Back to GatefoldIssue #2 by Kevin Hardwick
March 2017 |
The New York division of Madden Technical Labs was just as low key as their other locations, and the security appeared to be just as lax. They had been sitting in their recon van for most of the evening and not a single security guard had even glanced their way. The plan, according to Paladin, was to wait for their target to exit the building and then track him to an appropriate pick-up spot, somewhere that wouldn’t raise any alarms from people walking their dogs.
The man who wore the Venom weapon, Flash Thompson, loved being back in the city. He had traveled the world and experienced incredible things as part of an elite military unit, but as far as he was concerned there was only one city worth living in. New York had that kind of atmosphere. This was his home.
It was weird to think that he still had friends here. Growing up he had been a bit of a bully. He felt bad about that now, thinking about how the kid he had picked on the most, Peter Parker, was arguably one of his best friends now. He didn’t deserve Peter’s forgiveness or friendship, but he had both. He would have to make a point of taking a little time after this operation to go and visit him and maybe see Peter’s daughter.
Paladin, sans his purple body armor, stirred in the driver’s seat and said, “Thermal shows someone coming toward the exit.”
Flash leaned forward in the passenger seat. The van was filled with all types of surveillance equipment. For tonight they were relying mostly on the thermal scanner. The monitor built into the dashboard showed them a mostly blue and green image of the front of the building across the street from where they were parked. A yellow and red blob slowly made its way from inside the building on the first floor toward the front entrance.
Two other red and orange blobs indicated where the front desk guards were stationed. While the presence of Black Tarantula’s warriors at the last facility indicated that danger was an ever-present factor tonight, Flash didn’t feel the need to engage the guards and put them in harm’s way unless the enemy showed itself. Right now they were content with just waiting it out.
The first blob paused at the other two for a moment, supposedly swapping small talk for a moment before departure. When it came to the doorway both Paladin and Flash looked up to see who it was with their own eyes.
“Not him,” Paladin said. In comparison against the LinkedIn profile picture of their target, the man who had exited was too lean and had the wrong color hair. “How long can this guy work the night shift?”
“If he’s really close to building the ultimate mind control device then probably all night.”
“Yeah, this pscholar thing is supposed to be used for educational purposes and curing mental illness, right? How can this company’s board actually believe that’s what it would really be used for?”
“With enough dollar signs dangling in front of them I’m sure they would believe just about anything.”
“This is why I carry a gun instead of a briefcase.”
Flash snorted. He had never considered himself to be a corporate kind of guy. Never in his life would he have entertained the thought of being a paper pusher who wore a suit to work every day. He mentally smiled, realizing that he actually did wear a suit to work every day, but this one was extraterrestrial in origin as opposed to Brook Brothers.
Back in high school Flash had been sure he was going to be a pro athlete. But like many young hotshots he quickly realized that the world isn’t built on dreams and wishes. It’s built on hard work and determination. He had a nowhere career without even realizing how it acquired it, and had been saved by Spider-Man more times than he could count.
Spider-Man was really who he looked up to the most in the world. He respected a man who would put his life in danger over and over again, seemingly because that was what he felt his responsibility had become. So, one day he woke up and realized that if someone like Spider-Man could do it, why not him?
He wasn’t interested in getting a mask and pajamas, but he was interested in making a real difference in the world. Through his learned hard work and determination he might actually better it. He would feel proud if the world was a little better off thanks to something he had done.
So, he marched down to the recruiting office and zipped off on a world tour that eventually landed him in a recon van beside a known mercenary.
“You’re from here, ain’t ya?” Paladin asked.
Flash glanced at his partner for a moment before again focusing on the screen. “Yeah,” he replied. “Queens. I thought I might visit a few friends while in town.”
Paladin had a surprised look on his face. “You have friends?”
Flash said, “Ha. Ha. You’re hilarious. Yes, I have friends. I haven’t seen them for a while, but I have them. You don’t?”
“Too hard to keep relationships like that in our line of work.” Paladin sipped his coffee. “I have co-workers. Acquaintances at best. Silver is probably the closest thing I have to a friend.”
“That’s sad.”
“Not when she’s wearing her thong on assignment.”
Flash was about to respond, but another blob on the thermal imaging made him stop short. He pointed to it and then glanced at the doorway to Madden. After a moment out popped a man that matched their target precisely, right down to the hair color.
