Previously on Hulk vs. Death Claw
Marsh had the facility layout on a folded paper printout, hand-drawn from memory and supplemented by satellite imagery he’d pulled through an old DOD access credential that shouldn’t have still worked.
“It shouldn’t still work,” he said, spreading the printout across the hood of Derek’s van. “But here we are.”
Derek studied the layout. The main lab building sat at the center of the twelve acres, connected to two auxiliary structures by covered walkways. The southwestern fence line had the sensor gap Marsh had marked in red pen. The underground exhaust run went from the main building to a dispersal vent one hundred yards into the brush.
“How current is this?” Derek asked.
“The satellite pull is forty-eight hours old. The memory is fourteen months.” Marsh tapped the main building. “The interior layout won’t have changed. Facilities like this don’t restructure. They expand.”
“Containment units.”
“Sub-level. Every operation I worked in used sub-level containment. Harder to breach from outside, harder to breach from inside.” Marsh folded the printout. “There will be a stairwell access on the north interior wall of the main building. One way down, one way up.”
Derek looked at the fence line. They were parked on the parish road two miles north of the facility; the van pulled onto a gravel shoulder under a stand of cypress. The marsh spread south in the dark, flat, and quiet.
“Guards on the perimeter,” Derek said.
“Two-man rotation. Ninety-minute intervals based on standard protocol.” Marsh checked his watch. “We’re between rotations now. We have a forty-minute window to the fence.”
Derek went to the back of the van and changed his boots for a pair with better grip on soft ground. He checked his phone. Nothing from Olivia since her last text three hours ago confirming that Derek’s apartment had been surveilled. Nothing from his mother’s number, which had gone dark the night before.
That last part he didn’t think about directly. He kept it at the edge where it was useful without being loud.
He closed the van, and they moved into the marsh.
Marsh was sixty-one years old and moved like someone who had done this before and hadn’t enjoyed it then either. He kept pace without complaint, reading the ground carefully, placing his feet where Derek placed his. The chemical smell of the facility reached them after the first mile, synthetic and sharp underneath the organic marsh smell. Derek filed it and kept moving.
They reached the southwestern fence line in thirty-two minutes.
The sensor gap was where Marsh had marked it. Twelve feet of fence between two posts where the ground sensor array had a blind spot, the cabling routed around a section of unstable soil that had shifted the post foundations. Derek went through first, moving low and fast. Marsh followed.
Inside the perimeter, the ground was cleared and graveled. Floodlights on tall poles lit the space between the fence and the main building in overlapping cones. Derek counted the shadows between the cones and picked the route with the most coverage.
They crossed in two stages, pausing in the shadow of an auxiliary structure while a guard completed a corner rotation and moved away. Derek smelled two more guards somewhere on the south side of the building. Neither was moving toward them.
Marsh pointed to a service door on the north face of the main building. Keypad entry. Derek looked at it.
“Tell me you have the code,” Derek said quietly.
Marsh pulled a small device from his jacket pocket. “Override unit. Built it from a keypad exploiter I used in Kandahar.” He paused. “It takes ninety seconds.”
“Then let’s not stand here.”
They moved to the service door. Marsh attached the device to the keypad, and they stood against the wall while it ran. Derek watched the corner. Forty seconds. Sixty. The marsh smell was stronger here, coming through a ventilation grate at ground level. Underneath it is the chemical suppressant compound.
The device chirped. The lock released.
Inside, the building was cold and bright. White walls, sealed flooring, the hum of climate control running at full capacity. The main lab space opened to the left, equipment benches lit and active, screens showing data feeds Derek couldn’t read from the doorway. To the right, a corridor ran toward the covered walkways.
Straight ahead, the north interior wall.
The stairwell door was where Marsh had said it would be.
They moved to it without running. Derek pushed it open, and they went down.
The sub-level was darker. Emergency lighting only, red-tinted strips running along the base of the walls. The air was different down here, heavier, with the suppressant compound stronger and something underneath it that Derek recognized immediately.
His mother.
He stopped at the bottom of the stairs and stood still.
The smell was faint, but it was hers, human and biological, underneath the chemical overlay. He followed it left down the corridor. Four doors, heavy-gauge steel, each with a small reinforced window and a keypad. The first two were dark inside. The third had interior lighting.
Derek looked through the window.
Banner was on the floor of the containment unit, wrists secured to a floor anchor with heavy restraints, unconscious or close to it. His skin had a faint green tint that was either the lighting or something else. Monitoring equipment lined the wall above him, screens tracking biological data in real time.
The fourth door.
Derek moved to it and looked through the window.
Sheryl was on a medical cot, restrained at the wrists and ankles, eyes open and fixed on the ceiling. A suppression unit mounted above the cot ran a steady feed of compound through a delivery nozzle positioned six inches from her face. Her chest moved. Her eyes blinked. She was in there.
She turned her head and looked directly at the window.
At him.
Derek held her gaze for two seconds. Then he stepped back from the door and turned to Marsh.
“Keypads,” Derek said.
Marsh was already looking at them. “Same system as upstairs. Ninety seconds each.”
From somewhere above them, a door opened. Boots on the stairwell. More than one set, moving fast, which meant the service entry had been logged somewhere and someone had just checked the board.
Derek looked at the stairwell door. Then at the two containment units. Then at his hands.
The lion’s biology came up the way it always came up when the math stopped working in his favor. Not a decision. A fact. He felt it move through his shoulders first, then his jaw, the strain rewriting the geometry of his body from the inside out.
Marsh took three steps back.
The stairwell door opened.
Disclaimer Statement: The Incredible Hulk and all related characters are the property of Marvel Entertainment, LLC, a subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company. This story is an independently produced fan fiction created by Dee Watts. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to Marvel Entertainment or any of its subsidiaries in any capacity. All Bayou Blood characters, locations, and story elements are original intellectual property owned exclusively by Dee Watts. This work was created for entertainment purposes only. No copyright infringement is intended.
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