Peter had faked an excuse about needing to use the bathroom, but the moment he was out of sight, he veered toward the back of the café in search of an exit.
As a seasoned veteran at sneaking out of the place, he already knew the quickest route. His eyes landed on the familiar window, and without hesitation, he slipped off his backpack and tossed it outside before vaulting through after it.
Landing neatly in the back alley, he wasted no time unzipping the backpack and pulling out his Spider-Man suit. "Come on, come on..." he muttered under his breath as he hurriedly stripped out of his clothes and wrestled himself into the skintight costume.
This was easily the part he considered the lamest about being a superhero. "Come on...!" he urged himself through clenched teeth, his voice muffled by the mask gripped between them. He shoved one leg through the suit, hopping awkwardly as he stretched the fabric over his foot before repeating the process with the other. There was nothing remotely cool about it. No dramatic transformation. Just a teenager frantically trying not to get tangled in his own costume while a crisis unfolded somewhere across the city.
The instant both legs were through, he fired a web at the top of the building and let it yank him skyward. He landed on the rooftop in one fluid motion, tossing his backpack onto a nearby ventilation unit before shooting another web that anchored it in place. Without breaking stride, he launched another webline and swung away toward the growing commotion.
Spider-Man soared over the city, swinging from rooftop to rooftop as he chased after the trail of destruction. Every passing second felt like he was falling farther behind. To make matters worse, the pursuit kept getting interrupted by the kind of "side quests" only the neighborhood Spider-Man seemed cursed with. As much as he wanted to ignore them and focus on catching whatever was tearing through the city, he couldn't simply swing past innocent people whose lives had just been thrown into danger.
One of the decorative winged statues built into the side of a nearby building had taken a direct hit moments earlier when the hulking black symbiote bounded across the rooftops. Jagged cracks spread outward from the point of impact, snaking through the stonework until they reached the statue itself.
Below, a crowd of frightened yet curious onlookers had gathered along the sidewalk, craning their necks in an attempt to catch a glimpse of the chaos unfolding farther down the street. Tiny fragments of stone began raining down from above, one pebble bouncing off the bare head of a man standing near the front of the crowd.
Frowning, he rubbed the top of his head before instinctively glancing upward. The color drained from his face at the sight of the massive winged statue breaking free.
Its stone frame tilted forward, descending toward the crowd like an angel of death.
"Look out!" he shouted, throwing himself into the woman standing beside him and tackling her away from the curb.
Panic erupted instantly. Confused screams rang out as people shoved, stumbled, and tripped over one another in a desperate scramble to escape. Just as the enormous statue was about to crash into the terrified crowd, it jerked to a sudden stop in midair, suspended by thick strands of webbing.
"Hey! Watch the people!" Spider-Man shouted, as though scolding the culprits responsible while he secured the statue and finally caught a better look at the source of the destruction.
The same massive black symbiote was barreling through the street ahead, smashing through vehicles as it fled.
"That thing again."
With a grunt, Spider-Man swung the statue safely onto an empty section of the sidewalk before immediately firing off another webline. He launched himself back into pursuit, weaving through the skyline as another thunderous crash echoed somewhere behind him.
"What the hell is going on?" he muttered to himself between swings.
Making a brief stop to glance over his shoulder, Spider-Man couldn't help but voice the hopeful thought forming in his head. If this chase was as destructive as it looked, maybe the cavalry had already arrived.
"Thor?"
He crossed his fingers almost instinctively. "Fingers crossed," he muttered.
A split second later, his spider-sense flared, warning him that someone was directly overhead. Hope sparked in his chest as he looked up, expecting to see the God of Thunder descending from the sky.
Instead, a caped figure in a hooded cloak hovered above him.
His hopeful expression fell immediately.
"Even better," the stranger said with a confident smirk hidden beneath the hood. "I am the upgrade."
With a flourish, he pulled the hood back, revealing the familiar face beneath.
"This f...guy again," Spider-Man muttered under his breath, barely managing to stop himself from calling the lightning-emblazoned hero something far less polite.
"Wha—"
Before he could even finish the question, Shazam flashed him a grin and blasted forward in a streak of lightning, both fists stretched out ahead of him in an almost comically exaggerated Superman pose.
