Hulk (17 page)

Ross started to respond, but Betty didn’t wait. Instead she pushed her chair back. “Why do I bother?”

“You’ve got this all wrong, Betty,” Ross said.

She had to give him credit. He was maintaining the facade of the concerned father for far longer than she’d thought he would. With one eyebrow cocked, she asked, “Do I?”

“Yes. I did want to see you. I’m genuinely concerned for you,” said Ross.

For a heartbeat, she hesitated. There was something in his voice, something in the way he was looking at her . . .

Then the medals on his jacket flashed at her, as if going out of their way to remind her who he was, and who she was. Science and the military had been at odds with each other for ages, and this was simply the latest skirmish in that ongoing battle. It was the oldest strategy in the world: divide and conquer. Either Talbot had been feeding her father lies about Bruce to serve his own purposes—and she could just guess what those were—or her father had some other priorities in mind involving her, or Bruce, or the project, or . . . or who knew what?

It bothered the hell out of her that she couldn’t trust her own father, but that was the simple, hard truth of it. And whose fault was that? No. No, she wasn’t going to feel guilty about it. She simply wasn’t.

She got up to leave just as the waiter returned to take their order.

“I wish I could believe you,” said Betty, trying to mask the sadness in her eyes, and then she turned on her heel and left without looking back.

She retrieved her car, drove as fast as she could until she was clear of the base, and then pulled over to the side of the road, turned off the headlights, and started to sob. She hated feeling the way she did. Here she’d dared to hope that her encounter with her father would lead to something positive. Perhaps the start of a whole second life to their relationship. Instead all that had been stirred up, like flakes in a snow globe, was paranoia and resentment.

And yet . . .

And yet . . .

Her father’s words nagged at her. What if—what if he hadn’t just been trying to drive a wedge of distrust between her and Bruce, for whatever reason? What if he was actually trying to help her, and her own suspiciousness was precluding his attempt?

She stared at her own cell phone, as if it were something that was out to catch her or trick her somehow. Then, ever so reluctantly, she picked it up and dialed Bruce’s phone number at the lab. It never occurred to her that he would be anywhere else. She could envision him there, working until all hours. After all, he had something brand-new to explore: himself.

The phone rang several times and then his machine kicked in. “Please leave a message” was all it said in Bruce’s clipped tone.

For a heartbeat she considered just hanging up without leaving a message, but her father’s words preyed on her mind.

“Bruce, you there?” she asked, hoping that perhaps he was monitoring the call. No response. His answering machine was voice responsive, and if she stopped talking, it would shut off, so she took a deep breath and continued.

“I saw my father. It’s like—” She hesitated, and then pushed on. “—it’s like he suspects you of something.” The moment the words were out of her mouth, she wished that she could retrieve them, or pull them off the recording somehow. Quickly, to make certain that Bruce knew she didn’t believe him capable of any wrongdoing, she said dismissively, “Oh, I don’t know. I was so impatient, as always. I should have heard him out.”

Well, enough self-flagellation for one phone call. Trying to issue Bruce a warning, she said, “I just think they’re planning something, with the lab, with you. Just call me, okay?”

She terminated the call, and then the headlights of a vehicle appeared behind her. A car pulled up, and she was certain that her father had chased her down to tell her more lies about Bruce, to mess with her mind.

A red light was lit on top. It was a police car. Through a loudspeaker, she heard, “Are you in need of assistance?”

She rolled down her window, leaned out, and gave a high sign. Then she started up the engine and eased herself back onto the main road. The cop watched her go. It was very reassuring . . . and it was depressing to realize just how few reassuring sights there were left in the world anymore.

It was some hours later that she returned to her home. It hadn’t been an easy trip. There had been ambulances hurtling around, some sort of accident. And not just in one place; had affected different spots throughout the Berkeley area. Betty, with her supernaturally lousy luck, encountered at least three of them. She kept looking for signs of overturned cars or the similar sights that one routinely espied where disaster vehicles congregated, but there didn’t seem to be any.