“There’s our man,” Flash said. “He’ll head for the subway a block over on his way to his apartment. I’ll try to snatch him before he gets to the terminal, but if there are too many people I’ll ride the train with him and wait for a better opportunity.”
“Roger that,” Paladin said as he turned the key in the ignition. “I’ll follow along. Just be sure to…”
Flash had stood up and halfway moved into the back of the van, but paused and turned around. “What is it?”
“Thermal imaging is showing multiple people on the roof, not hopping across the alley in the same direction as our guy.”
“Black Tarantula’s men.”
“Most likely. You need to get him before they do.”
“Or get them before they get him.”
Paladin smirked, saying, “Better. Go, kid.”
Flash opened the side door of the van, mentally commanding his suit to shift in color and shape. What was once a pair of jeans and sweatshirt was now a black tactical outfit. The shadows of New York would seemingly cling to him as he walked down the sidewalk, thanks to the symbiote matching its appearance to the tint of the ambient light.
He glanced upward and saw a few blurs run across a rooftop just overheard of his target, who was walking ignorantly down the street. He was only a few minutes from the terminal entrance.
While the symbiote was a precious tool of his trade, Flash knew that he was going to have to engage it a little more than using it as urban camouflage. He ducked into an ally on his side of the street and gave another mental command for the suit to reconfigure itself into his more standard gear.
Thick armor covered him well, but still allowed him to freedom of movement. His head was now completely encased and protected, but he could still breath easily. Hands and feet were protected by gloves and boots. One of the few things that the symbiote insisted on including was a stylized white spider symbol across his torso. It was annoying at first, but Flash had actually grown to like it, and found that the symbiote was easier to control if he relented in the mental control enough to allow some aesthetic design.
Besides, it looked pretty damn terrifying. He was a soldier, but with the Venom weapon, he was something a hell of a lot more deadly. The spider insignia made him all the more fearsome, and it connected him to his personal hero.
The suit also gave him power. He bent his knees slightly and with a push he had the strength to leap the entire side of the building and land gently on his feet on the roof. He looked across the street and saw the blurs moving swiftly to overtake his target. They would never see him coming.
Normally he would have thought about sniping them from this position, but given that he had only come there tonight to apprehend the pscholar creator, a rifle and scope were not part of his luggage. He would have to tackle this problem a little more directly.
Extending his left arm, the symbiote launched a thick webline from his wrist to across the street. He pointed his arm down at a sconce on the edge of his own building and the webline fired again, solidifying in place at his feet. The webline was taut and strong enough to support him running on it, which he could easily do, thanks again to the symbiote.
As he raced along his impromptu high-wire, the man in control of the Venom weapon prepared himself to engage the enemy.
# # # # # # # # # # # # # # #
TWO YEARS AGO
The pain that rendered through his mind was almost as bad as the physical pain he was also enduring. Eddie Brock couldn’t remember the last time he felt like this, like he wanted to curl up and die.
But was it him that was feeling like death was the only refuge, or the symbiote?
He tried to pull his faculties back together. He couldn’t remember where he was or exactly how he got there. He recalled being in a café in Beaumont Seymour. The train ride down from Boxted had been uneventful, which is precisely how he wanted to live his life these days.
Having left New York a month ago, fleeing inquiring authorities and determined never to let his existence harm anyone ever again, he had been touring Europe and trying to stay out of trouble. His spawn, the crimson symbiote called Carnage, was dead. Spider-Man didn’t give a damn about him anymore, and the feeling was mutual. Sure, the symbiote resented the wall-crawler, but the hate was long gone, replaced by irritation. Eddie Brock was done with living under an assumed name, done with lethal protection, and done with his old life as Venom.
Fire scorched his chest. How did he get here?
A deep voice behind him said, “You should see yourself, Eddie. You’re dangling from a single, black thread. Just let go and this can all end.”
The voice jarred something inside him. He lashed out at nothing, screaming incoherently. The pain was reinforced and he felt like a puppy that had been kicked by its master.
He opened his eyes and say the nozzle of a flamethrower pointed at his chest. He was repulsed by the sight of it, not because it was an object designed for the single purpose of killing, but because of what it meant for him specifically. The symbiote was powerful indeed, but it had its weaknesses. Fire was one of them.
It was not only harmed by it, but it had grown terrified of the heat and flames. Just seeing the weapon made the symbiote scream in his mind. This was torture, both for him and his other.
