The lab was silent.
Not the sterile hum of efficient machinery, nor the nervous chatter of busy scientists. Just quiet. Heavy, suffocating quiet — the kind that presses down on a man who has carried too much for too long.
Bruce Banner sat slumped in the cold, dim room. His fingers hovered over the controls of a machine that was meant to end his torment once and for all. The device to close the Green Door.
He looked at the faint green glow shimmering at the core of the chamber. The Green Door — that impossible gateway between life and death, between worlds. A door he had passed through too many times.
This time, he wanted to close it. To lock it. To die.
His breath was shallow. His eyes, tired beyond measure, reflected the flickering light.
He pressed the final button.
Energy surged with a crackle and a hum that vibrated deep in his bones.
The Green Door opened, rippling with familiar green light — fragile, thin at first, then growing into a swirling, shimmering portal.
But something was off.
The glow fractured, bending and twisting. The green twisted into bruised reds, smoky greys, flickering like flames caught in a violent wind.
The air thickened, heavy and charged — but not with electricity. With something ancient and alien.
Bruce's muscles tensed. His breath hitched. His hands twitched, unsure — to fight, to run, or to surrender.
The light warped, folding inward like a collapsing tunnel.
Then came the pull.
Slow, inexorable, silent.
His boots scraped the cold metal floor as he grasped at the console and tables — desperate for anything solid, anything real.
But the force dragged him forward.
His heart thundered. The world spun.
He struggled to steady himself, but it was no use.
The hum in his ears grew louder until all other sound was drowned.
His mind screamed in silence.
And then — he fell.
The fall was endless.
A silence that crushed, that pressed into his skull.
The light that surrounded him fractured, splintered, a kaleidoscope of shadows and fire.
No ground. No air. No time.
Just falling.
The cold clawed at his skin, invisible and sharp.
His lungs screamed for breath he could not draw.
Colors bled and faded.
His mind fought to hold onto reality, but it slipped like water through his fingers.
He tried to scream, but no sound came.
Just the vast, voiding black.
Then — impact.
The air was fire and acid.
It burned his throat with every breath.
His body ached with every broken bone he could not feel.
He lay sprawled on a ground that cracked beneath him like dry bone.
A haze of ash and dust filled his nostrils.
He coughed, dry and ragged.
The sky above was a churning swirl of bruised purples and angry reds.
No sun. No stars. No warmth.
The wind howled — not like any breeze he'd known, but like shards of broken glass scraping and cutting the very air.
It bit into his skin, ripped at his clothes, and filled his ears with a relentless scream.
The ground beneath him cracked and shifted, sharp stones jutting like teeth from the earth.
The smell was rot and old death, thick and choking.
Around him stretched endless barren wasteland, jagged cliffs, ruins half-buried in ash, and tangled, thorny growths that looked as though they had been carved by pain itself.
Bruce tried to move, but the ache in his limbs held him down.
His mind reeled. He blinked through stinging eyes, struggling to take it all in.
Where was this place?
It was not Earth. Not any world he recognized.
His skin prickled, every breath a fresh wound.
His thoughts spiraled, confusion and fear tightening their grip.
He tried to speak but found his voice cracked, hoarse, useless.
This was a prison. A forgotten realm. A place of exile and torment.
A place where monsters were chained and forgotten.
And now he was here — alone, stranded, helpless.
The silence pressed down heavier than stone.
No footsteps echoed.
No voices called.
No gods spoke.
Only the screaming wind.
Bruce Banner lay on the acid air of Tartarus.
And the Green Door was gone.