Sean sat calmly before the computer as Skynet, omnipresent and monitoring the entire world, played everything that had happened in Samuel Sterns's laboratory for him like a dull, overlong movie crammed with trivial details.
Dr. Banner's desperation while on the run had led him to make a huge mistake. Trusting a stranger had landed him in captivity. He should not have let down his most basic guard, or things might have turned out very differently.
Yet the root cause of it all lay with the resourceful S.H.I.E.L.D.—or rather, another secret force parasitizing that massive organization. Before the operation in Brazil, they had already noticed Bruce Banner, who was wanted by the military.
At that time, Banner, who could transform into Hulk, was still prey for military bigwig General Thaddeus Ross. S.H.I.E.L.D. had no reason to intervene, and the experimental accident had been full of coincidence, meaning the chances of successfully replicating it were minuscule.
Thus, Nick Fury had not listed Banner as a priority surveillance target. Hydra, lurking in the shadows, was far more interested. The great figure of the last century, Red Skull John Schmidt, had been created by Dr. Erskine's Super Soldier Serum, and so had his mortal enemy, Captain America. General Ross had wanted to replicate Super Soldiers, so he restarted the Rebirth Project, which led to the emergence of Hulk.
Following that line of thought, Dr. Erskine's Super Soldier Serum from World War II was still exerting enormous influence even now. That was why Hydra paid such close attention to Bruce Banner, hoping to obtain from him a power even stronger than that of a Super Soldier.
After World War II, Hydra attached itself to the Red Empire as it stood on the verge of collapse. With vast resources, it created a batch of Super Soldiers