Back to Gatefold
Issue #1 by R. John Burke (Volume 1)
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They all agreed it had been the battle of their lives.
In many cycles of roaming the stars, serving the First-Among-Equals by converting subject after subject, ever adding to the sacred Chorus, their experience with the subject they'd dubbed 1171 was unprecedented.
They had never seen a supposedly sentient creature so large, so strong, so... disagreeable. They had rather expected to take him peacefully, inasmuch as his world's inhabitants had already done the work of catching and caging him. Two of their scouts-- lithe, wiry fellows with a healthy burnt-orange sheen to their skin-- had scurried up the side of the Terran vehicle, testing the metal and inspecting the locks with four small, clever hands apiece. One of them turned to the other and murmured something in their slow language of mostly vowels. The other nodded and reached for the lock--
--and then a huge, green fist smashed through the metal to grab him by the throat.
The scout panicked. He tried to bolt. He nearly broke his own neck before the huge hand tossed him aside. It was immediately joined by another hand, tearing in the opposite direction, rending the metal.
“GRAAAAAAAAAARGH!!!” the new subject howled. A round of tranqs emptied through the gap in the metal didn't seem to affect him a bit.
He squeezed his bulk through the hole. He was more than a meter taller than the largest of them, and twice as big around as all of them put together. There was something in his eyes-- an unrestrained, animal fury-- that said he would not stop at merely ripping metal.
Three soldiers charged him at once. He sent them flying with a backhand swipe. Another switched from tranqs to explosive rounds and emptied his clip. The creature reached out, grabbed the weapon away, and crushed it into broken shards before lifting the soldier over his head and throwing him almost out of sight.
A little distance away, two of the six-limbed creatures stood watching, which was all they could do. They were observers; their fellows were soldiers. One did not deviate from one's assigned part of the chorus.
Watching the soldier sail merrily aloft, one observer turned to the other and said: “Maalo-- aandira.”
Which means, roughly, “Well, shit.”
The other observer, a female, shrugged her shoulders. “Aani, okolo osa ii'i m'dari.”
Which means, “Somebody must have made him angry.”
In many cycles of roaming the stars, serving the First-Among-Equals by converting subject after subject, ever adding to the sacred Chorus, their experience with the subject they'd dubbed 1171 was unprecedented.
They had never seen a supposedly sentient creature so large, so strong, so... disagreeable. They had rather expected to take him peacefully, inasmuch as his world's inhabitants had already done the work of catching and caging him. Two of their scouts-- lithe, wiry fellows with a healthy burnt-orange sheen to their skin-- had scurried up the side of the Terran vehicle, testing the metal and inspecting the locks with four small, clever hands apiece. One of them turned to the other and murmured something in their slow language of mostly vowels. The other nodded and reached for the lock--
--and then a huge, green fist smashed through the metal to grab him by the throat.
The scout panicked. He tried to bolt. He nearly broke his own neck before the huge hand tossed him aside. It was immediately joined by another hand, tearing in the opposite direction, rending the metal.
“GRAAAAAAAAAARGH!!!” the new subject howled. A round of tranqs emptied through the gap in the metal didn't seem to affect him a bit.
He squeezed his bulk through the hole. He was more than a meter taller than the largest of them, and twice as big around as all of them put together. There was something in his eyes-- an unrestrained, animal fury-- that said he would not stop at merely ripping metal.
Three soldiers charged him at once. He sent them flying with a backhand swipe. Another switched from tranqs to explosive rounds and emptied his clip. The creature reached out, grabbed the weapon away, and crushed it into broken shards before lifting the soldier over his head and throwing him almost out of sight.
A little distance away, two of the six-limbed creatures stood watching, which was all they could do. They were observers; their fellows were soldiers. One did not deviate from one's assigned part of the chorus.
Watching the soldier sail merrily aloft, one observer turned to the other and said: “Maalo-- aandira.”
Which means, roughly, “Well, shit.”
The other observer, a female, shrugged her shoulders. “Aani, okolo osa ii'i m'dari.”
Which means, “Somebody must have made him angry.”
“ANGER: Part One – A House Divided”
One Week Later
The two observers stood in their control center, surrounded by blinking lights and readouts that only a handful of people on Earth would have been able to decipher, even if they'd known the language. Ironically, one of those who could have done it lay on a nearby table-- doubly trapped, once by the restraints, made from an alien material as strong as vibranium, and once by his own mutated, almost absurdly muscular body.
Only rarely could Dr. Robert Bruce Banner claim to know any kind of peace, but now he had the closest thing-- an enforced peace, under constant and heavy sedation that allowed his own persona to hibernate while the monster within-- the personification of rage known to the world as the incredible Hulk-- struggled and fought and kicked its way toward the surface without success. If he ever woke up, he would do a great deal of damage.
It was Thaia's job to make certain he didn't wake up. The female observer, tall and strong by the standards of her people but still hardly more that petite for a human, played her multiple hands across the displays like a virtuoso breezing through a difficult piece of music. A thousand coordinated gestures in rapid sequence were necessary to keep the control center in safe operation. The tiniest slip could expose them to the inhabitants of their host planet, or-- worse-- to the green-skinned monster on the table.
