Grey Hulk (2026) – Jensen Ackles, Morgan Freeman

I lost track of time in that room.

There were no windows. No clocks. No sense of morning or night. Just fluorescent lights that screamed white until my eyes burned and restraints that bit into my wrists whenever I tried to move. Days bled into nights, nights into something worse—an endless stretch of awareness without rest.

At first, I tried to count.

Heartbeats. Breaths. Injections.

I stopped after the forty-seventh needle.

Somewhere between the restraints and the needles, I stopped being a man and became an experiment.

They called it Project Slate. A refinement, they said. A cleaner evolution of the gamma experiments that had already gone wrong once. They didn’t want another green monster—too unpredictable, too emotional. This time, they wanted control.

They wanted me awake.

“You’re lucky, Bruce,” Dr. Leonard Kessler told me through the glass, his voice calm, clinical. “Most subjects don’t survive past the third injection.”

I laughed, or tried to. It came out as a rasp.

Lucky.

You studied my pain like it was data. Watched my pulse spike while my muscles tore themselves apart just to survive what you forced into my veins. Every injection felt like drowning in fire—like my bones were melting and reforming while my blood screamed to escape my skin.

Gamma serum isn’t just radiation.

It’s betrayal.

I felt my body rewriting itself, cell by cell, against my will. Muscles thickened, then tightened, then compressed again. My heart beat slower, heavier, like it was learning a new rhythm—one meant to last through anything.

I tried to hold on to my name.

Bruce Banner.

I repeated it like a prayer. I thought if I remembered who I was, this would stay temporary. That I would wake up and this would be another nightmare born of guilt and bad science.

But the serum didn’t just change my flesh.

It erased my limits.

The first transformation didn’t come with thunder.

It came with silence.

My vision narrowed. The lights dimmed, not because they shut off—but because my eyes no longer needed them. I felt the restraints strain as my muscles swelled, not explosively, but deliberately. Controlled. Calculated.

This wasn’t the Hulk I knew.

This wasn’t rage unleashed.

This was pressure.

My skin darkened, not green, but slate-grey, like steel left too long in the rain. My bones didn’t grow outward—they reinforced inward. Dense. Heavy. Efficient.

I heard the scientists shouting behind the glass.

“Vitals stabilizing—no cardiac failure!”

“Neural activity is holding!”

“Dear God… he’s conscious.”

That was the difference.

I was awake.

I felt everything.

The restraints snapped like twine. Alarms screamed. Men ran.

When I stood, the room felt smaller. Not because I grew too big—but because everything else shrank in importance.

I looked at my hands.

They weren’t trembling.

That terrified me more than any loss of control ever had.

“Bruce?” someone called, trembling. “Can you hear us?”

I turned toward the glass.

“I hear everything,” I said.

My voice was deeper, rougher, but precise. No roar. No animal fury. Just cold understanding.

You wanted control.

You got it.

But you forgot one thing.

Control doesn’t belong to the one who builds the cage.

They tried to negotiate.

That was their second mistake.

General Ross arrived within hours, flanked by armed guards who looked very small behind reinforced glass.

“This doesn’t have to end badly,” he said. “You’re still Bruce Banner.”

I laughed then—low and humorless.

“No,” I replied. “Bruce Banner was a man who believed you when you said this was about protection.”

The weight in my chest was heavier than the chains had ever been. Not rage. Not yet. Something denser. Older. A pressure built from every moment I had been powerless—every time someone else decided what my life was worth.

I didn’t want to smash the room.

I wanted them to understand.

When I pressed my hand against the reinforced wall, it cracked—not explosively, but inevitably. Like ice under slow pressure.

That’s when Ross realized this Hulk couldn’t be frightened.

The Green Hulk had been rage.

I was consequence.

I walked out of the facility without running, without shouting, leaving steel and concrete folded behind me like paper.

Outside, the world felt fragile.

I could feel the ground through my feet. Every vibration. Every heartbeat in the earth. I didn’t want destruction—but I knew I could cause it effortlessly.

That knowledge settled into me like a second spine.

They didn’t stop chasing me.

They never do.

The military adapted quickly. Sonic weapons. Gamma-dampening rounds. Mechs built to restrain something they barely understood.

And I let them try.

Because each encounter taught me more about what I was becoming.

I didn’t lose myself in battle. I analyzed. I anticipated. I dismantled their machines with precision, not fury. Soldiers lived because I allowed it.

That’s when the world started to fear me more than the Green Hulk.

I wasn’t mindless.

I was aware.

Betty found me in the desert three weeks later.

She didn’t scream when she saw me. She never did.

“You’re different,” she said softly, standing a careful distance away.

“Yes,” I answered. “I finally am.”

She reached out, hesitated, then stopped. “Are you still… you?”

I thought about that for a long time.

“I don’t know,” I said. “But I remember why I cared.”

She told me the truth.

Project Slate wasn’t meant to save anyone. It was meant to replace heroes with weapons that didn’t argue, didn’t hesitate, didn’t break.

I had broken their plan.

