Hank's body slammed against the far wall, crashing down into a mess of overturned furniture and broken glass. Blood dripped from his mouth, his jaw clearly fractured, and one eye already beginning to swell shut. He coughed and wheezed, trying to push himself up with trembling arms.
Yelena stepped through the shattered doorway. Her white tactical suit shimmered with kinetic pulse marks, fresh from impact. She looked down at him in disgust.
Janet, still on the floor and fighting for air, looked up in confusion before recognition settled in. Relief mixed with pain crossed her face.
Yelena raised one hand, signaling for Janet to stay down. She stepped toward Hank as he rolled onto his side and activated a small device on his wrist. A sharp buzz filled the room, and in an instant, his body shrank to the size of an insect, vanishing from view.
"Coward," Yelena muttered. Her smart lenses were already tracking the sudden burst of energy. The system locked onto Hank's signature immediately, even in his miniaturized form. Red outlines flashed across her vision, targeting his exact coordinates. She noticed that Hank got an AI in his suit, which was even better for her.
"Hermes," she said with an angry expression, "disable his suit. Now."
There was a soft chime in her ear as Hermes responded. "Override complete. AI RED shutting down. Pym suit disabled."
A split second later, a sickening thud echoed across the room as Hank's tiny form suddenly reverted to full size mid-fall. He landed awkwardly on the floor, groaning in pain. His limbs flailed uselessly, the shock of the sudden shift leaving him stunned.
Yelena didn't wait. She ran and grabbed him by the collar, and yanked him halfway to his feet before slamming him down again.
"You disgusting piece of shit," she spat.
She kicked him once in the ribs, then again in the stomach.
"Argg! Cough!" Hank cried out, curling in on himself, but Yelena didn't stop. She kicked his shoulder next, then his thigh, each blow made a cracking sound of bones breaking.
"That's for hitting her. That's for the lies. And that," she said, her foot driving into his chest one more time, "is for thinking you could get away with it. Fucking piece of shit! If not for Tony's order, I'd have hanged you naked in the forest and let the hyenas tear you apart."
Hank moaned, barely conscious, blood smeared across his face.
Yelena finally stepped back. She looked over at Janet, who had managed to pull herself into a sitting position against the wall. "You're safe now," she said softly with a sad smile. She could see multiple scars on her body and knew what she had gone through. "Stark sent me. He wanted to offer you a spot with the Ultimates. But first, let me heal you..."
She released the bio-nanites, healing Janet and removing every single wound on her body.
"Second," Yelena controlled the nanites into Hank's body. Now, no matter how many times his bones break, he won't die, and the bio-nanites will keep healing him. "Beat the shit out of this fucker. No, worries, he won't..."
Before she could finish, Janet grabbed the wooden chair on her right, ran over to Hank, and smashed it on his head. The chair shattered into pieces.
She grabbed the broken chair leg with both hands and brought it down across Hank's ribs. The wood cracked against his side with a deep, ugly thud. Hank coughed blood onto the floor, his body convulsing as the pain hit. But even as he gasped, the nanites went to work, stitching broken tissue, sealing fractured bones, forcing him to breathe again.
Janet brought the leg down again. And again. She smashed him in rage. Her arms swung wildly. The blunt edge caught Hank's collarbone. Then his shoulder. Then his face.
"You used me," she shouted in a ragged voice. She struck him again. "You stole my blood." Another hit. "You broke me down. You made me feel small. You made me feel like a test tube." She slammed the wood across his legs, then drove it into his stomach with a two-handed blow that made him seize.
Yelena stood by the wall, silent, eyes hard but respectful. She knew this wasn't about violence. This was about release. This was about justice. 'Get it all out, girl.'
Janet tossed the broken chair leg aside and hauled Hank up by the lapels. His eyes were glazed over, his face covered in blood and swelling. He muttered something, too soft to hear, but she didn't care.
She drove her knee into his groin. He howled and bent forward. She hit his head with her elbow. He fell to the floor again, gasping like a drowning man.
"You drugged me to get what you wanted." She kicked him in the back. "You lied to everyone, but most of all, to me." She kicked again, this time at his hip. A crack echoed off the walls.
Hank's body spasmed and reset itself again. The nanites kept repairing every injury. Janet didn't stop.
She grabbed one of the metal rods from his lab kit. She jammed it into his shoulder, then twisted. He screamed. Blood gushed down his side. He reached for her arm out of reflex. She slapped his hand away and struck him across the face with the back of her palm.
"You broke the trust we built. You poisoned your own work. You said you loved me, but all I ever was to you... was a blood bank."
She slammed her foot on his ankle. It snapped. He shrieked. A second later, it popped back into place.
Over and over, she let the fury pour out of her.
She delivered a blow to his ribs, followed by a punch to his eye. A stomp to his chest came next, and then she kicked the side of his head. Dragging him a few feet, she kicked him in the spine. Finally, she turned him over and hit him in the face until her knuckles bled.
Yelena remained still.