Thaia held his mind in her hands-- that was another function of the equipment she manipulated. With the twitch of a finger, she could cast him back into his most distant memories or create a neurotic compulsion that would tear him apart. She'd treated thousands of minds in similar fashion over the years, and had never yet stumbled.
But there was always a first time.
Her companions, Xa'ios, visibly twitched as he watched her work. By alien standards, he might as well be bouncing off the walls. Members of the Chorus were trained to maintain an implacable reserve at all times.
“Yet?” he asked, gritting out the single syllable between his teeth.
“Not yet. Not nearly yet.”
“How long?”
“Aanaks... ta'aks,” Thaia said, naming her people's equivalent of days and weeks. Far too long to have this officious twit staring over her shoulder. “Perhaps you could find something else to--”
“We need this one,” Xa'ios said.
“I know.”
“He is the greatest force of Rage we have ever detected.”
“I know.”
Xa'ios hesitated, said reverently, “I think he is the one we've been waiting for.”
Thaia looked up so suddenly, she nearly missed a movement. That would have been a Bad Thing. She was buried so deep in the creature's somatosensory system, she might have left him without a sense of touch if she'd botched anything.
“I think that's premature,” she told Xa'ios.
“You don't deny, he is powerful enough. All the signs are there.”
“As are all the problems!” Thaia replied. “Look here...”
She called up a display, which spoke to the observers in the multimedia combination of colors, sounds, and sensations typical of their technology. For a moment, Thaia almost felt she was the creature on the bed; the feeling of being trapped overwhelmed her.
“Hmm...” said Xa'ios, who was not as sensitive or skilled a neural composer as she, and therefore not as easily overwhelmed by the tools of their trade. “There's the root. Childhood trauma. That's simple enough.”
Thaia made a small sound in the back of her throat that kept her from saying: You blasted moron...
“It's not a root, it's a tangle. Wheels inside of wheels, trapping themselves, a series of double-blind checks and balances. This brain is actually so smart it's dumb. I've never seen anything...”
“There's no way to know how deep it goes?”
Thaia sighed. “That's what I'm trying to tell you-- The subject has suffered such trauma that there's no longer a beginning or end to it. He isn't in pain, he is pain. This... may be beyond my skills.”
Her colleague turned a pop-eyed glare in her direction. “You came highly recommended by the Equals, Thaia. We have placed all our faith in you.”
“Then perhaps the First-Among-Equals would like to come down here and conduct this himself. He's supposed to be able to reshape the stars, isn't he? I'm only an artisan. I need time.”
Xa'ios stared openmouthed while she spoke-- her words tantamount to blasphemy within the Chorus-- but then he caught himself and reclaimed his reserve with all four hands.
“You shall have time,” he said. “A reasonable amount.”
He swept away in a huff, and Thaia grunted. Good riddance. Steadying herself as best she could, she turned her full attention back to the subject and prepared to delve into his subconscious.
Where are you, Dr. Banner? My people are most anxious to meet you...
# # # # #
There wasn't much left of the truck.
Once a top-of-the-line military vehicle, SHIELD-designed, supposedly tough enough to keep the Hulk under wraps after his most recent fight with Wolverine, now it wasn't much but a warped frame, some random shards of metal, and an assortment of gear that smelled like the world's most expensive burnt-out toaster oven.
A black sedan with tinted windows rolled up to the curb beside the wreckage. Two men and a woman in dark suits and sunglasses climbed out. They watched as camouflaged soldiers scurried around the crash site, intense and anxious as though they thought they could flush an eight-foot green giant out of the undergrowth. Their lieutenant caught sight of the new arrivals and hustled toward them.
Before he could speak, a cel phone went off. It belonged to the tallest of the newcomers, who made a face and reached into his jacket. Anytime money got spent and objectives were not achieved, somebody in government was going to get unhappy. When they got unhappy, they shouted. If they shouted enough, sometimes he got phone calls. He didn't like that.
“Go,” he said, without preamble. Anybody who required a greeting to know who he was-- well, that person had the wrong number.
The man's frown deepened as he listened. “Yes, I'll hold... yes.” A moment later, “Mr. President. Yes, sir, that's my understanding. Yes, sir... yes, sir. Yes, sir... Well, sir, I don't know yet. That's right... Yes, sir, I'll keep you informed.”
He pressed a button on the phone, glared at it for a moment, then dropped it on the ground and... CRUNCH.
The shorter man beside him glanced at what was left of the phone under Pratt's boot. Then he glanced up and said mildly, “Problem?”
“Reggie, how many times did I just say 'yes, sir?'”
“Five times.”
“That all? You counted?”
“Plus two other 'yesses,'” the woman put in helpfully.
“Damn straight,” said the tall man. “You think that makes me happy, five 'yes, sirs?'”
“It does not?” guessed Reggie.
“In fact, it does not. I hate saying 'yes, sir.' I prefer to have people say 'yes, sir' to me. Am I clearly understood?”
“Yes, sir!” The younger man grinned.
The tall man jerked a thumb toward the wreck. “Close it up. They're done here.”
Reggie pulled out a badge and ran toward the soldiers, shouting. He almost plowed into the lieutenant, who was going the other way.
“You there! Who the hell do you think you are?”
The tall man flashed another badge in his face. “Special Agent Pratt, FBI. Lost yourself a Hulk, did you?”
