From a purely scientific perspective, the brain governed everything.
Sight, hearing, smell, touch. Every sensation the body received was transmitted through the nervous system to the brain, where specialized regions processed the information and determined how a person responded. Because no two brains developed in exactly the same way, no two people reacted to the world in quite the same fashion.
Imagine the human body as a nation.
The brain was its government.
Each functional region was like a political faction with its own priorities.
If the "aggressive party" dominated, the person was quick to anger. If the cautious faction held sway, they became measured and conservative. If fear ruled the chamber, timidity followed.
The analogy was imperfect, but the principle remained.
Every region served a purpose.
Remove enough of them, and the government collapsed.
Unfortunately, that was exactly what had happened to Abomination.
"Are you certain, Dr. Helena?"
Nick Fury’s voice carried over the laboratory’s communications system.
The young woman who had initially seemed like little more than an assistant was, in fact, the facility’s leading neuroscientist. She simply hadn’t had much to do until the skull had finally been opened. Cutting through something harder than titanium with an industrial bone saw wasn’t exactly work suited to her specialty.
Now, however, the investigation belonged to her.
"I’m certain."
She answered without hesitation.
Fury folded his arms.
"Can you explain your conclusion?"
Whether Evenson had been telling the truth was only part of what interested him.
More importantly, he wanted to understand how General Ross had used Umbrella’s biotechnology, how Umbrella prevented its research from being reverse-engineered, and whether S.H.I.E.L.D. could eventually overcome those safeguards.
Dr. Helena lifted the damaged brain toward the camera.
"As you can see, numerous functional regions have completely dissolved."
She slowly rotated the specimen, indicating one damaged area after another with a gloved finger.
To the average person, watching someone calmly point at pieces of a mangled human brain would have been enough to empty their stomach.
Fury and Alexander Pierce managed to keep straight faces.
Neither of them, however, had much appetite left for dinner.
"The only structures that remain substantially intact..."
She finished rotating the specimen.
"...are a handful of isolated regions, along with the primary neural pathways."
Pierce adjusted his glasses.
"Could the damage have been caused by blunt-force trauma?"
It was a reasonable question.
Abomination and the Hulk had leveled entire city blocks during their battle. Abomination had taken countless blows to the head. Even without fracturing the skull, repeated impacts could damage brain tissue.
Concussions worked exactly that way.
Dr. Helena shook her head immediately.
"Impossible, Minister."
Her answer was absolute.
Academic certainty left little room for diplomacy.
Pierce, to his credit, didn’t take offense.
"Why?"
"Because the damaged regions aren’t connected."
She rotated the brain again.
"They’re scattered throughout different sections."
"In several places, missing tissue lies beneath perfectly intact outer structures."
Pierce leaned closer to the monitor.
She was right.
The surviving tissue formed intact outer layers, while cavities existed beneath them.
External trauma couldn’t selectively remove internal structures without destroying everything in between.
Unless the Hulk had somehow learned to punch through solid matter without disturbing it.
Fury spoke again.
"What functions do the surviving regions control?"
To him, Abomination himself had already lost most of his value.
With this degree of neurological damage, restoring his intelligence was almost certainly impossible.
The real mystery was why Umbrella had preserved these particular regions instead of erasing the brain entirely.
Dr. Helena examined the specimen one final time.
"Rage."
"Hunger."
She hesitated briefly.
"...And sexual drive."
Silence.
Fury and Pierce exchanged an awkward glance.
The first two made perfect sense.
The third...
Not so much.
Fury cleared his throat.
"Doctor..."
"As I recall, Abomination no longer possesses the necessary anatomy."
Unlike the Hulk, whose anatomy remained largely hidden by improbably indestructible shorts, Abomination had been entirely exposed during the battle.
There had been nothing there.
So why preserve that part of the brain?
Dr. Helena answered calmly.
"That region doesn’t exist to enable reproduction."
"It exists to generate the impulse."
"Whether the body can satisfy that impulse is an entirely different matter."
She paused.
"In fact..."
Pierce leaned forward.
"In fact?"
"If someone deliberately designed these alterations..."
"...leaving that region intact may have been intentional."
Fury narrowed his eye.
Pierce’s expression darkened.
The two men had reached the same conclusion at the same time.
Dr. Helena continued.
"With every other major cognitive center dissolved, these three remaining drives become the entirety of his mental life."
"And because nothing else exists to moderate them, each impulse would be magnified many times over."
She raised one finger.
"The rage center ensures his anger never truly subsides."
A second finger.
"The hunger center leaves him in a constant state of starvation."
"Anyone who has studied predators knows how dangerous a starving beast becomes."
Then the third.
"The sexual drive creates continuous instinctive frustration."
"But because his altered body can no longer satisfy that instinct, the frustration has no outlet."
She lowered her hand.
"That unresolved drive would continually feed back into the rage center, making him even more aggressive."
Her gaze settled on the remains of the brain.
"In my professional opinion..."
"...someone intentionally reduced Abomination to three uncontrollable instincts."
"Anger."
"Hunger."
"And frustrated desire."
"Everything else that made him human was erased."
The laboratory fell silent.
Finally, Fury nodded.
"A convincing assessment, Dr. Helena."
"Remain in the laboratory for now."
"I’ll have a recovery team arrive shortly to take custody of the body."
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