"Elsa…Brock…!"
The red Symbiote peeled away from Gwen's skin. The spasming waves caused a nasty, writhing effect, like it had been flayed alive.
"ELSA!"
The screams mattered little. She smashed a fist on the ground, gasping, her face revealed. A pretty blonde marred by red veins and bloodshot eyes. Blood dropped from her lips in hooks as the helicopter sound cannons screamed into her.
Her and her alone.
Across the fractured avenue, where asphalt lay upturned like shattered ribs, Rash-Hulk did not so much as flinch. The black mass coating his immense green body rippled, recovering, and then settled. Breathed.
Water was Rash's weakness, not sound. A feverish, white grin appeared on the Symbiote.
Two S.H.I.E.L.D. helicopters dipped lower, confident in their sonic barrage, rotors chopping the smoke-thick air as agents leaned out with mounted cannons.
A pair of tendrils thicker than bridge cables erupted from his back and lashed upward. They struck both helicopters in the same breath, spearing through rotor assemblies and tail shafts with a scream of shearing metal, and for one suspended, impossible second the aircraft simply hung there, impaled and shuddering, before Rash carefully wrapped them in the black ink and set them aside on the rooftops like broken toys.
"LIKE…SPIDER-MAN…NO KILLING TOO MUCH…NO DESTROYING TOO MUCH…!"
Thwip, thwip! Four more sonic cannons were blocked and the helicopters retreated. The careful manner of dispatching them were odd, not that Rash-Hulk understood it. He was simply following what Felix would have done.
With only two sonic cannons left, Gwen forced herself up on trembling hands. The high-frequency assault was weakened just enough for her Symbiote to crawl back across her cheek in thin, desperate strands, and she inhaled sharply, rage and humiliation burning hotter than the pain in her side where the shield had torn through her.
Not that Rash would let her get up. This was about him. About ending the threat—personally. These SHIELD people, who knows what they would do—was Rash's line of thought.
Gwen's Spider-Sense went off, then her ears ached. Rash-Hulk was charging at her. The ground detonated beneath him as if the earth itself were trying to flee his weight, and the wheezing Gwen launched upward to meet him, red-white tendrils flaring behind her like the wings of some furious angel. The red Spider-Woman struck first, driving both fists into his jaw with a crack that echoed between buildings, and for a flicker of a heartbeat she felt bone shift beneath skin.
But it was too weak. His hand closed around her throat and lifted her as though she weighed nothing. With a roar that layered Hulk's thunder with Rash's serrated chorus, he pivoted and brought her down across his raised knee.
Gwen screamed, the air blasted from her lungs as her spine arched violently, and her Symbiote reacted on instinct, surging outward in a violent flood of red mass that swallowed his forearm and began to crawl, to consume, to infiltrate—
Rash was faster.
Black tendrils snapped out and seized the red ones mid-spread, coiling around them like constrictor snakes, and Hulk's fingers tightened with catastrophic strength; there was a wet, fibrous tearing sound as he squeezed, compressing the living Symbiote between his palms until it shrieked and recoiled, crimson matter bursting apart in shredded strands that splattered against the broken street.
"No!" Gwen choked, fury cracking into panic.
Rash bared too many teeth.
He grabbed her by the skull, tiny in his huge hands, started running, and dragged her head along the ground. Sparks and blood sprayed behind her as he dragged her face-first through the ruins of Midtown; her cheek split, one eye swelling shut, and Gwen clawed at the ground in a futile attempt to slow the momentum. She couldn't. Rash was too strong. The Hulk was too strong.
He did not stop until he reached a still constructing twelve-story office building and swung her forward.
Like a bullet through paper, Gwen hit the building and made it implode. She hit three interior walls before finally cratering into a central support column, the shockwave shattering every remaining window in the building.
Dust swallowed everything. For a moment there was only the groan of failing architecture and the hiss of ruptured pipes.
Gwen lay there, trying to heal. Her Symbiote gathering up her blood—
SLAM!
Rash-Hulk had chased her, jumped, and stomped down on her. The stomp drove her fully through the floor into the level beneath with a detonation that shook the entire structure, and the building tilted a fraction as load-bearing columns snapped like brittle twigs.
She was on her back in the crater, coughing blood, ribs visibly misshapen.