That made me dangerous in a way no monster ever could be.

I lost track of time in that room.

There were no windows. No clocks. No sense of morning or night. Just fluorescent lights that screamed white until my eyes burned and restraints that bit into my wrists whenever I tried to move. Days bled into nights, nights into something worse—an endless stretch of awareness without rest.

At first, I tried to count.

Heartbeats. Breaths. Injections.

I stopped after the forty-seventh needle.

Somewhere between the restraints and the needles, I stopped being a man and became an experiment.

They called it Project Slate. A refinement, they said. A cleaner evolution of the gamma experiments that had already gone wrong once. They didn’t want another green monster—too unpredictable, too emotional. This time, they wanted control.

They wanted me awake.

“You’re lucky, Bruce,” Dr. Leonard Kessler told me through the glass, his voice calm, clinical. “Most subjects don’t survive past the third injection.”

I laughed, or tried to. It came out as a rasp.

Lucky.

You studied my pain like it was data. Watched my pulse spike while my muscles tore themselves apart just to survive what you forced into my veins. Every injection felt like drowning in fire—like my bones were melting and reforming while my blood screamed to escape my skin.

Gamma serum isn’t just radiation.

It’s betrayal.

I felt my body rewriting itself, cell by cell, against my will. Muscles thickened, then tightened, then compressed again. My heart beat slower, heavier, like it was learning a new rhythm—one meant to last through anything.

I tried to hold on to my name.

Bruce Banner.

I repeated it like a prayer. I thought if I remembered who I was, this would stay temporary. That I would wake up and this would be another nightmare born of guilt and bad science.

But the serum didn’t just change my flesh.

It erased my limits.

The first transformation didn’t come with thunder.

It came with silence.

My vision narrowed. The lights dimmed, not because they shut off—but because my eyes no longer needed them. I felt the restraints strain as my muscles swelled, not explosively, but deliberately. Controlled. Calculated.

This wasn’t the Hulk I knew.

This wasn’t rage unleashed.

This was pressure.

My skin darkened, not green, but slate-grey, like steel left too long in the rain. My bones didn’t grow outward—they reinforced inward. Dense. Heavy. Efficient.

I heard the scientists shouting behind the glass.

“Vitals stabilizing—no cardiac failure!”

“Neural activity is holding!”

“Dear God… he’s conscious.”

That was the difference.

I was awake.

I felt everything.

The restraints snapped like twine. Alarms screamed. Men ran.

When I stood, the room felt smaller. Not because I grew too big—but because everything else shrank in importance.

I looked at my hands.

They weren’t trembling.

That terrified me more than any loss of control ever had.

“Bruce?” someone called, trembling. “Can you hear us?”

I turned toward the glass.

“I hear everything,” I said.

My voice was deeper, rougher, but precise. No roar. No animal fury. Just cold understanding.

You wanted control.

You got it.

But you forgot one thing.

Control doesn’t belong to the one who builds the cage.

They tried to negotiate.

That was their second mistake.

General Ross arrived within hours, flanked by armed guards who looked very small behind reinforced glass.

“This doesn’t have to end badly,” he said. “You’re still Bruce Banner.”

I laughed then—low and humorless.

“No,” I replied. “Bruce Banner was a man who believed you when you said this was about protection.”

The weight in my chest was heavier than the chains had ever been. Not rage. Not yet. Something denser. Older. A pressure built from every moment I had been powerless—every time someone else decided what my life was worth.

I didn’t want to smash the room.

I wanted them to understand.

When I pressed my hand against the reinforced wall, it cracked—not explosively, but inevitably. Like ice under slow pressure.

That’s when Ross realized this Hulk couldn’t be frightened.

The Green Hulk had been rage.

I was consequence.

I walked out of the facility without running, without shouting, leaving steel and concrete folded behind me like paper.

Outside, the world felt fragile.

I could feel the ground through my feet. Every vibration. Every heartbeat in the earth. I didn’t want destruction—but I knew I could cause it effortlessly.

That knowledge settled into me like a second spine.

They didn’t stop chasing me.

They never do.

The military adapted quickly. Sonic weapons. Gamma-dampening rounds. Mechs built to restrain something they barely understood.

And I let them try.

Because each encounter taught me more about what I was becoming.

I didn’t lose myself in battle. I analyzed. I anticipated. I dismantled their machines with precision, not fury. Soldiers lived because I allowed it.

That’s when the world started to fear me more than the Green Hulk.

I wasn’t mindless.

I was aware.

Betty found me in the desert three weeks later.

She didn’t scream when she saw me. She never did.

“You’re different,” she said softly, standing a careful distance away.

“Yes,” I answered. “I finally am.”

She reached out, hesitated, then stopped. “Are you still… you?”

I thought about that for a long time.

“I don’t know,” I said. “But I remember why I cared.”

She told me the truth.

Project Slate wasn’t meant to save anyone. It was meant to replace heroes with weapons that didn’t argue, didn’t hesitate, didn’t break.

I had broken their plan.

That made me dangerous in a way no monster ever could be.