The low, steady hum of the Boeing C-17 Globemaster III—affectionately known by its crew as the Bus—vibrated constantly through the soles of Peter's boots.
"Guys," Phil Coulson announced, stepping into the center of the mobile command center, "Spider-Man is going to be working with us for a while."
Coulson's tailored suit was immaculate, completely at odds with the tactical, militarized interior of the plane. Peter studied the veteran agent from behind his white eye lenses, running the mental math. Coulson claimed his miraculous resurrection back on the helicarrier was purely the result of a Life Model Decoy protocol. Peter hadn't heard a single whisper about a magical, brain-rewriting island resort called "Tahiti." It was a significant deviation from the lore Peter knew, and he filed it away in the back of his mind.
Coulson gestured around the room, introducing the squad. Peter had already met most of them, but he let the formalities play out, using the time to analyze the room.
Grant Ward stood near the armory cages. Level 7. Lethal. Broad shoulders and a perfectly balanced tactical stance. Peter had already dropped a highly classified, heavily veiled hint to Coulson about Ward's extracurricular HYDRA affiliations. Whether Director Fury had acted on that intelligence was still a mystery, but Peter kept his spider-sense dialed in to a razor's edge whenever the specialist was within a twenty-foot radius. Will he shoot us in the back today? Probably not today.
Melinda May sat in the pilot's chair, her arms crossed. She projected a rigid, immovable posture that explicitly broadcasted her desire to be left entirely alone.
By the mobile lab stations, Jemma Simmons and Leo Fitz practically vibrated with overlapping, rapid-fire scientific enthusiasm, their eyes wide as they stared at Peter's suit.
Finally, there was Skye. She leaned against a server rack, a heavy laptop clutched to her chest like a riot shield. Daisy Johnson—though she didn't know her real name yet, nor did she know she possessed the dormant genetics of an Inhuman.
Coulson cleared his throat, snapping the team to attention. "An alien symbiote has invaded the Triskelion. Director Fury is..." Coulson paused, his jaw tightening slightly. "...extremely angry. We need Spider-Man's specific expertise to contain this. Simmons, you are lead on biological analysis. Work with Fitz; I need a reliable detection algorithm for this organism. Skye, monitor the grid. Check traffic cameras, police bands, anything anomalous."
Skye raised her hand slowly, blinking over the top of her laptop screen. "Sorry, but what exactly is a symbiote?"
"Oh. Right." Peter sighed, rolling his shoulders. "Step back. Way back."
He motioned for Cindy Moon to clear the immediate area. The air in the cargo bay seemed to drop ten degrees. Black, viscous fluid erupted from the collar of Peter's suit, washing upward over his face and expanding outward with the wet, sickening sound of tearing canvas. His mass doubled in a fraction of a second. The black jaws unhinged, revealing overlapping rows of translucent, jagged fangs and a wildly thrashing, serpentine tongue.
"HELLO," Venom rumbled, the heavy bass vibrating the metal floor grates. "WE EAT BRAINS."
Ward instantly dropped his hand to the grip of his holstered sidearm. May didn't flinch, but her weight subtly shifted into a combat-ready pivot. Fitz made a choked, high-pitched noise and immediately stepped behind Simmons.
The black sludge rapidly peeled back, sinking seamlessly into Peter's skin until he was just a teenager in a red-and-blue suit again.
"Sorry about that," Peter said, rubbing the back of his neck. "He's terrible at first impressions. Basically, they're gelatinous alien parasites. Highly aggressive, incredibly strong, and they require a host to survive. Their primary biological energy source is phenylethylamine, which the human body conveniently stores in the brain. If you start seeing police reports popping up about headless corpses, we've got a localized breach."
Simmons' terror vanished, instantly overridden by her scientific curiosity. "Phenylethylamine?" she asked, stepping out from in front of Fitz. "But there are massive concentrations of that chemical compound in cocoa beans. Why not just eat chocolate?"
"Because Venom is ostensibly a 'good guy' who occasionally settles for a Hershey's bar," Peter explained, "and the rogue ones are homicidal maniacs who prefer their snacks screaming."
Peter flicked his wrist, shooting a thin, precise strand of webbing to snag an empty glass test tube from Fitz's workstation. He caught it flawlessly. A small, writhing black tendril extended from Peter's knuckle. "Here. Cut a piece off before he changes his mind."