When her eyes opened, she saw black. She saw the hulking black monster slam down on her. She could only spew out more blood and raise her arms up.
"W-wait—!"
Rash-Hulk began to hammer down on her with both fists. The first blow caved the floor further. The second dislocated something. The third collapsed what remained of her Symbiote shield across her chest.
Bam!
Bam!
BAM!
Hulk smash.
Gwen's vision blurred into red and black fragments as the two fists drove her into fractured concrete, and she felt something inside her give in a way that frightened even her. Her Symbiote was desperately trying to become one with her, fill up the blood that was being lost, but…!
Gwen Stacy was going to die.
Rash knew it. She knew it.
The Hulk lifted both fists for the last crushing descent—
"NNGGH!"
Armor-piercing rounds slammed into Rash-Hulk's back and shoulders, forcing his upper body to twist as dozens of SHIELD agents flooded the perimeter below, rappelling through shattered windows and taking positions behind collapsed walls. It was an under-construction building, infiltration was simple enough.
The SHIELD agents were accompanied by the military too.
Rash snarled, annoyed more than wounded. The bullets flattened against him, but the distraction was enough.
He didn't sense or see Captain America running at him to his left and throwing her shield as hard as she could.
The shield struck him square in the skull.
"GAH!"
A coincidence? No, it was a matter of circumstances. The hardest metal in the world struck his skull, amplified by the throw of a super-soldier who understood angles, momentum, and timing better than anyone alive. Right where Rash coiled thickest around Hulk's brainstem, where black mass had layered itself in protective density. The combination of Gwen's failed absorption—Rash's mass still destabilized from resisting her consumption—and the direct concussive trauma to his cranial core sent a shock through the Symbiote's structure.
Bruce Banner's brain was like mush compared to Felix Faeth. It was barely holding on. And this woman made it worse.
This woman made Rash-Hulk stagger and gasp away.
His hands went to his head as black tendrils flickered erratically, portions of the Symbiote briefly losing cohesion, peeling and reattaching in frantic confusion.
"YOU…!"
Captain America was already between Gwen and Rash-Hulk. Her shield rebounded back to her arm as she planted herself wide and immovable. Behind her, S.H.I.E.L.D. medics rushed in, two agents sliding to Gwen's side and carefully lifting her broken body onto a reinforced stretcher as her Symbiote flickered weakly in protest.
Rash saw.
Rash understood.
"I KNEW IT—! YOU ARE NO HELP! SMASH! SMASH! SMASH—!"
He lifted his massive arms and swung down toward the cluster of agents with murderous inevitability. Murder was right for the greater good. And the greater good was ending her.
The smashing fists collided with the Proto-Adamantium.
The great shield of Captain America was said to be able to withstand anything, even a nuclear blast. It wasn't just Vibranium. It wasn't just Adamantium. It was an experimental, nearly indestructible, once-in-a-lifetime Adamantium-Vibranium alloy. The strongest, most durable metal in the known universe.
The shockwave blasted outward in a concussive dome, shredding what remained of interior walls and driving every agent to one knee.
The shield held. Captain America held. She was on one knee, letting out a breath. Behind her, the medics got up, sealing Gwen Stacy in a stretcher. Helicopter cables dropped down for them to grab.
Like a candle, the liquid was dripping from what was Rash-Hulk's eyes. "YOU WILL NOT KILL HER!?"
"Of course not. And I'd rather not have to kill you too. You can speak. We can end things, here and now."
"NOOO!"
Rash looked up seeing Gwen getting pulled up by the helicopter. Gunfire to his head made him stagger forward and get uppercutted by Captain America's shield again.
He staggered again. He couldn't believe it. These tiny creatures far weaker than him were causing HIM trouble!
"IF IT WAS WITH HIM—"
With Felix, Rash would have dodged. Rash would have been capable of Spider-Sense. But ripping away from Felix in the way he did and in THIS vessel in particular…this near-dead, radioactive Hulk…
Rash-Hulk growled, standing alone, all the while Gwen was hoisted toward the open sky. The hulking creature straightened to his full monstrous height.
Only Captain America stood in Rash's way.
***
The science wing of the Helicarrier was colder in temperament. There couldn't be too much space for scientists. The Helicarrier was ultimately for battle purposes.
