Tuesday morning over Manhattan was unnervingly quiet.
With the Avengers, the Fantastic Four, and practically every other heavy hitter on the Eastern Seaboard currently freezing their spandex off in the Arctic Circle to salvage a dormant space-dragon, Peter Parker was officially the only active cape left in New York.
Well, Peter and Coulson's flying S.H.I.E.L.D. laboratory.
Peter sat cross-legged on the roof of a Hell's Kitchen water tower, chewing thoughtfully on a bodega bagel. He was entirely unaware of the cosmic, apocalyptic chess game playing out right beneath his nose.
He didn't know why Lasher, Riot, and the other rogue symbiotes had originally tried to hunt Venom down. It wasn't because they were hungry for cannibalistic leftovers. They needed the Codex.
In the vast, terrifying biology of the Klyntar species, death was rarely permanent. When a symbiote or a long-term host died, their consciousness and genetic imprint—their Codex—automatically uploaded back into the interstellar hive-mind network. But that was under normal circumstances. If an elder cosmic node like the dragon Grendel was close enough, the signal wouldn't travel into deep space. The localized Codex would act like a lightning rod, striking the dragon and feeding directly into the trapped consciousness of Knull, the God of the Abyss.
If Venom died, Knull would wake up. The dark god would immediately seize telepathic control of the entire symbiote race, punishing the "traitors" and restarting his ancient, bloody crusade to extinguish all light in the universe.
But their initial plan had spectacularly derailed. Crashing in the Arizona desert, being locked in military cryogenic containment for decades, and losing Venom to a host as wildly powerful as Spider-Man had forced a change in tactics. In a straight fight, none of the rogues could physically tear Venom off Peter Parker.
So, Riot had pivoted to a terrifying backup plan.
Knull wasn't picky. The dark god didn't specifically need Venom's Codex; any mature imprint would do. Riot simply needed to remain bonded to his current host for forty-eight hours to generate a permanent Codex. Once the imprint was set, Riot would hunt Spider-Man down and force a brutal, no-holds-barred death match.
It didn't matter who won. If Spider-Man died, his Codex would wake Knull. If Riot was slaughtered in the brawl, his own death would trigger the exact same resurrection. It was a flawless, suicidal checkmate.
But before that clock could run out, the S.H.I.E.L.D. Globemaster was still hunting.
Inside the airborne mobile command center, Grant Ward sat at the primary intelligence terminal. He took a slow sip from a ceramic coffee mug, his eyes tracing the cascading lines of data on his monitor. Deep beneath his skin, the gray-black mass of Riot lay perfectly dormant, waiting for the forty-eight-hour timer to tick down.
Suddenly, a harsh, blaring red strobe flashed across Ward's screen.
Ward slammed his coffee mug down, the dark liquid sloshing over the rim. He stood up, perfectly playing the role of the dedicated agent. "Fitz!" Ward barked across the cargo bay. "Your localized detector just tripped!"
The 'Bus' squad had remained in New York airspace specifically to run a localized dragnet for the missing symbiote.
Leo Fitz practically vaulted over a rolling tool cart, sprinting to the console. His fingers flew across the keyboard. "I've got a ping! It's a direct match to the electromagnetic decay signature we pulled off the Lasher specimen! It's right here. The East Coast."
Phil Coulson stepped out of his glass-walled office, casually adjusting his tie. "Do we have coordinates?"
"Triangulating," Fitz muttered, his eyes darting across the screen. "It's entirely submerged. Bottom of the Hudson River. Looks like the ruins of that old HYDRA research outpost the military sealed off."
If the Pentagon had an issue with S.H.I.E.L.D. kicking the doors in on their classified real estate, they could file a complaint. In the face of an extinction-level biological threat, S.H.I.E.L.D. carried executive override authority. They didn't ask for permission.
"Contact Spider-Man immediately," Coulson ordered, his tone shifting into pure tactical command. "Send him the nav-data. Tell him we found the remaining targets. These organisms have likely secured hosts by now, so tell him to expect heavy, coordinated resistance."
Coulson turned to his engineer. "Fitz. Are the counter-measures operational?"
"Locked and loaded," Fitz said, pulling open a heavy steel drawer. He retrieved a compact, five-centimeter metallic cylinder. "I miniaturized the acoustic array from the heavy sonic cannons. It snaps right onto the under-barrel rail of a standard-issue sidearm."
Fitz tossed the attachment to Ward. "It runs on high-density battery magazines. One trigger pull unleashes a highly directional, overclocked high-frequency sonic wave. Just... seriously, do not fire it directly at a human being unless you want to permanently liquefy their eardrums."
