Chapter 2: Six months later...

[moonshadows]

Venom

Six months later, Venom had successfully learned a good deal of the humans’ language despite still not having been able to get inside one. They were absolutely samples to be studied, and the native leader – Drake, or ‘mister Drake’ – was growing frustrated with his trusted lieutenant – Skirth, or ‘doctor Skirth’ – having failed to unravel the secrets of the symbiotes. They had been moved from their small canisters into larger, more sturdy ones and put through a series of tests to determine their nature and needs, but while Skirth had the ‘nature’ pretty well sorted out, she was falling dramatically short on the ‘needs’ aspect. The three symbiotes had been systematically starved with only infrequent offerings of food, small creatures that it had taken a few attempts to figure out how to eat.

The process of eating alarmed the humans, and they spent many hours poking and prodding at the corpses of rats, fish, birds, and other small animals that had been presented and consumed. This, combined with the decrease in mass the symbiotes were experiencing as they starved, led to attempts to find a food supply that was acceptable. Some of the substances were barely edible, with a low amount of the microscopic nuggets of energy contained in the cells of the animals they were offered as hosts – because Venom had learned, listening to Skirth dictate her reports into a recording device, that the humans were attempting to figure out a way for the symbiotes to bond with Earth creatures. Most of the substances were completely devoid of these nuggets. When Venom and xir compatriots ignored or refused these substances, the humans stopped offering them.

Xie still had not figured out a way to communicate with Skirth, and thought it was greatly insulting that they had not been given any tests to determine intelligence. There was no way to tell her hey, imbecile, give us more creatures. Venom did what xie could, slowing xir eating down as much as xie could stand and learning how to get control of each small body, studying the openings each rat or rabbit was introduced through with the creature’s own eyes, listening with ears and trying to figure out how to communicate through the body language of an animal that could not speak.

It was slow and frustrating going, and all Venom could be sure of was that xie had established xirself as more intelligent than an animal and less hostile than either of xir companions. This at least led to more frequent feedings, as Skirth attempted to find a creature that was ‘compatible’ as a ‘respiratory host’. More frequent feedings, in turn, meant that Venom – and Phage, and Toxin, because even Riot’s less-clever subordinates could see when their fellow prisoner had figured out how to get more food and followed xir example – was able to rebuild and maintain enough mass that xie could afford to occupy a substandard host and not just devour it.

Today, Drake had come to watch the feeding.

Skirth, somewhat oddly to Venom’s mind, chose Phage for the demonstration. The yellow symbiote was the least patient of the three, and quickest to get bored and either attempt to use xir temporary host to escape or just suck the sweetness out of its organs. Xie had also been most recently fed out of the three and Venom knew, from Skirth dictating to her device, that xir longest period of staying in a host was only half of Venom’s record. But as Venom watched Skirth explain the process to her leader, xie realized that she didn’t want Drake to see everything she had discovered.

Did she not trust her leader? How interesting.

As Phage settled into xir rabbit, fed and not yet bored, Drake became excited. “If we do achieve symbiosis, they should be able to survive here, but also, we would…be able to survive there…”

Venom could have laughed. The human thought to use them? He would soon be disappointed. Humans were nothing more than tasty treats wrapped up in a convenient body, as far as Riot’s faction was concerned. They were fuel and vehicle combined, and as soon as one of the symbiotes was able to get into a human, the fun would start.

“We?” Skirth asked.

Drake didn’t answer. “Begin human trials,” he ordered.

“Oh, it’s way too soon to even begin to think about something like-”

“Doctor Skirth, you’re at the forefront of a scientific breakthrough; I need you to hold your nerve. All right?” The words were smooth and firm, denying that the protest had even been made.

“I understand, but it’s an ethical question-”

Drake continued to verbally trample his subordinate. “Think of future generations. Think of your kids.” There was a slightly-ominous pause before he asked in threateningly false concern, “Hey, how are your kids?”

Drake was clearly not taking no for an answer, and Venom curdled in glee. This was why Skirth had chosen Phage – she was attempting to slow her leader’s ambitions. Dissention in the ranks! An opening xie could use, perhaps, to win freedom.

“Let’s begin human trials,” Drake said when it was clear the warning had not been lost on Skirth. “Good work.”

