"Last night, Queens saw two incidents."
"The Catholic church beneath the Kosciuszko Bridge was vandalized. According to police evidence, an unknown creature—possibly some kind of beast—started at the church, made its way to the FEAST shelter, and brutally killed several of its residents."
Batman drove from City Hall subway station toward Parker Industries, the car radio recounting the events of the night before last.
"The body of philanthropist Martin Li was found, but forensic analysis revealed no external wounds—only brain damage."
"Another incident also occurred at the FEAST shelter…"
The radio droned on as Batman drove, his face expressionless. Venom, nestled within his body, remained silent, not daring to detach and slip into the crowded New York streets.
Inside Batman's car were at least twenty modified pumpkin bombs, now high-intensity flashbangs.
Venom wasn't afraid of blinding light, but the high-frequency noise that accompanied them was unbearable.
It didn't dare gamble on whether Batman would detonate the flashbangs the moment it left his body. From what Venom had glimpsed of Batman's memories—memories that screamed lunatic—it had no doubt he was capable of such a thing.
At Parker Industries, Batman collected the urgently ordered materials and returned to City Hall station. He immediately set to work assembling and modifying them.
After half a morning, the result was a square metal box, constructed from lead, sound-absorbing materials, a high-frequency noise emitter, a temperature regulation system, and specialized glass in a multilayered structure.
Pipes connected the box's layers to the exterior, ready to spray strong acid, flames, or liquid nitrogen at a moment's notice.
To prevent Venom from slipping away, flame jets and high-frequency noise emitters were installed on every exterior surface, ensuring no escape.
Each of the box's six faces had transparent glass, allowing Batman to monitor the interior at all times.
The moment the custom prison was complete, Batman pointed at it.
"Get in."
"No way! I'm not going in there! You'll experiment on me!" Venom shrieked in terror from within Batman's body.
Having glimpsed fragments of Batman's mind, Venom knew that entering this custom prison meant becoming a fish on the cutting board, at Batman's mercy.
"You go in willingly, or I use other methods," Batman said, his voice chillingly low.
To him, Venom wasn't a tool for power but a monster that had just arrived in this world and slaughtered nine FEAST shelter residents.
Until he knew everything about Venom, Batman had to remain on high alert.
"Other methods… what methods?" Venom asked cautiously.
Without a word, Batman stuffed two high-frequency noise emitters into his ears and reached for a button without hesitation.
"Stop! Stop! I'm begging you, don't do this!"
Venom screamed, leaping out of Batman's body and landing on the workbench in the City Hall subway station.
As it weighed the possibility of escape, a clatter echoed—crack, crack, crack…
Over ten flashbangs dropped from Batman's hand to the floor. His eyes locked on Venom, ready to detonate them the moment it made a wrong move.
The black, viscous symbiote substance recoiled in fear. Deciding not to push its luck, Venom scrambled into the prison Batman had built for it.
"Maybe I should go with Batman's term for it. This isn't a prison—it's an ecological tank…" Venom muttered, trying to console itself.
The tank was a mere eighty cubic centimeters. As Venom slithered inside, Batman snapped the lid shut with lightning-fast precision.
The symbiote mass writhed within the tank. Separated from Batman's body, it was reduced to a small puddle, no larger than a fist.
Venom raised its head from the inky black mass, staring at Batman.
When it had been bonded to him, Batman's iron will had suppressed it, preventing Venom from taking control of his body or delving into his memories to stir buried emotions.
His mind had been razor-sharp, not relaxing for a single moment since the night before last.
When bonded to Eddie Brock, Venom knew humans were fragile—they needed food, air, sleep. But from the moment it attached to Batman, he hadn't eaten, hadn't slept—only breathed.
Venom tilted its head, resembling a cobra poised to strike, watching Batman closely.
It wanted to see if, now free of its influence, Batman would finally take a deep breath and relax—or collapse from exhaustion.
But Batman remained expressionless. After locking Venom in the tank, he didn't spare it a glance, returning to his workbench computer to continue his work.
"Damn it, I should've known…" Venom muttered, slumping like a deflated fish at the bottom of the tank. "Bad luck. I'm done for."
Batman ignored Venom. If not for another pressing matter demanding his attention, he'd already be dissecting the symbiote's every trait.
After compiling all the data in his mind, Batman stared at Venom for a few seconds—long enough to make it shrink back nervously—before leaving.
