Back to GatefoldIssue #3 by Kevin Hardwick
July 2017 |
The building looked absolutely nothing like a hangout for bad guys. Not that Flash Thompson, the current operator of the Venom weapon, had much experience with bad guys. He had met a few, and even put down a couple, but as far as the spandex crowd was concerned he didn’t even rate a hit on the rumor mill. While the burning white spider symbol on his chest was scary enough, chances were that the kind of people he was chasing down tonight didn’t know or care about him.
He stood in full view of the front entrance, just across the street. Since he was bonded with the alien symbiote, it would only take a single thought to form a helmet around his head and bulk up his body armor. While he had most of his gear already in place, including an MP-5 and two 9mm handguns, he hadn’t yet shielded his face.
“Are you sure the intel is good?” he asked.
Paladin, his handler, sat in the van at the end of the block. Between bites of his chicken parmesan sandwich, he said into Flash’s earpiece, “Two local hustlers and one noise compliant filed in this precinct reported ninjas spotted in the area.”
“They’re not very good ninjas if three people spotted them.”
“I’ll tell them that later.”
Flash shrugged. “Why bring the pscholar tech here? It’s a dive bar.”
“Probably selling it. Or maybe Black Tarantula has some local heavyweights he wants to sit on the thing until he knows his next move.”
“That doesn’t make sense either,” Flash said. “He wouldn’t go to all this trouble just to sell it right away, or to not know what to do with it. He’s well organized and obviously has a plan. This is a place where costumed crooks hang out, right?”
“That’s the word.” Paladin chomped another noisy bite of his sandwich.
“Any chance he’s field-testing pscholar on these lowlifes? Get himself a pop-up army?”
Paladin hesitated and then said, “Well, only one way to find out, kid. Go earn your money.”
With a grunt, Flash commanded the symbiote to create and wrap a protective helmet around his head. The black armor was accented by pouches for extra magazines of ammunition, white outlines for eyes, and of course, the spider symbol. With being back in the New York for the first time in years he hoped to see some old friends, and maybe even Spider-Man himself.
He had been one of Spider-Man’s biggest fans, even going so far as to join the military and make something of himself so he could be just a little but more like his hero. The cold harshness of service darkened his attitude slightly, but he still had that moral spirit to take responsibility for those who couldn’t.
Most of his teenage and adult life had been directly impacted by Spider-Man, especially now that he was wearing the webslinger’s hand-me-downs. He enjoyed the smooth transfer of power that the symbiote gave him. The creature rarely went into his thoughts other than a fleeting inclination toward certain emotions. The torture it had received in the last days of being bonded to Eddie Brock seemed to have shattered whatever personality the symbiote once had. Now it was a tool; a weapon.
Of course, it hadn’t always been this easy.
# # # # # # # # # #
18 MONTHS AGO
He had been told that the white chamber was completely sanitized. No foreign elements had been introduced to the room other than himself and the silver cylinder, which he had to carry in himself. He was naked and cold and as he turned the cylinder over in his hands he wondered if he had made the right decision to join Silver Sable.
“Are you ready?” she asked. The voice was filtered through a PA system. He turned and saw her on the other side of three inches of protective plexiglass. She looked at him with her eyebrows raised.
He gave her a thumbs-up and took a deep breath. He was a soldier, or at least, he had been. When faced with the opportunity to really do something that might have a positive impact on the world standing naked in a Clean room, with a capital ‘C,’ seemed like a small compromise. So why was he sweating?
Because he knew what was inside the cylinder. It was locked, sealed, and sonic devises embedded in the two caps at either end would keep the alien thing inside docile. Or so he believed. It was all science fiction to him, despite the things he had seen. Living in New York for his whole life had given him a front row seat to some really weird stuff. Even still, to think he was holding a plasmatic alien life form in his hands seemed unreal.
He undid the one side of the canister and looked down into the black ink that filled it halfway. It was like looking into a liquid shadow. For the longest moment nothing happened.
He was about to say as much when a tendril lashed out and stuck onto his cheek. He jumped back, frightened not just by the physical speed of the thing, but by the synaptic connection that snapped into place. He was bombarded with emotions and when it finally stopped he looked up at the glass to see yet another surprise.