Venom already knew that human trials only meant more of the same, except with bigger meals. From the lack of excitement either of the other two displayed, however, xie was the only one who understood enough human chatter to grasp that they were going to be fed real meals instead of snacks filled with smaller snacks, and xie was determined to eat very slowly. The more xie could learn about humans from the inside, the quicker the fun would begin and then…

…heads in one pile, bodies in another.

 

Skirth had chosen Toxin to receive the first human meal, perhaps hoping that catastrophic failure would deter Drake. Venom couldn’t hear what speech the human leader was giving to his subordinates from the containment canister in xir new secure cell, but xie could watch as a human was marched into Toxin’s. At first, nothing happened. Drake was talking to the walking meal, either threatening or cajoling. Then the canister opened, and Toxin surged out towards xir victim.

Drake was elated as the symbiote vanished inside the other human, but Venom snickered to xirself because that emotion was wildly premature. Toxin was merely settling in to eat. The interesting thing, Venom noted, was that in the moments before all the tasty bits were ripped out of his flesh, the human didn’t seem to be aware that he had a passenger.

Then, of course, Toxin sucked all the sweetness out of xir meal and hurled xirself at the barrier between xir and their captor in a show of furious defiance. I’ll eat you, xie was snarling wordlessly. We’ll eat all of you.

Calmly, Drake watched the writhing form so eager to eat him from the inside out. Then, to Skirth’s silent horror, he ordered the next meal delivered.

This time, he didn’t stick around to watch the results of his orders. He left the area, secure in the knowledge that his lieutenant would carry out his commands, and Venom watched as Phage, too, was fed. The problem of how to get the symbiotes back into their canisters was easily solved; Skirth had figured out months ago that they were…uncomfortable…being in this planet’s atmosphere without a host, and the symbiotes in turn had been taught that their canisters would be flooded with a less-reactive gas once they were inside. No matter how much the other two raged at the tasty meals just on the other side of the clear walls, they eventually crawled back into their containment modules and allowed themselves to be safely contained.

Then, and only then, was Venom offered a meal.

Xie kept xir body language as non-aggressive as possible, crawling hesitantly towards the man with pauses to surge upwards in the way that had seemed to endear the humans toward xir, as if xie had a head to cock curiously at them. The man was no different, and he calmly extended one hand in a tentatively friendly gesture. Venom entered through that hand, slipping smoothly into the body that released no flood of alarmed chemical compounds at the intruder. It was tempting, so tempting being surrounded by sweetness just begging to be sucked out, but Venom resisted. Patience now would yield great reward later, and xie took xir time getting comfortable.

When the man was still alive at the end of a minute, Skirth’s subordinates relaxed. At the end of five, they smiled and congratulated themselves. After ten, Skirth dismissed them.

“How do you feel?” she asked the man, who shuffled nervously closer to the barrier.

“How’m I supposed to feel?” he responded. “Okay, I guess. I don’t feel nothin’. Hungry, maybe.”

Human bodies weren’t all that different from rabbits, Venom thought. Arms and legs moved roughly the same, organs were mostly the same, things were just arranged in new configurations. Eyesight was different, focused in one direction but more accurate. Hearing was worse. But speech – that would take time to learn. Skirth checked her equipment and asked the man meaningless questions to keep him calm – who he was, where he’d come from, how he’d managed to wind up in such a state that he would volunteer for this project. Venom paid attention to how the man responded, feeling out the mechanics for xirself, and then contemplated how to go about eating this splendid meal. Xie didn’t want to do it all at once, and give the (correct) impression that xie was just feeling out how humans worked, but xie also didn’t want to risk killing the man and letting his cells with their sweet nuggets die before xie got to eat them. Xie was also feeling more than a little disgruntled that Drake was offering them slaves who were desperate enough to face certain death; killing them would be no fun, and while the other two wouldn’t care, Venom did. Xie had been mocked enough times in the past for sympathizing with members of a host race, treating them as equals rather than lesser creatures, but it didn’t change anything in xir mind. Ripping apart helpless captives just wasn’t fun.

The man got tired after a few hours and lay down on the floor to sleep. Skirth, by contrast, looked more alert. Venom decided to start with the muscles, feasting slowly while xie could hear Skirth muttering readings out loud. Then xie sucked the nuggets of energy out of the man’s organs, one by one, while Skirth sounded more and more alarmed. The man’s body started reacting at that point, all his remaining organs freaking out, and Venom hurriedly finished xir meal and exited the cooling corpse to slither obediently back into xir containment module.

