Chapter Text
THESE ARE BAD GUYS, EDDIE. WE CAN EAT THEM.
“Look, fellas,” Eddie says, trying to pitch it like he’s talking to the gunman sitting opposite him in the black sedan. “I get this looks bad, but I’m new in town and really, really not looking to stir anything up. You don’t have to escalate anything. We can just walk away, as if nothing ever happened.”
The gunman just stares at him. On the other side of Eddie, Hal chuckles and shakes his head.
“You talk a lot,” he says.
IF WE EAT THEM, WE CAN TAKE AS MUCH MONEY AS WE NEED. THINK ABOUT IT EDDIE. WORK SMARTER NOT HARDER.
“I will stop talking now,” Eddie announces, “and quietly sit here and practice my meditation.”
He catches a metaphorical earful from Venom for the duration of the ride. Venom spends half the time arguing they should bite the heads off the driver, Hal, and the gunman, and take the money that he’s sure exists somewhere in this car. He spends the other half proposing bloodier and bloodier revenge fantasies. Eddie closes his eyes and tries to keep his face neutral while he argues back. He’s not good at this, this whatever it is, alien telepathy nonsense, so he mostly throws images at Venom: headless bodies, mob enforcers chasing them guns a-blazing, sirens and police helicopters, the Avengers, sterile white labs, separation. They can’t risk it.
It’s almost dusk by the time the car pulls up to a deserted warehouse on the waterfront. Eddie internally groans. Nothing good ever happens at night in empty warehouses.
NOT TRUE. MANY GOOD THINGS CAN HAPPEN HERE! MANY TASTY THINGS.
This time, Eddie doesn’t bother to hold in his groan.
“Quiet,” Hal says sternly, and puts a hand on Eddie’s shoulder.
The sky is a blurred fuzz of indigo-grey; the water ripples bright as silver satin, reflecting all the city light. Eddie takes note of two external doors facing the docks, no guard in sight, as they march him into the warehouse. Turning his head, he spots two security cameras swiveling in his direction. Great. So he needs to keep Venom out of sight when they make their escape.
He’s pretty sure he’s walking into a mob warehouse. He’s ready for a dimly-lit interior, stone-faced Italian men in silk shirts, and the usual spiel about finding an intruder snooping around. But instead, the warehouse looks like… like… he suddenly remembers when the Brock Report covered a classic car expo. The restoration tent was completely taped off with heavy, semi-opaque plastic sheeting. The inside of the warehouse is similarly taped off. Behind the plastic sheeting, bright cold lights shine at strange angles.
Eddie has a bad feeling about this.
They walk him through a hallway, sort of, into a central… area. Plastic cubicle? There’s a cheap folding table, and a neatly-dressed man seated at it playing solitaire. Behind him stand the scowling goons Eddie expected.
“Mr. Lincoln,” the man says, without looking up from his game. “An unexpected visit. Care to explain?”
“There’s a situation at the L’Ouverture work site,” the gunman—Mr. Lincoln— says. “New hire came in. Non-local. Augmented, but not one of ours.”
The man at the desk looks up. He’s middle-aged, with half-moon glasses and a bad combover. He looks at Eddie the way an accountant looks at a miscalculated expense column.
“No? Are you sure? The effects can linger.”
“He’s not on the books,” Mr. Lincoln says. “Eddie Brock. He’s a journalist—was a journalist.”
The man at the desk sighs.
“So he’s a loose end. I see why you brought him to me.” He sets the cards down casually, reaches into his breast pocket for an orange canister of pills, and swallows on. When he looks up, his irises have shifted from brown to a poisonous, phosphorent purple.
WHOA! THAT LOOKS COOL. WE SHOULD SAVE THOSE EYES FOR LAST. OR MAYBE I CAN COPY THEM FOR YOU. IT WOULD BE A GOOD LOOK!
“No!” Eddie says. “No. Look, Mr., uh, I didn’t get your name, but I’m not a loose end. I’m just looking for work. This is all a big misunderstanding.”