He was covered in a black suit with a blazing white spider symbol across his chest. The suit was tight across his skin, accentuating his musculature. Even though it covered his mouth he found it fairly easy to breath.
Flexing his arms, he felt like the suit was both close-knit and loose at the same time. He did a few squats to test his mobility and then did a backflip on a whim. Instead of landing on his feet, however, he found that he had vaulted across the room and stuck to the wall by the soles of his feet.
“Wow,” he muttered. “This feels incredible! It’s like I just drank a hundred cups of coffee!”
“Is it speaking to you?” Silver Sable asked. “Dr. Richards’ reports indicate that the symbiote was intelligent.”
Flash stepped off of the wall and tried to focus inwardly. There was definitely another presence in his head, but it was docile. He felt the kind of pain from an old bruise that gets sore every now and again. He also felt appreciation. Whatever this thing was, it was grateful to be out of the canister and bonded with a human again.
“Not really speaking,” Flash said. “I can feel a few twitches, for lack of a better term. It feels like it was abused.”
“That matches with what our team uncovered. It’s possible that…Flash? Are you okay?”
“Yeah, why?”
“You…your chest just sprouted teeth.”
He looked down to see jagged, sharp, white teeth protruding from his chest. They slithered and moved down to his abdomen, where a slick, red tongue sprouted. He swatted at the teeth and leapt back, as if trying to get away from a monster clawing at him, but the symbiote was wrapped tightly around his body.
Flash began to panic. He tugged at the suit, but it stuck to him. It was clinging on and would not let go of him. He wondered why he was being rejected. Why was it happening to him again?
No. Not him. The symbiote was feeling rejected. He was having trouble distinguishing his thoughts from the symbiote.
Suddenly, his arms lashed out and tendrils burst out of the back of his hand. They whipped around the room and more joined them from the other side. Tendrils started springing out of his back, legs, and head. It was a black maelstrom of horror. The teeth and tongue swirled around his abdominal muscles.
“We’re coming in!”
“No! Stay back!”
Flash tried to concentrate, but it was hard. The symbiote was feeling too many emotions all at once to contain them. Trapped. Scared. Potential freedom. Rejection. Acceptance. Desire. He couldn’t figure out what he was feeling in comparison to what the symbiote was experiencing.
He sifted through the appropriated memories. Eddie Brock. Someone named Tombstone. Torture. More rejection. Sorrow. Then further back in the past there was Spider-Man. Peter Parker? Carnage. Hundreds and hundreds of deaths.
Flash offered himself as an anchor. It seemed like it had been so long since the symbiote had a true partner, someone that could willingly offer himself without asking for anything in exchange. Everyone else wanted to control it. Use it.
He was surprised when the symbiote stopped thrashing. He had landed on something there…control? No, not so much being controlled as just being grounded again. There was something about Brock that it never wanted to experience again.
A psychotic break. Brock had been tortured to the point of a total meltdown. It had been like a poison infecting the symbiote. The loss of mental cohesion had nearly killed it. Flash would offer it the opportunity to be whole again, without the psychological baggage.
The symbiote rejoiced at the concept. It didn’t care if it was a weapon, a partner, a tool, or anything else in between. It just wanted mental stability. In exchange for that it would leave the user alone and be complicit.
Flash stood up again and saw his reflection in the glass. The suit had changed, mimicking standard body armor that he had worn in the military, except it was all black with its trademark white symbol.
“Are you okay?” Silver Sable asked.
“Yeah. Yeah, I think I am.”
# # # # # # # # # #
He walked into the bar without any semblance of stealth. There would be no reason to sneak in, monitor the patrons, and figure out what was going on. If Black Tarantula was forcing more recruits into his organization, especially costumed criminals, through the use of pscholar technology, then there wasn’t any time left for reconnaissance.
Kicking in the front door with weapons drawn turned out to be the right idea. Not only were there no witnesses to be surprised, but the entire place looked like it had been vacant for months. A sign hung lopsided in the corner that said ‘The Bar With No Name.’ Broken glass and knocked over furniture littered the floor. The bar, which ran the length of the room on one side, was empty. No one tending and no drinks being poured.
