"Exactly." Bruce looked at Alex with something like professional respect mixed with genuine curiosity. "You already understood that before I said it."
"Educated guess." Alex kept his expression neutral, careful not to reveal how far beyond educated guessing his actual calculations went. "What do you need to attempt stabilization?"
Bruce listed off equipment, chemical compounds, precise measurements.
Alex recognized most of it from his own bunker inventory, mentally cataloging what he'd need to retrieve versus what could be synthesized on-site with what remained in his emergency kit.
"I have most of this at my property upstate," Alex said. "Better equipped than anything we can manage down here."
"How far?"
"Two hours by car. We'd need to move him."
Bruce glanced at Connors, still unconscious but breathing steadily. "Risky, but staying in a sewer tunnel isn't sustainable either. If we're doing this, better to do it somewhere with proper facilities."
They worked out logistics quickly, Peter volunteering to help carry Connors to Alex's car parked several blocks away under cover of early morning darkness, the streets still quiet enough to avoid attention.
Bruce moved with the careful efficiency of someone accustomed to disappearing quickly and completely, gathering his equipment into a worn bag that looked like it had crossed several state lines recently.
...
The drive upstate took just under two hours, Connors sedated and stable in the back seat, Bruce sitting beside him monitoring vitals while Peter rode shotgun, curiosity finally overcoming his earlier caution.
"So how do you two know each other?" Peter asked, glancing between Alex and Bruce. "Alex never mentioned having, like, actual famous scientist friends."
Bruce's expression shifted, something guarded returning to his features. Alex answered before the silence could stretch too long.
"Found him wandering near my property a few months back. Middle of nowhere, exhausted, running from something. I offered food and somewhere to sleep for a night. Didn't ask questions I figured he wouldn't want to answer."
"That's it?"
"That's how these things usually start," Bruce said quietly. "Someone decides not to be afraid of what they don't understand, and it turns into something worth keeping."
Peter absorbed that, glancing at Alex with something like new appreciation. "You just let a stranger stay at your secret bunker."
"I have good instincts about people." Alex kept his eyes on the road, deliberately not elaborating further.
The truth, that he'd recognized Bruce Banner immediately from Marvel Universe knowledge, that he'd calculated exactly how valuable an ally with gamma expertise would eventually become, that the entire encounter had been far less accidental than he was letting on, stayed carefully unspoken.
Bruce had stayed three days that first visit, wary and mostly silent, before disappearing again without much explanation.
He'd returned twice since then, brief stops between whatever constant movement kept him ahead of people hunting him. Alex had never pushed, never demanded explanations, just offered quiet hospitality and asked nothing in return.
It had built something resembling trust, fragile but real.
"You never asked what he was running from?" Peter pressed.
"I asked once. He didn't answer. I didn't ask again." Alex glanced at Bruce in the rearview mirror. "Some things people need to share on their own timeline."
Bruce met his eyes briefly in the mirror, something like gratitude flickering there before he returned attention to Connors' vitals.
...
The bunker's medical bay, one of the side chambers Alex had outfitted months earlier for exactly this kind of contingency, gave them proper space to work.
Bruce and Alex spent the next six hours in careful collaboration, synthesizing a modified compound that would encourage controlled regrowth rather than suppression.
Peter watched most of it from the doorway, occasionally handing over requested equipment, mostly staying out of the way while two brilliant minds worked through a problem that would have been impossible for either of them entirely alone.
"The regenerative marker responds better to gradual stimulation," Bruce said, adjusting the compound's molecular structure on the screen in front of him. "Push it too fast and we risk uncontrolled growth, potentially triggering full transformation again."
"Agreed. Slower delivery, lower initial dose, monitor for forty-eight hours before considering additional treatment." Alex made adjustments to his own calculations, cross-referencing against the Catalyst X data he understood more intimately than anyone alive.
"If this works, we should see partial arm regrowth within the first treatment cycle."
They administered the modified compound just after noon, injecting it carefully into the stump where Connors' arm had been.
The reaction was immediate but controlled, none of the violent convulsion from the initial reversal, just a steady warmth spreading through the tissue as cellular structures began responding.
Over the following hours, they watched something remarkable happen.
New tissue formed gradually, bone structure extending millimeter by millimeter, muscle and skin following in careful sequence.
By evening, a partial arm had regrown, incomplete but clearly progressing correctly.
"It's working," Peter said, genuine wonder in his voice as he watched the process continue.
"It's working," Bruce agreed, though his expression stayed carefully professional, the wonder of scientific achievement tempered by years of understanding how quickly biological miracles could turn into biological disasters.
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