Janet's breathing became ragged. She screamed and hit him again. Screamed and hit. Screamed and hit. Her fists were bleeding, her voice hoarse, but she didn't stop.
Hank didn't get to pass out. The nanites made sure he stayed awake through every single moment.
Janet stood over him, soaked in sweat, arms trembling, hair matted to her face. Her voice dropped to a whisper now.
"You don't own me. You never did. And you never will again. AND I'M NOT A MONSTER!" She yelled before kicking his groin again.
She dropped to her knees beside him. She looked into his swollen, nearly unrecognizable face. Then she whispered, "I'm not a fucking monster. All this time... It was you. You were the real monster wearing a human skin. I hope you rot in hell."
Hank groaned, barely able to lift his head.
Janet stood up slowly. Yelena stepped beside her and offered her a cloth for her hands. Janet took it and wiped the blood off her knuckles.
"You good?" Yelena asked quietly.
Janet looked down at Hank one last time.
"Yeah," she said. "I am now."
Yelena nodded and slightly looked back. She said, "Take him to the Vault."
Three widows came out from their invisible mode and dragged the meat slop with them.
Janet didn't watch them leave.
She just walked to the bathroom, turned on the sink, and began to wash the blood off her hands.
Yelena waited by the doorway, arms crossed, watching her with something close to admiration.
Let's go for a little flashback.
[FLASHBACK – 13 YEARS AGO] [S.H.I.E.L.D. HOLDING FACILITY – UNDISCLOSED LOCATION]
Bruce sat alone, hunched over in the corner, wearing a gray containment suit lined with faint blue circuitry. It was an early S.H.I.E.L.D. invention designed to monitor his vitals and suppress spikes in adrenaline. It wasn't foolproof. But it had kept him from transforming... for now.
Across the room, a reinforced glass wall separated him from the observation booth. Agents stood on the other side, whispering. No one had spoken to him since the incident.
Bruce's eyes were bloodshot, not from rage but from guilt. His knuckles were bandaged where he had pounded the walls in a fit of panic after the transformation wore off. His mind replayed the event in shattered pieces: Mary Parker's scream. Richard's hand reaching for her. Blood on the tile. The scorched remnants of the lab bench. The sound of bones breaking.
And then nothing but green and rage... So much rage.
He didn't know how long he'd blacked out. He only remembered waking up to the horror. Flames still burned along the edges of the room. Steel beams twisted like paper. Mary was unconscious beneath a collapsed support beam. Richard had dragged her halfway out before collapsing himself, ribs crushed. Banner had crawled out of the wreckage, barefoot and shivering.
They had sedated him on the spot.
Footsteps echoed now in the hallway.
The door to the observation booth hissed open, and Nick Fury stepped inside. He stopped and looked at Bruce with his arms crossed.
"You don't look like the guy who wanted to be Captain America," Fury said flatly.
Fury approached the glass, expression unreadable. "You know what I got in the other room? Twenty dead agents, thirty critically injured, and right now, they are fighting for their lives. And two bleeding scientists, one of whom might never walk again. And a billion-dollar facility in ruins. We were working on that serum for ten years. Ten years, Banner."
Bruce raised his head slowly. "I fixed it."
Fury scoffed. "You broke it."
"I perfected it," Bruce insisted, voice low, cracked. "I just didn't understand the... threshold. The transformation rate. The cellular variance under stress."
"You turned yourself into a walking weapon of mass destruction. You made a nuke with legs, Bruce. And worse—you didn't tell anybody."
"I didn't want to be weak anymore," he whispered.
Fury stared at him for a long moment. Then he walked to the console, tapped a control, and the glass wall dissolved with a low hum. He stepped into the containment cell.
Fury stood in front of him, hands still behind his back. "Let me tell you what's going to happen next. You're not getting a trial or going to jail. You're going into a box. A deep, dark one. And you're going to stay there until we figure out what the hell to do with you. Because the second your heart rate spikes, we've got a green nightmare that doesn't answer to anyone."
Banner looked up at him. "So I'm a prisoner."
"You're a time bomb," Fury said. "You made that choice."
He turned to leave, then paused.
"Mary and Richard are alive. Barely. Your cousin Jennifer was scheduled to visit that day. She didn't. Lucky her."
Fury walked to the door.
Before he left, he glanced back once.
"Just remember, Bruce... Captain America didn't need rage to be strong. He needed conviction. You? You built a monster with your name on it."
The door closed tightly behind him. Bruce sat in silence once more, the only sound being his ragged breathing. He wasn't angry; he was broken. And in the depths of his mind, beneath layers of guilt and fear, the Hulk whispered, "Weak no more."
After Fury's death and the changes within SHIELD, it was time to decide what to do with the monster.
Tony read Fury's mind before his death, so he knew the location of this secured facility. So, he simply flew there and walked into the facility. The agents opened the doors and led him inside the containment facility.
After going through multiple reinforced doors and force fields, they finally reached Banner's cell.
Tony looked at the agents. "Leave."
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