“Nobody home,” he said.
“Well, someone saw something,” Paladin said. “Those three witnesses didn’t just all imagine seeing the same thing.”
Flash stepped deeper into the bar and holstered his twin 9mms. “What kind of a name is ‘The Bar With No Name’ anyway? Why even go to the trouble of making a sign?”
“Hey, no one ever said that New York’s lowest common denominator crooks were smart. This place is supposed to be a refuge from the good guys, a place where thugs for hire can be picked up to join a new gang. I heard that the Ringer picked up his last crew in this place.”
“After tonight I’m not going to believe any rumors from you anymore.”
Behind him the door pushed open again. He turned, whipping out his MP-5 off the sling on his back, pointing it at the newcomer. Standing around six feet tall was a lean man wearing a black trench coat and a bandana around the bottom half of his face.
“Put the gun down; it won’t help you anyway,” he said.
Flash pulled back the action on the machine gun. “That’s not how this game is played. Are you one of Black Tarantula’s goons?” The man nodded. “And this is supposed to be a trap?”
“I was sent here to make sure that you don’t interfere for what he has planned. My name is Bullet. I’ve pulled jobs in countries you can’t even spell. I was trained by some of the toughest government operatives in the world. That little peashooter isn’t going to stop me.”
“Where is pscholar now?”
Bullet laughed and removed his coat, letting it fall to the dirty floor. “You know, he thought about using it on you. You and your friends have been chipping away at his business for a while now. He’s been getting the messages you send back to him through his men, the ones you don’t kill. You’re good. It would be smart to make you work for him.”
“Then why not take me to where pscholar is being kept? Maybe we can work something out.”
“Nah. You’re good.” Bullet bent forward slightly and pulled one arm back like he was about to break into a sprint. “But I’m better.”
Bullet launched forward like he had been shot out of a gun. Flash didn’t even have a chance to register what had happened before he had been bowled over. The guy was definitely superhuman. Increased speed and durability, if the power of the impact was any indication. Flash had been tackled around the midsection and propelled into the back wall, smashing through two tables.
Bullet dusted himself off. “I don’t see what all the fuss is about. Aren’t you a mercenary? Working with Sable and her Wild Pack, right?”
Flash felt like he had been hit by a bus. Or maybe a train. Bullet had been appropriately named. The symbiote was fine, but beneath the padding he thought a rib might be bruised or even broken. Without the symbiote he likely would have several broken bones and internal bleeding.
He sprung up and pulled the trigger on the MP-5, sweeping right to left. Modified for full auto, a storm of lead swept through the bar. Bullet ducked down and rushed back to the doorway, grabbing a chair and twisting around fully once to build momentum. He whipped the chair across the bar, but Flash leapt over it, dropping the spent MP-5. He could reload, but his enemy might be too fast for that. Better to start using the suit instead.
Webbing, thick and gray, sprayed out of the tops of his fists. He shot a line at an upturned table and yanked, slinging it across the room at Bullet. The killer saw it coming and ducked down again to run to a safe corner like he had before, but Flash was ready for him. His other webline was widespread, creating a net right in Bullet’s path.
He slammed into it, clinging like a fly trapped in a spider’s web. He swore and began to tear away at the webbing, but not before Flash closed the gap between them. He pounced up and dropped both of his heels into Bullet’s lower back. Bullet, already half free from the net, twisted and bashed the back of his fist into Flash’s head.
The speed and force of the backhand punch spun Flash around, and on his return pivot he instinctively fell to one knee to get under any follow-up hits. He drove his fist into Bullet’s lower back, working the same spot he had driven his feet. He got in two more hits before Bullet managed to pull himself free. He grabbed the back of Flash’s head and shot his knee up into Flash’s masked face and then picked him up by the shoulders.
Flash head-butted Bullet, which loosened Bullet’s grip on his shoulders. He followed up with a double-chop to both sides of Bullet’s neck and a punch to his solar plexus. Bullet stumbled back and Flash wrapped his legs in thick webbing and then tugged back, yanking Bullet onto his back and slamming the back of his head on the hard floor.
