Hulk by Peter David (e reader manga TXT) 📕

see her? To tell her that Bruce was effectively doomed? It seemed so insane. . . .

And then she saw the look in his eyes, and it occurred to Betty that insanity wasn’t only the name of the game, it was the only game in town. For half a moment, he had let slip what truly lay behind his eyes, and it was every nightmare, every collection of disgusting bugs that had ever been seen squirming around under a rock. It was right then that Betty abruptly realized that if she didn’t get the hell out of there, she wouldn’t be going anywhere, possibly ever.

“Of course,” she said, and rose quickly, grabbing up her coat. She did it so fast that she didn’t notice the scarf fluttering off the coat and landing on the floor. She was about to say something pointless such as “Good-bye” or “Have a nice evening,” but the inane social niceties froze in her throat and instead she just headed out the door as quickly as she could.

She heard a soft chuckle as she swung the door shut behind her, and fully expected someone or something to leap out at her as she sprinted for the curb, but nothing came. Betty hopped into her car and counted herself lucky as she gunned the engine and drove away. She had waltzed with the devil and survived for another dance, utterly unaware that the devil had her dance card.

Bruce felt a great swell of anger as he saw the contemptuous and doubting looks on the faces of Ross and the other officers. It was only his long practice at keeping his feelings firmly in control that enabled him to prevent that anger from being anything other than momentary.

The situation was so clichéd that Bruce would have laughed had he not been the subject of the interrogation. They’d even brought in a lamp with a high-powered bulb that they were shining on him, so that he would . . . what? Tan?

Ross sighed extremely loudly, in that way that one does to announce that one is reaching the end of one’s patience. “You guys buying this repressed-memory syndrome thing?” he asked the other officers.

“I don’t remember,” said Bruce, maintaining his equanimity. He didn’t in the least indicate that he was annoyed by their obvious skepticism. They were effectively calling him a liar. That didn’t bother Bruce. He’d been called far worse, under more trying circumstances than this. “How many times do I have to tell you? I’d like to help you, but I don’t know.” He almost sounded apologetic.

Ross leaned in toward him. “You know who I am, right, Banner?”

“Don’t you?”

“Banner . . .” Ross said warningly.

But Bruce simply smiled inwardly. “Perhaps you’re suffering from repressed-memory syndrome. Nasty, isn’t it? But you’ll learn to live with it. I have.”

“Banner!”

Bruce wasn’t exactly accustomed to answering to that name, but he knew that he’d pushed things as far as he could. “You’re Betty’s father,” said Bruce. “A high-ranking general.”

“Let’s cut the crap,” Ross snapped, circling Bruce, coming closer and closer in on his personal space. If he was trying to intimidate Bruce, it wasn’t working. Last Bruce had checked, there was no law against not knowing something, and at that moment, that was all Bruce was sure he was guilty of. Ross, however, didn’t seem deterred by Bruce’s lack of offenses. “I’m the guy who had your father tossed away, and a lot more like him. And I’ll do the same to you if I feel so disposed. You understand?” asked Ross.

Bruce had to admit to himself that that interested him. “My father. You say his name is Banner?” he asked, all too aware that it was the name the janitor, or dog man, or whatever one wanted to think of him as, had claimed was Bruce’s own. This simply couldn’t be coincidence.

“Now we’re getting somewhere,” said Ross, mistaking Bruce’s desire to clarify his own thoughts as an anxiousness to cooperate. “But then you say you’ve never known your parents.”

“I never did,” Bruce insisted.

“Don’t play me! You were four years old when you saw it—”

And those words caused something to freeze within Bruce. Abruptly he felt as if he were standing on the other side of a door, which, if swung open, would lead him toward things that would clarify so much, things that would fill the great gaping hole he’d always carried within him. The problem was he wasn’t sure he wanted to step through that door, for he knew instinctively that there would be no going back. And the old saying about ignorance being bliss had some merit to it at that.

He wrestled with the prospect of asking, but finally couldn’t help himself. “Saw what?”

Ross stared at him incredulously. “You were right there! How could anyone forget a thing like that?”

“Like what?!”

The general missed the rising ire in his subject, and instead simply said with unbridled contempt, “Oh, some more repressed memories?”

And Bruce saw himself jumping from his chair . . . leaping upon Ross, bearing him to the ground, pounding on his face, and his fists becoming larger, more powerful with every blow and Ross’s face was a horrible mess but Bruce didn’t care for he was howling with fury and laughing and smashing, just smashing . . .

Bruce sank further into his chair. He closed his eyes, desperate to shut out the vision that his own imagination had given him. He started to tremble, the repression of his anger becoming literally a physical thing. “Just . . . tell me,” was all he managed to say, his voice strangled.

There was something in his voice, something in his manner, that actually seemed to get through to Ross, at least a little bit. The slightest hint of empathy crossed his face. “I’m sorry, son,” he said with a heavy sigh, casting a frustrated glance at the other officers. “You’re an even more screwed-up mess than I thought you’d be.”

Bruce looked up at him, realizing that this was