Once it had hissed shut and all the oxygen, as the humans called the reactive gas, had been sucked out, Skirth entered the little room – but she did not go to the body. She went to the canister.

“You’re trying, aren’t you,” she said in a tone that wasn’t quite a question. “You’re trying to bond. You’re trying to show me what you need. You could have killed that man at any time, but you waited until he fell asleep. That was either kindness or cunning, and you’re either the least-dangerous one compared to your friends…or the most.”

She put her hand on the canister, the way Drake had put his hand on the barrier between himself and Toxin’s meal. Venom surged up to press against the barrier in an echo of how the doomed human had put his hand out to mirror Drake’s, then pulled back.

“You saw that?” murmured Skirth. “That means you saw the way your friends reacted and chose to approach less aggressively.” She pulled her hand away, then held both of them over the canister. “You’ll each get another volunteer tomorrow. My hope is that your friends will stay in their hosts, since they’ve just been fed.” One hand settled on the surface. “But I suspect they’ll just eat the volunteers to build up their strength.”

The other hand settled onto the canister’s surface as well. Skirth was giving xir a way to answer by offering xir two targets to reach towards…and possibly test if Venom was able to understand her.

Venom surged up to mock-touch the second hand, throwing support behind the idea that xir companions would just eat the humans offered to them.

Skirth gasped.

 

“I’ve crunched some numbers,” Skirth announced to her subordinates the next morning, making sure that her voice was broadcast into each symbiote’s holding cell. “The symbiotes’ mass increased after each failed host, but within five days decreased back to original levels. Given the increase each of them registered after failing to bond with a human host, I believe their mass will take nine days to return to original levels. Therefore, we will introduce each of them to a volunteer today and then not attempt a second one for five days.”

It was a test, Venom realized. A test to see if the symbiotes were listening and capable of understanding that this would be the only meal they got for five days. A test to see if they were able to control themselves and not simply devour the offered human. Three sacrifices were brought in; three tasty meals ushered into three holding chambers. Three containment modules opened. Two symbiotes surged out and rushed their victims; two humans screamed and panicked and died. Venom slithered out slowly and waited for xir human – a woman, this time – to notice xir. Hesitantly, tentatively, xie approached and gently merged with xir offered host.

The next three days were both interesting and boring. Sure, xie learned how to control a human body and was navigating the complex structure of the brain and the mechanisms of speech, but xie had to keep xir activity to a minimum and not eat all the delicious sweetness that surrounded xir. Skirth stayed late for chats and came in early, but the monitoring equipment never slept and Venom had no intentions of tipping xir hand. The woman’s name was Rebecca and she was most assuredly not a compatible host; when the bonding process didn’t start within a few hours, Venom knew she was nothing more than food. Xie could use her like a puppet, but xie couldn’t blend properly. There would be no communication, no flow of information. Xie was trading the containment module for one made of flesh, and after three days, xie carefully sucked some of the sweetness out of the host who hadn’t been given a choice in the matter and left her sitting dazed in a corner while xie slithered back into xir canister.

Skirth was alarmed and confused by this, and Rebecca was ushered out. Venom hoped she’d be released when it was clear she was unsuitable as a host.

Two days later, they were each given another human. Venom’s was named Richard. This time, Phage and Toxin had figured out they had to make their meal last and didn’t eat right away. Phage’s host turned out to be compatible and started reacting after two hours – elevated temperature, organs going crazy – and Skirth’s subordinates swarmed in alarm, but not as much alarm as the host Phage was bonding to. She banged on the walls and cried to be let out, cried for help, cried for death, and then started slamming her head against the wall until Phage lost patience and ate her.

Toxin got bored the next day and ate xir host.

Venom gambled that Drake would order more humans if none of them successfully bonded to their hosts and snacked on Richard before slithering out in clear rejection. Again, xir rejected host was ushered out and the bodies of the other two were hauled away, and the next day three new victims were shoved into the holding cells. This time, Drake came down to yell at Skirth. She tried to explain – at least partially – what was going on, but he would hear none of it. He grasped that the symbiotes could roughly understand what was said and yelled directly at the hosts, informing their passengers with no uncertainty that if they did not bond, there would be consequences.

