The blue square barrier materialized in a quiet section of road east of the facility perimeter, rising from floor to ceiling like something being printed into existence, and the figures inside it resolved from nothing into presence as the Time Platform completed its transit sequence.
"Doom and Reed's calibration is better than I expected," said the figure in the heavy protective suit, looking down at the dosimetry instruments already active in both hands. The voice came out muffled through the suit's face covering. "I had some reservations. Apparently they were unfounded."
Banner. Or the current dominant personality, at least. The instruments were already reading, the numbers climbing in ways that were making his expression, visible through the suit's visor, progressively less relaxed.
Nolan signaled the two Raven Guard company champions to fan out and establish a basic perimeter check on the surrounding environment. Then he looked at Banner.
"Dr. Banner. Complete your measurements and then return to base through the platform. I understand the Hulk is resistant to radiation, but this is an infiltration and reconnaissance operation, not a combat engagement. We need to move quietly."
"Nolan, can I take this suit off? Honestly, if I keep wearing it, Hulk is going to come out just from the frustration of it, and nuclear radiation specifically is not a serious concern for me."
"When you've finished the readings, go back. We'll handle the rest."
The protective suit tore.
It happened in the space between one moment and the next: a series of sharp sounds as the heavy material gave way, and where Banner had been standing, a green figure three meters tall stood in the ruins of the protective clothing, looking at Nolan's skull helmet with an expression that combined aggression with something that was trying to be dignity.
"Hulk. Fearless."
He said each word separately, like a statement of policy.
Then something in his expression shifted. The size reduced by a perceptible amount. The aggression backed down, not entirely, but enough. The version of Banner that looked back at Nolan from the green face had glasses that had not been there a moment before and the bearing of someone who had been managing an extremely complicated internal situation for a very long time and had developed considerable philosophical acceptance about it.
"Mr. Nolan." Professor Hulk's voice was measured and genuinely apologetic. "I would ask that you not discuss Hulk's capabilities critically within range of Dr. Banner's hearing. We share sensory input now across all three of us, and Hulk's relationship with nuance, implication, and indirect speech is not developmental. He responds to literal meaning."
Nolan was quiet for a moment inside the skull helmet.
"Understood. My fault." A pause. "Professor, what are your instruments reading?"
Professor Hulk picked up the fallen dosimetry units from the ground and examined them with the particular focus of someone reading a language they know very well.
The expression on his face went from cautious to serious over about thirty seconds of instrument review.
"Mr. Nolan. What I'm reading is not a standard nuclear contamination event. Nuclear radiation is present, but it accounts for a minority of what the instruments are detecting. The dominant component is gamma radiation, and not background gamma radiation: this is high-activity, broad-spectrum gamma with a signature I recognize because I've studied it extensively in one specific context." He looked up. "It is spreading from a large living source. The signature matches what I produce myself when the Hulk is at significant output. I have never encountered this pattern from an external source before."
Nolan absorbed this.
"Professor. Large-dose gamma exposure in ordinary humans. Probability of survival, and probable outcomes for those who survive."
"Fatal in most cases. However, gamma radiation is the same mechanism that produced me, and I cannot rule out the possibility that an individual with the right genetic profile might survive and transform. The outcome of such a transformation could be something like me, or something considerably less stable." He paused. "The honest answer is that a large-scale gamma event in a populated area will produce casualties and, potentially, newly created individuals of unpredictable capability and psychological state."
"That's enough for now. Professor, return to base. This part is ours."
Professor Hulk did not move immediately. He stood looking at the dosimetry readings for a few seconds longer, his expression carrying the weight of someone who recognized a signature they had spent years studying and was trying to work out whose it was.
"To generate a living gamma source on this scale, the original individual would need to have been exposed under conditions comparable to my own, or to share some fundamental biological characteristic with me. My adversaries and associates of that category are all on the American continent." He looked toward the direction the contamination was emanating from. "Who is this?"
The road to the nuclear power plant was empty and absolutely quiet in the way that places become quiet when everything that normally produces noise has already made a decision about being somewhere else. The cooling towers were visible in the middle distance, massive and grey against the sky. A military jeep sat overturned on the road's edge, its tires still rotating slowly against nothing.
Nolan moved under Shadow Step, the two Raven Guard champions behind him matching his pace in their vibranium plate, the three of them crossing ground quickly and without sound.
He held up a fist when they were fifteen meters from the overturned vehicle.
They closed the remaining distance carefully and looked at what was on the ground beside it.
A soldier. Or what had been a soldier. The uniform was still present, though it had stretched and torn at most of its seams. The body inside it was undergoing changes that had no natural parallel: tissue proliferating at visible speed, the proportions wrong and getting wronger, the shape of the face already barely recognizable as a face. The soldier was on the ground on his side, twitching at irregular intervals, and the eyes that turned toward Nolan and the Raven Guard when they approached were red: the whites fully suffused, the irises lost, the pupils expressing something that was simultaneously pain and terrible focused determination.
The mouth moved.
"Whoever you are." The voice came out cracked and effortful, the vocal architecture behind it already compromised. "Warn the clan elders at the Winter Palace. Chernobyl's underground prison is breached. Unknown energy source. All mutant inmates detained in the facility have either escaped or transformed." A convulsion ran through the body, and the soldier fought through it without breaking the message. "Those who transformed are no longer rational. They are threats."
He managed to pull in one more breath.
"Chernobyl has fallen. Pass it on. Chernobyl has fallen."
The flesh and blood closed over him completely, the transformation finishing what it had started, and what rose from the ground was no longer a soldier in any meaningful sense. It found Nolan and the Raven Guard with the red eyes and the instinct to attack filled in everything the rational mind had occupied a moment before.
The two Raven Guard champions raised their boltguns.
The weapons fired.
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