While Luke quietly returned to his grocery store and resumed his peaceful daily life, far from the chaos he had narrowly escaped...
Deep inside a classified military facility in New York, General Thaddeus Ross stood in a command center, his brow furrowed as he listened to a soldier's report.
"General," the man in a camo uniform said, holding a remote, "after combing through surveillance footage and retrieving data from civilian phones in the area, we found something… unusual."
He clicked a button, and the massive screen in front of them flickered to life.
Grainy footage appeared, close to nighttime city streets, recorded from a phone. A young man was walking a pudgy husky on a leash. For a few seconds, nothing seemed out of the ordinary.
Then the screen shook violently.
From the sky, a massive green figure came crashing down, smashing into the street, the subject they had named as the Abomination, rampaging without restraint.
The young man in the video looked just as terrified as everyone else, but unlike most civilians, his reaction was lightning fast. He immediately spun around to run.
But, almost comically, the leash just wouldn't budge.
The husky sat firmly on its haunches, refusing to move.
The room of hardened soldiers burst out laughing. Some nearly choked on their coffee.
Even General Ross's normally stoic expression twitched with amusement.
The soldier smirked. "Just keep watching, sir."
Ross raised an eyebrow and turned back to the screen.
The young man was visibly panicking now, torn between abandoning his dog or somehow dragging it along. The husky, trembling slightly, looked equally terrified, but still remained immovable.
Then, something changed.
A dark red aura started emanating from the dog's body.
The laughter in the room immediately stopped.
On screen, the husky began to grow rapidly. Its fur darkened. Flames sparked around its paws. Muscles swelled. A second head burst forth. Then a third.
The transformation was horrifyingly fast.
Within seconds, the once-chubby husky had become a six-meter-tall, three-headed hellhound wreathed in dark crimson fire.
It let out a roar that distorted the recording's audio, shaking the entire frame.
Gasps filled the room. Some soldiers instinctively stepped back from the screen.
Then the video cut off.
Silence.
General Ross's jaw clenched as he stared at the now-blank display. The image of the monstrous dog lingered in his mind, far more vivid than when he'd seen it in person from afar. Up close, on the screen, it had been worse.
Even more terrifying than Abomination.
Even more dangerous than the Hulk.
Ross exhaled slowly, his voice low. "...Compared to that thing, Banner looks like a kindergarten mascot."
He'd once believed the Hulk was the pinnacle of weaponizable evolution, a force that could change the battlefield forever.
Now, his mind had shifted.
A monster that used to be a dog… something that could be trained, potentially controlled... and not subject to the same legal, moral, or emotional constraints as a human.
Animal experimentation had far fewer obstacles.
And unlike people, dogs didn't ask questions.
Ross turned to one of the younger officers.
"Hans, I want the identity of that dog's owner. You have thirty minutes."
"Yes, General!" The soldier rushed to the computer station and began typing rapidly.
Tracking down a regular civilian wouldn't take more than a few minutes with their database access.
Then Ross turned to a muscular soldier waiting by the door.
"Havok. Assemble your team. As soon as we have a location, I want that boy and his dog brought in, alive."
The man nodded, all humor gone from his face. "Understood, sir."
As the elite squad captain under General Ross, failure wasn't an option.
He turned sharply and strode out of the room to prepare.
Ross looked at the now-dark screen again, his lips curling into a thin smile.
Soon… that beast will be ours.
…