The glowing plasma sphere carried an active electromagnetic field.
Red Hulk stared blankly for half a second.
It missed?
Drex took one look at Ross' confused expression and decided there was no point explaining solar electromagnetic radiation, charged particle confinent, or gravitational escape physics.
Ross definitely wouldn't understand any of it.
This ti, Red Hulk stopped hesitating and threw a punch.
The blow detonated the air itself.
A violent shockwave tore across the laboratory.
Drex remained completely calm.
His fingers moved slightly, almost like a puppeteer controlling invisible strings.
Then he pressed downward.
Instantly, Red Hulk felt an overwhelming force crash onto his body.
It was like an entire mountain had fallen on him.
His bones groaned violently.
His ears rang.
And before he could react, he slamd face-first into the floor.
"This... what is this...?"
Even speaking beca difficult.
The crushing pressure slowed his blood flow.
His heartbeat weakened.
Every movent felt impossibly heavy.
Drex grinned slightly.
"This is an electromagnetic field."
He lifted two fingers casually.
Red Hulk's massive body imdiately stiffened before rocketing upward toward the ceiling.
Before Ross could even shout, Drex flipped his hand downward.
BOOM!
Red Hulk smashed back into the ground hard enough to spit blood.
Then it happened again.
And again.
And again.
More than a dozen tis, his gigantic body slamd between floor and ceiling like a toy trapped inside a giant invisible pinball machine.
Finally, Drex clenched one hand sideways.
Red Hulk's airborne body instantly followed the gesture and crashed violently into the laboratory wall.
BOOOOM!!
Drex moved both hands freely now, conducting the battlefield like an orchestra.
Red Hulk shot wildly through the room, accelerating and stopping unpredictably, completely powerless against the invisible forces controlling him.
"Bastard!"
Ross finally snapped.
Rage exploded inside him, and with it ca another surge of strength.
Red Hulk forcibly tore free from the invisible restraints.
He had grown stronger again.
Then he lunged directly toward Drex.
Drex barely reacted.
Only an illiterate brute would keep charging blindly after witnessing this much power.
He pressed both palms downward.
The city's magnetic field shifted.
Expanding electromagnetic waves compressed inward and focused entirely onto Red Hulk's body.
Invisible field lines flooded the laboratory.
Pressure beyond human comprehension descended instantly.
Millions of tons.
The entire building trembled violently.
If the laboratory hadn't been reinforced with vibranium, it would have collapsed into the Earth imdiately.
Even Red Hulk nearly died under the force.
Fortunately, Drex adjusted the field before Ross was crushed into paste.
After experiencing that pressure firsthand, Ross reverted from his Hulk form almost imdiately.
For a brief mont, he had felt his body beco softer than wet paper beneath Drex's power.
That feeling terrified him.
Drex Valen had subdued a fully conscious Red Hulk using nothing except a machine and electromagnetic manipulation.
Was this really what it ant to be a genius centuries ahead of everyone else?
Drex casually waved his hand.
The nanomachines composing the electromagnetic generator disassembled instantly and vanished.
Ross relaxed visibly afterward.
Unlike Black Tank or the others, Ross was intended for a public political position eventually.
Psychic conditioning alone might beco risky over ti.
So under the excuse of "continued observation," Drex extracted massive amounts of Ross' blood for study.
Ross didn't care.
Even outside Hulk form, his body now felt overwhelmingly powerful.
He was old in appearance only.
Physically, he felt stronger than ever.
Dropping five or six trained soldiers barehanded wouldn't even elevate his pulse.
Drex studied the blood samples carefully.
The gamma radiation concentration inside them was absurd.
Which made him wonder how Samuel Sterns originally managed to research Hulk blood without dying horribly from radiation poisoning.
Red Hulk's blood alone was already this dangerous.
Green Hulk's should be even worse.
Of course, Drex himself didn't need to worry about gamma exposure.
That was another matter entirely.
After witnessing Drex's intelligence and terrifying power firsthand, Ross naturally agreed to cooperate with him.
And the suggestion about eventually pursuing the Secretary of State position clearly left a strong impression on him.
"By the way, Colonel Ross," Drex added casually, "even though your body's stronger now, I'd avoid sleeping with anyone for the ti being."
Ross frowned.
"Your radiation output could kill them."
Ross' face instantly darkened.
What kind of assumption was that?
Did Drex seriously think won were still his priority at this stage of life?
He'd gotten enough of that decades ago.
Still, seeing Drex imdiately return to research mode, Ross decided not to argue.
"You can call Blonsky back now," Drex told the Black Queen.
Honestly, Bruce Banner should be thanking him.
If the Dark Knight war machines hadn't appeared so suddenly, Ross' Hulk program never would've collapsed this quickly.
At this point, the governnt was practically abandoning active Hulk pursuit operations altogether.
And now that Drex possessed the Red Hulk serum, he no longer needed to obsess over Banner's blood anyway.
Emil Blonsky himself wasn't disappointed by the mission's outco.
Quite the opposite.
He rembered clearly what Drex had told him before he left.
Which was why he returned full of anticipation instead.
"Boss."
Blonsky looked toward Drex with obvious excitent.
Drex nodded.
"You did well."
Blonsky almost didn't know how to respond.
After all, he technically accomplished nothing.
He failed to retrieve both the Hulk serum and the super soldier serum.
Still, he obediently lay down on the nanomachine-ford operating platform.
Before anything else, Drex needed to stabilize his body.
The Hyper Zoanoid modifications inside Blonsky reacted badly with the Red Hulk serum.
Drex had already confird this through nurous failed experints involving lesser Zoanoids.
Once the Red Hulk serum entered Blonsky's bloodstream, his immune system and cells imdiately began collapsing just like Ross'.
But this ti, Drex injected Extremis Virus simultaneously.
Electromagnetic force spread through Blonsky's body, carefully controlling both the Red Hulk serum and the Extremis Virus.
Extremis rapidly rebuilt his immune system while regenerating damaged cells at astonishing speed.
This was the optimal balance Drex had discovered after countless experints.
Less pain.
Higher survival rate.
And most importantly, the Red Hulk serum stabilized Extremis itself, preventing the usual overheating and explosive failure.
Then Drex flooded Blonsky's body with gamma radiation.
Blonsky scread in agony.
But his cells beca hyperactive, greedily devouring the gamma energy.
When the experint finally ended...
Sothing monstrous stood in the laboratory.
Not Green Hulk.
Not Red Hulk.
Blonsky's appearance was far more grotesque.
Perhaps remnants of the Hyper Zoanoid modifications had altered the transformation.
His skin beca dark gray-black.
Bones burst outward through layers of muscle, forming jagged external spikes across his body.
Those protruding bones glowed faintly red while releasing visible heat vapor, as though the skeleton itself had beco a furnace.
"Interesting," Drex murmured.
"Your body developed thermal organs naturally."
His x-ray vision analyzed every internal change in perfect detail.
Massive quantities of thermal energy generated by Extremis accumulated throughout Blonsky's body.
Near the throat and mouth, a specialized organ structure had ford.
A biological weapon.
Blonsky could likely fire concentrated thermal beams directly from his mouth, and judging by the temperatures involved...
The destructive potential would be enormous.
"Boss."
Blonsky stared at his transford hands.
The power flowing through him surpassed anything he had ever experienced before.
Yet despite that strength, he didn't dare challenge Drex in the slightest.
Partly because of the psychic Thought Wave buried inside his mind.
But mostly because he had now seen firsthand what kind of monster Drex Valen truly was.
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