Dr. Elsa Brock was restrained and trapped by monitors, though not crudely. She sat on a high-backed composite chair with cuffs of matte-gray alloy circling her wrists and ankles and a thin inhibitor band resting against the pale column of her throat. Around her stood eight SHIELD agents in full tactical gear, rifles lowered but ready, their mirrored visors reflecting her in duplicate.
Elsa's blonde hair was pulled back in a severe knot, though loose strands had begun to escape and frame her face in tired wisps. There were dark crescents beneath her eyes. Perhaps it was exhaustion. Perhaps it was fear.
On the main monitor was a muted newsfeed flickered images of Midtown's devastation. She was like some queen being forced to observe her handiwork.
"My sonic cannons worked on Gwen. I said nothing about the other Symbiote." She did recognize it, however. It was her Symbiote. The one Spider-Man stole from her.
"Sorry, but don't get a pat on the shoulder for stopping one nuke, doctor. I'm here for everything you know. And I assume you have an idea on what this other Symbiote's weakness is?" Nick Fury's voice boomed from the monitors.
"That one…" Elsa snorted. It had taken her a while to confirm if it was really her Symbiote, the one Spider-Man stole from her. It had gotten stronger, after all. It had grown, well and truly, beyond her expectations. There was a flickering question on why it wasn't with Spider-Man. Then again, maybe this was Spider-Man and the monster she was seeing now was a new transformation.
"That one's weakness is simply enough. It's—"
She stopped. She…she couldn't speak. Her lips were refusing to move. Her legs started to move on her own and swivelled her on the chair.
Spider-Man and Emma Frost were standing directly in front of her.
Whatever had been preventing her from speaking, it wasn't there. She was able to panic properly. Her restraints clinked as she jerked against them. "Guards! Intruder—!"
Except no one moved. The eight agents remained upright, rifles still held in loose grips, eyes open and fixed at the monitors voicing Nick Fury—but utterly vacant.
"W-w-what?"
The monitors suddenly shut off too.
"They're asleep," Emma Frost said, smirking, arms laced around the vigilante. "You really should pay more attention to your surroundings, Doctor."
Only then did Elsa notice the near-invisible filaments anchoring each agent upright, adhered to boots and backs and wrists like a macabre marionette display. Spider-Man released his hold on Emma and set her gently on the ground. His mask regarded Elsa without expression.
She swallowed. "You—! Spider-Man! You took away my Symbiote and now…now it's changed! What have you done with it!"
A thin line of webbing shot from Spider-Man's wrist and struck the back of her chair. With a quick jerk, he reeled her forward several feet, scraping metal legs across the floor until she was nearly nose-to-chest with him.
She could only look up, remembering the same fear the last time they met.
"I-I—hold on! D-don't hurt me!"
Spider-Man did not so much as touch her. But Emma did, laughing as she did.
"Relax," Emma murmured softly, lifting one manicured hand. "We're not here to hurt you."
Emma's fingers touched her forehead.
The room dissolved. All three minds had connected.
…
…
…
Felix felt it first as a pressure behind his eyes, a subtle expansion of space that was not space, a pulling sensation as Emma's diamond-bright consciousness lanced outward and threaded itself through Elsa Brock's neural architecture. He did not resist when her bright power hooked into the quieter recesses of his mind and tethered him there.
Linking three minds was intense.
The physical world faded to translucence, replaced by a vast interior expanse that resembled a black library.
"This…"
"Is Elsa Brock's mind," Emma's voice finished. "A library."
Elsa's mind was orderly. Felix could suddenly feel himself materialize; first his feet, then his hands. He saw them literally form. Consciousness first, then body second was the process here. But it was damn dark. Although he recognized this as a library, it was because the mental connection, not some visual representation. It was a very strange feeling; to know without looking or smelling or tasting. Just…off instinct. Actually, it wasn't far off from his Spider-Sense.
"Huh, you've adapted well to this," Emma marked. He could feel her somewhere over his shoulder. Strange, was this his Spider-Sense? Guiding him and aiding him when his eyes and ears couldn't?
"Emma?" he called out.
Emma suddenly materialized next to him, a hand on her hip. She was also naked. Looking down, he realized he was also naked. Their forms were pale and slightly translucent. There was no light in this library. Emma lifted her index finger and spawned a candle.