The lieutenant eyed him warily. “It's under control.”
“Is that why you've got several hundred pieces of truck in this field?”
The woman beside him grunted. “More like several thousand.”
“Eve thinks several thousand. She's very good at math; I can only assume it's not under control.”
“You can't just--”
Pratt peered over the rims of his sunglasses. “Do I actually have to cashier your ass, or are you going to tell me about the Hulk?”
The lieutenant turned bright red and looked like he wanted to scream. It wasn't anything about Pratt that ultimately convinced him not to; it was more the matter-of-fact attitude of his subordinate. Eve's pose was casual, her hand barely resting on her gun, expression blank. It was not the posture of somebody engaged in a bluff, but of a woman who did this kind of thing every day. She would follow Pratt's orders, even those that appeared... extreme.
The lieutenant sighed. “We lost him. We don't know how; there's no trace of him.”
“No trail?” Eve repeated. “One thing about the Hulk, you generally know where he's been...”
“Let's take a look,” said Pratt. He led the way to the ruined truck. In the center of what was left was some kind of big, bulky device that he guessed to be a force-field generator. You'd almost have to have one. Get the Hulk angry enough, he'd rip through anything physical. Pratt expected to see that the unit had burned out from trying to generate enough power to contain the big guy...
He frowned. “Eve? Look at this.”
The junior agent joined him in kneeling beside the unit. She ran a hand along the casing and inspected a fingerful of soot.
“Burn damage is on the outside. This happened when the gas tank went up.”
Pratt glanced back at the lieutenant. “Nothing from the driver?”
The man shook his head. “One minute he was there, the next... no response. We found his body, over there with the...”
Since he already had the information he needed from the soldier, Pratt turned back to people and things who mattered. “Force-field didn't go off. Somebody turned off the force-field, then blew the gas tank to cover their tracks.”
Eve nodded. “They let him go...”
He heard the lieutenant behind his shoulder. “That's crazy! Our last contact with the Hulk had him in a real bad place... savage, brutal. Angry. Who the hell's gonna let that out of its cage on purpose?”
“Pandora, maybe.” Pratt sat back on his haunches, looked up at a very blue sky, and quoted: “'Desire with loathing strangely mixed / On wild or hateful objects fixed. / Fantastic passions! Maddening brawl! / And shame and terror over all.' Coleridge.”
“The Ancient Mariner guy?” asked Evie, who'd heard this spiel before.
Pratt nodded. “It's also somebody's motto. Know anyone who makes you think of shame and terror?”
“Our old friends?”
“Our... old... friends,” Pratt said, pronouncing each word with emphasis. He turned to the lieutenant. “Clean up and get your men out of here. Anybody asks, this crash never happened.”
“What are you you gonna do while we're covering your tracks?”
Pratt stood, brushed dirt off his pants, and turned back to the car. “Catch him. Cage him up. Kick Pandora's ass for good measure. Sound right?”
“Yes, sir!” said Eve, and she followed.
# # # # #
Four-year old Bruce Banner toddles toward his father's desk with his newest artistic creation clutched proudly in small hands. The man slumped over the desk doesn't seem to notice him; he pours himself another glass from the bottle beside his elbow, splashing more than a little on the desktop.
“Daddy, lookit what I...”
“Go 'way,” the man says in a slurred voice. “Get out of here, y' little freak... never should've... get out!”
“But Daddy, lookit! I--”
“Get OUT!” His father whirls and throws the glass. It shatters with a sound that's like the end of the world to a four-year-old. He stares into Brian Banner's wild, bloodshot eyes for a long moment. Then he runs, because he knows too well what comes after that look...
He keeps running until he's out of the room and slams the door behind him. Dimly, at his back, he can still hear his father, raging and swearing.
“It wasn't our fault, you know.”
Bruce Banner looked up with a start-- and suddenly he was no longer a little boy, but a man, thin and pale and nervous. The man he grew into, thanks to too many scenes like the one just replayed. He took a deep breath, steadying himself.
The fellow who'd spoken, who now stood with him in the dark, featureless room, was neither thin nor nervous. He was pale, but only if you counted pale green-- this was the heroic part of Banner's fractured personality, the perfect blend of strength and integrity he thought of as the Professor.
“It wasn't our fault,” the eloquent Hulk repeated. “He was the monster. He hated us because he could not bear to face his hatred for himself.”
“That's very pat,” Banner said-- all but stammered. “Very... correct. I wonder if you believe it.”
The Professor shrugged his broad shoulders. “Does it matter, in the end? We stand here trapped-- tourists in our own mind, if you will. What we find has meaning only so far as we give it meaning.”
Banner quashed a stab of annoyance. “Stop saying 'we.' It's not our mind, it's my mind... just mine. I never asked the rest of you to visit.”
“And that, my boy, is why we'll never leave... because you will never fully accept us. You of all people must know... we can be ever so stubborn.”
“You--”
“Shut up, shut up, SHUT UP!” cried another voice-- deep and throaty, almost the roar of some prehistoric beast. Another shape loomed out of the shadows, one Banner knew better than all the others. Huge and green and unstoppable, his personal inner demon, the savage Hulk. The brute continued: “Why you always TALKING? Too much talk! Be quiet and LEAVE HULK ALONE!”