Leaping to the ceiling, his feet connecting between the air conditioning and heating vents, Flash pulled upward and secured his webline to the ceiling. Bullet was strung upside down and woozy from the head-butt. Flash stayed on the ceiling and looked, from his perspective, up at Bullet.
“Where’s pscholar?” he demanded.
“Think you’re tough?” Bullet said. “This is nothing.”
Flash almost causally hopped down and stood in front of Bullet, bending over slightly so that their faces came closer. He pulled off the bandana and threw it away. “Where?”
Bullet spat on him.
With a deep breath, Flash flicked Bullet’s elbow and made him spin around slightly. He drove two, three, four jabs into Bullet’s lower back again, working that same area. He wasn’t letting the symbiote empower all of his hits, though. He didn’t want to kill the guy.
He bent over again at the squirming Bullet, who hung like a freshly caught fish. “Where?”
“Piss. Off.”
Five more jabs. The same question. The same response, only a little slurred.
Flash was getting irritated. He was also getting nowhere. He formed a black tendril along his right forearm and sharpened it to a razor’s edge, drawing it across Bullet’s cheek. To his credit the mercenary didn’t flinch much.
“Tell me or I’ll carve out your spleen.”
Bullet winced, but remained silent. So, Flash gently poked the tip of the tendril into Bullet’s gut, drawing blood. The hanging man flinched much more this time and started to swing back and forth to get away from the blade, but Flash held him in place, pushing the tendril in deeper.
“Okay!” Bullet screamed. “Get off me! Just get off! You’re insane!”
“Too late,” Flash muttered. The helmet twisted slightly and parted near the base, revealing sharp, white teeth and a lashing red tongue.
“Knock it off,” Paladin said in his earpiece.
Instantly, Flash stepped back and retracted the tendril. What the hell had just happened to him? For a moment it felt like there was a monster beneath his skin just itching to come out and take over. He reflected inward and pushed through his own mind in search of the symbiote’s emotional state, but only found the normal, tepid state of being he had grown accustomed to.
He hadn’t wanted to stop hurting Bullet. Why was that?
“Come pick us up,” Flash said. “We can finish this up elsewhere. I’m sure he’ll tell us everything we want to know now.”
# # # # # # # # # #
LATER
Paladin slammed the side door of the unmarked van shut after stepping in. He took a deep breath and worked some of the kinks out of neck. It was a crummy station in life, but he had drawn the short straw. It was probably a good thing he was in the van, however, because if he had been in the bar with Thompson he likely would have put a bullet in the kid’s skull.
While he appreciated the kid’s talents and his past service to Symkaria, it looked like it was finally time to make the call. He flipped on the untraceable satellite phone that he grabbed from a compartment hidden under the monitor suite of screens.
As soon as it connected a female said on the other end, “Report.”
“I just deposited what appears to be one of Tarantula’s lieutenants with the feds. Guy by the name of Bullet. Ring any bells?”
“Just a second.” There was the sound of keys tapping. “Wanted in Portugal and Brazil for murder. Several other outstanding United States warrants. Interpol really wants him bad. Nice job. I can collect on a few rewards for this one.”
“Cash flow is always nice, Sable. You know I always love getting those fat direct deposits. Look, about the kid.”
“You’ve spotted signs of the symbiote gaining control?”
“Yes. Well, no. I haven’t witnessed it. This is more of a warning call, I guess. What we were worried would happen to him could be starting. I can’t verify, but it’s possible.”
Silver Sable sighed. “Where is he now?”
“After we handed over custody of Bullet to the FBI he said he was going to get some sleep and maybe look up a few friends in the area. He’s from here, you know?”
“Okay. Keep him close. Watch him carefully. For now the operation parameters are the same. But if you think he’s been compromised by the symbiote…”
“I know. Paladin out.”
He hung up and replaced the satellite phone, exchanging it for a Desert Eagle he fancied. Even though the theory hadn’t been tested, he was sure that the hollowpoints loaded into the powerful handgun would be enough to take Thompson down.
