The chaotic aftermath of New York had yet to settle, and the manhunt for the "Green Giant" had already secretly begun nationwide.
In General Ross's command center, the red dot on the electronic map jumped erratically along the eastern states.
"He is injured, and there is a faint leakage of gamma radiation; this is our chance." General Ross stared at the screen.
"Step up biochemical and radiation screening at all transportation hubs. Pull up all surveillance footage from the Long Island incident; I want to know what made that monster stop!"
At this moment, Bruce Banner was curled up in the corner of an empty freight car on a train heading to Virginia.
His face was pale, and his body was trembling.
The memories of his transformation in New York were blurry and chaotic, but the destruction was real.
The lingering fear made him tremble more than any physical pain.
"Cannot sleep... cannot relax..." he whispered, his teeth chattering.
The energy within him was like a dormant volcano.
He had to keep moving, searching for gaps in the Military's net.
A few days later, he ventured to the university town of Culver in Virginia—the place where Betty had once lived.
He didn't go to find her; that was too dangerous.
He rented the smallest room at a motel on the edge of town, kept to himself, lived on canned food and tap water, and used breathing techniques and meditation to maintain a fragile balance.
On the afternoon of the fourth day, Banner, while out buying food, brushed past two "customers" in a convenience store who had sharp eyes and moved with tactical precision.
Alarm bells rang in his head.
He lowered his head, quickened his pace, and blended into the flow of people at the edge of the campus across the street.
Turning the corner of a building covered in ivy, he tried to take a shortcut through a small grove.
The moment he stepped onto the tree-lined path, figures appeared in front and behind him simultaneously—not the two from the convenience store, but new faces, closing in on him.
He was surrounded.
Despair and panic washed over him like ice water.
Banner wanted to run, but his legs turned to jelly.
Extreme tension and fear ignited the suppressed volcano within him.
"No... don't... not now..." He clutched his head in pain, his fingernails digging into his temples.
His vision turned green, his bones rattled, and his skin stung...
"Bruce?"
A voice, familiar enough to make his soul tremble yet as strange as if from a past life, rang out at the edge of his consciousness, which was almost entirely swallowed by green.
He looked up abruptly.
His vision, suffused with green, struggled to focus.
Behind the flank of the pursuers, on a fork in the path, a woman in a light brown trench coat holding a folder stopped in her tracks, looking at him in disbelief.
Chestnut hair, clear blue eyes, filled with shock, worry, and a hint of deeply hidden tenderness.
Betty.
Time froze.
The approach of the pursuers and the roaring within him instantly faded away.
Only that face, which had sustained him through countless days and nights of fleeing, remained.
"Betty..." he rasped, filled with endless pain and longing.
The nearly uncontrollable urge to transform stalled momentarily due to this intense emotional shock.
After the initial shock of seeing him, Betty instantly understood the situation.
She saw the flush and pain on Bruce's face, the inhuman green light in his eyes, and even more, the strange men whose hands were already reaching for their waists.
She knew her father's methods all too well.
She didn't hesitate.
At the critical moment when Bruce was about to be swallowed or arrested, Betty stumbled forward, clutching her folder, and blocked the path between him and the nearest pursuer.
The folder scattered with a "clatter," and papers flew everywhere.
"Oh! I'm sorry!" She raised her voice, bent down in a panic to pick them up, her body skillfully blocking their path and line of sight, while she hissed urgently to the stiff, frozen Bruce behind her: "Bruce! Look to the left! There's a gap in the outer wall of the abandoned greenhouse! Go! Don't let them catch you! Go!"
The brief obstruction and chaos bought a few critical seconds.
The emotional shock of Betty's appearance, combined with her self-sacrificing cover and clear instructions, snapped him back from the brink of transformation.
Survival instinct overwhelmed everything else.
He cast one last deep look at Betty, containing too much that could not be said.
Then he turned and, summoning the last ounce of a fugitive's strength, dashed in the direction she indicated—toward the vine-covered, abandoned greenhouse! His movements were staggering but incredibly fast.
"Stop!" The pursuers pushed Betty aside (not roughly, knowing who she was) and drew their guns to pursue, but were delayed by the scattered papers and Betty's "unintentional" obstruction.
Rushing around the corner, they only saw Banner disappear into the gap in the greenhouse's damaged outer wall.
"Target has entered the abandoned botanical garden area! Team A, pursue from the front; Team B, circle around to block the exit! Be careful, the target may 'transform'!" The leader hissed into his headset, then glanced coldly at Betty, who was crouching on the ground, seemingly terrified. "Ms. Ross, please leave immediately; it's dangerous here."
Betty lowered her head, her shoulders trembling slightly, her fingers gripping the crumpled paper so tightly her knuckles turned white.
She didn't speak, didn't leave, but kept her eyes fixed on that gap, praying frantically in her heart.
Bruce ran desperately through the dark, damp maze of the greenhouse, which was filled with the scent of rotting plants.
Behind him were the footsteps and shouts of the pursuers.
His lungs burned, and his heart felt like it would explode.
The agitation within him rose again due to the intense exercise and sustained tension, with green light flickering beneath his skin.
He knew he couldn't hold on much longer; he would either be caught or turn into the monster again, dragging Betty completely into it...
Just as he was in near despair, with green phantoms appearing before his eyes, the modified old pager he kept in his inner clothing, which never left his side, suddenly vibrated slightly.
This was no ordinary call.
This pager was his only remaining, most secret way of contacting the outside World.
It had almost never rung during his flight.
He stumbled behind a toppled cultivation tank and, with trembling hands, pulled out the pager.
On the small monochrome screen, there was no number, only two lines of scrolling encrypted characters that he needed to decode in his mind using a specific rule.
