Venom & Deadpool are owned by Marvel Comics and not by the author of this Fan-Fiction.
----
They say that the academic year is split into three distinct phases. During phase one students spend their time partying. In phase two it's all about protesting, it doesn't matter what they're protesting so long as there's something to protest about. And in phase three they spend all their time in the library. Unless of course you're failing your course and are woefully behind on your assignments.
Becca Robinson had to leave phase one early and proceed directly to phase three, and it is the library in which we currently find our protagonist.
"Ten minutes.." a voice blared over the intercom, and Becca, who up to this point had been slumped over a bunch of books in a far corner of the library awoke with a start. "Ten minutes to closing" the voice repeated.
While trying to suppress a yawn Becca cursed herself for nodding off right in the middle of her philosophy assignment. She only closed her eyes for a moment, and it wasn't like it was a restful sleep. If was far from restful, plagued with nightmare images, and at one stage she even dreamt she was drowning, something filling her mouth and nose cutting off her air supply, a cold sensation flowing across her skin. Involuntarily she shuddered at the dreamlike memory, the sense of terror and panic attached to it already fading in the way dreams do.
"It's totally my own fault for not getting enough real sleep." she said to no one in particular.
Then rubbing her face with her hands she grabbed her books and made for the stairs, at this time of night the place was pretty empty as it was but Becca had a habit of hiding out in the low traffic areas in the higher levels. During the day the sun streamed through the glass windows in the roof, at night she liked to think you could see the stars. An impossibility due to the light pollution from the surrounding buildings, but still a comfort.
Becca waved goodnight to the librarian on the front desk and filtered out the library along with the dozen or so other regulars who were there until closing. Still not feeling the best, and thinking it might be a hunger weakness, she drew her coat that bit tighter to herself as she walked off into the cold dark winter night.
"Get a move on book worm you've got people free-a-zing out here" a voice in the darkness said with an exaggerated tone.
This wasn't really a lie but it was inaccurate. While other people elsewhere might be feeling the cold, the speaker most certainly wasn't, indeed he didn't even register the chill in the air, it was just something he thought anyone listening would expect him to say. Even though no one was listening.
The librarian was moving from table to table picking up abandoned books and switching off reading lights. He was perfectly visible through solid walls as a heat signature of undulating colours when viewed down the scope of a very high tech rifle. One squeeze of the trigger and the librarian's head would be splatted all over the Dewey Decimalisation System.
"And there go the downstairs lights. Blink-a-blinkety-blink."
The lights in question were being observed from the top of a building directly across the street by a figure who chooses to be seen or not seen. Right now he was sitting on the fence with regard to if he should be seen, not that it mattered as there wasn't anyone around to see him. Lucky them. The Librarian paused in the hall a moment and a second heat signature moved towards him. "Ladies and gents, I give you tonight's rent-a-cop"
The Librarian exited the building to muffled sounds of the word "Goodnight", and the figure watching him from the rooftop kept him in the crosshairs as he walked down the empty street. "Goodnight John-Boy! Heh."
Becca awkwardly shuffled into her cramped apartment with books in one hand and the usual assortment of junkmail and her bag in the other. Everything, coat and all, was dumped on the arm chair closest to the door. It was time to be disappointed by what was in the refrigerator, the light humming as she opened the door. "A slice of yesterday's pizza and carton of milk due to expire tomorrow. It's the high life here at the Robinson Mansion." she grimaced. Not the best but it'll do she thought.
The blinking light on her cell phone attracted her attention, she had forgotten it when she left the house earlier afternoon. One missed call, one new message. Tom W. Dawson, or Wire to his friends as he declared Thomas to be too ordinary a name, had called telling her that they were showing some old Fu-Manchu movies, the Boris Karloff ones he made sure to point out, at the old Apollo and a group of his friends were going. Open invitation if she was interested.
Wire was renowned for his love of old black and white monster movies, and would talk endlessly about them if allowed to ramble. The message was left at 5:23pm but it was now close to midnight. Nothing left to do but go to bed, and eating that pizza slice might not have been the best idea as she still wasn't feeling any better.
The figure on the rooftop decided that enough time had elapsed from when the rent-a-cop came on shift to when he'd probably veg out in front of a small portable TV watching sports highlights, or just fall asleep. Besides, he was bored of playing collateral damage, a game in which you gained points by inadvertently destroyed things when you took out your target. You got points for style and as everyone knows points mean prizes. The gamesmanship took place only in his vibrant imagination. He fired a zip line from a hand held launcher at a raised point on the roof of the library across the street, secured the end on his side, and gracefully sailed across the gap in between. A Tarzan scream burst forth from his mouth as he did so. So much for this being a quiet operation.
Becca removed her makeup washed her face and then stared at it in the mirror of her small bathroom. Hazel eyes, a not too offensive nose, reasonable lips, and close cropped brunette hair gave her a pixie like look. Big fake grin for the mirror after brushing her teeth and then off to bed.
The man on the library rooftop touched something attached to his left wrist, it's display glowed for a moment and he noted the read out. Setting off across the roof with it's uniform skylight windows running in parallel rows he stopped at one and produced a small pen sized metal item which he waved across the window frame. The alarm sensors now disabled he produced a blade and pried the window open. He leapt into the opening and landed below on a large reading table. Falling leaves make more noise. Touching the device on his wrist again the display lit up, noting what it told him he set off quickly.
Becca was asleep, even if to outside observers it appears to be a restless sleep, though sleep none the less. Were she awake she'd be trying to scream right now, but with little success as her entire head including her neck and shoulders were in the process of being encased in a slick black goo. In places it appeared to bubble out from inside her skin and where it wasn't bubbling if was starting to flow in small vein like rivulets. One of her arms had already turned black right up to the fingertips while the other was patchy and half done.
Miles away across town someone else was dealing with a different kind of darkness. Standing in the gloom of the empty library it looked very much like the trail had gone as cold as the weather outside. No matter how many times he touched the device on his wrist the reading was the same. It just stopped at this point on the floor next to one of the desks.
" Run run as fast as you can. I'll catch you, you're not the ginger bread man!" he said in a high pitched squeal.
"I had hoped you'd crawled in here to die but it looks like you found a new walking emotional buffet to dine on. You got away this time but I'm gonna getcha. Yes I will"
At this stage the symbiote had completely encased Becca's body. As alien as the symbiote is to our planet had Becca not been in a dream state she'd have recognised the sensation of relief. The sense that life had been grabbed from of the jaws of death and fate had somehow rewarded a badly injured creature far from home. In it's mind it suspected that had it seeped through another skylight all this would have ended badly. It would have missed the only person on that floor and would have been found by the one hunting it. The one who separated the previous "us" and turned it into just an "I".
Being so weak it wouldn't have been capable of over powering the host it was now attached to, but she slept and it was crafty. It seeped in under the glass and poured itself right on top of her, it got it's way quickly and was able to spend some time resting. "We both see your dreams now Becca..", it thought to itself.
Carefully moving through the sleeping woman's psyche it began gingerly examining parts of the mind at the lower levels, the more primitive parts of the brain hoping that what it would find buried under layers and layers of morality wouldn't be as much as a disappointment as some of the other minds it had looked through. This was a strong mind, there was vanity & some shallowness but it was unexpectedly complex, the delights she hid in the places into which she thought no one would ever venture were wondrous. And the older mind, the one from the reptilian parts of the brain gave a lot to work with.
"Oh what great & terrible things we will do." it thought.