“There’s plenty of work in New York,” the man says primly, as if his eyes weren’t glowing like a rave stick. “Our organization’s… arrangement… is very specific, and attracts an equally specific category of applicants.” He gives Eddie an apprising look. “You don’t look like a journalist.”
“I’m not!”
“So what’s your line of work? Are you augmented? Powered,” he clarifies.
WHO’S ASKING?
“I…” Eddie casts a futile glance around the angular maze of lighted plastic sheeting. “I mean, if you want to get technical about it… Yeah, I’m augmented. And I pick up work wherever I can find it. What” he gestures at his own face, “what’s going on with your eyes?”
“Hmm.” The man drums his fingers on the table. A look passes between him and Mr. Lincoln, but Eddie can’t parse it. “How did you find us? Are you working for anyone? Newspaper, cops, any so-called heroes.”
YES, YOU’RE WORKING FOR ME AND I AM A HERO.
Eddie snorts at that, but turns it into a nervous sniffle.
“You want the full story, fine,” he says. “I had a rough go of interviews and some guy behind a vet’s office gave me the tip. I’m not working for anyone, and whatever you’re doing, I won’t tell anyone…” he pauses. “It’s… it’s not too bad, is it?” he says weakly. “Like, we’re talking, fencing stolen goods, embezzling from greedy corporations bad, not human trafficking and drug war bad… right?”
“Do you really want me to answer that?” the man says.
AHA! THEY ARE BAD GUYS, EDDIE! LET’S GOOOO!
Eddie tenses up, preparing for violence, but the man behind the desk looks at Mr. Lincoln again—Eddie clocks Lincoln giving a small nod—and answers:
“No, we don’t dabble in anything so crude. Our mutual employer’s aspirations far exceed street work.” He waves his hand over the faded card faces. “Well, Mr. Lincoln, he hasn’t lied so far. Should I press him further?”
STOP IGNORING ME! THEY ARE BAD GUYS. WE EAT BAD GUYS. FUEL IN THE TANK!
“Ask him who he was talking to in the car,” Mr. Lincoln rasps.
SHOW HIM, EDDIE! NO MORE TALKING!
“Oh, I was… myself,” Eddie says lamely. “I was just talking to myself.”
“Not a lie, but he’s holding something back,” the man at the desk says.
Hal shakes Eddie’s shoulder in a not-so-friendly way.
THIS IS TAKING TOO LONG. WE SHOULD EAT THEM FIRST AND ASK QUESTIONS LATER!!
“Okay, just stop, let me think,” Eddie snaps—without thinking. “Just let me focus for once! I’m…” he sighs, and does what he does best: gives up. “I’m guessing those pills turn your guy into a kind of human lie detector? Yeah. So why aren’t you taking them?” he turns on Lincoln. “I mean, you’re obviously in charge here. So why is he taking the experimental glowing pills and you’re standing back safe? I just, I just have to know what you’re doing, pal, because I’ve kind of had my fill of fly-by-night operations run by billionaires, just, just snatching up the homeless because they can and shooting them up with stuff that kills them or worse.”
YES! TELL THEM, EDDIE!
“You know, maybe I don’t need this job after all,” Eddie says. “Maybe we—”
“Calm down,” Mr. Lincoln says, from behind him. The words slide right past Eddie’s—and Venom’s—thinking brains where language and plans and images live, and settle in the emotional hindbrain. Eddie’s anger goes out like a snuffed candle.
WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT.
“Who are you talking to?” Mr. Lincoln almost sounds patient. Eddie knows that he should be afraid, that this is bad bad, but the fear isn’t coming. He breathes and tries to choose his words carefully.
“I’m talking to my partner,” he says, and he sees both goons reach for their guns. “He’s… he didn’t die after all. He’s still here, with me.” He touches a finger to his temple. “Protecting me. Giving me advice. Bad advice.”
WE DO NOT! I SHOULD COME OUT NOW, AND SHOW THEM—
“No!” Eddie hisses. “You should be quiet and let me talk!”