TO BE CONTINUED! The information from Bullet has given Venom his next lead: Black Tarantula plans on launching pscholar on New Year’s Eve in Time’s Square! With that many people in one place, he’ll have thousands of devotees permanently dedicated to his growing empire.
He stood in full view of the front entrance, just across the street. Since he was bonded with the alien symbiote, it would only take a single thought to form a helmet around his head and bulk up his body armor. While he had most of his gear already in place, including an MP-5 and two 9mm handguns, he hadn’t yet shielded his face.
“Are you sure the intel is good?” he asked.
Paladin, his handler, sat in the van at the end of the block. Between bites of his chicken parmesan sandwich, he said into Flash’s earpiece, “Two local hustlers and one noise compliant filed in this precinct reported ninjas spotted in the area.”
“They’re not very good ninjas if three people spotted them.”
“I’ll tell them that later.”
Flash shrugged. “Why bring the pscholar tech here? It’s a dive bar.”
“Probably selling it. Or maybe Black Tarantula has some local heavyweights he wants to sit on the thing until he knows his next move.”
“That doesn’t make sense either,” Flash said. “He wouldn’t go to all this trouble just to sell it right away, or to not know what to do with it. He’s well organized and obviously has a plan. This is a place where costumed crooks hang out, right?”
“That’s the word.” Paladin chomped another noisy bite of his sandwich.
“Any chance he’s field-testing pscholar on these lowlifes? Get himself a pop-up army?”
Paladin hesitated and then said, “Well, only one way to find out, kid. Go earn your money.”
With a grunt, Flash commanded the symbiote to create and wrap a protective helmet around his head. The black armor was accented by pouches for extra magazines of ammunition, white outlines for eyes, and of course, the spider symbol. With being back in the New York for the first time in years he hoped to see some old friends, and maybe even Spider-Man himself.
He had been one of Spider-Man’s biggest fans, even going so far as to join the military and make something of himself so he could be just a little but more like his hero. The cold harshness of service darkened his attitude slightly, but he still had that moral spirit to take responsibility for those who couldn’t.
Most of his teenage and adult life had been directly impacted by Spider-Man, especially now that he was wearing the webslinger’s hand-me-downs. He enjoyed the smooth transfer of power that the symbiote gave him. The creature rarely went into his thoughts other than a fleeting inclination toward certain emotions. The torture it had received in the last days of being bonded to Eddie Brock seemed to have shattered whatever personality the symbiote once had. Now it was a tool; a weapon.
Of course, it hadn’t always been this easy.
# # # # # # # # # #
18 MONTHS AGO
He had been told that the white chamber was completely sanitized. No foreign elements had been introduced to the room other than himself and the silver cylinder, which he had to carry in himself. He was naked and cold and as he turned the cylinder over in his hands he wondered if he had made the right decision to join Silver Sable.
“Are you ready?” she asked. The voice was filtered through a PA system. He turned and saw her on the other side of three inches of protective plexiglass. She looked at him with her eyebrows raised.
He gave her a thumbs-up and took a deep breath. He was a soldier, or at least, he had been. When faced with the opportunity to really do something that might have a positive impact on the world standing naked in a Clean room, with a capital ‘C,’ seemed like a small compromise. So why was he sweating?
Because he knew what was inside the cylinder. It was locked, sealed, and sonic devises embedded in the two caps at either end would keep the alien thing inside docile. Or so he believed. It was all science fiction to him, despite the things he had seen. Living in New York for his whole life had given him a front row seat to some really weird stuff. Even still, to think he was holding a plasmatic alien life form in his hands seemed unreal.
He undid the one side of the canister and looked down into the black ink that filled it halfway. It was like looking into a liquid shadow. For the longest moment nothing happened.
He was about to say as much when a tendril lashed out and stuck onto his cheek. He jumped back, frightened not just by the physical speed of the thing, but by the synaptic connection that snapped into place. He was bombarded with emotions and when it finally stopped he looked up at the glass to see yet another surprise.
He was covered in a black suit with a blazing white spider symbol across his chest. The suit was tight across his skin, accentuating his musculature. Even though it covered his mouth he found it fairly easy to breath.