Rapid decoding: "Southeast, 300 meters, old sewage treatment plant. Underground maintenance tunnel C7 entrance is unlocked; inside is a basic anti-tracking jammer (20-minute duration). The tunnel leads to the abandoned ranch west of the city. Take care. — A"
A? An anonymous person? A trap set by General Ross?
No, if it were a trap, there would be no need to provide a specific escape route and a jammer.
The other party knew this encrypted channel and the decoding key...
There was no time to think it over.
The footsteps behind him were getting closer.
The roaring inside him grew louder.
This was his only hope.
Bruce gritted his teeth, tucked the pager back, took a deep breath to force himself to stay calm, identified the direction, and then shot off toward the southeast like an arrow from a bow!
Bursting with unprecedented potential, ignoring the scratches from bushes and the slippery ground, he covered the three hundred meters in an instant.
The rusted iron gate, half-hidden in the weeds, was left ajar, with "C7" painted on it in fading paint.
He pushed it open hard, revealing a pitch-black, descending tunnel that smelled of mold and moisture.
He slipped inside and gently pulled the door shut behind him.
The moment the door closed, he saw on the tunnel wall an inconspicuous, black device the size of a matchbox, blinking with a faint green light—it was the jammer mentioned in the message.
Without looking back, he ran desperately down and forward along the narrow, slippery tunnel.
In the darkness, there was only his own heavy breathing and heartbeat.
After some time, light and an upward-leading iron ladder appeared ahead.
He climbed up, pushed open the heavy cover at the top, and, covered in mud and exhaustion, breathed in the relatively fresh air on the surface once again.
Before him lay a desolate, overgrown, abandoned ranch, with hills and woods in the distance.
Faint sirens could be heard from the direction of the city behind him, but they seemed very far away.
He... had temporarily escaped.
Collapsing onto the grass from exhaustion, Bruce coughed violently until he spat out blood-tinged phlegm.
Severe pain and weakness washed over his body like a tide, but stronger still was the collapse of relief from surviving, and the shock and gratitude for that mysterious message.
Who was it? A? Who could find his temporary hiding spot so precisely within General Ross's dragnet, know his secret contact method, and provide such timely and effective escape assistance?
That jammer was clearly Military-grade or something even higher, capable of temporarily shielding his gamma radiation signature and thermal signal, buying precious time to escape.
Could it be related to... that mysterious power in New York that made him "calm down" before?
The voice near the mall that wrapped him in a warm, serene feeling, making him ultimately choose to leave instead of destroy?
In Banner's chaotic memories, that particular recollection was the blurriest and strangest, filled with surreal telepathic experiences.
He leaned against a haystack, looking up at the darkening sky as the stars began to emerge.
The agitation of Hulk within him gradually subsided due to extreme exhaustion and the temporary escape from danger, but the cold, lonely fear still lingered.
However, unlike before, this time the fear was mixed with a trace of extremely faint warmth from the outside World.
Betty... she saved him despite the danger.
Even though they hadn't met for years, and even though he had turned into a monster, she still chose him at that moment.
And this mysterious "A".
Whoever it was, this helping hand extended in a desperate situation gave him a glimmer of strength and... hope to keep struggling.
He fished the old pager out of his soaked inner pocket; the screen had gone dark.
Clutching it tightly in his palm, the cold sensation of the metal kept him awake.
"Thank you..." he whispered in a voice raspy to the extreme, toward the empty wilderness, not knowing if it was for Betty, for the anonymous "A," or for all the glimmers of light in this cold World that had never given up on him and had offered him a hint of warmth.
After resting for a moment and regaining a little strength, he struggled to his feet, identified the direction, and dragged his scarred, battered body toward the deeper wilderness and mountains.
He needed a new hiding place, needed time to heal his wounds, and to calm the storm within.
And that message from "A," along with the image of Betty risking her life to save him, would be like stars in the night, supporting him through the long, dark road of flight that lay ahead.
Far away, in a safe house near Culver University, General Ross slammed a fist onto the table, his face livid.
"He got away again! Right under Betty's nose! Useless! Have you identified that signal jammer that suddenly appeared?!"
"General, the jammer was very professional, short-lived, and self-destructed completely, making it impossible to track."
"The target's gamma signal disappeared briefly after entering the abandoned sewage treatment plant area, and reappeared as a faint trace on the edge of the western ranch twenty minutes later, but by the time the tracking team arrived, it had vanished again."
"He... has likely left the area."
General Ross's eyes were grim. He glanced at the screen, at the silent, pale profile of his daughter Betty as she was being escorted away, his heart filled with a mix of fury and more complex emotions.
"Expand the search area! Re-analyze all relevant data, including the abnormal psychic fluctuation from the New York incident! I refuse to believe there will be a 'mysterious good Samaritan' to save him every time!"
In the study of the seaside cottage, Artoria watched the green dot shared by Minerva—representing that Bruce Banner had successfully escaped the danger zone of Culver University and was moving toward more remote mountains (deduced through highly indirect satellite data analysis and energy residue extrapolation)—and let out a soft sigh of relief.
"Message delivered successfully, jammer effective, he is safe for now," Minerva reported. "General Ross's troops have been successfully led in the wrong direction."
"However, this intervention was extremely high-risk, and there is a slight possibility that our encrypted communication channel with Dr. Banner could be reverse-traced."
"I recommend suspending direct contact and switching to more passive information monitoring."
"Hmm, that will do for now. It's all we can do." Artoria nodded, walked to the window, and looked at the tranquil night scene outside.
"I hope he can hold on. And I also hope Betty... won't be too implicated because of this incident."
She thought of the intelligent and strong female scientist in her memories and prayed silently for her.
The story of Hulk was full of tragedy, but at least on this night, a glimmer of warmth from a stranger and an unbroken friendship brought a little bit of different starlight to that endless road of flight.
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