“I'm afraid we cannot do that,” said the Professor. Only slightly smaller than the other Hulk, he was mainly distinguishable by his placid smile. To Banner, he looked as though he ought to have a pipe clenched between his teeth. “You do see what she's done, don't you? She's trying to bring all that--” he nodded toward the imaginary door behind Banner, “to the surface. Trying to learn what makes us tick.”
“Good luck,” said Banner, who'd never quite figured it out himself.
“Hulk will make her stop. Hulk will GET OUT and SMASH and--”
“Yo, Cuddles!” came another voice, a guttural snarl. “We all dig the, uh, jolly green giant routine, but would ya mind keepin' it down? Some of us are tryin' to ignore you losers.”
Banner frowned into the darkness. With the Professor on his right side and the Hulk facing him, the only thing he needed to make his day complete was...
Another figure stepped forward on his left-- gray, powerful, but more on the scale of a deluxe-sized man than the overblown giants on his other two sides. Banner felt his stomach do a flop. Of course it was him. Of course.
'Joe Fixit,' the sometimes mob enforcer and full-time pain in the ass who personified Banner's more selfish desires, leered at the others while he lit an imaginary cigarette.
“So, what's shakin'?” he asked with a wink. “You clowns miss me?”
“Not even a tiny bit,” Banner told him.
“Hulk remembers little gray Hulk. Hulk does not like little gray Hulk. HULK WILL SMA--”
“Yes, yes,” said the Professor quickly. “We are quite cognizant of the omnipresent threat of smashing. If we might focus on the larger picture for a moment--”
“Hey, Prof, I'm just takin' five,” Joe said. “Tell ya what: You all go back to yer whining, I'll go smoke this someplace else, an' whoever's last out, turn off the lights when you leave, y'know what I'm saying?”
“I'm afraid you cannot ignore us so easily, Joe,” said the Professor. “This is your trauma, too.”
“Aw, whadda you think I am, some kinda pansy-ass momma's boy? Nothin' dramatizes ol' Joe...”
“Traumatizes.”
“That, too. I just do what I do, y'know? Nobody's gotta play head-shrinker for me!”
“But she is.” Banner looked at the Professor. “Isn't she?”
The intelligent Hulk nodded. “Our host seems to be attempting to separate us... to isolate your personality, I would imagine.”
“Why would lady talk to Banner? Nobody talks to Banner. Hulk HATES Banner!”
“Yes, thanks for reminding me,” the human told the childlike Hulk. Then back to the Professor with a grin: “Wouldn't that be ironic? All those years trying to rid myself of all of you, and some alien scientist comes along and does it for me.”
“I think I'm insulted,” said Joe Fixit. “Anybody else insulted?”
“It may not be so easy, my boy,” said the Professor. “We don't know what she wants. Suppose she intends some evil purpose. Without us, Dr. Banner, you will lack the strength to stand against her.”
“I'll take that chance,” said Banner. He turned and worked the door handle--
Thoom THOOM THOOM! Here came the savage Hulk, his every footstep like a clap of thunder. “Little man will NOT get rid of Hulk! Hulk will get rid of little man FIRST!”
He picked up Banner over his head like a rag doll, while the human screamed and Joe Fixit laughed. The Professor tried to get between them, to provide a voice of reason-- then he stopped. Frowned. Looked in every direction.
“How unusual... is it me, or is this darkness getting brighter?”
# # # # #
The Hulk murmured and groaned and thrashed on the diagnostic table while Thaia dug ever harder at his cerebral cortex. The drugs were failing. The restraints would go next. It would be utterly irresponsible to continue probing beyond this point.
Thaia called up another display and smiled: Shift change. If something should go wrong just now, almost all of her military-caste colleagues would be caught away from their stations-- unprepared and unable to respond to a crisis. A responsible neural composer would be extra careful at this moment.
Thaia instead... stumbled, jabbing Banner's mind with a sudden stimulus. Adrenaline would spike, heart rate would increase, his healing factor would kick in and dispel the last of the drugs...
The greatest force of Rage they'd ever encountered, Xa'ios had called this creature. Didn't that make him also the greatest note of discord? Wouldn't that disrupt the Plan, for good and all?
If the Hulk woke before she had him under control, it might. And wouldn't that be a shame?
Thaia prodded the beast again...
# # # # #
“Whoooaaaa! What the hell is this, Banner? You tryin' to shake us all outta yer mind?”
Bruce Banner nearly fell and cracked his head; only a quick grab by the Professor spared him that fate. Even so, he didn't know how long he could keep his footing. The plain black room that had represented his subconscious now seemed to be falling apart, its occupants drawn toward a nebulous light up above them...
“GrrrrrAAAAARRRGHHH!!!” cried the savage Hulk, striving toward the light with his primal need to be free. He knocked Joe Fixit aside and leaped...
The Professor inhaled sharply. “Bruce, my boy, our subconscious is a somewhat overwhelming place, but I believe that light may represent...”
“Consciousness, yes. That's my theory, too.”
“If one of us doesn't beat him to it, I fear another rampage.”
Banner nodded. “Can you get there before him?”
“I can try.”
The Professor leaped, too, caught a handhold on what looked like nothing, and stretched forth one lengthy arm at a time, trying to catch up with-- or just to catch-- his alter ego. Just before the savage Hulk reached the light, the Professor grabbed his foot.