Flexing his arms, he felt like the suit was both close-knit and loose at the same time. He did a few squats to test his mobility and then did a backflip on a whim. Instead of landing on his feet, however, he found that he had vaulted across the room and stuck to the wall by the soles of his feet.
“Wow,” he muttered. “This feels incredible! It’s like I just drank a hundred cups of coffee!”
“Is it speaking to you?” Silver Sable asked. “Dr. Richards’ reports indicate that the symbiote was intelligent.”
Flash stepped off of the wall and tried to focus inwardly. There was definitely another presence in his head, but it was docile. He felt the kind of pain from an old bruise that gets sore every now and again. He also felt appreciation. Whatever this thing was, it was grateful to be out of the canister and bonded with a human again.
“Not really speaking,” Flash said. “I can feel a few twitches, for lack of a better term. It feels like it was abused.”
“That matches with what our team uncovered. It’s possible that…Flash? Are you okay?”
“Yeah, why?”
“You…your chest just sprouted teeth.”
He looked down to see jagged, sharp, white teeth protruding from his chest. They slithered and moved down to his abdomen, where a slick, red tongue sprouted. He swatted at the teeth and leapt back, as if trying to get away from a monster clawing at him, but the symbiote was wrapped tightly around his body.
Flash began to panic. He tugged at the suit, but it stuck to him. It was clinging on and would not let go of him. He wondered why he was being rejected. Why was it happening to him again?
No. Not him. The symbiote was feeling rejected. He was having trouble distinguishing his thoughts from the symbiote.
Suddenly, his arms lashed out and tendrils burst out of the back of his hand. They whipped around the room and more joined them from the other side. Tendrils started springing out of his back, legs, and head. It was a black maelstrom of horror. The teeth and tongue swirled around his abdominal muscles.
“We’re coming in!”
“No! Stay back!”
Flash tried to concentrate, but it was hard. The symbiote was feeling too many emotions all at once to contain them. Trapped. Scared. Potential freedom. Rejection. Acceptance. Desire. He couldn’t figure out what he was feeling in comparison to what the symbiote was experiencing.
He sifted through the appropriated memories. Eddie Brock. Someone named Tombstone. Torture. More rejection. Sorrow. Then further back in the past there was Spider-Man. Peter Parker? Carnage. Hundreds and hundreds of deaths.
Flash offered himself as an anchor. It seemed like it had been so long since the symbiote had a true partner, someone that could willingly offer himself without asking for anything in exchange. Everyone else wanted to control it. Use it.
He was surprised when the symbiote stopped thrashing. He had landed on something there…control? No, not so much being controlled as just being grounded again. There was something about Brock that it never wanted to experience again.
A psychotic break. Brock had been tortured to the point of a total meltdown. It had been like a poison infecting the symbiote. The loss of mental cohesion had nearly killed it. Flash would offer it the opportunity to be whole again, without the psychological baggage.
The symbiote rejoiced at the concept. It didn’t care if it was a weapon, a partner, a tool, or anything else in between. It just wanted mental stability. In exchange for that it would leave the user alone and be complicit.
Flash stood up again and saw his reflection in the glass. The suit had changed, mimicking standard body armor that he had worn in the military, except it was all black with its trademark white symbol.
“Are you okay?” Silver Sable asked.
“Yeah. Yeah, I think I am.”
# # # # # # # # # #
He walked into the bar without any semblance of stealth. There would be no reason to sneak in, monitor the patrons, and figure out what was going on. If Black Tarantula was forcing more recruits into his organization, especially costumed criminals, through the use of pscholar technology, then there wasn’t any time left for reconnaissance.
Kicking in the front door with weapons drawn turned out to be the right idea. Not only were there no witnesses to be surprised, but the entire place looked like it had been vacant for months. A sign hung lopsided in the corner that said ‘The Bar With No Name.’ Broken glass and knocked over furniture littered the floor. The bar, which ran the length of the room on one side, was empty. No one tending and no drinks being poured.
“Nobody home,” he said.
“Well, someone saw something,” Paladin said. “Those three witnesses didn’t just all imagine seeing the same thing.”