"Damn... that's cool," Spider-Man admitted to himself.
He leaped from the rooftop and fired a webline, swinging after the speeding champion. "At least I got this guy," he muttered with a hint of self-deprecation. In his mind, Shazam was practically an Avenger in training. Iron Man had refused to make him an official member, yet still treated him like an overeager rookie under his supervision. It wasn't Thor or any of the seasoned Avengers, but Spider-Man had seen enough to know Shazam was more than capable of handling a monster like the one rampaging through the city.
Ahead of them, the fleeing symbiote lashed its arms outward. The black biomass stretched into long, slimy tendrils before its hands merged together, morphing into the shape of a massive hammer. It swung the grotesque weapon downward onto the hood of a pursuing vehicle packed with armed gunmen who hadn't stopped firing.
The impact flipped the vehicle violently onto its roof, sending it skidding across the pavement in a shower of sparks.
Several bikers continued the pursuit, unloading magazine after magazine into the creature. The bullets disappeared into its slug-like body, sinking beneath the black surface without drawing so much as a flinch. At best, they seemed to do little more than annoy it.
The symbiote retaliated by extending both arms like monstrous tentacles. They wrapped around a nearby sedan, lifted it effortlessly into the air, and hurled it straight toward the pursuing bikers.
Shazam couldn't simply vaporize the creature like before. They already knew someone had been trapped inside the previous symbiote, and there was every possibility another human host was buried beneath this one's living mass.
The airborne car smashed through the bikers, sending motorcycles cartwheeling across the road before the vehicle continued tumbling end over end. Its trajectory shifted toward the broad glass windows of a tailoring shop, where a small crowd had gathered inside to watch the commotion unfolding outside.
"Oh, no!"
Spider-Man watched the disaster unfold in real time. Shazam had already surged far ahead in pursuit of the symbiote, while the shop sat well beyond the reach of his webs.
Thinking fast, he fired a web at the pole supporting a large street flag and yanked hard, using the recoil to catapult himself forward with even greater speed. The extra momentum helped, but he knew the truth before he'd even left the rooftop.
He wasn't going to make it.
A chorus of terrified screams erupted inside the tailor's shop as the spinning vehicle hurtled toward the storefront. Those quick enough to react threw themselves to the floor or dove behind displays, desperately shielding their heads. Others simply stood frozen, their minds unable to process the disaster rushing toward them.
Then, at the very last second...
The car stopped.
Barely a few inches from the glass.
The people who had thrown themselves to the ground hesitantly looked back, almost convinced they had imagined it.
Standing between the vehicle and the storefront was a young man in a white cape.
He held the entire car in one hand.
"You are safe, people," Shazam assured them calmly.
Lowering the wrecked vehicle onto the street with surprising gentleness, he offered no further explanation. Lightning crackled around him, and in the next instant he blasted back into the sky, as though saving them had been nothing more than a brief detour.
Among those inside the shop, an elegantly dressed middle-aged woman wearing glasses promptly fainted from the shock.
"Good work, bud," Spider-Man called after him, letting out a relieved breath before swinging after the chase once more.
Shazam followed the fleeing symbiote into a sprawling auction house. Before he had even crossed the entrance, deafening gunfire, panicked screams, and the creature's guttural roars echoed throughout the building.
He shot through the front doors at lightning speed.
Smoke hung thick in the air, obscuring almost everything beyond a few feet. No sooner had he entered than a body burst through the haze, hurtling straight toward him.
He caught the man instinctively.
Only then did he realize the body had no head.
Jagged tears ringed the severed neck, the flesh ripped apart in a way that looked less like a clean cut and more like something had bitten it clean off.
"Oh, God..."
Revulsion flashed across his face as he instinctively let the corpse slip from his grasp and fall to the floor.
Realizing the soldiers below were still engaged with the creature, Shazam shot upward toward the second floor instead.
Just as he'd suspected, dozens of workers and visitors had taken shelter upstairs after the attack began. They huddled together behind counters and displays, hoping the upper level would keep them safe.
It wouldn't.