Instead she saw trees knocked over, a fire hydrant smashed to one side that was spraying water skyward, stop signs bent in half, and busted up pavement. It was as if some sort of major storm had swept through in isolated areas and disappeared. She’d never heard of Berkeley being prone to tornadoes, but that certainly seemed the only reasonable explanation.

When she got home, she checked her machine. She heard one message from Glen and two from her father, both of which she promptly deleted without listening the moment she heard their voices. There was nothing from Bruce. Why was it that she kept hearing from the men she didn’t want to hear from, and the one man who meant anything to her couldn’t be bothered to pick up the phone, despite the clearly alarming nature of her previous call?

It was ridiculously late for Bruce to still be at the lab, but she tried him anyway. When that attempt failed, she called him at home. No answer there either.

Now she was truly starting to get worried. She went to bed, but didn’t manage to sleep for more than twenty minutes at a stretch before either worries about Bruce, her old nightmares, or the occasional ambulance siren woke her up.

By the time the sun rose, Betty wasn’t feeling much more rested than when she’d first gone to bed. It was earlier than usual, but she reasoned there was no point to hanging around trying to sleep anymore. So she showered and dressed and drove over to the lab—and found it in a state of utter chaos.

The entire area was choked off with emergency vehicles: ambulances, fire trucks, and more police cars than she thought existed in the entirety of Berkeley. She was only able to get within a couple of blocks before finally giving up and parking her car on a side street. She then ran as fast as her high-heeled shoes would allow before encountering some police barricades and a couple of stern officers who wouldn’t let her get any closer.

“But I work there!” she told them.

“Look, lady—” one of the cops began.

“That’s
doctor
,” she informed him archly.

He shrugged. “Fine. Look, Dr. Lady, until we get this sorted out, ain’t nobody working there.”

“What’s ‘this’? What happened?”

Then she spotted what appeared to be a gaping hole in the roof of the facility . . . and she felt a burst of alarm upon realizing that it was directly over the lab she shared with Bruce.

Suddenly a horrific scenario played itself out for her, one in which Bruce had been up late working and had inadvertently caused some sort of explosion that had—had—

She fought back rising panic. The cops weren’t being of any help. She could see some of the lab security guards, but they were far too distant to hear her calling to them. Even if they did hear, they probably wouldn’t be of much use. One of them was gesticulating wildly, holding his hands wide apart in the instantly recognizable gesture that indicated size. He was talking about something gargantuan, and getting clearly disbelieving looks from the police who were hearing the story. Maybe it was a huge explosion. Maybe . . .

She was accomplishing nothing by standing there and worrying herself sick. Instead she bolted back to her car, jumped in, peeled out, and sped toward Bruce’s house.

Betty’s mind was racing as she tried to determine just what she would do if she got there and discovered Bruce wasn’t home, because that would mean he was at the lab, and he might well be dead.

Arriving at his house some minutes later, she saw his bicycle was chained up outside as usual, so obviously he had come home. That thought calmed her somewhat as she got out, went to the front door, and knocked, at first tentatively, then briskly when no answer was immediately forthcoming. She wondered whether she should be angry or concerned even as she fished around in her bag for her ring of keys. She thumbed through them, found the one for Bruce’s house, and inserted it in the lock. Moments later she was poking her head into the house, calling, “Bruce?” cautiously.

No answer.

She entered, closing the door behind her, and walked through the living room. Everything looked normal, and that in and of itself made things seem even more abnormal. She walked past one hallway, then stopped, backed up and stared. Down at the far end of the hall she could see the back door. It was swinging loosely on its hinges, broken.

“What the hell?” she muttered.

She went to the door and tried to close it, and succeeded in nearly tearing the whole thing free of its hinges. She looked around. The kitchen itself was a disaster area, canned goods and napkins and whatever else had been lying about just strewn all over the place. She continued, with slowly increasing dread, following the trail of destruction to Bruce’s bedroom.

And there, sleeping like the proverbial baby, was Bruce Krenzler. Bare chested, possibly naked, since she couldn’t see all of him, Bruce was tangled up completely in knotted sheets. He was sleeping soundly, which was far more than she’d been able to do.

“Bruce!” she said in a far more loud and alarmed voice than she’d intended.

