Hulk by Peter David (e reader manga TXT) 📕

a not-so-subtle message to his son, Bruce realized. If Bruce began to transform into the Hulk, his father would share his fate. Perhaps David thought this was generous, or a show of goodwill on his part. To Bruce it simply qualified as just desserts.

He stood before his son and hung his head.

“I should have killed you,” Bruce whispered with ill-concealed venom.

“As I should have killed you,” his father acknowledged.

“I wish you had,” replied Bruce. He sank down onto the cot, his head in his hands. “I saw her last night. In my mind’s eye. I saw her face. Brown hair, brown eyes. She smiled at me, she leaned down and kissed my cheek. I can almost remember a smell, like desert flowers—”

“Her favorite perfume,” said the father.

“My mother. I don’t even know her name,” said Bruce, starting to cry.

At the other end of the hangar, Betty and her father watched on the monitors. The sound was low, distorted, but they could just make out the conversation. And Betty had to admit something to herself: As messed up as her relationship with Thunderbolt Ross might have been, he was Father of the Year compared to the nut Bruce had gotten stuck with.

David Banner didn’t seem bothered at all by his son’s sobs. “That’s good. Crying will do you good.” He walked toward his son and reached out with manacled hands.

Betty couldn’t help but be appalled. To see this man suddenly trying to act solicitous after the things he’d said, the things he’d done. She was relieved to see Bruce pull back from him.

“No, please don’t touch me,” Bruce said, recoiling. “Maybe, once, you were my father. But you’re not now. You never will be.”

“Is that so?” asked David. His eyes narrowed. All pretense of affection and compassion were evaporating. “Well, I have news for you. I didn’t come here to see you. I came for my son.”

Betty was confused when she heard that, and Bruce was obviously no less so.

David Banner continued, “My real son . . . the one inside you. You are merely a superficial shell,” and his voice started to get louder, “a husk of flimsy consciousness surrounding him, ready to be torn off at a moment’s notice.”

“Think whatever you like,” Bruce said tiredly. “I don’t care. Just go now.”

And then the father seemed to look right into the camera, sneering at Betty, before leaning in toward Bruce and murmuring so softly that no one monitoring the conversation could hear him. That was Betty’s first warning that something truly disastrous was going to happen.

Bruce tried to back away, but his father gripped his legs and held him in place. “But Bruce,” he whispered, “I have found a cure—for me.” His tone grew more menacing. “You see, my cells, too, can transform. Absorb enormous amounts of energy, but unlike yours, they’re unstable. Bruce, I need your strength,” he said with growing urgency. “I gave you life, now you must give it back to me—only a million times more radiant, more powerful.”

“Stop,” said Bruce, trying to pull away.

“Think of it,” David said, and he made a gesture that took in the entirety of the hangar. “All those men out there, in their uniforms, barking and swallowing orders, imposing their petty rule over the globe. Think of all the harm they’ve done, to you, to me—and know we can make them and their flags and their anthems and governments disappear in a flash. You . . . in me.”

Bruce was aware that his continued existence hinged on keeping absolutely calm, but at that instant he didn’t care.

“I’d rather die,” he said.

“And indeed you shall,” his father assured him, sounding as if he were trying to be accommodating. “And be reborn a hero of the kind that walked the earth long before the pale religions of civilization infected humanity’s soul.”

All the possibilities of the moment went through Bruce’s trained, analytical mind as he looked deep into the eyes of his demented parent. And he suddenly was certain that whatever his father was talking about, it wasn’t just the ravings of a lunatic. He definitely had some sort of plan, and although there was no questioning that he was—as Bruce’s adopted mother used to say—crazy as a soup sandwich, there was also no questioning his brilliance. Bruce was positive that his father had a plan, and the ability to pull it off. And it involved Bruce Banner.

Knowing he was triggering his own destruction, but determined to head off whatever the hell his father was up to, Bruce leaped to his feet and screamed, “Go!”

The shout was directed to those who held his life in their hands. He wanted them to go ahead, to annihilate him right then and there.

Enough already.

Betty, he thought bleakly, and he wasn’t sure if it was his mind thinking that or another’s, but then he heard the electromagnets powering up and knew it should take no more than a few seconds. He thought he heard Betty cry out in dismay, but she was very, very far away, and it hadn’t been much of a life, but damn, it had been interesting. . . .

And David Banner, thinking that he’d been the subject of the strangled “Go!” snarled, “Stop your bawling, you weak little speck of human debris. I’ll go. Just watch me go!”

With that, displaying a strength that he shouldn’t have possessed, he grabbed one of the thick electrical cables lying on the floor and tore it apart. The live wires sputtered, and then he took them into his mouth, a perversion of a newborn being suckled by its mother. Overhead, the klieg lights in the hangar began to sputter.

“No!” howled Bruce, and he jumped toward his father but was bounced back by the current. If he’d seen his own reflection as he hit the floor, he would have seen a definite hint of green in his eyes.

“What the hell!” shouted Ross, watching the confrontation between the two Banners spiral out of control. Betty, sensing something