Hulk by Peter David (e reader manga TXT) 📕

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.