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While Marcus was explaining the whole Inhuman thing to Tony, Abomination was recovering.
The monster's healing factor was impressive—Marcus had to give him that. The skull-denting punch that would've killed a normal person? Already knitting itself back together. Not completely, but enough that Abomination could drag himself upright, wobbling slightly as he found his feet.
When his eyes landed on Marcus, there was genuine fear there. Maybe for the first time since his transformation, he'd encountered something that could actually hurt him.
But fear mixed with rage was a dangerous cocktail.
I injected Banner's blood into my veins, Abomination thought, teeth grinding. Risked everything to become this powerful. Became a monster. And this skinny kid in street clothes just knocked me across the block like I'm nothing?
The injustice of it burned. If Marcus hadn't just demonstrated overwhelming force, Abomination would've already charged over and pulverized him into paste.
Instead, he stayed where he was, using what little tactical sense he had left to figure out his next move.
He didn't get far in his planning.
"HULK!"
The roar came from behind him. Abomination spun around to see Hulk—fully recovered now—standing upright, fists clenched, eyes blazing with renewed fury.
Something in Abomination snapped at the sight. All his rational thinking evaporated. There was only Hulk, the one who'd humiliated him, the one who represented everything he wanted to surpass.
"HULK!" he roared back, charging.
Hulk didn't hesitate. He launched forward, and the two collided like freight trains.
BOOM. CRACK. CRUNCH.
Fist met flesh. Bone struck bone. It was savage, primal—two apex predators tearing into each other with zero finesse and maximum violence.
"Well," Tony muttered, watching the spectacle, "this is awkward."
Marcus raised an eyebrow. "Awkward how?"
"I can't exactly shoot at them without risking Hulk." Tony gestured at the melee. "They're moving too fast, and one wrong repulsor blast hits the wrong guy, and suddenly I'm the bad guy who hurt the hero. PR nightmare."
"So you're just going to watch?"
"Got a better idea?"
Marcus shrugged. "Actually, yeah. But you do you."
Tony glanced at him. "That's not ominous at all."
Marcus didn't respond. He just watched the fight with that same calm intensity, like he was studying a chess match instead of two monsters trying to beat each other to death.
The fight was shifting, though. Hulk was getting bigger.
Not metaphorically—literally bigger. With every hit he took, every surge of rage that flooded through him, his muscles swelled. His frame expanded. Where he'd been roughly the same size as Abomination before, now he was noticeably larger. Taller. Broader. More powerful.
The angrier Hulk got, the stronger Hulk got. And right now? He was furious.
Abomination, who'd been winning before, was now being pushed back. Hard.
"Oof!" Abomination grunted as Hulk's fist slammed directly into the wound Marcus had left on his skull—the one that had barely started healing.
"AAAGH!" The scream tore out of him as the injury split wide open, yellowish blood streaming down his face. His vision swam. His balance wavered.
Hulk didn't miss the opening.
He tackled Abomination to the ground, straddling his chest, and started raining down punches. Over and over. Methodical. Brutal.
WHAM. WHAM. WHAM.
"Jesus," Tony breathed.
Marcus said nothing.
Abomination tried to block, tried to fight back, but Hulk was too strong now, too fast, too angry. Every blow landed. Every strike drove Abomination deeper into the pavement. His breathing grew labored. His movements sluggish. His life signs dropping with each passing second.
In the distance, Betty had finally managed to climb out of the wrecked helicopter. She saw Banner—her Banner—on top of Abomination, beating him to death. Her face went white.
"Banner!" she shouted, voice cracking. "Banner, don't!"
Marcus's eyes flicked to her. Then back to Abomination.
He'd made his decision the moment that chain swung at his head.
Betty opened her mouth to shout again—
But Marcus was already moving.
His telekinetic field surged forward, invisible and precise. It threaded through the air, slipping into the open wound on Abomination's skull—the one Hulk had just reopened. It sank into brain matter, wrapping around neurons and synapses.
Then Marcus twisted.
Twenty tons of force, compressed into the space of a fist, rotating inside Abomination's cranium.
Everything inside turned to mush.
Abomination's body went limp. His eyes rolled back. His breathing stopped.
Hulk, mid-punch, froze. His fist hovered above Abomination's face, confusion rippling across his features. Something was wrong. The thing beneath him—it didn't feel alive anymore.
It felt... empty.
"Banner, don't!" Betty's voice finally reached him.