His sudden arrival beside them made several people gasp and stumble backward in fright. One moment the space beside them had been empty.
The next, the caped champion was standing there.
"Stay calm! I'm getting you all out of here!"
Without wasting another second, Shazam moved. He swept through the upper floor at blinding speed, evacuating civilians one group after another. Their safety came first. Whatever nightmare was unfolding downstairs could wait until every person he could find was out of immediate danger. By the time he returned after escorting the last group he could locate to safety, he knew there were probably still others hiding somewhere inside the sprawling building. Even so, he couldn't afford to delay any longer.
Down below, concealed within the thick blanket of smoke, the symbiote snatched a soldier off his feet. The man struggled helplessly in its grasp, terror plain on his face as he stared into the creature's monstrous maw.
"W-What are you!?"
A deep, guttural voice answered him, each word slow enough to send a chill down everyone's spine.
"We... are... Venom."
Having just returned from evacuating the civilians, Shazam stretched both arms outward before bringing his palms together with tremendous force. The clap detonated like a shockwave, blasting through the building and sweeping away the dense curtain of smoke.
As the haze cleared, the horrifying scene beneath it was laid bare.
Venom stood in the middle of the room, jaws spread wide as it prepared to bite the head off the soldier clad in black tactical gear.
For the briefest moment, the room seemed to fall silent.
"That's just gross, dude." The casual remark broke the tension instantly.
Every pair of eyes turned toward the source.
Perched atop one of the building's massive support pillars, Spider-Man crouched comfortably as though he'd arrived halfway through an especially disturbing movie.
Even Shazam, lightning already dancing around his raised hand, paused long enough to glance toward the wisecracking hero before returning his attention to the monster.
The next instant, a bolt of lightning erupted from his palm.
The blast slammed Venom into a nearby wall with tremendous force before the creature rebounded and crashed back onto the floor.
Seizing the opening, one of the soldiers lobbed what appeared to be a specialized flash grenade toward the disoriented symbiote.
The device detonated with a sharp pulse—not of light, but of sound.
An intense high-frequency wave rippled through the room.
The effect on Venom was immediate.
Its black mass convulsed violently as though every cell in its body had descended into chaos. Tendrils lashed wildly in every direction like the frantic claws of a furious cat dropped into a bathtub, while an ear-piercing shriek tore through the auction house.
Despite the agony, Venom lashed out, stretching one arm into a whipping tentacle aimed straight at a nearby soldier.
Before it could connect, Spider-Man fired a webline.
The soldier was yanked clear of danger just as the monstrous limb slammed into a waist height vase.
"That looked expensive." Shazam quipped.
Seeing the creature stagger, Shazam gathered another surge of lightning into his hand. This time the energy crackling around his arm was far stronger, enough to finish the battle with a single decisive strike.
But he hesitated.
The memory of Officer Suarez flashed through his mind.
Carnage hadn't been the villainous monster he had originally thought it to be.
The man inside the symbiote who served as its host had been the victim.
What if this was the same?
What if another innocent person was imprisoned beneath that living mass?
As though fate itself had chosen that exact moment to answer his doubts, another soldier hurled a second sonic grenade.
The frequency pulse rippled through Venom once again.
The creature shrieked louder than before, its body writhing uncontrollably.
A third grenade followed almost immediately.
This time, the effect was impossible to ignore.
For the briefest instant, the black symbiotic mass peeled away from its host.
Like iron sand drawn apart by an invisible magnet, the living substance rippled backward, exposing the terrified man within before surging back over him and sealing itself around his body once more.
The fleeting glimpse sent a jolt through Shazam as a forgotten memory resurfaced.
Fragments of the night he had broken Solomon's Seal came rushing back—the lightning that had struck him, the visions King Solomon had shown him later on, and the horrifying truth behind Knull.
Though this creature now possessed a humanoid shape, its nature was unmistakable.
The shifting black mass.
The writhing tendrils.
The living darkness.
It was almost identical to the slithering organisms Solomon had shown him—the ancient symbiotes forged by Knull before eventually turning against their creator.
The realization barely had time to settle before Venom roared and retaliated.