“Just let go, Eddie,” the voice said again.
He had watched a mugging happen just outside of the café. Once upon a time he would have intervened. With his power he could have torn the guy in half, giving the woman back her purse, and probably gotten to the other side of the town before anyone even thought to call the police. But instead he had just sat there and sipped his coffee. That life was behind him. Too many innocent people had died because he thought he could be a hero.
No, that wasn’t right. He had been a hero. And a villain. He was a curious amalgam. Wasn’t he?
The fire lashed out again and he felt his skin start to boil.
Where the hell was he?
He had gotten up from his table, gone over to the slime that thought he could just take whatever he wanted, and punched a hole clean through to his spleen. Hadn’t he?
He remembered the woman shrieking.
Fire again, and something else at his back that felt like a cattle prod.
The café…that had been this morning. Right? Or was it last week. How long has he been down here, held against his will, scorched and electrocuted? Why couldn’t he remember? He felt like he was losing his mind.
“Eddie!” the voice shouted, seemingly from right next to his head.
He lazily turned to see a chalk-white face mere inches from his own, with teeth as sharp as nails protruding from his mouth. He looked like a shark, a demon shark come to chew up his soul.
“I feel like you’re not paying attention, Eddie,” the deep voice said. It came from behind the toothy grin. This nightmare of a man that was slowly killing him. “I’d rip that thing off you if I could, but it doesn’t really work like that, does it? How much of this are you going to put up with anyway? It’s been days since we grabbed you outside of that café.”
Another man, the one with the flamethrower, chuckled. “I don’t think he can hear you anymore. Not where his head is at.”
“He can hear me,” the nightmare man said. “He can hear me just fine. Hit him again.”
Licks of fire splashed out of the nozzle again, drinking in Eddie’s darkened flesh. The spurt was only for a moment, but it felt like an eternity.
“You have to let go, Eddie. Give me what I want. Let go of that thing. I promise I’ll take good care of it.” He stretched the word ‘good’ out like it was something sexy and exquisite. “Just let go.”
Just as Eddie was about to lose consciousness, he finally toyed with the idea of not being bonded to this alien thing anymore. What had it ever gotten him anyway? What joy had it ever brought him? Why was he fighting to hold onto this horrible thing that had wrecked his life?
Wouldn’t it be better to just be rid of the damn thing?
When the blackened husk that was Eddie Brock gave up and fell unconscious, the charred symbiote did the same, sliding off of him like an oil slick. It was weak, nearly dead from the torture; fire for it and electricity for the host. It pooled on the floor, gently feeling with a few random tendrils to see if it could find a crack in the floor, a drain, anything to get away.
But they were ready for it. The huge chalk-white man scooped it up in a galleon-sized glass container, capped a lid on it, and quickly put it inside a special piece of equipment. Low-level sonics were pumped into the container to keep the symbiote dormant. It wasn’t going to be hurt any longer, but it was going to be kept weak so that it couldn’t try and escape.
It had finally given up on Eddie Brock, and it was now ripe for the taking.
“Finally!” the man with the flamethrower said. “I thought he was never going to give up. What do we do with him now?”
The man with the toothy grin, a stone-cold killer with the strength to match named Tombstone, replied, “Dump him with the local authorities. We don’t need to take the time to hide the body. We’re already behind schedule thanks to his stubbornness. I have some very anxious buyers already lined up to look at this specimen.”
# # # # # # # # # # # # # # #
Springing off of his webline high-wire, Venom latched onto the shoulders of the first of three assailants. He pivoted in midair at the apex of his spring, forcing the warrior to twist with him and add confusion to his element of surprise. Venom landed on his feet and immediately fell into a crouch, slamming a fist into his enemy’s kidneys, a strike reinforced by the alien strength of the symbiote. The warrior cried out in shock and pain and crumbled to the rooftop.
The other two warriors, garbed in black cloth, halted at the outburst and spun to see Venom already back up and lunging for them. The closest withdrew a knife from his belt and stabbed forward, choosing to greet his target with aggression. Venom angled his body away from the blade and latched onto the warrior’s wrist, the symbiote wrapping several tendrils around it. There would be no letting go.
Venom yanked back and the warrior was forced to draw closer, directly into Venom’s head-butt. The cracking sound could have been the noise of the symbiote armor impacting the warrior’s forehead, or it could have been the warrior’s skull splitting. Either way, the warrior was out of the match, further aided by Venom driving his elbow into the warrior’s nose and breaking it.