In three days, Toxin and Phage got fed up with sitting in unacceptable hosts and ate them. Venom also left xir host, a woman named Maria, and returned to xir containment module. Skirth’s subordinates entered the chambers, but while the unsuitable hosts were taken away, the canisters were also moved. Phage and Toxin were ejected from their canisters into smaller observation cells with new humans, but through a portal that closed. If they ate their hosts, there would be no containment module to retreat to. Venom was similarly ejected into an observation cell, but instead of a new potential host, xie found Maria waiting.

“I’m so sorry,” Skirth said once they were alone. “Drake said…he said that you chose to leave your hosts, so he thinks you could bond but you’re refusing. This isn’t right, but I don’t know what to do…”

It was the first time she’d talked directly to Venom since the night xie’d eaten xir first human.

“Get Eddie,” Maria said, hugging her knees and rocking. Having Skirth talk to the symbiote inside her was freaking her out more than having the symbiote inside her. “He’ll know what to do.”

“Eddie?” Skirth frowned in confusion.

“Eddie Brock. He’s a reporter, a good one. Good guy. Gives me money. I saw him on TV a few months back with your boss, talking about the rockets.”

Skirth nodded. “I’ll see what I can do,” she promised.

 

Anne

When the Uber driver pulled up to their apartment after dinner, there was a man standing on the sidewalk just staring at their door. The headlights showed battered jeans, an oversized hoodie, and ratty sneakers – not much to go on, but Anne’s heart leaped into fight-or-flight.

“Who the hell?” Dan asked rhetorically, but Anne was already climbing out of the car.

“Eddie?”

The man turned. It was Eddie, and he looked like either he’d been chasing a story for six months solid, or he really was hopeless about eating if no one reminded him.

She wanted to launch herself into his arms, smell his skin, and kiss his scruffy face until her lips bled.

She wanted to climb back into the car and deny she was ever there.

“Hey,” he said, and then the dress she was wearing registered. “Whoa.”

No. No, this was not the time to smile, she couldn’t afford to smile, oh god she missed him so bad.

“Annie, the landlord gave me your forwarding address when you moved out, I-”

“I can’t see you, Eddie,” she blurted. “I’ll get fired.”

“You won’t see me,” he promised, and then his pleading expression turned to vulnerable hurt as Dan came around the car.

“This is Dan,” she said, her voice sounding hollow to her ears. “Dan, this is Eddie.”

“Great to meet you,” Dan said pleasantly, hand outstretched for Eddie to shake. “I’ve heard so much about you.”

Eddie shook, but looked skeptical. “Really?”

“Yeah.” Dan wasn’t fazed. “I was sorry to hear the network fired you. I loved The Brock Report. Can’t believe no one else picked you up.”

“Yeah, well, Drake…” Eddie grimaced.

“I know. And I’ll perjure myself swearing you weren’t here, if I have to, but I’ll just go inside and let you two catch up.” Dan turned to her. “Good?”

She nodded. “Yeah, thanks.”

“Really nice to meet you finally,” Dan said with a friendly clap on the shoulder.

Eddie stammered out insincere agreement. A brief, chaste kiss for her, and then Dan was inside, leaving her on the sidewalk with the man she did and did not want to hug desperately.

“Annie…”

The sound of her name sent her heart climbing into her throat, because that was the completely open expression, the utterly vulnerable tone Eddie had used when he’d asked her to marry him.

“I just want to ask…are you alright?”

Her heart fell back into her stomach. It sounded like he was saying, I just need to know in case what I’m about to do gets me killed, and her hands were suddenly cupping his cheeks, their faces intimately close.

“Eddie,” she said softly, “whatever story you’re chasing, go get it. Be strong. Believe in yourself. I lo-”

I love you hung between them, unsaid. Eddie’s forehead wrinkled as if he were asking, Do you really? Anne hesitated, then nodded. She couldn’t say it, but she couldn’t hide it either.

“I’ll be okay,” she finished, thumbs brushing his cheeks. She wanted to tell him how badly she missed him. She wanted to hug him tight and not let go. She wanted to apologize, to beg his forgiveness, but the words all stuck in her throat and brought tears to her eyes.

“That’s all I needed,” he said quietly, taking her hands down and holding them in his.

They were very warm.

I love you, said his eyes.

Then she was alone, watching him walk away, and she hurried into the apartment and cried her eyes out on Dan’s shoulder because Eddie was suffering and it was all her fault. She should have stood by him. She should have quit the firm, bit the bullet and stuck with him to start over somewhere else but she couldn’t, she couldn’t make herself, and now Eddie was going to get himself killed and there was nothing she could do.

