wren, and ran to sound a general alarm throughout the base.

  And as he did that, David Banner drove at high speed across the desert, heading home to settle accounts with that little monster of his, once and for all.

  sabotage

  The one thing that gave Thunderbolt Ross’s day any meaning was running toward him.

  “Daddy!” Betty cried out. She toddled toward him, all of two and a half years old, in a yellow sundress and her hair in pigtails. Ross stepped down out of the jeep that he had driven back to his home, a modest white A-frame with a neatly trimmed lawn. He went down on one knee, scooped Betty up, and held her high in the air, swinging her around in a circle. Betty let out a delighted squeal and shouted, “Again!”

  “No ‘again,’ little girl. Last time I did, I wound up wearing your lunch on my uniform jacket.”

  “Not lunch. Ice cream,” she said proudly. “We went for ice cream, and then I got sick on you.”

  “How charming you remember that,” he told her, but he didn’t sound charmed about it. He set her down, and she promptly wrapped herself around one of his legs. “So what did you do today?” he asked.

  “Played,” she informed him. “Mommy had a headache. She lied down.”

  “Ah,” was all Ross said, and his gaze flickered toward the house. He knew all about his wife’s headaches. Betty understood that every so often her mother needed time to rest. Betty didn’t understand about something called brain cancer. She didn’t need to. All too soon, she’d have to deal with it, but not yet. Not yet.

  Then Ross heard the phone ringing inside his house, but as he started toward it, there was an abrupt, frantic honking from a car horn behind him. He turned and saw a small convoy of cars and jeeps. In the lead was one of his aides with Professor Wren, one of the scientists from back at the base, in the backseat. In the passenger seat was Colonel Billings, Ross’s second in command.

  “Billings, what’s wrong?” Ross said immediately.

  Billings wasted no time. “Sir, I’ve had to order an evacuation of the base.”

  “What? Why?”

  “It’s the cyclotron, sir,” Professor Wren stepped forward, looking extremely flustered. “It’s been shut down.”

  Ross felt as if he’d missed something. “Shut down?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And why is that a problem?”

  “I didn’t understand either at first, sir,” Billings started to say, “but . . .”

  Turning toward Wren, Ross said briskly, “Professor, I keep the military aspects of the base running. I know jack-all about the science half. So why don’t you tell me why turning something off is worth evacuating the base.”

  “General,” Wren said, talking calmly with great effort, “the cyclotron has been running for over a decade. It’s not like . . . like a light switch or a Buick that just gets turned on and off when it’s needed. This is a seventy-million- dollar Tandem Accelerator Superconducting Cyclotron. It’s . . .”

  “It’s really large; I’ve seen it. Big, cylindrical, blue . . .”

  “Yes, all true,” said Wren, “and shutting one down properly is a very lengthy and involved procedure. We never do a cold shutdown of a cyclotron. Ever. Understand, General: The cyclotron holds about 2,000 liters of liquid helium, maintained at a temperature of minus 270 degrees Celsius. Shutting it off cold, as was just done, means that the core temperature will eventually rise to room
temperature. The liquid helium will then convert to 2,000 liters of helium gas, enough to fill approximately 1 million balloons. It’s like . . . like putting water into a pot, screwing a lid on tightly, and then putting the pot on a burner. Sooner or later—probably sooner—there’s going to be an explosion.”

  “My God,” said Ross, beginning to grasp the immensity of the situation. “How big an explosion? What type? Nuclear?”

  “From the cyclotron itself? Probably not.”

  “Probably?”

  “I’m not an expert on cyclotron explosions, General!” Wren said in obvious exasperation. “I’m not sure what we’ll get! And need I remind you there are other potentially explosive materials in the lab as well. When the cyclotron goes . . .”

  “I understand the problem, Professor,” said Ross, and he turned to Billings. “Is the base clear? Are we far enough away where we are right now? How long have we got?”

  “Evacuation was almost accomplished before I came out here, General,” Billings told him. “According to the professor, the farther away the better . . . and we’re not sure how much time we have.”

  “I make it twelve to fifteen minutes from now,” Wren said helpfully.

  “Wonderful. Who in blue blazes did this?”

  And then he knew, and before anyone could respond, he answered himself. “Banner. David Banner.”

  “He was the last one logged into that station, sir,” said Wren.

  “Billings! Get my wife taken out of there, and bring her and Betty to safekeeping. I’m commandeering one of the jeeps and going after Banner.”

  Betty apparently heard that, because she dashed over to her father and cried out, “Daddy! I want to come with you!”

  “You can’t, sweetheart.”

  “Please! Please!”

  The child was bordering on hysterics, and Ross didn’t have any time to stand around and discuss it. “Fine!” he said, and practically tossed her into the back of the jeep. He pointed to one jeep filled with MPs and shouted, “You! With me! Billings, can you and Wren get another jeep to get my wife out of here?”