High in the spectator stands, John Wick and Wesley both leaned forward simultaneously, their eyes locked on the terrifying, sleek green silhouette dominating the adamantium ring.
Both men silently reached inward, probing the dark, alien consciousness coiled around their own spines. And both men received the exact same, chilling response—unrecognized. The green symbiote was absolutely not one of the original cluster that had crashed to Earth and been harvested by the Life Foundation. It was something else.
From his stationary, hovering position high above the ring, Smith Doyle's eyes narrowed. His gaze slowly, deliberately swept over the S.H.I.E.L.D. VIP contingent.
Lasher was here. Which meant Nick Fury had quietly recovered significantly more symbiotes than he had ever let on in his intelligence reports—or worse, there were other parasitic meteors that had struck the planet and simply hadn't surfaced yet. But the far more pressing, apocalyptic question burning in Smith's mind was whether any of this sudden, violent proliferation had reached the ears of Knull in the dark.
Ordinary symbiotes didn't concern Smith. They were just alien muscle, easily managed with fire, sonics, or sheer, overwhelming force. Knull, however, was a completely different, cosmic-scale calculation entirely.
The Symbiote God had brutally refused the Celestials' grand mandate at the dawn of creation. He had rejected their divine purpose, violently rejected the fragile life they seeded into the young universe, and started an absolute, butchering war over it in the darkness. He had decapitated a literal Celestial with the All-Black blade before the cosmic pantheon finally managed to throw him back into the endless void. Even sealed away in a cage of living darkness, even with his god-slaying blade lost on some unnamed, blood-soaked planet, Knull represented a level of extinction-level threat that made Smith Doyle deeply want to attain Super Saiyan status before the subject became relevant.
Super Saiyan first, Smith thought coldly. Knull after.
His cosmic gaze moved down the seating chart and settled on Eddie Brock.
Because of Smith's direct, surgical intervention during the Life Foundation raid, Eddie Brock had never actually died. Venom had never been forced to bring him back from the brink of absolute death. Which meant the Life Codex had never formed in Eddie's cellular structure—that miraculous, impossible fusion of symbiote and human host that only emerged when a parasite made the conscious, selfless choice to resurrect its dead partner.
Knull's entire, bloody path out of his cosmic prison ran directly through that Codex. The Celestials had sealed the God of the Void away because they simply lacked the power to permanently kill him. But they had left a lock, and the only key was one Knull himself, a being of absolute, consuming darkness, could never have predicted or replicated: a symbiote, born from the abyss, actually choosing to preserve life.
Countless years. Millions of planets. And not one parasite had ever done it.
Smith looked back across the arena at Wesley, at John Wick, and finally at Jessica Jones fighting for her life below. All three of them now carried that terrifying potential. And somewhere, buried deep inside S.H.I.E.L.D.'s subterranean containment vaults, there were undoubtedly more.
He'd need to deal with the symbiote proliferation problem after the tournament. Not urgently—but absolutely before it became urgent.
Down in the ring, the choking dust and smoke from the relentless knife barrage finally began to clear.
Tony Stark was still airborne. He slowly climbed back above the terrifying drop of the ring perimeter, his thrusters burning a brilliant blue, and descended heavily back onto the adamantium platform. The near-death experience had put a cold, thin film of sweat under the padding of his suit.
"I underestimated you," Tony admitted, his synthesized voice echoing across the quiet arena. "Didn't know about the symbiote. S.H.I.E.L.D. kept that quiet."
Tony stopped holding back.
Both armored palms snapped up, locking onto her biometric signature. The heavy shoulder mounts hummed, sliding open to reveal a staggering payload. Micro-missiles launched simultaneously from both shoulders, a swarm of screaming death arcing directly toward her.
Lasher moved.
The transformed Jessica became something terrifyingly close to a green blur. She cut across the frictionless adamantium ring surface so incredibly fast that the civilian crowd's naked eyes completely lost track of her. The arena's massive holographic screen immediately kicked into a slow-motion replay in a corner window just so the audience could follow the fight.
The swarm of micro-missiles detonated violently in her wake, leaving only black scorch rings on the indestructible secondary adamantium and absolutely nothing else.
She closed the distance in a microsecond, coming up directly under Tony's hovering position. She jumped, her leg muscles firing like pistons, rising above him. Both of her arms flowed into massive, serrated scythe-blades. The thick, muscular tentacles lashing off her back instantly converged, sharpening into hardened javelins and driving downward with crushing force.
The attack was relentless. High-frequency, savage, and completely devoid of gaps between strikes. The javelin tentacles moved far too fast for human afterimages to fully register. The heavy arm-blades raked violently across the Iron Man suit repeatedly.
BOOM. BOOM. BOOM.
Tony hit the ring surface hard, his armor skidding backward.
He checked his HUD. First marks on the armor. The triple-adamantium had held, but there were distinct, jagged gouges in the silver paint. Not structurally deep, but undeniable proof of concept.
Tony pushed himself up, his repulsors whining.
Jessica landed lightly on the balls of her feet and came at him again immediately, a green nightmare closing the gap for the kill.
Tony raised both arms, leveling his gauntlets directly at her chest.
Lasher's predatory instinct read the posture as the physical precursor to another massive concussive energy blast. The symbiote immediately dropped lower, accelerating its forward momentum, fully ready to slip cleanly under the angle of fire and gut the suit.
Tony didn't fire repulsors. He activated the high-frequency sonic emitters built into the gauntlets.
The invisible, localized soundwave hit Lasher across the full, exposed surface of her alien body.
Jessica froze mid-stride, her momentum violently arrested. The massive green symbiote covering her began to shake—visibly, violently, the alien tissue rippling in pure agony—and then pulled back all at once, frantically retreating into Jessica's skin to hide.
But Tony didn't stop. He dialed the frequency higher. The sonics followed the parasite in.
Jessica dropped hard to one knee. Both of her human hands flew up, clamping desperately over her ears, her face contorted in agony as the sound tore through her skull.
The pain was too much. Lasher tore itself out of her body entirely, a wet, screeching mass of green fluid separating from her spine. It poured onto the adamantium ring surface, frantically slithering away from Tony like a whipped dog, moving incredibly fast toward the absolute edge of the platform, desperate to put as much physical distance between itself and the excruciating sound as possible.
Silence slammed back down on the arena as Tony cut the emitters.
The crowd sat perfectly still, absorbing the brutal, clinical dismantling they had just witnessed.
And then, one by one, heads in the VIP section began to turn.
They looked toward Eddie Brock sitting in the corporate box. They looked toward Wesley sitting with the Fraternity.
The lethal, biological weakness of the unstoppable alien parasites was now entirely public knowledge.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Writing takes time, coffee, and a lot of love.If you'd like to support my work, join me at [email protected]/GoldenGaruda
You'll get early access to over 50 chapters, selection on new series, and the satisfaction of knowing your support directly fuels more stories.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~