Pling! Pling!
The third and final warrior had withdrawn a handgun from the folds of his black uniform, apparently choosing to employ a ranged attack, which was wise. However, it was still futile. The bullets were stopped by the symbiote easily and fell to the roof harmlessly. The shock of impact didn’t even resonant with Flash.
Pling! Pling! Pling!
Venom simply walked over to the enemy, ignoring the continued shots being fired into his torso. The final shot went off in his face from mere inches away. Venom grabbed the warrior’s wrist, twisted away, and relieved him of the weapon. He quickly turned back around and squeezed off a shot into the warrior’s knee.
He screamed and dropped to the rooftop in agony, blood and bone jutting out of his leg. If the target on the street below them hadn’t known he was in danger before, the gunshots and the scream would certainly alert him now. Venom would have to move all the quicker.
“Tell Black Tarantula that I’m coming for him soon,” Venom said, his voice altered by the facemask to sound gritty and demonic. “Tell him that his entire operation is going to be shattered when I’m through.”
Venom flipped the gun around in his palm and drove the butt of the grip into the warrior’s temple, granting him sweet sleep and the chance to temporarily forget the horrid pain of his left leg.
Racing to the edge, Venom saw that the target had nearly made it to the terminal entrance, but a quick visual sweep of the street confirmed that no one else was nearby. The target was on alert now, which meant it would be more difficult to tail him straight him from the subway. Hell, the guy might even call the police once he felt that he was safe on the train. That meant it was now or never.
Venom leapt off of the roof and fell the three floors to street level, rolling on impact and breaking immediately into a run. He closed the gap between himself and the target within three seconds, wrapping his arm around the man’s waist and shooting a new webline up at the corner of an adjacent building.
The man shrieked as he was yanked up into the night sky. Venom pulled them both up over the lip of the building’s edge, depositing the startled man onto the cobblestones that assisted with drainage on the roof.
“Don’t kill me!” he said.
Venom took three steps backward, his hands raised, palms out. “I’m not going to hurt you. Are you Doctor Fielding?"
The man nodded, obviously terrified that if he didn’t acknowledge the question that he was as good as dead. Sweat was already building on his forehead.
“Are you developing a working prototype of the pscholar device?”
Fielding’s eyes went wide. “How did you know about that?”
“There is an organization that wants the device. They sent three agents to either kidnap you or kill you tonight. I stopped them. Tell me, Doctor Fielding, have you completed your work yet?”
“Well…y-yes!” he stammered. “I mean, it’s nearly complete. Ninety percent efficiency. I still have more trials to run before it can be applied for medical research purposes.”
“The organization that wants you doesn’t care about the medical implications. How powerful of a mind control device have you developed?”
“It’s not just mind control!” Fielding shouted. “I tried to tell them that!”
“Who?”
“The Board of Directors. This device has the potential to literally re-wire a person’s brain. Do you have any idea what that means for neurodegenerative diseases? Alzheimer’s could be eradicated in a heartbeat. Parkinson’s! Huntington’s!”
“The mind control aspect, Doctor. Tell me.”
The man got an angry look on his face, as if he’s been through this argument a hundred times over. He looked determined, but after a moment, he relented. He knew that it was an argument that he could not win.
“In truth,” the Doctor began, “it’s the ultimate mind control technology. You see, the pscholar doesn’t just override neural inhibitors, it retrains them for an intended purpose. You could reset a person’s mental functions to return to a baseline, or you could alter the neural pathways as you see fit. Other mind control technology just lays an imprint of desired operation over top of these neural pathways, but the pscholar literally rewrites the brain.”
“So you’re saying—”
“Yes!” Fielding’s eyes went wide as he felt that he was finally getting his point across. “It is true reprogramming! The pscholar is not just mind control. It can actually rewrites a person’s personality to make them permanently comply with a person’s demands!”
Just then, the earbud beneath Venom’s helmet chirped. Paladin’s voice slipped into his ear, saying, “Bad news, kid. Those three you were tailing weren’t the only ninjas in town tonight. I’m picking up chatter on the Madden security channel that the bodies of several guards were just found dead on the loading dock and that the good doctor’s lab has been broken into. Guess what they stole?”
Venom didn’t reply, because if what the man in front of him was saying was true, then he was too busy thinking about the incredible power that Black Tarantula now had access to. It could literally change the world.
