Venom's javelin strike sent Riot tumbling backward through the air.
The larger symbiote crashed into the ocean with a massive splash, disappearing beneath dark water for maybe three seconds before erupting back to the surface. Michael was already there—the hybrid having circled around during the chaos, trying to flank Riot's position.
But it was Carlton Drake who caught everyone's attention.
The CEO stood near the launch pad's control station, staring at his own hands with an expression somewhere between shock and existential horror. His skin looked pale, almost translucent in the security lighting. Without Riot's biomass reinforcing his physiology, Drake seemed smaller somehow. Diminished.
"He left me," Drake whispered, his voice cracking. "The symbiote... he just left me."
Eddie heard the words even from fifty yards away. Through Venom's enhanced senses, he could see Drake's face cycling through denial, rage, and something that looked almost like betrayal.
"Eddie, the human is unstable," Venom observed. "His mental state is collapsing."
Drake's whisper became a shout. "I gave you everything! My company! My resources! My body!" He turned toward where Riot was emerging from the ocean in Alexei's stolen form. "You needed me! I was going to be a god!"
Riot paused at the water's edge, black biomass dripping seawater, Alexei's face barely visible beneath the symbiote's mask.
"You were convenient," Riot said, his layered voice carrying contempt that would have cut even without the alien harmonics. "A weak host with useful resources. Nothing more."
Drake's expression shifted from hurt to cold calculation. His hands clenched into fists. When he spoke again, his voice had steadied—the corporate executive reasserting control over the rejected lover.
"Fine. If you've abandoned me, then you don't get to exist."
Drake turned and ran toward the control building.
"What's he doing?" Eddie asked.
Venom's realization came a beat later. "The control room. The PA system. He's going to use the speakers to generate sonic frequencies."
Selene's head snapped toward the fleeing CEO. "The weakness. He's going to weaponize sound waves against Riot."
Riot saw Drake running and understood the threat immediately.
The symbiote's arm shifted, biomass flowing and restructuring into something thin, sharp, and aerodynamic. In less than a second, Riot had formed a massive throwing blade—six feet of serrated death that gleamed wetly under the facility's lights.
The blade left Riot's hand with terrifying velocity.
Drake made it maybe twenty yards before the projectile caught him square in the back. The force of the impact lifted him off his feet and carried him forward another ten feet before the blade punched through his chest and pinned him to the concrete.
Carlton Drake had time for one wet, bubbling gasp. Then his eyes went glassy and his body went still.
Eddie felt his stomach lurch. "God."
"One problem solved," Michael said from his position near the water's edge. His voice carried no sympathy.
Riot retracted the blade with a thought, letting Drake's corpse collapse to the ground. The symbiote turned back to face Venom, Selene, and Michael with something like amusement touching his alien features.
"The human was always going to betray us eventually," Riot said. "Better to end it now. But you three..." The symbiote's biomass rippled, weapons forming along both arms. "You still think you can stop me. How admirable. How futile."
Venom stepped forward, Eddie's fear buried beneath the symbiote's combat instincts. "We won't let you take that rocket."
"Then come at me together," Riot invited. "Show me what you're capable of."
Selene moved first—a blur of supernatural speed that closed the distance in less than a second. Her strike aimed for Riot's throat, intending to disrupt the symbiote's control over Alexei's vocal cords.
Riot blocked with a biomass shield that formed instantly across his forearm. The impact rang like steel on steel.
Michael came from the left, partially transformed, claws extended. He raked at Riot's exposed flank, seeking to tear through the symbiote's outer layer and force separation.
Riot twisted, letting the claws glance off armored plates, then countered with a tendril that wrapped around Michael's wrist and yanked hard enough to dislocate the hybrid's shoulder.
Venom attacked from the right, both arms transformed into blades, seeking any opening in Riot's defense.
The larger symbiote met the assault with contemptuous ease. Blade parried blade. Armor absorbed strikes that should have drawn blood. Riot moved with the confidence of someone fighting significantly weaker opponents.
Ten seconds of furious combat left all three attackers bleeding and Riot unmarked.
"Pathetic," Riot laughed, the sound layered with Alexei's Russian accent and alien harmonics. "You're insects trying to stop a god. Venom, I'll give you one final chance. Join me. Come home. Help me bring our people to this world and we'll rule together."
Inside their shared consciousness, Eddie felt Venom's response before the symbiote spoke it aloud.
"I've fallen in love with this world," Venom said. "With its people. With its possibilities. I'm not leaving. And I won't let you destroy it."
Riot's amusement vanished, replaced by cold fury.
"Then you'll die here. Alone. Still the weakest. Still the failure." The symbiote's biomass flowed across Alexei's enhanced musculature. "When I return with our army—millions strong—I'll make sure they know how Venom betrayed his own kind for a planet of cattle. Your name will be a warning. A cautionary tale about the price of weakness."
Riot turned and sprinted toward the Life Two rocket.
The PA system's countdown echoed across the facility: "ONE MINUTE THIRTY SECONDS TO LAUNCH. FINAL IGNITION SEQUENCE INITIATED."
"We can't let him leave!" Venom shouted, already running after Riot. "There are millions of symbiotes on their homeworld! If he brings them here—"
The three of them charged together—coordinated desperation rather than tactical planning. Selene used her speed to cut off Riot's angle. Michael transformed fully, his hybrid form bristling with claws and teeth. Venom extended tendrils, trying to entangle Riot's legs.
Riot swatted them aside without slowing.
A casual backhand sent Selene tumbling across the pavement. A kick caught Michael in the ribs and launched him into a fuel tank hard enough to dent steel. A blade from Riot's free arm severed Venom's tendrils and forced Eddie to retreat.
Thirty seconds. Twenty. Ten.