Flash stepped deeper into the bar and holstered his twin 9mms. “What kind of a name is ‘The Bar With No Name’ anyway? Why even go to the trouble of making a sign?”
“Hey, no one ever said that New York’s lowest common denominator crooks were smart. This place is supposed to be a refuge from the good guys, a place where thugs for hire can be picked up to join a new gang. I heard that the Ringer picked up his last crew in this place.”
“After tonight I’m not going to believe any rumors from you anymore.”
Behind him the door pushed open again. He turned, whipping out his MP-5 off the sling on his back, pointing it at the newcomer. Standing around six feet tall was a lean man wearing a black trench coat and a bandana around the bottom half of his face.
“Put the gun down; it won’t help you anyway,” he said.
Flash pulled back the action on the machine gun. “That’s not how this game is played. Are you one of Black Tarantula’s goons?” The man nodded. “And this is supposed to be a trap?”
“I was sent here to make sure that you don’t interfere for what he has planned. My name is Bullet. I’ve pulled jobs in countries you can’t even spell. I was trained by some of the toughest government operatives in the world. That little peashooter isn’t going to stop me.”
“Where is pscholar now?”
Bullet laughed and removed his coat, letting it fall to the dirty floor. “You know, he thought about using it on you. You and your friends have been chipping away at his business for a while now. He’s been getting the messages you send back to him through his men, the ones you don’t kill. You’re good. It would be smart to make you work for him.”
“Then why not take me to where pscholar is being kept? Maybe we can work something out.”
“Nah. You’re good.” Bullet bent forward slightly and pulled one arm back like he was about to break into a sprint. “But I’m better.”
Bullet launched forward like he had been shot out of a gun. Flash didn’t even have a chance to register what had happened before he had been bowled over. The guy was definitely superhuman. Increased speed and durability, if the power of the impact was any indication. Flash had been tackled around the midsection and propelled into the back wall, smashing through two tables.
Bullet dusted himself off. “I don’t see what all the fuss is about. Aren’t you a mercenary? Working with Sable and her Wild Pack, right?”
Flash felt like he had been hit by a bus. Or maybe a train. Bullet had been appropriately named. The symbiote was fine, but beneath the padding he thought a rib might be bruised or even broken. Without the symbiote he likely would have several broken bones and internal bleeding.
He sprung up and pulled the trigger on the MP-5, sweeping right to left. Modified for full auto, a storm of lead swept through the bar. Bullet ducked down and rushed back to the doorway, grabbing a chair and twisting around fully once to build momentum. He whipped the chair across the bar, but Flash leapt over it, dropping the spent MP-5. He could reload, but his enemy might be too fast for that. Better to start using the suit instead.
Webbing, thick and gray, sprayed out of the tops of his fists. He shot a line at an upturned table and yanked, slinging it across the room at Bullet. The killer saw it coming and ducked down again to run to a safe corner like he had before, but Flash was ready for him. His other webline was widespread, creating a net right in Bullet’s path.
He slammed into it, clinging like a fly trapped in a spider’s web. He swore and began to tear away at the webbing, but not before Flash closed the gap between them. He pounced up and dropped both of his heels into Bullet’s lower back. Bullet, already half free from the net, twisted and bashed the back of his fist into Flash’s head.
The speed and force of the backhand punch spun Flash around, and on his return pivot he instinctively fell to one knee to get under any follow-up hits. He drove his fist into Bullet’s lower back, working the same spot he had driven his feet. He got in two more hits before Bullet managed to pull himself free. He grabbed the back of Flash’s head and shot his knee up into Flash’s masked face and then picked him up by the shoulders.
Flash head-butted Bullet, which loosened Bullet’s grip on his shoulders. He followed up with a double-chop to both sides of Bullet’s neck and a punch to his solar plexus. Bullet stumbled back and Flash wrapped his legs in thick webbing and then tugged back, yanking Bullet onto his back and slamming the back of his head on the hard floor.
Leaping to the ceiling, his feet connecting between the air conditioning and heating vents, Flash pulled upward and secured his webline to the ceiling. Bullet was strung upside down and woozy from the head-butt. Flash stayed on the ceiling and looked, from his perspective, up at Bullet.