“Hold on, there, friend, there are one or two things we ought to discuss...”
The savage Hulk glared down at him. “No DISCUSS! You want to hold Hulk back! You all think you better than Hulk!”
“No, of course no one thinks that, but--”
“You may be smarter, but Hulk is stronger! HULK IS STRONGEST ONE THERE IS!”
The Hulk kicked, knocking the Professor down from his invisible perch. He fell toward Banner and Joe, while the brute Hulk gave one more push and--
# # # # #
“....rrrrrrrrAAAARRRRRGH! Hulk SMASH!”
POP! POP! The alien bonds shattered as though they were made of cheap plastic. The savage Hulk bounded off the table and crushed it with a two-fisted blow. Then he turned his attention to the equipment behind him and started smashing that, too.
“Oh, dear,” said Thaia, and she ducked behind a console. A moment later, the console went flying, and she found herself staring up into angry green eyes. The monster stood before her, every muscle tensed...
“You did this to Hulk. You put Hulk in a cage! Hulk hates to be caged!”
“I didn't,” she said, nearly hyperventilating. “Your own people did that.”
“Hulk has no people. Only humans! Puny humans always try to cage Hulk! Hulk HATES them!”
“Yes, well... the humans would be...” Thaia pointed with both trembling left arms. “That way.”
“GrrrrrrrAH!” snarled the creature. He stormed off, declining to break Thaia's neck. He did break a couple of soldiers who appeared in the doorway and tried to level their weapons on him, but those, after all, were expendable.
The Hulk smashed through the wall of the alien laboratory, then straight through the outer wall of their facility-- momentarily disrupting its cloak-- and into the night of his own world. Two seemingly endless leaps later, he was out of range. If Xa'ios wanted him for the Chorus, Xa'ios would just have to catch him again. Considering the mood the Hulk was in, the creature would probably break his neck.
Carefully composing herself for the questions that would follow, Thaia thought about that possibility... and smiled.
TO BE CONTINUED...
The two observers stood in their control center, surrounded by blinking lights and readouts that only a handful of people on Earth would have been able to decipher, even if they'd known the language. Ironically, one of those who could have done it lay on a nearby table-- doubly trapped, once by the restraints, made from an alien material as strong as vibranium, and once by his own mutated, almost absurdly muscular body.
Only rarely could Dr. Robert Bruce Banner claim to know any kind of peace, but now he had the closest thing-- an enforced peace, under constant and heavy sedation that allowed his own persona to hibernate while the monster within-- the personification of rage known to the world as the incredible Hulk-- struggled and fought and kicked its way toward the surface without success. If he ever woke up, he would do a great deal of damage.
It was Thaia's job to make certain he didn't wake up. The female observer, tall and strong by the standards of her people but still hardly more that petite for a human, played her multiple hands across the displays like a virtuoso breezing through a difficult piece of music. A thousand coordinated gestures in rapid sequence were necessary to keep the control center in safe operation. The tiniest slip could expose them to the inhabitants of their host planet, or-- worse-- to the green-skinned monster on the table.
Thaia held his mind in her hands-- that was another function of the equipment she manipulated. With the twitch of a finger, she could cast him back into his most distant memories or create a neurotic compulsion that would tear him apart. She'd treated thousands of minds in similar fashion over the years, and had never yet stumbled.
But there was always a first time.
Her companions, Xa'ios, visibly twitched as he watched her work. By alien standards, he might as well be bouncing off the walls. Members of the Chorus were trained to maintain an implacable reserve at all times.
“Yet?” he asked, gritting out the single syllable between his teeth.
“Not yet. Not nearly yet.”
“How long?”
“Aanaks... ta'aks,” Thaia said, naming her people's equivalent of days and weeks. Far too long to have this officious twit staring over her shoulder. “Perhaps you could find something else to--”
“We need this one,” Xa'ios said.
“I know.”
“He is the greatest force of Rage we have ever detected.”
“I know.”
Xa'ios hesitated, said reverently, “I think he is the one we've been waiting for.”
Thaia looked up so suddenly, she nearly missed a movement. That would have been a Bad Thing. She was buried so deep in the creature's somatosensory system, she might have left him without a sense of touch if she'd botched anything.
“I think that's premature,” she told Xa'ios.
“You don't deny, he is powerful enough. All the signs are there.”
“As are all the problems!” Thaia replied. “Look here...”
She called up a display, which spoke to the observers in the multimedia combination of colors, sounds, and sensations typical of their technology. For a moment, Thaia almost felt she was the creature on the bed; the feeling of being trapped overwhelmed her.
“Hmm...” said Xa'ios, who was not as sensitive or skilled a neural composer as she, and therefore not as easily overwhelmed by the tools of their trade. “There's the root. Childhood trauma. That's simple enough.”
Thaia made a small sound in the back of her throat that kept her from saying: You blasted moron...
“It's not a root, it's a tangle. Wheels inside of wheels, trapping themselves, a series of double-blind checks and balances. This brain is actually so smart it's dumb. I've never seen anything...”
“There's no way to know how deep it goes?”
Thaia sighed. “That's what I'm trying to tell you-- The subject has suffered such trauma that there's no longer a beginning or end to it. He isn't in pain, he is pain. This... may be beyond my skills.”