Hulk—no, Banner—looked up. Saw Betty's tear-streaked face in the distance. His eyes cleared, just a little. Just enough for the man inside to take the wheel.
He stared down at the body beneath him. Then back at Betty.
He didn't want her to see him like this. Didn't want her to think he was a monster.
"ROAR!" He stood up, the sound echoing off buildings.
Around them, the cavalry was arriving—police, soldiers, all pointing guns at him with shaking hands. A helicopter circled overhead, its spotlight pinning him like an insect under a microscope.
Hulk looked at the guns. At the helicopter. At the terrified faces surrounding him.
He couldn't stay here.
His eyes found Betty one last time. "Betty," he said, voice rough but unmistakably Banner's.
Then he turned and ran. Three bounds carried him to a rooftop. A few more and he was gone, vanishing into the New York skyline like a ghost.
The soldiers lowered their weapons slowly, unsure whether to feel relieved or disappointed.
Betty stood there, hand pressed to her mouth, tears streaming. General Ross stared after Banner with an expression too complicated to name. Tony's faceplate was up, his face somewhere between impressed and disturbed.
Marcus just looked calm. Like always.
Tony walked over to Ross, shaking his head. "General," he said, "I hate to say I told you so, but... actually, no, I love saying I told you so. The Super Soldier Program? Total disaster. My armor's looking pretty good right about now, huh?"
Ross gave him a withering glare but said nothing. He just waved at his subordinates, who scrambled into action. Medics for the wounded. A hazmat team for Abomination's body.
One of Ross's men approached after a few minutes, looking grim. "Sir, the hostile is KIA. No vitals."
Ross blinked. "Dead?"
"Yes, sir. Completely."
Ross turned to look at Abomination's corpse, then at the spot where Hulk had disappeared. "Must've been Banner," he muttered. "Hit him too hard."
Marcus suppressed a smile. Yeah. Sure. Blame Hulk. That worked.
If they autopsied the body, they'd eventually figure out the brain damage didn't match Hulk's fists. But by then, Marcus would be long past caring what Ross thought.
With the excitement over, Tony and Marcus headed for their respective exits.
"You want to come back to my place?" Tony asked. "We could talk about the whole Inhuman thing. Maybe run some tests—"
"Pass," Marcus said. "My apartment's the size of a shoebox. You'd never fit the armor inside, and I don't have a lab for you to dismantle it in."
"Fair point." Tony paused. "Rain check, then?"
"Sure. I'll call you."
They parted ways. Tony flew off in his armor, heading for Malibu.
Marcus caught a cab home, tipped the driver generously for not asking questions about the soot on his clothes, and collapsed on his couch with a beer.
Across the city, Tony landed in his workshop and immediately fired up his computer.
"Jarvis, pull everything you can find on Inhumans. History, biology, known cases—I want it all."
"Certainly, sir. Initiating deep search now."
With Jarvis's AI and Tony's borderline-illegal hacking skills, it didn't take long to compile a dossier. Hidden cities. Kree experiments. Terrigen Mist. Genetic activation. The whole weird, secret history.
"Huh," Tony murmured, scrolling through files. "So Marcus is basically an alien science project. Cool."
He made a mental note to never, ever tell Marcus he said that.
Meanwhile, in a secure facility on the other side of the country, Nick Fury sat in his office reviewing footage of the Harlem incident.
The Hulk. Abomination. Both powerful. Both dangerous. Both potential assets—or threats, depending on how you looked at it.
Fury replayed the part where Hulk went berserk. Noted the sheer destructive power. The lack of control.
"Coulson," he said into his comm.
"Yes, sir?"
"Start a file on Dr. Bruce Banner. Code name: Hulk. See if we can open a dialogue. Carefully."
"Understood. Anything else?"
"Yeah." Fury switched camera angles, pulling up footage of Marcus Reed catching a massive chain one-handed, then punching Abomination into low orbit. "Start another file. Marcus Reed. No code name yet. Witnessed at the Harlem incident. Demonstrated superhuman abilities—significant strength, possibly energy-based. Find out everything."
"On it, sir."
Fury leaned back in his chair, eye narrowed. Tony Stark he already knew—genius billionaire, recently outed as Iron Man, definitely going on the Avengers shortlist despite being a pain in the ass.
But Marcus Reed? That was new. That was interesting.
And if there was one thing Nick Fury hated, it was interesting unknowns operating on American soil without SHIELD knowing about them.
He pulled up Marcus's preliminary file—what little they had so far—and started reading.
This was going to be a long night.
(End of Chapter)
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