He’s getting a piercing, analytic gaze from those glowing purple eyes, and he can feel Mr. Lincoln’s breath on the back of his neck. He holds up his hands, palms open, and waits. The man at the desk eventually shrugs, nods at Mr. Lincoln. He must nod back, because the goons relax and re-holster their weapons. Eddie breathes again.
“So they experimented on you, and you ended up different,” Mr. Lincoln says. His voice is back to that horrible unvoiced rasp. “Tough. But don’t make assumptions about me. I don’t ask my men to take risks I wouldn’t take myself.”
He steps around to face Eddie, reaches into his own breast pocket, and pulls out a similar orange canister. He shakes it, and the tablets inside rattle and clatter. And oh, how did Eddie miss the weird metallic sheen on the albino man’s skin? The uncanny sense of menace he projects, but only when he makes eye contact? That makes three of them with powers, and the two goons. And whoever, or whatever, might be behind the thick plastic sheeting.
WE CAN TAKE THEM. FIVE AGAINST TWO ISN’T BAD.
“Hal,” Mr. Lincoln abruptly says. “You worked with him all day. Did his ‘friend’ get in the way?”
“Not that I saw.”
“Did he complete his work?”
“No complaints, boss.”
Mr. Lincoln’s gaze slowly travels back to Eddie.
“I don’t know you from Adam,” he wheezes. “But we’re down a man at the Hell’s Kitchen site. If I offered you a job—loading, unloading, and loss prevention—would you accept?” The corner of his mouth rises in an ironic smile. “Be honest. Arnie’s listening.”
“I…” Eddie holds up a finger, turns around, and crouches down. “So what do you think?” he whispers.
YES! Venom says instantly. LET’S DO IT!
“What? I thought you wanted to…” Eddie lets the sentence trail off. “Why?”
THEY ARE OBVIOUS BAD GUYS! WE WILL EAT THEM LATER! BUT WE SHOULD FIGURE OUT WHAT THEY ARE DOING FIRST, AND STOP THEM FROM DOING IT.
“That makes a surprising amount of sense.”
PLUS YOU NEED THE CASH. YOUR PLACE IS A SHITHOLE.
“I know, asshole!” Eddie whispers. He slowly gets to his feet and turns to face the group. “Okay. I’ll take the job.”
“Should we at least leave a note?” Gwen asks. Behind her, in the neon-lit darkness of the Spider-Lair, Peni and Spider-Ham are doing a final weapon selection. She carefully unfurls the sonic disruptor webshooter, letting it dangle in the air for a moment before draping it around her left wrist.
“Do you really want to?” Miles says. “They’re gonna be mad either way. And if we’re quick, maybe we’ll catch Venom before they get back.”
“Uh-huh,” Gwen says. “Oh, you should take one of those.” She gestures at the Lair’s chemistry lab. Miles squints, trying to remember the names of the different glassware. With a quick flick of her wrist, Gwen webs a wide-mouthed glass cylinder with a white cap, and yanks it across the room. Miles jumps to catch it. “Lab bottle with an airtight seal. For when we separate them.”
“Uh, right.” Miles tries not to think about the nightmare voice, the prehensile tongue, oh God, the teeth— “How long will that take?”
“Depends how long the fight takes,” Gwen says shortly. “Assuming Peni’s background noise analysis worked and he’s actually at the bus stop on L’Ouverture and 52nd, and assuming he’s working alone, and assuming we hit him with the sonic disruptors and flamethrower before he can react to much… thirty seconds, tops.” She shivers a little. “It’s gonna suck for him, though.”
“Are you… do you feel bad for him? I mean, are we supposed to be saving him, or fighting him?”
“I don’t know,” Gwen says, a touch more quietly. “I guess it depends on which version of Venom we’re fighting, and what kind of person is… stuck in there.”
“Not stuck for long!” Spider-Ham says triumphantly. He whirls his hammer over his shoulder a few times for effect. Over his shoulder, SP//dr’s visual display changes to “angry face” as a half-dozen flamethrower extensions pop from its torso. “Between the four of us—well, five if you count this magnificent marvel of machinery—we’ve got this in the bag!”