Its arm swelled into an enormous fist before stretching across the room like a battering ram toward another soldier still firing his rifle.
Spider-Man reacted instantly.
A webline shot forward and wrapped tightly around the creature's wrist, arresting the punch before it could land.
The interruption earned him exactly what he expected.
Venom slowly turned its head.
Its attention was now fixed entirely on Spider-Man.
"Could use some help over here, bud... but no rush."
Spider-Man's sarcastic plea snapped Shazam out of his brief daze. He turned just in time to see Venom's enormous fist crash into Spider-Man's torso, launching the web-slinger across the lobby. His body slammed hard into one of the massive pillars, the impact sending cracks spiderwebbing through the stone.
"At your own time," Spider-Man wheezed, forcing out one last sarcastic remark despite the air having been knocked clean out of his lungs.
Lightning exploded around Shazam's fist.
He vanished in a crack of thunder, reappearing directly in front of Venom before driving a lightning-cloaked punch into the creature's chest. The impact lifted the hulking symbiote completely off its feet and hurled it across the enormous lobby.
Shazam was already there waiting.
The instant Venom rebounded off the far wall, another thunderclap echoed through the building as Shazam intercepted it with a second crushing punch, sending it flying back the opposite direction like a ball in a game of ping-pong. He repeated the maneuver once more, battering the creature across the room with overwhelming speed and force.
By the fourth exchange, Venom adapted.
As Shazam blurred in for another strike, the symbiote stretched one arm toward a nearby pillar and latched onto it. With a violent yank, it pulled itself sideways, narrowly slipping past the incoming punch.
It bought only a fraction of a second.
Shazam was already on its flank.
His fist, wrapped in crackling lightning, smashed into Venom's face and drove the creature headfirst into the marble floor with a deafening boom.
'This one's attacks don't feel right,' Venom thought, silently addressing the consciousness within its body.
Its jaws slowly opened, revealing rows of shattered teeth that clicked and shifted as black biomass flowed over them. One by one, the broken fangs reshaped themselves until the monstrous grin was restored.
"You can talk, right?" Shazam called out, keeping his guard raised. "Then answer me something."
"Wait... it can?" Spider-Man asked, landing beside him with a surprised blink.
Shazam barely acknowledged him. His thoughts were racing. 'Buddy... does the word 'Klyntar' ring a bell?' The question never left his mouth as a deafening crash of shattering glass echoed through the auction house.
Countless shards rained across the lobby as another creature burst through one of the enormous windows and landed heavily between the heroes and Venom. It crouched low upon impact before slowly rising to its full height, throwing back its head as a piercing screech reverberated through the building.
The newcomer towered over everyone present.
Nearly ten feet tall, its lean frame was packed with dense, corded muscle hidden beneath dark, armor-like hide. An elongated, reptilian skull rested atop broad shoulders, while enormous jaws lined with jagged, needle-like teeth glistened beneath strands of saliva. Its small amber eyes burned with the cold focus of a born predator.
Long, powerful arms ended in wicked black claws that looked capable of tearing through steel as effortlessly as flesh. Every movement blended feline grace with reptilian menace, the alien beast prowling with the lulled confidence of a creature that had never experienced fear.
Only the instinct to hunt.
Without taking his eyes off the newcomer, Shazam tilted his head slightly toward Spider-Man.
"One of yours?" He wasn't asking about allies.
He meant Spider-Man's seemingly endless catalogue of bizarre supervillains.
"Nope," Spider-Man replied, lowering into a ready stance. "First time I've ever seen that thing."
The creature ignored both heroes.
Its glowing eyes remained fixed squarely on Venom.
Across the room, the symbiote's expression changed dramatically. The arrogance vanished from its monstrous face, replaced by something neither hero had expected to see.
Fear.
"Oh... shit," Venom muttered, its eyes widening. "It found us."
"And what exactly is 'that' supposed to mean?" Spider-Man asked while flipping backward to avoid a pair of whip-like tendrils lashing across the floor.
Venom didn't answer him.
Instead, it turned inward.
"Run," it urged Eddie, its voice carrying an urgency unlike anything before. "Run!"
Without another moment's hesitation, Venom spun around and bolted from the lobby.