 

Venom

It had been three days since Venom had been forced back into a half-eaten host. Skirth chatted with Maria a handful of times a day as she took readings, but nothing about Eddie and she didn’t address Venom directly. Phage and Toxin’s hosts were suffering as the symbiotes slowly snacked on them. The hosts were given dead material to eat, but it did nothing to restore the tasty little nuggets inside their cells and the symbiotes were getting both restless and desperate. Their half-eaten meals wouldn’t last forever, and none of them knew if Drake would provide another.

Finally, as the symbols on Phage’s cell changed to show that xie had been in xir host for four days, the yellow symbiote snapped. Xie used the last of the host’s strength to puppet the human body, attempting to break the clear wall with anything available including the host’s own limbs, but all xie managed to do was trigger some sort of alarm. Sound, deadly in both range and volume, shrilled through the floor and both Venom and Toxin withdrew from a full merge to cower, shivering, in the body cavities of their hosts. When the sound ended they blended again, shaken and weak, to see that Phage’s host had died of its wounds and Phage xirself had died to the vibrations that had shaken xir apart.

This was the end, the expressions of their hosts said silently as they were forced to look at each other. If they didn’t escape, they would die.

 

A few hours later, Maria’s ears picked up sound too quiet for the human to interpret. She remained in her balled-up state, rocking with the beat of her heart, while Venom listened.

“…the security system off,” Skirth said distantly. “No one will know you were here. You’ll have an hour before it turns back on. Get whatever evidence you need; I’ll distract the security guard.”

Footsteps wandered around, sometimes slow and uncertain, sometimes with urgency and purpose. Maria continued to hug her knees, rocking, as the footsteps approached. Venom forced her head up as the footsteps began to retreat, urging xir half-dead host into alertness.

It worked; Maria lunged at the door and began pounding desperately on it, attracting the attention of the intruder who hurried back to see what the noise was.

“Eddie!” she shouted. “Eddie! It’s me! Let me out!”

“Maria? Maria!” Recognition bloomed on his face, horror overtaking disbelief.

“Please, let me out!”

“I don’t know how to get you…” he protested as she repeated her frantic pleas. “I don’t know…”

He prodded the keypad on the door, but nothing happened. Frantic now as well, he grabbed a metal canister of some sort off the wall and began slamming it into the door. Maria recoiled as it cracked and shattered, and her weakened heart faltered.

Venom panicked and puppeted her failing body, lunging at the man and knocking him to the ground, fending off his flailing hands and surging from xir dying host into the living one. Being surrounded by so much sweetness was overwhelming after being starved for seven days and xie sucked some of it out, just enough to feel alert, and took over the body of the human apparently named Eddie.

Security system off. One hour. How much time was left? Cover xir tracks. Venom stalked through the scientific facility, lashing out with tendrils of xir body and destroying security cameras, random equipment, inconsequential clear walls, anything that looked important or messy. Hide the evidence of an intruder. Eventually, xie came to a door that xir host recognized the sight of: the door he’d entered through.

Shit, the host was compatible.

Hurrying faster now, Venom forced the man’s body to re-trace his path into the facility and hid in a truck leaving. The truck came to a stop somewhere, Venom didn’t know where, and xie puppeted xir host out and began running. Xie had to find a new host before the bonding process reached the point of being irreversible because xie was getting memories from Eddie, now. Memories about Maria. He’d been contacted by Skirth and agreed to come in out of concern for Maria, who’d been living on the streets and gone missing. He’d risked his life for that other human, and Venom had killed her. The chances of him welcoming the symbiote who had killed his friend were slim, and Venom found xirself reluctant to just eat the first evidence xie’d gotten that humans actually had compassion for each other.

That humanity was something more than just food and fun.

Day was dawning; Venom hurried along, sniffing at men and women on the street, searching for one that would be compatible because xie needed more information about humans. Xie needed to hide, to regain xir strength before Drake – or worse, Riot – could hunt xir down.

There!

A woman in a suit, striding confidently into a building. She would be compatible. Venom forced Eddie’s body to scale the side of the building and push a window open. Then xie left xir host curled up in the open cage of rusty metal clinging to the outside wall and slithered inside, sniffing the air currents to find xir new host.

 

Anne

Anne stepped out of the courthouse feeling accomplished. Although technically not open for another hour and a half, she’d been able to get inside and make contact with her friend to hand off some paperwork and now she felt…

Hungry.