TO BE CONTINUED! A lead on pscholar’s location is uncovered by Paladin, and Venom goes to investigate. Plus, what was the first bonding between Flash and the symbiote like?
The man who wore the Venom weapon, Flash Thompson, loved being back in the city. He had traveled the world and experienced incredible things as part of an elite military unit, but as far as he was concerned there was only one city worth living in. New York had that kind of atmosphere. This was his home.
It was weird to think that he still had friends here. Growing up he had been a bit of a bully. He felt bad about that now, thinking about how the kid he had picked on the most, Peter Parker, was arguably one of his best friends now. He didn’t deserve Peter’s forgiveness or friendship, but he had both. He would have to make a point of taking a little time after this operation to go and visit him and maybe see Peter’s daughter.
Paladin, sans his purple body armor, stirred in the driver’s seat and said, “Thermal shows someone coming toward the exit.”
Flash leaned forward in the passenger seat. The van was filled with all types of surveillance equipment. For tonight they were relying mostly on the thermal scanner. The monitor built into the dashboard showed them a mostly blue and green image of the front of the building across the street from where they were parked. A yellow and red blob slowly made its way from inside the building on the first floor toward the front entrance.
Two other red and orange blobs indicated where the front desk guards were stationed. While the presence of Black Tarantula’s warriors at the last facility indicated that danger was an ever-present factor tonight, Flash didn’t feel the need to engage the guards and put them in harm’s way unless the enemy showed itself. Right now they were content with just waiting it out.
The first blob paused at the other two for a moment, supposedly swapping small talk for a moment before departure. When it came to the doorway both Paladin and Flash looked up to see who it was with their own eyes.
“Not him,” Paladin said. In comparison against the LinkedIn profile picture of their target, the man who had exited was too lean and had the wrong color hair. “How long can this guy work the night shift?”
“If he’s really close to building the ultimate mind control device then probably all night.”
“Yeah, this pscholar thing is supposed to be used for educational purposes and curing mental illness, right? How can this company’s board actually believe that’s what it would really be used for?”
“With enough dollar signs dangling in front of them I’m sure they would believe just about anything.”
“This is why I carry a gun instead of a briefcase.”
Flash snorted. He had never considered himself to be a corporate kind of guy. Never in his life would he have entertained the thought of being a paper pusher who wore a suit to work every day. He mentally smiled, realizing that he actually did wear a suit to work every day, but this one was extraterrestrial in origin as opposed to Brook Brothers.
Back in high school Flash had been sure he was going to be a pro athlete. But like many young hotshots he quickly realized that the world isn’t built on dreams and wishes. It’s built on hard work and determination. He had a nowhere career without even realizing how it acquired it, and had been saved by Spider-Man more times than he could count.
Spider-Man was really who he looked up to the most in the world. He respected a man who would put his life in danger over and over again, seemingly because that was what he felt his responsibility had become. So, one day he woke up and realized that if someone like Spider-Man could do it, why not him?
He wasn’t interested in getting a mask and pajamas, but he was interested in making a real difference in the world. Through his learned hard work and determination he might actually better it. He would feel proud if the world was a little better off thanks to something he had done.
So, he marched down to the recruiting office and zipped off on a world tour that eventually landed him in a recon van beside a known mercenary.
“You’re from here, ain’t ya?” Paladin asked.
Flash glanced at his partner for a moment before again focusing on the screen. “Yeah,” he replied. “Queens. I thought I might visit a few friends while in town.”
Paladin had a surprised look on his face. “You have friends?”
Flash said, “Ha. Ha. You’re hilarious. Yes, I have friends. I haven’t seen them for a while, but I have them. You don’t?”
“Too hard to keep relationships like that in our line of work.” Paladin sipped his coffee. “I have co-workers. Acquaintances at best. Silver is probably the closest thing I have to a friend.”
“That’s sad.”
“Not when she’s wearing her thong on assignment.”
Flash was about to respond, but another blob on the thermal imaging made him stop short. He pointed to it and then glanced at the doorway to Madden. After a moment out popped a man that matched their target precisely, right down to the hair color.
“There’s our man,” Flash said. “He’ll head for the subway a block over on his way to his apartment. I’ll try to snatch him before he gets to the terminal, but if there are too many people I’ll ride the train with him and wait for a better opportunity.”
