The heavy boots of the agents echoed as they left the corridor. Once the final door sealed shut behind them, only two men remained in the long, sterile hallway: one on the outside of the glass, and one within it.
Tony stood there facing the reinforced glass. He didn't rush. He scanned the room's sterile layout, its too-clean walls, the reinforced vents, the faint buzz of power humming through the suppression field.
Inside, Bruce Banner lay curled in the far corner, knees drawn up to his chest. His frame was lean but worn, marked by years of confinement. The containment suit he wore clung to him like a second skin, woven with dull-blue circuitry that pulsed gently in sync with his vitals.
Tony noted the twitch of Banner's fingers, the shallow rise of his breathing, the quiet tremor in his left hand. The readings on the glass's display showed stable vitals, suppressed adrenal activity, and a neural lockdown protocol still engaged.
After a long moment, Tony cleared his throat.
"Bruce Banner," He said calmly, hands in his coat pockets.
"I know you're awake."
Bruce shifted slowly and opened his bloodshot eyes. He looked weak and tired.
"I'm Tony Stark," he said. "And before you say you've never heard of me, I know. That was the point."
Tony continued, "You've been off the books for thirteen years. SHIELD scrubbed you out of existence, so it took a while to find you."
Bruce sat up slowly. He looked cautious. "Are you here to shut me down?" His voice was hoarse from disuse, barely above a whisper.
"No," Tony replied. "I'm here to offer you a job. A chance to redeem yourself."
Bruce let out a dry, humorless laugh. It turned into a cough. "You serious?"
"You broke the serum code. You stabilized something no one else could during your era. The rage, the transformation, the regenerative factor. You created a controlled transmutation engine inside a human body." Tony gestured with one hand. "Then you messed up. Got greedy, stole the serum, and injected yourself like a fool."
"For years, I thought I wanted to be a hero like Captain America, but there was a part of me who was just... greedy. And that greed turned me into a monster. But in the end, it was me who took so many lives. There is no redemption for me."
"Yeah. You fucked up. But staying curled up here doesn't erase what you are, or what you could do now."
Bruce's eyes flicked toward the floor. "What I could do? You mean what the other guy could do. You don't want me. You want him."
Tony's face didn't change. "I want you both."
"Stark," Bruce said, dragging the name out like something sour. "You think you understand, but you don't. You weren't there. You didn't see what I did. You don't know what it feels like to wake up covered in someone else's blood. Letting me out is like letting a monster out of the cage after years of starvation. The moment you open that door, that monster will kill you."
"Ah! Is that so?" Tony said with his usual arrogant smile as he unlocked the door and disabled Bruce's containment suit.
The containment door hissed open.
The moment the final locking mechanism disengaged, Bruce clutched his head, and his spine arched. A guttural scream tore from his throat as the containment suit's dampening protocols failed. Muscles bulged, and veins turned green. Then his skin flushed green, stretching as his bones cracked and reformed. His breathing transformed into snarls.
Within seconds, Bruce Banner was gone. In his place stood the Hulk.
The transformation was instant and violent.
With a roar that shook the hallway, Hulk lunged forward and slammed both fists into the reinforced glass wall. It shattered like cheap plastic. The shockwave buckled the metal floor beneath his feet. "HULK SMASH!" Hulk raised one massive fist and drove it toward Tony's face.
The punch never landed.
Tony stopped it with a single finger. The nanites in his body absorbed the kinetic energy.
His nanite armor shimmered across his body, latching into place with perfect precision. Model 50, the Endo Sym armor activated. After his fight with Carol, Tony had upgraded the armor even further, and now was the perfect time to test it out. He looked up at Hulk and smiled.
Then Tony's fist came up.
One uppercut connected clean under Hulk's jaw with a burst of kinetic energy. The air cracked. Hulk shot straight up like a missile, smashing through the ceiling of the facility, tearing through concrete and steel and emerging into open sky. The shockwave from his departure rippled out for miles.
Tony looked up. "I'm gonna beat the shit out of you just to test out my suit."
He flew into the air, trailing white light behind him as he rocketed after Hulk. The HUD in his visor flared to life. Wind speed, gravitational pull, impact angles—all calculated in real-time. Tony caught up in seconds.
He hit Hulk in midair.
The impact sent both Tony and Hulk falling downward. Tony turned in the air and punched Hulk again, sending him toward the ocean. Hulk crashed into an abandoned island, creating a deep mark in the ground as he broke through trees, stone, and dirt.
Tony landed a few hundred feet away, dust kicking up around his boots.
The island was silent for two seconds.
Then Hulk exploded from the crater, mouth wide, roaring louder than thunder. He leapt toward Tony, fists swinging in a brutal arc. Tony blocked the first punch with a forearm brace, absorbed the second with a kinetic redirector, then responded with a spinning kick to Hulk's ribcage that launched him through a boulder.
Hulk tore out of the rubble and charged again.
Tony grinned inside his helmet. "Let's see what you've got."
Hulk slammed into him with full force, driving him back through the jungle. Trees splintered and rocks shattered. The ground itself cracked beneath them. Hulk pounded Tony's armor with relentless fury, each blow creating shockwaves that carved trenches into the landscape.
But the armor didn't break.
Tony locked Hulk's wrist in mid-swing and activated the endosym tether, liquefying the nanites on his arm into a coiled brace. The metal snaked up Hulk's forearm and around his shoulder like a python, binding him in place.
Tony pulled him forward and fired a repulsor burst straight into Hulk's face.
The explosion sent Hulk tumbling backward. He skidded across the ground, leaving a crater in his wake. He shook it off and slammed his fists into the earth, sending a tidal wave of dirt and debris at Tony. The dust cloud swallowed everything.
Then a beam of white-hot energy tore through the dust and struck Hulk in the chest, pinning him to the mountain wall at the edge of the island.
Tony hovered forward, his nanites returned and fused with his suit. He got Hulk's blood sample and left a swarm of nanites in his body.
"C'mon, you are hitting like a child," he mocked.
Hulk growled, ripping the rocky chunks apart as he pulled free. He roared and launched himself again, this time faster and wilder. He clapped his hands mid-air, sending a sonic shockwave that ripped through the valley.
Tony flew low and fast, dodging boulders and debris, before slamming into Hulk shoulder-first and driving him into the ground. Hulk flipped them over, pinning Tony and throwing punch after punch, trying to crush his helmet.
Each hit slammed into the armor, cracking the stone beneath them, but the Model 50 held strong. Tony's palm lit up, and he fired a pulse cannon point-blank into Hulk's stomach, launching him into the sky once again.
Tony followed, this time weaving around Hulk in a spiral. The armor responded with inhuman speed, forming blade-like extensions from his wrists. He sliced across Hulk's back, sparking green blood into the air, then spun and kicked Hulk back down toward the beach.
Hulk hit the ground hard.
Tony landed in front of him and powered up both gauntlets.
"You done?" he asked.
Hulk's chest heaved. His eyes burned with rage. He tried to rise, but stumbled, dropping to one knee. His body trembled. The rage hadn't left, but the damage was catching up and thanks to the nanites infiltrating his body, his wounds weren't healing anymore.
"So," he said. "You still there, Banner?"
Hulk snarled, then froze.
The anger flickered. His chest rose and fell slower now. The glow in his eyes faded, replaced by confusion. "No Banner. Only Hulk."
Tony knelt beside him.
"I need both of you. Hulk can smash monsters and become a hero, while puny Banner can sit behind computers and create something nice. So, you are either in or out. But if you ever go on a rampage, remember this punch," Tony said as his mask retracted, clenched his fist and smashed Hulk's face hard enough to knock him out.
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