Her colleague turned a pop-eyed glare in her direction. “You came highly recommended by the Equals, Thaia. We have placed all our faith in you.”
“Then perhaps the First-Among-Equals would like to come down here and conduct this himself. He's supposed to be able to reshape the stars, isn't he? I'm only an artisan. I need time.”
Xa'ios stared openmouthed while she spoke-- her words tantamount to blasphemy within the Chorus-- but then he caught himself and reclaimed his reserve with all four hands.
“You shall have time,” he said. “A reasonable amount.”
He swept away in a huff, and Thaia grunted. Good riddance. Steadying herself as best she could, she turned her full attention back to the subject and prepared to delve into his subconscious.
Where are you, Dr. Banner? My people are most anxious to meet you...
# # # # #
There wasn't much left of the truck.
Once a top-of-the-line military vehicle, SHIELD-designed, supposedly tough enough to keep the Hulk under wraps after his most recent fight with Wolverine, now it wasn't much but a warped frame, some random shards of metal, and an assortment of gear that smelled like the world's most expensive burnt-out toaster oven.
A black sedan with tinted windows rolled up to the curb beside the wreckage. Two men and a woman in dark suits and sunglasses climbed out. They watched as camouflaged soldiers scurried around the crash site, intense and anxious as though they thought they could flush an eight-foot green giant out of the undergrowth. Their lieutenant caught sight of the new arrivals and hustled toward them.
Before he could speak, a cel phone went off. It belonged to the tallest of the newcomers, who made a face and reached into his jacket. Anytime money got spent and objectives were not achieved, somebody in government was going to get unhappy. When they got unhappy, they shouted. If they shouted enough, sometimes he got phone calls. He didn't like that.
“Go,” he said, without preamble. Anybody who required a greeting to know who he was-- well, that person had the wrong number.
The man's frown deepened as he listened. “Yes, I'll hold... yes.” A moment later, “Mr. President. Yes, sir, that's my understanding. Yes, sir... yes, sir. Yes, sir... Well, sir, I don't know yet. That's right... Yes, sir, I'll keep you informed.”
He pressed a button on the phone, glared at it for a moment, then dropped it on the ground and... CRUNCH.
The shorter man beside him glanced at what was left of the phone under Pratt's boot. Then he glanced up and said mildly, “Problem?”
“Reggie, how many times did I just say 'yes, sir?'”
“Five times.”
“That all? You counted?”
“Plus two other 'yesses,'” the woman put in helpfully.
“Damn straight,” said the tall man. “You think that makes me happy, five 'yes, sirs?'”
“It does not?” guessed Reggie.
“In fact, it does not. I hate saying 'yes, sir.' I prefer to have people say 'yes, sir' to me. Am I clearly understood?”
“Yes, sir!” The younger man grinned.
The tall man jerked a thumb toward the wreck. “Close it up. They're done here.”
Reggie pulled out a badge and ran toward the soldiers, shouting. He almost plowed into the lieutenant, who was going the other way.
“You there! Who the hell do you think you are?”
The tall man flashed another badge in his face. “Special Agent Pratt, FBI. Lost yourself a Hulk, did you?”
The lieutenant eyed him warily. “It's under control.”
“Is that why you've got several hundred pieces of truck in this field?”
The woman beside him grunted. “More like several thousand.”
“Eve thinks several thousand. She's very good at math; I can only assume it's not under control.”
“You can't just--”
Pratt peered over the rims of his sunglasses. “Do I actually have to cashier your ass, or are you going to tell me about the Hulk?”
The lieutenant turned bright red and looked like he wanted to scream. It wasn't anything about Pratt that ultimately convinced him not to; it was more the matter-of-fact attitude of his subordinate. Eve's pose was casual, her hand barely resting on her gun, expression blank. It was not the posture of somebody engaged in a bluff, but of a woman who did this kind of thing every day. She would follow Pratt's orders, even those that appeared... extreme.
The lieutenant sighed. “We lost him. We don't know how; there's no trace of him.”
“No trail?” Eve repeated. “One thing about the Hulk, you generally know where he's been...”
“Let's take a look,” said Pratt. He led the way to the ruined truck. In the center of what was left was some kind of big, bulky device that he guessed to be a force-field generator. You'd almost have to have one. Get the Hulk angry enough, he'd rip through anything physical. Pratt expected to see that the unit had burned out from trying to generate enough power to contain the big guy...
He frowned. “Eve? Look at this.”
The junior agent joined him in kneeling beside the unit. She ran a hand along the casing and inspected a fingerful of soot.
“Burn damage is on the outside. This happened when the gas tank went up.”
Pratt glanced back at the lieutenant. “Nothing from the driver?”
The man shook his head. “One minute he was there, the next... no response. We found his body, over there with the...”
Since he already had the information he needed from the soldier, Pratt turned back to people and things who mattered. “Force-field didn't go off. Somebody turned off the force-field, then blew the gas tank to cover their tracks.”
Eve nodded. “They let him go...”
He heard the lieutenant behind his shoulder. “That's crazy! Our last contact with the Hulk had him in a real bad place... savage, brutal. Angry. Who the hell's gonna let that out of its cage on purpose?”