Simmons eagerly stepped forward with a pair of surgical shears. She snipped the tip of the sludge, which dropped heavily into the glass vial, thrashing angrily against the curved walls. She immediately practically sprinted back to her microscope.
Ward crossed his arms, the heavy leather of his jacket creaking in the quiet bay. "Sir? What should I be doing?"
Coulson offered a thin, measured smile. "If you have the time, Specialist, take our two Spider-kids down to the training mat. Teach them some S.H.I.E.L.D. close-quarters techniques."
Miles away, deep within the subterranean darkness of the Eastern seaboard's drainage systems, the creature known as Lasher was dying.
The high-frequency sonic arrow Spider-Man had used had violently shattered its cellular cohesion. Stripped of a humanoid host and desperate to survive, the green sludge had washed out of the New York storm drains and plunged into the icy, rushing currents of the river. In a blind panic, it had forcefully bonded with a large fish.
It was a terrible mistake. The fish's primitive, fragmented neural pathways corrupted the symbiote's advanced intelligence. Driven purely by a raw, unthinking instinct to swim, the creature rode the Atlantic currents southward for days. Its memories degraded, blurring into a chaotic mess of hunger and pain.
Eventually, the current dragged it into the Potomac River.
Guided by the faint, lingering scent of mass human settlements in its fractured memory, the green symbiote slithered off its dying aquatic host and crawled up the slick concrete embankment of a Washington D.C. sewer grate. It squeezed through the iron bars, dropping back into the city's labyrinthine underground pipes to search for its scattered kin.
It needed a host. A powerful one. Someone capable of breaking Venom.
Adrian Toomes wiped a heavy bead of sweat from his bald head, staring through the thick, reinforced glass of the observation deck.
A.I.M. Headquarters in Washington D.C. felt less like a technology firm and more like a sterilized operating room. The walls were blindingly white, the floors seamless chrome, and the air hummed with the constant drone of massive server farms.
Aldrich Killian stood next to him, his tailored suit perfectly pressed, a predatory, blindingly white smile plastered across his face.
"Not only are we pioneering advanced robotics like the Super-Adaptoid," Killian said smoothly. He gestured to the massive, liquid-metal android suspended in the repair bay below, its shifting chassis currently mimicking the bold red, white, and blue of the American flag. "But we've also secured a highly lucrative contract with the military for the Super Soldier Serum Restoration Project. Frankly, almost every major military-industrial complex is chasing that ghost."
Toomes frowned, the deep, weathered lines around his mouth tightening. "Do you actually have any viable leads on the serum?"
Killian chuckled, a dry, corporate sound. "No. But the Pentagon throws a bottomless pit of research funding at us just for trying."
Toomes stared down at the liquid-metal robot. He didn't care about super soldiers or military contracts. He cared about his family. He cared about the salvage company he had lost. "I have a standing agreement with Oscorp regarding my anti-gravity flight system patents. It could be a legal roadblock."
Killian waved a dismissive hand. "Already handled by our legal department. The Oscorp agreement simply acknowledges that your tech and theirs aren't plagiarized from one another. It's mutual non-infringement. There is absolutely nothing legally stopping A.I.M. from fully funding the development and upgrade of your bionic wings." Killian turned, his eyes flashing with sharp intensity. "Are you satisfied with our company's offer, Mr. Toomes?"
Toomes let out a long breath, a physical weight lifting off his shoulders. He aggressively rubbed the top of his bald head. "Yeah. Yeah, thank you. I'm very satisfied. Can we... can we sign the contract now?"
"Of course, Adrian."
Thirty minutes later, the heavy, embossed A.I.M. contract was signed.
Stepping out of the hyper-cooled A.I.M. lobby and into the suffocating, muggy heat of the D.C. evening, Toomes felt a surge of surreal euphoria. He gripped his leather briefcase tightly. The nightmares were over. He could finally buy a plane ticket home and tell Liz that her father had secured their future.
Distracted by his own overwhelming relief, Toomes walked briskly toward the curb to hail a taxi for the airport.
He stepped squarely onto a heavy iron manhole cover.
Toomes didn't notice the wet, viscous puddle of green sludge welling up through the cast-iron slats. He didn't feel it latch onto the rubber heel of his heavy work boot, sinking into the leather, dragging its alien mass silently upward into the fabric of his trousers.