“Just stick to the plan,” Gwen says. She pulls her mask over her face and checks the sonic webs. “Start at the edge of the perimeter, work your way inwards, and as soon as you see Venom, call the rest of us for backup. Then we hit him hard and fast.”
“Do not worry, Miles!” Peni chirps. “I’ve already devised three backup plans to contain Venom with minimal collateral damage!”
“Who said anything about worry?” Miles mutters. But he puts the wide-mouthed lab jar under his arm, and pulls up his hood before following the others out.
Thwip, pull. Thwip, pull. Thwip—pull.
Miles leans into steady rhythm and the push-pull of air, fall-slide-swoosh, center and find the target and thwip, and pull back up. He can do this. Not so long ago, the flow was flowing and he was finding his way. He can get back to that place, easy.
But this… thing… is different. Different level, different kind of thing. You sure you’re up to it?
He swallows and focuses on twisting in mid-air, turning to check on Gwen, Spider-Ham, Peni, and SP//dr. He has friends. They’ve done this before. They can do it again.
They can stop Venom.
As the squad slowly veers away from each other to set up the perimeter, as dusk falls across the city and the shadows lengthen, he can almost believe his own bullshit.
Miles’ chosen start point is the abandoned Corn Kits factory building near the waterfront. A towering, muddy-brick building from way back, it leans over the waterfront: the perfect vantage point to watch the water. Perched on the old factory clock face, he scans the sea of warehouses below, watching for movement. There. Four blocks east, a flutter of movement in the deep shadow of an empty warehouse. Miles leaps, twisting in mid-air, and swings towards it.
For the first two hours, he takes that strategy: pause, watch, find motion, chase it. But for an abandoned factory district, it’s still pretty populated. It’s dark, and getting chilly, and he keeps thinking about that shiny black monster and shivering into his hoodie.
He gets lucky at the beginning of the third hour. He’s swinging back towards the Corn Kits factory when he spots a long, sleek black sedan turning left. A very nice sedan. He switches directions, following it away from the waterfront towards another huge warehouse. Carefully staying out of side, Miles lands on one side of the building—a whole right angle away from the street where the sedan is parking—and spider-climbs his way downwards.
The car door slams shut. Low voices murmur below. He picks out a low, unvoiced rasp—Tombstone! The Kingpin’s terrifying enforcer! Inching closer to the building’s corner, Miles risks a peek.
Ten feet below, Tombstone is shaking hands with Eddie Brock.
There’s another guy with them, a blonde construction-worker type, and Miles can see a fourth silhouette in the driver’s seat. He quickly pulls his head back and reaches for his cell phone. With shaking hands, he taps Gwen’s contact.
And then… before the call completes… his head buzzes with urgency, the world slowing down as he leaps, without thinking, and arches his back in midair. His eyes widen as he sees two bullets streaking past him, burying themselves in the brick wall. He hears the gun’s muffled POP! from ten stories below. He feels his fingertips catch the wall, his body nerve-twitch, spider-quick repositioning itself on the warehouse.
Breathing heavily, he flattens his hands on the wall for extra grip. Lightning-fast, he leaps left. Leaps right! How did Tombstone see him? How did he get around the corner that fast? Below Miles, the grey-skinned enforcer is kneeling behind a conveniently-placed trash can, unloading both handguns in his direction.
Screw this! Miles focuses, channels the adrenaline, and pops out of visibility. Tombstone is yelling and motioning to the others; Miles scrambles back to the rooftop where he can complete the—
Thirty feet below him, the light glints off the fragments of his broken cell phone.
Miles is shaking as he reaches into his backpack for the sonic disruptor and the glass bottle. He can still do this. He just needs to stay invisible. He can sneak past Tombstone, avoid blonde mystery guy, save Eddie Brock, and cage Venom. No problemo. No… no problemo…
He breathes in. Breathes out. And creeps silently to the edge of the rooftop.