“Roger that,” Paladin said as he turned the key in the ignition. “I’ll follow along. Just be sure to…”
Flash had stood up and halfway moved into the back of the van, but paused and turned around. “What is it?”
“Thermal imaging is showing multiple people on the roof, not hopping across the alley in the same direction as our guy.”
“Black Tarantula’s men.”
“Most likely. You need to get him before they do.”
“Or get them before they get him.”
Paladin smirked, saying, “Better. Go, kid.”
Flash opened the side door of the van, mentally commanding his suit to shift in color and shape. What was once a pair of jeans and sweatshirt was now a black tactical outfit. The shadows of New York would seemingly cling to him as he walked down the sidewalk, thanks to the symbiote matching its appearance to the tint of the ambient light.
He glanced upward and saw a few blurs run across a rooftop just overheard of his target, who was walking ignorantly down the street. He was only a few minutes from the terminal entrance.
While the symbiote was a precious tool of his trade, Flash knew that he was going to have to engage it a little more than using it as urban camouflage. He ducked into an ally on his side of the street and gave another mental command for the suit to reconfigure itself into his more standard gear.
Thick armor covered him well, but still allowed him to freedom of movement. His head was now completely encased and protected, but he could still breath easily. Hands and feet were protected by gloves and boots. One of the few things that the symbiote insisted on including was a stylized white spider symbol across his torso. It was annoying at first, but Flash had actually grown to like it, and found that the symbiote was easier to control if he relented in the mental control enough to allow some aesthetic design.
Besides, it looked pretty damn terrifying. He was a soldier, but with the Venom weapon, he was something a hell of a lot more deadly. The spider insignia made him all the more fearsome, and it connected him to his personal hero.
The suit also gave him power. He bent his knees slightly and with a push he had the strength to leap the entire side of the building and land gently on his feet on the roof. He looked across the street and saw the blurs moving swiftly to overtake his target. They would never see him coming.
Normally he would have thought about sniping them from this position, but given that he had only come there tonight to apprehend the pscholar creator, a rifle and scope were not part of his luggage. He would have to tackle this problem a little more directly.
Extending his left arm, the symbiote launched a thick webline from his wrist to across the street. He pointed his arm down at a sconce on the edge of his own building and the webline fired again, solidifying in place at his feet. The webline was taut and strong enough to support him running on it, which he could easily do, thanks again to the symbiote.
As he raced along his impromptu high-wire, the man in control of the Venom weapon prepared himself to engage the enemy.
# # # # # # # # # # # # # # #
TWO YEARS AGO
The pain that rendered through his mind was almost as bad as the physical pain he was also enduring. Eddie Brock couldn’t remember the last time he felt like this, like he wanted to curl up and die.
But was it him that was feeling like death was the only refuge, or the symbiote?
He tried to pull his faculties back together. He couldn’t remember where he was or exactly how he got there. He recalled being in a café in Beaumont Seymour. The train ride down from Boxted had been uneventful, which is precisely how he wanted to live his life these days.
Having left New York a month ago, fleeing inquiring authorities and determined never to let his existence harm anyone ever again, he had been touring Europe and trying to stay out of trouble. His spawn, the crimson symbiote called Carnage, was dead. Spider-Man didn’t give a damn about him anymore, and the feeling was mutual. Sure, the symbiote resented the wall-crawler, but the hate was long gone, replaced by irritation. Eddie Brock was done with living under an assumed name, done with lethal protection, and done with his old life as Venom.
Fire scorched his chest. How did he get here?
A deep voice behind him said, “You should see yourself, Eddie. You’re dangling from a single, black thread. Just let go and this can all end.”
The voice jarred something inside him. He lashed out at nothing, screaming incoherently. The pain was reinforced and he felt like a puppy that had been kicked by its master.
He opened his eyes and say the nozzle of a flamethrower pointed at his chest. He was repulsed by the sight of it, not because it was an object designed for the single purpose of killing, but because of what it meant for him specifically. The symbiote was powerful indeed, but it had its weaknesses. Fire was one of them.
It was not only harmed by it, but it had grown terrified of the heat and flames. Just seeing the weapon made the symbiote scream in his mind. This was torture, both for him and his other.
“Just let go, Eddie,” the voice said again.
He had watched a mugging happen just outside of the café. Once upon a time he would have intervened. With his power he could have torn the guy in half, giving the woman back her purse, and probably gotten to the other side of the town before anyone even thought to call the police. But instead he had just sat there and sipped his coffee. That life was behind him. Too many innocent people had died because he thought he could be a hero.