Really, really hungry.

Picking up the pace, she stepped into a bagel shop and ordered a smoothie with as much fresh fruit as they could cram into it, one high-heeled foot tapping impatiently as the blender whirred. She sipped as she walked, but the cup was empty before she reached the end of the block and not only was she even more hungry, but she was craving…something. Something raw, something that would give her energy, lots of energy. She stepped into a small grocery store and headed to the deli, where they were preparing the grab-and-go foods for the day. Five minutes and one lame excuse about lunch for the office later, she was walking back out with eight packages of freshly-made sushi.

The weirdest thing, Anne thought as she sat on a park bench and opened the first one, wasn’t even that she normally didn’t care one way or the other for sushi. No, the weirdest thing was that she was picking all the raw fish out and leaving the rice for the birds.

Actually, scratch that. The weirdest thing was that the flock of pigeons gobbling up her offerings looked really tasty.

Maybe she was just overworked. Maybe she should take the afternoon off and have lunch with Dan before his shift at the hospital started that evening. Yeah, that sounded good. Stuffing raw fish into her mouth with one hand, she texted him to make reservations for eleven-thirty.

 

Dr. Skirth

This was it, Dora Skirth thought as she surveyed the wreckage of the lab. She was going to die.

She hadn’t thought she’d left Eddie alone that long, and her watch confirmed it had only been about twenty minutes, but someone or something had made a near-complete mess of the lab in that time. One of the symbiotes was dead, one was still in its cell with its host, and the last one…the one she’d pegged as displaying either mercy or self-serving altruism…

The last one was missing, and all evidence pointed towards it having escaped.

Drake was furious.

No one had been there to monitor the symbiotes overnight; the two lab techs who had been scheduled were discovered hung over in a store room and fired immediately. Luckily, whoever had damaged the lab equipment had also managed to take out the fuse box for the security system, so Dora’s transgression hadn’t been discovered…but that also meant no one knew how symbiote A01 had escaped, particularly since its host had been found dead on the floor outside the shattered door to its cell.

Drake ordered a sweep of the building, which took the better part of two hours and turned up exactly nothing. Personnel logs were checked and double-checked, but everyone was accounted for and Dora herself had the security guard – and surveillance footage of her talking to him – as an alibi. She was put to work reviewing the hard copies of the lab’s security cameras – what there was of it – to figure out what had happened, and she used that freedom to frantically text Eddie and let him know what was going on, that one of the symbiotes had escaped, that they were searching for it, and where the hell was he?

He didn’t text her back.

When she found the footage of symbiote A03’s death and realized that the sound of the security alarm had killed it – the way A02 and A01’s hosts reacted strongly suggested that it was the sound, because A03 was dead before its host – she quietly destroyed the footage and lied, saying that it had been too damaged to get anything.

Be very, very, very afraid, Eddie had told her when he relayed how Drake’s influence had kept him out of work and cost him his fiancée. Well, she was not only very, very, very afraid but wise enough to know that Drake would kill her if he found out about her part in all this, so she salvaged a part of the security system and wired it up to a crude switch with a battery. She still didn’t know if A01 was the least-dangerous or the most, but if it came to her against a symbiote, she wasn’t going down without a fight.

Dr. Emerson hurried up and ushered Drake away, to A02’s cell, where the host’s blood pressure and liver functions had returned to normal. Drake was elated, claiming the host’s body needed time to adjust, but Dora knew better. Six months of studying the corpses of failed hosts had revealed one interesting fact: every single one of them, their cells had ruptured and all the mitochondria they should have contained had been removed. A02 had been in that young man for four days and had to be getting desperately hungry. The host would die soon, and the symbiote would need to be fed.

Actually, when all the data was run with an eye towards hosts being food, there had only been a handful of hosts where she thought actual symbiotic bonding had been taking place and she wondered if A01 had eaten Eddie, or if they had bonded.

As Drake stormed off, a thought shook Dora to her core and left her hyperventilating. One of the symbiotes had gone missing in the crash. One of the astronauts had survived, but never made it to a hospital. The ambulance had suffered a crash, and the astronaut was dead. At the time, they had thought the symbiote just hadn’t survived, but Dora knew better now. She knew how easily one of them could slip into a human host undetected. Symbiote A04 was alive, and it had escaped long before anyone knew where to look for it.

There was a symbiote on the loose. It had been free to kill and eat for six months, and no one knew where it was.