This library wasn't wide with turns. It was just one corridor. One dark, book-filled corridor. There were large subtitles on the bookshelves. With a couple glances, Felix understood what they meant. These bookshelves, no, this library was an arranged style of her mind. Not chronologically but categorically: RESEARCH, CHILDHOOD, and, as he squinted, even SYMBIOTE STUDIES.
Emma glanced sideways at him. "You're the one who dragged me into this," she said lightly, though her eyes were already scanning the corridors. "What exactly am I looking for?"
Felix ran ahead. He saw what he needed already. Emma tilted her head and chased with a light walk.
The corridor almost appeared infinite. Running ahead, Felix found his footsteps lacking. It was like he was swimming to where he needed to be. In the Symbiote Studies, he found books upon books of her analysis of "Gwen Stacy 1.0" and "Spider-Man 2.0".
"The Symbiote she originally gave Gwen, then the Symbiote she gave me," Felix murmured. Every thought she had on it was separated by different dates. And let's just say there were hundreds of them, as tall as he could see.
Felix, however, crouched down to find what he needed. "The Return of Gwen Stacy…yes, almost three years ago! This is it!"
He touched the spine of the book. Emma gestured for him to open it and when he did, he was uscked inside it.
When Felix opened his eyes again, he saw Elsa Brock with a table in hand. And in front of her?
"Pleeease, let us out! We're begging you!"
"Why haven't you stopped!? We didn't consent to this!"
Behind reinforced glass cells were men and women whose pupils dilated and contracted independently of light. A trio were banging on the glass.
Elsa wasn't fazed at all.
"The numbers are wrong," she said sharply to a colleague, a gaunt man with a goatee. "The bonding index is still below threshold."
"The Symbiote cannot sustain cohesion in hosts this weak!" Elsa's lips hadn't moved with that sudden remark. Strange.
"They were our best candidates," the gaunt scientist protested with a sigh.
"Then your 'best' is insufficient," Elsa snapped.
"Please! Don't get snappy with me, woman! You're an Oscorp guest, nothing more! I can have SHIELD remove you anytime."
Elsa chewed on her bottom lip and humphed away. Felix could feel it in her. Behind her words lay the truth she did not voice aloud: Oscorp wanted a breakthrough. And Oscorp also wanted to know what SHIELD was doing with Cindy Moon.
Harry, after all, had told Norman that Cindy Moon was involved. And Norman understood that the woman knew more than anyone about the woman body. Here, that work was undocumented, off the record, and supported by SHIELD.
"That damn Cindy Moon isn't telling me anything!" Once again, it was a voice echoing from the memory's reality, not from Elsa's lips. It shook the memory hard.
"These are her strong emotional thoughts," Emma said, arms under her bust. She was beside Felix, watching. "She sounds quite frustrated at Cindy."
"Mhm."
"Wasn't she supposed to be locked up here?" Emma asked. "Was she being interrogated?"
"No." Felix's tone ticked lower. "Cindy was aiding this facility in conducting experiments. Elsa too, it seemed."
So Norman Osborn wasn't a complete fool. He did send somebody here after Harry Osborn was cured of the Lizard. His jaw clenched. "At this very moment, I bet…Harold is somewhere here."
Emma looked over, confused. "Harold? Who is that?"
"..."
The return of Gwen Stacy and the downfall of Harold happened here. Yes, there was no mistaking when the ground started to shake and Elsa went, "Huh? What's this?"
The men inside the cell weren't doing anything. The facility wasn't firing off alarms either. The scientists and guards all exchanged uneasy looks as the ground continued to shake.
Emma's eyes widen and she clutched her head. A moment later, Felix did the same when a screech erupted. "M-my ears! It feels like they're being ripped apart!"
Like tiny, spiked needles were stabbing into them! It was a pain he was not used to. It was…
A pain that Elsa was currently experiencing, he realized.
"D-don't worry, it's just the memory's emotions flowing into us! T-this memory will—!" Emma grunted and gasped, trying to keep everything steady. Felix tried to help but couldn't touch her. The semi-transparency wasn't for show. They weren't really here. They couldn't really touch anything.
He glanced over at Elsa Brock and saw that her ears were bleeding. Everyone in the area was suddenly covering their ear drums.
The screams of pain echoed when a dark-red portal suddenly opened inside the glass cell. The people inside crawled away from it, terrified by the sounds and the warp in space-time.
