After the factory battle, Ross’s team searched Bruce’s apartment. A forensics technician inspected Bruce’s homemade lab while Sparr riffled through his belongings.

“The stuff in the bottles was basic lab chemicals,” Sparr reported to Ross. “He was cooking something, but there’s no trace of it. He zeroed the place. Not a scrap of paper. Like he knew we were coming.”

“He didn’t know,” Ross replied. “He’s just always ready to leave.”

Then Blonsky entered the apartment, carrying Bruce’s backpack. “I knew something was different before I got the shot off,” he said. “He had it on him when he bolted.”

“Tell me that’s what I’m hoping it is,” Sparr said. She took the backpack and emptied it, pulling out a laptop. A grainy printout of a picture fell out, and Blonsky picked it up.

“Is that a girlfriend?” Blonsky wondered, examining the photo of Betty Ross. “She helps him maybe?”

General Ross snatched the picture of his daughter out of Blonsky’s hands. “ She is no longer a factor,” he said. “We closed that door to him long ago. He’s alone. He wants to be alone.” He tapped the laptop. “But see if he’s been talking to anybody.”

Blonsky stepped between Ross and Sparr. “Forgive me, sir,” he said. “But does somebody want to talk about what went down in there? Because he didn’t lose us and he wasn’t alone. We had him and something hit us. Something big .” Getting frustrated when Ross didn’t respond, Blonsky raised his voice. “It threw a forklift like it was a softball!”

Calming himself, he added, “It was the most powerful thing I’ve ever seen.”

“Well, it’s gone,” Ross said.

“If Banner knows what it is,” Blonsky swore, “I’m going to track him down and I’m going to put my foot on his throat and—”

Ross cleared his throat. “That was Banner.”

Blonsky shifted nervously. “You’re going to have to explain that statement, sir.”

“No, I don’t,” Ross replied. “You’ve done a good job. Pack up and get our men on the plane. We’re going home.” Then he strode out of Bruce’s apartment.

Sparr and Blonsky started after the general, dumbstruck.

Bruce woke to birdsong in the forest. He’d fallen asleep on a rock at the base of a waterfall....Well, asleep wasn’t really the right word. Somehow the creature had run out of rage, or energy, here. Then it had just stopped, and Bruce had become himself again. He looked at his hands, his pale and ordinary hands. His only clothing was a shredded pair of pants. He had to hold them up as he walked. Groaning, he followed a muddy road out of the woods until he reached a paved highway cutting through the mountains.

Bruce waved down a truck and leaned in the passenger-side window. “Can you help me?” he asked the driver in Portuguese.

“No habla portugués,” the driver replied.

Spanish? People in Brazil didn’t speak Spanish. Which meant, Bruce realized, that he was no longer in Brazil. But...“¿Dónde estoy?” Bruce asked. Where am I?

“Guatemala,” the driver said.

Guatemala? That was all the way north across Central America from Brazil. Somehow Bruce had traveled more than three thousand miles while he was...while the monster—the Hulking Monster—had been loose.

“I’m going to the next town,” the driver added. He didn’t ask what Bruce was doing in the middle of the rain forest dressed only in a pair of pants that barely stayed up.

“Will you help me?” Bruce asked.

The driver leaned across and opened the door. “Get in.”

When Bruce was in the truck, the driver gave him a blanket and helped Bruce wrap it around his shoulders. “Where are you going?” he asked.

“Home,” Bruce said. The driver nodded and drove on, not asking any more questions. Bruce was grateful for this simple act of kindness. It helped him keep his faith in humanity.

Bruce got across the border from Guatemala into Mexico, and slumped exhausted in the main market of a small town in Chiapas. He had to rest. A boy put a few coins into his hand, thinking he was a beggar.

The coins didn’t amount to much, but they were enough that he could get a shirt and a pair of pants at a nearby market stall. The vendor gave him things in his size, but Bruce looked at the pants, thinking about what he would do if the Hulking Monster came back. He’d need something... “¿Tienes más ...stretchy?” he asked, and the vendor smiled at his bad Spanish. But she found him a large, stretchy pair of pants. They were comically big on him, but they might hold together during a transformation.

Dressed again, Bruce felt better. He got something to eat, and then he kept going.

Blonsky walked with General Ross back into the command center at the Everglades base. “I’ve run into bad situations on crap missions before,” he said. “I’ve seen good men go down purely because someone didn’t let us know what we were walking into. I’ve moved on to the next one because that’s what we do, right? I mean, that’s the job. But this?” He stopped walking, and General Ross did, too. “This is a whole new level of weird,” Blonsky said. “I don’t feel inclined to step away from it. So if you’re taking another crack at him, I want in.”

He wanted to get back at Bruce for what had happened in the factory, but Blonsky also wanted more. He’d seen the creature’s unthinkable power...and he wanted that, too.

“And with respect,” he went on, “you should be looking for a team that’s prepped and ready to fight. Because if that thing shows up again? You’re going to have a lot of professional tough guys running for their mamas.”

Blonsky could see Ross thinking, but all Ross did was dismiss him. It wasn’t until a few days later that Ross called him in, and Blonsky got a whole new understanding of what they were up against.

“Let me emphasize that what I’m about to share with you is tremendously sensitive, both to me personally and to the army,” Ross said as he and Blonsky walked through a hanger. It was filled with helicopters and armored vehicles. “You’re aware that we’ve got an infantry weapons development program. Well, in World War Two, they initiated a subprogram for biotech force enhancement.”

“Yeah, the Super-Soldier program,” Blonsky said. He’d heard of it.

“Yes,” Ross said. “An oversimplification, but yes. And I dusted it off, got them doing serious work again. Bold work. Across the hall, they were trying to arm you better....We were trying to make you better.”

“Banner’s work was very early phase. It wasn’t even weapons application. He thought he was working on radiation resistance.” Ross smirked. “I would never have told him what the project really was. But he was so sure of what he was onto that he tested it on himself. And something went very wrong.” His smirk changed to a real smile, the kind of smile someone got when they had a secret. “Or it went very right.”

Ross started to get down to business now that he’d started to let Blonsky in on the secrets of the Super-Soldier project. “As far as I’m concerned, that man’s whole body is the property of the US Army.”

“You said he wasn’t working on wea-pons, right?” Blonsky asked.

“No.”

“But you were, weren’t you? You were trying other things.”

Ross saw that Blonsky was starting to put two and two together. Good , he thought. Blonsky might be just what he was looking for. “One serum we developed,” he said, “was very promising.”

“So why did he run?” Blonsky asked.

Ross stood. “He’s a scientist. He is not one of us. Blonsky, how old are you? Forty-five?”

Blonsky bristled but tried not to show it. “Thirty-nine,” he said.

“It takes a toll, doesn’t it?”

“Yes, it does.”

“So get out of the trenches. You should be a colonel by now, with your record.”

“No, I’m a fighter,” Blonsky said. “I’ll be one for as long as I can. You know, if I could take what I know now and put it in the body I had ten years ago, that would be someone I wouldn’t want to fight.”

Perfect , General Ross thought. He wants it. “I could probably arrange something like that,” he said.

Recruiting was easy when you identified the right man for the job, he thought. 5rm17HCHwPDpa58edBHg3Ty+gdeSbvJlxFaQQNRjkIk1KlHZUCEwIFFUczC8hpJ5