Riot reached the rocket's access hatch and grabbed the manual override. The door began to cycle open with mechanical precision.
Above them all, Smith Doyle had been watching from his aerial vantage point with clinical detachment.
The fight had played out exactly as he'd predicted. Riot's combination with Alexei produced exponential enhancement—the sum greater than the parts, though not quite multiplicative. Similar to Baby's parasitic fusion in Dragon Ball GT, where 1+1 equaled something closer to 2.5 rather than true multiplication.
If symbiote fusion worked like Dragon Ball's Fusion Dance, Riot would be operating at several hundred times Alexei's base power. The entire team would be dead already.
And if Riot had chosen Selene instead of Alexei...
Smith allowed himself a moment of relief that the symbiote had gone for raw strength over speed. Selene's supernatural velocity combined with Riot's combat experience would have made extraction significantly more complicated.
But Alexei was manageable. And Riot had made a critical error by announcing his intentions so clearly.
The rocket's hatch opened fully. Riot moved to enter.
Smith descended.
His voice cut through the chaos with absolute calm. "Do you think Earth is a place where you can come and go as you please?"
Riot spun, searching for the source of the words.
Smith materialized beside the symbiote—arms crossed, floating in midair at eye level with Riot's commandeered form.
Then he kicked.
The strike carried a fraction of Smith's actual strength—enough to hurt but not enough to pulp Alexei's enhanced skeleton. The impact created a visible shockwave. Air compressed into a concussive blast that shattered nearby windows.
Riot flew backward at supersonic speed.
The symbiote's trajectory took him over the launch facility, over the ocean, nearly a quarter mile in less than a second. Physics became optional when Smith Doyle decided violence was necessary.
But Smith was already there when Riot's momentum stopped.
The second kick came from behind, redirecting Riot's path from horizontal to vertical. The symbiote shot upward into the night sky like a missile.
Eddie's jaw hung open. "My God. Is that the boss's strength?"
His voice came out awed, almost reverent. The three of them together hadn't been able to slow Riot down. Smith was playing with the symbiote like a cat with a particularly aggressive mouse.
Selene climbed to her feet, brushing concrete dust from her tactical suit. "This is only a small part of the chief's power."
"No one in this world can match him," Michael added, his hybrid form already regenerating the damage from Riot's earlier strike. "Not even close."
A thousand feet above the launch facility, Riot reached the apex of his upward trajectory.
Inside Alexei's body, the symbiote's consciousness raced through possibilities and probabilities. Smith Doyle was stronger than anticipated. Far stronger. The power level readings from Drake's stolen memories had been conservative estimates at best.
But strength could be redirected. Used. Riot had parasitized beings across dozens of worlds. He knew how to abandon failing hosts and claim superior ones.
"If I can possess Smith Doyle's body," Riot thought, already planning the transfer, "his power becomes mine. Combined with my experience, we'd be truly unstoppable."
Gravity reasserted itself. Riot began falling.
The symbiote oriented himself in midair, spotting Smith hovering below. Riot transformed his arm into the familiar meteor hammer and dove, using gravity and his own strength to build devastating momentum.
The hammer came down in an arc designed to pulverize concrete.
Smith's fist rose to meet it.
The collision shattered Riot's weapon at the molecular level. Biomass exploded into fragments that dispersed across hundreds of feet. The meteor hammer simply ceased to exist as a coherent structure.
Riot's eyes widened—both his own alien consciousness and Alexei's trapped awareness sharing genuine shock.
Smith hand grabbed Riot's head—specifically, the symbiote's biomass covering Alexei's skull. Fingers that looked too small to threaten anything dug into alien tissue with surgical precision.
And pulled.
Riot screamed—a sound that combined Alexei's vocal cords with the symbiote's alien harmonics into something that didn't belong in Earth's atmosphere. Black biomass tore like wet paper. The symbiote's carefully maintained structure ripped apart under strength that treated alien biology as irrelevant.
A hole appeared in Riot's head coverage.
Alexei saw daylight—or rather, nighttime—for the first time since Riot had parasitized him. The Red Guardian's consciousness surged forward, recognizing the opportunity, and began fighting for control with renewed desperation.
Smith felt Alexei's resistance and pulled harder.
More biomass tore away. Riot's grip on his host weakened with each passing second. The symbiote tried to reinforce his hold, tried to flow around Smith's hands and parasitize this impossibly strong new host.
Smith's ki flared.
Energy surrounded him. The ki formed a barrier between Smith's biology and external threats, preventing Riot's biomass from making contact.
Another pull. More tissue torn away.
Riot abandoned strategy in favor of survival. The symbiote retracted from Alexei's extremities, consolidating his mass, trying to maintain enough cohesion to parasitize something—anything—before complete separation left him vulnerable.
Smith ripped the symbiote free in one final violent motion.
Alexei fell, tumbling through empty air, finally free of the alien presence that had controlled his body for the past several minutes.
Riot writhed in Smith's grip—a mass of black tendrils seeking purchase, seeking escape, seeking any host that could sustain his existence in Earth's oxygen-rich atmosphere.
The symbiote's desperation manifested as pseudopods that lashed toward Smith's arms, trying to force parasitic contact despite the ki barrier.
Smith raised his free hand. Energy gathered at his fingertips.
The explosion was small. Controlled. Precise.
It detonated directly inside Riot's biomass, flash-burning alien tissue from the inside out. The symbiote's scream cut short as fire consumed him at the cellular level.
What fell from Smith's hand wasn't a coherent organism anymore. Just fragments. Pieces. Scattered biomass that had lost the organizational intelligence that made it alive.
Smith's fingers glowed with energy.
Each fragment of Riot vaporized as the energy touched it. No ceremony. No hesitation. Just complete and total destruction that left nothing for regeneration or resurrection.
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