CHAPTER 17

Ross paced across his office as he watched the news reports on TV. He grimaced as they showed footage of the final explosion.

The coverage switched to a reporter in a newsroom. “Rumors continue to swirl about a clash between the US military and an unknown adversary at Culver University earlier today,” the reporter announced.

The TV now showed a blond reporter standing with two students on campus. “Very few outside the military got a firsthand look at who—or what—the soldiers were fighting,” she said. “Sophomores Jack McGhee and Jim Wilson were coming home from a hike and witnessed some of the battle. McGhee captured this on his cell phone.” The screen flashed an extremely grainy image of the creature.

The reporter held up her microphone to the nearest student, Jack McGhee. “Can you describe what you saw?” she asked.

“Dude, it was huge and green!” McGhee exclaimed.

“Dude, it was so big,” Wilson agreed. “It was like this huge… hulk.”

The reporter faced the camera again. “Further search for the mysterious ‘hulk’ was delayed by powerful thunderstorms in Smoky Mountains National Park.”

Ross wheeled around when Sparr entered his office.

“Sir. It’s Blonsky,” said Sparr.

Ross and Sparr hustled toward the hospital ward. As they pushed through the ICU doors, Ross asked, “Has anybody found out if he had next of kin or family?”

Sparr held open the door for him. “You can ask him yourself,” she replied.

A group of doctors and nurses backed away from Blonsky’s bed as Ross entered, and Ross could see Blonsky sitting up, laughing. One of the nurses was taking off a metal splint from his hand. He was completely healed. Ross reconsidered what he’d thought earlier about the Super-Soldier serum. Apparently it had made Blonsky tougher than Ross had thought.

Blonsky grinned when he saw Ross. “Sir,” he said.

Ross approached Blonsky and looked him over, astounded by the recovery. There wasn’t a mark on him, and considering what Blonsky had looked like when they’d medevacked him back here, that was nothing short of incredible. “Good to see you back on your feet, soldier.”

“Thank you, sir,” Blonsky said.

Ross kept looking at him, gauging his health from how Blonsky sat, how his eyes tracked everything in the room… and how the smile on his face didn’t really hide the expression of a man who wanted revenge. “How do you feel?” Ross asked.

Blonsky’s grin widened. “Ready for round three,” he replied.

Betty emptied the contents of her purse onto the motel bedspread. She had a phone, a credit and debit card, her driver’s license, forty dollars in cash, some makeup, her university ID, and a digital camera.

Betty shrugged. “I thought if you asked me to go, I ought to be ready.”

Bruce smiled, touched that she was prepared to join him. He collected everything from the bedspread except the money and the camera, and put them back into her purse. “Basically we can’t use any of this because they can track all of it,” he said.

“How about my lip gloss?” Betty joked. “Can they track that?”

With a laugh, Bruce said, “No, you can keep that.”

“And I need my glasses,” she added.

“You can—” Bruce stopped as he realized she was having fun with him. “We can use most of it,” he corrected himself. “We just can’t use the credit cards, the ID, or the phone. Don’t even turn the phone on.”

Betty looked down at the money in his hand. “How will we get where we need to go on forty dollars and no credit cards?”

Bruce looked down at the floor. He didn’t have an answer for her.

“We can sell this,” Betty said. She removed a chain from her neck, pulling up a lovely gold pendant. Bruce knew she had gotten it as an inheritance from her mother.

“No,” Bruce said firmly. “It’s the only thing you have left from her. No.”

“Well, we’ll have to try to get it back,” Betty said.

In that moment, Bruce realized how lucky he was to have her on his side.

Ross stood in the Pentagon planning room, looking over the team he had assembled as Sparr wrapped up the briefing on the Banner situation. They all stared up at Bruce’s and Betty’s photos on the projection screen.

“Federal is already monitoring phone, plastic, and Dr. Ross’s Web accounts, and local police have been on alert,” Sparr continued. “They’ll pop up somewhere, and when they do, it comes straight to us.”

Ross cleared his throat. “They’re not gonna just pop up,” he interjected. “Banner made it five years and got across borders without making a mistake. He won’t use a credit card now. If he was trying to escape, he’d be long gone. He’s not trying to disappear this time—he’s looking for help.” The general raised a hand and closed it into a fist. “That’s how we’re going to get him. We know what they’re after, and we know he’s been talking to somebody. You all have copies of the correspondence. The aliases Mr. Green and Mr. Blue have been added to the S.H.I.E.L.D. Operations Database. If he comes up for air, we’ll be waiting. If he makes a peep, we’ll hear him. And when he slips up, we’ll be ready.”

Betty counted out cash to the young guy working at the counter at a gas station. While the clerk was distracted, Bruce stepped into the attached garage and spotted a greasy-looking computer terminal on a desk. He plugged the USB drive into the computer.

He didn’t have time to download the chat software, and also he couldn’t attach files that way. Mr. Blue needed data, and Mr. Green wanted him to have it. So Bruce typed a quick e-mail to an address at Grayburn College, where he knew Mr. Blue worked. He used a subject line guaranteed to get Mr. Blue’s attention: File from Mr. Green.

The message was simple. Mr. Blue. Here’s the data. It’s time to meet.—Mr. Green. Then he uploaded the data from the drive and sent it off.

Betty came out of the store as he exited the garage. She held up a set of keys and smiled, pointing at a battered pickup truck. As Bruce removed the FOR SALE sign from the window and tossed it in the back of the truck, Betty said, “Hey…”

Bruce faced her, then grimaced when he saw her holding up the camera.

“It’s been worse than this before, right?” Betty asked.

“Yes,” Bruce replied. “Much worse.”

“And you’re not just running now,” Betty continued. “We’re on the way to something better. So smile.”

Bruce tried, but he was afraid he didn’t give her much of a smile to work with. But she snapped the picture anyway.

They were still on the highway as night fell. Betty drove, and Bruce leaned his head against the passenger-side window.

Betty took a deep breath. “What is it like?” she asked. “When it happens, what do you experience?”

“Remember those experiments we volunteered for at Harvard? Those induced hallucinations? It’s a lot like that. Just a thousand times amplified. It’s like someone’s poured a liter of acid into my brain.”

It was a scary thing to hear, but Betty went on. She loved Bruce and wanted him to know that she was with him for whatever he needed her to hear, and whatever he needed her to do. “Do you remember anything?” she asked.

“Just fragments. Images. There’s too much noise. I can never derive much out of it.”

“But then it’s still you… inside him,” Betty said.

“No. No, it’s not,” Bruce responded curtly.

Betty let that sit before replying. “I don’t know,” she began. “In the cave, I really felt like it knew me. Maybe your mind is in there, it’s just overcharged and can’t process what’s happening.”

“I don’t want to control it. I want to get rid of it,” Bruce said sullenly.

Betty wanted to say more, but she could tell Bruce was shutting down. He couldn’t come to grips with the creature inside him, and Betty knew if she was in his shoes she would probably have had the same trouble. Bruce turned away from her, staring out the window into the darkness.

All he could see was his own reflection.