"Piece of cake," Ward said, his face an emotionless mask. He smoothly slid the attachment onto the rail of his Glock 19. It clicked securely into place. He checked the battery indicator, a cold, confident smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth.
A hundred feet below the murky, freezing currents of the Hudson River, Otto Octavius was working in the dark.
He sat slumped in his motorized wheelchair, the damp chill of the submerged HYDRA facility aggravating his decaying, unresponsive nerves. He had managed to bypass the flooded corridors, diverting the base's failing auxiliary generators to drain and power a single, reinforced aquatic laboratory.
The Hudson River disaster had been a brutal wake-up call. The U.S. military was utterly incompetent. More importantly, Otto had realized these alien organisms weren't just mindless biological weapons. They were highly intelligent, parasitic invaders, and they were planning something catastrophic.
He needed to prepare for the inevitable fallout.
Otto rolled his wheelchair closer to a heavy steel workbench. Two pressurized glass cylinders sat under harsh halogen lights. Inside, the last two symbiotes he had stolen from the military convoy writhed and hissed.
Otto had spent the last several hours running chemical diagnostics on them. The purple symbiote—Agony—was a terrifyingly lethal specimen. It possessed a hyper-accelerated metabolism that could drastically increase a host's physical speed, and it secreted a highly volatile, acidic bio-resin capable of melting through solid titanium in seconds.
The yellow symbiote—Phage—was the exact opposite. It was a blunt-force instrument. It could rapidly condense its outer biomass into an impenetrable, armored barrier capable of shrugging off anti-tank artillery. It could also temporarily assimilate the DNA of organic material it consumed, mimicking biological traits on the fly.
But Otto didn't care about acid or armor. He only cared about control.
He stared down at his useless, atrophied legs. He desperately craved the physical mobility the symbiote bond provided, but he refused to let an alien parasite hijack his brilliant mind. He was currently attempting to synthesize a neuro-chemical inhibitor—a cocktail designed to neutralize the symbiote's unstable molecular consciousness, reducing it to a mindless, obedient biological suit.
Before he could finalize the compound, the laboratory's rusted proximity alarms shrieked to life. Red emergency strobes washed the room in a bloody glare.
Otto violently twisted his wheelchair around to face the security monitors.
A sleek, black S.H.I.E.L.D. stealth submersible was currently clamping onto the facility's exterior airlock. The exterior camera feed showed Spider-Man swimming effortlessly through the freezing water, wearing a specialized, Stark-tech rebreather mask over his suit.
Otto's hands gripped the armrests of his wheelchair. His knuckles turned white. A roar of pure, unadulterated hatred tore from his throat.
Spider-Man! It is always you!
On the workbench, the purple and yellow symbiotes went absolutely berserk. Sensing the proximity of Venom, they threw themselves against the reinforced glass, cracking the cylinders.
Otto looked at the monitors. He looked at his paralyzed legs. He didn't have time to finish the inhibitor. If S.H.I.E.L.D. breached that door, he would be dragged off to a federal black site to rot in a cell for the rest of his agonizingly short life.
Otto gritted his teeth. He reached out, grabbed the glass cylinder containing the yellow symbiote, and manually popped the pressure seal.
The yellow sludge exploded outward. It washed over Otto's hands, crawling rapidly up his arms and swallowing his face. The alien biomass surged into his dead nerve endings. Otto gasped, a horrific, dual-layered laugh echoing through the lab as he stood up from his wheelchair for the first time in years.
Three minutes later, the heavy steel gears of the laboratory airlock disengaged with a massive CLANK.
The door hissed open. A foot of freezing river water flooded over the threshold. Spider-Man stepped into the room, peeling the rebreather off his face, with Grant Ward sweeping the corners right behind him, Glock raised.
They both stopped dead in their tracks.
Standing in the center of the ruined laboratory was a towering, heavily armored monster composed entirely of dense, sickly yellow biomass. Jagged, hardened spikes extruded from its shoulders and knuckles.
"Hey, Spider-Man," the yellow behemoth rumbled, its voice a sickening blend of Phage's alien bass and Otto Octavius's arrogant sneer. "It is finally time to squash the annoying little bug that keeps getting in my way!"
PS:
The yellow and purple symbiotes featured here are named Phage and Agony in the comics! Along with Lasher (green), Riot (gray), and Scream (yellow/red), they were originally created by the sinister Life Foundation in the classic Lethal Protector storyline. The Foundation forcibly extracted them from Venom to serve as super-powered corporate security guards!
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