No, that wasn’t right. He had been a hero. And a villain. He was a curious amalgam. Wasn’t he?
The fire lashed out again and he felt his skin start to boil.
Where the hell was he?
He had gotten up from his table, gone over to the slime that thought he could just take whatever he wanted, and punched a hole clean through to his spleen. Hadn’t he?
He remembered the woman shrieking.
Fire again, and something else at his back that felt like a cattle prod.
The café…that had been this morning. Right? Or was it last week. How long has he been down here, held against his will, scorched and electrocuted? Why couldn’t he remember? He felt like he was losing his mind.
“Eddie!” the voice shouted, seemingly from right next to his head.
He lazily turned to see a chalk-white face mere inches from his own, with teeth as sharp as nails protruding from his mouth. He looked like a shark, a demon shark come to chew up his soul.
“I feel like you’re not paying attention, Eddie,” the deep voice said. It came from behind the toothy grin. This nightmare of a man that was slowly killing him. “I’d rip that thing off you if I could, but it doesn’t really work like that, does it? How much of this are you going to put up with anyway? It’s been days since we grabbed you outside of that café.”
Another man, the one with the flamethrower, chuckled. “I don’t think he can hear you anymore. Not where his head is at.”
“He can hear me,” the nightmare man said. “He can hear me just fine. Hit him again.”
Licks of fire splashed out of the nozzle again, drinking in Eddie’s darkened flesh. The spurt was only for a moment, but it felt like an eternity.
“You have to let go, Eddie. Give me what I want. Let go of that thing. I promise I’ll take good care of it.” He stretched the word ‘good’ out like it was something sexy and exquisite. “Just let go.”
Just as Eddie was about to lose consciousness, he finally toyed with the idea of not being bonded to this alien thing anymore. What had it ever gotten him anyway? What joy had it ever brought him? Why was he fighting to hold onto this horrible thing that had wrecked his life?
Wouldn’t it be better to just be rid of the damn thing?
When the blackened husk that was Eddie Brock gave up and fell unconscious, the charred symbiote did the same, sliding off of him like an oil slick. It was weak, nearly dead from the torture; fire for it and electricity for the host. It pooled on the floor, gently feeling with a few random tendrils to see if it could find a crack in the floor, a drain, anything to get away.
But they were ready for it. The huge chalk-white man scooped it up in a galleon-sized glass container, capped a lid on it, and quickly put it inside a special piece of equipment. Low-level sonics were pumped into the container to keep the symbiote dormant. It wasn’t going to be hurt any longer, but it was going to be kept weak so that it couldn’t try and escape.
It had finally given up on Eddie Brock, and it was now ripe for the taking.
“Finally!” the man with the flamethrower said. “I thought he was never going to give up. What do we do with him now?”
The man with the toothy grin, a stone-cold killer with the strength to match named Tombstone, replied, “Dump him with the local authorities. We don’t need to take the time to hide the body. We’re already behind schedule thanks to his stubbornness. I have some very anxious buyers already lined up to look at this specimen.”
# # # # # # # # # # # # # # #
Springing off of his webline high-wire, Venom latched onto the shoulders of the first of three assailants. He pivoted in midair at the apex of his spring, forcing the warrior to twist with him and add confusion to his element of surprise. Venom landed on his feet and immediately fell into a crouch, slamming a fist into his enemy’s kidneys, a strike reinforced by the alien strength of the symbiote. The warrior cried out in shock and pain and crumbled to the rooftop.
The other two warriors, garbed in black cloth, halted at the outburst and spun to see Venom already back up and lunging for them. The closest withdrew a knife from his belt and stabbed forward, choosing to greet his target with aggression. Venom angled his body away from the blade and latched onto the warrior’s wrist, the symbiote wrapping several tendrils around it. There would be no letting go.
Venom yanked back and the warrior was forced to draw closer, directly into Venom’s head-butt. The cracking sound could have been the noise of the symbiote armor impacting the warrior’s forehead, or it could have been the warrior’s skull splitting. Either way, the warrior was out of the match, further aided by Venom driving his elbow into the warrior’s nose and breaking it.
Pling! Pling!
