Chapter 149. The Birth of Red Hulk
----
"Huh... The Leader, of all people?" Nolan muttered as he scanned the live feed. "Didn't expect him to resurface. Still... he might actually be useful."
He stared at the monitor, watching the large-headed, green-skinned figure pacing the lab beside General Ross.
It was obvious who this was: Dr. Samuel Sterns, also known as The Leader. One of the Hulk's most iconic enemies.
A brilliant mind mutated by gamma radiation, born from an accident that fused Bruce Banner's blood with an open head wound, after being shoved to the floor by Abomination during an earlier Hulk experiment.
Sterns had always been obsessed with Hulk's biology, dedicating years to studying gamma radiation's effects on the human body. Arguably, there was no one more qualified to oversee the Red Hulk initiative.
And thanks to the cranial mutation, Sterns had gained more than intelligence; he also possessed a form of low-level telepathy. Not strong, but... enough.
"With him leading this, there's no doubt the experiment will succeed," Nolan remarked.
As data streamed from the military's internal servers into his Oscorp database, Nolan tapped his fingers rhythmically. Every biometric scan, procedure log, and enhancement cycle from Ross's experiment was being recorded.
Now, with Hulk, Abomination, and Red Hulk's blueprints in hand, he had what he needed to build a complete absorption module.
Still, the Hulk's rage-based power was... problematic. It wasn't just raw emotion, it was practically divine. A force tied to the same kind of dimensional madness that Wanda's Chaos Magic drew from. Like Spider-Man's powers, it felt... assigned.