“Pandora, maybe.” Pratt sat back on his haunches, looked up at a very blue sky, and quoted: “'Desire with loathing strangely mixed / On wild or hateful objects fixed. / Fantastic passions! Maddening brawl! / And shame and terror over all.' Coleridge.”
“The Ancient Mariner guy?” asked Evie, who'd heard this spiel before.
Pratt nodded. “It's also somebody's motto. Know anyone who makes you think of shame and terror?”
“Our old friends?”
“Our... old... friends,” Pratt said, pronouncing each word with emphasis. He turned to the lieutenant. “Clean up and get your men out of here. Anybody asks, this crash never happened.”
“What are you you gonna do while we're covering your tracks?”
Pratt stood, brushed dirt off his pants, and turned back to the car. “Catch him. Cage him up. Kick Pandora's ass for good measure. Sound right?”
“Yes, sir!” said Eve, and she followed.
# # # # #
Four-year old Bruce Banner toddles toward his father's desk with his newest artistic creation clutched proudly in small hands. The man slumped over the desk doesn't seem to notice him; he pours himself another glass from the bottle beside his elbow, splashing more than a little on the desktop.
“Daddy, lookit what I...”
“Go 'way,” the man says in a slurred voice. “Get out of here, y' little freak... never should've... get out!”
“But Daddy, lookit! I--”
“Get OUT!” His father whirls and throws the glass. It shatters with a sound that's like the end of the world to a four-year-old. He stares into Brian Banner's wild, bloodshot eyes for a long moment. Then he runs, because he knows too well what comes after that look...
He keeps running until he's out of the room and slams the door behind him. Dimly, at his back, he can still hear his father, raging and swearing.
“It wasn't our fault, you know.”
Bruce Banner looked up with a start-- and suddenly he was no longer a little boy, but a man, thin and pale and nervous. The man he grew into, thanks to too many scenes like the one just replayed. He took a deep breath, steadying himself.
The fellow who'd spoken, who now stood with him in the dark, featureless room, was neither thin nor nervous. He was pale, but only if you counted pale green-- this was the heroic part of Banner's fractured personality, the perfect blend of strength and integrity he thought of as the Professor.
“It wasn't our fault,” the eloquent Hulk repeated. “He was the monster. He hated us because he could not bear to face his hatred for himself.”
“That's very pat,” Banner said-- all but stammered. “Very... correct. I wonder if you believe it.”
The Professor shrugged his broad shoulders. “Does it matter, in the end? We stand here trapped-- tourists in our own mind, if you will. What we find has meaning only so far as we give it meaning.”
Banner quashed a stab of annoyance. “Stop saying 'we.' It's not our mind, it's my mind... just mine. I never asked the rest of you to visit.”
“And that, my boy, is why we'll never leave... because you will never fully accept us. You of all people must know... we can be ever so stubborn.”
“You--”
“Shut up, shut up, SHUT UP!” cried another voice-- deep and throaty, almost the roar of some prehistoric beast. Another shape loomed out of the shadows, one Banner knew better than all the others. Huge and green and unstoppable, his personal inner demon, the savage Hulk. The brute continued: “Why you always TALKING? Too much talk! Be quiet and LEAVE HULK ALONE!”
“I'm afraid we cannot do that,” said the Professor. Only slightly smaller than the other Hulk, he was mainly distinguishable by his placid smile. To Banner, he looked as though he ought to have a pipe clenched between his teeth. “You do see what she's done, don't you? She's trying to bring all that--” he nodded toward the imaginary door behind Banner, “to the surface. Trying to learn what makes us tick.”
“Good luck,” said Banner, who'd never quite figured it out himself.
“Hulk will make her stop. Hulk will GET OUT and SMASH and--”
“Yo, Cuddles!” came another voice, a guttural snarl. “We all dig the, uh, jolly green giant routine, but would ya mind keepin' it down? Some of us are tryin' to ignore you losers.”
Banner frowned into the darkness. With the Professor on his right side and the Hulk facing him, the only thing he needed to make his day complete was...
Another figure stepped forward on his left-- gray, powerful, but more on the scale of a deluxe-sized man than the overblown giants on his other two sides. Banner felt his stomach do a flop. Of course it was him. Of course.
'Joe Fixit,' the sometimes mob enforcer and full-time pain in the ass who personified Banner's more selfish desires, leered at the others while he lit an imaginary cigarette.
“So, what's shakin'?” he asked with a wink. “You clowns miss me?”
“Not even a tiny bit,” Banner told him.
“Hulk remembers little gray Hulk. Hulk does not like little gray Hulk. HULK WILL SMA--”
“Yes, yes,” said the Professor quickly. “We are quite cognizant of the omnipresent threat of smashing. If we might focus on the larger picture for a moment--”
“Hey, Prof, I'm just takin' five,” Joe said. “Tell ya what: You all go back to yer whining, I'll go smoke this someplace else, an' whoever's last out, turn off the lights when you leave, y'know what I'm saying?”
“I'm afraid you cannot ignore us so easily, Joe,” said the Professor. “This is your trauma, too.”
“Aw, whadda you think I am, some kinda pansy-ass momma's boy? Nothin' dramatizes ol' Joe...”
“Traumatizes.”