The third and final warrior had withdrawn a handgun from the folds of his black uniform, apparently choosing to employ a ranged attack, which was wise. However, it was still futile. The bullets were stopped by the symbiote easily and fell to the roof harmlessly. The shock of impact didn’t even resonant with Flash.
Pling! Pling! Pling!
Venom simply walked over to the enemy, ignoring the continued shots being fired into his torso. The final shot went off in his face from mere inches away. Venom grabbed the warrior’s wrist, twisted away, and relieved him of the weapon. He quickly turned back around and squeezed off a shot into the warrior’s knee.
He screamed and dropped to the rooftop in agony, blood and bone jutting out of his leg. If the target on the street below them hadn’t known he was in danger before, the gunshots and the scream would certainly alert him now. Venom would have to move all the quicker.
“Tell Black Tarantula that I’m coming for him soon,” Venom said, his voice altered by the facemask to sound gritty and demonic. “Tell him that his entire operation is going to be shattered when I’m through.”
Venom flipped the gun around in his palm and drove the butt of the grip into the warrior’s temple, granting him sweet sleep and the chance to temporarily forget the horrid pain of his left leg.
Racing to the edge, Venom saw that the target had nearly made it to the terminal entrance, but a quick visual sweep of the street confirmed that no one else was nearby. The target was on alert now, which meant it would be more difficult to tail him straight him from the subway. Hell, the guy might even call the police once he felt that he was safe on the train. That meant it was now or never.
Venom leapt off of the roof and fell the three floors to street level, rolling on impact and breaking immediately into a run. He closed the gap between himself and the target within three seconds, wrapping his arm around the man’s waist and shooting a new webline up at the corner of an adjacent building.
The man shrieked as he was yanked up into the night sky. Venom pulled them both up over the lip of the building’s edge, depositing the startled man onto the cobblestones that assisted with drainage on the roof.
“Don’t kill me!” he said.
Venom took three steps backward, his hands raised, palms out. “I’m not going to hurt you. Are you Doctor Fielding?"
The man nodded, obviously terrified that if he didn’t acknowledge the question that he was as good as dead. Sweat was already building on his forehead.
“Are you developing a working prototype of the pscholar device?”
Fielding’s eyes went wide. “How did you know about that?”
“There is an organization that wants the device. They sent three agents to either kidnap you or kill you tonight. I stopped them. Tell me, Doctor Fielding, have you completed your work yet?”
“Well…y-yes!” he stammered. “I mean, it’s nearly complete. Ninety percent efficiency. I still have more trials to run before it can be applied for medical research purposes.”
“The organization that wants you doesn’t care about the medical implications. How powerful of a mind control device have you developed?”
“It’s not just mind control!” Fielding shouted. “I tried to tell them that!”
“Who?”
“The Board of Directors. This device has the potential to literally re-wire a person’s brain. Do you have any idea what that means for neurodegenerative diseases? Alzheimer’s could be eradicated in a heartbeat. Parkinson’s! Huntington’s!”
“The mind control aspect, Doctor. Tell me.”
The man got an angry look on his face, as if he’s been through this argument a hundred times over. He looked determined, but after a moment, he relented. He knew that it was an argument that he could not win.
“In truth,” the Doctor began, “it’s the ultimate mind control technology. You see, the pscholar doesn’t just override neural inhibitors, it retrains them for an intended purpose. You could reset a person’s mental functions to return to a baseline, or you could alter the neural pathways as you see fit. Other mind control technology just lays an imprint of desired operation over top of these neural pathways, but the pscholar literally rewrites the brain.”
“So you’re saying—”
“Yes!” Fielding’s eyes went wide as he felt that he was finally getting his point across. “It is true reprogramming! The pscholar is not just mind control. It can actually rewrites a person’s personality to make them permanently comply with a person’s demands!”
Just then, the earbud beneath Venom’s helmet chirped. Paladin’s voice slipped into his ear, saying, “Bad news, kid. Those three you were tailing weren’t the only ninjas in town tonight. I’m picking up chatter on the Madden security channel that the bodies of several guards were just found dead on the loading dock and that the good doctor’s lab has been broken into. Guess what they stole?”
Venom didn’t reply, because if what the man in front of him was saying was true, then he was too busy thinking about the incredible power that Black Tarantula now had access to. It could literally change the world.
TO BE CONTINUED! A lead on pscholar’s location is uncovered by Paladin, and Venom goes to investigate. Plus, what was the first bonding between Flash and the symbiote like?