Only Felix stood tall and saw through the pain. "There you are. Gwen…!"
The portal was malfunctioning. The portal was not stable. It was causing the prisoners inside to panic and Elsa to gasp and step away.
"W-w-what is that!? Is that a person!?" Elsa yelled. The other scientists was at a loss for words, hands pressed to his ears. "D-do something, fool!"
Nobody could do a thing as the portal grew wider. It was opening on its own, it was being forced to open.
"HeEeLp MeEeE—!"
A hand was keeping the portal open, then a red-black tendrils started to aid in it. Soon, Spider-Woman came into view and Elsa gasped.
"Y-you! It's you!"
This was how Gwen had arrived in the SHIELD Correctional Facility. Her black Symbiote writhed across her body like liquid shadow, but something was wrong; streaks of crimson flared along its surface.
Whooosh!
Gwen stumbled forward and the portal closed behind her. The screeching promptly ended. Everybody could suddenly breathe and the memory became stable.
"The more intense and painful the memory, the harder the recreation," Emma wheezed out. "Are you alright?"
"I'm—"
Bam!"
"Fine."
But those experimented men in the cells weren't. Whether it was due to foolishness or the experiments corrupting their minds, they tried to attack the blonde. She exploded to her feet and was entangled in a fight with three of the figures in the enclosure. They didn't have Symbiotes per say, they were nothing but failed imitations.
But their eyes blackened and they were strong. Their punches left behind dents. Gasping, eyes red, Gwen dodged and attacked back.
She grabbed one man by the shoulder and slammed him into the wall, and her black mass coated him. "No, wait—!" Except that wasn't what she wanted. "Symbiote, enough! Stop! W-what are you doing—!?"
What was it doing? Her Symbiote absorbed the man in rippling waves and the red within the black glowed momentarily.
"N-no…" Gwen stared at what was left. At her own hands. She was trembling. "I-I didn't…I just wanted to protect…"
Elsa stared. The memory pulsed. There was utter fascination. This was a key turning point. Felix could feel Elsa examining what was her greatest creation up until that point: Gwen Stacy, whom she had created a Symbiote for after Gwen lost her powers to Cindy Moon. After she was sent to prison.
Gwen was suddenly knocked to her feet by the prisoners.
"K-kill her! She'll kill us!" one woman in the cell exclaimed.
"N-no!" Gwen turned over and waved her arms. In nothing but a state of panic, she revealed her face. Her young, wide-eyed face that was full of guilty. "I didn't mean to—that wasn't me! Symbiote, calm down! I'm not dying! The portal is gone! I-it's okay!"
Her Symbiote reflexively covered her face and smashed every single prisoner against the back wall. "No!" Gwen yelled, but it was too late.
Her Symbiote was absorbing everyone.
"She's killing them!" Elsa exclaimed. "Deploy the gas! Hurry!"
The vents in the ceiling hissed. They were too late to save the men, but they weren't too late to defeat Gwen. A white cloud filled the enclosure and Gwen was indeed affected. She hit the glass, clawing at the glass. Her Symbiote thrashed in protest, red streaks pulsing violently before dimming as her body finally succumbed.
Gwen Stacy fell unconscious.
Elsa approached the glass slowly, one hand pressed against it, eyes alight not with cruelty but with revelation.
"Finally! You're back! My Symbiote," she whispered.
A red tone suddenly took hold of the world when the gaunt scientist asked, "A-are you joking? She came out of nowhere and killed our experiments!"
Elsa wanted to glare and didn't. She had to speak calmly in order to convince this man. "If the universe delivers you a miracle, you don't question it. You use it."
"B-but that was Gwen Stacy! Is Gwen Stacy! We all know who she is."
"But nobody knows where she is, right? She disappeared after she got out of here. We…" Elsa stood up and faced the scientist, smiling. "We should keep this between us. I don't want Cindy Moon to know until I'm satisfied. Imagine…" She put a hand on his shoulder, smiling. "Imagine us researching her body and finding something new. Imagine us reaping all the rewards from SHIELD and, if with the two of us, Oscorp too. Come on, what do you say?"
The scientist looked over at the unconscious Gwen Stacy and then Elsa Brock.
What happened next, Felix already knew. The screams. The terror. The experiments.
Cindy Moon happened.