“That, too. I just do what I do, y'know? Nobody's gotta play head-shrinker for me!”
“But she is.” Banner looked at the Professor. “Isn't she?”
The intelligent Hulk nodded. “Our host seems to be attempting to separate us... to isolate your personality, I would imagine.”
“Why would lady talk to Banner? Nobody talks to Banner. Hulk HATES Banner!”
“Yes, thanks for reminding me,” the human told the childlike Hulk. Then back to the Professor with a grin: “Wouldn't that be ironic? All those years trying to rid myself of all of you, and some alien scientist comes along and does it for me.”
“I think I'm insulted,” said Joe Fixit. “Anybody else insulted?”
“It may not be so easy, my boy,” said the Professor. “We don't know what she wants. Suppose she intends some evil purpose. Without us, Dr. Banner, you will lack the strength to stand against her.”
“I'll take that chance,” said Banner. He turned and worked the door handle--
Thoom THOOM THOOM! Here came the savage Hulk, his every footstep like a clap of thunder. “Little man will NOT get rid of Hulk! Hulk will get rid of little man FIRST!”
He picked up Banner over his head like a rag doll, while the human screamed and Joe Fixit laughed. The Professor tried to get between them, to provide a voice of reason-- then he stopped. Frowned. Looked in every direction.
“How unusual... is it me, or is this darkness getting brighter?”
# # # # #
The Hulk murmured and groaned and thrashed on the diagnostic table while Thaia dug ever harder at his cerebral cortex. The drugs were failing. The restraints would go next. It would be utterly irresponsible to continue probing beyond this point.
Thaia called up another display and smiled: Shift change. If something should go wrong just now, almost all of her military-caste colleagues would be caught away from their stations-- unprepared and unable to respond to a crisis. A responsible neural composer would be extra careful at this moment.
Thaia instead... stumbled, jabbing Banner's mind with a sudden stimulus. Adrenaline would spike, heart rate would increase, his healing factor would kick in and dispel the last of the drugs...
The greatest force of Rage they'd ever encountered, Xa'ios had called this creature. Didn't that make him also the greatest note of discord? Wouldn't that disrupt the Plan, for good and all?
If the Hulk woke before she had him under control, it might. And wouldn't that be a shame?
Thaia prodded the beast again...
# # # # #
“Whoooaaaa! What the hell is this, Banner? You tryin' to shake us all outta yer mind?”
Bruce Banner nearly fell and cracked his head; only a quick grab by the Professor spared him that fate. Even so, he didn't know how long he could keep his footing. The plain black room that had represented his subconscious now seemed to be falling apart, its occupants drawn toward a nebulous light up above them...
“GrrrrrAAAAARRRGHHH!!!” cried the savage Hulk, striving toward the light with his primal need to be free. He knocked Joe Fixit aside and leaped...
The Professor inhaled sharply. “Bruce, my boy, our subconscious is a somewhat overwhelming place, but I believe that light may represent...”
“Consciousness, yes. That's my theory, too.”
“If one of us doesn't beat him to it, I fear another rampage.”
Banner nodded. “Can you get there before him?”
“I can try.”
The Professor leaped, too, caught a handhold on what looked like nothing, and stretched forth one lengthy arm at a time, trying to catch up with-- or just to catch-- his alter ego. Just before the savage Hulk reached the light, the Professor grabbed his foot.
“Hold on, there, friend, there are one or two things we ought to discuss...”
The savage Hulk glared down at him. “No DISCUSS! You want to hold Hulk back! You all think you better than Hulk!”
“No, of course no one thinks that, but--”
“You may be smarter, but Hulk is stronger! HULK IS STRONGEST ONE THERE IS!”
The Hulk kicked, knocking the Professor down from his invisible perch. He fell toward Banner and Joe, while the brute Hulk gave one more push and--
# # # # #
“....rrrrrrrrAAAARRRRRGH! Hulk SMASH!”
POP! POP! The alien bonds shattered as though they were made of cheap plastic. The savage Hulk bounded off the table and crushed it with a two-fisted blow. Then he turned his attention to the equipment behind him and started smashing that, too.
“Oh, dear,” said Thaia, and she ducked behind a console. A moment later, the console went flying, and she found herself staring up into angry green eyes. The monster stood before her, every muscle tensed...
“You did this to Hulk. You put Hulk in a cage! Hulk hates to be caged!”
“I didn't,” she said, nearly hyperventilating. “Your own people did that.”
“Hulk has no people. Only humans! Puny humans always try to cage Hulk! Hulk HATES them!”
“Yes, well... the humans would be...” Thaia pointed with both trembling left arms. “That way.”
“GrrrrrrrAH!” snarled the creature. He stormed off, declining to break Thaia's neck. He did break a couple of soldiers who appeared in the doorway and tried to level their weapons on him, but those, after all, were expendable.
The Hulk smashed through the wall of the alien laboratory, then straight through the outer wall of their facility-- momentarily disrupting its cloak-- and into the night of his own world. Two seemingly endless leaps later, he was out of range. If Xa'ios wanted him for the Chorus, Xa'ios would just have to catch him again. Considering the mood the Hulk was in, the creature would probably break his neck.
Carefully composing herself for the questions that would follow, Thaia thought about that possibility... and smiled.
TO BE CONTINUED...