Bruce sat up abruptly in response to the bellow, looking around in confusion for a moment, unable to discern from what direction he was being hailed. Then, after a brief time, he focused on Betty standing there.

And then, very slowly, he said, “I think . . . I’m not Bruce Krenzler. I think my name is Banner.”

what am i?

As Betty Ross was sitting down across from her father in what would be an abortive attempt at dinner, Bruce Krenzler was working—or at least attempting to—at his lab at Lawrence Berkeley. But his mind kept racing back to a time when he was quite young and had seen a very pregnant woman lying out on a beach. Disdaining more modest maternity wear, she’d been sporting a small two-piece bathing suit that had allowed her belly to bask in its full, stretch-marked glory under the sun. He had watched with fascination, creeping closer and closer as she lay there with her eyes lazily closed, and suddenly he had jumped back with a shriek.

The surface of her stomach had visibly rippled, as if something was trying to tear its way out.

The young woman had heard the boy’s yelp, opened her eyes, and smiled at his reaction. “The baby’s kicking, that’s all. You saw it kick just now.”

He knew in an abstract way that children were in their mothers’ stomachs before they were born, but he’d never actually seen such vibrant evidence of it before. The bizarre concept had stuck in his head, and even as an adult, he marveled at the sangfroid routinely displayed by even the most novice of expectant mothers. They never seemed the least bit disconcerted by the notion that their bodies had been usurped by something else entirely, that everything they’d known about their bodies was out of date as they underwent massive changes. “It’s the most natural thing in the world,” they’d say, but Bruce was never able to comprehend it. All he knew was that he was glad that he wasn’t a woman, and never had to worry about his body experiencing such odd transformations.

And yet here he was in exactly the same predicament, except it wasn’t the most natural thing in the world. No, it was entirely unnatural, and the more he studied the results of the tests done on his own blood, the more his head began to hurt and flashes of pain lanced through his skull.

He checked and rechecked, stared at the cells dancing about under the electron microscope, combining and recombining in a manner that simply didn’t track with anything that he’d ever studied or experienced. His thoughts were disjointed, confused, trying to make sense of it.
The cells . . . chemical bonds in the DNA . . . storing . . . too much energy. Impossible . . . impossible . . .

His lower back was stiffening up, his temples were throbbing, and from somewhere that seemed a great distance away, he heard a phone ringing, and then Betty’s voice. But he was barely paying attention, for exhaustion and fatigue were playing havoc with him. It seemed as if the shadows were moving.

Maybe it was that crazy janitor. Yes, that was it. The lunatic with the dogs was lurking about somewhere, lying in wait, preparing to . . . to . . .

He should have gone to personnel. Why hadn’t he gone to personnel? Why hadn’t he had the man investigated, rounded up, fired? Why?

Because you’re afraid of what you’ll find out if you do. You’re afraid.

I’m not afraid.

You are. You are afraid. Of us . . . of yourself. Of . . .

Betty’s voice.

It sunk in that Betty was calling him, leaving a message on the answering machine. What was she talking about? Something about her father saying things about him . . . suspecting him of something . . . planning something.

He jumped up from his workstation, carelessly knocking over a rack of tubes as he did so. He lunged for the phone, heard crashing behind him as something else was knocked over, and then he stumbled, fell, landed badly on his knees, then scrambled to his feet, thrusting his hand toward the phone like a drowning man, Betty’s voice promising salvation.

But she hung up just as he grabbed the phone, and he moaned. His salvation had vanished into the ether, was gone just like that.

He tried hitting redial but got a recording stating that the person he was calling was unavailable. She’d called from her cell, obviously, and now she was probably on the move again and the signal wasn’t getting through.

Bruce heard another crash, turned, and saw a tube of his blood tumbling to the floor, knocked over by one of the other falling racks. It seemed to be happening in slow motion and he just sat there, transfixed, knowing he was too far away to catch it but unable to take his gaze from it. The tube fell end over end, and then struck the floor and shattered, creating a puddle of dark red liquid that oozed across the floor. He looked down, horrified, frozen, and was certain that he could hear his own heart pounding, getting faster and faster.