“Where’s pscholar?” he demanded.
“Think you’re tough?” Bullet said. “This is nothing.”
Flash almost causally hopped down and stood in front of Bullet, bending over slightly so that their faces came closer. He pulled off the bandana and threw it away. “Where?”
Bullet spat on him.
With a deep breath, Flash flicked Bullet’s elbow and made him spin around slightly. He drove two, three, four jabs into Bullet’s lower back again, working that same area. He wasn’t letting the symbiote empower all of his hits, though. He didn’t want to kill the guy.
He bent over again at the squirming Bullet, who hung like a freshly caught fish. “Where?”
“Piss. Off.”
Five more jabs. The same question. The same response, only a little slurred.
Flash was getting irritated. He was also getting nowhere. He formed a black tendril along his right forearm and sharpened it to a razor’s edge, drawing it across Bullet’s cheek. To his credit the mercenary didn’t flinch much.
“Tell me or I’ll carve out your spleen.”
Bullet winced, but remained silent. So, Flash gently poked the tip of the tendril into Bullet’s gut, drawing blood. The hanging man flinched much more this time and started to swing back and forth to get away from the blade, but Flash held him in place, pushing the tendril in deeper.
“Okay!” Bullet screamed. “Get off me! Just get off! You’re insane!”
“Too late,” Flash muttered. The helmet twisted slightly and parted near the base, revealing sharp, white teeth and a lashing red tongue.
“Knock it off,” Paladin said in his earpiece.
Instantly, Flash stepped back and retracted the tendril. What the hell had just happened to him? For a moment it felt like there was a monster beneath his skin just itching to come out and take over. He reflected inward and pushed through his own mind in search of the symbiote’s emotional state, but only found the normal, tepid state of being he had grown accustomed to.
He hadn’t wanted to stop hurting Bullet. Why was that?
“Come pick us up,” Flash said. “We can finish this up elsewhere. I’m sure he’ll tell us everything we want to know now.”
# # # # # # # # # #
LATER
Paladin slammed the side door of the unmarked van shut after stepping in. He took a deep breath and worked some of the kinks out of neck. It was a crummy station in life, but he had drawn the short straw. It was probably a good thing he was in the van, however, because if he had been in the bar with Thompson he likely would have put a bullet in the kid’s skull.
While he appreciated the kid’s talents and his past service to Symkaria, it looked like it was finally time to make the call. He flipped on the untraceable satellite phone that he grabbed from a compartment hidden under the monitor suite of screens.
As soon as it connected a female said on the other end, “Report.”
“I just deposited what appears to be one of Tarantula’s lieutenants with the feds. Guy by the name of Bullet. Ring any bells?”
“Just a second.” There was the sound of keys tapping. “Wanted in Portugal and Brazil for murder. Several other outstanding United States warrants. Interpol really wants him bad. Nice job. I can collect on a few rewards for this one.”
“Cash flow is always nice, Sable. You know I always love getting those fat direct deposits. Look, about the kid.”
“You’ve spotted signs of the symbiote gaining control?”
“Yes. Well, no. I haven’t witnessed it. This is more of a warning call, I guess. What we were worried would happen to him could be starting. I can’t verify, but it’s possible.”
Silver Sable sighed. “Where is he now?”
“After we handed over custody of Bullet to the FBI he said he was going to get some sleep and maybe look up a few friends in the area. He’s from here, you know?”
“Okay. Keep him close. Watch him carefully. For now the operation parameters are the same. But if you think he’s been compromised by the symbiote…”
“I know. Paladin out.”
He hung up and replaced the satellite phone, exchanging it for a Desert Eagle he fancied. Even though the theory hadn’t been tested, he was sure that the hollowpoints loaded into the powerful handgun would be enough to take Thompson down.
TO BE CONTINUED! The information from Bullet has given Venom his next lead: Black Tarantula plans on launching pscholar on New Year’s Eve in Time’s Square! With that many people in one place, he’ll have thousands of devotees permanently dedicated to his growing empire.