Hulk Peter David (best motivational novels txt) 📖

if what went up had to come down, no one was quite prepared for the reverse, and through it all, the creature didn’t care, he was just . . .

. . . free free finally free . . .

Bruce Krenzler heard his name being spoken, and then became aware that he was in his own bed, but the sheets were completely knotted around him. Disconcerted and disoriented, he slowly twisted around, and it was Betty’s voice, calling his name in alarm. He stared at her through eyes that felt incredibly sore, and there was light on his face that shouldn’t have been there because it was nighttime and he was in the lab, except . . . How did his bed get to his lab?

Slowly he propped himself up on one elbow, blinked several times to try to get the ache out of his eyes, and this time when Betty said his name, it was louder and filled with alarm.

And for no reason that he could readily discern, he said the first thing that came into his mind, and, oddly enough, he knew it to be the truth. He told her that he thought his name was actually Bruce Banner. He had no clue why he told her, or even if he should have done so. He only knew that in telling her that, it would make him feel better, as if he were being honest with her about something that he hadn’t even known he was being dishonest with her about.

It didn’t work. Instead it just made him feel more confused . . . and more frightened than ever before, as if he’d just opened a door that could never again be closed.

meetings of great portent

An hour had passed, and Bruce and Betty were seated at the dining room table. In the intervening time, Bruce had showered and dressed. “Want to make myself feel human again,” he’d said, with only a vague sense of the irony of the statement. As he’d showered, he had fought to bring order to the chaotic flashes of images in his mind. But, try as he might, he couldn’t manage it.

For as long as he could remember, Bruce had felt that there was another . . . mind . . . rooting around somewhere within his. But the thoughts and impulses that came from that mind were always comprehensible, filtered through his own perceptions. Now, though, it was as if a barrier of some kind had been created, cutting him off from . . .

. . . himself?

Betty watched Bruce carefully as—having showered and dressed—he drank slowly from a cup of decaf coffee, which was the only kind he ever took. He was trying to explain to Betty what had happened, but it was extremely difficult because he didn’t entirely understand it himself. Betty sat and listened and nodded, but every so often her gaze would wander toward the back door, which was now leaning against the door frame with no means of attachment, the hinges hanging there uselessly. She thought about the things her father had said, and the more that Bruce spoke, the more she was thinking that her father didn’t know the half of it. But it wasn’t as if Bruce were some sort of sinister spy or foreign agent or saboteur. He was . . . he was . . .

God. She didn’t know what he was.

All she’d previously been worrying about was that Bruce had been caught in some sort of explosion. Now, though, he’d been presenting garbled recollections of displays of incredible strength coupled with extended blackouts, as if he were trying to remember things that had happened to someone else who was also him. She would have dismissed it as fantasy, a too-vivid dream, if she hadn’t witnessed everything from the devastation at the lab to the shattered door of his house. It was insane even to contemplate that he might be responsible in ways that defied any sort of scientific rationalization. She and Bruce were endeavoring to sort fantasy from reality, and having great difficulty accomplishing that usually simple task.

“It could have been him,” said Bruce, speaking of the bizarre visitation he’d had from the janitor. “He said he was my father. It’s like I had a kind of . . . dream of it. He was there, but I can’t remember.”

“Then you . . . you were there, at the lab?” asked Betty. It was hard for her to be certain, because Bruce’s own accounts seemed so muddled. Sometimes he would refer to his being there, but at other times he indicated that he wasn’t—or was there but wasn’t at the same time. It was making her head swirl just to try to keep track of it.

“No, not me . . . something,” he said with that same maddening vagueness. “Betty, what’s happening to me?”

She was the wrong person to ask. She could barely follow the conversation, much less offer anything vaguely approaching a rational explanation. There was one possibility although, given the circumstances, she was loath to suggest it. But it was the only thing she could think of. “Maybe . . . maybe he could tell you,” she said.

He stared at her for a moment uncomprehendingly, and then she saw the understanding appear in his eyes. Understanding . . . and fear. She was broaching the idea of going to a man whose very presence was daunting to Bruce, calling up all manner of associations that he could barely begin to comprehend, much less deal with. Still, if this janitor wasn’t insane—if his claims were legitimate—then maybe . . .

There was a loud, repeated pounding at the door. Bruce and Betty exchanged confused looks as Betty got up and opened the door, not knowing what to expect.

Two members of the military police filed in, followed by Thunderbolt Ross and several other MPs. His gaze swept the room as it routinely did whenever he entered a