City Hall station had been prepped long before Venom's arrival. Beyond roadblocks and barriers to keep out vagrants, Batman's training equipment, Batmobile parking, and electrical systems were already in place.
Surveillance was a given, monitored by the Oracle AI, relocated from a Parker Industries warehouse to this location for oversight and alerts.
Wearing a thin black trench coat, Batman smoothed his hair, flattened by the cowl, and drove straight to Stark Tower.
At Stark Tower's ground floor, Tony's bodyguard and driver, Happy Hogan, was dozing on a bench as usual.
Unlike Batman's last visit, Happy's face wasn't covered by a book on "emotional intelligence."
Batman didn't bother waking him, taking the elevator straight to the top floor.
"Peter!"
Tony Stark, a glass of liquor perpetually in hand, saw Batman step out of the elevator. Lounging on a couch, he didn't get up, merely raising his glass.
"I didn't see any gun oil orders from my weapons plants. Guess using gun oil as a lubricant substitute isn't the cost-saving trick it's cracked up to be."
Tony was still sore about Batman declining his offer to invest in Stark Industries' latest cluster missile project, and he took a subtle jab.
"If you're here for gun oil again, sorry, I don't have anything that meets your standards."
"I'm not here for gun oil, Mr. Stark," Batman said, playing the role of Peter Parker with a youthful but deliberately mature tone.
"Oh? So you're here for that cluster missile investment I pitched last time? By the way, I named it the Jericho Missile."
Tony looked at Batman, surprised, and downed his drink.
"Come on, don't tell me you're taking that technical consulting deal seriously, popping by every few days for 'guidance.'"
"The AI tech service is done, Peter."
On their second meeting, Batman and Tony had struck a deal over a half-finished AI model: Batman would hand over the model, and Tony would hire Batman's shell company as a technical consultant for a hundred million dollars.
Batman sat on the couch opposite Tony, his smile unreadable.
"Tony Stark, I'm here for your Jericho Missile."
Meanwhile, in the interrogation room at the Queens precinct:
"Name?"
"Eddie Brock."
"Occupation?"
"Unemployed."
"Describe everything you saw at the FEAST shelter the night before last, and explain why you were in the back garden, uninjured but covered in your own blood."
"I… I don't remember."
Officer Bulko, the interrogator, looked at Eddie Brock with growing impatience.
"Mr. Brock, if you don't cooperate, we'll have to keep you in the precinct holding cell until you're cleared."
Eddie Brock looked disheveled, his clothes caked with garden mud, grass stems tangled in his hair, his eyes vacant as he stared at the officer.
"I don't remember anything."
Bulko's brows knitted together. Just then, the precinct chief, Edward, approached. Bulko stood immediately.
"Chief Edward, Mr. Brock isn't cooperating. He hasn't given us a single useful piece of information."
"The killer at the FEAST shelter is still at large, but the public needs answers. Why don't we—"
Bulko's implication was clear: pin the blame on Eddie Brock, the amnesiac found at the scene.
Chief Edward shot him a glare.
"If you suggest something like that again, you can start drafting your resignation, Bulko."
"We don't frame the innocent, and we don't let the guilty walk free."
Bulko straightened, chastened, but added with difficulty, "The media and public are getting out of hand. There's a mob of reporters at the door. We can't keep stalling…"
Chief Edward's gaze darkened. After a moment's thought, he said, "Tell the reporters we suspect Batman is the culprit. We're gathering evidence."
"Uh…"
Bulko's brain lagged for a second. By the time he processed it, Edward was already gone.
"Isn't that the same as my idea? Pinning it on someone to take the heat?" Bulko muttered to himself.
No, there was a difference. Eddie Brock was a living, breathing human. Batman… he wasn't human. More like a vampire or something.
He glanced at Eddie, sitting docilely in the interrogation room, and decided against further fruitless questioning. Instead, he requested a psychiatric evaluator to take over.
After wrapping up, Bulko heard a commotion at the precinct entrance. Peering out the window, he saw a crowd.
"Yes, we suspect Batman is behind the FEAST shelter case, but we're still gathering evidence," Chief Edward declared to the reporters.
"I swear on the President's honor, we will catch the culprit and bring him to justice!"
Bulko pulled back, snorting softly. "The President? The Chief hates the current President."