Chapter 297: Who's Going to Save Me?
On North Brother Island, the Lizard Professor's eyes snapped open. Green scales rippled across his body with a sound like rustling metal.
The extended hibernation had locked his form permanently at ten feet tall and sixteen feet long.
The twin rows of spikes running down his spine were no longer simple bone protrusions. They'd evolved into proper dorsal fins—integrated structures of bone, muscle, and armored scales flowing together.
His claws had grown wickedly sharp. As he slowly pushed himself upright with one hand, North Brother Island's reinforced laboratory floor gave way silently beneath his talons. Clean gashes scored the concrete where his fingers had been.
The tail showed less dramatic change compared to the rest of his body—only increased strength in the powerful appendage.
"Connors?"
Dr. Banner heard the movement and hurried over, peering through his glasses at the Lizard Professor as he rose from his prone position.
The Lizard Professor didn't respond. He stared silently at Banner.
One second. Two seconds. The Lizard Professor remained motionless.
Banner calmly removed his glasses and flung them far across the room.
The instant Banner made that gesture, the Lizard Professor's eyes narrowed to slits. Cold menace flashed through those golden reptilian pupils.
WHOOSH!
The Lizard Professor's upper body stayed frozen. Behind him, his tail whipped upward suddenly. His body rotated slightly, using the momentum to swing that massive appendage directly at Dr. Banner.
In the brief moment between the tail rising and falling, green flashed through Banner's eyes. From head to toe, inside and out, progressively deeper green and increasingly bulging, corded muscles tore his clothes to shreds.
WHAM!
The lizard tail crashed down, but enormous green hands caught it firmly and shoved it aside.
"Big lizard want to fight? Hulk will fight!"
The green giant's voice rumbled deep in his chest. His fists slowly clenched. He actually looked somewhat angry.
Across from the Hulk, the Lizard Professor's eyes held no emotion whatsoever. Those cold golden slits locked onto the Hulk without a word. He dropped into a crouch, all four limbs hitting the floor, and lunged with jaws wide.
Seeing the Lizard Professor attack silently without any warning, fury flashed across Hulk's face. He raised both fists high and brought them crashing down the instant Connors reached him.
BOOM!
The Lizard Professor's head smashed deep into the floor under Hulk's blow. The sheer force drove not just his skull but his neck and upper torso into the concrete, his lower body angling upward.
"Hmph." Hulk snorted through his nose. Before he could form another thought, the Lizard Professor's tail coiled around his throat.
"Urk!" Hulk grabbed the constricting tail with both hands, green veins bulging like cables along his arms. He clearly intended to rip the appendage clean off.
But the Lizard Professor gave Hulk no such opportunity. His tail whipped violently, yanking the Hulk off his feet and slamming him into the floor on the opposite side.
"HISSSS!"
"RAAARGH!"
One lizard, one giant. Two massive green creatures locked together in savage combat.
Not twenty meters away, Dr. Octavius and Professor Morbius—who'd been conducting experiments moments ago—exchanged helpless glances.
"You want to try breaking that up?" Morbius whispered to Octavius.
"Me?" Octavius shook his head rapidly. "Are you joking? My tentacles are strictly defensive. There's no way I'm getting between those two monsters throwing around dozens of tons of force."
"Then what do we do?" Morbius felt small and helpless watching the battle.
Octavius kept his voice low, terrified of attracting attention from the Lizard Professor or Hulk.
"I sent Batman an emergency message. Don't know how long it'll take him to—"
Before Octavius could finish the sentence, his eyes went wide. Batman had appeared soundlessly beside the struggling Lizard Professor and Hulk.
Two thunderous BOOMS echoed through the lab. Both Hulk and the Lizard Professor took micro-mine explosions to their bodies simultaneously.
The blasts forced them each back half a step. In that opening, Batman's hands swept outward. In the blink of an eye, over a dozen beeping micro-mines covered the floor—the perimeter extending almost to where Octavius and Morbius stood.
"What are you doing, Lizard Professor?" Batman's voice cut like ice.
Hulk huffed indignantly.
"Big lizard went crazy! Didn't say anything, just attacked!"
Batman listened to Hulk's complaint. His white-glowing eyes locked onto the Lizard Professor's golden slits, matching his gaze without yielding an inch.
"Why?" Batman's voice dropped to a dangerous rumble.
The Lizard Professor's face had transformed completely into reptilian features matching his body. As he slowly rose from the floor, he looked more like a small dinosaur from Earth's primitive past.
"Something was calling me." The Lizard Professor's voice grated like nails on glass. "The sound dragged me out of my evolution. I'm angry."
"Who?" Batman demanded.
The Lizard Professor didn't answer. Instead, he turned and stared toward Manhattan.
Batman mentally calculated the exact trajectory and angle of the Lizard Professor's line of sight. It pointed directly at Reed Richards's Baxter Building.
---
"Fuck! I never thought I'd spend the 21st century getting chased by goddamn dinosaurs!"
Susan's brother Johnny ran while shouting at the top of his lungs.
"Fuck! Somebody save me!!"
"Ben! Why isn't the building's security system activating?! Get me a heavy machine gun! This pistol you gave me can't even break their skin!"
Beside Johnny, Ben Grimm ran at full speed with Reed Richards slung over his shoulder.
"Two hours ago, Reed shut down the entire building's security system so he could focus on researching that full-wave projector thing without interruptions!"
"Why the hell would he do that?!" Johnny's voice cracked with hysteria. The dinosaur behind him was closing fast. He could feel hot breath on the back of his neck.
"Because this maniac didn't want to answer phone calls from every VIP in the country after the full-wave projector triggered the alarm!!"
Ben sounded slightly guilty as he said this. After all, if he and Lunella hadn't brought the projector back to Baxter Building in the first place, none of this would be happening.
"We need to figure out how to rescue Lunella. Those primitives dragged her through!" Susan Storm shouted from a parallel corridor, also fleeing from pursuing dinosaurs.
Ben glanced back at the sixty-foot-long monster thundering after him and corrected Susan's priorities.
"Right now, the problem is how WE survive! The security system's offline. Unless Reed reactivates it, there's no other way. Every signal's being blocked except the emergency line... Damn it, when we set up those safety protocols, we never imagined THIS scenario!"
"Oh, and I should mention—those first five dinosaurs were just the vanguard. More keep pouring out of that portal!"
Ben had Reed Richards slung over his shoulder. He knew that in an absolute worst-case scenario, he'd have to sacrifice himself to the dinosaurs if it meant protecting Reed's brilliant mind.
But Ben didn't want to die. He wanted to live. As the creature behind him—something that looked like an oversized Giganotosaurus—snapped its massive jaws inches above his head, Ben asked himself one desperate question:
"Who's going to save us?"