The summer of 2011 bled into fall, and Alex Kane turned seventeen feeling like a coiled spring—stronger, sharper, but still waiting for the world to catch up.
Captain America was public now. Steve Rogers had appeared in carefully staged interviews: polite, earnest, a man out of time trying to find his place. Alex watched from afar, never approaching. Too risky. SHIELD eyes were everywhere, and he wasn't ready to be noticed. Instead, he focused on the next piece of the puzzle: Bruce Banner.
The Hulk had been a ghost story for years—whispers of a green monster in South America, military blackouts, Ross's endless pursuit. Then, in late 2011, credible leaks surfaced: Banner was back in the U.S., under tentative government watch, working in a low-profile lab somewhere in the Southwest. No public sightings, but the scientific community buzzed. Papers on gamma radiation mitigation started appearing under pseudonyms. Alex read them all.
He needed Banner's DNA—not the rage, not the monster. The resistance. The way Banner's cells adapted to gamma exposure without immediate cellular collapse. If he could copy even a fraction of that resilience, longevity would jump another level. And if he could transfer it safely to Elena…
Opportunity came unexpectedly.
Elena's hospital hosted a regional medical conference in early 2012: "Advances in Radiation Medicine and Cellular Repair." Banner wasn't speaking—too hot—but one of his distant cousins, Dr. Emily Chen, a radiologist from California, was on the panel. Chen had collaborated with Banner years earlier on low-level gamma studies before everything went sideways. She'd visited him in hiding more than once.
Alex convinced Elena to let him tag along as her "assistant." He carried her notes, fetched coffee, looked studious in a borrowed lab coat two sizes too big. During the coffee break after Chen's talk, he positioned himself near the refreshment table.
Chen was mid-forties, sharp-eyed, tired smile. She reached for a napkin; Alex "accidentally" bumped the table, sending a stir stick rolling. He caught it mid-air—reflexes on full display—and handed it back with an apologetic grin.
"Sorry, Dr. Chen. Clumsy today."
She laughed softly. "No harm done. You're Elena's boy, right? She talks about you constantly."
Alex nodded, letting the conversation flow. He asked intelligent questions about radiation hormesis, cellular adaptation thresholds—things no normal teenager should know. Chen's eyes lit up. She spoke freely, passionately.
When she finished her coffee, she set the cup down. Alex offered to clear it. As he took it, his fingers brushed hers—just a second of contact.
Enough.
That night, in the hotel room he shared with Elena (she was already asleep, exhausted from the day), he triggered the interface.
*[DNA Sample: Emily Chen, age 46. Analysis: Familial relation to Bruce Banner (second cousin). Trace gamma-exposure markers inherited + occupational. Primary traits – Extreme Gamma Radiation Resistance (cellular membrane stabilization), Adaptive DNA Repair (Hulk-level regeneration precursor, non-mutagenic), Rage-Response Suppression (partial, psychological). Risks: Gamma instability if over-copied; emotional bleed possible.]*
*[Selective Copy Recommendations: Gamma Resistance +1.3σ (safe), Adaptive Cellular Repair +1.1σ (high longevity value). Defer rage-related traits entirely. Copy?]*
*Yes. Resistance and repair only.*
The sensation was strange—cool at first, then a deep, radiating warmth like sitting too close to a radiator. His skin prickled, then settled. A faint green shimmer danced under his eyelids for a heartbeat and vanished.
He tested it the next morning: stood under the hotel's harsh fluorescent lights for twenty minutes straight. No headache. No nausea. Normal people got migraines from prolonged exposure; he felt nothing. Later, at a park near the conference center, he "accidentally" exposed his arm to a low-grade tanning-bed bulb someone had brought for a demo. Skin reddened slightly—then normalized in under an hour.
Healing was already good. This made it exceptional.
He transferred slivers to Elena during their goodbye hug at the airport. She yawned on the flight home. "I feel… lighter today. Weird."
Alex smiled against the window. *Good.*
Back in Queens, he turned the new resilience inward. Late-night experiments: controlled UV exposure, minor electrical shocks from jury-rigged circuits, even a brief stint holding dry ice (gloved, of course). His body adapted faster each time. Projected lifespan extension ticked upward:
*[Updated Projection: +35–42 years cumulative. Radiation & environmental toxin resistance: Significant. Familial transfer stability: 92%.]*
The real breakthrough came with his AI project.
He'd been seeding "Echo" since the Stark intellect copy—a modular neural network running on increasingly powerful home-built servers (funded by KaneTech drone sales, now hitting $120,000 quarterly). With Banner's adaptive repair logic as inspiration, he rewrote Echo's core algorithms to self-diagnose and self-correct errors in real time, mimicking cellular repair pathways.
By winter 2012, Echo wasn't just code anymore. It learned. It predicted hardware failures before they happened. It optimized his drone fleet routing for search-and-rescue ops, cutting response times by 40% in simulations. He started calling it "Aether" in private—something higher, cleaner.
Aether's first real test: a warehouse fire in Brooklyn. Alex anonymously fed live data from traffic cams and social media to the FDNY via a burner proxy. Aether predicted structural collapse zones with eerie accuracy. Firefighters avoided two near-fatal collapses. No one died.
Alex watched the news from his rooftop, drone hovering silently above. He felt no thrill of heroism—just quiet satisfaction. Fewer bodies. Fewer grieving families.
Romance hadn't entered the picture yet. Girls at school flirted; he was polite, distant. He had too much to protect, too much to build. But he noticed things: the way Sofia's eyes lingered when they studied together, the easy laughter with new friends at MIT open houses (he'd started dual-enrollment classes). He filed it away. Connections could wait. Stability first.
Elena's annual physical came back flawless. No trace of the old fatigue markers. She danced in the kitchen that night, pulling him into a silly twirl.
"You're my good-luck charm, Alex."
He laughed, spinning her. Inside: *I'm your cheat code.*
The interface pinged softly as he lay in bed later:
*[Milestone: Gamma-Resilient AI Seed (Aether v0.7) online. Adaptive learning rate: 300% baseline.]*
*[Global Threat Horizon Update: Loki incursion probability elevated. Chitauri invasion window: 6–9 months.]*
Alex stared at the dark ceiling.
Banner was out there, still running, still fighting the monster inside.
Alex Kane had borrowed just enough to keep the monster outside at bay.
And the invasion was coming.
He rolled over, mind already plotting the next collection.
(Word count: 1003)